Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/323078000?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Thursday, August 1, 2013
Moscow's Track and Field Event Puts Sports First
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Source: www.themoscowtimes.com --- Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Moscow is gearing up to host one of the biggest sporting events of the year amid fervent calls in the West to boycott "all things Russian," and with 2,500 athletes from 205 countries participating, the 2013 IAAF World Championships in Athletics looks set to defy any such sentiment. ...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/themoscowtimes/RUXi/~3/HAqCdjzYf-Q/483866.html
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British court dismisses landmark right-to-die appeal
By Adam Jourdan
LONDON (Reuters) - A British court rejected appeals for the right to die by a paralysed road accident victim and the family of a deceased locked-in syndrome sufferer on Wednesday, saying only parliament should decide on matters of life and death.
The Court of Appeal said the law on assisted suicide could not be changed by the courts, quashing the appeal by paralysed man Paul Lamb and the family of Tony Nicklinson, who suffered locked-in syndrome, where someone is aware and awake but cannot move or communicate.
He refused food and medication after he lost his bid to end his life with a doctor's help last year, and died a week later.
"The short answer must be, and always has been, that the law relating to assisting suicide cannot be changed by judicial decision," Igor Judge, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, said in the ruling, which is sure to spark more debate over a person's right to choose when and how to end his or her life.
Another paralysed man, known only as Martin, won a separate case on Wednesday seeking clarification of prosecution guidance for health workers who help others to die.
In Britain, anyone who helps another person to kill themselves commits the offence of assisted suicide, while a person who carries out euthanasia commits the offence of murder.
Switzerland and the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Montana are among the few places where some forms of euthanasia or assisted suicide are legal under certain circumstances.
Lamb, who has been paralysed since a car accident almost 25 years ago, said he was "gutted" by Wednesday's ruling. He is immobile except for limited movement in his right hand, requires 24-hour care and is constantly on morphine to relieve pain.
"I was hoping for a humane and dignified end. This judgment does not give me that," he said in a statement.
The case was an appeal against the Nicklinson decision, whose case was dismissed in August last year.
Nicklinson's wife, Jane, told BBC television: "I saw the way that Tony suffered and I would hate to think of anyone else suffering the way he did."
But expert and public opinion is divided over whether people should have the right to be helped to die.
British disability charity Scope opposes giving the right to people with disabilities to kill themselves.
Talking about the hearing earlier this year, the charity's chief executive, Richard Hawkes, wrote: "These cases are unbearably tragic, but they cannot be the basis for changing a law that could affect millions."
(Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/british-court-dismisses-landmark-die-appeal-122842898.html
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COLLEGE FOOTBALL: UCLA's prized recruit Eddie Vanderdoes cleared to play by NCAA after leaving Notre Dame
Five-star defensive lineman Eddie Vanderdoes has been cleared to play immediately for UCLA after an appeal with the National Letter of Intent committee, officially ending his dramatic exit from Notre Dame.1
The touted recruit initially committed to the Irish on National Signing Day in February, but asked out of his national letter of intent due to an illness in the family. The Placer High grad decided on UCLA to be closer to his home in the Sacramento area.
Rick Kimbrel of recruiting website BruinBru.com first reported Vanderdoes' immediate eligibility, a boon for a UCLA defensive line struggling with health. Had Vanderdoes not been released to play, he would have had to sit out the upcoming fall as well as lose a year of eligibility -- leaving him with only three seasons of college football.
Notre Dame had declined to release Vanderdoes from his letter of intent "in order to protect the integrity of that very important program," head coach Brian Kelly said in a statement in early June. Many Irish fans argued that if Vanderdoes were allowed to leave, letters of intent would become meaningless -- introducing more chaos into a recruiting world in which verbal commitments can flip week to week.
College coaches, of course, are not bound by any such restrictions; Kelly himself left Cincinnati for Notre
Dame in 2009, buying out of a contract that extended to 2013.As it now stands, Vanderdoes has regained all four years of eligibility. Rated the No. 3 recruit in California by Rivals.com, he will immediately bolster the Bruins' defensive line if he lives up to his billing.
