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Stop taking free flights while out sick, union tells airline workers
The AFA chapter for Endeavor Air, a Delta subsidiary, told members it had seen more investigatory meetings for pass travel violations.
7 Central Florida eateries shut down over health violations
Last week, seven more restaurants across Central Florida were forced to close after a visit from a health inspector, according to state records.
Lawmakers consider hiking fines for insurers who flaunt Georgia’s mental health parity law
Following recent fines for violations of mental health parity, Georgia advocates and lawmakers are pushing for stricter insurance compliance.
How Mamdani's warning to city health clubs could help Long Island members
An executive order requires New York City heath clubs "to monitor, investigate, and enforce violations related to subscription tricks and traps."
Lucky’s Steakhouse in Davison closed by Health Department
A restaurant in Davison has been closed by the Genesee County Health Department due to food code violations and repeat violations.
Judge orders takeover of Arizona prison health care operations after years of violations
The decision on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver came after her 2022 verdict that concluded Arizona had violated prisoners’ rights by providing inadequate care that led to suffering and preventable deaths.
Bay Area refinery to pay $10 million penalty for multiple health, safety violations
Parents demand transparency as Benton Elementary health violations raise funding questions
Concerns continue about conditions inside an elementary school in Polk County after a state health inspection uncovered multiple violations, including sewage od
Facing challenges again, Ken Welch launches third political committee
His previous PAC suffered an alleged theft, and the one before that was shut down due to violations.
Montana governor launches sanctuary crackdown, probes capital city over ICE limits
Montana governor launches investigation into Helena for allegedly violating statewide sanctuary city ban, promising penalties for violations of state law.
Curling drama grows as Britain hit with violation
The curling controversy at the Winter Olympics has widened as increased surveillance of matches resulted in the removal of a stone thrown by the British men's team for the same alleged violation that burned the Canadians two days in a row.
Health code violations issued at Pittsburgh Subway location
A Subway location in Pittsburgh has been issued several health code violations, according to a release from county officials.
Bulk beads, politics and advertising not allowed on the parade route: What krewes should know
New Orleans City Council President JP Morrell is calling out ordinance violations by krewes. We’re breaking down the rules.
27 Rochester restaurants cited for critical health violations. See the list
Here's a look at the results of restaurant inspections last month. How did your favorite Rochester place do?
Trump FTC sends letter to Apple over alleged political bias in its news app
In a letter sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson warns that the tech giant may be in violation of the FTC Act over alleged Apple News bias.
Congressional Researchers Analyze Whether Denying Marijuana Business Tax Deductions Under 280E Is Unconstitutional
As a federal marijuana rescheduling decision remains pending, congressional researchers have released an analysis of tax implications for cannabis businesses under current law—including a review of the idea that depriving the industry of the ability to take federal tax deductions amounts to a constitutional violation. In a report published on Friday, the Congressional Research Service […]
Six Palm Beach County restaurants temporarily shuttered for mold, roach infestations
From roaches in ovens to moldy ice machines, health inspectors shuttered six Palm Beach County eateries last week for food safety violations.
Popular Cincinnati brewery fails health inspection
Health inspectors listed several violations they found during their inspection.
‘Health crime’: Aoun slams Israel over spraying chemicals in south Lebanon
Lebanese president says latest 'aggression' represents an environmental crime and a violation of country's sovereignty.
Health inspections lead to 4 Central Florida restaurant shutdowns last week
The Department of Business and Professional Regulation shut down four Central Florida dining venues for health code violations during the week from Jan. 18-24.
