The home secretary has apologised for the treatment of the Windrush generation, saying it was "wrong" and "appalling" that some face deportation.

Many immigrants who arrived from the Commonwealth decades ago as children have been told they are here illegally.

Amber Rudd said they would be helped to attain required documents for free and added she was concerned her department "sometimes loses sight" of individuals.

Labour's David Lammy said it was a "day of national shame".

(...)

Thousands of people arrived in the UK as children in the first wave of Commonwealth immigration 70 years ago.

They are known as the Windrush generation - a reference to the ship, the Empire Windrush, that brought workers from the West Indies to Britain in 1948.

Under the 1971 Immigration Act, all Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK were given indefinite leave to remain.

However, the Home Office did not keep a record of those granted leave to remain or issue any paperwork confirming it, meaning it is difficult for the individuals to now prove they are in the UK legally.

Changes to immigration law in 2012, which requires people to have documentation to work, rent a property or access benefits, including healthcare, has highlighted the issue and left people fearful about their status.

classy

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

in value added terms, three countries are the main beneficiaries of this trend - Korea, Taiwan and Ireland.
[...]
REMEMBER, the "on-shoring" of intellectual property that happened in 2015 was a big driver behind the 26% GDP growth recorded in Ireland for that year, which gave rise to Professor Krugman's famous jibe.

With one in five [!] people on the planet [!!] now owning a smartphone, the demand [!!!] has driven the creation of highly complex supply chains across Asia. Korea is the main supplier of smartphone components. Its semiconductor exports alone accounted for 17% of total exports. Smartphone components accounted for one third of Taiwan's exports at their peak in 2017. For Malaysia the components were 17.4% of exports, while in Singapore it was 15.9%.

"Border Force expects the highest possible standards of professionalism and teamwork from our staff and adherence to our core values: Commitment; Discipline; Respect and Moral Courage."

Amid a weeks-long leadership tussle that claimed the scalps of the chief executive, two of his top lieutenants and tainted its chairman, the bank inadvertently transferred 28 billion euros ($35 billion) to one of its outside accounts, Bloomberg News has revealed.

While the blunder was quickly reversed and caused no financial harm, it's a stark reminder of the vulnerability of even the most sophisticated financial firms.

For Deutsche Bank, the mistake comes at a delicate time as the new CEO, Christian Sewing, seeks to convince investors the bank can now return to growth.

THE government's Brexit bill has suffered two shock defeats due to a mild breeze and a few spots of rain.

Nahles's only challenger was also a woman; the 41-year old Simone Lange is the mayor of Flensburg criticised her own party for sticking to Wolfgang Schaeuble's budget surplus policy.

Her criticism was focused against Olaf Scholz, finance minister and interim leader of SPD since Schultz resigned in February 2018. "A balanced budget can never be at the core of Social Democratic policy," Lange said.

Con lo scioglimento dei ghiacciai si sposta il confine italo-svizzero e il rifugio italiano Guide del Cervino, a 3.480 metri sul Plateau Rosà, si scopre per tre quarti in territorio elvetico. La questione è emersa dopo che la società delle guide, proprietaria dell'immobile, ha tentato di avviare l'iter per la ristrutturazione che rischia di non poter proseguire, intrappolato nel groviglio delle competenze tra il comune valdostano di Valtournenche e quello svizzero di Zermatt e delle differenti normative nazionali. Della questione si occuperà una Commissione paritetica la cui riunione è in programma dal 2 al 4 maggio prossimi.

Tutto nasce dal "confine mobile" tra Italia e Svizzera previsto da una legge del 2009. Un'invenzione resa necessaria dopo che lo scioglimento dei ghiacciai ha cancellato i riferimenti storici: il confine coincide ora con la linea di cresta che nel frattempo è emersa  e che ai piedi del Cervino taglia a metà il rifugio e anche l'adiacente scuola di sci.

Protesters have descended on a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia since cops cuffed two African-American men there after a manager called 911 when they tried to use the bathroom last Thursday. The manager said he barred the men from using the bathroom because they hadn't ordered anything.

The usual weekly earnings for a black worker at the 75th percentile of the distribution was 56 percent higher than the median earnings in the first quarter of 2018. If we assume that the gap is linear (i.e. moving up five percentage points in the wage distribution closes the gap between the 75th percentile and 50th percentile by one fifth)...

heh. <-- 0.0 (distrust) -- 0.5 (mistrust/"neutral") -->100(trust)

FULL COUNTRY REPORT:FUKUS is circling the bowl of esteemed nation-states.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A lot of people have been donating exactly $4.20 since we announced our plan to legalize weed in NY. Can we get 1,000 people to donate $4.20 a month in the next 24 hours? Let's try. Chip in here: https://t.co/eDrZqRJqj0

— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) April 11, 2018

Justice Department inspector general report cites ["]lack of candor["] by McCabe
"The instances the inspector general cited were McCabe's conversations with federal investigators and also with then-FBI Director James Comey in October 2016."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

ALL presidents, Republican and Democrat, seek to remake their party in their own image. Donald Trump has been more successful than most. From the start, the voters he mesmerised in the campaign embraced him more fervently than congressional Republicans were ready to admit. After 15 months in power, as our briefing explains, he has taken ownership of their party. It is an extraordinary achievement from a man who had never lived in Washington, DC, never held public office, who boasted of groping women and who, as recently as 2014, was a donor to the hated Democrats.

