Welcome To The DNN! (Daily News Network)
All too often the mainstream news media spotlights celebrity’s and high profile politicians for several days (The death of Michael Jackson anyone?). For like 3 weeks straight CNN constantly ran his death, his life, one conspiracy after another, who will get the kids, who got the kids, ETC. Meanwhile other more important news was buried so far down that they never had a chance to come to the surface. Please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Mr. Jackson, I’m just proving a point, and his death was the latest “Big News” that CNN and most other mainstream news media outlets buried other important news.
There is other sites that shed light on buried news, why am I making this site? Look in your phone book and search for Plumbers… I think you get my point. There’s a million restaurants, grocery stores, ETC all doing pretty much the same thing, but for some reason you prefer one for the other, maybe one has better fruit than the other store or something, so why can’t that apply to news sites too?
This site will try to be “Fair And Balanced” as much as possible, some of the time I’ll be posting about other news articles that I think are under-reported so it may or may not be totally balanced since it’s something that I didn’t write myself. But I’ll be transparent and let you know I will probably favor left-leaning topics.
Oh God, who am I kidding, We’re as left-wing as they get and proud! DNN is changing it’s policy; It will be the most liberal website on WordPress!
Sources: Whenever possible I’ll list my sources, usually I get my news from 3 types of sources: Mainstream such as AP, CNN, FAUX News, MSNBC, CBS, ETC. and Independent and foreign news Reuters, state-run media Press TV (Iran), CCTV (China), and ALjazeera English. (Aljazeera and Press TV, CCTV can easily be viewable with this free player; LiveStation .
DISCLAIMERS:
DNN does not recognize Plagiarism, We only include short excerpts and we do not include the entire original article, or that would be plagiarism. We include all attribution links for the originating source. The FAIR USE Act of U.S. Copyright Law protects DNN. In accordance with U.S. Code Title 17, Section 107,
Whenever possible, the content on this site will be under the Creative Commons and Fair Use policy and or licenses.
Most of our images come from online sites that offer Royalty-free/Creative Commons Licenses such as: stock.xchng, Stockvault.net, Image-After, Flickr with a CC License.
If you’d like to co-author blogs on this site, please send me an email 
material on this site (along with credit links and attributions to original sources) is viewable for educational and intellectual purposes.
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If you read this blog please let us know! It would be nice if we had some feedback to let us know how we’re doing!
Most of our images come from online sites that offer Royalty-free/Creative Commons Licenses such as: stock.xchng, Stockvault.net, Image-After, Flickr with a CC License.(POLITICS) READ: Obama Tells Lama to Stay Away…
(Newser) – In a move seemingly designed to appease China, US officials have asked the Dalai Lama not to meet with President Obama when he visits Washington this week. Typically, the Lama “drops in” on the White House whenever he’s in the capital, but Obama doesn’t want to meet with him until after his summit with China’s Hu Jintao next month, diplomats tell the Washington Post. READ MORE
(SCANDALOUS) READ: The White House Calls Out FOX News And Glenn Beck On Lies…
In a new post on the official White House blog, Online Programs Director Jesse Lee calls out Fox News for perpetuating lies about President Obama’s push to bring the Olympics to the city of Chicago.
Lee writes that Fox News, and in particular Glenn Beck, continues to ignore the facts “in an attempt to smear the Administration’s efforts to win the Olympics for the United States.”
The White House blog post continues to delineate what it deems misleading rhetoric on Obama’s Olympics efforts. An example:
Distracted Drivers Killed 5,800 in ’08…
(Newser Summary) – Accidents caused by distracted drivers killed at least 5,800 and injured another 515,000 last year, according to data pulled from police reports and presented today to Transportation Department conference on the issue. The actual figures may be significantly higher, say Transportation officials, since distraction is often hard to identify as a cause of a crash. Congress is considering laws that would limit what drivers can do behind the wheel, Reuters reports.
A ban on text-messaging has widespread support, but a cell phone ban is more controversial. While overall accidents fell last year, distracted driving was a growing cause, implicated in 16% of cases, up from 11% in 2004. Roughly 6% of drivers used their phones while driving in 2007, and another 1% texted on some other device.
