Mauna Loa, the world’s largest volcano, is erupting in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but lava flow is not an issue to …
Former Justice Department attorney George Higginbotham, former Republican National Committee deputy fundraising chair Elliott Broidy, and California businesswoman Nickie Lum Davis have already pleaded guilty in connection with the investigation into the influence-peddling effort. However, before leaving office, Trump granted Broidy a full pardon.
Kenner did not elaborate on what testimony Trump or Obama could offer about the effort, but said the value of their accounts should be evident to prosecutors. “I believe it’s all relevant,” Kenner said.
“The government is not intending to call any former presidents,” Justice Department lawyer John Keller told Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly during the half-hour-long court session Tuesday. However, Keller said the government does plan to call two high level officials from the Trump White House: former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and one of his deputies, Ricky Waddell. Neither is expected to resist testifying, Keller said.
Kollar-Kotelly expressed concern that efforts to draw the former presidents and other high-profile individuals into the case could complicate plans for Michel’s long-delayed jury trial to go forward in March. The judge was adamant Tuesday that, even if the former presidents seek to quash the subpoenas for their testimony, the trial will begin as scheduled on March 27.
“I do not have any time to push this case back, so you’re going on the dates you’ve got,” said Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
Michel — who has pleaded not guilty in the case — has been free pending trial, but his legal troubles appear to have contributed to a decision to cancel an international reunion tour last year for the American hip-hop group best known for the songs “Ready or Not” and “Killing Me Softly.”
home is being built in in Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, U.S. on January 7, 2023.
The Washington Post | Getty Images
Developers planning to build homes in the desert west of Phoenix don’t have enough groundwater supplies to move forward with their plans, a state modeling report found.
Plans to construct homes west of the White Tank Mountains will require alternative sources of water to proceed as the state grapples with a historic megadrought and water shortages, according to the report.
Water sources are dwindling across the Western United States and mounting restrictions on the Colorado River are affecting all sectors of the economy, including homebuilding. But amid a nationwide housing shortage, developers are bombarding Arizona with plans to build homes even as water shortages worsen.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources reported that the Lower Hassayampa sub-basin that encompasses the far West Valley of Phoenix is projected to have a total unmet demand of 4.4 million acre-feet of water over a 100-year period. The department therefore can’t move to approve the development of subdivisions solely dependent on groundwater.
“We must talk about the challenge of our time: Arizona’s decades-long drought, over usage of the Colorado River, and the combined ramifications on our water supply, our forests, and our communities,” Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a statement last week.
Developers in the Phoenix area are required to get state certificates proving that they have 100 years’ worth of water supplies in the ground over which they’re building before they’re approved to construct any properties.
The megadrought has generated the driest two decades in the West in at least 1,200 years, and human-caused climate change has helped to fuel the conditions. Arizona has experienced cuts to its Colorado River water allocation and now must curb 21% of its water usage from the river, or roughly 592,000 acre-feet each year, an amount that would supply more than 2 million Arizona households annually.
Despite warnings that there isn’t enough water to sustain growth in development, some Arizona developers have argued that they can work around diminishing water supplies, saying new homes will have low flow fixtures, drip irrigation, desert landscaping and other drought-friendly measures. More than two dozen housing developments are in the works around Phoenix.
In early December, the New York Stock Exchange signed a memorandum of understanding to begin dual listing securities with its Israeli counterpart, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, potentially accelerating U.S. investment in companies tied to illegal West Bank settlements.
The move could allow American investors increased access to companies like the construction firm Ashtrom, which is currently listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and on a 2020 United Nations human rights office database of over 100 companies tied to the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. To be included in that list, a company had to be engaged in supplying equipment used to destroy Palestinian assets including farmland and property; supplying transportation, utilities, or other support for existing settlements; or aiding in financial backing for settlement expansion or maintenance. Ashtrom, in addition to operating quarries in the West Bank, has helped construct housing in illegal West Bank settlements and prisons and military installments in the occupied territories.
Dozens of companies in sectors including telecom, construction, and renewable energy are listed in both the U.N. database and the Tel Aviv exchange. That includes some of Israel’s largest banks and the massive energy and infrastructure conglomerate Delek, one of Israel’s largest companies.