Investment and Statecraft: The International Politics of Sovereign Wealth Funds - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
In 1953, Kuwait established the world’s first sovereign wealth fund to invest the country’s oil revenues and generate returns that would reduce its reliance on a single resource. Since then, over 100 separate funds have been created to preserve national wealth and ensure long-term fiscal sustainability. Today, they manage over $10 trillion in global assets. In this discussion with GJIA, political economist Kathryn Lavelle explains the increasingly novel dynamics that surround fund behavior and what the world can come to expect from their growing presence in international financial markets. GJIA: When it comes to the roles sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) play in global markets and politics, what would you say makes them unique? Kathryn Lavelle: Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) operate on behalf of governments as investors. That in itself is a strange relationship. Within them, a core contest takes place between the state’s interests (or sovereign) part of the dynamic, and the money interests (or wealth) part of it, and these two aspects are frequently in contradiction, serving fundamentally different goals. SWFs are also quite fascinating because when you talk to the people who manage these funds, they have an interest in convincing you that the decisions are made almost exclusively on a financial basis—they really will go to great lengths to differentiate their government owners and those who make the management decisions. At the same time, these people ultimately answer to someone in power. Therefore, for most SWFs, it remains deeply unclear who is actually making the investment decisions and for what purposes. Of course, it is not always clear how other vehicles, such as hedge funds and private equity make the decisions they do, but I think what a lot of people find particularly disconcerting about SWFs is that they seem to act on behalf of people who have a different identity from their own. People who could be trying to manipulate politics and markets in a way that would have a long-term effect on their own populations. Regular investors come and go at will, and they only share an interest in profit as far as most of us understand. However, SWFs have that extra “sovereign” part right behind them that obscures their true interest. GJIA: These funds can be found in countries all across the globe, in both authoritarian states and democracies. Would you say SWFs differ in their goals and structures between regime-type? KL: It is not necessarily regime type that makes the goals and structures of SWFs different. It has to do with their economies. Let’s look at a country like China. There’s going to be a debate about exactly how to characterize the regime, but it is a country with many different kinds of sovereign wealth funds, and a particularly opaque state connection to each. At one time, some of the state-owned Chinese oil companies created specialized investment vehicles listed outside Chinese markets that excluded parts of the firms that were more associated with human rights violations. At the same time, the China Investment Corporation (CIC)—China’s largest SWF—draws a lot of concern, not necessarily because of its investment activities, but because of the dynamics of global politics. So, I wouldn’t really tie differences to regime types themselves in a wholesale way, but rather to how such funds are perceived and how they are structured. Saudi Arabia’s SWF is getting all kinds of attention for its involvement in Hollywood, and this takes me right back to when I was a student in the 1980s, when people were concerned about Japanese investment entities buying assets in Hollywood. They aren’t quite the same in financial terms, but it’s the same kind of concern about foreign investment that drives people to be suspicious, and the whole idea that “foreigners are influencing Hollywood.” This holds true across industries, and it reflects where politics are in places like the United States right now. One metric we can try to look at is transparency, where all the funds will tell you, “we are transparent.” The problem you’ll keep running into with this approach is how you value things. When trying to do comparative studies of equity markets, you’ll find that every country doesn’t use Generally Accepted Accounting Principles like we do in the United States. A fund may appear opaque politically and not want people to show what they’re invested in or what their intent with that investment is, but they could also just not be able to report it because of the way it was purchased, or the kinds of shares they purchased. There are some assets out there that really are difficult to put a monetary value on. GJIA: To what extent do domestic politics shape SWF behavior in both the investing “home” country and the recipient “host” country? KL: This depends on the type of fund present and also on the extent to which voters’ political views are able to influence the fund. For example, in a democratic home state like Norway, the SWF doesn’t invest in nuclear weapons or tobacco because of social concerns, but there is a continuing debate over whether it should invest in oil, even though that’s where most of the money comes from. The degree to which Norway will continue to make those investments, and whether they contradict the government’s overall climate goals, is an open question in Norwegian politics. Because of the way the fund’s governance is structured, it may not be easy to resolve. On the other hand, some people consider pension funds, like the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) in Ohio, to be quasi-SWF. They have a very strict separation between the people who make up the management division and the fund owners. No teacher or professor would want to invest in things that may harm the future of their students. At the same time, a fund manager might see an opportunity in a diversified multinational corporation that offers a good return, despite it deriving part of its revenue from e-cigarettes. These contests are very apparent. Domestic politics can work in host countries too. A good example is Singapore’s SWF, Temasek, investing in Thailand’s telecommunications sector. If you study political economy, you already know that countries everywhere are uncomfortable with foreign ownership of their telecom sectors because a foreign entity could monitor or manipulate our communications with each other. In the case of Temasek, there was significant pushback from Thai citizens surrounding the deal, which went on to influence national political sentiment toward Singapore as a whole, underscoring the risks some SWFs may face with their investment choices. In this case, fund behavior led to the dissolution of the entire Thai government in 2006 and a subsequent coup d’état. GJIA: To address some of this unease, the Santiago Principles were established in 2009 to ostensibly promote trust and transparency. From your perspective, have these mechanisms actually changed fund behavior? KL: In international relations theory, we always like to have a clear set of norms and best practices—the orientation we want the proverbial ship to be going in. In that regard, the Santiago Principles at least got the discussion going about which