#-a-subsidiary-of-Nationwide

[usmetube]

Geerarsa Nama Leenca Ajjeesee

Geerarsa Nama Leenca Ajjeesee Insurance Lawyer Mortgage Credit Donate gedaa bilisummaa Insurance Lawyer Mortgage Credit DonateGeerarsa Nama Leenca Ajjeesee

[fatehbaz]

On April 21, Ali Hussein Julood, a 21-year-old living in the Iraqi town of Rumaila, on the outskirts of one of the world’s largest oil fields, died from leukaemia. He was told by doctors that pollution from gas flared in the nearby field, which is operated by British Petroleum (BP), had likely caused his cancer. “Gas flaring” is a low-cost procedure used by oil companies to burn off the natural gas expelled during drilling. [...] [I]t also contributes to global warming [...]. Some of the pollutants released during this process, such as benzene, are known to cause cancers and respiratory diseases. Ali, who had been battling cancer for six years when he died, was only the latest victim of the environmental degradation caused by international oil companies like BP in Iraq.

In towns and villages near the country’s vast oil fields, thousands of other men, women and children are still living under smoke-filled skies and suffering avoidable health problems because company executives insist on putting profit before lives. [...]

[A] confidential report from the Iraqi health ministry recently obtained by the BBC blamed pollution from gas flaring, among other factors, for a 20 percent rise in cancer in Basra, southern Iraq between 2015 and 2018. A second leaked document, again seen by the BBC, from the local government in Basra showed that cancer cases in the region are three times higher than figures published in the official nationwide cancer registry.

Like many other problems and crises that are devastating the lives of ordinary Iraqis today, the chain of events that led to the poisoning of southern Iraq’s skies by international oil companies also started during colonial times.

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In the early 20th century, as its navy transitioned from coal to petrol, Britain found itself in increasing need of oil to run its empire and fuel its numerous war efforts. [...] In 1912, Britain formed the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) with the purpose of acquiring concessions from the Ottoman Empire to explore for oil in Mesopotamia. Following World War I, it brought modern-day Iraq under its own mandate [...]. By 1930, the TPC was renamed the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC) and was put under the control of a consortium made up of BP, Total, Shell and several other American companies. Together, they pushed for a series of “concession agreements” with the newly formed Iraqi government which would give them exclusive control of Iraq’s oil resources on pre-defined terms for long periods. By 1938, the IPC and its various subsidiaries had already secured the right to extract and export virtually all the oil in Iraq for 75 years. These concessions were granted to the IPC and its subsidiaries while Iraq was ruled by British-installed monarchs and under de facto British control. Thus the state had almost no negotiating power against the British-led consortium [...] In 1955, the Iraqi government started to voice its desire to use the gas being flared in Rumaila and Zubair for electricity generation. In 1960, while negotiating a concession with the IPC, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim formally asked the company to let Iraq exploit the gas that it was not using. The same demand came up again and again [...], but IPC and its subsidiaries repeatedly turned the Iraqi government down. [...]

Following the 2003 invasion, the Iraqi oil industry was once again privatised as a result of pressure from the US and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As was the case in the early 20th century, any negotiations on oil extraction rights took place when Iraq was still under foreign occupation [...]. When the process of auctioning off oil fields in southern Iraq began in 2008, the Iraqi government offered foreign oil companies long contracts of up to 25 years, reminiscent of the early concessions agreements with the IPC. These included stabilisation clauses, which insulated foreign companies from legal changes that might emerge over the course of their contracts. This meant that the companies were, and continue to be, unaffected by any environmental regulations passed by the Iraqi government to reduce pollution [...].

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Looking back at the development of the oil industry in southern Iraq makes apparent that the kind of pollution that killed Ali has been in the making for some 70 years. His death – like the deaths of many others who succumbed to pollution-related cancers in his country – was not an unavoidable tragedy, but the natural consequence of a long history of colonial violence and extractive capitalism.

Predatory colonial practices that began over a century ago caused southern Iraq’s vast oil reserves to be left under the sole control of foreign companies today – companies that over and over again put profit before the lives of the Iraqi inhabitants of the lands they exploit.

Ali’s death is yet more proof that colonial violence is far from over and that it has many different faces.

---

Text by: Taif Alkhudary. “Southern Iraq’s toxic skies are a colonial legacy.” Al Jazeera (English). 12 June 2023. [Some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Support is growing nationwide for striking Halifax workers of Sobeys-owned Pete’s Frootique as several solidarity gatherings were held across the country on Saturday. According to a release from SEIU 2, the union representing Pete’s employees, supporters were stationed outside the entrances at more than a dozen Sobeys and subsidiaries across Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia for a “National Day of Action” to educate the public about the workers’ situation as their strike enters a fifth week. Nicholas Cook, a striking Pete’s employee who was handing out information leaflets to shoppers at a Sobeys in Halifax, said the outpouring public support has been “phenomenal” — adding that it’s given him and his colleagues faith in their pleas for increased wages and benefits.

