Thomas L. Friedman: 'Trump's Going to Get Re-elected, Isn't He?' (NY Times)
Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!
Greg Sargent: People privy to the intelligence are convinced another electoral attack is coming (Washington Post)
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had a conversation with Vox's Kara Swisher that should worry anyone who thinks our elections should be free from foreign interference. Needless to say, this evidently doesn't include President Trump, who has basically invited another round of foreign electoral sabotage, or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who refuses to allow the Senate to vote on any of the numerous bills that have been proposed to shore up our political system against such sabotage. So that basically rules out any serious legislative response in advance of the next attack.
Garrison Keillor: Can't get across the river but we'll try again
Comedy and compassion are the trademarks of the upcoming generation and good for them. GPS is fine but without it we could always learn to read maps again. Facebook is okay but if it went away, we could learn to sit with people over coffee and conduct conversations. Comedy and compassion are what you need to make your way in the world.. Have not got the blues but am in a Hell of a fix." In other words, don't lose heart.
Chip Brownlee: Elizabeth Warren Is Warning of a Recession. Maybe We Should Listen. (Slate)
In 2003, Elizabeth Warren predicted that subprime mortgage lending would lead to a big economic crash. In 2008, it came true. Now a Democratic presidential candidate, Warren is warning that another crippling economic crisis-this time fueled by rising household and corporate debt-could be on the horizon, unless we (she) take(s) swift action. "Warning lights are flashing," the Massachusetts senator wrote in a Medium post Monday. "Whether it's this year or next year, the odds of another economic downturn are high-and growing."
What is the name of the interstitial programming series of animated musical educational short films, covering grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics that aired Saturday mornings on ABC?
Ma and Pa Kettle are comic film characters of the successful film series of the same name, produced by Universal Studios, in the late 1940s and 1950s. They are a hillbilly couple with fifteen children whose lives are turned upside-down when they win a model-home-of-the-future in a slogan-writing contest. At the verge of getting their farm condemned, the Kettles move into the prize home that is different from their country lifestyle. After that, they are subjected to more unusual situations.
Originally based on real-life farming neighbors in Washington State, United States, Ma and Pa Kettle were created by Betty MacDonald in whose 1945 best-selling novel, The Egg and I, they appeared. The success of the novel spawned the 1947 film The Egg and I starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, also co-starring Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride as Ma and Pa Kettle. Main was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role.
After the audiences' positive reaction to the Kettles in the film, Universal Studios produced nine more films, with Marjorie Main reprising her role in all and Percy Kilbride reprising his in seven. The films grossed an estimated $35 million altogether at the box office and are said to have saved Universal from bankruptcy.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Ma and Pa Kettle.
Randall wrote:
Ma and Pa Kettle
mj said:
Foils for a number of stars
Ma and Pa Kettle were "lovable" stereotypes of down home goodness and
wisdom. They had a lot of kids, too.
Alan J answered:
Ma and Pa Kettle.
Stephen F responded:
Ma and Pa Kettle
Leo in Boise replied:
Ma and Pa Kettle. Ma was portrayed by Marjorie Main, Pa by Percy Kilbride.
Cal in Vermont wrote:
Ma and Pa Kettle. A whole passel of movies were made in the late forties and fifties recounting the doings of a fictional farm family. They were in the tried and true format of "Ma and Pa Kettle Do This" or "Do That" or "Go Here Or There" and the like. I remember seeing them on a TV the screen of which was the size of a pack of cigarettes when I was a kid. How times change...
Dave replied:
Ma and Pa Kettle. After favorable public reaction to the hillbilly couple who co-starred in the 1947 big name feature film, "The Egg and I." Universal Studios made 9 Ma and Pa Kettle films in the next 10 years. It is thought the $35 million box office the film series generated saved Universal from bankruptcy. The Kettle family consisted of the lazy slow witted patriarch, his not much smarter wife and their 15 unruly children. Much of the film's comedy came from when the unsophisticated family moved from their rustic farm to the Home of the Future (that Pa won in a contest), a situation revisited by the writers of the later TV series "The Beverly Hillbillies." The comedy was typically of the corn ball variety, usually something like Ma getting butted by a Billy Goat or somebody falling into a mudpuddle.
