Author: Sunfire

Mail.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s Capitol has displayed a Pabst Blue Ribbon Festivus pole, atheist banners and even a tribute to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But a display showing an angel falling into flames with the message “Happy Holidays from the Satanic Temple” was too much for one woman.

Susan Hemeryck, 54, tried removing the display Tuesday, and when the Capitol Police told her she couldn’t, she began ripping it apart. She was arrested and charged with criminal mischief. The display had been erected as a satire by an atheist group to counter a nativity scene, which was taken down the day the Satanic Temple installed theirs.   Continue reading “Satanic display at Florida Capitol damaged”

RT

Google’s famed self-drive car is ready to go. The first fully-functioning automated vehicles will be seen on Californian roads starting 2015.

“Today we’re unwrapping the best holiday gift we could’ve imagined: the first real build of our self-driving vehicle prototype,” the search engine giant said on its website on Monday.   Continue reading “Google’s self-drive cars to hit streets in 2015”

Mail.com

BEIRUT (AP) — The gunmen came to the all-girls’ elementary school in the Iraqi city of Fallujah at midday with a special delivery: piles of long black robes with gloves and face veils, now required dress code for females in areas ruled by the Islamic State group.

“These are the winter version. Make sure every student gets one,” one of the men told a supervisor at the school earlier this month. Extremists are working to excise women from public life across the territory controlled by the Islamic State group, stretching hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the west to the edges of the Iraqi capital in the east.   Continue reading “Women excised from public life, abused by IS”

Mail.com

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s point person on U.S. relations says anything is up for discussion as the two countries move to re-establish diplomatic ties, from anti-drug cooperation to joint environmental agreements.

But there’s at least one area where Cuba appears unwilling to budge: Asylum for fugitives whom the U.S. has long sought to extradite from the communist-run country. “Every nation has sovereign and legitimate rights to grant political asylum to people it considers to have been persecuted,” the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s head of North American affairs, Josefina Vidal, told The Associated Press.   Continue reading “Cuba signals that extradition of US fugitives off the table”

Mail.com

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The parks director of a Pennsylvania township who helped subdue a gunman charged with killing three people at a municipal meeting last year is among 19 people being honored with medals and cash from the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Heroes Fund Commission.

Bernard Kozen was the 56-year-old parks director of Ross Township when he tackled, disarmed and subdued 60-year-old Rockne Newell on Aug. 5, 2013. Newell is awaiting trial and faces the possible death penalty for allegedly killing three people in a dispute over his property.   Continue reading “Man who helped subdue gunman among Carnegie Heroes”

RT

At least 73 adults and one minor have been taken into custody by Milwaukee police for blocking interstate highway 43 while protesting the killing of an unarmed and mentally infirm black man by police officer earlier this year.

The I-43 in downtown Milwaukee was completely halted in both directions by approximately 100 protesters at rush hour, about 5:00pm and remained inoperable for about 75 minutes.   Continue reading “Milwaukee protesters block interstate over police killings”

RT

Fukushima hopes to host some of the events for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo to show the world that the worst days of the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster are behind it.

“We need to set a goal so that we can show how much Fukushima has recovered,” Masao Uchibori, who was elected the new governor of Fukushima Prefecture in October, said Tuesday.    Continue reading “Fukushima2020? Disaster-stricken area hopes to host Tokyo Olympic events”

Mail.com

MIAMI (AP) — Cuban opposition leaders from the island joined Cuban American politicians and activists on Saturday, pledging to oppose President Barack Obama’s plan to normalize relations with the communist nation and disputing the notion that their community is split by a generational divide.

“The opposition will continue fighting, with or without Barack Obama,” Cuban activist Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, known by his nickname “Antunez,” said to cheers. The gathering at a Little Havana park drew more than 200 people, largely older Cuban exiles who chanted “Obama, traitor!” and waved U.S. and Cuban flags. Some expressed disappointment that the protest was not larger; the demonstrators filled about half the park.   Continue reading “Protesters: ‘It’s not the time’ for more Cuba ties”

RT

The world’s largest office supply retailer Staples has revealed that up to 1.16 million of its clients’ payment cards might have been “affected” by a massive malware attack on the company’s point-of-sales systems.

“Staples’ data security experts detected that criminals deployed malware to some point-of-sale systems at 115 of its more than 1,400 US retail stores,” the company said in a press release.   Continue reading “Staples data breach exposes 1.16mn cards in 115 stores”

Mail.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected last year after making promises to keep crime low while improving relations between police and the community. As the tensions between those promises continue to mount, Friday showed just how tricky threading that needle has been.

In the morning, de Blasio met with leaders of the protests that have swept through New York City in the weeks after a grand jury declined to indict the police officer who placed Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold while trying to arrest him.   Continue reading “New York mayor caught between protests, police”

Mail.com

MIAMI (AP) — Hours before President Barack Obama announced an end to a half-century of U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba’s communist government, the Cuban American National Foundation opened the doors to its inviting new headquarters, with a modern glass and concrete lobby in the heart of Miami’s Cuban exile community.

The symbolism is hard to ignore: The lobbying group was founded in 1981 by veterans of covert U.S.-supported missions to overthrow Fidel and Raul Castro, and for many years it worked to undermine the communist government from offices in an unmarked Miami building outside Little Havana. A guard kept out unwelcome visitors, and its leader Jorge Mas Canosa tended to leave little room for differing opinions.   Continue reading “Obama’s Cuba switch forces exile groups to adapt”

Mail.com

BAGHDAD (AP) — Abu Murtada al-Moussawi answered the call last summer from Iraq’s top Shiite cleric to help save the country from the Islamic State group, but after less than three months on the front lines he and several friends returned home because they had run out of food.

“Sometimes, we didn’t have enough money to buy mobile scratch cards to call our families,” al-Moussawi, a Shiite from the southern city of Basra, said. “Everybody felt like we were being forgotten by the government.”   Continue reading “Iraq’s Shiite fighters desert over shortages”