Trump goes AWOL, hasnt shown up to work all week

Source: Shareblue

Donald Trump’s public schedule has gone blank once again, as the amorphous Republican retreats behind the walls of the White House.

His strange disappearing act comes as Trump’s family becomes deeply embroiled in the Russia collusion story, and while the Republican Party is trying to generate momentum to pass its health care bill. Instead of having a full schedule in the wake of a multiple-day trip last week to the G20 summit in Europe, Trump has disappeared.

He hasn’t had an official public, stateside appearance in more than a week.

The current vanishing act stands in stark contrast to the way Trump routinely made public appearances during his first 100 days in office, generating headlines with executive order ceremonies, fake signing ceremonies, and round table meetings with business leaders.

The events were widely covered in the press, which helped the White House project the image of a robust, hard-working president. “Top White House aides even bragged about media access to the President,” CNN once noted.

But no more.

Read more: http://shareblue.com/trump-goes-awol-hasnt-shown-up-to-work-all-week/#.WWY3pH1z-Fc.facebook

High Time for Regulation: Uruguayan Government Markets Marijuana to Combat Drug Trafficking

Over the next few weeks, 16 pharmacies throughout Uruguay will begin to sell marijuana. It is the first country in the world whose government not only legalizes consumption; but also regulates, packages, and markets the drug.

Uruguay is using this public policy to combat drug trafficking and black market sales.

For tourists hoping to take advantage, there is a catch: only native Uruguayans and permanent residents can buy it, and must register with the Institute of Cannabis Regulation and Control prior to making any purchases. Only 4,539 people out of an estimated 150,000 users have registered so far; users include 6,908 independent growers and 63 membership clubs.

Approved pharmacies, according to the new law, will have exclusive rights to handle retail marijuana sales. Authorization for pharmacies to sell cannabis – initially expected by the end of 2014 – was postponed several times.

Participating pharmacies will have a device to scan fingerprints of registered users. This method guarantees the confidentiality of purchase and removes the need for users to bring identification.

The product will be sold in 5-gram bags, and each gram will cost the equivalent of 1.30 dollars - much cheaper than the black market. Each person may purchase up to 10 grams per week, equivalent to roughly 12 cigarettes.

Under former President Pepe Mujica Uruguay became the first country to legalize the cultivation, distribution, and consumption of marijuana in 2013. Unlike in other countries, where growers maintain autonomy, the Uruguayan government will supervise all parts of the process.

At: http://www.thebubble.com/high-time-for-regulation-uruguayan-government-markets-marijuana-to-combat-drug-trafficking/

KKK marchers say they will be armed Saturday at Charlottesville rally

Source: Washington Post

A Ku Klux Klan chapter holding a rally in downtown Charlottesville on Saturday afternoon says it expects 80 to 100 members and supporters to take part in the protest and that most will have guns with them.

“It’s an open-carry state, so our members will be armed,” said James Moore, a member of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is headquartered in Pelham, NC, near the Virginia border. Moore said that if members are attacked, they will defend themselves.

The KKK is protesting the Charlottesville City Council’s decision this year to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public park and rename that park. Once called Lee Park, it is now Emancipation Park. A court injunction has halted the statue’s removal until a November hearing. On Thursday, a “Confederate Heroes” plaque attached to the statue was removed by city workers.

“The liberals are taking away our heritage,” Moore said.

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kkk-marchers-say-they-will-be-armed-saturday-at-charlottesville-rally/ar-BBDXYhk?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=mailsignout

The dean of Argentine cartoonists, Juan Carlos Colombres, dies at 94

Juan Carlos Colombres, an editor, humorist, and cartoonist whose work lampooned Argentine mores and politics for 70 years, died yesterday in Buenos Aires.

Popularly known by his byline, Landrú, he was 94.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1923 to a well to-do family from the northwest, Colombres began his career in journalism in 1945 as a commentator and editorial cartoonist for 'Don Fulgencio', a satirical magazine. Colombres developed a naïf drawing style, incorporating his trademark smiling cat as a silent witness, and adopting a pseudonym (a custom among Argentine cartoonists): Landrú.

A decade later, in 1957, he co-founded what became his most successful undertaking: the satirical weekly 'Tía (Aunt) Vicenta'.

Family connections afforded Colombres rare access to business elites and the military inner circle, giving 'Tía Vicenta' the inside track on many of the political intrigues of the day. He made ingenious use of epigrams with teasers such as "why are you all looking at me?" to clue readers in on brewing - but still secret - controversies.

