Thursday, February 27, 2014

Court: School Can Ban U.S. Flag Shirts for Safety

SAN FRANCISCO — Officials at a Northern California high school acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during the Mexican heritage celebration Cinco de Mayo, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the officials' concerns of racial violence outweighed students' freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day.

The unanimous three-judge panel said past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions. The court said schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.
"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real," she wrote.
The case garnered national attention as many expressed outrage that students were barred from wearing patriotic clothing. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based American Freedom Law Center, a politically conservative legal aid foundation, and other similar organizations took up the students' case and sued the high school and the school district.
William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, said he plans to ask a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case. Becker said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if he loses again.
"The 9th Circuit upheld the rights of Mexican students celebrating a holiday of another country over U.S. student proudly supporting this country," Becker said.
Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when Mexican troops defeated a French army of Napoleon III, then considered the mightiest military in the world. It is considered a bigger holiday in the U.S., celebrating Mexican heritage with parades and revelry in many major cities.
Nightly News After what’s been a relentlessly cold winter, new potholes are testing the patience of drivers across the Northeast and Midwest.

Another in a seemingly endless string of brutal winter storms is gathering to unload its fury this weekend, starting as heavy snow Saturday in the Plains before moving east with the potential for treacherous ice accumulations Sunday and Monday from Ohio to Washington, D.C., and as far south as Tennessee, experts predict.

"This has been an unusual winter, with a lot of storms one right after the other," said Bob Becker, a maintenance engineer for the Missouri Transportation Department.
"All of the snowplows are on, the spreaders are in the trucks — all the equipment is ready to go for this weekend," Becker told NBC station KYTV of Springfield.  Ice could accumulate as far north as New York by Monday, with heavy snow across the entire Northeast.

The remnants of the heavy rain system flooding parts of California were expected to drop 5 to 10 inches of snow beginning late Thursday night over an area stretching from Montana and Idaho south to Colorado and Utah, the National Weather Service said. Blizzard warnings were in effect Thursday night for parts of western Montana.
But it's a second system moving in right afterward that will cause the real havoc as it begins trekking east Saturday.
The storm will bring significant ice accumulation to much of the Ohio Valley by Sunday, 

Frigid Produces Potholes ‘like Minefields

Precisely where it will hit hardest depends on whether it trends north or south. If it edges north, dangerous ice will likely coat the streets, trees and power lines of major cities like Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; if it tips south, the ice zone would be parked mainly over Tennessee and Kentucky.
Either way, the ice will then move into the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, threatening to snarl the Monday morning commute in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., according to The Weather Channel.
Heavy snow was expected around the ice storm, with as much as half a foot in Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis and Des Moines, Iowa, over the weekend and in New York and Boston by Monday.
"This is more likely than not to be a pretty big snow storm," said Greg Postel, a severe weather specialist for The Weather Channel.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

House Passes Bill to Allow Cellphone 'Unlocking'

Image: Cellphone users Ben Margot / Associated Press
An online petition submitted to the White House last year asked that consumers be able to legally unlock their phones.
The U.S. House on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow you to legally "unlock" your cellphone so that it can be used with any carrier.
The vote was 295-114, with 95 Democrats joining 200 Republicans in favor of the measure. The bill now goes to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.
The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act would repeal a rule put in place in 2012 that stopped consumers from unlocking their cellphones to use on other carriers. The bill would also allow consumers to seek help from others to unlock phones without breaking the law.

According to the sponsors, the bill was the result of an online petition submitted to the White House in 2013 that asked that consumers be able to legally unlock their phones.

U.S. wireless carriers often tether, or "lock," smartphones to their networks to encourage consumers to renew their mobile contracts. Consumers, for their part, can often buy new devices at a heavily subsidized price in return for committing to long-term contracts with a single carrier.

Major carriers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc, Sprint Corp, T-Mobile US and U.S. Cellular, in December made a voluntary pledge to make it easier for consumers to unlock their cellphones, under pressure from consumer groups and the Federal Communications Commission.

Under current law, those unlocking their phones without permission could face legal ramifications, including jail.

