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Raven Power LLC settles hazardous chemical release reporting violations at Baltimore facility

PHILADELPHIA (April 16, 2020) – In a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Texas-based Raven Power LLC recently paid a $105,000 penalty for allegedly failing to timely report a 2017 release of a hazardous substance from the H.A.




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doing very little.....

Although there's not much very interesting I thought you might like to see a few pictures of the little we did over Easter.




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Around the Adriatic Croatia Split Monday 2019 April 8

Leaving Mostar was almost sad because we had enjoyed the compact city as a group and on our own. We headed into the hills where towns or villages lined the road for a considerable distance. Rain was falling for the whole drive. I noticed none of the unr




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Wanderings through Little India

alskdfjdsjiw bangs head on computer. Okay I was just about done with this entry when my hostels crappy internet failed and I lost everything I39d written so here we go again.So since classes have started I haven39t had much time to explore




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Litchfield National Park

Tuesday 28th September cont...Later that same day fuelled with a bit of dutch courage and convinced that we'd been imbued with some local knowledge through the consumption of a Kangaroo Crocodile and Barramundi mixed grill we decided to enter a lo




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A little package from home...

It has been awhile since I last posted I hope I have not kept you all waiting.... Well. To be honest this last week or so has been very busy and filled with a lot of ups and downs. The main thing to report is that my dad came to visit He came the




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A little China traffic story

Driving in China...or more specifically Wuhan. What an experienceLast Friday night we decided to go for a relaxing dinner out at Aloha restaurant normally a halfhour jaunt away by taxi or scooter. We should have known better Quiet Relaxing Ch




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Little Richard: Rock'n Roll-Sänger gestorben

Er gehörte zu den einflussreichsten Musikern in der Frühphase des Rock 'n' Roll, inspirierte die Beatles und Elvis Presley. Nun ist der US-Sänger Little Richard mit 87 Jahren gestorben.




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Trump vs. Reality IV: 'Take a Knee!'

An animated reality check of the man who claims to be the greatest U.S. president ever.




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Politicians Call for Fewer Climate Protections During Coronavirus Crisis

German politicians have begun calling for industry to be shielded from too much environmental protection during the coronavirus crisis. But corporations aren't joining the appeal. They managed to turn CO2 reduction into a competitive advantage long ago.




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Did COVID-19 Improve Air Quality Near Hubei? -- by Douglas Almond, Xinming Du, Shuang Zhang

Ambient pollution is a byproduct of economic activity. It has been widely reported that COVID-19 and associated lockdowns have generated large improvements in air quality worldwide, including to China's notoriously-poor air quality. We analyze China's official pollution monitor data and account for the large, recurrent improvement in air quality following Lunar New Year (LNY), which essentially coincided with lockdowns in 2020. With the important exception of NO2, China's air quality improvements in 2020 are smaller than we should expect near the pandemic's epicenter: Hubei province. Compared with LNY improvements experienced in 2018 and 2019 in Hubei, we see smaller improvements in SO2 while ozone concentrations increased in both relative and absolute terms (roughly doubling). Similar patterns are found for the six provinces neighboring Hubei. We conclude that whether COVID-19 actually decreased pollution in China depends on the pollutant and reference period considered.




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Inequality and the Safety Net Throughout the Income Distribution, 1929-1940 -- by James J. Feigenbaum, Price V. Fishback, Keoka Grayson

We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.




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Dying in Solitude: First-Hand Accounts of the Coronavirus Horrors in Italy

Family members aren't allowed into hospitals nor can they take part in funerals. Crematoriums are overloaded. The horrors of coronavirus still have a firm hold on northern Italy.




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China Eases Back Toward Normality Three Months after Outbreak

Twelve weeks after the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in China, leaders in Beijing are gradually reopening the country. But how can they be sure their decision won't backfire?




