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admin:A major 11-country agreement goes into effect Sunday, reshaping trade rules among economic powerhouses like Japan, Canada, Mexico and Australia — but the United States won't be a part of it. That means that Welch's grape juice, Tyson's pork and California almonds will remain subject to tariffs in Japan, for example, while competitors' products from countries participating in the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership will eventually be duty-free. Japan will offer similar tariff relief to the European Union, in a separate trade deal set to go into effect on February 1. "Our competitors in Australia and Canada will now benefit from those provisions, as US farmers watch helplessly," said US Wheat Associates President Vince Peterson at a hearing on the potential negotiations with Japan. It's the opposite of what the Obama administration planned when it began negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as TPP. The proposed deal, which never passed Congress, formed the backbone of the US strategy to counter Chinese economic influence, but it was one of the first things President Donald Trump moved to undo when he took office, pulling the United States out of the deal in January of 2017. Instead, he's pursued a series of direct bilateral agreements, launching a trade war with escalating tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods to force Beijing to the negotiating table. The strategy has led to a new round of talks between Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping — but leaves US producers out of broader regional arrangements with other Pacific Rim nations, for now. The current signatories have left open the possibility that the United States and other countries — including China — could join in the future if they agreed to the terms. "They're trying to say, 'We're moving forward and we hope you come to your senses at some point and join us, too'," said Phil Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs who served as a senior economist for trade under President George W. Bush. Withdrawing from the TPP fulfilled a campaign pledge for Trump, who had called the agreement a "disaster" and argued that it would harm American workers and manufacturing. He's also renegotiated the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, replacing it with a successor deal, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which still needs congressional approval before it can take effect. And the Trump administration is currently pursuing bilateral accords with the European Union as well as with Japan. The stakes will be even higher now that the Trans-Pacific deal is going into effect — especially for American farmers who were eager to take advantage of more open markets abroad. Tariffs will be phased out over a 15-year period under the CPTPP. Tyson Foods and Welch's have both complained to the US Trade Representative's Office about how their products will be at a significant disadvantage around the world if no action is taken. But amid rising concerns over intellectual property protection and cybercrime, the most important element of the CPTPP may be its new rules for digital trade. Some of which were included in Trump's renegotiated North America Free Trade Agreement, but won't apply to US trade beyond Mexico and Canada for now. Creating a variety of standards through a number of bilateral and trilateral trade deals could wind up hurting small and mid-sized American companies that may find it costly to keep up with the differences. "The TPP was meant to create harmonization," Levy said. "If you're a small guy, that helps you immensely." us.cnn.com/2018/12/29/politics/tpp-trade-trump/index.html
bibox:The Affordable Care Act will lose its teeth in 2019, as the penalty for not buying insurance disappears – leaving the health care law’s future as murky as ever. On one hand, recently released enrollment numbers indicate the system may be able to survive the elimination of the so-called individual mandate penalty – which was stripped as part of last year’s tax overhaul. While the requirement to buy insurance was considered a crucial part of the original law, enrollment dipped but did not dive in anticipation of that penalty disappearing. The official numbers show enrollment in the 39 states that use the federal exchange declined by 4.2 percent from last year – from roughly 8.8 million to 8.5 million. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “The funny aspect to the individual mandate is that it mostly was [threatening] to penalize people who were already going to buy insurance anyway,†said Robert Graboyes, a senior research fellow and health scholar at George Mason University’s libertarian-oriented Mercatus Center. In other words, Graboyes said, the vast majority of people who signed up on the government-run portal did not need the threat of a penalty. Federal judge strikes down ObamacareVideo Meanwhile, many people who did not find ObamaCare to be a good deal skipped it and either paid the price or made an excuse. Figures from the Internal Revenue Service show that 4.1 million taxpayers in 2017 paid the penalty for not having insurance in 2016. The federal government collected $2.9 billion in revenue from those taxpayers. Another 10.8 million taxpayers claimed one of many hardship exemptions. Yet experts said the elimination of the penalty is just one of many factors driving an enrollment decline. The big question going into 2019 and beyond will be whether that slide will continue, and whether the system will continue to take on sicker customers while losing the young and healthy – creating an imbalance that would threaten higher prices. Add to the mix a recent court ruling against the law, and ObamaCare continues to take hits despite Republicans’ repeated failure to repeal it. Edmund Haislmaier, a health policy expert at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, said many people who were young and healthy have concluded that insurance simply was not worth it. This is especially true if they had no assets that would be at risk if an emergency caused them to be treated without insurance at a hospital. “What [the architects of the law] didn’t account for was the behavior of the target population,†he said. For now, Republican congressional efforts to further dismantle the law – beyond their mauling of the mandate – are dead in the water for at least the next two years, with Democrats taking back the House. But ObamaCare now faces a new legal threat, following a federal court ruling this month declaring the health care law unconstitutional – and creating a new element of uncertainty. OBAMACARE COULD RETURN TO SUPREME COURT That legal dispute is tied to the mandate penalty’s elimination. Back in 2012, the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare’s individual mandate, ruling that the government could require the purchase of health insurance under its taxing power. But in his recent opinion, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that because the mandate penalty was eliminated, the rest of the law is invalid. “The remainder of the ACA is non-severable from the individual mandate, meaning that the Act must be invalidated in whole,†O’Connor wrote. The Affordable Care Act remains in place pending appeal as the law’s defenders vow to preserve it. Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi blasted the ruling as “absurd.†The case eventually could come before the Supreme Court. Josh Blackman, a South Texas College of Law Houston professor who has written two books on ObamaCare, said the judiciary must look at what the lawmakers who drafted the plan thought of the mandate. And there is plenty in the record indicating that they believed the law could not work without it, he said. “We have to look at the mandate and the intent of the 2010 Congress to resolve this question,†he said. The mandate originally was pitched as a way to get healthy people to sign up for subsidized insurance and offset the costs for others, thus keeping the program’s overall costs in check. The Congressional Budget Office long had predicted that without the stick of a penalty, millions of people would ignore the carrot of subsidized health care. Last year, the budget forecasters determined that eliminating the mandate would result in 13 million fewer people with insurance by 2027 than if it remained in place. That included 5 million fewer people on Medicaid – even though the program is free to enrollees. But Cynthia Cox, director of the program for the study of health reform and private insurance at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said polling conducted by her organization indicates many people were not even aware of the penalty. “The mandate is only as effective as people know about it. … To me, that just seems like a lack of information,†she said. The penalty itself has risen from its inception. People filing their tax returns in April will have to pay the greater of 2.5 percent of household income or $695 per adult and $347.50 per child if they did not have health insurance for the entirety of 2018. That is far less than the cost of coverage for many people, though. And come 2019, the penalty imposed on people without insurance will drop to zero when they file their returns in 2020. Cox pointed to other explanations for the enrollment decline, including an improving economy that has allowed more people to get insurance from employers and the introduction of short-term, limited-duration health plans that are designed to fill insurance gaps when people are between jobs. Joshua Peck, co-founder of the advocacy group Get America Covered, disputed that the decline is the result of a stronger economy. He noted that the economy has been growing each year the Affordable Care Act has been in place. But he agreed that the new short-term alternatives – what he calls “junk plans†– have played a role. Peck also blamed the Trump administration for slashing outreach efforts by 90 percent over the past two years. Although “most people are not motivated by the penalty,†he argued, eliminating the mandate has not helped. “It did have an impact,†he said. “But it isn’t all by itself the most important factor.†www.foxnews.com/politics/obamacare-mandate-says-goodbye-in-2019-as-health-law-faces-new-threat