Continue Reading

[eretzyisrael]

BY PARK MACDOUGALD

The “movement,” in turn, while it recruits from among students and other self-motivated radicals willing to put their bodies on the line, relies heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party. Take the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement, Columbia University. According to reporting in the New York Post, the Columbia encampment was principally organized by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). Let’s take each in turn.

JVP is, in essence, the “Jewish”-branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, backed by the usual big-money progressive donors—including some, like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, that were instrumental in selling Obama’s Iran Deal to the public. JVP and its affiliated political action arm, JVP Action, have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and smaller amounts from progressive donors such as the Quitiplas Foundation, according to reporting from the New York Post and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute. JVP has also received nearly $1.5 million from various donor-advised funds—which allow wealthy clients to give anonymously through their financial institutions—run through the charitable giving arms of Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, and TIAA, according to NGO Monitor’s review of those institutions’ tax documents.

SJP, by contrast, is an outgrowth of the Islamist networks dissolved during the U.S. government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and related charities for fundraising for Hamas. SJP is a subsidiary of an organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); SJP in fact has no “formal corporate structure of its own but operates as AMP’s campus brand,” according to a lawsuit filed last week against AJP Educational Fund, the parent nonprofit of AMP. Both AMP and SJP were founded by the same man, Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian academic who formerly fundraised for KindHearts, an Islamic charity dissolved in 2012 pursuant to a settlement with the U.S. Treasury, which froze the group’s assets for fundraising for Hamas (KindHearts did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement). And several of AMP’s senior leaders are former fundraisers for HLF and related charities, according to November congressional testimony from former U.S. Treasury official Jonathan Schanzer. An ongoing federal lawsuit by the family of David Boim, an American teenager killed in a Hamas terrorist attack in 1996, goes so far as to allege that AMP is a “disguised continuance” and “legal alter-ego” of the Islamic Association for Palestine, was founded with startup money from current Hamas official Musa Abu Marzook and dissolved alongside HLF. AMP has denied it is a continuation of IAP.

Today, however, National SJP is legally a “fiscal sponsorship” of another nonprofit: a White Plains, New York, 501(c)(3) called the WESPAC Foundation. A fiscal sponsorship is a legal arrangement in which a larger nonprofit “sponsors” a smaller group, essentially lending it the sponsor’s tax-exempt status and providing back-office support in exchange for fees and influence over the sponsorship’s operations. For legal and tax purposes, the sponsor and the sponsorship are the same entity, meaning that the sponsorship is relieved of the requirement to independently disclose its donors or file a Form 990 with the IRS. This makes fiscal sponsorships a “convenient way to mask links between donors and controversial causes,” according to the Capital Research Center. Donors, in other words, can effectively use nonprofits such as WESPAC to obscure their direct connections to controversial causes.

Something of the sort appears to be happening with WESPAC. Run by the market researcher Howard Horowitz, WESPAC reveals very little about its donors, although scattered reporting and public disclosures suggest that the group is used as a pass-through between larger institutions and pro-Palestinian radicals. Since 2006, for instance, WESPAC has received more than half a million in donations from the Elias Foundation, a family foundation run by the private equity investor James Mann and his wife. WESPAC has also received smaller amounts from Grassroots International (an “environmental” group heavily funded by Thousand Currents), the Sparkplug Foundation (a far-left group funded by the Wall Street fortune of Felice and Yoram Gelman), and the Bafrayung Fund, run by Rachel Gelman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the sister of Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman. (A self-described “abolitionist,” Gelman was featured in a 2020 New York Times feature on “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.”) In 2022, WESPAC also received $97,000 from the Tides Foundation, the grant-making arm of the Tides Nexus.

WESPAC, however, is not merely the fiscal sponsor of the Hamas-linked SJP but also the fiscal sponsor of the third group involved in organizing the Columbia protests, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), formerly known as New York City SJP. Founded by the Palestinian American lawyer Nerdeen Kiswani, a former activist with the Hunter College and CUNY chapters of SJP, WOL has emerged over the past seven months as perhaps the most notorious antisemitic group in the country, and has been banned from Facebook and Instagram for glorifying Hamas. A full list of the group’s provocations would take thousands of words, but it has been the central organizing force in the series of “Flood”-themed protests in New York City since Oct. 7, including multiple bridge and highway blockades, a November riot at Grand Central Station, the vandalism of the New York Public Library, and protests at the Rockefeller Center Christmas-tree lighting. In addition to their confrontational tactics, WOL-led protests tend to have a few other hallmarks. These include eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Jewish state—such as Arabic chants of “strike, strike, Tel Aviv”; the prominent display of Hezbollah flags and other insignia of explicitly Islamist resistance; the presence of masked Arab street muscle; and the antisemitic intimidation of counterprotesters by said masked Arab street muscle.

