According to the unemployment data released this morning, the economy added only 54,000 jobs, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent. However, this report from MarketWatch suggests data is much worse than that:
McDonald’s ran a big hiring day on April 19 — after the Labor Department’s April survey for the payrolls report was conducted — in which 62,000 jobs were added. That’s not a net number, of course, and seasonal adjustment will reduce the Hamburglar impact on payrolls. (In simpler terms — restaurants always staff up for the summer; the Labor Department makes allowance for this effect.) Morgan Stanley estimates McDonald’s hiring will boost the overall number by 25,000 to 30,000. The Labor Department won’t detail an exact McDonald’s figure — they won’t identify any company they survey — but there will be data in the report to give a rough estimate.
If Morgan Stanley is correct, about half of last month's job growth came from the venerable fast-food chain. That is hardly the sign of a healthy economy.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Half of Last Month's New Jobs Came from a Single Employer — McDonald's | The Weekly Standard
Syria Blocks Internet Access Amid Unrest
By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
Syria shut down most of its Internet and mobile data connections early Friday, adopting a strategy used by other governments in the Middle East during critical points of the uprisings.
But the attempt to gain an advantage over the opposition groups by unplugging or partially blocking the Internet, which has played a key role in the protests, could backfire. In some cases, most notably in Egypt, the move appeared to prompt more angry protesters into the streets.
"You are reaching a point of no return when you do this kind of stuff," said Earl Zmijewski, a vice president at Renesys Corp., an Internet research firm in Manchester, N.H. tracking the developments.
At 6:35 am Syria time on Friday, about two-thirds of all Syrian networks were cut off from the global Internet, according to Renesys, which studies global Internet traffic flows. This occurred over roughly a half-hour, it said.
The networks that were blocked, including high-speed data connections for mobile phones, were those used by ordinary citizens.
The networks that serviced government websites, such as the site for the oil ministry and site of the government-owned telecommunications monopoly called the Syrian Telecommunication Establishment were not affected, according to Renesys.
A Syrian government-backed website confirmed Internet service had been shut down.
Blocking access to the Internet has risks both for the economy and for the regime, giving the appearance of desperation, Internet experts say.
Syria "can look at other countries where this was done and see that the Internet is not going away," said Bill Woodcock, director of research of the Packet Clearing House, a San Francisco organization that studies and supports Internet infrastructure globally. "It shows they're responding to the moment rather than thinking strategically, and any government that has devolved to that point is probably on its way out."
Egypt's Internet shutdown, which lasted about five days at the end of January and early February, required a wider effort than Syria's. Egypt had more than 200 international connections between Internet service providers inside and outside the country at the time of its shutdown, compared with just ten in Syria, according to Mr. Woodcock.
"Mubarak took Egypt offline and hurt Egypt's economy tremendously," said Mr. Zmijewski of Renesys, referring to ousted president, Hosni Mubarak. "So you only do this if you don't want images getting out of tanks rolling over people, or whatever is going to happen next there."
A blackout can be accomplished by removing blocks of routing addresses, called Internet protocol addresses, from the system, which has the effect of denying Internet data a way of finding its desired destination in those countries.
Syria's Internet culture has grown significantly in recent years. About 20 of every 100 citizens were online in 2009, the most recent year available, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations coordinating body that also tracks global technology trends. That's a four-fold increase from 2005. While that lags connectivity in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it's well ahead of Iran, Libya, and Iraq, according to the ITU.
John Edwards indictment a vindication for National Enquirer - Washington Times
A federal grand jury returned a six-count indictment today against John Edwards, the former senator and two-time presidential candidate. The government charges vindicate the story that the National Enquirer broke four and a half years ago: that Mr. Edwards was having an affair with Rielle Hunter and she was pregnant.
Editor-in-chief Barry Levine oversaw the Enquirer’s team of reporters and photographers who relentlessly pursued the story that turned out to be a blockbuster. “It’s been a long road and today’s indictment is vindication that this little supermarket tabloid exposed this massive cover-up,” Mr. Levine told The Washington Times. “We did our job. We got the facts right on this from the get-go. It’s amazing and a shame that the mainstream media couldn’t have followed our lead and pursed the story.”
The six counts against Mr. Edwards include four counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions from two donors in 2007 and 2008, one count of concealing those illegal donations from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and one count of conspiracy to violate the federal campaign finance laws and making false statements to the FEC. According to the indictment, the payments were used to facilitate Mr. Edwards‘ affair, and to conceal it and the resulting pregnancy from the public.
In December 2007, the Enquirer printed a photo of an eight-month pregnant Rielle Hunter and alleged that Mr. Edwards was not being fully honest about what happened. It reported campaign aide Andrew Young paid for Miss Hunter to move into a gated community in North Carolina. “We first said hush money was being paid to Andrew and Rielle to cover this thing up,” Mr. Levine explained. While on the presidential campaign trail, Mr. Edwards denied the affair and cover-up, saying, “The story is false, it’s completely untrue, ridiculous.”
The federal indictment alleges that campaign funds were used for Miss Hunter’s living expenses, travel and accommodations in order to hide her from the news media and the public so that his candidacy would not be damaged.
Reporters on the campaign bus with the candidate did not purse the story, but the Enquirer kept on it throughout 2008. Mr. Levine said that during that period, he was “just flabbergasted” that no one else followed up. “Here was a guy running for president who was betraying his cancer-stricken wife and his own campaign workers. If the mainstream media didn’t want to believe us, investigate yourselves. We literally drew a map to the people involved and no one wanted to go down that road.”
In July, the tabloid caught Mr. Edwards holding his baby daughter in a hotel room at the Beverly Hills Hilton. A month later, he confessed to ABC that he had a brief out-of-wedlock affair, claiming it occurred when his wife Elizabeth was in remission from cancer. He continued to deny that the baby was his, letting his former aide Mr. Young falsely claim paternity.
The paper was the first to report that campaign contributor Fred Baron was funneling money to hide Miss Hunter and her baby daughter from the press. “He moved her to a giant mansion in California with Andrew Young and his wife,” Mr. Levine explained. “Then moved her to a second mansion by the ocean. Our sources were saying at the time that this was a massive cover-up of hundreds of thousands, if not million of dollars.”
After Friday’s indictment was handed down, Assistant Attorney General Breuer said that, “Mr. Edwards is alleged to have accepted more than $900,000 in an effort to conceal from the public facts that he believed would harm his candidacy…. We will not permit candidates for high office to abuse their special ability to access the coffers of their political supporters to circumvent our election laws.”
The case of USA v. Johnny Reid Edwards will go to trial in North Carolina. If convicted, the former trial lawyer faces a penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the six charges against him.
Last year, I launched a campaign for The National Enquirer to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on the Edwards case. As the news organization that single handled uncovered this political sex scandal that ended with criminal charges, I believed that the Enquirer deserved the Ivy League prize. The committee initially refused to accept the Enquirer’s submission for various technical reasons. Mr. Levine persisted and the paper was included in the nominating for two categories.
In the end, however, the self-appointed media elite who run the Pulitzer committee did not give the paper even a mention in the prizes. The previous year, The New York Times won for its work exposing the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal, which did not end in criminal charges - instead he got his own show on CNN. “It still stings that the Pulitzer committee didn’t feel we were worthy of some type of acknowledgement, event a mention or a runner up of the work we did,” Mr. Levine said.
He thinks the indictment represents a far more important prize. “I think this is a victory not only for Enquirer but for all new media. It shows today that the gates are open. It’s not just The New York Times or the Washington Post that can break these stories. It’s the National Enquirer, Huffington Post, Drudge, these websites that are pushing real journalism like we are.?
Looking at the the bigger picture for the future of journalism, he said, “This is endorsement if you are persistent and aggressive and believe there a story there — despite others not believing in you and the subject calling you a liar, you can win.”
Emily Miller is a senior editor for the Opinion pages at The Washington Times.
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John Edwards charged in felony indictment
Federal grand jury indicts John Edwards
USA v. Johnny Reid Edwards contains six counts
Updated: Friday, 03 Jun 2011, 10:16 AM EDT
Published : Friday, 03 Jun 2011, 10:05 AM EDT
- MIKE BAKER and NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- A federal grand jury has indicted two-time presidential candidate John Edwards over massive sums of money spent to keep his mistress in hiding during the peak of his 2008 campaign for the White House.
The case of USA v. Johnny Reid Edwards contains six counts, including conspiracy, four counts of illegal campaign contributions and one count of false statements. The indictment was returned in the Middle District of North Carolina Friday.
An Edwards spokeswoman said she wasn't aware of the filing and declined immediate comment.
The indictment is the culmination of a federal investigation that lasted more than two years and scoured through virtually every corner of Edwards' political career.
A federal grand jury has indicted two-time presidential candidate John Edwards - The Washington Post
RALEIGH, N.C. — A federal grand jury has indicted two-time presidential candidate John Edwards
Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies - New Orleans News Story - WDSU New Orleans
Dr. Jack Kevorkian died early Friday morning at a hospital in Michigan, his lawyer confirmed.
Kevorkian, 83, died of pulmonary thrombosis around 2:30 a.m. at the Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, CNN, ABC and NBC reported.Kevorkian was hospitalized a couple of weeks ago due to medical issues related to his kidneys. He was released from the hospital, and was home for the past nine to 10 days before being admitted again earlier Thursday.Along with kidney trouble, Kevorkian was suffering from pneumonia.Kevorkian, believed to have assisted in 130 suicides, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 and sentenced to 10-25 years in prison but was released in 2007.He was the subject of “You Don’t Know Jack,” an HBO movie starring Al Pacino.Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. CNN contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
