Prometheus 6

The Coast Guard said the migrant vessel capsized while being towed by a Turks and Caicos police boat at 4:30 a.m., but local authorities said the police boat arrived on the scene after the accident.

At least 20 dead after Haitian boat capsizes
Occupants were thrown into water infested by sharks
By Vivian Tyson, Associated Press | May 5, 2007

SOUTH DOCK, Turks and Caicos Islands -- Every year, Haitians by the hundreds set off in rickety boats hoping to escape poverty by sneaking into the United States. The perils became gruesomely apparent yesterday when a crowded boat capsized, flinging migrants into shark-infested waters.

Hours after the sailing vessel overturned in moonlit waters a half-mile from shore, rescuers had recovered more than a dozen bodies -- some with savage bite wounds -- and were searching for about 60 missing people.

According to U.S. officials, both were briefly on the CIA payroll in 2006 under a covert program to fight the rise of the Islamists, a plan that fell apart when the Islamists drove the warlords from power last June.

 

Awale is a former police chief and later served as a top aide to Mohammad Farah Aideed, the late militia leader whose forces killed 18 American servicemen in the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident in Mogadishu in March 1993.

 

Dheere was the ruler of Jowhar, a quiet trading center north of Mogadishu, where he presided over a famously ruthless extortion network.

Former warlord Mohamed Dheere takes control in Somali capital
By Mahad Elmi and Shashank Bengali
McClatchy Newspapers

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A former warlord who for a time had been on the CIA payroll was sworn in Friday as mayor of Mogadishu and announced a plan to pacify this turbulent African capital within three months by requiring residents to turn in their guns.

Current law requires gun dealers to conduct a criminal background check and deny sales for specified prohibitions: if a gun purchaser has a felony conviction or a domestic abuse conviction or is an illegal immigrant, for example. There is no legal basis to deny a sale if a purchaser is on a terror watch list.

"When I tell people that you can be on a terrorist watch list and still be allowed to buy as many guns as you want, they are shocked," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports Lautenberg's bill.

NRA raps terror suspect bill
Says move to block gun sales, permits would deny rights
By Sam Hananel, Associated Press | May 5, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms.

Activists Want Chimp Declared a 'Person'
By AP/WILLIAM J. KOLE

(VIENNA, Austria)—In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn't care for coffee, and he isn't actually a person — at least not yet.

In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person."

Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests.

"Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.

"We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions," Theuer said.

The skit prompted Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich to pull out of his weekly call-in session with the show.

Producer Fired Over Racist Allen Iverson Skit
Last Edited: Tuesday, 01 May 2007, 2:34 PM MDT
Created: Tuesday, 01 May 2007, 2:26 PM MD

SAN ANTONIO -- The producer of a sports radio talk show that aired a parody about Denver Nuggets guard Allen Iverson with references to drugs, seeking sex from Mexican women and the shooting of a homeless man has been fired.

KTKR-AM producer Eric Gray was dismissed, the San Antonio Express-News reported, citing internal e-mails.

Matt Martin, a Clear Channel Communications Inc. vice president and market manager for KTKR, wouldn't confirm the firing Tuesday. He issued a statement saying the April 25 parody "included content that could be viewed as insensitive. KTKR does not condone or approve of inappropriate content or language."

Want to see what the feds mean when they say "small business"?

SBA has several general Size Standards. A business in one of the following industry groups is small if it is not greater than the size standard indicated.

Industry Group	Size Standard
Manufacturing	500 employees
Wholesale Trade	100 employees
Agriculture	$750,000
Retail Trade	$6.5 million
General & Heavy Construction (except Dredging)	$31 million
Dredging	$18.5 million
Special Trade Contractors	$13 million
Travel Agencies	$3.5 million (commissions & other income)
Business and Personal Services Except:	$6.5 million
Architectural, Engineering, Surveying, and Mapping Services	$4.5 million
Dry Cleaning and Carpet Cleaning Services	$4.5 million

If the size of a business exceeds the size standard for its overall industry group, it may still be a small business for the specific NAICS industry in that group. Some industries have higher size standards than the general one for the industry group. SBA has a Table of Size Standards on its web site.

