Monday, March 31, 2014


News Clips Of The Day



Obamacare Website Down as Deadline Arrives – NBC
First published March 31 2014

People trying to apply and enroll for private health insurance through Obamacare before Monday's midnight deadline are discovering the website is "currently unavailable."

Healthcare.gov, the online marketplace bedeviled by bugs since its launch last fall, is down, a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services said. The statement said "the tech team is working now to bring the system online as soon as possible."

An HHS spokeswoman said she expected the site would be available again later in the morning, and said a version of a queuing system was open so that people could leave their information and get an email informing them when the system was back up.
"Consumers may also complete their application by calling the call center at 1-800-318-2596. The federal data services hub is working normally," HHS said.

Monday at midnight ET is the deadline to sign up for insurance in the online markets created by President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

Million of people have piled onto the sites in the last days, and the federal government said as of last week, 6 million people had applied for insurance.
The administration announced an extension for those who had started an application by Monday but didn't finish, perhaps because of errors, missing information or website glitches. HHS says as long as people have gotten in line by Monday, they will be allowed to finish their applications.

The government says it will accept paper applications until April 7 and take as much time as necessary to handle unfinished cases on HealthCare.gov.




Bummer! This is bad, especially since the deadline is upon us. I'm sure they'll have it fixed soon. It has been working fine until today. It's good that they have the queu for leaving your basic information and requesting an email to go back to later. There is also the call center and the opportunity to use a paper application. I would expect that some people who are not used to using computers would prefer the paper application anyway. I hope this site is up and running smoothly by later this morning.




Tour of Ukraine-Russia Border Finds No Signs of Military Buildup – NBC
By Jim Maceda
First published March 30 2014, 9:53 AM

All is not quiet on the Western Front, but the drumbeat of war along the long Ukraine-Russian border is nowhere near as loud as it sounds in Moscow.

According to dire warnings from U.S. military and intelligence officials, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his daring annexation of Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula, has concentrated tens of thousands of his forces on the border with Ukraine. Camouflaged and concealed to throw off U.S. spy satellites, the warnings say, the heavily armed combat troops and special operations forces are coiled and ready to spring across the border into restive regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine such as Kharkov and Donetsk, where pro-Russian populations are eager to be annexed by Russia, just like Crimea.

Top Russian officials – including Putin himself – have denied any such troop concentrations near the Western border. One minor Ministry of Defense official, who didn’t want to be named because he wasn’t authorized to comment, told NBC News that there had been training exercises – war games – in the border region but, once ended, those troops and armor returned to their bases. “All of this international hype is completely unfounded,” he told us earlier in the week.

Still, the stream of YouTube video clips and photos seemed to tell a different story: long convoys of Russian armored personnel carriers on a highway headed toward Ukraine; tanks and artillery pieces moving by rail on dozens of train cars; squads of MI-24 combat helicopters perched on a hill near Belgorod, only 20 miles from Ukraine. Are these preparations for a Chechnya-like invasion, or just more maneuvers meant to intimidate Ukrainians and the West?

We went to look for ourselves. Cameraman Dmitry Solovyov, sound engineer Alexei Gordienko and I packed our bags, devices and news-gathering gadgets into the back of our grey, nondescript bureau minivan and began a journey along the 1,200 mile border between Russia and Ukraine – many segments of which give no indication that it’s an actual border between two countries.

Sudzha, a small town in the region of Kursk, site of the biggest tank battle of World War II, was our first destination. A tank column had been spotted there, 5 miles from the border, about a week before. But as we drove around the quaint town – equally proud of its freshly painted Orthodox Church and its bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin – we saw no tanks, or even armored personnel carriers. We did see ATM machines on almost every block. All was quiet. There was no tension in the air. Outside town, farmers were planting winter wheat.

We traveled some 500 miles along the border – sometimes right next to Ukraine, at other times 30 to 40 miles from it – before we came across any sign of military activity. As we passed Belgorod’s army base, near the airport, I recognized the same MI-24 choppers I’d seen on the Internet. We got lucky – a pair took off as we drove past. We turned back to see them banking within the base’s perimeter. Nearby, clusters of military vehicles, mostly heavy trucks, were out in the open, but where were the tanks and artillery?

In Belgorod – the Russian city adjacent to the restive Ukrainian city of Karkov – we were briefly detained by 2 officers of the Russian FSB security service after driving right up to the border gate and asking people about the rumors of impending war. (The taxi drivers said they were angry because the Ukrainian border guards weren’t letting any Russians into the country – fearing provocations – which had dried up their business.)

We had apparently wandered into a prohibited, 3-mile wide security zone. But the agents of the former KGB were polite, even willing to talk on background.
“Look over there, ‘’said the regional chief, pointing toward the border crossing. “The Ukrainians have tanks just inside. Can you imagine if a trained, Right Sector (Ukrainian ultra-nationalist militant) commandeers the vehicle and fires on us?”

Did he think that Kiev would give that order, I asked?
“No, I don’t. But we have no faith that Kiev can prevent such an incident,” he replied. After some two hours of discussion, we were let go, each with a photocopy of the law we’d broken. ‘’You’re not the first ones,’’ said the chief, seeing us off.
After the Belgorod confrontation, we spent the next two days traversing seemingly endless farmland on pot-holed roads, passing chicken coups and old ladies selling buckets of apples -- but no signs of brewing war.

"If Russians and Ukrainians on the other side unite, it would be better for everyone."
We found more army bases -- in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and Rostov, both near Ukraine’s southeastern border -- but the only activity we saw was some serious latrine duty and a band of conscripts enjoying a friendly wrestling match.

Russian villagers living just 5 miles from the border in Novoshakhtinsky -- one of the most likely invasion routes into Donetsk -- didn’t believe Putin would give the order.

“If Russians and Ukrainians on the other side unite, it would be better for everyone,” offered Vladimir Kasianov, an unemployed 30-something who echoed the sentiments of many Russians we talked to along the border. But Kasianov didn’t want a military solution. “Everything must be done through politics, not war,” he told us.
We ended our journey in Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian-Ukrainian land border melts into the Sea of Azov, after 1,000 miles and 80 hours. But were we any closer to knowing if a war between Moscow and Kiev had been averted, or was just around the corner? The answer seemed to beg still another question: Will Russia’s most popular and powerful politician listen to his own people?




“All of this international hype is completely unfounded,” says an unnamed Russian official. US military and security, however, claim “the heavily armed combat troops and special operations forces are coiled and ready to spring” near the border.

A Russian official at Bolgorod who spoke to the reporters about the situation when they were briefly detained for crossing the border said that he feared Ukrainian ultra-nationalist militant could commandeer on of the Ukrainian tanks and fire on the Russians, though he didn't expect Kiev to order an attack.

The heavy equipment and massive numbers of troops are gone from the border as the war games have been concluded, according to a Russian, and the reporters found no evidence of the troops. Vladimir Kasianov, a Ukrainian Russian speaker, is quoted as saying that he hopes that the Ukrainians and Russians will “unite” – it wasn't clear whether he meant under a Ukrainian or Russian flag – by “political” not military means. The reporter said that many Russians along the border shared this sentiment.

They also didn't believe that Putin would order troops into Ukraine. Putin himself has continued to state the same. There is no question that he wants to keep Crimea under Russian control, however, which Obama firmly opposes. Still, it looks, at least for the time being, as though the situation on the Ukrainian border has cooled down, while the US and Russia are talking diplomatically about reaching a solution. Russia has asked for an international presence to stabilize the situation within Ukraine. Putin remains concerned about spontaneous fighting between Russian and Ukrainian speakers, fearing that the Russians are being mistreated. If that, in fact, is happening it should be stopped, because it can only work to destabilize the country and give weight to Russia's claim that there is a need for Russian troops to cross the border.




