Syria chemical attack claims aim to justify foreign interference ... - RT

Syrian army soldiers patrol the Sheik Said neighbourhood of Syria's northern city of Aleppo.(AFP Photo / STR)

Accusations that forces backing Syrian President Assad allegedly used chemical weapons against the opposition is a provocation aimed at making an excuse for foreign military intervention, says the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Another goal of such reports is to stir up panic among Syrians and foreigners who remain in the country, the ministry?s spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich told the media on Thursday.

The use of weapon of mass destruction is unacceptable, the diplomat stressed. The Syrian government repeatedly assured Russia, as well as Western partners and the UN that it would not use chemical weapons. Moscow is keeping a close watch on the situation and has no information that the Syrian government plans to use chemical arms.

?We hope that all opposition forces will assume similar obligations and strictly follow these commitments,? Lukashevich pointed out.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the use of chemical weapons ?would be a political suicide? for Assad regime.

?Every time we hear rumors, or pieces of information come to surface that the Syrians are doing something with the chemical weapons we double-check, we triple-check, we go directly to the government and all the time we get very firm assurances that this is not going to be used under any circumstances,? he said in an exclusive interview with RT.

Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition claims the government troops did use chemical warfare in an attack on the city of Homs on Sunday, killing seven people and injuring dozens more with poison gas. A number of videos were posted online showing, opposition activists claim, victims of the alleged chemical attack.

Syria's Ambassador to Moscow Riyad Haddad denied the report saying that the information ?was absolutely wrong.?

"Naturally, it was a provocation and a part of plans to put psychological pressure on the government in Syria," he told Interfax. According to the diplomat, it is all done to make a pretext for a foreign intervention into the Arab Republic. He expressed hope though that thanks to Russian and Chinese efforts it will not happen.

Permanent members of the UN Security Council, Moscow and Beijing stand for a political solution to the Syrian crisis.

?The only path to put an end to the sufferings of Syrian people lies through a dialogue and talks,? Lukashevich reiterated on Thursday. On the whole, the situation in Syria is extremely complicated and ?is following the most unfavorable scenario." Responsibility for continuing the bloodshed in the republic is laid with those who incite further fratricidal war in Syria, the Russian diplomat pointed out.

Source: http://rt.com/politics/chemical-weapon-syria-provocation-911/

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TSA confiscates record number of guns at US airports in 2012

24 min.

Jason Clampet , Skift

Travelers have attempted to carry more than 1,500 firearms through U.S. airports and?on?board airplanes in 2012, according to the Transportation Security Administration.?

As of Friday, TSA's gun?tally sat at 1,527?? 1,295 of which were loaded ? and this week?s count will likely bring the final tally just past 1,550 before the year ends.

Once a weapon is found, the TSA?s job ends, David Castelveter, the agency?s director of external communications, told Skift.??We are not an arresting authority. We don?t have detention authority. If somebody comes through with a weapon the immediate procedure is to call the local authority,? he said. ?There are some states where they just tell you to take it back to the car; in others you?ll end up at Rikers.?

Beyond the weekly tallies, which the TSA posts every Friday afternoon on its blog,?TSA does not follow arrests, indictments?or convictions stemming from firearms violations.??We just keep track of the confiscations, because the police don?t always keep us apprised of what happens,? Castelveter said.??We don?t pay attention to the arrest unless it turns into an indictment and we have an agent give testimony in a trial.?

The second half of 2012 has seen an increase over gun activity in the first six months: In July?On the National Security Beat, a project of Medill Journalism School, reported that 697 guns had been found, 170 of which were not only loaded but had rounds in their chambers.

Skift reported?earlier this month?that of the top 11 airports for firearms confiscation, five were in Texas, two were in Florida, and the most-confiscated title went to Atlanta?s?Hartsfield ? Jackson International.

More?stories?from Skift

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/tsa-confiscates-record-number-guns-us-airports-2012-1C7753890

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JAXFCU-No Equity Home Improvement Loan | Home Improvement ...

26Dec

Our No Equity Home Improvement Loan is for well-qualified borrowers who want to make home improvements, but may not have equity in their home. With declining home values, many Jacksonville-area residents have few options for financing. JAXFCU?s unique ?No Equity? loan may be the perfect solution for some borrowers. Loans for Florida and Georgia residents only. Learn More here: www.jaxfcu.org

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Source: http://www.cohocton.org/143-jaxfcu-no-equity-home-improvement-loan

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Bay Area's stormy weather expected to subside

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Posted: 11:55 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012

KTVU.com and Wires

BAY AREA ?

The rain-soaked Bay Area was expected to get a slight reprieve from the stormy weather for the next couple of days, a National Weather Service forecaster said Wednesday.

Isolated thunderstorms and hail were possible throughout the day

Wednesday, but that night and Thursday should be dry, forecaster Steve Anderson said.?

