Saturday, February 8, 2014


News Clips For The Day




Time Running Out for Malawi's Divisive President --NBC

By Lauren Bohn

CHIRADZULU, Malawi: Fifteen-year-old Rosa Nowayga is like most girls her age — she likes to dance and hang out with friends. But she's also married with two children. Her eyes sparkle with youthful optimism, but her shoulders prematurely slouch with exhaustion.

"Malawi is [full of] girls like me," she says, waiting in line at a rural healthcare clinic. "We can't change our situation. Poverty eats you."

The landlocked southern African country is racked with challenges, its people accustomed to hanging on by a thread. Roughly the size of Pennsylvania, three-quarters of Malawi's 16 million live below the poverty line. Just nine percent of the population has access to electricity. The country's life expectancy hovers around 49. While primary education is free, only 16 percent of girls finish.
But one ambitious woman, who was born in a village not far from Rosa's, vows to change all that.

"All the ills that have dragged Malawi backwards must be stopped now," said Malawi's 63-year-old president, Joyce Banda, who was Vice President until her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika, died 21 months ago. "We're at a transition point, and I am a part of a crop of new leaders on the African continent that worry about the people first."
As the second female president elected in Africa, Banda is a beacon of hope. She isn't afraid to take on challenges that have weighed her country – and a continent – down for decades. But ahead of presidential elections in May, Banda has just as many detractors as she does fans. And time is running out to convince her country that she's the one who will walk them back from the edge of survival.

From rural to royal
As Banda whisks through the presidential palace in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe, people rise and greet her with an honorific "Her Majesty." But it wasn't long ago when her life was dramatically different.

Banda's modest background earned her the nickname "mayi wa mandasi," – woman who sells fritters. And it was in her village that she dreamed of something more for herself and other women. Banda recalls how a close childhood friend, who she says was "much brighter" than her, couldn't finish school because her family couldn't pay the $6 registration fee. Her friend, instead, married at 15.
Ahead of presidential elections in May, Banda has just as many detractors as she does fans.

"She's still where I left her," Banda said of her friend. "She has seven children and is in poverty. And I am where I am."

Banda married young, too, like most Malawian women. But at 25, she escaped an abusive relationship and fled with her three children. She then dedicated her career to spearheading grassroots efforts to improve the lives of Malawi's beleaguered women.
"My mother would ask me, 'Why are you in the villages?' Even I couldn't explain. All I knew was that it not acceptable to see my fellow women abused," she recalled. "These women relate to me, and I relate to them...it's a love affair."
She has stridently taken on domestic abuse and the decriminalization of homosexuality – both taboo issues in the country. And she has continuously sacked cabinets over corruption rows.

"I was warned by my colleagues across the continent...they said the people you are tackling have a lot to lose, they'll fight you back and they'll drag you down. They'll suck you in. You might die, they might even shoot you," she said. "But my greatest achievement is that I make bold decisions and take risks when other people won't."

But for Banda—whose "mayi wa mandasi" nickname is used adoringly by fans, and condescendingly by the political elite— those risks might prove her demise.
"We're optimistic," says Brian Banda, the president's press officer. "But she has told us and her family to get ready to pack their bags. We're in for the fight, but it's up to the people."

Broken promises
Upon assuming the presidency, Banda ushered in sweeping economic reforms, including a devaluation of the country's currency and the removal of major subsidies on fuel and other commodities to meet conditions for an IMF loan. These reforms have made her something of an international development darling (she's quick to share that she was ranked by Forbes Magazine as the Most Powerful Woman in Africa – twice – and 47th on their 100 Most Powerful Women in the World list).

But back home those reforms have resulted in rising daily costs that have further strangled her people. IMF chief Christine Lagarde visited the country last year, congratulating Banda for her "bold" economic policies, and encouraged her to "stay the course." Thousands of Malawians came out to protest.

"I don't think of my political career... I put Malawi first," Banda said. "I've told Malawians that they need to go through a difficult time in order to get to a better place."

