August 2015

‘Better than Facebook!’ Egyptian cleric suspended for altering dawn prayer call

2015/08/31

Egyptian religious authorities have suspended a muezzin from Beheira province from duty after local villagers accused the religious figure of intoning “prayer is better than Facebook” in his early morning call for prayer.

Mahmud al-Moghazi, who has denied uttering those words, stands accused of referencing Facebook twice during the dawn prayer last week, changing the verse which originally says “prayer is better than sleep.”

After being refereed by the local villagers to the Ministry of Awqaf, or religious affairs, the clerics body confirmed Moghazi’s suspension.

“The case will be referred to the prosecution service which will see that the law is applied,” Ministry official Sabri Ebada told AFP.

As the ministry continues their investigation, Moghazi denounced the accusations as “lies” during his appearance in one of country’s talk shows on Sunday. With 16 million users, Egypt is one of the world’s top 20 Facebook-engaged societies, but muezzin denied even knowing how this word is spelled.

“I don't know what Facebook is and I don't know how it is spelled,” he swore, blaming the banned Muslim Brotherhood followers of plotting to discredit him. He accused the group of trying to hold protests and organize unlicensed Islamic lessons at the local mosque.

The muezzin claimed that the Brotherhood wanted to get him “out of the mosque,” adding that he had begun a hunger strike in protest against his treatment. “I forbid any group to use the mosque, I forbid unauthorized courses,” he said.

The Brotherhood was declared a terrorist organization by the Egyptian state months after Islamist president Mohamed Morsi’s toppling by the army in 2013. The group members have faced a multitude of terror-related charges and convictions ever since.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Wag the dog: Kentucky dog mayor making plans for presidential run

2015/08/31

Lucy Lou, the dog mayor of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky is set to retire Labor Day weekend – but not from politics. Her owner and chief of staff said the border collie is expected to announce a bid for the presidency.

Bobbi Kayser, Lucy’s owner, told The Kentucky Enquirer that after serving for seven years, the dog will retire as mayor on September 5 and announce her political ambitions for the White House

“Somebody up the road decided most politicians are dogs anyway,” Kayser told the Enquirer. “Why not put a real dog in office?”

With seven years as mayor of Rabbit Hash (population 135) under her leash, Lucy Lou is no newbie to politics. She has been grandmarshal of parades, made appearances on national TV and radio, and has starred in informational documentaries about the town.

Lou is a tough political canine opponent, and ran for mayor under the campaign slogan, “The Bitch You Can Count On.”

On election night, she trounced nine other dogs, one cat, one opossum, one jackass and one human, according to the Rabbit Hash Historical Society.

The Rabbit Hash Historical Society said: “An estimated 21.5 percent of local registered and unregistered voters swarmed the polls…for 2008 Mayoral election.” And Lou won.

“She works tirelessly to promote Rabbit Hash,” said Kayser, who is also chief executive officer.

Lucy Lou hasn’t filed her paperwork yet, but she will be joining a flurry of equally ambitious folks like Limberbutt McCubbins and Deez Nuts, both of which have announced their candidacy in the last few weeks.

Another hairy candidate is McCubbins is a five-year-old rescue tabby cat who announced he filed his paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in May.

McCubbins is running as a “Demo-cat,” according to his campaign literature. His slogan is: “Together, we cat.”

The filing began as a joke, but its consequences are anything but, according to one of McCubbins’ campaign managers, 17-year-old Isaac Weiss.

“Me and my friends have begun to realize how easy it is to run for office, and have learned about the way the FEC and campaign finance work,” Weiss told the Huffington Post.

“Not that we don’t want anyone to run, but I personally don’t think that if I’m applying to run for the most important position in the USA, that I should be able to do it in 20 minutes. Or less. And without immediately proving that I’m at least a US citizen.”

Independent party candidate Nuts, meanwhile, turned out to be a 15-year-old Iowa high school boy named Brady Olson, too young to legally be president. Yet he is outperforming several other presidential contenders in the polls.

A Public Policy Polling survey released on August 19 found that he was at 9 percent in North Carolina, tied with Republican hopeful Senator Marco Rubio (Florida), and outperforming GOP candidates Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who garnered 6 percent each.

Olson told Time that he decided to run because he was “frustrated with the two-party system,” and the viral momentum of Deez Nuts showed him that America agreed with him. According to Olson, he’s been contacted by people in 23 states who want to help with the campaign.

Perhaps Lucy Lou will make a great VP running mate?

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Death of man at Texas jail ruled homicide

2015/08/31

The Dallas County Medical Examiner ruled that the death of a man who was pinned down by three deputies in a Texas jail lobby was a homicide. Other contributing factors to his death were drugs, heart problems and stress to the body.

The cause and manner of death of Joseph Hutcheson, 48, was homicide with “combined effects of cocaine and methamphetamine, compounded by hypertensive cardiovascular disease and physiologic stress associated with struggle and restraint,” according to the medical examiner’s office.

A full autopsy report is pending but it will include toxicology results.

Scott Palmer, an attorney for Hutcheson’s family, said the medical examiner’s findings corroborate what the video shows: that deputies were responsible on some level for the man’s death.

“It is apparent from the ruling that Mr. Hutcheson died at the hands of another,” Palmer said in a statement, according to The Dallas Morning News. “We believe without the assault by the Sheriff’s deputies, Mr. Hutcheson would still be alive today.”

Palmer told the paper that the family hired a private pathologist to conduct a second autopsy. The doctor couldn’t determine what had killed Hutcheson, but told the family that the organs in his throat were missing.

Hutcheson died on August 1 after a struggle with three deputies on the lobby floor. Authorities said the man walked into the building that morning, yelled for help, was placed in handcuffs, lost consciousness and died.

In an excerpt from a 4.37-minute surveillance video released Friday, viewers see Hutcheson first enter the lobby. While there is no sound, it appears he is yelling or coughing. People sitting in the lobby scatter as he paces up and down before a deputy approaches to talk to him. Another deputy joins them as Hutcheson sits down, before they move to the back of the lobby.

[embedded content]

Hutcheson then peels off and is seen pacing erratically in the lobby, though he does not leave. He is seen either coughing or yelling as an officer tackles him to the ground. Two others join, and it seems they are trying to arrest him by putting him in handcuffs. A struggle ensues and Hutcheson’s legs can be seen flailing.

In the middle of the struggle, at the 2:30 mark, a deputy appears to put a knee on Hutcheson’s neck or throat, and he keeps it there for a least a minute. The knee is released then re-applied, and Hutcheson is finally handcuffed. The video ends as other deputies arrive.

Dallas police said there is an ongoing investigation and the deputies involved in the incident were reassigned to other duties several weeks ago.

Police said that Hutcheson went into the building yelling for help, behaving erratically, and claimed his wife was trying to kill him.

In a related story involving police restraint, a homicide was also confirmed by the medical examiner in the death of 43-year old Eric Garner in New York on July 17, 2014, when he was placed in a chokehold by police. In Garner’s case, contributing factors were asthma and heart disease, and the examiner said he died due to “the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”

A special grand jury called to investigate the case declined to indict the police officer involved, Daniel Pantaleo.

A year later, New York City settled with the family, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit, for $5.9 million.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Between ferns & ‘hypnoflag’: New Zealand presents final 4 national designs

2015/08/31

New Zealand has released a final selection of four flag designs, picked from thousands of creative drawings presented over the past few months. Three “ferns” and one “hypnoflag” featuring a koru will now compete to potentially become the new national symbol.

A government-appointed panel has selected the four designs from a long list of 40, itself from an initial pool of more than 10,000.

Ferns dominate the short list, with three quarters of the options featuring one in some form. Two of the four were designed by Kiwi-born architect Kyle Lockwood, who has since settled in Melbourne.

Another was submitted by Alofi Kanter, an amateur artist and a flight attendant who says he sent in the design “to make my contribution.” The final work, by a freelance graphic designer Andrew Fyfe, is the only one featuring a koru instead of a Fern.

“I think there’re two or three there that could potentially be a new New Zealand flag,” Prime Minister John Key told reporters.

Kiwis will vote on their favorite of the four in a public referendum in November. The winner will face a second referendum in early 2016 to determine the new national flag between the selected flag and the existing one.

Public opinion in New Zealand is mixed about the idea of changing the design, with many critical of the process’ $26 million price tag. According to Herald Digipoll, a survey showed that almost half of voters were open to a change of flag, although 24 percent said that their decision would depend on the proposed alternative. However, 53 percent oppose any change to the flag.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Maryland cop buys food & housing for mother, daughter fleeing domestic violence

2015/08/31

A Maryland police officer's kindness towards a woman fleeing domestic violence with her one-year-old daughter was noticed by his sergeant, captured in pictures and posted on the department’s Facebook page. The post quickly went viral.

