#the street signs say ‘yield to aircraft’

[roylustang]

Got my lawn chair back 🙌🏻

[phroyd]

WASHINGTON — Standing in a packed amphitheater in front of Mount Rushmore for an Independence Day celebration, President Trump delivered a dark and divisive speech on Friday that cast his struggling effort to win a second term as a battle against a “new far-left fascism” seeking to wipe out the nation’s values and history.

With the coronavirus pandemic raging and his campaign faltering in the polls, his appearance amounted to a fiery reboot of his re-election effort, using the holiday and an official presidential address to mount a full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism.

“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children,” Mr. Trump said, addressing a packed crowd of sign-waving supporters, few of whom wore masks. “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”

Mr. Trump barely mentioned the frightening resurgence of the pandemic, even as the country surpassed 53,000 new cases Friday and health officials across the nation urged Americans to scale back their Fourth of July plans.

Instead, appealing unabashedly to his base with ominous language and imagery, he railed against what he described as a dangerous “cancel culture” intent on toppling monuments and framed himself as a strong leader who would protect the Second Amendment, law enforcement and the country’s heritage.

The scene at Mount Rushmore was the latest sign of how Mr. Trump appears, by design or default, increasingly disconnected from the intense concern among Americans about the health crisis gripping the country. More than just a partisan rally, it underscored the extent to which Mr. Trump is appealing to a subset of Americans to carry him to a second term by changing the subject and appealing to fear and division.

“Most presidents in history have understood that when they appear at a national monument, it’s usually a moment to act as a unifying chief of state, not a partisan divider,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, said before the speech.

Mr. Trump planned to follow up his trip with a “Salute to America” celebration on Saturday on the South Lawn at the White House, marked by a military flyover and the launch of 10,000 fireworks on the National Mall.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington has warned the gathering violates federal health guidelines. The Trump administration, which controls the federal property of the National Mall, pushed for the celebration, ignoring a mayor whom officials view as a political rival.

Most politicians, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, this year were forgoing any of the traditional holiday parades and flag-waving appearances. The vast majority of fireworks displays in big cities and small rural towns have been canceled as new cases reported in the United States have increased by 90 percent in the past two weeks.

Mr. Trump’s itinerary Friday and Saturday, however, had a different message: The sparkly, booming show must go on at all costs in the service of the divisive message and powerful images he wants to promote.

“We will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, and we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people,” Mr. Trump said, referring to his political opponents and their supporters.

In response to Mr. Trump’s event in South Dakota, Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said in a statement, “Our whole country is suffering through the excruciating costs of having a negligent, divisive president who doesn’t give a damn about anything but his own gain — not the sick, not the jobless, not our constitution, and not our troops in harm’s way.”

Under the granite gaze of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Trump announced plans to establish what he described as a “vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live,” an apparent repudiation of the growing pressure to remove statues tied to slavery or colonialism.

As he arrived, Air Force One performed a flyover of Mount Rushmore. His campaign promoted the stunt online, calling him “the coolest president ever.”

In the amphitheater below, few in the packed crowd practiced any social distancing as people waved signs that referred to CNN as the “Communist News Network.” As he observed a flyover by the Navy’s Blue Angels, Mr. Trump sat on a packed dais with the first lady, Melania Trump, the national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, none of whom wore masks.

As the president departed Washington for South Dakota on Friday, at least five states — Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina and South Carolina — reported their highest single day of cases yet. Newly reported cases of the virus were rising in all but a handful of states, and many large cities, including Houston, Dallas, Jacksonville and Los Angeles, were seeing alarming growth.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has tried to bend events to his will, often using social media to drive home his alternate version of reality and, thanks to the power of repetition and the loyal support of his base, sometimes succeeding. But the president’s attempt to drive deeper into the culture wars around a national holiday, during an intensifying health crisis that will not yield to his tactics, risked coming across as out of sync with the concerned mood of the country at a moment when his re-election campaign is struggling and unfocused.

“I don’t think it will work, because what he is trying to do is pretend that the situation is better than it is,” Mr. Beschloss said.

Mr. Beschloss compared Mr. Trump to Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the influenza pandemic in 1918 by trying to pretend it was not happening, and to Herbert Hoover, who in 1932 tried to project that the Great Depression was not as bad as people were saying.

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“People voted him out because they felt he did not understand the suffering,” Mr. Beschloss said, referring to Hoover.

Mr. Trump has consistently played down the concerns over spikes in new cases, even as many cities and states have had to slow or reverse their reopenings, claiming that young people “get better much easier and faster,” that the death rate is declining and that the virus will “just disappear.”

On Thursday, he lauded his administration’s response, referred to the surge in new cases as “temporary hot spots” and focused instead on what he said was evidence of the economy bouncing back.

“A lot of people would have wilted,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference where he praised the latest job numbers. “We didn’t wilt. Our country didn’t wilt.”

Despite his rosy outlook, the coronavirus on Friday for the first time infiltrated Mr. Trump’s family circle. The president’s elder son, Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, had traveled to South Dakota separately with plans to meet up with the president. But they left before Mr. Trump’s arrival once Ms. Guilfoyle tested positive for the virus and said they planned to cancel all coming events.

Mr. Trump’s show, however, went on without missing a beat. In South Dakota, Mr. Trump enjoys the backing of Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, who had invited him to make the trip, which amounted to a second attempt to get his campaign back on track after the disappointing turnout at a rally last month in Tulsa, Okla.

In recent weeks, South Dakota has had one of the country’s most encouraging trend lines. The state has averaged a few dozen new cases each day, including 85 announced Friday. There has not been a day with more than 100 new cases in South Dakota since late May. Ms. Noem said Friday night that many attendees at Mr. Trump’s Fourth of July spectacle had traveled from out of state to attend.

In Washington, however, officials remain adamantly opposed to the celebration planned for Saturday, which White House officials defended as a gathering people could enjoy safely. Administration officials noted that the celebration in Washington was scaled back from last year’s event, when Mr. Trump turned the holiday into a salute to the military, with tanks on the streets of the capital and flyovers from Air Force One as well as aircraft from each branch of the armed forces, as he delivered remarks from the Lincoln Memorial.

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said this week that Mr. Trump had recommended following guidelines set by local authorities only on wearing masks — not on social distancing overall. “The C.D.C. guidelines, I’d also note, say ‘recommended,’ but not required,” she said. “We are very much looking forward to the Fourth of July celebration.”

This year, the National Park Service said it was taking extra safety precautions on the National Mall, installing more than 100 hand-washing stations throughout the area, up from 15 last year. Officials also said they had 300,000 cloth facial coverings on hand to distribute.

“We are committed to providing the American people with a safe and spectacular celebration of our nation’s birthday in Washington D.C., which will honor our military with music, flyovers and fireworks,” a spokesman for the park service said. “We are doing so consistent with our mission and historical practices, and we hope everyone enjoys the day’s festivities.”

On Friday, Mr. Trump spent the day at his golf course in Sterling, Va., before he departed for South Dakota, and White House officials said they had no safety concerns about the trip.

But the virus had already shown it can infiltrate the administration, and the White House has experienced the dangers of staging large gatherings as the pandemic rages. Vice President Mike Pence postponed a planned trip this week to Arizona after Secret Service agents set to accompany him tested positive for the coronavirus or showed symptoms. And at least eight campaign staff members who helped plan Mr. Trump’s indoor rally last month in Tulsa, have tested positive, either before the rally or after attending.

Before the president left for South Dakota on Friday, Trump campaign aides were circulating on social media a doctored image of Mount Rushmore, featuring Mr. Trump’s face carved into the stone next to some of the nation’s most revered presidents.

“Mount Rushmore, improved,” one aide wrote.

Phroyd

[day0one]

Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message  2 hrs ago

WASHINGTON — Standing in a packed amphitheater in front of Mount Rushmore for an Independence Day celebration, President Trump delivered a dark and divisive speech on Friday that cast his struggling effort to win a second term as a battle against a “new far-left fascism” seeking to wipe out the nation’s values and history.

With the coronavirus pandemic raging and his campaign faltering in the polls, his appearance amounted to a fiery reboot of his re-election effort, using the holiday and an official presidential address to mount a full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism.

“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children,” Mr. Trump said, addressing a packed crowd of sign-waving supporters, few of whom wore masks. “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”

Mr. Trump barely mentioned the frightening resurgence of the pandemic, even as the country surpassed 53,000 new cases and health officials across the nation urged Americans to scale back their Fourth of July plans.

Instead, appealing unabashedly to his base with ominous language and imagery, he railed against what he described as a dangerous “cancel culture” intent on toppling monuments and framed himself as a strong leader who would protect the Second Amendment, law enforcement and the country’s heritage.

The scene at Mount Rushmore was the latest sign of how Mr. Trump appears, by design or default, increasingly disconnected from the intense concern among Americans about the health crisis gripping the country. More than just a partisan rally, it underscored the extent to which Mr. Trump is appealing to a subset of Americans to carry him to a second term by changing the subject and appealing to fear and division.

“Most presidents in history have understood that when they appear at a national monument, it’s usually a moment to act as a unifying chief of state, not a partisan divider,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, said before the speech.

Most politicians, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, this year were forgoing any of the traditional holiday parades and flag-waving appearances. The vast majority of fireworks displays in big cities and small rural towns have been canceled as new cases reported in the United States have increased by 90 percent in the past two weeks.

As he traveled to South Dakota for the huge fireworks display at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Mr. Trump, however, had a different message: The sparkly, booming show must go on at all costs in the service of the divisive message and powerful images he wants to promote.

“We will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, and we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people,” Mr. Trump said, referring to his political opponents and their supporters.

