Spain has extradited to the United States a Russian citizen who is suspected of being one of the world’s most notorious spammers.

Pyotr Levashov, a 37-year-old from St. Petersburg, was arrested in April while vacationing with his family in Barcelona.

U.S. authorities had asked for him to be detained on charges of fraud and unauthorized interception of electronic communications. He was scheduled to be arraigned late Friday in a federal courthouse in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where a grand jury indicted him last year.

A statement from Spain’s National Police said officers handed Levashov over to U.S. marshals Friday. The extradition was approved in October by Spain’s National Court, which rejected a counter-extradition request from Russia.

The Russian Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Army of botnets

Authorities in the U.S. say they have linked Levashov to a series of powerful botnets, or networks of hijacked computers, that were capable of pumping out billions of spam emails. An indictment unsealed last year said he commanded the sprawling Kelihos botnet, which at times allegedly involved more than 100,000 compromised computers that sent phony emails advertising counterfeit drugs, harvested users’ logins and installed malware that intercepted bank account passwords.

On a typical day, the network would generate and distribute more than 2,500 spam emails, according to the indictment.

Levashov’s lawyers have alleged the case is politically motivated and that the U.S. wants him for reasons beyond his alleged cybercrimes. They had argued that he should be tried in Spain instead, and pointed to evidence showing that he gained access to Russian state secrets while studying in St. Petersburg.

Levashov’s U.S.-based lawyer, Igor Litvak, didn’t return emails or calls seeking comment Friday.
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From: MeNeedIt

Male rats exposed to very high levels of the kind of radiation emitted by cellphones developed tumors in the tissues around their hearts, according to a draft report by U.S. government researchers on the potential health risks of the devices.

Female rats and mice exposed in the same way did not develop tumors, according to the preliminary report from the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), a part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The findings add to years of research meant to help settle the debate over whether cellphone radiation is harmful.

However, NTP scientists and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were quick to say the findings could not be extrapolated to humans and that current safety limits on cellphone radiation are protective.

The 10-year, $25 million studies — the most comprehensive assessments of health effects and exposure to radiofrequency radiation in rats and mice to date — do raise new questions about exposure to the ubiquitous devices.

John Bucher, a senior scientist with NTP, said the tumors seen in the studies are “similar to tumors previously reported in some studies of frequent cellphone users.”

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, noted that the studies were negative for common tumors.

“These draft reports are bound to create a lot of concern, but in fact they won’t change what I tell people: The evidence for an association between cellphones and cancer is weak, and so far, we have not seen a higher cancer risk in people,” he said in a statement on Twitter.

Brawley said if cellphone users are concerned about this data in animals, they should wear an earpiece.

Different kind of radiation

Unlike ionizing radiation such as that from gamma rays, radon and X-rays, which can break chemical bonds in the body and are known to cause cancer, radiofrequency devices such as cellphones and microwaves emit  radiofrequency energy, a form of non-ionizing radiation.

The concern with this type of radiation is that it produces energy in the form of heat, and frequent exposure against the skin could alter brain cell activity, as some studies have suggested.

In the NTP study, rats and mice were exposed to higher levels of radiation for longer periods of time than what people experience with even the highest level of cellphone use, and their entire bodies were exposed all at once, according to the draft report.

Cellphones typically emit lower levels of radiation than maximum levels allowed, the draft report said.

NTP, a part of the National Institutes of Health, will hold an external expert review of its complete findings from these rodent studies on March 26-28.

Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, head of the FDA’s radiological health division, said there is not enough evidence to say cellphone use poses health risks to people.

“Even with frequent daily use by the vast majority of adults, we have not seen an increase in events like brain tumors,” he said in a statement. “We believe the current safety limits for cellphones are acceptable for protecting the public

health.”

Nevertheless, the findings are potentially a concern for device makers, especially the world’s three biggest smartphone sellers, Apple Inc., Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and China’s Huawei Technologies.

The CTIA, the trade association representing AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Apple Inc., Sprint Corp., DISH Network Corp. and others, said on Friday that previous studies have shown cellphone RF energy emissions have no known heath risks.