As of Monday, the Prince George County Police Department’s Facebook page had received 14,000 likes and more than 1,300 comments regarding Corporal Che Atkinson’s assistance to the mother and child.

"I'm a little overwhelmed and shocked. And the reason why is it didn't seem like a big deal to me because I see other officers do stuff like this all the time,” Atkinson told WUSA 9. "It's not a big deal."

It all began last Wednesday morning, when Atkinson noticed a woman sitting in the lobby of the police precinct with a small child and several bags. Atkinson talked to the woman and discovered she had fled domestic violence abuse. She was also homeless.

The officer sought help from local agencies and tracked down a family friend who was willing to pick up the mother and child. He then went out on patrol.

On Thursday morning, Atkinson went to work and found the mother and daughter in lobby. After making inquiries, police officers told him the family had spent the night there. It turned out the family friend couldn’t pick them up until Friday morning.

Atkinson spoke to the mother and then found out that the pair hadn’t eaten for two days. That’s when he decided to use his own money to rent a hotel room and buy them food and drink.

"It was here's somebody here with a child – one-years-old - had nowhere to go,” Atkinson told WUSA9. “I had the extra money. What would it hurt just to put them up for a night to make sure they're safe?"

He also tracked down a car seat for the child. As Atkinson packed their luggage in a patrol car, his sergeant was taking photos without Atkinson’s knowledge.

ICYMI: An amazing act of kindness: a police officer uses his own money to get a woman and her child off the streets. http://t.co/SxXrIeiQJQ
— Ellison Barber (@ellisonbarber) August 31, 2015

Those photos went up on the department's Facebook page with a description of what happened. It said that Atkinson had “reinforced the department’s pledge to not only protect citizens but serve them as well.”

Within hours the post had over 9,000 likes.

Out of a slew of comments, Elisa Carballo-Castillo from Virginia wrote:

“It's great to hear stories like this. I work with victims of domestic and sexual violence and unfortunately resources and shelters are very limited. Great job officer, i wish there were more officers like him.”

Atkinson’s work was also appreciated by Maryellen McNamara Madeja from Pennsylvania:

“People are always putting the police officers down and complaining. This is what our law enforcement officers do and never get the credit. I hope the woman and her child are safe and have a wonderful life all because of one act of kindness from a police officer."

The act of kindness came the same week that Maryland became the first state to adopt rules against police profiling. Under guidelines issued by the state’s attorney general, police officers are forbidden from using race, religion, or sexual orientation as factors in making routine stops and are banned from stopping everyone in a neighborhood when a crime is reported.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

America's "justice" system is a lie

2015/08/31

During my more than twelve years of writing for Pravda.Ru, I don't believe I've ever opened an article with a warning to readers. So this will be a first. Therefore, I respectfully ask you to sit down before reading further, because the news I am about to relate is so shocking, so out of the norm, and so unimaginable that you might faint if you read it while standing up.

A white cop is going to walk free after shooting an unarmed African-American man.

Although my warning is sarcastic, it is not meant to be humorous. The cold, harsh reality is that, in recent months, numerous cops who have killed unarmed people have escaped any form of justice. Some were not charged at all. Others evaded prosecution after farcical "grand juries" were convened to provide the illusion that some "impartial" procedure created the failure to bring criminal indictments. And even when a few of these cases made it to trial, the results were almost always a hung jury or an outright acquittal.

Shot ten times

The case I am discussing above involves the killing of Jonathan Ferrell, who was shot ten times by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Randall Kerrick.

I first discussed Ferrell's murder in my Pravda.Ru article, America's Epidemic of Killer Cops (December 1, 2014), by explaining how "it actually required a second grand jury to secure an indictment [against Kerrick] because the first apparently thought 'voluntary manslaughter' was too severe a charge for a white police officer who gunned down an unarmed African-American."

During the facade that masqueraded as a trial, a police captain testified that Kerrick violated departmental policy by shooting Ferrell, and an officer who was on the scene at the time of the killing stated that Ferrell represented such a minor threat that "he never considered pulling [his] weapon."

But, predictably, this wasn't enough for the jury, who deadlocked 8-4 in favor of acquittal. And, a few days after this deadlock occurred, prosecutors stated they would not seek a retrial, thus making Kerrick a free man.

Knowing that this trial was held in North Carolina-the state where two separate juries once acquitted Klansmen and Neo-Nazis who were videotaped shooting anti-Klan protesters (see Greensboro Massacre: Justice Delayed or Justice Denied?, Pravda.Ru, February 28, 2008), and where voters elected a virulent racist named Jesse Helms to the United States Senate five times-it is tempting to blame the outcome of the Kerrick case on "good old boy southern justice."

Why do juries acquit policemen?

But this ignores the tragic reality that juries have also acquitted cops of killing unarmed people in states like California and New York.

The question is, WHY?

One answer I proposed in my America's Epidemic article is fear. Even though most reasonable people will acknowledge on the intellectual level that police brutality and excessive force exists, on the visceral level they want to pretend it doesn't happen: "People do not want to believe that a late-night trip to the grocery store, a stroll through a parking lot (Kelly Thomas), driving home from a party (Samantha Ramsey), or seeking assistance after a traffic accident (Jonathan Ferrell) can result in an encounter with police that ends in their death. So the natural instinct is to blame the victims of police brutality, to find something, anything, no matter how minute, that can be used to rationalize a cop's actions."

But this is only part of the story. In today's America open displays of racism are looked upon with disfavor, and often result in economic and social repercussions for those who express them. But two sanctuaries where racism can still be exhibited is the voting booth and the courts.

This is why I have stated in several previous Pravda.Ru articles that America's so-called "legal" system habitually works harder to perpetuate and cover-up injustice than it does to promote justice, and it will go to extraordinary lengths to support and protect the criminality and corruption of those who serve the system, while rabidly imprisoning people-even innocent people-who expose or challenge this criminality and corruption.

Those who doubt this should recall that in the past few years alone, American courts have endorsed the torture and extrajudicial execution of American citizens, warrantless surveillance and spying, and the usurpation of the democratic process by billionaires and corporations. It is a system that is unabashedly racist, hopelessly corrupt, and unyieldingly vindictive. And, since many of the sociopaths who control, manipulate, and profit from this system (most of whom already come from backgrounds of wealth and privilege) exploit it as a gateway to greater wealth and power, it is also self-servingly intransigent.

Make no mistake about it. If America's legal system truly wants to get you, it will. You can bet if Jonathan Ferrell had been accused of shooting Randall Kerrick, no hung jury would prevent a retrial. In fact, there would most likely be no hung jury at all, because every means at a prosecutor's disposal-suborning perjury, withholding exculpatory evidence, fabricating incriminating evidence, intimidating witnesses, excluding racial minorities from the jury-would be deployed to obtain a conviction.

The outcome of the Kerrick case and countless others like it lead to one inescapable truth: America's criminal justice system is not equipped to effectively prosecute police brutality and excessive force cases, and no proposed reforms are going to alter that reality.

Cops are already reluctant to testify against their fellow officers, and the outcome of the Kerrick case will undoubtedly entrench this reluctance even further. Why suffer the wrath of your fellow officers, endure a hostile work environment, or risk being denied necessary backup in a dangerous situation when you know your testimony will be meaningless?

A more racially diverse legal system will not by itself solve these problems. During my years of practicing law, I discovered that African-American cops, prosecutors, and judges were often more zealous in demanding harsh punishments for racial minorities than their white counterparts. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, for example, has done more to destroy the civil rights gains of African-Americans than most white racists ever could.

Creating laws that make it easier to prosecute police brutality and excessive force cases on the federal level will most likely fail as well. Laws are only as good as their enforcement, so it would still be up to prosecutors or grand juries to decide whether to bring charges. And even if those charges are brought, the accused officer will still be tried by a jury system that incessantly refuses to criminally punish police misconduct.

Finally, as the rubber-stamp acquittal issued to Cleveland, Ohio police officer Michael Brelo by Judge John P. O'Donnell glaringly illustrates, even judges cannot be entrusted with rendering unbiased verdicts when it comes to police shootings of unarmed African-Americans.

At the end of my Pravda.Ru article Scott Walker: Satan's Candidate (July 20, 2015), I quoted a passage from the 1979 movie And Justice for All, which starred Al Pacino as an idealistic criminal defense attorney named Arthur Kirkland. I will do so again here. As Kirkland's frustration with the shameless corruption and callousness of the legal system mounted, he finally realized, "It's just a show."

And indeed it is. America's justice system is one of the biggest frauds ever foisted on the American people, and the argument that it may be less fraudulent than justice systems in some other countries doesn't make it any less despicable.

