http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/22/news/economy/workforce-opioid-crisis/index.html

A pack of cigarettes sits on top of a Buffalo Wild Wings application on the kitchen table in front of Mike Harsanyi. After six years struggling with heroin addiction and two spells in prison, Harsanyi has been living in a sober house in Maryland for five months and he's looking for steady employment.
"The job search has not been going good," said Harsanyi, a baby-faced 27-year-old with tattoos poking out of his collar. "I think when you're a drug addict in sobriety with a felony on your record, they look at you different, like you're going to rob their store."

Jobs are plentiful in Maryland's Anne Arundel County, which boasts an unemployment rate of 3.1%. But after doing time for an armed robbery committed while he was high in 2015, Harsanyi has so far been turned down for jobs at Valvoline and Jiffy Lube, and is only able to pick up occasional work as a tile setter for another recovering addict he met through his 12-Step program.

Harsanyi's experience isn't just hard on him. The opioid crisis is turning into a real problem for employers, who are having trouble finding workers in the midst of one of the tightest labor markets in decades.

There are nearly 6 million job openings in the U.S. and the unemployment rate, at 4.1%, is at a 17-year low. But the share of people working or looking for work still hasn't recovered from before the recession. Part of the problem: The rise in abuse of prescription painkillers, partially responsible for the 64,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016, has incapacitated thousands of working-age people whom employers would otherwise be eager to hire.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-gun-laws-trnd/index.html



The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people, has put the focus on Florida's gun laws. For instance, the state doesn't require a permit or a license for someone to own a gun.

Here are some facts about the gun laws in the Sunshine State, from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action:

The right to bear arms is found in the first article of Florida's constitution: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and of the lawful authority of the state shall not be infringed..."

You don't need a permit or license to buy a gun, nor do you have to register a firearm.

You don't need a permit to conceal carry a rifle or shotgun, although you do need it to conceal carry a handgun.

The state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services must issue a concealed weapons license to an applicant as long as the person meets a certain set of requirements, including being a US citizen, being the age of 21 or older, not having a felony conviction and demonstrates competence with a firearm.

You can buy as many guns as you want at one time, because Florida doesn't regulate that either.

Gun sellers don't have to get a state license to sell firearms.

The state does require a three-day waiting period before you can buy a gun.

And Florida does not regulate assault weapons, .50-caliber rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/14/investing/lloyd-blankfein-goldman-sachs-economy/index.html

Lloyd Blankfein is worried that a spending spree by the Trump administration could overheat the American economy.
"The odds of a bad outcome have gone up," the Goldman Sachs CEO told CNN's Christine Romans in an interview airing Wednesday.

Blankfein noted that the economy was already humming along before the federal government juiced it with $1.5 trillion in tax cuts and $300 billion of additional spending, pushing up the budget deficit. And now, President Trump has proposed a $200 billion infrastructure package.

That kind of spending is normally reserved for recessions -- or at least fragile recoveries -- not booms.

While it's not his "base case," Blankfein said the risk is that all that stimulus could be "too much of a good thing" for the economy and financial markets.

"Don't forget, all of these deficits have to be paid for," he said on the sidelines of Goldman's 10,000 Small Businesses Summit.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/13/us/tukwila-police-ice-detain-trnd/index.html

(CNN)Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno and his family were in trouble, so he did what he knew to do -- call police for help. About an hour later, he was in ICE custody.

Rodriguez's detention on Thursday sent shockwaves through the Seattle-suburb and is now garnering national attention from advocates, warning the way authorities handled the case could make immigrants scared to call police to report crimes.

Early Thursday morning, Rodriguez saw someone trespassing on his property in Tukwila, Washington. In the last few weeks, someone had been repeatedly trying to break-in to his home and car. So, he called 9-1-1.

Police arriving on scene apprehended a trespasser according to Rodriguez's lawyer Luis Cortes.
After giving officers his ID for what he thought was "report purposes," police put Rodriguez in handcuffs, his lawyer said. After running his information through the National Crime Information Center database, officers saw he had an outstanding warrant.

"officers believed that they were executing a valid order from a judge in the form of a criminal warrant."
In reality, officers executed an administrative ICE warrant.

Tukwila Police say in their Facebook post ICE told to them it's been entering administrative warrants into the database the same as criminal warrants. And that, "we may be encountering more of these types of warrants in the future."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/politics/us-cyberweapons-russia-trump.html



BERLIN — After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials.

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.

Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.

The United States intelligence officials said they cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian operation to create discord inside the American government. They were also fearful of political fallout in Washington if they were seen to be buying scurrilous information on the president.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/08/florida-boy-gets-trapped-inside-arcade-claw-machine.html

A young boy who was really set on getting a stuffed toy from a claw-style vending machine at a Florida restaurant ended up getting stuck inside it on Wednesday, according to officials.

Titusville Fire and Emergency Services said in a Facebook post the incident happened at a Beef O'Brady's restaurant on the state's Atlantic coast.

"This evening little Mason was enjoying some food and decided he wanted a stuffed animal," the rescue agency said. "He wanted it so bad, he climbed into the game to get that toy!!"

Fire officials said the boy was "never in any distress," and an off-duty firefighter who happened to be there eating dinner contacted his colleagues.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/09/california-lawmaker-behind-metoo-push-is-accused-of-groping-male-staffer/?hpid=hp_hp-morning-mix_mm-lawmaker%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.519fda0294e3

California Democratic Assemblywoman and vocal #MeToo advocate Cristina Garcia is under investigation for allegedly groping a former male staffer. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

A California lawmaker who has gained national recognition for fighting against sexual misconduct in the state Capitol is accused of groping a former legislative staffer.

The staffer, Daniel Fierro, told The Washington Post on Thursday that Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, who has become a prominent figure in the #MeToo movement, approached him alone after an assembly softball game in 2014, squeezed his buttocks and tried to touch his crotch. He said Garcia was visibly intoxicated.

Fierro, who was 25 at the time, did not report the incident because he worried about the long-term consequences that could come with accusing the powerful lawmaker, who chairs the Legislative Women’s Caucus and the Natural Resources Committee. But in January he told his former boss, Democratic Assemblyman Ian Calderon, who referred the matter to an assembly panel that is now investigating Garcia.

Politico was the first to report on Fierro’s allegations. The story also included sexual misconduct allegations against Garcia from an anonymous male lobbyist that The Post was not able to independently verify.