“We understand that the NTP draft reports for its mice and rat studies will be put out for comment and peer review so that their significance can be assessed,” the group said.

Samsung and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. stocks slumped Friday, pulling down the Dow Jones industrial average by more than 650 points and handing the market its worst week in two years.

Technology, banks and energy stocks accounted for much of the broad slide. Several major companies, including Exxon Mobil and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, sank after reporting weak earnings.

Fears of rising inflation sent bond yields higher and contributed to the stock market swoon after the government reported that wages grew last month at the fastest pace in eight years.

The sharp drop follows a long period of unprecedented calm in the market. Stocks haven’t had a pullback of 10 percent or more in two years, and hit their latest record highs just one week ago.

“We’ve enjoyed low interest rates for so long, we’re having to deal with a little bit higher rates now, so the market is trying to figure out what that could mean for inflation,” said Darrell Cronk, head of the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

The increase in bond yields hurts stocks in two ways: it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow money, and it also makes bonds more appealing to investors than riskier assets such as stocks.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 59.85 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,762.13. That’s the biggest loss for the benchmark index since September 2016. The S&P 500 has lost 3.9 percent since hitting a record high a week ago.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 665.75 points, or 2.4 percent, to 25,520.96. The Nasdaq slid 144.92 points, or 2 percent, to 7,240.95. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gave up 32.59 points, or 2.1 percent, to 1,547.27.

Rise in interest rates

While interest rates are still low by historical standards, meaning borrowing is still relatively cheap for businesses and people, they’ve been rising more swiftly, and that’s what has markets on edge.

“The pace of rate increases is more important than the level,” said Nate Thooft, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.

The increase in rates has been driven by the prospect of stronger economic growth, and higher inflation, in the U.S. and abroad.

Bond prices declined again Friday, pushing yields higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for interest rates on many kinds of loans, including mortgages, climbed to 2.83 percent, the highest level in roughly four years. The rate was at 2.41 percent four weeks ago and 2.66 percent on Monday.

“Once we started going north of 2.5 percent, and you put that together with an overbought market, it had the ingredients of a sell-off, especially since January was so strong,” said Jeff Zipper, regional investment strategist at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management.

The S&P 500, which many index funds track, soared 5.6 percent in January, its biggest monthly gain since March 2016.

The expectation among investors has long been for a gradual rise in interest rates, as the Federal Reserve slowly pulls back from the stimulus that it implemented for the economy amid the Great Recession. But if rates rise more quickly than expected, it could upset markets.

The key concern is that the Fed will respond to higher inflation by raising its key interest rate more quickly than expected. The government’s latest job and wage data stoked those concerns Friday.

U.S. jobs

U.S. employers added a robust 200,000 jobs in January, slightly above market expectations for an 185,000 increase. Meanwhile wages rose sharply, suggesting employers are competing more fiercely for workers. The figures point to an economy on strong footing even in its ninth year of expansion, fueled by global economic growth and healthy consumer spending at home.

That’s good news for Main Street USA, but not for Wall Street. Investors fear the pickup in hourly wages, along with a recent uptick in inflation, may make it more likely that the Fed will raise short-term interest rates more quickly in the coming months. Some economists were predicting Friday that the central bank will raise its benchmark rate four times this year, rather than the three times most previously expected.

“With financial conditions continuing to ease and core price inflation also starting to pick up, we expect this will persuade the Fed to hike rates four times this year,” Andrew Hunter, an economist with Capital Economics, wrote in a published note Friday.

The market slide may have been overdue, particularly after the strong start for stocks this year where the S&P 500 had its best January in two decades.

The global economy is still strong, corporate profits and sales have been better than expected this reporting season and buyers for stocks still remain, all reasons to be optimistic about stocks, said Nate Thooft, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.

“It’s appealing, these 2 to 3 percent pullbacks,” said Thooft, who had been trimming some of his stock holdings after the market’s big January gains. “We look at this and say, ‘Maybe it’s your first day to buy a little bit.’”
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From: MeNeedIt

Stocks closed sharply lower in New York on Friday, extending a weeklong slide, as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 600 points. 