When I was a kid I saw one or two of the movies at my grandparent's house (they had cable! 13 channels!), on either Channel 9 out of Chicago or Detroit's Channel 50, as those channels were independent and usually filled out their line ups with old movies.
Photos: advertisement for "The Egg and I" | advertisement for a Kettle film | a physical comedy still
Mac Mac responded:
Phoebe "Ma" Kettle
Franklin "Pa" Kettle
Deborah said:
I don't recognize those people at all; probably not a show my parents watched or I was too young to remember it. Was it Ma and Pa Kettle? Was that even a TV show? So many unknowns; it's like algebra without a way to get answers.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, wrote:
Ma and Pa Kettle........back home again
Daniel in The City answered:
Looks like Ma and Pa Kettle
Harry M. responded:
Ma and Pa Kettle
Dave in Tucson replied:
That's Ma & Pa Kettle.
Roy (Still Blue, Still in Red Tyler, TX) wrote:
Pardon my 71-year-old eyes if I'm wrong, but that sure looks like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby from one of those "Road to (name of place at the end of said road). Meeting and talking with Bob Hope backstage during his USO Show at Danang was the highlight of my tour in Vietnam!
Steve in Wonderful Sacramento, CA, said:
It was during the early 1950's. We lived on a farm in rural South Dakota. We had no television, only AM radio and a Victrola phonograph for entertainment. The small town nearby (2 miles away) had a drive-in movie theater, a small walk-in movie theater and one traffic signal light. Every couple of weeks parents would treat us to the drive in movies. Into the 1946 Mercury 4 door sedan we four kids climbed, with homemade popcorn, Koolaid and a coffee can to pee into and off we went to see Old Yeller, Roy Rogers, The Yearling, movies like that. Good movies. A most wonderful way to grow up in America. These real life farmers got to see us at the drive in movies every time a new movie was made about them. They were Ma and Pa Kettle. Pure Americana. When America was great. About 25% of working Americans had Union representation, now only about 6%. Top income tax rate was 90%, now about 28% or less. No crippling federal debt. WW2 paid for. Korean war paid for. Interstate Highway System, paid for. When we paid taxes we got something for it instead of paying interest on debt and not getting anything for it. When America was great.
Doug in Albuquerque, New Mexico answered:
Ma and Pa Kettle
Micki took the day off.
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BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
• A lucky break helped soprano Leslie Garrett get a job with the English National Opera. She was singing the part of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro when she received word that English National Opera managing director Lord Harewood would be present at a performance. Normally, Ms. Garrett paced herself so that she could get through all four acts. However, since Lord Harewood would be present, she decided to sing all-out from the very beginning and trust that some extra strength would providentially arrive to help her get through the end of the opera. She did sing all out from the very beginning, performing brilliantly in the first two acts, but unfortunately extra strength did not arrive, so she sang poorly in the last two acts. She thought that she blown her chances of ever singing in the English National Opera, but luck was with her. Lord Harewood had left after the first two acts, and shortly afterward she got a job singing with the English National Opera.
• Throughout her career, soprano Helen Traubel was compared to another great soprano: Kirsten Flagstad. Early in her career, Ms. Traubel auditioned for a radio program, although she had broken out in fiery spots because of an allergy to a kitten she had cuddled. In the middle of the audition, she noticed the radio engineers in the control room laughing, and she assumed that they were laughing at her appearance, so she threatened to leave. However, they convinced her to stay, explaining that they were laughing because the radio bigwigs, who were listening in an upstairs room, had called to tell them, "Stop your kidding. Turn off that Flagstad record and let that kid you're going to audition start singing."
