May 19 and 20 2016


News and Views


http://floridapolitics.com/archives/210807-vern-buchanan-says-will-oppose-inadequate-zika-funding-bill

VERN BUCHANAN SAYS HE WILL OPPOSE ‘INADEQUATE’ ZIKA FUNDING BILL
By Peter Schorsch
May 18, 2016


U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan said today he will oppose House legislation that contains “inadequate” funding to address the growing threat posed by the Zika virus.

“The funding in this bill is far less than what the Centers for Disease Control said is needed to confront the Zika threat,” Buchanan said. “The lives of thousands of infants are potentially at risk. There’s no excuse for failure to act responsibly and swiftly.”

Buchanan said he was hopeful that in the end, Congress would put aside partisan differences and approve an appropriate level of funding to contain the mosquito-borne virus.

Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said Wednesday the House bill fails to provide adequate funding to diagnose the virus, combat the mosquitoes and develop a safe and effective vaccine, according to The Associated Press.

Buchanan was the first Republican in the U.S. House to support the Obama administration’s request for $1.9 billion in emergency funding to combat the virus. The CDC has told Buchanan the money is essential to protect people in Florida and elsewhere as the summer months approach and mosquitoes flourish.

Florida has 120 reported cases of the Zika virus as of Wednesday, according to the Florida Department of Health. Across the U.S. there are 503 travel-related cases of Zika, according to the CDC.

Buchanan was also one of the first in Congress to back using emergency federal funding to fight the virus.

The CDC has declared its emergency operations center has been put on a “Level 1” status — its highest level of activation — as a result of the Zika outbreak. The CDC has only put its operations center at Level 1 three times in the past: during the Ebola outbreak in 2014, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.



“The funding in this bill is far less than what the Centers for Disease Control said is needed to confront the Zika threat,” Buchanan said. “The lives of thousands of infants are potentially at risk. There’s no excuse for failure to act responsibly and swiftly.” Buchanan said he was hopeful that in the end, Congress would put aside partisan differences and approve an appropriate level of funding to contain the mosquito-borne virus. …. Buchanan was the first Republican in the U.S. House to support the Obama administration’s request for $1.9 billion in emergency funding to combat the virus. The CDC has told Buchanan the money is essential to protect people in Florida and elsewhere as the summer months approach and mosquitoes flourish. …. Buchanan was also one of the first in Congress to back using emergency federal funding to fight the virus. The CDC has declared its emergency operations center has been put on a “Level 1” status — its highest level of activation — as a result of the Zika outbreak.”


“Buchanan was the first Republican in the US House to support….” I do hope this phraseology indicates that other Republicans have joined him. Objecting to everything that Obama requests is, in this case, going to be catastrophic as some of our many, many mosquitoes start to bite Zika carriers. So far we have simply been lucky. Buchanan is called a “progressive conservative” and a “moderate Republican” in Wikipedia below. His voting record doesn’t appear to me to be quite “progressive,” but compared to most of them it probably is. At any rate, he’s on the right side of things on this issue. Voting NO on accepting federal funds to fight this terrible disease is either unintelligent or heartless, as the lives and health of thousands of babies are at stake. I do wonder what the “Christian” code of ethics is among these people; likewise, their statesmanship.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vern_Buchanan

Vern Buchanan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Vernon G. "Vern" Buchanan (born May 8, 1951) is a member of the United States House of Representatives. He has represented Florida's 16th congressional district since 2007. He is a member of the Republican Party. Rep. Buchanan is the only member from Florida on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, international trade, health care, and Social Security. Prior to serving in Congress . . . .

Ethics ruling[edit]

In 2008, Buchanan was accused of campaign fraud by forcing employees of his dealerships to write checks to his campaign, while reimbursing them from his own pocket. The investigation that was called into action was fueled by members on both sides of the aisle and looked into his participation in several counts of fraud. Despite the investigations being called off, numerous witnesses came forward testifying he had made campaign violations.[23]

In 2012 there were no less than four federal and congressional investigations into his business and fundraising activities. Allegations were made that Buchanan used his car dealerships for campaign funding through cash swaps.[24]

On July 10, 2012, the United States House Committee on Ethics cleared Buchanan of charges that he violated House rules by intentionally misleading Congress about his finances. The committee stated the errors found in his financial disclosure forms did not warrant punitive action.[25]

CREW’S Most Corrupt has named Buchanan as one of the most corrupt members of Congress for 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012, accusing him of fundraising fraud and tax evasion. Eleven individuals and entities affiliated with Buchanan have been fined for illegal contributions to his campaign.[26]

U.S. House of Representatives
110th Congress (2007–2009)

. . . . OnTheIssues.org positions Buchanan as a "Populist Conservative", while GovTrack.us labels him a "Moderate Republican".

Buchanan secured federal funding of $2 million for reimbursement for cleanup efforts in Anna Maria Island and $4 million for cleaning up Wares Creek in Manatee County.[28][29] . . . .”