Under the granite gaze of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Trump announced plans to establish what he described as a “vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live,” an apparent repudiation of the growing pressure to remove statues tied to slavery or colonialism.

As he arrived, Air Force One performed a flyover of Mount Rushmore. His campaign promoted the stunt online, calling him “the coolest president ever.”

In the amphitheater below, few in the packed crowd practiced any social distancing as people waved signs that referred to CNN as the “Communist News Network.” As he observed a flyover by the Navy’s Blue Angels, Mr. Trump sat on a packed dais with the first lady, Melania Trump, the national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, none of whom wore masks.

As the president departed Washington for South Dakota on Friday, at least five states — Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina and South Carolina — reported their highest single day of cases yet. Newly reported cases of the virus were rising in all but a handful of states, and many large cities, including Houston, Dallas, Jacksonville and Los Angeles, were seeing alarming growth.

Mr. Trump planned to follow up his trip with a “Salute to America” celebration on Saturday on the South Lawn at the White House, marked by a military flyover and the launch of 10,000 fireworks on the National Mall.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington has warned the gathering violates federal health guidelines. The Trump administration, which controls the federal property of the National Mall, pushed for the celebration, ignoring a mayor whom officials view as a political rival.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has tried to bend events to his will, often using social media to drive home his alternate version of reality and, thanks to the power of repetition and the loyal support of his base, sometimes succeeding. But the president’s attempt to drive deeper into the culture wars around a national holiday, during an intensifying health crisis that will not yield to his tactics, risked coming across as out of sync with the concerned mood of the country at a moment when his re-election campaign is struggling and unfocused.

“I don’t think it will work, because what he is trying to do is pretend that the situation is better than it is,” Mr. Beschloss said.

Mr. Beschloss compared Mr. Trump to Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the influenza pandemic in 1918 by trying to pretend it was not happening, and to Herbert Hoover, who in 1932 tried to project that the Great Depression was not as bad as people were saying.

“People voted him out because they felt he did not understand the suffering,” Mr. Beschloss said, referring to Hoover.

Mr. Trump has consistently played down the concerns over spikes in new cases, even as many cities and states have had to slow or reverse their reopenings, claiming that young people “get better much easier and faster,” that the death rate is declining and that the virus will “just disappear.”

On Thursday, he lauded his administration’s response, referred to the surge in new cases as “temporary hot spots” and focused instead on what he said was evidence of the economy bouncing back.

“A lot of people would have wilted,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference where he praised the latest job numbers. “We didn’t wilt. Our country didn’t wilt.”

Despite his rosy outlook, the coronavirus on Friday for the first time infiltrated Mr. Trump’s family circle. The president’s elder son, Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, had traveled to South Dakota separately with plans to meet up with the president. But they left before Mr. Trump’s arrival once Ms. Guilfoyle tested positive for the virus and said they planned to cancel all coming events.

Mr. Trump’s show, however, went on without missing a beat. In South Dakota, Mr. Trump enjoys the backing of Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, who had invited him to make the trip, which amounted to a second attempt to get his campaign back on track after the disappointing turnout at a rally last month in Tulsa, Okla.

In recent weeks, South Dakota has had one of the country’s most encouraging trend lines. The state has averaged a few dozen new cases each day, including 85 announced Friday. There has not been a day with more than 100 new cases in South Dakota since late May. Ms. Noem said Friday night that many attendees at Mr. Trump’s Fourth of July spectacle had traveled from out of state to attend.

In Washington, however, officials remain adamantly opposed to the celebration planned for Saturday, which White House officials defended as a gathering people could enjoy safely. Administration officials noted that the celebration in Washington was scaled back from last year’s event, when Mr. Trump turned the holiday into a salute to the military, with tanks on the streets of the capital and flyovers from Air Force One as well as aircraft from each branch of the armed forces, as he delivered remarks from the Lincoln Memorial.

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said this week that Mr. Trump had recommended following guidelines set by local authorities only on wearing masks — not on social distancing overall. “The C.D.C. guidelines, I’d also note, say ‘recommended,’ but not required,” she said. “We are very much looking forward to the Fourth of July celebration.”

This year, the National Park Service said it was taking extra safety precautions on the National Mall, installing more than 100 hand-washing stations throughout the area, up from 15 last year. Officials also said they had 300,000 cloth facial coverings on hand to distribute.

“We are committed to providing the American people with a safe and spectacular celebration of our nation’s birthday in Washington D.C., which will honor our military with music, flyovers and fireworks,” a spokesman for the park service said. “We are doing so consistent with our mission and historical practices, and we hope everyone enjoys the day’s festivities.”

The president’s political opponents, however, said the celebrations were about one person, only: the president himself.

“Donald Trump is seeking to aggrandize himself and divide our nation at yet another rally,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden. “Joe Biden believes the presidency is about serving the American people — whereas Donald Trump only exploits it to serve himself.”

On Friday, Mr. Trump spent the day at his golf course in Sterling, Va., before he departed for South Dakota, and White House officials said they had no safety concerns about the trip.

But the virus had already shown it can infiltrate the administration, and the White House has experienced the dangers of staging large gatherings as the pandemic rages. Vice President Mike Pence postponed a planned trip this week to Arizona after Secret Service agents set to accompany him tested positive for the coronavirus or showed symptoms. And at least eight campaign staff members who helped plan Mr. Trump’s indoor rally last month in Tulsa, have tested positive, either before the rally or after attending.

Before the president left for South Dakota on Friday, Trump campaign aides were circulating on social media a doctored image of Mount Rushmore, featuring Mr. Trump’s face carved into the stone next to some of the nation’s most revered presidents.

“Mount Rushmore, improved,” one aide wrote.

[todaynewsstories]

China says U.S. trying to bully it into submission as fresh tariffs kick in

BEIJING (Reuters) – The United States and China imposed fresh tariffs on each other’s goods on Monday as the world’s biggest economies showed no signs of backing down from an increasingly bitter trade dispute that is expected to knock global economic growth.

FILE PHOTO: Shipping containers are seen at a port in Shanghai, China July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

Soon after the fresh duties went into effect, China accused the United States of engaging in “trade bullyism” and said it was intimidating other countries to submit to its will through measures such as tariffs, the official Xinhua news agency said.

But Beijing also said it was willing to restart trade negotiations with the United States if the talks are “based on mutual respect and equality,” Xinhua said, citing a white paper on the dispute published by China’s State Council.

U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods and retaliatory tariffs by Beijing on $60 billion worth of U.S. products took effect at midday Asian time, though the initial level of the duties was not as high as earlier feared.

The U.S. will levy tariffs of 10 percent initially, rising to 25 percent at the end of 2018. Beijing has imposed rates of 5-10 percent and warned it would respond to any rise in U.S. tariffs on Chinese products accordingly.

The two sides had already slapped tariffs on $50 billion worth of each other’s goods.

For U.S. consumers, the new duties could translate into higher prices for Chinese products ranging from vacuum cleaners to technology gear such as home modems and routers, while U.S. goods targeted by Beijing include liquefied natural gas and certain types of aircraft.

President Donald Trump is pressuring China to reduce its huge bilateral trade surplus and make sweeping changes to its policies on trade, technology transfers and high-tech industrial subsidies. Beijing has denied accusations that U.S. firms are being forced to transfer technology and sees Washington’s demands on rolling back its industrial policies as an attempt to contain China’s economic rise.

The U.S. administration “has brazenly preached unilateralism, protectionism and economic hegemony, making false accusations against many countries and regions, particularly China, intimidating other countries through economic measures such as imposing tariffs,” Xinhua quoted the State Council’s white paper as saying.

BOTH SIDES DIGGING IN

Several rounds of Sino-U.S. trade talks in recent months have yielded no major breakthroughs and attempts at arranging another meeting in coming weeks have fallen through.

China, which has accused Washington of being insincere in trade negotiations, has decided not to send Vice Premier Liu He to Washington this week, The Wall Street Journal reported late last week.

News of Beijing’s decision to skip the talks pushed China’s yuan currency down 0.3 percent on Monday in offshore trade, reinforcing global investors’ fears that both sides are digging in for a long fight. Mainland China markets were closed for a holiday.

FILE PHOTO: China Shipping containers sit on a ship in the Port of Los Angeles after being imported to the U.S., California, October 7, 2010. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

A senior White House official said last week the U.S. will continue to engage China, but added there was no date set for the next round of talks.

Economists warn that a protracted dispute will eventually stunt growth across the globe. Companies on both sides of the Pacific are already reporting disruptions to their operations and are reviewing investment plans.

The trade tensions have also cast a pall over broader relations between Beijing and Washington, with the two sides butting heads on a growing number of issues.

China summoned the U.S. ambassador in Beijing and postponed military talks in protest against a U.S. decision to sanction a Chinese military agency and its director for buying Russian fighter jets and a missile system.

Rob Carnell, ING’s chief Asia economist, said in a note to clients that in the absence of any incentives Beijing would likely hold off on any further negotiations for now.

“It would look weak both to the U.S. and at home,” he said, adding that there is “sufficient stimulus in the pipeline” to limit the damage of the latest tariffs on China’s economy.

“The U.S.-China trade war has no clear end in sight.”

China may also be waiting for U.S. mid-term elections early next month for any hints of changes in Washington’s policy stance, Carnell added.

“With generic polls favoring the Democrats, they may feel that the trade environment will be less hostile after November 6.”

WASHINGTON READYING MORE MEASURES

Trump on Saturday reiterated a threat to impose further tariffs on Chinese goods should Beijing retaliate, suggesting that Washington may slap tariffs on virtually all imported Chinese goods if the administration does not get its way.