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Optimal Bailouts and the Doom Loop with a Financial Network -- by Agostino Capponi, Felix C. Corell, Joseph E. Stiglitz

Banks usually hold large amounts of domestic public debt which makes them vulnerable to their own sovereign’s default risk. At the same time, governments often resort to costly public bailouts when their domestic banking sector is in trouble. We investigate how the interbank network structure and the distribution of sovereign debt holdings jointly affect the optimal bailout policy in the presence of this "doom loop". Rescuing banks with high domestic sovereign exposure is optimal if these banks are sufficiently central in the network, even though that requires larger bailout expenditures than rescuing low-exposure banks. Our findings imply that highly central banks can use exposure to their own government as a strategic tool to increase the likelihood of being bailed out. Our model thus illustrates how the "doom loop" exacerbates the "too interconnected to fail" problem in banking.




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Changes in Black-White Inequality: Evidence from the Boll Weevil -- by Karen Clay, Ethan J. Schmick, Werner Troesken

This paper investigates the effect of a large negative agricultural shock, the boll weevil, on black-white inequality in the first half of the twentieth century. To do this we use complete count census data to generate a linked sample of fathers and their sons. We find that the boll weevil induced enormous labor market and social disruption as more than half of black and white fathers moved to other counties following the arrival of the weevil. The shock impacted black and white sons differently. We compare sons whose fathers initially resided in the same county and find that white sons born after the boll weevil had similar wages and schooling outcomes to white sons born prior to its arrival. In contrast, black sons born after the boll weevil had significantly higher wages and years of schooling, narrowing the black-white wage and schooling gaps. This decrease appears to have been driven by relative improvements in early life conditions and access to schooling both for sons of black fathers that migrated out of the South and sons of black fathers that stayed in the South.




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Do Differences in School Quality Generate Heterogeneity in the Causal Returns to Education? -- by Philip DeCicca, Harry Krashinsky

Estimating the returns to education remains an active area of research amongst applied economists. Most studies that estimate the causal return to education exploit changes in schooling and/or labor laws to generate exogenous differences in education. An implicit assumption is that more time in school may translate into greater earnings potential. None of these studies, however, explicitly consider the quality of schooling to which impacted students are exposed. To extend this literature, we examine the interaction between school quality and policy-induced returns to schooling, using temporally-available school quality measures from Card and Krueger (1992). We find that additional compulsory schooling, via either schooling or labor laws, increases earnings only if educational inputs are of sufficiently high quality. In particular, we find a consistent role for teacher quality, as measured by relative teacher pay across states, in generating consistently positive returns to compulsory schooling.




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Geographic Mobility in America: Evidence from Cell Phone Data -- by M. Keith Chen, Devin G. Pope

Traveling beyond the immediate surroundings of one’s residence can lead to greater exposure to new ideas and information, jobs, and greater transmission of disease. In this paper, we document the geographic mobility of individuals in the U.S., and how this mobility varies across U.S. cities, regions, and income classes. Using geolocation data for ~1.7 million smartphone users over a 10-month period, we compute different measures of mobility, including the total distance traveled, the median daily distance traveled, the maximum distance traveled from one’s home, and the number of unique haunts visited. We find large differences across cities and income groups. For example, people in New York travel 38% fewer total kilometers and visit 14% fewer block-sized areas than people in Atlanta. And, individuals in the bottom income quartile travel 12% less overall and visit 13% fewer total locations than the top income quartile.




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When Larry Fink Met Greta: Investors Join In Calls for Corporate Sustainability

Pressure is growing across the board for large corporations to do more to protect the environment and the climate. Even institutional investors like Blackrock head Larry Fink are joining the chorus of voices calling for change.




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Little Richard, flamboyant rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, dead at 87




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Seminal rocker Little Richard, singer of classic “Tutti Frutti” and “Lucille,” dead at 87

The wildly influential singer and pianist established rock ’n’ roll as a genre with just one rule — there are no rules.