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/egyptair-flight-vanishes-search-underway/

EgyptAir crash deemed more likely terror than tech failure
CBS/AP
May 19, 2016, 1:27 AM

Photograph -- egyptairflight804familiesap16140276780915.jpg, Relatives of passengers on a vanished EgyptAir flight grieve as they leave the in-flight service building where they were held at Cairo International Airport, Egypt, May 19, 2016. AP
Image -- egyptair-map.jpg, The flight path of EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo on May 19, 2016 is seen on a flight tracking screen from Flightradar24.com. FLIGHTRADAR24.COM/REUTERS
Play VIDEO -- What investigators are looking for in missing EgyptAir jet case
Play VIDEO
Photograph -- Capt. Sullenberger on missing EgyptAir Flight 804
Photograph -- egyptairflight804ap16140226971787.jpg, The Egyptair in-flight service building where relatives are being held at Cairo International Airport, Egypt, May 19, 2016. AP
Play VIDEO -- Missing EgyptAir jet calls Egypt's transportation security into question
Play VIDEO -- How did ISIS take down a plane?
Related: Is ISIS "reverting" to its roots?
Related: How common is the type of plane that crashed in Mediterranean?


CAIRO -- An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people disappeared from radar early Thursday morning over the Mediterranean Sea, and Egyptian and Greek officials said it had crashed and a search was underway for debris.

Egypt's Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said at a news conference in Cairo that there was a "stronger" likelihood that terrorist action brought the missing plane down than a technical failure.

Egypt's chief prosecutor Nabil Sadek, meanwhile, ordered an "urgent investigation" into the crash. Sadek instructed the National Security Prosecutor to open an "extensive investigation" in the incident.

The director of Greece's Civil Aviation Authority said air traffic controllers were in contact with the pilot of EgyptAir Flight 804, an Airbus A320, as it passed through Greek airspace.

"The pilot was in good spirits and thanked the controller in Greek," the authority said of the last communication with the flight crew, at approximately 2:48 a.m. local time (7:48 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern time), as the jet was cleared to leave Greek airspace.

The authority's director, Constantine Lyzerakos, told private Antenna television that controllers tried to make contact with the pilot again 10 miles before he exited the Greek Flight Information Range (FIR), but the pilot did not respond.

Lyzerakos said controllers continued trying to contact the pilot for about 10 minutes, until 3:39 a.m. Greek time (8:39 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern time) when the plane disappeared from the radar in Egyptian airspace. EgyptAir said it disappeared about 175 miles off Egypt's coast, north of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.

A Greek official said the aircraft made sudden "swerves" off its charted course as it plunged and then disappeared from radar.

The jet "turned 90 degrees left and then a 360-degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet," Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said at a news conference.

The Reuters news agency cites a Greek defense ministry source as saying authorities were investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported a "flame in the sky" some 130 nautical miles south of the island of Karpathos.

Greece's Defense Ministry said in a statement that it had sent two military aircraft and a Navy frigate to the area south of Karpathos to join the search, and that two Super Puma helicopters based on the island were also ready to help, according to French news agency AFP.

There were unconfirmed reports on Greek state television that two large peices of debris had been spotted in the sea south of Karpathos.

"Right now we have to find where this aircraft is," former NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker told CBS News, explaining that once that was accomplished, the focus of the search would turn quickly to the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders -- the so-called "black boxes." Those instruments should contain information to help investigators determine what brought the plane down.

Rosenker, a CBS News transportation analyst, noted that whatever caused the plane to disappear happened at cruising altitude -- about 37,000 feet, and "very, very few accidents occur at that altitude, about 10 percent."

Rosenker described the Airbus jets, which are used widely across the globe, as "solid aircraft, workhorses in the industry."

Heading into a crisis meeting at the airport in Cairo on Thursday, Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail was asked whether it was possible to rule out a terrorist attack.

"We can neither rule out or confirm any hypothesis at the moment," said Ismail. "We must first complete all the search procedures."

The Airbus A320 in question flew earlier Wednesday from Cairo to Paris, and before that also made a stop in Tunis, Tunisia. The airline said there were three security personnel on the flight when it left Paris.

CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips notes that French authorities have tightened airline security since the terrorist attacks on Paris. Not only passengers, but anyone who gets near a plane in the French capital goes through screening, and people have been dismissed for security reasons.

The big question now, says Phillips, is whether somewhere -- be it in France, Egypt or Tunisia, security measures failed.

An EgyptAir official told The Associated Press that Egypt's Armed Force's Search and Rescue unit had received a distress signal from Flight 804's emergency equipment at 4:26 a.m. local time, but again, Egyptian officials later denied that claim, saying the information had been relayed prematurely.

CBS News aviation consultant and former "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, said the lack of a distress call from the flight crew suggests a likely catastrophe in the air.

"Something must have happened that either prevented the pilots from communicating, or made them so busy that they couldn't get to a priority as low as talking on the radio. They were trying to maintain control of the airplane or fight a sudden catastrophic emergency, for example," Sullenberger told "CBS This Morning."

Egyptian armed forces were searching for the plane, which was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, and 10 crew. The pilot had 6,000 flight hours. Earlier, the airline said 69 people were on board.

EgyptAir said there were 15 French passengers, 30 Egyptians, one Briton, two Iraqis, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian and one Canadian on the flight.

Airbus said the missing Egyptian plane was delivered to EgyptAir in 2003 and had logged 48,000 flight hours. The European plane-maker said in a statement Thursday that the plane had engines made by Swiss-based engine consortium IAE, and had the serial number 2088.

Airbus said it was ready to help authorities investigating the disappearance and said "our concerns go out to all those affected."

Family members of passengers on board the missing flight arrived at the airports in both Cairo and Paris.

Reporters gathered in front of the small, empty EgyptAir counter at Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle Airport. Airport staff said EgyptAir staff were on their way.

