Made in China, for China

By: Credit Suisse

Published: June 6, 2016

China has long been the world’s factory, but the country’s entrepreneurs are increasingly focused on catering to the needs and wants of the Chinese people themselves. Hear Michelle Leung, founder and CEO of Xingtai Capital Management, discuss how the country’s growing middle class will shape consumption and entrepreneurship over the next decade.

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Fox News Poll: Clinton leads Trump by 10 points, both seen as flawed

 Sixty-one percent of voters think Hillary Clinton is dishonest, yet she’s opened up a big lead over Donald Trump in the latest Fox News Poll.

Here’s why: majorities think Clinton is nevertheless qualified to be president, and has the temperament and knowledge to serve effectively. It’s the opposite for Trump: over half feel he is not qualified, and lacks the temperament or knowledge to lead the country. And his 62 percent dishonesty rating tops hers.

After the conventions, the Clinton-Kaine ticket leads the Trump-Pence ticket by 10 points (49-39 percent) in the race for the White House. Clinton’s advantage is outside the poll’s margin of error. A month ago, Clinton was up by six points (44-38 percent, June 26-28).

This is the first time the Fox News Poll included running mates. Trump announced his vice presidential pick of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence July 15. Clinton told supporters she’d picked Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine July 22.

Since last month, Clinton’s position is improved with most groups, as she gained ground among men, women, whites, Democrats, young voters, and seniors.

The Democrat is winning among the so-called “Obama coalition,” the key voting blocs that secured his re-election. Clinton is favored among women by 23 points (57-34 percent), blacks by 83 (87-4 percent), Hispanics by 48 (68-20 percent), and voters under 30 by 18 (49-31 percent).

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS

Those numbers rival Barack Obama’s performance among those groups against Mitt Romney in 2012, when he won among women by 11 points (55-44 percent), blacks by 87 (93-6 percent), Hispanics by 44 (71-27 percent), and voters under 30 by 23 (60-37 percent).

© FoxNews.com Mike Emanuel reports from ColoradoTrump is the choice among whites by 10 points (49-39 percent), men by 5 (45-40 percent), white evangelical Christians by 50 (69-19 percent), and whites without a college degree by 16 (52-36 percent).

Right now he’s underperforming his 2012 counterpart. Romney won whites by 20 points (59-39 percent), men by 7 (52-45 percent), white evangelicals by 57 (78-21 percent), and whites without a degree by 26 (62-36 percent).

Trump bests Clinton among veterans by 53-39 percent.

Twelve percent of Republicans back Clinton. That’s more than double the number of Democrats supporting Trump (five percent). And while Clinton garners more support among Democrats (87 percent) than Trump does among Republicans (78 percent), she trails among independents. They go for the Republican by 41-33 percent. In 2012, independents went for Romney by 50-45 percent.

More Clinton supporters say their vote is for her rather than against Trump (49-47 percent). Among Trump supporters, a majority says their vote is better described as being against Clinton (52 percent), while less than half are voting because they like him (44 percent).

When Libertarians Gary Johnson and Bill Weld are included in the hypothetical vote, they receive 12 percent, while Clinton takes 44 percent to Trump’s 35 percent. They siphon off support about equally from both the Democratic and GOP tickets.

Qualified to be president? Sixty-five percent say Clinton is vs. 43 percent Trump. Fifty-eight percent feel he isn’t qualified, including 45 percent who say “not at all.”

On temperament, 64 percent say Clinton has it. Just 37 percent say Trump does. And 72 percent think Clinton has the knowledge to serve effectively, while 40 percent say the same for Trump.

The poll finds a couple things that could bode well for the incumbent party, most notably a positive rating for the president. A 52-percent majority approves of the job Barack Obama’s doing as president. Forty-five percent disapprove. Those are his best marks since May 2011, soon after U.S. forces killed Usama bin Laden, when 55 percent approved and 41 percent disapproved.

In addition, more voters feel they are getting ahead financially (35 percent) than have felt that way in nearly a decade.

There are also findings that could help Trump. Most voters say they are either just able to pay bills (49 percent) or are falling behind (14 percent). In addition, 55 percent remains dissatisfied with the direction of the country. Those unhappy voters prefer Trump by 62-23 percent, which makes sense considering 84 percent of Republicans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

Poll-pourri

After emails published online showed the Democratic National Committee favored Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the nomination process, 37 percent of Democrats think their party’s primary process was rigged in favor of Clinton. That jumps to 56 percent among all voters, and 61 percent among those who preferred Sanders over Clinton as the party’s nominee.

