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President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is engaged in active discussions with the US Army Corps of Engineers and Interior Department to begin planning a wall along the Mexican border, including how specific environmental laws could get in the way, CNN has learned. A US official with knowledge of a visit last last month to the Interior Department -- which oversees most federal lands and major environmental laws -- said the transition team was particularly interested in finding out "how long it would take" to build the wall given potential legal obstacles. "It seems clear they were trying to size up...

Anyone here ever work in the Alaskan Fisheries in one capacity or another?My 20 year old son, in his 2nd year of College, has been happy working as an Asst. Produce Mgr. in a local grocery store during school summer breaks, but it doesn't pay much for a poor college student.I've had old friends over the years work in these fisheries for 2-3 months during the late Spring/Summer and bring home a slew of money.They'd work 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week gutting and cleaning salmon on the "slime lines". Room and board is provided so you don't...

On January 20, 2016, the country is sending a businessman to Washington in one of the riskiest bets in history. Donald Trump appears to be intent on running the country like a business enterprise. But Trump is not just a business man. He is a real estate developer, an important distinction, as it impacts how he will think about revitalizing an economy that has struggled to maintain significant growth. Trump promises to cut both corporate and individual taxes while investing up to $1 trillion on the country's infrastructure. By simultaneously decreasing the country's revenue and increasing its expenses, Trump would...

Marijuana legalization advocates and industry actors remain optimistic about the incoming Trump administration's attitude towards pot, despite some less-than-reassuring comments from the man who will soon be charged with enforcing drug laws in America. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. Attorney General, in a confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week said he could not commit to not enforcing federal marijuana laws when at the helm of the Department of Justice. He didn't say he would crack down on cannabis, either. "I won't commit to never enforcing federal law...but absolutely it's a problem...

OSAKA -- Hon Hai Precision Industry and its Japanese subsidiary Sharp have begun studying the possibility of building a liquid crystal display panel plant in the U.S., a Sharp executive said Friday. The plan is "on the table," the executive said. "We will make a decision carefully." The Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer, also known as Foxconn, and its Japanese alliance partner SoftBank Group reportedly told Donald Trump they would jointly make significant investments creating new jobs in the U.S. when SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son met the President-elect in New York last month. The joint investment plan was proposed by Son,...

Once again, graphene has proven itself to be a rather special material: an international research team led by Professor Fritz Aumayr from the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Wien was able to demonstrate that the electrons in graphene are extremely mobile and react very quickly. Impacting xenon ions with a particularly high electric charge on a graphene film causes a large number of electrons to be torn away from the graphene in a very precise spot. However, the material was able to replace the electrons within some femtoseconds. This resulted in extremely high currents, which would not be maintained...

How concerned should India be about an unpredictable Donald Trump presidency, now just about a week away from inauguration? Trump’s presser yesterday (11 January) did not inspire much confidence, focused as it was on attacking the media, bringing jobs back to America, diatribes against the pharma industry, and defending himself against intelligence leaks which suggested that Russia had compromising information on him. (Read the full transcript of what Trump said here) But that’s the man. He has a tendency to talk from the gut, and that is what got him elected. But once he is President, he won’t be able...

It looks like 2016 has been a good year for the state economy. The first official reports show that jobs, income and production are all up and tended to grow faster than national averages. The data on the state’s current economic performance shows substantial growth, though much of it will not come out until after year-end. The state added 70,900 jobs from the end of 2015 to November 2016, the most recent release showed. That is a 1.7 percent increase compared to a 1.4 percent increase for the nation. There are now more jobs in Michigan than when the 2007...

Sooooo, food for thought. Higher estimates of the wall are 38 billion. Current US foreign aid is about 37 million annually. Mexico has about 500 million in US foreign aid out of that 37 million. How about we take all of north and south america's US foreign aid and apply it to the wall budget. We can tell all of those countries: "Hey dudes, sorry, but Mexico ruined the Foreign Aid gravy train for you. If you can convince Mexico to pay for the wall, we can turn the free money back on." Maybe even include countries that Mexico trades...

