Updated: Sat, 11 May 2013 22:42:04 GMT | By CBC News, cbc.ca
Wall of ice destroys Manitoba homes, cottages
Area officials told CBC News the wind pushed built-up ice off Dauphin Lake on Friday evening and caused it to pile up in the community, located on the lake’s southern shore.
The piles of ice, which were more than nine metres tall in some cases, destroyed at least six homes and cottages, according to the Rural Municipality of Ochre River.
Another 14 homes suffered extensive damage, with some structures knocked off their foundations.
Clayton Watts, Ochre River’s deputy reeve, said it’s a miracle no one was hurt.
He told CBC News one minute people were watching hockey in their living rooms, the next they heard something that sounded like a freight train near their homes.
“It happened so quick,” said Watts. “And you can’t predict it — not like water that slowly comes up.”
Watts said there are several cabins that were completely flattened by the wall of ice that came at them.
“The ice is over top of them, they’ve been crushed, there’s nothing left,” he said.
“There are other cabins that have been knocked right off their footings,” he continued. “There’s ice right over top of some of the cabins, coming over the roof on the other side.”
Updated: Sun, 12 May 2013 20:48:20 GMT | By CBC News, cbc.ca
Ice wall damage leaves Manitoba community devastated
A massive cleanup effort is underway in Ochre Beach after a wave of lake ice swept up by strong winds destroyed or seriously damaged 27 homes in the community on Friday night.
Winds gusting at 80 km/h pushed ice off Dauphin Lake and caused it to pile up along the lake’s southern shore where the community is located.
A local state of emergency was declared in the Rural Municipality of Ochre Beach after the piles of ice, which in some cases were more than nine metres high, destroyed 13 homes and cottages and severely damaged 14 others.
Several homes were completely crushed, others knocked right off their foundations.
Many devastated homeowners are still in disbelief about what happened.
Myles Haverluck was outside barbecuing when he noticed something was wrong. He said he could hear a big roar as he saw the wave of ice coming.
“By the time we went around the front the cabin, next door was moving 10 feet off its foundation,” he told CBC News.
“Then we heard these cracks, and we went inside the house and the ice had come through the windows of the kitchen and living room” Haverluck continued.
Andrew Barnet was also working outside when the wind storm came towards the lakeshore homes.
“Looked out and the ice started coming out over the house and the ice started shifting,” Barnet told CBC News.
Scientists have long believed that comets and, or a type of very primitive meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites were the sources of early Earth’s volatile elements-which include hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon-and possibly organic material, too.
Understanding where these volatiles came from is crucial for determining the origins of both water and life on the planet. New research led by Carnegie’s Conel Alexander focuses on frozen water that was distributed throughout much of the early Solar System, but probably not in the materials that aggregated to initially form Earth.
The evidence for this ice is now preserved in objects like comets and water-bearing carbonaceous chondrites. The team’s findings contradict prevailing theories about the relationship between these two types of bodies and suggest that meteorites, and their parent asteroids, are the most-likely sources of the Earth’s water. Their work is published July 12 by Science Express.
Looking at the ratio of hydrogen to its heavy isotope deuterium in frozen water (H2O), scientists can get an idea of the relative distance from the Sun at which objects containing the water were formed.
Objects that formed farther out should generally have higher deuterium content in their ice than objects that formed closer to the Sun, and objects that formed in the same regions should have similar hydrogen isotopic compositions.
Therefore, by comparing the deuterium content of water in carbonaceous chondrites to the deuterium content of comets, it is possible to tell if they formed in similar reaches of the Solar System.
It has been suggested that both comets and carbonaceous chondrites formed beyond the orbit of Jupiter, perhaps even at the edges of our Solar System, and then moved inward, eventually bringing their bounty of volatiles and organic material to Earth. If this were true, then the ice found in comets and the remnants of ice preserved in carbonaceous chondrites in the form of hydrated silicates, such as clays, would have similar isotopic compositions.
