# data[].attributes.body
Having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.
Example: Hitler was very xenophobic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a report on the Status of German Unity released by the cabinet on Wednesday, leaders expressed concern about the increasing incidents of anti-immigrant and right-wing attacks, especially in eastern states that were part of the former German Democratic Republic.

Presenting the report, Social Democrat Iris Gleicke said she was "very upset" with the development. Right-wing attacks were now being carried out from the ranks of normal citizens or accepted by them. She said she expected the federal government and state and district administrations to "act decisively."

The document said that xenophobia, right-wing extremism and intolerance could lead to destroying all chances for increasing immigration in a region where the dwindling population could benefit from immigrants. It also expressed concern that the former East German states, other than Berlin, had the lowest ratio of foreigners compared to their western counterparts. This proved that anti-migrant violence was not because of a high proportion of refugees.

Confrontations between refugees and residents in Saxony's Bautzen made headlines this week

According to a report by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, there was an average of 10.5 extremist attacks for a million people in the western states. Eastern states like Mecklenburg-West Pomerania showed 58.7 attacks for a million people, followed by 51.9 in Brandenburg and 49.6 in Saxony.

"We East Germans have to take the matter into our own hands and decide whether we want to protect our cities and villages or leave them to the brown nightmare," Gleicke said, referring to the brown uniforms worn during the Nazi regime. People were obliged to not look away when people or refugee shelters were being attacked, she added.

Migrants essential for development

The report said the eastern part of Germany was catching up with its western half when it came to economic development and regional governments were doing a good job in training employees and improving the quality of life and the environment. However, compared to northern, southern and western Germany, the region still lagged behind in terms of economic performance, income, health and life expectancy.

The migration of skilled foreigners and EU citizens into the east would therefore help stabilize the decline in the number of people and offset the effect of an increasingly ageing population. A majority of refugees in Germany were under 30 years old and could therefore be trained for jobs. However, the eastern states needed to develop a richer culture of welcoming foreigners if they wanted a better future, the report said.

Iris Gleicke

Many East Germans, especially those with advanced skill sets, left their hometowns to look for more lucrative opportunities in the west after reunification in 1990. Consequently, the population in these areas declined. Neo-Nazi groups sprouted in several states, including Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Saxony, home to the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground (NSU).

Of late, these groups have used terror attacks and the influx of refugees to highlight the failure of the government and gain public support. In 2014, members of PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West) began marches in the Saxon town of Dresden to protest what they perceived as the rising influence of Muslims. Mainstream political parties like Alternative for Germany (AfD) have also used these arguments to attract voters in regional elections.

Attacks on refugee shelters and asylum shelters have been on the rise across Germany after the country opened its borders to over one million migrants last year - mostly from the conflict-ridden Middle East and Africa. Nearly 1,050 cases of arson on refugee homes were registered in 2015. This year, the figures have already crossed 700 until now, according to the Federal Police Office.

mg/msh/blc (AFP, KNA, epd)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Federal report laments rising xenophobia in Germany | DW | 21.09.2016

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a report on the Status of German Unity released by the cabinet on Wednesday, leaders expressed concern about the increasing incidents of anti-immigrant and right-wing attacks, especially in eastern states that were part of the former German Democratic Republic. Presenting the report, Social Democrat Iris Gleicke said she was "very upset" with the development.

# data[].attributes.body
A general vote by the electorate on a single political question that has been referred to them for a direct decision. (voters get to choose yes or no to a question like spending money on a new school)
Example: Schools sometimes put out referendums.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Fears that Britain will slide into a post-referendum recession have been allayed after a Guardian analysis showed the latest news on the economy has confounded analysts' gloomy expectations, with consumer spending strong, unemployment low and the housing market holding steady.

Fears that Britain will slide into a post-referendum recession have been allayed after a Guardian analysis showed the latest news on the economy has confounded analysts' gloomy expectations, with consumer spending strong, unemployment low and the housing market holding steady.

The finding comes as a leading thinktank toned down its earlier dire warnings of economic turmoil for the UK and its neighbours in the event of a leave vote. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said prompt action by the Bank of England to cut interest rates had cushioned the blow from June's Brexit vote but it still believes the UK will suffer a sharp slowdown next year amid heightened uncertainty.

Official figures on the state of the public finances, released on Wednesday, also showed little impact from the vote to leave the EU. Government borrowing was a touch higher than economists had expected in August, but was lower than a year ago in a boost to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, as he prepares to give his maiden autumn statement in November.

Following the historic 23 June vote to leave the EU, analysts were quick to predict the UK economy would grind to a halt or even shrink. They warned businesses and households would stop spending because of job cuts, political uncertainty and a squeeze on living standards as the weak pound stoked inflation.

But since the Bank stepped in with a package of measures to shore up the economy, much of the economic news has defied expectations and many analysts have toned down their post-referendum gloom.

Now the picture of early resilience is bolstered in the first snapshot of post-referendum Britain in a new Guardian project that will track the economy as the Brexit talks begin and progress, and as more data on the economy becomes available.

The Guardian has chosen eight economic indicators, as well as the value of the pound against the dollar and euro, to illustrate the state of the economy.

While there are warning signs of possible problems ahead, the dashboard shows a better than expected performance in four of the eight categories analysed. Two were as expected and inflation came in below forecasts, defying expectations for a post-referendum pick-up in price rises. Public borrowing was a little worse than forecast, at £10.5bn in August, compared with the £10bn predicted by economists.

Speaking after the latest figures, Hammond highlighted signs of resilience. "The underlying strength in the UK economy will support growth this year, and we have seen that in the labour market where employment is at a record high," he said.

On Wednesday, investment bank UBS became the latest to revise up its forecasts for growth. It now expects GDP to expand 1.9%, rather than 1.3%, in 2016. In 2017 growth is expected to slow sharply to 0.7%, just above a previous forecast of 0.5%.

Joe Grice, the chief economist at the Office for National Statistics, said a check on the data out so far suggested there had not been a huge shock to the economy.

"As the available information grows, the referendum result appears, so far, not to have had a major effect on the UK economy. So it hasn't fallen at the first fence but longer-term effects remain to be seen," he said.