China imports far less from the United States, making a dollar-for-dollar match on any new U.S. tariffs impossible.

Instead, it has warned of “qualitative” measures to retaliate.

Though Beijing has not revealed what such steps might be, business executives and analysts say it could withhold exports of certain products to the U.S. or create more administrative red tape for American companies operating in China.

Some analysts say there is also a risk that China could allow its currency to weaken again to cushion the blow to its exporters.

Reporting by Se Young Lee, Min Zhang and Yilei Sun; Additional reporting by David Lawder in WASHINGTON; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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[davidchanus]

How the US got its first big break against Colombia's Cali cartel in a Queens, New York, bathtub

US authorities were mainly focused on heroin in the early 1970s.

But cocaine, smuggled by Colombian groups, was growing in prominence, especially in the Northeast.

A tip in 1978 would lead police in New York City to uncover the first sign of the Cali cartel's burgeoning power.

In the early 1970s, the newly formed US Drug Enforcement Administration was focused on heroin, and its agents spent little time on cocaine.

"We really were not pursuing it like we should have," Mike Vigil, who joined the agency a few months after it was created in mid-1973, told Business Insider, in part because it "didn't have the social impact" that heroin did.

Cocaine was often seen as "kiddie dope" and not significant enough to go after, said Vigil, who would eventually serve as chief of international operations for the DEA before he retired.

A drug-abuse task force set up by President Gerald Ford in late 1975 said cocaine was not a problem, as it was "not physically addictive … and usually does not result in serious social consequences, such as crime, hospital emergency room admissions, or both"

But cocaine's prevalence would only grow; by 1979 at least 20% of Americans said they had used it in the past year. And with US authorities focused elsewhere, cocaine traffickers jockeyed to supply a burgeoning market, building networks between South America and the US.

Perhaps the most well-known traffickers of the period were those of Medellin cartel, who funneled immense amounts of cocaine to the US, mainly to South Florida, in the 1970s and 1980s. But the Cali cartel also gained a foothold in the US, focusing on New York City, where its operations went largely unnoticed for most of the 1970s.

Cali's point man for New York was Jose Santacruz Londono, a cofounder of the cartel. The DEA wasn't aware of his operations in the the city in the mid-1970s, but in summer 1978, the agency's New York City branch office got a letter from a citizen's committee in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens, expressing concern about growing violence and crime in the area related to cocaine trafficking.

The letter didn't have much impact, as the DEA was still focused on heroin at that point.

"The agency thought the drug was small time," said Ken Robinson, who was a member of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, which was set up in 1970 to coordinate drug investigations among government and law-enforcement agencies, according to Ron Chepesiuk's 2003 book, "The Bullet or the Bribe: Taking Down Colombia's Cali Drug Cartel."

"So they turned the matter over to the NYDETF for investigation," Robinson said.

Detectives following up on the letter didn’t expect much, as other cocaine operations had been very low-tech, usually involving bundles of the drug thrown off ships, picked up, and sold in bars.

But the task force's investigation began to gain steam in September 1978, when a Colombian man walked into their office and described a cocaine ring stretching from South America to Queens.

It had an unlimited supply of the drug, he said, and its members used beepers to communicate. He eventually tipped officers off to a drug sale, which yielded a kilo brick of cocaine and a suspect.

Another suspect, a man in a red Chevy Impala, got away. A dogged investigation of the missing car turned up more than 50 parking violations. Those tickets led the officers to another car, a blue Buick, which in turn led officers back to the red Chevy, which was parked nearby. The officers found that the suspects had swapped the license plates of the blue Buick and the red Chevy, and the NYDETF's investigation accelerated.

The officers got few resources from their superiors, but they pursued the case in their free time, doing surveillance on the two cars around the clock. In the process they began to understand the scope of the cocaine problem in Jackson Heights; dealers walked the streets with no fear of arrest, and many sold openly from their cars.

In October, the task force seized six pounds of cocaine and some financial ledgers, which revealed that their suspects were making at least a million dollars a month — a stunning figure previously only associated with the heroin trade.

In January 1979, the officers identified a major player in the organization, Jose Patino. Surveillance on Patino led the officers to a number of apartments, some of which appeared to be used infrequently, if at all. In July, they sped to one apartment after getting word their suspect was there. They stopped him, and he agreed to a search of the apartment, apparently unaware of his rights.

Inside they found the man’s bag had a money-counting machine and rubber bands. More searching turned up rent receipts for more apartments.

Searches at one of those apartments turned up more false identification documents, but it was the discovery at an apartment on Burns Court that left the detectives staggering.

They kicked down the door, and the occupants were gone, but inside the smell of cocaine was almost overpowering. "The windows were barred and the agents couldn’t open them. Some of them left the apartment to get some air," Chepesiuk writes. "The rugs were infested with coke and the bathtub was crammed with kilo packages of coke."

"They found 44 pounds of cocaine in a huge safe, machine guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests, driver’s licenses, business cards, an aircraft registration, and automobile registration, coded customer lists, and more financial records," according to Chepesiuk.

"Nobody had ever seen 44 pounds of cocaine in New York City before," Robinson said.

Officers also seized firearms manuals, including a Marine Corps manual titled "Destruction by Demolition, Incendiaries and Sabotage."

John Fallon, the DEA's northeast regional director, said it was the most weapons ever seized by authorities in a cocaine bust, and it triggered fears that a Miami-like war for control of the cocaine trade would erupt in New York City.

"The DEA brass in New York City sent the Washington headquarters information providing evidence that cocaine was becoming a problem, not just in Miami but also New York City," former DEA agent Rich Crawford told Chepesiuk. "The DEA started to take the drug seriously. It began assigning more agents to cocaine investigations."

While the Burns Court apartment was still being examined, officers went to another apartment in Bayside. There they found an authentic passport for Santacruz, who they had actually encountered in person months earlier while tailing Jose Patino. They also found bank records connecting Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela — the other two Cali cartel cofounders — directly to drug deals in New York.

Their investigation began to reveal details about the Cali cartel financial structure and leadership. Santacruz was connected to cocaine busts as early as 1976, and US authorities found additional evidence linking him to Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela.

The suspects they arrested who made bail would disappear, and ones they managed to hold to said little, spurning offers for lighter sentences in exchange for cooperation. It didn’t appear they could have revealed much, as the cartel's US operations were organized as a network of cells.

"The organization operated through independent cells, and members of each cell didn’t know each other," Robinson told Chepesiuk. "When we arrested someone, he would say, 'I don’t know anything. I've just been dealing with one guy.'"

The cartel also had lawyers in the US, some of whom would use trials as opportunities to gauge what evidence US authorities had on the cartel and report back to Santacruz himself.

The Cali cartel also used violence. Investigators in New York found that prospective employees had to give the cartel names of family members still in Colombia, who would undoubtedly pay if that employee betrayed the cartel.

Over time, investigators would suss out patterns in the cartel's operations, but its methods were more sophisticated than anything they had encountered.

The cartel's personnel had endless fake documents, cycled through apartments, and had money, drugs, and weapons stashed at separate apartments. And the insular network of Colombians in the US that the cartel relied on often deflected or stalled police investigations.

By the end of 1981, the NYDETF’s investigation gathered mountains of evidence from around the country about the Cali cartel’s US operations, revealing some 40 members of the organization, many of whom were convicted on trafficking charges. It also seized $2 million in cash, 70 weapons, and over 430 pounds of cocaine with a street value of $50 million.

SEE ALSO: What the Cali cartel learned from Pablo Escobar, according to a DEA agent who hunted both of them

NOW READ: Pablo Escobar's death cleared the way for a much more sinister kind of criminal in Colombia

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NOW WATCH: Why the price of cocaine in America has barely moved in decades

from Legal News http://www.businessinsider.com/us-cocaine-bust-against-cali-cartel-in-a-queens-new-york-city-bathtub-2017-10

[newestbalance]

Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes…

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he was pushing ahead with hefty tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports on Friday, and the smoldering trade war between the world’s two largest economies showed signs of igniting as Beijing immediately vowed to respond in kind.

Trump laid out a list of more than 800 strategically important imports from China that would be subject to a 25 percent tariff starting on July 6, including cars, the latest hardline stance on trade by a U.S. president who has already been wrangling with allies.

China’s Commerce Ministry said it would respond with tariffs “of the same scale and strength” and that any previous trade deals with Trump were “invalid.” The official Xinhua news agency said China would impose 25 percent tariffs on 659 U.S. products, ranging from soybeans and autos to seafood.

China’s retaliation list was increased more than six-fold from a version released in April, but the value was kept at $50 billion, as some high-value items such as commercial aircraft were deleted.

Shares of Boeing Co (BA.N), the single largest U.S. exporter to China, closed down 1.3 percent after paring earlier losses. Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N), another big exporter to China, ended 2 percent lower.

Trump said in a statement that the United States would pursue additional tariffs if China retaliates.

Washington and Beijing appeared increasingly headed toward open trade conflict after several rounds of negotiations failed to resolve U.S. complaints over Chinese industrial policies, lack of market access in China and a $375 billion U.S. trade deficit.

“These tariffs are essential to preventing further unfair transfers of American technology and intellectual property to China, which will protect American jobs,” Trump said.

Analysts, however, did not expect the U.S. tariffs to inflict a major wound to China’s economy and said the trade dispute likely would continue to fester.

TVS SPARED, CHIPS ADDED

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will begin collecting tariffs on 818 product categories valued at $34 billion on July 6, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said.

The list was slimmed down from a version unveiled in April, dropping Chinese flat-panel television sets, medical breathing devices and oxygen generators and air conditioning parts.

