Wednesday, December 18

Tag: north america

The Welfare-Industrial Complex Is Booming
31Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

The Welfare-Industrial Complex Is Booming

Dec. 31, 2023 11:23 am ETDrill into the nation’s 3.7% unemployment rate, and you’ll find a growing welfare-industrial complex beneath the seemingly strong labor market. Government, social assistance and healthcare account for 56% of the 2.8 million net new jobs over the past year, and for nearly all gains in blue states such as New York and Illinois.The tens of thousands of migrants pouring into big cities need to be tended to. So do the hundreds of thousands of drug-addled and mentally ill homeless living on the streets. Progressive government doesn’t do anything on the cheap. America’s welfare state has thus become a proverbial Big Dig, and it keeps getting bigger.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Congo’s President Has Been Re-Elected. His Climate Policy Will Have Global Significance.
31Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Congo’s President Has Been Re-Elected. His Climate Policy Will Have Global Significance.

Dec. 31, 2023 11:51 am ETCongolese President Felix Tshisekedi on Sunday was declared the winner of this month’s national election, handing him a pivotal role in global efforts to combat climate change thanks to his country’s vast forests and rich mineral reserves. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s electoral commission said the 60-year-old Tshisekedi won a second five-year term with 73% of the vote in the Dec. 20 presidential election, well outpacing his challengers. But the election was fraught with delays: Many polling stations didn’t get voting materials on time, which led the commission to extend the vote by an extra day. The vote also came amid a hunger crisis and the worst fighting in years in Congo’s war-torn east.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 8...
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It’s the Same Old Nick Saban. It’s a Brand New Alabama.
31Dec By adminNo Comments
World

It’s the Same Old Nick Saban. It’s a Brand New Alabama.

For the better part of two decades, Nick Saban and his Alabama football team have been college football’s model of consistency.Through an era of unprecedented change, when the sport has been rocked by conference realignment and the whole notion of amateurism has begun to unravel, Alabama has remained stubbornly the same. The Crimson Tide recruit the best players, they win the biggest games, they roll into the playoffs pretty much every year as favorites to win the championship.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Minimum Wages Are Going Up. Low-Paid Workers Probably Won’t Notice.
31Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Minimum Wages Are Going Up. Low-Paid Workers Probably Won’t Notice.

Low-paid workers might not notice that 22 states are increasing the minimum wage to start the year. The reason: Robust raises in recent years have rendered pay floors largely irrelevant, even in states that aggressively lifted them.At the turn of each year, many states lift the minimum wage to adjust for the cost of living or to meet requirements in the law. Before the pandemic, that often meant a welcomed raise for low-wage workers, but labor shortages in recent years caused paychecks for many cooks, housekeepers and grocery clerks to rise faster than required by states. Meanwhile, the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage, followed in 20 states, has been unchanged since 2009.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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China Ends Underwhelming Year With Fresh Signs of Weakness
31Dec By adminNo Comments
World

China Ends Underwhelming Year With Fresh Signs of Weakness

Dec. 30, 2023 10:18 pm ETChina’s economy showed fresh signs of weakness as the year drew to a close, piling pressure on Beijing to take bold new steps to fire up growth in 2024.Surveys suggest factory activity slid deeper into contraction in December due to thin order books at home and abroad, while the services sector struggled as consumers kept a tight leash on spending.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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The Entrepreneur Who Bet His Company on a Fight With Apple
31Dec By adminNo Comments
World

The Entrepreneur Who Bet His Company on a Fight With Apple

Masimo Chief Executive Joe Kiani bet the future of the company he spent three decades building in an expensive legal battle with the world’s most valuable company. So far, he is winning, but it isn’t over.His company, which pioneered a better method for measuring blood-oxygen levels, has spent around $100 million fighting Apple in a dispute that temporarily halted Apple Watch sales. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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What to Watch: The 18 Best Movies and TV Shows From December
31Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

What to Watch: The 18 Best Movies and TV Shows From December

By WSJ Arts in Review Staff Here’s a roundup of the month’s most noteworthy movies and TV shows, as covered by The Wall Street Journal’s critics.Poor ThingsSumptuous, dazzling and glorious seem barely adequate as descriptors of “Poor Things,” a two-hour-and-20-minute cinematic fable of self-discovery. Writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, the dryly weird Greek filmmaker who has mostly been forced to work on skimpy budgets before, has at last been given the resources to show off everything he can do. This film makes most of this fall’s acclaimed pictures look like, in the words of one of its characters, “signs of the conventional mind straining hard to almost touch mediocrity.”Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 ...
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Jack Smith Asks Appeals Court to Reject Trump’s Immunity Claim
31Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Jack Smith Asks Appeals Court to Reject Trump’s Immunity Claim

WASHINGTON—Special counsel Jack Smith asked a federal appeals court on Saturday to reject Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that his defense “threatens to license Presidents to commit crimes to remain in office.”In an 82-page court filing, the special counsel’s team used some of its most strident language to date in a bid to bolster the first-ever federal prosecution of a former president. Declaring flatly that Trump is wrong, prosecutors said separation-of-powers principles, legal precedent and history combined to “make clear that a former President may be prosecuted for criminal acts he committed while in office—including, most critically here, illegal acts to remain in power despite losing an election.”C...
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Pardon Lt. Ridge Alkonis – WSJ
30Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

Pardon Lt. Ridge Alkonis – WSJ

Japan helped mend a diplomatic sore before Christmas when Tokyo transferred an imprisoned U.S. Navy lieutenant back into American hands. But this international incident isn’t over, and the outcome matters to U.S. troops wondering if they’re vulnerable to rough justice while stationed abroad.Lt. Ridge Alkonis was assigned to a Navy destroyer in Japan in 2021 when he fell unconscious while driving, and two Japanese nationals died after the attendant crash outside a restaurant. Lt. Alkonis maintains he experienced a medical emergency—acute mountain sickness—while driving his wife and children back from a daytime hike. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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