Many of the Self-Employed Are Simply on Their Own
By MILT FREUDENHEIM

The small businesses that struggle the most with health insurance may be the smallest of all: those with only one employee.

In 11 states, self-employed people have some of the same legal rights as small companies when it comes to dealing with insurers: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Vermont.

But elsewhere, in dealing with insurance companies, the nation’s estimated 20 million self-employed are on their own.

And I want to be clear about something. I'm not anti-Republican and I don't have it in for white guys.

No one will ever accuse you of being anti-Republican, son.

See, you are what you eat, and you've swallowed the "anti-Black" Republican line.

But you can't get away.

It's when I'm out in the world, when I have to interact with people, that I'm reminded I'm something other than just me or a man who happens to be black. I'm a black guy.

And yesterday, man, did I feel like a black guy.

The company was trying to keep to a defined pay scale, but some managers had given workers raises that moved them above the limits. That had to be corrected, he said, because the company had to compete with other chains on wages as well as prices.

Shoppers Short-Circuit Retailer Over Firings
By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 5, 2007; D01

When Carole Fisher read the news in March that Circuit City fired 3,400 employees so it could replace them with lower-paid workers, she knew one thing: She would never shop there again.

"They weren't going after the big guys, they were going after the little guys again," said Fisher, 71, of Ellicott City. "It seems to me the little guy gets screwed pretty routinely when a company is having trouble."

Although she needs to replace her kitchen television, she'll shop elsewhere. It will be her little way of trying to fix what she thinks is wrong with corporate America.

And it can't...it took a whole committee to make this up.

The I.R.S. has told Congress that it taxes 99 percent of wage income, but only about 70 percent of nonwage income. The disparity is largely because of different reporting rules. Employers tell the I.R.S. how much workers make, but Congress trusts business owners and investors to report their income with little or no verification.

In the case of securities, the only reporting is of the proceeds from the sale of stocks or bonds. The price paid to acquire the securities is not reported and thus taxpayers can cheat by inflating the price paid.

Professor Soled said there is significant evidence that many taxpayers make up the purchase price they report.

Surprising Finding in Capital Gains Study
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Capital gains are the most highly concentrated form of income, with just 10,000 or so taxpayers earning a third of all profits from selling investments and only 3 percent of gains going to people who make less than about $50,000.

So could it be that most of the tax cheating on capital gains income, as measured in dollars, is by people at the lower end of the income ladder?

two months later — acting on what he was told was information from a confidential informant — shield man Gary Smith was wounded in a drug raid about a mile away, at the home of Kathryn Johnston. This time, the revolver brandished by the elderly resident was real, and she squeezed off an errant shot. The entry team responded with a 39-shot fusillade, killing Johnston.

No drugs were found in that case, either, except for the ones police planted in the basement.

Two months before fatal drug raid, Atlanta cops encountered another elderly woman with a gun
By BILL TORPY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/04/07

Two months and a day before Kathryn Johnston, there was Frances Thompson.

The 80-year-old Thompson was in her bedroom the afternoon of Sept. 20, when she heard a terrible crash and shouting. Startled and confused, she grabbed a pistol and was immediately confronted by three Atlanta narcotics officers.

"They had masks covering their face. I thought I was being robbed," she recalled. "They pointed those big guns at me."

Yin

After Imus
No more witch burnings for PC offenses.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Thursday, May 3, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Don Imus, Bernard McGuirk, Trent Lott, Larry Summers, the Duke lacrosse team, Jimmy the Greek, the kid who yelled "water buffalo" at Penn, Howard Cosell, Jon Stewart, Chief Illiniwek, Jackie Mason and "South Park" all have in common only one thing: They have not been Politically Correct.

Yang

CBSNews.com Turns Off Comments on Obama Stories

Today CBSNews.com informed its staff via email that they should no longer enable comments on stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama. The reason for the new policy, according to the email, is that stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments.

Terrorism is a term used to describe violence or other harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians. Most definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear or "terror", are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a "madman" attack), and deliberately target "non-combatants".