Source: Reuters
(SHOCKING) READ: Chicago Day-Care Home Used for Dogfights…
(Newser Summary) – Chicago police raided an Illinois day-care center that apparently doubled as a brutal dogfighting operation. Ten children were being watched at the private home at the time of the raid. A swing set used by the kids was only 10 feet from a bloody garage where a “vicious” pit bull was found, said the county sheriff. Three people were arrested and nine abused dogs recovered.
Source: Chicago Tribune And Newser
(ENVIRONMENT) READ: Gizmos’ Energy Draw Alarms Experts…
(Newser Summary) – All around the house, electronic gadgets are blinking, buzzing, computing—and drawing on an immense amount of energy, the New York Times reports. Worldwide, they take up 15% of household power, and will likely consume three times as much by 2029, making it harder to combat global warming. Two hundred and thirty nuclear plants would be needed to fuel that demand, the International Energy Agency says.
Most experts say regulations are needed to limit gadgets’ energy draw, but manufacturers have resisted such mandates. A federal attempt to limit the power draw of TVs—flat-screens are the biggest energy offender—died in the 1990s due to industry opposition. But Congress has done it before, limiting the energy use of appliances like refrigerators and washers. “Standards are one of the few ways to cheaply go after big chunks of energy savings,” one advocate says.
Source: New York Times
(ECONOMY/OUTRAGEOUS) READ: Chicago Cabbies Want To Charge For People Tossing Their Lunch!…
Source: The Huffington Post
Chicago could become the first major city in the country with a puking ordinance if cab drivers get their way.
Chicago taxi drivers proposed a package of fee and fare hikes Thursday designed to offset their plunging income during the recession. Among the more controversial revenue-boosting ideas brought to the City Council is charging customers $50 for vomiting in cabs.
If enacted, Chicago would become one of America’s least friendly cities for drunks and people who eat bad shellfish. Customers who barf in cabs in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston or San Francisco may face the driver’s wrath, but they won’t see any additional charges.
“No, we do not have a puking fee,” Boston Police spokesman Joe Zanoli told the Huffington Post. “To my knowledge it’s free to puke in a cab.”
Raymond Turner, president of Yellow Cab Houston, said Friday that of the nearly 3.7 million cab trips his company makes yearly only a fraction involve incidents of reverse peristalsis.
“It’s a fairly rare event,” Turner said. “From my perspective, putting a city ordinance that applies to all cab rides for something that happens only three or four times a month is not very prudent.”
Turner added that while Houston has no law allowing for a fee, drivers often work out arrangements with customers who ralph while in transit. Some passengers agree to pay for a car wash, while others give larger tips.
(CLIMATE) READ: Venice Is Sinking Despite Billion-Dollar Efforts To Keep It Afloat…
The construction of mobile floodgates aims to safeguard the 1,300-year-old island city of Venice. It’s an ambitious engineering project, but some scientists say it may not be sufficient to protect Venice from rising sea levels due to climate change.
Venice rose from mudflats in the middle of a lagoon which forms the largest wetland in the Mediterranean. One of the world’s most endangered cities, it has been subject to increasing flooding due to sinking land — but also to rising sea levels.
It’s known as “aqua alta” — high water — and it brings city life to a standstill for several hours. Big boats can’t go under low-hanging bridges, and water seeps into buildings through the sewage system. Venetians have not lived on the ground floor for decades. READ MORE
(ECONOMICS) READ: Cash-strapped States Are Hoping You’ll Sin, But There’s Not Enough Sinners!…
Source: ESQUIRE
The Las Vegas of 2009 has become much more reliant on high-end customers looking to splurge.
It’s never quite accurate to describe Las Vegas as a ghost town. Even at five in the morning on a Tuesday, it’s liable to be more lively than your average main street or shopping mall. But when I arrived there for a brief getaway last November, it was not the same bustling town I’d been used to. My flight from Houston was barely a third full. There was no line at the taxi stand, and my cabbie told me that several of his friends had recently been laid off from construction work on a variety of new developments, many of which had been halted in midstream after financing dried up. And when I arrived at Las Vegas Boulevard in the heart of the Strip, I found as many locals handing out postcards for dodgy escort services as tourists.