The drop capped stocks’ worst week in two years. The Dow’s drop was its biggest in percentage terms since June 2016.

Several giant U.S. companies’ shares dropped after reporting weak earnings, including Exxon Mobil and Alphabet. Apple and Chevron also fell.

Bond yields rose sharply after the government reported the fastest wage growth in eight years, stoking fears of inflation.

The Dow fell 665 points, or 2.5 percent, to 25,520.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 59 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,762. The S&P is down almost 4 percent since hitting a record high a week ago.

The Nasdaq was off 144 points, or 2 percent, to 7,240.
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From: MeNeedIt

James Ivory didn’t see “Call Me By Your Name” with an audience until the week before he was nominated for its screenplay. He caught it at a New York theater with a good audience, he says, that applauded at the end. It was his first tangible taste of the adulation for the film he wrote, about first love in Northern Italy, since it began its celebrated run at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. 

“I’ve just been thinking: What is it about the film that people respond to so much?” Ivory says in a recent phone interview from his upstate New York home in Claverack. “And I think it’s a story about a happy love in a beautiful place. I think that just appeals to people. It ought to.”

The pure and glittering romance of “Call Me By Your Name” has taken on an almost escapist quality in an awards season consumed with sexual harassment revelations throughout Hollywood. But if “Call Me by Your Name,” about the sun-dappled relationship between 17-year-old Elio (Timothee Chalamet) and a visiting grad student (Armie Hammer), radiates with the tumultuous emotions of youth, it’s also composed with the insight of age. 

Expected to win

Ivory is 89, and should he win the Oscar for adapting Andre Aciman’s 2007 novel — as Ivory is widely expected to — he’ll become the oldest Oscar winner ever. (That is, unless the 89-year-old French filmmaker Agnes Varda, born a week before Ivory, also wins at the March 4 ceremony. Her “Faces Places” is up for best documentary.)

But regardless of the outcome, “Call Me By Your Name” has proven an unlikely yet altogether fitting encore for a master filmmaker whose films have already pocketed 31 Oscar nominations and six wins. For some 50 years, Ivory was half of perhaps the most long-running and illustrious independent filmmaking duo in film history. With Ismail Merchant, his partner and producer, they made up Merchant Ivory Productions, a name virtually synonymous with literate, refined period dramas. 

Together, with their regular screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, they more or less wrote the book on literary adaptations with films such as “Remains of the Day,” “Howard’s End,” “Maurice,” “A Room With a View” and “The Golden Bowl.” Though sometimes superficially seen as stuffy portraits of upper-class life, the recent and ongoing 4K restorations of their work by Cohen Media Group has only enhanced the films’ intimacy of character and pristine economy of storytelling. 

“A lot of directors don’t bother to go back and look at their films, but I do,” says Ivory. “If I hear that a film of mine is going to be shown on a big screen somewhere and I haven’t seen it in a while, I make a point to get to see it. I just want to see it up on the big screen. My feelings don’t usually change much about it. I happen to like all our movies.”

‘Three-headed monster’

For filmmakers known for tales about British aristocracy, they were an unusual trio: Ivory, the Oregon son of a sawmill owner; Merchant, the son of a Bombay textile dealer whose family protested the 1947 partitioning of India; and Jhabvala, a German Jew who fled Britain during World War II. Merchant called them “a three-headed monster.” 

Merchant died in 2015, Jhabvala in 2013 and Ivory’s last film was 2009’s “The City of Your Final Destination,” which he prepped with Merchant and which Jhabvala wrote from Peter Cameron’s novel. The losses were profound, but Ivory never wanted to retire. 

“No! I still don’t,” Ivory says. “In fact, I’m working on a new screenplay. Maybe it’s absurd to imagine that I would actually get to direct it at my age. But I don’t know why. I’m much healthier than other people who are doing movies. And I’m in great shape. It’s always a matter of convincing the insurance people. They seem to think that after a certain age, you’re just going to fall over or something.”

