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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

All The News Fit to Share: Weekend Edition

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Welcome to your nearly-nightly news diary that we leave open throughout the weekend! JanF and I are combining forces for an open news thread we hope will please all of you.  

Please comment on any of the stories in the diary or comments, or share any news stories you like from anywhere!  I tend to share lesser-known stories, and especially look for stories from original journalists w/ byline credits.  And I frequently highlight my home state of Utah.  

News stories may be added throughout the day and night, so please stop back if you are inclined.  

This will serve as the open news thread until Monday.    

Bangladesh war crimes protest turn deadly

Four people have died in clashes between Bangladeshi police and protesters during a new round of protests over war crimes trials as the unrest spread to the country’s main tourist resort.

Police said violence on Friday erupted at Tarabunia in the southeastern Cox’s Bazaar region as 5,000 supporters of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party took to the streets to protest at the trials of their leaders by a government-appointed court.

Jamaat supporters armed with homemade firearms and bombs and stones attacked the security forces who retaliated with gunfire, said police officers.

“So far four people have died in the clashes,” Nur Jahan, a local police officer, told the AFP new agency. A district administrator said three of the deceased were Jamaat supporters.

Army heads hit back at combat training claims

Army chiefs and the Defence Minister have hit back at claims that ill-prepared soldiers were sent into combat in Afghanistan.

A report leaked to the New Zealand Herald has strongly criticised the training given to an army contingent sent to Afghanistan which lost five of its members in combat.

The report was written by a sergeant in military intelligence who reviewed the group’s preparation in Hawkes Bay, where the troops performed exercises simulating situations they were likely to encounter in Bamiyan province.

Graphing the Great Gun Debate

ProPublica: Christie Thompson

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama again called for Congress to take quick action on gun control. “These proposals deserve a vote,” he said. “Because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun.”

In the two months since Sandy Hook, debate has surged over how to address America’s epidemic of gun violence. In late January, the Senate Judiciary Committee began ongoing hearings on proposals to tighten restrictions on gun sales.

We’ve dug into the NRA’s efforts to block gun control policy, compared spending on both sides of the issue, and laid out five gun laws you probably never heard of. But with so much media coverage, it can be hard to keep facts straight. To help, we’ve compiled some of the best graphics on guns, from where they’re purchased to the laws governing how they’re used.

h’t Hedwig

No Turk-Israeli project ‘without Erdoğan’s OK’

Turkey will not agree to an energy project with Israel without the approval of the Turkish prime minister, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said, commenting on an Israeli offer to lay an undersea natural gas pipeline to Turkey for export to Europe.

“We can’t act like nothing ever happened. We won’t operate a project with Israel without seeing that the conditions put by the prime minister are met [first],” Yıldız told private broadcaster CNBC-e.



City Weekly; Eric S. Peterson

Then the residents of Rio Grande Street shuffled past the scene, heading inside the St. Vincent de Paul Center for a lunch of hard bread, ground beef, sugar cookies and salad. Just another day and another routine ambulance call-one of 63 to that street in 2012.

The plight of Salt Lake City’s homeless is perhaps the most tragic news story that isn’t. It’s not news because the suffering and despair of those who have fallen through the cracks is anything but new. The homeless lack the money, health and opportunity for stable work to get them off the street, but they manage to scrape together enough money for the poisons that keep them there.

I spent hours on the street, ate meals at the St. Vincent de Paul Center and, while the weather was still warm, spent a night at the Road Home men’s shelter in close observation of this nexus of support, warm beds and meals-and cold streets and hard drugs.

Utah twins launch sticky note protest of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue

Salt Lake Tribune; Jennifer Napier-Pierce

On Monday, Beauty Redefined launched an online campaign urging supporters to cover up Kate Upton, the magazine’s scantily clad cover model, with the organization’s stylized sticky notes. The notes, available for purchase at www.beautyredefined.net, are imprinted with phrases such as “You are capable of much more than looking hot,” and “There is more to be than eye candy.”

Beauty Redefined, founded by twins Lindsay and Lexie Kite, began selling the sticky notes a few years ago and encouraging supporters to post them on mirrors in public rest­rooms and dressing rooms. The Kites, both of whom will earn doctorates in communications from the University of Utah this spring, say the words of empowerment have been extremely popular. They’ve sold 1,500 pads of 50 pieces each. Each pad costs $5.

They’re getting PhD’s from the University of Utah this spring.  I can barely stop laughing.  

Clear victory for Correa will have him in frontline to succeed Chavez

The combative US-trained economist has won strong support by using windfall oil earnings to give cash handouts to some 2 million people and expand access to healthcare and education.

Correa has a lead of as much as 50 percentage points over the nearest of his seven rivals in opinion polls. His confrontation with oil companies and Wall Street investors has helped him drum up nationalist fervour.

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Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 49 Comments

49 comments

  2. FrugalGranny

    I found it difficult to vote in the poll as they are all interesting and important. I chose homelessness as I see it daily.

    Here in San Francisco, advocates and law enforcement really try to get people off the street. They can’t force them, of course. I like to listen to the police scanner on Friday and Saturday as I’m not all that fond of tv. I was listening when we had frost warnings out. As much as we love to complain about the PD, they were really trying. One officer arranged to have his buddies on the next shift check on a pair of homeless guys that he couldn’t talk into seeking shelter. He checked on them every couple of hours after that. Our cops aren’t all heartless jerks. There are plenty who care.  

  3. JanF

    The objectification of women by the media and the consequences for young women’s self-esteem and health is a big deal. I did some research related to a colleague’s diary last year and found this study on young women from Fiji:

    ”You’ve gained weight” is a traditional compliment in Fiji, anthropologists say.

    In accordance with traditional culture in the South Pacific nation, dinner guests are expected to eat as much as possible. A robust, nicely rounded body is the norm for men and women. ”Skinny legs” is a major insult. And ”going thin,” the Fijian term for losing a noticeable amount of weight, is considered a worrisome condition […]

    Just a few years after the introduction of television to a province of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, eating disorders — once virtually unheard of there — are on the rise among girls, according to a study presented yesterday at the American Psychiatric Association meetings in Washington. Young girls dream of looking not like their mothers and aunts, but like the slender stars of ”Melrose Place” and ”Beverly Hills 90210.”

    ”I’m very heavy,” one Fijian adolescent lamented during an interview with researchers led by Dr. Anne E. Becker, director of research at the Harvard Eating Disorders Center of Harvard Medical School, who investigated shifts in body image and eating practices in Fiji over a three-year period.

    It is a constant battle to keep our daughters from not falling into the traps that the media sets for them related to the Perfect Body. When they see the body types that are glorified it becomes more difficult to remind them that their bodies are fine and that it is not necessary to look like those images.

    Good for those girls pushing back. This is very true: “There is more to be than eye candy.”

    Here is a link to their website BeautyRedefined.net: “Taking back beauty for women everywhere”

  4. Chris Blask

    is willing to pay for it with counterfeit US currency.

    No, really they will set off another nuclear weapon, the fake currency they need to use to buy Grand Marnier for Dear Leader.

    North Korea has told its key ally, China, that it is prepared to stage one or even two more nuclear tests this year in an effort to force the United States into diplomatic talks, said a source with direct knowledge of the message.

    The little boy who makes Marco Rubio look like a calm and wizened leader, who grew up even more disconnected from reality than his father, is turning out to be the likely candidate for the Most Likely to Start a Nuclear Was prize, of all time.

    The (Chinese Government( source said he saw little room for compromise under North Korea’s youthful new leader, Kim Jong-un. The third Kim to rule North Korea is just 30 years old and took over from his father in December 2011.

    He appears to have followed his father, Kim Jong-il, in the “military first” strategy that has pushed North Korea ever closer to a workable nuclear missile at the expense of economic development.

    “He is much tougher than his father,” the source said.

  5. JanF

    Lawsuit: Race-based request sidelined Michigan nurse

    The man, who is not named in the filing, allegedly showed her a tattoo that may have been “a swastika of some kind” and told her that he didn’t want African-Americans involved in his baby’s care.

    The request, according to the lawsuit, made its way through management ranks, and was granted. Battle’s manager called her at home to tell her she would be reassigned.

    A note made its way onto prominent spot on the baby’s medical chart, according to the suit: “Please, no African-American nurses to care for … baby per dad’s request.”

