CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
Sunday, January 26, 2014
STILL MORE SHOOTINGS. THIS TIME IN A SHOPPING MALL.
COLUMBIA, Md. – You know what Saturdays are like in a mall – people everywhere. But all at once shots rang out at the Columbia Mall, the favorite mall of all who live in or near Ellicott City, Maryland. It happened yesterday morning. This story impacts me more than it most likely does you because that’s the city where my daughter Beth, her husband Todd, and five of my grandchildren live. In fact, my youngest grandson, Ian, had dinner at the mall’s food court on Friday night. Praise God, none of them were in the mall on Saturday. That’s where a lone gunman burst into a skate shop gunning down two of the store’s employees and shooting someone else. Then he killed himself after turning a morning of perusing and shopping into a day of death and chaos.
The mall is at the center of the town and typically opens at 10 a.m. on Saturdays. Darion Marcus Aguilar of College Park, the shooter, arrived at the Mall at Columbia by cab about 10:15 a.m. Saturday, or roughly an hour before he fired six-to-eight shots from a Mausberg 12-gauge shotgun he bought from an unidentified source in Montgomery County in December, police said.At about 11:15 AM witnesses described hearing gunshots and screaming as panicked shoppers ducked into nearby stores and hid behind locked doors. Many found cover in stockrooms and barricaded themselves until they knew police had arrived. At least 100 police officers descended on the mall from Howard, Anne Arundel and Montgomery Counties, as well as the Maryland State Police. SWAT units and officers in fatigues were walking around the scene and helicopters were flying overhead all afternoon.
Once it was believed that all who had been in the mall were outside, the mall will be closed until at least Monday, giving police plenty of time to carefully search each door for explosives as well as people who might still be hiding. Search dogs were brought in to help the investigating.
Howard County Police Chief William J. McMahon said at a news conference that authorities had difficulty identifying the gunman because of concerns he was carrying explosives and were proceeding with an “abundance of caution.” The police did find two “crude devices” that appeared to be attempts at improvised explosives. By late Saturday, police said they had tentatively identified the gunman but declined to release his name while they followed up on leads.
Someone called 911 at around 11:15 a.m. to report a shooting at the mall. Police responded to the scene within 2 minutes and found three people dead – including the apparent gunman near a gun and ammunition store which sells skateboards, clothing and accessories. McMahon said police were confident there was a single gunman. He said officers did not fire any shots when they arrived at the scene. The police news release said it appears the gunman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police identified the victims as 21-year-old Brianna Benlolo of College Park, Marylandd., and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson of Ellicott City. Both worked at Zumiez.
Allison Cohen, who works at the apparel store Lucky Brand Jeans, said she always felt safe at the mall. “I truly never thought something like this would ever happen here,” Cohen said. “It’s really, really shocking.”
Police identified the victims as 21-year-old Brianna Benlolo of College Park, Md., and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson of Ellicott City, Md. Both worked at Zumiez.
Benlolo’s grandfather, John Feins, said in a telephone interview from Florida that his granddaughter had a 2-year-old son and that the job at Zumiez was her first since she went back to work after her son’s birth. “She was all excited because she was the manager there,” he said. He said he had spoken with his daughter, Brianna’s mother, earlier in the day, but didn’t know who the gunman was or whether the person knew his granddaughter.
Howard County General Hospital said it had treated and released five patients. One patient had a gunshot wound, while at least three other patients sustained other injuries.
“It’s senseless. It’s totally, totally senseless,” Feins said. “I mean what can you say? You go to work and make a dollar and you got some idiot coming in and blowing people away,” he said.
Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Martin Di Caro in Washington contributed to this report.
IT ISN’T ONLY ABOUT GUNS
A teenage Russian national was arrested late Friday on charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction, police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, report. Blair County Prison confirmed to Fox News that Vladislav Miftakhov, 19, is in custody. Altoona Mayor Matthew Pacifico said Miftakjov is a student at Penn State University Altoona.
He is charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction, risking a catastrophe, possessing instruments of crime, prohibited offensive weapons, incendiary devices, recklessly endangering another person, and several drug-related charges.
Officers had been investigating an alleged marijuana growing operation when they discovered the alleged bomb, according to a statement posted on the police department’s Facebook page. They said the bomb was found inside a suitcase along with “assorted bomb making materials. The bomb was safely deconstructed by experts from the Pennsylvania State Police Bomb Squad,” the statement read.
Miftakhov allegedly told investigators he bought the bomb-making materials online over the past few weeks. Police did not release any details about a possible motive or possible targets.
Mayor Pacifico said the city had “quite a scare. This is something you hear about in big cities or movies, but not something you would think would happen in a place like Altoona,” he told Fox News.
The Altoona Police Department said federal agencies had been notified and are assisting with the investigation.
butTodd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations.
