Hah nice catch. Fixed.

Huh? All federal judges in the US (Supreme Court justices, court of appeals judges, and district court judges) are nominated.

Even at the state level, it’s a mix of election and nomination based on the vacancy.

Thanks. I’ve updated the post.

I don’t think so. There are other important parts in the article:

For the first time, the annual event will also involve troops from the Australian and French military. Fourteen other countries in Asia and Europe will attend as observers. The exercises will run until May 10.

…

The 2024 exercises are also the first to take place outside of Philippine territorial waters.

“Some of the exercises will take place in the South China Sea in an area outside of the Philippines’ territorial sea. It’s a direct challenge to China’s expansive claims” in the region, Philippine political analyst Richard Heydarian told DW.

He added that some of the exercises this year will also be close to Taiwan.

This year’s exercises have a “dual orientation pushing against China’s aggressive intentions both in the South China Sea but also in Taiwan,” he added.

According to ProPublica, it’s commonly done using Leahy Laws:

The recommendations came from a special committee of State Department officials known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. The panel, made up of Middle East and human rights experts, is named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief author of 1997 laws that requires the U.S. to cut off assistance to any foreign military or law enforcement units — from battalions of soldiers to police stations — that are credibly accused of flagrant human rights violations.

…

Over the years, hundreds of foreign units, including from Mexico, Colombia and Cambodia, have been blocked from receiving any new aid. Officials say enforcing the Leahy Laws can be a strong deterrent against human rights abuses.

https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations

Archive link: https://archive.ph/7mQ8M

It wasn’t me!

Just pointing out the headline seems to imply it’s from WaPo when in fact it was written by RT.

This is a repost of an RT article. https://www.rt.com/news/594456-biden-israel-indiscriminate-bombing/

Agreed. Here’s some more context:

Korea has the second-lowest number of physicians among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, leading to some of the highest doctors’ wages among surveyed member nations.

Doctors in Korea earn the most among 28 member countries that provided related data. Following Korea, the highest earners are in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The US was among the countries for which data was not provided.

Measured by PPP, which takes into account local living costs, salaried specialists earned an average of $192,749 annually in 2020, According to the 2023 OECD Health Statistics report. That was 60 percent more than the OECD average. Korean GP salaries ranked sixth.

… The country also ranked low in the number of medical school graduates – 7.3 per 100,000 people, which is the third-lowest after Israel and Japan, and nearly half the OCED average of 14 graduates for every 100,000 people.

https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230730000088

These doctors are not telling the whole story. More context from the article:

Public surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, and critics say that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to a rise in the number of doctors.

Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also likely result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.

I think you’re overthinking this. Your original comment asked about the consequences of him saying “no,” so I outlined the legal options the prosecutor of the case has already considered and discussed. Let’s see what happens soon.

From the article, he has to put up the money in order to appeal:

Though he has vowed to appeal both cases, he must immediately grapple with the enormous sums that are at stake: To keep both judgments from being enforced while he appeals, he must put up the entire amount in either cash or bonds, according to legal experts. Usually, defendants must put up such bonds within 30 days of a final judgment to keep the plaintiff from collecting, experts said.

If he doesn’t appeal and doesn’t pay his penalty, NY has already indicated they’ll seize his assets:

New York Attorney General Letitia James told ABC News on Tuesday that she will seek to seize some of the former president’s assets if he’s unable to cover the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-letitia-james-fraud-lawsuit-judgment-verdict-63e643d0fe098cc1ac178c003f21a40d

Your comment seems to suggest that the boat was far away from Taiwan, which was not the case. For context, the boat was touring Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands, which are just a few kilometers/miles from the Chinese mainland (Wikipedia says 10 km/6.2 mi), and had to veer toward the Chinese side of the water to avoid shoals.

According to the article, this seems like an escalation by the PRC:

For years, sightseeing boat tours between Kinmen and Xiamen, the closest city on the Chinese mainland, have offered Taiwanese tourists a chance to gaze at China’s dazzling skyline without the hassle of border checks, with China operating similar tour boats for its citizens too.

…

Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, said the latest measures are part of China’s “gray zone” tactics, referring to coercive or aggressive state actions that stop short of open warfare – something Beijing has used increasingly in recent years in the East and South China Seas, as well as toward Taiwan.

