Tag Archives: European Union

May 1, 2013 · 10:27 AM

10 things you need to know today: May 1, 2013

U.S. military guards move a detainee inside Guantanamo in 2010.

Busy day for me today.  This will be my only post until later this evening…

The Week

Obama recommits to closing Gitmo, investigators find ricin on suspect’s trash, and more in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion

1. OBAMA RENEWS PUSH TO CLOSE GUANTANAMO
President Obama said Tuesday that he was renewing his push to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, a goal he abandoned in the face of congressional opposition during his first term. Obama said the controversial facility is too expensive, and hurts America’s international reputation and counterterrorism efforts. The remarks came after the U.S. sent dozens of Navy nurses and medics to help deal with a hunger strike that has spread to 100 of the 166 inmates. [New York Times]
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2. RICIN FOUND ON SUSPECT’S DUST MASK
Investigators found ricin on a dust mask allegedly thrown into the garbage by a Mississippi man suspected of sending letters laced with the poison to President Obama and other officials, according to an FBI affidavit released Tuesday. A surveillance team reportedly watched suspect J. Everett Dutschke, who was arrested Saturday, leave a tae kwon do studio he once ran and discard the dust mask, latex gloves, and a coffee grinder — which can be used to extract ricin from castor beans. [Washington Post]
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3. FDA APPROVES MORNING-AFTER PILL SALES TO 15-YEAR-OLDS
Federal regulators are making it easier for women to get the morning-after pill Plan B One-Step. The emergency contraceptive is currently sold at pharmacies, and is only available without a prescription to those over age 17. The Food and Drug Administration, under court order to lift the age restriction, decided Tuesday to allow stores to sell the product to anyone 15 or older, and to stock it on drugstore shelves next to women’s health products and condoms. [Washington Times]
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4. BANGLADESH BUILDING COLLAPSE DEATH TOLL PASSES 400
The death toll from the collapse of a factory complex in Bangladesh has risen above 400, and it could climb further. So far, 399 bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Another three people have died in hospitals. A senior army official said relatives had reported 149 people still missing. Thousands of people participating in May Day parades on Wednesday demanded the death penalty for the owner of the eight-story building, which housed several garment factories. [BBC News]
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5. OBAMA CONSIDERS ARMING SYRIAN REBELS
President Obama is preparing to send weapons to Syrian rebels, according to The Washington Post. A final decision on the move, which would mark a major policy shift, could come within weeks. The Obama administration has been ramping up non-lethal aid, including medicine, to the Syrian opposition, but the president has come under pressure to supply arms following reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons. [Washington Post]
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6. GREEKS PROTEST AUSTERITY WITH STRIKE
Greek unions held a general strike to protest government austerity measures on Wednesday to mark May Day, the international Labor Day holiday. Thousands of people stayed home from work, shutting schools and tax offices and disrupting public transportation. It was the second mass strike this year to call for an end to the deep spending cuts and tax hikes imposed under the terms of a European bailout designed to save the debt-burdened nation from financial collapse. [New York Times]
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7. BRAWL ERUPTS IN VENEZUELAN PARLIAMENT
A fight broke out in Venezuela’s parliament on Tuesday over the country’s recent disputed presidential election. Opposition lawmakers say supporters of President Nicolas Maduro ambushed and pummeled them. Maduro, the handpicked successor of late President Hugo Chavez, won a narrow victory, but supporters of opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski have called the results illegitimate. State TV cameras pointed to the ceiling during the scuffle. [CNN]
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8. EUROPE’S UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUES TO RISE
Unemployment hit another in a string of record highs in March, reaching 12.1 percent in the euro zone, according to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office. The figures reflected a host of problems, including Spain’s seventh straight quarter of contraction. Economists said the bad news suggested that the European Central Bank might be overly optimistic in predicting that the region will begin to recover this year. [Guardian]
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9. SCIENTISTS CREATE WORLD’S TINIEST MOVIE
IBM researchers have created the world’s smallest movie by manipulating a few dozen carbon atoms on a copper surface into a stop-motion animation clip. The Guinness Book of World Records has certified the feat, which was accomplished by moving around the individual atoms with the tiny tip of a scanning tunneling microscope. A thousand frames of what you see in the clip, “A Boy and His Atom,” would fit on the span of a single human hair. [BBC News]
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10. TEEN MOM STAR MAKES MILLION-DOLLAR PORN DEAL
Perhaps reports of the death of the celebrity sex tape were premature. Teen Mom reality TV star Farrah Abraham has reached a deal to sell the rights to a XXX tape she made with porn star James Deen to adult-industry powerhouse Vivid Entertainment for $1.5 million, according toRadar Online. Abraham, 21, reportedly made the professionally shot tape — which Vivid is callingFarrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom — after attempts to sell another video, made with an ex-boyfriend, failed. [Radar Online]