Some 37 percent of Sanders supporters think he would have won if the primaries had been fair.

Republicans are still divided over their party’s nominee: 50 percent are happy with Trump, while 49 percent would rather have someone else.

Finally, 77 percent of voters are familiar with the exchange between Trump and the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who died while serving in Iraq. Some 69 percent of them describe Trump’s criticism of the Khan family as “out of bounds.” Among Republicans, 40 percent think his response was “in bounds,” while 41 percent say “out of bounds,” and 19 percent are unsure.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,022 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from July 31-August 2, 2016. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.

      
Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Energizer Bernie: How does Sanders keep going, and going, and going?

It was well past lunch on a highway in California near the start of Memorial Day weekend, and the reporters on the Bernie Sanders press van were basically begging their handler for some downtime. Maybe after the next event we could swing by the hotel, they asked the press aide. And to each other they wondered, Doesn’t this 74-year-old ever get tired?

But there is rarely time for a break in the Sanders campaign, as staffers and reporters follow a candidate who doesn’t ever seem to slow down. His opponents might consider the relentless pace a metaphor — why doesn’t he just stop running already? But the Vermont senator is currently barnstorming California, a delegate-rich state he sees as his last hope to slow Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination.On this holiday weekend when Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, had scheduledjust one public event and Hillary Clinton, the most likely Democratic nominee, had nothing public on her schedule, Sanders held one rally after another, interspersed with TV appearances. Ventura, Pomona, and Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday; Long Beach, Inglewood, the Young Turks and Bill Maher on Friday; Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Bakersfield on Saturday;  Visalia and Fresno on Sunday; a few stops in Oakland on Monday.

As he points out at each event, this is the kind of primary campaign this state has never seen.  Usually the race is decided by the time California votes. But Sanders is hoping that a big win here, while not enough to overcome Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates, will somehow convince unbound superdelegates to throw their support his way. “We are doing something that to the best of my knowledge has never been done in California political history, holding rallies just like this up and down this state,” he says again and again. “By the end of this, I am confident we will have personally met and spoken to over 200,000 Californians. We will win here, and we will go to the Democratic National Convention with the momentum to make our case.”

So as his staff catnapped in the motorcade and the press hoped for at least a coffee stop, the man himself — call him the Energizer Bernie — was completely “on” at one event after the next, giving his one-hour stump speech at what seemed like full volume over and over again.

“He runs the 25-year-old staffers into the ground,” says one former aide who recently left the campaign, which has shedded team members as Clinton has closed in on the nomination.

Another ex-staffer expressed similar surprise at Sanders’ grueling pace.

“Most candidates half his age would strain under the weight of that schedule. There was one day where he hit five or six states in a single day. I really don’t understand how he does it,” the staffer said.

So how DOES he do it?

His wife, Jane, described her husband as “just one of those people who is built to keep going.” He has been sick fewer than half a dozen times in their 28-year marriage, she said, and she credits his endurance to the fact that he was a competitive runner in high school.

It’s certainly not his diet — he tends toward meat at meals, corn is his go-to vegetable, and his aides know to keep salty snacks, like pretzels, on hand in the limo. It’s probably not genetics — both his parents died young. It’s not because he is cosseted and spoiled on the trail. The former aide says “it pisses him off if we try to pamper him” and noted his preference for “simple” stops on the road.

“He’s a Hampton Inn guy, and he’s a diner guy. He’s, like, a Denny’s guy.”

It’s also not because he is religious about sleep — he is a night owl who often stays up too late — or exercises strenuously. There’s no gym time slotted on his schedule, though he often detours the motorcade to a field, or even an empty parking lot, so he can go for a brisk walk between events, with the Secret Service keeping people at bay. Staffers call these constitutionals “the Sanders Stroll.”

“He cannot stand that he doesn’t get fresh air and have a chance to walk,” his wife says. “It was 10 degrees in Wisconsin, and we went for an hour walk.”

Back home he rides his bike every day, she says, and when the Secret Service protection started one requirement was that the agents have bicycles.

 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, May 28, 2016, in Santa Maria, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Hillary Clinton: ‘I will be the nominee’

Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that the outcome of the Democratic presidential nomination is certain and that she will prevail.

“I will be the nominee for my party,” she said during an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged he will continue to challenge Clinton for the nomination, though the math requires him to secure increasingly improbable landslides in the remaining contests to overtake the former secretary of state among pledged delegates. He then hopes to convince superdelegates to switch their allegiance, another difficult task.