For the past several years, Ivory has been trying to mount a “Richard II” film, with a script penned by Chris Terrio (“Argo,” “Justice League”) and potentially Tom Hiddleston and Damian Lewis starring. “A Shakespeare film does not grab the hearts of financiers, I can tell you,” he says. 

Concerns over Ivory’s age also fed into his experience on “Call Me By Your Name.” The rights to Aciman’s novel were acquired by Ivory’s neighbors, Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman. They asked Ivory to be an executive producer, and Ivory accepted.

Script takes a year

After some difficulty finding a director or financing, the producers met with Luca Guadagnino, who suggested he co-direct with Ivory. Ivory again accepted but he wanted to write the screenplay. Ivory spent a year on the script but the co-directing framework was less appealing to investors. 

“We wanted to make it with him as the director, but we were disappointed by the market,” says Guadagnino. “When we realized that could have been made was a teenie, teenie tiny movie in a very small amount of time, and that there was some interest in me doing it, we said, ‘OK.’ He was very generous. He said, ‘I bless this project if you do it.’”

“James is at the peak of his career,” added Guadagnino. “I can’t explain how full of life is James. It’s extraordinary. His wonderment and love of discovery. I am 46 and he’s almost 90, and the energy in his body is really more than mine.”

Ivory’s script, which he typed on a typewriter, begins with a description of the villa owned by Ellio’s family and an atmosphere “of upper-middle class comfort but nothing princely, or run-down aristocratic.” As is commonplace, there were changes along the way. To save money, the film was uprooted from Sicily and re-set around Guadagnino’s town of Crema. The film’s beloved final close-up — which even Aciman has praised as superior to his ending — was originally located not by a fire but while Elio was hanging a candle on a Christmas tree. 

A few issues to be settled

The collaboration wasn’t without issues. Ivory went to arbitration with the Writers Guild over whether Guadagnino deserved a co-writer credit. The WGA ruled he didn’t. Ivory has also previously suggested disappointment that the film didn’t feature more of the nudity in the script. (Both Chalamet and Hammer had contract clauses against frontal nudity.) But Ivory has walked back those comments. 

“I think it has to do with nationalities,” he says. “In ‘A Room With a View,’ you have three young Englishmen running around naked and laughing and whooping and jumping in the water. It’s something the English don’t apparently find troublesome. They like that. But you would never get three American actors to do that. It’s just not in our nature, somehow, to expose ourselves like that. It’s a cultural thing.”

“Call Me By Your Name” is a kind of bookend to Ivory’s 1987 film “Maurice,” a restoration of which was released last summer. Now regarded as a landmark in gay cinema, Ivory’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s posthumously published novel is about two Cambridge students (James Wilby, Hugh Grant) who fall in love in Edwardian England. Released at the height of the AIDS epidemic, it dared something groundbreaking: a happy ending. 

In “Maurice,” their love is tortured and strained by the times. But in “Call Me By Your Name,” any hurdles to romance are entirely interior. It’s about, Ivory says, “young love that doesn’t know how to trust itself.” Having both films in theaters a few months apart, Ivory grants, has been gratifying.

“It’s been a really interesting year, I have to say.”  
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From: MeNeedIt

Just like every other health technology, prosthetics are now able to do things that were unimaginable a few years ago. The advances are happening with the help of machine learning, but also through human ingenuity. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Investigators in the unsolved 1981 drowning death of actress Natalie Wood have named her husband, actor Robert Wagner, as a “person of interest” in a case that stunned the nation.

Wood’s body was found floating off Santa Catalina Island the morning after she disappeared from a yachting party with Wagner, actor Christopher Walken and the boat’s captain. All had been drinking heavily.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lieutenant John Corina tells CBS-TV’s 48 Hours, to be broadcast Saturday, “We know now that he [Wagner] was the last person to be with Natalie before she disappeared.”

Corina also said Wagner’s story of what happened that night has shifted over the years and “his version of events just don’t add up.”

The capitan told investigators he heard Wood and Wagner arguing that night. Wagner had written that it was he and Walken who argued and that he did not notice his wife was missing until he saw a small boat hooked onto the yacht was also gone.