But it's a tough sell for Malawians who have grown weary from endless decades of shameless misrule, broken promises, and squelched dreams. Many say Banda has simply sold out to donors and that she's a mere tool to the west, further entrenching the country's indebtedness to outsiders instead of promoting self-reliance. Still others say she's no different from the depraved rest, simply paying lip service to reform and merely reshuffling her graft-ridden cabinet.

"She is of the people, but still...people don't understand her reforms," explains Clifton Ngozo, a local development worker. "When you're just hanging on, it's hard to see long-term."

Prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, says the country is in an extreme crisis, which will only be exacerbated by rapid population growth in years to come.

'I've told Malawians that they need to go through a difficult time in order to get to a better place.'

"When you put the pieces together, it's one of the most difficult places in the world," he said. "It's been ravaged by the AIDS pandemic the past generation. There have been some glimmers of progress, but not many."
"What you need is a clear, long-term consistent strategy to get out of this mess," he added, criticizing the international system and donors for lacking adequate and innovative strategies to truly effect change. "And there is none. Malawi lives month-to-month, drought-to-drought, blackout-to-blackout. I could tell you there are harder places on the planet, but there are not that many."

Against the clock
For people like Dr. Grace Chiudzu, head of the maternity ward at the Kamazu Central Hospital, there's been change, but not enough. To her, Banda is a reformer chained by unshakable bureaucracy, but the clock is ticking.

"When she came into the office, I celebrated. I thought she had the will, but time is not on her side," she said. "The grounds are shaky. I'm not certain she'll win."

Dr. Grace Chiudzu discusses her county's health care situation at the Ethel Mutharika Maternity Ward at the Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi, Sunday Dec. 8, 2013.

Having faced near fatal labor complications herself, Banda has taken on Malawi's woeful maternal death toll, encouraging the involvement of local tribal chiefs – the country's unofficial powerbrokers – and the expansion of community health workers in a country with a severe shortage of trained medical personnel.

"She needs more time, but I'm not sure if the people will give it to her," Chiudzu says. "They need to see changes."

For 31-year-old hotel worker Hudson Phiri, the calculus is simple. "If Banda can bring food to my table, and a better job, she'll have my vote," he says, echoing the sentiments of a destitute nation. "She has until May."

Banda and her aides concede time isn't on their side. Still, she's resolute as her aides pass around newspapers detailing the country's latest government fraud scandal.
"Regardless of whatever smear campaign comes my way during elections, I don't care. Even if I lose the next elections, I don't care," she says. "I will leave a happy person knowing that what I have started now...Malawians will demand this of any leader in the future."

But for many, a future seems hard even to envision.
By nightfall, a sheet of darkness swept over 15-year-old mother Rosa's village, lit up only by sporadic patches of sharp neon blue from mobile phones.
"If I could tell the president one thing," says Rosa, unfazed by a swath of flies encircling her face, "I'd tell her...we're waiting." Her two-year-old son, Innocence – whom she says she named after a childhood toy – wailed loudly, tugging at her oversized sky-blue shirt.

"I'd tell her we're waiting, but not much longer."
This reporting was made possible in part by a reporting fellowship from the UN Foundation.
First published February 8 2014, 2:44 AM




Joyce Banda has initiated economic reforms which please the World Bank, but are unpopular among many of the people. She also has fought against the death of women in childbirth, the problem of AIDS,
domestic abuse and initiated the decriminalization of homosexuality. Hopefully the nation will not fail, though this article seems to project that it may.

The following about Banda is from Wikipedia.

“Joyce Hilda Banda (née Mtila; born 12 April 1950) is a Malawian politician who has been the President of Malawi since 7 April 2012. She is the founder and leader of the People's Party, created in 2011.[2]

An educator and grassroots women's rights activist, she was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2009 and Vice President of Malawi from May 2009 to April 2012.[3]
Banda took office as president following the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika. She is Malawi's fourth president[4] and its first female president. Before becoming president, she served as the country's first female vice president.[5]
She was a Member of Parliament and Minister for Gender, Children's Affairs and Community Services. Before her active career in politics she was the founder of the Joyce Banda Foundation, founder of the National Association of Business Women (NABW), Young Women Leaders Network and the Hunger Project.