Beyond dual listing, the memorandum signed between the two exchanges also lists the potential development of exchange-traded fund, indexes, and environmental, social, and corporate governance, or ESG products. The potential creation of ESG products is especially notable given that ESG funds, while offering groupings of socially responsible products, have also been used to greenwash companies with a track record of various abuses. At the same time, impact investing groups, like JLens, have gone on the offensive to attack ESG funds incorporating Israeli human rights abuses into their modeling.
While the vast majority of companies in the 2020 database are Israeli, a handful of U.S. companies made it onto the list, including Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Expedia, and General Mills. These companies are already listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The memorandum will likely open U.S. investors’ access to Israeli companies also doing business in illegal settlements and bolster Tel Aviv listings through the institutional support and size of the New York exchange.
NYSE President Lynn Martin said in a press release that “our exploration of dual listings will provide investors with potential exposure to listed companies and economic activity in both markets. The importance of our global capital markets has never been greater, and we look forward to demonstrating what two great exchanges can accomplish when they work together.”
Dual listing is not a departure from standard financial sector norms. Tel Aviv has entered into similar agreements with exchanges like Toronto prior to the New York memorandum.
“The narrow framing of this is that it’s the perfect headline for those of us who would worry about a blending of the Israeli far-right and American-style finance capitalism,” Robert Hockett, a professor of financial and international economic law at Cornell, told The Intercept. “The New York exchange is the largest of them all,” Hockett said, “and is the most heavily traded exchange and is in that sense the largest capital market, so any firm in Tel Aviv will get a lot more access than it previously had.”
Despite the Biden administration’s official stance against illegal settlement expansion, as the U.N. was set to add more companies to its database last month, the United States began lobbying the human rights office to drop its bid to expand the list. Two American diplomatic officials, including Michèle Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council, told an Israeli ambassador they were pressuring the U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk not to add more companies to the U.N. database.
At the same time that the New York and Tel Aviv exchanges announced their collaboration, a coalition of far-right Israeli extremists seized power in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Fomented by Benjamin Netanyahu’s desperation to regain power amid ongoing corruption investigations, the new coalition of cabinet ministers has already engaged in egregious provocations against Palestinians and laid bare its intent to fully annex the West Bank.
Language from the coalition deal states that Jews “have a natural right over the Land of Israel,” and that “in light of our belief in the aforementioned right, the prime minister will lead the formulation and advancement of policies within the framework of applying sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.” Israel’s incoming tourism minister has vowed to accelerate annexation and Jewish tourism to the West Bank, describing Palestine as “our local Tuscany.”
The possible creation of ESG products referenced in the dual listing announcement also follows intense lobbying to ignore Israeli human rights abuses in scoring social impact of investments. In October, the financial services giant Morningstar bent to overwhelming pressure from powerful American Zionist groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Women’s Zionist Organization of America to remove Israeli human rights abuses committed against Palestinians from its methodology. A leader of ESG analytics, Morningstar and its subsidiary Sustainalytics committed to removing its Human Rights Radar service, no longer using the U.N. Human Rights Council as a source for its analysis, and abandoning terms relating to Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The ESG products that could emerge out of the dual listing memorandum hold the potential to mirror the principles of JLens, an investment advising fund now owned by the Anti-Defamation League that led the charge against Morningstar, leveling accusations of antisemitism.
“Dual listing serves the interests of Israeli companies and of the State of Israel by allowing companies to maintain a strong link to Israel and ecosystem it offers while benefiting from the upsides of listing on the world’s largest exchange,” Ittai Ben-Zeev, CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, said in a press release. Ben-Zeev was previously executive vice president and head of Capital Markets at Bank Leumi, which is listed in the U.N. database of financial institutions supporting illegal West Bank settlements.
A Russian missile strike over the weekend at an apartment complex in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro exposed a weakness in Ukraine’s air defenses, just as many fear more brutal Russian attacks are on the horizon.
The Dnipro strike killed 45 people, including six children, and injured another 79 people in one of the most devastating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population since Moscow’s invasion nearly a year ago.
Russia has targeted critical infrastructure and energy grids in Ukraine with strikes since October, hoping to cow the Ukrainian people into submission after facing numerous setbacks in the war.
In the Dnipro strike, however, Ukraine says it was completely unable to stop the missile that hit the apartment complex because it lacked the defense capabilities to intercept it.
The deadly incident, just days after the Kremlin’s appointment of a new commander to oversee the war, is leading to concerns that a more desperate Russia will increasingly carry out such strikes and Ukraine will struggle to defend against them.
Gian Gentile, the associate director of the nonprofit Rand Corporation’s Arroyo Center, predicted Russia will keep up the strikes as it prepares to launch a potential ground offensive in coming months.
Gentile said he could not speak with finality on Russian intent, but he believes the Kremlin is “at the point now where they are intentionally killing civilians” to turn them against the government.
“They may be moderating between going after infrastructure and power nodes” and civilian areas, he added. ”But they are following a playbook that lots of other countries have taken in war — and that is to punish the civilian population.”
After the strike, a Kremlin spokesperson said Russia does not target residential areas and falsely attributed blame for the attack on Ukrainian air defenses, according to the Kyiv Post.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said the Dnipro strike was part of a weekend barrage of missiles targeting power grids and not a direct assault on the multistory apartment complex, noting the Kh-22 missile used in the Jan. 14 attack is “notoriously inaccurate.”
Ukrainian officials on Monday said they do not possess a defense system capable of downing Russia’s Kh-22s, a Soviet-era long-range missile designed to strike ships and aircraft. Ukraine’s Air Force Command said in a Facebook post that Russia has fired more than 210 of the missiles since the war began and Ukraine has shot down none of them.
According to analysts, Kyiv is physically capable of shooting the missiles down, but they are extremely hard to track. The Kh-22 can reach more than 3,000 mph once fired from Russia’s Tu-22M3 bomber planes.
The missile type, equipped with a conventional warhead, has been used in past strikes, including one on a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk in June that killed around 20 people.
Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense secretary, said Kyiv needs the Patriot missile defense system or a SAMP-T, a defense system co-owned by France and Italy, to effectively take the missiles down.
The U.S. and Germany are each providing Ukraine with one Patriot defense system, and American troops are training Ukrainian personnel on the missile system at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
But Sak said Ukraine will undoubtedly need more of the Patriots.
“It’s a question of quantity because Ukraine is a large country,” Sak told The Hill. “To protect Ukrainian cities, we will need to continue to work with our partners to get more of these systems.”
Others cautioned that while more air defense systems were good, they can only do so much, arguing Ukraine also has to be effective in responding to the attacks.
Konstantin Sonin, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, said there were indications Russia may have modified its missiles or launched the attack from an unclear direction, further stymying Ukraine.
“In this attack, the air defense was extremely unsuccessful,” he said. “I think they’re extremely busy trying to figure out how it was done.”
Russia is reportedly running low on ammunition and inventory, leading to questions regarding if the Kremlin has the ability to continue the strikes.
But Sak said Russia is continuing to produce more missiles, and with its existing stockpile, the Kremlin could “at any given moment” conduct two or three mass strikes.
That evidence is also supported by other analysts, who estimate Russia could continue the attacks with the current munitions supply through at least the summer.
The Dnipro attack led to an outpouring of grief from Ukraine, even in a country already beleaguered by war and death.
Noting the sheer number of civilian deaths, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Monday evening address that Ukraine is “doing everything to strengthen our air defense as much as possible.”
“What happened in Dnipro, the fact that Russia is preparing a new attempt to seize the initiative in the war, the fact that the nature of hostilities at the front requires new decisions in the defense supply,” he said, “all this only emphasizes how important it is to coordinate our efforts — efforts of all members of the coalition to defend Ukraine and freedom.”
The U.S. property & casualty insurance industry pays out more than $790 billion in policy benefits, according to the Treasury Department.
The industry also employs more than half a million people, making property & casualty (or “P&C,” as insurance insiders call it) one of the more important spokes in the insurance industry wheel.
P&C insurance is one of the most “overlooked” forms of personal and business insurance. How come?
A white paper entitled “The Overlooked Gap in Financial Advice,” by Chubb, a commercial insurance company, and Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm, states that millions of Americans go to great lengths to protect traditional financial assets, yet the vast majority overlook costly property and casualty insurance risks. That, the report states, is an error of omission that could lead to big financial trouble if a consumer or small business is targeted for a lawsuit or financial damages, but doesn’t have P&C insurance.
Property and casualty insurance aids consumers in protecting their possessions (that’s the property side) while providing liability coverage (that’s the casualty side) if you’re deemed legally responsible for an accident that results in bodily harm to another individual, or to any possessions that person owns. Homeowner’s insurance, renter’s insurance and auto insurance are both examples of P&C insurance.
“A smart way to think of property and casualty insurance is to frame it within the idea of risk and consequence,” says Kent Thune, insurance analyst at FitSmall Business in New York City. “Like many other forms of insurance, the risk of incurring a P&C claim is relatively low, but the consequence of not having this coverage can be extremely high.”
As an example, Thune says, the odds of someone getting injured on your property and successfully winning a million-dollar lawsuit against you are low. “That said, you don’t want to be faced with this scenario without the proper liability coverage,” he states.
In addition, people struggle to make smart decisions about risk trade-offs and insurance or other risk financing options.
“A good example of that is people who live in Florida who have high hurricane deductibles or who are out of the flood zone but don’t understand that flood maps are old and there is always a possibility that a hurricane can flood many areas,” says Layne Kertamus, a P&C insurance specialist with 20-years in the business. “Likewise, a doctor may not quite understand how the insurance company’s defense cost provision works in a policy that could have the effect of reducing available coverage.”
“Even large companies don’t necessarily understand where their P&C risk exposure is and how that could result in financial impairment,” Kertamus adds.
Even consumers who do want P&C insurance often have trouble getting a good policy and finding solid financial advice in choosing a policy. According to Chubb, 75% of high-income level consumers want their financial advisor to help, yet only 28% of advisors offer P&C insurance support. But financial experts say U.S. adults who ignore property & casualty insurance are taking a big risk.
Once you realize your assets are at risk for a property and casualty claim, the job at hand is to get good P&C insurance that fits your needs.
“Turning to an independent broker is the best way to get personal property & casualty insurance,” says Matthew Struck, a partner at Treadstone Risk Management, LLC in Morristown, N.J. “They can market your coverages to many different companies and recommend the options that represent the best coverage for the best price, which gives you the best insurance value.”
Property & casualty insurance should be part of the overall household insurance package, which should include homeowners, auto, health insurance and disability, and term life insurance, Struck says. $300,000 in liability coverage should do the trick on the property & casualty insurance front, he says, but talking to an insurance professional should be mandatory to properly assess your own unique overall insurance requirements.
Insurance brokers also represent multiple insurance carriers and can save time, money, and energy to find affordable and comprehensive coverage, says John Espenschied, owner of Insurance Brokers Group, in St. Louis, Mo.
“We recommend checking insurance rates for auto and home insurance (both of which offer P&C component coverage, up to certain coverage limits) every two years to ensure you are receiving competitive rates and up-to-date coverage limits,” he says.
Generally speaking, bundling insurance can be your best bet for receiving the lowest P&C premium rates, but that’s not always the case, Espenschied states.
“Some insurance carriers might be very competitive on auto insurance but not with home insurance,” he notes. “Having an insurance broker shop multiple companies will give you the choices and options you need to make an informed decision.”
Good liability coverage isn’t overly expensive (in the range of $400 to $700 per year should net you a decent policy), according to industry statistics. The cost is well worth it, given the downside of the financial damages, for example, of someone being injured on your property.
Talk to an insurance professional to gauge your need for property & casualty insurance. For a relatively small amount of cash, it might turn out to be one of the savviest money moves you’ll ever make.
Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report CEO Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter on Oct. 27 for $44 billion, has a history of tweeting on the social media site long before he owned the company.
Musk, who refers to Twitter as the town square of our time, has been controversial in many of his tweets, and one particular message back on Aug. 7, 2018, already cost him millions in Securities and Exchange Commission fines and forced him to step down as Tesla chairman.
Musk reached a settlement with the SEC on Sept. 29, 2018, which required the CEO and Tesla to each pay a $20 million fine and for Musk to step down as chairman for tweeting that he could take Tesla private at $420 per share and buy out the company for $72 billion.
