Tuesday, April 29, 2014


News Clips For The Day



Four Things That Turn America into the 'Tornado Super Bowl' – NBC
By Bill Briggs
First published April 29 2014


A one-of-a-kind combination of weather factors make the United States the twister capital of the world, with the ominous funnels 10 times more common in the states than anywhere else on the planet, scientists say.

The four main ingredients all are geographical, all unique to America's borders: a massive mountain wall to the west, a warm ocean to the southeast, a cold-air “shield” to the north – and above these particular latitudes, a narrow river of wind, the jet stream, that surges eastward at hundreds of miles per hour.

“I call the area from the Rockies to the Appalachians and from the Gulf Coast to the Canadian border the ‘tornado super bowl’ of the world,” Ernest Agee, a professor at Purdue University, affiliated with the school’s Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Department.

“Other places have tornadoes, that’s for sure, but not as many,” Agee said.
“The Super Bowl is where you get the best together to create an event, so the 'tornado super bowl' is where you put the best ingredients together to make tornadoes."

Indeed, the sorts of heat-transferring “convective” storms that spawn tornadoes have been known to strike on every continent, except Antarctica, experts say.
But America has a permanent hold at No. 1 among tornado counters, averaging about 1,000 twisters per year, while Canada ranks second with about 100 annually, experts say.

According to the National Climatic Data Center – part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – tornadoes have formed in northern Europe, western Asia, Bangladesh, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa and Argentina.
“The Super Bowl is where you get the best together to create an event, so the 'tornado super bowl' is where you put the best ingredients together to make tornadoes,” Agee said.

“And we’re on a part of the planet where these ingredients can come together sometimes very quickly as they did Sunday,” Agee added.

An outbreak of tornadoes in three states killed at least 16 people Sunday, carving a particularly savage route through Arkansas.

In the most simple terms, super-cell storms are born from warm, moist air at low levels of the atmosphere – usually near the ground – that rise and mix with dry, cold air way above, said Harold Brooks, a senior researcher NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

But the fearsome foursome factors of American tornadoes begin, Agee said, with the fact that a “strong” jet stream blows above the nation, typically gaining speed during spring months as cold air from the northwest careens toward warm, wet air in the southeast.

“Not to sound sarcastic, but if you declared the land from the Yucatan (Peninsula in Mexico) to the Florida Keys to be a landfill, and there was no Gulf anymore, there would be no tornadoes."

That hot air wafts up and out over the salty currents and blue waves of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Not to sound sarcastic, but if you declared the land from the Yucatan (Peninsula in Mexico) to the Florida Keys to be a landfill, and there was no Gulf anymore, there would be no tornadoes,” Agee said. "The Gulf of Mexico is basically the fuel tank for these developing storms.

“But, of course, we have to have the jet stream, too. You get big storms in the tropics but they don’t have tornadoes because the jet stream is not there to help produce the tornadoes,” he added.

The northern regions of the country, meanwhile, offer the third geographical ingredient – a vast “continental shield” that extends from Western Canada to Greenland, behind which winter continues well into America’s spring, Agee said. That shield allows cold air to pool and remain to eventually fuel those mega-thunderstorms storms far south, carried there by the jet stream.

Of course, all of those cold, dry pockets up high, and that humid, juicy air down near the ground need an energy source to create what scientists like Agee call “vorticity,” or spinning. That’s where America’s greatest mountain chain enters the recipe.

“That we have a north-to-south mountain range like the Rockies help create the vorticity that’s needed for the storms, caused when the jet stream winds comes over those mountains," Agee said.

The Rockies, in fact, are considered “protypical” to Earth’s tornado-churning machine, Brooks said.

The 14,000-foot-tall range helps trap winds in the middle of the country.
“They extend a long way, north to south, and they’re wide, east to west, and there’s basically no way for the air in the central U.S. to get over there without having to go over the Rockies,” Brooks said.

"That we have a north-to-south mountain range like the Rockies help create the vorticity that’s needed for the storms, caused when the jet stream winds comes over those mountains."

In contrast, consider South America, which has the Andes, another north-to-south range yet very narrow when compared to the Rockies.

“In South America, the source of moist air for their severe thunderstorm region is the Amazon (rain forest),” Brooks said “It’s not quite as good as the Gulf because it's not a body of water.”

And on other continents, other huge mountain ranges run east-to-west, including the Himalayas in Asia and the Alps in Europe, allowing air to blow around the giant rock outcroppings instead of being forced to somehow push over the peaks, Brooks said.
“So that means, (in the U.S.) when we get the right wind profiles in the atmosphere, we are bringing in the temperature and moisture profiles that are most conducive to tornadoes,” Brooks said.

“Anywhere else on the planet,” he added, “the atmosphere has to produce the conditions and it has to work much work harder to bring these ingredients together.”




Ernest Agee, a professor at Purdue University, calls the US the ‘tornado super bowl’ due to the Rocky Mountains, the Gulf of Mexico, the “shield” of cold air to the north and the rapidly moving and powerful jet stream mixing and pulling the air. Right now a huge mass of circling air is sitting over the center of the continent and all around the edges are lines of large super-cell thunderstorms producing tornadoes. Worst of all that mass of air is not moving out to the east and to the ocean, but sitting more or less in place, swirling. As a result the morning forecast today said that this same pathway of storms is going to keep producing tornadoes for two or more days along the same paths, so that towns already devastated may be hit again today or tomorrow.

While a tornado can occur in most other parts of the world, the US has by far the most annually, “averaging about 1,000 twisters per year, while Canada ranks second with about 100 annually, experts say.” Due to the Southern climate and the presence of the Gulf of Mexico, we generate large thunder storms – “super-cell storms are born from warm, moist air at low levels of the atmosphere – usually near the ground – that rise and mix with dry, cold air way above, said Harold Brooks, a senior researcher NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.” The moving and guiding factor, though, is the jet stream which pulls cold air high above the ground over a southerly path to collide with the warm southern air and the warm air rises upward through the cold, which can set up a circular motion.

“You get big storms in the tropics but they don’t have tornadoes because the jet stream is not there to help produce the tornadoes,” he added.” 'Vorticity' is the powerful spiral of air that defines the tornado or “twister.” The Rocky mountains, 14,000 feet high, provide a barrier which keeps the path of the jet stream in the center of the continent, where the air is guided from north to south. 'So that means, (in the U.S.) when we get the right wind profiles in the atmosphere, we are bringing in the temperature and moisture profiles that are most conducive to tornadoes,' Brooks said.

I have always been fascinated with strong thunderstorms and tornadoes, though we had few tornadoes in Piedmont NC. There were some however, and I have several times experienced hail which is associated with tornadoes. When a lightning storm came we all used to get up on a bed, sofa or chair and hunker down until the storms would pass. One of my most vivid memories of childhood concerned one of those storms which happened to occur on a very warm, moist day. We had no air conditioning then, so my father, our terrier Butch and I were all out on the front porch after the storm to cool down. All was well until suddenly a rounded explosion of white light struck the metal piece in the yard about 25 feet from the place where we sat. It made a terrific boom and, according to Mother, who thought we were foolish for being out there at all, we all including the dog came scrambling through the door at once, trying to get away from it. She always told the story and laughed at us. That's okay. It scared me, but it also thrilled me. I don't ever want to go through it again, though. Once was enough.




Affirmative Action's Next Phase May Target Class, Not Race – NBC
By Nona Willis Aronowitz
First published April 29 2014

With race-based affirmative action taking yet another, potentially lethal, blow after last Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision, experts say universities may soon need to get creative if they’re serious about diversity.

The ruling was relatively finite — it merely affirmed the constitutionality of Michigan’s 2006 ban on race as a factor in college admissions — but it opened the door for other states to do the same thing. The decision is the latest in several Supreme Court cases since 2011 that have chipped away at race-based admissions practices. But that doesn’t mean universities will cease trying to diversify—they’ll just find other ways to do it.

“I think class- and wealth-based affirmative action is the future,” said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology, medicine and public policy at New York University. “You’re going to see a lot of experimentation on how to do this in the next few years.”

A few public university systems have already been experimenting with admissions policies meant to level the playing field for poor students, which indirectly boosts racial diversity. Texas, California and Florida have adopted versions of the “top 10 percent” plan, where a percentage (the number varies) of students from each high school in the state are guaranteed admission to state universities, giving a better chance to striving students from disadvantaged high schools. Texas, class-based affirmative action’s guinea pig, has been doing this since 1996.

Some experts, most notably Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, a public policy think tank, have held Texas up as an example, citing increased enrollment by black and Hispanic students eight years after the “top 10” plan began. Supporters say these methods are effective in creating a campus that’s both racially and economically diverse — rather than simply filling quotas by admitting privileged students of color, as many universities tend to do under traditional affirmative action.

“Texas’ percent program has been quite successful,” said Halley Potter, a policy associate at the Century Foundation who co-authored a study with Kahlenberg on the future of affirmative action. “Since [top 10] students are allowed to pick the campus they go to, this method has had a profound effect on UT Texas and Texas AMU,” the state’s flagship universities.

On the other hand, the University of California’s black and Hispanic populations plunged after “top 10” was implemented in 1997 and have never rebounded at selective campuses like UCLA and UC-Berkeley (a fact cited in Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion Tuesday). That’s likely because UC only guarantees admission to at least one of the campuses for “top 10” students.

“Many schools are reluctant to move beyond race, because admitting poor students has financial implications."

Stella Flores, associate professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, says colorblind, class-based fixes like these don’t create racial diversity as effectively as race-based affirmative action does — and she says the numbers prove it.

Even though the number of black and Latino students enrolling in Texas schools increased, it hasn’t kept up with the demographic growth in that state. UT-Austin’s 2013 freshman class, for example, was 23 percent Hispanic and 5 percent black — well below the state percentages of 38 and 12, respectively. (The numbers of college-age black and Hispanic Texans are even higher).

This disparity mirrors the rest of the country: Hispanic and black college enrollment has soared in the past decade, but both groups continue to be underrepresented at four-year colleges, especially more selective schools like UT-Austin and UC-Berkeley. Fifty-six percent of Hispanic college students, for instance, enroll in a four-year college, versus 72 percent of their white counterparts.

Not to mention that “top 10” programs’ success depends on states remaining highly segregated by class and race — a dynamic that skeptics of the plan view as morally problematic.

But Potter said less sweeping, more individualistic ways to factor in socioeconomic status can be more effective than “top 10.” She pointed to the University of Colorado-Boulder, where admissions officers created an algorithm based on how prospective students’ performance compares to students with similar backgrounds and experiences. This “disadvantage index” allows them to measure the students’ relative perseverance in the context of obstacles to their upward mobility. For example, a B average from a kid who grew up in a single-parent household, speaks Spanish at home, and had a job during high school would mean more than a B average from a more affluent, third-generation American student.

According to Potter, University of Colorado-Boulder “has actually done a better job of increasing admit rates for…underrepresented minorities” than race-based affirmative action.

Solutions like Boulder’s have moved into the spotlight as race-based affirmative action phases out across the country — and some administrators even see a race-neutral future as a chance to revamp a system that, especially in the strapped state university system, tends to focus on recruiting wealthier students of color.

“Many schools are reluctant to move beyond race, because admitting poor students has financial implications for their institution,” Potter said. Since Pell grants often don’t fully cover tuition, colleges would either have to cut prices or raise financial aid to accommodate more low-income students. “To the extent that [class-based policy] is pushing colleges to really think about socioeconomic status and broaden their definition of diversity, I think that is positive,” she said.

At elite universities, a “top 10” class-based program would likely never happen because it would take away their ability to be selective. But according to Potter, top universities could benefit from a Boulder-like algorithm, since it’s “a better way of being meritocratic. You’re looking at not only students’ broad academic achievement but also the obstacles they’ve overcome,” she said.

At this point, many selective colleges already factor in both race and class as a consideration, and their large endowments would hypothetically render them more equipped to subsidize good, low-income students. The problem is, most high-achieving, low-income students don’t apply to top colleges at all; state colleges are often receiving their applications instead.

“Race shouldn’t matter more than other types of diversity."
It’s undeniable that the United States’ wealth gap correlates with race — black households’ net worth is only about 4.5 percent of whites’ median household wealth — so it would make sense that tackling class would solve two diversity problems at once. But many experts say there are racial factors to consider that are separate from class.

“Racial identity and tolerance are important aspects of one’s education,” said Brenda Shum, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She pointed to a recent incident at the University of Mississippi, where a fraternity closed its chapter after three members were accused of tying a noose around a statue of James Meredith, the college’s first black student.
“Educators need to acknowledge how diversity promotes racial understanding” and combats prejudice, she said. In a state that’s almost 40 percent black, Ole Miss’s black population hovers at only about 17 percent. And the campus’ already tense race relations can’t abide potentially an even less diverse population under race-blind admissions policies, according to Shum.

Flores is also concerned that with a solely class-based system, deep-seated stereotypes about blacks and Latinos will remain.

“With race-based affirmative action, you have more income variation,” she said. If most of the students benefiting from new class-based policies are low-income and non-white, “what does that tell white students — that every person of color is poor?” (Potter counters that there’s “not a huge amount of evidence” that fewer affluent students of color will be admitted to colleges without race-based affirmative action.)
But for Ward Connerly, founder of the conservative American Civil Rights Institute, even if a colorblind future did mean a smaller and more homogenous pool of minority students, it’s a small price to pay for getting rid of what he sees as a prejudiced system.

“To engage in what amounts to racial discrimination in the name of ‘we want diversity’ I think is morally wrong,” said Connerly, who is black. “Race shouldn’t matter more than other types of diversity. Class-based remedies make sense in a society that is as fluid as ours is, with more and more black people finding themselves part of the middle class.”

Until there’s an outright federal ban on race-based admissions policies, it will be up to each university to decide which methods help them hit their diversity goals. And according to Flores, their standards should be high. “Universities have to ask themselves whether having a racially diverse student body leads to the best educations, the most employable students, a labor market that works in favor of their alumni,” she said.

They can have a 99 percent white student body if they want to, Flores said, “but does that does really contribute to the benefit of all?”




According to this article, “...experts say universities may soon need to get creative if they’re serious about diversity....'I think class- and wealth-based affirmative action is the future,' said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology, medicine and public policy at New York University. 'You’re going to see a lot of experimentation on how to do this in the next few years.'” I must say, class should always have been a basis for achieving diversity. There are poor whites who can't afford college, too.

When I see scholarships that are purely based on high academic achievement I get angry. Wealthy people should not get their kids educations paid for, as they are well able to pay for it themselves, and there are bright kids born to all races and classes who need the right to go to college. There are some background based score differences that emerge between the wealthy and the poor, purely because the wealthy parents tend to be themselves well-educated so their kids hear a higher level of vocabulary spoken in the home, and they tend to send their kids to elite college prep private schools.

If Duke University or Harvard wants to be sure they maintain a high scholastic standing with high performing students so they can keep their bragging rights, they should do an IQ test as well as using the College Board score, which directly reflects the kids high school background more than IQ, and then give those brighter students a scholarship because they are more likely to be able to achieve well at college. Moreover, stop the practice of admitting students whose parents have made large donations to the college. Getting into the highest ranked colleges has never been an even playing field.

There is already progress along these lines. “Texas, California and Florida have adopted versions of the 'top 10 percent”' plan, where a percentage (the number varies) of students from each high school in the state are guaranteed admission to state universities, giving a better chance to striving students from disadvantaged high schools.” This, to me, is fair, and will loosen the hold of the economic elite on having a better chance to climb the ladder in life. The article points out that the Texas plan has been in place since 1996, and it has increased the number of black and Latino students. I'm sure it has also increased the number of poor white students.

This sentence stands out starkly in the article – “Many schools are reluctant to move beyond race, because admitting poor students has financial implications." It is generally the “privileged” black and Latino students who are admitted on race-based plans, and according to Stella Flores of Vanderbilt University the “color blind” plans don't tend to bring as many minority students. “Fifty-six percent of Hispanic college students, for instance, enroll in a four-year college, versus 72 percent of their white counterparts....'top 10' programs’ success depends on states remaining highly segregated by class and race — a dynamic that skeptics of the plan view as morally problematic.”

Halley Potter, a policy associate at the Century Foundation states that “the University of Colorado-Boulder, where admissions officers created an algorithm based on how prospective students’ performance compares to students with similar backgrounds and experiences. This “disadvantage index” allows them to measure the students’ relative perseverance in the context of obstacles to their upward mobility. For example, a B average from a kid who grew up in a single-parent household, speaks Spanish at home, and had a job during high school would mean more than a B average from a more affluent, third-generation American student.” Now that's the kind of thing that I think should be considered. Further, she adds that UC at Boulder “has actually done a better job of increasing admit rates for…'underrepresented minorities' than race-based affirmative action.” I think we have the solution to the problem here.

Brenda Shum, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “said 'Educators need to acknowledge how diversity promotes racial understanding' and combats prejudice.....with a solely class-based system, deep-seated stereotypes about blacks and Latinos will remain.” A serious racial incident at the University of Mississippi is given as an example.

I must say, UNC-Chapel Hill, where I took a BA degree, was so diverse that I got used to seeing Indian women in saris walking the traditional ten steps behind their husbands and truly black-skinned people from Africa without the Caucasian mixture that occurs in this country, and I don't remember a single racial incident getting into the news then. Personally, I have always enjoyed the differences between people, and I do think my college experience, between the student culture and the academic courses I took, got rid of the last remnants of my white southern upbringing. Of course UNC is a liberal college in all ways, including the courses that are taught. They also try to admit people who probably wouldn't get into Harvard either academically or economically, and they give lots of scholarships while maintaining a lower tuition than those elite colleges. It's up to the student to study hard in order to reap the best education he can from the courses, poetry readings and other talks by authors, the concerts and lecture series that were free to all students.




Supreme Court Upholds Air Pollution Regulation – NBC
— The Associated Press
First published April 29 2014

The Supreme Court has given the Environmental Protection Agency an important victory in its effort to reduce power plant pollution that contributes to unhealthy air in neighboring states.

The court's 6-2 decision Tuesday means that a rule adopted by EPA in 2011 to limit emissions from plants in more than two-dozen Midwestern and Southern states can take effect. The pollution drifts into the air above states along the Atlantic Coast and the EPA has struggled to devise a way to control it.

Power companies and several states sued to block the rule from taking effect, and a federal appeals court in Washington agreed with them in 2012.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the court's majority opinion. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.




I hope this means that global warming inducing CO2 pollution as well as any chemicals which might be going into the air, will be included in this ruling. Presumably it will. I am sure there is such a thing as over-regulating, but the air and water pollution that we have fought since I can remember need desperately to be improved, and businesses will rarely do it on their own. I am very glad to see that the Supreme Court is not bought by the Republican party. This is good news.





Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: GeoResonance survey company says "wreckage of a commercial airliner" found
By Tucker Reals CBS News April 29, 2014

Last Updated Apr 29, 2014 10:17 AM EDT
The Malaysian government confirmed Tuesday that officials investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 were looking into an Australian company's claim to have located aircraft wreckage on the sea floor in the northern Bay of Bengal -- thousands of miles from the search area scanned meticulously for weeks to the south.

