Free Republic

A major player in the California desert solar power scene may not be playing much longer. Abengoa, the Seville, Spain-based renewable energy company that owns and operates the 250-megawatt Mojave Solar project near Hinckley, CA, has filed for protection from creditors in a Spanish court, in what may well be the start of bankruptcy proceedings. The decision to pursue insolvency came last week after Basque steel company Gonvarri decided not to provide an infusion of 350 million euros in new investment funding for Abengoa, which was just the latest in a series of lenders declining to do business with Abengoa....

Workers represented by Los Angeles County's largest employee union voted to approve a tentative agreement with county management that would give them a 10% raise over three years. Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents more than 57,000 county employees, including nurses, social workers and clerical workers, tallied ballots Thursday after a month long voting process. Apart from the pay increase, the new contract would make Cesar Chavez Day an official county holiday starting in 2017, provide as much as an additional week of annual vacation every year and put some temporary workers on a path to full-time jobs....

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Minneapolis city officials say several men tried to kidnap a woman in broad daylight as she walked up to a store Thursday afternoon. The woman says she was about to go into a business on the 300 block of Lake Street West at about 3 p.m. Several men were standing outside, one of whom grabbed her by the wrist and said, “Get in the car.” The woman pulled away and entered the store, and the men fled in a light-colored car. The men are described as Somali males between the ages of 18 and 25. Anyone with...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A woman and child were raped and beaten after masked gunmen invaded their Minneapolis home. Police say Reggie Bishop, Roynell Taylor and Deondre Bishop broke into a Minneapolis home on Bryant Avenue North late at night on July 19. “They broke into this house, vandalized and stole things, but worse: They raped both the young woman, the daughter, and her mother,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said. Police say the three armed men tied the mother and the 14-year-old girl up and put pillow cases over their heads. They demanded money and threatened to burn them with...

Last week, the University of Minnesota’s undergraduate student government voted down a resolution to hold an annual “moment of recognition” on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, citing concerns that it might inflame anti-Muslim sentiment. Now the group is facing a backlash on social media, particularly in the wake of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris. The resolution, which was proposed by Theo Menon, a representative from the College Republicans, noted that “there is currently no official recognition” of 9/11 on the Twin Cities campus and urged the U to start such a tradition next year. After a debate Nov....

The Ecologist speculates that the aim of the ISIS terrorists, who have claimed responsibility for the recent Paris terrorist atrocity, might have been aimed at protecting ISIS’ oil business from an anticipated new climate agreement. According to The Ecologist; Is it a coincidence that the terrorist outrage in Paris was committed weeks before COP21, the biggest climate conference since 2009? Perhaps, writes Oliver Tickell. But failure to reach a strong climate agreement now looks more probable. And that’s an outcome that would suit ISIS – which makes $500m a year from oil sales – together with other oil producers. But...

Roughly 9,000 California companies moved their headquarters or diverted projects to out-of-state locations in the last seven years, and Texas has been a prime beneficiary of the Golden State’s “hostile” business environment. Phoenix was not far behind. That’s the conclusion of a study by Joseph Vranich, a site selection consultant and president of Irvine, California-based Spectrum Location Solutions. Of the 9,000 businesses that he estimates disinvested in California, some relocated completely while others kept their headquarters in California but targeted out-of-state locations for expansions, Vranich found. The report did not count instances of companies opening a new out-of-state facility to...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Jamar Clark, the 24-year-old north Minneapolis man who was shot by police Sunday, has been taken off life support and has died, according to family members. Clark’s shooting has ignited a series of protests by the group Black Lives Matter. On Monday, more than 50 people were arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest that shut down I-94W in Minneapolis for over two hours. The shooting happened early Sunday morning on Plymouth Avenue North. Police were responding to a report of a man, later identified as Clark, assaulting a woman. On the way to that call, police...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A convicted sexual predator is charged again with raping a teenage girl — this time at gunpoint in a Minneapolis alley earlier this month. The Hennepin County Attorney’s office says 34-year-old Charles Edward Stevenson was charged Thursday with one count of first-degree penetration while armed with a dangerous weapon and one count of providing false information while registering as a sex offender. The criminal complaint says Stevenson is accused of grabbing a 15-year-old girl as she was walking down the 2900 block of Irving Avenue North during the early morning of Nov. 2. The victim says Stevenson,...

Target is selling a sweater that makes light of OCD, which isn't so funny to some of the people who actually have the disorder. The red sweater is emblazoned with the acronym OCD, followed by the words "Obsessive Christmas Disorder." Customers who know that OCD actually stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are demanding that Target take the sweater off its shelves and online store. "I'm calling on @Target to remove the #OCD sweater!" tweeted someone identifying herself as "the original #OCDiva." The issue lit up social media, with legions of the offended vowing that Target would get on their naughty...