The Guardian's dashboard shows that consumer spending, business activity, house prices and wage growth have all beaten forecasts. Unemployment has held at an 11-year low of 4.9% and exports appear to have been helped by a weaker pound.

But behind the headline messages of continued high-street spending and a rebound in business activity, there are telltale signs of challenges that could hit the economy just as Britain embarks on what may be the " most complicated negotiation of all time", as the Brexit secretary, David Davis, has described it. Statisticians have also warned against reading too much into any one month's data.

Firms are already complaining of a rise in the cost of materials as the weak pound raises import prices. They must decide whether to pass that on to consumers or take a hit to their profits. At the same time, wage growth has slowed, albeit by less than economists predicted.

The prospect of slower earnings and higher inflation raises the spectre of British workers' pay packets falling in real terms. There are also worries that young people will bear the brunt of any downturn, with early signs that graduate job schemes have been cut since the Brexit vote.

Businesses have spoken of their fears that the economy will slow markedly when Brexit negotiations begin in earnest, which has made them nervous about investing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Analysts had predicted a drop in house prices but fears have been allayed by figures from HMRC. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

In their latest check on the economy, the Bank's agents around the country said companies' investment and employment intentions had fallen. But consumer spending growth and confidence had been more resilient, they added.

In the housing market, analysts predicted a drop in house prices following the Brexit vote but property transaction figures from the HMRC on Wednesday confounded those fears of a crash. Residential property transactions were flat between July and August, but down 6.1% from a year ago. Similarly, a check on surveyors' expectations from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors suggested that confidence was already returning to the housing market in August.

The Bank last week held interest rates at their record low of 0.25%, with its monetary policy committee (MPC) conceding that "a number of indicators of near-term economic activity have been somewhat stronger than expected". Policymakers still expect a "material slowing" in the second half of this year and continued to hint at another rate cut to about 0.1%.

Speaking to the Guardian, the former MPC member David Blanchflower said policymakers were wise to act quickly after the vote. He believes the Bank learned lessons from the global financial crisis.

"The collapse in business and consumer confidence data from April 2008 was the earliest signal that the Great Recession had started. So it was sensible for the MPC to act when they collapsed after the Brexit vote and not to wait, as some have suggested, for the 'hard data'," said Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. "My worry is that there is a lot of bad news to come. It is good to get your retaliation in first. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best."

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

David Blanchflower, a former member of the MPC. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

But another former MPC member, Andrew Sentance, said the Bank was wrong to cut interest rates so soon. He fears savers will suffer from even lower returns, while there is a risk that cheap borrowing costs will drive a further surge in house prices.

"I believe the Bank should have held fire until it had more evidence on how the economy would respond to the post-Brexit shock. There is a genuine danger of unintended adverse consequences from their current policy," said Sentance, now senior economic adviser at the consultancy PwC.

Overall, Sentance feels the economic indicators so far have been mixed. "The economy seems to have rebounded after the shock to confidence in July, helped by the stabilisation in the political situation," he said. "Retail sales and other measures of consumer spending have held up reasonably well. But estimates for the overall growth of the economy in the third quarter point to an increase of just 0.2%-0.3% over the previous quarter."

The dashboard analyses the performance of areas of the economy since April, comparing key economic indicators with the predictions of those indicators, based on the consensus forecasts in polls of economists by Reuters.
* To find out more about supporting the Guardian's journalism, please click here Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Brexit economy: post-referendum data defies gloomy UK predictions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fears that Britain will slide into a post-referendum recession have been allayed after a Guardian analysis showed the latest news on the economy has confounded analysts' gloomy expectations, with consumer spending strong, unemployment low and the housing market holding steady.

# data[].attributes.body
the improvement or fixing of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc.
Example: Tax reform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As a registered Libertarian, I am assaulted by young, liberal friends who tell me that if I vote for Gary Johnson, I'm voting for Donald Trump by not giving my support to Hillary Clinton.

And I'm told by my older, conservative friends that by not supporting Trump, I may as well vote for Clinton. Since both can't be true, I'm left wondering why our elections are so dysfunctional, and why no one wants to talk about it.

We need massive election reform to revitalize our political discourse and flip elections on their heads. I suggest ranked-choice voting, which can be explored at fairvote.org. This would prevent a vote from ever being wasted, because staunch supporters of Green Party candidate Jill Stein, deathly terrified of Trump, could list Clinton as their reluctant second choice, to vote their conscience, but also still vote strategically.

Similarly, voters in the middle, antsy for an outsider and scared of Clinton and the establishment, could cast a shameless vote for Gary Johnson with Trump a reluctant second choice. As first choice losers are weeded out, ranked choice guarantees no winner without majority support. Can we talk about our elections now?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As a registered Libertarian, I am assaulted by young, liberal friends who tell me that if I vote for Gary Johnson, I'm voting for Donald Trump by not giving my support to Hillary Clinton. And I'm told by my older, conservative friends that by not supporting Trump, I may as well vote for Clinton.

# data[].attributes.body
A procedure that allows citizens to remove and replace a public official before the end of a term of office
Example: Brazil recalled their president.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Within days of heralding their products' return to grocery stores in three states, officials with Blue Bell Creameries quietly recalled two flavors of cookie dough ice cream from 10 states because of Listeria concerns.

Discovered to have had Listeria monocytogenes problems at its production facilities in recent years, Blue Bell remains under federal investigation related to a deadly multi-state outbreak that temporarily halted the company's operations in 2015.

This time, though, the Listeria contamination is believed to be the fault of a company supplier - Aspen Hills Inc. - according to a notice Blue Bell posted Wednesday. No illnesses had been reported in connection with the recalled ice cream as of Wednesday, Blue Bell officials reported.

"Blue Bell identified a potential problem through intensified internal testing and notified Aspen Hills. Aspen Hills then issued a voluntary recall of the products supplied to Blue Bell," according to the notice on the Brenham, TX-based ice cream company's website.

"Although our products in the marketplace have passed our test and hold program, which requires that finished product samples test negative for Listeria monocytogenes, Blue Bell is initiating this recall out of an abundance of caution."

