Benjamin Paul Grindstaff arrived a couple of weeks later than expected, but when he finally decided it was time to come into the world, he didn’t waste any time.
The expanding Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal now includes 11 million vehicles worldwide, and threatens to destroy the credibility and market value of a global behemoth that was already showing signs of instability.Still more.
The world's largest automobile manufacturer, Volkswagen Group was experiencing weakening sales in the U.S. and China, its two most promising areas of growth. As of the Friday before the emissions story broke, the company's stock had already fallen to $162 a share, from a March 2015 high of $255. Midday Tuesday, the stock traded at $106.
Volkswagen has confirmed Environmental Protection Agency charges that it installed software "defeat devices" in versions of its 2009-2015 Jetta, Beetle, Golf, Passat and Audi A3 passenger cars fitted with 2.0-liter, 4-cylinder engines.
The company on Tuesday said the same software was present in as many as 11 million vehicles sold worldwide. The company said in a statement it was working "at full speed" to come into regulatory compliance.
Facing up to as much as $18 billion in U.S. fines alone -- and liable for fines and punishments in other countries -- Volkswagen said it would also set aside $7.2 billion to cover the cost of recalls and “other efforts to win back the trust of our customers.”
That broken trust may prove equally problematic for Volkswagen's bottom line. Many buyers feel duped into having bought a polluting car with a green marketing campaign for the "clean diesels."
In California, which has the nation's toughest emissions standards, outraged consumers used social media to air their anger at the company. Many said they were angry enough at the company to turn away from the brand permanently.
Owner Bob Merlis, an independent music industry publicist, said he was looking to add a second Volkswagen diesel last week.
"I went shopping for a new one, the Golf Sportwagen, but that's so off the table now," Merlis said. "I don't want to do business with those criminals."
LONDON — After weeks of indecision, the European Union voted on Tuesday to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers among member states, a plan meant to display unity in the face of the largest movement of refugees on the Continent since World War II.Keep reading.
Instead, the decision — forced through by a majority vote, over the bitter objections of four eastern members — did as much to underline the bloc’s widening divisions, even over a modest step that barely addresses the crisis.
Nearly half a million migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe this year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a number that is only expected to rise.
The crisis has tested the limits of Europe’s ability to forge consensus on one of the most divisive issues to confront the union since the fall of Communism. It has set right-wing nationalist and populist politicians against Pan-European humanitarians, who have portrayed the crisis in stark moral terms.
“We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that,” Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, said after a meeting of home affairs and interior ministers.
Leaders from across the 28-member bloc will meet in Brussels on Wednesday for further discussions on how to respond to the crisis.
Mr. Asselborn said even countries that voted against the distribution of asylum seekers — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia — must comply. “I have no doubt they will implement these decisions fully,” he said.
But with the prime minister of Slovakia immediately threatening to defy the plan, the outcome was more than an example of the bloc’s inability to coordinate its policies — formidable enough through the long crisis over the euro and Greece’s debt.
The response to the refugee crisis so far has also raised profound questions about a failure of European principles, a trembling of the pillars on which the bloc was founded more than 20 years ago.
The European Union’s reputation, and its faith in Brussels, have suffered in the past few months, with sharp and vocal divisions among member states and continuing doubts about Greek economic sustainability.
The migrant crisis “risks bursting the E.U. at its weak seams,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian ambassador now based in Brussels. “It’s more dangerous than the Greek drama and more serious than the euro, because it challenges fundamental European accomplishments and beliefs.”
With Tuesday’s vote, he said, “the cleavages only get deeper.”
MERCED, Calif. — More than 5,000 parishioners packed the pews, the choir loft and the vestibule on a recent weekend at Sacred Heart Church here in California’s Central Valley for five Masses — four of them in Spanish. Young Hispanic families spilled outside onto the steps, straining to hear the homily over the roar of an elevated freeway across the street.More.
Across the country in Philadelphia, there is only one weekend Mass now at Our Lady Help of Christians, a church built by and for German immigrants in 1898. The clock in its tower has stopped. The parochial school next door is closed. Only 53 worshipers, most of them with white hair, gathered for Mass on a recent Sunday in the soaring Gothic sanctuary.
The Roman Catholic Church that Pope Francis will encounter on his first visit to the United States is being buffeted by immense change, and it is struggling — with integrating a new generation of immigrants, with conflicts over buildings and resources, with recruiting priests and with retaining congregants. The denomination is still the largest in the United States, but its power base is shifting.
