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Purveyor's JournalObama To Nominate Republican James Comey To Head FBI
Source: International Business Times
By Howard Koplowitz | June 20 2013 5:05 PM
President Barack Obama is expected to tap James Comey to succeed Robert Mueller as FBI director on Friday, Politico reported Thursday afternoon.
Comey, 52, is a Republican who served as deputy U.S. attorney general in George W. Bush’s administration from 2003 to 2005. Before that, he was the Manhattan U.S. attorney from January 2002 to December 2003.
Obama will nominate Comey during an afternoon ceremony on Friday, according to Politico. Comey will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If Comey’s nomination goes through, he’ll replace Mueller, who has been FBI director since 2001.
Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-nominate-republican-james-comey-head-fbi-photo-1317105
Four In Ten U.S. Adults Care For Sick And Elderly Relatives
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Four in 10 U.S. adults are now caring for a sick or elderly family member as more people develop chronic illnesses and the population ages, a new study has found.
“More health care is happening at home,” said Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life project and the study’s lead author. “As more people are able to be saved by medical advances, their lives are being extended, but they’re also being sent home medically fragile. It’s caregivers who are the first line of defense.”Researchers, which found that the number of caregivers increased 10 percent between 2010 and 2013, surveyed 3,014 adults nationwide and found that most caregivers were between 30 and 64 years old.
Fox also said the slow U.S. economy could explain why family members are becoming more responsible for care. With fewer or depleted savings, many people are less able to hire professional help, she said.
About half of the United States population has at least one chronic condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adults ages 65 and older, 75 percent of whom have chronic conditions, are expected to make up 19 percent of the population by 2030, compared with 12 percent in 2000.
MORE...
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/20/four-in-ten-u-s-adults-care-for-sick-and-elderly-relatives/
US Human Trafficking Report: Russia And China Angered
Russia and China have reacted angrily after the US downgraded them in a report on efforts to fight human trafficking.
Russia spoke of its "indignation". A Chinese official called the report an example of an "arbitrary judgement".
The annual US Department of State report relegated Russia and China into its lowest category, which also includes Iran and North Korea.
Uzbekistan also fell to Tier 3 in the report, published on Wednesday.
The 21 countries in Tier 3 may face sanctions in areas including cultural and education programmes, and the US could withdraw its support for loans from the World Bank or International Monetary Fund.
MORE...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22985594
Palestinian Children Tortured, Used As Shields By Israel: U.N
GENEVA | Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:35pm EDT
(Reuters) - A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces on Thursday of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields.
Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, are routinely denied registration of their birth and access to health care, decent schools and clean water, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said.
"Palestinian children arrested by (Israeli) military and police are systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture, are interrogated in Hebrew, a language they did not understand, and sign confessions in Hebrew in order to be released," it said in a report.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it had responded to a report by the U.N. children's agency UNICEF in March on ill-treatment of Palestinian minors and questioned whether the U.N. committee's investigation covered new ground.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-palestinian-israel-children-idUSBRE95J0UJ20130620
Six-Member, All-Female Jury Selected In Trayvon Martin Murder Case
SANFORD, Florida | Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:57pm EDT
(Reuters) - Lawyers in Florida's Trayvon Martin murder case selected a six-member, all-female jury on Thursday to try the high-profile case against former neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman.
The jurors, selected from a final pool of 40, will decide the fate of Zimmerman, who triggered a national debate about guns, race and equal justice before the law when he shot and killed Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in a gated community in central Florida in February 2012.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-usa-florida-shooting-jury-idUSBRE95J12620130620
Freeway Bridge, Under Construction, Collapse Kills One And Injures Another In Arizona
(Reuters) – A freeway bridge under construction collapsed in Mesa, Arizona, on Wednesday, killing one worker and injuring another, a fire department spokesman said.
The collapse occurred when four workers were removing supports from the bridge being built for the State Route 202 freeway, Captain Forrest Smith of the Mesa Fire and Medical Department said.
One man was found dead under the debris. Another worker was injured and taken to a hospital for treatment, Smith said.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/19/freeway-bridge-collapse-kills-one-and-injures-another-in-arizona/
Chomsky: Obama Is ‘Dedicated To Increasing Terrorism’
In a wide-ranging interview with GRITtv host Laura Flanders, MIT professor and author Noam Chomsky plainly stated that President Barack Obama’s administration is “dedicated to increasing terrorism” all around the world.
In his view, the NSA spying scandal clearly illustrates how subservient to corporate and state power the American media has become. “There would be headlines saying this is a bad joke” if the press wanted to be truly independent, Chomsky told Flanders.
“The Obama administration is dedicated to increasing terrorism,” he went on. “In fact, it’s doing it all over the world. Obama, first of all, is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history. The drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it… All of these operations, they are terror operations.”