"We're dealing with some light residual showers around the region," Anderson said. "Some of them can be locally heavy but they're going to be short-lived."

The next significant rainfall was expected Friday night and Saturday, but Anderson said that rain likely wouldn't be as heavy as what the Bay Area had seen over the past few days.

High temperatures were expected to reach the mid-50s, with overnight lows in the mid-30s in the North Bay and the mid-40s elsewhere, he said.

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Source: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/bay-areas-stormy-weather-expected-subside/nTf3K/

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Kids: Afghan policewoman who killed was mentally ill

Mohammad Ismail / Reuters

Fatima, 13, holds a picture of her mother, Narges Rezaeimomenabad, at her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. Her mother is suspected of killing a U.S. contractor at a police headquarters in Kabul.

By Michael Georgy and Mirwais Harooni, Reuters

KABUL -- The Afghan policewoman suspected of killing a U.S. contractor at police headquarters in Kabul suffered from mental illness and was driven to suicidal despair by poverty, her children told Reuters on Wednesday.

The woman was identified by authorities as Narges Rezaeimomenabad, a 40-year-old grandmother and mother of three who moved here from Iran 10 years ago and married an Afghan man.

On Monday morning, she loaded a pistol in a bathroom at the police compound, hid it in her long scarf and shot an American police trainer, apparently becoming the first Afghan woman to carry out such an attack.

Narges also tried to shoot police officials after killing the American. Luckily for them, her pistol jammed. Her husband is also under investigation.

Her son Sayed, 16, and daughter Fatima, 13, described how they tried to call their parents after news broke of the shooting, then waited in vain for them to come home.

---

They recalled Narges's severe mood swings, and how at times she beat them and even pulled out a knife. But the children said she was consistent in bemoaning poverty.

"She was usually complaining about poverty. She was complaining to my father about our conditions. She was saying that my father was poor," Sayid said in an interview in their damp, cold two-room cement house.

On the floor beside him were his mother's prescriptions and a thick plastic bag filled with pills she tried to swallow to end the misery about a month ago. On another occasion, she cut her wrist with a razor, Sayed said.

US civilian killed by Afghan policewoman in Kabul

"My father was usually calm and sometimes would say that she was guilty too because it wasn't a forced marriage. They fell in love and got married."

There was no sign in their neighbourhood of the billions of dollars of Western aid that have poured into Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, or of government investment.

RAW SEWAGE, STAGNANT WATER, DIRT ROADS

The lane outside their home stank of raw sewage.

Dirty, stagnant water filled holes in dirt roads nearby, where children in tattered clothes played and butchers stood by cow's hooves in shops choked by dust.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest nations, with a third of its 30 million residents living under the poverty line.

The sole distractions from the daily grind appeared to be a deck of playing cards and a compact disc with songs from Iranian pop singers, scattered on the floor of a room where Narges would lock herself in and weep, or sit in silence.

At times, Narges would try to focus on building her children's confidence, telling them to be guided by the Muslim holy book, the Koran, to tackle life's problems.

Taliban says US base targeted in Afghan blast

Sayed and Fatima said she never spoke badly of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Neighbour Mohammad Ismail Kohistani was dumbfounded to hear on the radio that Afghan officials were combing Narges' phone records to try to determine whether al Qaeda or the Taliban could have brainwashed her into carrying out a mission.

But he was acutely aware of her mental problems and often heard her scream at her husband, whose low-level job in the crime investigation unit of the police brought home little cash.

Kohistani, who operates a small sewing shop with battered machines, never imagined his neighbour could be accused of a high-profile attack that raised new questions about the direction of an unpopular war.

"I became very depressed and sad," said Kohistani, sitting on the floor few feet from a tiny wood-burning stove in Narges's home, alongside family photographs and a police training manual.

Fatima would often seek refuge in Kohistani's house when her mother's behaviour became unbearable. "She did not hate us, but usually she was angry and would not talk to us," said Fatima, her eyes moist with tears.

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com

Nevertheless, she missed her mother. The children were staying with a cousin.

"I ask the government to free my mother, otherwise our future will be destroyed," said Fatima.

Officials described it as another "insider shooting", in which Afghan forces turn on Westerners they are meant to be working with to stabilise the country. There have been over 52 such attacks so far this year.

The shooting at the police headquarters may have alarmed Afghanistan's Western allies. But some Afghans have grown numb to the violence.

Kohistani's 70-year-old father, Omara Khan, who sports a white beard, sat twirling prayer beads beneath a photograph of Narges in a black veil beside one of her husband.

Asked what he thought of the attack, he laughed.

"This is common in Afghanistan," said Khan, who lived through decades of upheaval, including the 10-year Soviet occupation and a civil war that destroyed half of Kabul and killed some 50,000 civilians.

"People are killed every day."?

