Sunday, June 29, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Pakistani couple hacked to death over love marriage
CBS/AP June 29, 2014

ISLAMABAD - A 17-year-old girl and her husband were killed by her family for marrying without its consent, and another young woman was burned alive by a man for refusing his proposal in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, police said Sunday.

Muafia Bibi and her husband Sajjad Ahmed, 30, were killed in Satrah village Friday night, allegedly by her parents, two uncles and her grandfather, said Asghar Ali, the area police chief.

He said the couple was hacked to death with a butcher's knife, and that all five suspects have been apprehended.

Ali said the couple married on June 19, and that the family had lured them back home by saying it accepted the marriage. He said it was Ahmed's third marriage, with the first ending in divorce and his second wife leaving him after he married Bibi.

Elsewhere in Punjab, a man burned alive a young girl he wanted to marry after her family refused his proposal. Fayaz Aslam, 26, doused Sidra Shaukat in gasoline before setting the 20-year-old alight in a field, said Akhtar Saeed, a district police official.

Saeed said the girl was taken to hospital where she died overnight. He said Aslam was arrested for murder.

Marrying for love is a taboo among conservative Muslims in Pakistan, where hundreds of people are killed each year by their own relatives over alleged sexual indiscretions, which are believed to bring shame upon the family. The victims are usually women but in some cases couples are killed.

Last month, a mob of family members, including her father and brothers, beat 25-year-old Farzana Parveen to death with bricks stolen from a construction site after she married someone against their approval.

Initially, many in Pakistan offered their condolences to Parveen's husband, Mohammed Iqbal, after the killing as the family apparently didn't want her to marry him.

But Thursday, Zulfiqar Hameed, deputy inspector general for Punjab police, told The Associated Press that authorities arrested Iqbal for the October 2009 killing of his first wife, Ayesha Bibi. Hameed could not offer details about the slaying, but said the case was withdrawn after a family member forgave him.

Under Pakistani law, those charged with a slaying can see their criminal case dropped if family members of the deceased forgive them or accept so-called "blood money" offerings over the crime.




This article contains instances of purely primitive behavior. I have heard that the doctrines of the religion of Islam are not the source of such things, but rather the tribal customs of the local community which commits the crimes in the name of religion. “Marrying for love is a taboo among conservative Muslims in Pakistan, where hundreds of people are killed each year by their own relatives over alleged sexual indiscretions, which are believed to bring shame upon the family. The victims are usually women but in some cases couples are killed.” Freedom is impossible among such people, and I think also all true feeling between married couples. Already there have been several “honor killings” in the news by fathers in the US among immigrant families. They carry their evil with them. It makes it hard for American citizens to welcome and include “conservative” Muslims under these conditions.

Bride burning in particular is mainly among Hindus, however. See this article from Wikipedia. According to this article the punishment in India, however, is usually life in prison or death. In Pakistan it can be “forgiven” by only one member of the bride's family or by the acceptance of “blood money.” I ran across the payment of “blood money” several times in the past when reading about ancient societies, including the Celts in Europe. That was 3,000 years ago, however, and these cases are in the present in a country which is, tentatively at least, an American ally. I think the US should put diplomatic pressure on both India and Pakistan to outlaw those cultural customs. The world can't move forward as long as such things persist.


Bride burning
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bride burning is a form of domestic violence common within the regions of India and Pakistan[1] wherein a groom or his family kills the bride due to dissatisfaction over the amount or duration of the dowry.[2] Kerosene is most often used as the fuel.[3]

This crime has been treated as culpable homicide and, if proven, is usually accordingly punished by up to lifelong imprisonment or death.[4] Bride burning has been recognized as an important public health problem in India,[5]accounting for around 2,500 deaths per year in the country.[5] In 1995, TimeMagazine reported that dowry deaths in India increased from around 400 a year in the early 1980s to around 5,800 a year by the middle of the 1990s.[6] A year later, CNN ran a story saying that every year police receive more than 2,500 reports of bride burning.[7] According to Indian National Crime Record Bureau, there were 1,948 convictions and 3,876 acquittals in dowry deathcases in 2008.[8]

BBC claims that Bride burning is some variation of the ancient custom of Sati, formally abolished in 1829, where a widowed woman was forcibly or voluntarily placed on the burning pyre of her dead husband and burnt to death,[4] but in reality, it is actually related and byproduct of Jauhar.