All this talk of fake news has everyone in a tizzy. I'm personally glad that we've finally put media bias and unsubstantiated news into the spotlight. Organizations like CNN and CBC have been publishing lopsided and unsubstantiated news stories for decades, so I'm glad we've finally noticed. As an example, a CBC segment from last week made the erroneous claim that Barack Obama ran a scandal-free administration. CNN and MSNBC have made similar claims, so we can't just single out CBC, but we should definitely hold them to a higher standard. As Barack Obama puts his obnoxious and self righteous...

Reflections on Barack Obama's legacy... While there is nothing particularly “happy” about warfare, some aspects are even more distasteful than others. There must be shooting in battles; there must be conquest of land; this is what warfare is made of. But some tactics go too far… such as mines. In the 1990s, for example, the Ottawa Convention sought to put a global end to the use of mines – both land and sea varieties – an aspect of warfare that still costs several thousand lives per year worldwide, even long after the wars in which they were used have ended....

This morning I heard Bryan Williams (of all people) say that today is “one of the busiest news days” since the election. I suppose that’s true if you butter your bread in the cable news game. But while much of the press corps prefers to discuss secretive and probably imaginary meetings in Prague of whatever bits of dirt they can dig up on the cabinet nominees, there have been some other things happening. Ever since Donald Trump was elected there’s been a not always quiet undercurrent of concern flowing through companies who do a lot of outsourcing or build factories...

Former oil executive Rex Tillerson’s history of politically damaging oil dealings in the Middle East could jeopardize the future of a united Iraq as he assumes the position of U.S. Secretary of State with the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20th, pending a Senate confirmation vote. Under Tillerson’s management in 2011, Exxon Mobil approved oil contracts with Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which spans almost 80,000 kilometers in northern Iraq, provided disputed territories are included in the calculations. These lands hold an estimated 45 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

What excuse do the Democrats have to claim that Donald Trump and Republicans are the ones in this country who are fascists? Don’t these people ever look in a mirror? The recent nonsense regarding some of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes being unwilling to perform at the Trump inauguration leads to the potential for many parallel examples but with wildly different reactions. For example, a waiter or waitress might determine that a restaurant patron doesn’t agree with them politically. They might tell their boss to find this reprehensible person another server because they refuse to wait on that particular...

New analysis from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (Georgetown Center) finds that President-elect Trump’s 10-year $1 trillion infrastructure proposal could create 11 million jobs, restoring the job growth trajectory derailed by the Great Recession, but also risks overheating the economy. It is not surprising that $1 trillion in spending on infrastructure is certain to have positive employment effects in keeping with standard Keynesian theory. However, the additional spending, in combination with tax cuts and other economic policy shifts proposed by the President-elect, could generate inflation and set the stage for further interest rate hikes. President-elect Trump’s...

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping's delegation to next week's World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos is open to meeting with President-elect Donald Trump's team, an official said Wednesday. Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodong told reporters at a briefing that "there are open channels of communication" with Trump's team. Bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the annual gathering of business leaders, politicians and cultural icons are still being finalized, but China would look into what sort of arrangements could be made "as long as the schedule permits and if there is the wish," he said....

MEXICO CITY (REUTERS) - Mexico’s new Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Tuesday (Jan 10) there is no way his country will pay for the wall that US President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to build on the United States’ southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. “There’s no way that could happen,” Videgaray said on Mexican television a few days after his appointment. “There are no circumstances...not even the best possible trade deal, investments, support which would justify taking a step that would violate the dignity of Mexicans to such an extent.” The wall has been a bone of contention...

Understanding the scarcity of H-1B visas, early in 2016, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), in partnership with the City University of New York (CUNY), launched the International Innovators Initiative (IN2NYC) to build a pathway to help international entrepreneurs grow companies and create jobs in the United States, specifically in New York City. The program is now bearing fruit as its first two entrepreneurs are setting up their businesses within the CUNY incubator. Gabor Tankovics, a native of Hungary, will base his company, Dartboard, at LaGuardia Community College and Namisha Bahl from India will begin mentoring students at...

President-elect Donald Trump's meeting with Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma on Monday was brilliant — but not for the obvious reason of making him look good for being part of a conversation about creating 1 million jobs. What's really smart about it is that puts China on its heels. Trump and Beijing have been engaged in a back-and-forth rattling of sabers from the minute Trump won the election. Remember that Trump took a congratulatory call from Taiwan's president and on the same day Trump met with Ma, a state-run Chinese tabloid warned that China would "take revenge" if...