[SF Gate] The union representing San Francisco sheriff's deputies filed a formal complaint against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, linking the Pier 14 killing of Kathryn Steinle to a March order that barred them from communicating with federal immigration agents, according to documents obtained by The Chronicle.
The murder arrest of a man whom deputies had freed from jail despite a felony record and a history of deportations showed that Mirkarimi's policy "recklessly compromises the safety of sworn personnel, citizens, and those who merely come to visit the San Francisco area," the deputies wrote in the grievance.
The San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs' Association called for Mirkarimi to correct his "flawed philosophy" and rescind the March 13 memo prohibiting his staff from giving immigration agents information about detainees -- including their citizenship status, their booking and arrest documents, and their release dates.
[Dhaka Tribune] A Cambodian property tycoon accused of assaulting a well-known actress has appeared in court after she posted a video of the attack online. Violence against women is commonplace in Cambodia but public exposure of this attack has sparked outrage.
CCTV footage emerged earlier this month of an assault on the actress Ek Socheata, better known as SaSa, at a restaurant in the capital Phnom Penh.
Sok Bun, 37, returned to Cambodia from Singapore, where he had fled. After his arrest at Phnom Penh's airport, Sok Bun faces charges of violence and intentionally causing injury.
On Thursday, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called for Sok Bun's arrest.
"Don't think that because you have money you can escape,'' Hun Sen said. "What you have done is intolerable."
The footage shows SaSa being dragged off a chair and on to the floor at a Japanese restaurant. She is then kicked in the head, and when she tries to get up, she is punched and stamped on over the course of a minute.
At one point, a bodyguard draws a gun and points it at her head as the attack continues. It ends when a restaurant worker pulls the attacker away.
SaSa then obtained the video from the restaurant and posted it on her Facebook page. She has since given several interviews on national television and was still visibly badly bruised.
Earlier in the week, Sok Bun pleaded for forgiveness but a social media campaign called for his arrest.
"He pulled my hair and smashed my head against the floor," she told the News Agency that Dare Not be Named (AP) news agency. "I was in shock, I couldn't believe what was happening."
SaSa says she was protecting a friend from the advances of Mr Bun, who was at one point the head of Cambodia's estate agents' association.
Yin Sophy, Sok Bun's lawyer, was quoted in the Phnom Penh Post as saying his client had been keen to return to Cambodia to see the case resolved.
"My client has a real willingness to deal and take responsibility about this case," he said. "So he has come to solve these allegations with court directly."
If found guilty, Sok Bun could face up to five years in prison.
The newspaper reports that the bodyguard has been charged with attempted murder and remains on the lam. SaSa says he pulled the trigger of his gun only for it to fail to discharge.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
"Don't you know who I am?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/20/2015 11:57 Comments ||
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Seaweed is widely considered to be a health food. Bacon, on the other hand ... well, bacon isn't. There may yet be hope for pork belly lovers around the world, however. Scientists at Oregon State University (OSU) have patented a lab-bred strain of dulce seaweed, that they claim has "a strong bacon flavor" when fried. How about smell, morons?
Regular varieties of dulce have been eaten by people for many years, mainly as a food additive or nutritional supplement. And where were their tastbuds, exactly?
The new form (Palmaria mollis) was developed by a team led by OSU's Prof. Chris Langdon, who has been growing it in tanks of cold seawater at the university over the past 15 years. Not only does it apparently taste like bacon, but its translucent crinkly red leaves even look a bit like it, too. When the science is finally understood, this will probably not be a coincidence.
Langdon's original goal was to develop a seaweed that could be used as a "super-food" to feed farmed abalone. The resulting dulce strain grows faster than its wild counterpart, and is said to be very high in minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, containing up to 16 percent protein by dry weight. Abalone did well on a diet of it, growing at rates "that exceeded those previously reported in the literature." So it's good for fast food?
The idea of exploring its use as human fodder came about when Chuck Toombs from OSU's College of Business was looking for business projects for his students, since the new dulce strain can be farmed. "Culinary research chef" Jason Ball got involved at that point and after some experimentation, the seaweed's unique bacon-like taste was discovered. Followed by exhultation from every Jew and liberal handwringing worldwide.
Langdon is currently able to grow 20-30 lb (9-14 kg) of dulce per week in his two tanks, but is planning on upping that amount to 100 lb (45 kg). Toomb's students, meanwhile, are preparing a marketing plan for the seaweed, and examining its commercial feasibility as a large-scale aquaculture crop. Try not to screw this one up or we'll give it to the kindergarteners to come up with a better marketing plan.