UKRAINE PROTEST LEADERS SAY NYAT
TO TWO TOP GOVERNMENT POSITIONS
Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych has offered the post of prime minister to opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk. He also offered former boxer Vitali Klitschko the position of deputy Prime Minister. Both men rejected his offer and repeated their demands for new presidential elections.
The offer came after talks on Saturday with the opposition in a new effort to end the deadly unrest that has spread across the country. Addressing a crowd of tens of thousands in Kiev’s Independence Square on Saturday evening, Yanukovych spoke along with the opposition leaders.
The protests began in November after Ukraine decided not to sign an accord on more co-operation with the EU. Instead, the government opted to deepen ties with neighbouring Russia.
Klitschko, the leader of the Udar (Punch) movement, told the crowd that the opposition would not yield in its demands for elections to be held this year. A vote is not due until 2015.
In a statement published on the government’s website, Justice Minister Olena Lukash said the president had offered public debates with Mr Klitschko “in order to ensure a wide public dialogue”, and that Mr Klitschko had agreed. In addition, Mr Yanukovych has said he is ready to amend the constitution to reduce the president’s powers, Ukrainian media report.
Vitaliy Zakharchenko – in charge of the police and one of the figures most despised by the protesters – blamed “radical groups” for the unrest, adding that protesters had arms. “We will consider those who remain on the Maidan [Independence Square] and in captured buildings to be extremist groups,” he said. “The events of recent days in the Ukrainian capital showed that our attempts to peacefully resolve the conflict without resorting to forceful opposition remain futile,” he added.
Although the protest movement – the “EuroMaidan” – is largely peaceful, a hardcore of radicals have been fighting pitched battles with police away from the main protest in Maidan.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE UKRAINIAN SITUATION
By Max Fisher and the Washington Post foreign staff staff
What’s happening in Ukraine is about much more than the anger over Yanukovych rejecting the European Union deal and drawing the country closer to Russia. To help explain what’s going on, think of a map with red stripes showing regions where mass protests are surrounding the regional capital buildings. The black stripes would show regions where protesters have actually seized the government administrative buildings. The blue regions would be where Yanukovych won a majority in the last presidential election in 2010; dark blue means he won at least 70 percent. Orange regions would show where Yulia Tymoshenko, then prime minister and candidate for a pro-European party, won the majority. Imagine dark orange regions. They would be where she won at least 70 percent.
Here’s why such a map is important to visualize: There is a big dividing line in Ukrainian politics — an actual, physical line that separates the north and west from the south and east. That divide goes beyond the question of whether Ukraine faces toward Europe or toward Russia, but that question is a major factor. And it’s polarizing.
This visualized map drives two things home: First is that the protests are practically endemic in the half of the country that voted against Yanukovych, which includes Kiev. Second, the protests are not really a factor in the half who voted for Yanukovych. That doesn’t mean that people in the blue areas adore Yanukovych, but they’re certainly not pouring out into the streets to oppose him. It also doesn’t mean that the protesters lack legitimate gripes or that it’s just about their candidate losing. The economy is in terrible shape, and the government recently imposed severe restrictions against free speech, media and assembly rights, which is part of why the protests kicked back up again.
In other words, in the European-facing half of Ukraine, the orange half, the protests are even more widespread and severe than you might have gathered from watching the media coverage. But it’s important to keep in mind that the other half of the country, the blue half, is much quieter.
You may be wondering, then, why there is such a consistent and deep divide between these two halves of Ukraine. Here’s the really crucial thing to understand about Ukraine: A whole lot of the country speaks Russian, rather than Ukrainian.
Ukrainian is the majority and official language of Ukraine. But, as a legacy of of the country’s subjugation by Russia, many Ukrainians speak Russian, which is the native language for about one-third of the population. The Russian speakers are clustered in the south and east. A significant chunk of them are ethnic Russian, as well. In some regions, more than three-quarters of the population speaks Russian as their primary language.
Heavily Russian-speaking regions can tend to be more sympathetic (or at least less hostile) to policies that bring their country closer to Russia, as Yanukovych has been doing. But the Ukrainian-speaking regions have historically sought a Ukrainian national identity that is less Russia-facing and more European. So this is about politics, yes, but it’s also about identity, about the question of what it means to be Ukrainian.
Ukraine’s ethno-lingistic political division is sort of like the United States’ “red America” and “blue America” divide, but in many ways much deeper — imagine if red and blue America literally spoke different languages. The current political conflict, which at its most basic level is over whether the country will lean toward Europe or toward Russia, is part of a long-running and unresolved national identity crisis. Yes, it’s also about Yanukovych’s failures to fix the economy and his draconian restrictions against basic freedoms. But there’s so much more to it than that, which helps make the crisis so intractable.
After two months of rallies in the capital city of Kiev against President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a deal for closer integration with the European Union, Ukraine’s protests are spreading to other major cities throughout the country’s west. Protesters have even seized government administrative buildings in several regional capitals, heightening concerns about where Ukraine’s crisis will go.
