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Wheal told the BBC: “His friends – who seemed more like minders to me – grabbed hold of me and pushed my camera towards the ground.” Both parties are now claiming that the other assaulted them, and have complained to the police.
However, in a twist to the story, it turned out that Paul McCartney’s long-term publicist Geoff Baker had tipped Wheal off about a ‘photo opportunity’ without consulting Paul McCartney. According to reports, Paul McCartney sacked him on the spot.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said in a statement: “Shortly before 1am today officers near the David Blaine stunt show became aware of a dispute between a group of friends, a photographer and other members of the public.
“Following the altercation we have received two counter allegations of common assault.
“The group of friends have alleged that they were assaulted by a man during the argument.
David Blaine is currently suspended in a Perspex box above London, attempting to survive for 44 days without food.
"Action will begin immediately to address the actions of Rep. Kent Williams," said Smith. "His commitment today was not to Republican principles, but to the blind and shameless pursuit of personal power. He cast his vote for a pro-tax, pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-gun liberal Democrat to preside in leadership against all 49 of his Republican colleagues."
Notice that the Southern GOP is now getting more honest. It has a problem with anyone who can be called "pro-gay."
Here are portions of the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform that discuss education and school reform.
The platform was approved Tuesday by convention delegates meeting in Charlotte, N.C., to formally nominate President Obama to seek re-election. You can read the education portion of the Republican Party’s 2012 platform here.
An Economy that Out-Educates the World and Offers Greater Access to Higher Education and Technical Training. Democrats believe that getting an education is the surest path to the middle class, giving all students the opportunity to fulfill their dreams and contribute to our economy and democracy. Public education is one of our critical democratic institutions. We are committed to ensuring that every child in America has access to a world-class public education so we can out-educate the world and make sure America has the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. This requires excellence at every level of our education system, from early learning through post-secondary education. It means we must close the achievement gap in America’s schools and ensure that in every neighborhood in the country, children can benefit from high-quality educational opportunities.
We Democrats honor our nation’s teachers, who do a heroic job for their students every day. If we want high-quality education for all our kids, we must listen to the people who are on the front lines. The President has laid out a plan to prevent more teacher layoffs while attracting and rewarding great teachers. This includes raising standards for the programs that prepare our teachers, recognizing and rewarding good teaching, and retaining good teachers. We also believe in carefully crafted evaluation systems that give struggling teachers a chance to succeed and protect due process if another teacher has to be put in the classroom. We also recognize there is no substitute for a parent’s involvement in their child’s education.
To help keep college within reach for every student, Democrats took on banks to reform our student loan program, saving more than $60 billion by removing the banks acting as middlemen so we can better and more directly invest in students. To make college affordable for students of all backgrounds and confront the loan burden our students shoulder, we doubled our investment in Pell Grant scholarships and created the American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college, and we’re creating avenues for students to manage their federal student loans so that their payments can be only 10 percent of what they make each month. President Obama has pledged to encourage colleges to keep their costs down by reducing federal aid for those that do not, investing in colleges that keep tuition affordable and provide good value, doubling the number of work-study jobs available to students, and continuing to ensure that students have access to federal loans with reasonable interest rates. We invested more than $2.5 billion in savings from reforming our student loan system to strengthen our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alaska, Hawaiian Native Institutions, Asian American and Pacific Islander Institutions, and other Minority Serving Institutions. These schools play an important role in creating a diverse workforce, educating new teachers, and producing the next generation of STEM workers.
We Democrats also recognize the economic opportunities created by our nation’s community colleges. That is why the President has invested in community colleges and called for additional partnerships between businesses and community colleges to train two million workers with the skills they need for good jobs waiting to be filled, and to support business-labor apprenticeship programs that provide skills and opportunity to thousands of Americans. The President also proposed to double key investments in science to educate the next generation of scientists and engineers, encourage private sector innovation, and prepare at least 100,000 math and science teachers over the next decade. And to make this country a destination for global talent and ingenuity, we won’t deport deserving young people who are Americans in every way but on paper, and we will work to make it possible for foreign students earning advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to stay and help create jobs here at home.