• Soprano Beverly Sills felt that she was too tall to sing the title role in The Ballad of Baby Doe, but eventually she agreed to audition for the role. She wore high spiked heels that made her even taller, and before she began to sing, she said, "This is how big I am before I sing, and I'm going to be just as big when I finish. So if I'm too big for your Baby Doe, you can save my energy and your time by saying so right now." The composer of the opera, Douglas Moore, told her she looked "just fine," and after she had sung, he was awed and told her, "Oh, Miss Sills, you are Baby Doe."
• In June of 1897, Enrico Caruso, then an unknown, auditioned for Giacomo Puccini and made an immediate impact. After Mr. Caruso had sung "Che gelida manina," Mr. Puccini turned from the piano he was playing as accompaniment, looked at Mr. Caruso, and asked, "Who has sent you to me - God?"
Autographs
• American soprano Grace Moore became famous in opera, musical comedy, and movies - in opera, she is best known for her Louise, which she studied under Gustave Charpentier. One day, Garbo visited her and her husband at their house in Connecticut in response to an invitation to stay for the weekend. Before Sunday lunch, Ms. Moore asked Garbo and her other guests to sign their names in her guest-book. Garbo disliked giving autographs, so she declined to sign the guest-book. Ms. Moore told her, "If my house is not good enough for you to let others know you have been here, I think you had better leave immediately. I shall have the car ready to take you back to New York in 15 minutes." Within 15 minutes, Garbo was in the car and headed for New York.
• Following a recital in Boston, Massachusetts, by soprano Marilyn Horne, a woman with a seeing-eye dog asked Ms. Horne to autograph her program. First, however, Ms. Horne asked about the seeing-eye dog and whether she could pat him. The blind woman replied, "It's a her. Her name is Gloria, and sure, you can pat her." Ms. Horne patted Gloria, and then she signed the program. A little later, the blind woman and a friend came back, and the friend asked Ms. Horne to re-sign the program. Ms. Horne looked at the program and saw that she had written, "Dear Gloria, Many thanks for being with me today. Sincerely, Marilyn Horne." Ms. Horne commented, "It may be the only time a dog has received an autograph."
Last night this little site was hammered by more than 2700 hits in twenty-some minutes, at the rate of 1 hit every .05 seconds - all from the same Amazon isp in Virginia.
WTF?
Tonight, Thursday:
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'Love Island', followed by a FRESH'Big Brother', then a FRESH'Elementary'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Jeff Goldblum and Aisha Tyler.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Keegan-Michael Key, Terry Crews, and Joshua Jay.
NBC begins the night with a RERUN'The Wall', followed by a FRESH'Hollywood Game Night', then a RERUN'L&O: SVU'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Kevin Delaney, Zachary Quinto, Betty Gilpin, and Mike Vecchione.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Michael Moore, 2 Chainz, and Brian Michael Bendis.
On a RERUNCarson 'The Scab' Daly (from 3/18/19) are Stephanie Beatriz, Talos, Ben Sinclair, and Katj Blichfeld.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'Holey Moley', followed by a FRESH'Family Food Fight', then a FRESH'Reef Break'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Sen. Bernie Sanders, Eugenio Derbez, and the Raconteurs.
The CW offers a FRESH'iZombie', followed by a FRESH'The Outpost'.
Faux has a FRESH'MasterChef', followed by a FRESH'Spin The Wheel'.
MY recycles an old 'The Good Wife', followed by another old 'The Good Wife'.
A&E has 'Live Rescue: Rewind', followed by a FRESH'Live Rescue: Rewind', then a FRESH'Live Rescue'.
AMC offers the movie 'Home Alone', followed by the movie 'Home Alone 2: Lost In NY'.
BBC -
[2:00AM] MONEYBALL (2011)
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 14-Alter Ego
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 15-Coda
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 16-Blood Fever
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 17-Unity
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 18-Darkling
[10:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 19-Rise
[11:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 20-Favorite Son
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 21-Before and After
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 22-Real Life
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 23-Distant Origin
[3:00PM] THE TERMINATOR (1984)
[5:30PM] TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)
[8:00PM] TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009)
[10:30PM] TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)
[1:00AM] TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009)
[3:30AM] THE TERMINATOR (1984) (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of NYC', another 'Real Housewives Of NYC', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of NYC', another 'Real Housewives Of NYC', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
FX has the movie 'Get Out', followed by the movie 'Ride Along 2', then a FRESH'Baskets', and another 'Baskets'.