WOL’s role appears to be that of shock troops, akin to the role played by black block militants on the anarchist side of the ledger. WOL is, however, connected to more seemingly “mainstream” elements of the anti-Israel movement. Abdullah Akl, a prominent WOL leader—indeed, the man leading the “strike Tel Aviv” chants in the video linked above—is also listed as a “field organizer” on the website of MPower Change, the “advocacy project” led by Linda Sarsour. MPower Change, in turn, is a fiscal sponsorship of NEO Philanthropy, another large progressive clearinghouse. NEO Philanthropy and its 501(c)(4) “sister,” NEO Philanthropy Action Fund, have received more than $37 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2021 alone, as well as substantial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

[mariacallous]

The end of TikTok has begun. As the dust settles from a week of shockingly fast legislative action by the US Congress, it’s clear that TikTok next year will look much different from the TikTok we’re using today.

When President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion dollar foreign aid package on Wednesday, it brought to life a nightmare that has haunted TikTok for more than four years. If TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, refuses to divest its stakes in the company, the United States will ban the app nationwide. The signing started the clock, giving TikTok 270 days to find a new owner. (As The Washington Post’s Cristiano Lima-Strong noted, TikTok’s time will run out the day before Inauguration Day 2025.)

There are a few ways this could all shake out. An American company or private equity fund could buy TikTok and its powerful recommendation algorithm. Or, a buyer might have to accept just the bones of the platform without that algorithmic muscle; The Information reported on Thursday that ByteDance has already started gaming out what a sale without the algorithm would look like. Or, perhaps no buyer can be found and TikTok goes poof.

Unless TikTok or a horde of its users were to somehow win a lawsuit challenging the law signed this week—a lawsuit the company has already said it plans to file—all the potential outcomes lead to an app that is dramatically different.

If a US tech company were to, miraculously, buy out the app and algorithm from ByteDance, it’ll likely integrate the app into its own products and services. But I doubt we’ll ever see a “TikTok by Meta.” Meta and other tech giants have come under intense antitrust scrutiny in recent years. If any company with a big social platform were to gobble up one of its top competitors, that would set off alarms at the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission.

Microsoft has suggested that it has an interest in buying TikTok, and it might be one of the app’s only viable choices for a buyer. Microsoft’s biggest subsidiary otherwise is, well, LinkedIn—and can we even call LinkedIn a TikTok rival with a straight face?

Separately, if, say, a private equity firm like Blackstone were to purchase TikTok without its much-envied algorithm, rebuilding the heart of the app could be difficult. A company without a deep bench of algorithmic wizards on hand likely wouldn’t have the expertise to quickly reengineer a feed-based social media platform from scratch. If they tried, I doubt the results would be pretty.

And if there’s no new owner? Well, I guess we’re left with YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. TikTok’s popularity in the US forced Google and Meta to invest in vertical video, but those platforms mostly cater to the younger “Skibidi Toilet” generation. They wouldn’t easily fill a TikTok-shaped gap on the US internet.

Still, the law passed this week may not stand for much longer. In a statement calling it unconstitutional, TikTok seemed confident that the law could be overturned. “We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail,” a TikTok spokesperson said on Wednesday. The company used a similar argument last year to win an injunction blocking a ban passed in Montana.

Regardless of how this lawsuit plays out, TikTok will be different. The question is just what kind of “different” that will be.

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

In a report by CNN’s media reporter and anti-conservative attack dog Oliver Darcy, the company confirmed that it had spent the week harassing Ticketmaster and various venues to demand that they cancel Tucker Carlson’s upcoming nationwide tour.

The report states:

Ticketmaster is linking arms with right-wing extremists, boosting their ability to reach mainstream audiences and profiting off their dangerous and hateful rhetoric ahead of the November election. The ticketing sales giant is the distributor of the forthcoming live speaking tour from Tucker Carlson, who announced plans this week to crisscross the country with a 15-city arena tour, inviting fellow conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene to join him along the way. On the Ticketmaster website, Carlson is referred to as “the leading voice in American politics” and “an alternative to corporate media dedicated to telling the truth about the things that matter — clearly and without fear.” While it is hard to imagine that Ticketmaster conjured this glowing description of Carlson itself, it is remarkable the company would approve it and promote it on its site. … Asked for comment this week, representatives for the Live Nation subsidiary chose not to respond. In fairness to the company’s public relations division, it is difficult to see how they can defend such conduct. How can any decent person not only participate in enabling Carlson’s poisoning of the public discourse but also justify profiting off of his hateful rhetoric in the process?