Mitt Romney has a radically different vision. He says we need fewer teachers, cops, and firefighters – good middle class jobs – even after losing hundreds of thousands of such jobs during the recession and at a time when state, local, and territorial governments are still shedding these jobs. He supports dramatic cuts to Head Start and the Pell Grant program. Tuition at public colleges has soared over the last decade and students are graduating with more and more debt; but Mitt Romney thinks students should “shop around” for the “best education they can afford.” And he supports the radical House Republican budget that would cut financial aid for more than one million students while giving tax cuts to the rich. We Democrats have focused on making sure that taxpayer dollars support high-quality education programs, but Mitt Romney is a staunch supporter of expensive, for-profit schools – schools that often leave students buried in debt and without the skills for quality jobs and that prey on our servicemembers and veterans.
Poverty. Too many Americans live without hope for a better future or access to good, family-supporting jobs. Fifteen percent of our fellow citizens live in poverty, and one in five families struggles with food insecurity. Many of these families work but are unable to pay the bills. The economic crisis has hit lowincome American families particularly hard, but merely restoring our country to where it was before the economic crisis is not enough. We must make ending poverty a national priority.
When the President took office, we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. President Obama and Democrats took immediate action to get the economy moving again. By expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and supporting unemployment insurance benefits and food stamps, the Recovery Act kept seven million people out of poverty and reduced poverty for 32 million more in 2010. The Obama administration invested in Promise Neighborhoods in communities across the country – a comprehensive approach to fighting poverty from early learning to college and career. The administration provided grants to financial institutions in urban and rural communities for the purpose of increasing lending for low-income Americans.
Arts and Culture. Democrats are proud of our support for arts funding and education. We are committed to continuing the policies and programs that have already done so much for our creative arts industry and economy. Investment in the arts strengthens our communities and contributes to our nation’s rich cultural heritage. We will continue to support public funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and for programs providing art and music education in primary and secondary schools. The entire nation prospers when we protect and promote the unique and original artistic and cultural contributions of the women and men who create and preserve our nation’s heritage.
Provides assurance of Stanford compliance with Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) regulations for the protection of human research subjects.
Stanford University's Federalwide Assurance for the protection of human subjects, along with the related assurances for Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Lucille Salter Packard Children's Hospital, the Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research, and the Veteran's Administration Palo Alto Health Care System can be found in the Research Compliance Office site.
Incorporated into Stanford's Federalwide Assurance are The Belmont Report and Code of Federal Regulations, 45 CFR 46, Protection of Human Subjects.
Evansville, Ind., police raiding the home of a suspected burglar found the place packed to the ceilings with stolen loot.
The booty was hauled away and laid out on a warehouse floor, where home-break-in victims were invited to come in and identify their stuff.
A real-life Goldfinger may be on the loose.
Officials at a Missouri pharmaceutical manufacturing company discovered that $700,000 in gold dust had vanished from their warehouse.
The gold dust is very fine and would be difficult to sell on the black market, experts say.
Cops outside Dallas got a 911 call of a house burglary in progress — from the burglar.
The thug-turned-wimp called for help when the intrepid homeowner jumped out and pointed a gun at him.
Officers rescued and arrested the suspect.
Only in Texas, kids, only in Texas.
This may be the first time anyone was actually held responsible for trying to get a dummy elected to public office.
The woman, who on a nominating petition wrote the dummy a phony biography, is fighting the charges.
Even a GPS wouldn’t have helped him.
In one of the worst cases of getting lost since Wrong-way Corrigan, a driver in Sweden wound up making a wrong turn onto train tracks.
He then drove the car carrying his family a mile to the next station.