Blue Bell reports distributing the recalled "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" and "Cookie Two Step" flavored ice cream in 10 states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Blue Bell had just re-entered grocery stores in Georgia and the Carolinas in the past 10 days.

Consumers are urged to check their homes for the recalled Blue Bell ice cream and not eat it. The recalled ice cream can be identified by the following package information:

Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough half gallons with the code number 082618226;

Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough pints with code numbers 081518242 or 082418242; and

Blue Bell Cookie Two Step half gallons with the code numbers 080418222 or 081818224.

Blue Bell produced the recalled ice cream at its Sylacauga, AL, plant using cookie dough from Aspen Hills Inc.

Follow the dough
Based in Garner, IA, Aspen Hills is a supplier of cookie dough for food companies. It is also a leading provider of cookie dough for fundraising campaigns, according to its website.

Aspen Hills recalled certain lots of its no-egg chocolate chip cookie dough on Tuesday, according to documents posted on Blue Bell's website. Aspen Hills shipped 578 cases of the dough to Sylacauga, AL, on July 26 and a total of 1,358 cases to Brenham, TX, on Aug. 9 and 22.

The recall notice from Aspen Hills posted by Blue Bell does not name the ice cream company. It also does not specify how many entities in Alabama and Texas received the combined 1,936 cases of cookie dough.

Anyone who has eaten the recalled ice cream and developed symptoms of Listeria infection should immediately seek medical attention and inform medical personnel about the possible exposure to Listeria monocytogenes. Symptoms can take up to 70 days after exposure to develop.

Listeria monocytogenes is a microscopic organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

The Listeria outbreak linked to Blue Bell ice cream products in 2015 was both complex and unusual. The outbreak included at least 10 sick people across four states and spanned the period from 2010 to 2015. All 10 people required hospitalization. Three died.

In addition to withdrawing their products from the market in 2015, Blue Bell officials shut down production facilities in Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas. But the fourth-largest ice cream producer was back in business by year's end.

Texas put Blue Bell on short leash
Owners of Blue Bell Creameries LP agreed earlier this year to pay a fine in Texas in relation to the deadly Listeria outbreak. The agreement between Blue Bell and the Texas State Department of Health Services required the company to pay $175,000 within 30 days of signing it. Blue Bell's president and CEO Paul W. Kruse signed the agreement July 22.

Another $675,000 - for a total fine of $850,000 - must be "held in abeyance" and would go to the state if Blue Bell fails to meet food safety requirements in the coming 18 months.

If Blue Bell makes it through the 18 months, the state will not require the company to pay the remaining $675,000 of the $850,000 fine, according to the agreement.
(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Blue Bell recalls ice cream for Listeria; blames supplier | Food Safety News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Within days of heralding their products' return to grocery stores in three states, officials with Blue Bell Creameries quietly recalled two flavors of cookie dough ice cream from 10 states because of Listeria concerns. Discovered to have had Listeria monocytogenes problems at its production facilities in recent years, Blue Bell remains under federal investigation related...

# data[].attributes.body
To search for and expose real or alleged corruption, scandal, or the like, especially in politics.
Example: Muckrakers helped with the Watergate scandal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than 300 journalists and speakers from 30 countries will be attending the second Asian Investigative Journalism Conference, 22-25 September, in Kathmandu, the largest ever-international media conference to be held in Nepal.

The event is organised by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and co-hosted by the Kathmandu-based Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJN), and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung of Germany. It is expected to bring together some of Asia's best muckrakers, data journalists and media law and cyber-security experts from around the world.

Recent crackdowns on press freedom across Asia have made it difficult and dangerous for reporters, especially investigative journalists. Media has had to battle censorship, overt state control, harassment, and reporters have been killed even in countries with long traditions of free press such as Philippines and India.

However, Asia has also seen courageous journalists expose corrupt leaders for their ill-gotten wealth, kleptocratic state machineries, investigated cross-border financial crimes, trafficking, illegal logging and has uncovered large-scale plunder of state coffers like the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia.

"Now, more than ever, Asia needs powerfully reported stories that uncover wrongdoing by powerful individuals and institutions," says Sheila Coronel of Stabile Centre for Investigative Journalism of Columbia University, whose expose of Philippine President Josef Estrada in 2001 led to his downfall. "The Kathmandu conference is a unique opportunity to foster cross-border collaboration among investigative journalists in the region and elsewhere."

Coronel is a speaker at the conference together with the Pulitzer Prize winning team that investigated the Seafood Slaves story for the Associated Press. Walter V Robinson of the Boston Globe whose investigative story on paedophile priests featured in the Oscar-winning film, Spotlight, will be giving the keynote speech.

Ying Chan who has just finished her tenure as dean of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong, Steven Gan of the independent news portal, Malaysiakini, and strong teams of investigative and data journalists from India and Pakistan will be in attendance.

"We're witnessing an extraordinary response to the Kathmandu conference, not just in the number of investigative journalists participating, but also in the high calibre of speakers," GIJN Director David Kaplan told the Nepali Times. "What happens in Nepal next week will influence Asian journalism for years."

The first Uncovering Asia conference was held in Manila, Philippines in 2014 and got such a positive response that GIJN decided to hold another one, and proposed a partnership with CIJN.

"At a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to uncover the truth and present facts to the public, the conference will provide huge motivation to Nepali journalists, especially investigative reporters," says Namrata Sharma, Chair of CIJN. "At the same time it a matter of pride for Nepal to host an event in which so many globally well-recognised journalists will be participating."

The conference will have more than 60 workshops and panels: from a forum on the Panama Papers to panels on investigating corruption, climate change, health, to a session assessing the state of investigative journalism in Nepal. Journalists from Kantipur, Republica, Annapurna Post, The Kathmandu Post, BBC Nepal, Nagarik, Ujjyalo and other Nepali media portals are expected to participate.

There will also be a demonstration on the use of database managers and a workshop on security for investigative journalists. Advanced mapping, Internet detective, Media Law Clinic, virtual reality and hands-on training in data journalism and digital protection are other aspects that the conference is scheduled to cover.

"The era of the lone wolf is over. An increasingly interconnected world needs journalists who can work across borders to hold power to account," says Sheila Coronel.