The true danger right now is that the refusal of biased prosecutors and farcical grand juries to bring charges, and the egregious acquittals of police officers who shoot and/or beat unarmed people to death, have become so routine that Americans will soon become desensitized to them. Some pundits are already arguing that focusing on police misconduct should be subordinate to focusing on crimes that racial minorities perpetrate upon each other.

While that problem certainly should not be ignored, two wrongs do not make a right. When anyone, in any profession, knows he or she can get away with murder, there is a danger to all people, of all races.

And murderers will continue to walk freely among us.

David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Global food shortages could strike as result of climate change – General Mills

2015/08/31

Food giant General Mills has announced a commitment to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 28 percent by 2025, while also asserting that human-caused climate change could lead to food shortages worldwide.

In a Sunday statement, General Mills announced a plan to reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain, “from farm to fork to landfill.”

The company said that it has “long been committed to being part of the solution on climate change,” according to its website, and CEO Ken Powell said climate action is as much a good business strategy as it is a corporate responsibility gesture.

"We think that human-caused greenhouse gas causes climate change and climate volatility and that's going to stress the agricultural supply chain, which is very important to us," Powell said in an interview with the Associated Press. "Obviously we depend on that for our business, and we all depend on that for the food we eat."

This isn’t just talk: Since 2005, the company has managed to reduce its emissions by 13 percent. But getting to 28 percent in the same amount of time is a little more complicated than just making company-wide green policies like using less cardboard and plastic in its packaging, as 92 percent of greenhouse emissions in its chain come from entities that it doesn’t control.

However, General Mills, whose brands range from Haagen-Dazs ice cream to Progresso soups, can exert strong influence over such entities, and this cooperation would be an essential part of its climate plan.

A spokeswoman for General Mills said symptoms of climate change are already having an effect on food production, pointing to extreme and volatile weather conditions and the decline in pollinating insects. A dramatic example of this is the drought in California, which threatens a large parts of the United States’ agriculture industry.

This fear of a hungry future is visible in the company’s climate action plan. In addition to investing $100 million in cleaner energy in its own operations, General Mills will encourage its partners to use “climate-resilient” soils.

John Church, General Mills’ senior vice president of global supply chain, told Minnesota Public Radio that the company is also working with its milk suppliers to cut greenhouse gas emission through better management of cattle.

"Our biggest greenhouse gas contributing ingredient is dairy, milk," he said. "In that supply chain, it's because the cows themselves create methane in their digestive process."

These climate-conscious moves reflect a growing trend of corporations making environmental pledges. In 2014, General Mills became a member of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), a policy advocacy group that lobbies to pass climate change and energy legislation, joining competitors such as Nestle and Kellogg’s.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

India investigates Google over search results rigging

2015/08/31

Internet heavyweight Google is under investigation by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) over alleged rigging of search results in the country – a violation that could potentially be punished by up to 10 percent of the company’s income, running into billions of dollars.

The CCI director general filed a report following initial complaints by Consumer Unity and Trust Society, a local nonprofit organization, and the Bharat Matrimony website, who accused Google of ranking its own websites above its competitors, even those more relevant and those which showed a stronger traffic flow.

In total some 30 internet companies reportedly signed up to the CCI complaints list, including Flipkart, Facebook, Nokia’s maps division, MakeMyTrip and Hungama Digital.

The CCI report, which has been viewed by The Economic Times, said that the Silicon Valley giant is accused of placing advertised links above those more relevant for search queries. The CCI claims that Google search results are dependent on the amount of advertising funds the company receives from its clients, which results in sponsored links sometimes superseding the actual trademark’s website being searched. India’s authority also says that Google modified its search algorithms without informing users.

Google has until September 10 to reply to the commission or request a deferral. In a response to the publication, Google says it is reviewing CCI’s ongoing investigation.

“We continue to work closely with the CCI and remain confident that we comply fully with India's competition laws. Regulators and courts around the world, including in the US, Germany, Taiwan, Egypt, and Brazil, have looked into and found no concerns on many of the issues raised in this report.”

Unless Google remedies the concerns raised by the CCI, the commission will be forced to hold hearings to determine whether the internet firm violated antitrust regulations. If found guilty, the company, which posted a net income of $14 billion on $66 billion in revenue for 2014, could be liable for paying 10 percent of that share.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

White supremacist found guilty of killing 3 at Kansas Jewish centers

2015/08/31

White supremacist Frazier Glenn Cross was convicted of killing three people, including a boy, outside Kansas Jewish centers in April 2014. Despite admitting to the murders, Miller pleaded not guilty. The jury will now decide whether he is put to death.

After approximately two hours of deliberations, the jury found Cross – also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, 74 – guilty on three murder counts as well as on three counts of attempted murder.

As the verdict was read, Cross interrupted the judge, gave a Nazi salute and said, "Sieg Heil,” CNN reported.

Cross said he was disappointed at the verdict, which he said ruined his day.

Representing himself at the trial, Cross previously admitted to committing the murders but called on jurors to “show great courage" by finding him not guilty.

The Monday trial was interrupted twice due to Cross showing disrespect to the court. Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan had to briefly halt the proceedings after the defendant made comments about the court system and accused Ryan of carrying out an unconstitutional trial.

"Please show some respect. Respect? I have no respect for you, this court or any damn thing associated with it," he growled, according to WFSB News. "In fact, I hate every damn one of you because you are whores of the Jews."

During his closing arguments, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said there was a "mountain of evidence that the defendant came to" the sites with the intent of "killing as many people as possible,” according to WFSB.

“Clearly, his vision, his goal was to kill as many people as possible at those two facilities,” Howe told jurors, the Guardian reported.

Cross objected to Howe’s statement, saying that he was not trying to kill people but people who were Jews, who he accused of committing genocide against the white race.

He admitted to killing 14-year old boy Reat Underwood, his grandfather William Corporon, 69, and Terri LaManno, 53, outside two Jewish centers in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, in April 2014. All of Cross’s victims were Christians, but not Jewish.

[embedded content]

Cross said he did not learn that until six days after the murders, but that he still did not regret killing Corporon and LaManno, who he considered accomplices to Jews. While having said that he was sorry for killing Underwood because of his age, under cross-examination Cross admitted that he would have been fine with killing Underwood if the boy was Jewish.

The former “Grand Dragon” leader of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Cross told the jurors that everything he did was for them, “for your children, your grandchildren and for future generations of our people.”

Cross also described the joy he felt after he pulled the trigger.

"I thought I killed some of my Jewish enemies," he said. "I swear to you on my mother's honor I felt free as I drove away I was floating on a cloud."

Now in a wheelchair and having to use an oxygen tank due to a lung illness, Cross tried to find the jury’s sympathy, saying that on that day in April of last year he was risking his life.

The jury will return Tuesday morning to decide whether Cross will get the death penalty.

Cross said he hoped to "die a martyr" after the Monday verdict was announced. At last week’s hearing, Cross said from the very beginning he knew he might end up getting the death penalty.

"You guys are going to put me on death row,” he told jurors, according to NBC News. “We all know that.”

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Child cancers ‘attributable’ to Fukushima disaster ‘unlikely’ to increase – IAEA

2015/08/31

The IAEA remains certain that thyroid cancers among kids attributable to the Fukushina accident are unlikely to increase, while providing no conclusive data on the exact amount of radioactive exposure suffered by civilian population in the vicinity of the nuclear plant.

The IAEA Director General’s Report on the Fukushima Daiichi Accident, admitted that “uncertainties remained concerning the thyroid equivalent doses incurred by children immediately after the accident.”

The dosage received by children remains under question as during the March 2012 accident authorities failed to swiftly and uniformly distribute “stable iodine” due to “lack of detailed arrangements” and were generally unprepared for emergency responses to such large scale accident.

The administration of non-radioactive iodine is an urgent protective action to be taken when exposed to radiation, preventing or reducing the uptake of radioactive isotopes by the thyroid gland.

In addition, the report noted, there was not enough reliable personal radiation monitoring data immediately after the accident. The data gathered so far, the IAEA says, shows a very limited dosage of radiation exposure in children “attributable to the accident.” Doctors began checking the thyroids of children in Fukushima Prefecture as early as October, 2011.

“Because the reported thyroid doses attributable to the accident were generally low, an increase in childhood thyroid cancer attributable to the accident is unlikely,” the report stated.

The report that consists of five technical volumes dealing with the 2011 nuclear meltdown, the worst emergency at a nuclear power plant since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. It discovered “certain weaknesses” in the design of the Japanese power plant. Lack of authority and responsibility also played a role in crisis management.

“Responsibilities were divided among a number of bodies, and it was not always clear where authority lay,” IAEA's Director General Yukiya Amano said.