The organising principle of Mr Trump's Republican Party is loyalty. Not, as with the best presidents, loyalty to an ideal, a vision or a legislative programme, but to just one man--Donald J. Trump--and to the prejudice and rage which consume the voter base that, on occasion, even he struggles to control. In America that is unprecedented and it is dangerous.

(...)

At the heart of his system of power is his contempt for the truth. In a memoir published this week (see Lexington) James Comey, whom Mr Trump fired as director of the FBI, laments "the lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organisation above morality and above the truth". Mr Trump does not--perhaps cannot--distinguish between facts and falsehoods. As a businessman and on the campaign he behaved as if the truth was whatever he could get away with. And, as president, Mr Trump surely believes that his power means he can get away with a great deal.

When power dominates truth, criticism becomes betrayal. Critics cannot appeal to neutral facts and remain loyal, because facts are not neutral. As Hannah Arendt wrote of the 1920s and 1930s, any statement of fact becomes a question of motive.

...20. The conspiracy constituted an act of previously unimaginable treachery: the campaign of the presidential nominee of a major party in league with a hostile foreign poser to bolster its own chance to win the Presidency. And, in carrying out this effort, Defendants conspriered to disseminate documents stolen from the DNC in violation of the laws of the United States, as wll as the laws of the State of Virginia and the District of Columbia. Under the laws of this nation, Russia and its co-conspirators must answer for these actions.
III. DAMAGAGES TO THE DNC
21. The illegal conspiracy [to diseminate documents stolen from the DNC] inflicted profound damage oupon the DNC. Defendants undermined and distorted the DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and vision to the American electorate; sowed discord within the Democratic party at a time when party unity was essential to electoral succes; and seriously compromised the DNC's internal and external communications.

Passage could make it harder for Trump aides who might be pardoned to escape prosecution, even if special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election were shut down.

The law would do away with double jeopardy protections, which prevent people from being tried twice for the same crime, in cases of presidential pardon.

New York's [?] double jeopardy law is "a recipe for trouble," and changing it would "substantially reduce the threat of lawless White House action," Schneiderman said in a statement.

::

File under "Mentel disorder is a communicable disease"

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

France's President Emmanuel Macron says he has "proof" that the Syrian government attacked the town of Douma with chemical weapons last weekend.

He said he would decide "in due course" whether to respond with air strikes.

Urine and blood samples from victims of the attack have tested positive for chlorine and a nerve agent, media reports quote US officials as saying.

The French president was interviewed by the TF1 TV channel earlier today, on a list of subjects, without getting specific, as usual.

Syrie, SNCF, hôpitaux, CSG..., ce qu'il faut retenir de l'interview d'Emmanuel Macron sur TF1 - Le Monde

   Syrie, « la preuve » des armes chimiques

Le président de la République a assuré que « nous avons la preuve que la semaine dernière des armes chimiques ont été utilisées par le régime de Bachar Al-Assad » sur la ville de la Douma, dans la banlieue de Damas, qui est retombée entièrement aux mains de l'armée syrienne jeudi 12 avril.

Pour autant, M. Macron a fait savoir que la France n'avait pas encore décidé d'une éventuelle réaction à cette attaque. « Nous aurons des décisions à prendre en temps voulu », a-t-il dit, ajoutant qu'il faut « tout faire pour qu'il y ait des cessez-le-feu ». Le chef de l'Etat a également dit avoir appelé « à plusieurs reprises » le président russe, Vladimir Poutine, allié de Bachar Al-Assad. « En aucun cas la France ne laissera une escalade se faire, ou quoi que soit qui puisse endommager la stabilité de la région », a-t-il encore dit.

That is why it was so surprising to discover the results of a new survey, conducted by the Geocartography Knowledge Group among 500 Jewish Israelis, for our book, Nakba in Hebrew. The survey shows that quite a few Israeli Jews, or at least many more than one would think, support the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.

Jewish Israelis were asked the following question: "In 1948, during the War of Independence, the majority of Palestinians who lived in the country were turned into refugees and have since been spread across the world. The right of return of the Palestinian refugees refers to the possibility of every Palestinian refugee (and his/her descendants) to decide between actual return to the place where they lived until 1948, and other forms of compensation. The significance of the recognition of the right of return may be that more than seven million Palestinian refugees will choose to return to Israel. To what extent do you support or oppose the right of return as presented?"

The detailed wording and inclusion of "over seven million" Palestinian refugees were meant to ensure that the respondents fully understand the significance of recognition and implementation of the right of return. This was done after the wording in two previous surveys was less explicit, yielding more than 20 percent results in support of the right of return. And yet, 16.2 percent of respondents in the new survey answered that they support return, or that they support it "provided the refugees return in peaceful conditions."