Dowry deaths[edit]
A dowry death is the death of a young woman in South Asian countries, primarily India, who is murdered or driven to suicide by her husband. This results from the husband continually attempting to extract more dowry from the bride or her family. Bride burning is just one form of dowry death. Others include acid throwing and Eve teasing. Because dowry typically depends on class or socioeconomic status, women are often subjected to the dowry pressures of their future husband or his relatives.[2]





The toughest places to live in America
By AIMEE PICCHI MONEYWATCH June 27, 2014

Almost every county in the U.S. has its share of haves and have-nots. But there are some regions where it's just plain harder for Americans to thrive, places where the poor far outnumber those living in middle-class comfort.

Ten counties in America stand out as the most challenging places to live, based on a survey of six criteria including median household income, disability rate and life expectancy, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

The county with the dubious distinction of being the worst of all is Clay County, Kentucky, where residents can expect to die six years earlier than the average American. But it's not a recent distinction for the Appalachian county. Its reputation as a rough area dates as far back as 1899 thanks to clan feuds, while a recent survey found Clay County had the worst health characteristics of any county in the state.

Clay isn't the only Kentucky county to make the list, according to the Times. A cluster of Appalachian counties rank among the toughest places to live in America, with five additional coal-region Kentucky counties on the list: Breathitt, Jackson, Lee, Leslie and Magoffin.

The other four counties ranked at the bottom of the survey include four counties in the rural south: Humphreys County, Mississippi; East Carroll Parish, Louisiana; Jefferson County, Georgia; and Lee County, Arkansas.

The findings highlight an often overlooked issue in the debate about income inequality -- the stubbornness of rural poverty. In the U.S., the number of poor rural residents outnumber those in the cities, with 14 percent of rural Americansliving below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent in urban areas, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development's Rural Poverty Portal.

Half a century ago, Kentucky provided the face for President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty." But while the U.S. poverty rate has declined to 16 percent, from almost 26 percent in 1967, poor rural counties are now facing new issues, such as obesity and drug addiction, and longstanding problems, such as a lack of employment opportunities.
There are a lot of ideas on how to help struggling regions around the U.S., but no clear answer. One proposal floated by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is to create "economic freedom zones" in challenged U.S. cities, cutting income taxes to a flat 5 percent in order to attract employers.

But the problems in America's hardest-hit counties go far beyond a tax stimulus, and include one aspect that may simply prove insurmountable, at least in the near term: isolation. With Appalachia's poor regions far from major highways, cities and industry, that makes it more difficult for families to find stable jobs or pursue higher education.

More than one-fourth of children live in poverty in 12 states that stretch from Appalachia to Arizona, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Poverty rates are not only higher for rural children than for those in cities, but the growing income gap is also hitting rural families harder, the PRB said in a 2009 report.

Already challenged by its isolated geography and poverty, Appalachia was especially adversely affected by the recession. Median household income in the region between 1999 and 2005 through 2009 declined 7 percent, compared with a decline of 5 percent nationwide.

Of course, Appalachia and the South aren't the only parts of the country where people struggle, The Times' study found. Pockets of economic and social hardship extend from Maine to Alaska.

So where's the best place to live? According to the number crunching, it's Los Alamos, New Mexico, home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Thanks to the lab's $2.1 billion budget, the county of about 18,000 residents is prospering.

Other high-ranking counties include several that serve as suburbs to Washington, D.C., and New York City-area counties, such as Westchester, New York (ranked 98th out of all U.S. counties) and Morris County, New Jersey (ranked 43rd).




Lack of infrastructure such as roads and public transportation connecting rural areas easily to towns where jobs may be found, lack of education and good health, obesity and drug addiction, all add to the poverty found in some dozen counties which occur primarily in the rural south. “Median household income, disability rate and life expectancy” are the factors that a New York Times study tracked in coming up with these conclusions. I am surprised that no cities were in this study, as poverty in cities seems to me to be as bad as that in the countryside. I also think that, in the rural areas, families are at least able more often to grow their own food on the land that they occupy. Maybe there is something about those counties that makes this no longer true. Also, in cities the poor are perhaps more likely to be able to take advantage of the “social safety net,” such as food stamps due to better transportation.