Already praised by head coach Jim Mora for his work ethic, the 6-foot-3, 310-pound freshman could immediately slide in as the Bruins' starting defensive end.
All-Pac-12 selection Datone Jones graduated from the spot and became UCLA's first first-round draft pick since 2006. Jones' likely successor, rising senior Owamagbe Odighizuwa, underwent hip surgery in the offseason and is questionable to return. If Vanderdoes can impress enough early on, the UCLA staff could even elect to redshirt Odighizuwa -- a former five-star recruit himself -- to save him for a full season.
Defensive line depth also wasn't helped when backup nose tackle Brandon Tuliaupupu tore his ACL near the end of spring camp.
The other side of the line, however, is held down by returning starter Cassius Marsh, a physical player who was an All-Pac-12 honorable mention. He had 50 tackles in 2012, and projects as a mid-round draft pick in next spring's draft. Senior Seali'i Epenesa made 10 starts at nose tackle last season and should keep the spot this fall.
UCLA begins training camp Aug. 7 at Cal State San Bernardino.
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UK welcomes steps towards ?free, fair? elections ... - Minivan News
UK Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt has issued a statement welcoming confirmation from the Maldives? Elections Commission ?that the chosen candidates of all political parties will be able to participate in the presidential elections this coming September?.
All four candidates seeking the presidency have been accepted by the commission, and the five day period to contest those candidacies in the Supreme Court expired last week.
The four candidates from top to bottom on the ballot paper are Gasim Ibrahim (Jumhoree Party), Dr Mohamed Waheed (independent, incumbent president), Abdulla Yameen (Progressive Party of the Maldives) and Mohamed Nasheed (Maldivian Democratic Party, former President).
?It is vital for the good of the citizens in this young democracy that both campaigning and elections are judged to be free, fair and peaceful,? said Burt.
?We hope that all parties will honour free and fair election results and work to ensure a peaceful transition to post electoral politics. No matter who wins, cooperation between political parties will be vital in order to work for the good of the Maldivian people, and consolidate democratic institutions,? he added.
Former President Mohamed Nasheed?s candidacy in the upcoming elections was contested last year following the filing of charges in the Hulhumale Magistrate Court over his detention of Chief Criminal Court Judge Abdulla Mohamed, in the days leading up to Nasheed?s controversial resignation.
Nasheed and the MDP contested that the charges were a politically motivated attempt to prevent him contesting the election, and challenged the authority of the court and the appointment of the panel of judges.
Both the court and the panel had been appointed by the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), which included several of Nasheed?s direct political opponents, including a rival presidential candidate, Gasim Ibrahim.
The international community reacted with calls for the presidential election to be ?free, fair and inclusive?, and concerns over the state of the judiciary and the impartiality of the JSC were?echoed in a special report by UN Special Rapporteur Gabriela Knaul.
?It is indeed difficult to understand why one former President is being tried for an act he took outside of his prerogative, while another has not had to answer for any of the alleged human rights violations documented over the years,? wrote Knaul, following her Maldives mission in February 2013.
The Nasheed trial subsequently stalled at the high court level, after Chief Judge of the High Court Ahmed Shareef issued an injunction.
A day later the JSC suspended Shareef for what it claimed was an unrelated matter. He is currently contesting his suspension in court.
Meanwhile, despite initial reluctance, Gasim stepped down from his position on the JSC in accordance with the commission?s regulation on members seeking elected political posts.
Nasheed?s candidacy was accepted by the Elections Commission on July 18.
?Today we submitted the election forms and begin the task of restoring democracy to our country. It has been a slippery slope but we have come a long way. Despite all the barriers and hurdles that were put in our way, we never gave up,? Nasheed stated, in a subsequent press conference.
