Blue_Tires
Blue_Tires's JournalMontana top court overturns teacher's one-month rape sentence
(Reuters) - The Montana Supreme Court overturned on Wednesday a one-month prison sentence given to a former teacher for the rape of a 14-year-old student, a penalty that sparked outrage and drew criticism from women's groups as too lenient.
Montana district Judge G. Todd Baugh drew fierce public criticism last year when he sentenced the teacher, Stacey Rambold, to just a month in prison for the 2007 sexual assault of his student, Cherice Moralez, who later killed herself.
Baugh fueled the public outrage by saying during Rambold's sentencing hearing that the teenager seemed older than her years and was "probably as much in control of the situation" as the Billings high school teacher.
On Wednesday, the high court ordered the case assigned to a different judge for re-sentencing as it ruled the sentence - technically 15 years in prison with all but 31 days suspended and credit for one day served - was too lenient.
"The district court lacked authority to suspend all but 31 days of Rambold's sentence, and its judgment is therefore reversed," Justice Michael Wheat said in the opinion, joined by five other justices.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/30/us-usa-montana-rape-idUSBREA3T0PP20140430
Nigeria's kidnapped girls sold into marriage for $12
Scores of young girls and women kidnapped from a school in Nigeria are being forced to marry their Boko Haram abductors, a local human rights group has reported.
Halite Aliyu, of the Borno-Yobe People’s Forum, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that more than 200 girls who were kidnapped two weeks ago had been sold to the fighters for $12.
Aliyu said the information given about the mass weddings was coming from villagers in the Sambisa Forest, on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon where Boko Haram was known to have a number of hideouts.
"The latest reports are that they have been taken across the borders, some to Cameroon and Chad,'' Aliyu said.
It was not possible to verify the reports.
Community elder Pogu Bitrus of Chibok town, from where the girls were abducted, told the BBC's Hausa service that some of the kidnapped girls "have been married off to insurgents".
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/04/nigeria-kidnapped-girls-sold-into-marriage-2014430174029374520.html
Germany blocks Edward Snowden from testifying in person in NSA inquiry
The German government has blocked Edward Snowden from giving personal evidence in front of a parliamentary inquiry into NSA surveillance, it has emerged hours before Angela Merkel travels to Washington for a meeting with Barack Obama.
In a letter to members of a parliamentary committee obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung, government officials say a personal invitation for the US whistleblower would "run counter to the political interests of the Federal Republic", and "put a grave and permanent strain" on US-German relations.
Opposition party members in the committee from the Left and Green party had for weeks insisted that the former NSA employee was a key witness and therefore would need to appear in person, not least because of concerns that Russia otherwise could influence his testimony.
However, the ruling Christian Democratic and Social Democratic parties, said that a written questionnaire would suffice. The disagreement led to the resignation of the CDU head of the committee this month.
Last June the German foreign ministry rejected Snowden's application for asylum because it was not submitted in person on German soil. If Snowden had been invited as a witness, he could have met these requirements.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/01/germany-edward-snowden-nsa-inquiry
Of course, the truth of the matter is Snowden has nothing of substance to add to the inquiry anyway, since he has a policy about not discussing anything which hasn't already been in the newspapers and even then; he was a very small cog in the grand scheme of things...Naturally, Germany saves face by hinting that the U.S. is twisting their arm, and no one is the wiser...
Mayor Rob Ford 'ready to take a break'
TORONTO - Mayor Rob Ford says he’s “ready to take a break” from the mayoral election campaign to “go get help.”
The decision to immediately step away from the campaign — while staying on the ballot — came after the Toronto Sun exclusively obtained a new raunchy audio recording of Ford ranting and swearing in an Etobicoke bar.
The Globe and Mail also published a report that a new video surfaced of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what has been described as crack-cocaine early Saturday morning.
Ford told the Sun columnist Joe Warmington that he realizes “it’s time” and that he “wants” to “deal with his issues.” He said he is being urged to not leave the mayoral race by people around him.