SOWING OF SEEDS FOR A ONE WORLD RELIGION?
Tony Blair has reignited debate about the west’s response to terrorism with a call on governments to recognise that religious extremism has become the biggest source of conflict around the world. His remark is particularly relevant considering Hillary Clinton’s statement in 2008 that evangelical Christians are “The lunatic fringe.”
Referring to wars and violent confrontations from Syria to Nigeria and the Philippines, Blair, writing in the Observer, argues that “there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith.”
Identifying religious extremism as an ever more dangerous phenomenon, the spread of which is easier in an online age, he says: “The battles of this century are less likely to be the product of extreme political ideology, like those of the 20th century – but they could easily be fought around the questions of cultural or religious difference.”
The former prime minister, who led the country into the Iraq conflict in 2003, appears to acknowledge that previous aspirations to export liberal democracy focused too much on political objectives.
But sources close to Blair insist that he is not in any way indulging in amea culpa over past interventions by the west, including in Iraq. In the future, he writes, “the purpose should be to change the policy of governments; to start to treat this issue of religious extremism as an issue that is about religion as well as politics, to go to the roots of where a false view of religion is being promulgated and to make it a major item on the agenda of world leaders to combine effectively to combat it. This is a struggle that is only just beginning.”
The promotion of religious tolerance, both within and between countries, states Blair, will be key to fostering peaceful outcomes around the world in the 21st century.
He uses his article to announce The Creation, a new online forum and database run by his Faith Foundation in collaboration with the Harvard Divinity School, which he hopes will become the world’s leading source of information and debate about religion and conflict. The Harvard Divinity School is known for its espousing liberal theology in conflict with the Bible.
Blair argues that while the west needs to be ready to take security measures for its protection, such action alone, even military action, “will not deal with the root cause of extremism”.
Debate over Blair’s role in the invasion of Iraq will return to centre stage this summer when the long-awaited Chilcot report into the period running up to the war is published. It is expected to contain damning evidence of how President Bush and Blair jointly engaged in a rush to war to topple Saddam Hussein in the face of warnings of the risks of triggering sectarian divisions across the region.
In the article, Blair directly addresses the chaos left in the wake of the invasion when he argues: “All over the region and including in Iraq, where exactly the same sectarianism threatens the right of the people to a democratic future, such a campaign [for tolerance of other religious views] has to be actively engaged. It is one reason why the Middle East matters so much and why any attempt to disengage is so wrong and short-sighted.”
On Saturday, Jonathan Eyal, the international director of the Royal United Services Institute, took issue with Blair’s analysis and any implication that western governments were not informed before invading Iraq of the sectarian violence that was likely to be stirred up. He said, “It was not the lack of sufficient knowledge about history and religion which led to the Iraqi debacle, but the lack of restraint among politicians who had all the relevant information at their fingertips.”
OBAMA SAYS TO AFGHANISTAN “TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT”
By Bill Van Auken
24 January 2014
The US military has proposed keeping 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after the formal withdrawal of American “combat forces” at the end of this year. Claiming that any lower troop level would not be viable, the Pentagon proposes a complete pullout by next December rather than maintaining fewer than 10,000 soldiers and Marines.
The senior US commander in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford, presented the proposal to a recent White House meeting of the National Security Council. He argued that 10,000 troops was the minimum force needed to secure strategic bases across Afghanistan. US intelligence and State Department officials seconded the recommendation, according to media reports, insisting that the proposed troop level was required to protect their continued operations as well.
The Pentagon is determined to keep control of Afghan bases, which provide the American military with the means of projecting military force against neighboring China, Iran, South Asia and the oil-rich former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
“The proposal is 10,000 or basically nothing, a pullout,” an unnamed senior official familiar with the White House discussions told the New York Times.
In addition to US forces, some 2,000 to 3,000 troops from NATO and other allied countries would remain in Afghanistan after 2014 under the plan.
There are currently approximately 37,500 US troops occupying Afghanistan, along with 19,000 from NATO and allied countries. The number of US troops is scheduled to drop to 32,000 by next month and fall more steeply after Afghan presidential elections set for April.
The Obama administration had anticipated that President Hamid Karzai would sign last November, after a hand-picked, 2,500-member Loya Jirga, or grand council, voiced its approval of the BSA. Instead, the Afghan president, who was installed as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan, has put off acceptance of the agreement while demanding that the US occupation forces halt night raids and air strikes on Afghan villages. These attacks have claimed a large number of civilian casualties. Karzai is also demanding that Washington get behind peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban armed opposition. The first of these points of contention was further inflamed last week by a US air raid on a village in Parwan province that killed two women and five children.
