Mercedes has reaffirmed its commitment to Formula 1, the German manufacturer strengthening the ties that exist between its Grand Prix team and its AMG division.
Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff recently rubbished rumors of a sale of the manufacturer’s F1 outfit to UK chemical giant and team sponsor INEOS
In a conference call with investors on Tuesday, any remaining doubts about Mercedes’ future in Grand Prix racing were put to rest by the company’s new global strategy that include a presence in F1, closer ties to AMG and a full commitment to electrification, with the production of a range of new cars
“We will use the technology development in Formula 1 for performance hybrids and going into other exciting technologies in the future, and put that into our AMG cars,” explained Mercedes chief executive Ola Källenius.
“With Project One, we’re taking the Formula 1 powertrain and putting it on the road. So it just comes natural to us to leverage Formula 1 even more for AMG going forward.”
Read also: Red Bull labels 2020 Mercedes ‘most complete and rounded car’ yet
The stronger alliance between Mercedes F1 and AMG will entail closer marketing links between the two entities, a technology transfer to AMG’s road cars and a more prominent presence of the AMG identity on the Brackley squad’s cars.
Mercedes returned to F1 as a works outfit in 2010 following the acquisition of Brawn GP and has won every single Constructors’ and Drivers’ championship since the advent of the hybrid engine in 2014.
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
Levi Strauss & Co. has introduced its shoppers to SecondHand, a
recommerce site that buys back unwanted Levi’s items and resells
quality second hand denim.
“Levi’s SecondHand keeps coveted pieces in circulation,” the
company explained on its website. “It’s all about connecting people to
timeless styles they otherwise may not have found, and most
importantly, saving clothing from going into a landfill. Old denim has
never looked better.”
Customers may drop off unwanted Levi’s items at participating
stores in exchange for a gift card. The company will professionally
clean and sort the returned denim, which will then be sold through its
new SecondHand online store.
Shoppers can now find vintage and recently-made secondhand Levi’s
pieces through the site, with prices ranging from 30 dollars for a
pair of “mint condition” jeans to 297 dollars for a vintage denim
jacket.
A Republican candidate running for an open House seat in Montana was caught on tape praising the GOP’s measure to repeal and replace ObamaCare after declining to answer a question on Thursday about his stance on the bill.
A spokesman for Greg Gianforte, who is running against Democrat Rob Quist to fill seat vacated by now-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, told The New York Times that the candidate needs “to know exactly what’s in the bill before he votes on it.”
But in a call with lobbyists in Washington on Thursday, Gianforte could be heard expressing support for the American Health Care Act, the GOP bill repealing large parts of ObamaCare that the House narrowly passed Thursday, The Times reported.
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“The votes in the House are going to determine whether we get tax reform done, sounds like we just passed a health care thing, which I’m thankful for, sounds like we’re starting to repeal and replace,” Gianforte said on the phone call, according to the report.
The Montana special election is seen increasingly as a key battle for Republicans working to keep their House majority and Democrats looking to capitalize on President Trump’s historically low approval ratings.
Like other special elections in Kansas and Georgia, the Montana race has gained national attention. Vice President Pence is expected to travel to Montana next week to campaign for Gianforte. Likewise, Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) is set to appear alongside Quist this month.
Gianforte’s campaign manager Brock Lowrance told the Times that the candidate would not have voted for the bill, because he didn’t know what’s in it. He said Gianforte simply meant that he was “thankful” healthcare reform was underway.
Hours after President Barack Obama signed into law a defense bill that continues to thwart closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, a group of human rights activists is staging a vigil and fast at its gates to say “the whole prison must shut down.”
Under the banner “Forced-Feeding, Not Feasting at Guantanamo,” the Thanksgiving Day action outside of the base in Cuba by 14 members of Witness Against Torture aims to put a spotlight on the men who continue to suffer unjust detention and the continued practice of force-feedings of hunger striking prisoners at “the site of one of our country’s greatest shames.”
“Our actions are a simple act of solidarity,” Chris Knestrick from Cleveland, Ohio said in a media statement. “We are here to say: We know you are suffering; we have come to stand with you.”
In addition to closing the prison, the group says the U.S. military needs to shut down entirely its naval base in Cuba.