— NBC News' Frank Thorp and Reuters contributed to this report.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Big Business to Arizona: Gay Discrimination Bill Bad for Economy

By Miranda Leitsinger

Apple, American Airlines and Marriott delivered a message to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Monday: State legislation allowing companies to discriminate against gays on religious grounds would be bad for business.
The conservative Republican governor is facing growing pressure over the bill, which the statehouse passed last Thursday. Opponents have called it "state-sanctioned discrimination" and an embarrassment.

Apple and a slew of big-name firms issued letters and made phone calls to Brewer on Monday telling her the state would take a financial hit if the law passed, according to CNBC.
Apple is just about to open large new glass manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona.
Marriott, meanwhile, noted that their bottom-line could suffer as a result of the bill.
This measure "would have profound negative impacts on the hospitality industry on the Arizona and on the state's overall economic climate for years to come," the hotel chain said in a statement.
American Airlines noted how deeply Arizona suffered during the recession and said: "Our economy thrives best when the doors of commerce are open to all. This bill sends the wrong message."
The state's to U.S. Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Republican, also weighed in on Twitter, asking for a veto, and the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee — the state will host football's premier event next year — said it didn't support the legislation.
A trio of Republican Arizona state lawmakers even urged a veto on Monday, despite earlier supporting it.

The three state senators, who initially voted in favor of the measure, said in a letter to Brewer that the proposal had been mistakenly approved in haste and had already caused "immeasurable harm" to Arizona's national image.
"While our sincere intent in voting for this bill was to create a shield for all citizens' religious liberties, the bill has instead been mischaracterized by its opponents as a sword for religious intolerance," read the letter by state Senators Adam Driggs, Steve Pierce and Bob Worsley.  The measure, which passed the state Senate 17-13 in a party line vote, would have failed in the Senate had those three voted against it.  Brewer said over the weekend that she's "got plenty of time," to make a decision on whether or not to sign or veto the bill. She has until Friday.

— Reuters contributed to this report

U.S. Tracked Drug Lord's Cell Phones, Leading to Capture

American officials who had been tracking the world’s most notorious drug lord were afraid that he had slipped through their grasp one more time.
The DEA, ICE and the U.S. Marshals had been tracking cellphones used by associates of Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, AKA El Chapo, the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, and by last Monday they had traced him to his ex-wife’s house. Guzman was wanted in six different U.S. courts for allegedly smuggling billions of dollars of cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana across the border and had a $5 million U.S. pricetag on his head.

But just before Mexican Marines raided the home in Culiacan, Mexico, Guzman slipped through a secret door beneath his bathtub and into the city sewer system. And most of the wiretapped phones went dead.
“At this point the phones went out of service,” said a U.S. law enforcement official. “It’s likely he was tipped.”

One of the phones remained active, however. “It led us to Mazatlan,” said the official.
Early Saturday morning, Mexican Marines arrested Guzman, 59, and several associates at a condo tower in the beach resort town of Mazatlan, 220 kilometers south of Culiacan, ending a 13-year manhunt for the largest importer of drugs to the U.S. – and years of frustration for U.S. law enforcement.
Chapo Guzman had been on the lam since 2001, when he escaped in a laundry cart from a Mexican prison. The hunt for Guzman intensified after 2007, when then-Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched a war against the nation’s drug cartels. Eighty-thousand people have died since 2007 in a multi-front war between the Sinaloa, Gulf and Zetas cartels and the Mexican government.
The U.S. has been supplying information from wiretaps to Mexican officials for many years. But each time they tracked Guzman to a specific location, and told Mexican authorities were to look, their quarry escaped. In 2012, the U.S. pinpointed Guzman’s address in Los Cabos, only to watch as he eluded capture yet again.
“Every time he gets away, they tell us, ‘He got out the back door,’” one American official told reporters at the time. The official said that Americans involved in the manhunt had started to joke that there was “no word in Spanish for surround.”

