Big Pay Gaps Are Bad for Business
Anton Woronczuk | truth-out.org | 2018-05-26
Truthout doesn't take corporate money and we don't shy away from confronting the root causes of injustice. Can you help sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation? | Mattel is one of the largest toy-making companies on earth. Turns out it's one of the biggest manufacturers of income inequality, too. | Last year, the Barbie doll manufacturer paid its CEO nearly 5,000 times as much as its median worker. | This stunning revelation is the result of a new regulation that requires US publicly held corporations to report their CEO-worker pay ratios to the Securities and Exchange Commission. | Mattel's gap is the widest reported so far. But most other big US companies also have staggering divides. According to a new report by the staff of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the first 225 large corporations to release their numbers had pay…
www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/44600-big-pay-gaps-are-bad-for-business

Global Warming Grows Less Nutritious Rice
Staff | truthdig.com | 2018-05-26
Global warming could bring a serious problem for the two billion people on the planet who depend on one grain for their staple diet: less nutritious rice to sustain them. Scientists have found that rice grown at higher levels of carbon dioxide has an overall lower nutritional value. | The grain contains lower levels of protein, and iron and zinc — metals vital for health in trace form — and also consistent declines in vitamin B. | This finding is not based on computer simulation of a plant's response to notionally higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas CO2, nor on laboratory studies under glass and in artificial conditions. It is based on open air field trials. | That is, extra carbon dioxide is piped to the plants to mimic the ratios expected at the end of the century as ever…
truthdig.com/articles/global-warming-grows-less-nutritious-rice/

The NFL Moves to Silence Voices of Dissent
George Payne | counterpunch.org | 2018-05-25
Would women have the right to vote today if they were told by men to only protest inside their homes? Would African-Americans have equal protection under the law if the Civil Rights movement was confined to the churches? Would farmers and migrant workers have just working conditions in the fields if they were forced to…
counterpunch.org/2018/05/25/the-nfl-moves-to-silence-voices-of-dissent/

Media Quote Frank on Rolling Back Dodd/Frank–Not Disclosing He's Now a Bank Director
Justin Anderson | fair.org | 2018-05-25
The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to roll back key provisions of the landmark Dodd/Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a 2010 law that increased regulatory scrutiny of banks following the 2008 financial crisis. | One of the many provisions of the original Dodd/Frank law subjected banks with over $50 billion in assets to annual economic "stress tests" to gauge their potential for collapse in the event of an economic crisis. The rollback bill raises that threshold to $250 billion, which would exempt at least two dozen "small" banks, including SunTrust, BB&T, Charles Schwab and American Express. By comparison, in 2008, key failed bank Countryside had only $172 billion in assets, and so would have avoided stress testing, while other financial dominos like Washington Mutual ($264 billion) and Bear Stearns ($289 billion) were close to the lower limit.
fair.org/home/media-quote-frank-on-rolling-back-dodd-frank-not-disclosing-hes-now-a-bank-director/

When CEO's Earn 5,000 Times as Much as a Company's Workers
Sarah Anderson | counterpunch.org | 2018-05-25
Mattel is one of the largest toy-making companies on earth. Turns out it's one of the biggest manufacturers of income inequality, too. Last year, the Barbie doll manufacturer paid its CEO nearly 5,000 times as much as its median worker. This stunning revelation is the result of a new regulation that requires U.S. publicly held…
counterpunch.org/2018/05/25/when-ceos-earn-5000-times-as-much-as-a-companys-workers/

Australia's China Syndrome
Binoy Kampmark | counterpunch.org | 2018-05-25
Syndromes can make for cringe worthy, nervous laughter. To see the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, struggle with reconciling China the bully of influence with China the resource hungry friend supplied the press with one such spectacle on Tuesday morning. Larded with suffocating clichés, Turnbull could speak of the greatest multicultural society on earth (forget the…
counterpunch.org/2018/05/25/australias-china-syndrome/

Workers Are Prepared to Shut Down Entire Las Vegas Strip
Mark Gruenberg | mintpressnews.com | 2018-05-25
If 50,000 workers, who toil at 34 big hotels on the Las Vegas strip and downtown, must walk out, it would be the union's largest strike in decades. | The post Workers Are Prepared to Shut Down Entire Las Vegas Strip appeared first on MintPress News.

