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Contents contributed and discussions participated by sgardner35

sgardner35

Yellowstone National Park bison attacks: Tourists need common sense - 0 views

  • The latest attack Tuesday was an especially violent scene, as a bison charged a 62-year-old Australian man and flung him into the air several times.
  • A male American bison can weigh up to 907 kilograms, bigger than a Smart car. They have horns that aren’t just for grubbing around for tasty shoots.
  • or almost twice as fast as Usain Bolt’s world-record speed in the 100-meter dash.
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  • Any less than 23m is unsafe, they warn. Also, stop staring at your camera or phone, be aware of your surroundings, and know that Yellowstone’s wild animals are free to roam where they please.
  • Some who encounter bears in Yello
  • wstone aren’t so fortunate. Grizzly and black bears have killed more than 40 people in Yellowstone in the past 30 years.
sgardner35

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17: Russia reveals key Ukrainian witness Evgeni Agapov - 0 views

  • The Russian investigative committee says an aviation armaments mechanic “voluntarily crossed the state border of the Russian Federation and expressed a desire to cooperate with the Russian investigation.”
  • “As now there is new evidence of the reliability of the words of the witness, as well as various reports concerning the doubts of certain media outlets about the real existence of this witness, we decided to disclose [the name of the witness],” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
  • In his statement, Agapov reveals a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft left the Ukrainian air base and “set out for a military task”.The aircraft returned without its ammunition on the day of the crash, on July 17, 2014.
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  • “It was an accident and happened in combat conditions, the pilot just confused the planes.”
  • The Ukraine government claims none of its jets were in the air when the flight went down yet the Russian government released radar data proving otherwise. Russia has since been accused of faking the pictures.
  • Earlier this week, the Russian maker of the Buk air defence missile system concluded the flight was downed by an older version of the BUK-M1 system, which is no longer in service with the Russian military but is used within Ukrainian arsenals.
sgardner35

In Trinidad, Former FIFA Executive Seen as 'Our Robin Hood' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad — In one moment, Jack Warner is on TV telling his countrymen he fears for his life. An hour later, he's standing on a packed narrow street at a political rally, boasting that he fears nothing.
  • That's how many in Trinidad see the 72-year-old Warner, now a member of Parliament. If he stole from the rich and gave to the poor, then they see no harm done
  • "If he didn't live so long, he would have died a hero," said Sunity Maharaj, a journalist who has long followed Warner. "He would have been the story of the little boy who grew up to be FIFA vice president."
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  • Warner doesn't hide his hubris and says the world's perception of him is nowhere near the reality.
  • Warner said Wednesday night he has compiled reams of documents to expose wrongdoing, adding that when he heard FIFA President Sepp Blatter was planning to resign, he wrote him and urged his immediate departure.
  • Spending a night in jail after his arrest last week was a good thing, he said, because he got to tell other Trinidadian leaders they should clean up the prisons.
  • "Sometimes I deliberately break my rear-view mirror, because it is not always pleasant to look back," said Raymond Tim Kee, the mayor of Port-of-Spain who also leads the soccer association that Warner once controlled financially. "Since I assumed office two years ago, one of the first things I pursued was rebranding because what I realized was the football federation at the time had lost credibility and there were a lot of questions and fears because of all that was going on that time."
  • "Gandhi once said that all through history, there have been tyrants," Warner said. "But in the end, they fall."
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    Interesting how he says the worlds perception of him isn't close to the reality. 
sgardner35

U.S. Surveillance in Place Since 9/11 Is Sharply Limited - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The passage of the bill — achieved over the fier
  • ce opposition of the Senate majority leader — will allow the government to restart surveillance operations, but with new restrictions.
sgardner35

