Thursday, October 17, 2024
Home Blog Page 66

Violent Extremism: CISLAC, GIABA-ECOWAS Take Sensitisation to Borno Emirate

0

Violent Extremism: CISLAC, GIABA-ECOWAS Take Sensitisation to Borno Emirate   The Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)/Transparency International in Nigeria (TI-Nigeria), Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani), has called for enhanced community-based surveillance through institutionalised Early Warning and Early Response system, to elicit citizen-based report of threat signals for timely response to terrorism…
Read More

Can X help Donald Trump get back into the White House?

0

Inside Story

The former US president and Republican nominee returns to the platform in a talk with Elon Musk.

As recently as two years ago, Donald Trump and Elon Musk were public enemies – with Musk posting on his social media platform X: “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

Now, the billionaire businessman has endorsed him – and the Republican presidential candidate has returned to X.

Their two-hour-long interview was streamed live and touched on topics including immigration, foreign policy and US energy policy.

Trump is under pressure to halt the advance of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the race to the White House, and Musk is facing business problems.

So, what impact could X have on the US election?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Brian Stelter – Veteran media journalist and special correspondent for Vanity Fair

Steve Herman – Voice Of America’s chief national correspondent and author of Behind the White House Curtain

Arshad Hasan – Democratic political strategist and founder of Convey Communications

Read More

VFW Condemns Donald Trump’s ‘Asinine’ Comments About Medal of Honor

0

“It is even more disappointing when these comments come from a man who already served in this noble office and frankly should already know better”

Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the country’s largest veterans advocacy group, condemned Donald Trump in a new statement after comments the former president made earlier this week comparing the Congressional Medal of Honor to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

At an event meant to center on fighting antisemitism Thursday at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf club, Trump talked about awarding a civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 to megadonor Miriam Adelson, noting how its equivalent to the Congressional Medal of Honor — the highest military honor given for valor in combat — but even better, because that’s given to soldiers “in very bad shape … or they’re dead.”

“I watched Sheldon [Adelson] sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Trump said. “That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

“But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump added. “She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she got it for — and that’s through committees and everything else.”

The VFW, unsurprisingly, took umbrage Trump’s remarks, with the organization’s National Commander Al Lipphardt saying in a statement (via The Hill), “These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterized the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.”

As the Hill notes, this isn’t the first time Trump’s remarks on the military has drawn consternation from the VFW: In 2020, Trump downplayed the traumatic head injuries suffered by 34 service members in Iranian airstrikes as “headaches,” with the VFW demanding an apology for that comment.

Trending

“When a candidate to serve as commander-in-chief so brazenly dismisses the valor and reverence symbolized by the Medal of Honor, I question whether they would discharge their responsibilities with the seriousness and discernment necessary,” Lipphardt added in his statement. 

“It is even more disappointing when these comments come from a man who already served in this noble office and frankly should already know better.”

Read More

As Harris gains ground on Trump, ‘crypto bros’ try to thread this political needle

0

Donald Trump’s family is teasing more details of their latest ‘crypto’ grift while Democrats try to put the digital asset community at ease over what a Kamala Harris presidency might mean for the sector.

Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, began pimping a purported decentralized finance (DeFi) product of some sort last week but weren’t all that forthcoming regarding the details. Don Jr. later participated in an online Q&A in which he declared that the plan was to “take on a lot of the banking world. I think there has been a lot of inequality in that only certain people can get financing.”

Earlier this week, Eric spoke to the New York Post, revealing that “digital real estate” would play a role in the Trump Organization’s new cash grab. It appears to involve a plan for more efficient processing of loan applications by Americans who allegedly “cannot be banked … meaning they will be rejected for most loans from most institutions.”

Eric claimed that DeFi would give these unbanked masses “the ability to almost instantaneously be approved or denied from a lender based on math, not policy. Money could be in their account in minutes, not months… It’s equitable. It’s collateral anyone can get access to and do so instantly.”

Maybe it’s our cynical ears, but promising easier access to real estate financing by people who really can’t afford to buy real estate conjures up uneasy echoes of the subprime mortgage fiasco that crashed the global economy in 2008. But apparently, “this time it’s different,” courtesy of DeFi.