The audio recording, covertly taped by a patron of Sullie Gorman’s Monday night, captures the mayor being unruly as he’s ordering booze at the Royal York Rd. bar, complaining about his wife Renata and making lewd comments about mayoral contender Karen Stintz.
“I’d like to f-----g jam her (Stintz), but she doesn’t want ... I can’t talk like this...I’m so sorry,” Ford is heard saying on the recording. “I forgot there’s a woman in the house.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/04/30/mayor-rob-ford-ready-to-take-a-break?token=1b12edd057112d8c06e79cfe46d83166
Snowden Retained Expert in Espionage Act Defense
WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who provided journalists a trove of classified documents, retained a well-known Washington defense lawyer last summer in hopes of reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutors that would allow him to return to the United States and spare him significant prison time.
The lawyer, according to people familiar with the investigation, is Plato Cacheris, who has represented defendants in some of the highest-profile cases involving Espionage Act charges, including the convicted spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen and the convicted leaker Lawrence Franklin. But nearly a year after Mr. Cacheris became involved, no agreement appears imminent, and government officials said the negotiations remained at an early stage.
Mr. Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, where he received temporary asylum, was charged last year with multiple violations of the Espionage Act. He faces up to 30 years in prison, and prosecutors could easily add more counts...
...“Snowden is interested in returning home,” said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who also represents Mr. Snowden. “He is and always has been on America’s side. He would cooperate in extraordinary ways in the right circumstances. But he does not believe that the ‘felon’ label is the right word for someone whose act of conscience has revitalized democratic oversight of the intelligence community and is leading to historic reforms.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/us/snowden-retained-expert-in-espionage-act-defense.html?_r=0
plea deal in the works?
The War on Truth in Ukraine
WASHINGTON — For a moment last week, war seemed imminent. A day after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, warned Ukraine’s leaders against using force in the crisis there, the Ukrainian military attacked a checkpoint outside the separatist-held town of Slovyansk. Russian forces across the border responded with maneuvers labeled “exercises,” coupled with statements from the Kremlin that amounted to “you were warned.” Russian television made Slovyansk look like Guernica; Ukrainian news media reported that separatist militants were using kindergartners as human shields.
As each side revved up its propaganda, the world got another taste of the confusion, uncertainty and distortion of information that have brought this conflict to the brink. An absence of legitimate authority in eastern Ukraine has left an absence of transparent, agreed-upon facts — a breeding ground for suspicion and manipulative diplomatic games on the margins of the truth that may yet carry the region to war.
Consider the armed “green men” who seize towns and whose photos circulated in the media this month. Do they work for the Russians? The United States has said Russian culpability is beyond “a shadow of a doubt.” The Russians have issued categorical denials. The Ukrainian government’s photo evidence of involvement of Russian special forces has been undermined by apparent errors of location and misidentification, but not before the images were submitted to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, endorsed by the United States State Department and headlined in American news media.
Doubt’s shadow has not left Ukraine. Instead, the failure to agree on facts — to share a basic reality — has become the norm. Who distributed leaflets ordering Jews to register with authorities? Was it the anti-Semitic new “government” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic, as the Ukrainian government claims, or was it a provocation designed to discredit the pro-Russian separatists? And who killed three men at a checkpoint in Slovyansk last week, Russian military intelligence or Ukrainian nationalists?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/the-war-on-truth-in-ukraine.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1
Prime Minister Chung Hong-won resigns over ferry sinking response
Source: CBC
South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won resigned on Sunday over the government's response to the April 16 ferry disaster.
The Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip south from the port of Incheon to the traditional holiday island of Jeju.
"Keeping my post is too great a burden on the administration," a sombre Chung said in a brief announcement.
Chung was booed and someone threw a water bottle at him when he visited grieving parents the day after the disaster. More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from one high school on a field trip, have died or are missing and presumed dead. The children were told to stay put in their cabins, where they waited for further orders. The confirmed death toll on Sunday was 187.
Tempers have frayed over the slow pace of the recovery and frequent changes in information provided by the government, including at one time by a local government that everyone had been rescued.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/prime-minister-chung-hong-won-resigns-over-ferry-sinking-response-1.2623250
Trying to Bring Baldwin’s Complex Voice Back to the Classroom
James Baldwin’s 1953 novel, “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” about a Harlem teenager’s search for meaning, quickly became a classic, along with his searing essays about race published a decade later in the book “The Fire Next Time.” But in recent years Baldwin’s presence has diminished in many high school classrooms.
In a year that marks the 90th anniversary of his birth, educators offer different reasons for Baldwin’s faded presence there, from the concern that he is too controversial and complex to the perception that he has been eclipsed by other African-American voices. Collectively the explanations illustrate how attitudes about race have changed, along with the way the high school literary experience has evolved.
“Baldwin is still there, but he’s not there in the way he was,” said Jocelyn A. Chadwick, chairwoman of the secondary level of the National Council of Teachers of English, noting that while in the 1960s and ’70s students would study Baldwin’s essays, short stories and novels in their entirety, today they often encounter his work only in anthologies.
Now teachers, scholars and other Baldwin fans are seizing on the anniversary of his birth in Harlem to inspire what they hope will be a revival of a younger generation’s interest in the work of one of the country’s most gifted writers and major voices on race and morality.
The New York Live Arts festival “James Baldwin, This Time,” which began on Wednesday and continues through Sunday with performances and events across disciplines, is an extensive commemoration of the writer, who was black and gay and died in 1987. The festival kicks off a yearlong, citywide consideration of Baldwin at several places, including Harlem Stage, the Columbia University School of the Arts and the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics.
Additionally, some of Baldwin’s books are being reissued this year, and there are new appraisals of his work as well as new work inspired by him. “Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems” (Beacon Press), with an introduction by the poet Nikky Finney, came out this month. Vintage reissued “Giovanni’s Room” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” last year. Already the attention has prompted a broader conversation about Baldwin’s legacy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/books/james-baldwin-born-90-years-ago-is-fading-in-classrooms.html?nytmobile=0&_r=0
Authorities: Drug ring targeting top suburban Philly schools busted
Source: CNN
Two young men, a bunch of subordinates, one master plan: Take over the drug trade at some of Pennsylvania's best schools.
Authorities announced Tuesday that they were able to foil this ambitious effort -- unearthing marijuana, hash oil, cocaine, ecstasy (or MDMA, its active ingredient) as well as cash and several weapons -- and arrest the pair allegedly at the center of it, among others.
"They were in business to make money, and they were going to do whatever they needed to do to make sure that no one threatened their business," Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.
She was speaking primarily of the main suspects, 25-year-old Neil Scott and 18-year-old Timothy Brooks, behind what they allegedly called the "Main Line Take-Over Project" -- the Main Line referring to a group of affluent towns and cities outside Philadelphia...And these weren't just any schools. They include the prestigious Haverford School, from which both Scott and Brooks graduated. They had ties to its lacrosse program.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/22/us/pennsylvania-students-drug-bust/
RGIII to drive pace car at Richmond NASCAR race
RICHMOND
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III will drive the pace car before Saturday night's NASCAR race at Richmond.
Richmond International Raceway made the announcement Wednesday, and says it happened with some help from Twitter.
The track says NASCAR driver and devout Redskins fan Dale Earnhardt Jr. got the ball rolling in late March when he tweeted to Griffin about being Grand Marshal for the race. Track President Dennis Bickmeier chimed in on Twitter, telling Griffin he'd love to have him drive the pace car instead.
The following Monday, RIR officials reached out to the Redskins, and plans were finalized.
Griffin is scheduled to lead the field around for three parade laps on the 0.75-mile oval, and then to the start of the 400-lap race.
http://hamptonroads.com/2014/04/rgiii-drive-pace-car-richmond-nascar-race
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