American Airlines Accidentally Flew the Wrong Plane From L.A. To Hawaii

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american-airlines-unitedIn late August, American Airlines accidentally flew the wrong plane from Los Angeles to Hawaii, a mix-up that violated Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

The mistake, first reported by aviation blogger Brian Sumers, occurred on Aug. 31 — just days after the airline began flying Airbus A321 planes on the L.A. to Hawaii route (other planes in American Airlines’ fleet have long flown this route).

A spokesman for the airline confirmed to The Washington Post that a version of the A321 plane that was not certified to make long flights over water — as on the route between Los Angeles and Hawaii — was accidentally flown that day.

The mistake was caught midway through the flight, Sumers reported, but a decision was made to continue to Hawaii. The airline canceled the return flight and the empty plane was flown back to Los Angeles.

“Immediately when we realize what happened, we notified the FAA and we are working and fully cooperating with them,” spokesman Casey Norton said. “We also have an ongoing, thorough review of our policies and procedures.” (Read more from “American Airlines Accidentally Flew the Wrong Plane From L.A. To Hawaii” HERE)

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Yale Establishes Islamic Law Center Thanks to $10M From Saudi-Sharia Banker, Alleged Bin Laden Financer

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Saleh-Abdullah-Kamel-Reuters-640x480Saleh Abdullah Kamel, a Saudi banker who is now worth billions of dollars thanks to his success with Sharia-compliant financing, has donated $10 million to Yale University as part of a successful effort to build an Islamic Law Center at the Ivy League school.

“Mr. Kamel’s extraordinary generosity will open up exciting new opportunities for Yale Law School and for the entire university, said Yale President Peter Salovey. “The Abdullah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization will enhance research opportunities for our students and other scholars and enable us to disseminate knowledge and insights for the benefit of scholars and leaders all over the world.”

Professor Anthony Kronman, a new co-director of the Islamic Law Center, said of the school’s new addition:

“The contemporary challenges of Islamic law are broadly relevant to political events throughout the entire Islamic world and those are developments that are watched by a much larger audience of people who in many cases have not much knowledge at all of the history and traditions of Islamic law.”

“It’s the responsibility of universities to teach and instruct and that obligation applies with particular force where an issue or a subject tends to be viewed in an incomplete or inadequate or even caricatured way. There the responsibility to teach and enlighten is even stronger,” he added. (Read more from “Yale Establishes Islamic Law Center Thanks to $10M From Saudi-Sharia Banker, Alleged Bin Laden Financer” HERE)

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Are Western Values Losing Their Sway?

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13erlangerSUB-master675The West is suddenly suffused with self-doubt.

Centuries of superiority and global influence appeared to reach a new summit with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the countries, values and civilization of the West appeared to have won the dark, difficult battle with Communism.

That victory seemed especially sweet after the turn of China toward capitalism, which many thought presaged a slow evolution to middle-class demands for individual rights and transparent justice — toward a form of democracy. But is the embrace of Western values inevitable? Are Western values, essentially Judeo-Christian ones, truly universal?

The history of the last decade is a bracing antidote to such easy thinking. The rise of authoritarian capitalism has been a blow to assumptions, made popular by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy has proved to be the most reliable and lasting political system.

With the collapse of Communism, “what we may be witnessing,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote hopefully in 1989, “is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” (Read more from “Are Western Values Losing Their Sway?” HERE)

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BIS Fears Emerging Market Maelstrom as Fed Tightens

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newPic_7805_PNG_3315703bDebt ratios have reached extreme levels across all major regions of the global economy, leaving the financial system acutely vulnerable to monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve, the world’s top financial watchdog has warned.

The Bank for International Settlements said the wild market ructions of recent weeks and capital outflows from China are warning signs that the massive build-up in credit is coming back to haunt, compounded by worries that policymakers may be struggling to control events.

“We are not seeing isolated tremors, but the release of pressure that has gradually accumulated over the years along major fault lines,” said Claudio Borio, the bank’s chief economist.

The Swiss-based BIS said total debt ratios are now significantly higher than they were at the peak of the last credit cycle in 2007, just before the onset of global financial crisis.

Combined public and private debt has jumped by 36 percentage points since then to 265pc of GDP in the the developed economies. (Read more from “BIS Fears Emerging Market Maelstrom as Fed Tightens” HERE)

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Boston Bombers Were ‘Refugees Seeking Safety’ and Obama Wants 10,000 MORE of Them

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boston-750x533Obama is willing to import 10,000 “refugees” from Syria into America. These refugees will mainly be Muslim men . . .

The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations – hidden amongst innocent refugees . . .

According to Washington post:

With their baseball hats and sauntering gaits, they appeared to friends and neighbors like ordinary American boys. But the Boston bombing suspects were refugees from another world — the blood, rubble and dirty wars of the Russian Caucasus.

(Read more from “Boston Bombers Were ‘Refugees Seeking Safety’ and Obama Wants 10,000 MORE of Them” HERE)

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Expatriates Choosing to Leave the U.S. Rather Than Pay Taxes

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102344610-78532484.530x298More Americans renounced their citizenship and terminated their long-term residency in the first three months of the year than ever before, courtesy of the crackdown in foreign tax rules.

The upsurge subsided some in the second quarter but has been ongoing since the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service began aggressively enforcing tax rules for American expatriates. The crackdown on the Foreign Bank Account Report is fresh, though the law has been in existence since 1970. Under the law, U.S. taxpayers are required to file if they held one or more foreign accounts totaling more than $10,000 over the course of a year.