History has 'Mountain Men', followed by a FRESH'Mountain Men', then a FRESH'Ax Men', followed by a FRESH'Alone'.
IFC -
[6:00A] All Monsters Attack
[7:45A] Java Heat
[10:00A] The Mist
[12:45P] Into the Storm
[2:45P] Rush
[5:30P] Fool's Gold
[8:00P] We're the Millers
[10:30P] We're the Millers
[1:00A] The Hangover Part III
[3:15A] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
[5:30A] Pee-wee's Playhouse-Conky's Breakdown (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[6:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:00am] Miller's Crossing
[10:30am] The Bone Collector
[1:00pm] Law & Order
[2:00pm] Law & Order
[3:00pm] Law & Order
[4:00pm] Law & Order
[5:00pm] Law & Order
[6:00pm] Law & Order
[7:00pm] Law & Order
[8:00pm] Law & Order
[9:00pm] Law & Order
[10:00pm] Law & Order
[11:00pm] Law & Order
[12:00am] Law & Order
[1:00am] Law & Order
[2:00am] Law & Order
[3:00am] Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter - Comedy Showrunners
[4:00am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show
[4:35am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show
[5:10am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show
[5:45am] The Mary Tyler Moore Show (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'The Boy', followed by the movie 'Constantine'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 6/5/19) is Sophie Turner.
Douglas Adams' comedy sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is headed to American television. I have learned that Hulu is developing a TV series adaptation of the novels from prolific showrunner Carlton Cuse (Lost, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Locke & Key) and feature writer Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman, Ice Age: Continental Drift). The project hails from ABC Signature, the cable/streaming division of ABC Studios where Cuse and his Genre Arts production company are under an overall deal.
A British popular culture staple, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy originated as a comedy radio series and became a hugely successful series of novels that has been translated into more than 30 languages and has become essential reading for high school students around the world.
The series follows the intergalactic adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman, following the destruction of Earth by the Vogons, a race of unpleasant and bureaucratic aliens.
Cuse and Fuchs, both fans of the iconic title, will write, executive produce and showrun the proposed series, a modern updating of the classic story now in development at Hulu via ABC Signature and Cuse' Genre Arts. Fuchs is writing the pilot script.
Disney owns the Hitchhiker's Guide IP; the studio produced the 2005 star-studded feature adaptation, in which Arthur was played by Martin Freeman. The cast also included Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman.
10 Top-Grossing of All Time (Adjusted for Inflation)
Movies
"Avengers: Endgame" became the highest-grossing film of all time on July 21, when Disney announced that the movie had pulled in $2.79 billion at the global box office. The Marvel movie topped the record held by 2009's "Avatar," which made $2.7897 billion in a 234-day theatrical run after 87 days in theaters.
But the title of the highest-grossing film is a deceptive one - it doesn't take into account the changing prices of movie theater tickets or the general effect of economic inflation. CNBC enlisted Comscore, a media analytics company, to calculate the top 10 highest-grossing films in the U.S. when ticket price changes and inflation are taken into account.
Because of the wide variations in inflation rates between currencies, Comscore analysts focused only on ticket sales in the United States, where "Endgame" made $854 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo. They found the average ticket price for the year a film was released and divided that into the film's domestic gross to find the estimated number of tickets the film sold, then multiplied the estimated number of tickets by the average price of a ticket in 2019 ($9.01, according to CNBC). Comscore also included any times that the film was re-released in the adjusted domestic gross.
At an $854 million domestic gross, "Endgame" did not even crack the top 10 when adjusted for inflation. Neither did the current record-holder for domestic gross, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which pulled in $937 million after its 2015 release.
Faye Dunaway has been fired from the previously Broadway-bound one-woman play Tea At Five, Deadline has confirmed.