Despite these daunting odds, Sanders insists he will soldier on through the June 7 primary races, which include big, Clinton-friendly states such as California and New Jersey. On Tuesday, after Sanders won the primary in Oregon, he vowed to fight on until “the last ballot is cast.”

“I am absolutely committed to doing my part — more than my part — but Sen. Sanders has to do his part,” she said.

Clinton recalled her own unsuccessful 2008 primary race against then-Sen. Barack Obama.

At the time, Clinton — who was then closer to Obama in delegates than Sanders now is to her — forged on into the late primaries despite also facing improbable odds. But she noted to Cuomo that she later worked to rally her supporters behind Obama’s candidacy.

“That’s why the lesson of 2008, which was a hard-fought primary as you remember, is so pertinent here,” she said. “Because I did my part. But so did Sen. Obama. He made it clear he welcomed people who had supported me. He made it very clear.”

She continued: “We went to Unity, N.H., together, appeared together, spoke together and made it absolutely obvious that I was supporting him. He was grateful for that support. I was reaching out to my supporters.”

Later in the day Thursday, the Sanders campaign fired off a statement disputing Clinton’s assessment of the primary.

“In the past three weeks voters in Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon respectfully disagreed with Secretary Clinton. We expect voters in the remaining eight contests also will disagree,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said.

“And with almost every national and state poll showing Sen. Sanders doing much, much better than Secretary Clinton against Donald Trump,” he added. “it is clear that millions of Americans have growing doubts about the Clinton campaign.”

Watch part of Clinton’s interview below.

Hillary Clinton on Democratic unity: I will do my part but "Sen. Sanders has to do his part" 

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 19, 2016

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Manchester United: Cause of 'bomb' scare at Old Trafford dubbed 'fiasco'

(CNN)After the relief that everybody was safely evacuated from Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium ahead of a key soccer game following the discovery of a suspicious item, questions are now being asked as to how an "incredibly lifelike explosive device" was at the ground in the first place.

The item was actually a training device left in the stadium by a private company and Greater Manchester's Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd didn't hold back in his criticism of what he described as a "fiasco."

"It is outrageous this situation arose and a full inquiry is required to urgently find out how this happened, why it happened and who will be held accountable," said Lloyd in a statement.

Lloyd was particularly unhappy at the "waste of time of huge numbers of police officers and the army's bomb squad."

He added: "Whilst this in no way demeans the professionalism of the police and stewards responsible for getting the fans out, or the supporters' calmness and cooperation during the evacuation, it is unacceptable that it happened in the first place."

The discovery of the device prompted the evacuation of United's game against AFC Bournemouth, which was then canceled.

"Following today's controlled explosion, we have since found out that the item was a training device which had accidentally been left by a private company following a training exercise involving explosive search dogs," Assistant Chief Constable John O'Hare of the Greater Manchester Police said in a statement Sunday.

Sniffer dogs

United was due to to face off against Bournemouth in the final game of the English Premier League season on Sunday. The game could have qualified United for next season's Champions League -- European soccer's biggest competition -- if they had won and their local rivals Manchester City lost at Swansea.

Shortly before the 3 p.m. kickoff, Manchester United staff alerted police to a suspicious item found in the toilets within the North West Quadrant, between the Sir Alex Ferguson stand and the Stretford End. Initially, a partial evacuation of the stadium was put in place while sniffer dogs searched the stands of the 75,000-capacity stadium.

A sniffer dog patrols the Old Trafford stands.

After the initial sweep a decision was made between police and Manchester United officials to abandon the game and a full controlled evacuation of the stadium was carried out.

"We don't make these decisions lightly and we have done this today to ensure the safety of all those attending," O'Hare of Greater Manchester Police said.

Bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion of the device and determined it was not "viable."

"Everyone remained calm, followed instructions, and worked with officers and stewards to ensure that a safe evacuation was quickly completed," O'Hare said. "Those present today were a credit to the football family and their actions should be recognized."

 

 

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Woman endures five years of slavery, chains, starvation

Mexico City (CNN)She's 23 years old, but her petite frame makes her look like a teenager. Her bright eyes and friendly smile can easily hide the horrors she has lived, unimaginable physical and mental abuse that almost took her life.

She calls herself Zunduri, although that's not her real name. It's a name she adopted after regaining her freedom, a term that means "beautiful girl" in Japanese.

Zunduri says it all started when she ran away with her boyfriend at age 17. The relationship quickly fizzled and she found herself homeless in Mexico City. Instead of returning home, she found food and shelter with a lady who owned a dry cleaning shop in the Mexican capital's south side.