Alexander’s team included Carnegie’s Larry Nitler, Marilyn Fogel, and Roxane Bowden, as well as Kieren Howard from the Natural History Museum in London and Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York and Christopher Herd of the University of Alberta.
They analyzed samples from 85 carbonaceous chondrites, and were able to show that carbonaceous chondrites likely did not form in the same regions of the Solar System as comets because they have much lower deuterium content. If so, this result directly contradicts the two most-prominent models for how the Solar System developed its current architecture.
The team suggests that carbonaceous chondrites formed instead in the asteroid belt that exists between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. What’s more, they propose that most of the volatile elements on Earth arrived from a variety of chondrites, not from comets.
“Our results provide important new constraints for the origin of volatiles in the inner Solar System, including the Earth,” Alexander said. “And they have important implications for the current models of the formation and orbital evolution of the planets and smaller objects in our Solar System.”
OBAMA LAWYER ADMITS FORGERY BUT DISREGARDS “IMAGE” AS INDICATION OF OBAMA’S INELIGIBILITY
DAMAGE CONTROL: A recent ballot challenge hearing in New Jersey exposes a desperate strategy by Obama to distance himself from his forged certificate and induce the contrived value of his transient political popularity as the only “legitimate qualification” needed to hold the office of the presidency.
Commentary by Dan Crosby
of THE DAILY PEN
Updated 04/17/12
Obama’s lawyer, Alexandra Hill, agreed with arguments that the image of Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery and made the absurd claim that, therefore, it cannot be used as evidence to confirm his lack of natural born citizenship status. Therefore, she argued, it is “irrelevant to his placement on the ballot”.
Hill went on to contort reasoning by implying that Obama needs only invoke his political popularity, not legal qualifications, in order to be a candidate.
During the hearing, Hill’s concession was showcased by the following exchange:
Judge Masin asked Hill, “I understand you have a general objection before we get to the question of what is his (Obama’s) qualifications?”
“Yes, I have an objection as to relevance,” replied Hill, as to the plaintiffs’ witness testimony regarding the authenticity of the image of Obama’s alleged 1961 ‘Certificate of Live Birth’.
Hill then attempted to have the judge declare that Obama was preeminently eligible without any legal responsibility to prove with documentation that he was, in fact, qualified to hold the office of the presidency.
“The objectors carry the burden of proof to show that a candidate is not eligible under New Jersey statutes,” Hill said.
Hill’s misunderstanding of administrative law reveals a strategy to defend Obama’s fraudulent election in which our legal system has reversed the legal assignment of burden of proof in order to equate eligibility with a legal definition of innocence of a crime for Obama.
Unfortunately for Obama, eligibility for political office does not fall under the precepts of criminalogical reasoning of “innocent until proven guilty“, unless a charge is made that a crime has been committed, such as forgery or fraud, in order to deceive people about your identity or citizenship status. Obama’s ineligibility, by itself, is not a crime…being fraudulently elected by deceiving voters is.
Delegates at the Colorado Democratic Party state convention in Pueblo Saturday formally endorsed Amendment 64, the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act. Because support for the initiative was so strong at the convention, the endorsement becomes part of the party’s “essential” platform.
The initiative had already won the support of Democrats in 15 counties, including eight of the 10 most populous. Those counties are Boulder, Delta, Denver, Douglas, Eagle, Elbert, El Paso, Garfield, Jefferson, La Plata, Larimer, Pitkin, Pueblo, Routt, and Weld.
Lobbyists are making sure to schedule their vacations before the November election in anticipation of a frenzied congressional session at the end of the year.
Many on K Street are living in fear of the lame-duck session that will begin when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill after ballots are cast. Big-ticket items — including the expiring Bush tax rates, budget sequestration and an increase in the debt ceiling — will have to be dealt with by Dec. 31.
Votes on those politically tough issues are unlikely during campaign season, so lobbyists are preparing for November and December to be their busiest work period of 2012.
“I don’t think anyone is taking a vacation after the election. It’s the lame duck to end all lame ducks,” Steve Elmendorf, president of Elmendorf Ryan, told The Hill.