The tariffs will still target autos, including those imported by General Motors Co (GM.N) and Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings (0175.HK), and electric cars.

And USTR added tariffs on another 284 product lines, valued at $16 billion, targeting semiconductors, a broad range of electronics and plastics that it said benefited from China’s industrial subsidy programs, including the “Made in China 2025” plan, aimed at making China more competitive in key technologies such as robotics and semiconductors.

Tariffs on these products will go into effect after a public comment period. A senior Trump administration official told reporters that companies will be able to apply for exclusions for Chinese imports they cannot source elsewhere.

Most semiconductor devices imported from China use chips produced in the United States, with low-level assembly and testing work done in China, prompting the Semiconductor Industry Association to call the new tariff list “counterproductive.”

While many business groups and lawmakers urged the two governments to negotiate instead, there was little sign talks would resume soon.

Trump’s tariffs did gain some support from an unlikely source, U.S. Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, who called them “right on target.”

Slideshow (2 Images)

“China is our real trade enemy, and their theft of intellectual property and their refusal to let our companies compete fairly threatens millions of future American jobs,” Schumer said in a statement.

The USTR official said the tariffs were aimed at changing China’s behavior on its technology transfer policies and massive subsidies to develop high-tech industries. The United States now dominates those industries, but Chinese government support could make it difficult for U.S. companies to compete.

Washington has completed a second list of possible tariffs on another $100 billion in Chinese goods, in the expectation that China will respond to the initial U.S. tariff list in kind, sources told Reuters.

U.S. soybean futures plunged 1.5 percent to a one-year low on concerns that an escalating trade fight with China will threaten shipments to the biggest buyer of the oilseed, traders said.

Beijing and Washington had held three rounds of high-level talks since early May but failed to reach a compromise. Trump was unmoved by a Chinese offer to buy an additional $70 billion worth of U.S. farm and energy products and other goods, according to people familiar with the matter.

Analysts at Capital Economics said the impact of the tariffs on China’s economy would be small. Even if the U.S. duties reach the full $150 billion, they estimated it would shave well under a half-percentage point off China’s annual growth rate, which could be offset by fiscal and monetary policy actions.

“Neither side will be brought to its knees – which is one reason to think the trade dispute could drag on,” Capital Economics said. “For China’s part, its leaders will be determined not to be seen to back down to foreign pressure.”

Although shares of some tariff-sensitive companies fell on Wall Street, the stock market overall fell only modestly.

“With the announcement of the tariffs, there’s a real risk that we can see a continued increased escalation,” said Robin Anderson, senior economist at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, Iowa. But he said that underlying strong economic fundamentals in the United States would dampen the market impact.

Trump has also triggered a trade fight with Canada, Mexico and the European Union over steel and aluminum and has threatened to impose duties on European cars.

While China in recent months made incremental market-opening reforms in industries that critics in the foreign business community say were already planned, it has not been inclined to yield on its core industrial policies.

(GRAPHIC – Tit-for-tar tariffs interactive: tmsnrt.rs/2GXE9qr)

Reporting by David Lawder in Washington and Ben Blachard in Beijing; Additional reporting by Stella Qiu in Beijing; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Leslie Adler

The post Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes… appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2HU0IJ7 via Everyday News

[dani-qrt]

Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes…

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he was pushing ahead with hefty tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports on Friday, and the smoldering trade war between the world’s two largest economies showed signs of igniting as Beijing immediately vowed to respond in kind.

Trump laid out a list of more than 800 strategically important imports from China that would be subject to a 25 percent tariff starting on July 6, including cars, the latest hardline stance on trade by a U.S. president who has already been wrangling with allies.

China’s Commerce Ministry said it would respond with tariffs “of the same scale and strength” and that any previous trade deals with Trump were “invalid.” The official Xinhua news agency said China would impose 25 percent tariffs on 659 U.S. products, ranging from soybeans and autos to seafood.

China’s retaliation list was increased more than six-fold from a version released in April, but the value was kept at $50 billion, as some high-value items such as commercial aircraft were deleted.

Shares of Boeing Co (BA.N), the single largest U.S. exporter to China, closed down 1.3 percent after paring earlier losses. Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N), another big exporter to China, ended 2 percent lower.

Trump said in a statement that the United States would pursue additional tariffs if China retaliates.

Washington and Beijing appeared increasingly headed toward open trade conflict after several rounds of negotiations failed to resolve U.S. complaints over Chinese industrial policies, lack of market access in China and a $375 billion U.S. trade deficit.

“These tariffs are essential to preventing further unfair transfers of American technology and intellectual property to China, which will protect American jobs,” Trump said.

Analysts, however, did not expect the U.S. tariffs to inflict a major wound to China’s economy and said the trade dispute likely would continue to fester.

TVS SPARED, CHIPS ADDED

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will begin collecting tariffs on 818 product categories valued at $34 billion on July 6, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said.

The list was slimmed down from a version unveiled in April, dropping Chinese flat-panel television sets, medical breathing devices and oxygen generators and air conditioning parts.

The tariffs will still target autos, including those imported by General Motors Co (GM.N) and Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings (0175.HK), and electric cars.

And USTR added tariffs on another 284 product lines, valued at $16 billion, targeting semiconductors, a broad range of electronics and plastics that it said benefited from China’s industrial subsidy programs, including the “Made in China 2025” plan, aimed at making China more competitive in key technologies such as robotics and semiconductors.

Tariffs on these products will go into effect after a public comment period. A senior Trump administration official told reporters that companies will be able to apply for exclusions for Chinese imports they cannot source elsewhere.

Most semiconductor devices imported from China use chips produced in the United States, with low-level assembly and testing work done in China, prompting the Semiconductor Industry Association to call the new tariff list “counterproductive.”

While many business groups and lawmakers urged the two governments to negotiate instead, there was little sign talks would resume soon.

Trump’s tariffs did gain some support from an unlikely source, U.S. Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, who called them “right on target.”

Slideshow (2 Images)

“China is our real trade enemy, and their theft of intellectual property and their refusal to let our companies compete fairly threatens millions of future American jobs,” Schumer said in a statement.

The USTR official said the tariffs were aimed at changing China’s behavior on its technology transfer policies and massive subsidies to develop high-tech industries. The United States now dominates those industries, but Chinese government support could make it difficult for U.S. companies to compete.

Washington has completed a second list of possible tariffs on another $100 billion in Chinese goods, in the expectation that China will respond to the initial U.S. tariff list in kind, sources told Reuters.

U.S. soybean futures plunged 1.5 percent to a one-year low on concerns that an escalating trade fight with China will threaten shipments to the biggest buyer of the oilseed, traders said.

Beijing and Washington had held three rounds of high-level talks since early May but failed to reach a compromise. Trump was unmoved by a Chinese offer to buy an additional $70 billion worth of U.S. farm and energy products and other goods, according to people familiar with the matter.

Analysts at Capital Economics said the impact of the tariffs on China’s economy would be small. Even if the U.S. duties reach the full $150 billion, they estimated it would shave well under a half-percentage point off China’s annual growth rate, which could be offset by fiscal and monetary policy actions.

“Neither side will be brought to its knees – which is one reason to think the trade dispute could drag on,” Capital Economics said. “For China’s part, its leaders will be determined not to be seen to back down to foreign pressure.”

Although shares of some tariff-sensitive companies fell on Wall Street, the stock market overall fell only modestly.

“With the announcement of the tariffs, there’s a real risk that we can see a continued increased escalation,” said Robin Anderson, senior economist at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, Iowa. But he said that underlying strong economic fundamentals in the United States would dampen the market impact.

Trump has also triggered a trade fight with Canada, Mexico and the European Union over steel and aluminum and has threatened to impose duties on European cars.

While China in recent months made incremental market-opening reforms in industries that critics in the foreign business community say were already planned, it has not been inclined to yield on its core industrial policies.

(GRAPHIC – Tit-for-tar tariffs interactive: tmsnrt.rs/2GXE9qr)

Reporting by David Lawder in Washington and Ben Blachard in Beijing; Additional reporting by Stella Qiu in Beijing; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Leslie Adler

The post Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes… appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2HU0IJ7 via Online News

[cleopatrarps]

Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes…

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he was pushing ahead with hefty tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports on Friday, and the smoldering trade war between the world’s two largest economies showed signs of igniting as Beijing immediately vowed to respond in kind.

Trump laid out a list of more than 800 strategically important imports from China that would be subject to a 25 percent tariff starting on July 6, including cars, the latest hardline stance on trade by a U.S. president who has already been wrangling with allies.

China’s Commerce Ministry said it would respond with tariffs “of the same scale and strength” and that any previous trade deals with Trump were “invalid.” The official Xinhua news agency said China would impose 25 percent tariffs on 659 U.S. products, ranging from soybeans and autos to seafood.

China’s retaliation list was increased more than six-fold from a version released in April, but the value was kept at $50 billion, as some high-value items such as commercial aircraft were deleted.

Shares of Boeing Co (BA.N), the single largest U.S. exporter to China, closed down 1.3 percent after paring earlier losses. Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N), another big exporter to China, ended 2 percent lower.

Trump said in a statement that the United States would pursue additional tariffs if China retaliates.

Washington and Beijing appeared increasingly headed toward open trade conflict after several rounds of negotiations failed to resolve U.S. complaints over Chinese industrial policies, lack of market access in China and a $375 billion U.S. trade deficit.

“These tariffs are essential to preventing further unfair transfers of American technology and intellectual property to China, which will protect American jobs,” Trump said.

Analysts, however, did not expect the U.S. tariffs to inflict a major wound to China’s economy and said the trade dispute likely would continue to fester.

