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Dear Friends – I am very pleased to share some good news for Warrick Operations. This afternoon, Alcoa Corporation announced plans to restart three of our five smelter potlines to further improve the competitiveness of the rolling mill and fully engage the assets of our integrated site. The process to restart the three lines will begin immediately and is expected to be complete in the second quarter of 2018. The smelter is expected to employ about 370 employees – 95 who will be transferred from the rolling mill, up to 200 who will be recalled from layoff status and the...

I, Tina Griego, a journalist for the Denver Rocky Mountain News wrote a column titled, "Mexican Visitor's Lament." I interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez while visiting Denver last week. Hernandez said, "Illegal aliens pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes. What happens to your country's economy if 20 million people go away?" Hmmm, I thought, what would happen? So I did my due diligence, buried my nose as a reporter into the FACTS I found below. It’s a good question… it deserves an honest answer. Over 80% of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if...

It turns out that all Americans, regardless of income, spend a large percentage of their income on what economists categorize as luxuries. People who make the most money spend the biggest chunk of their incomes on luxury goods, but even the poorest households spend a significant amount on luxuries, according to an analysis released recently by Deutsche Bank Research. The wealthiest families (the top fifth of earners) spend around 65% of their incomes on luxury goods and 35% on necessities, according to the study, which looked at spending habits between 1984 and 2014. Middle-income households weren’t far behind: They spend...

As canna-business strategist Elise McRoberts walked across an animal skin rug and into the living room of a Pacific Heights home for the recent San Francisco launch of Beboe, an upscale cannabis brand from Los Angeles, she assumed she would see the usual faces on the marijuana circuit — growers, dispensary owners and cannabis chefs. Instead, the party was a cross-pollination of the worlds of high society, Silicon Valley, politics, fashion and design: industrial designer Yves Béhar, former Mayor Willie Brown, who carried decriminalization bills in the state assembly in the 1970s, philanthropists Katie and Todd Traina, boutique owner Emily...

Caribbean Foreign Ministers, including Belizean Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington, attended a meeting in Grenada yesterday with two officials from the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump. “Basically I thought they wanted to tell us they still have an interest in us and to hear our concerns and interests, and so we told them the various ills confronting our region,” Elrington told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) following the talks. UnderSecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas A Shannon Jr. and Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Francisco Palmieri, met with the foreign ministers on the sidelines of the...

RANSON, W.Va. — The decision a few years ago by leaders in the Jefferson County City of Ranson to annex the former Jefferson Orchards property along state Route 9 paid off in a big way Thursday when the manufacturing company Roxul announced plans to build a $150 million plant there. Roxul, which makes stone wool insulation, decided the Ranson site was the best after reviewing a number of other sites for its second North American plant, Ranson City Manager Andy Blake said. “We competed with people from all over the company. Their site selection team decided this was strategically one...

In Illinois, people are moving out as political leaders are locked in an impasse over the state budget. (Sound familiar?) The bond rating for the Land of Lincoln is close to junk status because of the standoff. There is an ugly lesson here for Connecticut's General Assembly: Don't be like basket-case Illinois. Connecticut is headed there, however, if the legislature doesn't end its budget deadlock and address the problems that are putting the state deep in the hole - a $5 billion budget hole over two years. Aetna drove that point home Thursday morning with the message that it's moving...

[BERLIN] The mood among German consumers rose to its highest level in almost 16 years heading into July, a survey showed on Thursday, supporting expectations that private consumption will contribute strongly to growth this year. The consumer sentiment indicator, published by the Nuremberg-based GfK institute and based on a survey of around 2,000 Germans, rose to 10.6 going into July, the highest level since October 2001. A Reuters poll had expected an unchanged reading of 10.4, from last month, also a near 16-year high. GfK linked the high reading to income expectations reaching their highest level since reunification in 1990...

MANILA, June 28 (Reuters) - A Philippine government panel led by President Rodrigo Duterte has approved 305.64 billion pesos ($6.05 billion) worth of infrastructure projects aimed at spurring one of Asia's fastest growing economies. The Southeast Asian country is boosting infrastructure spending to create jobs, lift economic growth to as much as 8 percent, and attract foreign investors turned off by high power prices and transport bottlenecks. The biggest project approved for bidding and construction was the 211-billion pesos railway project north of the capital Manila that will be funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency, Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia...

[bloomberg] The Anne docked at Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s terminal to determine if some of the world’s biggest carriers could start ferrying oil from Texas to foreign buyers. The shipping upgrade is necessary after a surge in production from U.S. shale fields like the Permian Basin led to more oil than Gulf Coast refiners could handle. And Corpus Christi is vying to become America’s main export hub.