Obama threatens to veto Cantor’s small business tax cut, calls it a ‘giveaway’
By Peter Schroeder
The White House has threatened to veto a small business tax cut bill being pushed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), calling it a $46 billion “giveaway” to the “most fortunate.”
In a lengthy policy statement, the White House blasted the 20 percent cut to companies with less than 500 employees as a salve to high-priced lawyers, consultants and “other wealthy individuals and corporations with the biggest profits.”
It cited independent analysis that found nearly half of the benefit from the bill would to go to taxpayers making more than $1 million a year, adding that it would benefit the wealthiest of those who would qualify.
“This bill is not an effective way to incentivize small business investment and job creation,” the administration said. “If the President is presented with H.R. 9, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.”
TREVISO, Italy — On New Year’s Eve, Antonio Tamiozzo, 53, hanged himself in the warehouse of his construction business near Vicenza, after several debtors did not pay what they owed him.
In Veneto, Italy, Stefano Zanatta leads a support group for struggling businesspeople.
Three weeks earlier, Giovanni Schiavon, 59, a contractor, shot himself in the head at the headquarters of his debt-ridden construction company on the outskirts of Padua. As he faced the bleak prospect of ordering Christmas layoffs at his family firm of two generations, he wrote a last message: “Sorry, I cannot take it anymore.”
The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”
Many, like Mr. Tamiozzo and Mr. Schiavon, have died in obscurity. Others, like the desperate 77-year-old retiree who shot himself outside the Greek Parliament on April 4, have turned their personal despair into dramatic public expressions of anger at the leaders who have failed to soften the blows of the crisis.
Obama says US trade deal with Colombia has strong protections for workers and the environment….
“It’s not a race to the bottom, but rather it says each country is abiding by everything from strong rules around labor and the environment to intellectual property protection. And so I have confidence that as we implement this plan, what we’re going to see is extraordinary opportunities for both U.S. and Colombian businesses.”
Between 2008 and 2011, 26 major American corporations paid no net federal income taxes despite bringing in billions in profits, according to a new report (PDF) from the nonprofit research group Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ calculates that if the companies had paid the full 35 percent corporate tax rate, they would have put more than $78 billion into government coffers.
Here’s a look at the 10 most profitable tax evaders and the politicians their CEOs, employees, and PACs give the most money to.
Verizon Communications
Profits: $19.8 billion Effective tax rate: -3.8% Top recipients, 2011-2012
President Barack Obama: $51,493
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.): $24,450
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): $23,700
Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio): $22,500
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): $15,000
General Electric
Profits: $19.6 billion Effective tax rate: -18.9% Top recipients, 2011-2012
Mitt Romney: $53,750
President Barack Obama (D): $30,493
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.): $23,900
Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.): $21,860
Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.): $19,750
Boeing Profits: $14.8 billion Effective tax rate: -5.5% Top recipients, 2011-2012
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.): $31,750
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.): $25,000
Former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.): $23,500
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.): $23,125
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): $20,986
The problem of plenty is once again troubling the Indian government as it does not know where to store the bumper grains to be harvested for the third year in a row. Fears are rising that the grains would be out in the open, rot and be eaten by rodents even as millions go hungry in the country which is planning to enact a right to food law.
The government’s plans to create additional storage space have so far moved at a snail’s pace. For instance, of the additional storage capacity of 19 million tonnes (MT) planned by 2012-13 through public-private partnership (PPP), only 0.5 MT could be created till January 2012.
“The states fail to provide land for the purpose,” said a food ministry official, citing the reason for the tardy progress of the scheme.
Experts say the government’s move to attract private players to build warehouses and other infrastructure has not succeeded because it does not offer tax benefits to them.
Biraj Patnaik, adviser to the Supreme Court-appointed food commissioners, told IANS: “The government should drop the idea of involving private players in building godowns and let the states do the job.”
With wheat procurement having started this month, the government is looking at a record crop over 90 MT this April-June season.
