Friday, February 28, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Ukraine official says Russian troops take over military airport in Crimea – CBS
CBS/AP February 28, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russian military were blocking a Ukrainian military airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea near the Russian naval base while unidentified armed men were patrolling another airport serving the regional capital, Ukraine's new Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Friday.

No violence was reported, and flights continued to operate at the airport serving Simferopol, the regional capital. It was not immediately clear whether the airport in Sevastopol, owned by the Ukrainian defense ministry, was open but there are no scheduled services to the facility.

Ukraine's State Border Guard Service said about 30 Russian paratroopers from the 810th brigade of Russia's Black Sea Fleet had taken up position outside the Ukrainian Coast Guard base in the Sevastopol area. It said the paratroopers said they were there to prevent any weapons at the base from being seized by extremists. Russia's defense ministry had no comment.

The Russian foreign ministry refused to comment while a spokesman for the Russian defense ministry also had no comment.

Avakov wrote in a Facebook post that the Belbek international airport in Sevastopol was blocked by military units of the Russian navy.

"I can only describe this as a military invasion and occupation," Avakov said.
Ukraine's Parliament, meanwhile, adopted a resolution calling for a U.N. Security Council meeting on the nation's crisis and demanding that Russia halt steps which it says are aimed against Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Early on Friday, dozens of armed men in military uniforms without markings were seen patrolling the airport in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea.

An Associated Press photographer saw military men armed with assault rifles Friday morning patrolling the airport. The men, who were wearing uniforms without any insignia, refused to talk to journalists, and it was not immediately clear who they were.

On Thursday, masked gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles seized the parliament and government offices in Simferopol and raised the Russian flag over the parliament building.

The events in the Crimea region have heightened tensions with neighboring Russia. It scrambled fighter jets on Thursday to patrol borders in the first stirrings of a potentially dangerous confrontation reminiscent of Cold War brinksmanship.

U.S. officials are closely monitoring Russia's military movements near Ukraine's border, reported CBS News correspondent David Martin. So far, it appears to be just an exercise as the Russians say, but that war gaming so close to the border could give Russia a rolling start to push into Ukraine, with little or no warning, and Martin says that is what concerns officials like U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

In spite of the concern, Martin said the U.S. is also trying to avoid any acts which could raise the tensions further, and according to the top American commander in Europe, NATO is not planning for any military reaction to a Russian intervention in Ukraine.

Russia also has granted shelter to Ukraine's fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, after recent deadly protests in Kiev swept in a new government.

Yanukovych has a news conference scheduled Friday in Russia's south near the Ukrainian border. He has not been seen publicly since Saturday, and he declared Thursday in a statement that he remains Ukraine's legitimate president.
Ukraine's parliament on Thursday elected a new government led by a pro-Western technocrat who promptly pledged to prevent any national break-up.

Moscow has been sending mixed signals about Ukraine but pledged to respect its territorial integrity. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long dreamed of pulling Ukraine -- a country of 46 million people considered the cradle of Russian civilization -- closer into Moscow's orbit.

For Ukraine's neighbors, the specter of Ukraine breaking up evoked memories of centuries of bloody conflict.

"Regional conflicts begin this way," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Thursday, calling the confrontation "a very dangerous game."

Ukraine's new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, on Thursday said the country's future lies in the European Union, but with friendly relations with Russia.
Yatsenyuk insisted the country wouldn't accept the secession of Crimea. The Black Sea territory, he declared, "has been and will be a part of Ukraine."

Oleksandr Turchynov, who stepped in as acting president after Yanukovych's flight, condemned Thursday's assault in Simferopol as a "crime against the government of Ukraine." He warned that any move by Russian troops off of their base in Crimea "will be considered a military aggression."

Ukraine's population is divided in loyalties between Russia and the West. Crimea, which was seized by Russian forces in the 18th century under Catherine the Great, was once the crown jewel in Russian and then Soviet empires. CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward reported that 60 percent of the population in Crimea are ethnic Russians, and many simply don't identify with the Ukrainian-speaking western parts of the nation, where Kiev sits and from which the recent opposition overthrow sprung.
"We cannot accept the authority in Kiev. We are a different people," Ludmila Milodanova, a pro-Russian protester said on the streets of Simferopol on Thursday. "We will be happy to join Russia. It is our motherland."

Crimea only became part of Ukraine in 1954 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred jurisdiction from Russia -- a move that was a mere formality until the 1991 Soviet collapse meant Crimea landed in an independent Ukraine.

The escalating conflict has sent Ukraine's finances plummeting, prompting Western leaders to prepare an emergency financial package.

In a bid to shore up Ukraine's fledgling administration, the International Monetary Fund has said it is "ready to respond" to Ukraine's bid for financial assistance. The European Union is also considering emergency loans for a country that is the chief conduit of Russian natural gas to western Europe.

Ukraine's finance ministry has said it needs $35 billion over the next two years to avoid default.


http://rt.com/news/minority-language-law-ukraine-035/

Canceled language law in Ukraine sparks concern among Russian and EU diplomats
Edited time: February 28, 2014 06:31

Ukraine’s swift abolition of the law allowing the country’s regions to make Russian a second official language has worried European MPs and officials, and has been condemned outright as a “violation of ethnic minority rights” by Russian diplomats.
The European Parliament has approved a resolution on Ukraine, which among other things calls on the country’s MPs and the new government to respect the rights of minorities, particularly when it comes to the use of languages.

Ukraine’s new leaders should distance themselves from extremists and avoid any provocation that might fuel "separatist moves,” MEPs said, the parliament’s press service reported. MEPs said that the new government should respect the rights of minorities in Ukraine, including the right to use Russian and other minority languages.

The resolution, proposed by six political groups in the European Parliament, urges Ukraine to ensure that its new legislation complies with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) abolished the 2012 law “On State Language Policy” the day after it voted to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovich. The law allowed the country’s regions to use more official languages in addition to Ukrainian if they were spoken by over 10 percent of the local population. Thirteen out of Ukraine’s 27 regions, primarily in Eastern Ukraine, then adopted Russian as a second official language. Two Western regions introduced Romanian and Hungarian as official languages.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Ukrainian MPs were wrong to cancel the law.

“The parliament of Ukraine has made what I believe to be a mistake a few days ago, cancelling a law on regional languages,” he told CNN, commenting on the current instability in the Crimea, where the majority of the population speaks Russian. “The new Ukrainian government should signal very eloquently to the ethnic minorities in Ukraine that they are welcome in Ukraine; that they are going to be part of the new Ukraine. And also Ukraine is a member of the Council of Europe, [with] its laws on protecting minorities.”

A much stronger reaction earlier came from Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights.

“Attack on the Russian language in Ukraine is a brutal violation of ethnic minority rights,” he tweeted in a comment on the abolition of the regional languages law.
An estimated 40 percent of the Ukrainian population speaks Russian, and the repealing of the language’s official status has been met with criticism by many citizens.

Activists in the Western Ukrainian city of Lvov, largely perceived as home to strong anti-Russian sentiment, decided to have a day of the Russian language to protest the Rada’s decision. The initiative was taken up by the city’s mayor, Andrey Sadovoy.
"I’m proud of those in Donetsk and Odessa who speak Ukrainian, although it’s not their native language. I’m proud of those in Lvov who today speak Russian in solidarity with the East of the country,” he said, Ukrainian Vesti daily reported.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed its concerns over the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. Among the most acute issues, the ministry cited “infringement of the right to speak [people’s] native language, discrimination based on ethnicity or country of origin, attacks and acts of vandalism performed on monuments of historical and cultural heritage as well as on places of religious worship.”

Monuments associated with Ukraine’s Soviet and imperial Russian past have been torn down all over the country in the last few days. As well as statues of Lenin, symbols of the victories over Hitler and Napoleon have also been destroyed or damaged.
Following the international and domestic criticism, acting Ukrainian President Aleksandr Turchinov ordered the Ukrainian parliament to urgently draft a new language bill, the press service of PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party has said.

The law will be “completely balanced” and will “take into account the interests of the east and the west of Ukraine, of all the ethnic groups and national minorities,” Turchinov said.




EU diplomats agree with Russia that the cancellation of Russian speakers rights is not advisable or fair. It does seem to me that if the opposition forces now controlling Kiev want the Ukraine to hold together as a nation, they need to give basic rights to all citizens. There is too much old enmity involved in this conflict.

Russian forces are apparently in the Ukraine now. “ the paratroopers said they were there to prevent any weapons at the base from being seized by extremists. Russia's defense ministry had no comment.” The US and NATO are not planning to intervene militarily at this time. I will continue to watch news articles on this conflict.




Appeals court says school had right to ban U.S. flag T-shirts – CBS
CBS/AP February 27, 2014

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.

"It is truly a sad day when government officials are permitted to ban the American flag on a public high school campus for any reason," Robert Muise, the American Freedom Law Center's co-founder and senior counsel, said in a statement.

"Here, school officials feared that our clients would offend 'Mexican' students if they wore their flag shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo, so they ordered the students to either remove their shirts or leave school in direct violation of their First Amendment rights," Muise said.

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.




I believe it is fair and wise to allow minority ethnic groups to celebrate their important holidays, speak their own language, go to their own religious services, etc., as long as they are not disturbing the peace or initiating violence or undue cultural conflict. In a peaceful society minorities should be allowed to live a full life and add their cultural elements to the “melting pot” of America. African Americans' celebrating Kwanza is an example. These things should not cause groups who consider themselves to be more mainstream to start a battle over the matter.

American white protestants shouldn't taunt or attack Latino citizens when they are peacefully observing their primary nonreligious holiday. It reminds me of the England-allied Northern Ireland protestants staging parades through the Catholic neighborhoods, called “Orange Walks,” celebrating the British win over Ireland in which England attained control over Northern Ireland. The Orange Walk was a blatant provocation and inevitably caused a riot. During the Clinton administration, and with his help, Britain and the Irish revolutionaries reached a peace agreement, but the Men of Orange still are adamantly against the agreement.

Those marches are now strongly controlled by the Parades Commission, but I noticed in a BBC Internet article from July 2013 on the subject that the Orange Order is still protesting that control, claiming that the Catholic Irish republican population is “waging a cultural war” against “Britishness.” To me, the Men of Orange are just trying to maintain their control and are stuck deeply into their pattern of hatred. They should give over their attempts at continued power and become a peaceful part of the society. They are, after all, the minority and the controls over their marches are for the purpose of keeping the peace.




Scientific world getting duped by computerized fake research papers – CBS
By Erik Sherman MoneyWatch February 27, 2014

If you've ever had occasion to read an academic paper in almost any field in which you don't hold a PhD, chances are that it seems like so much gobbledygook. And there's some chance that it literally is.

A 2005 prank by three MIT graduate students has given way to a new genre: computer-generated fake academic papers, as the Guardian reports. Back then, the students wrote a program called SCIgen in just days that would take high-minded terms from academic writing, paste them together, and create papers that had literally no research or meaning behind them.

The program used "context-free grammar" and added graphics, figures, and citations. The students -- Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan Aguayo -- didn't stop there. They submitted two papers under their names to a scientific conference. One was accepted. Here's the gibberish-filled abstract:
Many physicists would agree that, had it not been for congestion control, the evaluation of web browsers might never have occurred. In fa ct, few hackers worldwide would disagree with the essential unification of voice-over-IP and public-private key pair. In order to solve this riddle, we confirm that SMPs can be made stochastic, cacheable, and interposable.

