Thursday, January 2, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News For The Day



Catholic priest found slain in California church rectory – NBC
By M. Alex Johnson and F. Brinley Bruton

St. Bernard's Catholic Church in Eureka, Calif., posted a tribute to Father Eric Freed, who was found slain in the church's rectory Wednesday.

A Catholic priest was found dead in the rectory of his California church Wednesday morning, and police are investigating it as a murder, authorities said.
Rev. Eric Freed's body was discovered at St. Bernard's Catholic Church in Eureka, Calif., according to Mayor Frank Jager.

“Father Eric was a friend of mine, a tremendous person in the community,” Jager said in a video of a press conference posted on local news website lostcoastoutpost.com. “This is absolutely a tremendous loss not only for the St. Bernard’s parish but for our community in general.”

Police Chief Andrew Mills told reporters that staff members called police about 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday when they found a man's body.  
He did not identify Freed as the victim during the news conference, although Jager did.

The death did not appear to have occurred under “normal circumstances” so police launched a murder investigation, Mills said.
He did not offer any details from the crime scene. No one was in custody, and police released little additional information, but they did say were seeking Freed's dark gray Nissan Altima hybrid.

The church canceled its 7 p.m. Mass and posted tribute to Freed on its website.
In his Christmas message, posted on the church's website (.pdf), Freed declared that he was "proud and honored ... to be your pastor."
"Our parish is alive, joyful, and full of faith, hope, and charity that define us as Catholic Christians," he wrote.

Representatives from St. Bernard’s were not immediately available for comment.
Freed was beloved in Eureka, especially among its sizable Japanese community, Jager said.
"Those of us that believe in prayer, this is the time for that, and I hope we can find out who did this," he said.
Officials said the street in front of the church would be blocked off for people who want to gather to pray.


This is a somber news story about a tragic death, but there is no suspicion of community stress or personal abuse of the priest's position, unless the fact that much of the congregation is Japanese is a factor. It looks to me to be an ordinary murder by a criminal in an attempt to rob the church or the act of a mentally disturbed person. It is a shame that churches aren't safe anymore. I remember when I was a young person that a church in Thomasville, NC was robbed, and we were all shocked. Churches in those days were often left unlocked so people could go inside to pray, because few people would violate the sanctity of a church by entering it to cause mischief. For that matter, our homes were often unlocked during the daylight hours with few incidents. While I like the greater degree of personal freedom that I enjoy in a sizable city today, I do miss the freedom to go walking in the woods without ever encountering another human – much less an attacker-- that I had as a young person. It is a changed world.





Ford develops solar powered car for everyday use – NBC
Phil LeBeau CNBC


C-MAX Solar Energi Concept Car
Ford has developed a concept model that runs primarily on solar power, which could bring the world one step closer to having a vehicle for everyday driving that is not dependent on traditional energy sources.

The C-MAX Solar Energi Concept is a collaboration between Ford, SunPower Corp. and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The concept car is expected to be unveiled next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Like all concept models, the C-MAX Solar Energi Concept may never be built or sold to the public. However, many of the features and technologies we see in current vehicles were once shown for the first time in concept models years ago.

Harnessing the sun's power
Ford says the C-MAX Solar Energi Concept would be powered by energy it collects using a special concentrator that acts like a magnifying glass.
The concentrator would take energy from sun light and direct intense rays to panels on the vehicle's roof.

In theory, the C-MAX Solar Energi could fully recharge itself without the vehicle having to be plugged in to an electrical outlet. Ford believes sunshine could power up to 75 percent of all trips made in a solar hybrid vehicle, though the automaker does not give a distance for those trips.

Solar powered cars not new
Solar powered cars have been developed and driven around the world for years, but almost exclusively in contests or research programs designed to show how far cars could travel without gas. In most cases, the cars have been small capsules designed to hold only a driver.

The challenge has long been finding a way to harness enough solar energy to power a vehicle that could be used every day and carry more than just the driver.


I do hope that this model or one similar to it will be developed and sold. Having to plug in an electrical car every day or so to recharge it takes a lot of the fun out of having one. We need a viable choice that doesn't use gasoline for its main energy source or run up our monthly electrical bill if we are to reduce our carbon footprint. Go, Engineers!