TVS SPARED, CHIPS ADDED

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will begin collecting tariffs on 818 product categories valued at $34 billion on July 6, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said.

The list was slimmed down from a version unveiled in April, dropping Chinese flat-panel television sets, medical breathing devices and oxygen generators and air conditioning parts.

The tariffs will still target autos, including those imported by General Motors Co (GM.N) and Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings (0175.HK), and electric cars.

And USTR added tariffs on another 284 product lines, valued at $16 billion, targeting semiconductors, a broad range of electronics and plastics that it said benefited from China’s industrial subsidy programs, including the “Made in China 2025” plan, aimed at making China more competitive in key technologies such as robotics and semiconductors.

Tariffs on these products will go into effect after a public comment period. A senior Trump administration official told reporters that companies will be able to apply for exclusions for Chinese imports they cannot source elsewhere.

Most semiconductor devices imported from China use chips produced in the United States, with low-level assembly and testing work done in China, prompting the Semiconductor Industry Association to call the new tariff list “counterproductive.”

While many business groups and lawmakers urged the two governments to negotiate instead, there was little sign talks would resume soon.

Trump’s tariffs did gain some support from an unlikely source, U.S. Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, who called them “right on target.”

Slideshow (2 Images)

“China is our real trade enemy, and their theft of intellectual property and their refusal to let our companies compete fairly threatens millions of future American jobs,” Schumer said in a statement.

The USTR official said the tariffs were aimed at changing China’s behavior on its technology transfer policies and massive subsidies to develop high-tech industries. The United States now dominates those industries, but Chinese government support could make it difficult for U.S. companies to compete.

Washington has completed a second list of possible tariffs on another $100 billion in Chinese goods, in the expectation that China will respond to the initial U.S. tariff list in kind, sources told Reuters.

U.S. soybean futures plunged 1.5 percent to a one-year low on concerns that an escalating trade fight with China will threaten shipments to the biggest buyer of the oilseed, traders said.

Beijing and Washington had held three rounds of high-level talks since early May but failed to reach a compromise. Trump was unmoved by a Chinese offer to buy an additional $70 billion worth of U.S. farm and energy products and other goods, according to people familiar with the matter.

Analysts at Capital Economics said the impact of the tariffs on China’s economy would be small. Even if the U.S. duties reach the full $150 billion, they estimated it would shave well under a half-percentage point off China’s annual growth rate, which could be offset by fiscal and monetary policy actions.

“Neither side will be brought to its knees – which is one reason to think the trade dispute could drag on,” Capital Economics said. “For China’s part, its leaders will be determined not to be seen to back down to foreign pressure.”

Although shares of some tariff-sensitive companies fell on Wall Street, the stock market overall fell only modestly.

“With the announcement of the tariffs, there’s a real risk that we can see a continued increased escalation,” said Robin Anderson, senior economist at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, Iowa. But he said that underlying strong economic fundamentals in the United States would dampen the market impact.

Trump has also triggered a trade fight with Canada, Mexico and the European Union over steel and aluminum and has threatened to impose duties on European cars.

While China in recent months made incremental market-opening reforms in industries that critics in the foreign business community say were already planned, it has not been inclined to yield on its core industrial policies.

(GRAPHIC – Tit-for-tar tariffs interactive: tmsnrt.rs/2GXE9qr)

Reporting by David Lawder in Washington and Ben Blachard in Beijing; Additional reporting by Stella Qiu in Beijing; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Leslie Adler

The post Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes… appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2HU0IJ7 via News of World

[party-hard-or-die]

Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh

(Reuters) – Wall Street edged lower on Friday, weighed down by bank and chip shares as well as a handful of tepid earnings reports, although losses were capped by gains in industrial stocks on signs of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 18, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

China denied it had offered a package to slash the U.S. trade deficit by up to $200 billion, but dropped an anti-dumping probe into U.S. sorghum imports in a conciliatory gesture as top negotiators meet in Washington.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the consultations were “constructive” as the world’s two biggest economies are seeking to bridge a divide on trade issues.

“There is still a concern around trade talks with China, but … the stock market is cautiously optimistic that trade talks will lead to a good result,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The industrial sector .SPLRCI jumped 0.53 percent, the most among the 11 major S&P sectors. Boeing (BA.N), which sells about a quarter of its commercial aircraft to Chinese customers, rose 2.03 percent.

Also helping the industrials sector was Deere (DE.N), which jumped 6.3 percent after the tractor maker raised its full-year earnings estimate.

Slideshow (2 Images)

Applied Materials (AMAT.O) dropped 8 percent after the chip gear maker’s disappointing forecast renewed concerns over slowing smartphone demand.

The warning dragged down Philadelphia chipmaker index .SOX by 1 percent. Intel (INTC.O) dropped 1.6 percent, and along with Applied Materials weighed the most on the S&P and the Nasdaq.

The financial sector .SPSY dropped 0.79 percent, with traders citing a combination of a slight pullback in Treasury yields after a four-day rally and the uncertainty around trade talks, despite the progress being signaled.

JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America fell between 1.2 percent and 2.2 percent.

At 12:57 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 7.52 points, or 0.03 percent, at 24,721.50, kept afloat by Boeing and other industrial stocks.

The S&P 500 .SPX was down 5.99 points, or 0.22 percent, at 2,714.14 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 17.37 points, or 0.24 percent, at 7,365.11.

The industrial, materials .SPLRCM and healthcare .SPXHC sectors were the only gainers among the 11 major S&P sectors.

Investors have been fretting about the impact of rising Treasury yields and commodity prices on corporate results, with the dollar hitting five-month highs also a source of concern.

Campbell Soup and tractor maker Deere joined a list of companies that blamed higher raw material and freight costs for a drop in profit margins.

Campbell (CPB.N) fell 12.1 percent after cutting its full-year profit forecast, saying it expects higher costs to weigh on margins.

The warning also dragged down shares of General Mills (GIS.N), Kraft Heinz (KHC.O) and other food companies.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.03-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.06-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded eight new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 130 new highs and 23 new lows.

Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva

The post Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2IpXWAm via Breaking News

[dragnews]

Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh

(Reuters) – Wall Street edged lower on Friday, weighed down by bank and chip shares as well as a handful of tepid earnings reports, although losses were capped by gains in industrial stocks on signs of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 18, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

China denied it had offered a package to slash the U.S. trade deficit by up to $200 billion, but dropped an anti-dumping probe into U.S. sorghum imports in a conciliatory gesture as top negotiators meet in Washington.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the consultations were “constructive” as the world’s two biggest economies are seeking to bridge a divide on trade issues.

“There is still a concern around trade talks with China, but … the stock market is cautiously optimistic that trade talks will lead to a good result,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The industrial sector .SPLRCI jumped 0.53 percent, the most among the 11 major S&P sectors. Boeing (BA.N), which sells about a quarter of its commercial aircraft to Chinese customers, rose 2.03 percent.

Also helping the industrials sector was Deere (DE.N), which jumped 6.3 percent after the tractor maker raised its full-year earnings estimate.

Slideshow (2 Images)

Applied Materials (AMAT.O) dropped 8 percent after the chip gear maker’s disappointing forecast renewed concerns over slowing smartphone demand.

The warning dragged down Philadelphia chipmaker index .SOX by 1 percent. Intel (INTC.O) dropped 1.6 percent, and along with Applied Materials weighed the most on the S&P and the Nasdaq.

The financial sector .SPSY dropped 0.79 percent, with traders citing a combination of a slight pullback in Treasury yields after a four-day rally and the uncertainty around trade talks, despite the progress being signaled.

JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America fell between 1.2 percent and 2.2 percent.

At 12:57 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 7.52 points, or 0.03 percent, at 24,721.50, kept afloat by Boeing and other industrial stocks.

The S&P 500 .SPX was down 5.99 points, or 0.22 percent, at 2,714.14 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 17.37 points, or 0.24 percent, at 7,365.11.

The industrial, materials .SPLRCM and healthcare .SPXHC sectors were the only gainers among the 11 major S&P sectors.

Investors have been fretting about the impact of rising Treasury yields and commodity prices on corporate results, with the dollar hitting five-month highs also a source of concern.

Campbell Soup and tractor maker Deere joined a list of companies that blamed higher raw material and freight costs for a drop in profit margins.

Campbell (CPB.N) fell 12.1 percent after cutting its full-year profit forecast, saying it expects higher costs to weigh on margins.

The warning also dragged down shares of General Mills (GIS.N), Kraft Heinz (KHC.O) and other food companies.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.03-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.06-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded eight new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 130 new highs and 23 new lows.

Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva

The post Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh appeared first on World The News.

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[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

Global air finance titans ponder whether boom will ever end

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/global-air-finance-titans-ponder-whether-boom-will-ever-end/

Global air finance titans ponder whether boom will ever end

DUBLIN (Reuters) – As the titans of the $140-billion a year aircraft financing industry gathered in Dublin this week to celebrate an unprecedented boom, a few were casting a cold eye on mistakes of the past – and whether they could happen again.

Ireland owes its dominance of global aircraft finance to the rise and spectacular collapse in 1992 of industry pioneer Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), which demonstrated both the risks and returns possible from financing airplanes.

The former GPA executives who now dominate the industry were debating which of the new players and investors that have flooded in the last five years might not have learned from those mistakes – and whether the industry had finally broken its cycle of spectacular booms and busts.

The five-star venues that every year host the sector’s showcase conferences were heaving with hundreds of new investors – many from China – who have poured in to a once-obscure industry as global investors engage in a desperate search for returns.

Throngs of financiers spilled into the street from the 200-year-old Shelbourne Hotel during the Airline Economics conference, whose delegate list has tripled to 3,000 in five years.