Investigators originally ruled Wood’s death an accident, but reopened the case in 2011. The coroner has since amended Wood’s death certificate to read the cause of death as “drowning and other undetermined factors.”

Investigators say the 87-year-old Wagner is not a suspect, but just a person of interest, meaning he may have more information that he has yet to disclose. He has always denied responsibility for his wife’s death.

Wood, 43 when she died, started her career as a child actress and became a Hollywood icon, starring in such classics as Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, The Great Race, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
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From: MeNeedIt

Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently declared that artificial intelligence fueled by powerful computers was more important to humanity than fire or electricity. And yet the search giant increasingly faces a variety of messy people problems as well.

The company has vowed to employ thousands of human checkers just to catch rogue YouTube posters, Russian bots and other purveyors of unsavory content. It’s also on a buying spree to find office space for its burgeoning workforce in pricey Silicon Valley. 

For a company that built its success on using faceless algorithms to automate many human tasks, this focus on people presents something of a conundrum. Yet it’s also a necessary one as lawmakers ramp up the pressure on Google to deter foreign powers from abusing its platforms and its YouTube unit draws fire for offensive videos , particularly ones aimed at younger audiences.

In the latest quarter alone, Google parent Alphabet Inc. added 2,009 workers, for a total of 80,110. Over the last three years, it hired a net 2,245 people per quarter on average. That’s nearly 173 per week, or 25 people per day.

Some of the extra workers this year will come from its vow to have 10,000 workers across Google snooping out content policy violations that computers can’t catch on their own, representing “significant growth” in personnel.

Alphabet on Thursday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $3.02 billion, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier.

The Mountain View, California-based company said it had a loss of $4.35 per share, caused by provisions for U.S. tax changes enacted last year. Earnings, adjusted for pretax expenses, came to $9.70 per share.

The results missed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $10.12 per share.

The internet search leader posted revenue of $32.32 billion in the period. After subtracting Alphabet’s advertising commissions, revenue was $25.87 billion, exceeding Street forecasts. Twelve analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $25.65 billion.

Alphabet shares were down 4 percent at $1,119.22 in after-hours trading.  
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From: MeNeedIt

Haiti’s teen women’s soccer team made history this week when it qualified for the country’s first FIFA Women’s Under-20 World Cup berth.

Star midfielder Sherly Jeudy scored the winning goal to lead the team to a 1-0 victory over Canada in the third-place game Sunday at the CONCACAF Women’s Under-20 Championship, held in Couva, Trinidad and Tobago.

“I’m very happy I was able to score the goal, but I’m even happier for Haiti as a country,” Jeudy said in a postgame interview. “I was just so very happy because we were able to qualify.”

Haiti has not qualified for the World Cup since 1973, which led to the men’s national team’s only appearance in the FIFA championship series, in 1974. The team was eliminated in the first round.

Both inside Haiti and in the diaspora, Haitians reacted happily to the news on social media, posting photos and videos of the team on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with congratulatory messages.

“Bravo, ladies, we respect the sacrifices you made [to win] because soccer in Haiti is not easy,” Ansitho Pierre Louis posted in Creole on the Haitian Soccer Federation’s Facebook page. “I congratulate you, hang in there, keep working so we can shine at the World Cup. Much respect.”

VOA Creole reporter Pierre Nazon Beauliere caught up with the players during a stop in Miami before they returned to Haiti. Goalie Kerby Theus discussed their strategy heading into the match against Canada.

“We were very motivated and focused [going into the game],” Theus told VOA. “We weren’t worried about the loss to the United States [in the semifinals] . … We set qualifying for World Cup as our goal. We never entertained the thought of losing. It was important to us to achieve this goal for Haiti.”

Team physical therapist Aldride Joseph talked about the significance of the win for Haitians. 

“The win means so many things to us, not just socially but also politically,” she told VOA. “Despite our country’s problems, you can see everyone is sending the girls congratulatory messages and expressing their joy — that means so much to us — and we’re going to keep working for the win [at the World Cup competition].”

Joseph said it was more than luck that helped Haiti clinch the berth. “We worked hard for this,” she said, adding that the women train twice a day to perfect their game.