LONDON — The rest of the planet bears a warning for President Trump’s plan to lean heavily on private business in conjuring a trillion dollars’ worth of American infrastructure: Handing profit-making companies responsibility for public works can produce trouble. In India, politically connected firms have captured contracts on the strength of relationships with officialdom, yielding defective engineering at bloated prices. When Britain handed control to private companies to upgrade London’s subway system more than a decade ago, the result was substandard, budget-busting work, prompting the government to step back in. Canada has suffered a string of excessive costs on public...

If the man often hailed as the original "Dr. Doom" is right, the stock market could see another "lurch" higher — at which point investors may want to cash out quickly and run for cover. Marc Faber, the editor of "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report' and a perennial bear, isn't backing down from his latest dire prediction that would send stocks plummeting by 40 percent or more. A drop of that size could take the S&P 500 Index down from Friday's closing price of 2,438 to 1,463. He used the meteoric rise of FANG stocks, which reflects Facebook, Apple,...

A promise made before Christmas is fizzling before the Fourth of July. In December, then-President-elect Trump told hundreds of workers at the Carrier manufacturing plant that he had worked out a deal to save their jobs. But it's not working out that way. A steady downpour today did little to wash away the fact that the jobs of 600 union employees are going south. "They're going to Monterrey, Mexico," said Robert James, president of the local union. Reynolds said he felt betrayed, since Mr. Trump told workers during his December visit to the plant that 1,100 jobs would be saved....

Disgusted with the subway? Well, chew on this: Since 2014, the city has forked over more to its pension funds than it has for building and repairing schools, parks, bridges and, yes, subways — combined. In fact, the city’s current predicament is the result of benefit increases that state lawmakers have showered on retired city workers. The pension sweeteners added just in 2000 alone cost the city $13 billion over the next 10 years. These two factors (over-optimistic assumptions and ever-greater benefits) are why the city’s yearly contribution to the funds has had to mushroom nearly sevenfold, from $1.4 billion...

After Senate Republicans unveiled their ObamaCare replacement on Thursday, ABC smeared the bill during World News Tonight with claims that people were going to pay more for less and that Medicaid was being cut. On Sunday, Clinton lackey George Stephanopoulos took to his show, This Week to continue their smear campaign. “The President right there said no cuts in Medicaid … Why is the President going back on his promise,” he rudely yelled at Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. According to Stephanopoulos, “A lot of senators have questions about the Senate bill. Particularly those cuts in Medicaid. More than $800 billion.”...

Here's why Rajeev Srinivasan believes there will be nothing particularly positive about the prime minister's US visit. IMAGE: The fact that it has taken this long for the US to extend an invitation to Narendra Modi suggests that India is not on Donald Trump's event horizon. Photographs: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images and Carlos Barria/Reuters Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not naive, so he is surely approaching his fifth visit to the United States, and his first meeting with US President Donald Trump with careful preparation. He is also deliberately creating low expectations. Unlike the hoopla of his previous Madison Square Gardens...

Washington -- Even as the Trump administration is cosying up to the Chinese, the US will need India to counter Beijing's growing influence in the world, a top American think-tank has said. Describing India as a "key piece in the jigsaw" for the US, the Atlantic Council urged the Trump administration to prioritise its ties with New Delhi. "Given the advancements that China has made both economically and militarily, the US will need to channel considerable resources to assert its global and regional primacy," Atlantic Council, a top American think-tank said in a policy paper 'Transforming India from a Balancing...

Throughout the 2016 campaign and into the early stages of his presidency, Donald Trump vowed to make infrastructure improvements around the country. The promise was all part of his brand of populism — spend more money domestically and less abroad. America first. “We need members of both parties to join hands and work with us to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to build new roads and bridges and airports and tunnels and highways and railways all across our great nation,” Trump pledged at a campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, earlier this year. Given Trump’s Russia investigation toxicity, it will...

Making America Great Again continues to run up against the reality of DC UniParty roadblocks. Both Democrats and Republicans are procrastinating while hoping for any excuse not to participate in America-First policy advancement. The election result in Georgia’s sixth district is yet another example of Trump supporters removing excuses the DC UniParty puts forth; yet the DC apparatus is so entrenched in their opposition to President Trump’s policy agenda, they sit idle spinning various congressional hearings-to-nowhere in an increasingly transparent effort to avoid action.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) said on Wednesday that Democrats have been "hyper-confused" on economic issues for years. Harold Ford, Jr., an MSNBC contributor and former Democratic congressman, asked Murphy on "Morning Joe" about the Democrats' future economic message going into the 2018 midterm elections. "I think we have to challenge ourselves," Murphy said. " I think we've been hyper-confused over the course of the past five years. Some of the time we are talking about economic growth. Some of the of the time we are talking about economic fairness." Murphy added that he does not know whether Democrats have...