December 19, 2013

NY US attorney: Indian diplomat treated very well

A federal prosecutor ventured into the tense relationship between the U.S. and India on Wednesday, defending the arrest and strip-search of an Indian diplomat held on visa charges and saying she was treated very well, even given coffee and offered food while detained.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who made the highly unusual move of issuing a lengthy statement addressing the arrest and issues not in a criminal complaint, said diplomat Devyani Khobragade was afford courtesies most Americans wouldn't get — such as being allowed to make phone calls for two hours to arrange child care and sort out personal matters — after she was discretely arrested by U.S. Department of State agents outside her children's Manhattan school.

Khobragade was arrested last week on charges she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national. Prosecutors say the maid received less than $3 per hour for her work.

Bharara said Khobragade, who has pleaded not guilty, wasn't handcuffed, restrained or arrested in front of her children. And he said that while she was "fully searched" in private by a female deputy marshal, the move was a standard safety practice all defendants undergo.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/NY-US-attorney-Indian-diplomat-treated-very-well-5073891.php

December 19, 2013

(OH) First person in Northeast Ohio arrested under 'hidden compartment' law

For the first time in Northeast Ohio, state troopers made an arrest under the state's new "hidden compartment" law.

The bust happened yesterday on the turnpike in Lorain County.

They pulled over the driver for speeding, but then troopers noticed several wires running to the back of the car.

Those wires then led them directly to a hidden compartment.

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/2013/11/20/trap-car-law/3655713/

December 18, 2013

At 61 She Lives in Basement While 87-Year-Old Dad Travels

Eighty-seven-year-old Lew Manchester has just returned from a three-week trip touring Buddhist temples in Laos and cruising the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. His 61-year-old daughter Lee lives year-round in the basement of her friend’s Cape Cod cottage, venturing into the winter cold to get to the bathroom.

Lew is making the most of his old age. Lee is paring back and lightening her load as she looks ahead to her later years. Both worked all their lives, both saved what they could. Yet Lew, a son of the Great Depression and former company man, and Lee, a baby boomer who has pursued careers as an entrepreneur and a mid-level manager, are winding up in two very different economic strata.

“Timing is everything and my dad’s timing with jobs, real estate and retirement benefits was better,” said Lee.

While plenty of baby boomers, born from 1946 to 1964, have become affluent and many elderly around the U.S. face financial hardship, the wealth disparity of this father and daughter is emblematic of a broad shift occurring around the country. A rising tide of graying baby boomers is less secure financially and has a lower standard of living than their aged parents.

The median net worth for U.S. households headed by boomers aged 55 to 64 was almost 8 percent lower, at $143,964, than those 75 and older in 2011, according to Census Bureau data. Boomers lost more than other groups in the stock market and housing bust of 2008, and many also lost their jobs in the aftermath at a critical point in their productive years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-18/at-61-she-lives-in-basement-while-87-year-old-dad-travels.html

December 18, 2013

Jerry Brown, urged to run for president, won't rule out 2016 bid

If he weren’t the nation’s oldest governor, a ripe 75, Jerry Brown would automatically be counted among serious Democratic candidates for president in 2016.

He boasts a household name, an impressive list of accomplishments in the country’s most populous state — a state some once deemed ungovernable — glowing national media coverage and a deep familiarity with the pitfalls and rigors of a White House bid, having run three times before.

Now, some are pushing Brown to consider another try for the White House, even if it means taking on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the prohibitive, if still undeclared, Democratic favorite.

“I think Jerry is precisely what America needs,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, the leader of a national nurses union and a strong political ally of Brown. “He has the courage of his convictions, which we haven’t seen in a very long while.”

Brown, who is up for reelection in 2014, has not yet stated his intention to seek another term, though he has raised millions of dollars for what would appear to be an easy campaign.


http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-jerry-brown-president-2016-20131217,0,5894416.story#ixzz2nriNcWSI

December 18, 2013

Ex-EPA Official Who Faked CIA Jobs Gets 32-Month Sentence

A former high-ranking U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official who skipped years of work by faking assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency was sentenced to 32 months in prison for stealing government property.

John Beale, 65, collected paychecks from about 2000 through this year despite absences from work totaling about 2 1/2 years that he explained by falsely claiming he was working for the CIA.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle sentenced Beale today in Washington, calling his actions “unbelievably egregious” and “blatantly fraudulent.”