[embedded content]

IAEA also found “weaknesses” in emergency preparedness and response arrangements and in planning for the management of a severe accident.

“The possibility of several reactors at the same facility suffering a crisis at the same time was not considered. And insufficient provision was made for the possibility of a nuclear accident occurring at the same time as a major natural disaster,” Amano said.

The report was based on the evaluation of data and information from a large number of sources available up to March 2015 and was a result a collaborative effort involving five working groups with about 180 experts from 42 Member States.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

5 percent of University of Kentucky students sexually assaulted last year

2015/08/31

Nearly 5 percent of University of Kentucky students were raped or were the victims of attempted rape during the last school year, a new survey has found. The incidents were vastly underreported and most of the attackers were fellow students.

The university conducted a campus-wide poll during the spring semester, asking students about unwanted sexual experiences during the 2014-2015 academic year. The preliminary results found that 4.9 percent of the roughly 21,500 Kentucky students who answered the question had been sexually assaulted during that time.

Only 30 sexual assault cases were reported to either campus or Lexington police officers during the last academic year, while 114 were reported to other university agencies. The survey found that 1,053 sexual assaults occurred, meaning only 13.7 percent of the incidents were reported.

Nearly 75 percent of the sexual assault victims said they were attacked by a fellow student, while 3.1 percent were assaulted by a university employee, including faculty, staff and resident and teaching assistants. Nearly two-thirds (62.5 percent) of the incidents occurred off-campus, while more than a quarter (27.3 percent) occurred in university housing.

The survey is part of University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto’s five-year plan to assess student perceptions and experiences regarding violence or harassment while attending, the school said in a statement. The 2014-2015 academic year was the first to be assessed under the initiative.

“This robust survey instrument is the next step in answering important questions about sexual assault, learning and asking more questions that help us improve,” Capilouto said. "This is what we must do as we undertake our sacred trust to care for the health and well-being of our students."

The survey, called the Campus Attitudes Towards Safety (CATS), was conducted by the UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women.

"This survey and its information IS a next step in addressing violence and harassment for University of Kentucky students," Diane Follingstad, director of the center, said in the statement. She added that the information revealed by the survey will help the university "make the kinds of changes and introduce programs that will enhance students' safety."

In its statement, the university said that its results were comparable to a 2007 Department of Justice survey, called the Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study. However, the university’s comparison is misleading because of how it defines the term sexual assault and because of the time frames of the studies. According to the CATS brochure, sexual assault is “unwanted sexual experiences (vaginal, oral, or anal sex),” including “individuals for whom someone attempted to force them to have sex, but they were able to escape.”

This definition is more restrictive than the CSA version, which established sexual assault as including “a wide range of victimizations, including rape and other types of unwanted sexual contact (e.g., sexual battery).”

The CSA Study found that 13.7 percent of female students at two large, public universities had been victims of sexual assault since starting college. Of those, 3.4 percent were raped. UK’s CATS version does not appear to tabulate the number of sexual assaults that cannot be described as rape or attempted rape, and only looked at those incidents that occurred within the last year.

Regardless, the results are far better than a 2014 University of Oregon study, which used an online survey to discover that more than a third of female students on the Eugene campus reported being sexually assaulted, and 10 percent of the women surveyed had been raped during their collegiate careers.

Last May, the US Department of Education announced it was investigating 55 US colleges and universities in connection with allegations that they mishandled or ignored sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints.

Jennifer Freyd, a professor in Oregon’s Department of Psychology who conducted that university’s study, is part of a White House effort to develop a nationwide survey of sexual assaults on college campuses that will allow for “meaningful comparisons.”

"If you've got a survey that lets you make meaningful comparisons between colleges, then colleges will have a meaningful incentive to reduce the violence that's being measured," she told Reuters last May.

The Kentucky survey was part of the registration process, while the Oregon version was emailed to a group of 5,000 random students. University of Kentucky officials believe that their school is among the first in the country to undertake a mandatory survey about sexual assault on campus, they said.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

SpaceX grounded: Falcon 9’s next flight still ‘a couple of months’ away

2015/08/31

SpaceX still isn’t ready to give its Falcon 9 rocket another launch date following its primary mission failure in June, when an unmanned rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded just a couple of minutes after taking off.

According to the company’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, the next Falcon 9 takeoff is “a couple of months away,” Reuters reported.

"We’re taking more time than we originally envisioned, but I don’t think any one of our customers wants us to race to the cliff and fail again,” she said at a panel discussion during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2015 conference in California.

Back on June 28, a Falcon 9 rocket intended to launch a cargo ship to the ISS blew up about two minutes into launch. An investigation conducted by the company found that a flawed steel strut located in the rocket’s second stage fuel tank was the “most probable” cause of the blast.

While Shotwell said the problem is “easy” to fix, she added that the company is also poring over other details to “make sure we’re not seeing something like that anywhere throughout the vehicle or the supply chain.”

SpaceX stated at the time that no new flights would be conducted until at least September. Shotwell’s statement sets the stage for a November flight at the earliest.

Nevertheless, Shotwell maintained that SpaceX still wants to successfully land the first stage rocket booster in order to keep moving forward on its mission to develop a reusable rocket, which would dramatically reduce the cost of commercial space launches.

"I want to see a Falcon 9 first stage land on a drone ship or land on my landing site," she said, according to Vice’s Motherboard. "If you don't get reusability to work, it's a one-way trip to Mars, and that's not the way you want to go. I want to stick a landing this year."

To do that, SpaceX may very well have to stage a successful launch and stage one landing on its next flight. Additionally, Shotwell said it is also progressing on a new version of the Falcon 9 that is 30 percent more powerful, Motherboard stated.

Before the June incident, SpaceX had delivered six cargoes to the ISS in the past three years.

The explosion of the Falcon 9 in June marked another setback for private space companies in the US. Last October, another rocket developed by Orbital ATK, called the Antares, exploded shortly after launch. It was also bearing cargo for the ISS.

It also marked a setback for NASA, which has looked to Russia and Japan to resupply the ISS as a result. Facing a lack of funding for its human spaceflight commercial crew program, the agency also decided to extend its contract with Russian space agency Roscosmos until 2019, at the cost of $490 million.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Anti-ISIS hacktivists claim foiling terror attacks in Tunisia & New York

2015/08/31

Ghost Security, a network of hacktivists formed earlier this year, claims that it thwarted two major terrorist attacks in the past month, as well impeding Islamic State’s online recruitment drive.

The group says it is looking for more volunteers to crowdsource its anti-terrorist efforts.

‘Somebody has got to oppose them’: Anti-ISIS hackers to RT

Mikro, one of the hackers, who has represented the group in its dealings with the media, told RT how Ghost Security intercepted social media communications between Islamist plotters.

“In Tunisia, they were, as always, talking on Twitter [about] what they’re about to do. And when you catch those conversations ... [you start] to get the pieces of the puzzle together. They started to talk about an old Jewish town in Tunisia right after the first beach attack,” said Mikro, referring to the shooting of 38 people in a Sousse hotel complex in June this year.

“We looked further into that and then we noticed that we were actually onto something. We looked a little closer, waited a couple of hours and alerted the authorities. A couple of days later they told us what has been done on our information and confirmed that we did prevent a terrorist attack at that point.”

Mikro said he was forced to be more circumspect about a subsequent plan to carry out an attack on a New York target, saying the group needed to maintain secrecy, but did say that there were “reasons to take the threat seriously” and claimed that reporting the plot to the authorities apparently “scared off” the radicals. The hacktivist group has used a private contractor as an intermediary with its dealings with the US government.

The hacker reports that the group, which has links to the broader Anonymous movement, has attained unique insight into the online workings of Islamic State and its growing web of affiliates.

“In the beginning we failed a lot, but now it has become easier, as we now know who they are, we know their methods, we know everything about Islamic State online.”

While foiling terrorist plots represents the cutting edge of Ghost Security’s work, the group’s bread-and-butter is shutting down accounts Islamic State uses to broadcast its atrocities and recruit new followers. As a result of their tip-offs some 59,000 Twitter accounts, 1,300 YouTube propaganda videos, and 130 standalone sites have been disabled.

The hackers’ representative says that rather than endlessly hunting down mirror accounts, the group’s aim is to block Islamic State content before it goes viral. While it has said that the number of ISIS accounts on Twitter has gone down by up to a quarter, eventually, the group hopes to create a virtual blanket filter that will stop the radical Islamists from reaching mainstream platforms altogether.

According to DigitaShadow, another member of the group who spoke to The Blaze last week, there are currently twelve core members of Ghost Security, as well as hundreds working as part-timers and informants. But the team is looking at crowdsourcing techniques to take its work to the next level.

