South of Human

Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Accepted Medical Purpose

admin — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:31:29 +0000

The federal government ruled on Friday that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should remain in the same class of drugs as heroin.

The decision comes nearly nine years after marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify the drug to take into account the growing body of research conducted across the globe that proves it’s effective in treating certain diseases, reports The Los Angeles Times.

The paper spoke to advocates who criticized the ruling but are pleased that the government has finally responded, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts.

In May several medical marijuana advocacy groups under the name Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis filed a lawsuit insisting that the DEA finally attend to the 9-year-old request, reports LAist.

Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access told the Times, he was not surprised by the decision, which came shortly after the Obama administration announced it would not tolerate large-scale commercial marijuana growing operations.

It is clearly motivated by a political decision that is anti-marijuana,” he said. He noted that studies demonstrate pot has beneficial effects, including appetite stimulation for people undergoing chemotherapy. “One of the things people say about marijuana is that it gives you the munchies and the truth is that it does, and for some people that’s a very positive thing.

The Times also noted, this is the third time that petitions to reclassify marijuana have been denied. The first was filed in 1972 and denied 17 years later. The second was filed in 1995 and denied in 2001. Both decisions were appealed, but the courts sided with the federal government.

California and many other states have legalized marijuana for medicinal reasons and a push to legalize it in general is expected to appear on the 2012 ballot in California as Proposition 19, writes LAist.

‘Caylee’s Law’ Considered Following Casey Anthony Trial Verdict

admin — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:28:15 +0000

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Lawmakers outraged over Casey Anthony’s acquittal have responded by proposing so-called Caylee’s laws that would allow prosecutors to bring felony charges against parents who do not quickly report missing children.

The new measures were triggered, at least in part, by an online petition that had more than 700,000 signatures Friday. Some questioned whether a new law would do any good because the circumstances of the Anthony case were so rare, but lawmakers in at least a dozen or so states have already floated proposals reacting to the verdict.

“Casey Anthony broke new ground in brazenness,” said Florida state Rep. Scott Plakon, who is sponsoring the proposal in his state. “It’s very sad that we even need a law like this, but Casey Anthony just proved that we do as unfortunate as that is.”

In June 2008, Anthony’s 2-year-old daughter Caylee was last seen at the Orlando home she shared with her mom and her maternal grandparents. For the next month, Casey Anthony, then 22, left her parents’ house and spent most of her time with friends, shopping and partying, telling her family and others that Caylee was with an imaginary nanny.

Anthony’s mother called detectives when Anthony could not produce her child. Anthony told investigators she hadn’t called them because the nanny had kidnapped the child and she had been conducting her own search, two of the numerous lies she told investigators.

Anthony was acquitted of murder in Caylee’s death, but convicted of four misdemeanor counts of lying to investigators. She was sentenced to the maximum of four years, but after serving nearly three years in jail awaiting trial, coupled with good behavior credits, she is set to go free next Sunday.

Florida’s proposal would make it a felony for a parent or other caregiver to not report a child under the age of 12 missing after 48 hours. It also makes it a felony to not report a child’s death or “location of a child’s corpse” to police within two hours of the death.

Had Florida’s measure been in place and Anthony been convicted, she could have faced another 15 years behind bars.

Other states are considering similar measures and the online petition at Change.org, started by an Oklahoma woman, calls for a federal law.

“It’s certainly something that we want to look into, because right now looking at the Maryland state law we’re not seeing anything that would fit the circumstances to the degree that we want to,” said Joseph Cassilly, a prosecutor in Harford County, Md., which is one of the state’s considering a Caylee’s law.

But others think it’s unnecessary.

“It only applies to people like her and fortunately those are not common everyday occurrences,” said Willie Meggs, who served as a state attorney in Florida for more than three decades. “I don’t think it changes anything.”

When Caylee was reported missing, the sheriff’s office launched a massive search, but her remains weren’t discovered until six months later, near the Anthony family home. The bones were in such bad shape, prosecutors said they had difficulty collecting forensic evidence from them, making it harder to present their case to the jury.

Anthony’s attorneys argued that Caylee drowned in the family pool. They said Anthony panicked and her father decided to cover up the death by making it look like murder. Anthony’s lies and conduct during the month her child was missing were caused by the sexual abuse she had suffered herself as a child by her father, her attorney said.

Anthony’s father vehemently denied the allegations on the witness stand and said he would have done anything to save his granddaughter.

In Alabama, a bill would make it a felony for a parent, legal guardian or caretaker to not notify law enforcement authorities within an hour after the death of a child and also require parents to report a missing child within 24 hours. In Kentucky, the proposal would make failing to report a child under 12 who has been missing for 12 hours or more punishable by one to five years in prison.