Chomsky continued: “People have a reaction, they don’t say, ‘Fine, I don’t care if my cousin was murdered.’ And they become what we call terrorists. This is completely understood from the highest level, that as you carry out these operations you’re generating terrorism.”
“Sometimes it’s almost surreal,” he lamented, recalling the congressional testimony of a man from Yemen who claimed a single drone strike turned his whole village against the U.S. — something the extremist Muslims in his region had failed to do.
MORE...
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/19/chomsky-obama-is-dedicated-to-increasing-terrorism/
China Says Middle East Conflict Too Complex for Just U.S.
By Bloomberg News - Jun 19, 2013
The Middle East’s challenges are too complicated for the U.S. to address alone, a top Chinese envoy said today, as the government seeks greater influence in a region that’s the source of 50 percent of its oil imports.
China’s new leadership is paying great attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Wu Sike, China’s special envoy for the Middle East, told the official Xinhua News Agency in comments reported yesterday. He spoke as China hosted United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who is scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping today.
“The Middle East problems are too complex to be solved single-handedly, including by a superpower like America taking the leading role,” Wu said. “It’s not that the U.S. doesn’t want to solve it, it’s that they can’t solve it.”
Since becoming president in March, Xi has taken steps to bolster China’s role in promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, including hosting visits by the two sides’ leaders and proposing a plan to resolve the conflict. The Middle East may feature more prominently in China’s pursuit of natural resources amid forecasts the country will overtake the U.S. as the world’s top crude importer in 2014.
Since taking his post earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has pushed to restart peace talks deadlocked for almost three years. Xi’s proposal, announced last month, called for a halt to settlement activities, an end to violence against civilians and lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip. He called for an independent Palestinian state on the basis of 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/china-envoy-says-middle-east-conflict-too-complex-for-u-s-alone.html
Erdogan Casts Bankers as Villain of Turkish Protests
By Firat Kayakiran - Jun 19, 2013
As Turkey’s government seeks to rally support by identifying culprits behind the unprecedented explosion of anger that erupted in recent weeks, one group has featured on almost every list: bankers.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan began blaming a so-called “interest-rates lobby” in the first week after anti-government protests spread nationwide on May 31. Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said “blood-sucking” financiers, seeking to push Turkey’s interest rates back up, helped provoke the movement that ignited over a police crackdown against people opposed to development plans in Istanbul’s Taksim Square.
The rhetoric resonates in a majority Muslim country where many remember skyrocketing borrowing costs that undermined the economy in the pre-Erdogan decade. In 2001, the year before his party came to power, the government spent more on interest payments than it earned in tax income. In the last two years the Islamist-rooted Erdogan, 59, and his ministers have frequently accused a rates lobby of working to undermine the economy.
That’s “very divisive and unproductive language from a country trying to break through the middle-income trap,” Murat Ucer, a former official at Turkey’s central bank who now works at New York-based economic advisory firm GlobalSourcePartners, wrote in e-mailed comments on June 15. The Turkish economy, which grew 2.2 percent last year, “is having hard time gaining traction” even with record-low interest rates, he said.
‘Without Working’
Erdogan’s government has brought interest rates down as it reduced budget deficits and debt and lured record amounts of foreign investment. Last month, yields on two-year debt fell to a record low of 4.79 percent. In October 2002, the month before his Justice and Development Party or AKP won its first election, the government paid more than 70 percent on nine-month bonds.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/erdogan-casts-bankers-as-villain-of-turk-protest-boosting-yields.html
Federal Health Exchanges Are Behind Schedule, GAO Finds
Source: Bloomberg
By Alex Nussbaum - Jun 19, 2013
Computer systems to help Americans gain coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges may not be ready on time, and training for the people who will assist consumers is behind schedule, a government report found.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is still developing and testing computer systems meant to determine consumers’ eligibility for government subsidies, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said today. Plans to train “navigators” to assist people in finding new insurance plans have been delayed by about two months past a June deadline, the GAO found. The exchanges are set to open Oct. 1.
“Factors such as the still-evolving scope of CMS’s required activities in each state and the many activities yet to be performed -- some close to the start of enrollment -- suggest a potential for challenges going forward,” the GAO said in its report. “Much progress has been made, but much remains to be accomplished within a relatively short amount of time.”
The exchanges are the centerpiece of the 2010 law’s efforts to expand coverage for the uninsured, with some 7 million Americans expected to buy subsidized private plans on the markets next year. The Obama administration’s workload for creating the federal marketplace has swelled beyond what the law’s authors predicted as many Republican-led states have refused to operate their own exchanges.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/federal-health-exchanges-are-behind-schedule-gao-finds.html
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