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Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/26/16173931-mental-illness-poverty-drove-afghan-policewoman-to-kill-us-contractor-her-children-say?lite

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James McAvoy Joins Star-Studded London Theater Season In Title Role Of ?Macbeth?

Next season on London?s West End is shaping up to be a who?s who of British talent. Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Daniel Radcliffe, Ben Whishaw and Jude Law are all starring in plays and Whishaw and Dench?s Skyfall director Sam Mendes is prepping a musical production of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. James McAvoy is the latest to commit to walking the boards, taking on the title role in Macbeth which veteran theater director Jamie Lloyd is mounting as part of the Trafalgar Transformed season. McAvoy has played Macbeth before, albeit in a modernized BBC version in which the Scottish lord was transformed into a top chef. He was last on stage in 2009?s Three Days Of Rain, which Lloyd also directed. He?ll next be seen on screen in Danny Boyle?s Trance and is reprising his role of a young Charles Xavier in Bryan Singer?s X-Men: Days Of Future Past. In a growing trend to reach out to wider audiences, ticket prices for Macbeth will be slashed to ?15 on Mondays and ?10 for select shows. Michael Grandage is making a similar move with his new season that features Dench, Law and Radcliffe. Macbeth runs from February 9 to April 27.

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Source: http://www.deadline.com/2012/12/james-mcavoy-joins-london-theater-season-macbeth/

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Apollo's lunar dust data being restored

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2012) ? Forty years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, the science from those missions continues to shape our view of the moon. In one of the latest developments, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored by scientists with the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"This is the first look at the fully calibrated, digital dust data from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions," said David Williams, a Goddard scientist and data specialist at NSSDC, NASA's permanent archive for space science mission data.

The newly available data will make long-term analysis of the Apollo dust readings possible. Digital data from these two experiments were not archived before, and it's thought that roughly the last year-and-a-half of the data have never been studied.

The work was presented on December 6 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, as part of a session organized in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 17 launch. Also presented in this session was a similar effort to fill in gaps in the Apollo 15 and 17 heat-flow measurements, the only such measurements ever taken on the moon or any planetary body other than Earth.

The recovery of these data sets is part of the Lunar Data Project, an ongoing NSSDC effort, drawing on researchers at multiple institutions, to make the scientific data from Apollo available in modern formats.

The Lunar Dust Detectors that were placed on the lunar surface during Apollo 14 and 15 measured dust accumulation, temperature and damage caused by high-energy cosmic particles and the sun's ultraviolet radiation. The same kind of instrument had flown earlier on Apollo 11 and 12 (Later, Apollo 17 carried a different type of dust detector).

Restoring the data was a painstaking job of going through one data set and separating the raw detector counts from temperatures and "housekeeping" information that was collected to keep an eye on how healthy the Apollo instruments were. A second, less complete data set indicated how to convert the raw counts into usable measurements. But first, the second data set had to be converted from microfilm, which had been archived at NSSDC in the 1970s, and the two data sets had to reconciled because their time points didn't match up exactly. Most of this meticulous work was carried out by Marie McBride, an undergraduate from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne who was working with Williams through a NASA internship.

Newer missions, such as NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), have continued to study lunar dust. "It's one of those questions that scientists keep coming back to," said McBride.

"Just last week, LRO did some important measurements seeking dust profiles in the lunar atmosphere," said Rich Vondrak, the LRO deputy project scientist at NASA Goddard. LRO has been orbiting the moon since June 2009, and the mission was recently extended through 2015.

And the main objective of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), scheduled to launch in 2013, is to characterize the moon's atmosphere and dust environment.

This offers another example of how profoundly influential the Apollo data continues to be, observed Noah Petro, a member of the LRO project science team at NASA Goddard. "A mission ends when it ends, but the science continues forever."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/qSuidlnHJ6o/121206153652.htm

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Power Gained, Argument Weakened for Same-Sex Marriage | First ...

Power Gained, Argument Weakened for Same-Sex Marriage

December 6, 2012

Matthew J. Franck

The naive reader of the U.S. Constitution might see the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (?nor shall any State . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws?), and presume that these words are themselves to be applied equally to all persons, whatever their circumstances. If the modern Supreme Court is to be followed as our authoritative guide, however, that presumption would be incorrect. There are, one might say, three different equal protection clauses. And the group to which one belongs will determine which of them is put to use.

Described this way, the practice looks hard to defend. But the trouble may begin with the clause itself. The ?equal protection of the laws? cannot really be taken to mean ?the law shall make no distinctions among persons,? for the making of some such distinctions is unavoidable in the law. Children and adults, men and women, citizens and aliens, the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor?all of these are treated differently in some respects (though not in all), and few will complain that some abstract ?equality? norm has been traduced in every case.