Rail passengers’ jaws dropped as they saw the car rumbling along the tracks into the station.
Surprisingly, the man was not drunk.
National telecoms operator, Globacom, yesterday in Lagos, signed a $750 million network upgrade equipment deal with Chinese equipment vendor, Huawei.
The contract, according to the telco, is aimed at making the network more resilient for better user-experience.
Group Operating Officer (GCOO) of the telco, Mohammed Jameel, said this year marks a significant milestone in the annals of the firm’s operation in the country.
He added that the network upgrade will be holistic as it will affect all the facets of the equipment of the firm.
He said Globacom took the decision to make the network more resilient because it is central to good quality telecoms service provision to the subscribers.
Mr Jameel added that the decision of the telco is a reflection of the importance the firm attached to customers’ satisfaction.
He said the network upgrade prgramme, which will take the next six months, will be carried out without any disruption to the network. He promised that the network transport, which has 10 gigabytes (Gig) capacity, will be upgraded to 100 Gig, adding that the telco is changing in line with changes in the development of technology.
Huawei Vice President, Africa, David Fan, said the equipment vendor was delighted to work with Globacom, saying the two firms share certain similarities in common.
According to Fan, China which is the host country of the firm, is an emerging market while Globacom is also operating in a country that the leading emerging telecoms market in Africa, adding on the cultural front, the countries share one quality, which is that of hardwork.
BAGHDAD — Iraq sentenced a Belgian man to death by hanging on Monday for being part of the Daesh (the so-called IS) militant group, one of dozens of foreign nationals facing the death penalty in Iraq.
During an hour of proceedings at Iraq’s Central Criminal Court, the judge read out portions of Marchohi’s signed confession and showed a video and photographs that he said proved his membership in the group. The images from a phone found in his possession at the time of arrest showed Marchohi carrying a gun and making a hand gesture affiliated with the militants. Several pictures showed him cradling his infant son.
Marchohi repeatedly denied all allegations against him in open court, including that he was a member of Daesh in Iraq at any time.
During the proceedings, judge Jumaa Saidi told the court that the photographs were clear evidence that Marchohi was a member of Daesh.
A translator was appointed by the judge for Marchohi, who spoke in English throughout the trial. He was also given a court appointed lawyer with whom he had no contact at all throughout the trial.
Belgian consular representatives attended the proceedings on Monday. The Belgian foreign ministry in Brussels said it was not immediately able to comment.
Marchohi is the second of two Belgians held in Iraq known to have been sentenced to death for a role in Daesh. Tarek Jadaoun, 30, also known also known as Abu Hamza Al-Beljiki, was sentenced to death in May 2018. A senior member of Daesh, Jadaoun featured prominently in the group’s propaganda videos which threatened attacks on European soil.
Iraq is conducting the trials of hundreds of suspected members of Daesh, many of whom were arrested as the group’s strongholds crumbled throughout Iraq.
Well, it is a year now since you were gunned down in the streets of Santa Lucia del Camino, Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, while filming an uprising against that state’s much-despised leaders.
In the first days after your killing, there were dozens of protests and vigils held all over the world including here in New York. Since then, Friends of Brad Will has evolved into a national network of activists demanding accountability through the arrest and prosecution of the people responsible for your murder. Jail may not be a solution, but something must be done.
We have been working with other organizations such as Amnesty International to pressure Congress to take a stronger interest in the human rights abuses that are still happening in Oaxaca. On March 1, some of us traveled to Washington, D.C., and met with members of the congressional subcommittee that guides U.S. policy in Latin America and confronted Thomas A. Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Although we are making progress with Congress on your case, there is a need for more grassroots resistance as the Bush administration pushes a billion-dollar “Plan Mexico” that would ramp up funding for Mexican security forces, lead to greater collaboration with corrupt local officials and introduce Blackwater-style mercenaries into that country. We are working in solidarity with a number of other groups to halt Plan Mexico and to mandate that any taxpayer aid to Mexico be predicated upon accountability for human rights violations, including your death.