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April 2, 2013 · 10:32 AM

10 things you need to know today: April 2, 2013

A boy pays his respects to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings during a December candlelight vigil in Tirana, Albania.

The Week

Connecticut lawmakers agree on strict gun laws, North Korea restarts its nuclear plant, and more in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion

1. CONNECTICUT LEGISLATORS AGREE ON TOUGH GUN LAWS
Connecticut lawmakers agreed on what they called the nation’s toughest gun laws on Monday, just over three months after their state was shaken by the deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The package, which is expected to be passed on Wednesday, requires eligibility certificates for the purchase of any rifle, shotgun or ammunition, requires people convicted of weapons offenses to register with the state, imposes universal background checks for gun buyers, and expands a state ban on assault weapons. It also bans the sale of high-capacity magazines with more than 10 bullets, although lawmakers declined to completely ban the clips despite pleas from relatives of 11 Sandy Hook victims. [New York Times]
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2. PROSECUTOR SEEKS DEATH PENALTY FOR JAMES HOLMES
A Colorado prosecutor announced Monday that he would seek the death penalty against James Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 70 others in a shooting rampage inside a movie theater last July. Defense lawyers had offered to have Holmes, a graduate school dropout with a history of psychiatric problems, plead guilty in exchange for a promise that he would not be executed, but District Attorney George Brauchler rejected the deal after speaking with 60 people who lost loved ones in the Aurora, Colo., massacre. “In this case, for James Egan Holmes, justice is death,” Brauchler said. [USA Today]
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3. NORTH KOREA SAYS IT’S RESTARTING MOTHBALLED NUKE PLANT
North Korea announced Tuesday that it would restart a nuclear reactor and uranium-enrichment facilities shut down under an aid-for-disarmament deal five years ago. The declaration demonstrated the commitment of the isolated regime’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to expanding its nuclear arsenal, and heightened tensions raised by weeks of war threats against the U.S. and South Korea. “It’s yet another escalation in this ongoing crisis,” said Ramesh Thakur, director of the Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament at Australian National University in Canberra. [CNN]
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4. KENNEDY REPORTEDLY HEADED FOR EMBASSY IN JAPAN
Caroline Kennedy is reportedly in line to become President Obama’s next ambassador to Japan. Kennedy, the daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, is a lawyer and author, and provided Obama with an early endorsement in 2008 that helped him beat out Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. The appointment has been rumored to be in the works for weeks. If it goes through, it will thrust Kennedy into one of the world’s most visible diplomatic posts as China’s rise and North Korea’s belligerence are raising the stakes in the region. [Boston Globe]
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5. SANFORD FACES GOP RIVAL IN PRIMARY RUNOFF
Former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford takes the next step on the comeback trail on Tuesday, when he faces a lone rival in a GOP congressional primary runoff four years after an extramarital affair derailed his political career. Polls indicate that Sanford, who once held the seat in the Charleston-area district, is favored to beat personal-injury lawyer and former city councilman Curtis Bostic for the Republican nomination. Bostic is trying to catch up by enlisting help from evangelical preachers angered by Sanford’s affair. The winner will face Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a business development official and an older sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, in May. [Bloomberg]
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6. EUROZONE UNEMPLOYMENT AT RECORD HIGH
