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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Friday, June 4, 2021

America’s Biggest Companies (Fortune) Fortune magazine released its annual ranking of America’s largest companies, with Walmart topping the list for the ninth straight year. Boosted by the pandemic-driven consumer shift to online and bulk purchasing, the retail behemoth brought in nearly $560B in revenue. The company was followed by Amazon ($386B in revenue), Apple ($275B), CVS Health ($269B), and UnitedHealth Group ($257B). The combined list generated almost $14T in revenue last year—about two-thirds of the US economy.

Drought ravages California’s reservoirs ahead of hot summer (AP) Each year Lake Oroville helps water a quarter of the nation’s crops, sustain endangered salmon beneath its massive earthen dam and anchor the tourism economy of a Northern California county that must rebuild seemingly every year after unrelenting wildfires. But now the mighty lake—a linchpin in a system of aqueducts and reservoirs in the arid U.S. West that makes California possible—is shrinking with surprising speed amid a severe drought, with state officials predicting it will reach a record low later this summer. While droughts are common in California, this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them. The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis. If Lake Oroville falls below 640 feet (195 meters)—which it could do by late August—state officials would shut down a major power plant for just the second time ever because of low water levels, straining the electrical grid during the peak demand of the hottest part of the summer.

Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change (NYT) Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge. Already, no one likes the answer. Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods—except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district. The dramatic $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them. The trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions are cheap, easy or pretty.

A deadly vote (Washington Post) TAXCO, Mexico—Mario Figueroa sat in his armored SUV, surrounded by bodyguards clutching semiautomatic rifles. The bulletproof vest was stashed behind the back seat. These days, Figueroa rarely travels without his security team. As a candidate for mayor of this Spanish colonial city—once popular with American tourists, now lashed by drug violence—the 53-year-old businessman has already taken a bullet in the chest. Mexico is in the final days of one of its most violent electoral campaigns in modern times. Eighty-nine politicians have been killed since September, according to the security consulting firm Etellekt. Scores more have been wounded or threatened. The campaign has become a stark illustration of crime organizations’ quest to expand their control of Mexico’s territory. The violence has focused largely on races for mayor and other local government posts. “They want control of the police, control of public works projects, the budget, and illicit activities,” said Marcial Rodríguez Saldaña, the state leader of Morena, the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “We’ve reached an extreme,” Figueroa said.

US troops storm sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria (Foreign Policy) The owner of a sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria has taken legal action after U.S. soldiers accidentally stormed his business during a NATO training exercise. The mix-up occurred while soldiers were simulating the clearing of an airfield in southern Bulgaria, and continued on to Marin Dimitrov’s factory, where workers watched on as gun-wielding soldiers stalked through the premises. The incident has led to a rebuke from the highest levels with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev calling it “absolutely unacceptable.” “We always learn from these exercises and are fully investigating the cause of this mistake,” the U.S. embassy in Sofia said in a statement.

Beijing Introduces Three-Child Policy (Foreign Policy) On Monday, China announced that married couples would be allowed to have up to three children, raising the official two-child limit in a widely anticipated move. Despite government hopes, the introduction of the two-child policy in 2016 failed to produce a baby boom. It’s unlikely the latest policy change will affect China’s fertility rate, either. The public has responded with mocking contempt toward the idea that government restraints have held parents back from having more children, rather than the exorbitant costs of child rearing in China—from migrant families forced to pay fees for local public schools to upper-class parents who fear their children will fall behind without flute or calligraphy lessons. So why keep a limit on the number of children a couple can have at all? One reason is to provide cover for the ongoing forced sterilization of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, whose birthrate fell by nearly 50 percent between 2017 and 2020. Another is that China now has an enormous family planning bureaucracy that supports many jobs. Party leaders may also be concerned that the rich flaunting large families—such as late Macao casino tycoon Stanley Ho, known for his four wives and 17 children—would spark resentment.