But the total storage capacity available is 53.4 MT, including 33.4 MT with the Food Corporation of India functioning under the central government, and 20 MT with the states.
Of this, ministry sources said, storage utilisation is 76 percent, leaving around 24 per cent capacity unutilised due to lack of proper planning.
According to one estimate, up to seven percent of the country’s annual grain production goes waste due to insufficient storage space and inefficient transport and distribution networks.
The lack of adequate storage capacity would bother authorities as procurement of wheat from major producing states like Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh picks up. Together, the three states account for over 80 per cent of India’s total production.
One way of solving the problem, Patnaik told IANS, is that the government should distribute more grains among the needy if it is not able to create enough storage capacity.
To reduce stockpiles, the government had allowed traders last year to export wheat and rice surpluses.
The government’s food grain stock up to January 2012 was 46.7 million tonnes. Ministry officials said most states failed to lift the additional 2.5 MT grain allocated to them last year.
To deal with the emerging situation, the finance and food ministries are trying to dovetail a food-for-work scheme with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
But the idea has not found favour with the rural development ministry.
Seeking the Truth About U.S. Targeted Killing Strike That Killed Dozens of Women and Children in Yemen
By Nathan Freed Wessler, Fellow, ACLU, and Pardiss Kebriaei, Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights
April 17, 2012 “” —Today the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about a horrific U.S. missile strike that killed dozens of civilians in Yemen.
This was the Obama administration’s first known missile strike in Yemen, carried out with one or more cruise missiles launched from an American warship or submarine on December 17, 2009. The U.S. military reportedly used cluster bombs, killing at least 41 people in the remote mountain village of al-Majalah in Yemen’s Abyan province. The government was purportedly targeting “militants,” but those killed include at least 21 children and 14 women. Entire families were wiped out. It is the worst reported loss of civilian life from a U.S. targeted killing strike in Yemen to date.
Although Yemen initially claimed responsibility for the attack, the press soon quoted unnamed American government officials acknowledging that in fact the U.S. had launched the strike. Those reports were confirmed when WikiLeaks released a secret diplomatic cable from January 2010 describing a meeting between then head of the U.S. Central Command General David Petraeus and then Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The cable describes General Petraeus and President Saleh discussing an apparent agreement that Yemen would help conceal U.S. involvement in the al-Majalah and other missile strikes in Yemen by publicly taking responsibility for those attacks. Even now, the U.S. government refuses to publicly discuss its role in the strike.
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SANAA, Yemen, April 17 (UPI) — Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh isn’t letting go of power and may launch a campaign to “bring down the building of change,” a defense official said.
Abdu Rabo Mansour Hadi won a one-man presidential election in Yemen in February. His election followed a decision by Saleh to sign a deal in late 2011 to step down following nearly a year of protests in Yemen.
Denmark has demanded an explanation from the Israeli government for video footage showing a senior Israeli army officer striking a Danish activist in the face with an M16 rifle, an act which has been sharply criticised by the Israeli prime minister, president and chief of staff.
In the video, Lt Col Shalom Eisner, deputy commander of the Jordan Valley territorial brigade, is clearly seen slamming his rifle into the face of Andreas Ias. There was no obvious reason for the assault in the clip, which was broadcast on Israeli television and posted on YouTube. The soldier was suspended by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) pending an investigation.
The video emerged on the same day as Israel launched a security operation to prevent hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists entering the country en route to the West Bank, claiming they were provocateurs and were planning acts of violence. The assault on the Danish man and the operation to block the entry of Palestinian sympathisers have led to questions about whether Israel’s response to activists is excessively heavy-handed and will damage its image.
How an Anti-Democratic, Corporate-Friendly Pennsylvania Law Has Elevated the Battle Over Fracking to a Civil Rights Fight
The upcoming legal fight over Pennsylvania’s pro-fracking law, Act 13, pits the civil rights of people against the economic rights of corporations.
Editor’s note: This is the second article in a two-part series about the battle over Pennsylvania’s Act 13. You can read the first one here.