Beale’s crime “really is a stain on the entire federal workforce,” Huvelle said. She declined to fine him, saying “he is paying a hefty amount in every which way.” Beale has paid back $886,186 and agreed to forfeit about $507,000 more.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-18/ex-epa-official-who-faked-cia-jobs-gets-32-month-sentence.html

Beale created a fake CIA persona, writing weekly entries in his electronic calendar titled “DO oversight” that indicated days he purportedly worked at the spy agency’s directorate of operations, according to sentencing memos by his lawyer and prosecutors.

He told colleagues and managers he was working for “Langley,” the northern Virginia city where CIA headquarters is located.

As part of his deception, Beale told an EPA manager in June 2011 that his work for the spy agency would require him to be out of the office for extended periods.

He didn’t come to work at the EPA for the next 18 months while continuing to draw a paycheck and celebrating his purported retirement from the environment agency with a dinner cruise on the Potomac River in September 2011.

December 18, 2013

Duck Dynasty guy's vile, yet unsurprising views on gays and civil rights

"Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson told GQ, unsurprisingly, that he doesn't get the whole gay thing.

"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men," Robertson told GQ's Drew Magary in the magazine's Janurary issue.

He then went on to describe, in detail, why he, a self-proclaimed vagina-loving man, doesn't understand the attaction.

So there's that. Oh, and also, he explained why blacks were happy during the Jim Crow days in Louisiana.

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Duck-Dynasty-guy-s-vile-yet-unsurprising-views-5075149.php

December 18, 2013

Millennial Craft-Makers Embrace Arm Knitting

When it comes to knitting, Lydia Schoenbein thought she had seen it all. The 73-year-old retired nursing-home supervisor from Morton, Ill., learned to knit and crochet when she was growing up in Germany and can make everything from socks and shawls to cable-knit sweaters.

So when her 22-year-old granddaughter, Carly Hill, visited and showed off her own creation—a crude-looking, ropelike cream scarf—"I was flabbergasted, to tell you the truth," recalls Ms. Schoenbein. The accessory hadn't exactly been handmade. It was the product of a new cultural yarn: arm knitting.

An increasingly popular activity among younger do-it-yourself enthusiasts, arm knitting uses the forearms in lieu of knitting needles.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304011304579220660554732336?mod=trending_now_3

Great video

December 18, 2013

Freedom march ends in tears: 150 Sudanese refugees imprisoned after fleeing 100 miles to Jerusalem

In the largest and most dramatic demonstration ever staged by African refugees in Israel, 150 Sudanese men who have been locked up in a monster immigration prison down south, some for over two years, stormed the Israeli government compound in Jerusalem yesterday. From about 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., they trudged through the snow that still lined the streets of the capital city after last weekend's record-setting blizzard, waving handmade signs in Hebrew and English and begging government officials to grant them asylum in Israel.

"No more prison! No more prison!" went one chant. Another: "Refugees' rights right now!"

As evening approached, they made a bold attempt to leave the main roadway and march up toward the Knesset (parliament) building. That's when a few dozen Israeli border cops stepped in, forming a human barricade around the group. All 150 refugees inside the circle either followed the cops' orders willingly or were tackled to the ground, one by one, and dragged onto two jumbo buses waiting to drive them back to their cold desert cells.

Many began sobbing near the end, while others chanted to deaf ears: "Freedom, yes! Prison, no!" A few left-wing Israeli supporters clung to the refugees' jackets, screaming, "They're HUMAN BEINGS!" as border cops ripped them away by their collars. News photographers elbowed past cops to capture the panic and agony in refugees' faces. The Reuters team even jumped onto the roof of a flimsy mobile home parked nearby (part of another man's protest outside Knesset headquarters) to capture the scene from above.

It was one half-hour of heartbreaking chaos — a quick, brutal end to the refugees' arduous journey across wintertime Israel.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/hella_tel_aviv/item/150_sudanese_refugees_sent_back_to_prison_after_fleeing_100_miles_to_jerusa

African Refugees Protest Detainment in Israel

Some arrived here on Tuesday in sturdy walking boots donated by local aid organizations; others came less equipped for the leftover snow on the ground, wearing sandals and house slippers.

They held placards bearing slogans like “Refugees but not criminals” and a verse invoking a biblical injunction against oppressing the stranger because “you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

The roughly 200 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea came to protest their treatment by the Israeli authorities, finishing a two-day journey. On Sunday they left a new “open” detention facility where they were being held in the Negev desert and walked for about six hours to Beersheba, the nearest city. They spent the night in the bus station there and another night at a kibbutz that had agreed to host them. They made the final leg of the journey by bus.

Once in Jerusalem, they gathered outside the Israeli prime minister’s office and marched to the Parliament building.

It was the latest round in the long-running political, legal and emotional struggle of the African migrants and their Israeli supporters against a government that is committed to clamping down on “infiltrators,” the term it uses for those who enter the country surreptitiously.

The protest came after Parliament last week approved an amendment to Israel’s Prevention of Infiltration Law. It allows for the detention of migrants who enter the country illegally for up to a year without trial and allows the state to hold those already in Israel indefinitely in the open detention facility. The amendment replaced previous legislation that allowed for detention without trial for up to three years. Israel’s Supreme Court overturned that law in September, ruling that it violated principles of human dignity and freedom. Local human rights groups have already petitioned the Supreme Court against the new measures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/world/middleeast/african-refugees-protest-detainment-in-israel.html

December 18, 2013

Israel spurns blood of Ethiopian-born lawmaker

The refusal of Israel's equivalent of the Red Cross to accept blood from an Ethiopian Jewish lawmaker sparked demands on Wednesday for a review of guidelines seen as deeply discriminatory.

The rejection of the blood from Pnina Tamano-Shata by an official of Magen David Adom came at a donor drive outside parliament and was caught on video footage which was widely aired by Israeli television channels.

"Under health ministry directives, we are unable to accept blood from donors of Ethiopian Jewish origin," the health official is heard to say as he spurns the donation.

http://www.france24.com/en/20131211-israel-spurns-blood-ethiopian-born-lawmaker/

She recalled that 16 years ago, the revelation that health authorities were secretly throwing away blood donations from Ethiopian Jews had sparked a massive protest in Jerusalem.

Israeli Parliament Throws Out Blood Bank Collectors
The leader of Israel’s parliament ordered a blood-collection crew to leave the premises on Wednesday after it refused to take the blood of an Ethiopian-born lawmaker,

“Under health ministry directives, we are unable to accept blood donors of Ethiopian Jewish origin,” a health official at the blood drive said, according to AFP.

The Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, runs the country’s blood bank service and has a policy to not take blood from people who were born or have lived for more than a year since 1977 in a country where HIV is prevalent, the Jerusalem Post reports.

“I thought this was behind us, but now it turns out I was wrong,” said Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. “This unacceptable phenomenon has no place in the Knesset.”



Read more: Ethiopian-Born Israeli Lawmaker Blood Rejected | TIME.com http://world.time.com/2013/12/12/israeli-parliament-throws-out-blood-bank-collectors/

December 18, 2013

Opposition urges Netanyahu: Recognize gay rights in Israel

Opposition Knesset members used Tuesday’s plenary session to call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to openly take a stand on granting equal rights to the gay community in Israel.

As members of the LGBT community demonstrated outside the Knesset, MKs from the Labor Party and Meretz criticized the coalition for failing to pass legislation that would address this issue.

MK Stav Shaffir (Labor) noted the results of a survey conducted by Haaretz showing that 70% of the public supports granting full and equal rights to gays. "This government does not support the community. Whereas 70 percent of the population lives in 2013, the government straggles behind, caught somewhere in the 19th century," she said.

Shaffir listed the failed legislative initiatives thus far: “My bill, which proposed allowing same-sex couples to have recognized civil unions, was rejected by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation; a similar proposal by Yesh Atid disappeared since their last press conference. A prohibition on discrimination in hiring based on gender and a bill aimed at equalizing mortgage terms for same-sex couples were also rejected.”

MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), the first openly gay Israeli lawmaker, also assailed the prime minister: “In almost every major speech he’s given overseas in the last few years, he has used the LGTB community in Israel as a means to attack Iran. For that purpose we’re okay, showcasing Israel as a liberal paradise. I ask the prime minister what he has done to address the issue here. The truth is that for the last five years, during which he has headed the government, any advancement of the gay community toward full and equal legal rights has been frozen.”

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.564215