Australian land and sea survey company GeoResonance said in a statement sent Tuesday to CBS News that it had discovered materials "believe to be the wreckage of a commercial airliner" about 100 miles south of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal using proprietary technology which scans vast areas for specific metals or minerals.

The company's technology is often used to help clients find mineral deposits for mining, but GeoResonance also has participated in the hunt for old warships or aircraft on the ocean floor.

"During the search for MH370, GeoResonance searched for chemical elements that make up a Boeing 777: aluminum, titanium, copper, steel alloys, jet fuel residue, and several other substances. The aim was to find a location where all those elements were present," said the company in the written statement.

Scanning "multispectral images" taken from the air on March 10 -- two days after Flight 370 went missing -- GeoResonance says it found "an anomaly in one place in the Bay of Bengal" where many of those relevant materials were detected in significant amounts, and in a pattern which matched the approximate layout of a large aircraft.

The company said analysis of images take of the same area five days earlier showed the "anomaly had appeared between the 5th and 10th of March 2014."

In a statement released to the press on Tuesday, Malaysian Acting Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein confirmed that his government was "working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information."

A U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CBS News on Tuesday that they were still in the early stages of gathering information about GeoResonance's claim, but they were "very skeptical" it would lead to anything, given all the data that investigators have been working with points to the southern Indian Ocean.

A team of experts working for the International Investigation Team have been studying the data available on the flight, which includes the attempted communications between Flight 370 and satellites which led officials to focus their search in the so-called Southern Arc. They continue to analyze that data and their focus remains to the south, says CBS News transportation correspondent Jeff Pegues.

There have been many false leads in the hunt for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 since it disappeared from commercial radar northeast of Manila on March 8.
Investigators believe the plane turned an inexplicable about-face after losing contact, heading southwest into the Indian Ocean.

Officials said Monday that, with not a clue found to date, the huge search area about 1,000 miles southwest of Perth, Australia -- which has been combed fastidiously by a robotic U.S. Navy submarine using sonar imaging -- would be expanded significantly and the air search called off.

"It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface. By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Tuesday.
"Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area," he said. That search, according to Abbott, could take at least eight months.

GeoResonance said it first alerted officials with Malaysia Airlines, and the Chinese and Malaysian embassies in Australia, that possible aircraft debris had been found in the general area of its discovery on March 31, "well before the black box batteries had expired."

"These details were also passed onto the Australian authorities (JACC) in Perth on April 4, 2014. A more detailed study was completed in early April. The final 23 page report including the precise location of the wreckage was passed onto Malaysian Airlines, Malaysian High Commission in Canberra, Chinese Embassy in Canberra, and the Australian authorities (JACC) on April 15, 2014," according to the company.

It was not immediately clear whether the international search team has previously investigated GeoResonance's information.




Australian land and sea survey company GeoResonance, searching for materials of which an airliner is composed, said that “an anomaly” which resembles an airliner has been found in the Bay of Bengal, and that “analysis of images taken … five days earlier showed the 'anomaly had appeared between the 5th and 10th of March 2014.'" GeoResonance said it did inform both the Malaysians and the Australians of this finding first on March 31 and again on April 4. “It is not clear” whether the report has been investigated before now. If it wasn't that will probably be a scandal. I can only hope that investigation proves this to be the Malaysian airliner and that the “black boxes” will be found intact.





What are the NBA’s options with Donald Sterling?
CBS/AP April 29, 2014

There is little doubt the [sic] Donald Sterling has a troubled history of race relations, punctuated emphatically by an alleged audio recording of him making racist remarks to a girlfriend.

The fallout has been swift: current and former NBA players have publicly denounced Sterling, the NAACP is returning donations he has made and canceled a planned award ceremony next month and sponsors have fled.