In a handful of communities in eastern states, local anti-fracking activists have been heartened by recent lower court decisions that have upheld local zoning ordinances and statewide moratoriums to keep the controversial natural gas wells out of their towns.
But in Pennsylvania, the epicenter of the controversial drilling, the legislature recently stripped all local zoning authority to prevent drilling, overturning the kinds of steps that have frustrated drillers in neighboring states. As a result, a different and riskier strategy is emerging in the battle to keep drilling at bay: local ordinances and organizing elevating the civil rights of communities and nature while limiting the legal rights of corporations.
Immigration violations are civil, not criminal infractions. But for many non-criminal immigrant detainees living alongside criminal inmates at the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama, that distinction carries little meaning. Far removed from families and legal orientation programs, many of the 350 immigrant detainees housed at the Etowah Detention Center have received deportation orders, but for various reasons cannot be deported. Many are serving the maximum allowable time in detention, and are doing so under poor living conditions at a great cost to American taxpayers. In fact, a recent report by the Women’s Refugee Commission reveals that ICE continues to operate facilities like Etowah that fail to meet even its own detention standards.
It’s a day ending in Y, which means if you glance around, you’ll find yet another piece of evidence showing the persistence of the gender wage gap, and Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, which means there’s an actual study on pay disparities. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research has released an analysis showing that:
…women have lower median earnings than men in all but one of the 20 most common occupations for women, ‘bookkeeping and auditing clerks,’ where women and men have the same median earnings. In one of the twenty most common male occupations, ‘stock clerks and order fillers,’ women out-earned men by 3 percent of median male earnings.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Obama campaign website yanks BET videos following TheDC’s reporting
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign website has removed several videos that pitched alarmist messages to African-American voters, following reporting by The Daily Caller and the Fox News Channel.
In one video that the campaign yanked from the “African-Americans for Obama” section of its website Tuesday, actress Tatyana Ali seemed to predict that a second Obama term would bring a host of benefits to African-Americans once the president no longer had to concern himself with campaigning.
“What really excites me … is that a U.S. president has only two terms,” a laughing Ali said in the footage that the Obama campaign scrubbed from its website Tuesday. “In the second term, ‘it’s on,’ because we don’t have to worry about re-election.”
President Barack Obama’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis, has authorized new posters in elevators throughout the Department of Labor’s Washington, D.C. headquarters building. The posters feature a photo of her marching in protest alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson and MSNBC television host Rev. Al Sharpton, among others.
The photo depicts Solis acting as an emissary of the Obama administration protesting against Alabama’s strict new law combating illegal immigration. Solis has her arms locked with Sharpton, and Jackson is a few feet away. The poster also carries a message for federal government employees — who are traditionally expected to be apolitical in the performance of their duties.
“Whether we take to the streets or simply do our work with integrity and commitment here at the U.S. Department of Labor,” the poster reads, above Solis’ signature, “We are all marching toward the same goals: safer workplaces, fair pay, dignity on the job, secure retirement and opportunities to make a better life. I believe in the power of collective action.”
Stanford’s Lazear: US Suffering Worst Economic Recovery in History
By Forrest Jones
The United States is experiencing its worst recovery in U.S. history thanks to excessive regulations and punitive taxes, writes Edward Lazear, a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush and Stanford professor.
Economies normally snap back when recovering from recessions, but that hasn’t been the case this time around.
From 1947 to 2007, the average annual growth rate for the U.S. was 3.4 percent, Lazear writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
Since the recovery began from the Great Recession, growth has averaged 2.4 percent, Lazear adds, citing National Bureau of Economic Research data.
While many argue the financial nature of the recent recession means recovery should be slow, other recoveries stemming from similar downturns in the past didn’t go as tepidly as today.
Even the Great Depression saw stronger snapbacks between downturns.
“Threats of higher taxes, the constantly increasing regulatory burden, the failure to pursue an aggressive trade policy that will open markets to U.S. exports, and the enormous increase in government spending all are growth impediments,” writes Lazear, who was chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009.
