Former CG officer gets life for rape, murder

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A former Coast Guard officer has been sentenced to life in prison for raping and killing a Jupiter woman. As part of a plea deal, 27-year-old Chi Ng received a life sentence Thursday after pleading guilty to first-degree murder. He could have faced the death penalty. Authorities say 33-year-old Nongkran [...]

Chinese officials say Houston police beat diplomat

BEIJING — China said Friday that a Chinese diplomat in the U.S. was beaten and injured by Houston Police Department officers and urged an investigation to ensure diplomatic practices are not violated. The U.S. Department of State was taking the matter very seriously and findings of the investigation would be shared with China “as soon [...]

Escapades of former sheriff Gary Penrod’s Wife

See also:  Escapades of former sheriff Gary Penrod Witnesses who have been lined up to testify that the woman who has provided psychological care to members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for more than two decades engaged in multiple sexual affairs with the deputies she was hired to treat should be excluded from [...]

Superior Court Judge candidate Ed Montgomery endorses Paul Schrader for sheriff of San Bernardino County

It is my privilege and honor to endorse candidate Paul Schrader for the office of Sheriff in San Bernardino County. Our community will be well served by many of Paul’s proposals and recommendations once he takes office. San Bernardino has suffered too long without an election for sheriff. It is time to move forward in [...]

Wildomar moves to allow medical marijuana in its city

Once drafted, and if passed by council member vote, the new ordinance would establish Wildomar as the only Southwest Riverside city to allow medical marijuana within its borders. In front of a standing-room-only audience, and after more than two hours of discussion and heated debate, the Wildomar City Council passed a motion during its council [...]

FBI Adds Electronic Form for FOIA Requests

The FBI has a new electronic form designed to make requesting information easier. In addition, the bureau has retooled it records website, including a guide for research in FBI Records. Of course, filing a request has always been the easiest part of making a FOIA request of the FBI. George Washington University’s National Security Archive [...]

Oklahoma Passes Bill Outlawing Militia Recruitment

Last week the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill that equates recruiting militia members to recruiting gang members. “Recruiting membership in an unauthorized militia or the Ku Klux Klan would be a crime if legislation approved Thursday by the House of Representatives becomes law. ‘This is making unauthorized militias illegal,’ said Rep. Mike Shelton, [...]

From nose to brain: New route for chemical incapacitation?

HTML clipboard I first realized the power of intranasal drug delivery after reading a 2005 paper in Nature entitled “Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans.” In it, the authors–several psychologists, neuroscientists, and economists–reported on a study based on a game that pitted two players against each other–an investor and a trustee. (You may be wondering what [...]

Study Describes Difficulties of Latino Kids in U.S.

WASHINGTON – Latino children face obstacles in education and health that make their success as adults and their integration into society more difficult, the National Council of La Raza says in a study released Wednesday. Latinos make up 22 percent of the country’s total population under age 18, a percentage that is predicted to grow [...]

YouTube Didn’t Delete M.I.A. Video, But Did Bury It

See the story here.

Rise in Fratricide Seen in the War on Terror

Incidents of fratricide in the U.S. war on terror increased in recent years, according to a new report (pdf) from the U.S. Army. “Fratricide” — the unintended killing or injury of friendly forces — “is a harsh reality during combat operations,” the study states.  “Over the course of 2004-2007, the number of fratricide incidents increased, [...]

Military Wants to Super-Charge Troop Smarts

The Pentagon’s been trying to get ahead of the curve on neuroscience for years, toying with ideas like mind-reading lie detection and performance-degrading drugs for enemy combatants. Now, they’re launching a major effort to harness neuroscience in an effort to better prepare soldiers for the mental rigors of modern warfare. In a series of small [...]

Top 25 Psychiatric Prescriptions for 2009

These are the top 25 psychiatric medications by number of U.S. prescriptions dispensed in 2009, according to IMS Health. I’ve also provided their 2005 ranking. To put the percent change into perspective, the U.S. total population rose approximately 4 percent from 2005 to 2009. 2009 Rank 2005 Rank Brand name (generic name) Used for… U.S. [...]

FBI: Ex-airman claimed he had dynamite

BANGOR, Maine — A former Air Force intelligence specialist showed signs of paranoia aboard a trans-Atlantic flight and told federal air marshals that he had dynamite in his boots and laptop computer, forcing the plane to be diverted to Maine, according to court documents filed Wednesday. Derek Stansberry told the FBI that fellow passengers were [...]

Flintstones hawking cigarettes

All of Gopherspace as a single download

In 2007, John Goerzen scraped every gopher site he could find (gopher was a menu-driven text-only precursor to the Web; I got my first online gig programming gopher sites). He saved 780,000 documents, totaling 40GB. Today, most of this is offline, so he’s making the entire archive available as a .torrent file; the compressed data [...]

