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Ethiopia agrees to "fully accept" the outcome of the Algiers Agreement of 2000, which ruled that disputed areas, including the border town of Badme which Ethiopia currently occupies, are Eritrean territory.

The European Court of Justice rules that EU countries that have not legalised same-sex marriage must still offer same-sex spouses the same residency rights as heterosexual couples under freedom of movement laws.

Prostitutes in Brussels' Rue d'Aerschot red-light district go on strike today after one of their colleagues is found murdered this morning.

The Government of Puerto Rico says that it will comply with a Superior Court order to release all death certificates issued after Hurricane Maria hit the U.S. territory. The court order came after CNN and Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism sued the territory's government amid allegations of undercounted fatalities.

The death toll for the Volcán de Fuego eruption in Guatemala rises to 75 people.

The Syrian government re-opens the Homs–Hama highway after it was closed for seven years.

400 migrants try to scale the Ceuta border fence, with most of them repelled. It is the first such incident in seven months. https://www.thenewsguru.com/400-migrants-storm-border-spanish-exclave-north-africa/

A woman in Australia is reported dead from hepatitis after consuming frozen pomegranate. Health authorities have stated that 24 such cases were related to products by Entyce Food Ingredients. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44378911

And we're off! Yesterday, Governor John Carney placed Delaware's first legal sports bet: $10 on the Phillies (+200) to beat the Cubs.

Student Loans: It’s Time to Empty that Piggy Bank All of those happy hour Orange Crushes were worth it...right?...Right? Maybe. But lately, the cost of higher education has sent student loan debt jumping to $1.5 trillion. Here's how it breaks down by the numbers: $28,400—How much debt the average new grad owes. That number was $22,100 in 2001 (adjusted for inflation). 20%—Borrowers who are late on payments. 66%—Student loan debt held by women. Typically, more women attend some form of higher education than men. For perspective... $1.2 trillion—U.S. auto loan debt. More than $1 trillion—U.S. credit card debt.

UK regulators appear ready to allow Fox (+1.09%) to buy a majority of Sky, but only if it divests Sky News. Comcast (-0.67%) also shouldn't have a problem with its bid.

Medicare’s finances were downgraded in a new report from the programÂ’s trustees Tuesday, while the projection for Social SecurityÂ’s stayed the same as last year. MedicareÂ’s hospital insurance fund will be depleted in 2026, said the trustees who oversee the benefit program in an annual report. That is three years earlier than projected last year. This year, like last year, Social SecurityÂ’s trustees said the programÂ’s two trust funds would be depleted in 2034. For the first time since 1982, Social Security has to dip into the trust fund to pay for the program this year. It should be stressed that the reports donÂ’t indicate that benefits disappear in those years. After 2034, Social SecurityÂ’s trustees said tax income would be sufficient to pay about three-quarters of retireesÂ’ benefits. Congress could at any time choose to pay for the benefits through the general fund. Medicare beneficiaries also wouldnÂ’t face an immediate cut after the trust fund is depleted in 2026. The trustees said the share of benefits that can be paid from revenues will decline to 78% in 2039. That share rises again to 85% in 2092. The hospital fund is financed mainly through payroll taxes. Social Security trustees said that reserves for the fund that pays disability benefits would be exhausted in 2032. Combined with the fund that pays benefits to retirees, all Social Security reserves would be exhausted by 2034, they said. The trustees said MedicareÂ’s changed outlook is due to adverse changes in the programÂ’s income and costs. Hospital insurance fund income is projected to be lower than last yearÂ’s estimates thanks to “lower payroll taxes attributable to lowered wages in 2017 and lower levels of projected GDP,” the trustees said. And hospital insurance fund expenditures are expected to be higher than last yearÂ’s estimates, the trustees said. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement that “lackluster economic growth in previous years,” as well as an aging population, has contributed to shortages for both Social Security and Medicare. He said the Trump administrationÂ’s economic agenda, including tax cuts and trade deals, would generate growth and help to secure the programs. AARP said in a statement that the report showed “challenges ahead for the long term,” and singled out health care for action during the election year. “In particular, we need to take further steps to lower the cost of health care, especially the ever-rising price of prescription drugs,” the organization said. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/medicares-finances-are-getting-worse-as-social-security-taps-into-fund-for-first-time-in-36-years-2018-06-05

@kergo This is a site for everyone. Just like Twitter / Facebook etc.... Yes. there is also a subform about Jehovah's Witnesses as there is for Mormons, Catholics etc....