“Sentiment is as positive as I have seen it,” Alec Burger the head of No. 2 lessor GECAS – formed from the hulk of GPA – told a packed second conference, Global Airfinance, where airline executives buoyed by surging air traffic eyed funds to expand their fleets.

“This will be the fourth year of global airline profits above $30 billion and that is beyond unprecedented,” Flight Ascend chief economist Peter Morris said.

PEAK OR PLATEAU?

Optimists insist the flood of Asian money – around 20 Chinese lessors have opened Dublin offices since the start of the decade – confirms the emergence of air finance as a worthy asset class in its own right.

Aengus Kelly, the former GPA employee who is now CEO of the world’s largest lessor AerCap, said the number of banks and bond investors willing to lend to his firm has mushroomed from 50 to 500 in two decades.

“Is it the case that all of them are in for the long haul? – Of course not. Have they come in looking for yield? – Of course they have,” he said in an interview. “But I do think on a structural basis the industry is well understood and people are starting to divorce it from airline cyclicality.”

Domhnal Slattery, head of No. 3 firm Avolon, told delegates that those who thought the market must be peaking were “cynics” and that the cyclical peak was years away.

SIGNS OF INSTABILITY

But the money has also caused returns to collapse in the industry’s de facto spot market: buying planes from airlines and leasing them back, prompting many big players to abandon it.

Leasing giants say they are often left at the back of a queue of two dozen firms for such deals as new players accept tiny – some argue non-existent – returns.

“My biggest concern over the past few years has been all the liquidity chasing these assets,” Betsy Snyder, Standard & Poor’s director, said. “What happens if we get into a downturn?”

The risk for those prepared to wade too aggressively into this market is that rental fees don’t cover the cost of paying debt on an over-valued jet, said market veteran Bill Cumberlidge of Aviation Partners.

Yet as lease rates suffer, the value of aircraft rises as airlines find a queue of takers, even before they are delivered. That may have encouraged some airlines to order extra planes in the hope of flipping them into the sale-leaseback market.

If so, they could end up getting burned as markets turn against them, warned John Plueger, CEO of Air Lease.

As in other branches of global finance, some worry that while a tide of money moved in during an unprecedented phase of low interest rates, it could recede as quickly as rates rise.

“I think interest rates are a real risk in the space generally,” said Matthew Little, a partner at Castlelake, a private investment firm, adding leverage was also increasing.

The test will be whether this pressure topples an inexperienced few or shakes the wider industry.

“There are a lot of new players and I am sure some of them will thrive and do very well and some of them won’t,” said Peter Barrett, another GPA alumnus who runs No.4 lessor SMBC Aviation Capital. “Time will tell who the winners and losers will be.”

Reporting by Conor Humphries, Tim Hepher, Graham Fahy

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[newestbalance]

Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh

(Reuters) – Wall Street edged lower on Friday, weighed down by bank and chip shares as well as a handful of tepid earnings reports, although losses were capped by gains in industrial stocks on signs of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 18, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

China denied it had offered a package to slash the U.S. trade deficit by up to $200 billion, but dropped an anti-dumping probe into U.S. sorghum imports in a conciliatory gesture as top negotiators meet in Washington.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the consultations were “constructive” as the world’s two biggest economies are seeking to bridge a divide on trade issues.

“There is still a concern around trade talks with China, but … the stock market is cautiously optimistic that trade talks will lead to a good result,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The industrial sector .SPLRCI jumped 0.53 percent, the most among the 11 major S&P sectors. Boeing (BA.N), which sells about a quarter of its commercial aircraft to Chinese customers, rose 2.03 percent.

Also helping the industrials sector was Deere (DE.N), which jumped 6.3 percent after the tractor maker raised its full-year earnings estimate.

Slideshow (2 Images)

Applied Materials (AMAT.O) dropped 8 percent after the chip gear maker’s disappointing forecast renewed concerns over slowing smartphone demand.

The warning dragged down Philadelphia chipmaker index .SOX by 1 percent. Intel (INTC.O) dropped 1.6 percent, and along with Applied Materials weighed the most on the S&P and the Nasdaq.

The financial sector .SPSY dropped 0.79 percent, with traders citing a combination of a slight pullback in Treasury yields after a four-day rally and the uncertainty around trade talks, despite the progress being signaled.

JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America fell between 1.2 percent and 2.2 percent.

At 12:57 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 7.52 points, or 0.03 percent, at 24,721.50, kept afloat by Boeing and other industrial stocks.

The S&P 500 .SPX was down 5.99 points, or 0.22 percent, at 2,714.14 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 17.37 points, or 0.24 percent, at 7,365.11.

The industrial, materials .SPLRCM and healthcare .SPXHC sectors were the only gainers among the 11 major S&P sectors.

Investors have been fretting about the impact of rising Treasury yields and commodity prices on corporate results, with the dollar hitting five-month highs also a source of concern.

Campbell Soup and tractor maker Deere joined a list of companies that blamed higher raw material and freight costs for a drop in profit margins.

Campbell (CPB.N) fell 12.1 percent after cutting its full-year profit forecast, saying it expects higher costs to weigh on margins.

The warning also dragged down shares of General Mills (GIS.N), Kraft Heinz (KHC.O) and other food companies.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.03-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.06-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded eight new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 130 new highs and 23 new lows.

Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva

The post Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh appeared first on World The News.

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[megadarkbouquettidalwavethings]

Strong U.S. consumer, business spending bolster growth picture

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer spending accelerated in November and shipments of key capital goods orders increased for the 10th straight month, data showed on Friday, the latest signs of strong momentum in the economy as the year winds down.

But the bullish growth picture was dimmed somewhat as the figures also showed household savings dropped last month to the lowest level in more than nine years. Low savings could hurt consumer spending, though economists are optimistic wage growth will pick up in the new year.

Economists see a modest lift to consumer spending from a $1.5 trillion tax cut package approved by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress this week, in the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years.

“Consumers are still out there spending, but their purchases are being supplemented by low energy costs, credit and a reduction in savings rather than organic income growth,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel Fixed Income in Chicago. “Without sustained improvement in wages, consumers will struggle to maintain even today’s moderate pace of consumption.”

The Commerce Department said consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, rose 0.6 percent last month after gaining 0.2 percent in October. Spending last month was buoyed by an increase in demand for motor vehicles, recreational goods and utilities.

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending increased 0.4 percent in November from unchanged in the prior month. Personal income rose 0.3 percent last month, with wages increasing 0.4 percent.

As a result, households dipped into their savings, which fell to $426.2 billion – the lowest level since August 2008 and down from $466.9 billion in October. The saving rate dropped to a 10-year low of 2.9 percent from 3.2 percent in October.

In addition to savings, consumer spending is being driven by record household wealth, thanks to a booming stock market and rising home prices.

With the U.S. economy near full employment, economists argue that the tax cuts will only provide a modest boost to growth. President Donald Trump signed the tax legislation into law on Friday. It slashes the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and offers tax cuts for individuals.

The Trump administration argues that the tax cuts will boost both business and consumer spending. But the individual income tax cuts are skewed toward higher-income households, which economists say have a low propensity to consume.

Economists also believe companies will use much of the windfall on stock buybacks and debt reduction.

The dollar was trading slightly higher against a basket of currencies while U.S. Treasury yields rose modestly. Stocks on Wall Street slipped. [MKTS/GLOB]

INFLATION TAME

Despite the increase in spending, monthly inflation remained benign in November. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.1 percent in November after gaining 0.2 percent in October.

The so-called core PCE price index increased 1.5 percent in the 12 months through November, picking up from 1.4 percent in October. It has undershot the Fed’s 2 percent target since mid-2012 and its progress could determine the pace at which the U.S. central bank raises interest rates next year.

The Fed increased borrowing costs three times this year and has forecast three rate hikes in 2018.

“There is little doubt that structural shifts, including increased global competition, the growth in online retailing and new technologies that enable consumers to find the best price instantly and at little cost, are playing a role in holding down prices,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In a second report on Friday, the Commerce Department said shipments of non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft – a closely watched proxy for business spending – rose 0.3 percent after surging 1.3 percent in October.

Core capital goods shipments are used to calculate equipment spending in the government’s gross domestic product measurement. They have risen every month since February, the longest stretch since the series started in 1992.

The increase in core capital goods shipments over the last two months suggested a strong pace of increase in business spending on equipment in the fourth quarter.

Business investment in equipment rose at its fastest pace in three years in the third quarter, but the momentum could be slowing. Core capital goods orders slipped 0.1 percent last month after rising 0.8 percent in October.

“Real equipment spending has been on a very strong run in recent quarters, but the recent cooling in the orders data signals that there could be some softening to come,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

In a third report, the Commerce Department said new home sales jumped 17.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 733,000 units last month. That was the highest level since July 2007. New home sales surged 26.6 percent from a year ago.

Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; editing by Andrea Ricci, Chizu Nomiyama and G Crosse

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The post Strong U.S. consumer, business spending bolster growth picture appeared first on dailygate.

[cleopatrarps]

Wall Street edges lower as bank, chip stocks weigh

(Reuters) – Wall Street edged lower on Friday, weighed down by bank and chip shares as well as a handful of tepid earnings reports, although losses were capped by gains in industrial stocks on signs of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 18, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

China denied it had offered a package to slash the U.S. trade deficit by up to $200 billion, but dropped an anti-dumping probe into U.S. sorghum imports in a conciliatory gesture as top negotiators meet in Washington.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the consultations were “constructive” as the world’s two biggest economies are seeking to bridge a divide on trade issues.