 Powerful Drug Kingpin Captured

But high-tech surveillance soon put them back on Guzman’s tail. As U.S. and Mexican authorities arrested various members of the Sinaloa cartel, which controls drug trafficking throughout much of Western Mexico, they were able to use each defendant’s cell phone to lead them deeper into the cartel hierarchy, and closer to Guzman. By February, said officials, they were tracking four or five cellphones used by close associates.
And by then Guzman had become "complacent," according to former senior DEA official Mike Vigil. "Once you become complacent, you become vulnerable," said Vigil.
Mexican authorities had also uncovered a key piece of evidence. Earlier this month, a Sinaloa courier told them during questioning that Guzman had a series of safe houses in Culiacan with secret steel doors connected to tunnels and to the city sewer system.
With the help of U.S. electronic surveillance, the Marines were able to determine which of the seven houses Guzman was using as a hideout, and raided the house on Monday, Feb. 17.
Guzman made another of his miraculous escapes, but still had one of the bugged phones – a satellite phone. On the day he escaped, Guzman used the phone to summon help.

Guzman and his associates, including his wife, former beauty queen Emma Coronel, and their twin baby daughters, were asleep when Mexican Marines burst into two condos on the fourth and fifth floor of the Miramar development early Saturday morning. No shots were fired.

U.S. officials said they were impressed by the professionalism of the Mexican Marines, who have conducted many of the recent operations to capture cartel leaders. “I’ve got to tell you,” said one law enforcement agent. “There is a lot of talk about how great the Navy SEALs are, the British commandos. These Marines are under-recognized. They are right up there with the best of them.”

A senior DEA official said the Marines’ attitude marked a change from past experiences with Mexican authorities. “In times past when we almost got him, it was, ‘Let’s go back to regroup,’” he said. “This time there was no going back to regroup. They stayed on the trail. And he was driven out of his briarpatch, and into the open.”  One U.S. official who served for many years in Mexico said that the U.S. aid to the Marines was not just intelligence, but included “boots on the ground,” in the form of U.S. Marshals.  “They are manhunters,” said the official. “They came down, showed the Mexicans their techniques, helped train them, and stayed with them.”

Once Guzman was in custody, the Marines flew him to Mexico City, where he was displayed to the public as proof that after many close calls he’d finally been captured.  Guzman was serving a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking when he escaped from prison in Mexico in 2001. He is also under federal indictment for drug trafficking in San Diego, Brooklyn, N.Y., El Paso, Chicago and Miami. The DEA announced a $5 million reward for his capture in 2005.

On Saturday, Attorney General Eric Holder and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson congratulated the Mexican government on Guzman’s capture. “The operation led by the Mexican government overnight to capture Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman Loera is a significant victory and milestone in our common interest of combating drug trafficking, violence and illicit activity along our shared border,” said Johnson. “ We congratulate our Mexican partners in this achievement and we will continue to work collaboratively with them to ensure a border region that is safe and secure, for the communities and citizens of both our nations."

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Video Shows Principal Allegedly Dragging Kindergarten Students

A Bridgeport, Conn. schools administrator said Friday that a video showing a principal dragging two young students down a hallway should have led to the principal's firing.

The videos, made public this week, show Tisdale School principal Carmen Perez Dickson dragging two kindergartners through the halls on different occasions, according to Sandra Kase, chief administrative officer for Bridgeport Schools.

Both were in the spring of 2012.
The Board of Education investigated the incidents, and in October 2013 it voted to suspend Dickson for six months, rather than fire her, something Kase had recommended.
"The board did not exactly agree with us, so the action that was taken was not what we recommended. If I saw the same evidence and saw the same video today, we'd support the same recommendation we made at the time," Kase said.
Video of the children being dragged was provided to NBC Connecticut by the mothers of the students involved.
Board members were divided on the punishment for Dickson. Leticia Colon voted to have her fired.
"Children go to school to learn and to be respected and we are an example. And if we start to bully, then we can't expect much from these children. They will learn to bully others," Colon said.

Dickson's attorney said her client's actions were within Board of Education policy guidelines in using reasonable force.
Dickson will return from her six-month suspension next month, but she will not return as principal at Tisdale School, according to Kase.


— NBC Connecticut

Vet Shocked to Learn of Medal of Honor: 'I fell to my knees'

Melvin Morris was commanding a strike force on a mission near Chi Lang, South Vietnam, when his special forces group came under attack and a fellow commander was killed near an enemy bunker.