Darcy, who has built his career lobbying for censorship of conservative figures and organizations such as The Gateway Pundit, added that he had also contacted the venues for Carlson’s tour to suggest they cancel the event

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Hugh Jackson

Donald Trump along with the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party, both wholly owned Trump subsidiaries, sued Nevada Friday saying any mail ballots that are not received by or on Election Day must not be counted.

Nevada law requires mail ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked no later than Election Day and received by county election officials within four days after Election Day.

The suit is almost identical to one Trump’s Republicans filed in Mississippi(!?) early this year. (Yet again Nevada is the Mississippi of the West, but this time in a different way.)

Yes, Republican advocacy of “state’s rights” has always been situational.

Other nearly identical suits to disenfranchise a segment of the mailing electorate have already been dismissed (by Trump-appointed judges by the way) in Illinois and North Dakota.

Trump & Friends keep filing the suits anyway, and presumably more are on the way in the 19 states and territories that require ballots to be counted after Election Day provided they’re post-marked by or on Election Day.

Even if Trump loses all the suits, they are a vehicle for casting aspersions on democracy and another means to try to dishonestly discredit election results in advance. (As Trump said this week, “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results.…If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.” Everyone knows what that means.)

But an additional motive was at work in Trump’s suit in deep red Mississippi: Trump is shopping for a Trumpy federal judge who will make a Trump-friendly ruling that will trigger appeals, maybe go to the Trump-McConnell Supreme Court, and possibly set national precedent and, hence, national law.

In other words, nullify ballots that arrive after Election Day even if they’re postmarked before Election Day in Mississippi, and nullify them nationwide in the process.

Meanwhile, the suit filed in Nevada is only one of many that Trump and Republicans have promised/threatened to file this year in battleground states as part of a concerted and deliberate effort to harass election officials and their employees while maligning and attempting to discredit democracy.

At the very least, the suits will be a time-consuming nuisance for people working in state and local election offices in states across the nation.

At the very worst, given the Weltanschauung of the Trump-packed U.S. judicial system, there is always the possibility – in defiance of what thus far has been ruled to be logic, case law, and constitutional interpretation – that the Republicans could prevail and scrap all ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if those ballots were postmarked before it.

Trump and Republicans would genuinely welcome anything that curbs voting by mail – or more specifically, its impact.

Remember all the Nevada Republicans howling and squealing in 2020 about how mail ballots were super vulnerable to fraud? And then remember how the only example of mail voting fraud that came to light was the MAGA guy who said somebody stole his deceased wife’s ballot and fraudulently voted on her behalf? And then it turned out the ballot stealer/fraudulent voter was none other than the MAGA guy himself?

That unsavory incident came after years of Trump, customarily without a shred of evidence, falsely asserting that voting by mail was intrinsically fraudulent.

He’s continued making those false claims in 2024. “We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots, you have crooked elections,” Trump said earlier this year.

But last month Trump changed his tune, and now is encouraging voting by mail.

Why the flip-flop?

Probably for the same reason there is no repetition of 2020-style evidence-free blathering about mail voting being susceptible to fraud in the suit Trump, the RNC, and the Nevada Republican/Fake Electors Party filed Friday.

They’re not suing because voting by mail is, as Trump put it, “crooked.”

They’re suing to curb the number of mail votes that get counted for the simple reason that Democrats vote by mail more than Republicans do.

“In Nevada’s 2020 general election,” the suit says, “60.3% of Democratic voters voted by mail, compared to just 36.9% of Republican voters.”

Perhaps Trump and Republicans shouldn’t have spent the last several years screeching lies about how “crooked” mail voting is.

Dang. Hoist by their own petard. What to do?

Simple.

If you can’t beat ‘em, nullify their votes.

[airsllides]

airsLLide No. 3740: C-GNMO, Convair 580, Inter Canadian, Montreal-Dorval, September 3, 1989.

Still wearing the full basic livery of Nordair Canada that was acquired by CP Air shortly before the latter was merged with Pacific Western Airlines to form Canadian Airlines, deemed to become the new nationwide competitor to Air Canada.

Canadian Airlines subsidiary Inter Canadian was established to operate feeder flights in Canada's Eastern provinces. While it quickly grew and modernised the fleet with then state-of-the-art Fokker 100 jets and ATR 42 turboprops, some of the older Convair twins were rebranded and retained for a short period, mostly to serve as back-up aircraft out of the base at Montreal-Dorval during the initial phase of the carrier.

