Monday, September 8, 2014


News Clips For The Day


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/05/1327359/-Black-boy-12-with-Down-Syndrome-Abused-by-White-Guard-in-Front-of-Parents-As-a-Joke?detail=email

Black boy, 12, with Down Syndrome Abused by White Guard. As a "Joke." UPDATE: GUARD FIRED!
By Lollardfish
Friday, September 6, 2014

Yesterday, in something of a rage, I wrote the story of an African-American boy with Down syndrome who was heading to his first day of school in Syracuse. His parents were with him and, as they entered the school, they paused to take a picture.

A white security guard intervened and pushed the boy against the wall to 'assume the position' as if he were being frisked. Here's the upsetting story:

Brandon was accompanied on his first day at Huntington K-8 School in Eastwood by his mother, Brandiss Pearson, her husband and her father.

When they stopped in front of a hallway mural to snap pictures, a school sentry, or security guard, who is white, inserted himself. Brandon and his family are black.

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on,'' Brandiss Pearson recalls the sentry saying. Then the sentry turned Brandon to face the wall and lifted Brandon's hands above his head on the wall, as if to be frisked, she said.

"And he starts laughing and says, 'Now take the picture, he's in the right position,' '' Pearson recalled.

The parents were shocked and took a little while to figure out how to respond to it, but gradually decided to the principal.

Pearson reported the incident to Huntington's principal Tuesday afternoon. She tearfully confronted the security guard, or school sentry, Wednesday when she saw him in the hallway. He responded that he thought it was "a funny joke,'' she said.

School administrators put the sentry on leave Wednesday while they look into the incident, said Michael Henesey, coordinator of communications for the school district. Henesey declined to identify the sentry. Pearson said she did not know the sentry's full name.

As always, I suggest we engage with such stories through intersections. This is racism, yes. This is ableism, yes. This is authoritarianism. Racism because the "right position" for a black boy in this guard's eyes is against the wall. Ableism because he's relying on the fact that Brandon has Down syndrome to make it funny - indeed, Brandon thought it was all a game. To me, that intensifies the awfulness of it.

I want to explore the third part a little more though. It's authoritarianism because this is one way that the cult of compliance has entered our schools.

I don't want to overlook this last point as I wallow in the anger at the racism and ableism. Schools are not militarized yet, not in the ways our police forces are, but they are increasingly a part of our compliance-driven state.

Within the school, the guard has intensifying power to control the space and control the bodies - especially the bodies belonging to people of color - all in the name of safety. And sure, safety is important, but as Bruce Schneier says, 1) We're bad at assessing risks and 2) all security comes with trade-offs.

There are consequences when we fill our schools with guards, with metal detectors, with draconian dress codes, with zero tolerance policies, with the constant drumbeat of fear that your school or your kids' schools or your neighborhood school is beset by armed gangs ready to do battle or psychopaths ready to commit a massacre! There are consequences and we have not properly assessed the trade-offs here between security and not just loss of freedom, but loss of sense of self-worth and the price of empowering men like this security guard.

Our schools do need security, sadly. What they don't need is a demand for total compliance. They need guards who understand their job is to protect and empower the students as they chase their future, not control, not dominate, not bully.

This guard is a bully. He's the same as the kids who dumped feces and urine over an autistic boy who thought he was doing the ice bucket challenge. He's the same as the people who sentmean texts to a girl with seizures. He's the same as the "teachers" who use electrical shocksto "control" people with autism. He's the same.

But he has a kind of power in the school that he's used to exercising, and it seemed like it would be funny to him, and if it's funny to him, surely it's funny to the parents and boy too.

The incident is disgusting. The guard will likely be fired (he's been suspended). If he talks to the press, he'll express regret, he'll say that he was just trying to make a joke and didn't think about it. I believe him that he didn't think. Such acts of petty control have become normal, and if Brandon didn't have Down syndrome, if the guard just pushed another black boy up to assume the position, we probably wouldn't hear about it.

I'm going to end with a quote from Alice Goffman's controversial book On the Run. One thing that even her critics agree is that she did a good job showing the consequences of police abuse, not just on the people arrested, but on the whole community. She writes:

I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.”

These are the trade-offs of our pursuit of perfect safety and total compliance - Brandon against the wall, the six-year-old pretending to do a cavity search.


UPDATE: The guard has been fired! That's good. The harder part is working on the culture that enables such a guard to exist in the first place.

I am a freelance columnist, blogger, long-time member of this site, and history professor. You can read my blog at How Did We Get Into This Mess? This is a modified version of today's post.
To read more, you could 'like' my public Facebook page.



THE CULT OF COMPLIANCE

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/ferguson-police-shootracismcompliance.html

Ferguson and the cult of compliance
When the police won’t take no for an answer
by David M. Perry  @lollardfish
August 15, 2014 6:00AM ET

The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, set off by a policeman’s shooting of an unarmed black teen last week, appear to be spinning out of control — not because crowds are rioting nightly but because law enforcement is operating as though they are in a war zone. Peaceful protesters are facing nothing short of a domestic army, armed with military equipment, waiting for a provocation.

As the protests progressed, the police have used noncompliance, or the failure to obey their every order, as their justification for whatever violence came next. That’s also the excuse that the police used to explain why an officer shot Michael Brown. They said the incident started because Brown didn’t comply with an order to move, so it is he who is to blame.

What happens if you don’t comply when the police give you an order? What rights do you really have? How free are you, really, when the authorities have weapons pointed at you or when they have the right to draw a weapon and use it with relative impunity?