Despite massive enemy fire directed at him and his men, hitting him three times, the 72-year-old Morris told The Associated Press on Friday that he was able to get to his fallen comrade and recover the body. He also retrieved a map that included strategic information that would have been trouble if it fell into enemy hands.

Image: Melvin Morris U.S. Army via AP
Melvin Morris of Cocoa, Fla. More than four decades after Morris was commended for courageous actions while a staff sergeant during combat operations on Sept. 17, 1969, in South Vietnam, President Barack Obama will bestow on Morris, now 72, and 23 other veterans the Medal of Honor.
More than four decades later, as a way to try to correct potential acts of bias spanning three wars, President Barack Obama will bestow the Medal of Honor on the Florida man and 23 other veterans. They come after a decade-long congressionally mandated review of minorities who may have been passed over for the U.S. military's highest honor because of long-held prejudices.
Morris became one of the first soldiers to don a "green beret" in 1961 and volunteered twice for deployments to Vietnam during the war. After his Sept 17, 1969, ordeal, the then-Staff Sgt. Morris received a Distinguished Service Cross in 1970. He said he never realized that being black might have kept the higher honor from him.
"I never really did worry about decorations," Morris said.
He got a huge surprise when the Army contacted him in May and arranged for Obama to call him at his Cocoa, Fla., home.
"I fell to my knees, I was shocked," Morris said. "President Obama said he was sorry this didn't happen before. He said this should have been done 44 years ago."

The Associated Press
Image: Santiago J. Erevia, Jose Rodela, Melvin Morris AP
From left, Spec. 4 Santiago J. Erevia, Sgt. 1st Class Jose Rodela and Staff Sgt. Melvin Morris. Seeking to correct potential acts of bias spanning three wars, President Barack Obama will award the Medal of Honor on March 18, 2014, to 24 Army veterans, including Erevia, Rodela and Morris, who are still alive and fought in the Vietnam War.

  

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Last-Minute Pharmacy Switch 'Sordid,' Death-Row Inmate Argues

By Tracy Connor

Lawyers for a Missouri prisoner on death-row slammed the state Thursday for refusing to identify the new pharmacy that is supplying the drugs for his lethal injection next week.
"Utterly nothing is known about this pharmacy," the defense said in court papers, saying the secrecy deprives inmate Michael Taylor of the right to investigate the source of the chemicals.
Taylor, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl, got one compounding pharmacy in Tulsa, Okla., to agree not to supply pentobarbital to the prison by suing them.
The state then turned around and said it had found a new pharmacy to buy the lethal dose and planned to proceed with the Feb. 26 execution.
"Whether one supports or opposes capital punishment, there is something sordid about rushing to execute a person less than a week after switching the supplier of the lethal drug–especially where, as here, the drug is effectively unregulated and experimental and has already provided cause for alarm," Taylor's legal team wrote.
They cited the case of Michael Wilson, who reportedly said, "I feel my whole body burning,” after he was given an injection cocktail that included pentobarbital.
Death-penalty states are scrambling to obtain drugs because the manufacturers refuse to sell them for executions. Some have turned to compounding pharmacies, which are less regulated, but even some of those are now deciding the sales are not worth the hassle and controversy.
Image: Michael Anthony Taylor Missouri Correctional Office via AP file
Michael Anthony Taylor is scheduled for execution Feb. 26.

Can a Divided Opposition Control the Violence in Ukraine?

The bloody collapse of a ceasefire between the Ukrainian government and the opposition has raised questions about who's in control of the protests in Kiev's Independence Square and who can stop the situation from descending into even more deadly chaos.
As NBC News' Richard Engel reported, it was front-line demonstrators who shattered a fragile truce just hours after it was announced late Wednesday into early Thursday by the leaders of three political parties who have been leading the anti-government movement since the fall.

