With Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, alive and in custody, police are trying to determine what involvement, if any, Russell had in the plot to plant bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15. Russell’s attorney, Amato DeLuca, released a statement earlier this week saying his client was willing to provide “as much assistance to the investigation as she can.” The younger Tsarnaev brother told law enforcement that he and his brother were partly influenced to carry out the attack by the online sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Al-Qaeda speaker who was killed by a US drone strike two years ago. Dzhokhar also said that the brothers learned to make explosives by reading Inspire magazine, an English-language periodical published by Al-Qaeda. Police sources speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said that at least a portion of the radical Islamist material was found on Russell’s computer, although they are trying to determine who exactly accessed the information. DeLuca has maintained that Russell, 24, had no involvement in the plot. She previously provided a DNA sample after law enforcement officials found female DNA on a component of one of the exploded bombs found in downtown Boston. However, Russell’s DNA was not found on the explosive device. Federal investigators told The New York Times that they doubt Russell’s innocence, whether in planning the attack or evading police in the aftermath. Russell allegedly called her husband when the FBI released his photograph to the public but did not contact the police. She has reportedly stopped cooperating with authorities. Russell is known to have worked as many as 80 hours every week as a nurse’s aide while Tamerlan, who was unemployed but sometimes worked as a mechanic, cared for the couple’s child. When he was not taking care of the child, it’s been speculated, Tsarnaev experimented with making bombs using household materials. The police “increasingly believe” the brothers assembled the bombs in their home just five miles from where they detonated them, Reuters reported. FBI agents spent about 90 minutes Monday looking for evidence at Russell’s parents’ home, where she’s been staying since the attack. The FBI refused to comment on whether they found evidence there. However, it is known that they came up empty-handed Friday after searching four locations near the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, where the brothers were thought to have practiced detonations. Russell was raised in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, where her parents still reside, and met Tamerlan Tsarnaev at Suffolk University. She converted to Islam and married him in 2010. DeLuca claimed Russell does not speak Russian so, often, she could not understand what he was saying when speaking with friends. The widow has not spoken to the press, but her attorney said earlier this week that Russell had refused to claim Tamerlan’s body, instead opting to let his relatives take the corpse. Rusland Tsarni, Tsarnaev’s uncle, the same who called the brothers “losers” during a media scrum, said Tuesday that he would claim the remains. “Of course, family members will take possession of the body,” he told the Associated Press. “We will do it. A family is a family.” … Read More
Recovery for the 7 Percent
Is this the profile of a democracy in which government serves the public interest, or is it the profile of a financial aristocracy that uses government to grind the population under foot? … Read More
‘Big Brother’ in your fridge: British National Grid eyes ‘forced’ electricity switch
The plan, dubbed by critics as “Big Brother technology,” has been backed by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). The EU-wide body of energy regulators, ENTSO-E has outlined it in a 63-page document sent for the European Commission approval, Mail Online reported on Sunday.Should the plan find approval in the European Parliament and become legislation, it would enable the energy giants to selectively cut power consumption in millions of homes, instead of having to deploy back-up generators and ask factories to temporarily shut down production.Under the current scheme, the National Grid may approach companies asking them to switch off some of their works, when the UK’s power transmission network is not coping with the demand. In return, compensation is paid.But there was no hint of compensation or benefits to the household device owners in the document drawn up by ENTSO-E. Also, there was apparently no way for consumers to decide, if they wanted to use the proposed scheme, as the ‘smart’ switches were to be automatically installed by device manufacturers.Reports of the plan have immediately sparked public outrage in the UK, with critics saying the energy giant are simply “passing down their incompetence to the customers.”“This is Big Brother technology on a grand scale… Consumers are not benefiting at all and will be left paying more when they buy the appliances, as well as having their private goods controlled by outside forces,” Viktor Sundberg, energy strategy manager at Electrolux, has said. At the same time, energy companies would benefit from consumers’ inconvenience by saving millions, he added.Meanwhile, the UK’s Big Brother Watch civil liberties group voiced its firm opposition to the proposal.“This sinister plan smacks of over-the-top intrusion into people’s houses. It should be the choice of consumers if they want to sign up to it, not slipped into our homes through fridges and freezers,” the group’s director Nick Pickles has said.Consumer groups throughout Europe have also expressed their “serious concern” with the issue in a letter to ENTSO-E.Nevertheless, the UK company pushing the idea was adamant the proposal was both rational and reasonable.“This should result in benefits to consumers as it will lead to a reduced requirement for additional back-up electricity sources,” a spokesman for National Grid said, speaking of “accumulated effect” of automatically switching off millions of temperature controlled devices.The company also claimed that the scheme would have no serious impact on consumers, and “no material impact on the operation of fridges and freezers,” as the devices will have to be put off just “for a few seconds and only occasionally.”A private company with multi-billion profits, the National Grid is said to be addressing the EU’s demand for having 20 per cent of all electricity generated from green sources, such as wind farms. Being dependent on weather factors, such sources increase a risk of large-scale blackouts, which the energy supplier is keen to avoid. … Read More
How many pets can we save?
My wife is a veterinarian, and we have a household of eight pets, which is more than I would’ve thought a sane young couple could have. We’re newly married and don’t yet have children, and like a lot of people we treat our pets as our kids. Currently we have three dogs, two cats and three heritage-breed chickens. Some friends call this our menagerie, the less kind ones our circus. We prefer to call it our pack. It’s a life with a lot of noise and no small amount of dander.It began when I took my dog to the veterinary clinic where my wife works. At the time she was still in vet school and I was a first-time pet owner who’d chosen to spend most of my adult life responsible solely for my own fun and convenience. Archie, my dog, represented my first, hesitant step toward maturity. “He has a tick and I don’t know how to remove it,” I said to my future wife. Thankfully she pitied me, removed the tick, and thought I was cute enough to date. Three years later we got married with our dogs among the witnesses.Continue Reading… … Read More
Number of Americans Who Say Their Income Taxes as Fair At Lowest Point Since 2001
About 55 percent of Americans
say the income taxes they pay are fair,
according to a poll by Gallup. That’s fewer than any year since
2001, when just 51 percent said their income taxes were fair, and
down from a high of 64 percent in 2003, right after a tax rate cut
under President George W. Bush. ;
Political affiliations turn out to correspond to perceptions
about tax rates more than income: ;
Perceptions of income tax fairness, perhaps surprisingly, vary
little by household income level. Fifty-seven percent of those
whose annual household income level is below $75,000 say their
taxes are fair, as do 54% of those whose income is $75,000 or
above.
In fact, there are no notable differences by most major
demographic groups. The biggest differences are based on political
affiliation, with Democrats and political liberals much more likely
than Republicans and conservatives to believe their taxes are
fair.
Gallup also asked respondents whether they thought their taxes
were “too high.” Half said they were—up from a record low of 46
percent last year. Another 45 percent said they about right.
Two percent, meanwhile, responded that their taxes were “too
low.” Must be tough. On the other hand, they always have the
opportunity to ;pay
more! ;
(Via The
Transom.)
A bit of morning listening for this tax day:
Majority of chemicals in household products have never been independently tested for safety
Current law regulating industrial chemicals commonly used in household products rarely requires companies to provide the federal government with adequate information about their safety, a new report finds.”Regulators, doctors, environmentalists and the chemical industry agree that the country’s main chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, needs fixing,” Ian Urbina wrote in The New York Times on Sunday.According to the report in the Times:Continue Reading… … Read More
Experiencing an erection of collectivism lasting 4 hours? Stop watching MSNBC
Then, precisely what community should own your kids? Your block, neighborhood, town, city, nation? … Read More