It was a family business. The mother owned the cleaners and was helped by the father. Two daughters occasionally helped. There was also a sister of the owner's with two children.

At the beginning, Zunduri says, the dry cleaner's owner treated her so nicely she started calling her "mom."

Zunduri says, in addition to being physically abused, she was also brainwashed. The message was always the same: "You're worthless." She's shown after her escape.

But little by little, the amount of work she was asked to do increased. First, it was doing domestic chores around the house, but not the cleaners. Then it increased to ironing clothes a few hours a day, which eventually turned into 16-hour shifts. Occasionally she would iron clothes for as long as 20 hours a day, she said.

As the workload increased, the amount of food she was allowed to eat decreased. She says one time she went five days without eating anything and was so hungry she would chew on the plastic bags she used for laundered shirts. She survived on the little water she could take out of the iron, she said. By then she was already sleeping on the floor.

More on the CNN Freedom Project

The heavy workload was followed by beatings.

"The first time she started kicking me. Then she said, 'You have no right to talk back because I'm like a mother for you. If you call me 'mother,' you have to understand that mothers discipline their children,'" Zunduri said.

Zunduri said, in addition to being physically abused, she was also brainwashed. The message was always the same: "You're worthless."

"She always tried to put things in my head like, 'Your mom doesn't love you. If she loved you, she would be here with you. If she loved you, she would've taken you back. The guy you left with didn't love you either. He couldn't stand you because you're worthless as a woman,'" Zunduri said.

The human trafficking survivor who smashed a world record

Finally, when she felt she could no longer take more beatings or humiliation, she says things got much worse. Her captor put her in chains.

"She told me, 'This is how animals like you should be treated' and she grabbed me and put the chain around my neck. I could only say 'No, this is unnecessary. Don't treat me like this. Don't do it,'" Zunduri said.

The chain then moved to her waist, so that she would still be able to iron clothes, Zunduri says, estimating that she spent six months in chains.

After five long years in captivity, Zunduri was finally able to escape in April 2015.

Zunduri is now celebrating her first year of freedom. After five long years in captivity, she was finally able to escape in April 2015 when the woman who enslaved her left the chains a little loose.

Human rights attorney Maria Teresa Paredes, one of the first people to see Zunduri after she escaped, said she was horrified when she saw the victim's injuries.

"There was not a single part of her body without a scar or wound. She also had scratches and bruises. She had also lost a lot of hair," Paredes said.

Survivor: 'I was raped 43,000 times'

Actress and human rights activist Karla de la Cuesta, who is now a close friend of the victim's, says Zunduri was also tortured. Her captors would frequently use the iron to burn different parts of her body.

"She tells me that her captors would peel off the scabs from her skin. When she was healing from her burns and scabs would appear, they would yank them off so that they would bleed again. They would scratch her neck with their fingernails. Her head was badly injured as well. They used the iron to burn her in the head," de la Cuesta said.

Zunduri, 23, consults last year with a plastic surgeon in Mexico City.

After Zunduri escaped and her case came to the attention of authorities, police raided the house where she had been held captive. Seven people were detained, including two minors. They were all members of the same family. The two minors were later freed, but the five remaining adults remain behind bars and face charges of human trafficking and exploitation, punishable by at least 40 years in prison.

Juana Camila Bautista, a special prosecutor in charge of combating human trafficking in Mexico City, said every single member of the family mistreated Zunduri in some form, even the children.

Bautista also said investigators verified Zunduri's testimony. Blood stains found in multiple places around the dry cleaners matched Zunduri's DNA.

Zunduri, Bautista said, was starving to death.

Zunduri meets the Pope in Vatican City.

"She had very advanced levels of anemia and the doctors determined that her body and her internal organs were similar to those of an 80-year-old person," Bautista said.

Zunduri has undergone a number of medical procedures as part of her recovery. She told her story to Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York. She traveled to The Vatican last July to meet with Pope Francis. She has also traveled to other countries, such as Argentina, where she openly talks about her story of slavery.

Children for sale: A CNN documentary

Her dream is going to culinary school to become a pastry chef. She wants to open her own bakery someday.

Zunduri is a victim, a survivor. But when you see her friendly smile you realize that in spite of everything she went through, her spirit remains undaunted.

