January 26, 2013

La. Trooper: 1 Officer Fatally Shot, 2 Wounded

Police arrested a man suspected of shooting and killing a police officer and wounding two sheriff's deputies Saturday near a south Louisiana casino.

A Chitimacha tribal officer was pronounced dead at the scene of the shootings near Charenton, while two St. Mary's Parish sheriff's deputies were critically wounded and taken to local hospitals, said Louisiana State Police Trooper Stephen Hammons.

Hammons said the officers were responding to a fire at a trailer home near the Cypress Bayou Casino when the unidentified man allegedly shot them.

The casino is run by the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana. Hammons said the shooting occurred near but not on tribal land.

More: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/la-trooper-officer-fatally-shot-wounded-18324327

January 26, 2013

Post in thread complaining about censored post mocking censorship censored, censorship thread locked

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022259014

Censored

January 26, 2013

Unlocking smartphones without permission illegal after Friday

BY SALVADOR RODRIGUEZ
The Los Angeles Times
January 25, 2013

A change to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes it illegal for consumers to unlock their mobile devices without the permission of their carrier goes into effect Saturday.

Carriers lock smartphones -- which they typically subsidize in the U.S. -- as a way to prevent their customers from getting a cellular plan with a different company.

Users unlock phones when they want to switch carriers, sometimes after the phone's original contract has run out, or so they can use it when going abroad.

The change was made because the Librarian of Congress determined that consumers have a number of alternatives to unlocking devices, including buying devices that come already unlocked.

More: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-unlock-phone-illegal-20130125,0,3942514.story

January 26, 2013

Anti-Semitic Twitter Hashtag Trends in Mexico, Causes Uproar

By CONZ PRETI
ABC News
Jan. 25, 2013

In Mexico a Twitter 'trending topic' has caused an uproar in the local Jewish community for its anti-Semitic content. On January 18 #EsdeJudios, which translates to 'it's Jewish to', was second among trending topics in Mexico. In related tweets people talked about soap, ashes and gas in a mocking reference to what the jewish community had to endure during the Holocaust.

The Mexican forum against anti-Semitism, Foro de Coordinacion de lucha contra el Antisemitismo, issued a statement last Friday compiling some of the inappropriate tweets, several of which had more than 400 re-tweets. They also stated that they are looking for the person who started this hashtag.

According to Topsy the hashtag was first tweeted on January 16. The next day it had already received more than 13,000 original tweets. By January 18 it started losing steam, with only 400 tweets sent out using the hashtag. One of the most popular tweets that day read 'To the 'comedians' that feed on the hashtag #it'sjewishto: don't cry when you get fired, don't cry when no one gives you a job.'

Mexico has a Jewish community of 40,000 to 50,000, according to Jewish Virtuality, a nonprofit organization. About 90 percent of this community is based in Mexico City, although smaller communities can also be gound in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Tijuana among others.

More: http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/anti-semitic-hashtag-trends-twitter-mexico/story?id=18315278

January 26, 2013

Ronald Reagan on assault weapons

January 25, 2013

Jordan’s King Abdullah: “The New Taliban Are In Syria”

Source: The Daily Beast

Jordan's King Abdullah warned today that those who think the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad will fall in weeks don't know the situation on the ground. He expects Assad will hold on for at least the first half of 2013. And he cautioned that even if that government falls and is replaced by a strong and effective new administration (which is doubtful) it could take years clean out the jihadists that have established themselves inside Syria's war-torn territory. Al Qaeda has established itself there, he said, and, "The new Taliban we are going to have to deal with are in Syria."

Abdullah was speaking to the World Economic Forum annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, where he and his wife, Queen Rania, are familiar faces. And the tone of his remarks resembled a frank, sometimes almost brutally frank, exchange with friends. But where Syria was concerned, it also reflected a growing consensus on the ground and among that country's neighbors that the civil war, which began almost two years ago, is not going to end anytime soon.

Indeed, although nobody quite wants to say it out loud and on the record, there are many signs that governments in the region and the international community are adjusting to the idea that civil war in Syria is a sort of ‘new normal’.

