Biden versus Trump. Some speculate that the future of the republic hinges on the outcome of the next election. But for smart investors, it doesn't really matter who wins.
Conventional wisdom says that those liberal Dems are generally bad for the economy and the stock market because of their big-government tendencies, while fiscally conservative Republicans are good. This widely accepted belief is actually fake news if you look at data going back to the end of World War II.
“Stock markets do perform better under Democrats than under Republicans. That’s a well-known fact, but it does not imply cause and effect,” says Jeremy Siegel, the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1952 through June 2020, annualized real stock market returns under Democrats have been 10.6% compared with 4.8% for Republicans.
With the 2020 election less than four months away, some investors are fretting about the pros and cons of a Trump vs. Biden presidency. A Democratic sweep would almost certainly mean a rollback of Trump’s massive corporate tax cut (a negative for stocks), but additional economic stimulus (which the market apparently loves despite deficit implications) and stability on the China trade front would be a big positive.
PRESIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE
Which presidents have delivered the best stock returns? So far Democrats are dominating.
The young Malian migrant who saved a four-year-old child hanging from a fourth-floor Paris balcony after scaling the facade with his bare hands will be made a French citizen, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.
Mamoudou Gassama, who met with Macron after a video of his rescue went viral on social media, will also be offered a place in the fire brigade, the president added.
See the video from the official Twitter handle of the French President:
Parce que des actes d’héroïsme comme ça, on en a besoin tous les jours ! M. GASSAMA peut, s’il le souhaite, rejoindre les héros du quotidien
The Kwara State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party on Sunday said It had no hand in a case filed against the state governor-elect, Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrazak, accusing him of allegedly forging his West African Examinations Council’s certificate.
The party made its position known in a statement in Ilorin by its state publicity Secretary, Tunde Ashaolu.
It said instead of accusing the PDP of being behind the suit, the All Progressives Congress should advise the governor-elect to defend himself in court.
The statement read in part, “Our attention has been drawn to a fictitious comment made by a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Kwara, accusing our party, the Peoples Democratic Party of blackmailing the state governor-elect, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, with the certificate forgery scandal he is enmeshed in.
“This accusation is not only false but also laughable, as the PDP has no link with the development. There is absolutely no basis to accuse or blame the PDP for Abdulrahman’s certificate forgery case which is currently before an Ilorin High court.
“The claimant is not a member or official of the PDP and in fact, has no established connection with the party. We then wonder why anyone in his right senses would choose to blame or link the PDP with the court case.
Michael Cohen on Wednesday provided the House Intelligence Committee with new documents showing edits to the false written statement he delivered to Congress in 2017 about the Trump Organization's pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow project into the 2016 campaign season, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The documents Cohen provided are intended to further explain his public testimony last week, in which Cohen said that President Donald Trump's then-personal lawyer Jay Sekulow made changes to his statement to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and that it was reviewed ahead of time by lawyers like Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the President's daughter and son-in-law who are both White House advisers.
It's unclear what Cohen's documents show was specifically changed in the statement. Cohen is testifying Wednesday behind closed doors at the House Intelligence Committee.
"There were changes made, additions -- Jay Sekulow, for one," Cohen said last week. "There were several changes that were made including how we were going to handle that message, which was -- the message of course being -- the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive."
Sekulow pushed back on Cohen's allegations in a statement last week, saying that the "testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for the President edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false."
As CNN previously reported, according to two of the sources familiar with the preparation, including one close to the Trump Organization and one close to the President's legal team, the lawyers had no indication that any of the information in the testimony of Trump's now-former longtime attorney and fixer was inaccurate.
Cohen also accused Trump in his public testimony of encouraging him to lie about the Trump Tower Moscow discussions, though he said Trump did not tell him to do so directly.
"He doesn't tell you what he wants. What he does is again, 'Michael, there's no Russia, there's no collusion, there's no involvement, there's no interference.' I know what he means because I've been around him for so long," Cohen testified. "That's the message that he wanted to reinforce."
Cohen was supposed to report to prison Wednesday to begin serving a three-year sentence for tax crimes, tax evasion and lying to Congress. Instead, President Donald Trump's former lawyer is on Capitol Hill talking about the crimes he is now accusing Trump of committing.
Cohen, who is now slated to begin his prison term on May 6, is back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for his fourth appearance in the last eight days, concluding his closed-door testimony before the Intelligence Committee that began last week.
In the first round of testimony last week, Cohen was asked about a range of topics, with lawmakers seeking additional details on the drafting of Cohen's statement as well as any discussions about a possible pardon. The session also included some of the partisan fighting that plagued the committee during its Russia investigation in the last Congress, according to sources familiar with his testimony.