    The hospital lawyer later made them remove the note but, according to the article, “for more than a month no African American nurses were assigned to care of the child”.

  6. Moozmuse

    UnNaturalGas

    Un-Natural Gas: Fracking Set to Shake Up German Campaign

    … Fracking in the US has triggered a modern-day oil and natural-gas boom, the size of which has the potential to alter the global energy landscape. Not surprisingly, there are those in Germany who feel that a similar gas rush could be had here. Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources estimates that there is between 0.7 and 2.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas to be found in the country, enough to cover German demand for up to 13 years. Exxon Mobil and the German natural gas company Wintershall are both hoping to undertake test drillings as soon as possible.

    That would be madness – Germany is tiny compared to the US and densely populated. Germany has a really strong grass-roots environmental movement, so I don’t think it will come to pass, but even entertaining the thought is terrible. I sure hope Merkel’s coalition loses the election in fall. The conservatives have been in power long enough.

  8. slksfca

    …here in the Bay Area. And I saw it, having left my back door open since it was so balmy outside. It wasn’t as big or bright as the Russian one, but still impressive (and it moved VERY fast). All these outer space items are starting to freak me out. 🙂

  9. princesspat

    Hanford N-waste leak is detected

    A single-shell tank at Hanford is leaking up to 300 gallons a year of radioactive liquids, a disclosure that raises broader questions about the integrity of more than 140 other tanks that hold tens of millions of gallons of waste left over from decades of processing nuclear materials at the federal site in southeast Washington.

    ~snip~

    The tank under scrutiny was assumed to be leaking in past decades, so in 1995 pumpable liquids were removed in what was termed an “interim stabilization,” according to the Energy Department.

    The tank currently holds about 447,000 gallons of sludge.

    Leaking tanks and contaminated soil at the Hanford is not new news, but containing it is certainly an issue Congress needs to keep funded. Why am I not optimistic?

  10. princesspat

    Obama Faces Risks in Pipeline Decision

    President Obama faces a knotty decision in whether to approve the much-delayed Keystone oil pipeline: a choice between alienating environmental advocates who overwhelmingly supported his candidacy or causing a deep and perhaps lasting rift with Canada.

    Canada, the United States’ most important trading partner and a close ally on Iran and Afghanistan, is counting on the pipeline to propel more growth in its oil patch, a vital engine for its economy. Its leaders have made it clear that an American rejection would be viewed as an unneighborly act and could bring retaliation.

  12. JanF

    NRA President: ‘Today, Guns Are Cool’

    National Rifle Association president David Keene expressed confidence that the powerful lobby has a decided edge in the simmering debate over gun violence, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a profile published Saturday that his side draws one of its biggest advantages from being hip.

    Keene said much has changed since the 1994 passage of the since-expired federal assault weapons ban, which amounted to a policy defeat for the NRA.

    “The difference between today and 15 years ago is that today, guns are cool,” Keene said.

  13. JanF

    Mississippi Ratifies Slavery Ban

    Earlier this month, Mississippi finally ratified the 13th Amendment banning slavery, after a specialist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center saw the movie “Lincoln” and started digging into the states’ ratification of the legislation.

    Georgia gave the amendment the three-fourths’ vote it needed in December 1865, according to the Clarion-Ledger. Mississippi, Delaware Kentucky and New Jersey rejected the amendment. Kentucky ratified the amendment on March 18, 1976 after rejecting it on Feb. 24, 1865.

    The specialist, Ken Sullivan, found out that Mississippi lawmakers voted to ratify the amendment in 1995, but never sent the necessary paperwork to the Office of the Federal Register

  14. JanF

    Colorado State House Passes Measure Limiting Gun Magazines To 15 Rounds

    On a tight 34-31 vote, House Bill 1224 passed out of the chamber and sent the measure to the Senate, which is also in Democratic hands. HB 1224 was the first of four gun-related bills that will be voted on in the House on Monday. Only three Democrats voted against the bill.

    Opponents to the legislation contended that it would hurt drive gun manufacturing jobs out of the state. Others signaled an aversion to all gun bills that were being considered. Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) said last week that he supports the 15-round limit on gun magazines.

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