After the subject of one such series in 1958 (Vice President Alejandro Gómez) resigned just a few weeks later, Tía Vicenta's readership jumped to over 200,000 a week, with peaks of 450,000 - becoming the country's most popular current events magazine.

Its very access and biting wit would become its undoing when, after a 1966 coup, Colombres used his knowledge that Gen. Juan Carlos Onganía was referred to as the "walrus" by fellow generals to lampoon the new dictator with two walruses on that week's cover declaring: "finally! A right and Godly government!"

Tía Vicenta was promptly shut down by the new dictatorship, and his career as a publisher never recovered.

Colombres was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot prize by Columbia University in 1971. He later began contributing editorial cartoons for the nation's largest daily, Clarín, in 1975.

He continued poking fun at stodgy politicians and businessmen - even during Argentina's brutal 1976-83 dictatorship, when he often referred to the wiry (and wily) dictator, Gen. Jorge Videla, as the "Pink Panther."

Many of his stock characters alluded to upper-class pretentiousness as he saw it; one such character - the self-righteous but philandering "pillar of society" Señor Porcel - had been patterned, he later revealed, after his own father. Porcel's wife, Señora Gorda, in turn symbolized self-absorbed upper-class women, and would become one of his most lasting characters.

His weekly column in Clarín's culinary insert likewise offered "recipes" whose ingredients were puns alluding to Argentine current events.

Colombres' work became more infrequent after being shot in the right hand in a 1994 robbery. He was named an Illustrious Citizen by the City of Buenos Aires in 2003, and in 2014 made his last public appearance to unveil a mural with his smiling cat in Buenos Aires' Cartoon Promenade.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.clarin.com%2Fsociedad%2Fmurio-landru-destacados-humoristas-graficos-pais_0_BkXhuba4b.html



Colombres ("Landrú&quot and friends.

Cablevision-Telecom merger to concentrate unprecedented control over communications in Argentina

The boards of directors of Telecom Argentina, the nation's second-largest mobile phone carrier, and Cablevisión, its largest cable television provider, announced their merger on Friday.

Some 40% of the shares of the new company will remain in the hands of Mexican equity firm Fintech, which already has significant stakes in both Telecom Argentina and Cablevisión. Another 33% will belong to the Clarín Group, the largest media conglomerate in Argentina and a key backer of the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration.

The merger, all but certain to be approved by the Argentine regulators, will give the firm a communications quadruple play - the control of fixed and mobile telecommunications, television, and internet distribution.

Media observers in Argentina have expressed concern over the merger, which, once finalized later this year, will give a single company unprecedented power over the nation's already concentrated ​​telecommunications and information services.

The firm will control an estimated 42% of the fixed telephony market, 34% of mobile telephony, 56% of broadband internet connections, 35% of mobile connections, and 40% of the cable TV market.

Besides its stake in Cablevisión, the Clarín Group is also "the biggest newspaper publisher, owner of leading radio staions and television and cable channels, as well as being a shareholder in (newsprint maker) Papel Prensa, the DyN Agency and pay TV signals," Professor Martín Becerra of the University of Buenos Aires pointed out.

With annual revenue of $3 billion, the Clarín Group is today among the largest telecom businesses in Latin America; 70% of these revenues come from Cablevisión, which the group spun off last year in order to facilitate the Telecom merger.

The group’s growth has historically been driven in no small part by close relations with presidents and dictators who approved successive buyouts of competitors.

President Mauricio Macri, whose narrow victory in 2015 was owed largely to staunch support from Clarín's media outlets, has helped it expand further by privatizing televised football rights (sold to a Fox/Turner/Clarín consortium), by rolling back anti-monopoly regulations, and by allowing it to enter Argentina's 25 million-subscriber mobile phone market with the purchase of Nextel Argentina this January.

Macri was denounced in December by the three leading mobile carriers - Spain's Telefónica, Carlos Slim's América Móvil, and Telecom - for allowing Clarín's Nextel unit free access to 4G networks that had cost $2 billion between them.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infonews.com%2Fnota%2F308760%2Ftras-la-fusion-clarin-y-telecom-concentraran&edit-text=

German investigators pay 5 million for Panama Papers to hunt global tax criminals

Source: The Local

The German Federal Criminal Police Office said on Tuesday that it has purchased the vast amount of leaked data known as the Panama Papers, which revealed the legally dubious offshore activities of celebrities, politicians and sports stars last year.

While the BKA would not disclose details about the purchase, government sources told DPA that the data had been bought from a “source” within the past year for €5 million.

The Panama Papers created a stir worldwide last year when German newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), along with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), published details of the 11.5 million leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The documents revealed financial information of Mossack clients such as the Saudi Arabian King, Argentine football star Lionel Messi, the father of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and four other sitting heads of government.