“God forbid we ever run into a mother like Casey Anthony again,” said Plakon, the Florida legislator. “If we do, that mother will be a felon.”

Absurd! Jailed for cashing Chase check at Chase bank

admin — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:20:32 +0000

AUBURN, Wash. – Buying his own home was a big accomplishment for construction worker, Ikenna Njoku, of Auburn. He’s only 28 years old.

“I was really excited. For the first time, I actually got to buy a lawn mower, mow my lawn and everything,” said Njoku.

Njoku qualified for the first time home buyer rebate on his tax return.

“It was really important, I had a vehicle I was looking on paying off,” said. Njoku. And it wasn’t just any vehicle. “It was a 2001 Infinity I-30, silver…just like my favorite car, “he said.

Njoku signed up to have the rebate deposited directly into his Chase Bank account. But when the IRS rebate arrived, there was a problem. Chase had closed Njoku’s account because of overdrawn checks in the past. The bank deducted $600 to cover what he owed them and mailed him a cashier’s check for the difference–$8,463.21.

But when Njoku showed up at the Chase branch near his house intending to cash the check, he was in for a nasty surprise.

The check had Njoku’s name and address on it and was issued by JP Morgan Chase. But the Chase Customer Banker who handles large checks at the Auburn branch was immediately suspicious.

“I was embarrassed,” Njoku said. “She asked me what I did for a living. Asked me where I got the check from, looked me up and down—like ‘you just bought a house in Auburn, really?’ She didn’t believe that,” he said.

The Customer Banker said the check looked fake, so she took it, along with Njoku’s driver license and credit card, and called Bank Support.

After waiting for about 15 minutes, Njoku said he got impatient and told Chase he was leaving to do an important errand. By the time he got back, the bank was closed. Njoku said he called customer service and asked them what he should do. He says they told him to go back to the bank the next day to get his money.

But when Njoku arrived, it wasn’t the money that was waiting for him.

“They just threw me in jail; they called the police and said this guy has a fraudulent check,” Njoku said.

Auburn police arrested him for forgery – a felony crime.

“I was like – you’re making a mistake, you’re making a mistake, don’t take me to jail, I got work tomorrow. I can’t afford to miss work,” he said.

Njoku was taken to jail on June 24, 2010, which was a Thursday. The next day, Chase Special Investigations, realized it was a mistake. The check was legitimate. The Investigator called Auburn Police and left a message with the detective handling the case, but it was her day off. So Njoku stayed in jail for the entire weekend. Finally, on Monday, he was released.

Auburn Police Commander Dave Colglazier said Chase could have done a lot more to let them know they’d locked up an innocent man.

“We do have a main line that comes into our front office,” he said. “There are ways to reach someone 24/7 at a police department.”

For Njoku, going to jail for five days meant a lot more than just losing his freedom. He said the entire time he was “just stressed out…trying to figure out what was going on with my vehicle. I love my vehicle,” he said.

Njoku’s car had been towed from the bank parking lot and his check seized as evidence.

“I had to wait a couple of weeks,” he said, “and my car got sold, auctioned off.”

Njoku says he didn’t have the money to pay the impound fees and fines to get his car back before it was sold. He said he also lost his job because he didn’t show up for work while he was in jail.

After all of that, Njoku said he never heard a word from Chase.

“They haven’t even sent me a letter or apologized,” he said. “It’s been a year we’ve been trying to contact these guys.”

Finally, A Seattle attorney offered to help. Last week, Felix Luna sent Chase a scathing letter. Read the attorneys’ letter to Chase

“It’s one thing to make a mistake,” Luna said. “It’s one thing to make multiple errors of judgment like Chase has made and then, once you realize that your error has caused such harm to somebody else, to just ignore it for a year. I think he deserved better. I think all their customers do.”

Like Njoku, KING 5 had a difficult time getting answers from Chase. A week after first contacting them, they sent a two line e-mail.

“We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We’ll be reaching out to the customer,” wrote Darcy Donoahoe-Wilmot, from Chase Media Relations.

But on Thursday, Chase issued an apology.

Njoku said that even after he got out of jail, he said was confused and upset. “For a month, two months, I was just down and depressed,” he said.

He’s still happy he bought his house, but sad that his experience with his own bank was so humiliating.

“They treated me like a criminal,” he said.