France remains under a state of emergency after Islamic extremist attacks killed 130 people in November. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continues to threaten France and Egypt, where it is known to operate in the volatile Sinai Peninsula.

Greece joined the search and rescue operation for the EgyptAir flight with two aircraft: one C-130 and one early warning aircraft, officials at the Hellenic National Defense General Staff said. They said one frigate was also heading to the area, and helicopters are on standby on the southern island of Karpathos for potential rescue or recovery operations.

An EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus in March. A man who admitted to the hijacking and is described by Cypriot authorities as "psychologically unstable" is in custody in Cyprus.

The incident renewed security concerns months after a Russian Metrojet passenger plane was blown out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula. The Russian plane crashed in Sinai on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and the local ISIS branch claimed responsibility for planting it.

In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 1990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard, U.S. investigators filed a final report that concluded its co-pilot switched off the autopilot and pointed the Boeing 767 downward. But Egyptian officials rejected the notion of suicide altogether, insisting some mechanical reason caused the crash.



"The pilot was in good spirits and thanked the controller in Greek," the authority said of the last communication with the flight crew, at approximately 2:48 a.m. local time (7:48 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern time), as the jet was cleared to leave Greek airspace. The authority's director, Constantine Lyzerakos, told private Antenna television that controllers tried to make contact with the pilot again 10 miles before he exited the Greek Flight Information Range (FIR), but the pilot did not respond. Lyzerakos said controllers continued trying to contact the pilot for about 10 minutes, until 3:39 a.m. Greek time (8:39 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern time) when the plane disappeared from the radar in Egyptian airspace. …. A Greek official said the aircraft made sudden "swerves" off its charted course as it plunged and then disappeared from radar. The jet "turned 90 degrees left and then a 360-degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet," …. The airline said there were three security personnel on the flight when it left Paris. CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips notes that French authorities have tightened airline security since the terrorist attacks on Paris. Not only passengers, but anyone who gets near a plane in the French capital goes through screening, and people have been dismissed for security reasons. The big question now, says Phillips, is whether somewhere -- be it in France, Egypt or Tunisia, security measures failed. …. CBS News aviation consultant and former "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, said the lack of a distress call from the flight crew suggests a likely catastrophe in the air. "Something must have happened that either prevented the pilots from communicating, or made them so busy that they couldn't get to a priority as low as talking on the radio. They were trying to maintain control of the airplane or fight a sudden catastrophic emergency, for example," Sullenberger told "CBS This Morning."


The first thought that comes to my mind from the description of the plane’s swerve 90 degrees to the left and then 360 degrees to the right is that, if that were a car, somebody grabbed the wheel and turned it against the pilot’s will, suggesting that the person was already in the cockpit. It could be the copilot or an intruder, especially one with a gun. Rather than expose my extreme ignorance of modern airplanes I did look this up on Google. There is still a “control wheel” and a “yoke,” which controls the position of the nose of the plane. “When the yoke is pulled back the nose of the aircraft rises.”

That intruder with a gun theory also fits the fact that the pilot stopped responding a short while before it descended rapidly and disappeared. In modern airplanes there is (I thought) a lock on the cabin door so no one can force it open from the outside, so again it causes me to think someone who looked like a legitimate pilot succeeded in getting into the cabin before the plane left the ground, sat in the copilot’s seat, and waited for the plane to get to its’ desired elevation and direction of flight. Of course we’ll see in a few days what the black boxes show, and whether information comes to the authorities about a possible plot and culprits. Will there be a voice shouting “Allah Akbar,” as there was some years ago during the Clinton administration – and before hijackings became the popular thing to do among mentally disturbed jihadists?



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-police-arrest-woman-video-truck-bat-gas-station/

Woman caught on video taking bat to truck: "I told you to move"
CBS NEWS
May 19, 2016, 9:46 AM


LANCASTER, Calif. -- A violent confrontation was caught on camera at a gas station in Southern California, CBS Los Angeles reports.

Cellphone video of the incident from the Valero gas station in Lancaster showed a woman who's accused of repeatedly hitting a man's truck with a bat. The woman apparently is an employee at the station.

The owner of the vandalized truck, identified only as Ray, said he was shocked and feared for his own safety.

In the clip, the woman is seen standing behind the truck and counting before taking the bat to the truck's back tail light. She's heard telling him, "I told you to move."

Deputies responded to the scene and arrested the woman on suspicion of vandalism in connection with the incident, which a witness captured on tape. In the video, the woman is also heard telling the man to call the police.

Ray said he suspects the incident unfolded because he was sitting in his truck making calls after he filled his tank.

He admits he lost track of time, possibly staying there for about an hour.

A CBS Los Angeles reporter returned to the gas station Wednesday night and saw a woman who resembled the person in the clip behind the counter.

That individual declined to comment and provided the reporter with the contact information for her attorney.

A call placed to that attorney was not immediately returned.



Two wrongs don’t make a right! The woman was within her rights to be angry, but why she thought bashing his truck with a baseball bat was the best thing to do is beyond me. She should have pounded heavily on his window until she got his attention. Apparently he was deep in a conversation with his lady love or something. If that didn’t work, she should have called the police not after an hour, but after the first ten minutes. He certainly deserved a ticket or, at any rate, a warning for keeping other drivers from pumping their gas. What about “loitering?”