On the East Coast and in the Midwest, bishops are closing or merging parishes and shuttering parochial schools built on the dimes and sweat of generations of European immigrants. In many parishes, worshipers are sparse, funerals outnumber baptisms, and Sunday collections are not enough to maintain even beloved houses of worship.
In the West and the South, and in some other unexpected pockets all over the country, the church is bursting at the seams with immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, but also from Asia and Africa. Hispanic parents put their children on waiting lists for religious education classes and crowd into makeshift worship spaces, but avoid predominantly Anglo parishes because they do not always feel welcome there.
“The ethnic face of the church is changing, and the center of gravity and influence in the church is shifting from the East to the West, and from the North to the South,” Archbishop José H. Gómez of Los Angeles said...
Is Congress waging a war on college men? It’s starting to look like it.That's a war on men alright, brought to you not just by asshole congressional Democrats, but by the Obama White House as well. (Also assholes, naturally.)
Last week, Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, suggested that even innocent students should be booted from campus if they were accused of sexual assault. According to Polis: "If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people."
So one of the longstanding traditions of American law — that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent — has now been turned on its head. Under the Polis standard, it’s basically the other way around.
According to Polis, it’s not such a big deal: "We’re not talking depriving them of life and liberty, we’re talking about their transfer to another university, for crying out loud," Polis said, laughing off the idea that his suggestion would violate due process rights. He is not alone in taking the due process rights of the accused lightly, a widely-backed Democratic senate bill is just more circumspect.
But it’s no laughing matter. A student with expulsion for sexual assault on his record will have great difficulty gaining admission to another college, with life-altering consequences. (If you don’t believe that, then you don’t think that college matters much, which is something I doubt higher education boosters want to maintain.) And even if he succeeds, the expulsion will affect his chances for employment for the rest of his life, too.
As UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh notes, Polis’s approach suggests that he doesn’t think the rights of the accused are very important at all: “Now I should say that there are certain positions where indeed a whiff of suspicion might be enough to get someone removed. I just hadn’t thought that being a college student would or should be one of them.”
Plus, as Volokh also notes, Polis’s approach punishes the innocent without doing much about the guilty...
ABUJA, Nigeria — More than 100 people were killed Sunday evening in northern Nigeria in a quick succession of what appeared to be carefully coordinated bombings by Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group.More.
The attacks, near the airport in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, were the deadliest in months. They suggested the group’s enduring strength despite the Nigerian government’s assertions that Boko Haram had been severely weakened and President Muhammadu Buhari’s pledge to wipe out its last members within three months.
The four explosions detonated within 25 minutes on Sunday evening in an area called Gommari in Maiduguri. The targets included a railway crossing, a mosque, a video center where fans were watching a soccer match and a market where Muslims were buying sheep and other provision for the coming Eid al-Adha holiday.
“More than 100 have died so far,” Abba Mohammed Bashir Shuwa, an aide to Gov. Kashim Shettima of Borno, said in a telephone interview on Monday evening.
Mr. Shuwa said Boko Haram insurgents had taken advantage of the Muslim holiday week, during which many residents of surrounding villages gravitate to Maiduguri to shop.
“That’s what happened,” he said. “They melted among the villagers and came in as traders.”
Mr. Shuwa said that recent military gains had significantly weakened Boko Haram and that the attacks had been carried out by “remaining pockets that seek opportunities to strike.”
Col. Sani Usman, the army spokesman, said in a statement that the “attacks signify high level of desperation on the part of the Boko Haram terrorists.”
In staging the attacks during the holiday week, Boko Haram ensured that casualties would be high. Also, in keeping with the group’s long campaign of terrorizing the population with bombings, abductions and plundering, the attacks were certain to disrupt the state’s holiday celebrations...
Gov. Jerry Brown may have expressed reservations about continuing the temporary tax hikes he championed three years ago, but activist groups are pushing forward anyway.LOL! It's for the children!
Two campaigns are circulating initiatives to extend some parts of Proposition 30, with the goal of collecting enough signatures to place their proposals on the November 2016 ballot.
One of them, which filed its initiative on Monday, is even using the same political firm, SCN Strategies, that helped elect Brown and convince voters to pass his tax-hike plan in 2012.
