Category: News

Budget cuts are great news if you’re criminal in L.A.:

AP:

The Los Angeles court system has already closed 17 courtrooms and another 50 will be shut down come September unless something is done to find more money. The judge who presides over the system predicts chaos and an unprecedented logjam of civil and family law cases in the worst-case scenario.

The crisis results from the financially troubled state’s decision to slash $393 million from state trial courts in the budget this year. The state also decided to close all California courthouses on the third Wednesday of every month.

What has emerged is a hobbled court system that is struggling to serve the public.

Custody hearings, divorce proceedings, small-claims disputes, juvenile dependency matters and civil lawsuits have been delayed amid the courtroom shutdowns in Los Angeles. Drivers who choose to fight traffic tickets now have to wait up to nine months to get a trial started.

Complex civil lawsuits, those typically involving feuding businesses, could really feel the hit. It now takes an average of 16 months for such cases to get resolved, but court officials expect the cuts to bog down these civil matters to the point that they take an average of four years to finish.

“On any given day, 100,000 people go in and out of our courthouses,” said Superior Court Judge Charles W. McCoy Jr., who presides over the Los Angeles system. “That’s a Rose Bowl full of people.”

While this doesn’t mean criminals will go scot-free, it does mean that it will take far longer to try people in court. It also will effectively increase the cost of litigating against someone. Obviously there are a lot of dumb cases that should never make it to court, but at the same time there are a lot of legitimate ones too.

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Andreas F. Voegelin

Click for slideshow: A coffinette that contained Tutankhamun’s mummified liver is exquisitely crafted, even though the container is only 4 inches (11 centimeters) wide and 16 inches (39.5 centimeters) long. Click on the picture to see the full coffinette and other artifacts from New York’s King Tut exhibition.

King Tutankhamun’s treasures have been on the road for a long, long time: Over the past five years, precious artifacts have been criss-crossing America, heading over to London, then back to Egypt, then back to America. Everywhere those artifacts have gone, museumgoers have gone crazy over the boy-king, just as they did during a traveling Tut exhibit in the 1970s. (Remember Steve Martin’s classic Tut tribute, circa 1978?)

Tut mania continues to reigns supreme, especially now that the big tour has reached New York City, its last U.S. stop.

“A different generation of Tut mania is everywhere,” Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, observed during a walkthrough of the “King Tut NYC” exhibition in midtown Manhattan.

But the Tut of today – or at least the image that Hawass and other experts have of the “golden boy” from 3,300 years ago – is not the Tut of 30 years ago, or even five years ago. High-tech studies of the mummy have led to an extreme makeover in the story that’s told by the golden treasures.

Too fit for kids? Jillain Michaels doesn’t want babies stretching out her well-toned tummy.

The Biggest Loser trainer doesn’t want to ruin her super-fit figure by getting pregnant, so she’s planning to adopt kids instead. Jillian was overweight as a child and after winning the battle with obesity she doesn’t want to risk undoing all that hard work by gaining weight with a pregnancy.

“I’m going to adopt,” the 36-year-old told Women’s Health Magazine this month. “I can’t handle doing that to my body. Also, when you rescue something, it’s like rescuing a part of yourself.”

At least she’s honest. However, Jillian’s remarks has attracted widespread criticism within in the health industry, with some experts accusing her of passing on dangerous ideas to other women about the “health risks” of pregnancy. Meanwhile, others have praised the fitness guru for wanting to open her heart to a child in need — no matter what her reasons.