[nominalnebula]

oh the joys of being an adult - shopping for car insurance because the current one went up again and the convenience of staying/familiarity of this particular company is no longer outweighing shopping around

so if anyone has any thoughts on progressive or geico? they're who I will most likely switch to, I currently have state farm and I've priced allstate but they're too expensive. also won't do nationwide or farmer's because they don't technically operate in florida, but have partners that do and I'd rather deal with the actual company, not a subsidiary/partner

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil regulator told to block Lactalis takeover of Nestle subsidiary

Technical staff at Brazil's antitrust watchdog CADE have recommended the regulator to block the sale of DPA Brasil by controllers Nestle (NESN.S) and Fonterra to Lactalis, CADE said in a statement on Tuesday.

Their recommendation will trigger a broader review of the transaction by CADE's court, which will then vote on whether to approve it or not.

CADE said its technical team noted the DPA sale would likely cause horizontal competition issues in the Brazilian dairy products market, specifically citing the fermented milk, petit-suisse and dairy dessert markets.

The regulator added the technicians identified a reduced number of rival companies in those markets nationwide, noting that competitors would have "low capacity to challenge the market power resulting from the transaction".

Continue reading.

[veebeemedia]

Best Stock broker in India

Best Stockbroker in India There are several benefits to choosing a reputed stockbroker in India. These include the fact that they offer a wide range of services. They also offer products for a variety of asset classes. In addition to this, they have a significant presence in different business and retail segments. Moreover, they have won several awards and were named as one of the most promising brands in India.

Parasram Parasram is the best Stock Broker in India. PARASRAM, a renowned & customer focused Financial Market player, is among the top stock broking groups in India, having memberships of leading Stock Exchanges. The group is a Depository Participant with NSDL and CDSL. We are One Stop Financial Supermarket currently caters to more than 130,000 High Net-worth Investors, NRIs, Corporate and retail clients through nationwide web of branch offices and business associates.

Upstox Upstox is one of the leading discount brokers in India. It offers a free trading platform and waives off the account opening fees. However, it does charge a fee for call & trade, auto square off, and research. There are also some downsides to Upstox, such as their lack of NRI trading options and monthly unlimited trading plans.

Upstox is one of the largest online brokerage firms in India and has been in business for 11 years. It provides trading in stocks, mutual funds, forex, IPOs, and commodities. It also provides important information for investors including market analysis, technical data, and equity derivatives. In addition, the company charges a low flat commission of Rs20 per trade, which is considerably lower than other online brokers in the country.

Motilal Oswal The following article compares Nj Wealth and Motilal Oswal, two full service brokers in India. We compared brokerage charges, trading platforms, customer support, and complaints to see which one is better for your needs. Nj Wealth has a reputation for being the best broker in India for investors, but if you're looking for an affordable option, Motilal Oswal is the way to go.

Motilal Oswal offers several different types of products for retail investors. In addition to stock trading, investors can also trade in a variety of commodities including bullion and agro commodities. These products are available on the MCX and NCDEX.

Sharekhan Sharekhan is a 21-year-old trading platform with over 2 million registered clients across India. It offers a range of products that help investors create a diversified portfolio. The platform also provides guidance and relationship managers who help clients with their investing. Furthermore, the website offers market news updates, auto investing, and learning resources.

Sharekhan is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas and is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Sharekhan is also one of the oldest online brokers in India. It is part of the global BNP Paribas group, which is a publicly listed company. It is crucial to research a broker's background before deciding which one to use.

Sharekhan offers full service stockbroking and a range of investment and trade products. Its large network of branches covers more than 600 cities throughout India. The company is also renowned for its high-quality customer care and support. Sharekhan also offers excellent online trading platforms.

Zerodha Zerodha is a discount broker that's fast gaining in popularity. They offer a variety of investment options, including stocks and futures. The company is registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which means that they're regulated by the government. In addition, Zerodha offers educational resources that can help new investors understand the basics of investing.

Unlike other brokerage firms, Zerodha offers a digital platform for investing. You can open an account within 24 hours, and use Aadhar-Esign to speed up the process. You'll also need to submit income proof, a net worth certificate, and a form 16 acknowledgment.

Angel broking Angel Broking offers multiple services to its clients. It is headquartered in Mumbai and has over 11,500 offices throughout India. Founded in 1987, Angel Broking makes money through the brokerage fees it charges on each trade it executes. These fees are part of the brokerage the client pays for the services he or she receives. In addition, Angel Broking offers free research tips and excellent offline support.

Angel Broking is a regulated broker and follows the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX) and Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (MCX). The company is a custodian of the CDSL, which regulates the brokerage industry. However, Angel Broking does not offer any form of segregated account or financial compensation in case of ruin. Clients can deposit and withdraw funds using their bank accounts or via a debit card.