“Many people have been getting caught up on their U.S. tax filings and then renouncing,” said Andrew Mitchel, an international tax lawyer who analyzes Treasury Department data.

For a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate and gift tax returns and paying estimated taxes are generally the same whether one is in the country or abroad. A person’s worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where he or she resides.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is intended to ensure that the Internal Revenue Service obtains information on accounts held abroad by U.S. taxpayers at foreign financial institutions. (Read more from “Expatriates Choosing to Leave the U.S. Rather Than Pay Taxes” HERE)

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Egypt Security Forces Accidentally Kill 12, Including Mexican Tourists

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Egypt-Camp-1-APEgyptian security forces killed 12 Mexicans and Egyptians and injured 10 “by accident” on Monday, mistaking a tourist convoy for militants they were chasing in the country’s western desert, the ministry of interior said . . .

A joint force from the Egyptian police and military was chasing militants in the country’s vast western desert, which borders Libya, when it inadvertently opened fire on the convoy.

The convoy was made up of four four-wheel drive vehicles, the Egyptian interior ministry said in a statement, and there will be an investigation into how and why the tourists entered an off-limits area.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto condemned the attack on his Twitter account, describing it as a tragic incident and demanding a full investigation . . .

Egypt’s tourism ministry spokesman told state news agency MENA the convoy was at an off-limits site and was using unlicensed cars. The convoy was taking part in an unapproved safari, he said. (Read more from “Egypt Security Forces Accidentally Kill 12, Including Mexican Tourists” HERE)

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According to a Study, Parents With This Many Children Are the Happiest

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family_reunion_-_thinkstock1The happiest parents are—drumroll, please—parents with four or more kids.

Parents of large families were found to have the most life satisfaction, according to a study by Australia’s Edith Cowan University. Dr. Bronwyn Harman, of the psychology and social science school at the university, spent five years studying what types of families are most content.

“[The parents] usually say they always wanted a large family, it was planned that way, and it was a lifestyle they’d chosen,” Harman told The Sydney Morning Herald.

During her five-year study, Harman interviewed hundreds of parents from different family makeups. Her findings are based on resilience, social support, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.

Her research points out that parental happiness relates to how much effort has been put into growing the family.

“What is important for kids are things like consistency, boundaries and [to] know that they are loved, no matter what,” Harman tells ABC Australia.

Prior to the study, Harman thought parents with more children would be less happy.

Though larger families may have more chaos and expenses than a smaller family, Harman’s research shows that these issues are balanced by the amount of joy received from having more children.

Her findings show that children who grow up in large families learn independence at a young age and always have someone to play with. (For more from the author of “According to a Study, Parents With This Many Children Are the Happiest” please click HERE)

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This GOP Candidate Will Be the First to Drop out of 2016 Race

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635652263103535809-nhrepublicansBy Theodore Schleifer. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who insisted he learned lessons from his disastrous 2012 presidential campaign, dropped his second bid for the White House on Friday after just 100 days.

“Today, I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States,” Perry said in an address in St. Louis that virtually mirrored his standard stump speech until the very end. “Life is good. I am a blessed man.”

The departure of Perry, who had little support in early-voting states or among the GOP donor class, is unlikely to alter the contours of the Republican race. But Perry nevertheless implored his supporters in an email to back a candidate who embodies the principles of conservatism.

“The conservative movement has always been about principles, not personalities,” Perry said, before making a not-too-veiled swipe at Donald Trump, the GOP’s current front-runner. “Our nominee should embody those principles. He — or she — must make the case for the cause of conservatism more than the cause of their own celebrity”…

He raised only about $1 million in the first fundraising quarter, and he never had enough supporters for him to earn a spot in the premier GOP debates. Back in Texas, he remained under indictment on an abuse-of-power charge. (Read more about this GOP candidate HERE)

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After Being Consigned to an Undercard Debate, Perry Drops Out

By B. Christopher Agee. Just days before the second Republican presidential debate, the Associated Press reported Friday that Rick Perry is on the cusp of becoming the first to bow out of the race. Western Journalism previously reported that the former Texas governor was one of five candidates to be consigned to an undercard debate preceding CNN’s prime-time presidential faceoff Wednesday.

According to two separate AP sources, Perry will announce his decision Friday evening at an event in Missouri.

Speculation has brewed for roughly the last month that Perry – who ended his 2012 presidential bid in January of that year – would be the first GOP contender to drop out.

Politico reported in August that roughly half of the Democrats in early primary states shared such a prediction, along with nearly as many Republicans. The recognition that his campaign was in trouble, however, was not necessarily a denunciation of his message. (Read more from “This GOP Candidate Will Be the First to Drop out of 2016 Race” HERE)

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Club for Growth: Trump ‘Worst Republican, Simply Awful’

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Donald TrumpClub for Growth President David McIntosh released an email letter this weekend saying the group was not going to “back down” in their fight against Donald Trump.

McIntosh claimed Trump is “posing” as an anti-establishment conservative, but in reality he’s a liberal.

The letter accuses the billionaire of supporting single-payer socialized medicine “to the left” of Obamacare; advocating the largest tax increase in history; opposing a flat tax; use of eminent domain laws to seize private property; and protective tariffs that will lead to “massive trade wars.”

McIntosh described Trump as the “worst Republican candidate on economic issues” and that “short of Bernie Sanders, he may be the most liberal candidate” in the race.

Trump, for his part, has also trashed the Club on Twitter, claiming they run an “extortion” racket after they asked him for a donation that he declined to give. (Read more from “Club for Growth: Trump ‘Worst Republican, Simply Awful'” HERE)

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