Workers Are Prepared to Shut Down Entire Las Vegas Strip

Qatar Joins Core Human Rights Treaties
Human Rights Watch | hrw.org | 2018-05-25
| (Beirut) — Qatar submitted documents to the United Nations on May 21, 2018, to join two core human rights treaties, following cabinet approval on March 14, Human Rights Watch said today. But Qatar's accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights includes formal reservations that will deprive women and migrant workers of the treaties' protections. | Qatar rejected gender equality provisions in marriage, divorce, and child custody on grounds that they contravene Sharia, or Islamic law. It also declared it would interpret several provisions in line with Sharia, including on defining cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment — avoiding bans on capital and corporal punishment — minimum marriage ages, and freedom of religion. And it said it would interpret the term "trade unions" in accordance…
www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/25/qatar-joins-core-human-rights-treaties

Ireland Asks Voters to Lift the Nation's Strict Ban on Abortion
Robert Mackey | theintercept.com | 2018-05-25
Ireland has changed quite dramatically since 1983, when two-thirds of the electorate approved a constitutional amendment that imposed a near total ban on abortion by recognizing "the right to life of the unborn," which promised equal protection under the law to fetuses and pregnant women. | The contours of Ireland's gradual transformation into a more liberal country in the decades since can be traced in the results of a series of subsequent referendums that defied the teachings of the once-dominant Catholic Church. Divorce was legalized, narrowly, in 1995; same-sex marriage, overwhelmingly, in 2015. | On Friday, Irish voters go to the polls once again, this time to cast ballots in a referendum on their government's proposal to repeal the abortion ban enshrined in the Eighth Amendment to the constitution 35 years ago.Manifestation on O'Connell St. A few minutes ago.
theintercept.com/2018/05/24/irelands-sex-marriage-vote-easy-win-ending-abortion-ban-might-not/

House Bill Would Let Airports Stop Using Toxic Firefighting Foam
Sharon Lerner | theintercept.com | 2018-05-25
While the controversy over the Environmental Protection Agency's recent " leadership summit" on PFAS chemicals held in Washington earlier this week brought attention to the cancer-causing contaminants in the drinking water of millions of Americans, Congress has quietly made an important step toward getting rid of one of the products responsible for this widespread water pollution. On April 27, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would free the Federal Aviation Administration from longstanding requirements that commercial airports use firefighting foam that contains the chemicals. | For decades, FAA policy has been to require airports to use firefighting foam that meets specifications developed by the Navy. Those standards mandate the use of fluorinated chemicals, a term that includes PFAS, all of which persist indefinitely in nature. While most of the thousands of chemicals in this class have yet to be…
theintercept.com/2018/05/25/airport-firefighting-foam/

The GDPR Comes Into Force Today
Human Rights Watch | hrw.org | 2018-05-25
Today marks the entry into force of the European Union's General Data Privacy Regulation, a law that will advance your rights and improve privacy protections online. Human Rights Watch has a new privacy policy that you can read here.
www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/25/gdpr-comes-force-today

Focus on Pruitt's Scandals Obscures Environmental Degradation Under Trump
Justin Anderson | fair.org | 2018-05-23
Focusing on a $43,000 phone booth (Washington Post, 4/16/18), not on the $60 trillion that unchecked climate change is projected to cost (Nature, 7/25/13). | Scott Pruitt sure is busy these days. The climate change-denying head of the Environmental Protection Agency has been renting out a DC condo on the cheap from an energy lobbyist; installing a $43,000 soundproof booth for his telephone calls; passing out improper pay raises to aides; jet-setting around the world on first-class flights; hitting up Disneyland and the Rose Bowl with his oversized $3 million, 20-person security detail; receiving police escorts to trendy DC restaurant Le Diplomate; and even having a fancy dinner in Rome with Vatican treasurer, climate denier and recently charged child sexual abuser George Pell. | What's more, Pruitt's staffers at the EPA have continued to…
fair.org/home/focus-on-pruitts-scandals-obscures-environmental-degradation-under-trump/

Work of Satan? Sinkhole opens on White House lawn, Twitter in turmoil over its meaning (PHOTOS)
RT | rt.com | 2018-05-23
A sinkhole has opened up near the White House press briefing room on the north lawn, prompting a wave of derision online as social media users revelled in the unique karma of the event. …
www.rt.com/usa/427493-white-house-sinkhole-photos/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Scientists reveal global warming's impact on Great Barrier Reef
wsws.org | wsws.org | 2018-05-23
Warming events are becoming more frequent, giving coral insufficient time to recover.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/23/bbrd-m23.html

Venezuela Slams New US Sanctions as Washington Hints at Oil Embargo
Cira Pascual Marquina | venezuelanalysis.com | 2018-05-22
The latest measures fly in the face of international concern about the living conditions of Venezuelans.
venezuelanalysis.com/news/13833

