China’s economic growth edged down to 6.8 percent in the final quarter of 2015 as trade and consumer spending weakened, dragging full-year growth to its lowest in 25 years.
Growth has fallen steadily over the past five years as the ruling Communist Party tries to steer away from a worn-out model based on investment and trade toward self-sustaining growth driven by domestic consumption and services. But the unexpectedly sharp decline over the past two years prompted fears of a politically dangerous spike in job losses.
Full-year growth declined to 6.9 percent, government data showed Tuesday. That was the lowest since sanctions imposed on Beijing following its crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement caused growth to plummet to 3.8 percent in 1990.
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China’s economic growth edged down to 6.8 percent in the final quarter of 2015
For the first time in 17 years, civil rights leaders gathered at the South Carolina Statehouse to pay homage to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. without the Confederate flag casting a long shadow over them.
The flag was taken down over the summer after police said a young white man shot nine black church members to death during a Bible study in Charleston. Following the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Gov. Nikki Haley reversed course and made it a priority for lawmakers to pass legislation to remove the flag.
Bishop James Walker, who presides over the 7th Episcopal District in Connecticut, praised the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for its fight against the flag.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Iran on Thursday accused the Saudi-led coalition battling Shiite rebels in Yemen of hitting its embassy in the capital, Sanaa, in an overnight airstrike, but there were no visible signs of damage on the building.
The accusation comes amid a dangerous rise in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia in recent days, following the kingdom’s execution of a Shiite cleric and attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic.
Analysts have feared the dispute could boil over into the proxy wars between the two Mideast rivals in Yemen and in Syria.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
China halted stock trading Thursday, its second daylong trading suspension this week, after prices plunged in the latest spasm of investor panic on its volatile markets.
Chinese markets have lurched up and down as regulators gradually withdraw emergency measures imposed after the main stock index plunged in June following an explosive rise.
A similar price plunge Monday triggered a sell-off on Wall Street and other global markets.
On Thursday, trading was suspended after a market index, the CSI 300, nose-dived 7 percent a half-hour after markets opened, triggering a “circuit breaker” that took effect Jan. 1.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
President Barack Obama is looking for ways to keep guns out of the hands of “a dangerous few” without depending on Congress to pass a law on the fraught subject of gun control.
He’s says he’ll meet his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, on Monday to see what executive actions might be possible. Steps to strengthen background checks could come this week.
“The gun lobby is loud and well organized in its defense of effortlessly available guns for anyone,” Obama said in his weekly radio address. “The rest of us are going to have to be just as passionate and well organized in our defense of our kids.”
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ASSOCIATED PRESS President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about gun violence at the Annual Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco, Friday, June 19, 2015.
Bill Cosby was charged Wednesday with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home 12 years ago — the first criminal charges brought against the comedian out of the torrent of allegations that destroyed his good-guy image as America’s Dad.
The case sets the stage for perhaps the biggest Hollywood celebrity trial of the mobile-all-the-time era and could send the 78-year-old Cosby to prison in the twilight of his life and barrier-breaking career.
Cosby was charged with aggravated indecent assault and was to be arraigned in the afternoon.
Prosecutors accused him of rendering former Temple University employee Andrea Constand unable to resist by plying her with pills and wine, then penetrating her digitally without her consent, when she was unconscious or unaware of what was happening.
At least 11 people died and dozens were injured in strong tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area and caused substantial damage this weekend, while 13 people died in flooding in the Midwest.
It was the latest of a succession of powerful weather events across the country, from heavy snow in New Mexico, west Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle to flooding in parts of the Plains and Midwest. Days of tumultuous weather have led to 43 deaths overall — those in Texas, plus five in Illinois, eight in Missouri and 19 in the Southeast.
The full extent of damage from Saturday’s storms along a nearly 40-mile stretch near Dallas came into clear focus. Local officials estimated as many as 1,450 homes were damaged or destroyed. Vehicles were mangled, power lines fell and trees were toppled. Heavy rain, wind and falling temperatures hampered cleanup efforts Sunday afternoon.
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G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News via AP
Damage is seen in a mobile home park after Saturday’s tornado in Garland, Texas, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2015. At least 11 people died and dozens were injured in apparently strong tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area and caused substantial damage this weekend. (G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
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Sudden cardiac arrest may not always be so sudden: New research suggests a lot of people may ignore potentially life-saving warning signs hours, days, even a few weeks before they collapse.
Cardiac arrest claims about 350,000 U.S. lives a year. It’s not a heart attack, but worse: The heart abruptly stops beating, its electrical activity knocked out of rhythm. CPR can buy critical time, but so few patients survive that it’s been hard to tell if the longtime medical belief is correct that it’s a strike with little or no advance warning.
An unusual study that has closely tracked sudden cardiac arrest in Portland, Oregon, for over a decade got around that roadblock, using interviews with witnesses, family and friends after patients collapse and tracking down their medical records.
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Fuse via Getty Images
“About half of middle-aged patients for whom symptom information could be found had experienced warning signs, mostly chest pain or shortness of breath, in the month before suffering a cardiac arrest.”
President Barack Obama will use his Sunday night address on terrorism to urge the American people not to “give in to fear” after the California shootings, and may ask Congress to take action to further safeguard national security, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said.
Lynch also said that “dealing with guns is one way to handle the violence crime issues that we have in this country.”
The White House said Obama would provide an update on Wednesday’s shootings in San Bernardino that killed 14 and wounded 21, and discuss the broader threat of terrorism, including how it has evolved and how he plans to defeat it. Authorities say a married couple – a 28-year-old American-born man and a 29-year-old woman originally from Pakistan – was responsible, and that the woman had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group on Facebook as they went on their rampage.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
The Obama administration is boosting the amount of corn-based ethanol and other renewable fuels in the U.S. gasoline supply despite sustained opposition by an unusual alliance of oil companies, environmentalists and some GOP presidential candidates.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a final rule designed to increase production of ethanol to be blended with gasoline through 2016, a decision that could reverberate in Iowa’s crucial presidential caucuses.
The agency said it will require more than 18 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2016, most of it ethanol. The amount is less than was set in a 2007 renewable fuels law, but is more than was proposed by the EPA in May. The agency said that the demand for gasoline has risen since May, increasing the amount of renewable fuels that can be blended in.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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China’s economic growth edged down to 6.8 percent in the final quarter of 2015
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
James' World 2 