There will also be panels on the best cross-border investigative stories on post-disaster reporting, data mining, covering conflict, human trafficking and slavery, organised crime and terrorism.

UNCOVERING ASIA

Some of the notable participants attending the Asian investigative journalism conference:

IndiaSpend, India

Newstapa, Korea

Katadata, Indonesia
Read also: Asia uncovered, Guna Raj Luitel Investigation online The storytellers, CK Lal Investigative journalism competition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Media muckrakers coming to town | Nation | Nepali Times

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than 300 journalists and speakers from 30 countries will be attending the second Asian Investigative Journalism Conference, 22-25 September, in Kathmandu, the largest ever-international media conference to be held in Nepal. The event is organised by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and co-hosted by the Kathmandu-based Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal (CIJN), and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung of Germany.

# data[].attributes.body
An organized association of workers formed to protect and further their rights and interests; a labor union.
Example: Labor unions protect workers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When working people come together, they make things better for everyone. Joining together in unions enables workers to negotiate for higher wages and benefits and improve conditions in the workplace. There are millions of union members in America from all walks of life.

# data[].attributes.body
A political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group, commands the support of a group of supporters and businesses (usually campaign workers), who receive rewards for their efforts. The machine's power is based on the ability of the workers to get out the vote for their candidates on election day. In many cases illegal actions are taken to control the government for the benefit of that group.
Example: Political Machines are big parts of elections.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The so called "green energy" movement is sinking to a new low in its fanatical mission to eradicate the use of fossil fuels in America. Two examples of this obsessive hostility and deception reveal just how far "green" activists are willing to go to advance their agenda.

Recent efforts by several liberal state attorneys general to investigate those who have contrary views on manmade global warming has become an ugly campaign of intimidation and harassment. In a betrayal of public trust as well as the First Amendment, several attorneys general transformed their offices into partisan political machines, launching probes and issuing subpoenas of individuals, groups and businesses that dared to question whether factors other than man might be responsible for climate change.

After the Energy and Environment Legal Institute exposed the blatant coordination between several state attorneys general and liberal environmental groups, public reaction was widespread and appropriately harsh. As a result, a much lauded group of 17 state attorneys has run for cover and now has dwindled to arguably just one: New York's Eric Schneiderman.

Red-faced Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker was the first to retreat in a firestorm of criticism over subpoenas against Exxon, think tanks and various research organizations. Other news reports suggest that California's AG never started much of an investigation and Massachusetts AG Maura Healey has suspended her probe into climate "deniers." Counter-subpoenas from the chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and bold criticism from Texas AG Ken Paxton certainly helped bring about the demise of the, "Clean Power Coalition."

Another shameful example of the green energy playbook is the Southern Environmental Law Center's ongoing campaign against Duke Energy in North Carolina. Coal ash, a byproduct of coal after it's used to produce electricity, is not considered to be a carcinogen by the EPA. Yet, the SELC is portraying it as an environmental monster as means of crushing an energy producer. They're deceitfully frightening N.C. residents about drinking water quality and demanding remediation "solutions" that will needlessly cost ratepayers billions while pounding the state's highway infrastructure for years to come.

Additionally, the SELC is actively promoting dubious information from a controversial "expert," state toxicologist Dr. Kenneth Rudo. Rudo apparently arrived at his own safety "standard" regarding coal ash and the trace amounts of an element called chromium 6 which is found in coal ash but also occurs naturally. Rudo says there is no safe standard for any amount of chromium 6 in any water supply - a statement no other state nor the national EPA recognizes as fact.

Chromium 6 is found in some 70 percent of all water supplies in the United States, according to Paul Driessen, senior policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, who notes that arbitrarily proclaiming any amount chromium 6 to be a health hazard, absent of any known peer-reviewed fact, needlessly alarms people. If the rest of the nation adopted Rudo's random safety standards, tens of millions of people would be told not to drink their water.

This is not the first time Rudo's arbitrary standard-setting has been called into question. In a Maryland case, Rudo testified that methyl tertiary-butyl (MTBE), an organic compound added to gasoline is a "probable human carcinogen" and again proclaimed, "...there is no save level." The EPA disagrees. EPA does not classify MTBE as a human carcinogen saying the present standard for MTBE allows for a person to be exposed to the chemical every day for 70 years with only a negligibly increased risk of cancer. The case, based largely Rudo's testimony, crumbled and awards to the plaintiffs were reversed. Rudo has also testified in the past how mushrooms, coffee, peanut butter and bread also contain carcinogens.

The green fringe believes its job is to kill off access to the affordable and reliable energy upon which we rely for our quality of life. Meanwhile, energy producers must provide that much-needed supply - while spending multi-millions every year defending themselves against often baseless attacks.

No one is arguing against accountability, remediation, and taking immediate steps to prevent future incidents when environmental accidents occur. But the rabid green movement does not often bother itself with reality, facts or even honesty. Its moral compass is guided solely by the extent to which it can shutter American energy suppliers.

In a crucial election year, we must decide whether we will support policies that want to grow our energy industry and help create thousands of new jobs, or whether to vote for policies that pander to unrealistic environmental extremists.
David Schnare, Esq. Ph.D. serves as General Counsel of the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When It Comes To Environmental Extremism, Anything Goes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The so called "green energy" movement is sinking to a new low in its fanatical mission to eradicate the use of fossil fuels in America. Two examples of this obsessive hostility and deception reveal just how far "green" activists are willing to go to advance their agenda.

# data[].attributes.body
Conditions relating to public health, especially the provision of clean drinking water, adequate sewage disposal and garbage disposal.

Example: Sanitation of cities is very important in order to keep everyone healthy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For an artist obsessed for nearly half a century with the concepts of maintenance and sanitation, Mierle Laderman Ukeles keeps an office in desperate need of a cleaning. Or maybe an intervention by a department of doctoral students.

"This stuff needs to go into an archive, because it's getting insane," she said one August morning, surveying shelves groaning with piles of paper, file boxes, photographs, videotapes, rolls of film and other testaments to one of the more unlikely, and underappreciated, careers in the postwar New York art world.

