[NBCCHICAGO] Seven people were killed and at least 32 others were shot in violence that plagued Chicago over Father's Day weekend. Six of the fatalities and 13 other shootings occurred overnight Saturday leading into Father's Day, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy. On the Southwest Side, five people were shot, one fatally, in two shootings in the Little Village neighborhood. Per Besoeker who had the same post: Crime rates rise as historically disadvantaged remain the hardest hit by poverty and Global Warming.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
frustration over paternal confusion on Father's Day?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2013 11:03 Comments ||
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Alaska man mauled after giving bear BBQ Yes, alcohol was involved.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The Alaska Department of Fish and Game thinks a black bear that mauled a man at a campground north of Anchorage won't threaten other people.
Spokesman Ken Marsh told the Anchorage Daily News the bear was "pretty much goaded" into the attack Saturday near Eklutna Lake Campground because the man fed it meat from a church barbecue. He may be charged with illegally feeding wildlife.
Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Beth Ipsen says the man had been drinking and went for a bike ride, taking some of the food along. He came across the bear and threw it a piece of meat. When he offered the bear another piece, it attacked.
The man was treated for punctures wounds and scratches at an Anchorage hospital.
Kuwaits top court on Sunday ordered the dissolution of parliament and called for fresh elections, officials said. The Constitutional Court made its ruling after throwing out an opposition challenge to changes to the electoral system decreed by the Amir, head judge Youssef Al Mutawa told reporters.
The opposition case had questioned the constitutionality of a change to the voting system ordered by the Amir, His Highness the Amir of Kuwait, Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jabbar Al Sabah.
Mutawa said the hearing had decided not to make a ruling on the challenge, in effect leaving the Amirs decree unchanged.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2013 00:00 ||
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[The Guardian]
Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in Londonistan in 2009 had their computers monitored and their cellies intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic. Host Nation internet cafe's.... who knew ?
The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week. Are You Being Served ?
The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, No Such Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey. Battle of Ingogo Heights and the Dardanelles Campaign obviously found at the aft end of "long-standing".
There have often been rumours of this kind of espionage at international conferences, but it is highly unusual for hard evidence to confirm it and spell out the detail. The evidence is contained in documents classified as top secret which were uncovered by the No Such Agency you know who and seen by the Guardian. They reveal that during G20 meetings in April and September 2009 GCHQ used what one document calls "ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to intercept the communications of visiting delegations. International conference espionage? ...Nooooo !
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Monday warned against engaging North Korea in a token dialogue that would only allow Pyongyang more time to develop its nuclear weapons programme. Now there is a breath of fresh air from the usual halitosis of appeasement...
The warning came in a 20-minute telephone call between Park and US President Barack Obama the day after North Korea proposed opening direct denuclearisation talks with the United States.
The offer was widely seen as an effort to drive a wedge between the United States and its South Korean ally after planned North-South talks were cancelled last week in a row over protocol.
"Talks for the sake of talks will only help North Korea earn more time to advance its nuclear weapons," a presidential Blue House spokesman quoted Park as telling Obama.
The White House meanwhile issued a statement saying the two presidents "agreed to continue close communication and coordination on actions to pursue the denuclearisation of North Korea".
Washington had already responded warily to Pyongyang's proposal, saying North Korea would have to show proof of its willingness to abandon its nuclear programme before a dialogue could begin.
The South's Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean relations, made it clear that Seoul and Washington were firmly on the same page.
"I'd like to explain our stance by repeating the comments from the White House ... that the window of dialogue is open but that the North should take concrete steps first," said ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-Seok.
During their 20-minute call, Obama briefed Park on his recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, when both leaders agreed to work together on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
Park and Xi are due to hold their own summit in Beijing on June 27.
North Korea has embarked on something of a diplomatic offensive of its own after months of heightened military tensions on the Korean peninsula, during which it had threatened nuclear strikes against the South and the US.
In May, it received a top-level aide to Japan's prime minister, and leader Kim Jong-Un sent his personal envoy to Beijing for talks with the Chinese leadership.
Then it proposed high-level talks with South Korea which were called off at the last minute after the two sides argued over the rank of their respective chief delegates. Nork rope a dope.
Sunday's proposal for direct talks with Washington insisted there could be no "pre-conditions" -- an optimistic requirement given the US insistence that the North first demonstrate its sincerity about denuclearisation.
South Korean media dismissed Pyongyang's talks offer as a worn-out strategy to divide Seoul and Washington, with an editorial in the JoongAng Daily calling it "North Korea's indecent proposal".
Last week, Glyn Davies, the US pointman on North Korea, repeated calls for the North to take steps to end its nuclear programme and said the recent surge in tensions on the Korean peninsula had reinforced US hesitancy to engage again.
The last senior-level talks between North Korea and the United States in February 2012 resulted in a deal for supplies of US food aid in exchange for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests. And we took the bait...to our shame and embarrassment.
The agreement collapsed almost immediately when the North unsuccessfully launched a long-range rocket the following month.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/17/2013 16:01 ||
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Champ is dumb enough. Kerry is more than dumb enough. Talks will take place. Results will be the same as every other time.
#2
China will never allow vassal NOKOR to possess a truly potent LR nuclear arsneal, nor one that is outside of their control.