Forbes named President Banda as the 71st most powerful woman in the world and the most powerful woman in Africa.[6]”

“Joyce Banda is the founder and leader of the People's Party, formed in 2011 after Banda was expelled from the ruling DPP when she refused to endorse President Mutharika's younger brother Peter Mutharika as the successor to the presidency for the 2014 general election.[28”

“Within the last year of Mutharika's presidency, Britain, the United States, Germany, Norway, the European Union, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank had all suspended financial aid. They had expressed concern for Mutharika's attacks on democracy domestically and his increasingly erratic policies. In March 2012, Mutharika told these foreign donors to "go to hell." He accused them of plotting to bring down his government.[44] Part of Banda's challenge as president is to restore diplomatic ties with the aid donors. She also has the challenge of restoring diplomatic ties with Malawi's neighbors like Mozambique, and regional countries such as Botswana”

“On 18 May 2012, Banda announced her intention to overturn Malawi's ban on homosexuality. The measure was reported to already have the support of a majority of MPs. If successful, it would make Malawi the second African nation to legalize same-sex sexual activity since 1994.[48] Amnesty International reported in early November 2012 that Malawi had "suspended" laws criminalising homosexuality pending a vote.[49]”

“On 17 January 2013, thousands of Malawians protested in Blantyre against rising inflation after Banda, joined by IMF chief Christine Lagarde, defended the devaluation of the kwacha and said she would not reverse the decision.[52][53]”





A 9,000-year-old Recipe For Roast Armadillo – NBC
By Nidhi Subbaraman


There is only one way to roast a big hairy armadillo, just ask the Argentinians. Communities in that country have been cooking the armored mammals the same way for 9,000 years: flipping them on their backs and roasting them in their shell.
Armadillo remains found at 10 hunter-gatherer archaeological sites, dating between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago, left researchers guessing about how the critters got there: Were they cooked and eaten? Did the animals find their way to the site afterwards? Perhaps humans built a cooking hearth above animal remains, causing them to char.

In northern Argentina, some communities continue to cook armadillos in this way, hinting that the animals were killed and cooked for their meat, as a supplement to larger game like Pampas deer.

To confirm this, researchers experimented with six armadillos, cooking three in their shells on a specially constructed hearth, and burying the three others under it, while the flames were on.

“The animal was cooked using its armor as a natural container, directly on the fire. Then the cavities were filled with hot-rocks,” Romina Frontini, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional del Sur told NBC News in an email.
(No armadillos were harmed along the way: the researchers cooked critters that were found dead.)

The burn marks left on the shell in the BBQ-ed mammals matched those found on the samples, Frontini and her colleague Rodrigo Vecchi report in a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

This work adds detail to our understanding of the daily lives of an ancient community, before Spanish influences from visiting explorers changed the local customs, she said.




Modern archaeology has tended in the last few decades to be more frequently experimental, with archaeologists chipping away at pieces of stone to produce weapons, etc. I think that is more likely to produce true results than just peering at old bones and stones and spinning theories about them. In this case they have spoken to modern-day people in Argentina about how they cook an armadillo and then compared the burn marks on discarded shells with those found in the dig site. Some information is ancient indeed, but if it continues to be useful it may be continued to the present.




Retired Cop in Florida Cinema Shooting Staying in Jail
By Tracy Connor

A Florida judge ruled Friday that retired police captain Curtis Reeves must stay in jail while he awaits trial on charges he murdered a Navy veteran during a dispute over texting in a movie theater.

Judge Pat Siracusa denied a bail application after watching grainy surveillance footage of the moment Reeves shot Chad Oulson, listening to audio tape of his police interview and weighing dueling descriptions of who was at fault.

"He was a ticking time bomb that day — and he exploded," prosecutor Manny Garcia said of Reeves.