California’s Bay-Area Transit Police Stripped Of Tasers

Have we finally reached the point at which police over-use and abuse of tasers will start resulting in the danged devices being taken away? The Bay Area Rapid Transit police are losing their tasers after a police sergeant attempted to tase a 13-year-old boy on a bicycle whom he was pursuing by car. Oh, and [...]

Soldier faces 17 years for running brothel

BALTIMORE — A soldier formerly stationed at Fort George G. Meade has been sentenced to 17½ years in federal prison for running a brothel out of his Millersville apartment. Prosecutors say Craig Corey conspired with three other men from his hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio, to bring women to Maryland to work as prostitutes. He pleaded [...]

Bluebear: Exploring Privacy Threats in BitTorrent

BitTorrent is arguably the most efficient peer-to-peer protocol for content replication. However, BitTorrent has not been designed with privacy in mind and its popularity could threaten the privacy of millions of users. Surprisingly, privacy threats due to BitTorrent have been overlooked because BitTorrent popularity gives its users the illusion that finding them is like looking [...]

San Bernardino Deputy District Attorney Bruce Brown with marijuana activists

Pilot cleared of 9/11 accusationsPilot cleared of 9/11 accusations

An airline pilot wrongfully imprisoned and accused of training hijackers in the 9/11 terrorist attacks finally won his battle for compensation this week. Lotfi Raissi, and Algerian-born commercial airline pilot who was trained in the US and living in Britain, was the first person to be arrested after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He was held [...]

Assassin of Malcolm X freed on parole

Thomas Hagan, assassin of America’s civil rights leader Malcolm X, has been freed 45 years after he admitted to shooting Malcolm X in New York City. “He was released today. His release was approved,” said Linda Foglia, spokesman for the New York State Department of Correctional Services on Tuesday. Thomas Hagan, who confessed to the [...]

US puts child soldier on trial

A new US law on military trials will be put to the test this week when a long-running case of the Canadian-born terrorist suspect Omar Ahmed Khadr, who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 aged just 15, resumes in Guantanamo. Khadr is accused of killing an American soldier during a gun battle, but his lawyers [...]

Officers charged in alleged kidnap, rape to ask for reduced bail

Organ Jelinek RANCHO CUCAMONGA — Attorneys for two law enforcement officers charged in the alleged kidnap and rape of a woman at Ontario Mills are set to argue before a judge Wednesday morning that bail should be lowered for the two men. Anthony Nicholas Orban, 30, and Jeff Thomas Jelinek, 31, have been jailed in [...]

20-year La Verne police veteran subject of investigation

LA VERNE – A 20-year veteran of the La Verne Police Department is being investigated for suspected misappropriation of public funds, La Verne’s police chief said Tuesday. Former narcotics detective Steve DeLuca, 49, of Upland was fired recently when the department opened an investigation into whether he falsified overtime reports last year, La Verne police [...]

Former CIA Official Arrested in Virginia for Rape

A former Central Intelligence Agency official, who is accused of raping two women, was arrested Monday at a motel in Virginia. A warrant was issued for 42-year-old Andrew M. Warren after he failed to show up for a hearing last week. Warren was the CIA’s Station Chief in Algeria. According to court papers, two Algerian [...]

Child sex `no breach of virtue’, some priests believe

Some priests didn’t see the molestation of boys as a breach of their celibacy vows, retired Catholic bishop Geoffrey James Robinson says. The former auxiliary bishop of Sydney blames the absence of women from church life as a catalyst for the sexual abuse crisis enveloping the faith. In an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, [...]

Ex-teacher gets 3 years, 8 months for molesting students

In a brief letter to her molester — a former teacher at Pacific Rim Elementary School — a young girl managed to capture the gravity of a situation that shattered the innocence of three victims and would send a man they once trusted to prison. “Dear Mr. Firth,” the girl wrote in a letter read [...]

New Study: Drug law enforcement contributes to gun violence and high homicide rates and increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting organizations involved in drug distribution could unintentionally increase violence

See also: Study links drug enforcement to more violence Today, the newly formed International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) released their first report: Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review. “Given the growing emphasis on evidence-based policy-making and the ongoing severe violence attributable to drug gangs in [...]

San Francisco City workers banned from official travel to Arizona

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally. The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including [...]

Pima County, Arizon, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik objects to new immigration law

An Arizona sheriff says he has “no intention of complying” with the state’s “abominable” new immigration law, which he describes as a “national embarrassment.” Last week, Arizona Governor Janice Kay “Jan” Brewer signed a controversial bill that authorizes state police to stop people they suspect may be illegal immigrants and demand identification. Pima County Sheriff [...]

Ex-FBI Agent Gets 30 Years for Home-Invasion Plot

A former Federal Bureau Investigation agent was sentenced today in California to 30 years in prison for plotting a violent home invasion of a suspected drug stash house in Orange County in what turned out to be an FBI sting. Vo Duong Tran, 42, of New Orleans, was convicted in March 2009 of plotting the [...]