#4
Another (sea)weed to let free into the environment. What happens when this "super" strain competes with the seaweed in the normal environment? Does it take over and perhaps even beyond seaweeds normal environment? Kudzu anyone?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/20/2015 15:09 Comments ||
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#10
Sing, seaweed, your siren song, "Bacon!"
Till shaken salts' ears are all achin',
And pepper your patter
With sizzle and spatter --
The Grecians will still think you're fakin'.
[AA.TR] Despite having an estimated potential of 20 gigawatts of hydroelectric power, the second largest in Central Africa, half the population of Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... does not have access to electricity throughout the day.
Electricity cuts "have become very common in Cameroon, (living in) darkness is what Cameroonians have in common," Carlos Alain Tetchang, a 19-year-old university student living in Douala, Cameroon's economic capital, told Anadolu Agency.
He recounted how he suffered to pass his high school exams: "Every evening, I had the same fear -- that the electricity will cut again. Every day I had to buy three candles in order to study."
Tetchang said he has grown accustomed to electricity cuts. "Cameroon has many dams but cannot use them wisely," he said.
Cameroon's electricity problem has two roots: low production capacity and dams being left unexploited.
Joel Nana Kontchou, CEO of Eneo, said: "The electricity rate is even lower in rural areas."
Eneo is a private Cameroonian energy company, which monopolizes electricity production in the Central African state.
"The annual electricity consumption per capita is about 165 kwh. Meanwhile, ...back at the alley, Bugs Moroni was holding Slats from behind while his brother Greasy Thumb was pounding his face into paste ... it is 1,650 kwh in southern Africa," he said.
Out of the 22 million people living in Cameroon, only 976,000 are subscribers to Eneo.
"The energy supplied today is not stable and is frequently interrupted," Kontchou said. "The company plans to invest 447 billion CFA Francs ($810.9 million) over the next 10 years into its network."
According to Robert Soh Tangakou, an economist and lecturer at the University of Douala, "the huge hydroelectric potential available to Cameroon can significantly contribute to increasing the country's economic growth."
He believes that to satisfy Cameroon's electricity demand, Eneo must implement a series of measures.
"The state and the company in charge (Eneo) must complete the construction projects of current dams and diversify the production of energy, using solar in particular," Tangakou said.
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07/20/2015 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza appears set to win a controversial third consecutive term in elections on Tuesday, a hollow victory that will leave him ruling over a violently divided nation.
The opposition and civil society groups have denounced his candidacy as unconstitutional and a violation of a peace deal that brought an end to a dozen years of civil war and ethnic massacres in 2006. And then it'll be all over but the shootin'.
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[Dhaka Tribune] Three brothers have been beaten and hacked to death following a dispute during a football match in the district's Sonaimuri upazila.
The dear departed are Md Kamal, 36, Md Harun, 32, Md Babul, 27, sons of Maksud Ullah, of Kazibari village under Nateswar union.
Victims' younger brother Md Morshed told the Dhaka Tribune: "My brothers went to watch a local friendly football match. During the match, they locked in an altercation with Golam Maula.
"At one stage of quarrel, a group of 10-12 criminals, led by Golam Maula, beat my brothers up and hacked, leaving them dead on the spot."
Of the attackers, seven are identified as Saddam, Anwar, Azim, Tawhid, Razu, Sharif and Rafiqul. They left the spot immediately after the incident.
Kazi Haniful Islam Bhuiyan, OC of Sonaimuri cop shoppe, said: "Being informed, police recovered the bodies from the spot. Drive is underway to capture the killers."
Nurul Amin Swapan, chairman of Nateswar Union Gay Pareehad, claimed that the victims were involved in drug peddling and many other illegal activities in the area and locals were frustrated with their activities.
However, the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach... when asked, the OC said he did not have such information on the victims.
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[WIRED] The year was 1989. The Soviet Union was falling apart, and some of its military officers were busy selling off the pieces. By the time Guy arrived at the helipad, most of the goods had already been off-loaded from the chopper and spirited away. The crates he'd come for were all that was left. As he pried the lid off one to inspect the goods, he got a powerful whiff of pine. It was a box inside a box, and the space in between was packed with juniper needles. Guy figured the guys who packed it were used to handling cargo that had to get past drug-sniffing dogs, but it wasn't drugs he was there for.
Inside the crates were maps, thousands of them. In the top right corner of each one, printed in red, was the Russian word секрет. Secret.
The maps were part of one of the most ambitious cartographic enterprises ever undertaken. During the Cold War, the Soviet military mapped the entire world, parts of it down to the level of individual buildings. The Soviet maps of US and European cities have details that aren't on domestic maps made around the same time, things like the precise width of roads, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and the types of factories. They're the kinds of things that would come in handy if you're planning a tank invasion. Or an occupation. Things that would be virtually impossible to find out without eyes on the ground.
