Tag: Domestic Politics

Top Hamas Leader Saleh al-Arouri Killed in Suspected Israeli Strike in Beirut
World

Top Hamas Leader Saleh al-Arouri Killed in Suspected Israeli Strike in Beirut

Listen to article(2 minutes)A top Hamas leader was killed Tuesday by a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut, according to two Lebanese security officials, raising the specter of further escalation in Israel’s war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.The blast killed Saleh al-Arouri, a founder of the Hamas military wing and one of its top political leaders, and at least three other people, the officials said. Hamas confirmed Arouri’s death in a statement. The Israeli military declined to comment on the explosion.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Biden’s $3.1 Billion Train Ticket to Nowhere
Health

Biden’s $3.1 Billion Train Ticket to Nowhere

It didn’t get a lot of attention, but last month the White House awarded $3.1 billion to the California High-Speed Rail project. This was supposed to be a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. Instead, its costs keep rising even as the state scales back the plan. Since 2008, when California voters authorized a $10 billion bond issue for the train, they’ve been sold a bill of goods.The original total estimated construction cost to taxpayers was $33 billion. That’s risen to at least $100 billion. The authority decided to offer service between San Francisco and Los Angeles in Phase I, then eventually extend the train service north to Sacramento and south to San Diego. Phase I was to have been completed by 2020. Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company...
Lee Jae-myung, Head of South Korean Opposition Party, Is Stabbed
World

Lee Jae-myung, Head of South Korean Opposition Party, Is Stabbed

Updated Jan. 2, 2024 2:17 am ETSEOUL—The head of South Korea’s opposition party was stabbed in the neck during a Tuesday visit to the port city of Busan.Lee Jae-myung, the 59-year-old leader of South Korea’s Democratic Party, remained conscious after being attacked by a male assailant, who was arrested at the scene, according to South Korea’s semiofficial Yonhap News Agency. Blood could be seen on his shirt collar. Lee was transported to a hospital in Busan within 20 minutes of the attack, Yonhap reported.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Tariffs and the Common Man
Business

Tariffs and the Common Man

With Donald Trump leading the 2024 polls while calling for a 10% universal tariff, the new GOP protectionists are trying to sell this idea as a boon for the working class. The evidence exposes this folly: Trade wars invite painful retaliation, prop up politically favored industries at the expense of others, and raise prices on consumers like an invisible tax. They hurt the average worker.The economic literature on this point is voluminous. To pick one place to start, here was the conclusion of a study of Mr. Trump’s last trade wars, written in 2019 by two Federal Reserve economists: “We find that U.S. manufacturing industries more exposed to tariff increases experience relative reductions in employment as a positive effect from import protection is offset by larger negative effects from r...
Xenophobia Drives Foes of Nippon Steel’s Deal
Health

Xenophobia Drives Foes of Nippon Steel’s Deal

Election-year jitters have the Biden administration and a few swing-state members of Congress from both parties parroting union concerns about Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel. The United Steelworkers union favored Cleveland-Cliffs’s offer, which was almost 50% lower than Nippon’s $14.1 billion bid. There is no real cause for concern other than xenophobia and the damage it could do to Cleveland-Cliffs’s position as the sole U.S. producer of electrical steel for transformers and electric vehicles. The rest is imported.Nippon’s steelmaking is at least as advanced as U.S. Steel’s, so technology export control isn’t an issue. National security could be a concern if American mills were shutting down due to unfairly subsidized Japanese exports to the U.S. But Nippon never used gimmicks to ...
Israel’s Highest Court Strikes Down Controversial Law to Curb Its Power
World

Israel’s Highest Court Strikes Down Controversial Law to Curb Its Power

By Carrie Keller-Lynn and Anat PeledUpdated Jan. 1, 2024 1:36 pm ETTEL AVIV—Israel’s highest court has struck down a controversial judicial overhaul law enacted last year by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would have limited the justices’ power.Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against a central piece of a judicial overhaul that Netanyahu was pushing before the war in Gaza erupted last October. The court struck down a law, which was passed in July and was akin to a constitutional amendment, that would have taken away the court’s powers to abrogate government decisions it deems to be “unreasonable in the extreme.”Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
John Fetterman Plays Against Type
Business

John Fetterman Plays Against Type

West Mifflin, Pa.It’s a warm December morning, and Sen. John Fetterman is walking along the Great Allegheny Passage across the Monongahela River from his home in Braddock. “I spend as much time as I can out here,” he says of the trail, which runs 150 miles from downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Md.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist
World

China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist

Updated Jan. 1, 2024 12:08 am ETListen to article(2 minutes)Chinese rulers have long used campaigns against corruption to sideline rivals and consolidate power. Xi Jinping is increasingly tying his authority to a new variation: a purge that never ends.With echoes of Mao Zedong’s “continuous revolution,” Xi has sent fear rippling through the ranks of the Communist Party for more than a decade with the largest campaign against corruption in modern Chinese history. It is now threatening to petrify the party as it tries to steer the world’s second-largest economy through its greatest period of uncertainty in a generation.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
DeSantis Bets on Iowa Caucuses to Keep Him Afloat in GOP Nomination Race
World

DeSantis Bets on Iowa Caucuses to Keep Him Afloat in GOP Nomination Race

Dec. 31, 2023 11:01 am ETELKADER, Iowa—With the Iowa caucuses fast approaching, Ron DeSantis is betting heavily on a strong performance in the state to preserve his viability in the Republican nomination race as he faces a drumbeat of questions about his campaign strategy. DeSantis is polling neck and neck with former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in Iowa in their quest for second place behind the front-runner, former President Donald Trump, but DeSantis lags behind Haley in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where voters will make their picks in late January and February, respectively. Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Focuses Year-End Report on AI
World

Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Focuses Year-End Report on AI

Chief Justice John Roberts focused his year-end report squarely on technology, avoiding discussion of the ethics questions that dogged the Supreme Court in 2023 and the flurry of election cases approaching the docket to discuss the promise and perils of artificial intelligence for the federal judiciary.“As 2023 draws to a close with breathless predictions about the future of Artificial Intelligence, some may wonder whether judges are about to become obsolete,” Roberts wrote in his annual report, which typically includes an essay regarding an issue involving the court system along with statistics on the federal judiciary’s workload. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8