“The three leaders who apparently accepted the ceasefire were not in control of that situation," Eugene Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said of armed protesters' surge forward, which sparked automatic gunfire from riot police.
While the crowds that have been flocking to the square include ordinary Ukrainians who say they don't identify with any party, there are concerns that right-wing militants are trying to hijack a grassroots campaign against the ruling Party of Regions and President Viktor Yanukovych.
Image: Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych ANDRIY MOSIENKO / Ukrainian government via EPA
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
“The young people who have turned up in the last month, the ones with the Molotov cocktails and the firearms, they are not controlled by the political parties. They are radicalized elements,” said Dominique Arel, chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa.
“The parties are not controlling the front-line activists. No one is controlling them.”
The official opposition is divided into three camps:
  • The Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR, which translates to "Punch"), headed by former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko. The 6-foot-7 pugilist, who has a Ph.D but little government experience, may be the most popular man in the country right now.
  • The Fatherland party, led by former economic and foreign minister Arseniy Yatseniuk . It was founded by Yulia Tymoshenko, the hero of 2004's so-called Orange Revolution, who became prime minister but was jailed after Yanukovych took power.
  • The Svoboda, or Freedom Party, helmed by nationalist Oleh Tyahnybok, leans to the right and draws support from the western, Euopean-allied regions of the country. Although it has sought a more mainstream profile, some say it's linked to a paramilitary group that uses a Nazi-style symbol.
Image: Vitalii Klitschko ANDRII SKAKODUB / AFP - Getty Images
Vitali Klitschko addressing policemen guarding the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev on February 20, 2014.
The strange-bedfellows makeup of the opposition certainly raises questions about how it would govern if it succeeds in driving the Party of Regions and Yanukovych from power.
James Collins, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said the fissures are also contributing to the disarray in the streets.

“The real problem is that Ukraine has not had a leadership – opposition or president – that is able to bring a consensus about stopping the violence or where Ukraine should go next,” Collins said on MSNBC on Thursday.
Mark Nieman, a political science professor at Missouri University who recently traveled to Kiev to study the protesters, called them a diverse group united by their "desperation with lawlessness, corruption and lack of opportunity."
Troubling to some, however, is the apparent ascendance of stone-throwing protesters aligned with the radical Right Sector, a group that thinks the Freedom Party is too liberal. There may be militant left-wingers and even anarchists in the mix, too.

Situation in Ukraine grows deadlier

"They would rather not have violence," he added, as the death toll from the fighting soared. "Because it has a way of getting out of hand."


Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Faith-Healing Parents Get Prison for Son's Death


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A Pennsylvania couple who believe in faith-healing rather than modern medicine will each spend the next three and half to seven years behind bars for the death of their 8-month-old son, the second time one of their ill children died without seeing a doctor.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner told Herbert and Catherine Schaible on Wednesday that it wasn't 8-month-old Brandon's time to die.

He said: "You've killed two of your children... not God, not your church, not religious devotion -- you."
At the time, they were under court orders to seek medical care for their children after their 2-year-old son Kent died of untreated pneumonia in 2009.

Each devout parent received up to seven years in prison to be followed by 30 months of probation. Herbert Schaible, 45, has remained behind bars while awaiting sentencing, his 44-year-old wife is set to report to prison next month.
The prosecution asked for a sentence of eight to 16 years.
In November, the devout parents pleaded no contest to third-debree murder. They are third-generation members of a small Pentacostal community, the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.

Both expressed remorse and apologized for violating a court order to seek medical care for their children following the 2009 death of a 2-year-old son of untreated pneumonia.
Their six surviving minor children are now in foster care.
A lawyer for Catherine Schaible explored their religious beliefs at the sentencing. Her husband's lawyer argues that no malice was involved.
“We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power,” Herbert Schaible said in a 2013 police statement. Medicine, he said, “is against our religious beliefs.”
A jury had convicted both parents of involuntary manslaughter in Kent's death, and they were put on 10 years of probation that included orders to seek medical care if any other child got sick.
After Brandon's death, an irate judge found they had violated parole.
Prosecutors have described the boys' symptoms as “eerily similar,” and said they included labored breathing and a refusal to eat. Catherine Schaible's lawyer, though, said her client tried to feed Brandon during his illness, and applied baby powder to keep him comfortable.

