Saturday, December 31, 2011
Happy Icelandic children
The United States placed 82nd in the ranking, behind Gabon and just ahead of Bangladesh. According to the Institute, “If the U.S. moderately reduced its violence to the same levels as Canada its economy would realise savings and additional economic activity of approximately US$360 billion. By reducing violent crime, incarceration and homicide, U.S. governments could save billions by lowering expenditure in correctional services, healthcare and preventing lost taxation revenue, while the general economy would save billions through preventing productivity losses that occur due to lost work days from violent crime and homicide.”
Opinion polls consistently show that none of these issues is as important to most Americans as the Big Issue: unemployment and the economy. An unusually vivid example occurred on April 19, which McDonald’s declared National Hiring Day, encouraging people across the country to apply for a job. The world’s biggest restaurant chain reported that it received one million applicants for open positions, which resulted in 62,000 people gaining employment. Another 900,000 plus were turned down.
Five years ago wildlife biologist Charles Monnett made news with his observation of drowned polar bears in the Arctic sea, which helped fuel the debate over global warming. Today, Monnett has made headlines again, this time for being suspended from his job pending a government investigation into alleged scientific misconduct.
Diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2009, Norman B. Smith, 63, has been treated at Cedars-Sinai by oncologist Steven Miles, who approved medicinal marijuana in part to help his patient cope with the effects of chemotherapy. Smith became eligible for a liver transplant last year, but was removed from the list in February after testing positive for marijuana.
Bipartisan legislation being considered in the U.S. Senate would expand the military’s power to go after any terrorism suspect, including American citizens, anywhere in the world—including within the United States—and confine them indefinitely without being charged or tried. S. 1867, referred to as the National Defense Authorization Act bill, was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John McCain (R-Arizona).
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created VIPR in December 2005 to inspect bus, rail and truck stations for potential threats. Modeled after the work performed at airport checkpoints, it is led by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In Tennessee VIPR has been set up at five weigh stations and two bus terminals. State officials noted that they were not responding to any particular threat, but rather were providing “a visible deterrence and detection security presence across Tennessee.”
Just hours after Giffords voted to pass the health reform bill, the glass door of her office in Tucson was smashed. MSNBC invited Giffords to comment on the attack on her office. Giffords noted that “We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, and when people do that, they've gotta realize there are consequences to that action.”
Many residents of Fort Wayne, Indiana, would love to name the new government building after the city’s longest serving mayor. Unfortunately, his name was Harry Baals. Baals served three consecutive terms from 1934-1947, and later a fourth term from 1951-1954 before dying in office. He pronounced his last name “balls,” but his descendents have gone with “bales.”
A State Department cable released by WikiLeaks has bolstered the contention that former FBI agent Robert Levinson has been held in Iran after vanishing on March 9, 2007, while working as a private investigator on Kish Island, a popular tourist resort in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian government has denied it is holding Levinson prisoner, even though back in 2007 it claimed that he was “in the hands of Iranian security forces.”
Researchers are continuing to search for the definitive cause of last week’s massive fish die off in King Harbor, located in Redondo Beach, south of Los Angeles. At least a million sardines died from lack of oxygen, scientists have determined, after too many of them crowded into the harbor. But tests have also revealed the presence of domoic acid in the fishes’ stomachs.
BIZARRE BEHAVIOR: Gaddafi is protected by a coterie of high-heeled female bodyguards known as the Green Nuns. One of them reportedly died when she took a bullet during a 1998 assassination attempt. In 1977, Gaddafi ordered all Libyans to raise chickens, even urban dwellers who lived in apartments. Gaddafi invited IRA recruits to terrorist training camps in Libya. However the recruits returned early to Northern Ireland when they discovered that they were being taught how to fight in the desert, a skill that was not terribly useful on the Emerald Isle. In the words of Jaafar Nimieri, former president of Sudan, Gaddafi “has a split personality…both evil.”
JPMorgan Chase is the No. 1 holder of stock in BP. That distinction also has earned the Wall Street bank the title of “Global Ultimate Owner” of the oil giant, as it owns 28.34% of BP. Next, at 7.99%, is Legal and General Group, a British-based financial services company with assets of more than $350 billion. Another U.S. investment firm, BlackRock Inc., owns 7.1% of BP.
Two. That’s the number of CIA torture cases involving detainees that the Obama administration will continue to investigate after spending two years reviewing just over 100 instances of alleged abuse during the George W. Bush years. Outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta was thrilled by the news, which amounted to “one of the greatest gifts the Justice Department could have given” to the agency’s new leader, former General David Petraeus.
Kamran Loghman helped develop pepper spray into a weapons-grade material while working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1980s. After seeing how his invention was used against student demonstrators in Davis, Loghman said police violated his original intent. “I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Loghman told The New York Times.
You know there’s something seriously wrong at an American embassy when staffers ask to be transferred to a war zone, instead of staying put in a cushy European post. “Most employees describe the Ambassador as aggressive, bullying, hostile and intimidating, which has resulted in an extremely difficult, unhappy and uncertain work environment,” reads a report from the State Department’s inspector general. [excerpt from Was Cynthia Stroum America’s Worst Ambassador?]
During the days of Circus Maximus, Diocles (104-146) established himself as the greatest competitor of Rome’s chariot races. Some have estimated he won 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money over 24 years of racing—or $15 billion by today’s standards, according to Peter Struck at Lapham’s Quarterly.
Although the earthquake swarm might be a natural occurrence, it is also possible that it has been a consequence of the natural gas drilling technique known as “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking.” The problem in Arkansas appears to be related not to the drilling itself, but to the disposal of wastewater from the drilling by forcing it back into the earth into injection wells.
In deciding to establish a state firearm, Utah lawmakers settled on the M1911 pistol because its creator, legendary gun maker John Browning, was born and lived a large part of his life in the state. Utah already had 23 other state symbols, including the state vegetable (Spanish sweet onion), state historic vegetable (sugar beet), state rock (coal), state insect (honey bee), state cooking pot (Dutch oven) and state fossil (allosaurus).
Part profiling, part advanced mathematics, the Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) is described as a “pre-crime” system by DHS. The program uses ethnicity, gender, breathing, eye tracking and heart rate to formulate a system for spotting criminals before they strike. If the technology proves reliable, the government might try using it at airport checkpoints, border crossings, sea ports or major sporting events.
Scientists working for the National Marine Fisheries Service have been told to not publicly discuss the investigation into why dolphins are dying in large numbers along the Gulf Coast, where the nation’s worst-ever oil spill occurred last year. One biologist interviewed by Reuters said the gag order “throws accountability right out the window.”
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