Academic publishing industry spam

Why did they do it? The trio was tired of all the emails they'd receive from conference organizers looking for papers. They thought that the standards for the conferences, which charge hefty fees for attendance, might not be rigorous. It might have ended there -- with the one-time submission of their nonsensical papers -- except that they made the program freely available, and it has become quite popular.

According to a newly published research in the journal Nature, more than 120 papers in a subscription database were computer-generated fakes. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), a major professional organization in electronic engineering and computer science, had published more than 100 of them.

Computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France developed software to detect the fakes generated by SCIgen. Some evidence suggests that not all the authors listed on the papers were involved.

According to Labbé, researchers are pressured to keep churning out papers and publish as much as possible -- the old "publish or perish" saying in academia. Maybe this was a stealth campaign to discredit the practice, or perhaps some people thought it could add to their credentials without requiring more hours of work.

But there's a darker side. SCIgen deals with nonsense. But what if you could harness some of the more startling developments in artificial intelligence to create work? (IBM's Watson program that could win at Jeopardy comes to mind.) Add information and let a computer put together a syntactically correct paper that expressed meaning, not context-free grammar that stopped at putting correct parts of speech in the right places, regardless for how it sounded.

You now might be able to create fake papers that would not automatically be distinguishable. Refer to real previous papers as citations, making it even more difficult to discover an auto-paper, because it would exhibit real ties to the rest of the academic publishing industry. (You could even throw in the occasional typo or misspelling to make things look even more authentic.) How could anyone know where human research left off and an academic Terminator picked up?




This is like the article I clipped a couple of months ago about computer generated news articles. The program was especially adept at writing sports stories due to the heavy use of statics and popular sports phrases in those articles. This subject is making me think that it would be a good subject for a futuristic novel in which such a computer program makes a bid to take over a state government, purporting to be a qualified political candidate. Photos of the “candidate” are clipped from Facebook to make their news articles more realistic. Add some racial overtones and you could have a thriller.

Seriously, though, this is potentially a real problem. Thank goodness someone has invented a computer program to detect these forgeries, but I can imagine the FDA or other important government departments being misled by a scientific article and making misguided decisions. Besides, its just shameful to abuse the public this way. The human mind at its best is considered to be the only source of important writing, so this is simply shocking to me.

Artificial intelligence is very popular now, but it is a suspect field, I think, capable of causing great damage. I'll never forget Hal of 2001 fame. This time it was three college students who did it, but it could be a dangerous radical political party that was generating propaganda next time. Do we need laws making such programs illegal? I think we do need more laws than we currently have to regulate Internet use in some cases. The ubiquitous Internet bullying is one such case, and some laws have already been made to punish abusers legally. This situation is one to watch to see where it goes.




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To Save Endangered Tortoises, Conservationists Deface Their Shells-- NPR
by Gloria Hillard
February 27, 2014
­
They're a quiet bunch, the hundreds of animals residing at the well-guarded botanical oasis in California's Ojai Valley. They've been brought to the Turtle Conservancy from countries around the world, like modern-day refugees escaping certain and persistent perils.

For years, the conservancy has worked on the front lines of the battle against smugglers, including on behalf of the ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar. The species is among the rarest tortoises on Earth; experts believe that only a few hundred still exist. Their rarity, along with a golden shell, has laid a high price on their head.

"Turtles and tortoises are arguably the most threatened group of animals on the planet," says Eric Goode, founder of the Turtle Conservancy. "Out of the 330 species of turtles and tortoises, over half of them are threatened with extinction."
Goode purchased the land in the Ojai Valley eight years ago, transforming it into a breeding facility and a lush haven for some of the world's most endangered creatures — those threatened by hunters, habitat destruction and now a booming global wildlife trade.

"In Southeast Asia in particular, the newfound wealth in the middle class enables people to now buy animals and keep them as status symbols," Goode says. "This is happening in China, in Indonesia."

The ploughshare tortoise is one of the most coveted living status symbols. On the black market they can fetch tens of thousands of dollars each. If you hold an adult in your hands, it's the size of a basketball.

At the Turtle Conservancy, two of them slowly meander toward veterinarian Paul Gibbons, their rounded feet lightly touching the earth.

"We're looking at a tortoise that's incredibly beautiful with its golden shell and this rounded dome," Gibbons says.

To help save this species, conservationists aim to make its most attractive feature, the shell, less desirable to poachers and wealthy collectors, he says. Carved into the back of a 30-pound female ploughshare at the conservancy are four large numbers, 7-0-0-2, and two block letters, M-G. Each tortoise has a unique identifier that includes info about where the tortoise originated, in this case Madagascar, and where it was found — Asia. The engraving is a last-ditch effort to protect the animals.
"We want the hobbyist or the pet owner to think: I'm looking for a beautiful tortoise, one that's not damaged," Gibbons says.

The engraving is being done not only on those in the captive breeding program but on the few hundred remaining in the wild as well. Shells wear down as part of the aging process and the procedure doesn't appear to be a painful one for the tortoise, Gibbons says. The long-term effects are less certain, though.

"We are balancing some harm with the benefit to the species and the individual," Gibbons says.

Currently, 11 ploughshare tortoises live at the sanctuary, but many people are hoping that number rises. Gibbons points to a pregnant female ploughshare nestled next to a large rock.

"The eggs now are 2 1/2 months old. We're seeing signs that we believe there's a chance they might be fertile, but we're not certain yet," Gibbons says.
Nothing would make the conservancy's Goode happier than welcoming captive-bred ploughshare hatchlings into the world.

"On one hand, tortoises have lived for over 250 million years. They've outlived the dinosaurs and they precede the dinosaurs. On the other hand, man is able to exterminate them very, very quickly," Goode says.

It is a mystery how they've survived this long. They move so slowly; they can't run away. All they can do is calmly stare back at you through ancient eyes.




I have never heard of this tortoise, but it is another creature that is being driven to extinction because of pointless human activities. I do consider the gathering of a living species to own them as a status symbol to be pointless. It occurs in every human society, but it is harmful and gives no real additional meaning to life. It's not the highest order of human thinking that is at the root of this kind of thing. It's part of the sheep mentality, when people follow each other slavishly rather than making a stand against the trend. Fads like this don't help mankind at all. They simply destroy another of earth's species.




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Connecticut Looks To Sell Its Obamacare Exchange To Other States – NPR
by Jeff Cohen
February 28, 2014
­
Kevin Counihan, the CEO of Access Health CT, is walking through the 15th floor of a downtown Hartford office building that houses Connecticut's health insurance marketplace. He passes the legal department, the IT folks and the consultants, then stops in front of three large, wall-mounted computer screens.

"These are showing in real time, activity on our website. So, for example, right now you're looking at the number of concurrent users on the site," Counihan says. "So you can see that there are 212 people in the process of applying for insurance on the site."

The monitors and technology are just a part of what his agency is doing right. Connecticut is widely seen as one of the states that is succeeding with the Affordable Care Act. The state's website works well, and it has already exceeded its first-year enrollment goals. Other states have noticed.

"We were approached by several states who called us and said, 'Would you have any interest in franchising your exchange to us as a state?' And so, as we thought about that, we began coming up with this concept of an 'exchange in a box,' " says Counihan.
Think of it as Obamacare a la carte. Need an effective executive team? Let Counihan's people run your show, for a fee. Need help managing your vendors? They can do that, too. The Connecticut exchange's technology infrastructure can be scaled to fit any need, he says. Connecticut can deliver a state-specific look and feel, too. Sales. Marketing. Legal. Why do it yourself, when Connecticut can do it for you?

"My only point to some of these other states is, why go through all that agita? Why recreate a wheel somebody else already built?" Counihan says, sounding every bit the salesman. And he is, because the effort could help Counihan bring new revenue into the exchange.

The question is, can it work? Consultant Rosemarie Day of Day Health Strategies worked with Counihan years ago when Massachusetts built its own health insurance system. She says the idea of an exchange in a box is intriguing, but it's got to be nuanced, too.

"I think you can't just cut and paste, if it works in Connecticut, boom," Day says. "Doing that kind of organ transplant and reconnecting things can take longer."
She cautions that it's important to consider the complicated insurance markets in different states and their politics.

"States that have embraced having their exchange have a fair amount of buy-in from their governor's office, and the governors wanting to put their own stamp on what they're doing for their constituents," says Day.

Ego plays a role, too. States that seem like they are running successful exchanges may still need help behind the scenes, she says.

"They may not be publicizing all of this, but they're trying to make sure that they get out of that fingers-in-a-dike mode into something that is sustainable," Day says. "If [Connecticut] can help them do that, that would be tremendous."

NPR approached several states that have struggled to implement Obamacare for comment. None confirmed contact with Connecticut.

But Oregon said it's looking at technology alternatives should its vendor not deliver by the end of March. Maryland officials said earlier this month that they are actively investigating their options. Just this week, the state fired its healthcare IT contractor and picked a new one.

Not everything is perfect in Connecticut. The state's Spanish language enrollment website just went live — with barely a month to go before open enrollment ends. Still, people who work for Counihan say Connecticut has a lot to offer.

"The second name of this city is the insurance capital of the world," says Jim Wadleigh, the chief information officer for Access Health CT. "As you look at our entire leadership team, we come from the Cignas, the Aetnas, the Uniteds, the Health Nets, all those companies. That is probably what's helped us be so successful. We understand health care."

They also understand timing. Counihan says states that need help getting ready for the next open enrollment in November have a few weeks to decide how to proceed. But the clock, he says, is ticking.




Hopefully information about Connecticut's plan will spread sooner rather than later, so that all states will be up and running by November. There is so much confusion about the Affordable Healthcare problems that it is hard to keep track of all of them. If all the states are trying to have their own unique plan, maybe that is part of the matter. I hope Republican states are not trying to sabotage the success of the plan rather than making it succeed. This article did say politics is part of the situation. I hope this works out for the better soon. We shouldn't have this as a political football. We do need healthcare that works as a people. I'll look for more news articles about this as they come up.




­ House Approves Anti-Regulatory Bills, With Eye On Elections – NPR
by Bill Chappell
February 27, 2014
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The House of Representatives has approved several bills that would limit and change the way the federal government regulates businesses. The Republican-backed measures were all passed by largely party-line votes; none are seen as likely to be enacted into law.

The legislation underscores "an increasingly symbolic thrust of legislation as Congress heads toward midterm elections," NPR's David Welna reports for our Newscast unit.

"This is an opportunity for us to show the American people that we are committed to restoring the trust in government," GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor said today.
Here's more from David:
"The series of anti-regulatory bills the House approved is part of what Republican leaders are calling Stop Government Abuse Week.

"Democrats accused Republicans of wasting everyone's time.
" 'I sincerely wish my friends on the other side of the aisle would stop this conservative merry-go-round,' said Alcee Hastings, a congressman from Florida.
"Even some Republicans acknowledged their legislation is unlikely to be considered by the Senate."

Here are two of the bills voted on today:
The Achieving Less Excess in Regulation and Requiring Transparency Act, or ALERRT, was sponsored by Rep. George Holding, R-N.C. It was approved by a 236-179 vote, with 10 Democrats joining the Republican side.