“You don’t need a gun to fight. It’s easy, you can sign on to Twitter, follow ControlSec or GhostSec [Twitter handles used by the group] and find terrorist accounts and report them. That’s actually something everyone can do. And we really depend on the public... to help us out, you don’t need any IT background,“ Mikro said in the recorded interview.

The Islamic State Hacking Division has previously dismissed the work of Ghost Security.

“Anonymous, GhostSec, CtrlSec who are apparently ‘hackers’ against IS, till date they have hacked nothing, they are all talk. The only thing they can do is report Twitter accounts and stage distributed denial-of-service attacks on websites for five mins,” a self-proclaimed senior Islamic State online operative told The Blaze in August.

While Ghost Security is not doing much of what one would call “hacking” per se to disrupt terrorist communications, the group’s contact with the US government, Michael S. Smith, said that the information they provide allows law enforcers to “take a more pro-active stance” against IS’ online activities.

“Information that they gather, which they believe could be instrumental in identifying plots, cell structures, recruitment activities and other activities, propaganda distribution and so on, is provided to federal law enforcement, intelligence and military officials from the United States and where necessary distributed to officials abroad so that it can support their counter-terrorism activities,” said Smith, the principal of national security company Kronos Advisory.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Pentagon understated cost of new bomber by $25bn, blames ‘human error’

2015/08/31

Very little is known about the US Air Force’s new long-range strike bomber (LRSB) – including, apparently, the cost. Facing questions over a $25 billion discrepancy in development costs, the Pentagon blamed “human error” and shrugged it off as a “mistake.”

The LRSB project is intended to replace the aging and expensive US bomber fleet by the mid-2020s, at the cost of $500 million per plane. Two aerospace conglomerates, Northrop Grumman and Boeing-Lockheed Martin, are bidding for the contract.

Last year, the Air Force told Congress that the 10-year cost of developing the bomber, between 2015 and 2024, would be $33.1 billion. This year, however, the estimate for 2016-2026 rose to $58.2 billion. The 76 percent increase prompted Representative Jackie Speier (D-California), ranking minority member on the House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee, to ask about the $25 billion gap.

“This sudden 76 percent increase in estimated cost is alarming, because it raises questions about the management of a crucial program that lacks transparency, on which we cannot afford serious cost overruns, development errors, and reduced production numbers that would deprive the United States of one of its core military capabilities,” wrote Speier.

It would be pandemonium if the VA or IRS or really any other agency got something $25 billion wrong, Pentagon gets a free ride.
— Jacob Marx (@jacobemarx) August 31, 2015

The response from Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James only added to the confusion, by introducing another number to claim that the cost estimate hasn’t actually changed. According to James, the real figure was $41.7 billion all along.

“There has been no change in the costing factors over the last two years … it was a mistake. It was a regrettable mistake,” James said during a Pentagon press briefing last week. “It occurred in part because of human error and in part because of process error, meaning a couple of people got the figures wrong and the process of coordination was not fully carried out in this case.”

James said that senior officials have “counseled” the people involved, “tightened up” the process, corrected the price tag with Congress and double-checked all the other figures contained in the reports.

“The key thing is there has been no change in those cost figures,” she said.

Northrop Grumman was behind the B-2 ‘Spirit’ stealth bomber, manufactured between 1989 and 2000 at the cost of $737 million per plane. The total cost of the program stood at $45 billion in 2004. Only 16 B-2s are currently operational, and cost $135,000 per hour to fly, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin has been catching flak over the cost overruns that have plagued the F-35, a fifth-generation strike fighter produced in three separate configurations for the Air Force, Navy and the US Marine Corps. By 2011 estimates, the US government was going to spend $1 trillion on the fleet of F-35s – $382 billion to buy 2,443 aircraft, and another $650 billion in operating expenses. That was more than the entire GDP of Australia at the time ($924 billion), according to The Atlantic. The costs have only gone up since, even as the F-35 failed combat tests to a 1970s design currently in service.

Lockheed also produced the F-22A Raptor, the current US air superiority fighter, between 1997 and 2011. Fewer than 200 Raptors were made, at a cost of $150 million each and the overall program cost of $66.7 billion as of 2011.

The contract for developing the LRSB was supposed to be awarded in June or July, but the Air Force has already missed that deadline. Unconfirmed reports from defense sources speak of a September or October announcement.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

The lure of being unhappy: Banksy's #Dismaland ‘bemusement park’ is a sold-out event

2015/08/31

Russia's Most Anachronistic Warship Is Getting an Overhaul

2015/08/31

Russians Believe U.S. Is Immoral and Racist вЂ“ Poll

2015/08/31

Kanye West's 2020 presidential ambitions send Twitter into 'New White House Plan' frenzy

2015/08/31

Kanye West is going to let Donald Trump finish his 2016 run for president, but the rapper thinks he will have one of the best candidacies of all time. The media mogul and fashion designer announced his 2020 campaign during the MTV Video Music Awards.

West revealed his 2020 presidential bid at the end of a meandering, 10-minute-long acceptance speech for receiving the Video Vanguard Award at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.

“I don’t know what I’m going to lose after this. It don’t matter, though, ‘cause it ain’t about me. It’s about ideas, bro. New ideas, people with ideas. People who believe in truth,” he said.

“And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president,” West concluded, walking off the stage to a standing ovation.

Earlier in his speech, though, he had declared: "I'm not no politician.”

West received the support of singer and actress Miley Cyrus, who said: “Trump, you had my vote. But now Kanye West for president!”

She was not the only one impressed by the rapper’s surprising announcement as social media erupted into memes and slogan ideas after his speech.

campaign slogan - it's time for kanye west to make america the kanye best #Kanye2020
— Dan Howell (@danisnotonfire) August 31, 2015

Twitter handles dedicated to the rapper’s run for office have already been created.

Most Kanye Accounts...." This account tomorrow will be gone. But the followers I gained will remain." Not this one #KanyeForPresident2020
— KanyeForPresident (@ForTheKidsBro) August 31, 2015

Some have gone so far as to predict West’s subsequent life in the White House.

West mentioned in earlier in his speech that he had smoked “something” before the awards ceremony to “to knock the edge off.”

Eugene Craig III, a Republican political operative based in Maryland, filed paperwork in support of West’s 2020 bid on Monday, the Hill newspaper reported.

"He would bring an interesting dialogue to the political debate," Craig told CNBC. "His stances on some of the pressing issues of the day would be welcome."

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Anti-police 'rhetoric' out of control, 'cops' lives matter' also - Texas sheriff

2015/08/31

Commenting on the fatal shooting of a Harris County sheriff’s deputy late Friday, Ron Hickman, sheriff of the county, said that supposed anti-cop motives in the Black Lives Matter movement was to blame for high tensions that have put police in danger.

““This rhetoric has gotten out of control,” Hickman said during a Saturday press conference, and has increased “to the point where calculated, cold-blooded assassination of police officers happens.”

Hickman was referring to the death of Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth, 47, who was gunned down Friday at a Houston gas station. The suspect, Shannon Miles, a black man, has been charged with capital murder in the slaying of Goforth, a white man, who “was only targeted because he was wearing a uniform," Hickman said.

In court on Monday, Harris County district attorney Devon Anderson said Miles shot Goforth 15 times with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson.

“We’ve heard black lives matter, all lives matter,” Hickman said Saturday, according to the Texas Tribune. “Well, cops’ lives matter, too.”

He added: “Why don’t we just drop the qualifier and say ‘lives matter.’ Take that to the bank.”

Anderson told reporters at the press conference that the "vast majority" of police officers are well-intentioned but are tainted by a "few bad apples." Recent cases of police shootings of unarmed black persons such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, which aims to beat back police brutality and profiling in black communities across the United States.

“That does not mean there should be open warfare declared on law enforcement,” Anderson said of the high-profile killings, some of which were caught on camera, since Brown's murder in August 2014. “What happened last night is an assault on the fabric of society.”

She added: “It is time for the silent majority in this country to support law enforcement.”

At a second press conference on Saturday, Hickman said anti-police sentiment puts law enforcement officers in danger. He added that he had "no details as to the motive" in the case.

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protesters in Minnesota were criticized over the weekend for a chant that referenced the killing of police. “Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon," protesters shouted at the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul on Saturday, according to the Mankato Times.

Approximately 400 protesters marched to the State Fair to stage a rally outside the front gates of the fairground in what the organizers called Black Fair. The St. Paul Black Lives Matter contingent has made demands of the local and federal governments, including a US Department of Justice investigation of the killing by St. Paul police of Marcus Golden in January. In May, a grand jury chose not to indict two officers involved in the shooting.

