Breaking News Events

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Allison W

Serious question: do you believe the police should be forbidden from taking fingerprints from people accused of crimes but not convicted? If you do, then the stance against taking DNA from people accused of crimes but not convicted is consistent. Do you believe police should be forbidden from entering the fingerprints of people accused of crimes but not convicted into a database? If you do, then the stance against entering the DNA of people accused of crimes but not convicted into a database would be consistent. If you have no problem with fingerprinting in either case, then I am forced to wonder why you consider one worse than the other, aside from simply being new and useful.

LOL yeah I have to think that one thru some more.

[*Anya*]

BBC World News tonight:

French newscaster Laurent Fabius reported "independent tests showed the Syrian government used Sarin gas on protesters".

Test results were given to the UN. The UN stated that they can't verify the results because they have not been given visa's to enter Syria.

The United States reportedly stated that "they need more evidence" (per the BBC).

Additionally, the BBC reported that children are possibly being used by the Syrian government to "get their parents to talk and also as executioners".

[Andrea]

Report: Secret court order forces Verizon to turn over telephone records of millions

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/05/politics/nsa-verizon-records/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"The U.S. government has obtained a top secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency on an "ongoing daily basis," the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday."

[Andrea]

Prescription Drugs Now Kill More People In The US Than Heroin And Cocaine Combined

http://www.businessinsider.com/painkillers-kill-more-americans-than-heroin-and-cocaine-2012-9

"Prescription opioid painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the U.S. than heroin and cocaine combined, according to a new study out of Brandeis University."

[Tommi]

FDA works Fast-3-D Printed Tracheal Splint

Researchers at the University of Michigan used 3-D printing technology to create bioresorbable device that proved to be lifesaving for Kaiba Gionfriddo, a 20-month old baby. The scientists received emergency permission from the FDA to create and implant the tracheal splint pictured here, which was made from polycaprolacton.

[Tommi]

FDA Investigates Multistate Outbreak of Hepatitis A Illnesses Potentially Associated with a Frozen Fruit Blend
Posted June 6, 2013
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Hepatitis A illnesses potentially associated with a frozen food blend. We are moving quickly to learn as much as possible and prevent additional people from becoming ill. We recognize that people will be concerned about this outbreak, and we will continue to provide updates and advice.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/RecallsOutbr.../ucm354698.htm

Nearly 50 reported cases of Hepatitis A in California and other states may be linked to contaminated Townsend Farmers Organic Anti-Oxidant frozen berries sold at Costco markets, according to the CDC. If you have consumed this product, or if you experience any signs or symptoms of Hepatitis, contact your personal physician immediately for treatment. Read the latest information from the CDC as well as what you should do if you've eaten these berries.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Andrea

Report: Secret court order forces Verizon to turn over telephone records of millions

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/05/politics/nsa-verizon-records/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"The U.S. government has obtained a top secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency on an "ongoing daily basis," the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday."

Similar to you, Andrea, I wonder about things of this nature: For example, I read the article as the media characterizing the subject (secret court order) as information being withheld from the general American populace in American media. I wonder about the decision making behind this type of 'court order' and why it was leaked in the British press, rather than the American press.

Originally Posted by Andrea

Prescription Drugs Now Kill More People In The US Than Heroin And Cocaine Combined

http://www.businessinsider.com/painkillers-kill-more-americans-than-heroin-and-cocaine-2012-9

"Prescription opioid painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the U.S. than heroin and cocaine combined, according to a new study out of Brandeis University."

During my graduate studies, I did a six month long intense study of such things because there's a methadone clinic in my neighborhood, which the clinic has been a controversial chess piece in neighborhood wars, county funding wars or city project wars. What I learned by in-dept field interviews with constituents recieving services at the particular methadone clinic in my neighborhood was that doctors of patients were prescribing pain remedies (oxycontin, et al) and the vast majority of people I interviewed said that although they followed their doctors orders to a 'T' - when their pain remedy trajectory outweighed the expected outcome percieved by doctor treatment plans, they were catagorized as not having followed their doctors treatment plan; which landed them in outpatient programs, such as the methadone clinic, to address the unexpected outcome of a pain remedy treatment (a causation of dependency outcome, an not-expected/unanticipated outcome). My heart went out to a good number of people I interviewed because people relegated to a methadone clinic were not the type of people expected to be visiting a methadone clinic and I would say that most of the people I interviewed were very upset with the outcome of having explicity followed their doctors advice and treatment plan to the 'T', only to suffer a more compounded, unfortunate outcome. But I can totally understand the study results in the aformentioned study that you linked us to in your post, due to the results of the study I conducted at a graduate level.

Originally Posted by Tommi

FDA Investigates Multistate Outbreak of Hepatitis A Illnesses Potentially Associated with a Frozen Fruit Blend
Posted June 6, 2013
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local officials are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Hepatitis A illnesses potentially associated with a frozen food blend. We are moving quickly to learn as much as possible and prevent additional people from becoming ill. We recognize that people will be concerned about this outbreak, and we will continue to provide updates and advice.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/RecallsOutbr.../ucm354698.htm

Nearly 50 reported cases of Hepatitis A in California and other states may be linked to contaminated Townsend Farmers Organic Anti-Oxidant frozen berries sold at Costco markets, according to the CDC. If you have consumed this product, or if you experience any signs or symptoms of Hepatitis, contact your personal physician immediately for treatment. Read the latest information from the CDC as well as what you should do if you've eaten these berries.

Thank you for posting about the Hepatitis A outbreak, Tommi.
I wonder if epidemiology experts will soon be working toward narrowing in on other factors pertinent to this case.

[Kobi]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — With every phone call they make and every Web excursion they take, people are leaving a digital trail of revealing data that can be tracked by profit-seeking companies and terrorist-hunting government officials.

The revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine major Internet services illustrate how aggressively personal data is being collected and analyzed.

Former NSA employee William Binney told The Associated Press that he estimates the agency collects records on 3 billion phone calls each day.

The NSA and FBI appear to be casting an even wider net under a clandestine program code-named "PRISM" that came to light in a story posted late Thursday by The Washington Post. PRISM gives the U.S. government access to email, documents, audio, video, photographs and other data belonging to foreigners on foreign soil who are under investigation, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper said it reviewed a confidential roster of companies and services participating in PRISM. The companies included AOL Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Skype, YouTube and Paltalk.

Like pieces of a puzzle, the bits and bytes left behind from citizens' electronic interactions can be cobbled together to draw conclusions about their habits, friendships and preferences using data-mining formulas and increasingly powerful computers.

It's all part of a phenomenon known as a "Big Data," a catchphrase increasingly used to describe the science of analyzing the vast amount of information collected through mobile devices, Web browsers and check-out stands. Analysts use powerful computers to detect trends and create digital dossiers about people.

The Obama administration and lawmakers privy to the NSA's surveillance aren't saying anything about the collection of the Verizon customers' records beyond that it's in the interest of national security. The sweeping court order covers the Verizon records of every mobile and landline phone call from April 25 through July 19, according to The Guardian.

The location information is particularly valuable for cloak-and-dagger operations like the one the NSA is running, said Cindy Cohn, a legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that has been fighting the government's collection of personal phone records since 2006. The foundation is currently suing over the government's collection of U.S. citizens' communications in a case that dates back to the administration of President George W. Bush.

"It's incredibly invasive," Cohn said. "This is a consequence of the fact that we have so many third parties that have accumulated significant information about our everyday lives."

It's such a rich vein of information that U.S. companies and other organizations now spend more than $2 billion each year to obtain third-party data about individuals, according to Forrester Research. The data helps businesses target potential customers. Much of this information is sold by so-called data brokers such as Acxiom Corp., a Little Rock, Ark. company that maintains extensive files about the online and offline activities of more than 500 million consumers worldwide.

In a sign of the NSA's determination to vacuum up as much data as possible, the agency has built a data center in Bluffdale, Utah that is five times larger than the U.S. Capitol —all to sift through Big Data. The $2 billion center has fed perceptions that some factions of the U.S. government are determined to build a database of all phone calls, Internet searches and emails under the guise of national security. The Washington Post's disclosure that both the NSA and FBI have the ability to burrow into computers of major Internet services will likely heighten fears that U.S. government's Big Data is creating something akin to the ever-watchful Big Brother in George Orwell's "1984" novel.

"The fact that the government can tell all the phone carriers and Internet service providers to hand over all this data sort of gives them carte blanche to build profiles of people they are targeting in a very different way than any company can," Khatibloo said.

Full Story
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Speechless.

[Glenn]

There are some remarkably foresighted people behind this with a plan, and that plan has an end/goal/aim that is gaining control of people and resources. I believe a one world government with a one world currency is on it's way.

[Greyson]

Nike’s Pro-LGBT #BeTrue Shoes And The Fashion Of Acceptance In Sports

By Travis Waldron on Jun 11, 2013 at 2:34 pm

The world’s foremost name in sporting apparel isn’t just dipping its toe in the waters of expression and acceptance. It’s diving in headfirst. After signing the WNBA’s Brittney Griner to a contract that has her market and wear men’s clothing as well as women’s apparel, and makes her the company’s first openly gay athlete.....

Griner and other female athletes are donning men’s suits and jeans, bow ties and button-downs. All this experimentation is pushing and redefining traditional gender norms, and while that’s still drawing negative responses from some, it’s drawing admiration and enjoyment from most. It’s also causing fans and admirers to experiment alongside them, giving Nike and other companies further incentive to ignore the norms to which they once felt they had to adhere.

http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2013...nce-in-sports/

[Kobi]

VATICAN CITY (AP) — In private remarks to the leadership of a key Latin American church group, Pope Francis lamented that a "gay lobby" was at work at the Vatican.

It was an apparent reference to allegations in the Italian media that blackmail was taking place within the Vatican against high-ranking prelates who are gay.

The Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious — the regional organization for priests and nuns of religious orders — confirmed Tuesday that its leaders had written a synthesis of Francis' remarks after their June 6 audience. The group, known by its Spanish acronym CLAR, said it was greatly distressed that the document had been published and apologized to the pope.

In the document, Francis is quoted as saying that while there were many holy people in the Vatican, there was also a current of corruption. "The 'gay lobby' is mentioned, and it is true, it is there ... We need to see what we can do ..." the synthesis reads.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday the audience was private and that as a result he had nothing to say.

In the days leading up to Pope Benedict XVI's Feb. 28 resignation, Italian media were rife with reports of a "gay lobby" influencing papal decision-making and Vatican policy through blackmail, and suggestions that the scandal had led in part to Benedict's decision to resign.

The unsourced reports, in the Rome daily La Repubblica and the news magazine Panorama, said details of the scandal were laid out in the secret dossier prepared for Benedict by three trusted cardinals who investigated the leaks of papal documents last year. Benedict left the dossier for Francis.

At the time, the Vatican denounced the reporting as defamatory, "unverified, unverifiable or completely false."

The initial reporting has never been precise on what exactly was meant by a "gay lobby," but Repubblica and Panorama went beyond saying there was merely a homosexual subculture at the Vatican. Rather, they raised allegations that high-ranking prelates were being blackmailed because they were gay.

On Wednesday, Italian gay rights groups denounced the reporting of the entire affair as insensitive and homophobic.

"That priests have sex with other men doesn't authorize anyone to speak about a gay lobby, because we're not talking about a group that represents the interests of the homosexual community but rather a group that is an integral part of a power structure — the Vatican — which is violently homophobic," said Franco Grillini, president of Gaynet rights group.

Francis' remarks on the matter, as reported by the CLAR leadership, were published Tuesday in Spanish on the progressive Chilean-based website "Reflection and Liberation" and picked up and translated by the blog Rorate Caeli, which is read in Vatican circles.

In the synthesis, Francis was quoted as being remarkably forthcoming about his administrative shortcomings, saying he was relying on the group of eight cardinals he appointed to lead a reform of the Vatican bureaucracy.

The document quoted him as saying: "I am very disorganized, I have never been good at this. But the cardinals of the commission will move it forward."

In its statement, CLAR said no recording had been made of Francis' remarks but that the members of its leadership team — a half-dozen men and women — together wrote a synthesis of the points he had made for their own personal use.

"It's clear that based on this one cannot attribute with certainty to the Holy Father singular expressions in the text, but just the general sense," the statement said.

___

Text of the CLAR synthesis is at http://www.reflexionyliberacion.cl/a...n-la-clar.html

Text of the CLAR apology is at http://www.clar.org/clar/index.php?m...&tid=2&pid=659

[UofMfan]

Supreme Court DNA Ruling: Court Says Human Genes Cannot Be Patented

[Allison W]

Originally Posted by UofMfan

Supreme Court DNA Ruling: Court Says Human Genes Cannot Be Patented

Hell yeah. Finally something that isn't just kowtowing to wealthy corporate interests.

[Greyson]

UCD Health System to include sexual orientation, gender identity in e-records

By Mark Glover
mglover@sacbee.com

The UC Davis Health System said today that it will become the first academic health system in the nation to incorporate sexual orientation and gender identity as standard demographic elements within the electronic health records of its patients.

Officials said the move was prompted in part by a 2011 Institute of Medicine report that noted a meager amount of research data about the health of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patients.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/06/13/549...de-sexual.html

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by UofMfan

Supreme Court DNA Ruling: Court Says Human Genes Cannot Be Patented

It was 9-0......unanimous decision......

They did rule that the company can patent a piece of DNA (like the BRAC) if they change it enough that it does not occur in nature and is being used for other purposes.

I cannot remember when there was a unanimous decision on the Court.....and with this Court, which is so divided, it borders on a miracle..

[Andrea]

Governor Terry Branstad, Iowa’s New Abortion Decider-In-Chief

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/governor-terry-branstad-iowas-new-abortion-decider-in-chief/news/2013/06/13/68582

"Iowa is about to become a one-of-a-kind state – the only state with it’s own abortion arbiter. From here on out, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad will be personally signing off on each and every request for a Medicaid-covered abortion in his state. In Iowa, that means victims of rape. Victims of incest. Women whose lives are endangered by a pregnancy. Women who are carrying a fetus so malformed it won’t survive. The Governor says he plans “to be thoughtful.”

[*Anya*]

Student kicked out of college for being a lesbian, now must repay over $6K for her revoked academic scholarship.

Danielle Powell was close to getting her bachelor's degree when she was kicked out of her university for being gay in 2012, and now says the only way the school will transfer her credits to another school is if she agrees to pay $6,300. In response, Powell has launched an online petition to pressure the school to forgive the debt.

Powell was a student at Grace University in early 2011 when she began her first same-sex relationship. Up until that point, neither she nor her then-girlfriend identified as lesbian. When Grace, a religious university in Omaha, Neb., found out about the relationship through a spiritual adviser at the school, they brought Powell before a judiciary board to decide whether she should be allowed to stay enrolled.

"At that time, my family had no idea, so I had to come out to my family sooner than I would've wanted," Powell told The Huffington Post.

Michael James, executive vice president at Grace, told The Huffington Post that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents them from discussing any student's particular case. But he did confirm the student handbook states that "Any student involved in sexually immoral behavior, including premarital sex, adultery, and homosexual acts, is at minimum placed on University probation and may be subject to a Judiciary Hearing."

Powell said the board asked her why she did what she did and whether she was remorseful, treating her, in her words, "like a sexual predator." The university ultimately decided in March 2011 to suspend her and not allow her to finish the semester. Powell said she was also told she now owed Grace just over $6,000 after an academic scholarship she'd been awarded was revoked.

Powell said that the university told her she could participate in a restoration program, involving counseling and regular church attendance, to get readmitted, but she would have to live off campus and could not stay overnight in the dorms. She began the restoration process in the summer of 2011, so as not to jeopardize work that she was afraid she might lose by transferring to another institution.

But shortly before the start of the spring 2012 semester, Grace decided not to readmit her because she was still dating women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular

[Jesse]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular

[Andrea]

S. 744
Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act
As reported by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on May 28, 2013,
including the amendments made in the star print of June 6, 2013

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/s744.pdf

"The report estimates that in the first decade after the immigration bill is carried out, the net effect of adding millions of additional taxpayers would decrease the federal budget deficit by $197 billion. Over the next decade, the report found, the deficit reduction would be even greater -- an estimated $700 billion, from 2024 to 2033."

Bolding mine....

[Princess]

Originally Posted by Jesse

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular

This is less than a mile from my home, and I could not be happier. This little girl is awesome, and she has raised nearly 20,000 dollars! Way to Go Jayden!