Defense lawyer Richard Escobar countered, "No one can dispute Mr. Oulson was totally out of control."

Reeves, 71, is charged with second-degree murder. He plans to argue he fired in self-defense because he feared for his safety but has not yet decided whether to invoke Florida's controversial "Stand Your Ground" law.

Two versions of grainy security video from the Cobb Grove 16 cinema were played in court, but the two sides clashed over what they showed.

The defense contended the footage shows Oulson, 43, tossing his cellphone at Reeves, then grabbing and throwing his popcorn at him, but the prosecution disputes that.
The tape also captures the moment when Reeves fired the single shot into Oulson's chest. although from a distance in poor lighting.

Witnesses, including Reeves' wife, say they never saw the victim strike the shooter — but the the ex-cop insisted to a detective afterward that Oulson "scared the crap out of me."

"If I had it to do over again, it would never have happened," Reeves told police on the tapes played in court.

"We would have moved," Reeves added. "But you don't get do-overs."
Reeves calmly told an investigator that Oulson either hit him with his fist or with his cellphone after cursing him out.

"He kept on hollering," Reeves told the detective. "He led me to believe he was going to kick my ass."

Reeves said Oulson was aggressively moving toward him when he pulled the gun out of his pocket and fired at what he believes was point-blank range.
"As soon as I pulled the trigger, I said, 'Oh, shoot,'" Reeves said.
He said his wife, Vivian, was upset with him after it happened.
"She said, 'We should have just moved,'" Reeves recalled. "[To her], there's no justification for what happened in there."

In her police interview, the wife said she did not see Oulson hit her husband but recalled that he said he had been struck shortly after the shooting.
Wearing street clothes, Reeves listened intently and quietly as the tapes were played. Also in the courtroom was Oulson's wife, Nicole, who was wounded by the single bullet.

"As soon as I pulled the trigger, I said, 'Oh, shoot."
In her interview with police, conducted at a hospital emergency room, she said they had shown up early for the daytime screening of the Navy SEAL movie and were watching a preview when Reeves began pestering them.

"He got rude with my husband," she said.
Reeves told Oulson he should turn off his phone, and he said he would "in a minute," Nicole Oulson said.

"The guy just kept telling him, 'Shut it off now,'" she said.
Reeves left to get a manager and by the time he returned Oulson had turned the phone off, she said. But Reeves, she said, would not let it go.

"Now you put it away?" Reeves said, according to the widow.
"My husband stood up and said, 'Hey, what is your problem?'"
Nicole Oulson said she put her left hand on her husband's chest as if to tell him to sit down.

"And that's when the shot rang out," she said. "I saw like a spark and saw him go down."
She said she was so stunned she didn't even realize she had been shot in the hand. Reeves, she said, just sat back down.
"He leaned back ... didn't try to help," she said. "He just sat there as all the chaos was going on."

She was asked whether a physical altercation precdeded the gunshot, and she said she didn't see one.
"My husband was standing up. He's a very tall guy. He was mad," she said. "[But] I didn’t see any pushing, shoving, hitting."




I do think this Stand Your Ground Law is partially responsible for causing a culture of fighting rather than “standing down,” in which people – perhaps influenced partly by the fact that they are carrying a gun in the first place – decide to pursue with deadly force, when without a weapon they would have had to stick to fist fighting or walk away. People still haven't learned to use words and not violence. There is a macho culture among many men of the old South which doesn't allow them to take a perceived insult without fighting over it. The Michael Dunn case which is right now being tried in Jacksonville,FL is another instance of the same thing. Society can't be civilized as long as that is the predominant attitude. I'm glad to see that this judge didn't give him bail, and that he is being charged with murder. I would like to see the Stand Your Ground Law abolished.




The Beatles 50 years later: How CBS is remembering the Fab Four

On Sunday, Feb. 9, it will have been 50 years to the date that the Beatles stepped foot inside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. It marked John, Paul, George and Ringo's first American TV appearance. Some 74 million people tuned in. And music would never be the same. 

The Fab Four's 1964 historic performance on CBS' "The Ed Sullivan Show" will be celebrated this weekend with a live symposium, tribute concerts and even an interview and performance by surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.  

The Beatles: Backstage at "The Ed Sullivan Show"
Get a glimpse behind the scenes when the Fab Four made their landmark appearance on American TV on February 9, 1964

 Kicking off the festivities will be "50 Years: The Beatles," a live multimedia event taking place at the Ed Sullivan Theater from 6:30-8:00 p.m. ET that will be streamed at CBSNews.com and CBSNewYork.com/50YearsLater.

Hosted by Anthony Mason, CBS News senior business correspondent and anchor of "CBS This Morning: Saturday," the one-time-only symposium will examine the lasting cultural and musical impact the Beatles have had -- with the help of several high-profile music and cultural experts whose work has been influenced the band out of Liverpool, England.

The event, presented by "Motown: The Musical," will also include an art gallery and exhibit of Beatles memorabilia displayed inside the Ed Sullivan Theater. CBS will unveil a marquee duplicating the one displayed at the venue the night the Beatles first performed there. 

Then starting at 8 p.m. ET, CBS will air "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles," a two-hour TV special featuring current top artists covering the songs performed by the Beatles on that historic night and through the years, as well as footage from that landmark Sunday evening.

The show, which taped earlier this month, will include performances by Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry, Imagine Dragons, Gary Clark Jr., John Legend, Pharrell Williams, LL Cool, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart as the Eurythmics, Alicia Keys, Walsh, Jeff Lynne, John Mayer, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Ed Sheeran, performers from the Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas Beatles show “Love” and George Harrison’s son, Dhani Harrison.

Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale and Anna Kendrick are among the celebrities who will be on hand to introduce the performers. 

Not only will McCartney and Starr perform on the special, but they will also be interviewed by David Letterman. The late-night host sat down with the former Beatles earlier this month at the Ed Sullivan Theater for the taping. 




Listening to the Beatles brings back many old memories of my student days. They transformed pop music, along with several other groups who together invented “Rock” music out of Rock and Roll, folk music and blues. There is still a Classic Rock station on the radio here that is loyal to the old songs and sound, and recently I bought a CD of Joe Cocker who has never stopped singing his bluesy style and remains a great singer. The 60's and 70's were a unique period in popular art, and were filled with talented singers and musicians. I'm glad to have been young during those times.





Minn. teen gets 10 years for fatal "knock-out game" punch – CBS

ST. CLOUD, Minn. -- After 17 months of waiting, a family finally learned how much time the man who killed their son will be in prison, reports CBS Minnesota
 A Stearns County judge sentenced 18-year-old Jesse Smithers to 10 years on Thursday. Smithers admitted to delivering a deadly punch in a St. Cloud alley almost a year and a half ago, when on Sept. 21, 2012, Colton Gleason was walking with friends when a car pulled up, and Smithers got out and punched him. 

His father, John Gleason, says the pain, bitterness and hurt his family feels did not go away with the sentencing of the man responsible for his son’s death.
“We’ve been given a life sentence by this cowardice attack and murder of our son,” John said. “He’ll serve very few short years and he’ll be back out again, and our son is gone forever.”

Suspected "Knockout game" attacks accumulating victims
"Knockout" attacks, designed to render an unsuspecting, random victim unconscious in one punch, have seemingly become an alarming trend in the United States...
 John says his son was the victim of a deadly “knockout game.”

“This group was out there and their intentions were very clear. This is unprovoked. They stopped and they saw someone they thought they could victimize,” he said. “Colton didn’t have a chance to even turn and defend himself when somebody blind-sided punched him.”

Jesse Smithers was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for delivering the fatal punch. He originally entered a plea of not guilty, but changed it to 2nd-degree murder in Nov. 2013. 

He apologized in court Thursday for what he called a “complete accident.” But Colton’s mother, Julie, disputes this claim.
“Somebody didn’t just run over and hit a car and provoke an attack,” Julie said. “This was an attack that was meant to happen.”