Haitian Football Federation (FHF) President Dr. Yves Jean Bart said he was extremely proud of the athletes’ performances.

Jean Bart launched Haiti’s women’s soccer effort before the devastating Janurary 2010 earthquake that left hundreds of thousands dead. He said after the disaster that many countries stepped forward to help the federation get back on its feet.

He said the FHF’s goal now is to train the girls just like the boys and to also provide academic support in addition to the rigorous athletic training.

“We’re not going to France just to look around — we are aiming to win,” Jean Bart told VOA Creole. France will host the 2018 event. “I hope we will get to a point where we can face any team from any nation.”

The U-20 team’s return to Haiti was full of pomp and circumstance. Haitian President Jovenel Moise and Prime Minister Jacques Guy Lafontant met the team at the airport in Port-au-Prince with flowers, handshakes and praise for a job well done.

With an eye toward France in August, goalie Kerby Theus had this message for the fans: “Keep encouraging us, keep rooting for us and you’ll see — we’ll do even greater things in the future.”

Pierre Nazon Beauliere contributed to this report.
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From: MeNeedIt

When Janet Yellen leaves the Federal Reserve this weekend after four years as chair, her legacy will include having shattered a social barrier: She is the first woman to have led the world’s most powerful central bank, a position that carries enormous sway over the global economy.

Yellen will be remembered, too, for her achievements in deftly guiding the Fed’s role in the U.S. economy’s slow recovery from a crushing financial crisis and recession. She picked up where her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, had left off in nurturing the nation’s recuperation from a crisis that nearly toppled the financial system.

As Jerome Powell prepares to succeed Yellen as leader of the U.S. central bank, here are five areas in which Yellen’s era at the Fed will be remembered:

Crisis management

Yellen served not just the past four years as Fed chair but for 2½ years in the 1990s as a Fed board member, then six years as president of the Fed’s San Francisco regional bank and then for four years as the Fed’s vice chair during Bernanke’s second four-year term. In all those roles, Yellen proved herself an able economic forecaster. She often detected perils before others saw reason for alarm, and she became a forceful advocate, especially during the Great Recession, for an aggressive response to economic weakness.

Transcripts of Fed policy meetings from the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers’ collapse ignited the most dangerous phase of the financial crisis, show that Yellen helped drive the Fed to unleash just about everything in its economic arsenal, including slashing its key short-term interest rate to a record low near zero.

Bold actions

As the recession deepened and millions more Americans lost jobs, Yellen was an assertive voice backing up Bernanke in the path-breaking move by the Fed to buy enormous quantities of Treasury and mortgage bonds to try to drive down long-term borrowing rates to support the economy. Critics warned that the bond purchases, which eventually swelled the Fed’s balance sheet five-fold to $4.5 trillion, could trigger high inflation. So far, inflation has not only remained low but for six years has remained below even the Fed’s 2 percent target rate.

The Yellen-led Fed continued to support the bond purchases in the face of skepticism. Later, it rebuffed pressure to start selling off its record-high bond holdings. Finally, in October, after the Fed felt it had achieved its goal of maximum employment, it began gradually paring its bond portfolio.

Clear communications

Yellen extended an innovation of the Bernanke Fed by holding quarterly news conferences after four of the eight policy meetings each year. At these roughly hour-long sessions, Yellen usually managed to shed some light on the Fed’s thinking about its rate policy while cautioning that any future policy changes would hinge on the latest economic data. By all accounts, she avoided any major communication stumbles by telegraphing the Fed’s moves in advance to avoid catching investors off guard.

Her success in this area contrasted with a rare but memorable stumble by Bernanke: In 2013, as Fed chairman, Bernanke triggered what came to be called the “taper tantrum.” It occurred when he first raised the possibility that the Fed could start gradually tapering its bond purchases sometime in the months to follow — unexpected remarks that sent bond prices plunging.

Jobs above all

Yellen, more than her predecessors, stressed the overarching importance of increasing job growth to the greatest level possible. Maximum employment is one of the two mandates Congress lays out for the Fed. The other is to manage interest rates to promote stable prices, which the Fed has defined as inflation averaging 2 percent annually.