[JURIST] Chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno Ocampo has asked judges to report Sudan to the UN Security Council for failing to comply with arrest warrants for two government officials. Ocampo filed the request Monday for a finding of non-cooperation pursuant to Article 87 of the Rome Statute for the government’s refusal to arrest Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ahmed Harun and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb. The request stated that Sudan has a binding legal obligation to fully cooperate with the court, as mandated by UN Security Counsel Resolution 1593, and has repeatedly refused to do so since the warrants were issued in 2007. The request went on to say “o the contrary, the continues to commit crimes, promotes and protects the persons sought by the Court; and harasses all persons who are considered to be in favor of justice.” Sudan, which is not a permanent member of the ICC, refuses to recognize the court’s jurisdiction, stating that “the International Criminal Court has no place in this crisis at all.” Harun and Kushayb are wanted for 51 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has also eluded a warrant issued last year for his arrest. Last month, the president of the ICC said that Bashir will eventually face justice in The Hague. Speaking in London before the UK House of Commons, Judge Sang-Hyun Song addressed controversy surrounding the ICC arrest warrant issued one year ago stating that “judges cannot and will not take political considerations into account.”Responding to questions, Song went on to compare the al-Bashir warrant with the successful surrender of Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor to the international criminal tribunals.

Thanks to the success of the BioSoil Demonstration Project, JRC scientists have concluded that large scale monitoring of soil conditions and biodiversity in forests is achievable. This goes part way towards fulfilling the main aims of the project: to provide harmonised soil and biodiversity data EU-wide, to evaluate the methodology of European soil and forest biodiversity monitoring programmes, and to provide a baseline to assess future trends in the soil condition and biodiversity of forests in the EU.

Soil characterisation data are essential to discover how an ecosystem works. Within the Forest Focus Biosoil project, participant countries have increased the range of forest monitoring activities (on atmospheric pollution and forest fires) by intensifying surveys on soil characteristics and forest biodiversity indicators.

President Obama calls for stricter mining regulations in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 15. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Beckley, W.Va. — “It’s unfortunate, but every mine safety law we have on the books today was written in the blood of coal miners.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

So said Rep. Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia, just hours after an underground blast in his district killed 29 coal miners earlier this month. It’s a sentiment uttered frequently in coal country, and it’s tragically relevant again as policymakers in both Washington and Charleston are vowing to prevent the next disaster with new laws, regulations and enforcement tactics designed to improve mine safety.

On the ground in Southern West Virginia, however, many doubts persist — with good reason. For more than four decades, members of the proud mining community here have watched from afar as Congress installed a series of sweeping new oversights and precautions in the wake of some horrific mining accident, only to have another come down the pike a few years later. In short, they’ve seen this picture before, and they don’t like how it ends.

Bill Price, a native of West Virginia’s coal country who now organizes for the Sierra Club on coal issues, summarized the trend tersely: “Somebody has to die first.”

The history backs his claim. The Farmington, W.Va., blast of 1968, for example, led to a 1969 overhaul of mining safety measures. A series of fatal Appalachian accidents in the 1970s catalyzed the mining reforms of 1977. Two back-to-back coal disasters in West Virginia in 2006 cleared the way for passage of the MINER Act later that year. And now, in the wake of this month’s deadly blast at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, policymakers — both state and federal — have reacted with investigations, promises of tighter regulations, and vows of “Never Again.”

“We have the resources,” fumed Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). “These tragedies, on this scale, should no longer be happening.”

That they are happening, many West Virginians argue, owes to a series of factors that have conspired, often with tragic effect.

• Lax Oversight: Mine-safety advocates have been arguing for years that the ties between many regulators — state and federal — and the companies they’re overseeing have grown too close, allowing the companies to skirt safety rules as inspectors look away. Lawrence Richmond, 85, a World War II vet who worked in the mines of Southern West Virginia for 34 years, said this week that that trend, though hardly recent, should change.”A lot of those inspectors overlooked things in order to keep mines operating,” Richmond said. “So if they run into some coal company that’s not obeying the laws, then it’s gonna have to be shut down, and the state’s gonna have to enforce it. That’s all there is to it.”

• Disregard for the Rules: Ostensibly, mine inspections are considered “surprise” events because the regulators often arrive to the gates unannounced. But miners have testified that there’s still plenty of time to clean the place up before those inspectors get underground.”We would know the minute they [inspectors] would come on the hill. We’d know the minute they’d get ready to come underground. We’d know what section they were going to,” one Massey deep miner said recently. “And that would give the people up on the section time to get their ventilation right, to try to get into what they should be doing all along, and stay in compliance with the laws.”