Called the “Invest in California’s Children Act,” it would make permanent the higher income taxes set by Proposition 30, which are currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2018. (The quarter-cent sales tax hike would be allowed the lapse.) The proposal would also set higher levies for households earning more than $2 million a year.
Called the “Invest in California’s Children Act,” it would make permanent the higher income taxes set by Proposition 30, which are currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2018. (The quarter-cent sales tax hike would be allowed the lapse.) The proposal would also set higher levies for households earning more than $2 million a year.
Revenue from the taxes is estimated at $10 billion per year, with 45% for K-12 schools, 5% for community colleges, 10% for early childhood programs and 40% for Medi-Cal. It would also ensure some money was deposited in a reserve fund specifically for funding child services, a step intended to shield the programs from cuts during an economic recession.
Asked if the campaign has received or asked for Brown's support, spokesman Dan Newman said, "We're reaching out to all the stakeholders."
The initiative is backed by the California Hospital Assn. and a chapter of the Service Employees International Union representing healthcare workers.
They're not the only powerful interest groups seeking to preserve Proposition 30 revenue. Last week another initiative, the School Funding and Budget Stability Act, was filed by the California Teachers Assn. and the statewide Service Employees International Union.
Instead of making the income tax hike permanent, it would extend them until 2030. All of the money, up to an estimated $9 billion per year, would be sent to schools and community colleges. There would be no additional tax on households earning more than $2 million annually...
ENOUGH ALREADY. Cut some heavily abused programs like food stamps, EBT and welfare. I'm so tired of seeing people use EBT cards in line at the supermarket while using their iPhone 6's and getting into new cars out in the parking lot.Yeah, they pick up lobster and thick top sirloin steaks with the EBT cards too. Sh*t's out of control.
FRANKEN_STEIN
* The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them.
* Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.
* Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress.
For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Department of Defense is reviewing and updating its contingency plans for armed conflict with Russia.Keep reading.
The Pentagon generates contingency plans continuously, planning for every possible scenario — anything from armed confrontation with North Korea to zombie attacks. But those plans are also ranked and worked on according to priority and probability. After 1991, military plans to deal with Russian aggression fell off the Pentagon’s radar. They sat on the shelf, gathering dust as Russia became increasingly integrated into the West and came to be seen as a potential partner on a range of issues. Now, according to several current and former officials in the State and Defense departments, the Pentagon is dusting off those plans and re-evaluating them, updating them to reflect a new, post-Crimea-annexation geopolitical reality in which Russia is no longer a potential partner, but a potential threat.
“Given the security environment, given the actions of Russia, it has become apparent that we need to make sure to update the plans that we have in response to any potential aggression against any NATO allies,” says one senior defense official familiar with the updated plans.
“Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine made the U.S. dust off its contingency plans,” says Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense for policy and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security. “They were pretty out of date.”
Designing a counteroffensive
The new plans, according to the senior defense official, have two tracks. One focuses on what the United States can do as part of NATO if Russia attacks one of NATO’s member states; the other variant considers American action outside the NATO umbrella. Both versions of the updated contingency plans focus on Russian incursions into the Baltics, a scenario seen as the most likely front for new Russian aggression. They are also increasingly focusing not on traditional warfare, but on the hybrid tactics Russia used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine: “little green men,” manufactured protests, and cyberwarfare. “They are trying to figure out in what circumstances [the U.S. Defense Department] would respond to a cyberattack,” says Julie Smith, who until recently served as the vice president’s deputy national security advisor. “There’s a lively debate on that going on right now.”
This is a significant departure from post-Cold War U.S. defense policy.
After the Soviet Union imploded, Russia, its main heir, became increasingly integrated into NATO, which had originally been created to counter the Soviet Union’s ambitions in Europe. In 1994, Moscow signed onto NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. Three years later, in May 1997, Russia and NATO signed a more detailed agreement on mutual cooperation, declaring that they were no longer adversaries. Since then, as NATO absorbed more and more Warsaw Pact countries, it also stepped up its cooperation with Russia: joint military exercises, regular consultations, and even the opening of a NATO transit point in Ulyanovsk, Russia, for materiel heading to the fight in Afghanistan. Even if the Kremlin was increasingly miffed at NATO expansion, from the West things looked fairly rosy.