Over the past few years, I have been tracking the rhetoric that police and other authority figures use to justify all kinds of violence. In cases that seem very different, separated by factors such as age, race, gender, sexuality, geography, class and ability, police explain away their actions by citing noncompliance. They do it because it works. They do it because according to their beliefs, any sign of noncompliance is an invitation to strike.

To fight back, ordinary citizens need not only to push specific reforms but also to transform the culture of law enforcement. 

Police patterns

The significance of the events in Missouri extends beyond the very real and terrible pattern of police killings of African-American men. It is an intensification of years of cultural shift in which law enforcement and other authority figures have increasingly treated noncompliance as a reason to initiate violence.

This cult of compliance provides the point of intersection between racism and militarization of law enforcement — the primary factors at play in Ferguson — and other issues, such as the overuse of stun guns and the failure of police to respond to the needs of the mentally ill. Police may be motivated by their racism to harass people of color, but when officers get violent, they almost always cite a form of noncompliance as their justification.  

In many cases, people who die at the hands of the police don’t obey commands, and the police initiate violence despite there being no imminent threat to their safety.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to recognize that something needs to change. In the aftermath of Brown’s death, the DOJ has promised both to investigate what happened in Ferguson and to examine police procedures more generally. Its list of topics includes lethal force incidents and the many encounters between police and mentally ill people. A recent confrontation in East Los Angeles, in which a police officer allegedly shot and killed Ezell Ford, an unarmed 24-year-old black man who was known to have suffered from mental illness, is the latest example of such an incident.

This last point is significant. Mental illness has been sidelined as a separate issue requiring specialized training rather than included in broader conversations. To my knowledge, this is the first time that any major law enforcement official has included police violence against minorities and police violence against those with disabilities in the same review and identified them as part of the same broader problem.  

It’s a link that needs to be made. In the vast majority of cases, especially those involving young black and Latino men, police can punish someone for noncompliance with impunity, and because of deeply entrenched racism, little is done in the way of reform. But when someone is disabled or unwell, violent police action reveals itself as what it is: disproportionate, crude and uncalled for. It is therefore imperative to consider the two situations side by side and integrate them into a broader discussion about how the police treats people who, for whatever reason, do not comply with their every whim.

Common denominator

First, we have to recognize the common denominators in many of these incidents: that people who die at the hands of the police don’t obey commands and that the police initiate violence, despite there being no imminent threat to their safety.

Brown’s story is now well known. According to an eyewitness, a police officer told Brown, an 18-year-old black man, to “get the f--- onto the sidewalk.” He didn’t comply, the incident escalated, and he got shot repeatedly.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar examples in which noncompliance led to violence. Ersula Ore, a black woman in Arizona refused to hand over her ID and was flung to the ground. A drunk woman in Skokie, Illinois, didn’t look into the camera when being booked, so the police threw her onto a bench, breaking her face. They claimed she was resisting arrest.

Some victims — Eric Garner, James Boyd and Nicholas Davis, to name just a few — die. Others, such as Antonio Martinez, just get beaten. Every time, the police explain their conduct by citing noncompliance. Cameras can provide a counternarrative to police tales of noncompliance, showing that Garner was peaceful and that Ore was a professor on her own campus.

But here’s the worst thing: Most of the victims of this cult of compliance are invisible. They receive no media coverage. Their stories get buried in plea deals. They are told that fighting bogus charges will just make matters worse. When police violence targets people who have suffered it for so long, it takes something unusual to bring it to light. People with disabilities, on the other hand, tend to generate broad sympathy. Disability makes it harder for police to blame the victim for not complying, so those stories make news.

Here’s a story from Maryland. Ethan Saylor, a 26-year-old with Down syndrome, was told to get out of his seat at a movie theater in Frederick, Maryland, because he hadn’t paid for his ticket. He refused and swore at the off-duty deputies who were moonlighting as mall security. They grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground. He was asphyxiated.

John Wrana, a 95-year-old World War II vet, didn’t want to go the hospital. The staff at his assisted living community decided to involuntarily commit him and called the police. When he didn’t comply and instead picked up a shoehorn and a cane, they tased him and shot him at close range with a beanbag round. He died from the injury.

In Oklahoma a deaf man was hauled from his car and beaten because he didn’t comply with verbal instructions. A panhandler with mental illness ran away from a police office in Missouri and was shot in the back for running.

This is why it’s so important that the DOJ has potentially acknowledged links among all different types of lethal-force incidents, including cases involving disability. It’s too easy for groups that have not historically experienced police violence to see the situation as someone else’s problem. Disability-related cases emerge from all races and social classes. By seeing police conduct through the lens of disability, the whole nation can engage in this discussion about policing, but only if the connections are made visible. 

Bad cops

Fixing the problems will involve working on racism in police departments across the country, enforcing bans on chokeholds, all kinds of better training and building a national mental health system focused on care rather than incarceration. Mandatory cameras are a good idea too. Let’s treat all these symptoms but keep our eye on the disease that’s causing them.

The public must stop blaming these events on bad cops or bad departments. Too many people are willing to accept that because being a cop is risky, they have to punch, shoot or tase at the slightest provocation. Such attitudes enable the cult of compliance.