The Tesla shareholders meeting was yesterday, and let's just say...Elon Musk knows how to give a performance. After dodging proposals that would dethrone him from his role as chairman (yes, not everyone is a Musk fanatic), he put on a teary-eyed show and expressed just how hard Tesla works to be great: Some employees supposedly have worked 60 days straight and had to be forced home. And how about that disappointing Model 3 production? Tesla just made 3,500 cars per week and is aiming for 5,000 by month's end. Moving forward? Expect Tesla to hit profitability in Q3 and Q4. Bottom line: Tesla's been under the spotlight this year. But major shareholders are still betting on Musk to turn things around.

Kate Spade: 1962-2018 Tragic news in the fashion industry: Kate Spade, the pathbreaking designer, was found dead of an apparent suicide in her NYC apartment. She was 55. Her story Kate was born Katherine Brosnahan in Kansas City, before eventually moving to NYC to work as an accessories editor for Mademoisellemagazine. And her fashion empire? It all started with fun, colorful handbags for the aspirational woman. Here she is telling NPR about the night she and her husband Andy (the brother of actor David Spade) came up with the idea: "So Andy and I were out, honestly, at a Mexican restaurant. And he just said, what about handbags? And I said, honey, you just don't start a handbag company. And he said, why not? How hard can it be?" They started the company in 1993 and opened their first store in SoHo three years later. And as it grew, the brand expanded into jewelry, clothing, stationery, and more...becoming an absolute powerhouse in the fashion world. The winning formula: According to Spade, "I wanted a functional bag that was sophisticated and had some style." Then came a string of deals In 1999, Neiman Marcus bought a 56% stake in the company. Seven years later: Liz Claiborne bought the label for $124 million, and eventually renamed itself Kate Spade & Co. 2017: Coach (now called "Tapestry") bought Kate Spade for $2.4 billion. Not that Kate herself saw any of the proceeds. She and Andy left the company a decade earlier to spend more time with family (she has a 13-year-old daughter) and focus on other projects. Especially this latest project: Kate teamed up with Andy and other business partners to launch a new accessories label, Frances Valentine, in 2016. + Here's last year's "How I Built This" podcast episode featuring Kate and Andy Spade.

Samsung Electronics has lost a long-running patent case, with a jury on Thursday ordering the company to pay Apple $538 million for copying their smartphones, Reuters reports. Apple first filed a patent lawsuit against Samsung in 2011, alleging it had "slavishly" copied Apple products. Specifically, Apple took issue with Samsung copying mobile design features such as rounded corners, the rim of the front face of the iPhone, and the app grid layout of the iOS home screen, reports The Verge. A 2012 trial found Samsung guilty. A lack of agreement over damages had resulted in a retrial, which ended last week, per Reuters.

An Amazon Alexa speaker recorded a user’s conversation inside their home and sent it on to one of their stored contacts, reports The Wall Street Journal. Amazon confirmed the incident and said the device mistook a conversation for commands. The episode “raises questions about the security of such voice-operated devices,” per the Journal. Â

Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman The Avenue A smaller share of people in their prime working years (25-54) are employed now than in decades past, and some have wondered whether disabilities and health problems have played a role in that decline. People with disabilities have much lower employment rates than people without disabilities, and disabilities are one of the most commonly cited reasons for not working. Moreover, a recent Brookings report identified particular subgroups among the out-of-work as having disproportionately high rates of disability. With that as context, we set out to better understand the role of geography and demography in patterns of disability among prime-age adults. Disability can take many forms, but the Centers for Disease Control provides a useful general definition: disability is any condition of the body or mind that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities and interact with the world around them. The onset of disability can also take many forms: it may present itself at birth, stem from an accident or injury, or result from a long-standing condition or disease, among other causes. Nine percent of adults aged 25 to 54, or 11 million Americans, reported at least one of six disabilities in 2016.[1] Some patterns by place and demographics are already well-established: disability is disproportionately concentrated in the Southeast, Midwest and Appalachian areas (the so-called “disability belt”), and people with disabilities disproportionately include people with low levels of education and incomes. But analyses at the metropolitan level are less common, and given the regional nature of labor markets, regional-level data should inform efforts to help people with disabilities. This analysis uses data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to examine disability rates of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, as well as differences by education and race/ethnicity. We do not limit our analysis to those receiving disability benefits, but rather include all who report a disability, in order to provide a broad picture of those with disabilities in the United States and where they live. Metros show wide variation in disability rates Disability rates range considerably among the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, from just under 4 percent up to 13 percent. Places with the lowest disability rates have strong economies and well-educated populations, such as San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in California; Madison, Wisc.; Austin, Texas; and Washington, D.C. Metropolitan areas with the highest disability rates are located both within and outside of the disability belt. Some have historically manufacturing-based or industrial economies, such as Scranton, Pa.; Birmingham, Ala.; Toledo, Ohio; and Spokane, Wash. Others, like Tucson, Ariz.; Deltona, Fla.; and El Paso, Texas have large tourism or agricultural sectors that employ many workers with low levels of education. Disability by race/ethnicity varies within and between metros… At the national level, Native Americans have the highest disability rate among working-age adults (16 percent), followed by blacks (11 percent), whites (9 percent), Hispanics (7 percent), and Asians (4 percent). Yet disability rates by race and ethnicity also vary greatly among metro areas. As Figure 1 shows, Asians exhibit both low levels of disability and relatively small variation between places, ranging from 2 percent to 13 percent. Blacks and Hispanics both exhibit wider ranges, from the low single digits to about 20 percent. In most places, as at the national level, blacks have higher disability rates than whites, up to 2.5 times greater. In a number of metro areas, however (concentrated in Florida, North Carolina, and Connecticut), blacks have the same or lower disability rates than whites. Similarly, although Hispanics have lower disability rates than most other races/ethnicities at the national level, they are more likely to be disabled than whites and blacks in metro areas such as Spokane, Wash.; Springfield, Mass.; Deltona, Fla.; and Allentown and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. …but the differences by education are much larger Among the entire prime-age population in the United States, the disability rate among those with only a high school diploma is three times higher than among those with a bachelor’s degree (12 percent and 4 percent, respectively). In a number of places, however, that gap is even greater, particularly in formerly industrial metro areas in Ohio (Akron, Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo, Youngstown), Pennsylvania (Scranton and Pittsburgh), and Massachusetts (Springfield and Worcester). In some ways, these data are not surprising. As noted above, people with disabilities have lower educational levels than people without disabilities, and education is a powerful predictor of health status in general. But the size of the gap is sobering and points to a complicated relationship between education and disability. Even in a post-ADA world, people with disabilities can face barriers to completing their education, and education is linked to overall health in myriad ways, including individual health knowledge and behaviors, access to health care, exposure to environmental toxins, and jobs that are more physically demanding or dangerous. Geography also interacts with education and disability. Low education is more strongly associated with disability in some regions than others, suggesting that education is one of a number of factors that influence local disability rates. But the relationship between disability and geography is long-standing: researchers have noted it for decades, suggesting the patterns have deep roots in industrial and sociocultural conditions. Our next post will dive deeper into employment trends among people with disabilities in their prime working years, with a continued focus on trends by race, education, and geography. Both job availability and demographics vary markedly around the country, requiring local leaders to craft employment and service interventions tailored to local needs. The authors thank Cecile Murray for her help conceptualizing and carrying out the data analysis for this blog. [1]Disabilities are defined as having difficulties in the following areas: vision, hearing, the ability to walk or climb stairs, cognition (remembering, concentrating, or making decisions), self-care (dressing or bathing), and independent living (doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping).