Arizona is the third-best market for California disinvestment, according to a seven-year Spectrum Location Solutions study of companies leaving the state. Texas, Nevada and Arizona are in the top three slots, following by Colorado, Washington, Oregon and North Carolina. Report author Joseph Vranich, a site selection consultant, confirmed that more than $68 billion in capital has been diverted to other states as a result of the more than 1,500 disinvestment actions – the act of a company pulling up stakes and relocating. “Companies moving to other states save 25 percent to 35 percent of operating costs compared to California costs,”...

No. 11 overall pick in 1990 NFL Draft convicted on three murder charges By John Breech | CBSSports.com November 6, 2015 5:00 pm ET A former NFL first-round pick was convicted on three counts of murder on Thursday. Anthony Wayne Smith, who was taken 11th overall by the Raiders in the 1990 NFL Draft, was convicted after eight days of deliberation by a jury in Lancaster, California, a Los Angeles County district attorney's office spokesman told the Los Angeles Times. Smith had been on trial for a total of four murders; however, jurors were deadlocked on the fourth charge and...

While many divisions within our society are arbitrary or engineered, there is one division that represents perhaps the most pervasive and important conflict of our time; the division between collectivists and individualists. Now, people who do not understand the nature of collectivism will often argue that individualism and collectivism are not mutually exclusive because individuals require groups in order to survive and thrive. However, a “group” is not necessarily a collective. For some reason the core fundamental of collectivism – the use of psychological coercion or physical force to compel participation – goes right over the heads of many skeptics....

Back in 1999, a quarter of all 25-year-olds lived with their parents. By 2013 this number has doubled, and currently half of young adults live in their parents home. While the troubling implications for the economy from this startling increase are self-evident, and have been extensively discussed both here and elsewhere (and are among the key factors pushing both the US and global economy into secular stagnation), a just as important question is why are increasingly more young adults still living at home. Labor Market and Higher Education One potential reason for the increase in young adults living with their...

IT IS HARD to see Gore in Florida without thinking about him not winning the 2000 election by 537 votes in the Sunshine State—or, if you prefer, one vote on the Supreme Court—to George W. Bush. You get the feeling that Gore thinks about it, too, and not just as a climate activist angry that Bush broke his campaign pledge to crack down on carbon emissions shortly after he arrived in the White House. At one point during his Climate Reality conference, while Gore was moderating a discussion about the Florida government’s hostility to solar power, someone mentioned shenanigans involving...

PHOENIX - A drug suspect who fled police and subsequently caused a fatal crash was in the country illegally after previously being deported, according to court documents. Juan Diego Toscano-Delval, originally from northwest Mexico, told officials that he was deported after a 2009 drug arrest, then illegally sneaked back into the U.S., documents said. Tempe police, after watching Juan Diego Toscano-Delval carry out a hand-to-hand drug deal Monday in west Phoenix, tried to pull Toscano-Delval over in his grey Kia passenger car, documents said. Toscano-Delval sped away from undercover police, ripped through a stop sign, and smashed into 58-year-old Henry...

There is still a large amount of foreign money flowing into targeted markets for the direct purpose of purchasing real estate. Not cheap real estate but trophy properties. “(Bloomberg) Buyers from China and Asian-Americans purchased about 80 percent of the 47 houses sold at Tri Pointe Homes Inc.’s Arcadia at Stonegate community in Irvine, about 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles, according to Tom Mitchell, president of the Irvine-based builder. Almost half of the buyers paid cash for houses in the development, at prices starting at $1.16 million, he said. The company has been surprised by how word travels among...

CASA GRANDE, AZ - A previously deported felon has been captured after fleeing from a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy on Wednesday night. The driver accelerated at a high rate of speed, estimated by the deputy to be over 100 miles per hour. The deputy stopped the pursuit after about a mile due to entering Casa Grande city limits. Officials say additional deputies responded to the area where the vehicle was last seen and located the abandoned vehicle near Casa Grande. Deputies were able to track the driver to the Living Wellness Center where they contacted the staff. Deputies contacted the...

Under orders to slash their water use in the fourth year of a statewide drought, Los Angeles residents and businesses have largely risen to the challenge. But this week, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said that because its customers have done such a good job saving, the agency is short on revenue. To help fill in the gap, the Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved a pass-through charge that will require an average customer to pay about $1.80 more a month, beginning in 2016. The 18 billion gallons of unsold water left the utility about $57...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Five Minnesota men accused of plotting to join the Islamic State group are now charged with a new count of conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States, according to a superseding indictment filed Wednesday that offers some new details about steps the men took as they allegedly planned to get to Syria. Prosecutors say the men are part of a group of friends in Minnesota’s Somali community who recruited and inspired each other to join the terrorist organization. Three members of the group have pleaded guilty, but the rest — Hamza Naj Ahmed, 20; Mohamed Abdihamid...