“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” Musk tweeted on Aug. 7, 2018.
Just days later on Aug. 10, 2018, investors sued Musk and Tesla alleging the statement that the company had the necessary funding to take the company private was fraudulent and that Musk and Tesla were artificially manipulating the price of Tesla stock “to completely decimate the company’s short-sellers,” according to Courthouse News Service.
The plaintiffs seek damages for shareholders who traded Tesla stock in the days after Musk’s tweets, as shares shot up immediately after Musk’s tweet, then fell on Aug. 17. Plaintiffs did not list an amount for damages.
Fast-forward to Jan. 17, 2023 and jury selection has begun in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco for the trial. Opening arguments reportedly could get underway Tuesday once the jury is selected.
The defendants, which include Musk and current and former Tesla directors, have denied the alleged fraud claims.
Musk’s lawyers earlier requested a change of venue to Texas where Tesla is headquartered, but were denied by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen.
An option under consideration for NSSL Phase 3 is to create “on ramps” to allow emerging launch providers to compete
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is likely to change how it selects providers of national security launch services and how it awards contracts, a program official told SpaceNews.
The changes would affect the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 procurement. United Launch Alliance and SpaceX won the Phase 2 competition in 2020, and their current contracts will be re-competed in 2024.
NSSL acquires launch services for heavy and medium lift class national security satellites.
The Phase 3 procurement strategy is still being finalized and will be released in a draft solicitation expected in the second quarter of 2023, Col. Douglas Pentecost, deputy director of the Space Force’s launch enterprise, said Jan. 13 in an email.
Compared to Phase 2, where only ULA and SpaceX were selected to launch all national security missions over five years, Phase 3 would create “on ramps” for other players to compete.
“The NSSL Phase 3 acquisition strategy is still in development but seeks to meet warfighter requirements while optimally exploiting ongoing advancements in the United States’ ever-growing commercial launch market to best combat the pacing challenge,” Pentecost said.
“A dual-lane contracting approach is being considered,” he said. One would be an IDIQ contract, short for indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity “with an unlimited number of providers.”
An IDIQ contract would allow the government to purchase launch services on an as-needed basis without committing to a specific amount. Pentecost said this vehicle would be used for less complex NSSL launches where there is likely to be more competitors. “This allows annual on-ramping of new capabilities for the less stressing NSSL missions.”
The second lane would be like Phase 2, or an indefinite delivery requirements contract with two selected providers for the more demanding NSSL missions.
Launch providers will be briefed on the details after the draft request for proposals is released, said Pentecost. “This will provide an opportunity for potential vendors to submit clarifying questions which will inform the final NSSL Phase 3 RFP planned for summer 2023.”
The dual-lane approach would satisfy congressional concerns about DoD restricting competition. “Some analysts have questioned the Space Force’s decision to award only two launch services contracts in NSSL Phase 2,” noted the Congressional Research Service in a report.
If the Space Force decided to continue working with only two providers in Phase 3, said CRS, “Congress could consider directing the Space Force to select more than two launch providers in Phase 3, directing the Space Force to examine alternative procurement models.”
An anonymous father on Reddit asked users if he’s in the wrong for refusing to pay his college-enrolled daughter for babysitting and completing chores – and people appear to be divided in the comments section.
Reddit user Throwaway476905, who couldn’t immediately be reached for comment since his account was suspended at the time of publication, submitted a post to the “Am I the A——” subreddit on Monday, Jan. 16, where he shared his apparent familial dispute.
The father wrote that he asks his 20-year-old daughter to babysit his 5-year-old twin sons about three times a week without pay. In addition, he wrote that he believes his request is a reasonable one because he’s paying his daughter’s college tuition and she lives with him rent-free.
DAD SAYS TEEN DAUGHTER CAN’T GO ON DATE BECAUSE BOY WON’T MEET WITH HIM
“Occasionally she has to watch over her younger brothers since I may be busy with work or when I need a break to hang out with my girlfriend,” Throwaway476905 wrote.
An anonymous father of a 20-year-old woman and two twin boys (not pictured) asked Reddit users if he’s wrong for refusing to pay his daughter for babysitting and doing chores.
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Throwaway476905’s daughter asked him to lessen her babysitting duties, according to the post.
“She told me she’s okay with cooking and cleaning around the house, but having to watch over her siblings was annoying & stressful and that it’s taking away from her studies,” Throwaway476905 wrote.
“That p****d me off because I myself went to school while having to pay bills & take care of her as a baby alongside my ex-wife,” he continued. “I told her she was acting very privileged and that if I could do it, so could she. She didn’t like that very much and stormed off into her room.”
The dispute reportedly escalated when Throwaway476905’s daughter told her aunt [Throwaway476905’s sister] about the exchange she had with her father, he wrote.
MAN ASKS REDDIT IF HE’S WRONG FOR NOT MOVING HIS LATE WIFE’S URN TO MAKE HIS NEW FIANCÉE HAPPY
Throwaway476905 described his sister as “very kind” and “gullible at times,” and wrote that he didn’t like that his sister suggested he pay his daughter an allowance.
Throwaway476905, an anonymous father on Reddit, shared he doesn’t think he should have to pay his 20-year-old daughter for babysitting and doing chores because he’s paying her college tuition and lets her live with him rent-free.
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“I explained why I felt that wasn’t necessary and she told me not to compare my situation to my Daughter’s since apparently I put myself in the position I was in back then which I guess is a fair argument,” Throwaway476905 wrote.
He reiterated that he doesn’t think an allowance should be necessary since his daughter lives in their shared home and is having her college tuition paid, but he was open to hearing from strangers on the internet about whether he’s “wrong for not wanting to pay her extra money to do basic chores.”
More than 9,000 people upvoted Throwaway476905’s post and he was ultimately labeled an “A——” by Reddit voters, but the post started a debate in the 5,400-plus comments left under his query.
DAD SPENDS $35G WEDDING FUND HE SAVED FOR HIS DAUGHTER ON A CAR, VACATION
The post’s commenter, a user who received more than 30,900 upvotes from the “Am I the A——” Reddit community, said Throwaway476905 was in the wrong – referencing how the father of three argued how he “went to school while having to pay bills & take care of her as a baby alongside.”
“That was your own baby and your own decision, same as now,” the top commenter wrote. “[Your] daughter has no kids, it’s not her responsibility.”
A 20-year-old college student is reportedly being asked to care for her 5-year-old twin brothers about three times a week in addition to other household chores, her father explained in an anonymous Reddit post.
(iStock)
In response to the top comment, one Reddit user initially sided with the dad, and wrote, “She’s living there rent free…that’s her allowance for these chores.”
The user revised their original response to the following – “You should be paying her for babysitting, you don’t need to pay her for the other chores though.”
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A Reddit user agreed with the revised comment and wrote that they don’t think an allowance is needed for household chores.
“…but she absolutely should get paid for watching children she didn’t choose to have – since they’re her siblings, not children,” the commenter wrote, which earned more than 9,200 upvotes.
Throwaway476905, an anonymous father on Reddit, wrote that his sister has suggested he pay his college-aged daughter for babysitting and completing household chores while he works and takes time to see his girlfriend.
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“I think if she’s asked to babysit once every few weeks, that is the equivalent of a chore,” another Reddit user wrote. “If it’s multiple times a week, that changes things.”
Some commenters expressed that they think the father could be seen as selfish since he noted that he asks his daughter to watch his young sons when he wants to spend time with his girlfriend.
“I see that this person ‘NEEDS’ to ‘hang out with his girlfriend’ and not care for his children quite a bit and that is odd phrasing,” one user wrote, which garnered more than 1,100 upvotes.
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Other Reddit users asked if the daughter is already handling the majority of the household chores since the father acknowledged he asks her to cook, clean and do “typical things you’re expected to do on a daily basis anyways” in addition to watching her young brothers.
Suspended Reddit user Throwaway476905 wrote that he asks his college-aged daughter to cook, clean and do other household chores in addition to babysitting her elementary-aged twin brothers.
(iStock)
Many commenters shared that they think there’s cause for concern if the father’s babysitting requests are truly getting in the way of the daughter’s schoolwork.
One Reddit user wrote that they believe it’s “not reasonable” to ask a college student to watch children under the age of nine for three or four days per week.