Protest Over 'Killer Cops' Triggers Violence in Albuquerque – NBC
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- Alexander Smith
First published March 31 2014

A peaceful protest in the streets of Albuquerque, N.M., descended into a scene of "mayhem" on Sunday as demonstrators threw rocks and police used tear gas and mounted units to try to disperse a crowd of hundreds.

The 10-hour protest was in response to what critics say is an unacceptable number of police shootings in the city – 23 fatal incidents since 2012, according to the Associated Press. The most recent of these deaths was James M. Boyd, a mentally ill man who was shot dead by Albuquerque police on March 16, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

Mayor Richard Berry said one police officer was injured after demonstrators threw rocks and later trapped a police vehicle and tried to break the windows, the AP said.

"We respected their rights to protest, obviously," Berry said at a news conference. "But what it appears we have at this time is individuals who weren't connected necessarily with the original protest. They've taken it far beyond a normal protest."

Sunday's protests came after a YouTube video purporting to be from the hacktivist group Anonymous issued a call to action following Boyd's killing, the Albuquerque Journal reported. The incident also prompted an FBI investigation and the Department of Justice has been investigating claims of excessive use of force against the Albuquerque Police Department for more than a year, the AP said.

The newspaper said protesters blocked traffic, took over the city's University of New Mexico and held signs bearing slogans such as "Hey hey! Ho ho! Killer cops have got to go!"

At one point a man parked a van in front of the Albuquerque Police Department building and produced what he said was an AK-47 rifle, although his fellow protesters convinced him to put it away, the newspaper said.

An AP reporter saw gas canisters being thrown outside police headquarters and personnel from the Albuquerque Police and Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department charging at the protesters.




The first question that comes to my mind in this article is whether 23 killings over the span of a year and a half is a very high number. I found this article, a blog, which I highly recommend to readers about fatalities by city and state and general comments on the issue – http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/01/police-involved-shootings-2011-annual.html. Albuquerque is listed as one of the highest ranked cities for fatalities on a per capita basis.

There does appear to be an inflated number of protesters who found out about the gathering from the website Anonymous when the mentally ill man was shot, and one protester displayed what he said was an AK-47 rifle before his compatriots convinced him to put it down. An FBI and Department of Justice investigation has been underway “for more than a year” about “excessive use of force” in Albuquerque.

Every now and then people ask for police to use rubber bullets. It occurs to me they could also use tranquilizer darts if they aren't too expensive. Sometimes in riot situations rubber bullets are used effectively, but in cases of hot pursuit or confrontations with armed or otherwise aggressive criminals the police do often shoot. I have seen several times TV shows on the subject, when the police defend the practice of shooting at the core of the body – in other words a kill shot – when they are under assault.

Tactically, it makes sense – police officers in close interactions are very much in danger of being shot or knifed by the criminal, and often are killed, in fact. Still, some police forces don't try as hard as others to avoid deadly shootings. I suspect that local politics has a lot to do with which cities those are. We do need the police, however, and without them crime would truly be rampant. I am mixed in my feelings about the issue. If I see any articles later about the findings of the FBI I will clip them.







Utah boy finds human remains in backyard: "It was kind of eerie"
CBS/AP March 31, 2014,

SALT LAKE CITY -- A 14-year-old boy digging a trout pond in the backyard of his father's Salt Lake City home stumbled across a surprise: the remains of an American Indian who lived about 1,000 years ago.

Experts from the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts spent Friday removing the remains, which were confirmed by medical examiners as those of a person from a millennium ago, and investigating the site for archaeological clues after ninth-grader Ali Erturk's discovery earlier in the week.

"Humans have occupied this valley for up to 10,000 years," department spokesman Geoffrey Fattah told The Salt Lake Tribune. "We do run into situations where progress runs into the ancient past."