Their pastor, Nelson Clark, has said the Schaibles lost their sons because of a “spiritual lack” in their lives and insisted they would not seek medical care even if another child appeared near death.
— NBC Philadelphia

School Coach Charged With Murder of Missouri Girl


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An middle-school coach was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the death of a Missouri girl who was taken off the street just blocks from her home a day before — as neighbors watched in horror.
A body believed to be that of 10-year-old Hailey Owens was found Wednesday at a Springfield, Mo., home owned by the suspect, Craig Michael Wood, 45.

A complete autopsy was pending, but Police Chief Paul Williams said authorities “have a high degree of confidence” in the preliminary identification, according to The Associated Press.
Wood, 45, of Springfield also faces kidnapping and armed criminal action charges, according to Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson, who filed the charges late Wednesday afternoon.
Owens was walking to a friend’s house in Springfield before 5 p.m. Tuesday. Witnesses told investigators that a man in a gold-colored Ford Ranger approached her, grabbed her, threw her in his truck and drove away.
The chief said that witnesses to the abduction called 911 to report the truck's license number. Resident Ricky Riggins told the Springfield News-Leader he chased the fleeing pickup in his car after a neighbor tried to pull the girl away.
"I couldn't keep up," Riggins told the newspaper. "He was probably five to six cars ahead of me. ... It was so fast."
Wood was arrested inside the truck parked outside his small, single-story home on Tuesday night.
In a statement Wednesday, Springfield School District Superintendent Norm Ridder said Wood works as a paraprofessional and athletic coach at Pleasant View K-8 School.

He has been worked for the school district since Aug. 18, 1998, Ridder said.
Officials said Owens did not attend that school and likely did not know Wood.
A records search shows Wood had little criminal history. He pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance in 1990 in Greene County and was fined $100. Wood also was convicted in 2001 for illegal taking of wildlife, the News-Leader reported.

Craig Michael Wood Greene County Sheriff
Craig Michael Wood

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Tourists Must Leave Egypt By Feb. 20 or Face Attack: Militants

 A militant Islamist group has warned tourists to leave Egypt and threatened to attack any who stay in the country after February 20, raising the prospect of a new front in a fast-growing insurgency.

The Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis group, which claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed two South Korean tourists and an Egyptian on Sunday, made the statement on an affiliated Twitter account.

"We recommend tourists to get out safely before the expiry of the deadline," read the tweet, written in English.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has said in the past that it does not post statements on social media sites but statements that appeared on the Twitter account in the past have afterwards surfaced on jihadi websites the group does say it uses.
Islamist militants have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the army deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in July, but Sunday's attack on a tourist bus marks a strategic shift to soft targets that could devastate an economy already reeling from political turmoil.
"What Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has announced, threatening to target tourists in the coming period, puts new challenges in front of the Egyptian security apparatus and the state in general," said Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif.
The uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 scared off many tourists, dealing a major blow to an industry that was a major employer and accounted for more than 10 percent of gross domestic product before the anti-Mubarak revolt.
Visitors are down to a trickle since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed Mursi, triggering a bloody political crisis.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, Egypt's most active Islamist militant organization, has threatened to topple the interim government installed by Sisi.

"Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis poses the most formidable security threat in current-day Egypt," said Anthony Skinner, Middle East and North Africa director at risk analyst Maplecroft.
"This is not only reflected in the attack on the tourist bus in Taba last weekend, but also in the series of bombings in the Nile Valley and Nile Delta regions."
In one of the boldest attacks claimed by Ansar, a car bomb killed 16 people at security headquarters in the city of Mansoura on December 24. The attack was claimed on the same Twitter account before jihadi sites carried the official statement.
While security forces have crushed Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has become more brazen.
The group has extended its reach beyond the Sinai to cities including Cairo, where they claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt on the interior minister.
"This statement, if genuine, would add tourism quite explicitly to the target set already outlined by Ansar, which includes security forces and economic interests of the state and the army," said Anna Boyd, an analyst at London-based IHS Jane's.
An army source told Reuters that the latest militant attacks were a reaction to a military offensive which was hurting militants. "They are breathing their last breath," he said.

Monday, February 17, 2014

North Korea's Horrors 'Strikingly Similar' to Nazi Acts

By  Alexander Smith

Atrocities committed by North Korea against its own people are "strikingly similar" to those perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, the head of a United Nations panel said Monday after publishing an unprecedented report.
The year-long investigation called for urgent action by the international community to stop allleged crimes against humanity committed by Kim Jong Un and his regime.