Lebanese leaders exchange barbs as country sinks into crisis (AP) Lebanon’s president and prime minister-designate traded barbs Wednesday, accusing one another of obstruction, negligence and insolence in a war or words that has for months obstructed the formation of a new government as the country sinks deeper into economic and financial crisis. The power struggle between the premier-designate, Saad Hariri, on one side and President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil on the other, has worsened despite warnings from world leaders and economic experts of the dire economic conditions tiny Lebanon is facing. The World Bank on Tuesday said Lebanon’s crisis is one of the worst the world has seen in the past 150 years. In a late night burst of anger, protesters blocked main roads in Beirut and north of the capital. A young activist told a local TV station the protest was against the constant humiliation of Lebanese who line up to fill their cars with fuel, increasing power cuts, search for medicine and deal with confused banking decisions that are robbing thousands of their savings. The Lebanese pound, pegged to the dollar for 30 years at 1,507, has been in a free fall since late 2019. It is now trading at nearly 13,000 to the dollar at the black market.

Netanyahu opponents reach coalition deal to oust Israeli PM (AP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents announced Wednesday that they have reached a deal to form a new governing coalition, paving the way for the ouster of the longtime Israeli leader. The dramatic announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, came shortly before a midnight deadline and prevented what could have been Israel’s fifth consecutive election in just over two years. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Knesset, or parliament, in a vote that is expected to take place early next week. If it goes through, Lapid and a diverse array of partners that span the Israeli political spectrum will end Netanyahu’s record-setting but divisive 12-year rule. Netanyahu, desperate to remain in office while he fights corruption charges, is expected to do everything possible in the coming days to prevent the new coalition from taking power. If he fails, he will be pushed into the opposition. (Foreign Policy) While a new government is not yet set in stone, normal business carries on: Benny Gantz arrives in Washington today to request $1 billion in emergency military aid in order to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defenses and help restock its bomb supply following the bombardment of Gaza. “I would imagine that the administration would say yes to this request and it will sail through Congress,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday.

In Syria camp, forgotten children are molded by IS ideology (AP) At the sprawling al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, children pass their days roaming the dirt roads, playing with mock swords and black banners in imitation of Islamic State group militants. Few can read or write. For some, the only education is from mothers giving them IS propaganda. It has been more than two years since the Islamic State group’s self-declared “caliphate” was brought down. And it has been more than two years that some 27,000 children have been left to languish in al-Hol camp, which houses families of IS members. Most of them not yet teenagers, they are spending their childhood in a limbo of miserable conditions with no schools, no place to play or develop, and seemingly no international interest in resolving their situation. Only one institution is left to mold them: remnants of the Islamic State group. Kurdish authorities and aid groups fear the camp will create a new generation of militants. They are pleading with home countries to take the women and children back. The problem is that home governments often see the children as posing a danger rather than as needing rescue.

‘Come On In, Boys’: A Wave of the Hand Sets Off Spain-Morocco Migrant Fight (NYT) Daouda Faye, a 25-year-old migrant from Senegal, was elated when he heard that Moroccan border guards had suddenly started waving in undocumented migrants across the border to Ceuta, a fenced-off Spanish enclave on the North African coast. “‘Come on in, boys,’” the guards told him and others as they reached the border on May 17, Mr. Faye said. Normally, Morocco tightly controls the fenced borders around Ceuta, a six-mile-long peninsula on Morocco’s northern coast that Spain has governed since the 1600s. But now its military was allowing migrants into this toehold of Europe. Over the next two days, as many as 12,000 people flowed over the border to Ceuta in hopes of reaching mainland Spain, engulfing the city of 80,000. The crisis has laid bare the unique pressure point Morocco has over Spain on migration. Spanish government officials and other experts say Morocco increasingly sees the migrants as a kind of currency and is leveraging its control over them to extract financial and political prizes from Spain. Hours after the migrants began pouring into Ceuta, Spain approved 30 million euros, about $37 million, in aid to Morocco for border policing.

A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says (NPR) Military-grade autonomous drones can fly themselves to a specific location, pick their own targets and kill without the assistance of a remote human operator. Such weapons are known to be in development, but until recently there were no reported cases of autonomous drones killing fighters on the battlefield. Now, a United Nations report about a March 2020 skirmish in the military conflict in Libya says such a drone, known as a lethal autonomous weapons system—or LAWS—has made its wartime debut. But the report does not say explicitly that the LAWS killed anyone. The assault came during fighting between the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord and forces aligned with Gen. Khalifa Haftar, according to the report by the U.N. Panel of Experts on Libya. “Logistics convoys and retreating [Haftar-affiliated forces] were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 ... and other loitering munitions,” the panel wrote. The Kargu-2 is an attack drone made by the Turkish company STM that can be operated both autonomously and manually and that purports to use “machine learning” and “real-time image processing” against its targets.

#headlines #news

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livinginlandmarketing · 4 years ago

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In late January, Sana Jaffery, a 19-year-old public policy student at UC Riverside, signed a lease to rent a private, off-campus apartment for the 2020-21 school year.

Jaffery was careful to reserve a room well before the September start of fall quarter.

UC Riverside student Sana Jaffery, seen outside her home in San Jose on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, is among hundreds of UCR students who found themselves locked into private off-campus apartment leases they no longer needed after classes moved online because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Anda Chu, Bay Area News Group)

“There’s a housing shortage everywhere,” she said. “So they tell us, ‘You need to get your housing locked and loaded so that you have a place to live.’”

Then the world flipped upside down.

The novel coronavirus struck. And, on March 13, Riverside County closed all schools, including universities.

Seven months later, the vast majority of UCR classes — 97% — are being taught online. It may be many more months before students return to the classroom.

Because of the pandemic, Jaffery no longer needs an apartment for classes she takes online from a laptop in her San Jose home. But when she tried to get out of her lease, Jaffery said she ran into a wall of resistance.

Hundreds of other UCR students have, too — and continue to.

It’s a problem occurring across California and elsewhere in the Inland Empire, though the biggest impact in the region appears to be at UCR.

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Leticia Gutierrez-Lopez, associate vice president of student health and wellbeing at Cal Poly Pomona, said about 50 Cal Poly students are in leases for off-campus private housing from which they have been unable to get out.

Cal State San Bernardino spokesman Joe Gutierrez said his university’s housing director wasn’t aware of similar problems there.

At the private La Sierra University in Riverside, spokeswoman Darla Martin Tucker said officials received a few reports about students renting private off-campus housing who “found it difficult or impossible to break their leases.”

Jaffery said some housing providers appear focused on the fact that students entered into rental contracts.

“Yes, we signed a contract,” she said.

But Jaffery said students could not have known a deadly disease would sweep the globe. She managed to get out of her 12-month lease the last week of July.

Since then, she has assisted 200 other UCR students locked in leases. Jaffery launched an online petition and a website — breakingucrent.com — to call attention to the issue.

Jaffery said students generally lease rooms in four main off-campus complexes: University Village Towers, The Palms on University, GrandMarc and Highlander at North Campus.

Apartments say they still have bills to pay

Operators of two of these complexes responded to requests for comment; two did not.

Keith Thompson, vice president of property operations for The Scion Group in Chicago, which manages The Palms on University, said his company is sensitive to students’ situation.

“In fact, as soon as we learned last summer that UCR would be primarily online this Fall, we invited any of our future residents whose plans had changed to contact us, so we could attempt to replace them and potentially release them from any obligation,” Thompson said via email.

Thompson wrote that The Palms, which primarily serves UCR students but is not exclusively reserved for them, isn’t “in a position to simply allow open cancellation” as it still must pay its mortgage, property taxes, payroll and utility bills.