In a statement, producers Ben Feldman and Scott Beck said of their decision: "The producers of 'Tea at Five' announced today that they have terminated their relationship with Faye Dunaway. Plans are in development for the play to have its West End debut early next year with a new actress to play the role of Katharine Hepburn."
The Dunaway project was announced in December - on the very same day the stage version of Network, based on the movie that won Dunaway an Oscar, opened on Broadway - with the actress set to star in the revival of Matthew Lombardo's Hepburn bio-play.
Dunaway, her reputation for being difficult and temperamental long established, performed the play in a pre-Broadway tryout in Boston from June 22-July 14. A final-week performance was canceled without explanation.
But unnamed sources told the New York Post, which broke the story today, that the July 10 performance was canceled "moments before curtain because Dunaway slapped and threw things at crew members who were trying to put on her wig." The Post reports that "Enraged at the cancellation, Dunaway began 'verbally abusing' the crew who were "fearful for their safety." The Post described Dunaway as often late for rehearsals and at one point throwing a salad on the floor. The newspaper's theater columnist Michael Riedel also reports that producers contacted Actors' Equity "to see if it was 'ethical' to put someone in her state in front of an audience."
Temperatures across 98 percent of Earth's surface were hotter at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the previous 2,000 years.
Such nearly universal warming, occurring in lockstep across the planet, is unique to this current era, scientists say. By contrast, other well-known cold and warm snaps of the past, such as the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period, were, in fact, regional rather than worldwide.
What's more, the rate at which temperatures are increasing now far exceeds any previous temperature fluctuations measured in the last two millennia. Those are the conclusions of a trio of new papers examining temperature trends over the last 2,000 years, published online July 24 in Nature and Nature Geoscience. Those previous climate fluctuations were primarily driven by natural causes, including powerful volcanic eruptions, rather than human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
The findings, which are based on newly available global paleoclimate data, reinforce an inescapable conclusion, says Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University who was not involved in the new studies: "The current period of warmth is unprecedented in its global scope in the last 2,000 years."
In the Nature study, a team led by Raphael Neukom, a climate scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, used many different types of temperature records from around the world to create thousands of climate reconstructions of the last two millennia, from A.D. 1 to 2000. Those data were collected by an international group of scientists called the PAGES 2k Consortium. They include proxies for temperatures derived from tree rings, glacier ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, cave deposits such as stalactites and stalagmites and historical documents (SN: 10/28/17, p. 29).
The increasing number of arrests related to domestic terrorism was fuelled in part by white supremacy, FBI director Christopher Wray said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director said his agency has already made nearly 100 domestic terrorism-related arrests this year, a figure already higher than that of the entirety of 2018.
"A majority of the domestic terrorism cases we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence," Mr Wray said during an exchange with Senator Dick Durbin.
Reports have previously indicated a rise in white supremacist attacks globally in recent years. The Centre for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University concluded in March that "white nationalism has reflected a coarsening of mainstream politics, where debates on national security and immigration have become rabbit holes for the exploitation of fear and bigotry."
The US government has interfered with humanitarian aid work at the US-Mexico border by monitoring activists, restricting their travel and detaining them, a new lawsuit alleges.
In a complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday against Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the FBI, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleges that the US government surveilled three not-for-profit organizers, who were included in a secret US database of more than 50 activists and journalists that was leaked earlier this year. The surveillance efforts hampered the activists' relief efforts on both sides of the border, according to the the complaint.
"It's terrifying," Erika Pinheiro, an attorney with the immigrant rights' organization Al Otro Lado and plaintiff in the case, told the Guardian by phone from Tijuana, Mexico. "This administration has taken a lot of steps to criminalize US citizens who stand in opposition to their policies … I'm just trying to do my job."
The ACLU complaint builds on documents obtained and published by the NBC 7 news station in San Diego in March, which suggested the US government had maintained the database of activists and journalists.