Approximately 240,000 Maldivians will be eligible to vote in the September 7 election. Transparency Maldives, in its pre-election assessment, meanwhile warned that the election was set to unfold against a ?crisis of legitimation, uncertainty of democratic transition, existing polarisations and other challenges that have been aggravated by the controversial transfer of power on 7 February 2012.?
?Political polarisation in the Maldives has grown in the wake of the failed all-party talks and events of February 7, leading to bitter mistrust between political factions and the pervading sense among parties that the loss of the upcoming elections ?could amount to losing everything?,? Transparency stated.
Transparency will participate in monitoring the election, along with the UK, EU, Commonwealth and UN.
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The Real Bradley Manning Problem
Now that a military judge has acquitted Pfc. Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy and convicted him of violating the Espionage Act, civil libertarians are breathing a small sigh of relief. But the Obama administration still has a big problem: how to control the flow of information between government agencies so you don't have a system that allows a private stationed in Iraq--or a contractor dating an acrobat in Hawaii--from downloading and distributing secret documents.
Top officials know they've got a problem. Earlier this month, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter addressed the information-sharing problem at the Aspen Security Forum. "There was an enormous amount of information concentrated in one place," Carter said. "It creates too much information in one place. You had an individual who was given very substantial authority to access that information and move that information. That ought not to be the case, either."
How did we get in this mess? Before the 9/11 attacks, government policies were the worst of both worlds: On one hand, you had a vast overclassification of documents shielding many secrets from government accountability. (See the 1997 panel led by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) And, of course, you had too little sharing between government agencies, which could possibly have prevented 9/11. When it came to the hijackers, we now sadly know the FBI didn't know what the CIA was doing--and vice versa. Even within the FBI, there wasn't enough information sharing.
A number of changes were made after that, thanks to the 9/11 report. There were things like the National Counter Terrorism Center, the Patriot Act's breaking down of walls between agencies, and a vast expansion of computer sharing. As the national security state swelled, there was an explosion in classification, but at least the upside was an ability for agencies to cooperate more easily, and this led to the bin Laden raid and the capture of the Times Square bomber. The vast archives of sensitive information grew, and so did those who had access to them, including Manning, who inserted blank CDs marked "Lady Gaga," slipped them into a drive in Baghdad, donned headphones like he was rocking out, and downloaded some 700,000 documents, shipping them off to WikiLeaks.
As a low-level military intelligence officer, Manning not surprisingly had access to Pentagon secrets. But one of the most perplexing things about the case was his access to State Department cables. When Manning's leak was first uncovered, then-Rep. Pete Hoekstra asked what everyone was wondering. "Why would a private first class, sitting in Baghdad, have access to data far beyond his area of responsibility?" Hoekstra asked. "How can it be that between 500,000 and potentially over a million government employees have access to a database of sensitive State Department cables?"
In the following months, we learned a lot more about the wide availability of State Department cables. "Thee idea was that there was a wealth of information that needed to be available on the ground, to the war-fighters," testified Charlie Wisecarver, the former deputy chief technology officer at State during the Manning trial who outlined the Horizontal Fusion program. Collecting the cables was a high priority at State,?which even asked department enlisted Foreign Service officers' spouses to scan in older cables. Cables were uploaded to the Defense Department's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. The State Department didn't put much in the way of restrictions on their use by the military, although at Foggy Bottom there were more protocols. The consequence is, Manning's documents rocked the world, perhaps even helping to ignite the Arab Spring when it was revealed how corrupt U.S. officials considered the Tunisian regime.
Steps have been taken to come up with a more sensible information flow. State is scrubbing cables more carefully before sending them to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is tightening access. As part of a discussion of the Snowden case at the Aspen Security Forum in July, National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander said, "You limit the numbers of people who can write to removable media. Instead of allowing all systems administrators [to do it], you drop it down to a few and use a two-person rule.... We'll close and lock server rooms, so that it takes two people to get in there."