Meanwhile, I can already hear you strumming a song about the paradox of working to secure justice through our warmongering government’s official channels, as you once sang against government injus- tice at public hearings to stop the auction of our community gardens.
Harry Bubbins is a South Bronx community activist and friend of Brad Will since 1995. Please see, friendsofbradwill.org.
Following the dramatic fire that consumed Notre Dame’s iconic spire, French president Emmanuel Macron pledged to “rebuild Notre Dame even more beautifully” in five years. What do you think?
LOS ANGELES—In a fiery and, at times, frenzied speech before a crowd of his most devoted followers, Neutrogena CEO Richard Harper announced plans Thursday for a campaign of worldwide cleansing, saying his company would never relent in its goal of attaining facial purity across the globe.
Days after the one-year anniversary of her Coachella set, Beyoncé has released Homecoming: The Live Album, an hour-and-a-half document of the critically acclaimed 2018 performance spanning tracks from her career. What do you think?
North Korea Tests Out New Knife In Smaller Escalation Of Threats To U.S.
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, IN who has experienced a rapid rise in prominence in recent months, announced his official entry to the 2020 race this weekend, portraying himself as a force of generational change despite criticisms of his youth and inexperience. What do you think?
"He fired rounds at them, and he may have actually shot them, too," Massa said. "It was a battle back and forth."
A second suspect also is connected to the victims. Murana is dating Hill.
Police have said the shooting stemmed from retaliation over a drug deal that went bad a couple of weeks ago. The victims were all outside in front of the house when gunfire erupted.
"Hill and Luis Reyes had a beef over a supposed drug rip off that occurred a couple weeks ago," Massa said. "He came up and thought he was the one robbing them."
Witnesses said Hill, Walker and Reyes all were armed and fired weapons during the shooting. "All were firing rounds," he said.
Massa said the reckless conduct charge was added because the rounds were fired while people were standing nearby and their lives were endangered.
Shortly after the shooting, police sent about 20 officers to a home on Third Avenue just north of 40th Street looking for a suspect. The home is at least five blocks away from the scene of the shooting. There was no standoff at the home as police looked for a suspect.
Officers temporarily blocked Third Avenue between 40th Street and 41st Street while police questioned people in the house.
The clackety-clack of freight trains running through town has long been part of the charm of little towns like Haverstraw, N.Y. But in recent months, news that these old cars are carrying a new type of oil is giving residents an ominous feeling about their local railroads.
"What if one had a problem with one of the wheels, it tipped?" said resident Dennis Herlihy, who lives downhill from the tracks.
The I-Team obtained railroad maps which show some of the routes crude oil trains take as they travel through New Jersey and New York. The maps show places as small as Haverstraw and as big as Newark are along the routes.
The oil, which comes from the Bakken region in North Dakota, is part of a recent boom that has kept gas prices low and made the U.S. less dependent on the Middle East.
But the oil has come faster than the pipelines and other infrastructure can handle, and the National Transportation Safety Board has warned the DOT-111 tank cars, the most common type of car used to transport the oil, could be hazardous because their shells are too thin.
"We’re told it’s much more volatile, much more explosive, much more corrosive to the cars themselves," says Haverstraw Mayor Michael Kohut.
Kohut, who also is a volunteer firefighter, says local emergency workers are not informed about what materials are passing through, or when they come by. He worries about not having sufficient evacuation routes in the event of a disaster.
“Trying to get 11,000 people out of two exits would be an impossibility," he said.
In other places, tank car accidents have already been catastrophic. Last year, 47 people died in Lac-Megantic, Canada when DOT-111 cars carrying Bakken crude derailed, creating a river of fire through downtown.
The railroads say 99.9 percent of all hazardous materials moved by rail arrive safely. But they, too, are asking tank cars be built to a higher standard and that existing cars be retrofitted.
