Hasta La Gadget!

TOP STORIES

ELIZABETH WARREN CONTINUES TRUMP ONSLAUGHT “Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), amplifying her her recent attacks on Donald Trump, admonished the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in a no-holds-barred speech on Tuesday, calling him ‘a small, insecure money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt.'” And Hillary Clinton’s campaign loves having Warren attack for them. [Marina Fang, HuffPost]

AFGHAN TALIBAN CONFIRMS LEADER’S DEATH Here’s how the U.S. government found and killed Mullah Akhtar Mansour, and meet the new leader of the Afghan Taliban. [Reuters]

BILL COSBY TO STAND TRIAL FOR 2004 SEXUAL ASSAULT CASE While the charges relate to one instance of sexual assault in Pennsylvania, over 50 women have accused him of sexual misconduct. These are their stories. [Michael McLaughlin, HuffPost]

TRUMP ALBUQUERQUE RALLY TURNS VIOLENT “Police in riot gear used smoke grenades on hundreds of protesters who they said hurled rocks and bottles outside a Donald Trump campaign rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Tuesday night.” [Peter Andrew Hart, HuffPost]

THE END OF THE DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ ERA? Democratic leaders are considering dropping the DNC chair. [CNN]

REFORMING YOUR IMAGE WHEN YOU’RE A FORMER SENATE CANDIDATE WHO JUST GOT OUT OF JAIL “Feeling exiled and frustrated in her Florida condominium, Ruthann Aron decided she needed a makeover. Not of the cosmetic variety but of the cosmic — a public image redo, which would not be particularly easy nearly 20 years after the trial that put her in a Maryland prison for hiring a hit man to murder her rich urologist husband.” [WaPo]

WHAT’S BREWING

GAWKER WAS RIGHT Someone was funding the lawsuits against them, and that someone is PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. [Forbes]

TWITTER JUST GOT EASIER TO USE But when will the changes stop? We still miss the stars. [Twitter Blog]

THE PREGNANT WOMEN TAKING OVER HOLLYWOOD From “The Night Manager” to “Neighbors 2.” [Vanity Fair]

THE ARCTIC IN 360 DEGREES You feel like you can reach out and touch your new polar bear friend. [HuffPost]

YOU NOW HAVE TO BUY SPOTS AT PARKS BECAUSE THE WORLD IS ENDING “This detail would even feel heavy-handed in a novel about a dystopian future ruled by the libertarian tech elite, but here you go: in San Francisco’s Dolores Park, people will be able to reserve chunks of the park as part of a two-month pilot program by the Recreation and Parks Department. ” [Deadspin]

INVESTIGATING TRUMP’S HAIR Could it be a $60,000 weave? [Gawker]

For more from The Huffington Post, download our app for iOS or Android.

WHAT’S WORKING

NO WEEKEND EMAILS IN FRANCE “Checking your work email on a weekend or a holiday? In France, where employees have been granted ‘the right to disconnect,’ that’s now against the law.” [HuffPost]

For more, sign up for the What’s Working newsletter.

BEFORE YOU GO

~ More 18- to 34-year-olds live with their parents than with roommates or partners, according to Pew Research.

~ Trump has finally donated $1 million to a veteran’s group, after saying he had done so four months ago.

~ Could the decline of cigarettes be connected to the rise of obesity in America?

~ These folks are reading out every word in the user agreement contacts in the apps people typically have on their phones. It’s taking them over 24 hours.

~ In reality TV winner news, here’s who triumphed on “The Voice” and “Dancing With The Stars.”

~ Would you like Angelina Jolie to be your professor? Head to the London School of Economics this fall.

~ The Olympics of hairdressing is as absurd as you think it would be.

~ This Texas town has had to boil its water for two weeks, and the end isn’t in sight.

~ Jay Z responded for the first time to “Lemonade” in a verse that mentions making millions on his marriage.

~ Google’s offices were searched (ba-dum-bum-ching) by French authorities in an ongoing tax evasion probe.

Send tips/quips/quotes/stories/photos/events/scoops to Lauren Weber at lauren.weber@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter @LaurenWeberHP. And like what you’re reading? Sign up here to get The Morning Email delivered to you.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) opposes the Justice Department’s decision to seek the death penalty in the case of Dylann Roof, the accused killer of nine parishioners at a church in South Carolina last year.

The Democratic presidential nominee has long been an opponent of capital punishment, arguing that it doesn’t fit with America’s moral values or deter crime. And though the circumstances of the Roof case have prompted cries for severe punishment, his campaign reiterated his position in an email to The Huffington Post.

“Sen. Sanders opposes the death penalty,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs wrote. “He believes those who are convicted of the most horrible crimes should be imprisoned for the rest of their lives without the possibility of parole.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on Tuesday that the Justice Department would seek the death penalty in the Roof case, following a “rigorous review process to thoroughly consider all relevant factual and legal issues.” State authorities had earlier said that they would seek the death penalty for Roof, who they allege was motivated by racial animus and carefully planned the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church. Roof is charged both with federal hate crimes and nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.