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-morley-safer-dies-at-84/

60 Minutes' Morley Safer dies at 84
Longtime CBS newsman Morley Safer of "60 Minutes" and Vietnam War reporting fame dies at 84
May 19 2016

Photograph -- Morley Safer CBS NEWS
Related: NEWSMAKERS
MORLEY SAFER: A REPORTER'S LIFE
26 PHOTOS -- MORLEY SAFER, 1931-2016
Related: 60 MINUTES OVERTIME, MORLEY SAFER'S PICK: LENELL GETER'S IN JAIL


Morley Safer, the CBS newsman who changed war reporting forever when he showed U.S. Marines burning the huts of Vietnamese villagers and went on to become the iconic 60 Minutes correspondent whose stylish stories on America's most-watched news program made him one of television's most enduring stars, died today in Manhattan. He was 84. He had homes in Manhattan and Chester, Conn.

Safer was in declining health when he announced his retirement last week; CBS News broadcast a long-planned special hour to honor the occasion on Sunday May 15 that he watched in his home.

A huge presence on 60 Minutes for 46 years -- Safer enjoyed the longest run anyone ever had on primetime network television. Though he cut back a decade ago, he still appeared regularly until recently, captivating audiences with his signature stories on art, science and culture. A dashing figure in his checked shirt, polka dot tie and pocket square, Morley Safer -- even his name had panache -- was in his true element playing pool with Jackie Gleason, delivering one of his elegant essays aboard the Orient Express or riffing on Anna Wintour, but he also asked the tough questions and did the big stories. In 2011, over 18.5 million people watched him ask Ruth Madoff how she could not have known her husband Bernard was running a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. The interview was headline news and water cooler talk for days.

"This is a very sad day for all of us at 60 Minutes and CBS News. Morley was a fixture, one of our pillars, and an inspiration in many ways."

In some of his later 60 Minutes pieces, Safer profiled the cartoonists of The New Yorker, interviewed the founder and staff of Wikipedia and reported on a billion-dollar art trove discovered in a Munich apartment. In his last story broadcast on March 13, he profiled the visionary architect Bjarke Ingels.

"Morley was one of the most important journalists in any medium, ever," said CBS Chairman and CEO, Leslie Moonves. "He broke ground in war reporting and made a name that will forever be synonymous with 60 Minutes. He was also a gentleman, a scholar, a great raconteur - all of those things and much more to generations of colleagues, his legion of friends, and his family, to whom all of us at CBS offer our sincerest condolences over the loss of one of CBS' and journalism's greatest treasures."

"This is a very sad day for all of us at 60 Minutes and CBS News. Morley was a fixture, one of our pillars, and an inspiration in many ways. He was a master storyteller, a gentleman and a wonderful friend. We will miss him very much," said Jeff Fager, the executive producer of 60 Minutes and Safer's close friend and one-time 60 Minutes producer.

CBS News President David Rhodes said, "Morley Safer helped create the CBS News we know today. No correspondent had more extraordinary range, from war reporting to coverage of every aspect of modern culture. His writing alone defined original reporting. Everyone at CBS News will sorely miss Morley."

Safer was a familiar reporter to millions when he replaced Harry Reasoner on 60 Minutes in 1970. A much-honored foreign correspondent, Safer was the first U.S. network newsman to film a report inside Communist China. He appeared regularly on the CBS Evening News from all over the world, especially Vietnam, where his controversial reporting earned him peer praise and government condemnation.

"Morley Safer helped create the CBS News we know today. No correspondent had more extraordinary range, from war reporting to coverage of every aspect of modern culture."

Safer's piece from the Vietnamese hamlet of Cam Ne in August of 1965 showing U.S. Marines burning the villagers' thatched huts was cited by New York University as one of the 20th century's best pieces of American journalism. Some believe this report freed other journalists to stop censoring themselves and tell the raw truth about war. The controversial report on the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" earned Safer a George Polk award and angered President Lyndon Johnson so much, he reportedly called CBS President Frank Stanton and said, "Your boys shat on the American flag yesterday." Some Marines are said to have threatened Safer, but others thanked him for exposing a cruel tactic. Safer said that the pentagon treated him with contempt for the rest of his life.

He spent three tours (1964-'66) as head of the CBS Saigon bureau. His helicopter was shot down in a 1965 battle, after which Safer continued to report under fire. In 1990, he penned a memoir of his Vietnam experience, "Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam" (Random House), in which he goes back to reminisce and to interview the enemy's veterans.

When he joined Mike Wallace at the beginning of 60 Minutes' third season, they toiled to put stories on the air for a program that dodged cancellation each season. But their work was immediately recognized with an Emmy for Safer's 1971 investigation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that began America's war in Vietnam. The two pressed on for five years, moving the broadcast from the bottom fourth to the middle of the rankings. Then in August 1975, with a new Sunday evening timeslot, Safer put 60 Minutes on the national stage. Interviewing Betty Ford, the first lady shocked many Americans by saying she would think it normal if her 18-year-old daughter were having sex. The historic sit-down also included frank talk about pot and abortion.

By 1978, the broadcast was in Nielsen's Top 10. Safer's eloquent, sometimes quirky features balanced out the program's "gotcha" interviews and investigations, perfecting the news magazine's recipe. It became the number-one program for the 1979-'80 season - a crown it won five times. 60 Minutes remained in the top 10 for an unprecedented 23 straight seasons.