Yellen’s predecessors typically worried most about triggering debilitating bouts of inflation of the kind that the United States suffered in the 1970s. That meant favoring higher rates to limit borrowing and spending.

Yellen was different. She believed the U.S. economy had entered an era in which the gravest threat was not a resurgence of inflation but a prolonged period of weak job growth. She argued that the Fed could leave its key policy rate at a record low near zero for far longer than had previously been thought prudent.

The Fed’s benchmark rate remained near zero from late 2008 until December 2015, when the central bank raised it modestly. Since then, the Fed has gradually raised rates four additional times, leaving its key rate in a still-low range of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent — well below the level usually associated with a prolonged economic expansion and a tight job market.

History’s judgment

So far, Yellen has been proved correct in her bet that rates could remain lower for longer without causing high inflation. The unemployment rate has reached a 17-year low of 4.1 percent with still-low inflation.

Yet many of Yellen’s critics remain unconvinced. They contend that her insistence on low rates has helped swell dangerous bubbles in such assets as stocks and perhaps home prices. They further warn that because the Fed took so long to begin raising rates, a Powell-led Fed could trigger market turbulence with further rate increases and end up harming the economy — possibly even triggering a recession.

Yellen’s supporters, though, argue that once again she will be proved correct and that the Fed will be able to achieve an economic soft landing: Raising rates enough to keep the economy from overheating but not so much as to derail the expansion, already the third-longest in U.S. history.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

North Korea’s national flag has been raised above the living quarters for the athletes taking part in the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea.

The flag began flying Thursday over the Olympic villages in the host cities of Pyeongchang and Gangneung, about 230 kilometers east of Seoul, one day after ceremonies were held marking the villages’ official opening.

The one-day delay was because of South Korea’s strict national security law that prohibits flying the North’s flag. Authorities have exempted all venues connected with the Winter Games, including the athletes’ dormitories and stadiums.

The North’s flag was raised in time to greet 10 members of the North’s Olympic squad who are scheduled to arrive in South Korea later Thursday. They will join 12 female hockey players who arrived last week to join their South Korean counterparts to train as a unified Korean team.

The surprise offer by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to send a delegation to the Pyeongchang Games during his New Year’s Day speech paved the way for restored dialogue between Pyongyang and Seoul, which had been frozen because of North Korea’s development of its nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs in defiance of international sanctions.

The talks led to an agreement for both sides to march in the Feb. 9 opening ceremonies under a unified flag.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has upheld appeals by 28 Russian athletes who were sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee for an alleged doping scheme at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

The CAS said Thursday there was insufficient evidence that the athletes committed doping violations. It annulled the sanctions against them and reinstated their results from the 2014 Games.

The IOC said after the ruling that the 28 athletes who won their appeals would not be invited to participate in this month’s Olympics in South Korea.

Still no invite

“Not being sanctioned does not automatically confer the privilege of an invitation,” the IOC said in a statement.

It further expressed regret at the court’s decision, saying it “may have a serious impact on the future fight against doping.”

For 11 other athletes who had appealed their sanctions, the CAS said there was enough evidence to show doping violations. But instead of keeping in place lifetime Olympic bans, it said those athletes would only be barred from participating in the 2018 games.

The court said its mandate was not to determine whether there was a wider effort on the part of Russia to manipulate drug tests at the 2014 Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes from competing under the country’s flag during the games in South Korea because of the doping scandal, and instead those participating will do so under a neutral flag.

Kremlin pleased

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed the CAS decision and said Russia would continue to stand up for the rights of its athletes.

Those who saw their sanctions overturned Thursday include skeleton gold medalist Aleksander Tretiakov, cross-country skiing gold medalist Alexander Legkov, and luge silver medalists Tatyana Ivanova and Albert Demchenko.

Bobsled gold medalists Aleksandr Zubkov and Alexey Voevoda were among those for whom the court said there was evidence of doping and sanctions would remain in place.
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From: MeNeedIt