From http://www.king5.com/news/125105599.html

First plastic processor

admin — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:12:25 +0000

“There’s been a lot of talk lately about developing replacements for silicon; how about a nearly-transparent film of plastic, woven into clothing or affixed directly to equipment? From the article, ‘Researchers in Europe used 4,000 plastic, or organic, transistors to create the plastic microprocessor, which measures roughly two centimeters square and is built on top of flexible plastic foil. … The processor can so far run only one simple program of 16 instructions. The commands are hardcoded into a second foil etched with plastic circuits that can be connected to the processor to “load” the program. This allows the processor to calculate a running average of an incoming signal, something that a chip involved in processing the signal from a sensor might do.’”

from: slashdot.com

Facebook worth 85 billions

admin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:01:33 +0000

Few months back Facebook value was $50 billion and a P/E ratio of 125, much greater than Google and Apple. Its total revenue was $1.86 last year (2010) with a profit of $400 million. At that time we all thought that now Facebook has reached its climax but we all were wrong.

Actually it didn’t go down even a single penny! About ten days back it hits its value of $78 billion based on the sale of a block of shares at SecondMarket. Last auction of Facebook shares by SharesPost revealed that now its Value is $85 billion. And stock price of $35. SharePost recently auctioned off a block of one hundred thousands (100,000) shares for $3.4 million.

from: www.chasingeyes.com

Chris Brown got furious again…

admin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:48:20 +0000

New York — R&B singer Chris Brown stormed off the set of ABC’s “Good Morning America” show after he was interviewed about a 2009 altercation with ex-girlfriend Rihanna, the network said.
Following a Tuesday interview with “GMA” co-anchor Robin Roberts, who mentioned a restraining order that resulted from the incident, Brown left the set and “stared down the producer” responsible for the segment, according to ABC.
The show’s hair and makeup staff allegedly called security moments later after hearing “loud noises coming from Brown’s dressing room,” according to an ABC report.
The show producer later discovered that the thick glass from Brown’s dressing room window had been smashed, ABC said.
A shattered window was visible from outside of the ABC building in Manhattan. The window was replaced later Tuesday.
“As always, we asked questions that are relevant and newsworthy, and that’s what we did in this interview with Mr. Brown,” ABC News said in a written statement.
Chris Brown’s angry outburst?
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After the interview, pegged to the release of his album F.A.M.E., Brown responded on Twitter saying, “This album is for you and only you!!! I’m so tired of everyone else.”
Last month, a Los Angeles County judge lifted the “stay away” order imposed on Brown after he was charged with assaulting Rihanna on the eve of the 2009 Grammy Awards.
Brown was sentenced in August 2009 to serve five years probation and to spend more than 1,400 hours in “labor-oriented service” for the assault conviction.
He was also ordered to complete a 52-week domestic violence program.

from: cnn.com

Syria arrest opposition leader

admin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:24:27 +0000

Syrian authorities arrested a prominent rights leader Tuesday as hundreds of anti-government demonstrators marched in southern parts of the country.
Loay Hussein — a political prisoner from 1984 to 1991 — was taken from his home in the Sehnaya district near the Syrian capital of Damascus, according to the country’s Observatory for Human Rights.
Hussein had been supporting protesters who marched for a sixth straight day, chanting, “The people want to bring down the regime,” a spokesman to the organizers told CNN from the southern city of Daraa.
The organizers are planning a day of mass protests Friday, he added.
Tuesday’s protesters paraded through the Syrian towns of Sanamain and Jassem.
On Monday, protesters marched in Daraa after they buried the body of a protester who was killed Sunday in clashes between anti-government demonstrators and security forces, an eyewitness told CNN.
Sunday’s protests came the same day a delegation from President Bashar al-Assad offered “condolences to the families of the two martyrs who died during the unfortunate events which took place in Daraa on Friday,” according to SANA, the Syrian news agency.
Local tribal leaders have said they rejected a government proposal to bring about calm and have put together a list of demands including asking that the head of the local police and governor of Daraa be held accountable for the civilian casualties since Friday, witnesses said.
The United Nations Human Rights office reported that six people have been killed by security forces in the southern city of Daraa since Friday, calling for an “independent, transparent and effective investigation into these killings.”
“The use of excessive force constitutes a clear violation of international law, which provides for individual criminal responsibility for violations committed,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“People have the legitimate right to express their grievances and demands to their government, and we urge the Syrian government to enter into a broad, meaningful dialogue with the protesters in an attempt to address those grievances,” he said.
Opponents of the al-Assad government allege massive human rights abuses and are calling for political and economic reforms.
Syria is the latest in a string of Arabic-speaking nations beset with discontent.