None of this, I suppose, should have been surprising: November was the nadir of the worst recession since the Second World War. Nevertheless, conventional wisdom has long held that gambling is recession-proof. In Las Vegas, it’s been anything but. Gaming revenues received by local casinos were down 12 percent in 2008 as compared with a year earlier. (This figure and all others in this article are reported on an inflation-adjusted basis.) And 2009 will be even worse: So far, revenues are off almost 15 percent from 2008′s already depressed figures. The recession, then, appears set to cost Las Vegas more than a quarter of its business.
This is sobering news not just for those who have purchased property in Las Vegas — economist Tyler Cowen recently stated that the real estate market would not recover there for another twenty years — but also for cash-strapped state legislatures that are turning to casino gambling as a way to raise revenue. Delaware, which already offers horse racing and slot machines, now plans to extend its law to permit table games like blackjack and, more controversially, sports betting. In July, Ohio governor Ted Strickland signed an executive order to permit slot machines at horse tracks, while California began to allow offtrack betting on horse races for the first time. Philadelphia will soon become the largest American city to permit casino gambling within city limits, although play will initially be limited to slot machines. And in Texas — where, ironically, no legal game of Texas hold ‘em is available — gaming advocates are hoping that Kay Bailey Hutchison will defeat gambling-averse incumbent Rick Perry in next year’s governor’s race, which would empower the state legislature to consider casino gambling there.
But desperate state governments looking to casinos to bail them out of their budget nightmares are likely to be disappointed. The same may be the case with trying to tap other “sins” for revenue. Nationally, sales of alcohol for off-premises consumption were down significantly last year, an unprecedented 9.3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the Commerce Department. The largest previous drop had been just 3.7 percent, between the third and fourth quarters of 1991.
Alcohol consumption can at least be expected to bounce back a bit — right? — but a lot of the potential customers of the new casinos may be tapped out. The year 2008 was the first time in history that total casino gaming revenues declined throughout the United States (by about 5 percent according to industry estimates). In most jurisdictions, gambling revenues max out quickly. In Atlantic City, for example, which opened for business in 1978, gaming revenues were no higher in 2008 than they were in 1986, and 2009 is on pace to be the slowest year since 1983. Gambling revenues peaked in 2002 in Illinois, in 2000 in Mississippi, and in 2006 in Detroit, which had only begun to permit gambling ten years earlier. The boom years in Vegas, when revenues nearly doubled, between 1989 and 2006, might have led states to misread casino gambling’s upside potential.
What we’ve witnessed, indeed, is something of a race to the bottom. Shortly after President Reagan signed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, which expressly permitted Indian tribes to open casinos under tribal-state compacts, states like Mississippi, Illinois, and Colorado — seeing no reason to split their profits with the Seminoles or the Cherokee — decided to permit their own state-run facilities. Neighboring states, worried about losing their customers across state lines, then followed suit: Louisiana a year after Mississippi, Indiana and Missouri three years after Illinois, Michigan two years after Ontario, Canada. Meanwhile, the Indian tribes continued to up the ante, their casino revenuesapproximately tripling from 1997 to 2006.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/data/nate-silver-sin-tax-1009?src=rss#ixzz0Rm0Qi3Kb
(POLITICS) READ: Zelaya Returns to Honduras…
Source: REUTERS/Newser
(Newser Summary) – Manuel Zelaya is back in Honduras, the ousted president told a Honduran TV station today, prompting thousands of his supporters to gather outside the UN building in the capital to celebrate. “I am here for the restoration of democracy, to call for dialogue,” Zelaya declared. The US State Department confirmed Zelaya’s return, though the country’s current de facto ruler denied it.
Zelaya wouldn’t say exactly where in the Tegucigalpa he was, but when a senior aide said he was inside the main UN building, as many as 4,000 supporters gathered outside, shouting “Yes, we did it!” Interim de facto president Roberto Micheletti called the reports “media terrorism,” insisting Zelaya remained “in a suite in a hotel in Nicaragua.”
—Kevin Spak
(ENTERTAINMENT) READ: David Hasselhoff Rushed To Hospital Allegedly Drunk, Daughter Calls 911…
Source: TMZ
TMZ has learned David Hasselhoff was taken to the hospital Sunday night after his daughter sounded an alarm that he had been drinking to excess.