That puts the problem in the laps of the oil companies, which own or lease the tank cars. They say 40 percent of those cars exceed federal standards, but they are not ready to replace or retrofit the other 60 percent right away, which some estimate would cost more than $1 billion.
“The cost is only one part of the equation. We want to make sure, as we squeeze out that last bit of risk, that we do it thoughtfully so we don’t create risk elsewhere, so we truly get to zero incidents,” says the American Petroleum Institute’s Jack Gerard.
API also says oil companies are willing to work with local first responders to better train for derailment response.
As a precaution, railroads will keep large crude oil trains under 40 mph in and around major metropolitan areas starting in July.
Sen. Chuck Schumer says he wants DOT-111 tank cars to be replaced.
"We need the Department of Transportation to require it, and require it quickly," said Schumer.
So far, an accident of the magnitude of the one in Lac-Megantic has not happened in the U.S., but Rockland County recently got a wakeup call when a train crashed into a car transporter in West Nyack right over Rockland County’s water source. That crude oil train was empty, but authorities worry what would have happened if it were full.
“Water system in Rockland County into Bergen County would have been contaminated,” says Rockland County Sheriff Lou Falco.
The Department of Transportation is reviewing industry comments about the DOT-111s and hopes to finalize a new rule on those cars in 2015.
If farmers have been on the warpath in many states across the country, they have good reason for their anger. Two reports, one by Nabard and the other by India Ratings, tell a story that is different from what state and central governments like to tell.
Table 1 shows that rural incomes have been pathetic in most states, including Maharashtra which boasts of doing so much for farmers. The states where farm prosperity is high have not seen farmer agitations. Hence, one does not hear about farmer agitations in the Punjab, Kerala, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Goa. They have erupted in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, because the farmer does not earn enough.
While Madhya Pradesh has climbed from being a Bimaru state to one which has made farmers a lot more prosperous than in the past, Maharashtra has done precious little. Instead of protecting the farm sector, it has focussed on the welfare of farmers who are close to cooperatives — mostly run by the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Hence, only 20 percent of land is cultivated in Maharashtra compared to 67 percent in Madhya Pradesh. Clearly, water has been cornered by the sugarcane and cotton lobbies. Not surprisingly, farmer distress is greater in this state.
True, Gujarat’s farmers earn more than their counterparts is most states. That is proof that the farmer agitation there is more political than based on poor remuneration for farmers. The agitation there needs a political, not a commercial, solution. However, the Nabard report points to a bigger farm crisis than had been imagined earlier.
Table 2 shows that average income from cultivation was just Rs 3,140 per household per month. Worse, incomes from livestock rearing generated only Rs 711 a month. If state governments had put in place the right systems, income from livestock could have been closer to Rs 3,000 per cattle per month.
The poor income from animal husbandry is on account of two factors. Table 3 shows that average yield per cattle is just around 1.4 litres per day. It should have been three at the minimum and 10 on the average. Compounding this is the ill-advised ban on cattle slaughter. It deprives cattle-owners from earning around Rs 20,000 from the sale of each cattle-head when it becomes old. That means a loss of another Rs 1,500 per month.
Over the past seven decades state governments have failed to educate farmers into using good artificial insemination techniques. Moreover, just a change in feed allows a yield of seven litres to swell to 10 litres. That pushes up farmer profits (not turnover) from Rs 40 to Rs 100 per cattle per day, as table 4 shows. That can make a farmer earn Rs 3,000 per cattle per month.
This is gross negligence on the part of animal husbandry staff in most states. They have failed to teach farmers how to augment their income. States such as Maharashtra have the dubious distinction of letting farmers get Rs 25 a litre by subsidising cooperatives. In doing so, Maharashtra has burdened taxpayers with Rs 3,000 crore a year. When Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu pay over Rs 26 and some over Rs 36 a litre, why can’t Maharashtra?

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