admin: If you were hoping to snap up all five of Johnny Depp's adjacent penthouses inside Eastern Columbia Lofts, a landmarked Art Deco building in downtown Los Angeles, you're out of luck. After a month on the market, the first has sold for $2.545 million, Nick Segal of Partners Trust confirmed to Mansion Global. The 2,500 split-level condo is the largest of the actor's predictably eclectic units and features two bedrooms, three baths, a galley-style kitchen, and a private terrace overlooking the city. The Wall Street Journal reported that the actor initially asked a cumulative price of $12.78 million for all five—he chose to keep the original layouts out of each but added doors to connect three and used the other two as an art studio and a guest house—but was willing to unload them individually. More: Johnny Depp Relists French Village for $55 Million, More Than Doubling the Price Public records show the "Black Mass" star bought the condos from the developer for about $7.2 million between 2007 and 2008. While it's unclear whether Mr. Depp, 53, decided to list the properties as a result of his volatile divorce from actress Amber Heard, it is known he also listed his 15-bedroom compound in the south of France for a reported $55 million. Last month, the former couple reached an agreement with Ms. Heard, 30, announcing she'd donate her $7 million settlement to charity. The remaining four penthouses inside Eastern Columbia Lofts are still for sale, collectively or individually, with price upon request. Kevin Dees of Partners Trust represented the actor in the sale. www.mansionglobal.com/articles/johnny-depp-sells-first-of-five-eclectic-l-a-penthouses-for-2-5-million-42849?mod=mansiongl_edit_outbrain_Dec&mod=outbrain_71135&utm_campaign=71135&utm_term=CNN+Edition+%28Turner+International%29
bibox:The good news in a new Washington Post Fact Checker poll is that most Americans don’t believe the various untrue claims that President Trump makes. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, for example, know that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, more than four times the percentage which said Russia didn’t. Trump, of course, has consistently tried to muddy the water on that issue and, unsurprisingly, those who strongly approve of Trump’s job performance are about as likely to believe Russia didn’t interfere than it did. Even Republicans overall, by a 2-to-1 margin, accept that Russia tried to interfere. There’s another group worth considering in this context: Those who identify Fox News as one of their main news sources. Compared with those who identify other cable news networks as a primary news source or those who identify newspapers or NPR in the same way, Fox News watchers are much more likely to accept Trump’s view of Russian interference. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/14/media-consumers-most-likely-believe-trumps-falsehoods-fox-news-watchers/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.480fe53cd55d
bibox: Everything you need to live well In the deep region of Ratanakiri in northeastern Cambodia lie the Kreung people. A people invested in agriculture, electricity is a strange occurrence. Food, shelter and love are the principal needs of these people. Unlike cultures where smoking and drinking is not allowed, teenage boys and girls have free will to. Also, in the areas of love, there is the belief that finding the right man requires a deep search through s*x in the “love hutsâ€. Once a girl clocks 13, her father builds a hut where a girl can s*xually experiment with any boy she likes. Boys in Kreung are taught to be respectful towards girls. Because their respect for girls will determine if they will continue to maintain the number of livestock they have, they are at the liberty of responding politely to sleeping with her or just talking when they get invited to the hut. Owing to this cultural uniqueness, the Kreung people forbid divorce. The community encourages girls to have as many boyfriends as she wants and can invite them at the same time into the hut. Jealousy and rape are unheard of. Once she no longer finds him attractive, she can leave him for another. Despite these relations, they cannot be seen in the public with their lover unless they are engaged or married. On the cases of pregnancy, the girl chooses who she opines will be best to raise the unborn child. Despite the existence of this culture, HIV/AIDS was not detected in the country until 1991. From then until 2003, Cambodia had one of the highest HIV/AIDS occurrences in Asia. However, because of modernisation and the rigorous attempt by the Royal Government of Cambodia, this culture is no longer as rampant as before. Source: guardian.ng/life/cambodia-community-where-girls-sleep-with-multiple-men-to-find-the-one/
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