Police use patrol car to stop pit bull rampage in California

A police officer in California resorted to hitting two pit bulls with his patrol car to stop a neighborhood rampage in which the dogs attacked several people, including a city sanitation worker, and charged a woman pushing two children in a stroller.

One pit bull was killed and the other captured when the San Mateo officer rammed the dogs with his vehicle Wednesday, The San Francisco Chronicle reported (http://bit.ly/15eVWCi).

http://news.yahoo.com/police-patrol-car-stop-pit-bull-rampage-california-185647102.html

Obama to pass on meeting netanyahu during washington visit

Source: AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned trip to Washington in March is kicking up a diplomatic dust storm in the nation's capital.

On Thursday, the White House said President Barack Obama would not meet the prime minister when he comes to the U.S. to address a joint session of Congress. The official White House explanation was that Netanyahu's visit fell too close to the Israeli election and the Obama administration wanted to avoid the appearance of taking sides.

"As a matter of longstanding practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections, so as to avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country," National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said.

But the timing of Netanyahu's visit also gave the White House a convenient means of retaliating against the prime minister for his decision to accept an invitation from Republican leaders to address Congress. GOP lawmakers and Netanyahu worked out the arrangement without consulting with the White House or State Department, only alerting the Obama administration a few hours before the Israeli leader's trip was made public.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_NETANYAHU

Sheldon Silver, New York Assembly Leader, Is Arrested on Graft Charges

Source: NY Times

The speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was arrested on federal corruption charges on Thursday and accused of using the power of his office for more than a decade to secure millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks and then covering up his schemes, according to court documents.

Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, is accused of a range of corrupt dealings that capitalized on his official position. They include using his position to obtain corrupt payments misrepresented as referral fees from a law firm, funneling state research funds and other benefits to a doctor who in return referred asbestos claims to the law firm where the speaker worked, and secretly helping real estate developers win tax breaks.

In recent years, a steady parade of lawmakers in Albany have been charged with corruption, and the complaint against Mr. Silver outlines a capital culture rife with back-room dealing, where money and influence shape public policy for the benefit of private agendas.

Mr. Silver, 70, surrendered to agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation early on Thursday in Lower Manhattan, and the charges were announced at midday by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/nyregion/speaker-of-new-york-assembly-sheldon-silver-is-arrested-in-corruption-case.html

American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring

American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring to begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, the head of US Army Europe Lt. Gen Ben Hodges said during his first visit to Kiev on Wednesday.

The number of troops heading to the Yavoriv Training Area near the city of L'viv — which is about 40 miles from the Polish border — is still being determined, however.

The American training effort comes as part of a US State Department initiative "to assist Ukraine in strengthening its law enforcement capabilities, conduct internal defense, and maintain rule of law" Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Vanessa Hillman told Defense News.

After meeting with commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Anatoliy Pushnyakov and acting commander of the National Guard Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Kryvyenko during his visit, Hodges said he was "impressed by the readiness of both military and civil leadership to change and reform."

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/land/army/2015/01/21/ukraine-us-army-russia/22119315/

DEA secretly tracked Americans’ calls for over a decade, court document reveals

Source: Washington times

A new document reveals that the U.S. Department of Justice secretly kept track of Americans’ calls to foreign countries for more than a decade to track drug trafficking and other criminal activities.

The new database of stored calls was described in a filing Thursday in the case of a man accused of conspiring to unlawfully export goods to Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.


official said in the filing that the agency, which operates under the Justice Department, has long used administrative subpoenas — not federal court orders — to collect the metadata of U.S. calls to foreign countries “that were determined to have a demonstrated nexus to international drug trafficking and related criminal activities,” the Journal reported.

Although the court document only refers to outgoing calls, sources familiar with the program say it also collected data on incoming calls.





Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/17/dea-secretly-tracked-americans-calls-for-over-a-de/

'It's pork or nothing', French mayor tells pupils

A mayor in France has stirred up a hornet’s nest by deciding Muslim pupils at the local school will not be given an alternative meal to pork. The mayor has justified his stance by claiming it's in the name of secularism.

Another week in France and another row has broken out surrounding secularism or laïcité as it’s is called.

After town halls were told to remove nativity scenes because they were against the principle of “laicïté” one mayor in the south of France has used the same argument to justify “a pork or nothing” policy in his school.

From January 1st pupils in the little town of Sargé-lès-Le Mans in the Sarthe department of north-western France will not be offered a substitute meal if they don’t eat pork.

This will affect the 15 Muslim pupils in the school who cannot eat pork because it against the dietary rules of their religion. Eating pork is also against the rules of the Jewish religion but it is not believed there are any Jewish pupils at the school.

http://www.thelocal.fr/20141210/its-pork-or-nothing-french-mayor-tells-pupils

Note this predates the Charlie massacre.

Anti-French Protests in Niger Kill 10 as Rallies Hit Africa, Middle East, Asia

Source: Wall Street Journal

Protests in Niger left 10 people dead as rioters torched churches, wrecked bars and blocked several major roads during two days of demonstrations against a French magazine cover depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The violence was the latest in a wave of anti-French protests that has swept parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia after Charlie Hebdo lampooned Islam in its “survivors” issue published after the Jan. 7 attack on its Paris offices.

Although largely peaceful, some of the protests, led mostly by young men, have turned violent.

Coming just a week after dozens of world leaders joined a massive procession in Paris to condemn terror attacks and show their support for freedom of speech, the protests underscore the challenge France faces in defending long-held values without fueling resentment among Muslims, many of whom regard the Charlie Hebdo cover as blasphemy.


Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-french-protests-in-niger-kill-5-as-rallies-hit-africa-middle-east-asia-1421531073

The Streets of San Francisco Are Covered in Human Shit

Israel lobbies foreign powers to cut ICC funding

Source: Reuters

Israel is lobbying member-states of the International Criminal Court to cut funding for the tribunal in response to its launch of an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, officials said on Sunday.

ICC prosecutors said on Friday they would examine "in full independence and impartiality" crimes that may have occurred since June 13 last year. This allows the court to delve into the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza in July-August 2014 that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and 70 Israelis.

The decision came after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in the absence of peace talks and against strong opposition from Israel and the United States, requested ICC membership, which comes into effect on April 1.

Israel, which like the United States does not belong to the ICC, hopes to dent funding for the court that is drawn from the 122 member-states in accordance with the size of their economies, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday.


Read more: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0KR06720150118?irpc=932

Snark levels were on full blast for ‘Kohaku’

The 2014 edition of NHK’s venerated song contest, “Kohaku Uta Gassen,” broadcast on Dec. 31, was remarkable for several reasons, though the performance that generated the most remarks was the one by the equally venerated pop-rock group Southern All Stars, their first on the show in 31 years.

Getting the band to agree to perform was a coup for the public broadcaster because the All Stars have traditionally spent New Year’s Eve playing for fans in their home base of Yokohama, as they were this time, so NHK arranged for a live feed from the concert venue.

When SMAP leader Masahiro Nakai introduced the group, front man Keisuke Kuwata showed up on screen sporting a chobi-hige, which the Asahi Shimbun translated incorrectly as a “small beard.” It’s really a small mustache, the kind, as Asahi went on to say, that Charlie Chaplin wore in the movie “The Great Dictator,” a roundabout way of explaining that it’s a style made notorious by a certain 20th-century German chancellor.

After the usual pleasantries, the band played their 2013 single, “Peace and Hi-lite,” which the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun described as the “theme song of the Asahi Shimbun,” implying that it has a left-wing slant and thus clashed with the other token middle-aged rocker appearing on “Kohaku,” Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi, whom Bunshun labeled “the guru of the right.”

The media’s indirect way of describing the Southern All Stars moment softened the impact of the group’s perceived dig at authority, though whose authority they were digging at wasn’t stated. The mustache and the purport of the song, which Kuwata has described as being about Japan’s contentious relations with its neighbors, could have been aimed at the current administration, a supposition reinforced by a similarly irreverent moment that occurred at another recent All Stars concert when Kuwata clearly criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who happened to be in the audience. In any event, Kuwata apologized on Thursday, saying somewhat disingenuously that he intended nothing political and the mustache was simply for entertainment purposes, which may be true. The name of the band’s December tour was adapted from a popular 1970s variety show featuring comedian Cha Kato, whose trademark is a chobi-hige.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/01/17/national/media-national/snark-levels-full-blast-kohaku/#.VLsJYCeUc7Q