In the aftermath of the police takeover of Ferguson, Americans are hearing many excuses about how noncompliance necessitated violent action. The public must push back by demanding that individual officers be held accountable for their actions and by emphasizing that the right to use lethal force comes with the requirement to accept the risk of not using it when people don’t instantly comply. 



http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/7529544-Study-Diverse-police-forces-not-cure-all-for-fatal-shootings/

Study: Diverse police forces not cure-all for fatal shootings
A growing body of research suggests that intractable circumstances of economics, culture and geography have more to do with shootings by police than the race of the officers
By Jesse Bogan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 04, 2014

FERGUSON, Mo. — Amid the firestorm of protests following the shooting of Michael Brown — an unarmed black teen who was killed by a white police officer — have come repeated calls for hiring a more diverse police force.

But a growing body of research suggests that intractable circumstances of economics, culture and geography have more to do with shootings by police than the race of the officers.

According to the research, neglected minority neighborhoods that are poor and prone to violence are a hotbed for such shootings — regardless of the complexion of the police.

And while the number of police shootings can be reduced by better training, disciplinary action, policy and political representation — the broader societal issues that plague violent neighborhoods work against efforts to reduce police shootings.

Former St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom recently said at a town hall meeting here that cops are the "face of government" in poor neighborhoods that most people don't venture into.

"Officers see (communities in need) every day and they become frustrated," Isom said. "They seem to be the person on the front line trying to solve many of these social and economic problems."

David Klinger, and other criminologists at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, including Isom, wrote an academic paper about 230 shooting incidents involving 315 St. Louis police officers between 2003 and 2012.

Of those, about two-thirds of the shooters were white and one-third were African-American. According to the paper, the distribution was reflective of the police department during that period.

Of the known suspects police were shooting at in those cases, 92 percent of them were African-American. St. Louis is 49 percent black. But they have a disproportionate rate of interaction with police. Crime is concentrated in poorer black neighborhoods.

According to St. Louis police data for 2012 and 2013, 94 homicide suspects were African-American; two were white; one was Hispanic; and one was Asian. Of 4,713 inmates sentenced in St. Louis who are in state prison, 598 are white and 4,083 are black.

"Race is not a predominant factor driving (police) shootings," said Klinger, a former police officer. "It's violence in the communities."

Canfield Green apartments — where Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson, 28, shot Brown, 18, on Aug. 9 — and neighboring Northwinds Apartments seem to fit this bill. Residents at Northwinds, which has been subsidized by low-income housing funds, must earn no more than 60 percent of median income for the area. People there have complained about crime and lawlessness, as well as mistreatment from police. Most of the residents are black.

Last month, the Post-Dispatch reported that dozens of police departments across the St. Louis region have fewer black officers on the force by percentage than the ratio of African-Americans in the communities those departments serve.

The same report found that efforts to increase black representation in police departments is hindered by a difficulty of recruiting minority candidates into policing.

Experts say having a more diverse force pays off in many ways, including building trust between the community and police.

And those benefits, say experts like Isom, extend beyond the sole issue of lethal force. Isom also points out that the study on police shootings in St. Louis isn't conclusive.

"(The report) also doesn't take into account that these are police officer reports from the police officer's standpoint," said Isom, who was recently named director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety. "I am not saying the reports aren't accurate, but I think there is more research to be done."

While scholars agree comprehensive data on police shootings in the United States are limited, some said general truths can be gleaned from the work that has been done.

"Two important and controversial factors are race and neighborhood," said Brad Smith, chairman of the criminal justice program at Wayne State University in Detroit. "African-American and Hispanic citizens are more likely to be shot by the police than whites. Police are more likely to shoot and kill citizens in cities with higher concentrations of segregated and impoverished minority residents and cities with higher rates of violent crime."

Police, including in Ferguson, often pull over and search a disproportionate number of minorities, which increases potential confrontational encounters, but lethal force is rare in the context of all interactions with police.

Smith said diversity can improve police community relations and the culture of a department, "but when it comes to highly emotional, stressful confrontations, I don't think it matters anymore."

Smith, along with University of Wyoming sociology professor Malcolm Holmes are the co-authors of the book "Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Urban Dilemma." In a letter to the National Journal they wrote that better community relations with a more diverse police department could help ease tension, but not fix the core issues in Ferguson and other places like it.

"The mental processes that make humans acutely apprehensive about people dissimilar to themselves cannot be easily overcome when residential segregation and socioeconomic conditions separate them," they wrote. "Those structural circumstances are ultimately responsible for creating and reproducing the tensions between police and citizens of color."

In St. Louis County, black poor are six times as likely as white poor to live in areas of concentrated poverty.

Scholars suggest that the controversial Kerner Commission report done for President Lyndon B. Johnson following civil rights riots that swept the country in 1967 is still applicable today. Report authors then sensed a similar story was being told over and over again, regarding Chicago race riots in 1919, Harlem in 1935 and 1943, and Watts in 1965.

"This is our basic conclusion," the report stated. "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal."

In 1982, criminologist Geoff Alpert helped put together a similar analysis about the shooting death of Neville Johnson Jr. by Miami police. After a few days of violent protests, one suspected looter was killed, 25 people were injured, including some police, and dozens of people were arrested. "Today, there are the same issues," Alpert said, "and that is kind of disturbing."

While some scholars believe diversity doesn't influence lethal use of force by police, other measures do, such as training, administrative policy, political representation and the degree to which departments view themselves as military.

Mike White, a criminologist at Arizona State University, studied 1,200 police shootings in Philadelphia between the 1970s and early 1990s. He noticed a significant drop in the numbers once there was a clear use of force policy and officers started getting retrained and sanctioned following inappropriate violence.