The office, on Beaver Street in Lower Manhattan, deep within the headquarters of the New York Department of Sanitation - where she has been an unsalaried artist in residence since not long after she proposed the idea to the city agency in 1976 - was the site that morning of feverish preparations for the first comprehensive retrospective of Ms. Ukeles's work, which has just opened at the Queens Museum.

Such a show has been a long time coming, but Ms. Ukeles, at 77, is nothing if not patient. She understood many years ago, she said, that the highly idiosyncratic art she was making - about so-called menial labor, about scrubbing and picking up and about the existential meaning of garbage itself, pieces that confused many of her peers and unsettled fellow feminists - was not sexy and might never get the recognition it deserved.

"People didn't understand why I was so interested in one municipal department, especially this one, which really got no respect, especially back then," she said. "But I felt like it was perfect, conceptually and practically. For me, the Sanitation Department was like the major leagues."

The road that led there started with the birth of her first child in 1968, a dozen years after she had moved from her hometown, Denver, to New York to make it as an artist. She was stunned to discover ("I was so naïve") that becoming a mother "instantly made me into a different class of human being."

"People stopped asking me questions, stopped thinking of me as anything other than a mother," she said. "I was in a crisis because I had worked years to be an artist, and I didn't want to be two people. It seemed like I could be an artist only by being two people." And so she sat down and in a single session typed a cri de coeur - "Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!" - that became a touchstone of conceptual and performance art, questioning not only gender and class in the art world but the foundations of the avant-garde itself.

Among its choice lines: "The sourball of every revolution: after the revolution, who's going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?" She wrote that she planned to continue doing the things she had to do as a mother and housekeeper, but to "flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art."

And then, in 1976, after she staged a collaborative performance with the help of more than 300 cleaners, maintenance workers and security guards at a downtown Manhattan building, an art critic's tongue-in-cheek response - that maybe the financially beleaguered Sanitation Department could call its work art and qualify for a National Endowment for the Arts grant - set off a bell in her head.

She wrote to the department and proposed essentially that very thing. Vito A. Turso, a deputy commissioner at the department, recalled reading the letter and manifesto back then, when he was a young public information officer. "I'd been a newspaper reporter and I'd seen some crazy, single-spaced letters in my time, and I thought: 'Oh, God, what's this?' But then I read it, and she had me at hello. And what she started to do was really magic." (Patricia C. Phillips, an art historian who organized the retrospective with Larissa Harris, a Queens Museum curator, has called the pairing of artist and agency "an almost unimaginable cultural and municipal affiliation.")

To earn the respect of the department's workers and to learn its byzantine system for vanquishing millions of tons of garbage per year, she conducted what became one of the most ambitious performance pieces in the city's history - "Touch Sanitation Performance" - in which she spent a year visiting each of the department's districts and shaking the hand of every one of the 8,500 workers who would accept the gesture.

Photos from the performance show her, with her shock of blond hair - it's now mostly white but still cascades around her head - surrounded by crews of beefy men, each of them looking at her as if she was the first person who ever deigned to give them so much as the time of day.

"I think her main idea - that so much happens in this world because of labor that is not acknowledged - is really powerful," said Ms. Harris. She added that Ms. Ukeles's concept of landfills as land art, at a time when men like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer were building immense, essentially masculine land-art pieces in the American West, was "a hilariously beautiful mental leap." (In a video piece at the retrospective, Ms. Ukeles says of the former Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, once the largest landfill in the world, now being remade into a park that she is helping to shape: "All of us made the social sculpture that is Fresh Kills.")

As you might expect from someone who has bent a city bureaucracy to her benevolent will for almost 40 years, Ms. Ukeles doesn't often take no for an answer.

"She's come through with some ideas that, even if you were a willing partner, stretched the bounds of possibility," Mr. Turso said. "We've had to try to slow her down at times, which isn't easy."

She and her husband, Jack, now live in Tel Aviv, to be closer to their three adult children and seven grandchildren there. But Ms. Ukeles is back at her Beaver Street office often enough that workers still greet her in the halls like an old friend. And she still knows the department's inner mechanisms almost as well as any of the eight commissioners who have run it during her time as its artistic soul.

When I told her that the neighborhood where I live in Brooklyn is part of the Sanitation Department's pilot program for collecting compostable food waste, she beamed: "And do you know what that means? It means the system is backing up into your house, making you responsible. Which is what should happen - because you're part of the system!"

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: She Calls the Sanitation Department Home. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
An Artist Who Calls the Sanitation Department Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The road that led there started with the birth of her first child in 1968, a dozen years after she had moved from her hometown, Denver, to New York to make it as an artist. She was stunned to discover ("I was so naïve") that becoming a mother "instantly made me into a different class of human being."

# data[].attributes.body
A run-down and often overcrowded apartment house, especially in a poor section of a large city.
Example: New York City has a lot of tenemants

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Yesterday afternoon a group of vocal protesters gathered along East 11th Street, facing a row of historic brick buildings they're intent on saving from demolition at the hands of one of the city's most prolific developers. The structures in question are a streak of five residential buildings, all of them five-story, Old Law tenements that, according to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, have changed little since they were built between 1887 and 1892.

GVSHP and the other preservation groups that organized yesterday's protest- including the Historic Districts Council, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative and the East Village Community Coalition- are appealing to the city's Landmarks and Preservation Commission to come through with an eleventh-hour historic district designation that would thwart plans for a 300-room hotel.

The buildings have nicer facade details than most- including what GVSHP describes as a "massive cornice with a crowning plinth and large, decorative brackets"- and familiar fire escapes zigzagging across the brick fronts, ranging in hues from classic, dark red to a lighter buff. But aren't buildings like these a dime a dozen in the East Village? If there were a competition for your eyes, they wouldn't stand a chance against historic Webster Hall, that blood-red Renaissance Revival behemoth located directly across the street.

But just try to imagine the East Village without brick tenements like the ones extending from 112 to 120 East 11th Street. State Senator Brad Hoylman, the only elected official who attended Monday's protest, said, "This is the fabric of our neighborhood."

East Village residents and affordable housing advocates and others who were there in solidarity were called to action after news broke that the Lightstone Group was planning to demo the historic buildings.