But Washington is still worried. In a recent interview with National Journal, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, a former officer in the Navy Intelligence Reserve, said, "We have a classified Internet on the backside of the intelligence community, and if you're on that system, then a Bradley Manning can download the presidential book of secrets like in the movie [National Treasure]." He noted that he didn't have nearly the kind of access to government-wide data when he was in the Balkans and Afghanistan as part of the reserves.
The trouble for Obama and his successors is that there's no easy way to fix the problem. Yes, you can make it harder to download data or have more alerts when someone does. It's pretty clear that no system is safe, and as long as the government has lots of people with lots of access to goldmines of classified data this won't be the last Bradley Manning.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/real-bradley-manning-problem-060034393.html
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Paramount Staffing looks to fill Joliet jobs
By Cindy Wojdyla Cain ccain@stmedianetwork.com July 30, 2013 9:15PM
The Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry holds a ribbon-cutting Tuesday for Paramount Staffing at 2405 Essington Road. The office is the company's 14th location, including eight in Illinois. Pictured are (front, from left) Tina and Matt Schubert, co-owners; partner Jude Fairbank, vice president of operations; and Joliet Mayor Tom Giarrante. | Cindy Cain~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: July 31, 2013 2:33AM
JOLIET ? The city?s unemployment rate for June was 13.5 percent, the fourth highest in the state, but the rate is probably closer to 5 percent for people who can work in skilled manufacturing, said Matt Schubert, owner of Paramount Staffing.
Paramount, which specializes in placing workers in industrial jobs, opened an office in Joliet on Tuesday to tap into the warehouse and manufacturing growth here, Schubert said. More industrial workers are retiring, and fewer young people are seeking those jobs, so the applicant pool is shrinking, he said.
?No parent, unfortunately, is pushing their kids into industrial to be a forklift driver, a lathe operator or a welder,? he said. ?Truthfully, I believe these jobs will be paying $50,000, $60,000 or $80,000 in the next 10 to 15 years. The demand is going to grow, and the supply (of workers) is going to shrink.?
Paramount finds it so difficult to find forklift drivers, for instance, that the firm has set up its own 4,000-square-foot training site in Bolingbrook.
?We train people from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day and on Saturdays,? Schubert said. ?So we?re doing everything we can to build our pool. We?d love to get into machinery (training), but that?s a little bit more of an investment.?
Schubert believes Joliet?s unemployment remains high because towns to the north such as Bolingbrook and Romeoville are pulling away some of the jobs. But the overall economy also is casting a big shadow here, he said.
Mayor Tom Giarrante, who attended the ribbon-cutting, said building projects, including the city?s new transportation center and Joliet Junior College?s new campus, both to be located downtown, should help boost hiring.
And while 13.5 percent unemployment is high, ?I?ve lived here all my life,? Giarrante said. ?And I remember when unemployment was 21 percent. So it?s high, but we?re doing what we can do.?
While overall unemployment remains higher than at pre-recession levels, there are signs the job market is coming around, Schubert said. Hiring of temporary workers is higher than it has ever been at 2.8 million nationally, with an expectation it will reach 3 million in the next year.
?Our industry has always, always been a leading indicator for the economy,? he said. ?Because companies will hire temporary employees before they hire full time, and some of those temporary positions turn into full time.?
The only thing slowing the hiring process is indecisiveness in Washington, D.C., and uncertainty with new health care laws, he said.
Paramount Staffing?s Joliet office is its eighth in Illinois and 14th in the United States. Schubert, who grew up in the staffing industry, opened a branch of his father?s Labor World here on Republic Avenue in 1994 and sold it in 1997.
Potential temp workers can visit the new office at 2405 Essington Road, Suite G, to fill out applications.
?Then we try to get them to work,? Schubert said. ?On a daily basis, we employ 4,500 people. And throughout the year we might employ up to 20,000 people off and on. They come and go.?
About 5 percent to 10 percent of the workers get hired full time by the companies they?re placed with.
?That might be the only way for somebody to get in the door, and that is to come through the temporary route,? Schubert said.
Source: http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/news/21626722-418/paramount-staffing-looks-to-fill-joliet-jobs.html
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