According to the survey, nearly twice as many women support the right of return than man (17.2 percent as opposed to nine). An especially optimistic figure can be found when breaking down the responses by age: Israelis between the ages of 18 and 34 support the right of return at a particularly high rate (25.9 percent), compared to adults over the age of 55 (15.1 percent) and those between 35-54 (7.3 percent). Meanwhile, Israelis who earn an average income are twice as likely to support the right of return than those who earn an above-average income (21.9 percent as opposed 12.7 percent).

under the current armistice system, it would be meaningless for South and North Korea to declare the end of the war and make a peace treaty without a guarantee from the US and other major parties. Declaring the end of the war first could be problematic for the status and role of the UN Command, which is responsible for maintaining and managing the armistice system on the Korean Peninsula, and another objection is that South and North Korea do not have the authority to deal with this. That is presumably why a senior official from the Blue House said that "it's unclear whether we'll actually use the phrase `end the war.'"

"Since ending the war is not something that South and North Korea can do, if they don't declare the end of the war separately, they can confirm their previous mutual non-aggression declaration and push for a peace treaty and a promise to prevent war from ever reoccurring on the Korean Peninsula," said Cho Sung-ryul, chief of research for the Institute for National Security Strategy.
[...]
"One option is for the leaders to make a declaration confirming that South and North Korea will not engage in military hostilities and for more detailed discussions to take place during subsequent talks between the two sides' defense ministers or military officials," a senior government official said.

"Prior to this, North Korea and the US had to reach an agreement about denuclearization before a discussion could be held about peace on the Korean Peninsula. But now the discussion of a peace regime has been decoupled from the discussion of denuclearization. Inter-Korean relations had been a dependent variable of North Korea-US relations, but now they have become an independent variable. South Korea is actually moving with a considerable degree of autonomy," said Lee Hea-jeong, a professor at Chung-Ang University.

~ Yash Tandon

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

One-third of reefs in the world's largest coral system were transformed by warmed waters, finds comprehensive underwater and aerial survey.

There are two reasons to be optimistic about fusion right now. Two big fusion reactors are built or being built. And fusion startups aiming to build smaller reactors, which would be cheaper, easier and quicker construct, are proliferating.

One of the two big reactors is a donut-shaped tokamak - a Russian acronym for a Soviet invention made in the 1950s that was designed to confine and compress plasma into a cylindrical shape in a powerful magnetic field. Powerful compression of the deuterium-tritium plasma at extremely high temperatures - as in about 100 million degrees Centigrade - causes fusion to occur.

ITER (Latin for "the way") is a collaboration between the European Union and the governments of India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China and the U.S. This consortium is now spending more than US$20 billion to build a giant tokamak in southern France. By 2035, it's slated to generate 500 megawatts while operating on just 50 megawatts. Meeting that goal would essentially confirm that fusion is a feasible source of clean energy on a large scale.

Looking at the architecture of Iran's ruined pigeon towers today. pic.twitter.com/gVXOeHyU1H

— Paul 🌹📚 Cooper (@PaulMMCooper) 2. April 2018

1600s fertilizer farms.

Rise of the Machines, 1600 - 1700

Working Class History | The Grunwick Strike, 1976 | AUDIO

AMRIT WILSON: I think that the workforce who came, who were employed at Grunwick, were mainly people who had fled from east Africa but had a very hard time in getting to Britain because the policies at the time of the then Labour partners. And then found themselves in a completely alien situation where they had been, most people had been middle-class. So the men found it very hard to do the types of jobs that were available ... some of them managed to find reasonable jobs, but the women then added to the family income by taking on sweatshop work.
INTERVIEWER: Add to that, I think, the owners of Grunwick were very explicit about the fact that they wanted to employ these types of women because they thought, they were very passive and they would accept the kind of wages they were being offered, and they wouldn't be able to get other people to do this kind of work.

The Pyjama Game: Hawera cinema's clothing ban goes global

When bosses of a small Taranaki cinema decided to get tough on people turning up to watch films in their pyjamas, onesies and dirty workboots, they didn't expect to find themselves making global news.

 « click for more info »

Hāwera Cinema 2 outlawed the clothing in a "friendly reminder" to patrons posted on Facebook on Saturday, April 21 - and by Tuesday that message had been reported around the world thanks to the likes of the The Guardian and even the BBC.

"We have a dress code at Hāwera Cinemas," the original message read. "It's simple really, as long as you are appropriately dressed and are wearing clean footwear you are good to go.

The Syrian revolution--a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement--has failed.

Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo.  The military and security forces didn't crack.  The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime.  Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.

Moe interesting than the quoted part are the cited pieces of how the US, UK, F, Turkey and Saudi intervention is picking up steam.

"We provide advertisers with reports about the kinds of people seeing their ads and how their ads are performing, but we don't share information that personally identifies you," he said. "You can always see the 'interests' assigned to you in your ad preferences, and if you want, remove them."

The social network also said that when advertisers bring them information to reach users on the site, it does not share identifying data with the advertiser.
[...]
"It's the same with a free search engine, website or newspaper. The core product is reading the news or finding information - and the ads exist to fund that experience."

He added that Facebook would not allow users to opt out of seeing adverts because "ads are what keep Facebook free".