240 days remain before the November election
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• Steve Bannon to honor France’s ultra-rightist National Front with a speech:
The Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, will attempt to pull her divided far-right party together when it meets this weekend for its first conference since she lost to Emmanuel Macron in the final round of the French presidential election.
Hours before the conference opened it was revealed Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon would be speaking on the first day of the event.
The surprise guest speaker Bannon was announced on Twitter by the FN deputy president Louis Aliot. He wrote: “Welcome to Steve Bannon who will address the FN tomorrow at our congress and will meet ML [Le Pen]. The people are waking up and taking their destiny in hand.”
• Not just for Daylight Saving Time anymore—Spring springs forward, arriving earlier the farther north you travel:
Despite the heavy snowfall in the Northeast this week, spring comes faster on average than it did 10 years ago. This is especially true the farther north you travel, according to a study by the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in Scientific Reports on March 2, found that spring arrives four days earlier for every 10 degrees north you travel, compared to its arrival time a decade ago.
• Trump’s record-busting “black budget” of $81.1 billion has received little coverage.
MIDDAY TWEET
• U.S. Dept. of Education tells states to lay off trying to regulate student loan companies:
Student loan debt collectors may soon be shielded from state regulators, according to a notice filed Friday by the U.S. Department of Education arguing states don’t have the power to crack down on the companies. [...]
“Recently, several states have enacted regulatory regimes that impose new regulatory requirements on servicers of loans under the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program,” the unpublished declaration states. “States also impose disclosure requirements on loan servicers with respect to loans made under … the Higher Education Act of 1965.”
Such state regulation, which is also imposed on the Federal Family Education Loan Program, is “preempted by federal law,” the Department of Education, or DOE, argues.
• Inside the Lab That's Building a Robot Cat: Kleo the Cat is pretty dumb and has a tough time moving around. But researchers are working on fixing that by looking to biology, specifically focusing on creating a network of “neurons” instead of programming algorithms line by line. Right now, the focus on primal, instinctual behavior.
• Questioning the legality of U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen:
[...] The Conventional Arms Transfer Policy requires, moreover, that proposed arms transfers take into account criteria including, “[t]he human rights, democratization, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and nonproliferation record of the recipient, and the potential for misuse of the export in question,” as well as “[t]he likelihood that the recipient would use the arms to commit human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law, retransfer the arms to those who would commit human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law, or identify the United States with human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
The United States’ continued transfer of billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in its military operations in Yemen—operations which the United Nations Expert Panel of Experts has found have involved repeated violations of international humanitarian law—would appear to run directly counter to this policy guidance, as well as the AECA and FAA.
Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio.” |