After Russia’s 2008 war with neighboring Georgia, NATO slightly modified its plans vis-à-vis Russia, according to Smith, but the Pentagon did not. In preparing the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s office for force planning — that is, long-term resource allocation based on the United States’ defense priorities — proposed to then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to include a scenario that would counter an aggressive Russia. Gates ruled it out. “Everyone’s judgment at the time was that Russia is pursuing objectives aligned with ours,” says David Ochmanek, who, as deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development, ran that office at the time. “Russia’s future looked to be increasingly integrated with the West.” Smith, who worked on European and NATO policy at the Pentagon at the time, told me, “If you asked the military five years ago, ‘Give us a flavor of what you’re thinking about,’ they would’ve said, ‘Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism — and China.’”
Warming to Moscow
The thinking around Washington was that Mikheil Saakashvili, then Georgia’s president, had provoked the Russians and that Moscow’s response was a one-off. “The sense was that while there were complications and Russia went into Georgia,” Smith says, “I don’t think anyone anticipated that anything like this would happen again.” Says one senior State Department official: “The assumption was that there was no threat in Europe.” Russia was rarely brought up to the secretary of defense, says the senior defense official.
Then came the Obama administration’s reset of relations with Russia, and with it increased cooperation with Moscow on everything from space flights to nuclear disarmament...
.@LilyAldridge wore @ProtagonistNyc to celebrate @TabithaSimmons_ at #TheApartmentByTheLine last night. #Protagonist pic.twitter.com/YqHRWLwInD
— PR Consulting (@PRConsulting) September 17, 2015
About 115,000 customers endured a power outage Sunday afternoon after a failed generator put stress on a power grid that was already under heavy demand on a sizzling summer day.
Communities from Mission Valley to San Clemente were left without power when the outages first struck about 1:20 p.m. About an hour later, nearly 44,500 customers, mostly in North County, were still affected. Power was restored by 3 p.m.
The outages knocked out traffic signals, causing traffic jams, and businesses left suddenly without the power were turning customers away.
San Diego Gas & Electric initiated the outages after a generator in the region went off line about 11:50 a.m. causing transmission lines to overload. The California Independent System Operator, the state's main grid operator, had SDG&E drop 150 megawatts of load in order to avoid overloading other lines, said Anne Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the state operator. One megawatt powers approximately 650 homes.
Only SDG&E customers were affected...
#VBSS16 x vb pic.twitter.com/iU0EPoSNt0
— Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) September 14, 2015#VBSS16 x vb pic.twitter.com/noZeS0jrZF
— Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) September 13, 2015Obsessed with Varya! x vb #VBSS16 pic.twitter.com/iLtRd8lL8P
— Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) September 13, 2015#VBSS16 x vb pic.twitter.com/gfecMNBgDU
— Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) September 13, 2015The VB bag of the season - The Half Moon x vb #VBSS16 pic.twitter.com/gQ8kv5KHf3
— Victoria Beckham (@victoriabeckham) September 13, 2015It took the NY Times seven years after I wrote my Obama book to tell the truth about Obama. But the NY Times and their fellow thumb-suckers in the media are as much at fault as he is for scrubbing, whitewashing and promoting the deeds of this cretin.And here's Peter Baker's report, at the New York Times:
Obama just threw his entire administration (and his party) under the bus for his catastrophic failures in Iraq and Syria.
Once again Obama is refusing to take responsibility for the unfolding, unimaginable disasters suffered at his hand. The devil made him do it? He is the devil...
WASHINGTON — By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting.He never, ever, takes responsibility for his own administration's massive failures. He is the devil.
But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place — a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
At briefings this week after the disclosure of the paltry results, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, repeatedly noted that Mr. Obama always had been a skeptic of training Syrian rebels. The military was correct in concluding that “this was a more difficult endeavor than we assumed and that we need to make some changes to that program,” Mr. Earnest said. “But I think it’s also time for our critics to ‘fess up in this regard as well. They were wrong.”
Here’s a quick closing summary, as another gripping chapter in Greece’s debt crisis closes, and another one opens.....More, "Syriza returns to power in Greek general election: Conservative rival New Democracy concedes defeat to leftwing party led by Alexis Tsipras."
Greece’s leftwing leader Alexis Tsipras has emerged triumphant from a snap general election after securing a dramatic victory over his conservative rival, despite a turbulent first term in office and predictions that the race was too close to call after he accepted a crushing eurozone-led austerity programme during his first term in office.