Unemployment in the eurozone rose to a record 12 percent in the first two months of 2013, the European Union’s statistical agency, Eurostat, reported on Tuesday. That means that 1.8 more people are unemployed in the 17 nations using the common currency than at the same time last year. The loss of jobs has been part of the social cost of three years of government spending cuts and other austerity measures, and the latest data will raise pressure on the European Central Bank to keep interest rates at their current record low, or cut them further, at a Thursday meeting. [New York Times]
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7. FIRE KILLS 13 AT MYANMAR MUSLIM SCHOOL
A fire killed 13 boys in a dormitory at a Muslim school in Myanmar on Tuesday. Fire officials said the flames erupted and spread quickly after a transformer overheated under a staircase, filling the building with smoke and suffocating some of the 70 boys sleeping on the top floor. Some Muslims, however, were skeptical about the official version, as the tragedy came after a wave of anti-Muslim violence in the predominantly Buddhist nation. [Reuters]
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8. COURT OKs LIVE-STREAMING OF BROADCAST TV
An appeals court on Monday ruled that start-up Aereo can continue live-streaming local TV online and through its app, marking a potentially significant setback for TV broadcasters. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York backed up a lower court that ruled Aereo isn’t violating broadcasters’ copyrights. Each of Aereo’s subscribers, all in the New York City area for now, leases an antenna in the company’s warehouse, and gets feeds to their computers and other devices. Consumer groups praised the decision, saying it would give viewers flexibility without hefty cable bills, but a dissenting judge called Aereo’s system “a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance” designed to sidestep the law. [USA Today]
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9. MTV HALTS BUCKWILD AFTER REALITY SHOW STAR DIES
MTV has suspended filming of the second season of Buckwild, a reality TV show about a rowdy group of friends in West Virginia, after the death of cast member Shain Gandee. The popular 21-year-old, his uncle, and another man were found dead in a red-and-white 1984 Ford Bronco that was partially submerged in a deep mud pit. The men were last seen at 3 a.m. Sunday at a bar, where they told people they were going driving off-road. Authorities are still investigating the cause of death. If the muffler was submerged while the engine ran, the vehicle could have filled with deadly carbon monoxide from the exhaust. [Associated Press]
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10. A SEA LION WITH RHYTHM
For the first time, a non-human mammal has shown it can follow a musical beat. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, taught a sea lion named Ronan to “bob her head in time with rhythmic sounds,” starting with a simple beat and moving on to the Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody” and Earth, Wind & Fire’s ”Boogie Wonderland,” her favorite song. The success of the experiment challenges the conventional wisdom that only humans and some birds capable of vocal mimicry can keep time with a musical beat. [Mashable]

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November 9, 2012 · 10:51 AM

Tea Party Begs Queen Elizabeth II – Take Us Back Please?

More “sorting out the crazies”…

Addicting Info

After the election, a wide variety of responses to the complete disconnect between reality and the right-wing blogosphere have emerged. On the popular right-wing website the Free Republic, one particular tea party member has posted an Open letter to the Queen of England to much applause, which we will reproduce now for your amusement:

Your Majesty,

We, the people of the former American colonies, would like to offer our most sincere apology over that little misunderstanding we had 236 years ago. Had we known that we were going to be subjects anyway, we could have saved a lot of trouble and hard feelings.

We were under the mistaken belief that we would be free, sovereign citizens; we believed that our hard work would yield its own rewards without someone coming along and taking what we built in the name of “Fairness.” We thought our laws and Constitution would protect us from a foreign born dictator, and our freedom to worship would prevent us from becoming a corrupt, morally bankrupt society (silly us).