And so the modern courts have muddled through by developing three different ?levels of scrutiny? for equal protection analysis, from most to least stringent: strict scrutiny, intermediate (or ?heightened? scrutiny), and rational basis review. The first is the hardest test for a legislature to pass, and is applied to groups identified as a ?suspect class.? Race is the paradigmatic category here, and the courts have added ?alienage? (foreign citizenship) and national origin to this level of scrutiny as well. To defend a law employing such distinctions, a state must bear the burden of showing a ?compelling interest,? and employ means ?narrowly tailored? to achieving that interest. It is, and should be, hard to defend a law that favors and disfavors persons based on race or ethnicity.

At the next level of heightened scrutiny, we find ?quasi-suspect classes? like ?gender? and ?illegitimacy.? Here the discriminating policies must be defended as ?substantially? related to an ?important interest? of the state. This is still an exceedingly muddy area of equal protection law, and it is hard to say how much of the probative burden is carried by the state, and how much by the party that complains of its policy. But in recent years?as when Virginia Military Institute was forced to give up all-male education in 1995?this intermediate scrutiny has been tantamount to the most stringent test.

All other state policies are subject to rational basis review, where the burden is largely on the challenging party, and all the state need show is that its policy of favoring some over others has some rational relationship to a merely ?legitimate? governmental interest.

In recent same-sex marriage cases, those who seek to overturn traditional marriage laws have tried to persuade courts to treat homosexuals as a suspect or quasi-suspect class, thus leveraging the legal analysis into one of the harder levels of scrutiny, or at least an ?intensified? rational basis review, and improving their chances of victory. Two recent decisions by federal district court judges in the Ninth Circuit?one in Hawaii by Judge Alan Kay on August 8, the other in Nevada by Judge Robert Jones on November 26?have rejected this gambit, rightly holding that laws restricting marriage to one man and one woman need only be shown to have an ordinary rational basis, that this is easily shown, and that they involve no invidious discrimination.

These decisions have blocked three roads to the enjoyment of a heightened judicial solicitude. (Both cases are being appealed, and neither is ripe for Supreme Court review in the present term. But the judges? opinions are worthy of examination by the justices in the cases they are now pondering.) The first approach claimed that a law telling people they cannot marry another of the same sex is a form of ?gender discrimination? meriting intermediate scrutiny. No, said the judges in these cases: Men and women are treated equally by such laws, and the discrimination turns not on gender but (at most) on sexual orientation.

The second approach was to claim that homosexuality is an immutable and defining characteristic, such that gays and lesbians have a history of being discriminated against, sufficient to raise their stature as a suspect class in the eyes of judges. Again, not so, said the judges in Hawaii and Nevada. Under governing Ninth Circuit precedent, never yet contradicted by the Supreme Court, homosexuality has been regarded as a behavioral characteristic, not an immutable one like race. And whatever discrimination gays and lesbians have suffered diminishes day by day, obviating the need for special judicial attention to their claims.

And this overlaps with the third and final approach, in which same-sex marriage advocates claim that gays and lesbians are politically powerless, unable to make headway in the normal channels of democratic decision-making at the polls and in legislatures, thus needing the aid of the judiciary. As Judge Jones noted in the Nevada case, this claim is refuted by recent history. The president of the United States opposes the Defense of Marriage Act and favors same-sex marriage. Legislatures in some states have established same-sex marriage, and in other states, civil unions. Moreover, Jones noted, the people of four states went to the polls in November to decide this question?and we know what the result was.

Perhaps it is something of a paradox that as their political clout grows stronger, the constitutional claims of same-sex marriage advocates become weaker. But if powerlessness is a legitimate variable in judicial decision-making, it is hard to gainsay the view of Judge Jones:

The question of ?powerlessness? under an equal protection analysis requires that the group?s chances of democratic success be virtually hopeless, not simply that its path to success is difficult or challenging because of democratic forces. . . . The relevant consideration is the group?s ?ability to attract the attention of the lawmakers,? an ability homosexuals cannot seriously be said not to possess.

Of course the advocates of same-sex marriage will continue to press their case in courts of law. They would rather convince five justices of the Supreme Court to impose their agenda on the country than try convincing the country itself. And notwithstanding their November victories, they are still leery of democracy in much of the country, even in blue New Jersey, where they have rejected a referendum idea floated by Governor Chris Christie.

But Judge Kay and Judge Jones are quite right. It is ludicrous to call gays and lesbians an oppressed and powerless minority in the United States at the end of 2012. This fact should weigh heavily in the Supreme Court?s deliberations.

Matthew J. Franck is director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute.

RESOURCES

Abercrombie v. Jackson (U.S. District Court, Hawaii, August 8, 2012)

Sevcik v. Sandoval (U.S. District Court, Nevada, November 26, 2012)

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Source: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/12/power-gained-argument-weakened-for-same-sex-marriage

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