It was another Safer story that would become one of the program's most honored and important. "Lenell Geter's in Jail," about a young black man serving life for armed robbery in Texas, overturned Geter's conviction 10 days after the December 1983 segment exposed a sloppy rush to injustice. Safer and 60 Minutes were honored with the industry's highest accolades: the Peabody, Emmy and duPont-Columbia University awards. 60 Minutes founder Don Hewitt often pointed to the story as the program's finest work.

Safer hit more journalistic home runs, but sought out the odd stories that piqued his curiosity. The offbeat tales were more suited to his raconteur style and cultural sensibility. He found esoteric subjects all over the world and here in the U.S., ranging from a tiny Pacific island nation economically dependent on guano to the strange choice of tango dancing as a national hobby for the shy people of Finland to the strange yet harmonious stew of cowboys and artists in the Texas town of Marfa -- all narrated in his drolly delivered and precise prose. His conversational wit with his subjects was just as sharp as his written word. In a profile of the prim Martha Stewart, a smirking Safer passed her livestock pen and said to the domestic diva, "Your barnyard? It's remarkably odor-free."

Some of these features had national impact, however, like his November 1991 report, "The French Paradox," which connected red wine consumption to lower incidents of heart disease among the free-eating French. Wine merchants say this report was single-handedly responsible for starting the red wine boom in America. His 1993 segment "Yes, But is it Art?" enraged the modern art community when it criticized expensive, contemporary installations featuring household items like toilets and vacuums. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City may have held a grudge; years later, it refused to allow Safer onto its premises to review a Jackson Pollock retrospective for CBS Sunday Morning.

Safer's life was a work of art into which 60 Minutes fit seamlessly. He vacationed in Europe, often combining field trips for his stories. He made a regular pilgrimage to The American Academy in Rome to hone his painting skills, a hobby he began from an early age. He mounted a small exhibition of his paintings in 1985. He also had a special affinity for cars and did 60 Minutes segments on England's Rolls Royce and Italy's legendary Lamborghini. He owned a silver 1985 Ferrari convertible, which he had raced occasionally and also owned a Bentley when he lived in London, bought with his winnings from a card game.

Other highlights from Safer's 60 Minutes work include a poignant segment in 1978 called "The Music of Auschwitz," about an inmate who played in an orchestra to avoid the Nazi gas chambers; his 1979 profile of Katharine Hepburn; "The Beeb," a 1985 Emmy-winning take on BBC Radio; "The Enemy," the 1989 story for which Safer returned to Vietnam; and in 1979, "Marva," about Chicago teacher Marva Collins, whose alternative school for disadvantaged kids proved such students could excel. Safer's follow-up on "Marva" in 1996, in which he debunked a subsequent book that claimed Collins' students would not succeed in the long run, earned him his fourth duPont-Columbia University award.

In addition to the four duPonts, Safer won every major award, including the Paul White Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1966 when he was only 35 -- an award usually given for lifetime achievement. The other awards given to Safer over his long career include three Peabody awards, three Overseas Press Club awards, two George Polk Memorial awards, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism first prize for domestic television, the Fred Friendly First Amendment award, 12 Emmys and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government.

CBS News hired the Canadian-born Safer in 1964 in London, where he was a correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He got the job in an odd turn of events. One of Safer's CBC colleagues seeking a job with CBS sent a demo tape of a roundtable he anchored that included Safer. CBS news executives liked Safer better and gave him a job in the London Bureau. The young correspondent took over his new job behind the desk once occupied by another CBS legend, the late Edward R. Murrow. After a year, he was asked to open the Saigon Bureau to report on the simmering conflict in Vietnam. He was then named bureau chief in London in 1967 and reported on a variety of foreign stories beyond Britain, many of them risky assignments, including the Nigerian-Biafran War, the Middle East conflict and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

During this period he also filmed the historic CBS News Special Report "Morley Safer's Red China Diary" (August 1967), the first broadcast by a U.S. network news team from inside Communist China. Safer's Canadian citizenship helped get him into the country posing as a tourist interested in archeology. He and his cameraman, John Peters, were able to film the everyday lives of Chinese with a home movie camera. In a close call, suspicious authorities took Safer and Peters to meet an archeologist, who tested his knowledge. Safer knew enough about China's archeological periods to avoid arrest.

Safer's reporting and writing also appeared on the CBS News documentary series, "CBS Reports." He had a regular feature on CBS Radio, "Morley Safer's Journal," that ran in 1970s. In May 1994, he hosted "One for the Road: A Conversation with Charles Kuralt and Morley Safer," a CBS News special marking Kuralt's retirement.

Safer was born Nov. 8, 1931 in Toronto and eventually became an American citizen, holding a dual citizenship. Telling MacLeans he felt "stateless," he believed this status was an advantage. "I bring a different perspective and I have no vested interests," he told the magazine in 1998.

Growing up, he was influenced by the writing of Ernest Hemingway and decided he would be a foreign correspondent. He attended the University of Western Ontario for only a few weeks when he dropped out to begin writing for newspapers. He first wrote for the rural Woodstock Sentinel-Review before landing a job with the much larger London (Ontario) Free-Press. He then went on to England with the help of the Commonwealth Press Union, which promised to place him in a job there. After a short stint on the Oxford Mail and Times, Reuters hired Safer in London in 1955. When he returned late that year, he found work as an editor and reporter in the Toronto headquarters of the CBC. He was chosen to produce "CBC News Magazine" in 1956, on which he also occasionally appeared. His first on-camera work was on assignment for the CBC covering the Suez Crisis in November 1956.

The CBC sent him back to London in 1961, from which he covered major stories in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including the war for Algerian Independence, until he joined CBS. He was the only Western correspondent in East Berlin the night the Communists began building the Berlin Wall in August 1961.

Safer was asked to characterize his legacy as a journalist in a November 2000 interview with the American Archive of Television. "I have a pretty solid body of work that emphasized the words, emphasized ideas and the craft of writing for this medium. It's not literary, I wouldn't presume to suggest that. But I think you can elevate it a little bit sometimes with the most important part of the medium, which is what people are saying -- whether they're the people being interviewed or the guy who's telling the story. It's not literature, but it can be very classy journalism."

He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Jane, one daughter, Sarah Bakal, her husband, Alexander Bakal, three grandchildren, a sister, and brother, both of Toronto.

Funeral arrangements are private. A memorial service will be announced at a later date.


“Morley Safer, the CBS newsman who changed war reporting forever when he showed U.S. Marines burning the huts of Vietnamese villagers and went on to become the iconic 60 Minutes correspondent whose stylish stories on America's most-watched news program made him one of television's most enduring stars, died today in Manhattan. …. No correspondent had more extraordinary range, from war reporting to coverage of every aspect of modern culture. His writing alone defined original reporting. Everyone at CBS News will sorely miss Morley." …. Safer's piece from the Vietnamese hamlet of Cam Ne in August of 1965 showing U.S. Marines burning the villagers' thatched huts was cited by New York University as one of the 20th century's best pieces of American journalism. Some believe this report freed other journalists to stop censoring themselves and tell the raw truth about war. …. Some Marines are said to have threatened Safer, but others thanked him for exposing a cruel tactic. Safer said that the pentagon treated him with contempt for the rest of his life. …. Interviewing Betty Ford, the first lady shocked many Americans by saying she would think it normal if her 18-year-old daughter were having sex. The historic sit-down also included frank talk about pot and abortion. …. It was another Safer story that would become one of the program's most honored and important. "Lenell Geter's in Jail," about a young black man serving life for armed robbery in Texas, overturned Geter's conviction 10 days after the December 1983 segment exposed a sloppy rush to injustice. Safer and 60 Minutes were honored with the industry's highest accolades: the Peabody, Emmy and duPont-Columbia University awards. …. Growing up, he was influenced by the writing of Ernest Hemingway and decided he would be a foreign correspondent. He attended the University of Western Ontario for only a few weeks when he dropped out to begin writing for newspapers.”


I tried to limit the number of paragraphs I clipped from the articles, but it is a long and beautifully written article about a full and extraordinary life. In addition, it is about my life personally, though I at the time was a student at UNC, taking courses that opened my eyes on many issues and being drawn to causes from liberal politics to the Black and Women’s civil rights issues, and taught me a passion for fairness.

In industrial and technological development and economic success, we have been a “great nation” indeed, but in our societal structure we have always been flawed by our classism and downright abuse of the poor. Those things are so entangled with America’s values that they are not only considered by many to be no problem, but an actual virtue. In my young years some people used to refer to the poor as “the great unwashed.” Now we seem to be moving back in that direction again.

I can’t think of a journalist with the rank and strength of Safer in these modern times when we do sorely need him. Morley Safer was one of those who stood up for the little guy and featured important niche issues such as a woman’s equal right to have a participatory sexual life, even when to do so could be socially unpopular or even dangerous. We are in the midst of another such negatively oriented time period now, with the Far Rightist political views that have infiltrated the Republicans and perhaps even the Democrats. As time goes by I am becoming more and more nervous about where our country is going. I hope for a strong and positive change in our culture so we will not become a new fascist society.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jason-dalton-kalamazoo-shooting-spree-suspect-ejected-from-court/

Mich. shooting spree suspect dragged out of court after outburst
AP May 20, 2016, 1:01 PM

Photograph -- Kalamazoo County Deputies remove Jason Dalton after an outburst during his preliminary examination in district court on Friday, May 20, 2016 in Kalamazoo, Mich. MARK BUGNASKI/KALAMAZOO GAZETTE-MLIVE MEDIA GROUP VIA AP, POOL
Play VIDEO -- Uber will not change hiring policy after Kalamazoo massacre [Caption: February 23, 2016, 4:36 PM, Uber driver Jason Dalton has been charged with the murder of six people after allegedly going on a shooting rampage this weekend. One of the survivors--14-year-old Abigail Kopf--is showing signs of improvement in the hospital. Meanwhile, Uber is defending its hiring practices. With more on the mass shooting aftermath, CBS News' Anna Werner joins CBSN.]

Please watch the video. It is very informational, and says among other things that Dalton was a gun fancier whose collection did include assault weapons.


KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- A man charged with killing six people during a night of random shootings in Michigan was dragged out of court Friday after bizarre outbursts during testimony by a woman who survived the rampage.

A judge called a recess and ordered Jason Dalton to jail where he can participate by video. Tiana Carruthers sobbed loudly on the witness stand while stunned relatives of other victims watched him be hauled away by deputies.

Judge Christopher Haenicke must decide whether there's probable cause to send Dalton to trial on charges of murder and attempted murder in southwestern Michigan's Kalamazoo County. It's a low threshold; prosecutors don't have to present all their evidence.

