Florida: Naked Man Killed by Police Near MacArthur Causeway Was ‘Eating’ Face Off Victim
May 27th, 2012[???]
Via: Miami Herald:
One man was shot to death by Miami police, and another man is fighting for his life after he was attacked, and his face allegedly half eaten, by a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp Saturday, police said.
The horror began about 2 p.m. when a series of gunshots were heard on the ramp, which is along NE 13th Street, just south of The Miami Herald building.
According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.
The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots.
Miami police were on the scene, which was just south of The Miami Herald building on Biscayne Boulevard. The naked man who was killed lay face down on the pedestrian walkway just below the newspaper’s two-story parking garage. Police have requested The Herald’s video surveillance tapes.
The other man was transported to the hospital with critical injuries, according to police. Their identities were not released.
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Police theorize the attacker might have been suffering from “cocaine psychosis,” a drug-induced craze that bakes the body internally and often leads the affected to strip naked to try and cool off.
More: Gawker Roundup of Zombie Apocalypse Stories
Fukushima: Wall of Building Holding Spent Fuel Shows ‘Slight Bulge’
May 27th, 2012Via: New York Times:
What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world’s second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl.
Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic.
The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.
The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the building’s safety.
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Some outside experts have also worked to allay fears, saying that the fuel in the pool is now so old that it cannot generate enough heat to start the kind of accident that would allow radioactive material to escape.
But many Japanese scoff at those assurances and point out that even if the building is strong enough, which they question, the jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the outages continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. Government critics are especially concerned, since Tepco has said the soonest it could begin emptying the pool is late 2013, dashing hopes for earlier action.
“The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.”
Related: Situation at Fukushima Has Potential to, “Destroy the World Environment and Our Civilization”
U.S. National Security Budget in Fiscal 2013 Will Be Nearly $1 Trillion
May 27th, 2012Via: Asia Times:
In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion – a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged.
If you’ve heard a number for how much the US spends on the military, it’s probably in the neighborhood of $530 billion. That’s the Pentagon’s base budget for fiscal 2013, and represents a 2.5% cut from 2012. But that $530 billion is merely the beginning of what the US spends on national security. Let’s dig a little deeper.
Research Credit: ms
Pope’s Butler Leaked Vatican Documents
May 26th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Paolo Gabriele was always a reserved, almost shy man, as his position required. He had access to the most private rooms in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace – Pope Benedict’s apartment.
But what could have prompted the pope’s butler, who was formally charged by Vatican magistrates on Saturday with illegal possession of secret documents, to betray the man who trusted him?
Was it money? Probably not.
Gianluigi Nuzzi, the Italian journalist who revealed some of the leaked documents alleging corruption in the Vatican and internal conflict over the role of the Vatican bank, declines to reveal his sources but insists he gave no money to them.
Nuzzi, a respected journalist with a good track record whose book “His Holiness” contains some of the allegations, says those who gave him the documents were devout people “genuinely concerned about the Catholic Church” who wanted to expose corruption.
Britain: Planning Underway for Immigration Controls if Euro Collapses
May 26th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
The Government is drawing up plans for emergency immigration controls to curb an influx of Greeks and other European Union residents if the euro collapses, the Home Secretary discloses today.
Texas: Students Will Be Tracked Via Chips in IDs
May 25th, 2012Via: My San Antonio:
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
Defrocked Priest Now TSA Supervisor at Philadelphia International Airport
May 25th, 2012Via: CBS:
The CBS 3 I-Team has learned that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over sex abuse allegations now holds a sensitive security post at Philadelphia International Airport.
The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day. But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.
Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.
The I-Team asked Harkins about the suit as he was leaving his shift at the airport.
“I have nothing to say,” was Harkins’ reply.
Spain: Bankia Shares Suspended Ahead of Rescue Details
May 25th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Shares in Spain’s fourth-biggest lender Bankia SA were suspended on the Madrid stock exchange on Friday, ahead of an evening announcement when the bank is expected to ask the state for a rescue of more than 15 billion euros (12 billion pounds).
The government is in the process of nationalising Bankia, which holds some 10 percent of the country’s bank deposits, after it was unable to raise enough capital to cover heavy losses from loans to property developers during a building boom that crashed in 2007-2008.
Update: Bankia Group to Seek EU19 Billion From Government to Restructure
Real U.S. Deficit in 2011: $5 Trillion
May 24th, 2012Via: USA Today:
The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.
A U.S. household’s median income is $49,445, the Census reports.
The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.
John Brennan Manages The Obama Regime’s Assassination List
May 24th, 2012Via: The Atlantic:
“White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure for both military and CIA targets,” Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press reports. “The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House … Under the new plan, Brennan’s staff compiles the potential target list and runs the names past agencies such as the State Department at a weekly White House meeting.”
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So to sum up, Barack Obama insists while campaigning that “enhanced-interrogation techniques” are a euphemism for illegal, immoral torture that makes us less rather than more safe from terrorism, and insists that the Bush Administration was imprudent for using those tactics.
After being elected, Obama forbids those tactics from being used.
And he names as a top counterterrorism adviser someone who advocated the tactics he regards as imprudent and immoral — ultimately entrusting him with more power than anyone else to decide whether various figures should be assassinated by our classified flying robot army.