Iran, Oil Prices and Gambling with the World Economy
By Daniel J. Graeber
The White House last week acknowledged problems in the global oil market but said the situation was secure enough to move ahead with tighter sanctions against Iran. President Obama said he was confident about the current state of the global economy and had assurances there was enough spare capacity to buffer against a severe shock to energy markets. The measure is meant to ensure Tehran doesn’t have the finances to back what’s seen as a nuclear weapons program. It might be something of a political and economic gamble, however.
Obama had until Friday to decide on pushing ahead with sanctions that would bar financial institutions from the U.S. economy if they don’t substantially cut their oil transactions with Iran. Some countries have already decided to back away from Iranian crude and others received some concessions from Washington for at least cutting back.
Concerns over Iran helped push oil prices up, however. The International Energy Agency said from Paris last week that oil prices are “very high again.” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said the agency was keeping a close eye on oil markets, noting concern because of lingering fragility in the global economy. And she’s right to be concerned because last week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned the British economy was at risk of sinking back into recession.
President Barak Obama gave a speech to newspaper executives about the recently passed Republican budget in the House of Representatives. It proposes to cut spending by more than $5 trillion over the next ten years. Yesterday’s speech was, basically, a declaration of war against the GOP and its vision of the government’s budget. The President said, “This Congressional Republican budget is something different altogether. It is a Trojan horse disguised as deficit reduction plans. It is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who is willing to work for it. A place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top but grows outward from the heart of middle class.”
Folks, it is officially “game on,” and every American should be scared speechless about this budget showdown. It is unlike any the nation has ever faced.
The country has never been more in debt, and this comes at a time when countries like China are shunning U.S. Treasuries. There are more than 12 million “officially unemployed.” (The unofficial is 22 million.) Home prices are falling despite near record low mortgage rates. The BRICS nations are actively seeking an alternative to the U.S dollar for settlement of trade, which could threaten the dollar’s reserve currency status. We are threatening financial war with any country that trades with Iran, and the nation is facing yet another shooting war in the Middle East. The only question is will it come before or after the election.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Tuesday that a nuclear-armed Iran or a conflict over its ambitions would both destabilize the region as she pressed Tehran to make progress in key talks.
As Israel voices growing impatience over Iran, Clinton credited US sanctions with inflicting pressure on the Islamic republic but warned of the “very difficult situation that the world faces” moving forward.
“There is no clear path. We know that a nuclear-armed Iran would be incredibly destabilizing to the region and beyond. A conflict arising out of their program would also be very destabilizing,” Clinton said.
“There is no way to balance this. You have two very difficult paths here,” Clinton told a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, on a day trip to visit the only NATO command in the United States.
Clinton, who traveled over the weekend to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, voiced concern that a nuclear Iran would trigger an arms race in the region….
USDA Orders 326,000 Rounds of Ammunition As Homeland Security Stays Quiet Over 450 Million Round Order
What exactly are the preparing for ??????
Apparently Homeland Security is not the only domestic government agency that has bought a large amount of ammunition in the last 7 months.
In a post published on the now infamous Fbo.gov website, the US Forest Service (USDA) solicited and secured a bid for over 300,000 rounds of ammunition (scary raw milk farmers beware) including:
Added: Sep 28, 2011 5:15 pm
(1) 40 caliber, 180 grain, 120,000 rounds or equivalent,
(2) 9 mm, 124 grain, 50,000 rounds or equivalent,
(3) .38 caliber, 135 grain, 10,000 rounds or equivalent,
(4) .380 caliber, 90 grain, 6,000 rounds or equivalent,
(5) .223 caliber, 64 grain, 87,500 rounds or equivalent,
(6) 12 gauge 00 buck, 15,000 rounds or equivalent,
(7) 40 caliber frangible, 10,000 rounds or equivalent,
(8) 9 caliber frangible, 10,000 rounds or equivalent,
(9) .223 caliber frangible, 10,000 rounds or equivalent,
(10) 12 gauge 1 oz slug, 7,500 rounds or equivalent
The cartridges shall be delivered to Albuquerque, NM.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services require the following items, Exact Match Only, to the following:
2. Remington .40 Caliber Pistol Ammunition (180 grain) Full Metal Jacket – 6,000 rounds
3. Remington .223 Caliber Rifle Ammunition (62 grain) Full Metal Jacket – 3,000 rounds
4. Remington FX Marking Cartridges (9 mm) – 2,000 rounds
These requirements seem normal considering the possibility of running into grizzly bears and wolverines. These, to me, are acceptable quantities to order.