The U.S. government's new holding facility for migrant youth will close as early as this week, less than one month after it was opened in response to the squalid conditions in which children were being detained by the Border Patrol, according to the nonprofit operating the facility.
The last children at the camp at Carrizo Springs, Texas, are on track to leave by Thursday, said Kevin Dinnin, the CEO of the nonprofit BCFS. Dinnin, whose nonprofit was contracted by HHS to operate Carrizo Springs, said his staff was to leave by the end of the week. It's still unclear whether some of the trailers and supplies brought to the camp will remain on site so that it can be quickly re-opened if it's needed in the future.
Roughly 400 children were detained at Carrizo Springs in total, Dinnin said. BCFS had a contract that could have run through January and paid $300 million, according to U.S. government public notices. But Dinnin said it made little sense for staff and resources to be tied to a site where they were not needed. Holding children at emergency facilities like Carrizo Springs comes at a huge cost - an estimated $750 to $800 a day.
Making Carrizo Springs ready for children required clearing mold and repairing air conditioning systems at the camp, which formerly housed oilfield workers . BCFS also brought in an infirmary built in a tent and its own ambulances.
Border crossings tend to rise in the fall. Dinnin said he hadn't been told yet what HHS wanted to do with the site, which the agency leased for three years.
Three years ago, US health officials warned hundreds of thousands of clinicians in hospitals around the country to be on the lookout for a new, quickly spreading and highly drug-resistant type of yeast that was causing potentially fatal infections in hospitalized patients around the world.
Candida auris has become a serious global health threat since it was identified a decade ago, especially for patients with compromised immune systems.
It is resistant to multiple antifungal drugs, and can spread between patients in hospitals and other health-care facilities and cause outbreaks. The fungus can lead to infections of the bloodstream, heart or brain, and early studies estimate that it is fatal in 30 to 60 percent of patients.
Researchers have never been able to isolate the fungus from the natural environment or figure out how genetically distinct versions emerged independently at roughly the same time in India, South Africa and South America.
Now researchers in the United States and the Netherlands have a new theory: They propose that global warming may have played a key role and suggest that this may be the first example of a new fungal disease emerging from climate change, according to a study published Tuesday in mBio, a journal of the American Society of Microbiology.
The U.S. government will pay a minimum of $15 per acre to farmers hurt by President Don-Old Trump (R-Grifter)'s trade war with China under an aid package to be unveiled before the end of the week, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said on Tuesday.
U.S. farmers, a key Trump constituency, have been among the hardest hit in the trade war between the world's two largest economies. Soybeans are the most valuable U.S. farm export, and shipments to China dropped to a 16-year low in 2018.
A new aid program would be the second round of assistance for farmers, after the Department of Agriculture's $12 billion plan last year to compensate for lower prices for farm goods and lost sales stemming from trade disputes with China and other nations.
The USDA has redesigned last year's aid program based on feedback. The new package will have a single payment rate per county, calculated by the damages in that area, instead of a rate for every commodity across the nation.
Perdue said the minimal payment would be $15 an acre. "We're anticipating right now three tranches; probably 50 percent ... or minimum there of $15 an acre initially," he said, adding the second and third tranches would be dependant on market conditions.
Hollywood actor Rutger Hauer, who became a global cult icon for his role as the scary yet thought-provoking humanoid android in the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner", has died at the age of 75.
Hauer's non-profit HIV/AIDS charity, the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, said on his website it was announcing "with infinite sadness that after a very short illness, on Friday, July 19, 2019, Rutger passed away peacefully at his Dutch home".
Born on January 23, 1944 in Breukelen just outside Amsterdam to Dutch parents who were both actors and ran an acting school, the young Hauer showed an early rebellious and wild streak.
At 15 he ran away to sea, travelling the world on a Dutch Merchant Navy freighter picking up English, German, French and Italian on the way.
For half a century Hauer was prolific, working on more than 100 films -- although some critics said he appeared in more than his fair share of bad movies.
He was also a noted campaigner for HIV/Aids research and set up his own association in 2000, in addition to his work as an environmentalist.
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