https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30/tech/dhs-h1b-final-rule/index.html

New York (CNN Business)A planned online registration system won't be ready when people can next apply for new H-1B work visas on April 1.

On Wednesday, the US Department of Homeland Security released a copy of new H-1B visa process requirements. The requirements will change the order in which H-1B registrations are selected to help get more qualified job candidates into American businesses. They will also require online registration, once the online system is up and running.
The government had planned to roll out a more modernized registration system by April 1. But the public expressed concern about bringing a new system online too early.

"USCIS has decided to suspend the registration requirement until such time that the registration system is fully tested to be reliably operable, and, as necessary, modified to address commenters concerns," the 214-page final rule draft states.
It was unclear when online registration will become available. Applicants will be able to continue to file paper petitions.
The H-1B visa is popular in American business. Some companies, especially in the tech sector, use H-1B visas to help fill their workforces. Tech firms big and small say they need the program to hire trained talent they can't find in the United States. The work visa is valid for three years and can be renewed for another three years.

The number of H-1B visas granted annually is capped at 65,000, and another 20,000 are reserved for people who hold advanced degrees from US higher education institutions. When demand exceeds the supply — as it often does — a lottery system is triggered.

A polar vortex is engulfing the US. Here’s what that really means, and why these events might be getting more common

https://www.businessinsider.com/polar-vortex-dangers-why-it-happens-2019-1?utm_content=buffer9b4fa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

For the first time since 2014, a polar vortex is descending on North America.

In parts of the Midwest and New England, about 25 million Americans are about to experience temperatures of -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Some areas in Minnesota and the Dakotas are facing temperatures 50 degrees below average — that's life-threatening cold.

The National Weather Service's Chicago office noted that wind chills of -30 to -55 Fahrenheit would hit the city between Tuesday and Thursday, with "record-breaking cold (potentially all-time)" on Wednesday.

The term polar vortex describes the mass of low-pressure, cold air that circulates in the stratosphere above the Arctic. Sometimes the circulation of the polar vortex weakens during the winter, causing surges of frigid arctic air to splinter off and drift south.

The freezing air is carried along by the jet stream, a current of wind that extends around the hemisphere and divides the air masses in the polar region from those further south.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682821224/most-contractors-do-not-expect-to-get-back-pay-when-the-shutdown-ends

Archaeologist Greg Seymour loves his job in the Great Basin National Park, whose 77,100 acres straddle the Utah-Nevada state line. "I'm working on a historic orchard that was planted in the 1880s," he says. "Heirloom trees."

But Seymour, a 62-year-old contractor with the National Park Service, has been out of work since Dec. 22. That's the day funding for the Interior Department and eight other federal departments ran out amid a political standoff between Congress and President Trump over his demand for money to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

"They sent e-mails out letting all of us know that work for them that we're furloughed until further notice," says Seymour.

What's more, Seymour has little hope of being compensated for all the time he's being furloughed from his $35-an-hour job.



"I know that the federal employees can get that," he says of the back pay that the 800,000 federal workers who've been idled or are working without pay expect once the shutdown ends. "But in this case, since I don't work, I don't get paid. So I'm out of luck."

And so are many more of the 4.1 million people who New York University federal workforce expert Paul Light estimates work under federal contracts — estimates because, unlike for federal employees, there is no national database tracking the number of contract employees.

"We've got a very large federal workforce with a majority of employees who are not on Uncle Sam's direct payroll," Light tells NPR. "They will not get paid for this unpaid vacation, and I'm not sure how they'll recover if this shutdown continues much longer."

http://mentalfloss.com/article/90839/13-trailblazing-facts-about-kamala-harris

Kamala Harris, who announced her entry into the 2020 presidential race on January 21, 2019, is known as a trailblazer. When she was first sworn in as a Democratic senator from California in 2017, she became only the second African-American woman to serve in the Senate, as well as the first-ever person of South Asian descent to serve. But being a pioneer isn’t new for her. The child of immigrants from Jamaica and India, Harris was also the first woman elected as District Attorney of San Francisco and the first woman, the first African-American, and the first person of South Asian descent to become Attorney General of California. Those are just a few of her inspiring firsts—read on for more facts about Harris.