President Chávez launched its first tweet at midnight

Caracas, May 28. ABN.- Tal como lo había prometido, el presidente de la República, Hugo Chávez Frías, escribió cerca de la medianoche de este martes su primer mensaje en la popular red social Twitter. ABN .- As promised, the President of the Republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, wrote about midnight on Tuesday its first message on [...]

New Study Shows Chernobyl Disaster Killed Nearly One Million

Moscow, April 27 (RHC)– A new study released on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster says the death toll is far higher than previously thought. In a book published by the New York Academy of Sciences, a Russian author and a Belarusian author say nearly one million people have died from exposure to [...]

Jack Kevorkian: “Medicine Is Controlled By Religion”

Military police officer suspected of killing wife, baby

A 21-year-old military police officer who returned form Afghanistan two months ago likely fatally shot his wife and 8-month-old baby, police said Tuesday. The bodies of Racquell Lynch, 19, and Kyirsta Lynch were found Monday by an apartment manager who opened up their Anchorage unit at the request of military police. Authorities were looking for [...]

Northcom Backs Out of National Level Exercise 2010

Northcom has unexpectedly withdrawn from participation in National Level Exercise (NLE) with FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Defense announced on April 26 it was decoupling its Ardent Sentry exercise from the National Level Exercise. Ardent Sentry is a Joint Chiefs of Staff directed and Northcom sponsored “homeland defense” exercise. It [...]

Brain shuts off in response to healer’s prayer

WHEN we fall under the spell of a charismatic figure, areas of the brain responsible for skepticism and vigilance become less active. That’s the finding of a study which looked at people’s response to prayers spoken by someone purportedly possessing divine healing powers. To identify the brain processes underlying the influence of charismatic individuals, Uffe [...]

Mexico warns citizens in Arizona

HTML clipboard The Mexican government warned its citizens Tuesday to use extreme caution if visiting Arizona because of a tough new law that requires all immigrants and visitors to carry U.S.-issued documents or risk arrest. And a government-affiliated agency that supports Mexicans living and working in the United States called for boycotts of Tempe, Ariz.-based [...]

Who Will Hold America Accountable for Its Crimes?

The website WikiLeaks has been garnering attention recently due to its publication of sensitive material that many in government (and elsewhere) would rather be kept private. Information on the site includes secret intelligence documents and studies commissioned by the U.S. government, which does not seem to appreciate the disclosure of such information, for fear of [...]

Sarkozy proposes total ban on the burqa in France

F At the April 21 meeting of the French cabinet, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that a bill banning the wearing of the burqa or niqab full-face veil in public would be put before the cabinet in May. The bill is a blatant attack on democratic rights, moving France towards extra-legal rule. Prime Minister François Fillon [...]

TSA applesauce “assault” case thrown out

A 58-year-old woman who was arrested, strip-searched, and handcuffed last year for grabbing her cooler (filled with applesauce and yogurt for her 93-year-old mother) from a Burbank airport Transportation Security Administration employee finally had her case thrown out. Source

$750K bail for Lewis GI accused of killing wife

OLYMPIA, Wash. — A 28-year-old Army sergeant accused of killing his wife during an argument and hiding her body in a storage crate has been ordered held on $750,000 bail. Sheldon Plummer appeared before a judge Monday in Olympia via video feed. He is being held in the Thurston County jail for investigation of second-degree [...]

US confronts its reputation abroad

US approves extradition of Panama’s Noriega to France

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday signed an order extraditing Panama‘s former strongman Manuel Noriega to France, where he is wanted for money laundering, a US official said. “The secretary signed the order of extradition,” a State Department official told AFP. CNN and CBS televisions aired video images that they said showed Noriega [...]

Video shows student beaten; Cop suspended

Source

Evolution’s New Foe: Timid School Administrators

Evolution education is under attack in Weston, Connecticut, but not from the usual direction. Nobody is promoting intelligent design in the curriculum, or asking schools to teach evolution’s “strengths and weaknesses.” There’s just an administration afraid that teaching third graders too much about Charles Darwin will cause trouble. “They might have just been looking to [...]

Memo to America: Stop murdering my people

Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only thing that brings some of these atrocities to [...]

Lawmakers want military in Chicago to fight crime

Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis today spoke out against a request for the Illinois National Guard to be to deployed on Chicago’s streets to help tackle gun violence. Stopping just short of outright rejecting the request from state lawmakers Rep. John Alden Fritchey IV and Rep. LaShawn K. Ford, Weis said “I don’t think the [...]

One-third of those killed in high speed chases are bystanders

Bystanders account for one-third of those who are killed in high-speed police chases, a USA TODAY review has found. The deaths have several communities around the nation wrestling with whether to restrict pursuits only to suspects in violent crimes. About 360 people are killed each year in police chases, according to the National Highway Traffic [...]