Dalton made strange references Friday to "old people with these old black bags." The judge cut him off after he said, "It's time to get to temple."

Police said Dalton, 45, was driving for Uber when he shot eight people on Feb. 20 at three locations in the Kalamazoo area; six of them died. Police have quoted Dalton as saying a "devil figure" on Uber's app was controlling him. He's been found competent to understand the charges and assist his lawyer.

Before the hearing was interrupted, Carruthers, 25, described how she was with children outside an apartment building when Dalton drove up.

"He cut us off," she testified. "I actually grabbed the children because he almost hit us."

Carruthers was the first person shot that day, and police credit her with shielding the children from possible injury.


It is always amazing to me that medical personnel can be so corrupt as to actually declare people like this “competent.” That’s so the courts can try them for a capital crime and then execute them. People like this man are obviously totally bonkers. He was seeing a “devil figure” that was telling him what to do. I don’t mean that such people should be allowed to be free. They should be permanently housed in an asylum for the criminally insane instead. People who have no control over what they think or do should not have the right to go wherever they please as some rights oriented people in our society say. They shouldn't have to be put into prison either, though. When Reagan's crew closed many of our permanent mental hospitals they caused a major problem for our society. It's not coincidental, I don't think, that the homeless population on the streets of every city of any size mushroomed around that time, either.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/video-ga-deputies-repeatedly-used-stun-guns-on-man-who-died/

Video: Georgia deputies repeatedly used stun guns on man who died
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS/AP
May 20, 2016, 1:18 PM


Photograph -- Police body-worn camera footage from Nov. 20, 2015, shows Coweta County, Georgia, deputies in the back of an SUV, attempting to subdue Chase Sherman, who died after stun guns were used 15 times during the confrontation. COWETA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE


ATLANTA -- Body camera video shows Georgia sheriff's deputies using stun guns multiple times on a handcuffed man in the back of a vehicle who died shortly after the struggle on an interstate highway.

The video obtained Friday by The Associated Press from the family's attorney and first posted by The New York Times shows Coweta County sheriff's deputies struggling to subdue 32-year-old Chase Sherman of Destin, Florida, in the back of an SUV Nov. 20.

The video, which the newspaper says is from body cameras worn by sheriff's deputies, shows deputies struggling with Sherman until he's still and they realize he's not breathing.

The deputies responded after Sherman's mother called 911. She told the dispatcher she was in a car with her husband, her son and the son's girlfriend on southbound Interstate 85. She said her son was "freaking out" and had taken a synthetic drug known as spice.

Coweta County Sheriff's Office records from Sherman's death show one deputy's stun gun was used nine times in a 2-½-minute span for a total of 47 seconds, including one use that lasted 17 seconds. The other deputy's stun gun was used six times in just over four minutes for a total of 29 seconds.

The family's attorney, Chris Stewart, says the records show that the deputies used the stun guns too many times on a handcuffed man.

The video shows deputies yelling at Sherman, telling him to stop resisting, and to let go of the stun gun and relax. The deputies also can be heard telling Sherman's mother to get out of the way, with her telling them not to shoot her son.

The deputies respond that he's being combative and they're trying to subdue him for their own protection.

The video shows Sherman finally being subdued, with one deputy yelling that he's not breathing. A deputy can later be heard saying that he thinks he will be fired.

His death certificate lists his death as a homicide and lists the cause as "sudden death during an altercation with law enforcement with several trigger pulls of an electronic control device, prone positioning on the floor of a motor vehicle and compression of the torso by the body weight of another individual."

On Feb. 5, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation turned the case over to Coweta County District Attorney Peter Skandalakis, who said in a statement released Friday that his office is still investigating.

"The review of this case is not complete, the investigation is ongoing and a final decision has not been made concerning the outcome of this case," Skandalakis said.


Law and order isn’t nearly as orderly as I would like it to be, and the courts see themselves as the legitimate guardians of police authority; while the common man on the street, especially in “conservative” parts of the country agree with that. The rule in Southern culture is often obedience to any and all authorities that exist. That includes everything from skirt length to the danger of “talking back” to an officer. If, as in this case, you are in the middle of a “bad trip” or any other type of psychotic episode and are totally “out of control,” your treatment by police will be worse than average. They usually don’t send out a team to tackle and hold an insane person so that control can be achieved without killing the suspect; but are more likely to treat it as any other matter to be “handled” too often with deadly force. Officers are not even trained to refrain from things like, in this case, the inadvisable and unconstrained use of a potentially dangerous weapon on a man 15 times. At that point he became “compliant.” His heart had stopped.

This isn’t the first time that officers have killed their suspect by overuse of stun guns. Stun guns, if they are not used more than they should be, and if they are in perfect working order at the time, should be safer than a pistol or shotgun. Stun guns that police usually use are described below along with the incidence of death at the hands of officers. They do pack a great deal of electricity and can stop the heart. Please read both these articles here on amperage, deaths, and police weapons. See below:

http://topstunguns.com/comparing_stun_guns
. . . .

Power source

Most stun guns use either regular batteries or inexpensive nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries for the power source. A good quality stun gun will use nickel-metal hydride (NI-MH) batteries, which are the newest technology in rechargeable batteries.

Voltage

Along with amperage, voltage is a main differentiator between cheap stun guns and quality units. Stun guns come in wide variety of voltage levels, from 30,000 volts to millions. The bottom line- For a stun gun to be effective, it must deliver at least 1 million volts. Anything short of 1 million volts will not be powerful enough to have an IMMEDIATE effect on the intended target.

