Author: JENO

Yahoo News – by Liz Goodwin

Police officers responding to protests in a St. Louis suburb Wednesday night were outfitted in fatigues, wore gas masks and body armor, carried military-style rifles, and were backed by tanklike armored vehicles as they sought to clear the streets.

Tear gas, smoke bomb explosions and the pop-pop-pop of nonlethal projectiles added to the picture, as photographs and video from Ferguson, Missouri, depicted a scene more reminiscent of a war zone than a civil rights protest against the police shooting Saturday of an unarmed teen in the largely low-income Midwestern town of about 20,000 people.    Continue reading “Why do Ferguson’s police officers look like soldiers?”

Yahoo News – by T.C. Sottek, The Verge

A suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, has been under a dramatic siege since Saturday, when a police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. In the wake of the killing, protests have engulfed the community — drawing a heavy-handed police crackdown with St. Louis County police officers armed with assault weapons andoutfitted with military equipment. Many of the striking images have come from reporters on the front lines, but also from citizens and their smartphones.

Continue reading “Reminder: You Have a Right to Record the Police”

Yahoo News – by Steve Norder

ATLANTA (Reuters) – An American aid worker infected with the deadly Ebola virus while in Liberia arrived in the United States from West Africa on Saturday and walked into an Atlanta hospital, wearing a bio-hazard suit, for treatment in a special isolation unit.

A chartered medical aircraft carrying Dr. Kent Brantly touched down at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, shortly before noon. Brantly was driven by ambulance, with police escort, to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for treatment in a specially equipped room.   Continue reading “American aid worker stricken with Ebola arrives in U.S. for treatment”

Yahoo News – by Liz Goodwin

Robert Shellmyer was relieved to see last week at his hometown’s 175th anniversary celebration that the local police department’s new prized possession was not driving alongside the tractors and floats in the parade.

That’s because a 45,000 pound, explosion-resistant vehicle from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might spoil the mood.   Continue reading “As wars wind down, small-town cops inherit armored vehicles”

Yahoo News

Washington (AFP) – US lawmakers moved to boost funding of the national background check system for firearm sales, a small but symbolic step toward broader gun law reform following recent mass shootings.

The measure would provide $19.5 million to help states submit records to a federal database aimed at preventing felons and the mentally ill from buying weapons.    Continue reading “US House moves to bolster gun background checks”

Yahoo News – by Dylan Stableford

The distraught father of one of the University of California, Santa Barbara, shooting victims — who blamed his son’s death on the inability of lawmakers to act in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School — got a special message from a father of one of the Newtown, Conn., victims welcoming him to an unwanted club.

“Dear Richard Martinez,” the letter posted by Mark Barden to the Sandy Hook Promise Facebook page begins. “We have not met, but you are now part of our extended family. It is not a family we chose, but a family born from the horrible circumstance of losing a child to gun violence — one that’s only growing each day.”   Continue reading “Sandy Hook dad to UCSB dad: ‘You are now part of our extended family’”

Yahoo News – by Oliver Knox

Amid a deadly backlash and a resurgence of polio in Pakistan, the White House has promised that the CIA will never again use a vaccination campaign as a tool of spycraft.

“I wanted to inform you that the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directed in August 2013 that the agency make no operational use of vaccination programs, which includes vaccination workers,” President Obama’s top counterterrorism and homeland security advisor, Lisa Monaco, wrote to deans of 12 schools of public health. Yahoo News obtained a copy of the May 16 letter.   Continue reading “After bin Laden backlash, CIA promises: No more fake vaccination campaigns”

LA Times – by MARY FORGIONE

Health warnings for travelers alerting them to the potentially deadly disease MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, are being posted at airport security checkpoints in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and 16 other airports nationwide.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reports two confirmed cases of MERS in the U.S., one in Indiana on May 2 and another in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday. The two cases are unrelated, the CDC says in a statement, though all cases of the virus have been traced back to the Middle East.   Continue reading “MERS health warning signs go up at LAX and other U.S. airports”

Yahoo News – by Ken Thomas

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the nation’s gun culture has gotten “way out of balance” and the U.S. needs to rein in the notion that “anybody can have a gun, anywhere, anytime.”

The former secretary of state and potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said the idea that anyone can have a gun is not in the “best interest of the vast majority of people.” But she said that approach does not conflict with the rights of people to own firearms.   Continue reading “Hillary Clinton: Gun culture ‘way out of balance’”

The Daily Beast – by Eli Lake

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military and American intelligence agencies have quietly pushed the White House in recent weeks to deny a new Russian surveillance plane the right to fly over U.S. territory. This week, the White House finally began consideration of the decision whether to certify the new Russian aircraft under the so-called “Open Skies Treaty.” And now the question becomes: Will the spies and generals get their way?   Continue reading “Pentagon Moves to Block Russian Spy Plane in American Skies”

Yahoo News – by Lyle Denniston

THE STATEMENT AT ISSUE:

“As a result of [Supreme Court] rulings, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were ‘well regulated,’ has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms.  That anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of the Second Amendment to make ti unambiguously conform to the original intent of the draftsmen.  As so amended, it would read: ‘A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.’ ”   Continue reading “Propaganda Alert: Does the Second Amendment need to be amended?”

Yahoo News – by  Dylan Stableford

In a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spring meeting in Las Vegas over the weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the “isolationists” within the GOP, defended the National Security Agency spy program and, of course, criticized President Barack Obama.

Cheney’s remarks were closed to the press, but audio of the speech obtained by Mother Jones was posted online Tuesday.   Continue reading “In secret recording, Dick Cheney blasts GOP isolationists, NSA critics, Obama”

Yahoo News – by DAVID A. LIEB

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A federal proposal to clean up the smoke wafting from wood-burning stoves has sparked a backlash from some rural residents, lawmakers and manufacturers who fear it could close the damper on one of the oldest ways of warming homes on cold winter days.

Proposed regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would significantly reduce the amount of particle pollution allowed from the smokestacks of new residential wood-powered heaters.   Continue reading “Federal wood burning rule prompts rural backlash”

Wall St Cheat Sheet – by MEGHAN FOLEY

Some of the issues that most divided the nation during the first five years of President Barack Obama’s presidency — the reform of the American health care system and gun control — are now on the docket of the United States’ highest court. Plus there are cases brought by for-profit companies — the craft store chain Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. — putting the spotlight on the First Amendment’s freedom of religion clause, with the plaintiffs objecting to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that companies subject to the employer mandate must provide workers with policies covering contraception. The Second Amendment has also been placed in the limelight thanks to lawsuits that have been appealed to the Supreme Court.   Continue reading “Former Supreme Court Justice: Second Amendment Must Be Changed”