It all happened in the span of just a few months after the property, which wraps around the 11th Street buildings and 85 East 10th Street between 3rd and 4th avenues, was scooped up by the Lightstone Group for $127 million (the buyout was finalized in April). Just a month later in May, it came to light that Lightstone, described by The Real Deal as "among the city's most active developers," had plans to build a Marriott hotel on the site.

It's all part of Marriott's massive $1 billion investment aimed at setting up of their new line of Moxy Hotels in New York City, which the company has described as an "affordable chic" hotel brand "designed to capture the rapidly emerging millennial traveler." There are a number of Moxy locations already open around the world, and one in New Orleans opened this summer with plans for "acupuncture happy hour and visiting DJs" and even an artist residency program. The Moxy website claims that a new location at "NYC/Manhattan/Greenwich (11th Street)" is opening sometime in late 2018. (B+B reached out to Marriott for comment but hasn't received a response.)

The protestors seemed particularly peeved at the Millennial detail. "[They] obviously care nothing of our history," Senator Hoylman said.

"It's an insult to my generation," Kelly Carroll of the Historic Districts Council argued. "Young people move to and visit New York, particularly this neighborhood, because of its authenticity." The Moxy, she said, is "anti-East Village" and represents the encroachment of "mediocrity" on the city. "It's an example of tasteless, moneyed people missing the point."

There's no sign that Lightstone's demolition application has been approved by the Department of Buildings just yet, however Berman told reporters at the protest yesterday that the "100 people who lived here" had already been evicted, and that the preservationists are currently trying to reach tenants to find out exactly what happened.

The protest called attention to the fact that these buildings provided affordable housing, including rent-stabilized units which have been on the decline in this neighborhood (and across the city) thanks to prospecting landlords and rent increases that lead to deregulation. Not all of the 76 units split between the five buildings extending from 112 and 120 East 11th Street are rent-stabilized, but according to the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), three of the four buildings contain some rent-stabilized units. The remaining units, however, are market rate. According to StreetEasy, a one-bedroom was leased out in May of this year for a whopping $3,250 a month.

While the loss of the historic buildings and affordable housing to a corporate hotel franchise was disturbing enough to protestors, how the whole thing went down with the Landmarks Preservation Commissions was another major point of contention.

"The process in some ways is even more disturbing," Berman explained during a phone call last week with B+B. "This was brought to the commission's attention with the knowledge that it was in imminent danger, and in the course of two months they didn't even respond."

Berman and others representing the local preservationist groups behind Monday's protest alerted the LPC in a letter dated June 9, 2016: "We are writing you to urge you to consider the designation of a historic district at East 11th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues. It is imperative that this be considered expeditiously as several of the historic resources in this potential district, specifically 112-120 East 11th Street, are planned for demolition."

It's especially confounding how the LPC failed to act considering that the environmental impact study conducted prior to the 2008 East Village rezoning classified East 11th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues as home to a "known architectural resource," Webster Hall, and deserving of a more all-encompassing landmark designation. The report outlines a "potential East Eleventh Historic District."

"We knew that given that they hadn't acted since 2008 to landmark this site, that it would probably take some convincing," Berman explained. "But we thought that hopefully it wouldn't be that hard given that they themselves had decided that it was landmark eligible years back." He added that "all they had to do was calendar the buildings"- meaning that a temporary hold would be placed on any demolition permitting while the LPC reviewed the potential landmarking. "It's not like we were asking them to do something unprecedented, but they refused to act in this case."

The LPC has not responded to B+B's request for comment, but the commission did respond to Curbed:

"The agency has recently evaluated the potential historic district and found that the nine buildings submitted as the potential district lack cohesion and a distinct sense of place in terms of age, scale, typology and their siting on only a portion of their blockfronts. Therefore, the agency found that these buildings do not rise to the level of architectural significance necessary for designation as an historic district, and do not merit further consideration as a potential New York City Historic District."

A major theme at the protest included harsh criticism of the Mayor for what the preservationists see as yet another failure to protect the loss of affordable housing in the midst of a housing crisis. "This demonstrates the disinterest of the Mayor," Kelly Carroll told the crowd. "These tenants were injuriously removed at very short notice, which certainly falls short of this administration's catchphrase of preserving affordable units."

Preservationists have also pointed to a New York Post story that draws a link between Mayor de Blasio's top fundraiser, Ross Offinger- who is currently under investigation for allegedly violating campaign finance laws- and a $50,000 contribution made by the developer David Lichtenstein to the Nassau County Democrats. The donation was previously described as "untraceable." Berman noted at the protest that de Blasio had appointed Lichtenstein to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) last year. The EDC is an arm of the administration that the Mayor's office touted as playing an important role in "[leveraging] the City's assets to create good jobs and drive growth, ensuring equitable and sustainable development across all five boroughs."

State Senator Hoylman pointed out the incompatibility between Lichtenstein's role in ensuring so-called "equitable" development and his spearheading of the Moxy Hotel project.

"Given the role of the developer and his position on the Economic Development Corporation, I think he's in a unique position to do the right thing here- he's someone who obviously cares about the city," he said. "I think that he should have a bigger frame of reference as to the city's goals in preserving affordable housing, [and] our goals in preserving the character of our neighborhood."

I asked Berman what, if anything, the Mayor could do at this point even if he were to act. "He can get the Landmarks Preservation Commission to intervene and he can get his friend who owns the building to reverse this plan," Berman suggested.

But maybe this whole debacle suggests that there's simply something screwy about the process of landmark designation itself. Berman wasn't so sure. "The pace of designations [at Landmarks Preservation Commission] definitely seems to have slowed down in recent years," he acknowledged. However, he argued that it's not the step-by-step that's to blame, but the composition of the commission itself.

Senator Hoylman, however, suggested that actually there might be something wrong with the LPC's process. "This could have been a part of the East Village historic district- it was considered and rejected," he said. "It seems rather random that these buildings suddenly would be removed from the conversation so summarily without even an explanation, so I think we are owed some answers."

