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Displaying results 1211 - 1220 of 2062
Bjerga analyzes food security in new book, "Endless Appetites"
Alan Bjerga stood at the podium many times at National Press Club events during his tenure as president last year. But for the first time he addressed a Club audience as an author on Oct. 17, when he introduced his new book, "Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest," at a Club Book Rap. His reading of chapter one encompassed the Chicago Commodities Exchange, Ethiopia, Kenya, the rice paddies of Thailand, a rocky road to an isolated farm in Nicaragua and Tunisia, where the price of bread compared to "what it’s worth" helped catalyze the Arab Spring uprisings. “…
Type: News
Pratchett depends on muse for good ideas
Whenever author Sir Terry Prachett needs a good idea, he counts on the "Goddess of Writers." The imagined deity always helps with some timely coincidence, Pratchett said at an Oct. 14 National Press Club Book Rap. One example was when he needed a name for the “5th horseman.” He was at a parade and float by Soak Milk passed by. Reflected in a window, he saw Soak backwards, Kaos, and that became the character's name. Prachett entered the Club ballroom to a standing ovation and kept the capacity audience, estimated at nearly 500, enthralled for more than an hour in wide-ranging talk. Prachett…
Type: News
Transportation Secretary LaHood pushes jobs bill to help transportation
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said passage of President Barack Obama’s jobs bill is a “no brainer” in his Oct. 13 luncheon speech at the National Press Club. The jobs bill would create thousands of new jobs and allocate $50 billion for roads, bridges and transportation and $10 billion for an infrastructure bank, LaHood said. “There’s no better example of a traditionally bipartisan issue than transportation,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a Democratic or Republican bridge.” The infrastructure challenges are enormous, LaHood said. “America’s roads are so choked with congestion that…
Type: News
National Press Club Speakeasy successfully evades detection by authorities
Zoot-suit and flapper-costumed National Press Club members and their guests packed into the Truman Lounge and Reliable Source as the Club was turned into a 1920’s-era Speakeasy Oct. 3. Shades were drawn, lights dimmed, and doors shut tight to prevent the “prohis” from detecting a strong and sultry performance of jazz-era standards by The Maureen Mullaney quintet, or the secret members-only poker game that was played in the Game Room. The Club’s Events Committee presented the event in honor of NPC Luncheon Speaker Ken Burns’s newest documentary, “Prohibition”, which premiered recently on PBS.…
Type: News
Ron Paul: Golden Rule Could End Terrorist Attacks
If the United States stopped occupying other nations, terrorist attacks would cease, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Wednesday at the National Press Club. Paul, a Republican who represents the Texas 14th Congressional District, said America’s decision years ago to build military bases in the Middle East incited terrorist attacks which drew the nation to begin occupying the region, causing further attacks. Citing Lebanon in the early 1980’s as an example, the congressman said when American military personnel withdrew the attacks “just stopped.” “I don’t know why we can’t think…
Type: News
Panelists Say Zero Tolerance School Discipline Raises Dropout Rates, Shows Racial Bias
Panelists representing school administrators, researchers, judges, parents and students at an Oct. 5 Newsmaker deplored the effect of “zero tolerance” school discipline that uses frequent suspensions. The panelists said suspensions lead to higher rates of school dropouts and eventual incarcerations. A UCLA researcher released “Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice,” a report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, at the Newsmaker. The author, Daniel J. Losen of UCLA, explained two aspects of the discipline problem. He said that…
Type: News
Prohibition hurt America, documentarian Ken Burns says
Prohibition sent American progress reeling backward and led to new social ills, including bootlegging and organized crime, documentary film maker Ken Burns told a National Press Club on Monday. The last segment of Burns' exhaustive three-part series "Prohibition" airs Tuesday night on PBS. What he learned from doing "Prohibition," he said, is how little he really knew about it, the social forces that shaped it. "Drunkenness was a huge social problem," he said. "We were known as a nation of drunkards." Economic and social powerhouses such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie supported…
Type: News
Bosnia-Herzegovina PM says war-torn country moving toward stabilization, EU membership
Bosnia and Herzegovina is successfully rebuilding after years of conflict by establishing trust among three factions "only recently at war with one another, Prime Minister Nikola Spiric said at a Sept. 26 Newsmaker event. Bosnia and Herzegovina has signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union, joined the NATO Membership Action Plan and is a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Spiric said Bosnia and Herzegovina considers EU membership one of its "most important and highest-priority strategic aims." He added that "it is only from within…
Type: News
Space exploration critical for human survival, SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk says
Human exploration of space is essential to ensure the survival of the human species, said Elon Musk, chief executive and chief technical officer of Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, at a Sept. 29 National Press Club luncheon. Calling multi-planetary life an insurance policy “for life as we know it,” the 40-year-old physicist/entrepreneur/inventor warned that catastrophic natural or man-made disasters -- such as the planetoid collision that wiped out the dinosaurs eons ago or nuclear holocaust or climate change -- could someday wipe out humankind. Space exploration “is the next…
Type: News
Family Research Council director predicts "any Republican with a pulse" will defeat Obama in 2012
The race for the Republican Presidential nomination won't come down to Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, but any Republican nominee "with a pulse" will defeat President Obama in 2012, Tony Perkins, executive director of the Washington-based Family Research Council, said at a Sept. 27 Newsmaker. "We have a good field of candidates now," for the Republican nomination, Perkins said. He rejected New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a potential contender. Perkins, who once served in the Louisiana legislature, said voters will choose a president who addresses "big government" issues such as health care, tax…
Type: News