A forensic anthropologist will analyze the remains to try to learn more, including the person's sex and cultural affiliation. A report will go to the state Division of Indian Affairs, which will try to determine whether the remains are linked to current tribes, Fattah said. A tribe may claim the remains and perform interment rites.
Other private property in Salt Lake City has occasionally yielded Native American graves. The department typically receives about six reports of ancient remains statewide each year, Fattah said.

Erturk told CBS affiliate KUTV that he "got the shovel and started digging and before I knew it - it got pretty deep."

Erturk said he had been working on the trout pond for a couple of weeks until he discovered what he initially thought was just an animal bone. Then he realized it was human remains.

The teen told KUTV "it was kind of eerie" that he may have stumbled on a crime scene. It "freaked him out" a bit and so they called others to check out the bones, together the group decided to call police.

Fattah urged the public to contact law enforcement authorities if human remains are unearthed so they can be removed professionally and respectfully. Erturk's father notified Salt Lake City police after his son's discovery.

Ali told KUTV that he was hoping to skip school Friday to watch archaeologist as they screen the dirt from his hole. They will be looking for the rest of the remains and any other important artifacts.




I can imagine the excitement that this teenager must have felt. That we live right on the same ground that was occupied by long forgotten Indian tribes has always thrilled me. I can imagine myself walking alongside their spirits, taking my turn in the flow of time. North Carolina has lots of American Indian findings, too. My father found a 6,000 year old grindstone in his garden in Eastern North Carolina. I hope young Erturk did stay home from school to watch the archaeologists work. That would be worth more than most daily lessons kids receive in school. Much of what we learn is not from a classroom.




U.S. and Russia fail to reach agreement on Ukraine – CBS
AP March 30, 2014

PARIS - The United States and Russia agreed Sunday that the crisis in Ukraine requires a diplomatic resolution, but four hours of talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov failed to break a tense East-West deadlock over how to proceed.

Sitting face to face but not seeing eye to eye on any of the most critical issues, Kerry and Lavrov advanced far-different proposals on how to calm tensions and de-escalate the situation, particularly as Russia continues to mass troops along its border with the former Soviet republic. As he called for Moscow to begin an immediate pullback of the troops, Kerry also ruled out discussion of Russia's demand for Ukraine to become a loose federation until - and - unless Ukrainians are at the table.
"The Russian troop buildup is creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine," Kerry told reporters at the home of the U.S. ambassador to France after the meeting, which was held at the Russian ambassador's residence and included a working dinner. "It certainly does not create the climate that we need for dialogue."

The U.S. believes the massing of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, ostensibly for military exercises, along the border is at once an attempt to intimidate Ukraine's new leaders after Russia's annexation of the strategic Crimean peninsula and to use a bargaining chip with the United States and the European Union, which have condemned Crimea's absorption into Russia and imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials.

Kerry noted that even if the troops remain on Russian soil and do not enter Ukraine, they create a negative atmosphere.

"The question is not one of right or legality," he said. "The question is one of strategic appropriateness and whether it's smart at this moment of time to have troops massed on the border."

U.S. officials said Kerry proposed a number of ideas on troop withdrawals from the border and that Lavrov, while making no promises, told him he would present the proposals to the Kremlin.

At a separate news conference at the Russian ambassador's house, Lavrov did not address the troop issue. Instead, he made the case for Moscow's idea of Ukraine as a federalized nation with its various regions enjoying major autonomy from the government in Kiev. Russia says it is particularly concerned about the treatment of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who live in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Lavrov said that Ukraine can't function as a "unified state" and should be a loose federation of regions that are each allowed to choose their own economic, financial, social, linguistic and religious models.

He said every time Ukraine has elected a new president, the country has adopted a new constitution, proving that "the model of a unified state doesn't work."
Ukrainian officials are wary of decentralizing power, fearing that pro-Russia regions would hamper its Western aspirations and potentially split the country apart. However, they are exploring political reforms that could grant more authority to local governments.

The U.S. has been coy about their position on a federation. Washington has encouraged ongoing political and constitutional reform efforts that the government in Kiev is now working on but U.S. officials insist that any changes to Ukraine's governing structure must be acceptable to the Ukrainians.

Kerry said the federation idea had not been discussed in any serious way during his meeting with Lavrov "because it would have been inappropriate to do so without Ukrainian input."

"It is not up to us to make any decision or agreement regarding federalization," he said. "It is up to Ukrainians."

"We will not accept a path forward where the legitimate government of Ukraine is not at the table," Kerry said, adding that the bottom line is: "No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine."

Lavrov denied that Moscow wants to "split Ukraine."
"Federation does not mean, as some in Kiev fear, an attempt to split Ukraine," he said. "To the contrary, federation ... answers the interests of all regions of Ukraine."

Lavrov said he and Kerry did agree to work with the Ukrainian government to improve rights for Russian-speaking Ukrainians and disarm "irregular forces and provocateurs."
Sunday's meeting was hastily arranged 48 hours after U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone in a conversation in which Obama urged Putin to withdraw his troops from the border with Ukraine. Putin, who initiated the call, asserted that Ukraine's government is allowing extremists to intimidate ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking civilians with impunity - something Ukraine insists is not happening.

That call did little to reassure U.S. officials that Russia is not planning to invade Ukraine after its annexation of Crimea that the West has condemned as illegal and a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States and Europe have imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials in response, sparking reciprocal moves from Moscow.

In the interview with Russian television, Lavrov called the sanctions a "dead-end" strategy that would not achieve results and accused the West of hypocrisy. He said it was inconsistent for the west to refuse to recognize Crimea's annexation, which followed a referendum on joining Russia that was overwhelmingly approved, while at the same time accepting the new government in Kiev, which was formed after the pro-Moscow president fled the country.

The idea for Sunday's meeting was for Lavrov to present Russia's responses to a U.S. proposal to de-escalate the tensions that covers Ukrainian political and constitutional reforms as well as the disarmament of irregular forces, international monitors to protect minority rights and direct dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, according to U.S. officials, who say it has backing of Ukraine's government.
U.S. officials said Russia appeared to show some interest in the Ukrainian reform program, but Moscow's insistence on a federated state left it unclear if they would support it.

Kerry and Lavrov have met several times in person and have spoken by phone almost daily since the crisis began but have not yet been able to agree on a way forward. The pair met last week in The Hague, where Kerry presented Lavrov with the proposal, which was a response to ideas Lavrov gave him at a March 14 meeting in London.
Kerry and Lavrov will continue their consultation at a distance. And Kerry was expected to travel to Brussels Wednesday and Thursday for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.




“Four hours of talks” is nothing in the diplomatic game. They always start with mutually exclusive demands and work inward. In the peace talks between the US and Vietnam I can remember long and heated discussions about the shape of the table which they would sit around. It seems there were symbolic reasons for that. That is how the fabled King Arthur got the idea for his famous Round Table – so every man sitting there would have equal status during discussions.

Russia is now asking for a breakup of Ukraine into a set of “federalized regions” which have considerable autonomy from Kiev. I would be afraid that Russia would continually try to interfere in the separate regions and bring them over to Russian domination. Kerry has stated firmly that no decisions about the structure of Ukraine's government would occur without Kiev's representatives at the table.

Lavrov denies that Russia wants to “split Ukraine,” though that sounds like exactly what he is saying. Lavrov has said, “he and Kerry did agree to work with the Ukrainian government to improve rights for Russian-speaking Ukrainians and disarm "irregular forces and provocateurs." I would not be at all surprised if there were gangs of “irregular forces” roaming the countryside and fighting. It is obvious that there is a great deal of anger between the peoples in this case. They fought for months in the streets of Kiev before they finally drove Yanukovich out of the country in fear for his life. Ukraine denies that there are any such groups intimidating Russian speakers.

