Trump

ROGUE ELEPHANT

Trump: “The people asking the questions—those are the racists”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ordered surrogates to double down on criticisms of the press and US district judge Gonzalo Curiel—a Mexican-American overseeing cases against Trump University—during a conference call on Monday (June 6).

“The people asking the questions—those are the racists,” he told a collection of supporters on the line, including former Arizona governor Jan Brewer, former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. “I would go at ’em.”

Trump has come under fire of late for comments about Judge Curiel—declaring the judge unfit to oversee suits against Trump University because of his Mexican heritage and Trump’s history of racist commentary toward the Mexican American community. (An unusual admission for the Trump campaign to make, post-#TacoSaladGate.)

On the call, he described Curiel as “a member of La Raza.” Curiel is affiliated with La Raza Lawyers of California, a Latino bar association independent of the National Council of La Raza, to which Trump refers. The latter is the United States’s largest Latino advocacy organization, which promotes progressive immigration reform, but is frequently misrepresented as a Mexican- or Latino-supremacist organization. It was in fact founded with funding from the Ford Foundation.

A number of Republican standard-bearers have publicly condemned the remarks about the judge’s impartiality, including New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte and senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton described the comments as “not just another outlandish, insulting comment from Donald Trump,” but “something much more dangerous,” going on to declare the candidate wholly unqualified for office. As The Atlantic’s James Fallows notes, GOP officials have yet to respond on Trump’s behalf:

The conference call also highlighted some apparent fissures within Trump’s campaign infrastructure. According to Bloomberg News, when Jan Brewer interrupted the discussion to bring up a memo emailed from his own campaign asking surrogates to abstain from talking about the Trump University lawsuit, the candidate angrily demanded to know who sent it.

“Take that order and throw it the hell out,” Trump said. “Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks? … That’s one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren’t so smart.”

“You all better get on the page,” Brewer told Trump.

2016, elections, Gonzalo Curiel, GOP, Hillary Clinton, hispanics, Jan Brewer, journalists, La Raza, latinos,law, media, Pam Bondi, politics, race, racism, Republican party, Republicans,

The Real Style  --------- NP 2016

Florida’s hurricane season

CODE ORANGE

Florida’s hurricane season is standing between you and orange juice

It’s bad news for breakfast addicts and mimosa-guzzling brunch loyalists alike. As Florida braces for Tropical Storm Colin to hit the US coast, the price of orange juice is starting to rise.

The threat of the storm—which comes early in the hurricane season—has driven the price of orange juice to its highest level in more than two years. The US is the second-largest producer of oranges after Brazil, which earlier this year suffered from weather-related incidents that damaged its orange groves.

The cost of orange juice could continue rising during the next several months, thanks to a particularly active season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said 10 to 16 storms could come hurtling toward the US coast this year, putting orange groves directly in their paths.

Besides weather woes, the Florida citrus industry is wrestling a more insidious issue: citrus greening. Some farmers have called citrus greening—the effects of an invasive little bug that brings a bacterial disease to groves—an even bigger threat than hurricanes.
: Africa, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, election 2016, ethnic tensions, geopolitics, Ideas, Mark Rosenberg, politics, racism, white voters

The Real Style ------- NP 2016

James Patterson

James Patterson says he’ll “disrupt” reading by writing shorter books

A new venture from publishing juggernaut James Patterson is being sold as the “Uber of books.”

“I’m a disruptor,” the massively prolific, bestselling author announced in a press conference this morning (June 6) as he introduced a new line of books. They’re called Bookshots, and the great promise of each is to be a plot-driven book under 150 pages that costs than $5.

These aren’t novellas, Patterson clarified, nor are they just short, regularly paced novels. Rather, he said, reading a Bookshot is like “reading a hit movie”—fast-paced, economical, with no meandering. Hisfirst two Bookshot titles, published by Little, Brown, will be available tomorrow, and will include Cross Kill, a new installment in his popular Alex Cross series. So far Patterson plans for Bookshots to publish thriller, romance, and non-fiction.

Patterson, one of the world’s highest paid authors, won’t write all the titles himself, but he does claim to have outlines for over 80 new stories.

: Africa, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, election 2016, ethnic tensions, geopolitics, Ideas, Mark Rosenberg, politics, racism, white voters

The Real Style --------- NP 2016

Nigeria says it’s recovered $9.1 billion

LOOTERS ANONYMOUS

Nigeria says it’s recovered $9.1 billion in looted funds, but won’t name the culprits

The Nigerian government says it has recovered assets and funds totaling $9.1 billion as part of its anti-corruption drive. The recovered assets “include monies withheld by past government officials, monies kept in private accounts, monies diverted to private pockets and monies in possession of government officials not disclosed after leaving government,” a spokesman said. The funds were recovered during president Buhari’s first year in office.

The news of the recovered funds signals gains made by president Buhari’s anti-corruption drive as he remains intent on ensuring transparency in state institutions and agencies previously known for being opaque and corrupt.

The recovery will also likely enhance Buhari’s reputation internationally as being intolerant of corruption despite aspersions cast inadvertently last month by David Cameron, prime minister of Britain. Cameron had described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” in the run-up to an anti-corruption summit in London but Buhari responded strongly asking Britain to return Nigeria’s stolen assets kept in the country.