Full coverage of the Donald Sterling scandal at CBSSports.com
The shoe that has yet to drop, however, is official league action. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has scheduled a press conference for Tuesday afternoon to discuss the league's investigation. It is Silver's first true test as NBA commissioner, and he vowed the league would "move extraordinarily quickly in our investigation."
A breakdown of the key elements heading into the press conference:

SILVER'S AUTHORITY:
CBS News legal analyst Jack Ford told "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday: "The commissioner has very broad powers that allow him to act 'In the interest of the league.'"
However, it remains unclear how far Silver's powers can reach so early in the process.

SUSPENSIONS:
Many have guessed Silver is likely to suspend the Clippers owner from participation in league activities, perhaps for up to a year. There is precedent, in the NBA and other professional sports leagues, for an owner to be suspended.
Ford said: "It sounds like you're going to see that."

If Sterling is suspended, he would be unable to attend games or team functions for the duration of the suspension and would likely have to appoint someone to take over the day-to-day operations of the team.

CBSSports.com's Ken Berger reports the NBA is likely to suspend Sterling indefinitely while a more thorough investigation of both Sterling and what other legal avenues the league has will take a while to complete.
FINES:

The league's bylaws allow for Silver to levy a penalty of up to $1 million without needing the approval of other owners if he deems Sterling's actions have damaged the league as a whole. A fine is likely, Berger reports, because the league does that frequently to owner, as is evidenced by the Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban.

OWNERSHIP REVOCATION:
Many, from LeBron James to Magic Johnson, have called for Sterling to be removed from the NBA altogether. In modern professional sports, there is only one precedent for forcing an owner to sell their team for incendiary commentary: Marge Schott, who owned baseball's Cincinnati Reds from 1986 to 1999.

"They could try to force the owner to sell the team, but they'd have huge legal hurdles," Ford told "CBS This Morning." "It'd be tough to go into a court of law and say we're going to force him to give up his property, what he owns, because of his comments."

CBSSports.com's Ken Berger reports there are few parallels between what happened with Schott and what is happening with Sterling.

Schott was only forced to sell "after years of pressure from baseball and fellow owners, and only after General Motors accused her of falsifying car sales with the names of team employees at a Chevrolet dealership she had since sold. Even then, Schott reaped the financial benefit of the sale and retained one ownership share as well as 21 box seats and a luxury suite, according to this story from the Cincinnati Enquirer," Berger wrote.

The league's owners are wary of forcing Sterling to sell his team, even if it would bring him a financial windfall. The league took over the New Orleans Hornets from previous owner George Shinn, but that was because of financial difficulties. The Clippers are a profitable team and Sterling is worth a reported $1.9 billion, so money is not an issue in this case. Plus, taking such measures would almost assuredly bring a lawsuit from Sterling and a long, expensive legal fight.

POSSIBLE SCENARIO:
Given that only a few days have passed since the recording first was made public, it would be hard to imagine a definitive move being made by Silver on Tuesday. The most likely possibility would seem to be an indefinite suspension while the NBA conducts a thorough investigation into not only this incident, but Sterling's past as well to try to determine if a pattern has developed. Silver could also issue a fine right away while leaving open the possibility for additional financial penalties pending the outcome of the investigation.




This story is especially interesting to me because, unlike the case of a testosterone based history of beating his wife or bar fights, Sterling has picked on a man with a squeaky clean background and a very good sports history, in other words one of the more well-loved players and a hero to young kids. It is also interesting that Sterling's girlfriend is clearly Asian. It's apparently just black people that he hates.

“The fallout has been swift: current and former NBA players have publicly denounced Sterling, the NAACP is returning donations he has made and canceled a planned award ceremony next month and sponsors have fled....NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has scheduled a press conference for Tuesday afternoon to discuss the league's investigation. It is Silver's first true test as NBA commissioner, and he vowed the league would "move extraordinarily quickly in our investigation." Silver's investigation into the matter will likely include looking to see whether or nor “a pattern” is involved.