direction SWFs should take at a time when people were very skittish about the growing size of these funds. Nobody wanted them to be out there and potentially destabilizing economies, so talks about disclosure, conditions for withdrawal, and the independence of managers were helpful when initiated. The biggest stumbling block was that there wasn’t exactly a good way to measure compliance with the Principles, let alone how to hold funds to them. If you read the Principles, they’re overall quite vague. In general, a fund doesn’t want to reveal how and why they make certain investment decisions because that information is proprietary—a fund makes money off of how and why it makes decisions—so how do you reconcile that with loosely-defined ideas of openness? Some decisions might have a political purpose. The bottom line is that trying to figure out and assign a score to compliance is not easy, and it is therefore the reason why the Santiago Principles never really got off the ground to the point where they could truly direct fund behavior. GJIA: Many emerging markets are looking to build their own SWFs from mineral and oil revenues. Historically, have funds shaped development trajectories in these countries? KL: I think the big story in international emerging markets investment is that the investment is increasingly no longer unidirectional. In the past multinational corporations of primarily Western background were the main form of foreign direct investment in a country. That has changed dramatically, to the point where you have companies from so-called “developing countries” taking over companies in the United States. Therefore, the landscape of international investment has changed, and I think SWFs are certainly a possibility to be the next step in the game. Historically, you didn’t need an entire financial vehicle to reinvest commodity revenues in your country, but as emerging markets get more financially sophisticated, their capacity to operate such funds has increased. SWFs would allow treasuries to move from relying on holding foreign exchange assets like cash or government bonds to having broader financial markets and targeted growth areas, while easing pressure on welfare expenditures. GJIA: With their increasing financial weight, do you see the presence of SWFs being a factor in the political choices leaders will have to make with regard to domestic and foreign policy? KL: It will depend on just how big the funds get. One of the reasons people are already apprehensive is because of their scale, and if certain SWFs in certain countries achieve a large-enough size, the presence will absolutely be cause for concern. The other factor political leaders will have to consider are their objectives. It’s not always clear how to define a SWF, or even where its activity is concentrated, but it is certainly a worry from the perspective of national security of opaque external investment. More than that, I think one of the most interesting questions going forward is whether the United States, the home to the world’s largest financial markets, will develop its own fund, for which the Trump administration announced a plan. There have also been several proposals in Congress. Were it to come into being, it would have tremendous weight. At the same time, one of the hallmarks of U.S. capitalism is a lack of government ownership of shares, so it would not be clear how such a fund would be received in domestic politics, or which direction it would take. Given how politically fragmented the country is, a Democratic administration would likely be concerned about different sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, and want investment there, rather than a Republican administration, which might prefer defense industries. No investment vehicle could thrive under conditions of such instability. Moreover, it remains unclear where the money to fund a theoretical U.S. SWF would come from. It would be a fundamentally different entity depending on whether it is financed with debt, economic surplus, commodities, or the sale of state companies, as in the case of Singapore. If it is debt, or government borrowing of some form, then the fund would have to outperform whatever the cost of that debt is, which is not an easy thing to do. I think our political leaders have enough on their plate. Our system has worked well keeping political and investment functions generally separate. We have seen different forms of business rise and fall, and even the perception of different countries, all of which funds are tied to. Unless a major SWF either starts—like in the case of the United States—or collapses—an issue that concerns the Saudis, I don’t see any political tsunamis on the horizon. . . . Kathryn Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research explores the exchange between domestic and international and political institutions with a particular emphasis on political economy and multilateralism. Dr. Lavelle’s first book, The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets, explored the political circumstances that surround large issues of stock in the developing world. After being granted tenure at Case Western, she was awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship and named the William A. Steiger fellow, a designation given to the most promising political scientist in her class of fellows. While in Washington during 2006-2007, she worked on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services on issues related to domestic and international monetary policy. Dr. Lavelle holds a PhD in political science from Northwestern University; an M.A. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia; and a bachelor’s degree in international economics from Georgetown University. She is a permanent member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Interview conducted by Sid Mehrotra. Image Credit: Jason Leung, Unsplash Content Licenses, via Unsplash
6 more Central Florida restaurants close over health violations
Last week, half a dozen eateries across Central Florida were forced to close after a visit from a health inspector, according to state records.
Apple and Google reportedly still offer dozens of AI ‘nudify’ apps
A recent investigation found over 100 apps on iOS and Android that use AI to create nonconsensual and sexualized images. This is a clear violation of both companies' policies.
China Announces Probe Into Vice Military Chair Zhang Youxia
China opened a probe into Zhang Youxia, a Politburo member and vice chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission over suspected “serious discipline and law violations,” Xinhua News Agency reported.
Health system size impacts AI privacy and security concerns
Administrators at larger health systems are more concerned about data and privacy violations, according to a new survey on shadow AI in healthcare.
8 more Central Florida restaurants shut down over health violations
Last week, eight Central Florida eateries were forced to close after a visit from a state health inspector, according to state records.
US set to quit World Health Organization
The U.S. is due to officially exit the World Health Organization on Thursday, in the face of warnings it will hit both U.S. health and global health and also in violation of a U.S. law that requires Washington to pay the UN health agency $260 million in fees that it owes.