The charismatic leader looked set to be returned to power with a near repeat of the stunning win that catapulted his Syriza party into office in January.
With most of the ballot papers counted, Syriza is leading with a 35.5% share of the vote compared with 28.2% for the centre-right New Democracy party. Speaking in Athens, Tsipras declared the election a victory for the people. “This victory belongs to the people and those who dream of a better tomorrow and we’ll achieve it with hard work,” he said.
Jubilant supporters, clearly relieved at the result, took to the streets in celebration, with many singing and dancing outside Syriza’s main election marquee in central Athens.
Tsipras told supporters that he would tackle endemic corruption in the country. “The mandate that the Greek people have given is is a crystal clear mandate to get rid of the regime of corruption and vested issues,” he said. “We will show how effective we will be. We will make Greece a stronger place for the weak and vulnerable, a fairer place.”
Is this finally the beginning of the end for Trump which everyone has incorrectly predicted over and over and over again? Or is this just where the tough sledding starts and he has some real competition in his lane from Carly? And on the establishment side of the house, has Marco just hit the moment where the student passes the teacher and sent Bush to the bench?
With each twist and wrinkle of this election season, which is as wide-open and unscripted as any presidential cycle in living memory, we see more clearly that these are special times in American politics, baffling times, times to challenge categories and scramble expectations. The Internet has killed the kingmakers. Freshness beats incumbency, while the perception of sincerity beats all. There is no room for focus groups in the elevator to the top of the polls; America wants its candidates straight up and packing a kick. This is how a squinty-eyed New Yorker goes from shooting his cuffs and hawking condos to the head of the GOP pack. It’s how Bernie Sanders can join the Democratic Party in April and by August be battling for first place in Iowa and New Hampshire.RTWT.
Without a single TV ad–or a single congressional endorsement–Sanders has exposed the weakness of the party’s Clintonian establishment while at the same time spotlighting its hunger for an ideological savior. Polls now indicate that if the nominating contests were held tomorrow, Sanders would edge out Clinton in Iowa and beat her in New Hampshire by 10 points. Nationally, he has cut Clinton’s lead from an impregnable 46 points to a crumbling 21 points in just two months.
But even those metrics don’t convey the extent of the Sanders phenomenon. At Clinton events, campaign staffers section off floor space before her speeches to make her crowds look densely packed. Sanders needs no barriers. His audiences are authentically huge–28,000 in Oregon, 11,000 in Arizona, 7,500 in Maine. His volunteer army, meanwhile, though mostly self-organized online, numbers more than 182,000 people spread out from rural Alaska to the Florida Keys, people who have asked the campaign how to improvise events, knock on doors and spread the gospel from campus quad to living room to farmer’s market.
Win or lose, Sanders seeks to transform his party and redeem American politics through an epic battle against some of the wealthiest powers in human history. “A lot of people have given up on the political process, and I want to get them involved in it,” he tells TIME. “In this fight we are going to take on the greed of the billionaire class. And they are very, very powerful, and they’re going to fight back furiously. The only way to succeed is when millions of people stand up and decide to engage.”
This is not just a campaign, says Sanders. It is a “movement,” a “revolution.” He is not only after delegates; he plans to “raise the political consciousness.” Contrast this with the message Clinton conveyed during a meeting this summer with a group of activists. Consummate political engineer, virtuoso of the knobs and dials of public opinion, Clinton said, “Look, I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.” David Axelrod, the onetime guru to Barack Obama, brutally mocked the plodding story line. “Hillary: Live With It,” tweeted Axelrod, “is no rallying cry.”
We lost our Jake yesterday, and I lost part of my heart and the father of my sweet babies. I don't have to tell most of you how wonderful he was. It was self-evident. His life was his testimony, and it was powerful and tender and fierce, with an ever-present twinkle in the eye. I will miss him forever, even more than I can know right now. No arms can be her father's, but my daughter is surrounded by her very favorite people and all the hugs she could imagine. This will change us, but with prayer and love and the strength that is their companion, we can hope our heartache is not in vain-- that it will change us and the world in beautiful ways, just as he did. If that sounds too optimistic at this time, it's because it is. But there was no thought too optimistic for Jake, so take it and run with it. I will strive and pray not to feel I was cheated of many years with him, but cherish the gift of the years I had. In a life where nothing is guaranteed, Jake made the absolute, ever-lovin' most of his time with all of us. This is a family picture we took a couple weeks ago. It was taken because Jake, as always, was ready with a camera and his immense talent. All four members of our little, growing family are in it. I can never be without him because these babies are half him. They are made of some of the strongest, kindest stuff God had to offer this world. Please pray that he can see us and we'll all make him proud. God, I love him. Psalm 34:18, Philippians 1:3.