As a form of unconventional warfare, terrorism is sometimes used when attempting to force political change by: convincing a government or population to agree to demands to avoid future harm or fear of harm, destabilization of an existing government, motivating a disgruntled population to join an uprising, escalating a conflict in the hopes of disrupting the status quo, expressing the severity of a grievance, or drawing attention to a neglected cause.

Can you think of a single hate crime that doesn't fit this definition? Why didn't you present the bill as an anti-terrorism bill?

Overall, the results favored Canadians, who were 5 percent less likely than Americans to die in the course of treatment. Some disorders, such as kidney failure, favored Canadians more strongly than Americans, whereas others, such as hip fracture, had slightly better outcomes in the U.S. than in Canada. Of the 38 studies the authors surveyed, which were winnowed down from a pool of thousands, 14 favored Canada, five the U.S., and 19 yielded mixed results.

We're Number Two: Canada Has as Good or Better Health Care than the U.S.
Despite spending half what the U.S. does on health care, Canada doesn't appear to be any worse at looking after the health of its citizens
By Christopher Mims

The relative merits of the U.S. versus Canadian health care systems are often cast in terms of anecdotes: whether it is American senior citizens driving into Canada in order to buy cheap prescription drugs or Canadians coming to the U.S. for surgery in order to avoid long wait times. Both systems are beset by ballooning costs and, especially with a presidential election on the horizon, calls for reform, but a recent study could put ammunition in the hands of people who believe it is time the U.S. ceased to be the only developed nation without universal health coverage.

Bloggers Who Crave the Mainstream Media's Attention
By Christopher Hayes, ChrisHayes.org
Posted on May 4, 2007, Printed on May 4, 2007

The strange thing about the netroots, and something that was made very clear to me at YearlyKos, is that the prominent members of the blogosphere have a real deep complex about their relationship to the “mainstream.” Their feelings (again, generalizing) towards the mainstream pundits, TNR, Joe Klein, Tim Russert et al, is similar to the way a pimply, awkward 14-year-old-boy might feel about the hot, mean girl in his class. He judges her harshly, thinks she’s vapid and cruel, and desperately wants her attention.

A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you've never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.

Even regular users might not realize how wide open they are until something drastic happens -- they fall in love, get dumped, have a huge fight or get attacked in the online parallel of rape. In that context, a sexual assault can indeed have a deep impact on a person's life, especially if they are actual rape survivors.

Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?
05.04.07 | 12:00 AM

Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape -- in Second Life.

I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool's joke.

Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.

And what makes me think that would be something that might slow the Bushistas down?

Bush Wants Phone Firms Immune to Privacy Suits
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 4, 2007; A14

The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens' privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program.

The measure is part of a legislative package drafted by the Justice Department to relax provisions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that restrict the administration's ability to intercept electronic communications in the United States. If passed, the proposed changes would forestall efforts to compel disclosure of the program's details through Congress or the court system.

HRD hopes to make $10 laptops a reality
Akshaya Mukul
[4 May, 2007 l 0253 hrs IST lTIMES NEWS NETWORK]

NEW DELHI: Having rejected Nicholas Negroponte's offer of $100 laptops for schoolchildren, HRD ministry's idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project.

So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labour charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops. "The cost is encouraging and we are hopeful it would come down to $10. We would also look into the possibility of some Indian company manufacturing the parts," an official said.

...i.e., everything is changing and no one knows what to do but jostle for position.

New World Disorder
By David Ignatius
Friday, May 4, 2007; A23

...The nuclear strategist Herman Kahn pondered this problem in a 1983 essay on "multipolarity and stability." Kahn made his name by "thinking about the unthinkable" -- namely, the consequences of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. But he recognized that the bipolar world of the Cold War had an inherent stability. The two superpowers understood the rules of the game, and because the dangers of conflict were so great, they learned to discipline themselves and their respective allies.

Meanwhile, Bush's "Justice" Department is going after approved federal programs intended to address this shortfall.

Skilled Masses
Keeping the world's talent in America
Friday, May 4, 2007; A22

THE IMMIGRATION reform debate has largely revolved around immigrants who do jobs Americans are not willing to do. But what about immigrants who do the jobs Americans are not able to do?