233 migrants rescued from 33-foot boat in rough seas off Italy --NBC
- Reuters

ROME - The Italian navy has rescued 233 migrants from an overcrowded smugglers' boat in rough seas south of Sicily.
The navy said one of its frigates was bringing the migrants — who were from Pakistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, Zambia and Mali — into a Sicilian port on Thursday. They were initially rescued by another naval vessel on Wednesday night some 80 miles south of the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa.

Officials said the migrants had been spotted in a 33-foot boat without any life vests. 
In one of the worst disasters of Europe's immigration crisis, over 300 migrants were killed in a shipwreck off Lampedusa last October.

Each year, thousands of African, Asian or Middle Eastern migrants attempt risky voyages across the Mediterranean Sea in unseaworthy boats, and hundreds die en route. Unless they are eligible for asylum or have families or jobs in Europe, they risk expulsion by Italy. 


This article is the first time I had heard of migrations to avoid the Arab Spring and other situations of unrest by going to Europe, but it is predictable, of course. The countries of origin mentioned here vary so widely that I wonder how the boat trip was organized to take in so many different groups. There must be people like the “coyotes” of Mexico who gather groups to go across the Rio Grande, probably for outrageous fees, and leave them without protections once they get to Europe. There is so much danger and discontent in the world, that there seems to be no end to it. It's really discouraging.




Clearer path for Obama regulatory agenda after 'nuclear option' paves the way – NBC
By Tom Curry, National Affairs Reporter,


With congressional gridlock standing in the way of his legislative agenda, President Barack Obama is getting some fresh help in adding to his legacy in a different way – through government regulation.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid speaks following the Senate's vote to instate a simple majority to approve executive branch and judicial nominees except for Supreme Court picks, saying "Washington has been in gridlock, gridlock, gridlock" and "we're sick of it."

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules and ended threatened filibusters of most presidential nominations, it was partly to allow Obama to install his appointees at regulatory agencies and to appoint judges who in many cases will help decide the fate of the regulations those appointees issue.

The rules change’s biggest impact could be felt at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit which will end up reviewing many of the regulations enacted by Obama’s appointees, helping increase the chances that the effects of Obama’s agenda will last long after he’s left the White House.
And by using the nuclear option Democrats will add three new Obama appointees to that important court, tilting the membership there to seven active judges appointed by Democratic presidents and four appointed by Republican presidents. A year ago the balance was four judges appointed by Republican presidents to three appointed by Democratic presidents.

It may not be as dramatic as passing sweeping legislation but the reach of the federal regulatory agencies is vast. A few examples:
Last week the Food and Drug Administration urged drug companies and farmers to use a standard of “judicious use” when giving antibiotics to cattle and other animals that will wind up as food on Americans’ dining room tables.

The Fish and Wildlife Service must decide whether to issue permits for energy projects that would affect endangered species such as the desert tortoise in the Mohave Desert. Here the Obama administration’s push for renewable energy may be on a collision course with species protection, said Ya-Wei “Jake” Li, the director of Endangered Species Conservation at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife. “Renewable energy projects and endangered species protection can coexist, but only if the administration begins placing higher priority on the needs of those species,” said Li.

The United States is poised to become a huge exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), partly due to the shale gas boom in states such as Pennsylvania. But LNG export requires approval of regulators at the Department of Energy and the building of LNG export facilities needs approval from other federal regulators.

Probably nowhere are the stakes higher than at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Obama made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions a major theme of his State of the Union address last February, pledging that “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”

President Obama called on the EPA to act, saying he refuses to condemn future generations to "a planet that's beyond fixing." NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
In June he issued a National Climate Action Plan which directed the EPA to set rules to cut emissions and prepare for climate changes. EPA issued a rule in September setting limits on GHG emissions from new electric generating plants.

“The biggest news in 2013 for the climate has been President Obama’s Climate Action Plan,” David Doniger, the policy director for Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, told a conference call last week. The plan “set in motion decisive steps to come to grips with the pollution that drives climate change.”

Now that the EPA has issued standards for new power plants, federal law requires that it also issue rules for existing power plants. (That will happen in 2015.)
According to the Congressional Research Service, it would impossible for coal-fired power plants to meet EPA’s standards without installing technology to capture and store much of the CO2 they produce. Such technology isn’t yet widely used and critics say it is unproven.

Coal-state lawmakers are trying to stop the EPA rules.
“Though EPA has yet to formally propose new standards for existing power plants, there is every indication that these standards will be unachievable as well,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, D- W.V. at a congressional hearing on the EPA rule in September. “The EPA is holding the coal industry to impossible standards and for the first time ever, the federal government is trying to force an industry to do something that is not technologically impossible to achieve at least for now.”