• Media Indifference: Although nearly half of the nation’s electricity is generated by coal, there remains an odd sense — both among the general public and Capitol Hill lawmakers — that mining safety is somehow an issue local to coal-producing regions. Indeed, although Raleigh County was swamped with reporters in the immediate wake of the Upper Big Branch blast — and many will surely be covering President Obama’s visit to Beckley Sunday to remember the deceased — the story faded from the front pages after all the miners were found.”You guys just disappeared,” Jerry Massie, field representative for the United Mine Workers of America’s District 29 branch in Beckley, told a reporter this week.

• Sheer power of the Coal Industry: Coal companies — no fans of tighter safety measures — hold tremendous sway over West Virginia’s lawmakers, who have accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the industry over the years. Critics say that it’s no coincidence that those same lawmakers have a long history of protecting the companies from tighter regulations.”This state is bought and sold by the coal companies,” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

• Poorly Targeted Reforms: Because congressional mining reforms have most often arrived in reaction to specific accidents, they’ve tended to target specific problems while ignoring others. For example, the 2006 MINER Act, which focused heavily on new requirements for keeping trapped miners alive after blasts, has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent those blasts to begin with.”There was nothing that come out of that MINER Act in 2006 that helped these [UBB] miners,” said Denny Tyler, an electrician who has contracted with Massey and now runs an anti-mountaintop removal website. “Nothing.”

This month’s tragedy has altered some of these powerful dynamics, at least temporarily. Indeed, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D), a former coal broker with a long history of defending the industry, called recently for the state’s mines to cease production for a day in order to examine their safety measures.

“In a deep mine explosion, there’s no way to protect anybody in the mine. All you can do is prevent it from happening,” Manchin (D) said last week. “What we’re trying to do is, in their honor, re-evaluate everything we do and the practices we use to make it safe.

“Not one person should have to work in unsafe conditions,” he added. “Everyone should expect to go home at night.”

Hi everyone! This is Jess filling in for Ginger today!

You might remember several weeks ago when I introduced you to a video contest we were running at USA.gov.

Well, I’m really excited to announce that we have a winning video.

Peter Sullivan from Nashville, TN put together this great video that tells the fictional story of a man who moved into a new neighborhood and wanted to get in touch with his representative.

Peter worked on this video around his family’s schedule and even made sure to include his kids.

I encourage you to check out the video and if you want to learn more about how Peter made the video, check out his interview with Federal News Radio.

EeePad is go, according to ASUS’ Chairman Jerry Shen, who will be showing it off this June at Computex as planned. However, a launch date has also been mentioned by the Taiwanese—an early-sounding late July. More »

Bernanke has kept U.S. interest rates ultra-low for years, and if he had his druthers, he’d probably keep them there forever. But dissent is building within the Fed.

The Economist says this makes an interest rate hike more likely to happen sooner rather than later.

Economist:

The most vocal dissident is Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and the Fed’s longest-serving policymaker, who has twice formally objected to the Fed’s “extended period” language. That commitment plus zero rates, he explained on April 7th, lead “banks and investors to search for yield… take on additional risk [and] increase leverage”. He argued the Fed should soon raise rates to 1% to “end the borrowing subsidy”.

The next day Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Fed, voiced a different concern: that the excess bank reserves created by the Fed’s MBS purchases create the potential for high inflation. He advocated selling $15 billion-25 billion of MBS a month, which would clear the Fed’s inventory in five years instead of the 30 it would take for the bonds to mature.