The H-1B visa, for "specialty occupation workers" in high-tech fields such as medicine, computers and engineering, is capped at 65,000 a year. Many of those industries face a shortage of skilled American labor. So, on April 2, the first day visa applications were accepted for fiscal 2008, few were surprised that the quota was hit within hours. By law, the 123,480 applications received in the first two days will be processed by lottery.

Next time someone says Jamaican-Americans are better/superior/more wise and wonderful than native-born Black Americans, remain tolerant.

The overall murder rate in the Caribbean is 30 per 100,000 persons, compared with 26 in Latin America and seven in the United States. Those numbers are from 2002, the last year when regional comparisons are available, and murders have since been rising in the Caribbean and declining in some parts of South America....The murder rates vary from country to country, with Jamaica registering 49 deaths per 100,000 people in 2006, Trinidad and Tobago registering 30 in 2005 and the Dominican Republic 27 the same year.

Obviously, some folks are down of native-born Black Americans to avoid being associated with his own culture's illnesses. And for this they often catch "some kind of heck."

You don't actually want to put off the Carribiean communities, but sometimes you have to check people, even when they are ostensibly on your side. If the person ceases his disingenuousness you can leave him alone going forward. If not, you will always have this for rhetorical purposes if the person continues assing up.

Crime costs steep in the Caribbean, World Bank and U.N. say
By Pablo Bachelet
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Caribbean nations, perceived by most Americans as sun-soaked paradises, are paying a steep price in lives and lost economic opportunities because of soaring crime, says a first-ever report by the World Bank and the United Nations on the economic costs of crime.

Reducing the murder rate by one-third would more than double per capita economic growth for the region, according to the report released Thursday.

"The department's action is having consequences that far outweigh any potential abuse the department was trying to avoid," Henry B. Howard, president of U.S. Education Finance Group, wrote last week.

I'm sure.

Loan Firms Set to Regain Access to U.S. Student Data
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 3, 2007; A07

The U.S. Department of Education moved yesterday to restore loan industry access to a national database with confidential information on millions of students, two weeks after it was shut down amid allegations of data mining and privacy violations.

The agency also tightened security in an effort to prevent computer systems from mining the 60 million student records in the database. All users will now be shown a screen of random numbers and letters and asked to type them before logging in.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren would not provide details of what led to the extra security, but said, "I'm not aware it was based on any threat."

Obama gets Secret Service protection
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 3, 2007

WASHINGTON: The Secret Service said Thursday that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama was being placed under its protection, the earliest ever for a U.S. presidential candidate.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff authorized Obama's protection after consultations with the bipartisan congressional advisory committee, according to Chertoff spokesman Russ Knocke and the Secret Service.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren would not provide details of what led to the extra security, but said, "I'm not aware it was based on any threat." Department of Homeland Security officials said there were no known threats.

Starving vultures prey on living animals
Thu May 3, 2007 12:40PM EDT

MADRID (Reuters) - Huge flocks of starving vultures have started attacking live animals in northern Spain, officials in the city of Burgos said on Thursday.

In one incident, about 100 vultures killed a cow and her newborn calf, a rancher from the Mena Valley said, according to the Spanish government's office in Burgos, quoted by state news agency EFE.

Simpson said that on April 17, the day after the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 dead, Clements High School officials learned a student had been playing Counterstrike, an Internet-based shooting game. The locale of the shootings depicted on this student's game were the hallways of Clements High School.

School district police investigated the report and questioned the student at school and then visited his home. The student's parents gave police permission to search the 12th-grader's room and computer. Simpson said police determined no criminal charges were warranted but that disciplinary action was.

Simpson said because of the violent nature of the game and because the actions had taken place in a computer-generated rendition of the high school, official consider the matter to be very serious.

"This was nothing to kid around about," she said.

Fort Bend school trustees put off video game appeal
Board lacks a quorum to consider high school senior's case
By ERIC HANSON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

SUGAR LAND — A special school board meeting called to hear the appeal of a student disciplined for playing a violent computer game involving his high school was canceled when four board members stayed away.