Little did we know that our own free press would intentionally sabotage, deceive and withhold the truth from us in order to reelect a Socialist that still holds distain for our nation and contempt for its founding principles. Nor did we believe that there would be so many citizens dependent on government handouts that they would blindly elect an unqualified charlatan, let alone reelect him.

Anyway, Your Grace, we are truly sorry and humbly sincerely beg your forgiveness. If you can find it in your heart to forgive us and take us back, we promise never to trade British oppression for Socialist tyranny again.

Your most humble servants,

The American People

 

Now, beyond the bad grammar, the letter has a few issues. One, it is clear this person operates under the banner of the “Sovereign Citizens,” a group listed as domestic terrorists by the FBI.  But more than that, they have no idea how the rest of the world works.

To run away from Obamacare, which requires the purchase of private insurance, they have decided to run to a single payer, socialist, healthcare system.  The UK is also a member of the European Union.  Many tea party members have commented negatively on the structure of the European Union, stating as such “Marxism provided the intellectual foundations of the modern European welfare state.”

But, for our friends in the United Kingdom, and to the Queen herself, I apologize and tell them that, no, we will not force them to endure the funny hat wearing, bad sign carrying buffoons of the Tea Party, and shall keep them for ourselves. They might be a few sticks short of a bundle, but we would not wish to unleash their insanity on to the nobility of the United Kingdom.

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January 9, 2012 · 8:56 PM

Panetta admits Iran not developing nukes

Okay, so why is the GOP doing all that saber-rattling?  Is it to continue the Neocon doctrine of perpetual war?  Of course  if that were the case who benefits?  Contractors and military equipment manufacturers.  Who loses, the American people, not to mention the rise in our national debt!

The Raw Story

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta let slip on Sunday the big open secret that Washington war hawks don’t want widely known: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Panetta admitted that despite all the rhetoric, Iran is not pursuing the ability to split atoms with weapons, saying it is instead pursuing “a nuclear capability.”

That “capability” falls in line with what Iran has said for years: that it is developing nuclear energy facilities, not nuclear weapons.

“I think the pressure of the sanctions, the diplomatic pressures from everywhere, Europe, the United States, elsewhere, it’s working to put pressure on them,” Panetta explained on Sunday. “To make them understand that they cannot continue to do what they’re doing. Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

Republicans have been beating the drums of war in recent weeks as tensions in the Iranian gulf have soared. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil transport hub crucial to global industry, if U.S. warships return to monitor their activities.

Iran said it was planning to hold military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz in the coming weeks, and prior wargames saw the Iranians test missiles that are designed to sink warships.

President Barack Obama recently agreed to fresh sanctions on Iran targeting the country’s central bank, in hopes of slowing down their nuclear program. The European Union was also considering fresh sanctions, and details were expected later in January. The U.N., as well, has sanctioned Iran repeatedly over its nuclear program.

Iran said recently that it had created the country’s first ever nuclear fuel rod made from domestic uranium enriched at their own facilities.

Nuclear fuel enrichment is much different from enrichment for weapons. Most commercial nuclear reactors use lightly enriched uranium, which is between 3-5 percent enriched. Weapons-grade uranium must be enriched to approximately 85 percent or more of a key radioactive isotope for it to be usable in an atomic bomb.

Iran added on Monday that it had alsoenriched uranium up to 20 percent in an underground facility, explaining that the isotopes were to be used to help cancer patients.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said late last year that Iran had carried out tests that suggested they may be taking the first steps toward building a nuclear weapon, but former agency insiders disputed the claim as being misleading.

This video is from CBS News, broadcast Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, as clipped by ThinkProgress.

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August 13, 2011 · 5:38 AM

Coulter Suggests Mass Murder As A Way To “Save England From Itself”

Ann Coulter at the 2004 Republican National Co...

Image via Wikipedia

This woman is one of the craziest of the crazies.