The Consumer Financial Freedom and Washington Accountability Act was sponsored by Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis. It seeks to replace the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a five-member commission that would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The new body would be called the Financial Product Safety Commission. It was approved by a 232-182 vote, with 10 Democrats voting in favor.




Why are there Democrats voting with them? What is their purpose? I wonder if these bills are part of Congress's plan to “do nothin',” as mentioned in yesterday's news article. When I see a situation of products being made badly or an abuse of power I think we need more regulation, not less. Foods, drugs, activities like the aircraft controllers all deal with important issues and need to be regulated. The problem with some regulatory agencies is that they are not checking often enough or closely enough, and problem situations slip through undetected. Of course, this article says that the bills in this article are not expected to be made into law. It's just a “ conservative merry-go-round” – another waste of time.

Thursday, February 27, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Ousted Ukraine leader reportedly in Russia as pro-Kremlin gunmen seize gov't buildings in Crimea
CBS/Wire Services February 27, 2014

MOSCOW -- Russia has agreed to ensure the personal safety of Ukraine's ousted President Viktor Yanukovich, Russian news agencies quoted an official source as saying on Thursday.

"In connection with the appeal by president Yanukovich for his personal security to be guaranteed, I report that the request has been granted on the territory of the Russian Federation," the source was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
The report appeared to confirm rumors that the Ukrainian leader had fled his own nation and reached Russian soil.

Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, meanwhile, quoted the statement allegedly from Yanukovich himself, in which he asked for Russia to protect him from the "extremists" who forced him to flee his post and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev over the weekend.
A respected Russian news organization reported that the fugitive Ukrainian president had been seen in a Moscow hotel and was now staying in a Kremlin sanatorium just outside the city.

The RBK report was impossible to confirm, but security at the Ukraina Hotel was unusually heavy late Wednesday, with police watching from parked vehicles outside and guards posted throughout the lobby. Some of Yanukovich's allies were also reported to have been at the hotel.

A poster with a photo of fugitive Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, who fled the capital Kiev and went into hiding after months of protests against his government, is seen fixed onto a barricade in central Kiev, Ukraine, Feb. 27, 2014.

Yanukovich has not been seen publicly since Saturday, when he was spotted in the eastern Ukrainian region of Crimea, bordering Russia, where he still enjoys significant support. While the West has recognized the new Ukrainian government, whose forces drove Yanukovich from power, Russia still considers him the legitimate president.

In the statement he reportedly made on Thursday he asserted the same, that he remained the rightful leader of the Ukraine.

RBK reported Wednesday evening that Yanukovich was staying at the Barvikha sanatorium, which is run by the presidential administration's property department. The spokesman for this department, Viktor Khrekov, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he has no information about this.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman also said he had no information about Yanukovich's reported arrival in Moscow.

The news about Yanukovich came as Ukraine put its police on high alert after dozens of armed pro-Russia men stormed and seized local government buildings in the eastern Crimea region and raised a Russian flag over a barricade.

The renewed tension in this strategic peninsula that houses Russia's Black Sea fleet came as lawmakers in Kiev were expected to approve the new government, but also a day after clashes between pro- and anti-Russian demonstrators in Crimea's regional capital, Simferopol.

The men occupying the local parliament building did not immediately voice any demands but threw a flash grenade in response to a journalist's questions. They wore black and orange ribbons, a Russian symbol of the victory in World War II, and put up a sign saying "Crimea is Russia."

Ukraine's acting president appealed for calm after the buildings were seized, by what he called "criminals in military fatigues."

Fistfights broke out Wednesday outside the legislature's building in Simferopol between pro- and anti-Russian demonstrators.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, put combat troops on high alert Wednesday for war games near the Ukrainian boarder -- the Kremlin's boldest gesture after days of sabre rattling since its ally Yanukovich was toppled.

Moscow said about 150,000 troops would take part in exercises in the Western military district that borders Ukraine.

Moscow denounced what it described as the rise of "nationalist and neo-fascist sentiment" in Ukraine's mainly Ukrainian-speaking west, where it said Russian speakers were being deprived of rights.

On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said fighter jets along the country's border with Ukraine had been put on combat alert, according to the Interfax news agency.

"Constant air patrols are being carried out by fighter jets in the border regions," Interfax quoted a ministry statement as saying. "From the moment they received the signal to be on high alert, the air force in the western military region left for the ... air bases."

Secretary of State John Kerry said late Wednesday it would be a grave mistake for Russia to send troops into neighboring Ukraine.

In Kiev, opposition leaders who took charge after Yanukovich fled were working on forming a new government to chart a path forward for the country and its ailing economy. The parliament approved Arseniy Yatsenyuk Thursday as the nation's new prime minister.

Opposition leaders chose Independence Square -- the center of the revolution -- to introduce the country's new government Wednesday. The introductions prompted booing from some opposition supporters in the square.

Parliament must ratify the new ministers Thursday, but CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward reported that for some in the crowd, there were too many familiar faces from the Yanukovich days on stage.

Russia has repeatedly expressed concern for the safety of Russian citizens in Ukraine, using language similar to statements that preceded its invasion of Georgia in 2008.

Since Yanukovich's downfall on Saturday, all eyes have been on Putin, who ordered the invasion of Georgia to protect two self-declared independent regions with many ethnic Russians and others holding Russian passports. Moscow recognized the regions as independent states, using armed force effectively to seize control of territory from its neighbor.

Any military action in Ukraine, a country of 46 million people that has close ties with European powers and the United States, would be far more serious -- the closest the West and Russia have come to outright confrontation since the Cold War.


Arseniy Yatsenyuk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk (Ukrainian: Арсеній Петрович Яценюк, Arseniy Yatseniuk; born May 22, 1974) is a Ukrainian politician, economist and lawyer and current Prime Minister of Ukraine. [2] Yatsenyuk served in the government of Ukraine as Minister of Economy from 2005 to 2006; subsequently he was Foreign Minister of Ukraine in 2007 and Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) from 2007 to 2008. Currently he is one of the leaders of Ukraine's second biggest party[3] All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" and leader of the parliamentary faction of "Fatherland".[4][5][6]

Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk was born on May 22, 1974 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). He was born to in a family of professors of the Chernivtsi University. His father, historian Peter Ivanovich Yatsenuk, has been a professor at the Faculty of History at Chernivtsi National University. His mother Maria Grigoriievna Yatsenyuk (nee Buckeye) has been a teacher at the French Department of Foreign Languages ​​at Chernivtsi National University.[7] After Yatsenyuk began studying at the Chernivtsi University in 1992, Yatsenyuk set up a student law firm.[8] He graduated from the university in 1996, and later attended the Chernivtsi Trade-Economics Institute of the "Kyiv National Trade-Economics Institute" in 2001.[9]
From December 1992 to September 1997 he was the president of "Yurek Ltd." law firm, based in Chernivtsi.[9] From January 1998 until September 2001, Yatsenyuk worked in the Aval bank, based in Kiev.[9]

Arseniy Yatsenyuk was proposed for the post of Foreign Minister by the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko. Yatsenyuk was chosen for the post by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) on March 21, 2007[12] with 426 votes (from 450 maximum),[13] but only after the Ukrainian parliament twice denied the post to Volodymyr Ohryzko.

Yatseniuk does not want Russian to become the second state language in Ukraine.[66]
Yatseniuk wants European Union membership for Ukraine.[67] and he sees this "because this means standards and values – a [high] level of education, medical treatment, pensions, employment, freedoms, new technologies, and progress".[67] Yatseniuk stated late 2009 that in its relations with the European Union, Ukraine should have a visa-free regime with EU countries.[68] Yatseniuk stated on 20 April 2012 it was clear to him that the European Union will not sign the association agreement "until fully fledged democracy is resumed in Ukraine, free and fair elections are held, and the political persecution of opponents is stopped in Ukraine".[69] Yatseniuk is against Ukraine joining the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia; according to him "Ukraine's joining the Customs Union means the restoration of the Soviet Union in a slightly different form and with a different name. But this means that the country will become a part of the Russian empire. We know history. We have been there and we don't want to return there".[67] On 21 August 2013 Yatseniuk stated "Russia has decided for some reason that it can be the architect of a new Berlin wall. And, according to Russia’s design, this wall should appear at the border between Ukraine and the European Union".[70]




Russia is amassing troops on the border of Ukraine, though “it denied that the previously unannounced war games were linked to the Ukrainian crisis.” Meanwhile Kerry is warning Putin against invading Ukraine. I wonder if Obama should be proposing reducing the size of our military at this time. Usually this kind of thing is just posturing, of course. I doubt if Putin would actually start a war. I will keep my eye out for developments.





Washington is content to do nothing in 2014 – CBS
By John Dickerson CBS News February 27, 2014

Washington is coasting. For the past several years, chroniclers of the relationship between the president and Republicans in Congress have searched in vain for new ways to describe chaos. When chaos wasn't on order, the task was to find new ways to connote stasis--the lack of progress that filled the exhausted interregnum between periods of chaos.

Now the job has changed a bit. Crisis budgeting that led to tense moments is largely gone, mostly because House Republicans have decided not to stage confrontations. That is healthy, but there seems to have been a collective decision that like the convalescent, no politician is going to risk tearing the stitches by doing much more than padding around the ward. No one is going to do anything big or risky. The pace of action is neither chaotic nor energetic but just shy of slipping on a Snuggie and settling in for a Lord of the Rings marathon.

This is, of course, pathetic. Republicans and Democrats are both so frightened about creating fights within their own parties during an election year that they are leaving the big questions unanswered. Wednesday, House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp put forward a set of fundamental tax reform proposals. It was the product of years of work between Camp, a Republican, and his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Max Baucus. The two traveled across the country holding hearings, taking in mountains of input, and engaging in all the other kinds of activity that most people like to think of when they think of elected representatives doing their jobs.

All that work is going nowhere. No one in either party wants to risk taking on the complicated and tricky issue that might offend big contributors or stir up voters in the wrong way. There will continue to be talk on both sides, but no one is going to get anything done. Budget expert Stan Collender thinks that means no action on this issue until 2019.

Trade and immigration are two other items that have gone from the back burner to the freezer. House Speaker John Boehner won't start a fight in his party by bringing up immigration reform, and President Obama won't force his party to take up trade legislation that the president says will help the economy.

The stakes are so low in Washington that Obama and Boehner could even sit down and meet again after a long pause. Tuesday, the two men talked for an hour in what was their longest noncrisis conversation in years. Boehner emerged calling it a "nice meeting" and then went back to beating up on the president and his health care law.
So if nothing is going to get done, what did they talk about? Well, just because no one in Washington is going to do anything big or meaningful doesn't mean they have totally banished their chance to do a little something.

There is a possibility that the appropriations process will actually take place in some form this year. Spending items may actually be considered by a committee in which people will have their say about the merits of each program. Although the big budget questions of our time--big new spending or entitlement reforms--are still out of the conversation, at least spending levels won't be determined by sequestration. There's also a slim chance that Congress might work together on the transportation bill, flood insurance, and a water resource bill in the way that members worked together to pass the farm bill.

Those are not grand pieces of legislation, but they are what one top congressional aide calls the "meat and potatoes" of operating a government. A cynic might also call them the least lawmakers can be expected to do and still deserve the name. Of course, even limited progress is the optimistic view. Though the temperature has lowered and chaos is on pause, it's still possible that lawmakers could slip from risk-free coasting to a full-on coma. Given how few legislative days are scheduled for this election year, it may be impossible even to handle the meat-and-potato basics. Congress may, for example, once again resort to passing a continuing resolution instead of having a proper appropriations process.

This week, Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress, announced that he is retiring. He's out of a job, but a sculptor just got a new one. The House will no doubt commission a monument to commemorate Dingell's more than 58-year career of legislative action. All the other sculptors can take off, though. Even if there are a few achievements this year, they won't be anything to chisel home about.




Maybe this time of quiet would be a good chance for the Democrats to work on the environment or immigration. I'm sure that would get things stirred up again. The photograph which accompanies this article shows Boehner and Obama relaxed and apparently joking about something, smiles on both their faces. That's good for a change.




N. Korea launches missiles amid U.S.-S. Korea exercises
CBS/Reuters February 27, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea fired four short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast on Thursday, a media official at South Korea's Defense Ministry said, while providing no information on the purpose of the firing.

North Korea fired the missiles at 5:42 p.m. (3:42 a.m. ET) from a mountain site just north of the border with South Korea, the official said.

Launches by the North of short-range missiles are not uncommon as part of military exercises.

The firing came days after the beginning of annual joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises which the North routinely denounces as preparation for war.
North Korea had requested earlier this month that South Korea cancel the exercises, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flatly rejected, CBS News' Samuel Songhoon Lee reports from Seoul.

The North was angered this month when a nuclear-capable U.S. B-52 bomber made a sortie over South Korea, though the flight did not trigger a sharp escalation of military tension.

The South's Yonhap News Agency said the missiles fired on Thursday were believed to have a range of about 125 miles, which means they could not reach Japan.




More war games – I suppose there is an actual need to rehearse joint actions this way. It probably gives the two governments a chance to improve their plans and test their equipment. Also, of course, it gently reminds North Korea that the bond between us and South Korea is still firm. I notice there was no comment from the North, threatening or otherwise except the launching of the missles harmlessly into the ocean. Since we spend so much money coordinating joint military games, the Pentagon must think it is useful. So be it.




Drones could help areas devastated by drought – CBS
By Bigad Shaban CBS News February 26, 2014

Drones could soon help communities suffering from extreme drought. Meteorologist Jeff Tilley tells CBS News they could help produce billions of gallons of additional water each month through a process called cloud seeding. 

Tilley's current cloud seed generator shoots tiny silver iodide particles into storm clouds to help transform water vapor into snow or rain. The conversion takes about an hour.  

 Over the Sierra Nevada, he said, the cloud seed generator is more successful at higher altitudes. 

Eventually there's a limit to how high a land-based instrument can reach -- and that's where drones come in. Tilley's team at Nevada's Desert Research Institute is developing a first-of-its-kind unmanned drone for cloud seeding. 

Piloted planes have also been used in cloud seeding for more than 60 years. They can produce an additional 1 billion gallons of water for every 25 to 45 hours of flying, but have to stay above the clouds for safety reasons. 

Tilley says drones can fly through clouds and stay in the air longer, producing even more precipitation for communities devastated by drought. 

"You can think of it not only do I have more water to shower with, or water my plants with, or raise crops with, you're really helping the economy from having the breaks put on it because of the amount of water that's available."

The Desert Research Institute is still working on a cost analysis for using drones, but estimates that the price tag to operate them might only be half as much as standard planes, especially because the smaller drones require much less fuel.

He hopes his cloud seeding drone will begin soaking drought-stricken communities by the end of this year.




Tilley's cloud seeding drone is still in the developmental stages, but should be available by the end of this year. I hope they can do it faster. California is in dire straits now. Why aren't they using regular airplanes until the drone gets ready, even though it is more expensive? Cloud seeding was used to shrink the size of a hurricane some years back – when the rain fell the strength of the storm was diminished – so it is a process that works. Apparently the drone process creates more rain and is less expensive. It's good to see that this is lined up for the near future, because the need is very great.




N.J. mom: School bus left my 5-year-old at wrong stop ... again – CBS
CBS News February 26, 2014

A mother in northern New Jersey was furious after she says her daughter was dropped off at the wrong stop and then put on the wrong bus all in the same week, CBS New York station WCBS-TV reports.

Melissa Clayton's 5-year-old daughter, Mia Autrey, was left outside their apartment building with no one to pick her up when she was supposed to be taken to an after school program Thursday.

Clayton said she feared the worst.
"Panic, panic," she said. "I was scared to death."
Clayton said this wasn't the first time Mia was left outside their building instead of being taken to the after school program. She said the Trans Ed bus company made the same mistake with Mia on her first day of school in September.

"The bus driver did come back and say, 'I am sorry, I'm sorry; she was sleeping.' And I said, 'Well, that's when you're supposed to pay closer attention to make sure she got off at the right spot,'" Clayton said.

A neighbor spotted Mia and took her in from the cold.
Trans Ed told WCBS-TV that it is looking into the incident but wouldn't comment further.

Clayton said the school's superintendent said it wouldn't happen again.
"Thursday night, the principal called me and said, 'Oh I apologize for what happened with transportation. We're going to handle that,'" Clayton said.

So it was easy to imagine Clayton's shock when a teacher put Mia on the wrong bus Friday.

"They apologized, but, you know, it's kind of hard to accept their apology when it's your kid," Clayton said.

Clayton said she feels a little less stress now that the school district transferred Mia to the elementary school where her afterschool program is located.

WCBS-TV reached out to the school district for comment. Officials did not return any calls.





Kids used to be at least six when they went to school. Five seems like little more than a baby to me, and not ready to protect themselves or seek proper shelter. Thank goodness the neighbor took her into her own home until her mom came for her.

Her age aside, there are too frequently problems with school busing. It is the only way to keep a racially integrated school system and guarantee that kids have transportation; but it is a heavy responsibility on the bus driver to know at every stop which children should be getting off there, and if they don't come to the front of the bus, go back and find them. I remember one story when a mentally disabled child was left alone on the bus at the school yard until school authorities came out to look for him. He had been asleep, and the bus driver didn't go back and check on him.

Then there are the fights that break out on buses sometimes as bullies taunt or even hit a more timid or weaker student. The driver, to me, should immediately pull the bus over and stop, and then call 911 for police help. He or she is usually unable to stop the fight on his own. One such case that happened here in Jacksonville made the national news as the bus camera recorded a vicious assault on a boy by a group of bullies. Kids need to be safe not only in school, but in transit as well. Maybe the drivers could use another adult stationed on the bus to supervise the kids and back up the driver if a fight breaks out. That would cost extra money, but I think it would be worth it.




­
Deadly MERS Virus Circulates Among Arabian Camels – NPR
by Richard Knox
February 25, 2014
­
Scientists have gotten close to pinning down the origin of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a dangerous respiratory disease that emerged in Saudi Arabia 17 months ago.
It turns out the MERS virus has been circulating in Arabian camels for more than two decades, scientists report in a study published Tuesday.

Middle East Coronavirus Called 'Threat To The Entire World'
So far MERS has sickened more than 180 people, killing at least 77 of them — an alarming 43 percent. But scientists haven't been sure where the virus came from or how people catch it.

A report in the journal mBIO suggests the virus is ubiquitous among Saudi Arabian dromedary camels, the one-humped variety. The animals get the virus when they're young, and it often doesn't make them sick.

"We now know the answers to several questions," says the report's senior author, Ian Lipkin of Columbia University. "First, this virus infection is very common in camels. It probably occurs early in these camels. So this is a reservoir that is constantly replenishing itself. It can go directly from camels to humans, with no need for adaptation in another animal. And there's a lot of virus."

"This really confirms that this is a camel virus," says virologist Marion Koopmans of Erasmus University, who wasn't involved in the study.

Outbreak In Saudi Arabia Echoes SARS Epidemic 10 Years Ago
Koopmans and her team had previously found the MERS virus in camels as far afield as Africa and the Canary Islands. But the current study, she says, ends the discussion about whether camels get the virus from people. "It shows this virus is circulating in camels, period," Koopmans tells Shots.

At the same time, the new data leave other questions unanswered and even deepen some of the mystery around MERS.

The symptoms of MERS — often a life-threatening lung infection — can look similar to regular pnuemonias. So one question is whether people have been getting the virus for decades without anyone noticing or diagnosing it.

"What argues against that," Koopmans says, "is genetic sequence data from viruses picked up in people indicating that the virus emerged around mid-2012, not before that. That does not add up to infections having gone on for a long time, but that's still an open question."

The biggest puzzle, though, is how people who've had no contact with camels get the MERS virus.

"In our cases in Saudi, two-thirds have had no contact with camels," says Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister, Dr. Ziad Memish.

Middle East Virus Spreads Between Hospitalized Patients
It's known that people can get MERS from other humans. But this fails to account for most cases, which occur sporadically, with no obvious source of transmission.

One possibility, Lipkin says, is that people pick up the virus from contaminated surfaces, which scientists call fomites. A report published last fall shows that the MERS virus can persist for at least four days in the environment at wide ranges of temperature and humidity. This makes it similar to its far more easily transmitted cousin, the SARS virus, and very different from, say, flu viruses.

The virus' ability to persist in the environment may help explain a MERS outbreak last year among hospitals in the Saudi town of Al-Hofuf. But Memish thinks transmission is a bit more complex than can be explained by fomites.

"We have strong evidence from a cluster [of MERS infections] in a household with 23 people, only one or two of whom got infected," Memish says. "After 1.5 years and close to 200 cases, we know this virus is not very infectious."

The discovery of widespread MERS virus infection in camels does not rule out bats or other animals as intermediaries in the chain of transmission to humans — although the current study didn't find evidence of infection in goats or sheep.

It's known that bats harbor a similar virus, and last fall Lipkin's group caused a stir by publishing evidence that a virus extracted from an Egyptian tomb bat contained a short stretch of genes identical to MERS virus from humans. But that bat was one among thousands of samples with no evidence of the virus. And not everybody in the community is persuaded that single bat was infected with the same one that causes human disease.

"We need to find out if there is another intermediate host that can carry the virus more closely into the human population," says Lipkin, who has become famous for his ability to track down elusive new viruses. "We need to understand how people get exposed to this virus."

The answer, Lipkin thinks, lies in "gumshoe epidemiology" — the painstaking work of investigating what distinguishes people who have gotten MERS from counterparts who haven't.

In fact, after a lengthy delay that has generated much criticism, Arabian health officials are about to launch just such a project, called a case-control study. The World Health Organization has scheduled a meeting next week to finalize the study design, Memish says.

But Memish doesn't expect the study to answer crucial questions. "I don't think we're going to find anything new because what we've been doing for the last 1.5 years is an in-depth investigation of every case and their contacts," he tells Shots.

Koopmans disagrees. A recent WHO report, she notes, "makes really clear that few people [with MERS] have had the kind of follow-up you would want."

One sidelight of the new report is the strong suggestion that collaborations between Saudi researchers and outsiders continue to be contentious.

A previous collaboration between Lipkin and Memish (the lead person for MERS in the Saudi government) has ended. Although Memish's name has appeared on previous papers with Lipkin, it's missing this time.