There’s also the fact that the last time the Trump Organization pledged to help the ‘little guy’ get into real estate, it ended with a $25 million legal settlement on behalf of all the suckers who’d been duped by the sham “who wants to be a millionaire” promises of Trump University.

Trump has seemingly made “crypto” a key plank of his 2024 election pitch, even though his understanding of blockchain technology isn’t the best, and his interest likely begins and ends with the millions he can cajole from ‘crypto bros’ with a few well-timed comments.

This has analysts at Wall Street brokerage Bernstein predicting the crypto bull market to end all bull markets should Trump be elected in November. Conversely, a Harris victory would allegedly unleash a bear market not seen since that grizzly mauled Leonardo DiCaprio a few years ago.

In fact, Harris’s current polling lead has been credited with/blamed for the recent weakness of the BTC token, a steaming pile of damp coals that not even Tether minting billions of additional stablecoins seems able to reignite.

Harris has yet to declare a policy position on “crypto,” although, to be fair, her campaign isn’t yet a month old and has yet to establish firm policies on any number of issues—most of which are infinitely more important to infinitely more people than “crypto.”

The bros cried foul when Harris announced several campaign advisors, including Brian Nelson, a former Treasury official who participated in the department’s successful prosecution of the Binance digital asset exchange. However, Harris also appointed David Plouffe, a former Obama aide who once served on Binance’s (now disbanded) global advisory board.

The fact that these appointments made such waves among the crypto faithful speaks volumes as to the single-issue mindset that prevails among those with heavy bags that aren’t going to pump themselves. Political operatives hold any number of positions on any number of subjects at any particular moment in time, so stop reading so much into every little twitch they make.

Schumer4SchumerRemainingSenateLeader

Nonetheless, Democrats have been trying to poke holes in the narrative that only Trump is good for ‘crypto.’ Last week, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) hosted a virtual meeting that included National Economic Council director Lael Brainard, White House chief of staff Bruce Reed, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. The industry side was represented by Mark Cuban and execs from Circle, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Kraken, Ripple, Uniswap, and others.

There’s been no formal readout of the meeting, but some regulatory scofflaws reportedly spent most of their time bitching about being the targets of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probes. Others cried bullshit when Adeyemo denied the existence of an active campaign to “debank” crypto firms, aka the unproven conspiracy theory known as “Chokepoint 2.0.”

Harris didn’t directly participate in the August 14 town hall put on by “Crypto4Harris,” a group not formally affiliated with her campaign. However, plenty of other Democratic stars did participate, including Reps Adam Schiff (D-CA), Wily Nickel (D-NC) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Stabenow, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently walked back plans to introduce an updated version of her 2022 digital asset bill. Stabenow told the town hall that her inability to make progress was because Republicans had been “playing games.” Like the Dems’ doomed border bill, Trump’s minions appear determined to deny the other side any legislative victories ahead of November’s election.

But Schumer raised expectations that Stabenow’s bill might rise again with his claim that passing some form of digital asset legislation before the conclusion of this session of Congress “is absolutely possible, even in these divided times.”

Schumer asked for support “to make sure that any proposal is bipartisan,” but Schumer also emphasized the need to pass “sensible” legislation. This would include “guardrails to keep users of this technology safe, to preserve our national security and to ensure that this tech can’t be abused by criminal organizations.”

Schumer said the pols were present “because we all support … Harris to be our next president, and we all believe in the future of crypto.” But even Nickel was a bit taken aback by Schumer’s pledge, calling it “a big deal.” Nickel said he expects to hear from Harris “soon” regarding a potential “reset” of Democratic policies regarding digital assets.

Nickel also reminded the audience that “there’s only one candidate running for president who’s called crypto a scam, and that’s Donald Trump.” Referencing Trump’s well-documented history of flip-flopping on issues based on their capacity to line his pockets, saying Trump “is just totally full of shit.”

Purple chain

Many “crypto” luminaries went full-throated in their public support for Trump shortly before Harris replaced Joe Biden on the Dem ticket, and the resulting reversal of poll positions may have them regretting that decision. Tellingly, some execs have begun trying to reverse the perception that ‘crypto’ is a partisan issue, hedging their bets should Trump’s downward spiral prove irreversible.

