Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Citizens always complain that politicians never get anything done, but it's not true. Last week the Senate settled one of the big issues of our time. Healthcare? Illegal immigration? The war in Afghanistan? No, something even more important -- to TV fans anyway. They made it illegal for commercials to be too loud!
This may seem like a trivial matter, but it's most definitely not -- at least not when you're sitting on your couch watching your favorite sitcom and then the commercials come on and for some reason they are nine times louder than the program you're watching. It's especially bad when local commercials are injected into the show -- they're the loudest. It's almost as if local businesses are screaming PAY ATTENTION TO US, WE'RE IMPORTANT TOO!
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Fingerprints for Food? High Tech Lunch Raises
Concern
By Efrem Graham
A Los Angeles school district has gone high tech to speed things up in the cafeteria -- using a fingerprint scanning system to record children's lunch purchases.
But the move has some worried about students' right to privacy.
Students at the Foshay Learning Center are the first in the school district to try the scanners. With the touch of a finger, they can buy sloppy joes, a slice of pizza, or a carton of milk.
"It's very safe," principal Yvonne Edwards said. "The children don't have to bring money to school."
She added that the technology speeds up cafeteria lines and eliminates the problem of forgotten lunch money.
Los Angeles Unified School District administrators are watching to see if the scanners would benefit other schools.
"When people knew that they were on free or reduced lunch, especially at the high school level, no one wants anyone to know, so sometimes they would not eat," Edwards added. "But the great thing about it is that everyone can eat now. Everyone does eat and they feel good about eating."
The process sound simple, but some parents find the privacy concerns hard to swallow. The American Civil Liberties Union says the students' rights are being violated.
"We don't use fingerprint identification to pay for our groceries or our clothes at a department store, so why would we ask our children to use fingerprints to pay for lunch at school?" asked ACLU lawyer Peter Bibring.
Roy Smith is a concerned parent.
"It doesn't seem right because they are only kids," he said. "So I don't think it is right to fingerprint them to get something to eat."
The program is even making some students uncomfortable.
"Yeah, because what if they use it for something else," student Elizabeth Garcia said.
Administrators argue that the machines only capture a partial image of fingerprints, and students can opt to use a seven digit code instead.
The district is looking to spread the technology to all schools that accept it by 2012.
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Internet 'Spies' Paid to Catch Criminals
Internet Eyes, a company based in London, England, is paying private British citizens to monitor surveillance cameras from their homes.
The London Daily Mail reported Tuesday that the cameras are set up to spot criminals in stores and on the streets.
People watch through a feed to their homes and if they see a shoplifter they send a text message to the business owner.
Big Brother Watch calls it "the privatization of the surveillance society."
"It's astonishing to think that innocent people doing their shopping could soon be spied on by an army of busy bodies with an Internet connection," said Daniel Hamilton of Big Brother Watch.
"CCTV should be used sparingly to help solve real crimes, not to encourage this type of tawdry voyeurism," he added.
The company behind the idea argues that the cameras are a tool to fight crime.
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Blind Man Barred From Dubai Flight Over Disability
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Oct. 5) - A blind American traveler says he was stopped from getting on a flight in Dubai on Tuesday because of his disability -- a decision the government-run airline insists was a mistake it regrets.Zuhair Mahmoud, of Arlington, Va., told The Associated Press he ran into problems when he went to check in for a 10:10 a.m. flight on FlyDubai to Amman, Jordan. He was planning a brief stay in the Jordanian capital before heading back to the United States.
Mahmoud protested and asked employees to check with their superiors. He said he was told that there was nothing they could do because it was airline policy not to allow a blind traveler on board unaccompanied.
"I was mad. ... I couldn't believe it," the 37-year-old information technology specialist said. "I tried to reason with them, but I just got a single cold answer."
He left the airport and went to stay at a brother's house in Dubai until he could catch another flight out.
The airline doesn't dispute Mahmoud's account.
Its chief executive apologized for the incident and said the carrier does not discriminate against blind passengers or others with special needs. FlyDubai also promised to rebook Mahmoud on another flight that's convenient for him and offered him a voucher for a free flight to make up for the mishap.
"This morning's events were extremely unfortunate and should not have happened. We will conduct a full investigation to find out what went wrong in this situation and take all means necessary to ensure it does not happen again," FlyDubai CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith said in an e-mail to the AP.
The discount carrier has grown quickly since it was launched by the Gulf city-state's government in June last year. It focuses on low-cost short-haul flights throughout the Middle East.
Al-Ghaith is a former executive at Dubai's flagship airline, Emirates. The two carriers operate as separate airlines, though both are owned by the emirate of Dubai and are chaired by an uncle of the sheikdom's ruler.
Mahmoud said he is keeping his options open, including possible legal action.
He wants the airline and UAE government regulators to take steps to ensure the same thing doesn't happen to others.
"I'm probably not going to come back to Dubai ever unless I'm assured these sorts of things aren't going to happen anymore," he said. "The real test is how it's handled and how it's reacted to. Mistakes happen all the time. It's how you deal with them that defines who you are."DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Cct. 5 -- A blind American traveler says he was stopped from getting on a flight in Dubai on Tuesday because of his disability - a decision the government-run airline insists was a mistake it regrets.
Zuhair Mahmoud, of Arlington, Virginia, told The Associated Press he ran into problems when he went to check in for a 10:10 a.m. flight on FlyDubai to Amman, Jordan. He was planning a brief stay in the Jordanian capital before heading back to the United States.
"They looked at me and said: 'Well, we can't take you. ... You're traveling alone,'" he recalled.
Mahmoud protested and asked employees to check with their superiors. He said he was told that there was nothing they could do because it was airline policy not to allow a blind traveler on board unaccompanied.
"I was mad. ... I couldn't believe it," the 37-year-old information technology specialist said. "I tried to reason with them, but I just got a single cold answer."
He left the airport and went to stay at a brother's house in Dubai until he could catch another flight out.
The airline doesn't dispute Mahmoud's account.
Its chief executive apologized for the incident and said the carrier does not discriminate against blind passengers or others with special needs. FlyDubai also promised to rebook Mahmoud on another flight that's convenient for him and offered him a voucher for a free flight to make up for the mishap.
"This morning's events were extremely unfortunate and should not have happened. We will conduct a full investigation to find out what went wrong in this situation and take all means necessary to ensure it does not happen again," FlyDubai CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith said in an e-mail to the AP.
The discount carrier has grown quickly since it was launched by the Gulf city-state's government in June last year. It focuses on low-cost short-haul flights throughout the Middle East.
Al-Ghaith is a former executive at Dubai's flagship airline, Emirates. The two carriers operate as separate airlines, though both are owned by the emirate of Dubai and are chaired by an uncle of the sheikdom's ruler.
Mahmoud said he is keeping his options open, including possible legal action.
He wants the airline and UAE government regulators to take steps to ensure the same thing doesn't happen to others.
"I'm probably not going to come back to Dubai ever unless I'm assured these sorts of things aren't going to happen anymore," he said. "The real test is how it's handled and how it's reacted to. Mistakes happen all the time. It's how you deal with them that defines who you are."
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20 Kidnapped in Mexican Resort City of Acapulco
ACAPULCO, Mexico (Oct. 2) - Gunmen kidnapped 20 men who were traveling together in Mexico's Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco, authorities said Saturday.
A shootout between drug gangs, meanwhile, left 14 people dead in remote town in the northern state of Durango, Mexican newspapers reported.
The group of men in Acapulco was visiting from the western city of Morelia and looking for a place to stay when they were abducted Thursday, said Fernando Monreal, director of state investigative police in Guerrero state, where the resort city is located.
He said the kidnapping was reported by a man who had been with the group.
The man told police that he and another fellow traveler had left the others to go a store and when they returned their companions were gone.
Witnesses said the men - who ranged in age from 17 to 47 - were kidnapped by an armed gang that drove them away in the four cars in which the group had been traveling. Police later found the cars abandoned near the kidnapping site.
The motive was unknown.
The man who notified police described his companions as tourists. He said they all worked for the same tire-alignment company in Morelia and saved up each year to take vacations together.
Monreal said police have been unable to locate the man since he reported the kidnapping Friday. The man left a cell phone but was not answering it, Monreal said.
Acapulco has been a key battleground for lucrative drug-trafficking routes. Violence in the region increased this year after a split in the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose leadership has been hit hard by President Felipe Calderon's drug war.
Police, who were scouring the resort cities and the highways leading out of it for the missing men, gave no indication that they were tied to drug trafficking.
Drug-gang henchmen frequently kidnap rivals and dump their bodies on the streets days later. But it is rare for a survivor of such kidnappings to go to the police.
The shootout between rival drug-dealing gangs broke out Friday morning in the town of San Jose de la Cruz, El Universal and Reforma newspapers reported, citing the Durango state attorney general's office.
Police and soldiers traveled to the town after being alerted by residents, Ruben Lopez, a spokesman for the office, was quoted as saying.
It often takes authorities hours to travel to the scene of shootouts in Durango, a mountainous state that has long been a stronghold for Mexico's most powerful drug traffickers.
Nobody answered the phone Saturday at the state attorney general's office.
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Stripper's Tip Leads to Arrest of Federal Judge on Drug, Gun Charges
ATLANTA – A veteran federal judge faces drug and firearms charges after an exotic dancer at an Atlanta strip club told authorities he used cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs with her.
Senior U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp was arrested Friday minutes after he handed an undercover law enforcement agent $160 for cocaine and Roxycodone, a narcotic pain medication, that he intended to use with the exotic dancer, authorities said in a court document released Monday. They said they also found two firearms in the front seat of his vehicle.
Camp, 67, who has presided over some high-profile cases, was released Monday on a $50,000 bond. His attorney, William Morrison, said after a brief hearing that the judge intends to plead not guilty. Morrison said Camp would probably take a leave of absence and would not preside over any more cases until the charges are resolved.
"This is really a case between Judge Camp and his wife," said Morrison. "It's not about Judge Camp being a judge. It's about him being a husband."
Camp's arrest set up an unusual domino effect in the federal courthouse. The district's federal judges all recused themselves, so Magistrate Judge Charles S. Coody of Alabama was brought in to hear the case. Federal prosecutors from Washington also flew in to handle the government's arguments.
The charges against Camp were laid out in a shocking eight-page affidavit released after the emergency hearing was finished.Camp met the confidential informant, who recently began cooperating with the FBI, at the Goldrush Showbar in Atlanta in early 2010 and he soon began paying her for sex and buying cocaine from her at $40 to $50 a pop, according to the records.
In June 2010, Camp followed the informant to a drug dealer in Marietta to buy Roxycodone. He was also recorded in a wiretapped telephone call on Sept. 28 talking with her about getting together over the weekend to split more pills and cocaine with her, according to the charges.
He showed up at a Publix parking lot in northeast Atlanta around 7:15 p.m. Friday to meet with the an undercover agent posing as the dealer. When the informant told her she was worried about his safety, the judge told her, "I not only have my little pistol, I've got my big pistol so, uh, we'll take care of any problems that come up," according to the affidavit.
He handed over $160 in cash to pay for the drugs around 7:35 p.m. Ten minutes later, authorities arrested the judge and seized the two guns from the front seat of his vehicle.
The judge faces four drug-related charges and one count of possessing firearms while illegally using drugs.
It's a stunning turn for Camp, a Vietnam War veteran who was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1987. He is a former chief judge for the Northern District of Georgia.
Known for wearing suspenders around the courtroom, he handled hundreds of cases before taking senior status — and a lesser caseload — in 2008.
In 2004, he sentenced two men accused of killing DeKalb County Sheriff Derwin Brown to life in prison without parole. He also handled litigation from voting rights groups who sought to block Georgia from asking new voters to prove their identities and citizenship before casting their ballots.
The judge also handled several high-profile drug cases, including the May 2009 sentencing on prescription-related charges of the personal doctor to a professional wrestler who killed himself, his wife and their 7-year-old son.
Camp, wearing a pinstripe suit, said little during the brief hearing Monday but turned to flash a smile at his family after he walked in. He hired four defense attorneys over the weekend to represent him, and Morrison said his client was in "good spirits."
"Judge Camp's wife is an extraordinarily strong woman and she's going to stand by her husband," said Morrison. "And this is a very strong man. He's going to overcome these circumstances."
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Owner of Segway Company Dies After Driving Scooter Off Cliff
The multi-millionaire owner of the Segway company died Sunday when he fell off a cliff while riding the famous motorized scooter, the Telegraph reports.
Jim Heselden, 62, died after skidding off a cliff at his estate in Yorkshire, England. He was reportedly testing a cross-country version of the upright, two-wheeled scooter when he plunged from the cliff.
Heselden's body was later found in a river by a passerby, the newspaper reports.
"Police were called at 11: 40 a.m. yesterday to reports of a man in the River Wharfe, apparently having fallen from the cliffs above," a spokesman for the West Yorkshire police told the newspaper.
"A Segway-style vehicle was recovered. He was pronounced dead at the scene," the spokesman reportedly said. "At this time we do not believe the death to be suspicious."
Heselden was worth close to $265 million and ranked 395th on the Sunday Times Rich List. He bought the Segway company less than a year ago from its U.S. inventor Dean Kamen. The battery-powered, gyroscope-stabilized Segway was invented by Kamen, who founded the company in 1999.
He made a fortune through his firm Hesco Bastion, which developed a system replacing sand bags to protect troops, the AP reported.
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Blessings Everyone! -Missygirl*
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