"We're surprised to see this report coming from their lab, using probably our samples, but we're not aware of it [until now]," Memish says. Lipkin says the group collected its own specimens in Saudi Arabia in collaboration with a group from King Saud University.

Lipkin acknowledges his collaboration with Memish has broken down. "We've gone our separate ways, and I wish him well," Lipkin says.


Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV),[1] also termed EMC/2012 (HCoV-EMC/2012), is positive-sense, single-stranded RNA novel species of the genus Betacoronavirus. It was first reported on 24 September 2012 on ProMED-mail[2] by Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.



http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/MERS/
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is viral respiratory illness first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. It is caused by a coronavirus called MERS-CoV. Most people who have been confirmed to have MERS-CoV infection developed severe acute respiratory illness. They had fever, cough, and shortness of breath. About half of these people died.

So far, all the cases have been linked to six countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula. No cases have been identified in the U.S. This virus has spread from ill people to others through close contact. However, the virus has not shown to spread in a sustained way in communities. The situation is still evolving.

CDC is working with partners to better understand the risks of this virus, including the source, how it spreads, and how infections might be prevented. CDC has provided information for travelers and is working with health departments, hospitals, and other partners to prepare for possible cases in the United States.




Wikipedia gives the Egyptian Tomb Bat as the only known source of the virus, clearly an outdated article, and the CDC simply tells very little about the disease. The most complete information I could find is in this NPR article. NPR Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, according to NPR, specifies camels as the “reservoir” for the virus, with the ability to spread to human with no intermediary, plus the virus has been found to spread from person to person as well, though it is not very infectious. The virus can also live on surfaces, or “fomites,” for up to four days and presumably be the source of some infections.

The virus first was detected in humans in 2012, but since the symptoms closely resemble other pneumonias, it may have been active in people for much longer than that. DNA evidence, though, does show that the virus emerged in its present form in 2012. It so far has killed 43% of those who have contracted it. It has not spread among people beyond the Middle East, though it has been found in camels in Africa and the Canary Islands, and since it does spread from person to person it could hop on a jet plane and come over to North America, conceivably. The good news is that it doesn't spread very fast. No information was given on treatments for the disease. Hopefully that will come soon as scientists continue to study it.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014


News Clips For The Day


California couple strikes gold after finding $10 million in rare coins
By Dana Ford, CNN
Wed February 26, 2014

(CNN) -- Eureka!
A husband and wife are reveling in their good fortune after finding $10 million in rare gold coins buried on their property in Northern California.

The gold country discovery is thought to be the largest of its kind in U.S. history, according to David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service, which authenticated the find.

"It's quite a story. People were walking along on their property in Northern California, noticed something, began digging and they found cans of gold coins," Hall said.
"It should have happened to you and me."

California discovers gold again

The coins were unearthed in February 2013 by the husband and wife, who wish to remain anonymous.
They were walking their dog when they spotted something shiny on the ground.
The couple dug and eventually discovered eight metal cans, containing more than 1,400 gold coins.

No one knows how they got there, or who the coins might have belonged to.
"Somebody could have buried them and then died before they let anybody know where they were," Hall said.

"Believe it or not, I know cases where they forgot they had something, or they moved or whatever ... It could have been some kind of robbery deal ... Who knows?"
The treasure is known as the "Saddle Ridge Hoard" because it was discovered near a hill the couple called Saddle Ridge.

In their effort to stay anonymous, the husband and wife aren't saying exactly where the fortune was found.

These coins could change history
The coins

The coins, in $5, $10 and $20 denominations, are dated from 1847 to 1894. Most were minted in San Francisco.

They have a combined face value of about $27,000, but experts believe they could fetch $10 million or more.

The couple is planning to sell much of the collection.
Approximately 90% of the coins will go up on Amazon.com's "Collectibles" site, according to Don Kagin, of Kagin's, Inc., who is assisting the anonymous owners.
Collectors wanting a sneak peak can see some of the coins at the American Numismatic Association's 2014 National Money Show in Atlanta, which opens Thursday.

"Unlike other hoards and treasures, this one includes a great variety of coins struck over many different years, and many of the coins are still in pristine condition," Kagin said in a statement.

"And add to that a wonderful human interest story: this family literally found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."





A number of years ago my father was digging in his backyard garden and discovered a large, smoothed stone. He thought he knew what he had and brought it to me in Chapel Hill, NC. We took it to an archaeologist on the campus, who stated that it was a 6,000 year old Indian grindstone. I still have that stone in my apartment in Jacksonville.

That was a great find, but nothing like these gold coins. I am imagining an old miner who was a hermit. Instead of running into the local bar and buying everybody drinks whenever he found more gold, he sold his gold for coins, gradually collecting this hoard. He spent very little, so the coins just continued to accumulate. He died alone from a heart attack. His body was found and he was buried in a pauper's plot, and the gold remained hidden. He had lived a spartan life, and the neighbors found no signs of wealth in his dwelling, so they suspected nothing. Eventually the land was sold to developers who put up housing on it, and this family bought their plot.

The article said that it could have been the proceeds of a robbery, but I doubt it. I don't think the coins would have been of varied years over such a long period of time unless it was something like a hermit's hoard. A Wells Fargo robbery would have been in mainly new coins, I think. Also, that's a lot of money for a robbery. Whatever, it is now going to be sold off ignominiously coin by coin on Amazon.com, not even in a spectacular auction. That is clearly the easiest way for the couple to translate their find to modern day currency, and they can retain their anonymity in the process. May they live long and enjoy the pleasures of their newly found wealth.




NATO chief backs Obama's threat to Karzai, says alliance will pull out of Afghanistan without BSA – CBS
CBS/AP February 26, 2014

BRUSSELS -- NATO's secretary general says that if Afghan leaders and the White House can't agree on a key security pact, the U.S.-led alliance will pull all of its troops and equipment out of Afghanistan by December.

The blunt statement from Anders Fogh Rasmussen Wednesday at the start of a NATO defense ministers meeting ratchets up pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to strike a deal.

On Tuesday, President Obama threatened to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year if the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) isn't signed.
CBS News correspondent David Martin reported that while the threat of the so-called "zero option" -- a complete withdrawal -- had been on the table for some time, and the Pentagon has been working on contingency plans for it, Tuesday's phone call was the first time Karzai had heard it directly from Mr. Obama. 

Hagel: Karzai's reluctance on security agreement is frustrating
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says he hopes Afghan President Hamid Karzai signs a security agreement for a post-2014 U.S. presence in Afghanistan...
Crucially, the White House indicated Wednesday that while the U.S. is adamant that a BSA must be signed, and the number of troops likely to remain in the country decreases the longer that signature lingers, the Obama administration is willing to wait until Karzai himself is replaced in an Afghan national elections in April. Many of the candidates vying to replace him have already indicated that they would sign a BSA with the U.S.

"We will leave open the possibility of concluding a BSA with Afghanistan later this year," the White House said in a summary of the call between the two leaders. However, the White House added that "the longer we go without a BSA, the more likely it will be that any post-2014 U.S. mission will be smaller in scale and ambition."
Martin said the U.S. currently has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the top American commander in the country has suggested keeping around 10,000 there after the bulk come home this year -- but only if the U.S. and Afghan governments can agree to and sign a BSA.

Without that agreement, Rasmussen said, forces from other NATO countries and partners cannot stay beyond 2014 either. There are roughly 19,000 non-U.S. forces now in Afghanistan.

"Let me stress, this is not our preferred option," Rasmussen said. "But these are the facts." The NATO chief was to hold meetings with other defense chiefs, including his U.S. counterpart Chuck Hagel, during this week's meetings in Brussels, and Afghanistan was expected to be a primary topic of discussion.

Many Afghan leaders and security officials have expressed serious concern about the readiness of the nation's police and soldiers to stand up to the Taliban and other insurgent groups without Western backup.

On Tuesday, speaking to CBS News on the condition of anonymity, a senior government official from neighboring Pakistan put it starkly, saying the "zero option should not be an option. It means civil war in Afghanistan."

The official said Afghan security forces were simply not ready for the fight on their own, and cautioned that many -- as much as 30 percent of the overall Afghan security force -- could simply walk off the job and return to their villages if the U.S. troops pulled out entirely.

He also worried that without foreign military backup, bloodshed in Afghanistan would increase and spill over the border in the form of more attacks on Pakistan. Afghanistan's leaders have for years pointed the finger, in turn, at Islamabad, saying many of the attacks on Afghan and NATO troops are carried out by militants who have bases on the Pakistani side of the nations’ shared border.

The official noted that Pakistan was already home to "millions" of Afghan refugees, and said any new influx sparked by a deterioration in the already-tenuous security situation in the neighboring nation would be a disaster for Pakistan's government.





If the US pulls out completely, our efforts there will be for nothing, and both Afghanistan and Pakistan will be harmed. The US, however, is willing to wait until Kharzai is replaced, as many of those who want to run for that office are willing to sign the agreement. I hope that this is, therefore, not the crisis that the news agencies are portraying. We will have to watch the situation as time goes on.




As more arctic air nears, massive ice jams wreck property across Midwest – CBS
By Dean Reynolds CBS News February 25, 2014

WILMINGTON, Ill. -- A new blast of arctic air is driving across the northern United States, and adding to the cold weather problems are ice jams.

Considerable damage has already been done in Tippecanoe County, Ind., where buckling ice from Wildcat Creek ran wild, literally plowing trees and wrecking property.
Video from Ohio last week captured the speed and strength of an ice jam on the move, and many in the region are now fearing a similar fate.

"This is probably 12 feet from the river's edge, and look at it -- it's like just mass destruction. You can't stop the ice," said Steve Highbaugh, who has lived along the Kankakee River for a quarter century.

Highbaugh's property is in danger of being pulverized both by the ice and the flooding that could follow.

The combination of the thaw and rain late last week got the ice going. Even when it appears motionless, it's generating dangerous pressure on infrastructure, and the water underneath could quickly reroute sideways to get around the jam, causing flooding.

"We are looking at something that looks very still and very calm right now, but at any time it could cause massive problems with the break-up and start flowing," said Trent Thompson, chief of operations for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.
Residents along the river are watching it closely, knowing that the next move it makes could force them from their homes.

As for what's in the forecast, chief meteorologist Eric Fisher at CBS Boston station WBZ says the arctic air will be dropping south over the next three days. By Thursday, lows will be in the teens and 20s in Texas and across the deep South on Friday.  




I have been watching the movements of the jet stream for years now on the weather reports, and it always seems to shift according to rules of its own. When it comes south now, unfortunately, it's bringing very cold air. This article didn't mention the “Polar Vortex” but the effect is much the same as last month's events. This damaging ice is the first mention I have ever heard of such danger in the Continental US, though I imagine if we were to go back through a hundred years worth of weather data there would be other cases like this. I do hope this current ice buildup doesn't produce large floods later, like we had about ten years ago on the Ohio River. Many people's homes were inundated then.





Inside China's pollution problems – CBS
CBS News February 26, 2014

Beijing is suffering through a week of dangerous air pollution levels. Even Chinese officials say the air is "unbearable."

Beijing's skyline disappears into smog as traffic cops and even toddlers don masks. Pollution is primarily caused by coal burning for heat and the more than five million cars on the road.

Students outfitted statues with masks to push classmates to think about pollution, while others are making smog a not-so-subtle partner in photos circulated online.
CBS News' Seth Doane reported from Beijing, "Many of us (who live in China) have apps on our phones that tell us the current pollution levels. The (Environmental Protection Agency) established a scale that runs from zero to 500, with 500 the worst. Today's pollution reading is above 500 -- beyond index. That means the average pollution levels are around 20 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers 'safe.'"

There's not much of a view from the 15th floor of American doctor, Richard St. Cyr's apartment. At Beijing United -- where he's a family physician -- patients pepper him with questions.

St. Cyr said, "(Patients ask) 'Does an air purifier actually work?' 'Does a mask actually do anything?' 'Should you exercise outside on a bad day or not?'"
St. Cyr said not only does he not have all the answers, "it's things that I want to know."

He started a blog to dole out advice and reveal what data he could uncover.
"Many times I've gone around my apartment like a crazy man with an air particle monitor, and I've borrowed like many machines and I've tested them in different rooms and I'll publish the results on my blog," St. Cyr said.

Beijing has not yet raised its color-coded alert to red -- the highest level -- but for nearly a week, the city has encouraged schools to keep kids inside and residents to wear masks.

State media has broadcast pictures of a steel factory being demolished -- because it's one of the heavy-polluting industries -- and it's reporting that 147 industrial companies in Beijing have cut or suspended production to combat smog.

While clothing was optional at Beijing's annual "Naked Run," masks were worn. And when China's President Xi Jinping made a surprise visit to a Beijing neighborhood earlier this week, much of the chatter online was that he did not wear a mask.
China's pollution problems are expected to be on the government's agenda at the national Peoples Congress set to begin March 5. After last year's meeting, China's premier said pollution gave him a heavy heart. However, the Chinese government's attempts to deal with pollution problems are difficult to detect on a day like this.




Many US cities could offer advice to China if they want to consult with us. Jacksonville, FL where I currently live had pollution bad enough to eat holes in women's nylon hosiery not too long ago, and the air is now much clearer after a massive government effort to clean it up. It was a big improvement for me here when I moved down from Washington, DC in 1995, where I had constant allergy and sinus problems causing frequent headaches and other problems.

It is possible to clear up a city's air, but it takes government efforts and restrictions on factories and car pollution. The fact that citizens in Beijing are burning coal for heat is probably one of their biggest problems. We have factories here, including two paper mills, but the air is still passable. Every city's situation is different. When I was in Washington I was aware of fungus spores from dead leaves and auto and bus pollution. My window sills collected a fine black soot deposit from the air. There were also many ornamental gardens around the city putting out pollen. I miss the free museums in Washington, but I don't miss the air quality.





Woman claims she was attacked for wearing Google Glass at bar – CBS
By Crimesider Staff CBS News February 26, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO - A woman took to Facebook to report being attacked for wearing Google Glass at a bar Friday night, according to CBS San Francisco.

Sarah Slocum, a technology writer, said she was at Molotov’s in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. She was showing someone how the high-tech headset works when two women confronted her, Slocum wrote on her Facebook page. Then, a man allegedly ripped the glasses off of her face.

“OMG so you’ll never believe this but… I got verbally and physically assaulted and robbed last night in the city, had things thrown at me because of some ---- Google Glass haters,” Slocum posted to Facebook.

Slocum said she recovered the Google Glass, and the video on the device that shows the man ripping the glasses off her face, from the assailant. However, her purse and phone – which she says were also stolen – have not been found.

According to witnesses, some people at the bar were upset about possibly being recorded by the glasses. Brian Lester, who was at the bar Friday night, said he saw a man insult Slocum outside the bar. Then, another man, who was accompanying Slocum, started a fight with the man who insulted her.

“The crowd was jeering as any last call crowd would do with a fight outside of a bar,” Lester said. “She was running around very excited… and people were telling her, ‘You’re being an ---, take those glasses off.”

“I think everybody was just upset that she would be recording outside of a bar this late with obvious embarrassing behavior going on,” said Lester. “And just rather insulted that someone thinks it’s okay to record them the entire time they’re in public.”

Slocum received sympathy and support about the ordeal from friends posting on her Facebook page.

Google recently sent out a list of do's and don't for Google Glass wearers on ways to use the headset.

Slocum declined an interview request by CBS San Francisco.



Google: How not to be a "Glasshole"
CBS News February 19, 2014

As the public release date approaches, Google is helping Google Glass wearers deal with all of the attention the new technology attracts. 

The digital eyeglass-style headsets -- which can search the Internet on voice command, record video, and more -- are expected to hit the market by the end of the year. Preview models have already proven popular with doctors and professional sports teams, along with a growing number of early adopters.

But the devices have not been welcome everywhere. One Seattle restaurant banned the wearable technology in November 2013, and an Ohio man was questioned when he wore his Google Glass to a movie theater.

 Models sport Google Glass on runway
Google co-founder Sergey Brin and designers Diane Von Furstenberg and Yvan Mispelaere walk the runway during New York's fashion week on Sept. 9, ...
 
Google Glass in surgery? Doctor testing tech says it's a "safety net"
High-tech device can stream live video of an operation to doctors in other cities, making surgery into a collaboration, according to Brent Ponce,...

 "Reactions range from the curious – 'Wow! Are those the "Google glasses'? How do they work?' – to the suspect – 'Goodness gracious do those things see into my soul?!' Luckily as the Explorer Community grows, so does their collective wisdom," Google wrote on its website.

And so, the company asked current "Glass Explorers" for their do's and don'ts. It posted the tongue-in-cheek advice on its site. The highlights read like a hybrid between an etiquette manual and a sales training guide. For example:

Don't "Wear it and expect to be ignored"
"If you’re worried about someone interrupting that romantic dinner at a nice restaurant with a question about Glass, just take it off and put it around the back of your neck or in your bag."

Don't "Be creepy or rude (aka, a 'Glasshole')"
"Respect others and if they have questions about Glass don’t get snappy. Be polite and explain what Glass does and remember, a quick demo can go a long way... Breaking the rules or being rude will not get businesses excited about Glass and will ruin it for other Explorers."

Do "Ask for permission"
"Standing alone in the corner of a room staring at people while recording them through Glass is not going to win you any friends."

Do "Take advantage of the Glass voice commands"
"Glass can free your hands up to do other things like golfing, cooking, or juggling flaming torches while balancing on a beach ball."

The list also includes some common-sense advice, such as warning users not to wear Google Glass during high-impact sports, or for extended periods of time. "If you find yourself staring off into the prism for long periods of time you’re probably looking pretty weird to the people around you," it says. 

  Google Glass gets new designer look
Google's futuristic glasses are redesigned
 Google sums it up by suggesting that users treat the glasses like they would a cell phone; if a situation is not appropriate for a cell phone camera, it's not appropriate for Google Glass.

The advice comes as Google Glass technology is becoming increasingly widespread. Google unveiled plans earlier this month for the technology to be incorporated into prescription eyewear. The NYPD also announced it will be testing the device for possible law enforcement use.




Well, Sarah Slocum needs to read this accompanying article from Google Glass on the do's and don'ts of the technology. In both these cases, at the movie theater and Slocum's altercation, a number of people are upset about being recorded. I wonder if jealousy is involved in the consternation, with anger at the expense of the glasses, such as wearing a fur coat and a hand full of diamonds with a pear of jeans – conspicuous consumption.

According to the first article there are restaurants and other venues which have banned Google Glass to assure the privacy of their customers. It does strike me as being more trouble than it's worth, and they could be distracting mentally at times when you are crossing a busy street or driving and you need to be paying attention to what you're doing. I don't want Google Glass. I don't need to record my life, and I get enough computer time when I'm doing my blog.




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Solitary Confinement Costs $78K Per Inmate And Should Be Curbed, Critics Say – NPR
by Carrie Johnson and Bill Chappell
February 25, 2014
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Former prisoners spoke about the effects of solitary confinement Tuesday, in a congressional hearing aimed at banning the treatment for some inmates. The federal push to reduce solitary confinement is being led by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who calls it "a human rights issue we can't ignore."

Inmates who are held in solitary confinement spend 23 hours a day in small windowless cells, receiving their food on trays that are pushed through a slot in the cell's door.

The use of solitary confinement is also extremely expensive and counterproductive, according to a news release from the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights,which Durbin leads.

NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson, who attended today's hearing, says that Durbin's calls for change, which is aimed only at the rules governing juveniles, pregnant women and the mentally ill, come as some states have already begun to cut the use of solitary confinement.

"In the last couple of years, a lot of factors have come together," Carrie tells Melissa Block on All Things Considered. She'll also report on the issue for Morning Edition Wednesday.

"There have been efforts by states to save a lot of money and reduce violence in prisons," Carrie says. "And also, a critical mass of advocacy by the ACLU and some researchers," she says, along with bipartisan interest in the issue.
"One fact that came out today was that it costs about $78,000 a year to house someone in the federal prison system in solitary," Carrie says. "That's three times as much as it costs to put somebody in a regular prison unit."

Carrie says that states "have been leading the way" in curbing solitary confinement.
New York recently announced a broad revamping of its prison poliicies last week, for instance, spurred by a federal lawsuit in which critics said " thousands of inmates — some of them pregnant or mentally ill — are being held for months and even years in isolation, often for minor infractions," as NPR's Brian Mann reported.

Mississippi, Maine, and Texas have also taken up the issue. Today, Durbin and his allies urged more states and the federal government to ban the use of solitary confinement.

"The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation in the world," Durbin said ahead of the session. "The dramatic expansion of the use of solitary confinement is a human rights issue we can't ignore."
Carrie calls the testimony that was given by former prisoners on Capitol Hill today "incredible."

Particularly moving were the words of former inmate Damon Thibodeaux, who was exonerated after serving nearly 15 years in solitary confinement in a Louisiana prison.

"Humans cannot survive without food and water," Thibodeaux told the senators. "They can't survive without sleep. But they also can't survive without hope."
"Years on end in solitary, particularly on death row, will drain that hope from anyone. Because in solitary there's nothing to live for," he said.

"After realizing what my existence would be like for years on end, until I was either executed or exonerated, I was on the verge of committing what was basically suicide by state," Thibodeaux said, "by voluntarily giving up my legal rights and allowing the state to carry out the sentence of death."

He asked, "What does it say about us as a nation that even before the law allows the state to execute a person, we're willing to let it kill them bit by bit and day by day, by subjecting them to solitary confinement?"

Interest in today's hearing was so intense that its location was shifted to a new venue on the Hill. The witness list included Piper Kerman, author of the memoir Orange Is the New Black, based on her own experience in prison.

Kerman said that for women in prison, the risk of solitary confinement can make them reluctant to speak up about rape and other abuses, for fear of possible retribution.
"The terrible threat of isolation makes women afraid to report abuse, and serves as a powerful disincentive to ask for help or justice," she said.

The proposed changes are meeting with resistance from prison officials and guards, whose union president, Eric Young, said today that "isolation or segregation is a vital tool to prevent anarchy in prisons," Carrie says.

And the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Charles E. Samuels, Jr., said that there are inmates, such as gang leaders, who must be separated from the rest of the prison population.

"If they see that we will lower our standards, we will not hold individuals accountable, it puts our staff at risk," he said. "It puts other prisoners at risk."
The Senate panel released information today stating that of the more than 2.3 million people who are in America's jails and prisons, "the United States held over 80,000 people in some kind of restricted detention."




"The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation in the world," said Durbin. Yet the prison officials say it is “a vital tool” to protect the main body of the prisoners from the gang leaders and other violent inmates, and that there would be anarchy without it. Durbin's proposed measure only protects “juveniles, pregnant women and the mentally ill,” and that some prisoners are discouraged from complaining about issues such as rape for fear of being placed in solitary. It is good to see that a number of states have already begun to examine the use of complete isolation with the possibility of banning it.

I would like to see Durbin stretch his measure to cover all prisoners. Solitary confinement is like that tactic of feeding selected prisoners Nutriloaf rather than regular meals as a punishment. It is too demoralizing and depressing. I also am one of those people who think the prison system should be actively involved in rehabilitating prisoners rather than just punishing them. Real change is a positive thing, not just the result negative punitive actions, and requires a positive attempt by the prison system. Prisoners who have not changed are much more likely to go back to a life of crime once they get out, than “go straight.” That makes their stay in prison basically worthless. Not only is it much more humane to try to change them mentally and emotionally, it is better for the whole society.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014


News Clips For The Day


http://www.pawnation.com/2014/02/18/prince-william-wants-buckingham-palace-ivory-destroyed/
Prince William Wants Buckingham Palace Ivory Destroyed
By Nancy Barber Feb 18th 2014

Prince William is calling for the destruction of all ivory in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace, the Guardian reports. This comes days after he attended the largest conference ever held on the subject of illegal wildlife trade.
Primatologist Jane Goodall told The Independent that when she spoke to Prince William and he said that he would "like to see all the ivory owned by Buckingham Palace destroyed."

The royal collection at Buckingham Palace contains about 1,200 pieces dating back hundreds of years. It includes furniture such as an ivory throne that belonged to Queen Victoria. Some art enthusiasts oppose the destruction of these artifacts, but conservationists support the idea.

"It would be a demonstration of them putting their money where their mouth is. It would be extremely significant and visual, and might help Britons hand in their ivory, illegal or legal," said conservationist Dr. Paula Kahumbu.

Prince William is not alone in his stance against illegal ivory. His father, Prince Charles, has asked to have items of ivory removed from his sight at his homes, Clarence House and Highgrove.

"It's difficult to imagine a stronger symbol of the horrors of ivory than Buckingham Palace publicly destroying its own. Good for Prince William for pushing this," said Member of Parliament Zac Goldsmith.

A spokesman for Prince William refused to confirm or deny any private comments attributed to the prince.


Ivory trade
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ivory trade is the commercial, often illegal trade in the ivory tusks of the hippopotamus, walrus, narwhal,[1] mammoth,[2] and most commonly, Asian and African elephants.

Ivory has been traded for hundreds of years by people in such regions as Greenland, Alaska, and Siberia. The trade, in more recent times, has led to endangerment of species, resulting in restrictions and bans. Ivory is used to make piano keys and other decorative items because of the white color it presents when processed

Elephant ivory has been exported from Africa and Asia for centuries with records going back to the 14th century BC. Throughout the colonisation of Africa ivory was removed, often using slaves to carry the tusks, to be used for piano keys, billiard balls and other expressions of exotic wealth.[3]

Ivory hunters were responsible for wiping out elephants in North Africa perhaps about 1,000 years ago, in much of South Africa in the 19th century and most of West Africa by the end of the 20th century. At the peak of the ivory trade, pre 20th century, during the colonisation of Africa, around 800 to 1,000 tonnes of ivory was sent to Europe alone.[4]




This Wikipedia article on the recently mostly illegal ivory trade is too long and detailed to include here, but it is well worth reading. It can be found on my second blog called “Thoughts and Researches.” The conclusions I drew from this article is that some conservationists, especially WWF, have been supportive of the ivory trade as a means of financing their conservation activities in the various African countries. They have concluded, I think, that the forces behind the worldwide ivory trade are too large and powerful to stop, so they have worked with the African governments to get an agreement on managing the trade in elephant ivory and apparently received money from the trade. They were only in support of a ban on the ivory trade in 1989: “WWF only came out in support of a ban in mid-1989 and even then attempted to water down decisions at the October 1989 meeting of CITES."

In 1989 the parties desiring a ban on the ivory trade achieved that through CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). See also the CITES website http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/what.php. “CITES is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.”

China and Japan are heavily involved in carving the ivory, as well as being markets for the ivory products, but most of the carved ivory goes to Europe and America, according to this Wikipedia article. The forces behind the ivory trade are as powerful and entrenched as those involving diamonds, uranium, gold and oil. The beauty of ivory objects makes them so highly desirable that they are almost irresistible as personal treasures.

I am afraid that Prince William's goal of destroying all the historic ivory pieces in Buckingham Palace, if it occurs at all, would be a drop in the bucket of the world ivory trade. It just wouldn't make any difference. It is possible that African nations need to follow the example of South Africa in setting up protected reserves for all of their elephant populations and “culling” them for their ivory periodically. I consider elephants to be highly intelligent animals, so I hate the thought of that, but the ivory trade probably cannot be stopped completely, and if it is managed carefully will be less harmful than in the present situation.




Battle begins on defense budget spending; Obama plan seeks to curtail army to pre-WWII size – CBS
CBS NewsFebruary 25, 2014

The Obama administration wants to build a 21st century military, but it may have to go to war with Congress to get its plan approved.

The pushback began quickly on Monday as the Pentagon revealed next year's proposed budget, which would shrink the Army to its smallest size since the 1930s before World War II.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, has called the changes "a huge challenge."

Some of these changes have been coming for years -- getting the military out of war mode and reshaping it into a modernized force, and that means smaller and more high-tech, but it could come at the expense of some of the men and women who serve.
The announcement at first didn't sound that dramatic. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said, "We are repositioning to focus on the strategic challenges and opportunities that will define our future."

As Hagel began outlining sharp spending cuts in the Pentagon's new budget, concern and dismay spread from Washington, D.C., to military bases across the country.
"What we're trying to do is solve our financial problems on the backs of our military," Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., the House Armed Services Committee chairman, said. "And that can't be done."

The requested cuts are widespread, affecting popular programs and troop benefits. Pay raises for enlisted men and women would be capped at one percent for a second straight year. Housing allowances would be reduced.

One veterans group estimates that an army captain with a family of four and 10 years of experience would lose $2,100 a year.

Megan Zemke lives at Fort Lee just outside Richmond, Va., with her husband, an Army captain with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It definitely affects us, and it's definitely a scary prospect," she said.
She also served in the Army for seven years, and now is at home expecting the couple's first child.

"It is a pinch," Zemke said. "It is a belt-tightening. It is trying to figure out, 'How are we going to make this work?' And on top of that, trying to figure out how am I going to have my husband be away again, how am I going to be the sole provider for my children while he or she is gone?"

Hagel also asked for a new round of base closures and to cancel the Army's ground combat vehicle and the Air Force's A-10 attack jets.

But two areas are being protected: money for special operations forces and cyber warfare.

Hagel says the cuts have to come and the U.S. is no longer on war footing, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported on "CBS This Morning."

Reshaping the military is something even former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to do, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was one of his biggest "failures" -- not being able to reposition the military for the 21st century.




If we commit to a peacetime force, what does that entail? “Getting the military out of war mode and reshaping it into a modernized force, and that means smaller and more high-tech,” is the proposed plan of the future, according to this article. If we are going to reduce the nation's budget overall, it is probably necessary to do this. I wonder what new kinds of more highly technical weapons they have in development? Lazer guns, increased use of drones, robotic assault vehicles? I got that last one from War Of The Worlds, but with smart cars that can drive themselves now it seemed a likely new weapon.

The Republicans will fight this measure very hard, I expect, as a powerful military is one of their main parts of an ideal government. I think the Democrats would say that our military is too bulky and not as flexible as a more mechanized military strike force and smaller, more highly trained groups of soldiers. Those things are appropriate to a situation in which we stay firmly away from full scale invasions, and only make air strikes or send in special forces groups.

I wouldn't want to weaken our military, but to make it more effective would be a good thing. The financial waste that the army has committed to has been reported in the news from time to time over the years. The fact that the military budget is a secret, but known to be huge, is also one of our problems. The waste continues partly because the public rarely hears about it in specifics, and can't control it even through our Congressional intervention. “Whatever is needed” has been the rule, and that has led to selection of equipment which upon testing doesn't work as it should, etc., with those new fighter jets costing billions of dollars. President Obama can make a restrictive budget, which will help, but careful procurement will have to be an ongoing policy to avoid getting back into the same situation again. I'm glad to see that he is making the effort. It's a positive step.




California to split into six states? Plan may get on ballot – CBS
CBS News February 25, 2014

A plan to split California into six different states is one step closer to a vote. California's Secretary of State is allowing a wealthy investor, Tim Draper, to start collecting signatures for his petition.

Draper recently told CBS News' Ben Tracy why he wants to draw the line in so many parts of the West. "Leaving the status quo as it is, is a crime," he said. "It's a crime to all those children and all those grandchildren. It's a crime that we should be ashamed of." 

Draper is a billionaire venture capitalist. He made much of his fortune with investments in tech start-ups, such as Skype and Hotmail. Now he wants to cut California down to size.

"California is just too big and too monolithic to manage all 38 million people," he said. "They're trying to be all things to all people, and they are doing nothing for anyone."

California is the world's eighth-largest economy. Farmers in the state's central valley grow one-third of the nation's produce. Hollywood is the entertainment capital of the world, and Silicon Valley is the center of tech.

Draper's plan would create the new states of Jefferson, North California, Central California, and South California. But the majority of the population and wealth would be concentrated in what he calls West California, including Los Angeles, and in the State of Silicon Valley containing San Francisco -- the area where Draper lives.
Tracy remarked to Draper, "The criticism is that you're a rich guy who wants to see his taxes kept local where they benefit you the most."

Draper replied, "I am a rich guy, and I am thinking that I want my government and my taxes to be well invested. I want them to create a great education system for my children and my grandchildren and their children."

There have been past proposals to break up dozens of U.S. states or even turn cities like New York into their own state.

Constitutional law professor Vikram Amar, of the University of California, Davis School of Law, says Draper's California plan is not crazy, but it could create more problems than it solves.

"We might be exacerbating the gap between wealthy and the less wealthy, by separating some of the less wealthy parts of the state from the wealthy parts of the state, into separate states all together," Amar said.  

To get his plan on the ballot, Draper needs 807,000 signatures by July. But even if Californians pass it, Congress would have to approve it.




Every now and then somebody comes up with a magic solution to a real problem. Anything as extreme as this is strikes me as being basically hazardous, as it would necessarily be an unpredictable set of massive changes, and whole new sets of laws and governmental bodies would have to be set up to cope with it all. At least Draper is not some crazy who is trying to set up something like racially segregated states and then have them secede from the union. I am imagining all the scramble over new struggles between the political parties that would ensue, and arguments over who gets the fertile farmlands or other natural resources. I wouldn't like to see it happen. Sometimes the known problems of the present are better, to me, than a whole new set of issues to battle. I like California as it is.