"At the end of the Second World War so many people said, 'If only we had known, if only we had known the wrongs that were done in the countries of the hostile forces,'" inquiry chairman Michael Kirby told a press conference in Geneva after releasing the report.
"Well now the international community does know … there will be no excusing the failure of action because we didn't know - we do know," Kirby said, holding up a copy of the report.

The report comes a year after the U.N. Human Rights Council set up the Commission of Inquiry into the D.P.R.K. (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) in March last year. It said hundreds of North Korean officials, "right up to the highest level of state," were potentially responsible for what it called "unspeakable atrocities" against their own people.

"The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world."
The commissioners also wrote a letter to Kim Jong Un informing the North Korean ruler that they would be recommending referring his country to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This was "to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for the crimes against humanity referred to in this letter and in the commission’s report.

The report also warned China that it may be "aiding and abetting crimes against humanity" with its policy of forcibly repatriating North Koreans who fled across its borders. Kirby wrote another letter to China's charge d'affaires in Geneva, Wu Haitao, saying that those caught fleeing to China and sent back to North Korea were likely to be tortured or executed. Haitao replied to say that this was not true.

With its pleas for cooperation flatly ignored by North Korea, the inquiry compiled their 400-page report by interviewing hundreds of victims and experts over the past year. These people spoke about the indoctrination, starvation, and torture endured in everyday life in North Korea.
But the report also shed new light on the country's darkest side - its labor camps.
As many as 120,000 North Koreans are thought to be imprisoned across the country, many of them in four large camps. This number may have shrunk in recent years, according to the report, but only because many of the inmates have been murdered or starved to death.

Andrea Mitchell: UN's 'Shocking' report on North Korea
NBC News
The abject life in these prisons has been documented before by rights groups such as Amnesty International, which last year released satellite imagery and first-hand accounts from escaped prisoners.
Digital Globe
Satellite imagery of Political Prison Camp No. 25, in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province.
The U.N. report contains more of this harrowing testimony, which it says is tantamount to "extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence." It compared conditions to camps run by the Nazis during World War II and gulags set up in Soviet Russia.

Comparing the crimes committed by North Korea to the Nazis, Kirby told Reuters on Monday: "Some of them are strikingly similar."
The report added: "The unspeakable atrocities that are being committed against inmates of the 'kwanliso' political prison camps resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian states established during the 20th century.
"The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns. The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world."
In a statement to Reuters, North Korea said it "categorically and totally rejects the report," which it said was based on faked material.
Reuters contributed to this report.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Bullying's Health Effects Snowball Over Time

By Hayley Goldbach

Image: Scene from the movie "Bully" The Weinstein Company
Kids who were bullied like those in the film "Bully," pictured above, had worse physical and mental health, and the effect seemed to snowball over time.
Kids who are victims of bullying have worse mental and physical health, more symptoms of depression and lower self-worth — and the effect seems to get worse as time goes on, according to new research.
Previous research has shown that bullying can lead to health problems, and the study in Monday's Pediatrics demonstrated that the effects of bullying can actually snowball over time.
The researchers followed 4,297 children in Los Angeles, Birmingham, and Houston at three points: fifth, seventh, and 10th grades. The kids were asked about bullying and also completed questionnaires designed to look for symptoms of depression, low self-esteem and poor physical health.
Those who were being bullied had high levels of depressive symptoms, low self-worth and more problems with basic physical activity. And the longer the bullying went on, the worse the problem was. For example, 10th graders who were being bullied reported problems, but the worst problems were reported by kids who experienced bullying in fifth and seventh grades, too. Almost half of these continuously bullied kids had poor psychological health — seven times more than kids who had never been bullied.
"We're seeing that the effects of bullying get worse over time," said Dr. Laura Bogart, a social psychologist in the Division of General Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and lead author on the study. "This gives more evidence that it's important to intervene early."
So what should parents do to protect their kids? Talk to them and know the signs of bullying, suggests Dr. Bogart. Unexplained cuts and bruises or signs of troubled mental health — unexplained anxiety, or a child who suddenly doesn't want to go to school — are all red flags.
Simple questions for the child like "how was your day at school?" can help assess if a child is having issues.