It is widely believed that Karzai is postponing any signing of the deal until after the April presidential election in order to maximize his own leverage in determining who will succeed him and ensuring that he continues to wield substantial influence.
Further escalating tensions between Washington and the puppet Karzai regime, President Obama last Friday signed into law a spending bill that provides only $1.2 billion in aid to Afghanistan for fiscal 2014, half of what was provided the previous year. News of the 50 percent cut was met in Afghanistan with warnings of a financial catastrophe for an economy that is almost wholly dependent on foreign assistance. Other donor countries are expected to follow Washington’s lead in slashing funds. The World Bank last week estimated the country’s growth rate for 2013 at 3.1 percent, a precipitous decline from 14.4 percent the previous year. The US aid cut has been widely interpreted in Afghanistan as retaliation for Karzai’s stalling on the security agreement.
Friction has been further increased by a series of ads broadcast by the Afghan media pushing for a speedy signing of the BSA, with Afghan “man in the street” interviews purporting to show popular support for the deal and, by implication, impatience with Karzai’s delays. The government has intervened to demand that the ads be pulled, and the Afghan attorney general has launched an investigation into their origin. According to TOLO TV, the country’s most popular channel, the spots were paid for by a company called Ads Village, whose funding, in turn, came from NATO’s ISAF occupation command as well as the US Agency for International Development (AID).
Emblematic of the deterioration of relations between Washington and its Afghan puppet is the reaction to last Friday’s attack on a popular restaurant in Kabul’s embassy district that claimed the lives of the IMF’s top representative in the country, several UN officials, and many others. In a statement expressing sympathy for the victims, Karzai went on to denounce the US-led forces for not distinguishing “victims and terrorists.” Two pro-government Kabul newspapers went further, suggesting that the restaurant bombing was the work not of the Taliban, but of Western intelligence agencies attempting to pressure Karzai and create an atmosphere in which the continued presence of US-led occupation forces will be seen as indispensable. Some observers are now automatically saying that attacks of this nature will continue if the bilateral security agreement is not signed with the United States. “Perhaps masterminds of these attacks wanted to show to the world and to the Afghans that Afghanistan still needs foreign forces on its soil.”
MASS EXECUTIONS IN NORTH KOREA. PURGE WILL INCREASE.
All relatives of the executed uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, including children and the country’s ambassadors to Cuba and Malaysia, have also been put to death at the leader’s instruction, Seoul’s Yonhap news agency quoted multiple sources as saying Sunday.
Jang Song-thaek, the once-powerful uncle, was executed last month on charges of attempting to overthrow the regime, including contemplating a military-backed coup. All direct relatives of Jang have also been executed, the sources said.
“Extensive executions have been carried out for relatives of Jang Song-thaek,” one source said on condition of anonymity. “All relatives of Jang have been put to death, including even children.”
The executed relatives include Jang’s sister Jang Kye-sun, her husband and Ambassador to Cuba Jon Yong-jin, and Ambassador to Malaysia Jang Yong-chol, who is a nephew of Jang, as well as his two sons, the sources said.
All of them were recalled to Pyongyang in early December and executed, they said. The sons, daughters and even grandchildren of Jang’s two brothers were all executed, they said. It was unclear exactly when they were killed, but they are believed to have been put to death after Jang’s death on December 12.
“Some relatives were shot to death by pistol in front of other people if they resisted while being dragged out of their apartment homes,” another source said.
Some relatives by marriage, including the wife of the ambassador to Malaysia, have been spared from executions and sent to remote villages along with their maiden families, according to the sources.
“The executions of Jang’s relatives mean that no traces of him should be left,” a source said. “The purge of the Jang Song-thaek people is under way on an extensive scale from relatives and low-level officials.”
SNOWDEN WON’T BE RETURNING TO AMERICA
Berlin (AFP) – “The US National Security Agency (NSA) sometimes uses data it collects strictly for economic purposes, intelligence leaker Edward Snowden reveals in an extract of an interview with a German television chain to being broadcast today.
“If there is information, for example on Siemens, which is in the national interest, but has nothing to do with national security, they will still use this information,” said Snowden, according to the German translation of the interview on public television ARD.
Snowden also assured everyone that he no longer is in possession of any confidential documents, as they had all been handed out to handpicked journalists. The former NSA contractor said he no longer wants to, or is able to, take part in any future revelations.
Other than the consequences of his revelations about NSA surveillance programs, Snowden will share “his personal path” to leaking the information. He ruled out returning to the United States, where he said there was no chance of a free trial.
US Attorney General Eric Holder has said he was unlikely to consider clemency for Snowden.
SMITH & WESSON EXITING CALIFORNIA ALONG WITH OTHER GUNMAKERS
A new gun law proponents say helps law enforcement has driven Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger out of California, and affirmed the suspicions of firearms rights advocates that the measure is really about making handguns obsolete.
The two companies have announced they will stop selling their wares in the nation’s most populous state rather than try to comply with a law that requires some handguns to have technology that imprints a tiny stamp on the bullet so it can be traced back to the gun. The companies, and many gun enthusiasts, say so-called “microstamping” technology is unworkable in its present form and can actually impair a gun’s performance.
“Smith & Wesson does not and will not include microstamping in its firearms,” the Springfield, Mass.,-based manufacturer said in a statement. “A number of studies have indicated that microstamping is unreliable, serves no safety purpose, is cost prohibitive and, most importantly, is not proven to aid in preventing or solving crimes.”
“The microstamping mandate and the company’s unwillingness to adopt this so-called technology will result in a diminishing number of Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistols available for purchase by California residents.”
Southport, Connecticut-based Sturm Ruger also announced this month that they will stop selling their guns in California due to the microstamping law.
Firearm microstamping, or ballistic imprinting, works by engraving a microscoping marking onto the tip of the firing pin. When the gun is fired, it leaves an imprint, usually of a serial number, on the bullet casings. The telltale mark theoretically allows law enforcement investigators to trace the bullet to the registered gun owner. California’s law is the first in the nation to be implemented and was originally signed into effect in October 2007, but not implemented until recently. Other states considering a microstamping requirement include Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts.
Critics say tracing a bullet to a registered gun owner does little to fight crime, since criminals often kill with stolen handguns. Many believe tracing bullets was never the real intent of the law in the first place. “This is the latest attempt to undermine the Second Amendment in California by politicians with little to no knowledge of firearms, who seek to impose their liberal values upon those who choose to protect their families with the constitutional right to own a handgun,” said Chuck Michel, West Coast Counsel for the National Rifle Association, an Adjunct Professor at Chapman University and author of the book “California Gun Laws.”
“The technology doesn’t fully exist yet, but by making it into a law, they [California] in fact enacted a gun law without actually passing one,” David Kopel, a constitutional law professor at the Denver University Sturm College of Law and Research Director of the Independence Institute, told FoxNews.com. “This is an indirect way to ban new handguns from being sold.”
The patent holder of microstamping tech, Todd Lizotte, was part of a Department of Justice study team which concluded that, “legitimate questions exist related to both the technical aspects, production costs, and database management associated with microstamping that should be addresses before wide scale implementation is legislatively mandated,” according to the study which was published in the Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners (AFTE) Journal.
Lawsuits were also filed against the Golden State this week by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute challenging the microstamping law saying in a statement this week that they predicted back in 2007 when the law was first passed that it would result in a “de facto semiautomatic handgun ban.”
Smith & Wesson said it expects sales of its California-compliant revolvers, which aren’t required to have microstamping, will offset the impact to the company. Company President and CEO James Debney vowed to continue to work with industry groups to oppose the law, while providing California customers with products that do comply with it.
Two trade groups, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute, filed a legal challenge to the law in California Superior Court earlier this month.
HONG KONG ABOUT TO DESTROY ELEPHANT TUSKS
WORTH MORE THAN 11 MILLION DOLLARS
HONG KONG, China, January 24, 2014 (ENS) – The Hong Kong government has decided to destroy one of the world’s largest ivory stockpiles as a deterrent to poachers who kill up to 96 elephants a day across Africa. Acting against a centuries-old tradition of carving ivory into religious objects, the Endangered Species Advisory Committee of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department voted Thursday to burn 27 metric tons of its estimated 33 tons of confiscated ivory. The Ports and Maritime Command of Hong Kong Customs seized 189 ivory tusks in three containers with a total value of about $11.53 million, Oct. 3, 2013.
The Endangered Species Advisory Committee said after Thursday’s meeting that its members were unanimous in their approval of the department’s proposal to dispose of forfeited ivory in the government stockpile.
Apart from retaining a small amount of ivory for potential uses permitted by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, all the forfeited ivory stockpile will be disposed of by incineration. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, AFCD, will work out an implementation plan. It is expected that the disposal can start in the first half of 2014 and be completed in about one to two years.
But, “In view of the management burden and the security risk generated by prolonged storage of the forfeited ivory stockpile,” the AFCD said it is necessary to dispose of the confiscated ivory by destruction.
African Wildlife Foundation CEO Dr. Patrick Bergin said, “The culture of ivory worship in Hong Kong is deep-rooted and centuries old, which makes the decision to destroy any ivory, much less an estimated 33 metric tons, that much more extraordinary.”
Hong Kong’s decision follows China’s destruction earlier this month of six tons of illegal ivory, a part of the country’s stockpile, to deter elephant poachers.
Will Travers OBE, chief executive of the international nonprofit Born Free Foundation, said Hong Kong’s decision is important. The amount of ivory seized globally in 2013 was over 44 tons, the highest in more than 25 years
“It’s massive. The biggest destruction of illegal ivory stocks in history,” Travers said. “Even a year ago, to think that China and Hong Kong would take such decisive action would have been fantasy.”
NEW GOVERNMENT OFFICE TO HELP DEMOCRATS WIN IN 2014
The White House is reinstating a political office to help congressional Democrats in the 2014 elections — raising concerns, considering President Obama shuttered when a similar operation after a federal investigation found it had used taxpayer money to help Republican candidates.
President Obama on Friday announced the opening of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, three years after the investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency.
“The White House’s announcement … again raises troubling concerns about the illegal use of taxpayer funds to support campaign-related initiatives,” said California Republican Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
In a January 2011 report, the watchdog office found that staff in George W. Bush’s Office of Political Affairs violated federal statutes that prohibit the use of Treasury Department money for some political activity while working with groups to get Republican candidates elected. “That appears to be precisely what the re-branded Office of Political Strategy and Outreach will do,” Issa said Friday.
Obama said David Simas, a top adviser grappling with problems with his health care rollout, will lead the new effort. Simas also will try to help Democrats retain control of the Senate and evaluate political support for the president’s agenda.
Helping Democrats maintain control of the Senate is crucial to Obama’s hopes of getting his priorities through Congress in the last two years of his presidency.
Obama when closing the office in 2011 shifted its director, Patrick Gaspard, to run the national party headquarters before choosing him last year as ambassador to South Africa. Congressional Democrats have since been grumbling that no one inside the White House is focused on the political environment, with their jobs on the line and tied to Obama’s performance.
Issa said his House committee has jurisdiction over the Office of Special Counsel and it will subject the White House decision and the ongoing work of the reconstituted office to “appropriate scrutiny and oversight.”
Simas will advise the president on the political climate, handle requests for campaign appearances and coordinate strategy with the Democratic National Committee and other national and local party operations. The White House said he’ll also tell administration officials what they can do legally when they get involved in political activity.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
NEW YORK MAYOR USING SAME COMPANY THAT CREATED OBAMA’S WEBSITE
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration awarded a $10-million-plus contract to update the city’s non-emergency call system to the same company fired for the botched ObamaCare rollout, according to The New York Daily News. The administration awarded the contract to Montreal-based CGI on December 31, just hours before Democrat Bill de Blasio was sworn in as mayor.
The contract was approved because Bloomberg considers the 311 hotline one of the legacies of his three terms, the newspaper said. However, rival companies and other critics of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications’ contract say CGI has little if any experience managing 311 call centers.
The Obama administration earlier this month didn’t renew its contract with a CGI subsidiary to work on HealthCare.gov, after technical problems severely slowed insurance enrollment on the site.
The contract will cost New York taxpayers $10 million this year and potentially tens of millions more in future years, according to the newspaper, which also said the city controller is conducting a review. CGI is defending Clinton is in…the deal, saying the contract was awarded through a “full and open competition.”BESTa council made up of village elders. Such councils are not legally binding in India, but they are seen as the will of the local community. The councils decide on social norms in the village and in some cases they dictate the way women can dress or who they can marry. Those who flout the councils risk being ostracized. Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, said, “They are dead set against giving basic human rights to women,” she said. “These are non-constitutional bodies and the West Bengal government should take stringent action against them.”
Subalpur is about 110 miles north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.
Four years ago, a village council in Birbhum district ordered a young woman paraded naked through the village. She was accused of falling in love with a man from a different caste.
In October, a teenager was gang-raped on two consecutive days in a Kolkata suburb. She was later set on fire when she refused to withdraw a police complaint against the men who had raped her. She died in a hospital last month leading to widespread protests in the city.
Earlier this month, a Danish tourist was gang-raped in New Delhi by a group of men when she stopped to ask for directions to her hotel.
India’s Supreme Court has in the past issued opinions condemning the councils as illegal bodies. Several legal organizations are pushing Parliament to pass a comprehensive law that would make edicts by local councils illegal.
MORE STATE CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS WANT MARIJUANA LEGALIZED
New Hampshire
New Hampshire Representative Steve Vaillancourt thinks it is time to legalize marijuana. But even he was surprised by this month’s House vote in favor of his bill. “I’ve said all along that I was surprised that it passed – obviously pleasantly surprised,” said the Manchester Republican.
The bill is now in the hands of the House Ways and Means Committee, which will hold a public hearing this week. It must return to the House floor and pass the full House again. It would then face a tough fight in the Republican-controlled Senate, which killed a bill last year that would have decriminalized marijuana possession. Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, has vowed to veto the bill if it reaches her desk.
New Jersey
New Jersey would join Colorado and Washington as the only states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana under legislation the head of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee said he was preparing to introduce.
Senator Nick Scutari, D-Union, who is also a municipal prosecutor in Linden, said marijuana legalization in New Jersey would generate much-needed tax revenue while also freeing up law enforcement resources to focus on more dangerous drug use, such as prescription pill abuse. “The bottom line is the current drug laws aren’t working,” he told reporters during a conference call Friday. “The only people who should be against this are the drug dealers.
Governor Christie has said numerous times that he doesn’t believe marijuana should be legal in New Jersey, a position his spokesman emphasized on Friday when asked about Scutari’s proposal.
Hawaii
She promised she hasn’t inhaled, but House Majority Floor Leader Rita Cabinillais looking to marijuana to solve some of Hawaii financial troubles.
Cabanilla said she hopes to legalize cultivation, manufacturing and exporting of marijuana and marijuana food products in Hawaii to pay off the state’s billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities as well as make infrastructure repairs and fund public education and human services programs. “This state would turn into a manufacturing state. Can you imagine factories that would be making ‘Maui Wowie’ cookies and making marijuana macadamia nut candy for export? I think that would be wonderful,” said Cabanilla, who represents Ewa Villages, Ewa Beach, Ewa Gentry, Ocean Pointe and West Loch.
Hawaii has some $25 billion in debts, encompassing the state retirement system, the public employee union health fund and outstanding bonds. The state also needs billions in repairs for roads, schools and infrastructure.
Some of her colleagues support the plan, Cabanilla said, but won’t necessarily come out and say it. “I am not even a fan of it. But if that is what it takes for our state to be in the forefront where we can fix our roads, we can build more affordable housing, we can help the homeless — that is the route we should go. “I don’t agree that our people should be using it. But I mean, if those countries that have accepted it for their people and they have laws in place for it, who am I to judge?” Cabanilla said with a shrug and a smile.
A legal marijuana manufacturing industry could mean billions of dollars to Hawaii. The state of Colorado made $1.6 billion in two weeks just by selling it. How much do you think we’re going to make for producing it and selling it? When we are the best, we are the best. We have the best marijuana in the world. I haven’t tried it, but the people that have tried it say, ‘Wow!’”
Contact Malia Zimmerman at Malia@hawaiireporter.com
And in Washington DC
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that legal marijuana sellers should have access to banks, and he indicated the Justice Department was preparing guidelines that would help pot shops cope with the challenge of running their businesses in cash.
But a yellow light from the Justice Department may not be enough. As long as pot remains a so-called Schedule I drug on par with ecstasy and heroine, banks have plenty to lose by transacting with marijuana companies. Even with a signal that the feds won’t pursue them, banks could still face punishment from zealous prosecutors, or be forced to surrender their charter for violating federal money-laundering statutes. “Everyone has taken a position that it’s just too risky,” Robert Rowe, a lawyer for the American Bankers Association, told me recently. And the nature of the guidance remains to be seen.
And now in Colorado……
Elliott Klug is not a criminal. But he sure acts like one. His pockets bulge with cash. He pays off his suppliers and employees with rolls of small, well-circulated bills. And once a month, he stuffs two hockey bags with about $20,000 each and heads off to pay the sales taxes he owes the City of Denver and state of Colorado on his marijuana sales.
“It’s kind of dangerous,” he says, referring to the trip to the treasury. “But those of us who have been interested in legalizing cannabis have been in the scary business for a long time. It’s part of the process.”
QUEBEC FIRE KILLS 32
L’ISLE-VERTE, QUEBEC – Crews pulled just two more bodies from the ice-covered rubble of a Quebec retirement home on the third day of the excruciating search, bringing to 10 the number of confirmed dead from a massive fire. The effort to recover another 22 people presumed killed will resume this morning. The cause of Thursday’s blaze in the small town of L’Isle-Verte remains under investigation.
MULTIPLE GRAMMY AWARD WINNER’S FATHER KNIFED
A woman accused of stabbing the father of singer Mary J. Blige has been arraigned on a charge of attempted murder. A judge set $500,000 bond Friday for Cheryl White of Battle Creek. Police say she stabbed 63-year-old Thomas Blige in the neck Thursday outside his Battle Creek, Michigan, apartment. He’s in critical condition at a Kalamazoo hospital.
Blige was attacked while confronting White, who was deflating his vehicle tires. Defense attorney Jeff Schroder says self-defense will be White’s likely defense. The two had dated for five years.
Mary Blige is a Grammy award winner whose hits include “Real Love,” ”No More Drama” and “Family Affair.
CNN AND HEADLINE NEWS CHANGING NETWORK PROGRAMMING
CNN and HLN “laid off more than 40 senior journalists in its newsgathering operations” at the end of 2013, Matthew Garrahan reports in the Financial Times.
The cuts “coincide with changes to the network’s programming.” CNN President Jeff Zucker “has hired new presenters and diversified CNN’s output, adding documentary and reality series to its traditional live news coverage.”
The layoffs were concentrated in Washington, Atlanta and Los Angeles, Garrahan reports.