The gray rubber dinghy that carries Huda Malak, pregnant with her first child, sags to sea level as it approaches Lesbos. The overloaded raft has been taking on water since it launched from a crag off the Turkish shore, about six miles away.Keep reading.
The 18 Syrians on board desperately try to bail water from the sinking craft. Weight, they need to shed weight. They start jettisoning backpacks that hold most everything they still own. A trip that should have taken 45 minutes has lasted double that, and they are still a mile from the Greek island.
Suddenly, Malak’s husband, Tarek Sheikh, stands up.
“I’m doing this to save you, our child, and everyone on board,” Sheikh tells her.
Then he jumps overboard.
His weight makes the difference, and the raft chugs toward land as Malak looks back to where her husband disappeared into the Aegean.
Finally, the boat makes one last thrust and scutters onto a pebble beach.
“Thank God, we are alive!” shouts Firas Gharghoori, a thick, compact man in shorts and a straw fedora, kneeling on the polished stones in a prayer of gratitude.
The new arrivals begin to wander away from the shore, but Malak remains. She crouches with knees bent, face cradled in her hands, her eyes focused on the sea. Fellow migrants approach to offer support to the 23-year-old schoolteacher, their elation at having made it to Europe tempered. She waves them off.
Without warning, Sheikh’s younger brother, Mohammed, takes off his shirt and plunges into the surf in a bid to rescue Sheikh — soon followed by a grizzled Greek restaurateur who has wandered to the scene. The Greek later swims back, his leg bloodied from the rocks. He gamely tries to maneuver a white paddle boat to sea as a makeshift rescue craft. It doesn’t get very far.
A Greek coast guard vessel appears offshore, but far from where Sheikh disappeared. Gharghoori frantically signals at the cutter to move to the left. A coast guard officer in aviator sunglasses, who is in radio contact with the cutter, arrives in a pickup. In broken English, he tries to calm everyone. A few minutes later, he approaches Malak and gives the thumbs-up sign.
Her husband, the hero of the gray rubber boat, is safe. His brother has been rescued too.
This year, more than 2,500 refugees and migrants have died trying to reach Europe in an armada of flimsy rubber dinghies and rickety fishing boats.
Tens of thousands of others are willing to take the risk. But they make it...
I guess it's “damned if you do, damned if you don't.” Ahmed's clock sure doesn't look like any clock I've seen.Plus, from Kyle Smith, at the New York Post, "How Ahmed's clock became a false, convenient tale of racism."
In fact, it looks like an incendiary device. What if the school officials, wanting to be politically correct, ignored this unusual invention and it turned out to be an explosive? Thankfully it was only a clock, and thankfully the school was wise enough to check it out.
I doubt that Ahmed's ethnicity or religion had anything to do with how he was treated. Please don't let accusations of racism overshadow security precautions.
Ahmed has shown the most maturity so far by his response to events that went out of control.
Jeanette A. Fratto
Laguna Niguel
I do think that much of the media (but certainly not all), wants to help Democrats win in the end. But the general election is a long way away, and for now, the media want ratings, and Trump has been great for ratings. He's very exciting and entertaining, but a lively challenger to Trump is also good for ratings, and Fiorina is a feisty, forcible speaker, unlike all the others, some of whom are almost ludicrously low key. In the end, I think the party is better off with someone who seems normal and has normal credentials — probably Bush, Kasich, or Rubio. But these people aren't much fun for now...Still more.
A Muslim teen, fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, bought a strange ticking device to his school, MacArthur High School. His device caused alarm and fear, and he was detained for having what his teacher perceived as a bomb. Police officers said the electronic components and wires inside his Vaultz pencil case (which is the size of a briefcase) looked like a “hoax bomb,” according to local news station WFAA.More.
When questioned about what the device was, Mohamed wouldn’t answer. Now terror-tied Islamic groups like the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), their media lapdogs, and even Barack Obama are waging jihad against the school and the local police.