The counties that are doing the best are in suburbs of Washington DC and New York City and, surprisingly, Los Alamos again because of available work at the National Laboratory there. Also listed was Morris County, New Jersey, which is also located near New York City.

Maybe if Rand Paul could set up an “economic freedom zone” of 5% income tax that would attract businesses there, and would bring improvement in the poverty stricken places. It would give jobs to some of the unemployed and also could possibly stimulate the building of better roads in and out of the most isolated pockets. and growth of towns in those counties rather than ruined farmland. Many people who try to farm for their income can't make a living due to the unpredictable and often very high costs involved. I don't know how the legislators would react to a 5% tax bracket, though, and there would be an outcry of unfair taxation from other places, I would expect. It sounds too utopian to work.





Environmentalists say bye bye blackbirds
By BIGAD SHABAN CBS NEWS June 28, 2014

WOODLAND, Calif. -- It's an infrequent sound these days -- the high-pitched cries of hundreds of newborn blackbirds in California's Sacramento Valley.

"It's something that I hear very infrequently -- almost rarely anymore," says Bob Meese, an environmental scientist.

Meese has spent the last decade studying the tri-colored blackbird, which once numbered in the millions. The decline, he says, is unprecedented.

According to surveys coordinated by Meese and his team at the University of California, Davis, the state was home to 400,000 tri-colored blackbirds in 2008.

Today, there are only 145,000 -- a 64 percent loss in just six years.

"There are parts of the state where the birds seem to be disappearing altogether,'' said Meese.

Meese is now catching the birds so he can tag them and track their movements. He believes the birds' natural habitats are being increasingly turned into farmland and vineyards which rely on pesticides that kill off the very insects the birds feast on.

"If they do not have enough insects in their diet, they simply cannot form eggs," he says.

So Meese is trying to convince growers to give up pesticides. At this organic rice field, the tri-colored blackbirds are able to collect insect larvae to feed their young.

"The blackbirds could act as a natural insecticide,'' says Meese.

"If we can reproduce this specific set of circumstances in enough places in California, I think the species has a future here."

Unless that idea takes flight, Meese says, California's iconic bird could be lost forever.




Destruction of environments and their insect populations are causing birds to be unable to form healthy eggs, so they are dying out. It's like the old DDT problem of 40 years ago when the birds eggs had too soft shells for the species to replicate. That was solved when DDT was absolutely banned. Unfortunately, not all other insecticides have been banned. Bob Meese, an environmental scientist, is trying to convince farmers to stop using insecticides and let the blackbirds eat the insects instead. "'If we can reproduce this specific set of circumstances in enough places in California, I think the species has a future here.'"





Astronaut captures video of lightning storm from space
CBS NEWS June 27, 2014

You've never seen a thunderstorm quite like this.

Astronaut Reid Wiseman -- known on Twitter as @astro_reid -- captured this Vine video from the International Space Station showing dramatic flashes of lightning over Houston.

Wiseman is serving as flight engineer aboard the International Space Station for Expedition 41, according to his NASA biography.

He launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 29.

Since then, he's been tweeting about experiments aboard the space station, the World Cup and views of the world from space.


http://spaceweather.com/: This is a website linked to NOAA that has been on the Net for at least ten years. It covers the highest regions of the atmosphere, and shows such things as “gravity waves” and “red sprites.” Red sprites are electrical discharges that occur above thunderstorms as high as 70 km above the earth, and are readily visible from space. Have a look at this site for lots of information and visuals. The lightning storm footage filmed by the astronaut was not of red sprites, but diffuse, very bright flashes in the clouds below. See the CBS website for today.

I consider going up into space as being a more dangerous thing than I want to do, but the pictures and video we sometimes see from the International Space Station are really beautiful. I'm glad to have lived in this generation. The first moves into outer space amazed me. Now NASA is talking about going to Mars. Just today a flying saucer-like device was tested for future Mars exploration. I don't think it will be feasible to set up a long term station for human habitation on Mars, though. I'll watch the news on it, nonetheless, and clip every article I find.




Nanny Who Wouldn't Leave Spotted Hiding in Car at Police Station – ABC
By Gillian Mohney, Sarah Figalora and Sabina Ghebremedhin
June 28, 2014

In another bizarre development, the former live-in nanny who a family said "refused to leave" after being fired, was spotted by press hiding in her car at the Upland Police Station in California.

Diane Stretton is being accused of squatting in a family's home after being initially hired as a live-in nanny.

Stretton arrived at a local police station Friday because she thought she was being followed, according to ABC station KABC-TV. Police confirmed that the person following her was a photographer and said she could leave. However, rather than leave Stretton remained in her car hiding under a windshield cover and didn't leave the parking lot until around 3 a.m.

Stretton initially grabbed headlines after Marcella and Ralph Bracamonte of Upland, Calif., said that Stretton refused to leave their home after they fired her from her job as live-in nanny. The couple told ABC News that a few weeks after they hired Stretton, she refused to work, saying she had health problems. Eventually she refused to leave her room except to come out for food, the couple said.

When the family asked Stretton to leave, she refused and allegedly threatened the couple that she would sue for elder abuse and wrongful firing.

Diane Stretton has a long history with litigation and is listed on California's Vexatious Litigant List, which includes people who have been found to bring legal action that is frivolous or repetitive.

Bracamonte called the police when Stretton first refused to leave, but the cops declined to do anything, saying it was a civil matter. Lt. John Moore of the Upland Police Department confirmed to ABC News that there is no immediate action that can be taken against Stretton, saying "generally, once somebody has established residency, you have to go through a formal eviction process."

While Stretton initially refused to leave the Bracamonte home, Marcella Bracamonte confirmed to ABC News that Stretton disappeared from the home early Thursday morning.

"She left around 7 a.m. yesterday morning and she never came back," Bracamonte told ABC News on Friday.

The former nanny was not seen until Friday, when she was spotted by the press as she arrived at a local police station according to KABC-TV.

It was unclear whether Stretton would return for her belongings or file suit against the Bracamonte family as they claimed she threatened to do.

Court documents obtained by ABC News revealed that Stretton was involved in at least six lawsuits in Riverside, Calif., since 2005, four in which she was the plaintiff, one in which she was the defendant and one in which she was the petitioner.

The majority of the lawsuits were directed at her own family members, especially her two sisters. According to documents, Stretton tried to block her sisters from selling family property.

Last year, Stretton even sued her son, Michael, according to court records, for property damage and personal injury.

Court documents show that when Stretton's father, John Richardson, died in 2000, his will included Stretton's two sisters, Donna Tobey and Sharon Freeburn. Richardson "specifically and expressly omitted Stretton," according to court documents.


Squatting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land and/or abuilding – usually residential –[1] that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.

Author Robert Neuwirth suggests that there are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every seven people on the planet.[2] Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement."[3]

Some squatting movements are political, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist.

In many of the world's poorer countries, there are extensive slums or shanty towns, typically built on the edges of major cities and consisting almost entirely of self-constructed housing built without the landowner's permission. While these settlements may, in time, grow to become both legalised and indistinguishable from normal residential neighbourhoods, they start off as squats with minimal basic infrastructure. Thus, there is no sewage system, drinking water must be bought from vendors or carried from a nearby tap, and if there is electricity, it is stolen from a passing cable.

England[edit]

Main article: Squatting in England
In England, squatting has a long historical tradition. The BBC states that squatting was "a big issue in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and again for the Diggers in the 17th Century [who] were peasants who cultivated waste and common land, claiming it as their rightful due" and that squatting was a necessity after the Second World War when so many were homeless.[49] The BBC also reported in 2011 that the British government estimated that there were "20,000 squatters in the UK" and "650,000 empty properties".[49]

Effective 1 September 2012, under Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, squatting in residential property was criminalised by the Government.[50][51]

Gremlins[edit]

Gremlins protesting on the roof of the squatted Spin Bowling, Cardiff, 2012.