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Lufthansa seeks €9 billion bailout amid political talks

Lufthansa is negotiating a €9 billion bailout with Germany's economic stabilisation fund to ensure its future, the airline said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.




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Ability to work from home could limit job losses - ESRI

More workers should be facilitated to work from home in order to improve their chances of retaining their jobs, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute.




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Bring on the e-scooters: A Bird executive explains how New York City can smartly and safely welcome the micromobility devices

Electric scooters are coming to New York and, with a little planning and preparation, they can safely thrive here. To understand how, it helps to start with some context.




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Taking government money? Disclose your political spending: Companies should opt for transparency now more than ever

With increasing reports of large public companies and politically connected ones receiving COVID-19 rescue aid and the Trump administration blocking proper oversight, business leaders can act on their own to protect the integrity of the government aid effort and of companies themselves. They can do that by disclosing their companies’ political spending to show that political influence is not a factor in who gets help.




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GREENE: Same profiling, same brutality, same disrespect — social distancing enforcement shows NYC ‘not as far as we think we are’

As much as Mayor de Blasio wants to pretend these arrests are just a drop in the bucket, from the point of view of those being constantly dropped in the bucket, the city’s heavy-handed coronavirus crackdown is just more of the same.Same profiling. Same brutality. Same disrespect.




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Inequality of Fear and Self-Quarantine: Is There a Trade-off between GDP and Public Health? -- by Sangmin Aum, Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee, Yongseok Shin

We construct a quantitative model of an economy hit by an epidemic. People differ by age and skill, and choose occupations and whether to commute to work or work from home, to maximize their income and minimize their fear of infection. Occupations differ by wage, infection risk, and the productivity loss when working from home. By setting the model parameters to replicate the progression of COVID-19 in South Korea and the United Kingdom, we obtain three key results. First, government-imposed lock-downs may not present a clear trade-off between GDP and public health, as commonly believed, even though its immediate effect is to reduce GDP and infections by forcing people to work from home. A premature lifting of the lock-down raises GDP temporarily, but infections rise over the next months to a level at which many people choose to work from home, where they are less productive, driven by the fear of infection. A longer lock-down eventually mitigates the GDP loss as well as flattens the infection curve. Second, if the UK had adopted South Korean policies, its GDP loss and infections would have been substantially smaller both in the short and the long run. This is not because Korea implemented policies sooner, but because aggressive testing and tracking more effectively reduce infections and disrupt the economy less than a blanket lock-down. Finally, low-skill workers and self-employed lose the most from the epidemic and also from the government policies. However, the policy of issuing “visas” to those who have antibodies will disproportionately benefit the low-skilled, by relieving them of the fear of infection and also by allowing them to get back to work.




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NYC Education Dept. due for shortage of more than 1,000 seats for preschoolers with disabilities: analysis

Advocates have long protested the lack of special education pre-K classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, which is federally mandated, even as the city invests millions in universal pre-K.




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Staten Island politician urges NYC Education Dept. to sit out St. Patrick’s Day parade after LGBTQ exclusion

City Council Member Debi Rose (D - Staten Island) said city students shouldn’t feel obligated to march with their schools or bands in the parade while event organizers refuse to let the Staten Island Pride Center march.




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'I don’t know what that grading system should look like’: Reality - and dilemma - of NYC’s remote learning sets in

Teachers and school leaders across the country are struggling to maintain a semblance of structure and normalcy during remote learning while adapting to the approach’s many limitations. Grades are at the center of that debate.




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Late-life literary success makes Brooklyn College teacher one of three CUNY profs to win Guggenheim Fellowships

Sigrid Nunez, 69, authored the National Book Award-winning novel “The Friend," which depicts a woman’s grief over the death of a close friend as she cares for his dog. She’s among 175 recipients of this year’s grants, which aim to give awardees the financial freedom to pursue their creative work.