Behind the scenes at Davos, leaders of the Syrian civilian opposition coalition formed in Qatar in November are doing their best to mobilize international support, but thus far appear to have garnered very little. One of them privately asked a prominent Arab journalist at Davos, "Why do the Americans ask us what we want if they are never going to give it to us?"

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/25/jordan-s-king-abdullah-the-new-taliban-are-in-syria.html

January 25, 2013

Andean glaciers melting at "unprecedented" rates: study

LIMA (Reuters) - Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, according to a study published on Tuesday in the journal The Cryosphere.

Andean glaciers, a vital source of fresh water for tens of millions of South Americans, are retreating at their fastest rates in more than 300 years, according to the most comprehensive review of Andean ice loss so far.

The study included data on about half of all Andean glaciers in South America, and blamed the ice loss on an average temperature spike of 0.7 degree Celsius (1.26 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 70 years.

"Glacier retreat in the tropical Andes over the last three decades is unprecedented," said Antoine Rabatel, the lead author of the study and a scientist with the Laboratory for Glaciology and Environmental Geophysics in Grenoble, France.

The researchers also warned that future warming could totally wipe out the smaller glaciers found at lower altitudes that store and release fresh water for downstream communities.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/us-andes-glaciers-idUSBRE90N0SO20130124

January 25, 2013

Andy Driscoll, KFAI host, duped by The Onion's "Drone Flyover" inauguration photo

Drones are scary, but they aren't yet this scary.

Good satire is based on truth, but isn't truthful in and of itself. This is an important distinction to keep in mind lest you end up making the mistake KFAI host Andy Driscoll made yesterday.

On Facebook, Driscoll -- a St. Paul resident who hosts KFAI's TruthToTell show show on Monday mornings --shared an ominous looking photo of a drone flyover during Monday's inaugural festivities in Washington, D.C. He wasn't aware that the image was actually photoshopped by The Onion until he was alerted by a commenter on the Facebook thread.

In a comment further down the thread, Driscoll writes that he's "Never seen three [drones] in a cluster formation like that, but they're obviously scanning the crowd for potential trouble - all monitored by a site in Las Vegas."



More: http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2013/01/andy_driscoll_kfai_host_duped_by_the_onions_drone_flyover_inauguration_photo_image.php

January 24, 2013

Fontana, Calif., schools get high-powered rifles

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) - The high-powered semiautomatic rifles recently shipped to school police in this Southern California city look like they belong on a battlefield rather than in a high school, but officials here say the weapons could help stop a massacre like the one that claimed the lives of 26 students and educators in Connecticut just weeks ago.

Fontana Unified School District police purchased 14 of the Colt LE6940 rifles last fall, and they were delivered the first week of December - a week before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Over the holiday break, the district's 14 school police officers received 40 hours of training on the rifles. Officers check them out for each shift from a fireproof safe in the police force's main office.

Fontana isn't the first district to try this. Other Southern California districts also have rifle programs - some that have been in operation for several years. Fontana school police Chief Billy Green said he used money from fingerprinting fees to purchase the guns for $14,000 after identifying a "critical vulnerability" in his force's ability to protect students. The officers, who already wear sidearms, wouldn't be able to stop a shooter like the one in Connecticut, he said Wednesday.

"They're not walking around telling kids, 'Hurry up and get to class' with a gun around their neck," the chief said. "Parents need to know that if there was a shooter on their child's campus that was equipped with body armor or a rifle, we would be limited in our ability to stop that threat to their children."

More: http://www.apnews.com/ap/db_45577/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=HrSqkeAc&src=cat&dbid=45577&dbname=Top+News&detailindex=7

January 24, 2013

Most parents 'lie to their children'

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News
Jan 23, 2013

The most frequent example was parents threatening to leave children alone in public unless they behaved.

Persuasion ranged from invoking the support of the tooth fairy to telling children they would go blind unless they ate particular vegetables.

Another strategic example was: "That was beautiful piano playing."

The study, published in the International Journal of Psychology, examined the use of "instrumental lying" - and found that such tactically-deployed falsehoods were used by an overwhelming majority of parents in both the United States and China - based on interviews with about 200 families.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21144827