When police questioned the boy, WFAA reports, they said he was “passive aggressive” and didn’t give them a “reasonable answer” as to why he had brought his contraption to the school. “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school,” said James McLellan of the Irving Police Department.
This whole thing smells like a setup. With ISIS in America, and young moderate Muslims fleeing to Syria to join the terror group, the response of MacArthur High School officials was rational and reasonable. At my website, PamelaGeller.com, I run news stories on a weekly basis of American Muslim teens who have been arrested for trying to join ISIS. Just this week, a Muslim teen from Philadelphia was arrested for an alleged plot to assassinate the Pope during his visit to the United States.
Every day we are warned of new terror threats, increased threat levels. But trying to protect school children is “Islamophobic.” And President Obama agrees, of course. Yes, he has weighed in; Barack Obama himself got into the act, tweeting to Ahmed: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
When I first heard about this story, I wrote at my website that it smelled fishy. Now, as more details have emerged, it positively stinks. The plot has considerably thickened. In what has become one of the most egregious of the faked hate narratives, the bomb hoax clockster turns out to come from a family that has a history of supremacist stunts.
The New York Daily News reported this Wednesday about Ahmed Mohamed’s father, Mohamed ElHassan Mohamed:
One of the earliest instances of the standout citizen making national news was in 2011, when he sensationally stood up to an anti-Islamic pastor and defended the Koran as its defense attorney. That mock trial at a Florida church ended with the book’s burning, to ElHassan’s claimed shock. In an interview with the Washington Post at the time, the devoted Muslim said he’d take on Rev. Terry Jones’ challenge because the holy book teaches that Muslims should engage in peaceful dialogue with Christians.Also in 2011, ElHassan debated Robert Spencer on the questionf of “Does Islam Respect Human Rights?” Clearly, he was trying to score a victory against a famous “Islamophobe” and thus win a name for himself. ElHassan has been looking for publicity and chances to fight against “Islamophobia” for a considerable period. Now he has seized it, going so far as to claim his son was “tortured” by school and law enforcement officials.
He finally has the cause he has been seeking for so long. School officials were being prudent, protecting the children. Irving, Texas has had its share of jihad and sharia. Two Muslim sisters, Amina and Sarah Said, were honor murdered by their father, execution-style, in Irving several years ago. He is still at large. And Irving, Texas is only half an hour from Garland, Texas – the site of a jihad shooting on a free speech event last May. And the news is regularly riddled with stories of young Muslims, all lovely, sweet achievers, who suddenly — go jihad...
In the starkest sign of how unsettled the situation is, what once seemed unthinkable — that Mr. Trump could win the Republican nomination — is being treated by many within the Republican establishment as a serious possibility. And one reason his candidacy seems strong is a change by the party in hopes of ending the process earlier: making it possible for states to hold contests in which the winner receives all the delegates, rather than a share based on the vote, starting March 15, two weeks earlier than in the last cycle. Ten states have said they will do so.Keep reading.
If Mr. Trump draws one-third of the Republican primary vote, as recent polls suggest he will, that could be enough to win in a crowded field. After March 15, he could begin amassing all the delegates in a given state even if he carried it with only a third of the vote. And the later it gets, the harder it becomes for a lead in delegates to be overcome, with fewer state contests remaining in which trailing candidates can attempt comebacks.
“Somebody like Trump, who is operating in a crowded field, could put this contest away early if the crowd doesn’t thin out,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, who was a senior adviser to Mr. Romney...
NAOUSA, Greece—Greeks are going to the polls for the third time this year on Sunday, but fewer of them than ever believe their politicians will end the country’s long economic crisis.Keep reading.
After a turbulent year including elections in January, a referendum in July, a showdown with Europe and the imposition of crippling capital controls, the only thing many Greeks hope for from Sunday’s new parliamentary elections is some calm that would allow them to get on with their lives and searches for prosperity.
“These constant elections bring everything to a halt in business. Nobody is hiring, everyone is waiting to see what will happen,” says Panagiotis Fountoulakis, a former information-technology manager who says he needs to find work again by this winter before his family’s savings run out. “Political stability is my big wish, but I’m not confident we will get it.”