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‘Just brutal’: NYC Ed Department reveals 50 - from administrators and teachers to facilities and food workers - have died from COVID-19

The COVID-19 deaths included 22 paraprofessionals, 21 teachers, two administrators, two central office staffers, a facilities employee, a guidance counselor and a school food worker.




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Digital signage success stories for the leisure and hospitality sectors

Repeat Signage is user-friendly, flexible digital signage software for Windows. Ideal for the leisure, tourism and hospitality industry, you can insert your pictures, text, real-time, RSS news feeds and other media to create dynamic and engaging digital signage presentations. Digital signage allows your visitors to learn more about your facilities, news of current and forthcoming attractions, helping to encourage return visits.




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GAA to discuss 2020 Championship possibilities

The GAA's management committee and chairpersons from each county board will meet remotely today to discuss the future of the 2020 All-Ireland Championships.




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The little bicycle that could, thanks to artificial intelligence

An AI chip designed to mimic certain aspects of the human brain has given a bicycle an unprecedented level of autonomy.




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Poor-quality sleep could prime the brain for an anxious day

From a neurobiology perspective, anxiety and sleep deprivation look very much alike.




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Editorial: It's no government takeover of PG&E, but it's still a possibility for the state's most dangerous utility

It's not the government takeover that many Californians wanted for the fire-starting utility, but the deal Gavin Newsom struck with PG&E should help.




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Trump's new immigration freeze is just more of his tired political posturing

The Trump coronavirus immigration order shows he has yet to find a crisis he can't try to exploit for his own political gain.




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Editorial: Who do we save from coronavirus and who do we let die? Take wealth, race and disability out of that brutal equation

In America, the healthiest are by no coincidence also the wealthiest. The poor, the disabled and people of color get the short end of the stick.




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Laker Anthony Davis partners with First Entertainment to teach community financial literacy

Lakers' Anthony Davis is partnering with First Entertainment Credit Union as their first official ambassador.




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Some NBA teams will be allowed to open facilities in May for individual workouts

NBA teams in states with relaxed or no stay-at-home orders will be allowed to open their facilities beginning May 1, but only for individual workouts.




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NBA teams can reopen training facilities May 8, but with many restrictions

The NBA has told teams they can reopen their practice facilities May 8 under certain restrictions if they are in a state where public health guidelines allow it.




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If it weren't for virtual reality games, I wouldn't be getting exercise right now

COVID-19 fears kept me home and on the way to gaining back the 30 pounds I lost last year. Then I picked up my VR headset and got moving.




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Why we're all getting to know ourselves a little better in quarantine

All this time at home has a side effect: A chance to learn more about ourselves and the people we're with. Here's how to have your a-ha moment.




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USC's Michael Pittman Jr. on NFL combine: 'This is just like a little starting place'

Even after four seasons at USC, Michael Pittman Jr. hasn't gotten much attention in a deep group of wide receivers at the NFL scouting combine.




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Op-Ed: As a doctor, I'm bracing for the possibility my home and hospital worlds may collide during the pandemic

A doctor leaves the calm of home to work in the charged atmosphere of the hospital where sober conversations abound about the possibility of being overrun with COVID-19 cases.




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Column: The Supreme Court played partisan politics in Wisconsin. It could unleash a political apocalypse in November

The court's slapdash intervention didn't serve the Constitution, just the GOP's chances in one election. Sound familiar?




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Op-Ed: Coronavirus revealed gaps in the U.S. ability to track infectious disease. That's fixable

Collecting and analyzing real-time data on the number of cases and deaths during a disease outbreak is crucial. Here's why we've failed.




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Column: How Trump and his enablers are pushing politics deep into pandemic policy

The Justice Department weighed in on a social distancing case in Mississippi to strike a blow for Trump's side in the coronavirus culture wars.




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Angels fall in a pair of split-squad games

Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon hit a three-run home run against the White Sox and Patrick Sandoval pitched two hitless innings.