A CNN spokesperson said it would add about 100 people to its headcount this year, adding that the network was investing in journalism. “We’re expanding the definition of news,” she said. “We’re not abandoning news by any stretch of the imagination . . . there will be more people working at CNN today than last year.”
GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER ADMITS
“I WAS A COUPLE OF SHEETS TO THE WIND”
In an interview with the U.K’s Telegraph Cate Blanchett admitted to being “a tad tipsy” when she gave her acceptance speech for winning Best Actress in a Drama at the 2014 Golden Globes.
“Unfortunately my category came up rather late in the evening so I was a couple of sheets to the wind,” she told the paper, giggling. “Once your name is read out it’s a high like no other, so I can’t remember a lot. I hope I didn’t do too many things I’ll regret.”
NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL SAYS “LET KIDS BE KIDS”
Ripping up the playground rulebook is having incredible effects on children at an Auckland, New Zealand, school. Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don’t cause bedlam, the principal says. The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing.
Principal Bruce McLachlan rid the school of playtime rules as part of a successful university experiment. “We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over.
Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the wheel of a car in high school, he said.
“When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an adult’s perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they don’t.”
Swanson School signed up to the study by AUT and Otago University just over two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play. However, the school took the experiment a step further by abandoning the rules completely, much to the horror of some teachers at the time, he said.
When the university study wrapped up at the end of last year the school and researchers were amazed by the results. Mudslides, skateboarding, bullrush and tree climbing kept the children so occupied the school no longer needed a timeout area or as many teachers on patrol.
Instead of a playground, children used their imagination to play in a “loose parts pit” which contained junk such as wood, tyres and an old fire hose.
“The kids were motivated, busy and engaged. In my experience, the time children get into trouble is when they are not busy, motivated and engaged. It’s during that time they bully other kids, graffiti or wreck things around the school.”
Parents were happy too because their children were happy, he said. But this wasn’t a playtime revolution, it was just a return to the days before health and safety policies came to rule.
AUT professor of public health Grant Schofield, who worked on the research project, said there are too many rules in modern playgrounds. “The great paradox of cotton-woolling children is it’s more dangerous in the long-run.” Society’s obsession with protecting children ignores the benefits of risk-taking, he said.
“Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks, meaning they work out consequences. You can’t teach them that. They have to learn risk on their own terms. It doesn’t develop by watching TV. They have to get out there.”
The research project morphed into something bigger when plans to upgrade playgrounds were stopped due to over-zealous safety regulations and costly play equipment. ”There was so many ridiculous health and safety regulations and the kids thought the static structures of playgrounds were boring.”
When researchers – inspired by their own risk-taking childhoods – decided to give children the freedom to create their own play, principals shook their heads but eventually four Dunedin schools and four West Auckland schools agreed to take on the challenge, including Swanson Primary School.
It was expected the children would be more active, but researchers were amazed by all the behavioural pay-offs. The final results of the study will be collated this year. Schofield urged other schools to embrace risk-taking. “It’s a no brainer. As far as implementation, it’s a zero-cost game in most cases. All you are doing is abandoning rules,” he said.
- © Fairfax NZ News
HAPPY CRUISE TURNS SOUR
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating how more than 300 people have fallen ill on board a ship cruising the Caribbean. The CDC said Saturday that health officials would board Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas Sunday, when it is scheduled to dock at St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
TP’D HOUSE DESTROYED BY FIRE
A family in Alabama burned their house to the ground after trying to get rid of toilet paper hanging from a tree by setting it on fire.
Cheryl Crausewell said local children had tp’d her house and garden on Saturday, and that while it had not been a major issue some remained stuck in a magnolia tree.
Speaking to local TV station WBRC, Ms Crausewell explained how she and her son went out to clean up the rest of the mess and, thinking they might burn away the last remnants of toilet paper, decided to set it on fire with a lighter.
Unfortunately, wind blew the lit piece across the yard, spreading fire to nearby grass, then the back yard, and finally a tank of propane next to a barbecue.
“It just popped out into a little patch and we tried to put it out and it just kept going, so I was trying to keep it from going down the front porch and came down the bank and around the back of the house,” she said.
Reports suggested the fire spread in a matter of seconds, and had soon claimed the house itself in the small town of Dora, Alabama, near Birmingham.
Ms Crausewell, her son, her elderly aunt, her mother and her aunt’s caregiver were all at home when the fire started around 2pm, but WBRC reported that everyone was able to get out safely.
The family said they had home owner’s insurance, and planned to build a new home on the same plot of land.
“I just realise life is really precious,” Ms Crausewell said. “I mean, you know that already but it just brings it home how precious life is and all these things really don’t matter.”
******************************
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Too many “theologians” are dying by degrees.
****************************
To See All Ray’s News Archives Click Below:
http://christiannewsfromray.blogspot.com/CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
Sunday, January 26, 2014