Disaffection with politics and a potentially low turnout could decide who wins Sunday’s contest: Syriza and its leader, Alexis Tsipras—who stepped down as premier last month to trigger snap elections—or their conservative challengers New Democracy under Vagelis Meimarakis. The two parties are neck and neck, according to most opinion polls.
The victor will probably have to form a coalition government. In Greece such pacts are usually fractious and short-lived. Policies will be heavily constrained by the bailout agreement with Europe that Mr. Tsipras signed this summer, which imposes further fiscal retrenchment after five years of unpopular austerity...
My father’s case reflects some of America’s most cherished ideals gone wrong. My father is a hard-working, innocent American who was presumed guilty. He devoted his life to academic research, for the sake of understanding the world around us better and contributing to his university and country — America. He had all that taken away from him in an instant.More, via Instapundit, who writes:
There is no escaping the geopolitics of our time and the influence that tensions between the U.S. and China have in our society today. Recently, the government has raised the specter of economic espionage with much attention on China. But as our country faces increased anxiety over China, the government is targeting innocent Chinese Americans...
I know, sorry, you thought you lived in America. You’re not the first Asian to make that mistake in the Obama era. But, you know, we’ve been “fundamentally transformed.” Hopey Changey!
MEXICO CITY — The day-trippers swarmed onto the beach to watch one of nature’s most extraordinary sights, hundreds of thousands of olive ridley sea turtles crawling out of the ocean to lay their eggs in the sand.More.
The turtles did not want the company. Scared off by the thousands of tourists massed along Ostional Beach on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, snapping selfies and perching their children on the turtles’ backs, the ancient reptiles simply turned around and retreated into the sea.
“It was a mess,” said Yamileth Baltodano, a tour guide who was at the scene when the turtles were scared away two weeks ago.
What happened during the first weekend in September was a one-time event, when a confluence of factors allowed the utterly unexpected to take place. But it was a cautionary tale for the conservationists charged with protecting the turtles, which are classified as vulnerable, not to mention a social media sensation. Now Costa Rican officials are scrambling to make sure it does not happen again.
“We are reassessing the way we work and the way we tackle the issue,” Mauricio Méndez, deputy director of the Tempisque Conservation Area, which includes Ostional Beach, said in a telephone interview on Friday.
The olive ridley nesting season, from August through October, coincides with Costa Rica’s rainy season, which ordinarily provides a natural barrier that protects the turtles. During that time, the beach is all but cut off by the flood tide of the swollen Nosara River, which blocks access on bridges. Even in the dry season, the beach is accessible only by a four-wheel-drive vehicle driven by a local guide.
But this year, low rainfall caused by El Niño left the river all but dry, making passage to the beach easy.
Mr. Méndez said officials were working on changes before the next arrival, expected on Oct. 4. He said he hoped to double the number of police officers and security guards, and even to bring in the Coast Guard. Groups will only be allowed in with guides and will be limited to the edges of the nesting area...
Some were pulled from the fire zone by relatives or neighbors, with or without their wheelchairs. At least a handful made the bumpy ride out in the back of a pickup through heavy smoke and fire-blackened debris — thanks to a former paramedic who breached the blockades.Some folks just want to go. At the accompanying photo, the caption reads, "Winnie Pugh was evacuated from her home by her sons after she refused to go with firefighters."
They arrived at area shelters with oxygen tanks, without their medications, anxious and in some cases disoriented. Then there were the ones who stayed behind —intentionally or not.
Of the three deaths reported so far in Lake County's devastating Valley fire, all were senior citizens, among them 72-year-old Barbara McWilliams, who suffered from advanced multiple sclerosis. Two other men who are believed to have died were in their late 60s.
The aging are woven into the fabric of Lake County, where 18% of residents have passed their 65th birthdays, versus 11% for the entire state. Some have flocked here to retire, drawn to the independent streak that favors community over government; others have aged in place, their grown children gone in search of better job opportunities.
And though it was unclear in the disaster's aftermath how many were living in the evacuation zone, officials said about 2,300 county residents rely on state-funded in-home care or delivered meals.
In the Rocky and Jerusalem fires, which burned to the north and northeast of the Valley fire in August and July, staff of the county Office of Adult Services were able to contact those living in "advisory evacuation zones" and offer transportation to shelters, program manager Todd Metcalf said.
But the Sept. 12 blaze "moved too quickly for us to perform outreach as we normally do," Metcalf said...