“There is still a concern around trade talks with China, but … the stock market is cautiously optimistic that trade talks will lead to a good result,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The industrial sector .SPLRCI jumped 0.53 percent, the most among the 11 major S&P sectors. Boeing (BA.N), which sells about a quarter of its commercial aircraft to Chinese customers, rose 2.03 percent.

Also helping the industrials sector was Deere (DE.N), which jumped 6.3 percent after the tractor maker raised its full-year earnings estimate.

Slideshow (2 Images)

Applied Materials (AMAT.O) dropped 8 percent after the chip gear maker’s disappointing forecast renewed concerns over slowing smartphone demand.

The warning dragged down Philadelphia chipmaker index .SOX by 1 percent. Intel (INTC.O) dropped 1.6 percent, and along with Applied Materials weighed the most on the S&P and the Nasdaq.

The financial sector .SPSY dropped 0.79 percent, with traders citing a combination of a slight pullback in Treasury yields after a four-day rally and the uncertainty around trade talks, despite the progress being signaled.

JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America fell between 1.2 percent and 2.2 percent.

At 12:57 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 7.52 points, or 0.03 percent, at 24,721.50, kept afloat by Boeing and other industrial stocks.

The S&P 500 .SPX was down 5.99 points, or 0.22 percent, at 2,714.14 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 17.37 points, or 0.24 percent, at 7,365.11.

The industrial, materials .SPLRCM and healthcare .SPXHC sectors were the only gainers among the 11 major S&P sectors.

Investors have been fretting about the impact of rising Treasury yields and commodity prices on corporate results, with the dollar hitting five-month highs also a source of concern.

Campbell Soup and tractor maker Deere joined a list of companies that blamed higher raw material and freight costs for a drop in profit margins.

Campbell (CPB.N) fell 12.1 percent after cutting its full-year profit forecast, saying it expects higher costs to weigh on margins.

The warning also dragged down shares of General Mills (GIS.N), Kraft Heinz (KHC.O) and other food companies.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.03-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.06-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded eight new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 130 new highs and 23 new lows.

Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva

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[stevescoles]

Shirley Jones sets off on foot on an expedition through our streets and parks to see how life differs on the high road and the low road…

I encounter Mrs P, as she pulls her ever-present shopping trolley. In her eighties, slightly bent and stooped, she still walks at quite a pace. She nods in the direction of her window, which is smashed. She tells me she has had a brick through her bedroom window in the night, and she is waiting for the council to board it up; she thinks it might have been acquaintances of her neighbour. She says her neighbour was arrested after a small fire broke out in her flat. It seems the neighbour had just attended the funeral in London of her only remaining parent, and I get the impression the fire might have been set deliberately.

I urge Mrs P to phone the police; if nothing else, she might need a crime number for insurance purposes. She says that she will, but there is no way of telling; I later hear her tell her neighbour that she doesn’t want to get her into trouble. Within the space of about a month, amongst about a dozen flats, there has been Mrs P’s troubles, a full-scale burglary; an inside job, (according to Mr M; the victim’s cousin did it) Mr M himself shut his front door on the hand of a man who had tried to push his way inside when it was opened, and two doors away it seemed the young man had made another suicide threat judging by the frantic knocking on his door. As the building works contractor had said ‘you see a side of life here you didn’t even know existed’.

I see a Goldfinch perched on a window ledge, the red head and gold wings looking especially illuminated on such a small bird. It freezes like a statue when it seems to become aware of being watched, before flying off. It must weigh less than an ounce. Yet, carrying some distance, its song is sharp and clear.

Crossing the road into town, although it is cloudy, an enormous roar overhead signals aircraft flying very low in V formation. As they get more or less directly overhead, they let out streams of red, white and blue. I can only assume it’s the Red Arrows, who have been on ceremonial duty in London. I crane my neck to see, until they are out of sight. There are about six other people in the street and they take no notice at all.

On a late summers evening, four police cars pull over, having driven slowly and quietly into a road. I hear one declare that they are armed police, then they are asking the occupant of a car to get out and make sure he has turned off the engine and put the hand-brake on. I look, as I was intending to go that way eventually, and can see an officer holding what looks like a semi-automatic. A puny-looking teenage boy walks to one of the cars and seems to get into the police car. They are there for a long time, the police seeming to be searching for something and they address teenage girls present. Of course, I am not fully in the picture, but it does seem odd that such a heavily armed presence is necessary if the police do not have an arrest warrant, nor sufficient information, which would enable them to remove the alleged criminals straight away.

People do, of course, often conform to stereotypes (which is presumably why we have them). One stereotype of the deprived area is that of the mob – for example groups forming to make accusations of paedophilia. And I can assure you, it does happen. I’m not sure what it is they actually say to each other, but they form groups of varying sizes and go and sit outside a hapless person’s house – somebody who had the gall to report anti-social behaviour, say; screaming and shouting and pointing ‘we’ve got a paedophile here!’ Children often accompany parents in such groups. The same sort of mentality, it would seem, which results in the stoning of fire engines and ambulances. Who can tell what the lives of such adults are like? What does conversation in the home consists of?  I hear from a reliable source (another contractor visiting on behalf of the council) that some houses have dog muck up the walls causing the contractor to gag, and to which the residents paid no attention. This is surely mental illness, but I don’t know what the route would be to getting people on the path to receiving help.

A very poignant sight, seen a couple of times now, is that of a man who has a physical disability walking along; a man behind has his hand on the first man’s shoulder at arm’s length, obviously blind, and they walk along, the first man acting as a guide for the blind man. This may be a temporary arrangement for whatever reason; it may be what both men prefer; or it may be born out of not being able to access the necessary services, not having the up-keep for a guide dog.

A group of twenty or so, possibly more Somalians dominating the streets -spread out in the road, under windows, weaving in and out on bikes, gradually spreading out, shouting, screaming, squealing; coming together, again, into a large cluster. It is always at sunset, as if the heat of the Somalia sun was a factor. There is usually a concrete and practical reality behind many customs and rites but there is no beating African sun to have to take shelter from during the day. The girls are dressed in hijabs and thick cotton leggings; and, it would seem in the case of one girl, if they don’t have cotton leggings, woollen tights. The boys are free to saunter in shorts and sandals. I have seen a child just learning to walk, out with a parent, with a covering over her head. Impossible to have one’s own window open I gather, or even hear one’s own radio or T.V. Then they seem to move, or a new group appears into the communal garden, this time with about ten adults making in total about 35 people.

A man who is, I think, Iranian, tells me his wife had said it had been going on all day. Another man, a Somalian, says he also has occasions with ‘about fifteen kids’ under his window. Next day, the scene is forlorn: small cycles blocking the footpath, litter, mainly plastic.

In the past, when British children had been the perpetrators, although perhaps not in such large groups, at one point a curfew was put into place for six months. But I think in the latter case more anti-social behaviour was involved.

No fly tipping in view at present, which is not often the case. The culture of poverty; originating, I would suppose from financial poverty – no money to pay the fees to visit the tip, nor any means to get there. A very small pocket park in the area has three or four lovely trees but the hedges have been cut so low that it feels more of a place to be on display, rather than a place to relax and possibly escape for a short time. There is, though, an interesting metal sculpture of a tree with birds and nests in the branches.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pictures by Shirley Jones

In a different place entirely – a pocket park in a place which could be described as mid-High Life is over the road from the church in what had been the church burial ground – known now as the church pocket park. It still contains the old headstones. Walking in, it doesn’t look too promising to me – plastic grating placed over mulch. But going in further, is a lovely surprise.

Along a winding path, dense with bushes and trees are benches to sit. There is a hollow in the ground, covered by an arch so thick with ivy and flora that it is impossible to tell whether this little hollow is natural or not. It has the effect of being in a small grotto. An exciting little hiding place for children. Further along the winding path are blackberry bushes, just beginning to yield fruit. Just before reaching the original entrance, there is another; following this one steps into a wide expanse of grass –but not the official village green, which is just over the road. Along Church Passage is a very low stone wall, the other side of which is pasture for sheep and a horse, chickens too. The sheep are kept as pets by a woman who at one point had fourteen of them. There are about half-a -dozen now. Preparing for the winter, a resident walks from his car carrying fire logs.

Green End straddles two roads, originally, I am told from the time when the family would walk from the Grange to the Church along one path, the servants going by the other path.

Here in High Life – a wooden gate at the side of the road leads into a pocket park – It seems as if at one time the gate would have been the entrance to the grounds of a house, a kitchen garden perhaps? It feels slightly eerie going in and akin to entering the Victorian era of ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’. The grounds you step into and the full door sized gate are long-established. You are led towards a wooden bridge, over a barely trickling stream. It is difficult to traverse through the tangled mass of nettles and weeds. Disappointingly, the bridge leads to a largish bank of grass. But the bank does overlook a largish stream, with a warning sign of deep water. Over the road from here, is the stream is for fishing in, with a daily fee paid by anglers.

Along the quiet main road is a house with a window box at doorstep level. The plaque says it is in memory of Princess Diana; it contains only shallow earth and small pebbles or stones. It brings back memories, in the year of the twentieth anniversary of her death. Even the bus stop is comfortable. Built of stone, it is as cool and shaded as could be hoped for on a scorching summers’ day. A wooden bench has a plaque in memory of the Great War Dead.

Looking out from here is another quaint English feature – a house has a sundial on the side wall. Past the Alms cottages, the old Post House, the Oak house, to a bench on the small triangular village green, dedicated to Dr Heggie ‘who loved this village.’ The view from here is out to the gentle rolling slopes of farmland, as far as the eye can see, interspersed with clumps of woodland.