[cloudsdsusa]

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has reaffirmed its strict stance on worker safety by imposing a $12 million fine on Dollar General for neglecting employee safety. This penalty comes as part of a broader, corporate-wide settlement that requires Dollar General and its retail subsidiaries to implement significant safety improvements across their stores nationwide. During its inspections, OSHA identified multiple safety violations, prompting the agency to mandate immediate actions to enhance the safety and well-being of employees across Dollar General’s 20,000 locations. 

[lboogie1906]

Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. (August 14, 1959) is a retired basketball player and former president of basketball operations of the Los Angeles Lakers. He played point guard for the Lakers for 13 seasons. After winning championships in high school and college, he was selected first overall in the NBA draft by the Lakers. He won a championship and an NBA Finals MVP Award in his rookie season and won four more championships with the Lakers.

His career achievements include three NBA MVP Awards, nine NBA Finals appearances, twelve All-Star games, and ten All-NBA First and Second Team nominations. He led the league in regular-season assists four times, and is the NBA’s all-time leader in average assists per game, at 11.2. He was a member of the 1992 US men’s Olympic basketball team(“The Dream Team”), which won the Olympic gold. After leaving the NBA in 1992, he formed the Magic Johnson All-Stars. He was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.

He became a two-time inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame, being enshrined for his career and as a member of the “Dream Team”.

Since his retirement, he has been an advocate for HIV/AIDS prevention and safe sex, as well as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, broadcaster, and motivational speaker. He is part of a group of investors that purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Los Angeles Sparks.

He runs Magic Johnson Enterprises, a conglomerate company that has a net worth of $700 million; its subsidiaries include Magic Johnson Productions, a promotional company; Magic Johnson Theaters, a nationwide chain of movie theaters; and Magic Johnson Entertainment, a film studio. He has created the Magic Card, a pre-paid MasterCard aimed at helping low-income people save money and participate in electronic commerce. He created a contract food service with Sodexo USA called Sodexo-Magic. He and his partner Ken Lombard sold Magic Johnson Theaters. He launched a cable TV network called Aspire.

He replaced Jim Buss as the president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Lakers. He resigned from the Lakers, citing his desire to return to his role as an NBA ambassador. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[lagmennet]

NNPC Plc Graduate Trainee Programme 2024 – Nationwide

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is the state oil company founded on April 1, 1977. In addition to its exploration efforts, the Corporation was granted authority and operational interests in refining, petrochemicals, product transportation, and marketing. Currently, the subsidiary firms include the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC). The Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) The…

[mariacallous]

Imagine the turmoil if a newly elected president of the United States announced that the U.S. government would no longer honor any outstanding Treasury bills because most of them were issued under his profligate predecessor. That’s essentially what Kim Jin-tae, the governor of South Korea’s Gangwon province, did. In doing so, Kim sparked a nationwide credit crisis that is spreading internationally, in the most farcical and unnecessary economic self-destruction this side of Liz Truss.

Enhancing the absurdity is the origin of the crisis: Legoland Korea, a theme park based on the familiar brick toys. Gangwon, a sparsely populated, mountainous region east of Seoul, had tried since 2010 to build a Legoland near the resort town of Chuncheon. After years of delay caused by a discovery of ancient artifacts in the construction site and allegations of bribery and kickbacks, the theme park finally opened on May 5.

To construct Legoland Korea, the Gangwon provincial government established a special purpose entity called Gangwon Jungdo Development Corp. (GJC), owned 44 percent by the province and 22.5 percent by Merlin Entertainments, the British company that owns the rights to Legoland. To fund the construction, GJC, through a subsidiary, issued bonds worth 205 billion won (about $150 million). The bonds were backed by the GJC-owned real estate for the theme park and its surrounding area, as well as a guarantee from the Gangwon provincial government, then led by liberal Gov. Choi Moon-soon. Korea Investors Service, the South Korean affiliate of Moody’s, gave the GJC bonds an A1 rating, the highest rating available for corporate bonds.

But Legoland Korea struggled out of the gate, too far from Seoul and too expensive for what was on offer, and it did not generate enough revenue to honor the bonds. Also, as South Korea’s real estate market softened, the value of the real estate backing the bonds began falling below the amount of the debt. As the first due date for the bonds was approaching on Sept. 29, GJC was in talks to extend the deadline with BNK Securities, the underwriter for the bonds. Negotiating for such an extension is a tense affair but a relatively common one. GJC was close to buying itself a three- or four-month reprieve, by prepaying BNK four months’ worth of interest that it would additionally owe by extending the due date.