SolarReserve is a developer of utility-scale solar power projects which include Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaic (PV) technology. The company has commercialized solar thermal energy storage technology that enables solar power tower CSP plants to deliver electricity day and night. In this technology, a molten salt is used to capture the energy from the sun and store it. When electricity is needed, the stored liquid salt is used to turn water into steam to turn a turbine and generate electricity. As of May 2015, SolarReserve has developed and secured long-term power contracts for 482 megawatts (MW) of solar projects representing $2.8 billion of project capital, with a development pipeline of more than 6.6 gigawatts (GW) globally.[3] SolarReserve reached its lowest price yet at ¢6.3/kWh for the 2019 Copiapó Solar Project. In addition to its headquarters in Santa Monica, California, SolarReserve has offices in Spain, Chile, South Africa, Turkey, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. SolarReserve was formed in early 2008 with seed capital[5] from US Renewables Group, in partnership with United Technologies Corporation (UTC), to commercialize advanced molten salt technology for utility-scale concentrated solar thermal power. This technology was first developed and tested by Rocketdyne for two decades and had more than 100 US and international patents. In September 2008 the company raised an additional $140 million in a Series B funding. In 2014, SolarReserve acquired ownership from Rocketdyne of its intellectual property rights and patents specifically for molten salt technology for concentrated solar-thermal power and electricity storage, heliostat designs and collector field control systems. Projects Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project The 110 MW Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is the world’s first utility-scale facility to use molten salt power tower energy storage. It has 10,347 tracking mirrors  (heliostats) that follow the sun and reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a heat exchanger, a receiver, atop a 640-foot (200 m) tower. Crescent Dunes has 10 hours of storage and will deliver 500,000 MW hours of electricity per year, day and night, to 75,000 homes. In September, 2011, SolarReserve received a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the project and broke ground. The project has a 25-year agreement with NV Energy for 100 percent of the electricity. Construction is complete and the project went online in the fall of 2015. Under the rollout plan with NV Energy, the facility will ramp-up over the coming year. Redstone Solar Thermal Power Project The Redstone Solar Thermal Power Project is 100 MW solar project located at Postmasburg, near Kimberly, South Africa. The project will have 12 hours of storage to deliver to more than 200,000 South African homes. The project is planned to be online in 2018. Aurora Solar Thermal Power Project The Aurora Solar Thermal Power Project is a 150MW solar thermal plant proposed to be built about 30 kilometres (19 mi) north of Port Augusta in South Australia.The project is expected to cost AUD $650 million and be completed by 2020. The promised power delivery price is noted to be competitive with combined-cycle natural-gas plants. Copiapó Solar Project The Copiapó Solar Project near Copiapó, Atacama Region, Chile is a 260 MW hybrid solar power project consisting of CSP and PV energy. It will have 14 hours of storage to deliver to more than 560,000 homes in Atacama. The project is the first of its kind in Chile and will be the largest solar power plant in the world. At the 2017 auction, SolarReserve bid $63/MWh (¢6.3/kWh) for 24-hour CSP power with no subsidies, competing with other types such as LNG gas turbines. Photovoltaic Lesedi Solar Energy Project Letsatsi Solar Energy Project Jasper Solar Energy Project

By Will James Sarah Howe, who is blind and uses a wheelchair, is searching for a new apartment after her landlord gave her notice to vacateWill James / KNKX Residents of the Tiki Apartments in Tacoma say they know their complex is run down. But they say it's served as a refuge for renters who struggle to find apartments elsewhere, including people with disabilities, fixed incomes, or criminal records. Now that a new landlord is displacing them, they're thrust into a much more intense housing market. A new owner from Seattle is renovating the complex and notified tenants last month that they would have to leave. The episode highlights the extent to which the Puget Sound region's housing affordability problems have taken root in Tacoma, once considered a bargain for housing within reach of people with disabilities. Tacoma's average rent swelled by 8 percent to $1,218 over the past year, according to the apartment search company RENTCafé. "It's like living in Hell," said Sarah Howe, who is blind and uses a wheelchair due to a rare genetic disorder called Norrie disease. Howe, 42, has lived in the complex three years and has until the end of June to move out. Initially, she had less than a month, but a public outcry led by tenants like Howe, and a last-minute deal engineered by Tacoma City Council members, extended the landlord's deadline. Howe estimates she's made 40 to 50 phone calls to inquire about apartments, none of which have panned out. "It's been a nightmare," she said. "I go to sleep and hope that I wake up and I get to start all over. But I wake up and it's the same thing: still looking for a place to live." Her disabilities limit her choices. She needs an apartment that's wheelchair accessible and close to transit lines. But a major obstacle is her income. Howe gets $790 a month total in federal and state assistance. Her rent at the Tiki Apartments currently takes up most of that, leaving her with $220 a month for bills and other expenses. Again and again, she's been told nothing is available within that kind of budget. "I want to cry, but I just hang up and then I cry a little bit," she said. "And then I get over it and make another phone call." Tacoma City Council members allocated $10,000 earlier this month to pay for caseworkers to help relocate the tenants. So far, about half have found new homes. All around Howe's unit, workers have already begun renovating apartments for new tenants. "My biggest fear is being the last one here," she said. "But then even if I'm the last one here, it's a statement that there's just not that much accessibility out there." When she went outside to pull a prank on one of her neighbors last weekend — she planned to put a sleep shade over her eyes and say, "I can't see, I'm blind!" — she couldn't find anyone. "There was nobody here to pull a prank on, nobody here to mess with," she said. "These are my friends, these are my community, these are the family that I chose. These are the people that looked out for me."

Anyone know the name of this flower/bush?