Speaking recently at the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said his “number one concern is that crypto becomes politicized and becomes a partisan issue in ways that, at the very least, slow and perhaps even worse, threaten its continued growth and development.”

Speaking to CNBC this week, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said “crypto in many ways, has been treated as a bipartisan issue for quite some time. You saw major bills in stablecoin, major bills in market structure advancing, and so it looked like this was a purple issue.”

Allaire said he saw “a concerted effort, both from the [Biden] administration and the Harris campaign, to really get to know the issues, the players, the industry, the policy issues. I think what the industry is looking for very, very clearly is clear statements … from Harris as part of her economic policy agenda.”

Not everyone is supportive of Harris potentially embracing crypto. Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the nonprofit financial reform group Better Markets, issued an op-ed on August 15, saying Harris had a lot of policy issues on her plate but “caving to threats from the crypto industry should not be one of them.”

Kelleher warned that crypto’s “big goal is to pick its own regulator and get a veneer of legitimacy, but not be regulated much at all.” Kelleher noted Harris’s “long and strong record as a prosecutor who fights for consumer and investor protections and against financial industry lawbreaking,” something Kelleher said was at odds with “the crypto industry’s extensive lawbreaking rap sheet.”

Biting the hand that feeds

Both Circle and Coinbase are contributors to Fairshake, the deep-pocketed political action committee that amassed nearly $200 million to boost pro-crypto candidates—and punish crypto critics—regardless of party affiliation.

Fairshake recently declared its intention to spend $12 million to dethrone Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who has been a reliable thorn in crypto’s side on Capitol Hill. That would top the $10 million Fairshake spent to defeat the bid by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) to take over the late Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat.

But Fairshake also pledged $3 million each to support Democrats Elissa Slotkin and Ruben Gallego, who are running for Senate seats in Michigan and Arizona, respectively. This has apparently put some Republican noses out of joint, who felt that their party’s vocal crypto support had guaranteed a zero-sum pro-GOP/anti-Dem approach from crypto super PACs.

One unnamed GOP strategist said, “Coinbase and Fairshake are attempting to become toxic to Republicans” by supporting candidates opposing GOP Senate candidates. An ‘industry leader’ expressed similar confusion, saying, “Republicans are WTF about what’s going on with Fairshake, and I think that’s a pretty bad omen for the industry.”

Meanwhile, the Coinbase-funded astroturf advocacy group Stand With Crypto just announced The America 💜Crypto Tour 2024, an “epic concert series across 5 swing states” (Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) from September 4-13.

It’s unclear what performers might have been willing to accept some crypto millions to perform at these shindigs, but we’re really hoping the Winklevoss twins’ utterly sucktastic band Mars Junction is on the bill. And that they play that song that lets voters yell back at them: ‘F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me.’

Watch: Teranode & the Web3 world with edge-to-edge electronic value system

New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.

Read More

Donald Trump Already Has an Expectation for His Cabinet

0

Former President Donald Trump pledged that his Cabinet would lower inflation in the first 100 days of his second term during a rally Wednesday.

The Republican presidential nominee was visiting Asheville, North Carolina, when he said he already had an expectation for his Cabinet—to get inflation down in the first few months of his presidency.

“On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign an executive order directing every Cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and bring consumer prices rapidly down,” Trump said. “I will instruct my Cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days, or much sooner.”

Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump walks toward the stage to speak at a rally at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse at Montana State University on August 9 in Bozeman, Montana. Trump pledged to…

Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

Trump said the Biden-Harris administration turned the economy Americans experienced during his presidency into an “economic nightmare.”

Inflation stood at 2.9 percent in July but reached a record high of 9.1 percent two years ago.

“A lot of people are very devastated by what’s happened with inflation,” Trump said. “I gave Harris and Biden an economic miracle and they quickly turned it into an economic nightmare.”

Trump also promised to preserve the Affordable Care Act and keep Social Security and Medicare in place.

“We are going to defeat Kamala Harris, we are going to win back the White House in a historic landslide, and we are going to take back our country,” Trump said.

Trump also said that Harris would not be able to improve the economy because of her current involvement in President Joe Biden‘s administration.