Media Ignore Government Influence on Facebook's Plan to Fight Government Influence
Adam Johnson | fair.org | 2018-05-21
Medium ( 5/17/18) | Facebook announced Thursday it was partnering with DC think tank the Atlantic Council to "monitor for misinformation and foreign interference." The details of the plan are vague, but Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab wrote in a non-bylined Medium post ( 5/17/18) that the goal was to design tools "to bring us closer together" instead of "driving us further apart." Whatever that means, exactly. | Behind its generic-sounding name and "nonpartisan" label, the Atlantic Council is associated with very particular interests. It's funded by the US Department of State and the US Navy, Army and Air Force, along with NATO, various foreign powers and major Western corporations, including weapons contractors and oil companies. The Atlantic Council is dead center in what former President Obama's deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes called "the blob"–Washington's bipartisan foreign-policy…
fair.org/home/media-ignore-government-influence-on-facebooks-plan-to-fight-government-influence/

NASA's new exoplanet hunter TESS snaps 200,000+ stars in its 1st PHOTO
RT | rt.com | 2018-05-20
After passing the moon's orbit, NASA's planet-hunting satellite has snapped its first picture from one of four cameras on board, relaying the footage of some 200,000 stars back to astronomers on Earth. …
www.rt.com/usa/427222-tess-first-image-nasa/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

DAPL-style protesters could face jail under new 'critical infrastructure' protection laws
RT | rt.com | 2018-05-19
New laws introducing harsher penalties against protesters who target "critical infrastructure" such as oil and gas pipelines are now pending in half a dozen states in the US. …
www.rt.com/usa/427214-us-criminalize-protests-dapl/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Trump's EPA Doesn't Want You to Know Chemicals in Teflon Are Poisoning Waterways & Firefighters
Democracy Now! | democracynow.org | 2018-05-18
The Environmental Protection Agency is facing a major new scandal after it worked with the White House to bury an alarming federal study detailing widespread chemical contamination of the nation's water supply. One Trump administration official warned release of the study would create a "public relations nightmare." The study found chemicals commonly present in Teflon and firefighting foam are a threat to human health at levels the EPA had previously called safe. We speak with Robert Bilott, the attorney The New York Times calls the "worst nightmare of DuPont," the manufacturer of Teflon. He successfully won compensation for his clients whose drinking water had been contaminated by toxic chemicals used to make Teflon. He is a recipient of the 2017 Right Livelihood Award.
www.democracynow.org/2018/5/18/trumps_epa_doesnt_want_you_to

Norman Finkelstein: Palestinians Have the Right to Break Free of the "Unlivable" Cage That Is Gaza
Democracy Now! | democracynow.org | 2018-05-16
This spring's mass nonviolent protests in Gaza come as the human rights conditions in the "open-air prison" have even further deteriorated. Last year, the United Nations issued a report warning Gaza is already "unlivable." The majority of its water is contaminated, and electricity is limited to only a few hours a day. About half the population is children. Almost all are refugees who are prevented from ever leaving the tiny Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. For more, we speak with Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar whose most recent book is titled "Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom."
www.democracynow.org/2018/5/16/norman_finkelstein_palestinians_have_the_right

ConocoPhillips Moves to Seize Venezuelan Oil Assets as PDVSA Maneuvers to Safeguard Tankers
Paul Dobson | venezuelanalysis.com | 2018-05-09
In response to the threat, PDVSA has allegedly ordered its fleet of tankers stationed in the Caribbean to return to Venezuelan waters.
venezuelanalysis.com/news/13803

Venezuela: Zulia Governor Blames Illegal Crypto Mining for Continuing Regional Power Shortages
Paul Dobson | venezuelanalysis.com | 2018-05-07
Sabotage, lack of maintenance, and climate change have also been offered to explain the crippling blackouts.
venezuelanalysis.com/news/13796

Venezuela Offers Petro-Based Oil Discount, Denounces "Kidnapping" of Funds
Paul Dobson | venezuelanalysis.com | 2018-05-03
Maduro has accused Euroclear of withholding USD$1.2bn as part of international financial sanctions against Caracas.
venezuelanalysis.com/news/13791

ConocoPhillips Awarded US$2bn for 2007 Oil Field Expropriation, Venezuela Claims Victory
Paul Dobson | venezuelanalysis.com | 2018-04-26
Venezuela claims the award ordered by the ICC is lower than the amount originally offered by Chavez as compensation and is only 10% of what the oil giant filed for.
venezuelanalysis.com/News/13785