Several prominent Republican South Carolina officials praised Lynch’s announcement, including Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.)

Less clear, however, was how Democrats would approach the debate, considering the horrific nature of the incident and the national outrage it sparked. President Barack Obama has called capital punishment “deeply troubling” but something he can rationalize. 

“There are certain crimes that are so beyond the pale that I understand society’s need to express its outrage,” he told the Marshall Project in 2015.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, likewise, has said she supports the death penalty in “certain egregious cases.” Aides to Clinton did not respond to requests for comment on the Roof case.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Our policymakers are looking for ways to encourage older Americans to save more for retirement. How about leading by example?

The retirement outlook for most older Americans today is tenuous (Quinn & Cahill, 2016). Over the past 30 years we have witnessed an unprecedented change in retirement income sources, perhaps most notably a switch in the private sector from defined-benefit (DB) pension plans to defined-contribution (DC) plans, like 401(k)s. While DC plans do have some benefits — they are portable when one changes jobs and the amount of assets accumulated is transparent — DC plans expose workers to both market risk and longevity risk, both of which were traditionally assumed by employers in DB plans. The default position is that, going forward, older Americans will be more exposed to risk later in life and will need to take action to insure against it.

Older Americans today also face a Social Security program that has undergone substantial changes over the past 30 years. For one, the Full Retirement Age (FRA) was increased from 65 to 67 for individuals born after 1959, and the increase has been occurring gradually over time starting with those reaching age 62 in 2000 (U.S. Social Security Administration, 2016). Other pro-work changes have occurred as well. The Earnings Test — a calculation that reduces current benefits if earnings exceed a threshold — has been eliminated above the FRA, and the Delayed Retirement Credit — the amount that monthly benefits increase for each month benefit receipt is delayed — is now actuarially fair for a representative worker. By incentivizing continued work, policymakers are sending a signal that it may be wise to postpone retirement.

The traditional third pillar of retirement income is individual savings, and the news on this front is sobering. Excluding home equity and the value of defined-benefit pensions, most workers report having less than $25,000 in financial assets, as do approximately 40 percent of workers aged 45 and older (Helman, Copeland, & VanDerhei, 2016). When considering 401(k) balances, among the approximately half of workers with a plan the median account balance for those aged 55 to 64 is roughly $110,000, enough to purchase a joint and survivor annuity of approximately $500 per month (Munnell, 2014). Combined with the medium-range Social Security benefit amount of approximately $1,500 per month (Board of Trustees of OASDI, 2015), most older Americans will be living benefit check to benefit check in retirement, so to speak.

One might reasonably ask how we got ourselves into a position where most of us will have to choose between a lower standard of living in retirement or continued work later in life. Policymakers, in particular, have been concerned about low savings rates for some time, and are currently seeking creative ways to promote savings, such as through automatic enrollment in employer 401(k) plans and even state-level plans. These all sound like good ideas and recent evidence points to some degree of effectiveness (Munnell, 2016).

A more basic starting point might make sense, though. Consider one measure of our federal government’s own savings rate — the budget deficit/surplus as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP; a measure of the total goods and services our country produces each year) . Over my lifetime, since 1971, this rate has been on average negative 3 percent (Office of Management and Budget, 2016). It doesn’t take an economist to figure out what your financial outlook will look like if on average you spend more than you earn every year. What is worse, most recently our federal government’s savings rate exceeded negative 5 percent in each year from 2009 to 2012, with an eye-popping negative 9.8 percent in 2009, followed by negative 8.7 percent in 2008, and negative 8.5 percent in 2011. Our savings rate was negative 2.8 percent in 2014 and negative 2.5 percent in 2015 — six years after the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009 (Rich, 2013). These percentages are depressing, and not just in the sense that they bring down assets.

The dollar amounts sound even worse. Last year our federal government spent $438 billion more than it collected, an amount that we have surpassed every year since 2007 (Office of Management and Budget, 2016). In 2009, our federal government spent an astonishingly $1.4 trillion more than it collected — in just one year — followed by $1.3 trillion in both 2010 and 2011, and yet another trillion in 2012.

Some will argue that a comparison between the way our federal government operates and the way a household operates is different. For one, the federal government has the power to tax and, somewhat justifiably, we have all been the beneficiaries of such deficits, so it makes sense for us to be stuck with the tab. Our federal government also has the ability to print money and monetize our debt. Both options, while feasible, risk serious adverse consequences.

I see things differently. If our policymakers really want to encourage fiscal responsibility and promote savings, perhaps it’s time they lead by example and stop spending beyond their means, too.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Brian May is many things: Lead guitarist of Queen, lover of badgers, and astrophysicist. Now, add VR guru to the list—because he’s just announced his very own version of Google Cardboard.

Read more…

Kanex has rolled out a new GoPower portable battery that uses the USB-C port to allow it to recharge your new MacBook or other device on the go. The battery has 15,000 mAh of juice inside, which the maker claims to be enough to completely charge your MacBook once. The USB-C port output is 5V at 3 amps and the … Continue reading