Daily Archives: April 27, 2017

OTTAWA Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S President Donald Trump spoke again about bilateral trade on Wednesday, the second conversation in as many days between the two leaders amid strains over softwood lumber and dairy.

Trudeau's office declined to say who initiated the phone call and revealed no details about the tone or content of the conversation, saying only that Trudeau continued to emphasize the importance of the trade to U.S. jobs.

It is extremely rare for the two to speak two days in a row, highlighting tension between their countries.

"The two leaders continued their dialogue on Canada-US trade relations, with the Prime Minister reinforcing the importance of stability and job growth in our trade relations," Trudeau's office said in a statement.

Trump is considering issuing an executive order to pull the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, a senior administration official said on Wednesday, a move that could unravel one of the world's biggest trading blocs.

News of the possible executive order, first reported by Politico shortly before midday, came two days after U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced tariffs on Canadian lumber exports, which U.S. producers complain are unfairly subsidized. The move triggered the fifth bilateral dispute over Canadian lumber in less than 40 years.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said the two nations have made progress in recent days on the softwood lumber dispute, "but we are not there yet," adding that the United States should treat Canada with respect, given that Canada is a major supplier of softwood.

Freeland said she had long conversations with Ross on Sunday and Monday about lumber.

"We do believe a negotiated deal is achievable. There is a deal to be had ... but we are also absolutely prepared to fight this out in the courts," she said.

Freeland, who described the tariffs as "punitive, unfair and just plain wrong," said Canada would strongly defend its domestic industry.

Stocks in Canadian lumber firms, which rose on Tuesday on relief the duties had not been higher, posted mixed results. Resolute Forest Products Inc shares closed up 15.0 percent on Wednesday while West Fraser Timber Co Ltd fell 2.6 percent.

In Washington, the National Association of Homebuilders said the duties would hurt American wages and raise house prices.

The premier of the Pacific province of British Columbia, a major lumber-producer, urged Ottawa to retaliate by banning exports of U.S. thermal coal to Asia via Vancouver. A shortage of port capacity means some U.S. coal firms rely on Canada.

In an open letter to Trudeau, premier Christy Clark cited the "unfair and unwarranted" lumber duties.

In Quebec, another lumber province, softwood negotiator Raymond Chretien said the two sides should try to settle the dispute ahead of the NAFTA talks.

"If lumber is not resolved (before NAFTA) the atmosphere will be so polluted," he said in an interview.

(Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Andrea Hopkins in Ottawa; Editing by Chris Reese and Tom Brown)

TOKYO The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged on Thursday and offered its most optimistic assessment of the economy in nine years, signaling its confidence that a pick-up in overseas demand will help sustain an export-driven recovery.

TOKYO Asian shares eased from a near two-year high on Thursday as a long-awaited U.S. tax cut plan failed to inspire investors, though sentiment remained supported by global growth prospects and receding worries about political risks in Europe.

Originally posted here:

Canada reports progress with US on lumber as Trudeau, Trump talk again - Reuters

With all 100 U.S. senators invited to a rare briefing on White House grounds Wednesday on North Korea, its hard to overstate how concerned officials are about the technological advancements out of Pyongyang.

While North Koreas leader Kim Jong-un has a reputation for bizarre behavior, the nuclear arsenal and aspirations of the Republic are being taken seriously.

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests in the past 11 years, the last several being the most destructive and now they are threatening a sixth.

North Koreas official Rodong Sinmun newspaper also said in a front-page editorial that its military is prepared "to bring to closure the history of U.S. scheming and nuclear blackmail.

The editorial said, "There is no limit to the strike power of the People's Army armed with our style of cutting-edge military equipment including various precision and miniaturized nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

It is that miniaturized nuclear weapon that is the biggest concern to the United States, and the rest of the world.

They have expressed the intent to [miniaturize a nuclear weapon], Thomas Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox News. It raises the stakes and increases the risk of missile threats to the region and the U.S. homeland.