Then came the disaster. Out of the blue, on Sept. 28, Gangwon’s newly elected conservative governor, Kim Jin-tae, announced that he would not honor the government’s guarantee. Instead, GJC would enter into bankruptcy, meaning that creditors would receive pennies on the dollar. BNK Securities declared a default on the GJC bonds and sought assurances that Gangwon would pay back the 205 billion won, but the government gave only a vague promise that it would honor the guarantee without giving a specific date. By mid-October, the GJC bonds were downgraded to junk status.

Kim’s declaration was brutally unnecessary. He claimed that he was trying to reduce the debt left behind by his liberal predecessor who, according to Kim, irresponsibly embarked on a white elephant project in Legoland Korea. But Gangwon’s decade-long pursuit of building a Legoland had always been a bipartisan affair, linked more to a hope of revitalizing the province than to any political faction. As a legislator representing Chuncheon, Kim was a vocal advocate for the theme park, claiming in 2014 that he would “jump into the Soyang River” along the city if South Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration blocked the project because of the ancient artifacts discovered at the construction site. Nor was the bond amount anything excessive. Gangwon’s annual budget is over 17.7 trillion won (about $13 billion), in which a debt of 205 billion won is but a line item. Nor was the provincial government being asked to pay the entire 205 billion won in one shot; it only had to assist GJC in paying the extra interest it would have incurred for extending the bonds’ due date.

By itself, extending the due date for the bonds would have cost Gangwon a bit, but it would have stayed contained. Kim’s move, however, has shattered trust in government bonds. In the South Korean bond market, a local government guarantee was previously enough to ensure a bond got the highest rating, approaching the safety of South Korea’s national government bond. By withdrawing Gangwon’s guarantee, Kim demonstrated that a local government’s guarantee could evaporate for a purely political reason.

This would be a reckless move under any circumstances but nearly suicidal in the current economy. In order to curb inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising the benchmark interest rate to remove liquidity from the market. The Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank, had to follow suit to prevent a rush of capital flight from South Korea to the United States. The result is a financial market starved of capital, with companies struggling to keep up with the sudden jump in the interest rate. Kim’s declaration all but threw a match into the dry winter forest that was the South Korean bond market.

Immediately, South Korea’s local government projects ground to a halt. As Gangwon did, South Korea’s local governments issue bonds with their guarantees attached to them in order to build infrastructure, public housing, and other large-scale projects. But Gangwon’s default made those guarantees worthless overnight. On Oct. 27, reports emerged that Incheon Housing and City Development Corp., a publicly owned company responsible for urban renewal for South Korea’s third-largest city, had abandoned a plan to issue bonds for affordable housing construction, as it expected no buyers. Out of the 60 billion won (about $44 million) worth of bonds issued by Gwacheon Urban Corp. (GUC) for public housing construction in a wealthy suburb of Seoul, 40 billion won in debt could not find a buyer—the first time in history that GUC failed to sell out its bonds.

But the fallout is not limited to local government bonds; it impacts the whole of South Korea’s bond market, worth more than $2 trillion. Corporate bonds are considered less safe than local government bonds. If few buyers are brave enough to buy local government bonds under these conditions, even fewer buyers can muster enough courage to buy corporate bonds. One of the safest corporate bonds in South Korea is issued by Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO). The returns for KEPCO’s three-year bond had climbed from 2.184 percent to 5.825 percent since the beginning of this year. But in its latest issuance, the KEPCO three-year bond worth 200 billion won (about $146 million) could not find a buyer.

Domestic trouble has led to international trouble. On Nov. 1, South Korea’s Heungkuk Life Insurance Co. declined to exercise the call option on its dollar-denominated bonds worth $500 million. Although the bonds’ term was 30 years, South Korean issuers have almost always exercised the call option to buy back the bonds after a shorter amount of time—usually between five and 10 years. The last time a similar non-call occurred was in 2009, in the wake of the global financial crisis. The non-call crashed the value of Heungkuk Life’s bonds, as it signaled to the market that the company could not come up with the money to buy back the bonds. Worse, Heungkuk Life’s non-call dragged down the value of other bonds issued by South Korean companies generally—and even bonds issued by other large Asian companies such as AIA Group and the Bank of East Asia in Hong Kong. As the shock rippled through the international bond market, Heungkuk Life abruptly made a 180-degree turn and said it would borrow money to exercise the call option after all, reportedly under heavy pressure from South Korea’s financial regulators. Such back-and-forth, however, does little to restore international investors’ trust in bonds issued by South Korean companies.