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“I fully expect that older children can and should on occasion help care for younger siblings when necessary – in emergencies or once in a while situations,” the Reddit user elaborated. “It’s just what families do. But if it’s frequent or regular there needs to be some compensation [in my opinion], and if it’s interfering with school? That’s a problem.”
CNN
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Here’s a look at the life of Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia and convicted war criminal.
Birth date: January 28, 1948
Birth place: Arthington, Liberia
Birth name: Charles Taylor
Father: Nelson Taylor, judge
Mother: Zoe Taylor
Marriages: Victoria Addison-Taylor (unknown-present); Jewel (Howard) Taylor (1997-2006, divorced)
Children: with Victoria Addison-Taylor: three girls; with Jewel (Howard) Taylor: McArthur Taylor. It is reported that Taylor has several other children.
Education: Bentley College, Massachusetts, BA Economics,1977
Taylor stole or diverted nearly $100 million of Liberia’s funds while in power, according to the New York Times. Taylor used the money to buy houses, cars and illegal weapons while fighting the civil war.
1972 – Moves to the United States to study.
1980 – Returns to Liberia and joins the administration of Samuel Doe, who comes into power after a coup.
May 1983 – Flees to the United States after Doe accuses Taylor of corruption and stealing over $900,000 from the Liberian government.
May 1984 – Is arrested in Boston. The court holds him to wait for extradition orders from the Liberian government.
1985 – Escapes from jail. Authorities believe he crosses into Mexico and then heads to Libya where Colonel Moammar Gadhafi gives him asylum.
1989 – While in Libya, Taylor forms the militia group National Patriotic Front of Liberia.
1990-1996 – A civil war is fought in Liberia. More than 150,000 people are killed and more than half of the population become refugees.
1996 – A peace pact brokered by the international community calls for elections.
July 19, 1997 – Taylor is elected president of Liberia in a special election.
2000 – Rebels in Liberia begin a struggle against Taylor’s government.
June 4, 2003 – Taylor is indicted for crimes against humanity by a United Nations court. Charges include murder, enslavement and the recruitment of child soldiers.
June 6, 2003 – Rebels advance into Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.
June 2003 – US President George W. Bush makes a statement asking Taylor to step down for the good of the Liberian people.
August 7, 2003 – Taylor submits his letter of resignation.
August 11, 2003 – Steps down as president, hands over power to Vice President Moses Blah and leaves for Nigeria, where he is granted asylum.
December 4, 2003 – Interpol puts out a global arrest warrant for Taylor.
March 16, 2006 – The indictment against Taylor is amended and reduced to 11 counts.
March 29, 2006 – Taylor is recaptured and taken into custody by border guards in northern Nigeria as he tried to leave the country with his wife.
April 3, 2006 – Taylor appears at a UN-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone and pleads not guilty to 11 war crimes charges.
June 20, 2006 – Taylor is transferred to The Hague in the Netherlands for trial.
June 4, 2007 – Taylor boycotts the opening of his trial, calling it a “charade” in a letter read by his attorney.
January 7, 2008 – Taylor appears in court as his war crimes trial resumes.
June 2010 – The prosecution, which rested its case against Taylor in 2009, asks to reopen its case. This is done to allow for the testimony of model Naomi Campbell and actress Mia Farrow regarding “blood diamonds” that Taylor may have given Campbell in 1997.
March 11, 2011 – Taylor’s trial concludes.
April 26, 2012 – Taylor is found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes in Sierra Leone.
May 16, 2012 – At a sentencing hearing, Taylor says that terrible things happened in Sierra Leone, for which there can be no justification, but his role in the conflict was much different than represented. “I pushed the peace process hard, contrary to how I have been portrayed in this court.”
May 30, 2012 – Taylor is sentenced to 50 years in prison.
January 22, 2013 – Taylor’s lawyers argue an appeal of Taylor’s conviction for war crimes.
September 26, 2013 – Taylor’s appeal is dismissed, his sentence stands.
September 8, 2020 – Taylor’s request to transfer to a prison outside of the UK over Covid-19 fears is denied.
October 2021 – Taylor files a lawsuit against the Liberian government over its refusal to pay his retirement and pension benefits since he resigned in 2003.