US Set to Quit World Health Organization
By Jennifer Rigby and Emma Farge LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. is due to officially exit the World Health Organization on Thursday, in the face of warnings it will hit both U.S. health and global health and also in violation of a U.S. law that requires Washington to pay the UN health ...
Georgia issues $25 million in fines against health insurance companies
Thousands of violations were found by the Insurance Commissioner's Office.
Trump set to pardon ex-Puerto Rico governor after ‘political prosecution’
Wanda Vázquez Garced, who accepted plea deal over campaign finance violation, endorsed Trump in 2020
Health inspectors find 13 violations at Lakeshore restaurant over holidays
A popular Lakeshore bar and restaurant suffered the worst health inspection it ever had last month, but the owner says everything has been “100% corrected.”
House Democrats introduce articles of impeachment for Kristi Noem
The articles include charges of obstruction of Congress, violation of public trust and self-dealing
ROACH PARTY: Health violations shut down over a dozen Central Florida eateries
Over a week into the new year, over a dozen more Central Florida restaurants have been forced to close up shop after a visit from a health inspector.
Longtime Oregon lawmaker admits to ethics violation, but fails to disclose business client
The Heppner Republican agreed to a letter of education from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission over the violation.
12 Orange County restaurants have flawless health inspections; seven marked with critical violations in December
Here's a look at the results of restaurant inspections conducted in Orange County last month.
Health inspectors shut down 4 Central Florida restaurants last week
The Department of Business and Professional Regulation shut down four Central Florida restaurants for health code violations during the week from Dec. 28-Jan. 3.
Rep. Greg Smith admits ethics violation, fails to disclose business client
AROUND OREGON: A state legislator facing multiple ethics investigations in the past year agreed to a state sanction in a second case. State Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, still has two other ethics cases pending at the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.
IHOP at Gateway Blvd gets a health score of 70 after dead roach, expired milk discovered
The IHOP on Gateway Boulevard has received a health inspection score of 70 due to violations including, but not limited to, contaminated eggs and a dead roach found in the cooler.
Mac’s Chophouse scores 64 on health inspection, owners say violations are being corrected
Mac’s Chophouse, a popular steakhouse on Marietta Square, scored a 64 out of 100 on its routine health inspection Tuesday, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Unions sue Baltimore City for refusal to negotiate health benefits
Baltimore City’s major unions sued the city, alleging it is refusing to negotiate aspects of health benefits in violation of a 2022 ordinance.
Bucks County nursing home in fatal explosion has history of violations
The new owners of a Bristol nursing home where 2 died in an explosion is attempting to correct "longstanding" issues with meeting state standards.
2 Texas Longhorns staffers fired over sports betting violations
Two of the six people involved were "immediately" fired after the violations came to light.
Health inspectors shut down 6 Central Florida restaurants last week
The Department of Business and Professional Regulation shut down six Central Florida restaurants for health code violations during the week from Dec. 14-20.
Texas Longhorns report 6 NCAA violations related to sports betting
The Texas Longhorns have reported six more NCAA violations related to sports betting this year, bringing the 18-month total to at least 11.
Choosing a hospital? See which California health facilities have violated the law
If you're struggling to navigate California's health care system, this tool can help. Search for any hospital, nursing home, clinic or other facility to see recent inspection reports, violations and potential references to patient harm.
Rodent droppings found on doughnut rolling rack at Dunkin’ during health inspection
Health officials discovered the contamination on a rolling rack in the prep kitchen, the first rodent-related violation at the location since 2022.
Mikado to Reopen After Health Violations
Mikado Asian Bistro in Vineyard Haven will reopen Friday at 5 p.m. after being shut down by the Tisbury board of health Monday for failing a health inspection. Drew Belsky, health agent for Tisbury,
Health inspections found moldy coconuts, room-temperature eggs
Pink buildup in an ice machine and signs of a pest infestation were among the violations found by Washoe County health inspectors from Nov. 8-14.
Boston hospital cafeteria addresses health code violations after inspection
A December health inspection found multiple violations, including temperature control problems and poor sanitation practices.
Texas Files Antitrust Suit Against Epic Systems Over Health Data
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Epic Systems Corp. for antitrust violations, accusing the healthcare software company of leveraging its control over patient medical records to maintain dominance in the market.
Unsafe storage, other health violations found at AZ grocery stores
Inspectors found unsafe food temperatures, contamination risks and improper storage at multiple Maricopa County grocery stores in November.
Republicans are covering their backsides on the double-tap strike
After reports Friday that the US had conducted a second strike on a suspected drug vessel in order to kill survivors of its first strike – quite possibly in violation of the law of armed conflict – few defended the Trump administration more strongly than Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida.
21 South Bend area restaurants with priority health violations; 59 get perfect inspection
The health violations occurred during health inspections from Oct. 1-15.