And of course the FBI needs about 100,000,000 rounds of .40 caliber ammunition for law enforcement needs. It posted the request November 15, 2011 and the order will be awarded this week. Oddly, it states a fixed price indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity type contract; however the pricing requirements go up to 100,000,000 rounds.
Ex-New Orleans officers sentenced to decades in jail for Katrina bridge killings, coverup
Cain Burdeau, Michael Kunzelman
Ex-New Orleans officers sentenced to decades in jail for Katrina bridge killings, coverup
NEW ORLEANS – Five former New Orleans police officers were sentenced Wednesday to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years for their roles in deadly shootings of unarmed residents in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, with the judge lashing out at prosecutors for two hours on their handling of the case.
Police shot six people at a bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, killing two, less than a week after Katrina made landfall. To make the shootings appear justified, officers conspired to plant a gun, fabricate witnesses and falsify reports. The case became the centerpiece of the Justice Department’s push to clean up the troubled New Orleans Police Department.
Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon were convicted of federal firearms charges that carried mandatory minimum prison sentences of at least 35 years. Retired Sgt. Arthur “Archie” Kaufman, who was assigned to investigate the shootings, was convicted of helping orchestrate the coverup.
Faulcon, who was convicted on charges in both fatal shootings, faces the stiffest sentence of 65 years. Bowen and Gisevius each face 40 years, while Villavaso was sentenced to 38. Kaufman received the lightest sentence at six years.
Afterward, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt accused prosecutors of cutting overly lenient plea deals with five other officers who co-operated with the civil rights investigation. The former officers pleaded guilty to helping cover up the shooting and are already serving prison terms ranging from three to eight years.
“These through-the-looking-glass plea deals that tied the hands of this court … are an affront to the court and a disservice to the community,” Engelhardt said.
The judge also questioned the credibility of the officers who pleaded guilty and testified against those who went to trial.
Read it on Global News: Global Edmonton | Ex-New Orleans officers sentenced to decades in jail for Katrina bridge killings, coverup
The US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Office have placed an order for 450 million rounds of .40 caliber bullets. The amount of ammo exceeds the amount of people that live in the US and many wonder the motives behind the vast purchase. The contractor Alliant Techsystems is the company supplying the ammunition to DHS and ICE and although the agencies claim these bullets are to be used for target practice many believe they have something else in mind. Jason Bermas, radio host and Filmmaker, joins us for more on the questionable purchase.
Senators Who Voted To Protect Oil Tax Breaks Received $23,582,500 From Big Oil
By Rebecca Leber
In a 51-47 vote, 43 Senate Republicans and four Democrats filibustered to protect $24 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil. Although a majority voted for Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) bill, it fell short of the 60 needed. The only two Republicans to break rank were Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).
A Think Progress Green analysis shows how oil and gas companies have funneled cash to the same senators who protected its handouts:
– The 47 senators voting against the bill have received $23,582,500 in career contributions from oil and gas. The 51 senators voting to repeal oil tax breaks have received $5,873,600.
– The senators who voted for Big Oil’s handouts received on average over four times as much career oil cash as those who voted to end them.
– Overall, Senate Republicans have taken $23.2 million in oil and gas contributions. Democrats received $6.66 million.
– Since 2011, Senate Republicans have voted seven times for pro-Big Oil interests and against clean energy three times.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