"Hopefully [parents and other adults] can step in and stop some of these bad effects of bullying before they happen," she said.

First published February 16th 2014, 2:52 am  

Wicked Winter: New England Slammed With Another Blast

Image: A tree fell toward a house in Sandwich, Mass.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Elderly driver backs over 7, killing 3, after church in Florida

WFLA-TV
An investigator and a bystander at the scene of an accident that killed three elderly women Sunday in Bradenton, Fla.
An elderly Florida woman is unlikely to face criminal charges after she backed out of a parking space into a crowd of pedestrians, killing three senior citizens, authorities said Monday.
Doreen Landstra, 79, of Bradenton, Fla., lost control of her Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utility vehicle after church late Sunday morning at Sugar Creek Country Club, the state Highway Patrol said.

Landstra began backing out of a handicapped parking space but then pulled forward to negotiate another parked vehicle, the Highway Patrol said in a statement. As she tried to pull back out, the rear of the SUV struck seven pedestrians standing in the parking lot, it said.
Margaret Vanderlaan, 72, Wilhemina Paul, 70, Johanna Dijkhoff, 80, were killed. Four other people were treated at hospitals.

State Trooper Kenn Watson said it was unlikely that Landstra would face charges because neither alcohol nor drugs were and involved, and "obviously, there was no intent."  

Landstra was issued a non-criminal citation for improper backing and will likely have her driver's license permanently revoked, Watson told NBC station WFLA of Tampa.   

Watson said the incident raised the question of when someone is too old to drive.  "I understand this is a quality-of-life issue," he said. "However, we do not want to endanger our friends or our neighbors by allowing them to continue to drive."  An average of 15 people ages 65 and older die in automobile accidents every day in the U.S., according to research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Pilot called a hero for avoiding buildings in Tennessee plane crash that killed 4

NBC News
Four people were killed aboard a light plane that crashed Monday near Nashville, Tenn., authorities said. The dead included the pilot, who witnesses and fire officials said saved many lives by narrowly avoiding a nearby YMCA building.
The plane, a Gulfstream 690C flying from Grand Bend Municipal Airport in Kansas to John C. Tune-Nashville International Airport, went down shortly before 5 p.m. ET just outside the YMCA in Bellevue, about 15 miles southwest of Nashville. Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, told NBC News it was carrying four people, according to its flight plan.

All aboard the plane were killed, Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron said. No injuries were reported at the YMCA, which was evacuated after the plane slammed into the ground just 20 feet from its wall.

"While details of the crash are still emerging, the near-miss of our building surely saved dozens of people from harm," the YMCA of Middle Tennessee said in a statement Monday night, adding that its prayers "continue to be with the victims' families and all those affected by the crash."  Aaron said the plane missed its first approach to the Nashville airport. It was circling back to make a second attempt and was coming in low, he said.  "The crash was very hard," he said. "The impact was very severe into the ground," strewing debris over an 80-yard area.  Three of the bodies had been recovered by late Monday evening, Aaron said, and "I understand that there are body parts [still] here."

As the smoky heap of rubble continued smoldering Monday night, Metro Nashville Fire District Chief George Hickey told reporters that it could have been much, much worse. Witnesses reported seeing the plane bank hard to the right and crash into the ground, he said — near not only the YMCA building but also a retirement home.
"No buildings were hit," Hickey said. "I may be wrong, but I really want to take my hat off to the pilot."
Hickey called it "the worst plane crash I've ever seen."

Ambulances transported no one from the scene, which Hickey called "a totally devastated area."
"The pilot did one hell of a job," he said.  Morgan MacGavin, who was at a nearby Starbucks, told the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville that the flames were so high and the smoke was so thick that it was impossible to tell at first what had exploded there.

"It looked like a massive bonfire," MacGavin said. "It didn't hit the building, but it's pretty close to the side of the building.  "That just breaks my heart," she said. "My heart just breaks for whoever that is and their family."  Foul play wasn't suspected, Aaron said. Bergen said the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.