As an Analyst on a MilBlog indic yesterday, despite any Govt-Media rhetoric to the contrary MAINLAND CHINA = BEIJING M-U-S-T HAVE CONTROL OF TAIWAN + OKINAWA + JAPAN-DISPUTED SENKAKUS/
DIAOYUS, ESPEC TAIWAN.
No iffs, ands, or but-t-ts - anyone whom says otherwise is either a fool or a Fifth Columnist.
[VOA News] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told hundreds of thousands of supporters it was his "duty" to evict activists from an Istanbul park.
Speaking at a rally Sunday, Erdogan said two weeks of street protests were manipulated by "terrorists." He dismissed opposition allegations that he was behaving like a dictator and he criticized foreign media coverage of the protests.
As he spoke, riot police in central Istanbul fired tear gas to stop protesters from regrouping in the main Taksim Square, after police forcibly drove them out of a nearby park that has been the center of protests against Erdogan's government.
The prime minister said his patience with the demonstrators had ended. Security forces used tear gas and water cannons to clear the park on Saturday evening.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Security measures at the Sessions Court were exposed once again when two murder accused were bumped off and five others injured by their rivals in the court of Additional District & Sessions Judge Sadiq Masood on Saturday.
Witnesses and police said the suspects fled after completing their mission of firing in the courtroom and the retiring room of the judge despite police presence.
Jamaat Ali and Nisar Ali, involved in a murder case registered with the Batapur police, came to court to get their pre-arrest interim bail extended when their rivals led by Shahbaz and Nawaz appeared on the scene. Both groups had a scuffle outside the court of the AD&SJ after which gunnies chased Jamaat and Nisar inside court and shot them. Arshad and Rizwan were among those who suffered injuries while trying to get shelter in the retiring room of the judge. The injured were shifted to the Mayo Hospital.
Police said nine members of both sides had been killed in property-related enmity.
The Islampura police started the paperwork but haven't done much else under sections 302, 324, 148, 149 and 109 of PPC against seven nominated accused and their four unidentified accomplices on the complaint of Sughran Bibi of Nishtar Colony.
A police official claimed that the suspects entered the court with weapons with the help of lawyers. He said the lawyers usually did not cooperate with the police personnel deployed at the entry gates and the latter did not dare frisk them. Taking advantage of exemption to lawyers, the suspects managed to enter the court premises.
DIG (Operations) Muhammad Tahir Rai told Dawn that Jamaat and his nephew Nisar, who were on interim bail, had come to the court for routine hearing. He said the rival group led by Shahbaz, who is complainant of the case against the victims, opened fire in a well-planned move.
He said both groups were relatives and developed dispute over a six-kanal piece of land in Batapur some years ago. The DIG said Sub-Inspector Abdul Samee, who was guard-in-charge at the court, had been suspended from service along with another SI, a head constable and a constable. He said the HC and the constable were found absent from duty.
He said the police teams conducted raids at the residences of the suspects but found them locked.
Later in the evening, Lahore High Court Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, along with other judges, visited the sessions court. He directed the sessions judge and police higher-ups to heighten security.
Justice Bandial told the media that there would be a curfew-like situation in the sessions court from Monday as irrelevant persons would not be allowed to enter.
In May 2011, two brothers were rubbed out in the court of an additional district and sessions judge. The assassin made good his escape.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2013 00:00 ||
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The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The [NY] Post reveals.
The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in States Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. The memo goes on to state that the troubling backgrounds can pose a problem if the agents are needed to testify at trials to assist prosecutors. Some Diplomatic Security field offices have major problems just waiting to be discovered, the memo adds.
An IG spokesman said he couldnt comment on internal documents, but State has said it prosecutes misconduct, and that the internal draft reports contain unsubstantiated information.
#1
and that the internal draft reports contain "unsubstantiated information."
But it's OK to paint Bureau of Diplomatic Security Service [DSS] employees as miscreants and criminals. Remember, they carry badges and icky guns, and when you go overseas.... you've got plenty of time to make nice and suck up to them for protection.
#2
I call BS on "many" of the points in this article. They throw out some big accusations but are short on details. Many means...50 %? 80 %? Suffice to say there are some worried mofos in HQ now regarding this and the hooker thing from last week. I'm about as far away from the Death Star as one could be.
As for Mr. B's comment - In high threat places, people tend to listen to us but in other places we are viewed as an annoyance. I've worked for two Ambassadors directly and both of them were buying what I was selling. So kinda of a mixed bag.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
06/17/2013 6:55 Comments ||
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#3
Yo Billy: You ever spend any time at Fort Devens, Lima Peru, or Moscow perhaps? Marry a fitness hottie from DIA? Oh well, no answer required, but send along my regards. :-)
#4
I suppose it is possible. State Dept. applicants fill out standard form 86, Questionnaire for National Security Positions. It is a 127 page form. It is not until page 84 that psychological suitability questions and criminal record questions get asked. Criminal history spans only the last 7 years of as person's history. 127 pages is too long. I can see why Personnel/HR doesn't have enough time for proper background checks. It looks like background and security checks are an in-house State deal.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NBCCHICAGO] Seven people were killed and at least 32 others were shot in violence that plagued Chicago over Father's Day weekend. Six of the fatalities and 13 other shootings occurred overnight Saturday leading into Father's Day, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy. On the Southwest Side, five people were shot, one fatally, in two shootings in the Little Village neighborhood.