But while the news of recovered funds has been hailed as a major win by the government, it has been received with a healthy dose of skepticism from many Nigerians. The skepticism is because the government did not release any names of persons and officials the assets were recovered from. This was despite an earlier promise by president Buhari to “make a comprehensive report” on “what has been recovered in whatever currency from each ministry, department and individual.” The report was expected to come during the president’s democracy day address on May 29.

The government says it cannot release names of looters for legal reasons but various groups within the country have questioned andcriticized the government’s decision to withhold the names. Critics say by not naming the looters, there is little deterrent to prevent others from looting funds as they suffer no reputational damage. “These people will do it again and again,” said a comment on one of the country’s biggest newspapers. “Because all you have to do in the eventuality that a government changes, is that you simply return the money and you wait until you can do it again.”

The timing of the recovery of the funds is crucial for Nigeria’s stumbling economy. The recovered funds are set to come in at a time when the government is doubling down on efforts to diversify its oil-dependent economy and fund a record $30.6 billion national budget. With oil prices falling and state revenue dwindling as a result, Nigeria’s economy has had a rough year typified by job losses, investor reticenceand slowed GDP growth.
: Africa, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, election 2016, ethnic tensions, geopolitics, Ideas, Mark Rosenberg, politics, racism, white voters

The Real Style  -------- NP 2016

So what is Apple working on, besides its giant spaceship in Silicon Valley?

A Siri version of the Amazon Echo

The Amazon Echo, a cylindrical speaker with a built-in, always-listening, virtual assistant called Alexa, has been a sleeper hit for the the online retailer since it was launched in late 2014. It can now do everything from order pizzas and Ubers, to turn on lights and sprinklers, and even remotely start your car. Through its developer program and partnerships, Amazon has managed to line up a wide range of services for the diminutive cylinder, and according to independent researchers, the company has already sold over 3 million units.

Apple is apparently working on its own home hub, with Siri acting as the digital assistant, to rival the Echo, and Alphabet’s forthcoming entry into the field, Google Home. According to The Verge, Siri will no longer be restricted to Apple services and basic internet searches, and it will apparently be able to tie into any other service that developers want to build for it—as major tech companies vie to be the conduit through which the increasing number of internet-connected home appliances and services flow.

Apple’s Echo rival could potentially be announced as early as next week at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, according to The Information (paywall).

Another wearable

While the first iteration of the Apple Watch may have left something to be desired, there’s likely a second version with cameras, a sleeker design, and more features just around the corner. But Apple CEO Tim Cook has said in the past that the company might be interested in building something else to use in the medical industry. The company is certainly pushing into health, using sensors on the Apple Watch and iPhone to send data back to doctors and researchers, and in an interview with The Telegraph last year, Cook said the company might look into a separate device that could be used just for tracking health data, that would be built to the specifications the US government has for medical devices:

“We don’t want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process. I wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it—maybe an app, maybe something else.”

Wireless headphones

There are rumors that the next version of the iPhone will not have a headphone jack, implying users will have to invest in some wireless headphones, or another converter cable, to listen to music on their new expensive gadget. But there are further rumblings that Apple is working on a set of wireless earbuds, or headphones, that it will launch at the same time as the iPhone 7, likely later this year. Perhaps Apple can use some of the expertise it acquired when it bought Beats in 2014 for $3 billion to help build some headphones with mass appeal. Apple has let Beats and its line of products operate relatively independently up until now.

Samsung just unveiled the Gear IconX wireless earbuds last week—what has Apple got to respond with?(Quartz/Mike Murphy)

Virtual reality

Apple has been awarded a number of patents pertaining to virtual and augmented reality, suggesting that the company may be in the process of building something to rival Samsung’s Gear VR device, or potentially a more powerful VR system like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, or perhaps even forthcoming systems like Microsoft’s HoloLens, or whatever Magic Leap is working on. It currently holds 220 patents that mention “virtual reality” in some capacity.

Will we be seeing a  VR anytime soon?(Reuters/Beawiharta)

But unless Apple has figured out some massive breakthrough in how to power virtual reality systems, make them far more intuitive than the systems currently on the market, or has secretly been working on securing partnerships with large gaming companies, it seems unlikelythat the company will be releasing a headset anytime soon.

A car

Then there’s the car—or minivan—that Apple is apparently working on. There have been reports that Apple has separate, secret facilities inSilicon Valley and Germany where it’s working on its prototype cars. And the company has hired designers from Aston Martin and Tesla, and electric-car-charging engineers from Google. It’s also been reported that the company has been meeting with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Given all these disparate pieces of information, it does seem that Apple is indeed working on a car, even if the company has not officially confirmed that it is.

The Chrysler Pacifica minivans that Google will be using for its new self-driving cars.(PRNewsFoto/FCA US LLC)

Some suggest that Apple is working on an electric car, something that would rival Tesla’s design-minded models, and others, such as The Guardian, say that the company is working on a self-driving vehicle. Apart from auto workers, the company has been hiring artificial intelligence researchers, and at the time of publishing, had 96 job openings listed on LinkedIn that mention artificial intelligence. Many include the following line:

Play a part in revolutionizing how people use their computers and mobile devices. Create groundbreaking technology for algorithmic search, machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence.

So perhaps the company is working on something more than just a regular car—or maybe it’s working on:

: Africa, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, election 2016, ethnic tensions, geopolitics, Ideas, Mark Rosenberg, politics, racism, white voters

The Real Style --------  NP 2016