There have been several stories that have come across the media of the extraordinary things that mom’s do to save their children, this is just another one that goes to prove that woman are capable of anything. … Read More
Major fines coming to New Yorkers who rent out apartments for under a month
Earlier this month Administrative Law Judge Clive Morrick ruled that resident Nigel Warren was operating an improvised hotel out of his apartment in the East Village section of Lower Manhattan. Warren advertised his room as an alternative to the major hotel chains that dominate Manhattan and the surrounding areas. Lawyers for Airbnb, a fast-growing social network that acts as a listing service for hosts like Warren and renters, became involved in the trial on Warren’s behalf, to no avail. For his entrepreneurship New York City rewarded Warren with a $7,000 fine, although the fee was eventually cut down to $2,400. A 2010 law makes it illegal for New York residents to rent out their property for fewer than 29 days. The city has also levied crackdowns on similar start-ups hoping to take advantage of the burgeoning sharing economy, among them being Roomorama and RelayRides – essentially an Airbnb for car sharing. Airbnb has argued that Warren and those like him are caught in the crossfire of confusion stemming from the flawed law.“This decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own rooms,” the company said in a statement this week. “There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous officials.” Lawmakers have asserted that the services, which have seen their growth stall since the new scrutiny, do not offer a clear plan of action in the event of a problematic tenant and are not strict enough on corrupted hosts.“The real problem here is the devil-may-care attitude companies like Airbnb take toward the legal consequences for their users,” said New York state senator Liz Krueger, who sponsored the 2010 legislation. “Whether it’s the laws like New York’s or it’s the basic terms of use of a potential user’s co-op or condo, Airbnb is recruiting private citizens into their business model without sufficiently warning them that it may not be legal and could even lose them their homes. That’s pathologically irresponsible.” This news comes only weeks after New York City placed a temporary restraining order on Uber, a popular app that alerts taxi and limo services when a customer needs a ride. Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the service, which swelled in popularity among Silicon Valley workers commuting in California’s Bay Area. The problem, unfortunately, is just the most recent in a city known for its stifling bureaucracy. “Despite Bloomberg’s best efforts to redefine the city’s image as a tech hub in tune with Silicon Valley-style innovation culture,” wrote Wired’s Marcus Wohlsen, “it’s New York’s fabled history of machine politics and protection rackets that come to mind whenever the city’s latest sharing economy shutdown makes the news.” … Read More
US aims to boost combat manhunt precision
The military has spent years quietly developing and implementing radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to track Taliban leaders, suspected terrorists, and other perceived enemies. Tribesmen in the Middle East are paid to “plant the electronic devices” on the intended targets or the targets’ home, according to a 2009 report in The Guardian. The device can be tracked to within three feet of its location, providing targeting co-ordinates that have become integral in launching drone strikes. “Transmitters make a lot of sense to me,” former CIA case officer Robert Baer told Wired in 2009. “It is simply not possible to train a Pashtun from Waziristan to go to a targeted site, case it, and come back to Peshawar or Islamabad with anything like an accurate report. The best you can hope for it they’re putting the transmitter right on the house.” The United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) will advance that strategy with the September rocket launch from Wallops, Virginia. Attached to the sides of the rocket will be eight devices that will be dispersed 300 miles above Earth then act as beacons for US intelligence. Wired noted that each of the eight satellites is roughly the size of a “water jug.” This is not America’s first foray into using outer space for gaining intelligence. A 2009 test program launched similar location devices to great success, with special operations officials later reporting that the technology was used to help locate Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But the military’s reliance on less-than-trustworthy operatives to carry out the most important part of such an expensive mission, locating the original target, has some people very concerned. Recruiting and paying poor people in hostile countries to carry out dangerous tasks could have intended, but serious, consequences. In a video released in April 2009, 19-year-old Habibur Rehman, reading a script written by the Taliban, who then executed him on film, claimed he was so desperate for money that he took advantage of his US handlers. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” Rehman said, before being shot for spying for the US. “If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.” A US official told NBC News that the video was nothing more than “extremist propaganda,” but it does raise moral questions surrounding drone warfare and targeted killings in the modern era. “I thought this was a very easy job,” Rehman went on. “The money was good so I started throwing chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money.” … Read More
‘Tornado Clearly Targets Conservatives’: Daily Show Creator In Hot Water Over Oklahoma Tornado Tweet
Lizz Winstead, the co creator of the popular Daily Show, is facing a massive backlash after she sent out an insensitive tweet that joked about the horrific Oklahoma tornado’s possible political motivations. … Read More
Associated Press chief attacks White House over ‘unconstitutional’ investigation
More than one week after the AP announced that the Justice Department subpoenaed two months of phone records in an apparent attempt to discover the source of an intelligence leak, the president and CEO of the news agency attacked US President Barack Obama and his administration for what he considers an unconstitutional intrusion on the way journalism is conducted.Speaking to CBS News on how the Justice Department secretly sought months’ worth of phone records, AP President Gary Pruitt said the government has “no business” interfering with journalists.“I don’t know what their motive is, but I can tell you their actions are unconstitutional,” Pruitt said on Sunday’s Face the Nation.On the record, the government has yet to explain why they requested the logs for 21 different phone lines used by the AP. But according to the company’s top executive, the government is doing everything in its power — and some things that aren’t — to learn the identity of the source that went to the media about a foiled terrorist attack thwarted by the CIA in 2012.“We don’t question their right to conduct these sorts of investigations, we just think they went about it the wrong way,” Pruitt said. “So sweeping, so secretively, so abusively, and harassingly and overbroad that it is an unconstitutional act.”In spring of that 2012, the US Department of Homeland Security and the White House independently said there was no credible evidence of a terrorist plot aimed at an American target to commemorate the anniversary of the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Pruitt told CBS that wasn’t true, though, and during an interview over the weekend he explained why it was important to explain the administration’s mistake — and the mistakes the government made as a result.“We felt the American public needed to know this story,” Pruitt told CBS, calling claims from Washington that there was no credible evidence of a terrorist plot “misleading to the American public.”Pruitt said the AP went to the government and intelligence agencies to make sure there would not be a national security risk by publishing news of the foiled terror plot. After five days, they went live with their scoop after being told any risk had been eliminated.“We acted responsibly. We held the story,” Pruitt said. “We held it for five days. On the fifth day, we heard from high officials in two parts of the government that the national security issues had passed, and at that point we released the story.”In doing so, Pruitt believes the AP prompted a probe of the news agency that has crossed the boundaries of what the government can and can’t do. After the story was published, nearly two dozen direct lines, cell phones and home phones were subpoenaed by the Justice Department for offices in New York, Washington and Connecticut.“Approximately 100 journalists used these telephone lines as part of newsgathering,” said Pruitt, who added that “thousands upon thousands” of work-related calls by AP journalists were made on those numbers.Speaking to CBS, Pruitt said he believes the administration violated their own guidelines by gunning straight for a subpoena without trying to work out an investigation with the AP.“The rules require them to come to us first. But in this case they didn’t, claiming an exception, saying if they had it would have posed a substantial threat to their investigation. But they have not explained why it would, and we can’t understand why it would,” pleaded Pruitt. “We never even had possession of these records. They were in the possession of our telephone service company, and they couldn’t be tampered with. So usually they would come to us, we would try to narrow the request, the subpoena, if we didn’t come to an agreement we could go to a judge and an independent arbiter could decide on the scope of the subpoena. We never got a chance.”The result, warned Pruitt, has been a chilling effect that is already impacting the way journalists report news. “Already, officials that would talk to us and people we would normally talk to in the normal course of news gathering are already saying to us that they are a little reluctant to talk to us. They fear that they will be monitored by the government,” he said.In the days since the AP disclosed that they were targeted by the Justice Department, other reports have surfaced as well. On Sunday, the Washington Post revealed that a Fox News journalist was investigated by the DoJ after he published classified intelligence that was believed to have been leaked by a State Department official. To investigate a June 2009 article, the Justice Department obtained the records of Fox reporter James Roser and a State Department advisor, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.“Rosen was not charged with any crime, but it is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets,” The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza reported on Sunday.Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges that he disclosed national defense information by going to Roser, told the Post that “The latest events show an expansion of this law enforcement technique.”Should the government continue to corner the Fourth Estate, Pruitt warned that future results could be catastrophic for the state of free speech.”And if they restrict that apparatus … the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that’s not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.”"It’s too early to know if we’ll take legal action but I can tell you we are positively displeased and we do feel that our constitutional rights have been violated,” Pruitt added to an AP article on the scandal. … Read More
Inside Story – Boko Haram and the battle for Nigeria’s north
http://www.youtube.com/v/QIyE4RVKEuU?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Original article - Inside Story – Boko Haram and the battle for Nigeria’s north
Eric Holder: idiot zen master
His own agency, the US Dept. of Justice, had spied secretly on reporters. But he, Holder, the head of that agency, decided to remain entirely ignorant about the whole fiasco, once he discovered the vague outline of what was going on. … Read More