Unable to find liquidity either inside of the country or out, South Korea is now facing a nationwide credit crunch. South Korean financial institutions have stopped offering auto loans, as interest rates have climbed to a prohibitive level. Many of South Korea’s housing redevelopment plans, which often cost hundreds of millions of dollars to turn old houses into new high-rises, are being suspended because they cannot find financing, putting enormous pressure on South Korea’s real estate market, which has been losing value at a record pace. On Oct. 20, Lotte Engineering & Construction, the construction arm of Lotte Group, South Korea’s fifth-largest chaebol, or family-owned conglomerate, had to take out an emergency loan of 500 billion won (about $365 million) from its affiliate Lotte Chemical amid speculation that it was facing a potential bankruptcy along with several other large construction firms.

To prevent the credit market from seizing up completely, the South Korean government stepped in by providing a liquidity facility of more than 50 trillion won (about $35 billion). The Bank of Korea also injected 42.5 trillion won (about $31 billion) to stabilize the short-term bond market, and South Korea’s five largest banks also pledged to provide up to 95 trillion won (about $67 billion) in liquidity. There is an absurdist quality to these measures: On the one hand, the Bank of Korea has been aggressively raising the benchmark interest rate to curb inflation by reducing liquidity, but on the other hand, the South Korean government is injecting liquidity to the market to stave off a total economic collapse.

Although the measures did calm the market somewhat, South Korea is not out of the woods yet. The country’s credit default swap premium, a measure of likelihood for a national-level credit event (such as a moratorium or other failure to pay back debt), is 75.61 basis points as of this writing, the highest it has been in nearly seven years.

Clearly, Kim Jin-tae did not understand the implications of his own action. The far-right politician is not known for his economic erudition, as he gained notoriety by being the standard-bearer for impeached President Park Geun-hye and claiming that the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, in which South Korea’s dictatorship massacred thousands of pro-democracy protesters, was a North Korean insurrection. As the Legoland bond debacle spread, Kim issued a statement in which he complained that Gangwon never defaulted on the bonds and only sought to restructure GJC—apparently unaware that the latter would automatically lead to the former. Belatedly, the provincial government allocated a special budget to pay the entirety of the bonds, which only served to remind everyone how unnecessary it was for Gangwon to complain about the debt amount in the first place.

South Korean media have compared Kim to disgraced former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, an apt analogy. For purely political reasons, both leaders caused an entirely gratuitous self-inflicted wound to their countries’ economies, destroying trust in what was supposed to be a sure thing—pension funds for Truss, government-backed bonds for Kim. The same lesson applies to Britain, South Korea, and everywhere: Electing bad politicians leads to a bad economy.

[dankusner]

3rd Court of Appeals Judge Karin Crump ruled that the Resource Group, a subsidiary

Jury finds subsidiary wrongfully banned vendor

Ascension Health Hit With $2 Million Defamation Judgement

Goodman often worked within Ascension Seton and Dell Children’s Hospital, and the jury found that during 2020 and 2021, the Resource Group “published false, harmful statements about her about things she never did, and wrongly banned her from all Ascension facilities nationwide as a result, causing her significant damages,” Goodman’s lawyers wrote in a press release last week.

All statements made by the Resource Group were found to be false in a 10-2 decision – they’ll have to pay Goodman $2,038,000 in damages, plus an extra $151,422 in interest.

“This judgment sends a message: treat people with respect, and independently investigate accusations or face significant consequences,” said employment attorney Austin Kaplan of Kaplan Law in a press release.

“People are wrongfully accused at work and few take action, but here one brave person stood up to falsehoods – and the jury stood with her.”

The saga began on June 10, 2021, when Goodman received notice from the Resource Group that she would be permanently banned from all Ascension facilities nationwide due to alleged “unprofessional behavior.”

In court documents, the Resource Group claimed that in October of 2020 Goodman was in an operating room at Seton hospital without good reason, and said she “exhibited unprofessional behavior” toward a staff member who felt “in immediate danger.”

On April 8, 2021, during an investigation of that incident, they alleged that Goodman again made unprofessional comments about another staff member.

Together, these incidents “violated Ascension's Vendor Access Policy” and allegedly justified Goodman’s permanent ban.

The lawsuit documents estimate that Goodman lost a total of $64,000 in wages due to the ban, and is projected to lose $424,000 in earning capacity in the future due to reputational damages.

This is just the latest in a long string of troubles for Ascension – in the last few years, the health care giant has seen a New York Times exposé on its understaffing crisis, a tense union battle with its nurses at Ascension Seton, and breakdowns in its partnerships with Blue Cross Blue Shield and its Travis County’s hospital district, Central Health.

Kaplan Law’s Matthew Caponi said in the press release, “While this result can’t undo the disruption to her life and career, it does vindicate her and is a crucial step toward repairing her reputation and putting this incident behind her.”

Karin Renee Crump

MS. KARIN RENEE CRUMP 250th District Court, Travis County

Bar Card Number: 90001588