“Kamala Harris won’t end the economic crisis, she will only make it worse. Why hasn’t she done it?” Trump said. “You don’t have to imagine what a Harris presidency would look like. You are living through that misery right now, except it will only get worse.”

Trump also claimed that price hikes during the Biden administration cost the average American household $28,000.

“From the day I take the oath of office, we will rapidly drive prices down and make America affordable again,” Trump said.

Earlier this year, Trump also pledged to end taxes on tips for workers as well as on Social Security payments.

“To help seniors on fixed incomes who are suffering the ravages of inflation, there will be no tax on Social Security,” Trump said. “With this vote, I will end this injustice.”

Trump has repeatedly promised a better economic future for Americans if reelected and said four years with Biden or Harris would see a worse economy.

“With four more years of Harris, your finances will never recover. Our country will never recover,” Trump said. “Vote Trump and your incomes will soar, your savings will grow, young people will be able to afford a home, and we will bring back the American dream bigger, better and stronger than ever before.”

Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, said Trump’s pledge to lower inflation with 100 days might be a “worthwhile goal,” but it could be difficult to enact.

“The sad reality is despite promises by either current presidential campaign, the effects of inflation over the past few years aren’t going to vanish anytime soon,” Beene told Newsweek. “Federal and state governments are doing their best through rebates, additional coverage in Medicare, and interest rate regulation to soften the blow already, and while they’ve helped, prices still remain stubbornly high.”

Beene said there are current signs of price stabilization, but true change might take longer than just a few months.

“Given history, though, it’s fair to say improving market conditions through changing consumer behavior and more inventory prompting price reductions will give more help to the problem than any short-term fix regulators could propose, and that includes a second Trump term’s proposals,” Beene said.

Michael Ryan, a finance expert and founder of michaelryanmoney.com, echoed Beene’s doubts that Trump could get inflation under control that rapidly.

“Trump’s pledge to slash inflation in 100 days reminds me of when I ran for fifth-grade class president and my opponent promised no homework and straight A’s for everyone. It sounds great, but the reality is far more complex,” Ryan told Newsweek.

“Inflation doesn’t respond to a magic wand. It’s influenced by a tangled web of factors, from global supply chains to energy prices. Trump’s plan to sign an executive order on day one feels like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded.”

Two months ago, a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists came together to warn that a second Trump presidency could worsen economic conditions rather than improve the inflation Americans have seen on goods and services.

“We the undersigned are deeply concerned about the risks of a second Trump administration for the US economy,” the 16 economists wrote in a letter led by well-known economist Joseph Stiglitz.

“The outcome of this election will have economic repercussions for years, and possibly decades, to come. We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the US’s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the US’s domestic economy.”

Read More

Man Utd transfers: Romano reveals Ratcliffe’s two ‘cheaper options’ with ‘top target’ costing ‘crazy money’

0

Manchester United are reportedly considering two “cheaper options” as alternatives to Manuel Ugarte, with the PSG star likely to cost “crazy money”. Man Utd have already spent around £90m to sign Joshua Zirkzee and Leny Yoro this summer. They now have deals in place to sign Bayern Munich pair Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui…
Read More

Unearthing History: Ancient Potatoes Reveal Indigenous Agricultural Genius

0

Research confirms the Four Corners potato was historically cultivated by Indigenous groups in the Southwest, showing advanced agricultural techniques and the potato’s role in trade networks, significantly impacting plant diversity. A study reveals that a native potato species, Solanum jamesii, was historically transported and cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the Southwestern U.S…
Read More

La DNCG confirme en appel la rétrogradation de Bordeaux en N2

0

La DNCG, qui examinait lundi le recours des Girondins contre leur rétrogradation administrative en National 2, la 4e division du football français, a annoncé quu0027elle avait confirmé sa décision en appel…
Read More

‘I threw a cup at him’: Henry Thia recalls disagreement with Jack Neo, how Mark Lee helped him with lines, Entertainment News

0

Looking back at his acting career that spans close to three decades, local comedian Henry Thia said he had never thought he would become a star. Sharing his experiences in the latest episode of the YouTube series R U Okay released yesterday (Aug 11), the 72-year-old said that he started off as a factory worker
Read More