Republicans on the committee objected to what they felt were untoward Democratic tactics in the run-up to the interview, noting that Democratic committee staff met with Cohen several times before the hearing without telling the Republicans, according to the sources. They also asked Cohen about his comments in last week's public hearing that he had discussed "topics" with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff before the hearing, the sources said.
Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, sent Cohen's attorney a letter on Thursday asking for details about his contact with Schiff and his committee staff, suggesting the staff may have "coached" Cohen.
Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Schiff, said that the committee was running "a professional investigation in search of the facts, and we welcome the opportunity to meet with potential witnesses in advance of any testimony to determine relevant topics to cover in order to make productive use of their time before the committee."
"Despite this professed outrage by Republicans, it's completely appropriate to conduct proffer sessions and allow witnesses to review their prior testimony before the Committee interviews them — such sessions are a routine part of every serious investigation around the country, including congressional investigations," Boland said.
Consultation with witnesses ahead of a hearing or interview isn't necessarily out of the ordinary. For instance, Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, also spoke to Republicans on the House Oversight Committee ahead of their hearing last week. But the questions about Schiff's consultation from Intelligence Committee Republicans underscores the divisions between the two parties on that panel when it comes to the Russia investigation.
Cohen's final day of Capitol Hill testimony, notably, comes in an even more heated environment than last week, after House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler announced Monday the start of a sweeping investigation into the President. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings signaled after Cohen's public testimony that he wanted to interview Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, among others.
And the House Intelligence Committee has signaled interest in Weisselberg, while Schiff said the committee would hold a public hearing next week with Felix Sater, the Russian-born Trump business associate who worked with Cohen on the Trump Tower Moscow project.
Trump has aggressively pushed back on the House investigations following Cohen's testimony, charging that "the witch hunt continues" and Democrats have effectively "started the campaign."
"The witch hunt continues. The fact is that -- I guess we got 81 letters. There was no collusion. It's a hoax," Trump told reporters Tuesday when asked about the investigations.
In his public testimony last week, Cohen accused Trump of directing him to make hush-money payments to women alleging affairs, and then displayed a reimbursement check he was paid with Trump's signature. He also accused Trump of telling him to publicly lie about Trump's knowledge of the payments in February 2018, along with committing financial fraud.
He followed up that public House Oversight appearance with the first part of his closed-door House Intelligence interview the following day, where Schiff said the committee was able to "drill down" certain issues in even more detail.
"We are in communication with, obviously, Mr. Cohen and his counsel about further document requests following our interview today that we'll be able to discuss at our next session," Schiff said after Cohen had finished for the day. "We also went through documents in our possession, dozens of documents in our possession with Mr. Cohen, but we have additional document requests that we will be in discussion with him about."
There are a host of topics that lawmakers are interested in hearing from Cohen about, including his public testimony about overhearing a conversation between Trump and longtime confidante Roger Stone involving a WikiLeaks' email dump, presidential pardons, and Cohen's public testimony that the Southern District of New York could be investigating his conversations with Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Cohen's former lawyer, Stephen Ryan, discussed the possibility of a pardon for Cohen with Trump's attorneys after the FBI's raid on Cohen.
The House Judiciary Committee is also asking questions about pardons, as they asked a number of Trump officials related to possible pardons for Cohen, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.
"Freedom may be the soul of humanity, but often you have to struggle to prove it." - Lech WalesaThe world has a lot to be concerned about these days.From global warming, to advancements in artificial intelligence, to various political movements threatening the stability of global democracy, our newscasts and newsfeeds are filled by the minute with dire warnings and breathless predictions.But there are more troubling trends I've witnessed happening right now, which don't get the same headlines. Yet they strike a direct blow at the heart of humanity itself.
Sold to traffickers
For the past several years, I've traveled the globe, both as a philanthropist and a reporter for the Foundation's news program "The Domino Effect," bearing witness to, and trying to help solve, some of the world's most pressing problems.But perhaps nothing moved me more than a trip I made in November 2018 to Lake Volta, Ghana.It is on this massive artificial lake that I came across one of the most unnatural scenes imaginable in the 21st century.The lake, which was only created in 1965 with the construction of a hydro-electric dam, is home to an estimated 20,000 child slaves.Read: Child slaves risking their lives on Ghana's Lake VoltaChildren as young as five are sold to human traffickers and made to work as fishermen for up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.They are beaten. They are abused. They eat scraps off the table and sleep on the dirt. A child slave untangles a fishing net on Lake Volta, Ghana, November 2018.Some of these children drown when forced to dive under the water to untangle fishing nets. These forgotten children become yet another anonymous corpse resting at the bottom of the lake.When they die, no one is there to grieve for them and no one is punished for enslaving and endangering them.The only loss is a financial one. The fisherman who bought the child had paid the price of a cow to turn him into a slave.This is wrong and it must be stopped.
