Author: Sunfire

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Warning that a “major loss of life” could result from an accident involving the increasing use of trains to transport large amounts of crude oil, U.S. and Canadian accident investigators urged their governments Thursday to impose new safety rules.

The unusual joint recommendations by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada include better route planning for trains carrying hazardous materials to avoid populated and other sensitive areas.   Continue reading “NTSB: Oil train crash risks ‘major loss of life’”

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KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — A top Ukrainian opposition leader on Thursday urged protesters to maintain a shaky cease-fire with police after at least two demonstrators were killed in clashes this week, but some in the crowd appeared defiant, jeering and chanting “revolution” and “shame.”

Emerging from hours-long talks with President Viktor Yanukovych, opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok asked demonstrators in Kiev for several more days of a truce, saying the president has agreed to ensure the release of dozens of detained protesters and stop further detentions.   Continue reading “Ukraine opposition urges continued cease-fire”

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SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Rep. Paul Ryan on Thursday told Texas business leaders eager for changes to immigration laws that House Republicans will tackle reform in pieces and ruled out negotiations with the Senate on its comprehensive measure.

The Wisconsin Republican didn’t offer a timetable ahead of next week’s GOP House caucus annual retreat, where Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said immigration will top the agenda. Supporters of an immigration overhaul are renewing hopes that 2014 could bring the first sweeping changes in decades. Ryan expressed optimism at a luncheon hosted by the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce but reiterated an insistence among GOP lawmakers that reforms happen piecemeal.   Continue reading “Ryan: House will take up immigration in pieces”

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GENEVA (AP) — Syria’s government said stopping terrorism — not talking peace — was its priority, while the Western-backed opposition said “the road to negotiations” had begun, offering a glimmer of hope Thursday for a way to halt the violence that has killed more than 130,000 people.

The two sides did not meet face-to-face, buffered by a famously patient U.N. mediator who shuttled between representatives of Syrian President Bashar Assad and members of the opposition trying to overthrow him. And they did not seem ready to do so Friday as originally scheduled.   Continue reading “Syrian peace talks yield hard stances, slight hope”

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NEW YORK (AP) — More than 30 years after hooded gunmen pulled a $6 million airport heist dramatized in the hit Martin Scorsese movie “Goodfellas,” an elderly reputed mobster was arrested at his New York City home on Thursday and charged in the robbery and a 1969 murder.

Vincent Asaro, 78, was named along with his son, Jerome, and three other defendants in wide-ranging indictment alleging murder, robbery, extortion, arson and other crimes from the late 1960s through last year. The Asaros, both identified as captains in the Bonanno organized crime family, pleaded not guilty through their attorneys and were ordered held without bail at a brief appearance in federal court in Brooklyn.   Continue reading “Reputed mobster pleads not guilty in 1978 heist”

RT News

A federal judge has ruled that a New Orleans newspaper must turn over information it has about anonymous commenters as part of an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct in the Danziger Bridge shootings that took place following Hurricane Katrina.

US Magistrate Judge Joseph Wilkinson decided Tuesday in favor of a lawyer for Stacey Jackson, the former New Orleans Affordable Homeownership executive director who has been accused of misusing federal funds before and after Hurricane Katrina for personal benefit. Theft and bribery are among the charges she is facing.   Continue reading “New Orleans paper must reveal online commenters’ identities – judge”

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The art of cyber-stalking is about to get an upgrade, as a team of computer whizzes on Kickstarter.com work towards a pocket-sized drone that is silent, maneuverable and, most importantly, so easy to set up it could probably be used by a chimpanzee.

What’s more, the “world’s first multicopter” is built well enough to carry a portable camera – any camera, in fact, as long as it’s about 15 grams in weight – and can even be operated from an Android phone or tablet via a USB port.   Continue reading “Photographers and stalkers rejoice – pocket drones coming soon”

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DALLAS (AP) — The pregnant, brain-dead Texas woman being kept on life support over her family’s protests is carrying a fetus that is “distinctly abnormal,” attorneys for the woman’s husband said Wednesday.

Marlise Munoz remains hooked up to machines in a Fort Worth hospital, while her husband and the hospital are locked in a court battle about whether to retain life support. The case has raised questions about end-of-life care and whether a pregnant woman who is considered legally and medically dead should be kept on life support for the sake of a fetus. The case has gotten the attention of groups on either side of the abortion debate, as anti-abortion groups argue Munoz’s fetus deserves a chance to be born.   Continue reading “Attorneys: Brain-dead woman’s fetus ‘abnormal’”

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The largest object in the asteroid belt just got more attractive: Scientists have confirmed signs of water on the dwarf planet Ceres, one of the few bodies in the solar system to hold that distinction.

Peering through the Herschel Space Observatory, a team led by the European Space Agency detected water plumes spewing from two regions on Ceres. The observations, published in Thursday’s issue of Nature, come as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is set to arrive at the Texas-sized dwarf planet next year.   Continue reading “Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres”

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KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Tensions in Ukraine spread far from its embattled capital on Thursday as hundreds of people in the city of Lviv stormed into the regional governor’s office and forced him to write a letter of resignation.

Kiev, the capital, has been the epicenter of two months of protests against President Viktor Yanukovych after he turned away from closer ties to the 28-nation European Union in favor of getting a bailout loan from Russia. The protests have turned violent this week as pro-EU demonstrators feel Yanukovych has ignored their demands to resign, call a new election and rescind his harsh laws against protesters.    Continue reading “Tensions in Ukraine spread to second major city”

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man who went from teenage millionaire to convicted con artist to professional fraud fighter and pastor was convicted Wednesday of cheating his San Diego church congregation out of some $3 million.

Barry Minkow pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from the San Diego Community Bible Church, a U.S. attorney’s statement said. He was already serving a five-year sentence for a securities fraud conviction in Florida and could get five additional years when he is sentenced for the new conviction April 7.   Continue reading “Conman-turned-pastor convicted of cheating church”

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MONTREUX, Switzerland (AP) — Furiously divided from the start, representatives of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the rebellion against him threatened Wednesday to collapse a peace conference intended to lead them out of civil war.

Assad’s future in the country devastated by three years of bloodshed was at the heart of the sparring, which took place against a pristine Alpine backdrop as Syrian forces and rebel fighters clashed across a wide area from Aleppo and Idlib in the north to Daraa in the south.   Continue reading “Peace talks on Syria stuck over Assad’s future”

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife are accused of taking at least $165,000 in loans and gifts to help the chief executive of a health supplement company peddle his products. But proving the couple broke the law may be difficult.

Legal experts say the case hinges on whether prosecutors can show that McDonnell agreed to provide specific favors in exchange for the gifts, a tough task given the fine line between what is illegal versus what is unseemly. And prosecutors will need to prove the McDonnells abused their positions and conspired together to sell their influence.   Continue reading “Lawyers: Case against ex-Va. governor no slam dunk”

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SUMTER, S.C. (AP) — Lawyers finally got the chance to argue on behalf of George Stinney, 70 years after the 14-year-old black boy was sent to the electric chair for killing two white girls in South Carolina.

Whether his conviction from that segregation-era court is tossed out is now up to Judge Carmen Mullen after a two-day hearing concluded Wednesday. She gave both sides at least 10 more days to consult witnesses and make more arguments.   Continue reading “SC judge gets case of new trial for executed teen”

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CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — An 86-year-old Nevada woman shot by her husband while hospitalized died Wednesday and her spouse of more than six decades was charged with murder, authorities said.

Frances Dresser of Douglas County died from injuries suffered when she was shot once in the chest Sunday while at Carson-Tahoe Regional Medical Center, Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong said. Her husband told officers he planned to “end his wife’s suffering” by killing her and then himself, but his gun jammed, police said.   Continue reading “Woman shot at Nev. hospital dies; husband charged”

RT News

Despite the explicit protections of the First Amendment, a majority of US institutions of higher learning enforce rules that severely restrict free speech on campus, according to a new study.

According to a report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), 59 percent of US colleges and universities received a ‘red light’, meaning that the schools endorse policies that the watchdog group says impede on First Amendment rights.    Continue reading “Majority of US college campuses becoming ‘no-free-speech’ zones – report”

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A West Virginia community hoping to determine whether its drinking water is safe after a catastrophic chemical spill will likely be left with serious doubts after the state governor said he could not confidently answer that question.

“We’ve been in this thing for 11 days. It’s a very complicated issue. I’m not a scientist, you know,” said Governor Earl Ray Tomblin.   Continue reading “‘I’m not a scientist’: W. Virginia governor addresses water safety after chemical spill”

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A man attending a movie on Saturday at an AMC theater in Columbus, Ohio was pulled from a theater, detained, and questioned for over two hours by US Dept. of Homeland Security special agents tasked with fighting piracy – all for wearing Google Glass.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, said that about an hour into a 19:45 EST showing of ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,’ a man who flashed an official-looking badge “yank[ed] the Google Glass” off his face, asking him to exit the theater. The man was attending the film with his wife at the AMC theater at Easton Town Center.   Continue reading “Google Glass moviegoer detained for hours on suspicion of piracy”

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A US federal judge in Washington wrote that a suspected internet pirate should not be prosecuted solely because his computer’s IP address was identified by a film studio. The landmark opinion may tip the fortunes of defendants in similar situations.

The Hollywood executives behind the movie ‘Elf Man’ filed a lawsuit against hundreds of people, alleging that they were guilty of copyright infringement because their internet protocol (IP) address was found to have illegally downloaded the film. An IP address can be likened to a computer’s online fingerprint; each is unique to the machine it originates from.   Continue reading “IP address does not prove online piracy, US judge says in landmark ruling”

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Geneva 2 quickly descended into a war of words, with each successive speaker ratcheting up the rhetoric as tensions from the protracted civil war which has ravaged the country for three years quickly bled into the peace conference.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday kicked off the long-awaited international peace conference for Syria, opening the international bid to end the blodshed.   Continue reading “‘No one, Mr. Kerry, has right to withdraw president’s legitimacy’ – Syrian FM”