from: cnn.com

Heart attack, risk spikes after sex

admin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:16:45 +0000

Exercising or having sex just about triples a person’s risk of heart attack in the hours immediately afterward, especially if the person does those activities infrequently, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Heart patients shouldn’t abstain from sex or forgo exercise based on this finding, however. Although a threefold increase in heart-attack risk sounds scary, the overall likelihood of having a heart attack after working out or making love is still very low — on the order of 3 in 1,000,000, as opposed to 1 in 1,000,000.
“Definitely, one should not interpret our findings as meaning that physical activity or sexual activity are dangerous or harmful,” says one of the study’s authors, Issa Dahabreh, M.D., a researcher at Tufts Medical Center’s Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, in Boston, Massachusetts. “The effect at an individual level is small.”
Health.com: Surprising heart attack risks
Moreover, the study participants who were more physically active appeared to be less susceptible to a heart attack following intercourse or a workout.
“People who exercise regularly have a much smaller increase in risk, if any,” Dr. Dahabreh says.
Numerous studies have suggested that physical activity, including sex, can trigger a heart attack or cardiac arrest, but the magnitude of the risk has been unclear. To arrive at an estimate, Dahabreh and his coauthor reanalyzed data from 14 such studies dating back to the 1980s.
All of the studies used a so-called case-crossover design, in which the participants’ activities in the one- to two-hour period leading up to their heart attacks were compared with their usual routines. If physical activity or sex were more common during the pre-heart-attack period than at other times, it would suggest that they triggered the attack.
Health.com: 5 ways to cut your heart attack risk
In the hours after exercising, the researchers found, a person’s risk of heart attack increased about 3.5 times, while his or her risk increased about 2.7 times within two hours of having sex. Physical activity also quintupled the risk of sudden death due to cardiac arrest.
However, the risk of heart attack or cardiac death was reduced by 45% and 30%, respectively, for each additional workout the study participants completed in a typical week.
Although the overall (or absolute) risk of heart attack after sex or exercise is “very, very small,” Dahabreh says, the findings do suggest that sedentary people who want to get in shape should increase their level of physical activity gradually to avoid undue stress on their hearts. (The American Heart Association makes the same recommendation.)
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Geoffrey Tofler, M.D., a professor of preventive cardiology at the University of Sydney Medical School, in Australia, stresses that it is extremely rare for sex or exercise to trigger a heart attack.
“If a healthy 50-year-old person has [a] one-in-a-million chance of having a heart attack in any given hour, tripling the risk will still only make three chances in a million of a heart attack in that hour,” says Tofler, a co-author of one of the analyzed studies whowas not involved in the new research.
The analysis was “conducted very thoroughly” and is close to being the last word on the subject, Tofler adds. The findings should reassure heart patients and their partners, who are often anxious about whether it’s safe to resume sexual activity after a heart attack or heart-disease diagnosis. “In conjunction with a return to regular physical activity, sexual activity carries a minimal risk,” he says.

from: cnn.com

Russian military shots avalanche

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:33:01 +0000

We never realised we wanted to join the Russian military – until we discovered what they do with potential avalanches.

That’s right, they fire massive artillery shells at them…. Boom, and if you will, kapow.

It seems that during the springtime, the snow thaws. Okay, that’s not

that surprising.

What’s slightly more surprising is that springtime – the season of daffodils and bunny rabbits for us Brits – is a bit of a nightmare for the inhabitants of Vladikavkaz, southern Russia, as Lent typically heralds avalanche season.

When the snow melts the avalanches begin their assault. Most often they block the roads – and as there is only one route between Russia and South Ossetia, it’s vitally important to prevent that from happening.

Cue the big guns. The really big guns. As you’ll see from the video below, dozens of shells are blasted up above the Transcaucasian highway to make sure the avalanches don’t land where they’re not meant to.

As far as we’re concerned, the fact that this is all to help clear the road is by-the-by – this is a legitimate reason to lob a huge amount of explosives up a hill… and that’s a good thing to do whenever, really.

Read more: http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/03/22/russian-military-control-avalanches-by-firing-artillery-shells/#ixzz1HMRawplS

from: http://www.asylum.co.uk/

Apple suits Amazon.com

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 03:13:17 +0000

“Apple is suing Amazon.com over the use of Apple’s trademarked App Store name in their mobile software developer program. Apple filed the suit back on March 18th, which detailed the trademark infringement and unfair competition which Apple felt was happening. Apple’s statement in the suit reads: ‘Amazon has begun improperly using Apple’s App Store mark in connection with Amazon’s mobile software developer program.’ Apple also said, ‘We’ve asked Amazon not to copy the App Store name because it will confuse and mislead customers.’”

Apple suits Amazon.com

from: slashdot.com