Giving child slaves a new life
Working alongside the CNN Freedom Project, I and my team at the Kulczyk Foundation traveled into the heart of central Ghana.More from the CNN Freedom ProjectThere, we met with the leaders of an organization called the Partners in Community Development Programme (PACODEP). It's one of the 200 organizations around the world the Kulczyk Foundation supports through infrastructure projects and social investments.
PACODEP is one of several local organizations working on the ground in Ghana to free these children and give them an education. They do a lot of great work with the police and local government. But they are overwhelmed by the scope of the problem and need more help. Not just from the federal government or from international donors, but from people in Ghana and around the world.I will never be able to fully express what it felt like seeing a dilapidated, leaky boat filled with four tiny children, working tirelessly for a man they called "master" who hadn't fed them in 24 hours. Dominika Kulczyk handing food to young boys working on Lake Volta.And I will never forget the moment, just days later, when I shared a boat ride back with them to the Village of Life, the shelter for trafficked children run by PACODEP. It was the start of their new life, after PACODEP freed them, along with 14 other children.All of those 18 rescued children are now safe and getting an education. Boys outside a school run by PACODEP for hundreds of local children, as well as nearly 100 former child slaves, freed by the organization.It fills my heart to know that with the simple act of attention and concern, we could change the lives of so many children.Still, reports say there are 20,000 more child slaves on the lake.
A simple solution
The world must act. As big as the problem appears and as deeply rooted as the underlying causes are, the solution, according to those on the ground, is relatively simple.PACODEP and the regional government have a plan to register all the boats on the lake. That way, any fishermen caught using children could be tracked, fined or arrested. The Ghanaian government should provide the necessary funding to register the boats, issue permits and monitor the work of the fishermen. Fishermen heading off to collect their second catch of the day on Lake Volta.In many ways, I think we are living in a defining moment in history. We can access all the world's information from a device in our hands. That same device can help us communicate, in a multitude of ways, with someone nearly anywhere on Earth, even on a boat in the middle of Lake Volta.Watch the full documentary: Troubled WatersBut it will be up to us to decide how we exercise this power -- whether it's used to widen the gulf between those that have and those that need, or if it can be harnessed -- like the adage states -- as a rising tide that lifts all boats.As a national hero in Poland and a personal mentor, Lech Walesa has always encouraged people to fight for freedom. He believes the foundation of positive change is to be in service of our fellow human beings.I take that message very much to heart and I encourage everyone who watches "Troubled Waters," the CNN documentary about child slavery on Lake Volta, to join me in taking action, by demanding the children working on Lake Volta be freed immediately.
Two boys at the PACODEP-led school in Kete Krachi, Ghana.March 14 is #MyFreedomDay, when schools around the world will raise awareness of modern slavery.
The powerful tornadoes that plowed through Lee County in Alabama and killed at least 23 people left a path of destruction that looked "as if someone had taken a blade and just scraped the ground," the county sheriff said Monday.
At daybreak, emergency crews and residents witnessed more of the aftermath of the twisters that Sheriff Jay Jones called "catastrophic," and the search was on for survivors and more victims.
It appears that some people had only a five-minute warning Sunday afternoon before tornadoes ripped through the region.
A tornado watch was issued for the area around noon. The first tornado warning for Lee County was issued at 2:58 p.m. ET, and the first reports of damage came just five minutes later, CNN Meteorologist Gene Norman said, according to National Weather Service data.
It appeared that two tornadoes hit Lee County back-to-back within the span of an hour, Norman said. A home stands among downed trees after tornadoes passed through Opelika, Alabama, on March 4, 2019.
A warning for a second tornado was issued at 3:38 p.m. ET, with the first reports of damage coming 13 minutes later.
At least a dozen tornadoes touched down in Alabama and Georgia on Sunday afternoon, according to the NWS.
The National Weather Service recorded EF-3 damage in southern Lee County. That classification means the damage was severe, with winds of 136 to 165 miles per hour.
How the destruction unfolded
Tornado watch for Lee County issued around 12 p.m. ET
Tornado warning 2:58 p.m. ET
First reports of damage 3:03 p.m. ET
Further damage reports 2:30 p.m. ET
Second tornado warning 3:38 p.m ET
First reports of damage 3:51 p.m. ET
More damage reported 4 p.m. ET
A house in Beauregard after a tornado hit Sunday.
