Believe it or not, the European Union's public data hasn't been very public: despite a 2003 directive, there wasn't a clear right to reuse weather or other vital data, whether it's for an app or a service. Logic is taking hold now that 27 countries on an EU Council committee have endorsed a European Commission revision opening the floodgates. The new rules would require that EU countries explicitly permit citizens and companies to reuse public information, either for free or no more than the basic cost of sending it out. The revamp would also push availability in open formats, along with expanding the directive's coverage to archives, libraries and museums -- you know, repositories of nothing but public knowledge. Both the European Parliament and individual governments will have to sign the changes into law sometime in the (likely not-so-near) future, but the shift could lead to a sudden wealth of data for Euro-centric hardware and software.
most of them were captive bred, I do not support selling? of wild caught animals at all. As long as a responsible owner buys the animals I?m happy, because there are worse homes for them and irresponsible owners and uneducated kids who buy them cheap and let them die. Once they?re at a show its too late to let them free or any nonsense like that. By the way it?s ?bred? not ?breeded?. Stop making up words, and im sure the animals are happy to not go home with you.
Most people living in America are seeking some improvement in various areas of their life. There are different areas in each person?s life where they want to makes these changes. If you are looking to apply some self improvement to your life, look no further than the wonderful advice that is contained in this article.
It is important that you feel comfortable using the abilities that you have. Everyone is skilled in different areas, which makes the world such a diverse and fascinating place to live. You should concentrate on talents you currently have rather than worry about those you do not possess at this point.
When you are working on your personal development, you should realize you deserve to be the best you can be. You need to be aware that you owe that to yourself. When all is said and done, you will realize that you have done everything that you can possibly do, and that you will not regret the decisions that you have made.
If you desire to be successful in life, you will need a respectable coach who knows what he or she is doing. Most people who are winners have a great mentor and coach behind them. All of us are students and teachers in one way or another. This is the way knowledge is passed down, and human progress happens. A great coach, mentor or teacher plays a huge role in most success stories.
TIP! Get to know the types of habits successful people use, and have those habits become a part of your life. Transform your lifestyle one small step at a time by selecting just a couple of things to work on at once.
Choose one element of your life to focus on improving. You may want to improve multiple aspects of yourself, but keeping a narrow focus makes it easier to define and achieve your goals. Adopting new habits one at a time will make it easier to maintain them.
Succeed at everything you set your mind to. Follow your passions to decide what to excel at. We cannot be the best at everything we try, however, we can bring inspiration to others by giving everything the best effort. Enhance your standing in your niche, and your self-esteem will climb too.
Your physical well-being and mental health are connected. Partake in regular exercise and stick to a nutritious diet. Remember that a healthy body can lead to a healthy mind.
A great self help tip to deal with anxiety is to accompany a friend to the movies. This gives you the opportunity to engage in a social activity that does not have a lot of risk. This also allows you to be around a large group of people in a stress-free environment.
TIP! Stress is the foe of happiness. When we have to deal with stress, it takes its toll on the body in a physical and mental sense.
Make friends who are positive-minded and bring joy to your life. This will help to boost your self-esteem as well as give you a bit of a break from the kind of people that spend their time badmouthing your dreams and goals every chance that they get.
Eliminate unnecessary stress from your daily life. You only create more stress than before when you over-react to negative events, and that is pointless. Expect occasional setbacks as you work to achieve your goals. Keeping this in mind will make it easier to handle any challenges that come your way.
A great suggestion to enhance your personal development is to make certain that value is placed on those things you think of as being the best. Therefore, you have to know what you value, and make it a priority for you.
Not only is getting organized an achievement in itself, but it will help you to meet other goals faster. You can stay on track if you tackle small things first. Keep track of your progress via a planner or use a journal just for your goals in personal development.
TIP! If you?re never able to meet the goals you set, consider whether those goals aren?t right for you and your situation. Compare your goals with the goals of others that you can research online.
Create goals that you can accomplish and live the life you love. Identify your weaknesses and strive to overcome them so you can become a stronger, better person.
Always look for opportunities to compliment another person. If you treat other people with kindness, you will be more likely to treat yourself with kindness too.
For the many people who are interested in improving various aspects of their lives, it?s often difficult to know what steps to take fist. This article can help you figure out where to start, but you must be determined. If you notice that you are starting to lack motivation, read over this article again to lift you back up.
Stop worrying. When you worry, you create a made-up situation inside of your mind that hasn?t yet happened, and in all likelihood, probably never will. Try not to worry about everything. Also, think about the worst that could happen, then start taking steps to overcome the worst case. Then, you are prepared to handle whatever gets thrown your way. Excessive worrying solves nothing.
TIP! Eradicate disorganization from your life entirely. You will feel accomplished and your mind will feel clearer.
Read the following article, you might find it very interesting! 5 Tips For Dealing With Unrequited Love
Bowdoin College, an elite university located in Maine, has recently found itself the nexus of a massive influx of controversy.
?And it?s all because its president talked down the wrong person.
Bowdoin College (Photo Credit: AP)
Bowdoin President Barry Mills reportedly engaged in a golf game during the summer of last year with philanthropist and investor Thomas Klingenstein who, while not being a graduate of Bowdoin, was himself interested in the college?s approach to education. The result was an apparently awkward conversation during which Klingenstein complained of Bowdoin?s excessive celebration of ?racial and ethnic difference,? in his words, rather than of ?common American identity.?
It is unclear precisely how sharp the conversation got, but it evidently distressed Mills enough that he decided to mention Klingenstein (albeit not by name) in his subsequent commencement address as a particularly unpleasant golfing partner who?d interrupted his backswing to spout racist platitudes.
Bowdoin College President Barry Mills (Photo Credit: Centre College)
Needless to say, Klingenstein found this response galling. What he decided to do about it, however, is almost certainly unprecedented: Klingenstein decided to commission researchers to do an academic report on Bowdoin?s culture, both academically and outside the classroom, to see just what the college was teaching its students. The result was a 355 page report by the conservative National Association of Scholars that systematically broke down Bowdoin?s entire culture and worldview with extreme frankness. TheBlaze took a look at this report, and spoke to one of its authors, and you may be alarmed at the results.
What did that report find? That Bowdoin College, and indeed most of its peers in the elite liberal arts college community, is in fact:
A) Obsessed with identity politics to the point of using them as an excuse to teach irrelevant and/or trivial courses, and to admit underqualified and undereducated students
B) At once entirely unconcerned with fostering healthy sexual behavior in students and consumed with making sure they follow inconsistent and ideologically motivated norms; and
C) Disingenuous in their purported support for critical thinking, which only extends as far as thinking critically about topics which the college finds institutionally inconvenient
The report, which runs 355 pages, is split into two sections ? first, there is the preface, which assesses the facts regarding Bowdoin and makes specific value judgments regarding those facts. Second, there is the report itself, which only explains the college?s behavior without passing judgment on it. The evidence for each of the above conclusions is too ample to rehearse in full, but a few highlights can be offered as examples to illustrate just what Bowdoin teaches.
A) Identity Politics
National Review?s Eliana Johnson, another reader of the report, summarized a few of its highlights on this point in an article last week:
The report documents an increasingly fractured academy that has no common curriculum and in which so-called identity studies take priority over a study of the West. It highlights, for example, the 36 freshmen seminars offered at Bowdoin in the fall of 2012. They are designed to teach writing and critical-thinking skills and to introduce students to the various academic departments. Some of the subjects are unsurprising: The Korean War, Great Issues in Science, Political Leadership. Others seem less conducive to critical thinking and fruitful classroom discussion: Queer Gardens, Beyond Pocahontas: Native American Stereotypes; Sexual Life of Colonialism; Modern Western Prostitutes.
Queer Gardens, an exploration of the work of gay and lesbian gardeners and of ?the link between gardens and transgression,? simply ?does not teach critical thinking as well as Plato?s?Republic,? the report notes; nor does any subject that has ?no canon of works that embody exemplary achievement in the difficult dialogic task of critical thinking.?
To many observers, such information might itself seem demonstrative. Yet the evidence goes beyond even these scattered examples. For example, in the section of the report that deals with distributional requirements, the authors observe (emphasis added):
When Bowdoin adopted the 2004 version of its distribution requirements, it took care to also provide a fuller rationalization for them than had been the case in previous iterations. In the new redaction the requirements were linked to a programmatic commitment to the ideal of ?diversity,? which was in turn given a prominent place in the college?s new statement, ?A Liberal Education at Bowdoin College.? Diversity serves an interesting function in the search for an underlying principle to give ?coherence? to both the requirements and cohesion to the larger curriculum. It gives a warrant for politicization while at the same time frees faculty members, departments, and students to go their own ways. In effect, the elevation of diversity to the level of governing principle institutionalizes the incoherence that it ostensibly corrects. As far as divergent departmental interests go, it is an agree-to-disagree arrangement that demands very little of anyone other than deference to one of the shibboleths of the Left.
Double standards also abound. For instance, while students who choose to major in history are given the option to major in US history or European history, all history majors are?required to take at least four courses that teach about history unrelated to either the US or Europe. In other words, history majors can leave Bowdoin with absolutely no instruction in the history of their own country, but cannot leave with no instruction in the history of non-Western cultures. The ideological bias is fairly obvious.
Nor does this concern with presumptively underrepresented subject material or peoples stop in the classroom. The report?s section on Academic Preparedness recounts several faculty members agonizing over how affirmative action admits are academically ill-prepared for the university?s rigor, in spite of their professed commitment to ?diversity.? In fact, the college apparently provides surreptitious extra help to these students to prop them up through their tenure at Bowdoin, in spite of their publicly professed belief that diversity and academic standards are not at odds. The report notes:
In the Minutes of the Faculty, the ?underpreparedness? of students is most emphatically linked with the college?s pursuit of racial diversity. This probably reflects a genuine gap in the level of academic performance of black students and members of other racially-defined segments of the student population. That is not something, however, that we can document, and even if true it might disguise a larger problem. ?Majority? students may generally perform better than black students, but majority students may also be ?underprepared? in significant ways. Indeed, that?s what the data nationwide attests, and there is small reason to think that Bowdoin is an exception.
This part is important to note, if only because it gives needed context to one of the report?s recommendations ? namely, that more
Protestors at Bowdoin place a sign in the hand of a statue of Civil War soldier Joshua Chamberlain (Photo Credit: Space4Peace)
introductory and/or survey courses in American history and other core topics be offered. While Bowdoin only admits 1 in 6 of the students who apply, and thus should presumptively count on those students having a superior grasp of such topics already, its extensive diversity programs make such a hope illusory. Reached by phone, Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars, and one of the authors of the report, was devastatingly frank on this point.
?Courses that were truly taught at the introductory level might be below some of the students? ability,? Wood told TheBlaze, ?but then again, Bowdoin has a policy of admitting quite a few students either for athletic reasons or for diversity who don?t come anywhere near the academic attainment of the usual students. Those students may not need remedial courses, but they do need something. And Bowdoin has nothing to offer them.?
And if students want to avoid learning these basic concepts, but instead just imbibe politicized opinions without ice or water? The school?s so-called ?studies? departments are happy to provide that as well. For just a sample:
Africana Studies today offers courses such as ?Affirmative Action and United States Society,? ?Black Women, Politics, Music, and the Divine,? ?Transnational Africa and Globalization,? ?History of African and African Diasporic Political Thought,? ?The African ?American Experience in Europe,? ?Protest Music,? ?Global History of the Ghetto,? ?A History of the Global AIDS Epidemic,? ?Martin, Malcolm and America,? ?Spirit Come Down: Black Women and Religion,? and ?Race and Sexuality in Modern America.? This seems a scattered miscellany of topics, perhaps representing the scattered miscellany of the academic specializations of the faculty. It doesn?t, in any case, add up to a coherent curriculum. It is something of a model of the entropy?pedagogical, intellectual, and curricular?that is characteristic of the college. It does convey the ?intersectionality? of the various identity-based programs. Africana Studies is plainly allied with Gender and Women?s Studies and with Gay and Lesbian Studies.
B) Inconsistent attitudes toward sex
One of the elements of the report that may draw some derision both from liberals and from more libertarian readers is the implicit urging by the authors that universities like Bowdoin act?in loco parentis to their students, IE in the place of parents. The meaning of this suggestion is, quite plainly, that the university should attempt to inculcate moral norms in their students, especially with regard to sex.
In contrast, the authors argue that Bowdoin not only does not build character where sex is concerned, but actively encourages libertinism and dysfunctional attitudes among students by handing out condoms like candy and offering free coverage for venereal disease. It?s a moralistic position that some readers may find to be at odds with the report?s twin insistence that universities should promote openness of all kinds, even to conservative ideas, but Wood insists there?s no tension between the two.
?We are, and we say we are, operating from the premises of a classical liberal education, which is meant to shape mind and character, and both issues are in play at Bowdoin,? Wood told TheBlaze. ?They have an idea of what the student?s mind should be like. They have an idea of what the student?s character should be like. Are they teaching different ethics? For sure they are. Is teaching ethics a bad thing? Not at all. But once you say you?re teaching ethics, it seems to me to be fair play to question what ethics you are teaching. And in this case, much of what they are teaching is open to a meaningful critique as destructive of the lives that are employing those values. I don?t see anything from Bowdoin that defends promiscuity as a good, but they promote it anyway.?
?Are we being judgmental about that?? Wood continued. ?To a certain degree, we are, and there?s plenty of evidence in the psychological literature and the sociological literature that the lifestyle being promoted has negative long-term consequences on people hooking up, with multiple sexual partners, etc, have less stable marriages, have much higher divorce rates. The psychological consequences of this behavior pattern appear to set in and have long-term damage. Those are things that Bowdoin could at least consider or talk about to students in the same context of telling them they have sexual freedom.?
Yet even this license-focused approach has its limits, as for all its claims not to be morally invested in sex, Bowdoin is very much interested in promoting specifically ideological ideas about one particular facet of sex ? namely, consent. Indeed, an entire play is put on at the beginning of the school year for freshmen intended to drill the importance of this concept into their heads. And while the concept of consent to sex is itself completely noncontroversial, Wood says the way Bowdoin understands it is inconsistent and difficult to parse.
?Bowdoin has not only an explicit set of rules about consent, but the rules being somewhat difficult to envisage, they also follow their rules with a bunch of hypothetical scenarios in which you can test yourself as to whether you?ve adequately internalized the rules,? Wood explained. ?We do have a section in the report about that. It?s not intuitive to me. For example, one of the scenarios involves two young men. One of them invites the other to his dorm room to watch videos, and while watching videos, tries to take the hand of the other boy, and he refuses, and tries a second time, and is refused a second time, and at that point, the guest leaves. Is that a case of sexual harassment? Their answer is ?Yes, it is.? On the other hand, a male having sex with an intoxicated female who indicates willingness is perfectly okay under Bowdoin?s rules, so we?re in the realm here where the definitions are slippery, but since they?re promoting such an act of an adventurous approach to sexuality, there?s bound to be misunderstandings.?
Moreover, according to Wood, when Bowdoin does try to instruct its students about sex, it uses ideologically motivated, junk information.
?One of the things we looked at was the feminists on campus are quite worried about the low rate of reported cases of sexual assault and rape,? Wood explained, ?and they have gone back repeatedly to both broaden the definitions and to find other ways to try to increase the rate of reporting, under the supposition that the assaults and rapes must be happening, but aren?t being pursued through the legal channels. They?ve been frustrated in this quest that even after lowering the definitions and putting many forms of encouragement in place, the rate of harassment claims is very low?They?re also fond of citing and continue to cite, despite its being an utterly discredited statistic, that something like one in four undergraduates in college will be raped. It?s made out of whole cloth. There?s nothing to substantiate that level of rape anywhere in America, let alone on college campuses.?
In other words, Bowdoin doesn?t teach its students to follow any set of sexual norms at all?unless those norms happen to be the ones advanced by the same identity groups who dominate the rest of the conversation on-campus.
C) Lack of critical thinking
Bowdoin professes to support ?critical thinking? in classroom discussions, and to encourage ideological diversity in order to speed this process. In fact, given that President Mills? speeches apparently make reference to a relativistic conception of ?the common good? with fair frequency, some might even argue the school?s commitment to ?critical thinking? and independent-decision making could err too far in one direction. Fortunately, in practice, this philosophical problem is avoided. Unfortunately, it is avoided in a way that the report?s authors suggest hamstrings critical thought far more than it ought:
Official Bowdoin projects two broad purposes: it aims to teach students to think critically and it aims to help them to develop into good citizens. Our claim that critical thinking is a Bowdoin goal is not likely to be contested by either the Bowdoin community or outside observers. Bowdoin is explicit and emphatic in its promotion of this goal. The first requirement for critical thinking is a genuinely open mind. ?Openness? and ?critical thinking? aren?t quite the same thing, of course. The first is really a precondition of the second. But for the moment we will treat them as near synonyms and bring in other requirements of critical thinking only as needed.[...]
The two Bowdoin goals?global citizenship and openness?actually push against each other. Openness requires skepticism and a sincere willingness to look for hidden assumptions, but Bowdoin?s understanding of global citizenship requires that some very large questions be settled in advance. A commitment to global citizenship requires a commitment to diversity (in its current understanding, the notion that each of us is defined in the most meaningful ways by the group to which we belong) and to the racial preferences that follow from diversity; to multiculturalism (all cultures are equal); to the idea that gender and social norms are all simply social constructs (an assumption that justifies virtually unlimited government intervention necessary to achieve the global citizen?s understanding of sexual justice); and to ?sustainability? (which assumes that free market economic systems, and the materialistic, bourgeois values that drive them, are destroying the planet). These are notions that are not meaningfully ?open to ?debate? at Bowdoin; indeed, a commitment to global citizenship requires that they not be open to debate. Students are encouraged to ?think critically? about anything that threatens the college?s dogmas on diversity, multiculturalism, gender, and sustainability, etc., but, for the most part, not to think critically about those dogmas themselves.
This problem is so pervasive, the report alleges, that not only is there an absence of openness to conservative ideas, but the campus actively stereotypes them as ?boorish,? and many classes treat liberal dogma as settled truth in their own syllabi. For instance, the ?women?s studies? department describes itself as follows:
Courses in Gender and Women?s Studies investigate the experience of women and men in light of the social construction of gender and its meaning across cultures and historic periods. Gender construction is explored as an institutionalized means of structuring inequality and dominance.
Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they are hardly settled truth. The idea that gender is socially constructed, let alone that such a hypothetical construct would function to preserve dominance, is debatable even within academic culture. Yet the college simply defers to the department in allowing this apparent politicized reading of controversial concepts to continue.
Conclusion
These three problems barely scratch the surface of the full report, which also points out problems with Bowdoin?s uncritical attitude toward environmentalism, its ambivalence about the free market, the persistently opinionated stances of its President despite his apparent role as a neutral arbiter, or the uniformly Democratic voting habits of its professoriate. The report?s impact on Bowdoin as yet is unknown, but as criticisms go, it is quite possibly the most harsh analysis of a college?s culture since William F. Buckley?s book ?God and Man at Yale? in the early 20th century.
Editor?s note ? We?ll be discussing this story and all the day?s news during our live BlazeCast from 12pm-1pm ET?including your questions, comments & live chat:
Related: What?s happening to First Amendment freedoms on campus?
President Barack Obama hugs Newtown, Conn., family members after speaking at the University of Hartford in Hartford, Conn., Monday, April 8, 2013. Obama said that lawmakers have an obligation to the children killed and other victims of gun violence to act on his proposals. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Barack Obama hugs Newtown, Conn., family members after speaking at the University of Hartford in Hartford, Conn., Monday, April 8, 2013. Obama said that lawmakers have an obligation to the children killed and other victims of gun violence to act on his proposals. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Obama holds his hand to his ear during a visit to the University of Hartford, in Hartford, Conn., Monday, April 8, 2013. Obama visited the school to highlight gun control legislation and to meet with the families of victims from the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Mark and Jackie Barden, parents of 7 year-old Daniel, left, walk with Nelba Marquez-Greene, mother of 6 year-old Ana, center, and an unidentified woman from Air Force One to waiting White House vans after landing at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Monday, April 8, 2013 with President Barack Obama and other families who lost relatives in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Obama was returning from Hartford, Conn., where he spoke at the University of Hartford, near the state capitol where last week the governor signed into law some of the nation's strictest gun control laws. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
President Barack Obama stands in the door of Air Force One, top right, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Monday, April 8, 2013 with families who lost relatives in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Obama was returning from Hartford, Conn., where he spoke at the University of Hartford, near the state capitol where last week the governor signed into law some of the nation's strictest gun control laws. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? As Senate Democrats approach a key decision on gun legislation, relatives of victims of the Connecticut school shootings mounted a face-to-face lobbying effort Tuesday in hopes of turning around enough lawmakers to gain a Senate floor vote on meaningful gun restrictions.
The families were meeting privately with senators Tuesday. They had breakfast with Vice President Joe Biden at his residence in the Naval Observatory, according to an administration official not authorized to speak publicly about the private meeting.
President Barack Obama's gun control proposals have hit opposition from the National Rifle Association and are struggling in Congress, nearly four months after the issue was catapulted into the national arena by December's slaying of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn.
Conservatives say they will use procedural tactics to try preventing the Senate from even considering firearms restrictions, headlined by background checks for more gun buyers and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Democrats criticized Republicans anew for trying to prevent a gun debate, a move that will take a hard-to-achieve 60 votes to overcome. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stood on the Senate floor before a poster-sized photo of a white picket fence with 26 slats, each bearing the name of one of the Newtown victims.
"We have a responsibility to safeguard these little kids," said Reid, D-Nev. "And unless we do something more than what's the law today, we have failed."
On Monday, Obama pressed the issue at the University of Hartford, just 50 miles from Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School, where the killings occurred.
"If you want the people you send to Washington to have just an iota of the courage that the educators at Sandy Hook showed when danger arrived on their doorstep, then we're all going to have to stand up," the president said.
The administration was continuing its efforts to pressure Republicans, with Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder making remarks Tuesday at the White House, joined by law enforcement officials.
Senate Democrats are approaching decision time on whether they should try to get Republican support for expanding background checks for firearms sales or will follow the shakier path of pursuing the cornerstone of Obama's gun control effort on their own.
Democrats were holding a lunchtime meeting Tuesday to assess whether Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., had reached an acceptable compromise ? or had a realistic chance of getting one ? with Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. Party leaders were giving Manchin until later Tuesday to complete the talks, and a decision by Democrats seemed likely in the next couple of days.
An agreement between the two senators, both among the more conservative members of their parties, would boost efforts to expand background checks because it could attract bipartisan support. Abandoning those negotiations would put Democrats in a difficult position, making it hard for them to push a measure through the Senate and severely damaging Obama's gun control drive.
In a preview of the Senate's debate, 13 conservative Republicans delivered a letter Monday to Reid. They promised to try blocking lawmakers from beginning to consider the measure, a procedural move that takes 60 votes to curtail, a difficult hurdle in the 100-member chamber.
The conservatives, who included Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said the Democratic effort would violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms, citing "history's lesson that government cannot be in all places at all times, and history's warning about the oppression of a government that tries."
"Shame on them," Reid responded as he brought Democratic gun legislation to the Senate floor, though debate did not formally begin.
Georgia's Sen. Johnny Isakson, a conservative Republican, said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning" that "the issue on background checks is how far they go and whether they violate rights of privacy." But he also said he believes the issue "deserves a vote up or down" in the Senate.
Reid could try beginning Senate debate on legislation that has already been approved by the Judiciary Committee. It would extend the background check requirement to nearly all gun purchases, strengthen laws against illegal firearms purchases and modestly boost aid for school safety.
If Reid does that, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will join conservatives' efforts to prevent the measure from being debated, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said.
In hopes of enhancing the prospects for Senate approval, Reid has been hoping a bipartisan deal could be struck. There are 53 Senate Democrats and two independents who lean toward them, meaning GOP support ultimately will be needed to reach 60 votes to move ahead.
Manchin has been hoping for a deal with Toomey that would expand the requirement to sales at gun shows and online while exempting other transactions, such as those between relatives and those involving private, face-to-face purchases.
Currently, federal background checks are required for sales by licensed gun dealers but not for other transactions. The system is aimed at preventing criminals, people with severe mental health problems and others from getting firearms.
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has also continued working for a bipartisan deal. Kirk, though, is considered too moderate to bring other GOP senators with him.
___
Eds: Associated Press reporter Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's rand was close to four-week highs against the dollar on Monday, as the currency continued to benefit from the accommodative policies of major central banks.
The rand was at 9.0880 to the dollar at 0612 GMT, slightly firmer than its close in New York on Friday.
The Bank of Japan's announcement last week that it would inject around $1.4 trillion into its economy to combat deflation boosted riskier assets, including the rand.
Weaker-than-expected U.S. non-farm payrolls data on Friday also suggest the Federal Reserve is unlikely to end its bond-buying programme soon.
"For the time being, the probability is high and growing that high yielding EM currencies will experience some sustained portfolio inflows, South Africa included," Tradition Analytics wrote in a note.
"The probability is high that the zero interest rate policies being implemented abroad will be forced on to EM type economies with those central banks likely to respond to the negative growth outlooks by reducing their own interest rates."
Government bond yields were lower, falling 2.5 basis points on the 2026 issue to 7.125 percent and 1 basis point on the 2015 paper to 5.34 percent.