Hong Kong's Tiananmen Vigil Adopts More Local Approach - WSJ - 0 views

  • , organizers this year adopted a decidedly more local approach to the event to embrace the city’s own democracy movement.
  • The organizers of the event, the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, estimated that 130,000 attended, above the average of about 100,000 of the previous five years.
  • The movement energized a whole generation of young people in the city, who started to question whether the Alliance’s event, with its focus on fighting for democracy in mainland China, fully reflected Hong Kong’s own plight.
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  • “Our strategy is to link the two things, so people can see that democracy in Hong Kong and in China are part of the same resistance,” said Lee Cheuk-Yan, former chairman of the Alliance in an interview before the vigil. “The two fights are the same fight”.
  • Some student groups decided this year not to attend the main vigil and to organize their own events. At the University of Hong Kong, hundreds of people, mostly student, gathered on a campus for a more sedate affair that mostly involved discussions on democracy and autonomy of Hong Kong.
  • where they burned Communist flags as well as cardboard drawings of Hong Kong officials.
  • The commemorations this year take place amid a backdrop of an intensifying crackdown on civil society in mainland China
  • At the Hong Kong vigil, organizers made special mention of th
  • e more than 200 people on the mainland who were arrested for voicing support for the Occupy protests, with dozens still in jail. In the run-up to June 4, a group of mothers of those who died in 1989 said that surveillance had worsened this year, with authorities going further than just tapping their phones and installing bugging devices in their homes.
sgardner35

Pew: 'Mixed success' at Community College of Philadelphia - 0 views

  • Community College of Philadelphia has had "mixed success" educating its students, though its tuition is far above the median for similar institutions - and higher than those of all other community colleges in the region, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
  • school's graduation rate was no better than about average, and in some cases was below those of its peers
  • On the positive side, the school's African American and Asian students graduate at higher rates than their counterparts at peer schools, and the college graduated a record 1,993 students in 2013-14, up from 1,602 in 2007-08, the report found.
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  • with about 200 schools nationwide in three peer groups: those in large cities, those with high percentages of low-income and mi
  • nority students, and those in cities that have a high concentration of colleges.
  • The college said in April it would offer free tuition to hundreds of recent Philadelphia high school graduates from low-income families
  • For the most recent year, tuition and fees totaled $5,550. Generals said the school did not raise tuition last year and was not planning to raise it this year.
  • The college graduated 17.5 percent of its students within six years, slightly below the average of two similar groups of colleges.
  • it served 2.9 percent of city residents 18 or older; peer schools in competitive markets served 6.1 percent.
  • The report called the college's workforce training arm, Corporate Solutions, "faltering." It has attracted fewer clients than in the past, and revenue has fallen steeply. Private employers told Pew that the college lacks "appropriate or convenient programs."
sgardner35

Josh Duggar was 'a child preying on a child,' his father says - LA Times - 0 views

  • " said they felt like failures after hearing that when their oldest son, Josh, was a teenager, he was involved in inappropriate conduct with several underage girls, including more than one of his younger sisters.
  • the people Josh touched have been "more victimized these last few weeks more than they were 12 years ago."
  • Josh was not a pedophile because he was not an adult when the incidents happened, they said.
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  • “At that point,” he said, “we pulled him out the house and said, ‘You can’t be here.’”
  • “He’s a child preying on a child,” Jim Bob Duggar said.
  • Kelly said that officer has since been convicted of child pornography charges and is incarcerated.“We had no idea” that the officer was involved in anything wrong, Jim Bob Duggar replied.
  • The scandal ignited on social media, where many expressed anger and disappointment toward the Arkansas family using the hashtags #CancelTheDuggars, #DitchTheDuggars and #BoycottTLC.
sgardner35

Ted Cruz apologizes for Biden joke - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • While the line is often well-received on his campaign trail, this time it fell flat. Biden's son, Beau, passed away from brain cancer on Saturday.
  • "It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize. The loss of his son is heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with the Vice President and his family," Cruz wrote.
sgardner35

Death toll from capsized China ship rises to 65, families demand answers | Reuters - 0 views

  • but more than 370 people were still missing and families broke through a police cordon to march to the site and demand answers.
  • Only 14 survivors, including the captain, have been found since the ship carrying 456 people capsized in a freak tornado on Monday night, in what could be China's worst shipping disaster in almost 70 years.
  • About 80 family members, frustrated by the paucity of information coming from authorities, hired a bus to make the eight-hour journey from Nanjing to Jianli county in Hubei, where the ship sank.
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  • The protesters later broke through a cordon of 20-25 paramilitary police who had tried to stop them at a roadblock.
  • Some relatives have asked the government to release the names of survivors and the dead, while others questioned why most of those rescued were crew members, why the boat did not dock in the storm, and why the rescued captain and crew members had time to put on life vests but did not sound any alarm.
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    Another very interesting article about a perception of a situation and how people begin to speculate and place blame on a person or people without knowing the full story. 
sgardner35

Shooting of Boston Terror Suspect Highlights Concerns Over Reach of ISIS - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Investigators had been watching Usaamah Abdullah Rahim long enough to know about his avid interest in Islamic State militants, but when they overheard him talking on a cellphone about beheading Massachusetts police officers, they moved in, leading to a confrontation Tuesday morning outside a CVS here that left Mr. Rahim dead, and once again raised alarms about the influence of foreign extremists on homegrown radicals.
  • officials described as a lengthy terrorism investigation, with several law enforcement agencies looking into an alleged murder plot that involved at least two other people, including a relative of Mr. Rahim’s who was charged Wednesday with conspiracy.
  • the case has also renewed concerns in Washington about the long reach of the Islamic State and other radical groups that have seized on Internet recruitment.
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  • He added that Mr. Rahim had been under investigation because he was “communicating with and spreading ISIS propaganda online.”
  • , F.B.I. agents said Mr. Rahim, 26, had been under surveillance since at least late May, when he bought three knives on Amazon.com.
  • Mr. Rahim was focused on a “planned victim in another state” who was not identified. But in a subsequent conversation on June 2, Mr. Rahim called Mr. Wright and told him he was going to “go after” the “boys in blue,” a reference to police officers.
  • Mr. Rahim was a religious mentor to his nephew David Wright, who was also known as Dawud Wright, Mr. Rivero said.
  • On Tuesday, an F.B.I. agent and a police officver approached Mr. Rahim around 7 a.m. on Tuesday outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, a middle-class Boston neighborhood. Officials said that after the law enforcement officials identified themselves, Mr. Rahim confronted them with a large military-style knife.
  • After the shooting Tuesday, Mr. Rahim was taken to a hospital, where he died.
  • Mr. Wright as a tall, quiet man who weighed as much as 400 pounds.
  • Mr. Rahim’s relatives had initially argued that he was shot in the back, insisting that the shooting was unjustified.
  • “They were dressed in Army camouflage and carrying a battering ram,” said Jim Brennan, 48, a bricklayer, who lives across the street. He said the officers had carried out several small brown paper bags labeled “evidence,” but he could not tell what was in them. He said they did not carry out any large items, such as a computer
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    Relates to history and TOK because I found it interesting on the different conclusions the eye witnesses came to after the man with the knife was shot. His close friends thought it was unjustified because he was shot in the back even though he pulled a knife on officers 
sgardner35

Amtrak Train Derails in Philadelphia, Killing at Least 6 and Injuring Dozens - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • bound Amtrak train that derailed and overturned late Tuesday, killing six people, injuring dozens more, and disrupting train service for thousands of riders in the Northeast region.
  • The train had at least seven cars, including the engine, which separated from the rest, officials said. Six cars overturned. At least one looked as bent as a crumpled soda can, and parts of the damaged cars were so badly mangled that firefighters had to use hydraulic tools to rescue people trapped inside.
  • On Wednesday, Temple University Hospital said it had received 54 people from the wreck. Herbert E. Cushing, the chief medical officer, said one person died overnight from a massive chest injury, and 25 remained in the hospital, including eight people in critical condition.
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  • Early on Wednesday, Mr. Nutter said officials had still not accounted for everyone on board.
  • Still, the derailment on Tuesday took place in roughly the same area of track that was the site of one of the nation’s deadliest rail accidents.
  • Amtrak canceled service between New York and Philadelphia, and modified three other routes. Officials said New Jersey Transit would honor Amtrak tickets between New York City and Trenton.
  • Into the early morning, train cancellations piled up, not just from Amtrak but also from New Jersey Transit and other services that use the same section of track that is now mangled.
sgardner35

Reports: North Korea publicly executes defense chief - CNN.com - 0 views

  • North Korea has publicly executed the country's defense minister after the regime accused him of treason, according to reports from South Korea.
  • l in front of hundreds of people in Pyongyang, the South Korean Intelligence Agency was reported to have told parliament members in a closed door session
  • expressed discontent towards leader Kim Jong Un, and failed to follow Kim's orders on several occasions, according to Kim Gwang-lim
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  • Hyon was a longtime Kim family loyalist who spent years working under North Korea's former leader Kim Jong Il as a high-ranking military official.
  • A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said the government considered the execution to be another display of "fear politics" in North Korea.
  • Hyon was seen nodding off during a meeting organized by Kim Jong Un
  • During 2014, Hyon was promoted again to the National Defense Commission (NDC), described as a supreme organ of the state which has authority over the Ministry of People's Armed Forces and Ministry of People's Security.
  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been accused of ordering the executions of as many as 15 top officials so far this year. However, during a rare trip by CNN to Pyongyang last week, a top official dismissed the allegation as "malicious slander."
  • North Korea is one of the most closed and repressive countries on Earth.
  • "Kim Jong Un has shown a ruthless side that we haven't seen since his grandfather consolidated power back in the 50s and 60s -- going after rivals and potential rivals and having them executed."
sgardner35

More Than a Dozen Detained as Europe Moves to Sweep Up Potential Terrorists - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • the Belgian police said on Friday that 13 people had been detained in Belgium and two in France after a shootout in which two men believed to be militants were kill
  • the authorities had conducted searches at a dozen locations where the police had found four weapons normally used by the military, including AK-47 assault rifles,
  • detainees belonged to the “entourage” of Amedy Coulibaly, one of the three gunmen involved in attacks in and near Paris last week.
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  • did not believe there was a direct connection between the events in Belgium and the carnage in France last week when gunmen conducted a three-day onslaught that left 17 people dead.
  • Mr. Coulibaly was accused of shooting dead a police officer on Jan. 8 and taking hostages at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris the next day, killing four of them.
  • As the waves of alarm spread, the only Orthodox Jewish school in the Netherlands was closed on Friday, Reuters reported, even though there was no specific threat against it.
  • In Germany, prosecutors said that 250 officers had raided 11 apartments after months of tracking a group that was said to support the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, with money and the recruitment of combatants.
  • Verviers is home to one of the biggest mosques in French-speaking Belgium, the newspaper report
  • The attacks last week provoked alarm, not simply about terrorism but also about a wider range of issues relating to the balance between liberty and security
  • The editorial director of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, who signed his drawings with the name “Charb,” was buried on Friday in Pontoise, near Paris, where he had lived as a child.
sgardner35

At 78, an Untamed McCain Savors a New Dream Job in the Senate - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “Every single day,” he mused in an interview, “is a day less that I am going to be able to serve in the Senate.”
  • other than being president, that he ever wanted: chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, overseer of the American military and the nation’s defense policy
  • Mr. McCain is an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, who is to appear before the committee in February.
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  • In short, he said of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy: “I’ve been right. He’s been wrong.”
  • He said that Mr. Obama’s decision not to send more American troops to Iraq to thwart the Islamic State had put America at risk. “That attack you saw in Paris? You’ll see an attack in the United States,” Mr. McCain said in an interview last Thursday. He repeated his frequent assessment that the president’s foreign policy is “a disaster” and “delusional.” He said “of course” he would have made a better commander in chief.
  • Mr. McCain, in a sense, grew up on the Armed Services Committee. In 1977, four years after his release as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, the Navy assigned Captain McCain to be its Senate liaison.
  • And by using his new platform to draw attention to global threats, he hopes to create a favorable climate for a Republican to win the White House in 2016. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney, a potential candidate, called Mr. McCain for advice.
  • “I think John sees the next six years, really the next eight years, as the chance to close it out strong,” said Jack Keane, a retired Army general and close friend to Mr. McCain.
sgardner35

Reprisals Feared as Charlie Hebdo Publishes New Muhammad Cartoon - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Death threats circulated online against the surviving staff members of the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo.
  • Survivors of the attack had said they would proceed with their next issue and again depict Muhammad.
  • The statement on Tuesday also commented on the new Charlie Hebdo cover, urging French Muslims to “remain calm and avoid emotive or incongruous reactions incompatible with dignity,” while “respecting freedom of opinion.”
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  • It shows Muhammad displaying the slogan that has become the symbol of resistance to Islamic militants: “Je Suis Charlie,” or, “I am Charlie.” He is shown weeping under a headline that reads: “All is forgiven.”
  • . And it said that the planned Charlie Hebdo cover would serve as an “unjustified provocation to the feelings of a billion and half Muslims around the world who love and respect the Prophet.” It said the newspaper’s cover “will give an opportunity for extremists from both sides to exchange violent acts that only the innocent will pay for.”
  • “The terrorists have been children, too,” Mr. Luzier continued. “They drew like all the children do, and then they lost their sense of humor.”
sgardner35

Education Secretary Says Administration Is Committed to Testing - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In a speech on Monday to outline the administration’s priorities for a revision of No Child Left Behind, the signature Bush-era education law, Mr. Duncan said that “parents, teachers and students have both the right and the need to know how much progress all students are making each year towards college- and career-readiness.”
  • Annual testing has become a point of contention in the often-bitter discussions about how best to improve public education.
  • The tests were intended as a way for schools to see whether all student groups, but particularly minorities and poor students, were being taught adequately
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  • Mr. Duncan said the primary purpose of the education law was to guarantee that public school students all have a chance at educational and economic mobility.
  • President Obama’s 2016 budget would include a request for an additional $2.7 billion for the Education Department’s program, including $1 billion for the program that funnels money to schools with high proportions of poor students.
  • “Of course we should be asking the question: Are there too many tests?” he said in a statement.
sgardner35

Police: No Proof That Rape in Article Occurred at UVa Frat - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Police said Monday that they've been unable to confirm that an alleged gang rape
  • occurred at a University of Virginia fraternity house as described in a Rolling Stone article
  • We are still investigating," Charlottesville Police Capt. Gary Pleasants said in an email to The Associated Press.
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  • The school temporarily suspended fraternities' and sororities' social activities while administrators vowed to take an extensive look at improving safety on campus.
  • Among them: Kegs of beer and pre-made mixes of liquor and punch will be banned; beer must be served in closed cans, and food and water must be made available.
sgardner35

Cuban Exiles at Miami Rally Denounce Obama for Rapprochement - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Cuba poured out in a rally here on Saturday during which President Obama was denounced unsparingly as a traitor and a liar.
  • This week’s announcements from Mr. Obama and the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, have revived in stark fashion the resentments of these exiles, many of whom now feel utterly betrayed by the government of their adopted land.
  • “All Obama is doing is throwing a lifeline to the Castros so that they can continue crushing the people of Cuba,” said Roberto Delgado Ramos, 78, who said he was arrested twice, in 1960 and 1964, for “counterrevolutionary activities” and served a total of 12 years in prison. “The Castros are the ones who need to pay for the blood that they have spilled.”
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  • : “If the United States doesn’t stand for freedom, then who does? What were all those lives lost for?”
  • “Obama hasn’t talked about stopping the repression,” he said. “Not only that, but the prisoner swap tells any terrorist group around the world that they can capture an American and that he can be exchanged for any terrorist they want.” Next in U.S.
sgardner35

6 Men, Said to Have Attacked the Police, Are Killed in China's Far West - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • saying that some have been trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But human
  • security forces shot and killed six men on Monday after they attacked police officers not far from the Silk Road city of Kashgar, a government website reported.
  • police opened fire on a man near the commercial center of Shule County who was wielding an ax while trying to set off explosives. It said another five men, described as “mobsters,” were subsequently shot to death as they, too, attacked the police.
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  • saying th
  • The episode on Monday occurred in Kashgar Prefecture, an impoverished stretch of southern Xinjiang whose population is nearly 90 percent Uighur and less than 10 percent Han Chinese, the nation’s predominant ethnic group
  • The Chinese authorities often blame Islamic extremists for the bloodshed,
  • saying that some have been trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But human
  • Government censorship of the Chinese news media and restrictions on foreign reporters who travel to Xinjiang make it difficult to learn more about such episodes, but reports of them have surged despite an increasingly heavy police presence.
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