Manchin’s ally, Rep. Ed Whitfield, R- Ky., pointed out that when Congress addressed the GHG issue in 2010, the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, but the Markey-Waxman bill to control GHG emissions never made it through the Senate. Obama and his allies “cannot get it through. So now, they're attempting to do by regulations what cannot be done through legislation,” Whitfield said.

When it comes to environmental regulation, almost nothing is simple, quick, or uncontested. After the EPA issues its rules, litigation inevitably follows.

Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case about rules which apply to air pollution that drifts across state lines. The high court is set to hear arguments in yet another significant case on the scope of EPA’s power on Feb. 24.
The EPA has been around for 43 years, but the newest federal regulatory agency has drawn as much scrutiny from Republican as the EPA has.

After a filibuster struggle that lasted for months, the Senate last July confirmed Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency created by the Dodd-Frank law to supervise banks, credit card issuers, and other financial firms.

Many Republicans argue that Dodd-Frank gave too much power to CFPB and put it beyond the reach of congressional control by arranging for its funding to come from the Federal Reserve and not from annual congressional appropriations.

Lawyer Alan Kaplinsky, a CFPB expert at the Ballard Spahr law firm in Philadelphia, said the bureau’s big regulatory initiatives in 2013 were in the mortgage field “which is not surprising in light of the fact that the Dodd-Frank Act mandated that the CFPB issue a whole raft of regulations pertaining to the origination and servicing of residential mortgages.”

“The compliance costs for banks and others involved in the mortgage business are going to be much higher because all the rules of the road are changing,” Kaplinsky said.

In 2014 the CFPB will likely be issuing rules dealing with debt collection, pre-paid debit cards, and payday lenders. “They have a lot of things percolating,” he said.
Both the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank became law in 2010. As with the ACA, Dodd-Frank’s impact – in the form of CFPB regulations -- will last for years and decades, validating Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s saying in 2009 that “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”


This kind of gridlock blocking legislation generates a pressing need for executive action, and makes it even more important that there is a liberal in the White House. Obama is alert to achieving what he can and taking some action, which is a relief to me. Some of his plans have either been almost impossible, such as the closing of Guantanamo Bay, or so highly contested that he hasn't been able to get them through. Thank goodness he hasn't become discouraged from trying to make headway.





Year in science: Old bones yield new revelations about kings and genes – NBC
Alan Boyle, Science Editor


Video: From Feb. 4: The bones of Richard III, who reigned for two years, have been discovered in Leicester, England, and they indicate that his spine was twisted by scoliosis and that he received eight head wounds in battle. NBC’s Stephanie Gosk reports.

Genetics isn't just for the living, as the past year's scientific revelations have demonstrated. Whether it's identifying King Richard III's long-lost bones or tracing humanity's tangled family tree, DNA analysis is shedding new light on mysteries that have lain buried for ages.

New technologies addressed longstanding questions in other contexts during 2013. Here are five of the year's leading themes, plus five bonus scientific highlights and links to five additional end-of-the-year roundups.

DNA unravels history's mysteries: In February, genetics clinched the case for King Richard III's remains, which British archaeologists recovered from beneath a parking lot in Leicester. Richard III was famous as one of Shakespeare's best-known villains, but the chroniclers lost track of his bones soon after his defeat and death on Bosworth Field in 1485. Analyses of his rediscovered remains proved the truth of what Shakespeare said with regard to a different English king: "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Forensic analysis found that the poor royal suffered from scoliosis, roundworms and other ailments. And Richard's troubles aren't over yet: Interested parties in Leicester and York are still fighting over who has rightful custody of his bones. On other fronts, genetics is being applied to the mysteries surrounding the fates of French King Henry IV and England's Alfred the Great.

DNA points to complexity in human origins: This month, scientists announced that they deciphered 400,000-year-old DNA extracted from bones found in a Spanish cave. That technical achievement set a record, but it also turned up something unexpected: genetic linkages to a mysterious population of human ancestors in Siberia, known as Denisovans. Other studies have pointed to interbreeding among Neanderthals, Denisovans and ancient representatives of our own species, Homo sapiens. DNA signatures even hint at humanlike populations yet to be identified. Such findings support the view that our family tree isn't organized into clear-cut roots and branches, but instead consists of bushy, messy tangles.