1. HER NAME IS JUST DIVINE.
Her full name is Kamala (pronounced “comma-la”) Devi Harris. Her mother, Shyamala, a Hindu, gave her daughters names taken from Hindu mythology in part to connect her children to their heritage. “A culture that worships goddesses produces strong women,” Shyamala told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

Kamalā is one of many Sanskrit words meaning lotus, as well as a name for Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and good fortune. Harris’s middle name, Devi, is a Sanskrit word used within Hinduism as the general term for a goddess. (Shyamala named her second daughter Maya Lakshmi, continuing the goddess trend.)

9. SHE HAS INNOVATIVE WAYS OF DEALING WITH CRIME.
In 2005, as district attorney, Harris launched Back on Track [PDF], a program designed to reduce recidivism by offering nonviolent, low-level drug-trafficking defendants job training, life skill-building, and the chance to avoid prison. Back on Track was highly successful: Two years after it launched, just 10% of graduates from the program had reoffended, versus the normal 53% for drug offenders in California. Plus, the program is cheaper than prison.

“I reject the false choice that you either are soft on crime or tough on crime,” she has said, insisting instead that we must be “smart on crime.” Her approach to criminal justice emphasizes preventing crime rather than reacting to it, and rehabilitating offenders rather than considering them lost.

11. SHE PLAYED HARDBALL WITH THE BANKS.
In her first year as California’s Attorney General, Harris played hardball during a multi-state suit against five major banks accused of improper foreclosure practices during the mortgage crisis. She pulled out of early negotiations, rejecting a multi-state deal that she felt brought too little money to California and protected the banks from prosecution for their actions, despite pressure from the Obama administration to accept those terms. “I took an oath to represent California, and that’s what I was doing,” Harris told The New York Times. “It was about making sure that Californians got what they needed.” Afraid she was jeopardizing the settlement, some pressured Harris to accept the initial terms. “The Los Angeles Times had an editorial saying I should take the deal,” she told San Francisco Magazine. “I got calls from elected leaders in California saying, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’”

Ultimately, she triumphed. Harris and her team secured $20 billion in mortgage relief for Californians, as well as the right to levy financial penalties if the banks failed to fulfill their promises in the deal.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/business/investment-boom-tax-cuts-economy/index.html

New York (CNN Business)Proponents of the 2017 tax law predicted it would set off a wave of spending by American businesses.

It did — just not the kind economists hoped for.
Corporate America rewarded investors by rolling out $1 trillion of stock buybacks in 2018. Yet a lasting boom in job-creating investments has yet to materialize.

Business spending on things like factories, software and new equipment jumped in the first quarter after the tax law took effect. But it has decelerated as companies worry about slowing global growth and rising trade tensions.
"There hasn't been a huge surge in response to tax reform," said Eric Zwick, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who studies the interaction between public policy and corporate behavior.
Real nonresidential fixed investment increased by just 2.5% in the third quarter, a sharp slowdown compared to 8.7% in the second quarter and 11.5% in the first quarter.

It's not that business spending is weak. It's just not booming.
"It now appears the investment recovery was short-lived," Ethan Harris, global economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a report last week titled, "The investment boom that wasn't."

https://wokesloth.com/ann-coulter-absolutely-roasted-border-wall-loss/lindseyweedston/

Today is a good day. Trump caved on his border wall, reopening the government and earning the nickname “Cave Man.” Roger Stone was arrested on obstruction charges. And the right, meanwhile, is imploding into a puddle of hate and failure. After over a month of the shutdown threatening the security and general stability of the country while federal workers went without pay, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of celebration, right? Even if it’s at the expense of another person?

Don’t worry, that person is only Ann Coulter.