Blue_Tires
Blue_Tires's JournalJournalist dies after being shot while hosting radio program
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder on Thursday of Brazilian radio journalist Gleydson Carvalho in the municipality of Camocim in the northeastern state of Ceará and calls on authorities to bring the killers to justice. Carvalho was presenting a program on Radio Liberdade FM when two unidentified gunmen entered the station's offices during a musical interlude and shot him, according to news reports. He died while en route to a hospital, the reports said. The journalist had frequently criticized local politicians and repeatedly received death threats on his Facebook page, news reports said.
"Violence against the press in Brazil had already reached unacceptable levels. Now we are stunned by the brazen murder of Gleydson Carvalho in the middle of his radio show," said Sara Rafsky, CPJ's Americas research associate. "Authorities must take action to combat a press freedom crisis that is violating the right of all Brazilians to be informed, not to mention ending journalists' lives."
CPJ has documented a sharp increase in lethal, anti-press violence in Brazil in recent years. Three other journalists have been killed this year in direct retaliation for their work, including two who were killed and tortured in a one-week period in May. None of their cases have been resolved. At least 16 journalists have been killed in direct retaliation for their work since 2011, CPJ research shows.
https://cpj.org/2015/08/brazilian-journalist-dies-after-being-shot-while-h.php
http://www.jn.pt/PaginaInicial/Mundo/Interior.aspx?content_id=4719124
NOTE: This is the fourth journalist slain in Brasil this year...
Meanwhile, in Times Square...
Poor Spidey...Fallen on rough times
https://twitter.com/TalibKweli/status/629730938621153280
Man sentenced to 30 years of jail for insulting the Thai monarchy on Facebook
A man has been sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment for insulting Thailand's monarchy on Facebook. The long jail term was imposed under the country's harsh lèse-majesté law (literally "injured majesty"
, which lays down that anyone convicted of insulting the king, queen, heir, or regent faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.
As The Guardian reports, Bangkok’s military court found Pongsak Sriboonpeng, 48, guilty of "posting messages and pictures defaming the monarchy in six posts on the social media site." Although he faced a possible 90 years in prison, the court imposed "only" 60 years—ten years for each insulting post—which was then halved because he pleaded guilty.
His lawyer pointed out that this is a new record for the law, and noted that there could be no appeal against the sentence, since it was imposed by a military court in a country still under martial law. The Guardian article says that convictions for lèse-majesté have increased dramatically since Thailand’s generals seized power from the elected government in May 2014.
The Thai "tradition" of imposing or threatening to impose long jail sentences for insulting the monarchy goes back many years. Ars reported how in 2006 a naturalised United States citizen from Thailand was arrested when he returned to his native land, and allegedly forced to confess to breaking the law. He was released after promising not to do so again—and praising the country's king.
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/08/man-sentenced-to-30-years-of-jail-for-insulting-the-thai-monarchy-on-facebook/
Snowden wannabe leaked files to 4Chan, but no one believed him
One person's dream of becoming the next Snowden or Manning was ruined when nobody believed that the classified documents that they posted to the internet were genuine. Michael Scerba was a 21-year-old graduate at Australia's Department of Defense when he happened upon information relating to the Five Eyes spying program. According to The Age, he uploaded the data to 4chan in October 2012, all the while speaking about his admiration for Julian Assange. Unfortunately, only 14 people chose to comment on the post, many of which Scerba is alleged to have described as "a bunch of 'fake and gay' remarks."
Scerba, now 25, is currently awaiting trial in Australia's Supreme Court and stands accused of accessing and leaking confidential information. The Brisbane Times has pointed out the tension between civil rights activists and the intelligence agencies before the case. After all, much of the trial will concern secret data and the documentation relating to the case will be destroyed 28 days after the hearing concludes.
There's no way to tell what information was contained in the leak, but Scerba is quoted as saying "I release(sic) what I feel should be in the media: bombings, civilian deaths, actions of the 'terrorists' that just aren't reported in the media." We do know, however, that the file concerned Five Eyes, the international program of surveillance cooperation between the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The incident was discovered purely accidentally, too, since a former employee of Australia's intelligence agency stumbled upon the post and alerted authorities. So, you know, at least one person worked out that it was genuine.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/06/australian-dod-employee-leaked-secrets-to-4chan/
LOL...A simple twist of fate, and it would be Scerba getting the movies and book deals...
Recordings: State rep asked aide to hide relationship
Source: Detroit News
Lansing — State Rep. Todd Courser planned the distribution of a fictional email alleging he had sex with a male prostitute in a bid to conceal his relationship with Rep. Cindy Gamrat, according to audio recordings obtained by The Detroit News.
Courser, a Lapeer Republican, said on one recording the email was designed to create “a complete smear campaign” of exaggerated, false claims about him and Gamrat so a public revelation about the legislators’ relationship would seem “mild by comparison.”
Interviews with former House employees and the recordings show freshman lawmakers Courser and Gamrat, R-Plainwell, used their taxpayer-funded offices to maintain and cover up their relationship. Courser, 43, and Gamrat, 42, rose from the ranks of tea party activism, battled establishment Republicans to win seats in the House last year and formed their own legislative coalition.
A now-former House aide recorded Courser in mid-May directing him to send Republican activists and operatives an email that would appear to be from an anonymous political enemy that said Courser had been “caught behind a Lansing nightclub” having sex with a man.
Read more: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2015/08/06/recordings-state-rep-asked-aide-hide-relationship/31269315/
So desperate to hide his affair he was actually about to pretend to be a homosexual??
This means I'm going to be *IMMORTAL*!
Eating Spicy Food Linked to a Longer LifeEating spicy food is associated with a reduced risk for death, an analysis of dietary data on more than 485,000 people found.
Study participants were enrolled between 2004 and 2008 in a large Chinese health study, and researchers followed them for an average of more than seven years, recording 20,224 deaths. The study is in BMJ.
After controlling for family medical history, age, education, diabetes, smoking and many other variables, the researchers found that compared with eating hot food, mainly chili peppers, less than once a week, having it once or twice a week resulted in a 10 percent reduced overall risk for death. Consuming spicy food six to seven times a week reduced the risk by 14 percent.
Rates of ischemic heart disease, respiratory diseases and cancers were all lower in hot-food eaters. The authors drew no conclusions about cause and effect, but they noted that capsaicin, the main ingredient in chili peppers, had been found in other studies to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.
“We need more evidence, especially from clinical trials, to further verify these findings,” said a co-author, Dr. Lu Qi, an associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “and we are looking forward to seeing data from other populations.”
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/spicy-food-linked-to-lower-risk-of-death/
Descendants Keep Alive Legacy of 1877 Black Settlement in Kansas
NICODEMUS, Kan. — Riding a red lawn mower down Washington Avenue in her hometown’s annual parade, Bertha Carter, 82, shielded herself from the sun with a white cowboy hat, and dispatched giant mosquitoes with an electronic swatter.
As Ms. Carter motored along, pulling several children on a makeshift train behind her mower, she drew applause from the hundreds of people drawn here for a weekend-long homecoming celebration in Nicodemus, the country’s oldest black settlement west of the Mississippi River.
Ms. Carter is among a dwindling number of Nicodemus’s permanent residents, who total no more than 25 by most estimates. But each summer, for a few sweet days, the town’s population swells for the homecoming. Children whose ancestors settled this land in the 1870s use the swings on a playground that often sits idle. Cousins snack on catfish sandwiches and play basketball on the court next to Township Hall. Old men and women reminisce about their childhoods, discuss the joys and hardships of rural life in northwest Kansas, and ponder the future of this proud town, one that boomed, went bust and held on.
“I hope it keeps going,” said Ms. Carter, who said she stayed here all these decades because “it’s home and I don’t like cities.”
The story of Nicodemus is unique in a region where many settlers were German or Swedish or Czech, and in a state that remains overwhelmingly white to this day. The town was founded in 1877, in the midst of America’s rapid westward expansion, by freed slaves from Kentucky who envisioned a black oasis on the prairie. It grew quickly at first, with two newspapers, a baseball team, restaurants and a post office. But in those days, sustaining growth meant getting a railroad line to run through town, and the trains never came to Nicodemus. Within a few years of its founding, many stores had closed, and plenty of residents left.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/us/descendants-keep-alive-legacy-of-1877-black-settlement-in-kansas.html
The FBI Investigated the Song ‘Louie Louie’ for Two Years
he song “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen might not strike you as Federal Bureau of Investigation material. But the song was under investigation by the FBI for two whole years. The bureau’s interest had to do with the lyrics of the song, which most listeners find either confusing or simply impossible to understand. Those muddled words turned out to be big trouble for “Louie Louie,” as at least one person heard a few things in there that weren’t exactly suiting for a teenage audience.
Part of the FBI’s job is to fight obscenity, and in the FBI’s files on the case, they explain that someone from Sarasota High School complained that the lyrics to the song were obscene. “The lyrics are so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter,’” the complaint read. “We all know there is obscene materials available for those who seek it,” it went on, “but when they start sneaking in this material in the guise of the latest teen age rock & roll hit record these morons have gone too far.” On Page 14 of the FBI document, someone did include what they thought the words to the song were. (Warning, they are not safe for work.) https://vault.fbi.gov/louie-louie-the-song/louie-louie-the-song/view
Here are the actual, full lyrics:
Louie, Louie,
me gotta go.
Louie, Louie,
me gotta go.
A fine little girl, she wait for me;
me catch a ship across the sea.
I sailed the ship all alone;
I never think I’ll make it home
Three nights and days we sailed the sea;
me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there;
I smell the rose, in her hair.
Me see Jamaica moon above;
It won’t be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I never leave again.
You can understand why people might not have sorted those exact words out by listening to the song below.
And, in fact, rather than attempting to figure out where the different, dirty versions of the lyrics came from, the FBI spent two years analyzing the song. They even played it at different speeds to see if they were missing some hidden obscene message. And in all that time, the bureau never once contacted Jack Ely, the man who sang the words of the song in the first place. At the end of the two years, the FBI didn’t even exonerate “Louie Louie,” they simply said that “the lyrics of the song on this record was not definitely determined by this Laboratory examination, it was not possible to determine whether this recording is obscene.”
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-fbi-investigated-the-song-louie-louie-for-two-years-78752777/#XPGl67G7zJMZ54E7.99
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