Ann Coulter loves saying outrageous things to:  a) get attention and b) sell more books.

The problem with her plan is that yes, a few like-minded crazies will buy her trash books but the rest of the world sees her as bat-crap insane!

Media Matters

In 2001,  Ann Coulter wrote two days after the 9-11 attacks that “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” National Review Online soon fired her. Now it looks like she’s trying to get fired from another outlet.

In her Human Events column today, Coulter writes that a “few well-place rifle rounds” would end the rioting in the United Kingdom. She then added that a “more sustained attack on the rampaging mob might save England from itself” because it would “remov[e]” more people from the welfare rolls:

A few well-placed rifle rounds, and the rioting would end in an instant. A more sustained attack on the rampaging mob might save England from itself, finally removing shaved-head, drunken parasites from the benefits rolls that Britain can’t find the will to abolish on moral or utilitarian grounds. We can be sure there’s no danger of killing off the next Winston Churchill or Edmund Burke in these crowds.

Fox Nation, of course, is highlighting Coulter’s column:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coulter’s incitement to massacre isn’t the only thing wrong with the column. Coulter, no stranger to borderline racist commentary, also uses the riots to argue that progressive policies in the United Kingdom are debasing people with “long English ancestry and perfect Anglo features.”

In fact, Coulter begins her column by noting the race of some of the rioters: “Those of you following the barbaric rioting in Britain will not have failed to notice that a sizable proportion of the thugs are white, something not often seen in this country.”

It gets worse from there.

She later says: “With a welfare system far more advanced than the United States, the British have achieved the remarkable result of turning entire communities of ancestral British people into tattooed, drunken brutes.”

She follows that up with a story of nine-year-old Shannon Matthews, whose disappearance she blames on parental neglect. Matthews’ mother, Coulter reports, only had children to get increased welfare benefits. Coulter then writes:

The Daily Mail (London) traced the family’s proud Anglo ancestry of stable families back hundreds of years. The Nazi war machine couldn’t break the British, but the modern welfare state has.

Then, after describing the murder of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, Coulter writes:

Needless to say, Britain leads Europe in the proportion of single mothers and, as a consequence, also leads or co-leads the European Union in violent crime, alcohol and drug abuse, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases.

But liberal elites here and in Britain will blame anything but the welfare state they adore. They drone on about the strict British class system or the lack of jobs or the nation’s history of racism.

None of that explains the sad lives of young Shannon Matthews and Scarlett Keeling, with their long English ancestry and perfect Anglo features.

Continue reading here…

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July 2, 2010 · 7:00 AM

US accepts Gulf spill cleanup assistance from 12 countries

AFP - The United States will accept offers from 12 foreign countries to help clean up and contain the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, officials said on Tuesday.
   
“The United States will accept 22 offers of assistance from 12 countries and international bodies, including two high speed skimmers and fire containment boom from Japan,” a US State Department statement said.
   
“We are currently working out the particular modalities of delivering the offered assistance,” it said, adding that details would be “forthcoming once these arrangements are complete.”
   
Offers of boom to contain oil and collect it off the surface of the water have been accepted from Canada, Mexico, Norway and Japan, said a spokeswoman from the Unified Area Command, an entity headed by the US Coast Guard that is coordinating with BP on the oil spill response.
   
Skimmers have been accepted from Mexico, Norway, France and Japan and a sweeping arm system has been accepted from the Netherlands, spokeswoman Gina Ruoti told AFP.
   
Non-material offers of assistance are coming from the European Union and International Maritime Organization, she added, but was unable to say how much the assistance would be.
   
A total of 27 countries have offered assistance to the US government following the explosion in April of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which left 11 workers dead and sparked the most severe oil spill disaster in US history.
   
An estimated 1.6 million to 3.6 million barrels of oil — or 67 million to 153 million gallons — have already poured into the Gulf from the ruptured wellhead some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface.

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