This tragedy has changed Gleason's family forever. All they have now are the memories of a 20-year-old that was loved by so many.
“He was just fun to be with all time, and he was always hugging and telling everyone he loved them,” she said.

If he doesn’t commit any offenses in prison, Smithers could be released in about five years.




It is depressing to think that Smithers may be released in just five years, and I think this is more like premeditated murder than “an accident” or as he plea bargained, Second degree murder. I wonder if the police had very little evidence except his confession, as is often the case in real life and didn't want to take the case to trial. In murder mysteries sufficient clues are found, but in the real world there aren't usually lots of witnesses or security cameras to record the incident, and this was in an alley. I was always told not to walk down alleys – sometimes an attacker is there hidden and in addition there is nowhere to run to except the other end of the alley which may be too far away.

They should at least have given him more than ten years – the boys who do something that cold and heartless are just plain bad. This boy wasn't even very young – he was 18 – plenty old enough to know better and to foresee the death of the victim -- "accident" just doesn't wash. This story is too disturbing for words.




­ Our Brains Rewrite Our Memories, Putting Present In The Past
by Nancy Shute
­
Think about your fifth-birthday party. Maybe your mom carried the cake. What did her face look like? If you have a hard time imagining the way she looked then rather than how she looks now, you're not alone.

The brain edits memories relentlessly, updating the past with new information. Scientists say that this isn't a question of having a bad memory. Instead, they think the brain updates memories to make them more relevant and useful now — even if they're not a true representation of the past.

To figure this out, researchers at Northwestern University asked 17 people to look at images of a scene, like a beach or a farm, with a small object like an apple layered on top. They were then shown a scene with the object in a new location. Then they were asked to move the object to its location in in the first picture. They always got it wrong.

Finally the participants were shown the original scene, with the apple in three places: the original location, the second or a brand-new one. They always picked the second, updated location.

"Their memory from the original location has been overwritten," says Joel Voss, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Northwestern. "It's taken that new location and stuck it to the original photograph."

This is a contrived laboratory setting, Voss tells Shots, so it's not guaranteed that the brain is taking current events in your life and stuffing them into your past. But the researchers had people do the experiment while observing their brain with a special MRI scanner.

The brain structure that the people in this experiment were using when they were rewriting their memories, the hippocampus, is very involved in autobiographical memory. "It's essentially as if the hippocampus doesn't care if it's putting together two new things," Voss says.

The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Voss and his co-author Donna Bridge tested the participants' memory of the original image, and they remembered it very well. So this wasn't a case of bad memory overall. It wasn't until they were asked to move the object and place it in the original spot that the memories changed.

"Our memories aren't perfect," Voss says. "They're not like tape recorders. There's a small current of thought that thinks these failures aren't necessarily a bad thing. Memory is not intended to allow you to remember what you did last week, or remember your childhood. The point is to help you make good choices right now."

It can be disturbing to realize that cherished memories may not be true, Voss agrees. But plenty of other studies have shown that memories are indeed often faulty. This doesn't keep you from recalling memories and treasuring them, Voss says. "But they might not be perfectly accurate."

And some things are worth forgetting. Voss, for one, is fine not remembering his father's 1980s mustache. "And the half-mullet," he says.




There are reported to be people who remember by the calendar date what happened each day of their life, or at least they claim to be able to. I wonder if those memories have been verified at all by psychologists. How could the truth be proven? There are a number of Internet articles about Autism and the Savant syndrome. Again, how do we know that what they say is accurate? They may talk about what they had to eat or what color their dress was. On the other hand, those who can tell what day of the week a calendar date fell upon can at least be verified.

This article describes a process that sounds more like what I think of by the word “learning” rather than simple memory. Maybe before people started keeping time records they didn't focus so much on when something happened and didn't worry about the exact memory. Maybe that's how “once upon a time” came to start so many stories. In simple and primitive societies the only “knowledge” was the stories of old people, who were their valued leaders rather than being cast aside by society, as so often happens now. Maybe we have lost something important.