He said the “vast majority” of student residents moved in and are studying online “from the relative comfort and safety of their homes in our community.”

Besides Jaffery’s efforts, Riverside Legal Aid and the Fair Housing Council of Riverside County have teamed up to try to solve problems for more than 60 students.

Legal Aid attorney Ernie Reguly said those students have complained about GrandMarc and University Village Towers and only a few have gotten out of leases.

Nathan Cieszynski, the council’s program manager, said, “It would be nice if we could get the property owners to come to the table to work with the students to find an equitable solution. But they really don’t seem to want to have those conversations.”

Students stuck in unpredictable situation

Cindy Finley, the community manager at University Village Towers, acknowledged “the unprecedented circumstances facing the student community” in an email. And she said her complex is exploring ways to “offer flexibility to our residents.”

“We are committed to working with each of our residents on an individual basis,” Finley wrote.

A person answering the phone at GrandMarc referred an inquiry to the corporate office of HH Red Stone Properties in Maryland, where an employee said the inquiry would need to be addressed to Kelley Brine, executive vice president. Multiple attempts to reach Brine were unsuccessful.

Highlander at North Campus did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Joshua Howard, a spokesman for the Sacramento-based California Apartment Association, called the situation “an unfortunate consequence of the pandemic.”

The plight of students in private housing stands in contrast to the experience of those who reserved rooms in university-owned campus housing. UCR spokesman John Warren said the university refunded campus housing fees and canceled leases upon request.

“UCR does not have any legal leverage over matters involving non-university housing,” Warren said in an email.

But he said officials are trying to work with apartment complex owners and are “hopeful of a positive outcome.”

Problem adds to students’ stress

As for students with whom Jaffery has worked, she said some moved into apartments, figuring if they are going to pay they might as well live in the place they are paying for. Others elected to stay home, including Tammy Wang, 19, a second-year biology student who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Los Gatos.

“I can’t afford $840 a month when I’m not even staying there,” Wang said by phone recently. “I never even picked up my key.”

Wang thought she had found someone to take over her University Village Towers lease. But she said the person “scammed” her out of incentive money she put up and didn’t take the apartment.

“I just really want out of the lease because that’s a lot of money down the drain,” she said. “I have been trying to find a replacement for so long, I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Reguly, the attorney, said housing companies are “abusing” students.

“These kids are stressed,” he said. “They are already dealing with a nonstandard school year.”

Howard, of the California Apartment Association, said operators of rental properties are facing financial challenges, too.

“As the pandemic lingers and vacancies rise, it’s becoming increasingly difficult – especially for mom-and-pop landlords – to pay their mortgages, payroll, property taxes, repair bills and other expenses,” Howard wrote.

The association urges members to “be flexible and try to come up with solutions,” Howard said, adding that the federal government should provide rent relief for student tenants and property owners.

Nicole Ryan, spokeswoman for the National Apartment Association in Arlington, Virginia, which has 85,000 members representing more than 10 million apartment homes nationwide, said the pandemic has been hard on the rental industry.

Ryan said by phone that vacancy rates are expected to peak in the fourth quarter at 7.2%, a more-than-3-percentage point increase from the fourth quarter of 2019. She said rent amounts are projected to slide down 8.1% during 2020.

‘Doubling up’ in rooms could end

Besides paying for unneeded housing, there is the concern about exposure to the virus.

Riverside City Councilman Andy Melendrez is working to help UC Riverside students stuck in apartment leases. (Photo courtesy of Andy Melendrez)

Riverside City Councilman Andy Melendrez said the larger housing complexes typically assign four students to four separate single-occupancy rooms that share a common living room and kitchen area.

But, because of a student housing shortage, Melendrez said city ordinance lets up to 15% of those single-occupancy rooms be assigned to two people, which he said is unsafe.

Melendrez said he plans to ask the Riverside City Council to temporarily suspend the “doubling up” policy.