Sick of the "Black Lives Matter" and "Cops Lives Matter"crap. Get rid of whatever you want in front because it should just be "Lives Matter"
— McCoy VanKlompenburg (@McCoyVK) August 31, 2015

So far in 2015, 652 people have been shot dead by on-duty police officers in the United States, according to a long-term tracking effort by The Washington Post. Of those, the Post reports that 24 were black and unarmed, and that a high percentage of the total shot were mentally ill or unstable. The federal government does not comprehensively track police shooting data, as the FBI only asks for voluntary reporting of such incidents.

The Post is not keeping track of non-gun-related police killings, such as the choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, last year. Along with Brown's shooting, Garner's death was a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City chose not to indict white officers for the killings of Brown and Garner. The grand jury decisions sparked nationwide protests to highlight, among other issues, racial profiling and police brutality not only in Missouri and New York, but across the country, including two fatal shootings in Ohio -- of John Crawford III and 12-year-old Tamir Rice -- that involved fake, air-powered guns.

In addition, two New York City police officers were gunned down in Brooklyn on Dec. 20, leading many police officers and their backers to blame the Black Lives Matter movement -- and the lukewarm support for their message shown by public officials like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio -- for a dangerous, "anti-police" environment despite the longstanding antagonistic relationship between police and citizens in New York and communities nationwide.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

On Alaska visit, Obama pushes Arctic agenda

2015/08/31

President Barack Obama is headed to Alaska for a climate change conference, a reality show shoot, and a stop above the Arctic Circle. While the US eyes the Arctic for its energy and military potential, its capabilities in the region are lagging behind.

Though this will be Obama’s second visit to Alaska, after a brief stop in Anchorage in 2009, he is scheduled to travel to a town above the Arctic Circle on Wednesday, making him the first US president to do so while in office.

The White House is promoting the visit as part of Obama’s push for climate change action. That will be a leading topic at the GLACIER conference in Anchorage on Monday evening. The Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience will be attended by Alaska natives and officials from the US and other Arctic countries, including Russia.

GLACIER is hosted by the US Department of State, and is unrelated to the US chairmanship of the Arctic Council, an international advisory body also including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden.

With the Arctic ice receding by 65 percent over the past four decades opening up access to natural resources and shipping routes, the region has become a subject of renewed interest. Reserves of oil and natural gas under the Arctic Ocean have been estimated at 90 billion barrels and 1670 trillion cubic feet, respectively.

For all its concern about the environment, in July the Obama administration issued a permit to Royal Dutch Shell for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea. Environmentalist groups have denounced the decision, and sought to block Shell’s ships and oil rigs from staging their operations out of Seattle. Obama has shrugged off the criticism, arguing that domestic oil production was vital to US jobs and energy independence.

Alaska lawmakers have urged greater US engagement in the region for the past several years, blasting the current capabilities as “woefully behind” other Arctic countries. As of 2013, the US had four icebreakers in active service, none of them nuclear; Canada had six, while Russia had 37.

Both Russia and NATO have held massive military drills in the Arctic earlier this year, deploying new hardware and forces in the region. This escalation of military activity is not necessarily about the struggle for resources, but ties into a broader conflict between Russia and the US-led bloc, Rob Huebert of the Center for Military and Strategic Studies told RT.

“The military capabilities that are being developed are very powerful,” Huebert said, “and of course, are going to entirely change the security structure of the Arctic region."

During his three-day tour, Obama is supposed to visit Kotzebue, known to the locals as Qikiqtagruk, home to about 3,000 people above the Arctic Circle. On Monday, NBC also announced that the president will make an appearance on ‘Running Wild With Bear Grylls,’ a popular reality show. The episode, presumably filmed during Obama’s scheduled visit to the Exit Glacier on Tuesday, will be shown later this year. The salmon-fishing town of Dillingham and the Kenai Fjords National Park are also on Obama’s agenda.

Most of the media’s attention has been on Obama’s symbolic gesture of restoring the native name to North America’s highest mountain. Rising 20,237 feet (6,168 m) above sea level, the peak has always been called Denali, or ‘Great One,’ by the native Athabaskan people. During the gold rush of 1896, however, a prospector named it after William McKinley, then a presidential candidate. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, six months into his second term, after presiding over the US conquest of Cuba and the Philippines from Spain.

“Generally believed to be central to the Athabaskan creation story, Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska natives,” the White House said in a statement announcing the change.

Though Alaska lawmakers have lobbied to restore the mountain’s name since 1975, legislators from McKinley’s home state of Ohio have fought to block the move. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision. Fellow Republican and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, however, was supportive.

The first sitting US president to visit Alaska was Warren Gamaliel Harding, in 1923. The most frequent presidential visitor was George W. Bush, who was in Alaska three times during his term in office, and also the only US president to have lived in the state, for several months in 1971. That same year, Richard Nixon was in Alaska to meet with Emperor Hirohito, the first Emperor of Japan to set foot on US soil.

A former Russian colony, Alaska was sold to the US in 1867, at a price of 2 cents per acre, or $7.2 million (approximately 121 million in today’s dollars). It was not until the discovery of gold in the 1890s that the US realized the true value of the territory, though.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Statue of Confederate president removed from UT Austin

2015/08/31

One of the nation's largest public universities has removed from prominent display on campus a statue of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America. The move comes amid a national uproar over Confederate symbols since the Charleston massacre.

Wrapped in plastic, the limestone statue that rested on the University of Texas-Austin's Main Mall was loaded onto a flatbed trailer on Sunday, along with a statue of former US President Woodrow Wilson. The statues were erected 82 years ago, according to the Austin-American Statesman.

Removal of the Davis statue was mainly prompted by a Student Government resolution, in addition to an outbreak of scrutiny applied to Confederate symbols since the June shooting of nine black parishioners of a Charleston, South Carolina, church by a Confederate sympathizer.

University president Gregory L. Fenves announced the decision to remove the statue this month, saying the school should no longer venerate the leader of the Confederate states, which seceded from the United States largely due to its defense of slavery. The Confederacy's break from the Union led to the American Civil War that lasted from 1861 to 1865.

Within 18 months, the Davis statue will be installed at the university's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. The fate of the Wilson statue is undecided, university officials said.

“This is an iconic moment. It really shows the power of student leadership,” said Gregory Vincent, UT’s vice president for diversity and community engagement, according to the Statesman.

Last week, state civil district Judge Karin Crump denied a temporary injunction to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that filed a temporary restraining order to keep the Davis statue in place.

“When you start cleansing statues from a center of higher learning, it’s just a dangerous precedent,” Kirk Lyons, attorney for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said of Crump's decision, according to The Daily Texan.

On Sunday, Lyons told the Statesman the removals represent an “ISIS-style cleansing of history,” referring to the destruction of cultural artifacts in the Middle East by the jihadist group Islamic State.

How DARE the University of Texas remove a statue of Jefferson Davis over a little thing like treason and the death of 600,000 Americans!!!
— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) August 30, 2015

Around 50 people watched the removal of the Davis statue, a UT Police Department spokeswoman told the Statesman.

The University of Texas has removed a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis from its campus so it can campaign for Ted Cruz.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) August 30, 2015

The statue had been vandalized many times over the years, most recently in June when the words "black lives matter" were painted on the Davis statue's base. The school, opened in 1883, did not admit blacks until it was forced to do so through a US Supreme Court court decision in 1950.

“Far from whitewashing history, we would put Jefferson Davis in his proper historical context.” Dr. Vincent said in his testimony at the Heman Sweatt Travis County Courthouse this month prior to Judge Crump's final ruling.

The school decided to keep on public display four other monuments to Confederate leaders with closer ties to the state, according to the Statesman. The statues are in place largely based on donations to the university by George Washington Littlefield, who fought in the Civil War with "Terry's Texas Rangers." Littlefield stipulated that his donations must be accompanied with acknowledgements of the state's Southern heritage.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Enormous new factory blast rocks Chinese industrial region

2015/08/31

97 percent of DC police issue no-confidence vote in Chief Cathy Lanier

2015/08/31

Nearly every member of the Washington, DC police union who voted declared that Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier isn’t able to properly manage the force’s resources and keep the citizens safe in a recent vote.

More than 1,100 District police officers voted this weekend in a survey conducted by an independent polling group that asked if they have confidence in Lanier, who has led the DC police department since 2007.

Only 28 members of the Fraternal Order of Police labor union expressed confidence in the chief and her policies, the FOP executive committee wrote in a statement about the vote. A total of 1,122 cast a no-confidence ballot in the online poll.

However, the union represents more than 3,600 police officers, sergeants and detectives out of the DC force’s nearly 4,000 police officers.

