Federal Reserve policymakers last month debated an April interest-rate rise, with several officials leaning against such a move because it would send the wrong signal and others saying it might be warranted.
“Several expressed the view that a cautious approach to raising rates would be prudent or noted their concern that raising the target range as soon as April would signal a sense of urgency they did not think appropriate,” minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s March 15-16 meeting released Wednesday in Washington said.
The debate, by flagging a potential April rate increase that’s nevertheless unlikely, may have the result of adding more focus to the June session. It also shows the FOMC is prepared to move in a meeting, if necessary, without a scheduled news conference by Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
U.S. central bankers, who left the benchmark interest rate unchanged in March in a range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, discussed the relative health of the American economy, which contrasted against persistent global risks. They worried that slowing world growth could reduce corporate investment plans and restrain U.S. exports. Some officials argued that the U.S. was at or near full employment with inflation starting to rise.
“In contrast, some other participants indicated that an increase” in the federal funds rate target range at the April 26-27 meeting “might well be warranted” if economic data came in as expected, the minutes said.
The March meeting marked an evolution in the Fed’s policy approach as U.S. central bankers gave more weight to the impact of slowing growth abroad on their outlook.
The fight for equality can be bittersweet.
Madeline Price, a student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, spent part of her weekend planning a bake sale. The main confection would be cupcakes, followed by brownies. But before any frosting was frosted and sprinkles sprinkled, Price’s sugared goods became the subject of uproar online.
The reason was her pricing scheme. As part of the university’s “Feminist Week.” Price decided to charge consumers different prices depending on the groups with which they identified.
White men would pay full price — $1. A woman, by comparison, would pay 83 cents.
These ratios were based on data from the Australian government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency, and calibrated around gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and whether the individual identified as having a disability.
The point was to demonstrate, in a tongue-in-cheek way, the numbers behind the gender pay gap in Australia — where, on average, women working full-time earn 83 percent of what men earn also working full-time. But Price, who serves as the student union’s vice president of gender and sexuality, ended up making another point in the process.
“Out of all the events we are hosting this week, our innocuous bake sale generated the most attention,” Price told The Washington Post in an email Wednesday morning. “It wasn’t meant to be a feature event, yet it riled the most feathers.”
As news of the event began to spread on Facebook, Price and her co-organizers became the victims of online harassment.
With swift ferocity, attendees and event planners were threatened by anonymous commentators who felt that the bake sale discriminated against men and manufactured inequality.
Many questioned whether there is a gender pay gap at all. Others called the bake sale organizers “hypocrites.” And some, in an effort to prove that sexism no longer exists, besieged the student union and women’s collective Facebook pages with sexist, violent messages.
The actual bake sale on Tuesday was a success: the group sold more than 200 baked goods in just over an hour, with proceeds going to a nonprofit that provides feminine hygiene products to homeless and at-risk women.
Tokyo
This comes a day after South Korean officials said they believed that the North was now able to mount a nuclear warhead on a medium-range missile, and after China sharply curtailed trade with its dependent neighbor.
Tensions have been running high in the region since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test at the beginning of January then followed it up with a long-range missile launch.
Current joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and a looming Workers’ Party Congress in North Korea both have added fuel to the fire.
Han Min-koo, South Korea’s defense minister, said that North Korea’s recent test-firings of 300-millimeter rockets suggested that it had almost completed the development of its multiple launch rocket system.
The number of executions carried out around the world in 2015 increased more than 50 percent over the previous year, a surge largely driven by three countries: Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International said in its annual report on the use of capital punishment.
At least 1,634 people were put to death in 25 countries last year, the highest number of executions recorded by the London-based human rights group in more than a quarter century, excluding those carried out in China.
Amnesty believes that thousands more people are executed every year in China, but the government treats information about capital punishment as a state secret.
In a statement released before the report was officially published Wednesday, Amnesty’s secretary-general, Salil Shetty, described last year’s rise in executions as “profoundly disturbing.”
“Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have all put people to death at unprecedented levels, often after grossly unfair trials,” Shetty said. “This slaughter must end.”
The report did not attempt to explain all the reasons for the sharp increase. But it noted that in almost every region, governments use executions as a tool to respond to real and perceived threats to state security and public safety, including terrorism-related offenses.
Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia accounted for 89 percent of the publicly disclosed executions recorded by Amnesty, which opposes the death penalty in all circumstances.
— Wire reports