North Korea would need that smaller nuclear weapon to deliver it long-distance.According to the New York Times, As Dr. [Siegfried] Hecker, a man who has built his share of nuclear weapons, noted last week, any weapon that could travel that far would have to be 'smaller, lighter and surmount the additional difficulties of the stresses and temperatures' of a fiery re-entry into the atmosphere. By most estimates, that is four or five years away. Then again, many senior officials said the same four or five years ago.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats are expected to update senators on the North Korea situation Wednesday afternoon.

President Trump told a meeting of United Nations Security Council ambassadors on Monday they must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korea. This is a real threat to the world, whether we want to talk about it or not, Trump said.

Obtaining reliable intelligence on North Korea has always been difficult. Kim Jong-un rules the country with an iron fist. The nation is so cut off from the world that is has been dubbed the hermit kingdom.

In March of last year, North Korea released photographs of Kim Jong-un inspecting what appears to be a miniaturized implosion device, but that photo op was met with skepticism.No reason to believe that is true, or to disbelieve it. No reason to dismiss it or to panic, Karako said. He added, I think that our insight into these programs is relatively modest. I think the posture of our military is to assume the worst.

This has the U.S., and the world, on high alert. The Global Times, a state-run Chinese newspaper,published an editorial on Tuesday stating, The game of chicken between Washington and Pyongyang has come to a breaking point. If North Korea carries out a sixth nuclear test as expected, it is more likely than ever that the situation will cross the point of no return.

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North Korea's weapons progress a top concern as US senators have rare briefing - Fox News

It is still drastically understaffed based on the number of child abuse allegations it receives; still has an unsustainable turnover rate among social workers; still has an unacceptably large number of open and unresolved cases by industry standards; and has not yet implemented a plan announced on April 3 to spend $153,000 on overtime to clear up that backlog.

Republican State Rep. Dick Hinch, House majority leader and chair of the commission, had hoped to get an update on the overtime project from DHHS Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers and his interim DCYF director on Wednesday.

In the past three weeks, has the additional overtime been effective? he asked at the committee meeting in the Legislative Office Building. How many cases have we resolved?

Meyers said the effort has yet to get under way.

We have developed an implementation plan and it will be starting this Friday, he said, citing payroll cycles and other factors.

Interim Director Maureen Ryan took the committee through a detailed spreadsheet that could be called DCYF by the numbers as of March 31, and the numbers were not encouraging.

Of 116 social work positions authorized statewide, only 92 are filled and 27 of those individuals are either in training or on leave of absence. That means as of April 1, the state had only 65 active case workers to investigate child abuse claims coming in at an average of 1,100 a month.

On average, a New Hampshire Child Protective Service Worker is carrying 79 cases a month, with 17 of them new each month.

The Childrens Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services standards call for 12 active cases a month per social worker, and no more than one new case for every six open cases.

Referring to the 79 average open assessments per social worker, Meyers said, Thats a very high number and thats the issue the department has to address as we reform the system.

Meyers described a vicious cycle in which social workers have to divert their attention to the most critical cases as they come in, leaving ongoing cases to languish well beyond the required 60 days.

We are looking at our entire process of opening cases and how they are closed, said Meyers. Its not about cutting corners or not adhering to best practices. Its about adjusting the flow of this work.

The commissioner said national consultants have been brought on to help address the problem.

We have to keep kids safe, but we have to design our process and workflow so the staff can do the work. When you lose staff and the cases are rising, thats where we run into this issue, he said.

The staffing situation varies widely among the 12 district offices. While Berlin is fully staffed at four social workers, Manchester has only nine of 15 positions filled, and two of those are in training, leaving the states biggest city with only seven social workers on the ground today.

The situation in Manchester is particularly troubling, said committee member Sen. Lou DAllesandro, D-Manchester, after the hearing.

He pressed Meyers on the turnover rate among social workers.

I dont have a number in front of me, but I will acknowledge that it is a real concern, said Meyers. We have to make these positions sustainable for our workforce. If we bring someone in and do not have the requisite number of workers and caseloads, we are increasing the extent to which people cant keep up and that will drive people away.

The turnover rate in four district offices is 70 percent, according to interim DCYF Director Maureen Ryan.

I believe when we get right-sized staffing wise, we will not see this level of turnover, she said.

As the agency has struggled with staffing and funding issues since 2012, demand for its services has grown substantially, due in large part to the ongoing opioid addiction crisis, said Meyers. Allegations of child abuse prompting an investigation have gone up from 9,242 in 2012 to 10,525 in 2016.

The committee discussed many of the initiatives under way to address the problem, most of which are awaiting legislative funding and agency implementation, although Meyers said he is going forward with hiring a new associate commissioner to focus on DCYF, a new DCYF director and new child protective service workers.

As we hire more staff and adjust our work flow, we are going to right this situation, he said.

dsolomon@unionleader.com

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DCYF reports little progress to joint committee - The Union Leader

April 26, 2017 BostonThe rate at which minorities are subjected to stops, searches and frisks by police doesn't appear to be improving in Boston in the year since the department claimed it was narrowing racial disparities in their tactics.

At least 71 percent of all street level, police-civilian encounters from 2015 through early 2016 involved persons of color, while whites comprised about 22 percent, an Associated Press review of the most recently available data shows.

That's only a slight decline from the 73 percent that minorities comprised in such street-level encounters between 2011 and early 2015, according todatathe city made available last year.

It's also higher than the roughly 63 percent that blacks comprised between 2007 and 2010, according to areportthe department released in 2015. That report didn't include the tallies for other minority groups.

And the gap between minorities and whites in the most recent reporting period is likely higher.

Over 7 percent of all police-civilian encounters compiled in the department's 2015 to 2016 "Field Interrogation, Observation, Frisk and/or Search" reports don't list the civilian's race at all.

Civil rights activists have complained for years that blacks, in particular, comprise a majority of these kinds of police interactions in Boston, despite accounting for about 25 percent of the population.

The disparity matters because it affects how some residents in largely minority communities perceive police, said Carl Williams, of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which provided the recent police data the AP analyzed.

"People feel uncomfortable talking with police when they feel they're getting stopped unjustly," he said.

Big city police departments vary in how they collect data on such encounters and how public they make it.

New York City Police, prompted by a class action lawsuit, has been releasingquarterly reportsfor years, something the Massachusetts ACLU chapter has also sued Boston to provide.

New York's data shows at least 83 percent of stops through the first three quarters of 2016 involved blacks or other minorities. From 2011 to 2014, they averaged roughly 84 percent of stops.

Philadelphia police also provide regular data as part of a court order. The most recentreport, which covers the first half of 2015, shows minorities accounted for 77 percent of stops during that time period.

Boston Police spokesman Michael McCarthy argued the AP's review was "not appropriate and quite frankly irresponsible" because it didn't account for other variables. The department has said neighborhood crime statistics, a subject's prior arrests and gang affiliations, among other factors not addressed in the data, also should be considered.

"Anything short of that is a complete disservice," Mr. McCarthy said in an email. "Too many reporters think they can look at this data set and accurately describe what it means."

Last year, the department enlisted independent researchers to conduct a deeper study of the 2011 to 2015 data. Further analysis would bear out how police are making gains in perceived disparities in treatment, it said at the time.

But that study won't be complete at least until this summer because researchers are seeking more information from police, said Anthony Braga, head of Northeastern University's criminal justice school and a researcher on that study.

He also dismissed analysis of the raw data before that study was complete as "overly simplistic, woefully incomplete, and, quite frankly, irresponsible."

But Shea Cronin, a criminal justice professor at Boston University, who is not affiliated with the police data study, said the numbers were fairly clear cut.

"My reading of the statistics is that there has not been much change in the racial composition," he said.

Mr. Cronin suggested the department should incorporate reviews of these and other statistics in their management evaluations to see whether specific officers, units or shifts use such tactics most often.

In an improvement on past data, the latest numbers from Boston Police provide more detail about the reasons for the police-civilian encounters and some of the actions police took as a result.

In about 21 percent of the incidents from 2015 to early 2016, for example, officers cited "reasonable suspicion" as the reason they engaged suspects. In 31 percent of the time, officer's cited "probable cause."

Generally, police need at least "reasonable suspicion" a crime has been, is being or will be committed in order to stop, briefly detain or frisk an individual. "Probable cause" is a higher legal threshold needed to arrest someone.

Of the more than 17,300 total incidents, officers frisked civilians about 21 percent of the time, searched them or their vehicles over 16 percent of the time, and issued a summons 2 percent of the time.

The data covering 2011 to early 2015, in contrast, provided little to no detail about why officers engaged with civilians, why a person was subsequently subjected to a search or frisk, and what the outcome of the encounters was, anAP reviewfound.

The new data, however, still lack details about what, if anything, came of the stops in terms of arrests or seizures. Civil rights groups have said such information is critical to gauging whether the methods are effective.

"The question remains: Are there aggressive tactics being used?" said Darnell Williams, of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. "We're not here to second-guess what police are doing, but if there is a disproportionate amount of blacks being stopped for non-obvious reasons, then that's a concern."

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Boston sees slow progress on race in police stops - Christian Science Monitor

The final frenzy at the White House began Monday, with a private reception for conservative news publications, a tariff on softwood lumber imports from Canada and the late-night debut of a website highlighting President TrumpsFirst 100 Days achievements.

It continued Tuesdayin the form of an executive order designed to help farmers and ranchers, an assurance that construction will begin soon on a wall along the nations southern border The walls going to get built, the president said and media briefings by senior administration officials who gave their takes on Trumps successes.

And by Wednesday, the White House plans to unveil its tax plan, which wouldcut the corporate tax rate drastically, to 15 percent.

Trump has called Saturdays 100-day marker a remnant of President Franklin D. Roosevelts initial flurry of legislative action an artificial construct, and he is not incorrect. Yet the kinetic energy emanating from the West Wing, which at times borders on frenetic, reveals a White House eager to cross the threshold with some tangible wins.

The whirlwind of activity this week seems aimed at demonstrating forward momentum from a young administration criticized for a lack of signature legislative achievements a sense that doing something, anything, is better than the perception of stagnation.

As the president himself quipped Tuesday afternoon, preparing to sign his latest executive order: Its a lot of words. I wont bother reading everything.

Trump is under considerable pressure, some of it self-imposed, to deliver. From funding construction of the border wall to spurring $1 trillion in infrastructure investments over the next decade, the presidenthas implemented zero of the 10 major pieces of legislation he promised as a presidential candidate for his first 100 days ina contract with American voters.

Only one bill has been introduced in Congress an ill-fated measure to scale back President Barack Obamas health-care law that culminated inan embarrassing defeat at the hands of Trumps own party.White House officials and several Republican lawmakers said Tuesday that they were nearing a deal to try again, though details were sparse.

[Everyone tunes in: Inside Trumps obsession with cable TV]

In many ways, Trump, more than any modern president before him, runs his White House like a television drama, believing that sometimes projecting an image of energy and progress is as important, if not more so, than the reality.

But Peter Wehner, a former official in the George W. Bush White House who is now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said noadministration can bluff its way through four years.

You have to produce, Wehner said. Ultimately the achievements will matter. You can spin and you can sell and you can put things in bright neon lights, but when everything is said and done, presidents are judged on their results.

The Trump White House has producedsome accomplishments already, from regulatory rollbacks intended to promote economic growth to the successful installation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

We see a president thats working at breakneck speed and somebody whos going as fast as he can in the confines of the law, running through that punch list of promises he made during the campaign, Reince Priebus, Trumps chief of staff, said Tuesday.

But on his largest promises those boomed from campaign trail stages and enshrined in his voter contract Trump has fallen short, a gap in signature legislative triumphs that has sent the president and his aides scrambling to notch victories, some of them more tenuous and less substantial than others.

Out of 60 promises from Trumps voter contract, The Washington Posts Fact Checker finds that five have been kept, five have been broken and 36 others have had no action at all. The remainder have either been launched or are in limbo.

Asked about Trumps failure to implement many of the key items in the contract, which he unveiled in October, Marc Short, the White House director for legislative affairs, said the administration had, in some ways, run up against the inherently slow-moving federal bureaucracy.

There are certain promises that you need to work with House and Senate leadership on, and its a process, Short said in a morning meeting with reporters.I think on the House side, obviously, the health-care legislation took longer than we would have wanted, but were excited as to where that stands today, and we think well get that completed.

Short said the administration was not backing down on its commitment to its early promises but added,Perhaps the timetable was ambitious.

[Opinion: Trump says his first 100 days have been a historic success. History disagrees.]

Still, in the run-up to the 100-day mark, the administration has become a whirling dervish of activity.

In a memo Tuesday that contained a number of factual inaccuracies including a claim that Roosevelt signed only nine executive orders, rather than the actual 99, in his first 100 days the White House boasted of the presidentshistoric accomplishment, citing the 13Congressional Review Act resolutions, the 28 laws, and the 30 executive orders that Trump has implemented or passed.

The presidents teamhas also deployed Cabinet secretaries throughout the countryto tout what they say are Trumps robust successes. And Saturday, the president will headline a 100-day political rally in Harrisburg, Pa.

But even as Trump sought to project strength, a federal judge in San Francisco delivered a new setbackTuesday, blockingthe administrations plans to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, those that refuse to detain undocumentedimmigrants for deportation.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans largely defended the president, with some seeking to separate his domestic achievements from his foreign policy moves as they reflected on what Trump has and has not achieved so far.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who had dinner with Trump on Monday night, said he was pleased with Trumps national security team and praised the cruise missile strikes the president launched in Syria. But he sized up Trumps domestic agenda differently.Obviously, its been stalled, McCain said.

However, McCain partially blamed members of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus for thwarting the effort to overhaul Obamas Affordable Care Act last month, echoing a criticism Short had offered more gently earlier in the day.

Weve learned that the House Republican Party, to its credit, is enormously diverse in its opinions, but that also sometimes creates larger challenges in bringing them together on a big legislative issue, Short said, reflecting on lessons his legislative-affairs team had learned in the failed health-care effort.

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), a Trump ally, faulted Congress for the presidents lack of domestic accomplishments.

[The Daily 202: Trump is caving on border wall funding after showing his base that he tried]

Congress has to pass bills for him to sign them into law, Collins said. If there is a frustration, its really aimed at Congress, not the president.

For congressional Democrats, who have waged a full-fledged war against much of the presidents agenda, there is some relief that he has not delivered on many of his promises, most notably his vow on the ACA, also known as Obamacare.

But Democrats are also trying to blame Trump for what he hasnt accomplished. They argue that while he campaigned on a populist platform, vowing to help average Americans, he has instead spearheaded efforts that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the working class.

In some ways, Trumps blustery two-step leading up to Saturday is simply the repackaging of a strategy he learned as a real estate developer a technique he described inThe Art of the Deal astruthful hyperbole. In the 1987 book, he chronicled creating an aura of success before hed actually achieved it such as when he orderedhis Atlantic City construction crews to dig up dirt on one side of a site to simply deposit it back on the other, in order to present a sense of progress.

ButWarren Tompkins, a longtime Republican strategist based in South Carolina, said that at some point, voters will demand evidence of signature legislation.

Our problem is people voted to give us the keys to the bus, and weve forgotten how to drive, Tompkins said.

Amid Trumps struggles, even the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library felt emboldened this week. On Monday, the library posteda tweet noting the laws and executive orders President Carter had signed in his first 100 days, before ending with the most devastating statistic of all Carters approval rating of 63 percent.

Trump, the least-popular new president in modern times, has an average approval rating currently hovering in the low 40s.

Read more:

Trump scrambles to show progress as the 100-day mark approaches - Washington Post

Antonio Tajani. (photo credit:TAMARA ZIEVE)

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani on Wednesday urged European countries to step up efforts to ensure the return of property and possessions seized from Jewish victims during the Holocaust.

Speaking at the opening of an international conference in Brussels titled Unfinished Justice: Restitution and Remembrance, Tajani stressed the importance of restitution.

Declaring that restitution across Europe was still challenged by legal and technical problems, leaving victims without their property, Tajani said: Restitution, together with remembrance and reconciliation, is a fundamental element to restore justice after the Holocaust.

The European Parliament has called on the [European] Commission to develop common principles and guidelines, he added, highlighting that the 2009 Terezin Declaration provides a clear reference point for restitution and a commitment for all European countries.

Forty-seven countries, including all 28 members of the European Union, approved the Terezin Declaration, which recognizes the importance of restituting or compensating Holocaust-related confiscations made during the Holocaust era between 1933-45.

According to the World Jewish Restitution Organization, only a small fraction of private and communal property illegitimately seized from Jewish victims during the Holocaust has been returned or compensated.

WJRO also emphasized that, of the remaining 500,000 survivors alive today, up to half are estimated to live in poverty.

Progress has been made over the last years. Some countries have done a lot and have even developed best practices. Others should do more, Tajani said.

The European Shoah Legacy Institute which commissioned a comprehensive study on the status of restitution in each of the countries that endorsed the Terezin Declaration called out Poland as being the only country that has yet to enact legislation dealing with restitution or compensation of private property nationalized by the Polish postwar Communist regime.

The conference was hosted by the European Parliament and organized by the European Alliance for Holocaust Survivors, a coalition of members of the European Parliament committed to issues impacting Holocaust survivors, the WJRO and ESLI, together with the European Jewish Congress and Bnai Brith International. The permanent missions of the State of Israel, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom to the European Union and their respective foreign ministries were also partners in the conference.

During the conference, members of the European Parliament called on the European Commission and all member states to each appoint special envoys for Holocaust-related issues, including restitution, to accelerate activities aimed at securing justice for victims.

Gideon Taylor, chairman of operations for the World Jewish Restitution Organization, praised Tajanis announcement as a significant step toward helping Holocaust survivors achieve justice regarding confiscated property.

The support of the European Parliament sends a strong signal about the importance of fulfilling the pledges countries made under the Terezin Declaration, he said. Countries have a moral obligation to ensure that workable property restitution laws are put in place, and we hope that they will respond by reaffirming their commitment to providing justice for the remaining survivors, their families and Jewish communities as a matter of urgency.

Polish-born British Holocaust survivor Ben Helfgott also emphasized the importance of the issue, saying that committing to a substantial, broad and coordinated program of restitution goes some way to recognizing the suffering, anguish and torment that occurred directly to those Jews present at the time, and the damage it caused for generations afterwards.

The conference was attended by members of the European Parliament, diplomats, leaders of international Jewish organizations and European Jewish communities as well as Holocaust survivors.

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European Parliament president urges post-Holocaust restitution progress - Jerusalem Post Israel News

Miles Robinson, Atlanta Uniteds first-ever draft pick , has yet to play this season for the MLS expansion squad.

The central defender, selected No. 2 from Syracuse during the SuperDraft in Los Angeles in January, said he has no regrets about leaving school after two seasons to turn professional.

Im just trying to work hard and let Tata (Gerardo Martino) make the decision that he feels comfortable with, Robinson said.

Robinson has made the 18 for three of Atlanta Uniteds games, including last weeks 3-1 win at Real Salt Lake. The team will host D.C. United on Sunday at Georgia Techs Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Robinson said he knew that he needed to improve his technical skills when he turned pro. Playing behind Michael Parkhurst and Leandro Gonzalez Pirez, who are very good passers and dribblers, has helped him learn.

Robinson said he frequently talks with either of the players about passes theyve made, how they spotted space, and other aspects of the position in which he hopes to improve.

He said he is also improving in those areas because the training focuses on technical ability. Its a different teaching regiment than he experienced at Syracuse because the style of play is different. The Orange wanted to get the ball into the opponents half, and win or keep possession there. Training focused on that.

Martino wants to keep possession no matter where the ball is. So, passes between defenders and even the goalkeeper are valued more than a long-ball approach.

Miles has progressed a lot in his technical ability and circulating the ball out of the back as we start moving forward, Pirez said. Miles is a great player. He just needs to play more.

Robinsons strength, and one that his teammates have noticed, is his one-on-one defending.

Hes really strong and takes the ball from a lot of people, Pirez said. He just needs to get experience and talk a little bit more. Hes going to be a great player with a lot of potential.

Robinson said theres always a little disappointment that he has yet to play, but hes not worried.

Its nothing to hang your head on this early in the season and in my career, he said. Its a matter of working hard and earning the spot that will come. I have to get better every day to do that.

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Atlanta United's Robinson likes progress - Atlanta Journal Constitution