Mother of child struck with polio-like symptoms still coming to terms with illness – CBS
CBS News February 25, 2014

Doctors in California are trying to unravel a medical mystery. A handful of children are afflicted with a polio-like illness that robs them of use of their limbs.

In at least two of five confirmed cases a specific strain of a virus called enterovirus has been found. Although 10 to 15 million cases are reported each year, only a handful result in symptoms like paralysis. Still, doctors involved are hesitant to say they are certain that is the problem.

The first known case struck Sofia Jarvis in 2012. At a press conference Monday, her mother Jessica Tomei spoke about the diagnosis.

"She started wheezing suddenly and she had not had any history of asthma, but I heard the wheezing so I called our pediatrician. We were given albuterol." said Tomei. "On the way home she started vomiting."

When her symptoms worsened through the night, Sofia was admitted to the ICU. While at a follow-up doctor's appointment days later, Tomei noticed something strange.
"Sofia went to the treasure box to grab her toy and I saw her left hand mid-grasp stop working," she said.

What they thought might be soreness from an I.V. was instead permanent paralysis caused by a spinal lesion.

"The prognosis that we've seen so far is not good," said Dr. Keith Van Haren, who is a pediatric neurologist who has treated Sofia.

While Sofia's parents are grateful to doctors, they are still coming to terms with her condition.

"Day-to-day, getting dressed, tying her shoes - those things that she would normally be learning right now or be doing, we are gonna to have to find a new way of doing," said Tomei.

Van Haren and his team have been unable to identify the cause of the illness and those sickened are not responding well to medications. Still, he cautions this is rare.

"This is not an entirely new phenomenon but the frequency of the cases we're seeing right now appears to represent to us, at least, a slight increase from what is normal," he said.

The average age of these victims is 12-years-old. Experts say they are publicizing this issue not to scare the public, but to inform doctors and parents so they can be aware of what to look for. At least 20 additional cases across California are being investigated.


Enterovirus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Enteroviruses are a genus of positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses associated with several human and mammalian diseases. Serologic studies have distinguished 66 human enterovirus serotypes on the basis of antibody neutralization tests

On the basis of their pathogenesis in humans and animals, the enteroviruses were originally classified into four groups, polioviruses, Coxsackie A viruses (CA), Coxsackie B viruses (CB), and echoviruses, but it was quickly realized that there were significant overlaps in the biological properties of viruses in the different groups. Enteroviruses isolated more recently are named with a system of consecutive numbers: EV68, EV69, EV70, and EV71, etc.[1]

Infection can result in a wide variety of symptoms ranging from mild respiratory illness (common cold), hand, foot and mouth disease, acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, aseptic meningitis, myocarditis, severe neonatal sepsis-like disease, and acute flaccid paralysis.[2]





Viruses are scarier than bacteria because unless there is a vaccine available they can't be cured, and they also often have more severe symptoms. “A virus” usually means nasal or stomach symptoms with a slight fever, but sometimes they attack the nervous system, causing problems in the brain or as in this case, paralysis. These California doctors seem to be stymied by this disease. I notice they didn't name it, saying only that it is “very rare.”

According to the Wikipedia article, polio, while not identical to this virus, is related genetically, polio being one of the types of entero virus. There was a news report of polio itself beginning to surface again, as some parents have opted out on vaccinations for it. I don't want to see that. I was around ten when the big polio scare happened. I was not allowed to go to the swimming pool during that time. Luckily it wasn't many years before the Salk vaccine was developed and everybody was vaccinated.




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A College Project That Imagines A Floating City For Oil Workers – NPR
by Wade Goodwyn
February 25, 2014
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Imagine you're in a college-level architecture class and your assignment is to come up with an idea so revolutionary that it could be considered an important advance in industrial design.

Students at Rice University in Houston accomplished that with plans for a floating city that is being considered by one of the world's largest oil companies. Last year, the students won the inaugural Odebrecht Award for a radical design of man-made floating islands where as many as 25,000 oil workers and their families could live for extended periods of time.

"We started focusing in around Brazil and into the oil industry, and one of the fascinating things with the oil industry in Brazil is that it's all offshore," says professor Neeraj Bhatia. His fourth-year Rice University architectural students focused on a 600-kilometer [373-mile] area off the coast of Brazil called the Campos, Santos and the Libra Oil Basins.

"We saw this crisis, this logistical crisis that was emerging as the newer [oil findings] were further and further offshore," Bhatia says.

The newer discoveries push the limits of normal helicopter range. That means getting to and from work on the oil platforms is both expensive and a grind. So the Brazilian oil company Petrobras is looking for a new, better way for its employees who must work on these platforms.

"And I think what was interesting was being able to affect their lives both at the human level, basically how they go about their day, and then in the broader sense we could change the way that those accumulated lives affected the whole industry," says Alex Yuen, one of the Rice students on the project.


Their solution seems right out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel. The class designed three large floating islands that are surrounded by 42 smaller islands. These smaller islands would provide the larger hubs with among other things, crops and electricity through solar and wave power. The three main hub islands would be as large as 1 kilometer by 2 kilometers [0.6 by 1.2 miles] and would be a mix of residential, office and industrial centers.

The floating city project designed by Rice University architecture students is the subject of a new book, The Petropolis of Tomorrow.

"We have a series of islands. There are three types — the hub island, which is the largest, considered more like a metropolitan island, where it has the densest population. It has apartments for workers and families, it has resources such as schools and office space," says Weijia Song, another student designer on the project.
There'd be a hospital, a commissary, office buildings and a desalination plant as well as a beach with volleyball and soccer fields and also a swimming pool. The platform workers would be transported to and from the island hub by ferry.

The family unfriendly life of working two weeks on, two weeks off could be eased.
Meat and other commodities would have to be imported by boat, but in many ways this offshore community would be self-sufficient. And the two square kilometers above the water is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath each hub is designed a mountain of submerged steel, including massive ballast tanks.

"With the ballasting techniques, not only can you raise and lower the island by the ratio of water to water, they also have techniques now for digitally sensing wave levels and these things are constantly being calibrated," Bhatia says. "So the technique of using digital stabilizers that are constantly reballasting the tanks would be what was employed."

The three hubs would serve as oil transfer facilities, pumping the offshore crude back to the coast through three large pipelines. The hope by Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, is to build and have operational floating residential islands in the next five years. Just how much of the Rice students' elaborate concept ultimately might be realized is still unknown. The company's project is in its early phases on the drawing board.




One of the things I enjoy most about gleaning these news articles is that sometimes I come across something entirely new, such as these permanent artificial islands. Some of you readers will surely have seen the movie Waterworld, made in 1995 and starring Kevin Costner. I enjoyed it thoroughly for its ingenuity and excitement, and exploration of what was a theoretical post-global warming scenario. I have heard that even if all the ice on earth were to melt, the sea wouldn't completely cover that much of the coastline and create that kind of setting, but it was still very entertaining. Seeing New York City underwater was fun to contemplate, even if it wasn't realistic.

These students did think out the aspects of life that would be possible to provide on the artificial islands, and create a very livable environment. I just passed over an article about the powerful hold college fraternities have on University life, showing the thing I dislike most about colleges – their maintenance of the class structure due to the high cost of attending college. This article, however, shows what colleges do best. They not only teach a classic core of subject matter, they encourage creative thought and inventive ideas among the students, at least the best professors do. This project has a buyer on the market already. That is great! I hope those students get some money out of it. At the very least they should receive an award of some kind. Maybe the college will do that for them.




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Cool Or Creepy? A Clip-On Camera Can Capture Every Moment – NPR
by Elise Hu
February 24, 2014
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With digital cameras and camera phones everywhere, there are few moments we don't document. But some designers still think we're missing the opportunity to capture some important, simple moments. The solution: the Narrative Clip, a wearable camera that automatically and silently snaps an image every 30 seconds.

"The dream of a photographic memory has come true," reads the box. The Narrative is now on the market and sells for $279.

NPR photographer and Picture Show blogger Claire O'Neill has been fearing a device that would automatically shoot photos all day long, so she joined me in testing it out. (Claire reviewed the user interface and shows you all the warped, blurry images she captured in a post for the Picture Show. Check it out.­

"I already have too many photos to look at," she said.

The Narrative Clip is a lightweight square only a smidge larger than a postage stamp. A tiny lens is in the corner, capable of shooting 5-megapixel images. You clip it to your lapel and it starts shooting two photos a minute. Later, you can simply connect it to your computer to store the photo stream. A Narrative app then organizes what it thinks are the best shots of the day.

"I don't even have to try to remember anything. Great. I'm just gonna turn my brain off now. This is crazy," Claire said.

Or is it? Narrative's founder, a Swedish designer named Martin Kallstrom, says his wearable camera reacts to a real need: We don't often capture simple or serendipitous moments because we don't know they're significant until later.

"What I wanted to achieve was to have a tool to make it possible for me to document stuff that I experience while I experienced them. Without taking me out of that moment," Kallstrom said.

The always-on camera means being fully present, without pulling out a point-and-shoot.
"You have special moments in your life where you want to be fully in that moment. Maybe spend time with your friends, or your kids," Kallstrom said.

I wore the Narrative Clip while spending time with my friends, family and co-workers. The most common reaction to seeing a white square clipped to my shirt was actually: "Is that a radiation detector?" Since these aren't mainstream, I had to explain it was an automatically snapping clip-on camera.

There were many "that's creepy" reactions, too. Even my closest friends said they felt strange about being photographed this way.

Kallstrom says he designed the Clip so it's obvious that you're wearing it. And, he says, just because it's shooting doesn't mean the images go anywhere.

"We never publish stuff automatically on the Web. Through the app, it's always a manual, human decision behind every photo that gets published out of your stream," Kallstrom said.

A lot of the worries people had about being photographed were overblown, for now. Mainly because the Clip just doesn't shoot many really compelling images at this point. (See our slide show, below, of the very best photos the Clip could muster.)
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Most shots in my stream were of my computer screen, people in meetings, and my hair, which accidentally covered the lens. This is partly why Claire, the photographer, is less concerned about privacy and more curious about the effect on our memories.
"I think this could potentially reshape the way you remember your life. Because these aren't the scenes you chose to remember. It's what this thing remembered for you," she says. The app does let users manually pick out images from their streams, but the work it takes to do so is pretty time-consuming.

If this all seems like a lot, tech investor and Narrative backer Evan Nisselson says we're just at the beginning of the wearable camera era.

"Within five to 10 years, wearable cameras and camera phones will replace 99 percent of digital SLRs and video cameras," he says.

A near future of clip-on cameras snapping away at every moment? Picture that.




"Is that a radiation detector?" I think that's a pretty strange reaction, and for it to be the most common is amazing. Who goes around thinking about radiation in their daily life? This new device would be handy if you wanted to record something, but it would need to snap way more than one picture every 30 seconds. That won't give a smoothly flowing image of anything, and of course there's no sound recorded either, so I just don't think it will be useful right now. (Of course, Google Glass isn't very useful, either, and people are buying it.) There is also the complaint that the shots it snaps are flawed and often blurry. I think it's just a novelty right now. They need to work on it some more, and then I think a lot of people might buy it. $279 is a good bit of money for most Americans. Still, it's an interesting new invention, and one that I might like to own if it were more highly developed.