Lost cities uncovered: Laser scanning, aerial imaging and other high-tech tools have revealed a previously uncharted ancient settlement in Cambodia that predated Angkor Wat, ruins in Peru that predated the Inca culture, and structures in Honduras that might have inspired conquistadors' tales of a treasure-laden city. The methods available to archaeologists today would make Indiana Jones green with envy. "I go out and do archaeology with a ray gun," the University of Sheffield's Ellery Frahm told LiveScience. "It doesn't get more sci-fi than that."

Discoveries from Antarctica's depths: Antarctica may seem like a frozen wasteland, but it can be a wonderland for the right kinds of research. In January, Russian scientists brought up fresh samples of ice from Lake Vostok, a body of water that lies hidden beneath a 2-mile-deep layer of ice. In July, they reported that the ice contained samples from a wide assortment of life forms, even though the lake has seemingly been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years. Meanwhile, detectors buried in Antarctica's ice were used to make a completely different kind of discovery: the first signs of high-energy neutrinos from beyond our solar system. Those detectors, part of the international IceCube experiment, could point the way to an entirely new kind of astronomy, based on neutrinos instead of old-fashioned photons. 

Clarity about climate change: Atmospheric readings of carbon dioxide exceeded 400 parts per million this year, raising fresh warnings about the greenhouse-gas effect. Climate-change skeptics tried to make the case that global warming has stalled, based on temperature readings from recent years, but researchers came up with a different explanation: Right now, much of the planet's excess heat is being soaked up by the ocean rather than the atmosphere. Such findings were factored into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report, which suggested establishing a cumulative cap on carbon emissions.

Five more highlights: Scientists confirmed the existence of Element 115, a.k.a. Ununpentium. Along-horned dinosaur dubbed Nasutoceratops was one of the year's paleontological stars. ... Evidence mounted that fracking can cause earthquakes. The Obama administration launched a multi-agency initiative to study the brain. And in London, taste testers chowed down on a $330,000 lab-grown hamburger that was bankrolled by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.


I try to find an interesting science article every day, but I only clipped one of those mentioned above, about the Denisovans. Here are a new element and a new dinosaur, two lost cities and a laboratory grown hamburger! That's why I like the news!



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California High Court OKs Law License For Undocumented Immigrant – NPR
by Scott Neuman
­
California's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that an undocumented immigrant from Mexico should receive a license to practice law in accordance with a new state law.
The ruling in favor of Sergio Garcia, 36, comes after California lawmakers passed a bill in October authorizing qualified applicants into the state bar, regardless of their immigration status. Garcia's case was widely seen as a test of the viability of the new law.

The Associated Press says:
"The decision means Garcia can begin practicing law despite his immigration status."
"Garcia had challenged a 1996 federal law that bars people living in the country illegally from receiving professional licenses from government agencies or with the use of public funds, unless state lawmakers vote otherwise."

Reuters says:
"The U.S. Department of Justice had opposed Garcia's application, while California Attorney General Kamala Harris supported it. Neither office could immediately comment on Thursday."

In October we reported:
"Garcia was born in Mexico. His parents brought him to the U.S. when he was 17 months old. He moved back and forth between the two countries until he came to California permanently when he was 17. At that time, immigration officials approved Garcia for a green card. That was possible because his dad had a green card. Garcia himself would have to wait to get his own green card until one became available."
"He's been waiting for nearly 19 years. In the meantime, he worked his way through college, law school, and passed the State Bar exam."

"'I am 36 years old,' he says. 'This is the home I know. This is the country I know. And this is the country I want to work for and fight for.'"


Undocumented immigrant is a relatively benign term for illegal alien which, in the last few years, has become the preferred way of referring to the mass migrations from South and Central America into the US. It leaves the path open for acceptance of the often endangered travelers as they get work and pursue goals here. Clearly, they are different from each other, with some committing crimes and being deported while others make it successfully upward.

Trying to keep them all down and send them back home is one course found among US citizens, but to me keeping all of them out of the path to progress is unfair to those who are intellectually capable, law abiding and hard-working, even though they didn't come legally with a visa. Blindly following restrictive laws pleases some personalities, but I am not one of them. The ability to make a good living in a legal pursuit is too important a goal to deny it to a whole group of people just because of their origin or ethnicity. It's just unfair. I'm glad to see we are making a little bit of progress as a society in this way. It makes me proud of America.