As a result of the criminalisation of squatting in residential buildings, a group calling themselves The Gremlins in October 2012 resisted eviction of Spin Bowling in Cardiff from bailiffs and police. The group covered their faces with scarves and masks, posting on Bristol Indymedia claiming; “The state tries to make people homeless, anarchists have no sympathy for the state and its lackeys.” The protest was believed to be in response to the imprisonment of Alex Haigh, who was the first person jailed under the new Section 144 law in the UK.[59][60] The activists have renamed the building Gremlin Alley Social Centre and continue to organise events at the squat.[61]
United States

In the United States, squatting laws vary from state to state and city to city. For the most part, it is rarely tolerated to any degree for long, particularly in cities.[65]There have been a few exceptions, notably in 2002 when the New York City administration agreed to turn over eleven squatted buildings in the Lower East Side to an established non-profit group, on the condition that the apartments would later be turned over to the tenants as low-income housing cooperatives.[66]

Squatters can be young people living in punk houses, low-income or homeless people, street gang members, or artists. Recently there have been increasing numbers of people squatting foreclosed homes [67][68] There are also reports of people resquatting their own foreclosed homes.[69]




This news article is a followup from a story a few days ago, and shows further results to the “standoff” between a couple and their previously hired live in nanny. It reminds me of some stories over the last 15 years or so of families who simply went on vacation to come back and find people had moved into their house and refused to leave. There is such a thing as “squatters rights” in some states. See the Wikipedia article information clipped above.

“Diane Stretton is being accused of squatting in a family's home after being initially hired as a live-in nanny.” In this case, the nanny recently left the home and took shelter in her car at a local police station from a “follower” who turned out to be a photographer. Stretton remained in the police parking lot hiding in her car until 3:00 AM. Apparently she is not under arrest, but she is no longer in the home. Hopefully there will be an update soon.






Ukrainian Soldiers Call for Lifting of Cease-Fire – ABC
Kiev, Ukraine
June 29, 2014

Several hundred Ukrainian soldiers and activists gathered outside the presidential administration in Kiev on Sunday to call for an end to the cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, an indication that tensions remain high a day ahead of a deadline for steps toward easing the violence.

After the weeklong cease-fire expired Friday, President Petro Poroshenko agreed to extend it through Monday in an effort to stop the fighting between government troops and Moscow-backed separatists that has left hundreds dead.

The European Union also set a Monday deadline for Russia and the separatists to take a series of steps, including releasing all captives, retreating from border checkpoints, agreeing on a way to verify the cease-fire and beginning "substantial negotiations" on Poroshenko's peace plan. If this was not done, the EU warned that it was ready to impose new punitive measures on Russia.

Soldiers from the Donbass battalion, a militia formed by volunteers, appealed to Poroshenko on Sunday to allow them to resume the fight.

A presidential administration official, Henadiy Zubko, promised to pass on their demands to the president, but told them that the cease-fire order would remain in effect until 10 p.m. Monday (1900GMT).

Both sides have been accused of violating the cease-fire.

Late Saturday, pro-Russia separatists released a second team of four observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who had been held captive in eastern Ukraine since the end of May. The first team of four was freed last week.

Ukraine on Friday signed a free-trade pact with the EU, the very deal that the former Ukrainian president dumped under pressure from Moscow in November, fueling huge protests that eventually drove him from power. Moscow responded to those events by annexing the mainly Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula in March, and the pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine broke out a month later.

The United States and the EU have slapped travel bans and asset freezes on members of Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle and threatened to impose more crippling sanctions against entire sectors of Russia's economy if the Kremlin fails to de-escalate the crisis.




“Ukraine on Friday signed a free-trade pact with the EU.... Late Saturday, pro-Russia separatists released a second team of four observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who had been held captive in eastern Ukraine since the end of May. The first team of four was freed last week.” The Poroshenko declared cease fire is still in effect until 10:00 PM Monday. Poroshenko is holding his line in the cease fire, against the wishes of several hundred of his militia volunteers from Donbass and other activists, who want to resume fighting. The Pro-Russia group has complied with the demand that they release some of the OSCE observers who have been held since the end of May. This isn't much progress, but it's a couple of steps in the right direction.