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Vermont college once led by Bernie Sanders’ wife collapses

Burlington College is the latest casualty in a growing list of private liberal arts colleges that have collapsed under financial struggles and lagging student enrollment. The school announced its closure in a statement Monday, blaming the move, in part, on the “crushing weight” of debt it incurred after a 2010 real estate purchase arranged by then-president Jane Sanders, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Jane Sanders served as president from 2004 to 2011 and left her post after a dispute with the college’s board over her decision to buy 30-plus acres of lakefront property from the Archdiocese of Burlington to expand the campus and attract new students. The move was unsuccessful.

At the end of Jane’s run, the school reported 19.4% of pupils were in default on their student loans three years after graduating, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That rate fell to 7% in 2012, the year after Sanders departed (and the latest year for which data is available).  According to a February report by Politico, only one-third of Burlington College graduates earned more than someone with a high school diploma. The cost of attendance (tuition and room and board) runs nearly $38,000 per year.

In July 2014, the school was in such dire financial straits it was put on probation by its accrediting agency with a two-year window of time to get its act together. With that window closing soon and news in April that the college’s lender, People’s United Bank, was pulling its line of credit, college leaders decided to throw in the towel. “These hurdles are insurmountable at this time,” the college said in a statement. The school will officially close on May 27. The 245 students currently enrolled will have to transfer to other schools.

Burlington’s closure is not unique in the world of private liberal arts colleges, a sector of higher education that has particularly suffered in the years since the 2008 financial crisis. According to data released Monday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), revenue at private colleges has slowed to 1.8%, down from 2.2% during the 2013-2014 school year. More than one-third of institutions reported declining enrollments.

Unlike public institutions, which are heavily subsidized by federal and state funding, and elite private schools, with billion-dollar endowment funds, small private schools depend almost exclusively on tuition and room and board fees for revenue.

In March 2015, the board of the 114-year-old Sweet Briar College in Virginia abruptly shut the school down, quickly followed by news that private Christian school Tennessee Temple University would merge with another private Christian school. (Sweet Briar College was eventually rescued by a crew of alumni who raised $12.5 million.)

One of the more popular ways these schools have tried to attract new students is by offering seemingly huge tuition discounts — that is, offering more grant-based aid up front, in order to reduce the sticker price families pay for tuition. The average discount for the 2015-1216 academic year was 48.6% for incoming freshman, according to NACUBO.

These discounts, however, aren’t the incredible bargain they appear to be, as Yahoo Finance illustrated in an in-depth report on the practice last fall. For example, Rosemont College, in Rosemont, Pa., said recently it would cut the sticker price for tuition and room and board by 34% for the incoming class of 2016. But looking at the change in the net price — how much families pay out of pocket after factoring in grant-based aid — the discount was a much more modest 7%.  

Bernie Sanders’ spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

For half her life, doctors told her to lose weight. But something else was going on.

To Deborah E. Savage, a trip to the doctor was frequently an exercise in humiliation.

For more than 15 years, Savage’s doctors doled out the same advice: You need to stop gaining weight. When Savage replied that she had tried watching her diet and exercising, only to pack on more pounds, it was clear they simply didn’t believe her. Her family was equally skeptical.

“I would eat like my sister, and I would gain weight but she wouldn’t,” recalled Savage, a civil engineer who lives in Montgomery County and turns 31 next month.

[Doctors were startled to find the cause of this 24-year-old’s excruciating pain]

Savage’s inexorable weight gain, which began in middle school and resulted in obesity, was not her only problem: For years, she also struggled with eruptions of painful acne and facial hair. “These things made me feel ugly,” she said.

For years, Debbie Savage kept gaining weight. She was plagued by horrific acne and apathetic doctors. (Courtesy of Debbie Savage)

Last year, after Savage had trouble getting pregnant, an inability she suspected was linked to her irregular periods, she consulted a new obstetrician/gynecologist. The doctor suggested that Savage’s constellation of problems might have a single cause. But it took a second OB/GYN to conduct the proper tests, which led to a definitive diagnosis of a common — and consequential — disorder.

“It’s frustrating to me that so many doctors” didn’t think of this, she said. “If I’d known, I would have made changes years ago.”

Comparisons rankled

From the time she was 12, Savage recalled, her inability to lose weight became one of the defining elements of her life. And because she is short — 5-foot-3 — extra pounds were particularly noticeable. Her family’s comparisons with her older, thinner sister rankled.

[He couldn’t eat, drink or work. And doctors couldn’t explain his searing pain.]