We’ve learned 17-year-old Hayley Hasselhoff — who was at home with David — called her mother Pamela, claiming David was extremely drunk. One of Pamela’s friends called 911, paramedics arrived at the family’s home in Encino and took him to the hospital.
We’re told the hospital was supposed to release David Sunday night.
No comment yet from Hasselhoff’s reps.
(POLITICS/MEDIA) Obama Snubs FOX News…
(Newser Summary) – Republican lawmakers are peeved because President Obama is—try not to laugh—snubbing Fox News. Obama will appear on every political Sunday talk show this week, except Fox News Sunday. “If people are going to be on the Sunday talk shows, they should be on all of them,” opined Joe Wilson, who last week talked to Fox News Sunday, and only Fox News Sunday. He also interrupted Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress—which only Fox, among the major networks, declined to air.
Pete Sessions of Texas said Obama had “handpicked” his audience, while Louisiana’s Steve Scalise accused him of “ignoring a very large segment of this country.” “I think that Fox News would ask some realistic questions,” said Sessions. “He’s the one who’s choosing not to take part in that.” Democrats saw no problem with the snub—one New York rep said Obama obviously knew “which networks are really fair.”
Source: The Hill
(OUTRAGEOUS) READ: 3 of 4 Oklahoma Students Can’t Name First President…
(Newser Summary) – Are you smarter about American history than a recent immigrant? Most of the students in Oklahoma’s public high schools aren’t. A conservative think tank asked thousands of high school kids to answer 10 questions drawn from the citizenship test given to recent immigrants. Would-be citizens have to answer six correctly, and 92% do so on their first try. By contrast, only 3% of the Oklahoma students would have.
A whopping 77% couldn’t name the first president, and 90% didn’t know how many justices are on the Supreme Court. (The question most knew—61%—involved naming the ocean on the East Coast.) The problem is not just an issue for Oklahoma; a study in Arizona yielded similar results. “It points to a real serious problem,” says one think tank member. “Jefferson said that a nation can’t expect to be ignorant and free.”
Source: KWTV Oklahoma City
(CRIME) READ: Australian Man Charged With Raping Daughter For 30 Years…
An Australian man accused of raping his daughter almost daily for 30 years and fathering her four children has been charged by police.
The man, who has been called “Australia’s Fritzl” after the notorious Austrian incest case, allegedly began raping his daughter in the 1970s when she was 11 years old, and had threatened her with violence if she ever revealed the abuse.
According to a report in Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper, the man was arrested in February after the victim approached police and said that she had been kept a virtual prisoner in the family home in a country town in the southern state of Victoria.
The newspaper said that all of the woman’s four children were born with birth defects in Melbourne hospitals. One of them died.
According to the report, the woman had reported the abuse to police in 2005 but then refused to co-operate further because she feared for her safety.
However, she went to police again in June last year and gave a statement against her father. Police conducted DNA tests on the father and laid 83 charges of sex abuse against him in February.
The case has been likened to that of Josef Fritzl, who was jailed for life in May for imprisoning and raping his daughter for 24 years and murdering one of the seven children he had with her.
The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, to demand an immediate investigation into how the case had gone unnoticed for so long.
The Herald Sun interviewed the woman’s mother, who is still married to the alleged rapist, and who lived with them in the house in rural Victoria. She claims that she was not aware of any abuse, despite sharing the house with her husband, daughter and grandchildren until 2005. READ MORE
(CELEBRITIES) READ: Your request is being processed… Burt Reynolds In Rehab, Reportedly Found Lying In Pool Of Blood…
Burt Reynolds has checked into rehab in West Palm Beach to be treated for an addiction to painkillers, following an allegedly grisly and bizarre incident in late August. He was found semi-conscious and covered in blood in his Hobe Sound, Florida, home, the National Enquirer reports.
“The houseman found Burt lying in a pool of blood. He’d fallen and was badly cut. The houseman drove him to the hospital. But this time, Burt was behaving strangely, and doctors were so concerned about his state of mind that they sent him to the county mental health facility in West Palm Beach,” a source told the tabloid.
His admission to rehab may not have been entirely voluntary. The facility allegedly refused to release Reynolds unless he agreed to head straight to rehab.
(MEDIA) WATCH: “Drop Dobbs”: CNN Pressured To Give Up Controversial Host…
Source: The Huffington Post
CNN is facing pressure on a number of fronts to drop Lou Dobbs from their roster of on-air talent, a move that would force millions of Americans seeking out news about the conspiracy to spread leprosy throughout America via illegal Mexican immigrants to turn instead to the guy who lives under the bridge by the old tire factory.
Leading the way in this effort are a coalition of organizations united under the “Drop Dobbs” banner, including Media Matters for America, the National Council of La Raza, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the New Democrat Network, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Writing for Media Matters’ County Fair blog, John V. Santore sums up their beef:
For years, Lou Dobbs has been one of the most dangerous hosts on cable news. He benefits enormously from the legitimacy of the CNN brand, which provides him with an unparalleled platform from which to mainstream the hate speech and racially charged conspiracy theories normally relegated to Fox News and other conservative news outlets. Dobbs calls himself an “advocacy journalist,” but he doesn’t even live up to that ambiguous standard. Good journalism enhances the discussion of serious topics, but Dobbs helps to undermine and debase that discussion, routinely infusing it with misinformation and fear. And when it comes to issues like immigration, he has more in common with birther Orly Taitz than with Anderson Cooper.
If CNN won’t drop Dobbs, it’s time that his advertisers did. It’s time to do more than simply highlight the damage Dobbs does and the threat he poses. We must demand accountability from the advertisers who, by their purchase of airtime on his shows, actively support his hate speech. READ MORE
(OUTRAGEOUS) READ: Loving Couple Divorces To Stay Afloat Financially….
Source: The Huffington Post
For Mary McCurnin and husband Ron Bednar, money trouble has followed health trouble. In 2003, the couple declared bankruptcy after their insurance covered only 10 percent of treatment costs for her breast cancer and his intestinal bleeding. In 2004, McCurnin’s breast cancer returned, and Bednar underwent open heart surgery.
Now, after repeatedly refinancing their house to pay medical bills and living expenses, they’re broke. To improve their chances of growing old together, they’ve filed for divorce.
“It occurred to me that I could get my first husband’s Social Security,” said McCurnin. Her first husband, to whom she’d been married 20 years, died in 1989. When she turns 60 in November, McCurnin said she will be eligible for $1,200 in monthly survivor’s benefits from the previous marriage. As the Social Security Administration told her, she can’t have the survivor benefit if she’s married to someone else.
The Rancho Cordova, Calif. couple has been scraping by with the occasional freelance gig — both are graphic artists — and Bednar brings in $1,000 a month in Social Security benefits. They haven’t made a payment on either of their mortgages in two months and fully expect a foreclosure. McCurnin told the Huffington Post that they don’t bother opening mail from their credit card companies, to whom they owe at least $10,000.
McCurnin said she suspects their horrendous credit is a huge obstacle to either of them landing a job, and Bednar talks about the “gray wall” that faces perfectly qualified older workers.
“We literally live from week to week,” said McCurnin. “We got $300 in the bank.”
McCurnin has health insurance via Medi-Cal; Bednar is hoping to stay healthy until next August, when he turns 65 and will be eligible for Medicare.
The couple first attempted to file for divorce in February, but ultimately hired a paralegal when their paperwork kept getting rejected for errors. They expect the divorce to be finalized in the coming weeks. There’s a bright side: After the widow’s benefits kick in, they could remarry without her losing them.
//
“She could divorce him now to collect short-term benefits on her earlier husband, and then at some later point after age 60 remarry him without it affecting her widow’s benefits,” said Lowell Kepke, a spokesman for the San Francisco regional office of the Social Security Administration. “Congress put that in precisely to stop encouraging elderly couples from not getting married.”
But the widow’s benefits aren’t the only reasons for the divorce. McCurnin and Bednar will be able to earn more money working before reaching a cap that would reduce their Social Security payments. Married couples are allowed to earn much less than the sum of what two individuals can earn separately.
“It’s always significantly less for the couple than it is after a divorce,” said Mary Thuerwachter, an elder law attorney in California, in an interview with the Huffington Post.
And, potentially more importantly, McCurnin and Bednar will be indemnified from each other’s future debts, should expensive medical problems come up.
“They will be off the hook,” Thuerwachter said.
The couple will be glad to get a break, but it’s not exactly the ideal kind.
Bednar, the couple agrees, is a little more romantic about it.
“It makes me feel awful, to tell you the truth,” he told the Huffington Post. “It makes me sad. It really does. I believe in the marriage. I believe in the whole act of marriage, to declare that we are married in front of friends and family and God and all that. It just makes me sad to have to go through that process.”
“The only thing that happens is a check mark in a box in a courthouse,” said McCurnin, who takes a more pragmatic view. “It’s absurd… Having to get divorced in order to be able to eat. I have no idea why it’s like that.” READ MORE
(WORLD) READ: Russia Lends Chavez $2B in Arms Deal…
(Newser Summary) – Russia has agreed to lend Venezuela more than $2 billion to buy Russian-made weaponry to ward off what the South American country sees as an imminent US-Colombian attack, reports the BBC. “With these rockets, it is going to be very difficult for them to come and bomb us,” said socialist President Hugo Chavez. Chavez plans to buy nearly 100 tanks and anti-aircraft systems as tensions mount in the wake of a Colombia agreement to grant the US more access to military bases there.
Source: BBC
(TERRORISM) READ: US Strike Kills al-Qaeda Hotel Bomber in Somalia…
Also wanted in 1998 US embassy attacks
(Newser Summary) – An American helicopter strike killed a long-sought terrorist in Southern Somalia yesterday, the New York Times reports. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Qaeda leader operating out of Kenya, was suspected in the 2002 attack on a Kenyan resort as well as the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was riding in a truck with leaders of Shabab, a Somali Islamist extremist group, when the US copters struck.
A senior Shabab commander tells the AP the group will seek revenge on the US. Shabab is fighting to overthrow Somalia’s teetering government, and intelligence officials say it’s drawing closer to al-Qaeda. But the main target of the strike was Nabhan. When special operations forces saw he’d moved away from civilians, they pounced. “We have been watching him for a long, long, time,” said a military official.
Sources: New York Times, Associated Press
(ENVIRONMENT) READ: Informant: Italian Mafia Sank Ship Carrying Nuke Waste…
(Newser Summary) – Italian authorities are investigating an informant’s claim that the mafia sank a ship containing nuclear waste off the country’s southwest coast, the BBC reports. Underwater cameras show the ship intact, with barrels nearby marked as containing toxic contents; the informant says that organized crime has gotten into the nuclear waste-disposal business, but rather than go the usual routes, sank the ship, and two others, off the Calabrian coast.
Source: BBC
(CRIME/WORLD) READ: Peru Flooding US With Counterfeit Bills…
About $8 million in fake greenbacks found in U.S., another $18 million in Peru
(Newser Summary) – American officials have seized some $8 million in high-quality counterfeit US bills made in Peru, reports the Los Angeles Times. South American raids have uncovered another $18 million. The massive number of fake bills costs businesses and individuals millions, and threatens to undermine confidence in US currency, warn officials. “It’s a form of economic terrorism,” said a Secret Service agent.
Early this year, US officials launched a special task force to train Peruvian police and bankers to identify and capture counterfeiters. Columbia used to print about 70% of fake dollars passed in the states until a similar crackdown cut production to about 5%—which still accounts for millions of fake bills. Police action may have driven some Columbian counterfeiters to Peru. Human “mules” bring the money across borders, often with it strapped to their bodies.
Source: Los Angeles Times
(CRIME) READ: FBI Opens Probe Into ‘Stolen’ Jackie O Letter…
(Newser Summary) – The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into a condolence letter written by Jackie Kennedy on the day after Robert Kennedy died, the Dallas Morning News reports. Sent to Ethel Kennedy, the two-age letter soon disappeared—and turned up 10 years ago in the home of the Kennedy family plumber. The plumber’s son ended up selling it to a dealer for $6,000.
The letter changed hands three more times, for prices up to $30,000, until a buyer consigned it for sale at an auction house—where it sat for 3 years until the FBI seized it with a search warrant. Now buyers and sellers of the letter are deflecting blame, and Max Kennedy, Robert and Ethel’s son, wants a prosecution if laws were in fact broken. “The efficient running of society requires that criminals be prosecuted,” he said.
