MIAMI (CBSMiami.com) – As some state lawmakers are calling for a re-thinking of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows people to defend themselves from danger without the need to first try to get away, an analysis of state data shows deaths due to self defense are up over 200 percent since the law took effect.

The shooting death of Trayvon Martin by an armed, self-appointed Central Florida crime watch volunteer who claimed he shot in self defense has sparked a national debate about Florida’s law, technically known as the Castle doctrine.

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Until 2005, it was generally considered self defense if someone tried to get into your home or invade your property, so long as you could show deadly force was the last resort. In 2005, the “Stand your Ground” law removed the need to retreat before using force, even in public.

That’s the justification George Zimmerman used when he shot and killed Miami Gardens teen Treyvon Martin, who was returning to his father’s fiance’s house from a convenience store visit when Zimmerman spotted him and deemed him suspicious. Before the police he called arrived, he claims Martin attacked him and he shot in fear for his life.

Police accepted his story, and let him go, sparking national outrage. Zimmerman remains free. .......

More at: MIAMI CBS

MIAMI (CBSMiami.com) – As some state lawmakers are calling for a re-thinking of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows people to defend themselves from danger without the need to first try to get away, an analysis of state data shows deaths due to self defense are up over 200 percent since the law took effect.

The shooting death of Trayvon Martin by an armed, self-appointed Central Florida crime watch volunteer who claimed he shot in self defense has sparked a national debate about Florida’s law, technically known as the Castle doctrine.

?w=300

Until 2005, it was generally considered self defense if someone tried to get into your home or invade your property, so long as you could show deadly force was the last resort. In 2005, the “Stand your Ground” law removed the need to retreat before using force, even in public.

That’s the justification George Zimmerman used when he shot and killed Miami Gardens teen Treyvon Martin, who was returning to his father’s fiance’s house from a convenience store visit when Zimmerman spotted him and deemed him suspicious. Before the police he called arrived, he claims Martin attacked him and he shot in fear for his life.

Police accepted his story, and let him go, sparking national outrage. Zimmerman remains free. .......

More at: MIAMI CBS

“The struggle continues, our work isn’t over,” were the words of Melissa Harris-Perry an hour after the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. I agree. Work within the African-American community, work within the criminal-justice system and work on a national level to further the debate over racial profiling, civil rights and “stand-your-ground” laws must continue. The power of racial profiling and the power of the gun lobby is a lethal combination in America.



Averri Liggins, 22, of Atlanta, chants while holding a picture of Trayvon Martin during a protest on July 14, 2013, in Atlanta. (David Goldman/AP)

As a former prosecutor, I never would have brought the Zimmerman case to court. There was a high burden of proof giving way to reasonable doubt. That said, as an African-American, I know it was a victory just putting Zimmerman on trial.

No doubt, there will be a civil suit, and Zimmerman will have to testify. The outcome may echo OJ Simpson’s civil trial, in which he was forced to testify and was found guilty. (I was on the prosecution team in the Simpson criminal case.) Today, the NAACP wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the government prosecute Zimmerman under the Civil Rights Act. So truth and justice might be found for Trayvon Martin—in several other courts of law.

Yet I still believe in the criminal-justice system, as I did after the Simpson verdict. The OJ case polarized America, dividing us among hard racial lines. African-Americans felt justified supporting OJ as a “payback” for all the profound injustices we have suffered at the hands of the criminal justice system. But OJ Simpson was the wrong poster child for that righteous campaign. He was no hero, framed by the police. He was a cold-blooded killer, guilty of a gruesome double murder. ..........

More at THE DAILY BEAST

Witness: Sanford police "Blew us off" in teen slaying

SANFORD, Fla. — WFTV reporter Daralene Jones spoke with a woman who heard a Sanford vigilante shoot a 17-year-old boy as he was walking home from a convenience store with a bag of candy.
The shooter, George Zimmerman, claimed self-defense in the killing, Sanford police said.
They said there was not enough evidence to arrest Zimmerman, fueling outrage around Central Florida and the nation.
However, witness Mary Cutcher said she knew the truth. Cutcher said police only took a two or three sentence statement from her, but it took about 30 minutes to tell WFTV the story.

"The cries stopped as soon as the gun went off, so I know it was the little boy," Cutcher said.
INTERVIEW: Witness talks to WFTV about teen slaying

Cutcher said a cry for help got her attention on the day Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in her backyard by Zimmerman, who was a neighborhood vigilante.

Cutcher said that until now, she ignored repeated attempts by national and local media to share what she saw, partially out of fear.

"We said, 'Is everything OK? And he just looked at us. Selma [another witness] asked him again, 'What's up, what's going on, everything OK? And he just said, 'Call the police,' kind of nonchalantly, kind of like, 'Leave me alone,' '' Cutcher said.
According to a partial police report, Cutcher is one of six witnesses that Sanford police took a statement from.
Cutcher said it was short, and police never questioned her in detail until after she repeatedly reached out to them.
"Blew us off, and I called him back again and I said, "I know this was not self-defense. There was no punching, no hitting going on at the time, no wrestling,'" Cutcher said.

Cutcher said she believes whatever confrontation there was, it ended before they got to her backyard. She also said she believes Zimmerman continued to chase Martin as he tried to get home.

More at link: http://www.wftv.com/news/news/witness-sanford-police-blew-us-teen-slaying/nLSqk/

As anyone who’s seen a yogurt commercial knows, our guts are teeming with bacteria. So, too, are our hands, feet, ears, and mouths.



But our brains?

Until recently, scientists would have said no way. The brain was long thought to be a kind of fortress, separated from the body by a virtually impenetrable barrier of specialized cells. Now, that view is beginning to shift, with increasing evidence that aliens can, and do, sneak in.

The latest evidence comes from a team of researchers in Canada, who found that a type of bacteria usually found in soil may make its way into some of our brains.

That possibility is “a mind-bending concept,” said Kathy Spindler, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the new work. If confirmed, the study would “upset the dogma that the brain is normally a sterile site,” said Vincent Young, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist also at the University of Michigan. If living bacteria help to maintain brain health in some way, disruptions to them, for example from antibiotics, could contribute to disease. (In other parts of the body, disruptions to native bacteria may play a role in some asthma, food allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, and even obesity, he added.)....

Indian billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla, founder of the world’s biggest maker of vaccines, will slash the price of polio immunization and introduce shots for diarrhea and pneumonia, undercutting Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc. (GSK)

Poonawalla, who set up the Serum Institute of India Ltd. in 1966, will use last year’s acquisition of a Dutch vaccine business to add the injectable form of polio inoculation to the oral drops the Pune, India-based company supplies to organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund, he said. The closely held group also plans to sell a low-cost pneumococcal shot to compete with Pfizer’s $4 billion Prevnar pneumonia vaccine by 2016.

The plan by Serum Institute, which says it supplies vaccines used to immunize two out of three children worldwide, will “revolutionize” efforts to eradicate polio that affects nerves and results in paralysis, said Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general at the World Health Organization. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a key funder of the effort to exterminate the malady, has backed the proposal as oral drops, made of live virus, carry the risk of infection.

“On May 30, Mr. Gates came over for a private dinner at my house,” and asked that Serum Institute remain family-owned, Poonawalla, 71, who also rears thoroughbred racehorses, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters. “The obvious reason was that, as soon as we sell the company, ‘big pharma’ would immediately double the price of vaccines.”

More at BUSINESSWEEK.COM

School shooting survivors arrive in Newtown


[font size = 0]Justin Jourdain, a 2008 graduate of Red Lake High School who was in the school during the shootings that occurred in 2005, poses with a Red Lake Band of Chippewa flag signed by students and residents of the reservation in Bemidji, Minn. Jourdain and others are taking two signed flags on a trip to Newtown, Conn., to offer comfort to the grieving community in the wake of the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. - Photo: AP / SL[/font size]

When members of Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation received a plaque from Columbine High School massacre survivors, they hoped the gift would stay with them.

The Columbine survivors presented it to them in 2005, after people at Red Lake – including five students – were gunned down in what was then the second most-deadly school shooting.

We hope you never pass this on, the Columbine survivors told them, but if a tragedy like this happens again, go help heal the community where it does.

Late Thursday morning, four survivors from the Red Lake massacre arrived in Newtown with that plaque, which they planned to give students at the town's middle school Thursday night. The survivors were among 13 Red Lake students and even more administrators who traveled to help those affected by the Dec. 14 Newtown shooting spree that left 20 children dead.

"They've just traveled almost 30 hours driving cross-country in the middle of all this weather to get out here and to be with the families," coordinator Stephanie Hope Smith said in front of Newtown's Edmond Town Hall.

If massacre of 20 children in Newtown doesn't bring gun control, what will?



Disbelief, horror, revolt: This is what we all felt when the news arrived. By its magnitude and cruelty, it surpassed everything else. We were not ready for it. Earlier tragedies should have immunized us. But they didn’t. Not to this violence, to this bloodshed.

A young man assassinates his mother with her own weapons. Then, he goes to an elementary school and murders 20 children, one after the other, firing more and more bullets into their small bodies.

Why?

The need, the desire to understand is as strong as the pain itself.

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