At her mother’s suggestion, Savage joined a gym, but that didn’t help her lose more than a few pounds.
Savage said she was too intimidated to ask her doctors why her weight didn’t budge much, even when she faithfully followed a diet and worked out.
Nor did she mention the other problems that plagued her. “The facial hair thing was embarrassing, so I didn’t want to talk about it,” she recalled. “Same with the acne. I felt so sensitive about it.”

.Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

‘They cut my son’s head off, and they took my son’s head. Who would do that?’

By Lindsey Bever May 16 at 11:18 AM

Jubal Alexander’s truck. (Courtesy of Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office)

Jubal Alexander had been living in his pickup truck, parked under a farm-to-market road in southeast Texas, according to local news reports.
He was saving money to pay bills while working nights as a pipefitter at an area chemical plant, family and friends told ABC News. And, they said, he was never in any trouble.
Alexander, 24, was discovered dead earlier this month, police said.
When police stumbled upon the grisly scene, they found Alexander’s body in the front seat of his truck. His head had been removed — and was nowhere to be found.
“They cut my son’s head off and they took my son’s head. Who would do that?” his father, who was not named, told ABC affiliate KTRK. “They won’t even let me see him.”

[4-year-old girl’s decapitation in Taiwan sparks outrage and death penalty debate]

Jubal Alexander (Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office)

The Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office is investigating after deputies were called May 3 about a headless body in a blue Chevrolet pickup parked at the Austin Bayou Boat Ramp on FM 2004 in Brazoria County, not far from Houston.
Deputies told CBS affiliate KHOU that a fisherman said he had been on the water all day and realized the truck had not moved.
Capt. Chris Kincheloe of the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Department told the Port Arthur News that authorities searched the grounds using cadaver dogs and the waters in boats but could not find Alexander’s head.
“We have absolutely no idea of the motive, but the mere fact that we have an unexplained homicide causes concern,” he told the newspaper.
Authorities said the victim was later identified through fingerprint analysis as Jubal Dee Alexander of Port Arthur, Tex.

[Man convicted of murder in near-decapitation of 95-year-old neighbor]

Alexander had been seen just a few days earlier, when he had dinner with his father in nearby Angleton, according to KTRK.
“He wanted me to be proud of him, so he worked exceptionally hard,” the father told the news station. “His shift was a 10-hour, maybe a 13-hour shift. He worked all night long.”
Alexander’s family told KTRK that it did not appear that he had been robbed because his wallet — filled with cash — was still inside the truck, along with Alexander’s guitar.


Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer

Obama Targets Trump Campaign Proposals in Highly Political Commencement Speech

ALEXANDER MALLIN,Good Morning America 4 hours ago 

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While not directly naming the candidate, President Obama made it clear just what he thinks about Donald Trump's campaign and policy proposals in a highly political commencement speech Sunday at Rutgers University.

The president said he would skip giving students the usual commencement banter, and instead run down a list of "suggestions" that turned out to be a stern and direct indictment of everything Trump has built his campaign on.

First, Obama took on Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan, telling students, "When you hear someone longing for the good old days, take it with a grain of salt."

Obama told graduates that despite what they may hear on the campaign trail, he believed they were better positioned than at any time to succeed and said the reason America doesn't tend to move backwards is "because you don't fear the future."

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Obama then went directly after Trump's proposals to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, and to ban Muslims from entering the country.

"The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it's becoming more connected every day. Building walls won't change that," Obama said. "Isolating or disparaging Muslims, suggesting they should be treated when they come to this country, that is not just a betrayal of our values -– that's not just a betrayal of who we are –- we alienate the very communities at home or abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.

"Suggesting that we can build an endless wall along our borders and blame our challenges on immigrants, that doesn't just run counter to our history as the world's melting pot, it contradicts the evidence that our growth, and our innovation and our dynamism has always been spurred by our ability to attract strivers from every corner of the globe," Obama continued. "It's how we became America, why would we want to stop it now?"

Obama then took aim at what he called a "strain of anti-intellectualism" in American politics, saying, "in politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue."

"It's not cool to not know what you're talking about," Obama said. "That's not challenging political correctness, that's just not knowing what you're talking about."

He then called out leaders who are allowed to promote "the wildest conspiracy theories," who "express a disdain for facts" and then are "not held accountable."

Near the close of his speech, there was also a seeming slight at the campaign message of Bernie Sanders, as Obama belied those who exaggerate the corrupt and "rigged system," saying the great changes in American history "didn’t happen because some massive political revolution occurred."

"Contrary to what we hear sometimes from both the left as well as the right, the system is not as rigged as you think and it certainly is not as hopeless as you think," Obama said.

Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer