Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 December 2012 08.20 ES

The British government has warned that the official authorisation of Israel's first settlement university will create another hurdle in the peace process.

Israel's defence secretary, Ehud Barak, approved the upgrade of a college in the settlement of Ariel, 11 miles inside the West Bank, earlier this week.

In a statement released on Thursday, the British foreign office minister Alistair Burt said the UK was deeply disappointed by the decision.

"Ariel is beyond the Green Line in a settlement that is illegal according to international law. This decision will deepen the presence of the settlements in the Palestinian territories and will create another obstacle to peace," the statement said.

MORE...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/28/israel-britain-west-bank-university

Source: Associated Press

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been busy working his way through the 282 bills passed by the Legislature during the final weeks of the 2012 session.

The governor's office said he signed 53 bills on Friday and vetoed four. He has acted on a total of 186 bills and 95 are pending review.

Snyder's actions included signing abortion regulations that supporters say protect women but opponents consider an assault on the right to terminate pregnancy. He vetoed legislation he originally sought to overhaul Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan because he objected to provisions preventing businesses from providing elective abortion coverage in employee health plans.

Read more: http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/story.aspx?id=841985#.UN8vv2_Qs2A

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Damn few details on what these 282 bills are. Expect some surprises Michiganians.

UPDATE: I found what appears to be a partial list of bills passed and sent to the Gov. (you will need to cut and paste the link into your browser)

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(1qkh4xiepafvkc55pi2hydr0))/mileg.aspx?page=BillRecentActivity

Russia and India acknowledge that Iran has the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear programme but are urging it to observe relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This is what a joint statement on the results of President Putin’s visit to Indian notes, a Voice of Russia correspondent reports.

It is possible to settle the situation dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme only by political means and through diplomacy, and also by establishing a dialogue.

The parties concerned came to the conclusion that unilateral sanctions are counter-productive.

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http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_12_24/Iran-has-right-to-pursue-peaceful-nuclear-programme-Russia-India/

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran started on Friday six days of naval drills in the Strait of Hormuz, the official IRNA news agency reported, maneuvers aimed at showcasing its military capabilities in what is a vital oil and gas shipping route.

Naval commander Habibollah Sayyari said the "Velayat 91" drills would last until Wednesday across an area of about 1 million square kilometers in the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and northern parts of the Indian Ocean, IRNA said.

Sayyari said the goal of the maneuvers were to show "the armed forces' military capabilities" in defending Iran's borders as well as sending a message of peace and friendship to neighboring countries.

Iranian officials have often said Iran could block the strait - through which 40 percent of the world's sea-borne oil exports pass - if it came under military attack over its disputed nuclear program.

MORE...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50310102#.UN8rFW_Qs2A

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says "the hour for immediate action is here" on a deal to avert the fiscal cliff.

The president says he remains "optimistic" that an agreement can be reached in Congress before a looming year-end deadline to avoid tax increases and spending cuts.

If Congress can't reach a deal, the president says Congress should allow a vote on a basic package that would preserve tax cuts for middle-class Americans while extending unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and working toward a foundation for a broader deal.

The president says an hourlong meeting Friday with congressional leaders was "good and constructive."

Read more: http://newsok.com/obama-says-immediate-action-needed-on-fiscal-cliff/article/feed/480794

Source: Rawstory

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Friday that reauthorizes and extends the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a law that was originally meant to retroactively grant legal immunity to the Bush administration and telecoms, along with temporary authorization to wiretap non-Americans inside the United States without first having to acquire a warrant.

The law was set to expire at midnight on Friday, but the Senate’s vote means it will almost certainly be extended through December 2017.

Before passing the extension by a vote of 73-23, lawmakers blocked amendments by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Jeff Merkley (R-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) that would have narrowed the window of reauthorization, added more oversight to the program and required annual reports to Congress on the privacy impacts of the program.

The extension continues warrantless wiretapping powers that apply even in the event that one person participating in the communication is an American citizen, despite the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for court oversight. It was originally passed in 2008 as a means of granting top Bush administration officials and the telecommunications companies legal immunity against suits over wiretaps that even the former president once claimed to be illegal.
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1xKlt)

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/28/senate-votes-to-extend-warrantless-wiretapping-powers/

Source: Politics365

Does Rahm Emanuel have a plan for a situation that would appear to be a state of emergency in the city of Chicago? It would appear not.

Chicago has logged its 500th homicide of 2012. The last time Chicago reached the 500 homicides was 2008 when there were 512 homicides. Last year, there were 435 homicides in Chicago.