Source: Dallas Morning News
(From The Editor’s Desk) READ: I Got A New Computer!…
Source: DNN (OMG! DNN plagiarized itself instead of Newser or The Huffington Post how bout that?) hee hee.
Woo Hoo! I finally broke down and got a new computer!… But I’d like to share my horror story with you before I reveal which one I got.
How I managed to make something do something that it wasn’t designed to do in the first place, and lived through it:
So I took a 4 or 5-year-old Dell 2400 dimension and tried to turn it into a Digital Video/Audio workstation by editing HD Sony video files (AVCHD)… No laughing allowed! It actually works remarkably well, just slow as hell; (Took about 10 minutes to import the file to Sony’s Picture Browser, then another 10 or so for it to analyze the file, and a few minutes to import the file into Sony’s Vegas PRO software, and this doesn’t even include the time it takes to actually edit the movie’s sound, removing unwanted pops/hisses or whatnot, edit out unwanted visual shots such as the camera was aimed wrong, focus was poor, ETC.) But I did all that on a single core processor, and a really antiquated video card, hard drive… PAIN! much pain.
So last night I went to BestBuy. Now normally I avoid that store like the plague for a few reasons: #1 the crowds, 2. The noise, 3. The $7.50 making sales associates or whatever they call themselves these days, I don’t mean to pick on low-wage making people, it’s just they tend to be rude, uneducated and just plain don’t care about the products they’re selling. I can say that because I was one of “Those” kinds myself for many years! 
Anyways, so yeah after 10 minutes I managed to stomp and kick loud enough that a sales rep finally noticed me. I told him what I was basically looking for: a decent computer that could handle HD video editing without choking too much… at first I was eye-balling some of their laptops (Toshiba), but I spotted a HP TouchSmart and noticed they have come down in price quite a bit since last year (I think they were about $1700 then, now they’re like $1000). However the guy that was helping me said that it would not be a very good computer for what I needed, and he recommended me a Quad-Core, they only had one:
HP – Pavilion Elite Desktop with AMD Phenom™ II X4 Quad-Core Processor
Model: e9120y | SKU: 9366553
Nope that’s not an advertisement link, remember kids, DNN doesn’t advertise (if we did you might as well just get your news from CNN or FOX, its money that corrupts them…bah, I got off track sorry about that!) that’s my new computer. 
Well I think I’ll close with that, I will try to write up a review soon, I’ve only had it for less than a day so I don’t know what it’s capable of yet. So If I may use the cliché: STAY TUNED!
(PEOPLE) READ: World’s Oldest Person Dead at 115…
(AP Summary) – The world’s oldest known person has died in Los Angeles at age 115. Gertrude Baines died today at a hospital, probably of a heart attack; an autopsy will determine the exact cause. Baines was born in 1894 in Shellman, Ga., and she got a letter from President Obama on her last birthday, in April. The oldest person in the world is now 114-year-old Kama Chinen, who lives in Japan.
Source: Associated Press & Newser
(WORLD) Chávez in Russia for Military Spending Spree…
Venezuela recognizes breakaway republics ahead of arms deal talks
(Newser Summary) – Hugo Chávez arrived in Moscow today, where the Venezuelan president is reportedly ready for an arms “shopping spree.” Chávez is ready to buy at least 100 tanks for $500 million, reports the Times of London, and a Kremlin aide said Venezuela may get loans for helicopters, submarines, and other military hardware. Chávez began his charm offensive today by recognizing as sovereign states South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two pro-Russian republics at the heart of last year’s war with Georgia.
Since 2005 Venezuela has signed $4.4 billion in arms contracts with Russia. Last year Moscow gave a $1 billion loan to buy military equipment to the Latin American nation, which the Russians call a “counterweight to US influence.” Chávez is holding talks today with Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin in the latest phase of his European tour; earlier he made a surprise visit to the Venice Film Festival.
Sources: Times (UK), Reuters
(ENVIRONMENT) READ: Is There A Toxic Waste Dump In Your Town?…
Source: The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — (AP) The toxic leftovers from burning coal for power are sitting in nearly 600 sites in 35 states, according to a federal survey released Tuesday.
Spills have occurred at 34 of those sites over the last decade.
Many of the spills were minor compared with the disaster that occurred at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant in Kingston, Tenn., in December. That spill, which flooded hundreds of acres of land, damaged homes and killed fish in nearby rivers, is not included in the data, although it triggered the EPA’s March request of 61 power companies for information on how they manage coal combustion waste.