Given the technology of the time, the Soviet maps are incredibly accurate. Even today, the US State Department uses them (among other sources) to place international boundary lines on official government maps. Lengthy, includes a map of Northern, Virginia and the Pentagon in Cyrillic.
#1
I heard or read somewhere, can't remember the source, that Soviets did not publish good maps of Russia because they didn't want potential adversaries (NATO) to have that kind of information.
#2
EU, I heard that too. The idea was that if you belonged there, you knew your way around. If you didn't belong there, you deserved to get lost.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/20/2015 11:55 Comments ||
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Worse, the maps for the masses were deliberately distorted with a special projection that introduced random variations. “The main goal was to crush the contents of maps so it would be impossible to recreate the real geography of a place from the map,” Postnikov tells me. Well-known landmarks like rivers and towns were depicted, but the coordinates, directions, and distances were all off, making them useless for navigation or military planning, should they fall into enemy hands. The cartographer who devised this devious scheme was awarded the State Prize by Stalin.
#4
When I worked for a digital mapping company in the 90s such a set of maps would have been very helpful. What my company did eventually was replaced by internet and smart phone maps but someone had to make the digital maps for the apps.
[Al Ahram] Italiatossed in the calaboose Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! three Egyptian men who are suspected to have piloted a boat carrying more than 300 migrants to Italia from Egypt, including a 10-year-old Syrian girl whose father said she died during the sea crossing, according to Italian media.
A Syrian man who was brought to Sicily on Wednesday after being rescued told an Italian prosecutor in that his daughter had fallen into a diabetic coma during the voyage and died.
Italian media said Egyptian people smugglers, to whom he had paid several thousand dollars for the trip, took a small backpack containing his daughter's insulin and threw it into the sea just as the boat was pulling out of port.
Without the medicine the girl did not survive the long trip and, at the urging of the other passengers on the crowded boat, her father buried her at sea, Italian media reported citing the prosecutor in Syracuse who took his testimony.
Police said they arrested the three men for people trafficking, not homicide, since the girl's father had said the men arrested were not the men who threw away the girl's medicine, Italian media reported on Saturday.
Italia is one of the main entry points, along with Greece, for migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe from North Africa and the government estimates as many as 200,000 may come this year.
Tensions have risen in recent days with Italians increasingly protesting the opening of new shelters near their homes. Italia is housing more than 84,000 migrants in shelters across the country, the Interior Ministry says.
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[ARABNEWS] Police on Sunday fired water canon at demonstrators rallying in the Indian capital against the failure to provide better safety for women after a teen was allegedly stabbed to death.
Dozens of angry protesters, mainly from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi tried to break through and jump over barricades erected around the police headquarters over the alleged murder of a 19-year-old girl last week.
The victim's family says she was stabbed to death in their central Delhi neighborhood after trying to avoid being harassed by two men late last Thursday. The eleventh grader was stabbed 35 times, according to local media.
The Delhi government has accused the police of abetting the killing by "inaction," saying they had never registered several complaints the victim filed against the perpetrators -- two brothers from the locality -- since 2013.
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[Tampa Tribute] TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Whenever members of the Judah P. Benjamin Camp of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans don their grey wool uniforms for a demonstration or re-enactment, Al McCray is there among his brothers.
He marches in the parades and flies the Confederate flag. He speaks out against the notion that the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of racism and defends "Southern heritage" causes.
Yet McCray is different from the rest of the camp.
While the other members are descendants of soldiers that fought for the south in the Civil War, McCray is an African-American "legionnaire" -- his ancestors were slaves on plantations near his hometown of Manning, South Carolina, just outside of Columbia.
"I understand the true nature of the war, and slavery was not the primary issue," McCray said. "It was an issue of northern aggression and northern imperialism."
#2
The flag is today's Rorschach test. A piece of cloth used by people to project their views of which not one is exclusive. It's all and it's none. One group has its definition of it while other groups have theirs. The real conflict is inherit to the groups, not the piece of cloth. It's all about POWER. There is a quick receding of tolerance and the growing demand of subservience and submission. The Left knows no limits other than power.
#3
When did it become de rigueur in our country to not be able to talk about anything without PC goons (liberals, politiicians, MSM) attempting to shut it down? All the more reason for a guy like Trump to talk and frame the issues and debate. The rest of the crowd running for office has been far too PC for fear of losing some possible votes. Trying to destroy a flag will just drive it underground.
Blacks fought for the Confederacy? Now there's a narrative the left does not want to be a part of history.
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.
[Tampa Tribute] TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Whenever members of the 