In explanation for the idea of a Federation, Lavrov said that “every time Ukraine has elected a new president, the country has adopted a new constitution, proving that "the model of a unified state doesn't work." The Ukrainian government is said to be “exploring reforms” to grant more power to the different regions, so maybe there is some room for them to discuss possibilities together. However, it won't happen without the Ukrainians themselves being involved in the discussions. That's fine. It sounds like progress to me. I will be on the alert for more information in the near future.




­ Japan Must Halt Whaling Program In Antarctic, Court Says – NPR
by Bill Chappell
March 31, 2014

­ An international court has ordered Japan to revoke whaling permits in the Antarctic and stop granting new ones.

The country's government had argued that hunting whales was part of a research program, but the International Court of Justice ruled Monday that Japan hasn't generated enough scientific research to justify killing hundreds of whales. Critics said the hunts were instead a way to justify commercial hunting.

Under the whaling program, Japan had set annual "lethal sample size" limits of 50 per species for fin whales and humpback whales, in addition to approximately 850 Antarctic minke whales. But the court said the research program had generated only two peer-reviewed papers that together refer to nine whales.

"In light of the fact that [Japan's program] has been going on since 2005 and has involved the killing of about 3,600 minke whales, the scientific output to date appears limited," the court wrote in its judgment.

By a 12-4 vote, the court based in The Hague decided Japan must "revoke any extant authorization, permit or license granted in relation to" its whaling program, "and refrain from granting any further permits" related to it.

The court's ruling stems from a complaint filed by Australia in May 2010, when it accused Japan of being in breach of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by operating a system that produced whale meat for sale in Japan, rather than creating scientific data.

Japan contested the allegations, saying the meat was sold in order to fund research. International conventions allow whale meat to be sold commercially when it's a by-product of research efforts.

Japanese officials have said the whaling program, called JARPA II, is for research on whales' age, sexual maturity and pregnancy rates, according to court documents. Some elements of the program were slated to go on for six to 12 years.

But the court noted that an expert who was called on to testify — Nick Gales, chief scientist of the Australian Antarctic Program — said Japan's program "operates in complete isolation" from other Japanese and international research efforts into Antarctica's wildlife.

As Australia's ABC notes, "Japan signed a 1986 moratorium on whaling, but has continued to hunt up to 850 minke whales in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean each year."

The news agency adds, "The ICJ's ruling is final and there will be no appeal."
Japanese officials have said they will abide by the ruling. But the country could also simply end its participation in agreements that curb whale hunting, ABC says. And as The New York Times notes, "The court left open the possibility for future whale hunting if Japan redesigned its program."




A research program, or a way to justify commercial whaling? The International Court of Justice says that Japan hasn't produced enough research to justify the killings. Under this program Japan has reported on nine whales, while 3,600 minke whales have been killed. The complaint comes from Australia which states that Japan has been killing the whales for meat to sell inside their country. Japan claims that the whale meat was sold to fund their research, which according to this article is not against international law.

Maybe that's one law that needs to be changed, if that is the case. Killing is killing, and as more and more species go extinct the human animal continues to ravage much that nature has given us. However, the court has ruled against Japan which has said that it will comply with the demand. Unfortunately, according to the New York Times the court gave Japan leeway to change its program in order to regain the right to hunt. So whose side is the Court on?

To be fair to Japan, I will add that the Inupiat Eskimo tribe in Alaska also hold an annual whale hunt. It is a 1,000 year old tradition, and provides winter food stocks for the tribe. They are allowed to kill only 22 whales a year, which isn't nearly as many as the Japanese have been taking. Go to the following website to read a very interesting blog on the Alaska hunt by a man who has observed it in progress. http://thewhalehunt.org/statement.html, written by Jonathan Harris.