The Chicago Police Department Chicago said that a man named Nathaniel Jackson was found on the sidewalk outside a store with a gunshot wound to the head on late Thursday evening. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office pronounced Jackson dead early Friday. Later on Thursday, another man was murdered in the Austin neighborhood on the city’s West Side.

Most of the deaths were gun related. The issue of Chicago’s homicide rate never came up during the presidential campaign of 2012. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. spoke on the crisis on CNN this morning.

Read more: http://politic365.com/2012/12/28/chicago-hits-500-homicides-highest-in-4-years/

PHOENIX -- Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday that he plans to deploy his armed volunteer posse to protect Valley schools from the kind of violence that happened in the Connecticut shooting tragedy. Arpaio believes having armed law officers around schools will deter would-be criminals from trying anything violent and, possibly, stop them if they do.

“I have the authority to mobilize private citizens and fight crime in this county,” Arpaio said.

Arpaio first started using his posse to protect malls during the holiday shopping season in 1993 in response to violent incidents in prior years. Since then he said malls where his posse members are on patrol have had zero violent re-occurrences and patrols by his all-volunteer squad during the 2012 shopping season netted a record 31 arrests.

Arpaio said since the program has worked so well in malls he believes it will work just as well protecting schools.

“We're not talking about placing the posse in the schools right now but in the outlying -- the perimeters of the school -- to detect any criminal activity.”

MORE...

http://www.azfamily.com/news/Sheriff-Arpaio-is-sending-posse-to-protect-schools-185012341.html

Most of us long for the authenticity of old-fashioned recipes, in which farm-fresh ingredients contribute honest flavors. Free-range eggs, with their sunny, orange yolks; freshly churned butter sparkling with the last drops of its briny whey: This is the way food ought to taste.

Thoughtful shoppers can resurrect some of those flavors by shopping carefully at farmstands and farmers markets. But one great heritage ingredient missing from most tables today is lard. Used in kitchens for centuries, lard (rendered from pork fat) has a unique mix of different types of fats that give it wonderful qualities, especially for baking and frying. If you’ve never eaten foods cooked with lard, you’re in for a lovely surprise when you do.

Like most animal fats, lard is higher in saturated fat than most vegetable oils. Lard’s reputation was tarnished decades ago when manufacturers persuaded us that Crisco and Parkay, which are vegetable oils that are “hydrogenated” using chemical processes to change the oils to solids, were better choices than traditional animal fats. Then, in the ’90s, when the medical establishment began to hammer on saturated fats as the culprits in heart disease, lard’s shunning was complete.

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New research shows that saturated fat is not the heart-slayer it was once deemed to be, whereas the trans fats found in hydrogenated fats are worse for us than we realized. (Learn more in The Fats You Need for a Healthy Diet.) It turns out that the trans fats in hydrogenated vegetable margarines and shortenings are lopsided in their ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, and those ratios have been linked to heart disease

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Look to lard for flaky, tender biscuits and pie crusts, and discover how its high smoke point (370 degrees Fahrenheit) makes it ideal for frying. Grit magazine’s lard book includes information on how to locate sources for lard from pastured pigs and instructions to render it yourself.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/cooking-with-lard-zmgz12djzkon.aspx?page=2#ixzz2GMoWTUXk

<b>comment</b>We tried lard a couple of years ago after reading another article from this magazine about it. Finally a pie-crust and fried eggs just look my Grandma, rest her soul, used to make. As with most everything, use in moderation...

GE has refused to add a warning to their bulbs’ packaging even though it has been known for many years that, when heated, Teflon-coated “nonstick” cooking pans can release a compound that kills birds and causes flu-like “polymer fume fever” in humans. In our October/November 2012 Dear MOTHER article, reader Lynn Chong detailed her efforts to convince GE to add a warning label to their light bulb packaging after a bulb killed 19 birds in her coop.

Chong’s story about Teflon dangers prompted us to research the history of Teflon and other perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs). Turns out there’s a great deal more to the story of DuPont’s Teflon than the deadly danger it presents to birds. Here’s the timeline we compiled from reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post and from scientific literature.

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Meanwhile, beware of GE light bulbs coated with DuPont’s Teflon — they can kill your chickens. And if you think a bulb promoted as shatter-proof for “rough service” might be a good choice in your kids’ bedrooms, think again. If Teflon products kill chickens overnight, you probably don’t want to use them anywhere in your home.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-community/teflon-dangers-zmgz12jfzkon.aspx#ixzz2GMn0sOHt