Read more: https://www.thelocal.de/20170705/german-investigators-pay-5-million-for-panama-papers-to-hunt-global-tax-criminals

Lawsuit seeks to void Georgia congressional election results

Source: AP

Georgia's electronic touchscreen voting system is so riddled with problems that the results of the most expensive House race in U.S. history should be tossed out and a new election held, according to a lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court by the Colorado-based Coalition for Good Governance and voters who are members of the group.

It seeks to overturn the results of the June 20 runoff election between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia's 6th Congressional District. Handel was declared the winner with 52% of the vote to Ossoff's 48%. The named defendants include Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, members of the State Election Board, local election officials in Fulton, Cobb and DeKalb counties and the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University.

The lawsuit claims Georgia's touchscreen voting system has severe security problems, lacks verifiable paper ballots and cannot be legally used for elections. A judge in June threw out a related lawsuit earlier that attempted to force Georgia to use paper ballots. The new lawsuit comes weeks after the publication of a classified NSA report describing a sophisticated scheme, allegedly by Russian military intelligence, to infiltrate local U.S. elections systems using phishing emails.

The suit cites the work of private cybersecurity researcher Logan Lamb, who discovered last August that a misconfigured server had left Georgia's 6.7 million voter records and other sensitive files exposed to hackers. The complaint also notes that seven months after Lamb made that discovery, another researcher was able to do the same.

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lawsuit-seeks-to-void-georgia-congressional-election-results/ar-BBDLAK9?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

Chile's Pinera cruising to primary win, solidifying front-runner status

Former Chile President Sebastián Piñera was cruising to victory on Sunday in the presidential nominating election for Chile's right-leaning Alianza bloc, consolidating his place as the front-runner for November's general election.

With 60% of votes counted, investor favorite Piñera, 67, a billionaire who governed Chile from 2010 to 2014, had 57% of votes cast in the Alianza primary, the country's electoral service Servel said.

That represented a decisive win over right-wing populist Manuel Jose Ossandon and the more socially liberal Felipe Kast, who had 29% and 14%, respectively.

Chile's relatively minor left-wing Frente Amplio coalition also held its primaries on Sunday, with journalist Beatriz Sánchez easily beating sociologist Alberto Mayol as expected with 68% of the vote.

Sunday's results narrow Chile's presidential field to four major candidates and Piñera's win will be welcome by the business community in one of South America's most stable and affluent countries.

According to the most recent poll by pollster CEP, released in June, Piñera leads the November election with around 24% of the vote. Leftist journalist Alejandro Guillier of the center-left Nueva Mayoria bloc, which did not participate in primaries, is in second place with 13%.

Sánchez followed with 5%, while Carolina Goic of the centrist Christian Democratic Party, which also skipped primaries, is trailing with 2%.

Bachelet is not allowed to seek re-relection, as Chile's constitution bans presidents from seeking consecutive terms.

If no candidate receives 50 percent in the first round in November as is likely, the election will go to a run-off in December. A runoff is seen as much tighter, particularly if the now fractured left unifies around one candidate.

At: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-election-idUSKBN19O018



Chilean candidates (from left): Sebastián Piñera; Carolina Goic; Beatriz Sánchez; and Alejandro Guillier

In honor of the (imperiled) Civil Rights Act - signed 53 years ago today.

Pope Francis Ousts Powerful Conservative Cardinal

Source: New York Times

Pope Francis earlier this year ordered Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the top doctrinal watchdog in the Roman Catholic Church, to fire three priests from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the keeper of the church’s orthodoxy and presides over investigations into sexual abuse

Cardinal Müller, an ideological conservative often at odds with the pontiff, was vexed by the order, and, in a recent interview, said he had made a case, in vain, for the priests to stay in Rome.

In a rarefied political atmosphere where personnel is policy, the replacement of Cardinal Müller, 69, who was appointed by Francis’ conservative predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, amounts to one of the pope’s most consequential appointments.

“This gives the pope the chance to finally place his own man in a very important spot,” said the Rev. James Martin, an editor at large for the Catholic magazine America and a consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communication. “For many admirers of Benedict, Cardinal Müller was the last link to Benedict’s way of doing things.”

The appointment also potentially removed the most powerful ideological brake on the pope’s agenda to emphasize pastoral inclusion over issues of doctrine. The dismissal comes right after Francis granted a leave of absence to an ideological ally of Cardinal Müller’s who is facing trial in Australia on charges of sexual assault.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/world/europe/vatican-pope-doctrine-mueller.html