From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
Huffington Post – by Amanda Terkel
WASHINGTON — As Vice President Joe Biden held a press conference announcing the progress of the White House’s gun violence task force on Thursday, news broke that there had been two people shot in a school shooting in California. The news grimly underscored the urgency — and difficulty — of addressing the problem of mass gun violence.
Continue reading “Joe Biden School Shooting Press Conference Collides With News Of Another School Shooting”
HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) – One Connecticut woman’s idea of a political statement has landed her in handcuffs.
86-year-old Estelle Margolis of Westport brought a BB rifle with ammunition to a town hall meeting on Tuesday evening.
She said the whole idea was to demonstrate how easy it is to buy a gun.
Continue reading “Elderly Woman Arrested For Bringing BB Rifle To Westport Town Meeting”
Huffington Post – by Harry Bradford
We all know the feeling of ripping open your fast food drive thru, order only to find it’s missing sweet and sour sauce, or ketchup or cheese on your burger. But it’s rare that that missing small fry leads to a violent altercation.
Continue reading “McDonald’s Mistaken Order Leads To Shotgun Blast, Police Standoff”
Someone told cops he thought he saw the king of beasts loose on the street, and he wasn’t lion.
Dispatchers in Norfolk, Va. received a 911 call Tuesday reporting that a baby lion was strolling down the street, potentially on the hunt for its next meal, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
Continue reading “Charles The Monarch, Dog, Mistaken For Lion In 911 Call”
Huffington Post – by Kavitha A. Davidson
Tough sanctions and a struggling economy have caused a severe medicine shortage in Iran, but the country is also facing a dire health crisis of another kind: air pollution.
Hassan Aqajani, an adviser to Iran’s health minister announced Sunday that 4,460 people have died from air pollution in Tehran in a one-year period since March 2011, AFP reports. The announcement came just as a five-day closure of government offices, schools, and banks because of air pollution came to an end — the second such shutdown in a month.
Continue reading “Tehran Pollution Crisis 2012: Thousands Dead In Iran’s Capital As Government Warns To Stay Indoors”
MANILA, Philippines — An unarmed target drone found in central Philippine waters was launched from a U.S. Navy ship during a combat exercise off Guam last year and may have been washed by ocean currents to the country, officials said Tuesday.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Bettina Malone said the BQM-74E drone was launched from the USS Chafee, a guided-missile destroyer, as a mock missile target during naval combat exercises off Guam’s coast in September.
Continue reading “U.S. Drone In Philippines Came From Guam Drill, Says Embassy”
Huffington Post – by Karen Matthews
NEW YORK — Google said Tuesday it is teaming up with a New York City neighborhood business group to provide the company’s first urban Wi-Fi network.
The network will be available free to about a 10-block area surrounding Google’s offices in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where Google has more than 3,000 employees. The area also is home to other tech companies, as well as high-end hotels and nightclubs and a housing project with more than 2,000 tenants.
Continue reading “Free Public Wi-Fi In Chelsea From Google: Mayor Bloomberg, Eric Fried Announce City’s Largest Wi-Fi Network”
HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) – Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal announced plans to introduce federal legislation that he said would close a massive loophole in the law involving the sale of ammunition.
Blumenthal said that while convicted felons and others are prohibited from purchasing guns, there is nothing to stop them from buying ammunition.
Continue reading “Blumenthal Seeks To Close ‘Black Hole’ Of Gun Violence With Background Checks For Ammo”
Wall Street Journal – by TAMARA AUDI And ANDY PASZTOR
Two years after being severely wounded by a gunman who killed six people outside a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband launched a political action committee aimed at curbing gun violence.
Spurred by last month’s killing of 20 children and six adults in a Connecticut elementary school, Ms. Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, wrote in an op-ed piece published Tuesday in USA Today that Americans for Responsible Solutions “will raise the funds necessary to balance the influence of the gun lobby.”
Continue reading “Giffords Makes a Push on Gun Control”
In a blow to the NYPD’s controversial use of stop-and-frisks, a federal judge has ordered an “immediate cease” to some police stops conducted under “Operation Clean Halls” outside apartment buildings in the Bronx.
“Clean Halls” allows police to stop, question and search residents in and around New York City apartment buildings, with permission of the landlord.
Continue reading “NYPD ‘Clean Halls’ Stop-And-Frisk Policy: Judge Orders ‘Immediate Cease’ To Stops Without ‘Reasonable Suspicion’”
Reuters – by Kim Palmer and Jim Forsyth
CLEVELAND/SAN ANTONIO, Jan 8 (Reuters) – School teachers in Texas and Ohio are flocking to free firearms classes in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school massacre, some vowing to protect their students with guns even at the risk of losing their jobs.
In Ohio, more than 900 teachers, administrators and school employees asked to take part in the Buckeye Firearms Association’s newly created, three-day gun training program, the association said.
Continue reading “Teachers in Ohio, Texas flock to free gun training classes”
A day after 26 people were shot to death in a Connecticut school, two New York churches have invited gun owners to hand in their weapons — no questions asked.
Two Brooklyn pastors opened their churches Saturday to the city’s Gun Buyback program. Anyone can trade in their weapon for a $200 bank card. The transactions are anonymous.
Continue reading “After Conn. school massacre, Brooklyn churches host gun buybacks”
Huffington Post – by Joshua Hersh and Sam Stein
WASHINGTON — When Susan Rice’s potential nomination to the post of secretary of state hit another snag this past week, the White House found itself in a quandary.
On Wednesday, a publication affiliated with the Natural Resources Defense Council dug into the ambassador to the United Nations’ financial disclosures, and discovered that she and her husband were heavily invested in several oil companies in western Canada including one, Transcanada, that currently has a project under review at the State Department.
Continue reading “Susan Rice Keystone XL Attacks Put White House In A Bind”
Huffington Post – by David B. Caruso
NEW YORK — A month after Sandy’s floodwaters swept up his block, punched a hole in his foundation and drowned his furnace, John Frawley still has no electricity or heat in his dilapidated home on the Rockaway seashore.
The 57-year-old, who also lost his car and all his winter clothes in the flood, now spends his nights shivering in a pair of donated snow pants, worrying whether the cold might make his chronic heart condition worse.
Continue reading “Health Crisis In Sandy Disaster Zones: Cold, Mold Loom As Hazards In Rockaways, Staten Island, Elsewhere”
Huffington Post – by Courtney Perks
The embattled owner of four Orange County hospitals has been fined $95,000 by the state for breaching a patient’s privacy in an effort to rebut a news article about the chain’s unusual and lucrative billing practices.
The Department of Public Health fined Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding earlier this month after the patient’s medical records were disclosed without consent to three news agencies as well as hospital employees. The hospital is owned by Ontario-based Prime Healthcare Services, which also owns Garden Grove Hospital, La Palma Intercommunity, West Anaheim Medical Center and Huntington Beach Hospital.
Continue reading “Prime Healthcare Services, Owner Of OC Hospitals, Fined For Breaching Patient’s Privacy”
Why we shoot deer in the wild. (A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who farms, writes well and actually tried this)
I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
Continue reading “Why we Shoot Deer in the Wild”