Voting began Saturday, just hours after a double murder on Friday night brought the 2015 homicide count in the nation’s capital to 105 ‒ equal to the total number of homicides in DC for all of 2014. FOP Secretary Marinos M. Marinos introduced the voting by blaming “poor management of MPD by the Mayor and Police Chief.” The poll ended Sunday evening, and the union released the results on Monday.

“Wave after wave of widespread violence has shaken this city and time after time, our officers have been told to stand fast,” the executive committee wrote in their statement. “We’ve been told that the status quo is working and we’ve been forced into a corner of lackluster, feckless, inefficient enforcement and been required to stand by and watch while the leaders of the department doubled-down on their stop-gap, gimmicky tactics.”

The union leadership noted that the FOP “has been frustrated with the leadership of MPD for years” due to a myriad of contractual and strategic complaints, including “impotent and ineffective policing strategies, disbanding of the most effective units, gimmicky deployment, toxic management... and an inability to fundamentally keep our neighborhoods, our citizens and our officers safe.”

Despite the no-confidence vote, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser expressed support for Lanier on Monday.

“After 25 years of policing DC streets, deploying officers and strategies, and building a force of highly qualified officers and leaders, in the good times and the tough times, too, I have every confidence in Chief Lanier,” she said in a statement.

Bowser and Lanier both blame the violence on an increase in synthetic drugs, as well as repeat violent offenders being involved in new crimes.

“We’re seeing a dramatically increasing number of people who are out on community release, under supervision, that have long,violent histories who are continuing to commit crime,” Lanier said Friday in an interview with WAMU.

Lanier called into question the timing of the vote, which occurred during the department’s first “All Hands on Deck” of the year. Over the course of the weekend, DC police recovered 21 illegal guns and arrested 16 people for possessing the illicit firearms.

“I realize that officers don’t like their schedules disrupted and I try to minimize it, but when we have violent crime we have to make the sacrifices that we all swore we would make when we took this job," Lanier said in a statement released before the results of the vote were made public.

The All Hands weekend began Friday, just one day after Bowser outlined her “Safer, Stronger DC” plan that called for increased police patrols, focusing on repeat violent offenders, increasing penalties for violent crimes committed on public transportation or in parks and recreation centers, incentivizing businesses to put up security cameras, implementing a new grant program for community non-profits, narrowing the definition of assault on a police officer, and repealing some traffic violations that are often seen as pretexts for a stop.

This was the first no-confidence vote of Lanier’s tenure as chief. She has spent her entire career with the MPD.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Spanish bank blocks payment to RT over EU sanctions against non-related media chief

2015/08/31

The British branch of the Spanish bank BBVA has blocked a transaction to RT, citing European sanctions against Russian media executive Dmitry Kiselev. Kiselev, who heads media holding company Rossiya Segodnya, is not affiliated with RT.

The transaction in question was due payment to RT by Axiom Media, the company that sells advertising on RT broadcasts in Britain. Although RT itself is not under sanctions, BBVA has not carried out a transaction to RT's account, saying it "could potentially be made available to an entity or body associated with Mr Dmitryi (sic) Konstantinovich Kiselyov."

Kiselev heads a Russian media holding company called Rossiya Segodnya, created after an overhaul of longtime Russian news agency RIA Novosti. Although "Rossiya Segodnya" translates as "Russia Today" in English (the name was used by RT before 2009 rebranding), the two news outlets are separate entities. Kiselev holds neither a paid nor unpaid position within RT, nor is he a stakeholder.

Yet, having blocked the money in connection with the situation with an entirely separate organization, the bank representatives said that the funds "available to an entity or a body associated with him [Kiselyov], or for his benefit, would potentially breach" European sanctions rules. Kiselev was slapped with individual sanctions by the EU along with other Russian individuals, whom Brussels believe to be responsible for the secession of Crimea from Ukraine last year.

"We are extremely outraged with the unlawful blocking of a payment to RT in Great Britain," RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement, adding that there are no legal grounds not to "transfer the money legally earned by RT."

In July, Kiselev's presence on EU's sanctions list hurt his own organization. Barclay's bank then froze a Rossiya Segodnya's account, with no formal notification or immediate justification for the move having been provided. A source in the British banking industry told the company that the freeze was related to the person heading it; Kiselev himself has called it "censorship."

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

24 yo black man with mental issues dies in prison after minor grocery theft

2015/08/31

A Virginia family is looking for justice after their 24-year old son’s death in prison. Accused of stealing approximately $5 worth of snacks, Jamycheal Mitchell has seen no trial since April as a judge described him as “incompetent” to stay it due to mental issues.

Mitchell was found dead at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, VA, on August 19, local WAVY-TV news channel reported. Now Mitchell’s family and their attorney have more questions than answers about what happened to Jamycheal.

“I think it’s twofold,” attorney Mark Krudys said. “It’s the death of her son [Mitchell's mother Sonia Adams], obviously, but it’s also the circumstance surrounding his death.”

The medical examiner’s report has been released yet.

Mitchell was arrested on April 22 for allegedly stealing some snacks at a local convenience store. According to court’s documents he took a Mountain Dew, a Snickers and a Zebra cake at 7-Eleven on George Washington Highway in Portsmouth.

Having spent almost four months in prison, Mitchell has not been brought to trial as the judge said the inmate was incompetent to stay the hearing because of mental issues. The judge then ruled that Mitchell had to be transferred to Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg. However, at the time, there were no beds available there, according to a general district court clerk.

According to a psychological evaluation Mitchell earlier admitted to having Bipolar disorder. Krudys has also confirmed that his clients’ son did suffer from a mental illness.

“It’s obvious that he did not receive the help that he needed, and that’s the main issue,” Krudys said.

It’s Krudys assumption that Mitchell was not taking any medicine while in jail, and hence not eating.

Jamycheal’s relatives claimed that he had lost a lot of weight.

“He was unrecognizable,” Mitchell’s aunt Roxanne Adams told the NewsChannel 3. “That's how bad it was. He was unrecognizable.”

Adams recalled that she did not recognize her nephew, whose body she said looked like a different person.

“I said this is not my nephew,” she said. “I asked them are you sure you have the right person."

The 24-year old man, who was 6-foot-3 and 185 lb. before prison, looked “probably 90 pounds and about 70 years old,” Adams said.

“If he would've gone to Eastern State we wouldn't be going through what we're going through now,” she added.

The family and Mark Krudys hope that Hampton Roads Regional Jail’s management may shed some light on the case.

“The focus is going to be what exactly they know, and what exactly they did and what they didn’t do,” Krudys said of jail staff and officials. “Either deal with the situation adequately at the jail or refer the person out to the appropriate place. In my mind, that would have been an emergency room if there were not an adequate bed available."

Mitchell’s mother Sonia Adams and his relatives believe that some of the answers could come from the jail’s records.

Hampton Roads Regional Jail’s superintendent is expected to issue an official statement on the case, according to WAVY.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Russian Orthodox Spokesman Calls on Faithful to Replace 'Cynical Elite'

2015/08/31

Not all that simple with Malaysian PM. Not just corruption, expert says

2015/08/31

Source: Pravda.Ru photo archive

Head of the Malaysian government Najib Razak has been accused of corruption. The Wall Street Journal and The Sarawak Report journalists revealed about $700 million. The funds were received in 2013, 2014, and 2015. It is noted that two transactions of over $11 million were made in 2014 and 2015 after the crash of Malaysian МН 370 and MH 17. People took to the streets in the capital of Malaysia protesting against Najib Razak.

Dmitry Mosyakov, Director of the Centre of South-Eastern Asia, Australia and Oceania at the Institute of Oriental Studies commented Pravda.Ru on whether the PM was bribed and who could do it.

According to him, there is political confrontation between Najib Razak and the "founder" of the Malaysian policy Mahathir bin Mohamad, who opposed the PM. Beside that, almost all political forces in Malaysia, traditionalists, Muslim radicals, pro-Western liberals intent to destroy the monolith of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

Thus, all the corruption scandals taking part in the country, are of a serious importance for the domestic policy, the expert noted.

"It is an important lever, which may be able to split UMNO, but in any case its monopoly over power will be significantly shaken.

Pliability of the Malaysian PM may be connected not only with the US pressure, but also with the fact that he wishes to obtain support of the Americans and influential Western forces, that act in Malaysia and oppose him as yet. Thus, he may be looking for a pivot in the relations with the US, doing favourable things for them," Mosyakov noted.

Answering the question why mostly those coming from China took to the protests against the Malaysian PM and what initiated the protests, Mosyakov said, that it is referred to the policy of "United Malaysian nation", which was put in place after the bloody acts between the Chinese and the Malaysians in the 60s. Given this concept, the political sphere is the hands of Malays, while the economic one is mostly in the hands of the Chinese.