“The military base itself is an unwelcome symbol of U.S. power, which houses a torture chamber,” said New York artist Enmanuel Candelario. “No country should endure this breach of its sovereignty.”
The group’s current visit to Guantanamo marks their second; their initial trip was a decade ago. “We are impatient,” said Frank Lopez, an educator from New York City. “That is the understatement of the century,” he said, noting that though a few of the detainees have been freed and despite Obama’s pledge in 2008 to close the prison, 47 men who’ve been cleared for release still languish there. “The whole prison must shut down,” he said.
The action was met with praise by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has represented current and former Guantanamo detainees.
Aliya Hana Hussain, Advocacy Program Manager for the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at CCR, writes Thursday, “In a place designed to dehumanize everyone it touches, this simple act of compassion has real power.”
“In the absence of their own homecoming, these activists are bringing humanity to the prisoners,” she writes, noting that
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Much has been made of how Donald Trump’s racist remarks on the 2016 presidential campaign trail are “un-American,” outlandish, and—incredibly to some—giving him a bump in the polls.
But others say it’s time for a reality check.
They say Trump is merely a symptom, not the disease. That he’s tapping into latent cultural currents and that we shouldn’t, in fact, be surprised that his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-“other” rhetoric is boosting his campaign and invigorating white supremacy.
Trump is “definitely not an outlier,” Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, told The Hill. “We always have this undercurrent of xenophobia that can burst at the seams. This might be the match that turns something that was simmering into a boil.”
“No good can come when we lie to ourselves,” added Chauncey DeVega at Salon on Friday. “Donald Trump’s racism, nativism, and bigotry are as American as apple pie.”
Citing the “racist immigration and naturalization laws” the U.S. used for decades to “maintain its status as a majority ‘white’ country,” DeVega continued: “Nativism and xenophobia are not limited to the demagoguery of Republican carnival-show barker professional wrestling wannabe reality TV show hosts who want to be president of the United States.”
Indeed, Peter Schroeder reported Friday for The Hill, “there is a significant chunk of the public eager to crack down on an influx of foreigners.”
“The sentiment is there in the electorate,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton University. “You don’t need Donald Trump to have people who are calling for borders to be closed, but he taps into it. He brings it out.”
Consider Bettina Norden, a 60-year-old farmer in Springfield, Oregon, who said of Trump in an interview with the New York Times on Friday: “He’ll keep a sharp eye on those Muslims. He’ll keep the Patriot Act together. He’ll watch immigration. Stop the Muslims from immigrating.”
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Norden’s statement supports what Olivia Nuzzi declared Friday at the Daily Beast: “Trump’s ugliness does not seem to matter to his supporters because Trump’s ugliness is a reflection of the rot that can devour the soul when a person is overcome by paranoia and fear.”
The real challenge, then, is to confront not the mouthpiece, but the underlying message.
“Racism, bigotry and xenophobia are a core part of America’s national character,” DeVega warned in Salon. “We cannot defeat Donald Trump until we acknowledge that fact and own its legacy.”
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An Ohio grand jury has decided not to bring criminal charges against the two Cleveland police officers involved in last year’s fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
#TamirRice Tweets
Rice, who was black, was playing with a pellet gun when he was shot by white Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. Video evidence shows that neither Loehmann nor Frank Garmback, the other officer present, moved to provide first aid to Rice while he lay dying.
According to Cleveland.com:
Monday’s decision comes in spite of the fact that in June, a judge in Cleveland found probable cause that Loehmann should face murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide, and dereliction of duty charges in the shooting death of Rice last November. The judge also ruled that probable cause exists to charge Garmback with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty.
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A group of clergy and activists known as the ‘Cleveland 8’ in July issued a video and open letter lambasting the grand jury process. It read in part:
Attorneys for the Rice family reiterated some of these criticisms in a statement released Monday, saying they were “saddened and disappointed by this outcome—but not surprised.”
“It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment,” the attorneys said. “Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir in less than one second, Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified.”
“Then, Prosecutor McGinty allowed the police officers to take the oath and read prepared statements to the grand jury without answering any questions on cross-examination,” the statement continued. “Even though it is black letter law that taking the stand waives the Fifth Amendment right to be silent, the prosecutor did not seek a court order compelling the officers to answer questions or holding the officers in contempt if they continued to refuse. This special treatment would never be given to non-police suspects.”
The family’s attorneys said they are renewing their request that the Department of Justice “step in to conduct a real investigation into this tragic shooting.”
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President Barack Obama said during his final State of the Union that he would reform how oil and gas development is managed on public lands. Great, say environmental groups, who add that in order to really “protect the planet and his own climate legacy,” he must keep those fossil fuels in the ground.
Reacting to the president’s announcement to push for changes to oil and coal resource management, Abigail Dillen, Earthjustice Vice President of Litigation for Climate and Energy, said, “This is essential,” while Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard called it “encouraging.”
“For far too long,” Leonard’s statement continued, “the Interior Department has given away our publicly owned fossil fuels to mining and drilling companies without regard for the damage they cause to communities and our climate.”
As Ben Adler explained at Grist on Monday:
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Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said ahead of the address that Obama should seize his “final opportunity to curb one of the gravest dangers to the world’s climate: fossil fuel companies’ grotesque exploitation of America’s beautiful public lands. Every new fossil fuel lease pushes our planet closer to a dangerous climate tipping point because it locks us into more decades of dangerous carbon pollution.”
Leases on public land and offshore areas “now generate nearly a quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions,” Suckling said. “Fracking, mining and drilling are destroying America’s natural heritage to create planet-warming pollution.”
It’s a key moment, Jamie Henn, director of communications and strategy for 350.org, writes, to see if Obama will “continue to act in the way he did on Keystone XL, standing up to Big Oil and turning down projects that endanger the climate and our communities or […] continue to promote fossil fuel development, leaving a legacy full of contradictions and half-measures. Here’s why:
Taking this important climate action to truly embark on an energy transition “is change the President can lead,” Earthjustice’s Dillen says.
And here’s an important reminder: “These lands are owned by the American people,” Suckling stated, adding that “the administration has a responsibility to manage them for the public trust. In the president’s last year in office, he must find the courage to take this powerful action to protect the planet and his own climate legacy.”
The Center for Biological Diversity and 350.org were among hundreds of organizations who signed a letter for Obama in September 2015 urging him, for economic reasons as well as for the climate, to stop new leases for fossil fuel extraction on areas that are “cherished resources for us all [and that] embody deep and diverse cultural values and provide clean air and water, recreation and solitude, and refuge for endangered wildlife.”
The letter states that the Obama “administration alone has leased nearly 15 million acres of public land and 21 million acres of ocean for fossil fuel industrialization. In total more than 67 million acres—an area 55 times larger than Grand Canyon National Park—is already leased to the fossil fuel industry.”
Stopping such leases “would safeguard our air and water from dirty energy pollution; ensure the health of communities that have lived in energy sacrifice zones for generations; and keep our last, best wildlife habitat from being lost to fossil fuel industrialization,” they wrote.
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Fed up with an administration whose policies caused the devastating water crisis and subsequent health epidemic, advocacy organizations and community members are calling for nothing less than a complete overhaul of the way government works in Michigan.
On Tuesday, Flint residents met with leaders of the national NAACP to draw up a “15-point priority plan” for addressing the lead-tainted water crisis. Chief among their demands is the repeal of Michigan’s contentious emergency manager law, which was enacted in 2011 under Gov. Rick Snyder.
A memo (pdf) by the national civil rights group notes that throughout talks with Flint community members, “Most stridently, we heard the need for a return to democracy by repealing the Emergency Financial Manager Law, under which the string of decisions were made that brought Flint to this crisis.”
As Flint native Art Reyes III explained, “The emergency manager law gave unchecked power to the governor in the name of helping these communities emerge from financial distress. But in reality, it unleashed a series of devastating austerity and privatization measures adopted in the name of progress, and took away democratic rights from poor communities of color.”
Indeed, a number of the city and state officials—empowered by that very statute—who oversaw the decision to change the source of Flint’s water supply were named in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Wednesday. The complaint argues that those officials repeatedly violated a number of federal laws, including the Safe Water Drinking Act, and will continue to do so without court intervention.
“Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city,” said Michael J. Steinberg, legal director of the ACLU of Michigan, which filed the suit along with the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Flint resident and water activist Melissa Mays.
“In a failed attempt to save a few bucks,” Steinberg continued, “state-appointed officials poisoned the drinking water of an important American city, causing permanent damage to an entire generation of its children. The people of Flint cannot trust the state of Michigan to fix this man-made disaster and that is why court oversight is critically needed.”
“Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city.” —Michael J. Steinberg, ACLU of Michigan
The lawsuit asks the court to compel city and state officials to follow federal requirements for testing and treating water to control for lead and to order the prompt replacement of all lead water pipes at no cost to Flint residents. The plaintiffs also seek appropriate relief to remedy the health and medical harms to Flint residents from the lead contamination.
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Since the crisis in Flint garnered national attention, the state’s Republican government has received enhanced scrutiny for both causing and ignoring the lead-tainted water.
Calls for Snyder’s resignation have also grown, while more than 430,000 have signed a petition advocating for his arrest.
In a column Wednesday, longtime Flint resident and filmmaker Michael Moore reiterated that demand and also argued for a complete federal government takeover of the situation, writing: “The state government cannot be trusted to get this right.”
Moore continues, somewhat ironically:
Meanwhile, Snyder continues to apologize for the crisis and during a press conference Wednesday announced that he requested $28 million in supplemental funding from the state legislature and secured $5 million from the Obama administration as part of a Jan. 16 federal emergency declaration.
But, Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers (USW) union, argued in an op-ed that the Flint crisis is exactly what happens when a venture capitalist, like Snyder, gets to pull the strings.
“This was not a Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy,” Gerard wrote. “The tragedy in Flint was a choice. This was a values decision about what was important. Giving a break to big business was the top priority for venture capitalist Snyder. Operating a shoddy government, over-taxing pensioners and poisoning Flint’s children was the result.”
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Parents, teachers, and students took part in rallies and “walk-ins” across the country on Wednesday, seeking to “reclaim” U.S. public schools from the grips of corporate reformers and privatization schemes.
The coordinated actions are the second national event organized by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers, the Journey for Justice Alliance, and the Center for Popular Democracy, among other organizations and unions.
“As public schools are increasingly threatened by a view of education that supports privatization, zero-tolerance discipline policies, less funding, and high-stakes standardized tests, AROS is fighting back with a broad vision of American public education that prioritizes racial justice, equity and well-resourced, world-class, public community schools,” the group wrote in a call-to-action.
In February, the first national “walk-in” day attracted more than 40,000 people in 33 cities, who rallied and strategized outside school buildings before making a collective entrance.
At least 75 cities and counties were signed up to participate on Wednesday.
Students at more than 40 Boston Public Schools, for example, “walked in” on Wednesday morning—a tactic that AROS organizers describe (pdf) as “a positive action that says that these are our schools and our communities.”
According to Boston.com:
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Meanwhile, more than 100 students, teachers, parents and administrators gathered in front of Pottstown High School in Pennsylvania on Wednesday morning for a rally focused on budget cuts.
The Pottstown Mercury reported:
And in Los Angeles—where charter school parents went so far as to pen an open letter in advance asking for the United Teachers Los Angeles union to stop the demonstrations—families and educators marched and rallied with signs calling for smaller classes and “teaching not testing.”
Other actions took place in locales as far flung as Arkansas, Florida, Wisconsin, and Colorado. Follow #ReclaimOurSchools on Twitter:
Mansur Gavriel is well known for their accessories offerings, having
initially come to fame thanks to their bucket bag. Now, the company has
launched their new Multitude tote handcrafted from the brand’s signature
vegetable tanned leather. The Multitude offers a modern iteration of Mansur
Gavriel’s classic tote shape and is designed from four hand stitched panels
with a contrasting suede interior. It has a roomy interior compartment, and
a top zip for everyday on the go ease.
The Multitude is a seasonless handbag that can be worn year-round. In the
spirit of sustainability, Mansur Gavriel is very meticulous about their
sourcing, and the brand continues to seek out quality fabrications that can
withstand wear and tear overtime.
The made in Italy handbag comes in a variety of color options including,
black, cammello, yucca
bordo/black, navy/marine, and giallo/mustard. The price points for the bag
range from 795 dollars to 950 dollars.