David Jacobs, sociology professor emeritus at Ohio State, has looked into political influence on police shootings.

"I suspect that where city elites don't put pressure on the mayor and the chief police administrator to enforce rules against inappropriate violence, it will recur," he said.

There are limited studies in the field, but results from a study he participated in found that when there's a black mayor dependent upon minority votes, police shootings fall.

"Remember that in most cities the police chief serves at the pleasure of the mayor and can be fired without much or any due process," he said.

The mayor of Ferguson doesn't have this power. The police chief answers to the city manager.

Moline Acres police Officer Ken Blackmon has a street perspective on race and law enforcement. He shared his insights from the front seat of a patrol car last week on Chambers Road, not far from where violence broke out in north St. Louis County after Brown was shot.

Blackmon, 51, who is black, remembers growing up in Detroit following race riots there. His father and grandfather were cops. He has relatives currently working as police officers in Michigan, Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles.

"I've been doing this 27 years, so I don't think the color of my skin is going to reflect how people portray me," he said. "You are going to have people who like you and hate you. If you treat people with respect, you might get some back."

There are dividends in that. Going from call to call, he said it's easy to forget a face. "But they might not forget you," he said.

Blackmon said he comes from training that puts a premium on how you carry yourself. "A lot of younger cops have the mentality of, 'I am a police, you are going to do what I say or else,'" he said.




The first story of the boy with Down Syndrome being placed “in the right position” for a photo by his horrified parents, shows the sheer stupidity of the guard rather than the boy. People who make fun of the disabled are the lowest on the totem pole, to me. So many adults in our society are not being taught basic human compassion and respect That is something that needs to be taught at home by loving but firm parents. Children who are allowed to run roughshod over their brothers, sisters and friends are more likely to become bullies as adults.

The fact is that guards and too many times police officers are not very highly educated and may have mental health issues of their own, making them prone to violence and abusive behavior. Police departments and any school, especially, who are hiring guards should require a mental health screening by a professional psychologist. Abusive, bullying people are sometimes drawn to police work because it puts them in a position of power over others; and then some police departments don't train their officers well enough to eliminate those characteristics or weed out the problem personalities from among the new recruits.

“Fixing the problems will involve working on racism in police departments across the country, enforcing bans on chokeholds, all kinds of better training and building a national mental health system focused on care rather than incarceration. Mandatory cameras are a good idea too. Let’s treat all these symptoms but keep our eye on the disease that’s causing them. The public must stop blaming these events on bad cops or bad departments. Too many people are willing to accept that because being a cop is risky, they have to punch, shoot or tase at the slightest provocation. Such attitudes enable the cult of compliance.”

Taken from the last article, “While some scholars believe diversity doesn't influence lethal use of force by police, other measures do, such as training, administrative policy, political representation and the degree to which departments view themselves as military. Mike White, a criminologist at Arizona State University, studied 1,200 police shootings in Philadelphia between the 1970s and early 1990s. He noticed a significant drop in the numbers once there was a clear use of force policy and officers started getting retrained and sanctioned following inappropriate violence.” Training and sanctions against guilty police officers are stressed here and also the militarization of modern police forces which was much discussed over the last few weeks. I don't want America to be a police state. Thank goodness the DOJ is looking into these things now, across the country as well as at Ferguson.

It is interesting that the statement above speaks of “political representation” as a factor, and unfortunately it doesn't explain the meaning of the phrase further. If the writer means that a heavily right wing populace and police department management tend to be more lenient on their police officers who abuse their position of power, I wouldn't be surprised. If they mean the situation described at Ferguson where 60% or more of the population are black and all the city officials are white, with only 4 black police officers, that is another obvious problem. But about politics, the use of heavy handed policing against the early civil rights movement is a prime example. One day when I was in high school I saw a picture in the newspaper of a standoff between police and black people in Greensboro, NC, in which the police held a dozen or so German shepherds back on leashes as they strained to get to the people. That show of force was over a lunch counter sit in.





New Ebola Vaccine Is Tested In Humans, After Success In Monkeys – NPR
by BILL CHAPPELL
September 07, 2014

An experimental Ebola vaccine is now being tested in people, according to scientists who say the drug has shown promising results when it was tested on monkeys. The small clinical trial is using healthy human volunteers in the U.S.

The Ebola vaccine is the subject of a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine. Researchers say the vaccine treatment includes a booster shot to help the immune system fight off the virus for months after it's first administered.

NPR's Rob Stein reports:

"Researchers injected rhesus monkeys with the experimental vaccine and found it could protect the animals for as long as 10 months. The researchers say that's the longest any Ebola vaccine has been shown to provide protection against the deadly virus.

"The National Institutes of Health began giving the vaccine to healthy people last week for the first time. The goal of that study is to make sure the vaccine is safe — and start to see if it might protect people.

"The study's among several that researchers are rushing to start because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. But experts say it could take months to know whether any of the vaccines are safe and effective."

Here's how the National Institutes of Health describes the vaccine:

"The investigational vaccine, which was designed by [Vaccine Research Center] scientists, contains no infectious Ebola virus material. It is a chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine into which two Ebola genes have been inserted. This is a non-replicating viral vector, which means the vaccine enters a cell, delivers the gene inserts and does not replicate further. The gene inserts express a protein to which the body makes an immune response."

The early human tests are being conducted at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. The initial trial includes 20 adults, who received the vaccine in differing doses. Some results will likely come by year's end.