Along Jack’s Lane two white butterflies, with a large wing -span, looking at first glance like two slips of paper, fluttering. Seeming to gracefully fly around each other, fluttering upwards, too.

A very small stallion – possibly a Shetland pony, brown-coated with a black mane and tail, stands in the cool shadow of a tree. A larger horse seems happy to expend energy eating energetically in the full glare of the sun. But then one notices the fencing cutting off the large horse from the shade of the trees. Looking out again over the farmland, the fields look purple and golden.

Along Back Lane, the sound of lawn mowers and hedge strimmers, one person could be seen tending to his garden. Then, the High Life version of anti-social behaviour? From a deserted drive-way, a hosepipe with water, not exactly gushing, but more than trickling, out, into the pavement then the street drain outside.

Idyllic sunshine, and quiet. Comforting and safe but if carried on for too long, perhaps, a little soporific.

A walk in the park to see how the other half lives

Shirley Jones sets off on foot on an expedition through our streets and parks to see how life differs on the high road and the low road…

A walk in the park to see how the other half lives Shirley Jones sets off on foot on an expedition through our streets and parks to see how life differs on the high road and the low road...

[nqbuddy]

Shirley Jones sets off on foot on an expedition through our streets and parks to see how life differs on the high road and the low road…

I encounter Mrs P, as she pulls her ever-present shopping trolley. In her eighties, slightly bent and stooped, she still walks at quite a pace. She nods in the direction of her window, which is smashed. She tells me she has had a brick through her bedroom window in the night, and she is waiting for the council to board it up; she thinks it might have been acquaintances of her neighbour. She says her neighbour was arrested after a small fire broke out in her flat. It seems the neighbour had just attended the funeral in London of her only remaining parent, and I get the impression the fire might have been set deliberately.

I urge Mrs P to phone the police; if nothing else, she might need a crime number for insurance purposes. She says that she will, but there is no way of telling; I later hear her tell her neighbour that she doesn’t want to get her into trouble. Within the space of about a month, amongst about a dozen flats, there has been Mrs P’s troubles, a full-scale burglary; an inside job, (according to Mr M; the victim’s cousin did it) Mr M himself shut his front door on the hand of a man who had tried to push his way inside when it was opened, and two doors away it seemed the young man had made another suicide threat judging by the frantic knocking on his door. As the building works contractor had said ‘you see a side of life here you didn’t even know existed’.

I see a Goldfinch perched on a window ledge, the red head and gold wings looking especially illuminated on such a small bird. It freezes like a statue when it seems to become aware of being watched, before flying off. It must weigh less than an ounce. Yet, carrying some distance, its song is sharp and clear.

Crossing the road into town, although it is cloudy, an enormous roar overhead signals aircraft flying very low in V formation. As they get more or less directly overhead, they let out streams of red, white and blue. I can only assume it’s the Red Arrows, who have been on ceremonial duty in London. I crane my neck to see, until they are out of sight. There are about six other people in the street and they take no notice at all.

On a late summers evening, four police cars pull over, having driven slowly and quietly into a road. I hear one declare that they are armed police, then they are asking the occupant of a car to get out and make sure he has turned off the engine and put the hand-brake on. I look, as I was intending to go that way eventually, and can see an officer holding what looks like a semi-automatic. A puny-looking teenage boy walks to one of the cars and seems to get into the police car. They are there for a long time, the police seeming to be searching for something and they address teenage girls present. Of course, I am not fully in the picture, but it does seem odd that such a heavily armed presence is necessary if the police do not have an arrest warrant, nor sufficient information, which would enable them to remove the alleged criminals straight away.

People do, of course, often conform to stereotypes (which is presumably why we have them). One stereotype of the deprived area is that of the mob – for example groups forming to make accusations of paedophilia. And I can assure you, it does happen. I’m not sure what it is they actually say to each other, but they form groups of varying sizes and go and sit outside a hapless person’s house – somebody who had the gall to report anti-social behaviour, say; screaming and shouting and pointing ‘we’ve got a paedophile here!’ Children often accompany parents in such groups. The same sort of mentality, it would seem, which results in the stoning of fire engines and ambulances. Who can tell what the lives of such adults are like? What does conversation in the home consists of?  I hear from a reliable source (another contractor visiting on behalf of the council) that some houses have dog muck up the walls causing the contractor to gag, and to which the residents paid no attention. This is surely mental illness, but I don’t know what the route would be to getting people on the path to receiving help.

A very poignant sight, seen a couple of times now, is that of a man who has a physical disability walking along; a man behind has his hand on the first man’s shoulder at arm’s length, obviously blind, and they walk along, the first man acting as a guide for the blind man. This may be a temporary arrangement for whatever reason; it may be what both men prefer; or it may be born out of not being able to access the necessary services, not having the up-keep for a guide dog.

A group of twenty or so, possibly more Somalians dominating the streets -spread out in the road, under windows, weaving in and out on bikes, gradually spreading out, shouting, screaming, squealing; coming together, again, into a large cluster. It is always at sunset, as if the heat of the Somalia sun was a factor. There is usually a concrete and practical reality behind many customs and rites but there is no beating African sun to have to take shelter from during the day. The girls are dressed in hijabs and thick cotton leggings; and, it would seem in the case of one girl, if they don’t have cotton leggings, woollen tights. The boys are free to saunter in shorts and sandals. I have seen a child just learning to walk, out with a parent, with a covering over her head. Impossible to have one’s own window open I gather, or even hear one’s own radio or T.V. Then they seem to move, or a new group appears into the communal garden, this time with about ten adults making in total about 35 people.

A man who is, I think, Iranian, tells me his wife had said it had been going on all day. Another man, a Somalian, says he also has occasions with ‘about fifteen kids’ under his window. Next day, the scene is forlorn: small cycles blocking the footpath, litter, mainly plastic.

In the past, when British children had been the perpetrators, although perhaps not in such large groups, at one point a curfew was put into place for six months. But I think in the latter case more anti-social behaviour was involved.

No fly tipping in view at present, which is not often the case. The culture of poverty; originating, I would suppose from financial poverty – no money to pay the fees to visit the tip, nor any means to get there. A very small pocket park in the area has three or four lovely trees but the hedges have been cut so low that it feels more of a place to be on display, rather than a place to relax and possibly escape for a short time. There is, though, an interesting metal sculpture of a tree with birds and nests in the branches.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pictures by Shirley Jones

In a different place entirely – a pocket park in a place which could be described as mid-High Life is over the road from the church in what had been the church burial ground – known now as the church pocket park. It still contains the old headstones. Walking in, it doesn’t look too promising to me – plastic grating placed over mulch. But going in further, is a lovely surprise.

Along a winding path, dense with bushes and trees are benches to sit. There is a hollow in the ground, covered by an arch so thick with ivy and flora that it is impossible to tell whether this little hollow is natural or not. It has the effect of being in a small grotto. An exciting little hiding place for children. Further along the winding path are blackberry bushes, just beginning to yield fruit. Just before reaching the original entrance, there is another; following this one steps into a wide expanse of grass –but not the official village green, which is just over the road. Along Church Passage is a very low stone wall, the other side of which is pasture for sheep and a horse, chickens too. The sheep are kept as pets by a woman who at one point had fourteen of them. There are about half-a -dozen now. Preparing for the winter, a resident walks from his car carrying fire logs.

Green End straddles two roads, originally, I am told from the time when the family would walk from the Grange to the Church along one path, the servants going by the other path.

Here in High Life – a wooden gate at the side of the road leads into a pocket park – It seems as if at one time the gate would have been the entrance to the grounds of a house, a kitchen garden perhaps? It feels slightly eerie going in and akin to entering the Victorian era of ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’. The grounds you step into and the full door sized gate are long-established. You are led towards a wooden bridge, over a barely trickling stream. It is difficult to traverse through the tangled mass of nettles and weeds. Disappointingly, the bridge leads to a largish bank of grass. But the bank does overlook a largish stream, with a warning sign of deep water. Over the road from here, is the stream is for fishing in, with a daily fee paid by anglers.

Along the quiet main road is a house with a window box at doorstep level. The plaque says it is in memory of Princess Diana; it contains only shallow earth and small pebbles or stones. It brings back memories, in the year of the twentieth anniversary of her death. Even the bus stop is comfortable. Built of stone, it is as cool and shaded as could be hoped for on a scorching summers’ day. A wooden bench has a plaque in memory of the Great War Dead.

Looking out from here is another quaint English feature – a house has a sundial on the side wall. Past the Alms cottages, the old Post House, the Oak house, to a bench on the small triangular village green, dedicated to Dr Heggie ‘who loved this village.’ The view from here is out to the gentle rolling slopes of farmland, as far as the eye can see, interspersed with clumps of woodland.

Along Jack’s Lane two white butterflies, with a large wing -span, looking at first glance like two slips of paper, fluttering. Seeming to gracefully fly around each other, fluttering upwards, too.

A very small stallion – possibly a Shetland pony, brown-coated with a black mane and tail, stands in the cool shadow of a tree. A larger horse seems happy to expend energy eating energetically in the full glare of the sun. But then one notices the fencing cutting off the large horse from the shade of the trees. Looking out again over the farmland, the fields look purple and golden.

Along Back Lane, the sound of lawn mowers and hedge strimmers, one person could be seen tending to his garden. Then, the High Life version of anti-social behaviour? From a deserted drive-way, a hosepipe with water, not exactly gushing, but more than trickling, out, into the pavement then the street drain outside.

Idyllic sunshine, and quiet. Comforting and safe but if carried on for too long, perhaps, a little soporific.

A walk in the park to see how the other half lives Shirley Jones sets off on foot on an expedition through our streets and parks to see how life differs on the high road and the low road...