http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/oil-jobs-worker-shortage/index.html

Good news laid-off oil workers: U.S. energy companies could soon face a serious worker shortage.

Goldman Sachs believes the American oil industry is about to stage a big comeback from the painful downturn and big job losses caused by oversupply.

As more oil fields come on line and America's oil boom gets back on track, there simply won't be enough people to do the required drilling, well completion and other logistical work. Cheap oil wiped out nearly 170,000 oil and gas jobs since late 2014 as desperate companies scrambled to cut costs and avoid bankruptcy.

That means just to keep up with the expected ramp-up in drilling activity, the oil and gas industry would need to add 80,000 to 100,000 jobs between now and the end of 2018, Goldman predicted in a recent report.

The estimate is based on Goldman's forecast for U.S. oil production to resume growing next year after the recent drop to two-year lows. That growth would require some 700 oil rigs to be added -- and each one supports an average of 120 to 150 employees.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/may-day?utm_term=.lmaEJwjLm8#.mlnBJEPzya

Hi America! So you might have heard that today the UK gets a new prime minister. This has happened much quicker than we expected and has taken lots of people by surprise.

You know how your presidential elections take about three years? This is not like that.
Maybe you’re thinking, Oh, that’s probably because the British sorted it out without any fuss in their quaint, traditional ways. There was probably tea involved. Haha NOPE.

No tea has played a significant role…yet.
As we explained recently, ever since we voted to leave the EU, everything about our country has become ridiculous and confusing.

So here’s what happened: David Cameron was our prime minister. He’s from the ruling right-wing Conservative party, aka the Tories – think the Republicans, except they all went to Oxford University and like posh things, like drinking port and having money.

He called a referendum on whether we should be in the EU, just to try to calm down the Europe-hating right wing of his party, but he then proceeded to lose it, plunging the country into economic and constitutional turmoil. So he resigned.

NOW HOLD UP, YANKEE FRIENDS. When our prime minister resigns, it’s not like a president resigning! We don’t directly elect our prime minister – instead, we elect members of parliament (MPs), and whoever can ~command a majority~ of MPs gets to be PM. Which basically means it’s the leader of the largest party.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/here-are-republican-national-convention-speakers-we-know-n608601

Rep. Paul Ryan: the House speaker has encouraged party unity despite Trump's contentious exchanges with establishment Republicans. Ryan told Politico he would speak. He's expected to give a 10-minute address.
House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy will speak, giving an address about the House GOP's agenda and building party unity, the Washington Post reported.
Sen. Ted Cruz announced he will speak at the convention last week. "Donald asked me to speak at the Republican convention and I told him I'd be happy to do so," he told reporters.
Sen. Tom Cotton told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday that he will speak in Cleveland next week. "We're waiting to nail down the final date and time, but I look forward to talking about our military and our veterans, and what we need to do to make sure that we're serving them, so they can serve us," he said.
Sen. Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he will speak, but would not confirm more details.
Trump told an Ohio crowd earlier this month that Indiana's legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight will speak at the convention.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said Tuesday he'd speak during the first session of the convention in the afternoon. The attorney has brought high-profile cases against same-sex marriage and federal regulations in the past, including some that reached the Supreme Court, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Evangelical pastor Mark Burns will also speak on Monday night, Politico reported. This won't be his first time taking the stage at a Trump-headlined event. He's a regular opener for the presumptive GOP nominee at rallies.
Former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani will also speak. The former mayor, who ran New York City during the 9/11 attacks and is extremely conservative on national security issues, has often defended Trump's more controversial policies on homeland security.
The firebrand Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst -- whose profile got a boost in 2014 with an ad about castrating pigs as a metaphor for taking on the Washington establishment -- will have a prime-time speaking slot and will address the convention on national security, the Des Moines Register reported this week.
Tennessee's Rep. Marsha Blackburn will speak as well, Politico reported.
Gov. Scott Walker told a CNN affiliate this month that he would speak at the RNC; despite criticizing Trump in the past, Walker has argued that not supporting Trump is akin to supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Gov. Mike Huckabee's spokesman told reporters the former 2016 candidate and Arkansas governor would also speak, but it was unclear when.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson will be speaking as well, a strategist said.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/13/politics/gop-platform-lgbt-social-conservatives-rift/

Cleveland (CNN)Republicans working this week efforts to hammer out a platform representing the heart of the GOP kept coming back to one topic: LGBT issues.

Through hours of debate on topics ranging from federal lands to immigration to the economy to family values, a handful of delegates gathered for Platform Committee meetings ahead of next week's Republican National Convention repeatedly challenged their peers to moderate provisions affecting gay and lesbian Americans.

They were for the most part rebuffed by the 112-member panel, which approved a GOP platform that opposes same-sex marriage rights, supports efforts to restrict bathrooms to individuals' birth gender and protects businesses who refuse services to individuals based on religious objections to gay marriage.

The two days of nationally broadcast, uncomfortable votes exposed a deep divide in the Republican Party over its staunch social conservatism, culminating in a dramatic effort to force the issue on the convention floor and counter cries of deceit.
At the heart of the effort was a group of delegates working with American Unity Fund, a pro-LGBT Republican advocacy group funded by billionaire Republican Paul Singer.

After failing repeatedly in their efforts, the group was buoyed by the number of delegates who voted in their favor, including about 20 delegates raising their hands in support of a proposal from D.C. delegate Rachel Hoff to revamp the party's position on marriage to broaden the language to include "diverse" views on marriage and support the "strength of all families" While raising the amendment, Hoff also emotionally made public to her peers that she was gay.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.da319056935a


Dylan Noble died on the last Saturday of June.

Police in Fresno, Calif., received a report of a man walking a downtown street with a rifle, but when they arrived, they instead found Noble speeding by in his pickup truck.

When they tried to pull him over, the 19-year-old led police to a nearby gas station and then exited his car.

“The driver then turned towards officers with one hand concealed behind his back, and told officers he hated his life,” the Fresno police department said in a statement. “As he continued to advance towards officers, an officer-involved shooting occurred.”

The department framed it as a “suicide by cop.” His family insisted that could not be the case, urged federal officials to investigate and demanded that video from the body cameras worn by both officers involved be released.

“I am outraged that the police would shoot my son and say that it is his fault,” Veronica Nelson, Noble’s mother, told reporters at a news conference not long after the shooting. “So please join me as I’m demanding justice for Dylan.”

Noble’s friends and family gathered for days at the gas station parking lot where he was killed — some waving Confederate flags and others chanting, “White lives matter.”

And soon, they were angry at their inability to garner more attention. At a time when dozens of police killings have prompted outrage, why hadn’t this one? Was it because Noble was white?

Once again, while in raw number there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population.

According to FBI numbers from 2014, about 90 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other black people. The “white-on-white” murder rate that same year — homicides in which a white person was killed by another white person — was 82 percent of all murders of white people.