The survey is the most comprehensive list to date of coal ash storage sites and includes information submitted by 219 facilities.
The EPA said Tuesday that to date it had not received any information or detected any issues at the 584 coal ash storage sites identified that required immediate action.
But environmental groups, which obtained the data last week, said that the number of sites and the danger they pose to surrounding communities shows that coal ash ponds need federal regulation.
Coal ash is a byproduct of burning coal that can include heavy metals and other toxic contaminants. But no federal regulations or standards govern its storage and disposal, although the EPA has long recognized coal ash as a risk to human health and the environment and knows of 67 cases where it is known or suspected of polluting water.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson earlier this year said that the agency would consider federal rules, but it is unclear whether the ash will be controlled like household trash or under the more stringent rules for hazardous waste. READ MORE
(OUTRAGEOUS) READ: Iraq Militias Kill Gays With Impunity…
Government’s unwillingness to protect gays points to a bleak future for all Iraqis
(Newser Summary) – Iraq’s militias have switched from slaughtering rivals to killing men they suspect of being homosexuals, and the Iraqi government is turning a blind eye, Rasha Moumneh writes in Foreign Policy. Gay men have been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in rising numbers since the start of this year, but not a single arrest has been made. One UN worker estimates that the body count is well into the hundreds.
Survivors say the Mahdi Army militia is behind most of the attacks, as it tries to reinvent itself as a guardian of morality instead of a foe of the US. The government’s indifference to the murders has ominous echoes of the attacks on gays that preceded a wider campaign of violence in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Moumneh writes. If Iraq can’t do more to protect all of its citizens, the militias will continue seeking out new victims and a wider surge of killings will follow.
Source: Foreign Policy
(READ): Flu-Fearing Churches Ban Peace Handshakes…
(Newser Summary) – Churches nationwide are bracing for cases of swine flu, with one in Cincinnati banning peace handshakes during Mass, the Enquirer reports. The Catholic church passed out a flier telling parishioners not to shake with their neighbors during the “sign of peace” or clasp hands during the “Our Father” prayer. At least three other Cincinnati churches are considering similar measures, as are schools and churches across the US, notes the AP.
Sources: Cincinnati Enquirer, Associated Press
(TABLOID) Rag Magazines Are Saying Patrick Swayze Dieing…
(Newser Summary) – Patrick Swayze has left the hospital and gone home to die in his own bed, the National Enquirer reports. Despite the actor’s strong will to live, he has reportedly suffered multiple setbacks in his battle with pancreatic cancer, including a mild heart attack and an ongoing intestinal infection, and now often requires a wheelchair and oxygen. “Patrick’s bodily functions appear to be shutting down,” a Swayze family source said.
The source claimed that Swayze recently told wife Lisa Niemi, “I refuse to die in a hospital room. I’ll go on my own terms—in our home and in my own bed.” Swayze cannot visit his beloved New Mexico ranch because he has to stay close to medical care, and though he is in “constant pain” at his Los Angeles home, “he refuses to give in.”
Source: National Enquirer
(WORLD) Iran announces plan to purge universities of Western influences…
Source: Los Angeles Times
Humanities curricula will be revised to bring them more in line with Islamic principles, an official says. Critics say the move is based on ‘fascism and totalitarianism.’
September 7, 2009
Reporting from Beirut – A hard-line deputy of Iran’s supreme leader announced steps Sunday to purge Iranian universities of Western influences even as the government faced accusations of “fascism and totalitarianism” leveled by the country’s former president.
Hamid Reza Ayatollahi, head of a government body that oversees universities, announced a plan to revise humanities curricula to bring them more in line with Islamic principles.
“Many of the syllabuses taught to students majoring in humanities are not in line with Iranian and Islamic culture and therefore their revision is a must,” Ayatollahi said in a statement published by Iranian news agencies.
A committee has been established to “eliminate certain curricula and replace them with Islamic materials,” he said.
The effort stemmed from a speech last week by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said that humanities courses result in “disbelief in Islamic and divine teachings” and are mostly based on “materialist philosophical concepts causing misgivings about religious principles.”
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-ira…