At this point, it would take some dramatic action to stop the hotel plan from going through, but Hoylman promised the protestors, "We're not going down without a fight." The preservationists also promised that the East 11th Street development is something they'll be following very closely. "I think New Yorkers are really bothered that they're seeing more and more of their city slipping away," Berman explained. "And this is the perfect example of that."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Millennial-Friendly Hotel Threatens Historic East Village Tenements

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yesterday afternoon a group of vocal protesters gathered along East 11th Street, facing a row of historic brick buildings they're intent on saving from demolition at the hands of one of the city's most prolific developers. The structures in question ...

# data[].attributes.body
Becoming more like a city. When populations of people grow, the population of a place may spill over from city to nearby areas. Maybe tall apartment buildings spring up on what had been the outskirts of town, bringing more people there to live and work.
Example: My town urbanized

# data[].attributes.body
The right of citizens, outside the legislature (lawmakers), to introduce ideas for legislation (laws).
Example:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The philanthropic initiative founded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will spend $3 billion over the next decade in an effort to cure and manage all human diseases. The Chan Zuckerberg's latest effort will begin with a $600 million investment in a project called Biohub, an independent research center located at the University of California at San Francisco that will work on developing new tools to measure and treat disease.

"Mark and I spent the past two years talking to scientists ranging form Nobel Prize laureates to graduate students," Chan said during an emotional talk at UCSF. "We believe that the future we all want for our children is possible. We set a goal: can we cure all diseases in our children's lifetime? That does't mean that no one will ever get sick. But it does mean that our children and their children should get sick a lot less. And that we should be able to detect and treat or at least manage it as an ongoing condition. Mark and I believe this is possible within our children's lifetime."

Zuckerberg, who took the stage after his wife's remarks, laid out a plan for eliminating most disease over the next century. He noted that heart disease, infectious disease, cancer, and neurological diseases are the leading causes of death. No one breakthrough will eliminate any of those, he said. But an investment in basic science research and building new tools will advance progress in fighting them more quickly, he said.
"We have to be patient"
Zuckerberg said that the existing scientific grant progress, which typically awards a few hundred thousand dollars to individuals, is inefficient at creating large breakthroughs. He said the Biohub would bring together scientists with software engineers, and provide funding for long-term initiatives, in an effort to accelerate scientific discoveries.

The initiative will also push others to invest in scientific research, he said. "It's going to take years before the first tools are built, and years after that before the first diseases are treated," Zuckerberg said. "We have to be patient."

Zuckerberg called for investments in artificial intelligence to better understand the brain, machine learning to analyze cancer genomes, chips that could diagnose any infectious diseases, and bloodstream monitors that could catch diseases at an earlier state. "These are the kinds of tools we want to develop at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative," he said.
Building a cell atlas
The initiative's scientific efforts will be led by Dr. Cori Bargmann, a neurologist who was most recently at Rockefeller University in New York. The Biohub will be led by Joe DeRisi, a professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, and Stephen Quake, a Stanford biophysicist and bioengineer. It represents a rare collaboration between three schools: UCSF, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley.

One of the Biohub's first projects will be attempting to develop a "cell atlas" - a comprehensive account of every location and molecular property of all the cells in the human body, Bargmann said. That tool and others will be made available to the entire scientific community free of charge, she said. "It's amazing that no one really knows how many types of cells are in the human body," Quake said. It is estimated to be around 300, but some scientists believe there may be many more.

"We need more science," said Bill Gates, who made a surprise appearance at the end of the initiative's presentation Wednesday. Gates praised Zuckerberg and Chan for their work and said it would help to eradicate disease. "Only through science can we get an HIV vaccine, or a malaria vaccine. ... We desperately need this science."

The initiative was founded in December with the stated goal to "advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research and energy." For its first investment, it put $24 million into Andela, which trains developers in Africa. Zuckerberg has said he plans to contribute $1 billion a year of his Facebook stock to the initiative, a limited liability company.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative commits to investing $3 billion to cure diseases

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The philanthropic initiative founded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will spend $3 billion over the next decade in an effort to cure and manage all human diseases.

# data[].attributes.body
The process by which an economy is transformed from primarily agricultural (farming) to one based on the manufacturing of goods (machines and factories). Individual manual labor is often replaced by mechanized mass production, and craftsmen are replaced by assembly lines.
Example: Towns industrialize to make room for more people.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Africa is growing. Estimates are that the continent's population will double in the next 50 years.

Concomitant to this population boom will be an increase in the total working age population. This increase in the working age population creates a window of opportunity with the possibility of higher growth arising from the "demographic dividend". This "demographic dividend" played a role in the "Asian Miracle", where research shows that from 1965 to 1990, the 23 economies of the East Asia region grew faster than all other regions of the world, in part due to the increased number of the working population.

On the other hand, an increase in the working age population, with scarce employment opportunities, is a recipe for social unrest and tensions. This means that, without any major structural overhaul of African economies, the current social and development challenges being faced by African countries, could significantly worsen. This has led to the renewed calls for Africa's industrialization as well as the push for the structural transformation of the continent's economies. Such structural transformation entails moving from commodity export dependent economies towards industrialized and diversified economies.

The supply side constraints to industrialization and the structural transformation of economies are well known and well documented. However, there is also the "demand" side of the equation which is often neglected: the markets. After products have been transformed, the industrial goods must find markets and consumers. Some of the failures of state interventions for industrialization in the past can be attributed to the lack of attention to market issues. In the present dynamic, this is where the establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) comes into play.

The CFTA, launched by African Heads of States in 2015, aims to create a single market for Africa in line with the overall objective of the Abuja Treaty of establishing an African Economic Community, thereby establishing a market of over a billion people with a GDP of over US $3 trillion.

The majority of African markets are small and fragmented, with populations of fewer than 20 million and economies (in terms of GDP) of less than US $10 billion, and cannot develop the economies of scale to enable them produce competitively. This means that most of the firms never grow beyond their markets, and the case for attracting substantial and transformative investment flows becomes more difficult, as the markets are often too small to justify the returns on the investments.