I am glad to see that among sports fans and players alike, the callous and hateful anti-black remarks have produced outrage. Sports fans are mainly men, and men are more likely to be rabidly racist than women, but in this case at least there is no support for Sterling. CBS News legal analyst Jack Ford has predicted that Sterling will be suspended for as much as a year, unable to attend games and may have to appoint somebody else to run the team operations, plus possibly levying a fine of up to $1 million.




EU Follows U.S. In Imposing New Sanctions On Russia – NPR
by Scott Neuman
April 29, 2014
This post was updated at 9:30 a.m. ET.

The European Union has followed the U.S. in imposing a new round of sanctions on Russia for the Kremlin's intervention in Crimea and alleged support of separatist elements inside eastern Ukraine.

The sanctions, which specifically target Russian President Vladimir Putin's "inner circle," drew a response from Moscow, which described them in Cold War terms.
According to The Guardian, the EU has named 15 people for sanctions, including Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who has been charged with developing Crimea. Kozak was also named on Monday by the U.S.

Several leaders of the pro-Russian militia and protesters who have been occupying buildings in eastern Ukraine have also been named, according to the Guardian. They will be subject to asset freezes and travel bans.

The Washington Post says:
"The European Union has been more reluctant than the United States to target Russian businesses, in part because E.U. companies have far stronger economic relations with Russia than their U.S. counterparts. U.S. officials have indicated that they were ready to issue new sanctions last week but decided to wait for the European Union in order to project a unified front against what they say is Russia's escalating campaign to destabilize Ukraine."

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the U.S. and EU have revived the legacy of the Cold War.

"This is a revival of a system created in 1949 when Western countries essentially lowered an 'Iron Curtain,' cutting off supplies of hi-tech goods to the USSR and other countries," he said.

NPR's Corey Flintoff, reporting from Moscow, says Russian officials maintain that most of the sanctions will not seriously affect their economy.

However, Ryabkov says Russia's space program "could be hurt by a ban on sales of certain high-technology items that are made in the West," Corey says.

Meanwhile, The Guardian also reports that Gennady Kernes, the mayor of Kharkiv who was shot in the back by an unknown gunman on Monday, has been flown to Israel for treatment, where he is "fighting for his life."

Reuters reports that "hundreds of pro-Russian separatists stormed the regional government headquarters" in the eastern Ukraine city of Luhansk.

The news agency says:
"The government in Kiev has all but lost control of its police forces in parts of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian activists have seized buildings in the region's second biggest city of Donetsk and several smaller towns."

"'The regional leadership does not control its police force,' said Stanislav Rechynsky, an aide to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. 'The local police did nothing.'"




According to this report, “the EU has named 15 people for sanctions, including Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who has been charged with developing Crimea. Kozak was also named on Monday by the U.S....Several leaders of the pro-Russian militia and protesters who have been occupying buildings in eastern Ukraine have also been named, according to the Guardian. They will be subject to asset freezes and travel bans.”

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated, “This is a revival of a system created in 1949 when Western countries essentially lowered an 'Iron Curtain,' cutting off supplies of hi-tech goods to the USSR and other countries," he said. He went on to say that the Russian space program may be hurt due to their need for Western made high-tech items.

Gennady Kernes, mayor of Kharkiv is being flown to Israel for treatment after being shot in the back by “an unknown gunman” and is in very serious condition. Meanwhile the eastern city of Luhansk is now under attack by hundreds of separatists. "The government in Kiev has all but lost control of its police forces in parts of eastern Ukraine,” said Stanislav Rechynsky, an aide to Arakov in Kiev, continuing that the local police are doing nothing to stop the marauders.

The fact that journalists and international observers have even been kidnapped and in at least one case beaten is also very disheartening. Open warfare may be the only thing that will stop them. Of course, Putin has said that if Kiev makes an all out assault on the Russians in the east he will send in Russian troops in force. He wouldn't if the UN were to send in a large number of peace-keeping forces, I don't think, or if the US and EU countries were to go into Western Ukraine to build up Kiev's powers. I no longer have any sympathy or good will for Putin and his followers. They have nothing that passes for a conscience.