Read more here >

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	Beijing 2010: Chevrolet Volt MPV5 crossover revealed Tasty.		Officially Official: Japan EV Club Mira sets Guinness distance record The little kei car goes 345+ miles on a single charge.
	GM’s R&D head says Voltec powertrain not suitable for vehicles bigger, smaller than Volt But it is still good for the Volt, right?	Other news: Beijing 2010: Chevrolet adds five-door hatch to New Sail lineup Earth Day Prizelust: Tesla Roadster on “Price is Right” is most expensive freebie ever BMW confirms Megacity electric car for 2013

AutoblogGreen for 04.23.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re one of the millions of BlackBerry users dying to get their hands on RIM’s upcoming OS 6.0, you may have to wait a little longer, but until then Ryan Hamrick has designed an OS 6.0 inspired theme for the BlackBerry Bold 9700, Curve 8900, Tour 9630, and Storm series. It features premium crisp icons, which look pretty close to the screenshots of OS 6.0! It’s quite a nice theme and can be yours for only $4.99. If you want to grab a copy of I Dream of 6 follow the link below.

Check out I Dream of 6 in the BBSync Store for $4.99

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I Dream of 6 – BlackBerry OS 6.0 Inspired Theme is Now Available!

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Filed under: Health, Healthy Eating, 30-Day Nutrition Challenge

The following is an email conversation between one of our participants in the 30-Day Challenge, Carole and the Healthy Foodie. It’s presented here so others participating in the challenge can get some helpful tips and advice. If you missed our other … Read more

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We’ve already discussed the (finally) officially released draft of ACTA — which only came out after a ridiculous amount of public pressure, multiple leaks and a total beatdown by the European Parliament. While the official version shows that the leaked versions were quite accurate (this version only has the few changes made at the recent New Zealand negotiations, which came after the leaks), some are noticing what’s missing. Jamie Love is pointing out that the leaked versions clearly showed which countries were pushing for which provisions. But the different country positions have been conveniently deleted from the “official version”:

“It’s late, very late, and missing a key element of transparency — the country positions. Governments had to be forced by civil society groups to make the ACTA text public. Let’s hope that the precedent for the future is to publish the texts, and to publish them much sooner. Now that the text is out, it will be easier to have public debates about its contents. It is unfortunate that the country positions were eliminated from the published version, but positions as recent as January 2010 are available from the earlier leaked texts…. Clearly the text goes way beyond counterfeiting and copyright piracy, into several categories of intellectual property rights, including patents, semi conductor chip designs, pharmaceutical test data and other topics. Governments should engage with consumer groups, civil rights organizations, educators, libraries, generic drug manufacturers, technology companies and others to re-balance the text, or abandon the negotiation if this is not possible in the current political environment.”

Once again, it looks like this “transparency” isn’t quite as transparent as ACTA supporters would like you to believe.

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Howard Lovy wrote:

Don’t get Randal Charlton wrong. The executive director at the TechTown business incubator in Detroit is thankful for a recent announcement of $5 million coming his way to help graduates of his FastTrac business training program launch their companies. But, he says, look at it this way: The money, granted by the New Economy Initiative, a Detroit-area philanthropic partnership, is not being thrown at comfortable entrepreneurs. This is, essentially, aid to the unemployed. And, as such, $5 million barely scratches the surface.

Many of the entrepreneurs to be helped by the First Step Fund, the entity created by NEI’s $5 million investment, are not launching startups because it seems like a promising thing to do. They have nowhere else to go, Charlton says. Their former jobs in the auto industry are gone, never to return. Their choices are to leave the state or try to create their own jobs in Michigan.

In the world outside Detroit, Charlton says, the national unemployment rate of 10 percent is a grim figure that conjures images of the Great Depression. Inside the alternate economic universe of Detroit, with a 15 percent unemployment rate, that 10 percent figure would hail a new era. “If we could get down to 10 percent unemployment in the city of Detroit in the next three years, we’d be holding block parties to celebrate,” Charlton says.

So, March’s announcement of a $5 million investment from the New Economy Initiative to create the First Step Fund is just that-a first step, Charlton says.

The companies chosen to take that first step are:

• Air Movement Systems of Southgate, MI, which develops and sells thermal recovery systems.
• Current Motor Co. of Ypsilanti, MI, which designs and sells, electric mopeds and scooters.
• Clean Emission Fluids of Detroit, which designs and sells fuel blending systems for biofuel dispensing stations.
• NextCAT of Detroit, a Wayne State University startup whose catalyst technology allows for low-cost production of biofuels.

Charlton’s TechTown has been basking in positive international media attention lately as it attempts to fling startups out into the world. Or, as Charlton puts it, each new company is a “bet,” since many …Next Page »

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UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Elecite has a very creative team of designers, and the team just announced their latest creation called Polygon. This premium theme features a unique cell structure with a futuristic red colored interlaced. It’s available for the BlackBerry Curve 8900, Bold 9000, Bold 9700, Storm, Storm2, and 9600 series. Here’s a quick excerpt about the theme:

All of the homescreen icons in Polygon are organized in a cell system. Each icon you see represents a category that once clicked, reveals a handful of icons. This allows for quick access to your social, communication, media, options and more, a grand total of 18-19 icons.

Got an app that you’d like on the homescreen that isn’t there already? This theme adapts to you. Just move the icon to the top of your application list and it will be visible in one of the 6 slots in the custom category (star icon).

What’s even better is you can grab the Polygon theme from Elecite right from the BBSync Store for $6.99 – and if you hurry you can still get 20% off with BBSync’s Birthday Coupon Code “bbsyncbday3″ at the checkout.

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Berkshire Hathaway director Thomas Murphy has said that Warren Buffett still has faith in Goldman Sachs, and that Buffett is not worried about fraud accusations leveled at the company.

Bloomberg:

“He’s not concerned with the investment at all,” Murphy, 84, said in a Bloomberg Television interview, citing a telephone conversation with Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive officer. “He has to see what’s going to happen on it, but I think he has great confidence in Goldman,” Murphy said.

The two men spoke after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced its lawsuit on April 16, Murphy said. Buffett, a longstanding Wall Street critic, has supported a firm that’s become a lightning rod for politicians and people who feel cheated by the recession. Public regard for Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm in Wall Street history, has plummeted in the year and a half since Buffett, 79, provided the company with capital in the depths of the financial crisis.

“I think he’s awfully secure” in Berkshire’s Goldman Sachs holdings, said Glenn Tongue, a partner at T2 Partners LLC, which invests in Buffett’s firm. “He assessed the culture of Goldman Sachs when he made the investment. He had known the company for decades.”

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The effects of the decision to stop censoring results in China are already starting to be felt at Google. According to new studies, Google lost a big slice of the search-ad market in the first quarter of the year, the first decline since the second quarter of 2009. It’s now clear that advertisers are worried that Google may … (read more)

Most motorcycle boots look tough, but clunky. If you’re going for that bad-boy vibe, but want a sleeker look, check out the new Vitesse motorcycle books. They not only look cool, but they’re practical as ell.

Vitesse – which bills itself as Europe’s avant-garde motorcycle boot company – was inspired by iconic footwear such as work shoes, English gentlemen boots and vintage sneakers.

Because lower leg traumas are the most frequent injuries when crashing on a motorcycle, Vitesse has invented the V-Cockpit, an ankle management device that offers riders protection and comfort. V-Cockpit is featured on every single Vitesse boot, because a crash on a moped can be as bad as a crash on a sport-bike.

The Vitesse boots cost 175 euro (about $240) and can only be purchased directly from the Vitesse Moto Store.

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Today YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday. Exactly five years ago, a 19-second clip called ‘Me at the Zoo’ was uploaded by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, after a visit to the San Diego Zoo. Back then, Mr. Karim was employed at PayPal. Here’s the historic video:

This video is also a throwback to YouTube’s humble beginnings. Although YouTube is now big enough to attract movie premiers and live events, for me the biggest draw of YouTube remains its odd amateur videos. It has spawned innumerable viral sensations including the JK wedding entrance dance, the Numa Numa kid, David after dentist and the keyboard cat. And, I am sure we will see more in the years to come. Happy Birthday YouTube!

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