Alabama's deadliest since 2011
The 23 deaths reported on Sunday marked the deadliest day for tornadoes in Alabama since the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado that killed more than 200 people in 2011.The victims, including children, died in Lee County, Jones said. At least 12 of those deaths occurred in an area about 5 to 6 miles south of the city of Opelika, he said. The tornadoes left damage to cars, homes and other structures in Opelika, Alabama, on Monday, March 4, 2019.Jones told CNN affiliate WRBL that he could not confirm the number of people injured but said that some people were receiving treatment for "very serious injuries."Lee County Coroner Bill Harris said as many as 20 people are unaccounted for but cautioned that some of them might have fled the storm and haven't been able to check in with their families. Metal wrapped around a tree in Beauregard.Footage broadcast by WRBL showed trees destroyed by the powerful winds and debris from leveled homes piled up on the side of the road."Houses completely destroyed, homes -- just basically slabs left where once stood a home," Jones said."Massive damage. In specific areas the contents of one residence we know for a fact were located over 1,000 yards away, So we've got a very wide storm track that went through the area --- may have even been two storms, we're not sure. But massive damage," Jones said. Damage is shown in Alabama after tornadoes touched down.Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey extended the state of emergency that had been issued last month statewide due to tornadoes and severe weather."Our hearts go out to those who lost their lives in the storms that hit Lee County today," she tweeted.Harris said coroners from surrounding counties were helping out with the mass casualty event. Rita Smith of the county's emergency management agency told WRBL that about 150 first responders had been working since the first tornado warning was issued. People clear fallen trees and debris on a road following a tornado in Beauregard, Alabama."We are heartbroken for the people who have lost loved ones today. It is sad. You prepare and you prepare and you prepare, you guide citizens on what to do and sometimes even when we do everything right, mother nature has a mind of its own. We're very upset today about this," Smith said.One woman, Delrico Eiland, shared video on Facebook of her 72-year-old aunt Earnestine Reese after her house and daughter's trailer were destroyed in Beauregard.In the video, Reese, who suffered a broken hip and will have surgery this morning, is talking on FaceTime to her grandson Kingston Frazier who is away at college, Eiland says."I thank the Lord. You tell God 'thank you God.' You hear me? You hear me? Tell God thank you. Tell God thank you," she tells him."She's telling Frazier to tell God 'thank you' for sparing her life," Eiland told CNN. "She is a very strong woman." A funnel cloud in Byron, Georgia, March 3.
Georgia damage
According to the National Weather Service, an airport in Eufaula, Alabama, along the Alabama-Georgia border was destroyed, along with a fire station.In Talbotton, Georgia, at least 15 structures were destroyed in a tornado on Sunday, including multiple homes and at least one apartment building, said Leigh Ann Erenheim, the emergency management director for Talbot County.Six people suffered injuries, with the most severe being a possible broken leg, she said. Crews were checking on residents in the outer areas of town and working to open a shelter for people who have been displaced.Vinton Copeland, pastor at Powell Baptist Church in Talbotton, Georgia, told CNN people there did not expect a tornado to hit the town."Complete apartments are gone and damaged. We have a shelter at our county high school for those affected. It's devastating and houses are gone and there are power lines decimated. Tough time," he said."The news only reported specifically about rural Alabama and all of a sudden it hit us quickly. We couldn't have planned for this."
The tornadoes are part of the same system that is bringing winter weather to much of the eastern United States this week, Norman said.The NWS warned on Twitter that severe weather would continue into early Monday over the Southeast, with damaging winds, large hail, and isolated tornadoes possible.
Lula, as he is known, was jailed on corruption charges last year Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been granted leave from prison to attend his grandson's funeral.
The seven-year-old died of meningitis on Friday, and the jailed ex-leader will be allowed to go to the burial in Sao Paulo on Saturday.
Lula, as he is known, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on corruption charges last year.
The ex-leader says his conviction was politically motivated.
An iconic figure for the left in Latin America, the former trade unionist led Brazil between 2003 and 2010.
But he was convicted for work done on a beach front property, and in February a court doubled Lula's sentence after he was found guilty of taking renovation work from a company implicated in a corruption scandal.
His lawyers said he would appeal against the new conviction.
Lula had asked permission to attend his brother's funeral in January, but the country's Supreme Court did not grant the request until the funeral was under way.
However, Paraná state government said Lula would be allowed to attend his grandson Arthur's funeral in Sao Paulo.
Arrangements are being made to fly him to the city, roughly 340 kilometres (211 miles) away.
The former leader is currently jailed in a federal prison in Curitiba, capital of Paraná state. This will be his first time out after his conviction last April.
Lula's was the most high-profile conviction from a sprawling anti-corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash - dubbed "the largest foreign bribery case in history" by the US Department of Justice.
His supporters have insisted he is the victim of political persecution, with his left-wing Worker's Party petitioning for his release.