The treatment was developed by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and at Okairos, a Swiss-based biotech company that was bought by the British drug company GlaxoSmithKline last year.

"There is an urgent need for a protective Ebola vaccine, and it is important to establish that a vaccine is safe and spurs the immune system to react in a way necessary to protect against infection," says National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.

The news comes as another vaccine, developed by a unit of Johnson & Johnson, is moving toward human tests in the first half of 2015, as NPR's Shots blog reported Thursday. That vaccine targets the Zaire species of Ebola that's been causing misery in West Africa this year.

And as the AP reports, "Canadian researchers created a similar Ebola vaccine that works in monkeys. Manufacturer NewLink Genetics of Ames, Iowa, said first-stage safety testing in healthy volunteers is set to begin in a few weeks."

The current Ebola epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people in five West African countries, according to World Health Organization data. Trying to stop it, Sierra Leone has announced it will institute a public lockdown later this month, as we reported Saturday.




"The investigational vaccine, which was designed by [Vaccine Research Center] scientists, contains no infectious Ebola virus material. It is a chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine into which two Ebola genes have been inserted. … The news comes as another vaccine, developed by a unit of Johnson & Johnson, is moving toward human tests in the first half of 2015, as NPR's Shots blog reported Thursday. That vaccine targets the Zaire species of Ebola that's been causing misery in West Africa this year.... And as the AP reports, "Canadian researchers created a similar Ebola vaccine that works in monkeys. Manufacturer NewLink Genetics of Ames, Iowa, said first-stage safety testing in healthy volunteers is set to begin in a few weeks."

It looks as though some kind of effective vaccine will appear soon. That is a relief. The failure of drug companies to invest in a vaccine for Ebola before now – which one article said was for economic reasons, there being a relative lack of need – is clearly being hastily redressed. The appearance of Ebola in the western part of Africa rather than in the Congo region, plus it's rapid spread, illustrates the necessity for a vaccine. Hopefully they can produce one which will be effective for a longer period of time than ten months. It's possible that the mutation rate of Ebola is a problem, as new strains emerge which are not well matched to the virus at hand.






What was the loud crash heard in Nicaragua? – CBS
AP September 7, 2014, 10:34 PM

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Nicaragua's government said Sunday that a mysterious boom heard overnight in the capital was made by a small meteorite that left a crater in a wooded area near Managua's airport.

Government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said a committee formed by the government to study the event determined it was a "relatively small" meteorite that "appears to have come off an asteroid that was passing close to Earth."

Murillo said Nicaragua will ask international experts to help local scientists in understanding what happened.

The crater left by the meteorite had a radius of 12 meters (39 feet) and a depth of 5 meters (16 feet), said Humberto Saballos, a volcanologist with the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies who was on the committee. He said it is still not clear if the meteorite disintegrated or was buried.

Humberto Garcia, of the Astronomy Center at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, said the meteorite could be related to an asteroid that was forecast to pass by the planet Saturday night.

"We have to study it more because it could be ice or rock," he said.

Wilfried Strauch, an adviser to the Institute of Territorial Studies, said it was "very strange that no one reported a streak of light. We have to ask if anyone has a photo or something."

Local residents reported hearing a loud boom Saturday night, but said they didn't see anything strange in the sky.

"I was sitting on my porch and I saw nothing, then all of a sudden I heard a large blast. We thought it was a bomb because we felt an expansive wave," Jorge Santamaria told The Associated Press.

The site of the crater is near Managua's international airport and an air force base. Only journalists from state media were allowed to visit it.




“Government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said a committee formed by the government to study the event determined it was a 'relatively small' meteorite that 'appears to have come off an asteroid that was passing close to Earth.'... The crater left by the meteorite had a radius of 12 meters (39 feet) and a depth of 5 meters (16 feet), said Humberto Saballos, a volcanologist with the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies who was on the committee. He said it is still not clear if the meteorite disintegrated or was buried.... Wilfried Strauch, an adviser to the Institute of Territorial Studies, said it was 'very strange that no one reported a streak of light. We have to ask if anyone has a photo or something.' Local residents reported hearing a loud boom Saturday night, but said they didn't see anything strange in the sky.”

I always get a little tense when an asteroid or comet is said to be coming a little too close to the earth. For some reason a number of small space rocks have hit Russia or Siberia. Perhaps its simply because that is a large expanse of the earth, so the likelihood of a hit there is greater. This case was more scary because it hit near human dwellings and an airport. The worst case would be a hit in a major city like New York, where it might do damage similar to an atomic blast, killing many people and destroying structures. At least no one was killed this time.





Rare, serious respiratory virus sickening kids across Midwest
CBS NEWS September 7, 2014, 2:50 PM

Hundreds of young children suffering from a for a respiratory illness that has symptoms similar to a common cold have been filling up intensive care units in several Midwest cities.

As the school year gets underway, a CDC official said in an interview Sunday that the large number of seriously ill patients being reported now could be "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases."

"We're in the middle of looking into this," Mark Pallansch told CNN. "We don't have all the answers yet."

Human enterovirus 68 mimics the common cold but within hours those affected are severely ill. While it tends to affect sufferers of diseases like asthma worse, many parents have been left surprised that within just hours of relatively benign symptoms their children are left gasping for air and placed on a ventilator in the ICU.

Apparent sufferers of the illness are filling up intensive care units at hospitals around Colorado, CBS Denver reports.

Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City had reported treated about 450 cases in young children as of early last week.

More than 70 children complaining of respiratory virus symptoms visited the Blessing Hospital in Quincy, southwest Illinois, during the Labor Day weekend, according to Reuters.

St. Louis hospitals have also issued warnings about the disease's outbreak.

Hannibal Regional Hospital near the Missouri-Illinois border asked on its Facebook page "that children 16 and under and persons with the following symptoms refrain from visiting patients who are hospitalized at Hannibal Regional Hospital until further notice," due to the virus.

"I remember thinking I was going to die," said 13-year-old Colorado resident Will Cornejo. "Yesterday I felt like I couldn't breathe at all."

Will had to be placed on oxygen after visiting a Denver hospital.

"He was white as a ghost, his lips were blue, he was completely unconscious at that point," said Will's mother, Jennifer Cornejo.

His father, Matt Cornejo, said they felt "sheer terror."

In the ICU at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, Dr. Raju Meyappan said the virus hadn't shown up in Denver until now.

Now he is seeing how quickly this virus becomes life-threatening, especially in children with mild asthma.

"The onset of symptoms was very rapid, usually within hours," said Meyappan.

Since human enterovirus 68 is a virus, antibiotics don't work. Doctors can only treat the symptoms, helping kids breathe and trying to keep their airways open.




“Hundreds of young children suffering from a for a respiratory illness that has symptoms similar to a common cold have been filling up intensive care units in several Midwest cities. As the school year gets underway, a CDC official said in an interview Sunday that the large number of seriously ill patients being reported now could be 'just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases.'... Human enterovirus 68 mimics the common cold but within hours those affected are severely ill. While it tends to affect sufferers of diseases like asthma worse, many parents have been left surprised that within just hours of relatively benign symptoms their children are left gasping for air and placed on a ventilator in the ICU. Apparent sufferers of the illness are filling up intensive care units at hospitals around Colorado, CBS Denver reports.... 'I remember thinking I was going to die,' said 13-year-old Colorado resident Will Cornejo. 'Yesterday I felt like I couldn't breathe at all.' Will had to be placed on oxygen after visiting a Denver hospital. 'He was white as a ghost, his lips were blue, he was completely unconscious at that point,' said Will's mother, Jennifer Cornejo.”

I am reminded of the Stephen King novel The Stand, in which a flulike virus kills off most humans, leaving a remainder who successfully fought it off or were already immune to it, and the story shows a collapse of civilized society. Also, similarly, the new movie Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which shows a “superflu” which kills most people. After this a group of laboratory apes which have been taught things like how to speak English (which, I understand is impossible due to the structure of their vocal chords). Less surprising, they had been around humans all their lives and so they built a village for themselves out of logs (how they cut the trees down was not told) and, inevitably, come upon a group of humans climbing the mountain to get to a hydroelectric dam and start it running. One wise leader of the apes speaks with the most benign of the three humans to cooperate in the endeavor. It was beautifully produced and well worth seeing.

As for this real world virus, hopefully NIH is right now working on a vaccine for it, and will push forward to human trials soon – sooner than they did with the Ebola virus. Why only children are being affected by it is not stated. I'll clip other stories on this as I come across them.





Beware the court-summons scam – CBS
By KATHY KRISTOF MONEYWATCH September 8, 2014

In today's litigious society, almost anyone could be sued, and that's what makes a pernicious malware scam so effective. In an email that appears to bear the logo of a law firm, victims are told that they're being summoned to court and that their failure to appear would cause the case to be heard without them -- possibly resulting in a default judgment.

The catch: To find out who is suing, as well as the date and time of the hearing, you're supposed to click on an attached "notice." If you do, you'll see what appears to be a court document -- which is phony -- on your screen. But what you won't see is that the "exe" file you just opened is also slipping some nasty malware onto your computer.

According to Snopes.com, the main virus included in this bogus court documentwill cause your computer to flash security warnings, urging you to download fake security software. Do that and you'll expose yourself to even worse malware, including one that ferrets out your online passwords and another that's designed to hide the virus from your real security software.

This particular scam has been around for more than a year and has hit victims in the United Kingdom, as well as in the U.S. The Better Business Bureau says it's now making another round, threatening new victims.

But how do you know the summons is fake? Courts don't send summons via email. (Knowing this should also help you avoid a similar email scam that purports to admonish you for not showing up for jury duty.)

If you're really being called to court, you''ll get a notice via the U.S. Postal Service or through a process server. Real court officials won't call you on the phone, either. So if you're being summoned by these suspicious means, you can be sure it's a scam.

You're still not certain? Try doing a Google search on the law firm in the notice and call them up. (Don't call any number appearing in the letter -- you're liable get a fraudster on the phone, who will use further scare tactics to get you to cave in.)

Its unlikely that you'd find such a firm with a phone number and address on the web because crooks don't want to have brick-and-mortar locations where the cops can find them. But if the scammers used the name of a real law office, you can call or write the firm to ask whether they have a lawsuit with your name on it. They won't. But in the one-in-a-million chance that you are involved in a suit, law firms will send it to you by mail.

It's worth mentioning that crooks hate sending stuff in the mail because the U.S. Postal Service has a very effective law enforcement agency in the Postal Inspectors Office. If you've got the address of someone who sent a fraudulent solicitation, you can call them and they're likely to quickly shut the operation down. The agency also has a handy online tool for finding your nearest local Postal Inspector's office.