Amperage

This is a crucial part of the effectiveness of any stun device. If the amperage is too low, a stun gun won’t have the knock down power needed to instantly drop an assailant, no matter how much voltage is being delivered. If the amperage is too high, it becomes too dangerous, and could easily cause death. Therefore, achieving the correct balance, or “ratio”, of amperage to voltage is critical for a stun gun’s stopping power. This is why just looking at high “voltage” levels is not the overall factor in stun gun effectiveness.

NOTE -The typically accepted, maximum safe level for amperage in the human body is 5 miliamps (mA). Any more than 5 miliamps, and danger to the heart, or electronic implants, can occur. THE MOST EFFECTIVE STUN DEVICES WILL DELIVER THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF AMPERAGE, YET REMAIN BELOW 5 MILIAMPS. The typical amperage of cheap stun guns proliferating the market today is only 1 – 2 miliamps! On the other hand, stun guns that have quality circuitry, and are able to deliver high voltage and amperage, are more expensive to produce, hence they cost more. The old saying, “You get what you pay for” rings true in this case!

Safety

One feature of a good, quality stun gun (although not the only indicator) is the presence of a kill switch, or safety switch. The safety lanyard contains a pin, which plugs into the unit and is necessary to complete the circuit. Used properly, the user holds the stun gun, and has the pin plugged into the device and the lanyard around the wrist. If an attacker tries to take the stun gun away and use it against the owner, the unit becomes inoperable, protecting the owner in the process.



http://excited-delirium.blogspot.com/2010/01/q-how-many-amps-in-police-taser.html
FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2010

CONTACT, COMMENT, COMPLAIN: Excited.Delirium @ gmail.com
“Killing Them Safely” -- Documentary Film - coming soon


The primary purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for my observations and analysis about tasers, taser "associated" deaths, and the behaviour exhibited by the management, employees and minions of Taser International. In general, everything is linked back to external sources, often via previous posts on the same topic, so that readers can fact-check to their heart's content. This blog was started in late-2007 when Canadians were enraged by the taser death of Robert Dziekanski and four others in a short three month period. The cocky attitude exhibited by the Taser International spokespuppet, and his preposterous proposal that Mr. Dziekanski coincidentally died of "excited delirium" at the time of his taser-death, led me to choose the blog name I did and provides my motivation. I have zero financial ties to this issue.

If you arrived here on direct link to a specific post, then you may click here if you wish to view all the latest posts on the Excited-Delirium blog.


Q: How many amps in a police taser?
A: "2.1 mA."

The above answer is a vast oversimplification and is thus misleading.

There are two tasers in common use by officers. The M26 was introduced in 1999, and the X26 was introduced in 2003. There are others, such as the XREP projectile, and the X3 released in 2009.

There are several ways to measure complex waveforms. The "2.1 mA" mentioned above is the Average. In general, electrical engineers do not use simple averages, even if rectified, because they most often provide a misleading number.

The most common method of measuring complex waveforms is something called RMS (root mean square). For example, the voltage in your house is probably 120 or 240 volts RMS. This concept is explained in first year EE courses. All reputable brand digital meters in common use by EEs provide the RMS function.

Both the M26 and X26 are about 150 to 160 mA when measured using RMS.

This 150+ mA range might raise eyebrows, because it's clearly a number that is well above the safe limits of around 30 mA.

Part of the safety claim made by the manufacturer is that the output waveform consists of very short pulses (100us) of high frequency (50kHz), and these two waveform characteristics provides an increased level of safety margin.

Problem is... the X26 waveform has a DC pulse after the arc phase. This DC pulse is low frequency (19 Hz) and continuous 100% duty cycle. So the X26 taser is clearly less safe than the older M26 (even the manufacturer's own expert confirmed this fact). I believe that their in-house experts forgot about Fourier transforms and neglected to account for this DC pulse. They continued to proclaim "short pulses" well past 2003.

So the real question being asked is: What's the Effective current?

By the effects, the taser's Effective current is well above "2.1 mA". The taser usually does much more than just a harmless tickle. As I said, "2.1 mA" is misleading. The implicit claim that the Effective is the Average is simply preposterous.

The Effective current is self-evidently well above the level of excruciating pain (way above and beyond). It's also obviously well above the level where muscle lock-up occurs (that's the whole point). And there's growing evidence that the effective current might be enough to sometimes affect the heart (this is the very next step on the scale, right next to muscle lock-up).

The manufacturer claims that the waveform has special (magical?) characteristics to ensure safety. This seems unlikely since the M26 and X26 waveforms are so different. And there's a newer X3 model that reportedly emits about 40% less charge than the X26. So that claim is falling apart for numerous reasons (inconsistent, obviously preposterous).

It's worth noting that the taser-associated death rate was much less than one per month up until 2003. Starting in 2003, strangely coincident with the introduction of the X26 taser, the taser "associated" death rate ramped up to about 7 per month and has been at about that rate ever since.

It's also worth noting that the taser, assuming it did kill, would leave no explicit postmortem clues. So some folks would be able to invoke alternate explanations such as "excited delirium" to explain the deaths. They could enforce this by means of lawsuits against coroners that dare to find the taser a cause of death.

The whole issue is extremely complicated and there's a lot of history.

But the claim that the taser current is "2.1 mA" is very very wrong.