Market size is also a challenge to the traditional approaches to industrialization on the continent. Some of the "infant industries" that are being protected will never grow due to the sizes of the domestic markets they operate in. Protecting an infant industry in a market of about 2 million people is very different from doing the same in a market of 80 million, 300 million or even a billion people. For example, Nigeria, with the largest population on the continent of about 180 million, cannot be compared with China at 1.35 billion and India at 1.25 billion, and Nigeria is by no means the average African country in terms of size as described above.

The establishment of the CFTA, therefore, is an attempt to address this challenge head on, affirming the principle of "One Africa, One market". The CFTA will not, by itself, automatically integrate the entire continent, but it will assist in the facilitation of other continental priorities such as the development of regional infrastructure and the free movement of people, which are necessary to achieve integration.

While substantial progress has been achieved with the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), it is clear that the existing RECs are still not large enough to provide the economies of scale necessary to make African products competitive globally.

Studies have also shown that African markets are the major markets for African manufacturers. African exports to other African countries are more diversified and industrialized than exports to the rest of the world. For example, both Nigeria's and South Africa's exports to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), respectively, are much more diversified than their exports to the rest of the world in terms of manufacturers. However, this is also because most of these manufactured products are still not competitive on the global market.

For the CFTA to fulfill its promise in helping Africa to industrialize, some deliberate policy choices have to be made to create a conducive environment for the continent's participation in global value chains, and in particular on rules of origin (RoO) and trade in services.

With regard to the RoO, there must be harmonization of these rules across the entire continent if Africa is to truly have a single market. While there are large areas of overlaps across products, there are some significant differences across some of the RECs, particularly with the SADC RoO. Also, the RoO must be as flexible and pragmatic as possible. Restrictive RoO tend to constitute trade barriers more than they facilitate trade.

As noted by the ARIA VI report, the CFTA RoO must take into account the reality of the continent's dependence on imports, particularly capital and intermediate goods for manufacturing, as well as the major imbalances in development and productive capacity across the continent. The RoO should not simply favour the countries that are larger and which have more productive capacity for producing the components that go into manufactured goods. It must take into account the fact that other than a handful of countries, the vast majority of CFTA members will be countries that have very limited productive capacity. The CFTA RoO cannot afford to have onerous local content and value addition requirements, as that will simply disqualify the majority of African countries from being able to participate meaningfully in the CFTA.

With the increasing fragmentation of production manufacturing value chains, RoO that restrict the possibility of sourcing inputs globally will only work to shut Africa out of the global value chains.

With reference to services, the increasing "servicification of manufacturing", referring to the role of services as inputs in manufacturing, emphasizes the importance of having a competitive services sector as a bedrock for industrialization. Services increasingly make up a larger share of the value of finished manufactured products. Consequently, the need for a competitive services sector is critical to any discussion on value addition on the continent include - both in terms of enabling products to be cost competitive and creating opportunities for value addition.

It is in this regard that the trade in services element of the CFTA negotiations is as important for Africa's industrialization as is the trade in goods negotiations. The CFTA thus offers an opportunity for African countries to develop a more competitive services sector, as well as increase their services exports.

These are just some of the issues for African policy-makers to consider as they negotiate the CFTA. While, undoubtedly, the CFTA sets up a complex and heavy agenda for negotiations; more importantly, it provides an opportunity to address some of the issues that have bedeviled the continent's development in the past decades, and perhaps it offers answers to some of the questions about the industrialization and structural transformation of the continent. The achievement of the CFTA in 2017 and the creation of a single African market will ensure the realization of the benefits of industrialization and Africa's demographic dividend.

Babajide Sodipo is the Senior Trade Adviser to the African Union Commissioner for Trade and Industry, working on strategic continental trade and investment issues. He has previously provided advice on trade policy, investment and regional integration issues and policies in East and West Africa, working as an adviser with the Rwandan and Nigerian governments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Integration Critical to Industrialization in Africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Africa is growing. Estimates are that the continent's population will double in the next 50 years. Concomitant to this population boom will be an increase in the total working age population. This increase in the working age population creates a window of opportunity with the possibility of higher growth arising from the "demographic dividend".

# data[].attributes.body
Coming to live permanently in a foreign country.
Example: People might have to immigrate if their own country is too dangerous to stay in.

# data[].attributes.body
Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery (giving money for favors).
Example: Some large companies are corrupt with power.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will stand trial on corruption and money laundering charges over an alleged scheme at the state oil company, Petrobras, a judge has said.

Prosecutors say he accepted 3.7m reais ($1.11m; £867,000) in bribes connected to the multi-billion dollar scheme.

Lula, 70, had already been charged in August with allegedly obstructing investigations.

He denies any wrongdoing and says the accusations are politically motivated.

"I am sad," Lula said. "It is a big farce, a big lie, a big pyrotechnic show.

"What's happening isn't getting me down, but just motivates me to go out and talk more."

Lula: The most hated and loved man in Brazil

What has gone wrong in Brazil?

Judge Sergio Moro, who is overseeing Operation Car Wash, the investigation into corruption allegations at Petrobras, said there was "sufficient evidence of [Lula's] responsibility".

The money that the ex-president allegedly received was laundered through the purchase and renovation of a beach apartment, prosecutors say.

The flat was built by a construction company implicated in the scandal.

His wife, Marisa Leticia, and six others have also been indicted.

Lula was accused by prosecutors of being the "boss" of the scheme, estimated to have cost the company more than $2bn (£1.5bn).

Several politicians and Petrobras executives have been arrested and sentenced as a result of the two-year inquiry.

Investigators believe overpriced contracts with Petrobras were given in return for bribes.

Some of the illicitly-obtained money was used to finance the electoral campaign of top Brazilian politicians, they allege.

Lula, who served as president between 2003 and 2011, was one of Brazil's most popular leaders and is seen as a possible candidate for the 2018 presidential elections.

However, the popularity of his Workers' Party plummeted this year and his chosen successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached last month.

A criminal conviction would bar him from running in 2018.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brazil's Lula to be tried for corruption

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will stand trial on corruption and money laundering charges over an alleged scheme at the state oil company, Petrobras, a judge has said. Prosecutors say he accepted 3.7m reais ($1.11m; £867,000) in bribes connected to the multi-billion dollar scheme.