“According to Snopes.com, the main virus included in this bogus court documentwill cause your computer to flash security warnings, urging you to download fake security software. Do that and you'll expose yourself to even worse malware, including one that ferrets out your online passwords and another that's designed to hide the virus from your real security software.... Courts don't send summons via email. (Knowing this should also help you avoid a similar email scam that purports to admonish you for not showing up for jury duty.)... If you're really being called to court, you'll get a notice via the U.S. Postal Service or through a process server. Real court officials won't call you on the phone, either.”

More stuff to look out for. Generally speaking anything that appears spontaneously on your screen when you're looking at some other website is a scam and may plant a virus on your computer. Just use the back search arrow to go back to your original website or exit via the X on the top right corner. Sometimes if I can't get rid of something like that I will turn off the computer at the floor. That will usually keep any virus from getting a toehold in your computer, and the program will reboot at an earlier setting. I don't do that very often because it's a little harsh, but so far it hasn't caused my computer to malfunction.





Digital learning takes front row seat in classrooms
By HEBA KANSO, HANNAH FRASER-CHANPONG CBS NEWS September 5, 2014, 5:30 AM

WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK -- Familiar scenes come to mind as kids around the country go back to school: yellow buses making pick ups, hallways crowded and noisy, and students lugging backpacks full of heavy textbooks to class.

That won't be the case at Archbishop Stepinac High School, at least on the last note, where students are starting their second year of using an all-digital textbook library. Stepinac, located in the New York City suburb of White Plains, has been touted as the first school in the U.S. to adopt a digital textbook library, which provides students with access to all of its textbooks online.

"Students are able to access any grade level of any textbook that we offer," said Patricia Murphy, director of technology at the all-boys private school. "If they're in 11th grade and they need a brush up on quadratic equations, they can go back to their 9th grade textbook."

Murphy was part of a small group of teachers and administrators at Stepinac that brought the idea of the library to their partners at education publishing house Pearson more than three years ago.

Together, the team created a way for students to access digital versions of all their textbooks on computers and tablets. There are around 40 textbooks available in the digital library.

"In the social studies books, there are actual speeches so the student doesn't have to hear the teacher dryly repeat any famous speech," said Murphy. "They can actually watch Dr. Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech. It's much more engaging when you hear it from him, as opposed to hearing all these abstract ideas."

Each student pays $150 for one year of access to the digital textbook library for core subjects, with additional fees of about $15 for each textbook for elective courses. Since traditional textbooks can cost between $80 and $200 each, students can save hundreds of dollars with the digital versions. While Murphy could not say how much each individual student spends on laptops or tablets, she said the options available range from a $179 tablet to a $1,500 laptop.

Murphy also said that the school provides technical support for any device that best fits a family's needs.

Joe Desanctis, a senior, was skeptical about losing the touch and feel of traditional textbooks but said he now prefers the digital versions, which update with new information and annual revisions automatically.

"Not only is it literal stress off my back because of my backpack," he said, "but it's just way easier to have it all on your computer screen."

The consolidation of reference books, digital assets like videos, virtual lectures and notes creates a sense of convenience that is shared by his classmates.

"I like the fact that it's all there," said James Mitchell, a junior. "I don't have to go through textbook to textbook, leaving one at school, leaving one at home, switching from my locker and whatnot, carrying a giant backpack full of books."

But beyond convenience, the school saw some academic improvement since switching to the digital textbook library. Based on the limited sample - just one year - Stepinac found that the percentage of students with failing grades was cut in half.

"I actually feel like I'm learning more with it," Mitchell said. "I'm actually understanding. My grades can definitely prove that."

The shift to digital by schools has caught the attention of companies like Amplify, a education technology company based in Brooklyn, New York.

After four years of development and testing, Amplify is now rolling out its all-digital curriculum to between 40 and 50 public middle schools around the country.

It also sells a tablet, pre-loaded with lessons and educational games, that students and teachers can use in classrooms and at home. Larry Berger, the president of Amplify Learning, says that while the content stays true to the "age-old goals of education," Amplify creates a more engaging classroom environment catered to the needs of a modern student.

The effectiveness of digital tools relies partly on the teachers that are employing them, according to Boser. Back at Stepinac, Murphy said one of the school's goals this year is to encourage all of its teachers to better integrate the media in the digital textbook library into lesson plans.

"It was hard for [teachers] to get used to the fact that they didn't have to stand at the front of the room," she said. "They didn't have to just be attached to the board and the lecture podium. Now there's going to be more circulation, more group work, more apprenticeship learning."

Murphy calls it "flipping" the classroom: students can learn the basics of a subject at home, using their digital textbook and the accompanying media. During class time, teachers can work one-on-one with students on assignments and experimentation.

Additional upgrades to Stepinac's program this year include 40 new charging stations and 10 additional "loaner" tablets for students who forget devices at home or find them unusable once at school. Over the last two years, Stepinac has invested $1 million in infrastructure to support its digital library, like increasing the number of WiFi hotspots in the school.

Not all schools in the U.S. will be able to replicate the success of Stepinac this year, but there is a consensus that the possibility -- and the potential -- of digital learning is already here.

"When we think about technology in schools today, I think we've moved past access," Boser said. "The question now is use. How are students using computers? Are they doing it in new ways?"

It's a question that educators at Stepinac and Amplify, along with others around the world, are taking steps to answer.




Technology has become inevitable, it seems, and I'm not totally happy about that. I like my page flipping paper book – the way it feels under my fingers and the ease with which I can flip back to look at a passage again or refresh myself about a character in my mystery book. In addition, if it has adjustable lighting, letter size and focus, it may be easier to read than some books.

Textbooks are pretty much standardized in content so that a new edition can be simply added into the memory, and if some old classics or out of print works are digitized and put in the program they could be kept for years without ever becoming musty smelling like old books now do. Besides if I were on a train riding north for Christmas I wouldn't have to bother the people next to me by having the overhead light turned on, and I could load several books from the library onto my tablet and not have to lug several extra pounds around. I'm almost convincing myself to get a tablet.

“But beyond convenience, the school saw some academic improvement since switching to the digital textbook library. Based on the limited sample - just one year - Stepinac found that the percentage of students with failing grades was cut in half.... 'I actually feel like I'm learning more with it,' Mitchell said. 'I'm actually understanding. My grades can definitely prove that.'" I'm not sure why students would find it easier to learn with a tablet, although if the student has a question in his mind he can simply go to the Internet and look it up – if these tablets contain the ability to access the Internet. If they can't get on the Internet I wouldn't think they would be as useful a tool for research or studying. I suspect that a lot of the appeal is the novelty of it as compared to reading books.





In Kiev, A New Patriotism Cemented In Russia's Shadow – NPR
by ELEANOR BEARDSLEY
September 07, 2014

A cease-fire in eastern Ukraine appears to be collapsing, with both the Ukrainian government and separatist forces accusing each other of violating it. That won't come as a surprise to the people of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, who are deeply skeptical.

You might have thought that after five months of fighting, a decimated economy and an estimated 2,600 deaths, people would be ecstatic about a possible end to the fighting, but any relief was overshadowed by doubt. Maria Ischienko says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is good, but the peace will fail because of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I think Poroshenko does everything right," Ischienko says. "But there's the dark side, Russia, who will break these agreements."

The agreement provides for more autonomy for the eastern, breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ischienko says they've become like a cancer on Ukraine.

"Maybe I shouldn't have said it this way, but I don't see anything else," she says. "So should you chop them off? Yes."

Ukrainians in Kiev say the conflict has been devastating, ripping their country apart. Yet at the same time they say it has helped forge a real sense of Ukrainian identity for the first time. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, independence was handed to them. Now, Ukrainians say they're fighting for their country.

There are signs of that new patriotism all over Kiev: The Ukrainian flag flies from buildings and cars; giant banners proclaim glory to Ukraine and her heroes; brigades of young people paint the city's fences in the national colors of yellow and baby blue.

If it holds, Kievite Vadim Nabuev says the cease-fire is a good thing. "It will allow us to strengthen our army with new enforcements and press harder," he says.

When his wife Svetlana says no to more war, Vadim replies that Ukraine will only have peace when it drives the bandits out. The mistrust is enormous on both sides.

Speaking over the weekend, Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's national security and defense council, said he fully expected the separatists to try to provoke a reaction from the Ukrainian army.

If the country's future is hanging in the balance, you wouldn't know it on the streets of Kiev, where a sunny weekend brings out musicians and families licking ice cream cones.

But entering the gates of a military hospital is like stepping into another world. There are wounded Ukrainian soldiers out on stretchers enjoying the sun where family members have come to see them. It is a jolt from being out on the normal streets and brings home the fact that this country was at war.

Sergei Kozak fought with the Ukrainian army special forces. Now he sits in a wheelchair with his discolored left leg full of metal pins. Kozak says he got that wound during the last cease-fire.

Kozak says his units were up against bands of mercenaries from Russia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. He says the cease-fire doesn't really depend upon Ukraine; it depends on Russia and just how deeply they want to "get into our territory."




“The agreement provides for more autonomy for the eastern, breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ischienko says they've become like a cancer on Ukraine. Maybe I shouldn't have said it this way, but I don't see anything else," she says. "So should you chop them off? Yes.'... Ukrainians in Kiev say the conflict has been devastating, ripping their country apart. Yet at the same time they say it has helped forge a real sense of Ukrainian identity for the first time. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, independence was handed to them. Now, Ukrainians say they're fighting for their country.... The Ukrainian flag flies from buildings and cars; giant banners proclaim glory to Ukraine and her heroes; brigades of young people paint the city's fences in the national colors of yellow and baby blue. If it holds, Kievite Vadim Nabuev says the cease-fire is a good thing. "It will allow us to strengthen our army with new enforcements and press harder,' he says.... Kozak says his units were up against bands of mercenaries from Russia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. He says the cease-fire doesn't really depend upon Ukraine; it depends on Russia and just how deeply they want to 'get into our territory.'”

At this moment the cease-fire is holding, but nobody expects it to last very long. Still, people are out on the streets “eating ice cream cones” and enjoying the sunshine. Ukrainian flags are hung around the city of Kiev. The cease-fire is useful even if it doesn't last, because it allows the national military to regroup its forces. Nobody thinks the war is over, though, and there are rumors on both sides of the other already breaking the peace. They will have to draft a real peace agreement which gives the Russian speaking population some greater freedom and guaranteed rights, as they are the minority. Maria Ischienko has voiced the opinion that Ukraine would be better off if the Russian portion were “chopped off,” stating that they are like a cancer. It probably is true that both groups would do better without living right next to the others. Both the Kiev faction and the Donetsk group were each in an autonomous area. I can't see Russia giving in to Kiev's becoming closer culturally to the EU group, though, without actually losing in the war. We'll see what happens next.