Countries around the world are coming up with more and more elaborate tricks to pressure parents into fully vaccinating their children. … Read More
Toomey: Background checks aren’t happening “any time soon”
Sen. Pat Toomey says that he doesn’t think the Senate will take up his gun background checks measure any time in the near future. “It’s a pretty heavy lift to get five senators to change their mind on a big issue like this,” Toomey told a group of Digital First Media editors at The Times Herald. “It’s not likely to happen any time soon. I hope people will reconsider over time.”The measure, which Toomey, R-Penn., introduced with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was five votes short of the 60 needed to break a Republican filibuster of the bill.Though a few Democrats also voted against the bill, Toomey blamed the measure’s failure on the politicization of the Republican Party. “In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized,” he said. “There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” ;Continue Reading… … Read More
Miami Herald reporter: Guantanamo prisoners would rather starve than live in legal limbo
Tuesday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow welcomed Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg to the program. Rosenberg has covered the offshore U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba since it was opened in 2002. The reporter detailed the recent hunger strike and the breakdown…
‘Like a nuclear blast’: Texas plant explosion registered as 2.1 earthquake
The blast injured over 172 people; dozens are feared dead. The explosion leveled local residents’ homes, shaking doors and sending shockwaves across the community.Follow LIVE UPDATES on Texas plant explosion”It was like a nuclear bomb went off,” a man who was looking for a lost relative on Willie Nelson Road told KVUE.”There was a huge shock wave,” said Mark Licknovsky, who works at the Czech Stop less than one mile away, told the station. “That’s when we knew something was serious.” Local resident Keith Williams said his house was completely destroyed.”All the ceilings are out. The windows are out. The brick’s knocked off the house. My big garage out back is half blowed in,” Williams told ABC News Radio. He also saw “people with all their houses tore up across the street from me, on each side of me.”"Shook my doors!” wrote Nancy Procaccini on her Facebook page. “Thought it was earthquake!” Bill Bohannan was visiting his parents at their house in West, near the plant, and witnessed the explosion.“I said, ‘This thing is going to blow’… and I told my mom and dad to get in the car. I was standing next to my car with my fiancee, waiting for my parents to come out and [the plant] exploded. It knocked us into the car… Every house within about four blocks is blown apart,” he told the Waco Tribune-Herald.A young father-of-two who lives less than a mile from the plant, Jason Shelton, said he heard fire trucks heading toward the facility several minutes before the explosion and felt the shockwave from the blast.”My windows started rattling and my kids screaming,” he told Reuters. “The screen door hit me in the forehead … and all the screens blew off my windows.”Crystal Anthony, who serves on the West Independent School District board of trustees, said she and her daughter were “knocked back” by the explosion as they stood blocks away from the plant.“A nearby nursing home is really bad, there’s an apartment complex and the school [that caught fire],” she told the Waco Tribune. “We’ve been moving patients out of the nursing home and taking them to the football field and gymnastics building on Davis Street.” Dr. George Smith, stationed in a local a nursing home, has confirmed emergency worker deaths. “I knew the EMS people [who were killed] very well – they were friends of mine,” he told CBS 11. … Read More
Texas AG: Democrats more dangerous than North Korea
Greg Abbott, the Republican Attorney General of Texas, thinks that his state has bigger things to worry about than North Korea. Namely, President Obama.Abbott was referring to reports that North Korea had included Austin, Texas on its list of potential targets in the United States. But, Abbott told the Waco Tribune-Herald, the state has more “far more dangerous” problems, in the form of the federal government.“One thing that requires ongoing vigilance is the reality that the state of Texas is coming under a new assault, an assault far more dangerous than what the leader of North Korea threatened when he said he was going to add Austin, Texas, as one of the recipients of his nuclear weapons,” Abbott said. “The threat that we’re getting is the threat from the Obama administration and his political machine.” ;Continue Reading… … Read More
Guantanamo hunger strikers in lockdown after secret, pre-dawn cell raid
U.S. soldiers reportedly raided communal cellblocks at Guantanamo Prison in Cuba and hustled hunger striking inmates at gunpoint into single, maximum security cells on Saturday. According to the Miami Herald, prison authorities conducted the maneuver only hours after International Commitee of the…
In Katrina aftermath, State Farm went out of its way to avoid paying claims
As ABC News first reported in 2006, two former State Farm employees, the Rigby sisters, came forward with accusations of having witnessed an epidemic of fraud at the company’s offices in Biloxi and Gulfport. According to the two, company supervisors instructed staff to “bury” or modify damage reports to avoid payouts. Even worse, the claim which was the subject of the recent court case had been hidden in a special file with a note reading “Put in Wind File. DO NOT Pay Bill. DO NOT discuss.” The recent charges pertain to one single case, in which State Farm reduced its liability by claiming that damage to a home was caused by flooding rather than high winds. Evidence provided by the Rigsby sisters proved that the company filed a false report in order to avoid paying the homeowner instead of the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Now, a judge has ordered State Farm to reimburse the NFIP for a sum of $250,000, and potentially more once additional damages are determined. The Sun Herald has reported that, though the money involved may not sound like much, it could set precedent that will push along a longer list of potential liabilities. The jury was also shown evidence that a State Farm flood claims manager, Lecky King, believed that some policyholders were “so desperate” that they would have said anything to receive a payout. For their part, the Rigsbys were able to prove that the insurance company considered Katrina “a water storm,” and trained its adjusters to enforce that view by influencing engineering companies and their damage assessments. Still, considering the widespread damages and the complexities of the insurance liabilities involved, which can vary depending on policies, proving further instances of fraud may not be easy. During this latest case, the jury was presented with evidence of other nearby homes that, though they were totaled during Hurricane Katrina, were literally blown away before waters rose. Hurricane Katrina proved to be the costliest single natural disaster in US history, killing 238 and causing billions in damage within the state of Mississippi alone. Following landfall, officials estimated that some 90% of structures along the state’s coastline had been leveled by the storm, with a recorded water surge that was the highest in the history of the US. Insurance companies faced massive losses following Katrina, which the Insurance Information Institute reports as the costliest disaster in the industry’s history. A total of $41.1 billion was distributed amongst 1.7 million claims, with the state of Mississippi accounting for one third of losses. … Read More
