Authentic news,No fake news.
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Thursday, March 2, 2017
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice with the Russian ambassador last year while he was still a senator and he failed to disclose those meetings to Congress during his confirmation hearings, the Washington Post reported.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called for Sessions' resignation.
Digits of the day:
0.09 percent
So that wall President Donald Trump is promising to build along the southern border? The one that will be financed with "existing funds and resources" of the Department of Homeland Security, until such time as Mexico agrees to pay for it? Those existing funds total $20 million. The cost of building the wall: $21.6 billion. For those keeping score at home, the wall, therefore, is 0.9 percent funded. Only 99.91 percent to go.
Bonus digits of the day:
$24 billion
Snapchat parent Snap Inc raised $3.4 billion in its IPO last night, valuing the company at $24 billion, more than double the size of Twitter and the richest valuation in a U.S. tech IPO since Facebook five years ago. The shares priced at $17 each, above the expected range of $14-16. And the IPO was oversubscribed by more than tenfold, indicating a hunger for the shares that might produce a pop on the first day of trading.
Here's a list of the people and firms getting the biggest windfallsfrom the Snap IPO.
Meanwhile an investor committee that advises the Securities and Exchange Commission plans to review if Snap's decision to deny shareholders voting rights might also reduce the social media company's public disclosures on executive pay and other governance matters.
Dante's Inferno? No, just a volcano
Italy's Mount Etna, Europe's tallest and most active volcano, spews lava as it erupts on the southern island of Sicily, Italy Feb. 28, 2017. REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello
Around the country
- During Trump's address before Congress on Tuesday, he told a story about a woman who has Pompe disease, a rare muscle disorder, and the president lauded the disease's drug treatment. It was part of his attack on "artificially high" drug prices. One problem: The drug costs $300,000 a year.
- Trump's daughter Ivanka was a key advocate for the more measured, less combative tone he struck in that speech. She made recommendations for the speech during a brainstorming session in the Oval Office on Sunday, helping her father decide on a new approach aimed at easing concerns over whether he had the right temperament to govern effectively.
- The House intelligence committee will investigate allegations of collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, the committee's top Democrat told MSNBC.
Around the world
- The fortunes of the richest 100 members of China's parliamentand its advisory body - all billionaires - grew about 64 percent in the four years since Xi Jinping rose to power in 2013. Since then, the wealth of the upper crust in the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, has grown faster than the wider economy, the stock market, home prices and wages.
- U.S.-backed Iraqi forces advancing in the Islamic State group's stronghold in western Mosul fought off a counter-attack by the militants during bad weather. Iraqi forces captured the eastern side of Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting and launched their attack on the districts that lie west of the Tigris River last month.
- Malaysia will deport a North Korean held in connection with the death of the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong Un, and cancel visa-free entry for all North Koreans, as diplomatic ties between the two countries fray further following the killing at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Around Wall Street
- About 32 million Yahoo user accounts were accessed by intruders in the last two years using forged cookies. The company said some of the latest intrusions can be connected to the "same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the 2014 breach," in which at least 500 million accounts were affected. Yahoo also said in December that data from more than 1 billion user accounts was compromised in August 2013.
- China supports the work of the World Trade Organization, the country's foreign ministry said, after the Trump's administration said it might defy WTO rulings it viewed as interfering with U.S. sovereignty.
Today's reason to live
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