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Post Malone primed to close out Coachella
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Katy Perry set to roar into space on all-female flight
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Xi warns protectionism 'leads nowhere' as he arrives in Vietnam
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Trump hosts El Salvador's Bukele, key ally in anti-migrant push
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Trump spotlight divides S.Africa's Afrikaners
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South Korea's ex-president denies insurrection at criminal trial
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World leaders slam deadly Russian strike on Ukraine
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Chinese exports soared in March ahead of Trump's 'Liberation Day'
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'We can get it' - Emery eyes Champions League comeback against PSG
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Perfect Piastri puts McLaren in driving seat
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Flick has Barcelona on cusp of return to European elite
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Noboa wins Ecuador presidential runoff, rival claims fraud
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China's exports beat forecast in March despite trade war woes
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Solar park boom threatens Spain's centuries-old olive trees
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Trump tariff rollercoaster complicates ECB rate call
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Asian stocks rise on electronics tariffs exemption, gold hits new high
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South Korea's ex-president attends first day of criminal trial
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Nobel Literature Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa dies in Peru
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A coffin for Pol Pot's memory, 50 years after Phnom Penh's fall
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McIlroy in no mood to talk on the way to Masters win: DeChambeau
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Vargas Llosa, last of Latin America's literary golden generation
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Incumbent Noboa wins Ecuador presidential runoff
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Rollercoaster carries McIlroy to Masters glory at last
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German archive where victims of the Nazis come back to life
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From deadly rave to recovery: Israeli study examines MDMA's effect on trauma
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McIlroy rides luck of the Irish to overcome Masters
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Xi warns protectionism 'leads nowhere' as starts SE Asia tour
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Brazil ex-president Bolsonaro surgery ends 'with success'
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Ten birdies not enough as Rose falls to McIlroy in Masters playoff
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Post Malone and Megan Thee Stallion primed to close out Coachella
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Zelensky urges Trump to visit Ukraine to see war devastation: CBS
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Trump warns no country 'off the hook' on tariffs
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Incumbent Noboa leads Ecuador presidential runoff
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McIlroy completes career Grand Slam with emotional Masters playoff win
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Harden bags 39 as Clippers edge Warriors to clinch play-off spot
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Trump downplays tariffs walk-back, says no country 'off the hook'
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Polls close in Ecuador's razor-tight presidential runoff
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USA, Japan win to qualify for BJK Cup finals
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Russian missile strike on Ukraine city kills 34
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Lyon close in on Champions League, Saint-Etienne snatch draw
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McIlroy leads by four as Masters back-nine battle begins
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Lazio and Roma share derby spoils as Atalanta relaunch Champions League bid
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Children's show 'Yo Gabba Gabba!' takes Coachella by storm
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Fabio Grosso's Sassuolo return to Serie A after a year away
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Red Bull reflect on 'bad' Bahrain weekend
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WHO says child killed after Israel strike hits Gaza hospital
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Trump advisor Navarro looks to cool spat with Musk
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Moviegoers digging 'Minecraft Movie,' tops in N.America theaters
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Paris Olympic torches, other memorabilia auctioned off
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Ecuador votes in razor-tight presidential runoff

Biden's Fed board nominees become political footballs
Though set up as an institution operating above the partisan fray in Washington, the Federal Reserve has again become a political football, with Republicans and business groups attacking President Joe Biden's nominees to serve on the central bank's board.
Biden last month announced a slate of candidates who would at long last fill all the seats of the seven-member board, and include the first Black woman to hold the position since the Fed was founded 108 years ago.
If all are three confirmed, the majority of the board members would be women for the first time, and most would be named by a Democratic president.
Critics say the choices threaten to inject a political slant into the Fed's management of the economy just as it pivots to fighting inflation, which threatens to undermine the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But economists and Fed watchers say the criticisms are unfounded and in some cases racially motivated.
The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Thursday to consider the nominations of Lisa Cook, an economics professor at Michigan State University, who would be the first African American woman to serve as Fed governor.
Lawmakers will also consider Philip Jefferson, of Davidson College, who would be the fourth Black man to serve on the body.
For the powerful post of Fed vice chair for supervision, which oversees the nation's banks, Biden tapped Sarah Bloom Raskin.
She previously served as Fed governor and in a senior role at the Treasury Department under former president Barack Obama, as well as the top state bank regulator in Maryland.
Biden also renominated Jerome Powell to a second term as Fed chair, and named current board member Lael Brainard to serve as vice chair. They are awaiting Senate confirmation.
- Race and climate -
The White House said the picks "will bring long overdue diversity to the leadership of the Federal Reserve."
But Senator Pat Toomey, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, complained about a lack of "diversity" among nominees to the board, which does not have anyone from the energy industry.
His complaints, echoed by the US Chamber of Commerce, center on Raskin, charging she would be overly aggressive in focusing on banks' roles in fighting climate change.
She has called for the Fed to ensure financial institutions take climate risks into consideration, something Powell also endorses.
Toomey's concerns are the mirror image of opposition expressed by some Democrats to Powell's nomination for a second term at the helm of the central bank, who argue he is not focused enough on climate change.
- Racially motivated attacks? -
Conservative political commentator George Will has accused the Fed of being politicized, writing in a column that Cook's "peer-reviewed academic writings pertinent to monetary policy are, to be polite, thin."
However other board members, including Powell, are not trained economists.
"I just I don't understand the backlash," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. "It just really seems to be pretty biased."
Cook and Jefferson have researched inequality in the labor market, a topic Powell has repeatedly highlighted as important, since the Fed works to ensure the benefits of economic expansions reach all parts of society.
Swonk called Cook a "phenomenal" candidate.
Biden's nominees "bring enormous depth to the Fed at a time when" the central bank is "finally acknowledging inequality and what it costs us," she told AFP.
Amid the attacks, the National Economic Association issued a statement supporting Cook and Jefferson, both past presidents of the organization, that called them "uniquely and exceptionally qualified."
- Republican support -
David Wessel, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and a longtime Fed watcher, dismissed the criticisms about qualifications, saying they impose a "double standard" on Cook.
"The whole point of having a seven-member Federal Reserve Board... is to represent a cross section of America," he told AFP.
"Nobody wants to have a Federal Reserve Board... that's all white guys who went to the same three Ivy League schools."
The nominees also have won Republican support.
Kevin Hassett, a top economist under former president Donald Trump, praised Jefferson as "exactly the type of economist who should be at the Fed at this difficult time."
Representative Patrick McHenry, the top Republican on the House Financial Services committee, which oversees the Fed in the lower chamber of Congress, highlighted Raskin's "long history of distinguished government service."
C.Kovalenko--BTB