Today, there occurred a very serious part of pro-Western Malay elite, which stands for the equality among all the groups of population," the expert explained.

Also read: Flight MH 17: One year on, lies galore and zero evidence against Russia

Pravda.Ru

Read article in Russian on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Mass riots spark, explosion occurs near Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada

2015/08/31

AP photo

Many demonstrators, who took part in the riots near the Verkhovna Rada in Kiev, were bribed. Channel 5 aired the video that showed the moment when the "demonstrators" were receiving 50-hryvnia notes from organizers of the riots.

Some of the protesters in the video were wearing white T-shirts, holding the flags of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky's party called Ukrop. A woman in the crowd said that she did not know why she was there for the meeting. Another woman could pronounce the word "decentralization" and admitted that she had come to stand at the rally for 50 hryvnia per hour.

A powerful explosion occurred in front of the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Kiev police chief Alexander Tereshchuk said that about 100 law-enforcers were injured during the riots on August 31, 2015.

Mass protests in front of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine began today as the parliament was discussing amendments to the Constitution regarding the decentralization of power.

Pravda.Ru

Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Russia, Belarus and Serbia learn to suppress 'Maidan'

2015/08/31

First-ever joint military exercises of paratroopers from Russia, Belarus and Serbia are to start in two days near Novorossiisk, Russia. The drills will be conducted to show resistance to anti-government riots and illegal armed groups, Commander of the Russian Airborne Troops, Colonel-General Vladimir Shamanov said.

Under the scenario of the drills that will be held on September 2-5, "anti-government elements" and regular armed forces will be trying to destabilize the state of affairs in a conditional state. The joint command will decide to take joint anti-terrorist actions to destroy illegal armed groups and restore law and order, the official said.

Vladimir Shamanov said that during the first stage of the drills, non-lethal weapons will be used in the course of "special operations to prevent unrest". The official did not specify what kind of non-lethal weapons they would be exactly.

According to the Commander of the Airborne Force, "the purpose of the exercises is to train the skills of a joint group in a special operation to detect and destroy the center for training illegal armed groups."

The drills will be conducted on the Raevsky range ground of the 7th Air Assault Division. The division will represent Russia in the drills. Serbia will send a separate airborne company to the drills, whereas Belarus - two companies of special forces, RIA Novosti reports.

"In total, the event will involve more than 700 troops, 20 aircraft and helicopters, 100 units of hardware, including of Belarus," said Shamanov.

Foreign participants have already arrived to the area of the maneuvers. Serbian commandoes will receive equipment and arms from the Russian Defense Ministry.

As for non-lethal weapons, it is worth noting that Russian riot police may soon receive state-of-the-art shields complete with built-in electroshock devices.

The Ministry of Interior plans to purchase 100 test electroshock shields that will protect its wearer from impacts of heavy objects, as well as from electric current: the back side of the shield is covered with special protective rubber film. The new shield makes it possible to use a taser in a conventional way as well. It will take a person up to 20 minutes to recover after being exposed to an electric shock of the new shield.

Politonline

Read article in Russian on politonline.ru

Also read:

The impending Russian Maidan

One year after Maidan, Ukraine turns into US-obedient Nazi state

Russia fed up with Western boorishness

Russia names its prime enemy

[embedded content]

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Japan builds up military budget and equipment

2015/08/31

Source: Pravda.Ru photo archive

Tokyo builds up its military budget, that will make up record-high $42,4 billion, the Chinese TV channel NHK reported on Monday.

In comparison with the current fiscal year, which comes to an end in March 2016, the next budget will increase 2,2%.

It will be the fourth stage of Japan increasing expenditures for the military purpose. The Japanese authorities took to such tactics after the country's PM Shinzō Abe put an end to the 11 years of expenditures decrease for defence.

The Japanese military aims at constructing joint sites with the US to watch the situation in space. There will be also enlarged the staff dealing with cyber threat, and purchased new military equipment, namely the AVV7 Assault Amphibious Vehicles, F-35 fighters, tiltrotor military aircraft V-22, and unmanned surveillance aircraft RQ-4 Global Hawk.

Analysts also note more active presence of the Japanese armed forces in the East China Sea, and the Western part of the Pacific Ocean.

Also read: Japan to allow military actions abroad

Pravda.Ru

Read article in Russian on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Europe turns into cesspool of the world

2015/08/31

The American propaganda machine never stops trumpeting about the imminent Russian threat. The American political elite portrays Russia as a state that threatens Europe in the first place. With this pretext in mind, the USA and NATO continue to militarize Europe. European populations do not show any protests, let along governments. Few people in Europe realize that it is not Russia that they should fear. Let's imagine the future of Europe in two or three decades.

Could you imagine 20 years ago that all modern cities would be equipped with CCTV cameras that would be following you everywhere - in buildings, in trains, in buses and cars and everywhere else? Nowadays, no one raises the question of violation of human rights and privacy. These issues have been skillfully replaced with concerns for personal safety and struggle against the terrorist threat.

Edward Snowden told the world that US secret services control nearly all of the world wide web. It would not be a surprise to know that NSA's secret laboratories continue the research for establishing control over mankind, and it goes about not only humans.

Every person will have chips implanted underneath their skin

For example, almost all pets in the West have chips underneath their skin. Chipped livestock is common practice in several countries of the West as well. In the US, this technology has been developing rapidly. People already volunteer to have chips implanted in their bodies so that police could find them in case of emergency. All US passports have integrated chips, like credit cards.

In fact, it is not Russian aggression that threatens Europe. Europe is facing the danger of Washington-generated Islamization that will deprive Europe of cultural and Christian identity. Why not throw good old Europe into the melting pot of nationalities and religions so that it is easier to control it?

There was a shocking news report last week about more than 70 dead bodies of Syrian refugees in an abandoned truck in the east of Austria. Clearly, the flow of migrants from Muslim countries is larger than official statistics says.

For instance, Bulgaria, according to quotas, must accept about 3,000 workers. In real life, there will be 60-70 thousand of them this year, Bulgarian bloggers write. Many national governments of the EU warn that key provisions of the migration policy of Brussels are not working. However, Brussels continues to repeat the mantra of tolerance and multiculturalism. Is Brussels independent in making such decisions?

One may also wonder why refugees from Iraq, Syria and Africa do not go to Australia, the USA and Canada. Why don't they escape to neighboring well-to-do countries, such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan? The answer is simple. In the United States and Canada, there is tough immigration legislation. Australia turns boats full of migrants to the "concentration camp' on the island of Nauru. Turkey and neighboring Arab countries do not allocate public funds to maintain refugees.

Europe was chosen as a cesspool for those who flee from US-instigated destruction and wars for democracy.

All Orthodox nations are dying out, and Sunni Muslims are coming to replace them. Germany receives 800,000 inquiries for refugee status from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States of Europe: A few decades to go

Having been brainwashed with the concept of the Russian threat, the Europeans do not realize how the US is militarizing their countries. Washington has been building NATO command points and increasing its contingent throughout Europe. By the middle of the current century, European capitals may become Muslim-dominated cities.

Social explosions may lead to the creation of, for example, "the Party of Islamic Justice" that will win parliamentary elections in the United States of Europe thus giving birth to a new, 1-billion-strong country, with 600 million originating from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

This Sunni state will leave traces of "traditional beliefs" in the face of Christians somewhere in the north. The army of this mega state will be based on American principles. The army will consist of the people, who will be ready to wage war against anyone. They will not have the European genetic memory of the two world wars. The model for the establishment of such a state has already been used in the creation of the Taliban and the Islamic State. There is even a small range ground in the center of Europe - Kosovo.

After 2030, financial oligarchy will initiate the collapse of China, start a conflict with Japan and launch the operation to conquer Russia. A Maidan-like revolution in Russia will be possible, as Russia's current education system will prepare a new generation of slaves that would be addicted to gadgets. If you take away the Internet from such people (the Internet is controlled by the USA), the crowd will crush the culprit. The war against Russia will reduce the global population and will give the Americans an opportunity to colonize Russia. The European part of the country will be annexed to the United States of Europe, while Russia's Asian part will become another state of the USA.

After the war, the world will be adjusted to America's standards. Under the slogan of developing healthcare and anti-terrorist struggle, chips will be implanted under the skin of every human being. World's elites will start cloning themselves, while common people will work for the evolution of the human body.

The article may sound like a script for an apocalyptical motion picture, a fruit of someone's imagination. If so, think of the war in Ukraine that seemed to be unreal to all two years ago.

Lyuba Lulko
Pravda.Ru

Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru

Also read:

With free migration, mankind is doomed

Do Europeans owe their lives to migrants?

Germany's Fourth Reich strangles Europe

[embedded content]

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )