Brain-eating amoeba infections from their own home water
 

Two People In Louisiana Killed By Amoeba Infection Traced To Tap Water. Fox News (8/24, Crees) reports, “Following the deaths of two people from Louisiana who contracted brain-eating amoeba infections from their own home water systems the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration are warning people to follow appropriate guidelines when using” neti pots or other nasal-rinsing devices.

The victims died from “primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) — an almost universally fatal infection — after using neti pots filled with tap water to irrigate their sinuses.” The amoeba in question is Naegleria fowleri (N. Fowleri) described as “a climate-sensitive amoeba found in warm freshwater lakes and rivers” which “has over a 99 percent fatality rate.” The CDC and FDA recommend use of “boiled, distilled or filtered water when using neti pots or other nasal-rinsing devices” to avoid risk of infection. PAM infections are usually “associated with swimming in warm, untreated water.”

9 shooting bystander victims hit by police gunfire.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/24...#ixzz24f0kDmHe

Federal court rejects Texas voter ID law
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal court on Thursday rejected a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to cast ballots in November.

A three-judge panel in Washington unanimously ruled that the law imposes "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty.

The decision involves an increasingly contentious political issue: a push, largely by Republican-controlled legislatures and governors' offices, to impose strict identification requirements on voters.

Republicans are aggressively seeking the requirements in the name of stamping out voter fraud. Democrats, with support from a number of studies, say fraud at the polls is largely non-existent and that Republicans are simply trying to disenfranchise minorities, poor people and college students — all groups that tend to back Democrats.

In the Texas case, the Justice Department called several lawmakers, all of them Democrats, who said they detected a clear racial motive in the push for the voter ID law. Lawyers for Texas argued that the state was simply tightening its laws. Texas called experts who demonstrated that voter ID laws had a minimal effect on turnout. Republican lawmakers testified that the legislation was the result of a popular demand for more election protections.

http://news.yahoo.com/federal-court-...161316144.html

Federal judge rules state must provide sex reassignment surgery
 

A federal court judge has ordered state officials to provide a sex-reassignment surgery for a transsexual prison inmate, convicted of murdering his wife, after finding that the treatment is the only adequate care for his serious mental illness, gender identity disorder.

US District Court Chief Judge Mark Wolf also noted that the treatment for Michelle Kosilek had been prescribed by Department of Correction doctors, and that the only justifications for denying the treatment were based on public opinion.

“This fact that sex reassignment surgery is for some people medically necessary has recently become more widely recognized,” Wolf wrote in a landmark, 129-page ruling issued today.

Kosilek first sued the Department of Correction in 2000, arguing that its refusal to pay for a sex-change violates her Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.

The department has consistently opposed Kosilek’s request.

Today, Department of Correction spokeswoman Diane Wiffin said the state agency has received Wolf’s ruling.

“We are reviewing the decision and exploring our appellate options,’’ Wiffin said.

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012...V5N/story.html

Southern Decadence Arrests: 9 Anti-Gay Preachers Nabbed For Disrupting New Orleans Celebration



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...ref=gay-voices

I read on yahoo yesterday that the fedral judge was going to alow an inmate to have sexual reasingment surgery while in prison.The tax payer will be footing the bill no doubt.

Judge upholds Arizona "show-your-papers" measure in mixed ruling
 

PHOENIX (Reuters) - A U.S. judge ruled on Wednesday that a controversial Arizona "show-your-papers" immigration provision that has been upheld by the Supreme Court may go into effect, but in a split ruling blocked another measure making it a crime to harbor illegal immigrants.

The measure that was upheld, part of a broader law to combat illegal immigration in the state bordering Mexico, home to an estimated 360,000 undocumented immigrants, requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop and suspect are in the country illegally.

In allowing that measure to proceed, District Court Judge Susan Bolton ruled the law's challengers had failed to show they were likely to prevail on the merits of the case, but noted that the top court had left open the possibility of contesting the provision "after it goes into effect."

In a mixed ruling, Bolton also issued a preliminary injunction blocking a part of the state law, known as SB 1070, that made it a crime to transport, shield or harbor an illegal immigrant within Arizona's borders.

Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer, a major White House foe in the battle over illegal immigration, signed the state crackdown on illegal immigrants into law in April 2010, complaining that the federal government had failed to secure the state's border with Mexico.

Brewer welcomed the ruling, which she said brought Arizona "one big step closer to implementing the core provision of SB 1070."

http://news.yahoo.com/judge-upholds-...000045097.html

Mass. Lawmakers “Greatly Troubled” By Judge’s Sex Change Ruling
 

BOSTON (CBS) – In a letter to the state Department of Correction, 50 Massachusetts lawmakers say they are “greatly troubled” by a federal judge’s ruling that ordered prison officials to provide sex-reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate.

The lawmakers are urging that the DOC appeal the judge’s ruling.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf made the ruling in the case of Michelle Kosilek, who was born as a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison.

Kosilek is serving a life sentence for murdering his wife, Cheryl.

“The nature of his punishment – life imprisonment without the possibility of parole – sheds light on the heinousness of the crime,” the letter reads.

In his ruling Tuesday, Wolf found that surgery is the “only adequate treatment” for Kosilek’s “serious medical need.”

The lawmakers responded, saying, “We find such a suggestion to be unjustifiable, against the better judgment of the citizens of this state, and offensive to the family of Cheryl McCaul.”

Cheryl’s family is grateful that the lawmakers are urging an appeal.

“I think this is a great letter,” says Cheryl’s niece Susan Ohannessian. “It needs to happen. The fight is on and we are not going to back down on this.”

Latino group asks court to stop Texas voting map
 

WASHINGTON—A Latino civil rights group is asking the Supreme Court to stop Texas from using congressional districts drawn by a lower federal court in the November election because they discriminate against minorities.

The League of United Latin American Citizens filed the request Friday. The group says the court-drawn map, intended for use only in this year's election, has the same flaws identified by federal judges in Washington who last month rejected political boundaries drawn by Texas lawmakers as discriminatory.

The interim congressional map was used in Texas' primaries in May and was devised to let the state hold elections while courts considered challenges to redistricting plans adopted by the legislature following the 2010 census. Last week, the judges who drew the interim map declined to change it.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...--+Latest+news

--------------------------------------------------


Does anyone know the history behind or the criteria for drawing voting districts? I used to know this.

Not sure this is breaking news, but it didn't feel right putting it in the good news thread...not that I'm not in total agreement, I am, but....well, you know what I mean, I'm sure.




Barney Frank Torches Log Cabin Republicans: 'Many Of Them Are Nice. So Was Uncle Tom'




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1875373.html

Not breaking news, but Yahoo has posted an article from Business Insider (never heard of it) about how Obama has made and invested his own money. LINK

ANYWAY, he donated all the Nobel Prize money, and 100k of it went to the Central Asia Institute, which has been accused of lying and misusing donations. The Greg Mortenson/Three Cups of Tea scandal. ANYWAY, I got burned by them too -- for a considerably smaller donation. So I felt better when I read that people with considerably more informed advisors than I have made the same mistake.

Hopefully some of that money went for schools in Afghanistan. :(

Ma RMV will ‘be ready’ for proof of legal residence law in January
 

When the heck did this happen?


SOMERVILLE - Despite Gov. Deval Patrick’s concerns that it might be used to “identify and police” undocumented immigrants, the Registry of Motor Vehicles will be able by January to implement a new law requiring that vehicles be registered only by someone with “proof of legal residence,” according to Registrar Rachel Kaprielian.

Gov. Deval Patrick unsuccessfully sought to amend and then vetoed legislation with the new requirement, but the Legislature rejected his amendment and then overrode his veto, 24-10 in the Senate and 135-19 in the House. The plan was inserted into the fiscal 2013 state budget and while proponents said that it was a common sense safety measure, Patrick said it veered too far into stringent immigration enforcement.

The law says anyone registering ownership of a motor vehicle at the Registry of Motor Vehicles must have “proof of legal residence” though Kaprielian will be empowered to write “exemptions for out-of-state students, military personnel, senior citizens and disabled persons,” as well as other exemptions.

Under the law, people seeking to register a motor vehicle or trailer would need to provide a driver’s license, a state identification card, Social Security number or “other proof of legal residence.”

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/reg...60197&srvc=rss

Didn't know where this one should go
 

The giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to a cub at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C
Panda-monium! Panda born at National Zoo; panda cam overwhelmed,

WASHINGTON -- The capital region's newest celebrity is no bigger than a stick of butter.

The National Zoo's female giant panda gave birth Sunday night, generating panda-monium in a city that has adored the rare creatures since the first pandas arrived in the wake of President Richard Nixon's 1972 groundbreaking trip to Beijing.

Zoo officials think they caught a glimpse, via panda cam, of the unnamed cub being clutched tightly by its mother, Mei Xiang (pronounced may-SHONG), but got confirmation of its arrival via loud squealing.

Back in 2010, Carly Simon came out publicly that she and other wealthy clients (of celebrity, too) were taken to the cleaners by Kenneth I Starr (a ponzi scheme very similar to the Madoff debacle).

Starr was a former CPA, and is now a dis-barred attorney; plus from what I could find, is due to get out of prison soon - they only gave him a short sentence, who knows if he reconciled the terrible crime financially to people who got burned by him.

I don't think you or myself or others who invest and are burned by schemes like this have technically made a 'mistake'. It appears obvious to me that Starr made mistakes in judgement though (Madoff, et al, too).