The inspection of a Taiwanese tour boat by China’s coast guard, which Chong said had not happened before, was meant to provoke Taiwan and see if it would either escalate or accept this sort of behavior as given.

Here’s the full combined list:

1. Lincoln
2. FD Roosevelt
3. Washington
4. T Roosevelt
5. Jefferson
6. Truman
7. Obama
8. Eisenhower
9. LB Johnson
10. Kennedy
11. Madison
12. Clinton
13. J Adams
14. Biden
15. Wilson
16. Reagan
17. Grant
18. Monroe
19. GHW Bush
20. JQ Adams
21. Jackson
22. Carter
23. Taft
24. McKinley
25. Polk
26. Cleveland
27. Ford
28. Van Buren
29. Hayes
30. Garfield
31. Harrison
32. GW Bush
33. Arthur
34. Coolidge
35. Nixon
36. Hoover
37. Tyler
38. Taylor
39. Fillmore
40. Harding
41. Harrison
42. Pierce
43. Johnson
44. Buchanan
45. Trump

Source: http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/uploads/1/0/8/7/108798321/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf

Interesting observation:

Rachel Swan, a breaking news and enterprise reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, says there are “two really visible crises” in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use.

“And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety,” she said. “One thing I’m starting to learn in reporting on public safety is that you can put numbers in front of people all day, and numbers just don’t speak to people the way narrative does.”

There is an interesting trend that Gen Z men are leaning more conservative, while more Gen Z women are becoming liberal :

Something strange is happening between Gen Z men and women. Over the past decade, poll after poll has found that young people are growing more and more divided by gender on a host of political issues. Since 2014, women between the ages of 18 and 29 have steadily become more liberal each year, while young men have not. Today, female Gen Zers are more likely than their male counterparts to vote, care more about political issues, and participate in social movements and protests.

While the gender gap is an enduring feature of American politics, at no time in the past quarter century has there been such a rapid divergence between the views of young men and women. The startling speed of the change suggests something more significant is going on than just new demographic patterns, such as rising rates of education or declining adherence to a religion — the change points to some kind of cataclysmal event. After speaking with more than 20 Gen Zers, my colleagues at the Survey Center on American Life and I found that among women, no event was more influential to their political development than the #MeToo movement.

[…]

As women’s political priorities have solidified, young men’s priorities have melted into mush. Surveys consistently show that young men are far less likely than women to say any particular issue is personally important to them. A survey we conducted last year found that young women expressed statistically significant greater concern for 11 out of 15 different issues, including drug addiction, crime, climate change, and gun violence. There was not a single issue that young men cared about significantly more than young women.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-gender-gap-young-men-women-dont-agree-politics-2024-1

Some additional interesting points in the cited poll report:

• Gen Z adults trend slightly less Republican than older Americans. More than half of Gen Z teens do not identify with a major party, but most share their parents’ party affiliation.
• Gen Z adults are more liberal than older Americans. Gen Z teens are more moderate.
• Gen Z is more religiously diverse than older generations. Gen Z teens mirror their parents’ religious affiliation. Gen Z teens are more likely than Gen Z adults to attend church or find religion important.
• Most Gen Z Americans, particularly Gen Z Democrats, are more likely than older Americans to believe that generational change in political leadership is necessary to solve the country’s problems. Younger and older generations both express a lack of understanding across generational lines.

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This comment is so disingenuous. Your link said guaranteed sick leave was the sticking point in December 2022:

The initial agreement brokered by the Biden administration was accepted by all but four rail unions, who were holding out for guaranteed paid sick leave days. The opposing unions, though, represent the majority of rail workers. The workers and companies had until Dec. 9 to reach an agreement before they vowed to strike, which the industry estimated would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day.

But five months later, it was resolved:

When Joe Biden and Congress enacted legislation in December that blocked a threatened freight rail strike, many workers angrily faulted Biden for not ensuring that the legislation also guaranteed paid sick days. But since then, union officials says, members of the Biden administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and labor secretary, Marty Walsh, who stepped down on 11 March, lobbied the railroads, telling them it was wrong not to grant paid sick days.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave