It Gets Worse. Yes. Worse.The credibility of the narcotics officers in the Johnston raid just took another hit:It was Fabian Sheats' third felony drug arrest in four months. But on the afternoon of Nov. 21, according to a police report, he was looking to curry favor, so he told officers they could find a kilogram of cocaine in a house at 933 Neal Street N.W.
That encounter led police to the home o ... (more)
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Ranger alleges war crimesAn Army Ranger accused of holding up a Tacoma bank plans to use the notoriety of his case to reveal what he characterizes as systematic war crimes -- rapes, homicides and political assassinations -- committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Spc. Elliott Sommer is allegedly part of a four-member Ranger crew from Fort Lewis involved in the armed robbery Aug. 7 of a Bank of America branch, court documents show.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Sommer,... (more)
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Fatherless babies in fertility revolutionA child's need for a father will no longer be a consideration when a woman seeks fertility treatment, ministers will say this week.
The move – which comes despite widespread public opposition and which will give single women and lesbians the right to treatment – forms part of a shake-up of Britain's embryology laws. One of the key proposals would allow research on test-tube embryos that were part-human, part-animal — referred to as "chimeras".
Caro... (more)
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How Many More Will Die For Bush's Ego?Last July in response to Bush-the-Evil's enabling of Israel's gratuitous slaughter of thousands of Lebanese civilians and destruction of the country's infrastructure, I wrote about "the shame of being an American." With the ongoing slaughter of our troops and Iraqi civilians in Bush's war in Iraq, it is time to revisit that theme.
As the Iraqi civil war (euphemistically termed "sectarian violence") intensifies, both US and Ira... (more)
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Parking space outside your home? Then you'll have to pay tax on thatHomeowners who have parking spaces on the road outside their home face higher council tax bills - even if they don't have a car.
Ministers have admitted that the availability of parking outside people's properties will be considered by inspectors assessing how much council tax households should pay. The "parking tax"- which will come on top of the cost of residents' parking permits - has been condemned as unfair by the Tories.
The Independent on Sunday has learnt th... (more)
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Police may use CCTV for eavesdroppingPolice are considering installing a next generation of CCTV camera that is powerful enough to record people’s conversations up to 100 yards away.
Ultra sensitive microphones may be attached to surveillance systems across the UK, so law enforcement has the chance to thwart aggressive behaviour before it turns violent.
Councils and transport authorities have also reportedly expressed interest in installing the new systems before the London Olympics in 2012.
... (more)
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Always someone watching WILKES-BARRE — Everyone on Public Square is being watched through a tower of surveillance cameras.
Many people say the cameras make them feel safer and deter crime downtown, while civil liberty advocates argue they are an invasion of privacy.
The cameras on Public Square were installed as a test system at a minimal cost to the city to increase security downtown, said City Administrator J.J. Murphy. The city only paid for the shipping costs for these cameras, ... (more)
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Bill would ban 'mercury vaccine'The first bill in the legislative hopper for the 2007 session is one near and dear to Lawrence's Linda Weinmaster and a number of parents across the state.
Senate Bill 1 would ban the use of mercury-based thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
"I'm somewhat optimistic that it will pass this session," Weinmaster said. "We're going to give it our best try."
Weinmaster and many others claim that thimerosal, which is used as a preservative in some vaccines, ha... (more)
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Sandra Day O'Connor: "My Life as a Buck-Passing Phony"Do you like Sandra Day O' Connor?
You know, the peevish ex-Supreme Court Justice with the mug like George Washington?
O' Connor's placement on the Iraq Study Group is one of the more striking political ironies of our time. After all, who played a bigger role in securing a spot in the Oval Office for our Crawford Interloper than O'Connor?
Nevertheless, O'Connor was rewarded for her loyalty by sticking her on a panel that is designed to derail the Bush ... (more)
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Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control SystemIn the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk.
A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores.... (more)
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In a Confessing State of Mind An early impulse of Bush administration officials after the attacks of September 11, 2001 was to take off "the gloves," or, as CIA Director George Tenet put it (so Ron Suskind tell us in his book, The One Percent Doctrine), "the shackles." Those were the "shackles" ... (more)
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37 million poor hidden in the land of plentyAmericans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening
The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.
... (more)
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US bugged Diana's phone on night of death crashThe American secret service was bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week.
Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.... (more)
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MADD's `exorbitant costs' anger charity's volunteersPeople who donate to Mothers Against Drunk Driving are told by the charity that most of the $12 million it raises annually is spent on good works — stopping drunk driving and helping families traumatized by fatal crashes.
But a Star investigation reveals most of the high-profile charity's money is spent on fundraising and administration, leaving only about 19 cents of each donor dollar for charitable works.
MADD chief executive officer Andrew Muri... (more)
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A generation is all they needBy the time my four-year-old son is swathed in the soft flesh of old age, he will likely find it unremarkable that he and almost everyone he knows will be permanently implanted with a microchip. Automatically tracking his location in real time, it will connect him with databases monitoring and recording his smallest behavioural traits.
Most people anticipate such a prospect with a sense of horrified disbelief, dismissing it as a science-fiction fantasy. The technology, however, al... (more)
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'You must leave in 24 hours or your heads will be cut, your houses burnt'The three Azzawi brothers, Hussein, Qadam and Ali, loved their home. Their late father had picked the two-storey villa because it was big enough for his sons to marry and raise children in. He hoped that they would always live there.
That dream ended with a letter, dumped after dark on the Azzawis’ doorstep. The death threat was organised like a business memorandum, with the helpful heading “Subject: displacementâ€.
... (more)
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Rwanda accuses France of hiding late Habyarimana`s plane black boxThe row between France and Rwanda went a notch higher after Rwandese foreign minister, Charles Murigande, challenged Paris to disclose the whereabouts of the black box of the ill-fated plane that killed President Juvenal Habyarimana.
Rwanda`s President Habyarimana and his Burundi counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira were killed on 6 April 1994 after their plane was shot down, sparking off the infamous Rwanda genocide.
France is currently investigating the cause of the pla... (more)
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It's still about oil in Iraq December 8, 2006 -- WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.
Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendation... (more)
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CIA is undermining British war effort, say military chiefs British intelligence officers and military commanders have accused the US of undermining British policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the sacking of a key British ally in the Afghan province of Helmand. British sources have blamed pressure from the CIA for President Hamid Karzai's decision to dismiss Mohammed Daud as governor of Helmand, the southern province where Britain deployed some 4,000 troops this year. Governor Daud was appointed in mid-year to replace a man the... (more)
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65 years later, his questions lingerAround this time every year, Joe Fenton’s mind wanders back to the preview he had of the destruction that would be unleashed on Pearl Harbor.
Just 17 years old and six months removed from boot camp, Fenton was an oiler on the USS Boise as it escorted five merchant ships carrying air base construction materials across the Pacific to the Philippines. After midnight on the morning of Nov. 28, 1941, the light cruiser’s loudspeakers blared with orders for crew members to ma... (more)
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Christmas terror attack 'highly likely' An attempted terrorist attack in Britain over the Christmas period is "highly likely", the Home Secretary said today.
John Reid said that around 30 conspiracies were under preparation, and the current threat level was "very high indeed".
He told GMTV Sunday that he did not think it an attack was inevitable, but that "the terrorists only have to get through once, as they did on July 7, for us to see the terrible carnage that it causes".
"Our security ... (more)
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Police to get 'dirty bomb hoods' in terror alertPOLICE forces have been told to buy anti-radiation masks for their 100,000 frontline officers to protect them in the event of a “dirty bomb” terrorist attack.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has told all forces they should look to purchase specially designed chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN) hoods as soon as possible.
Senior officers are concerned that, with only 1,000 thought to have been distributed, their ability to de... (more)
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Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from carsMeet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to de... (more)
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Spy widow points finger at RussiaThe widow of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko has said she believes the Russian authorities could have been behind his murder.
Marina Litvinenko, 44, told the Mail on Sunday: "Obviously it was not Putin himself, of course not."
But she said what President Putin "does around him in Russia makes it possible to kill a British person" in Britain.
Two Metropolitan Police officers have tested positive for traces of radioactive substance polonium-210.... (more)
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