Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Global Warming Cartoon


Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon issues state of emergency ahead of Ferguson grand jury decision


Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard Monday in advance of a grand jury decision about whether a white police officer will be charged in the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
Nixon said the National Guard would assist state and local police as needed, in case there is civil unrest when the grand jury's decision is announced.
There was no indication an announcement is imminent. There is no specific date for a decision to be revealed about whether Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson should face charges for shooting Michael Brown on Aug. 9. The St. Louis County prosecutor has said that he expects the grand jury to reach a decision in mid-to-late November.
Meanwhile, police officials in Ferguson and other cities across America were bracing Monday for possible violence in the wake of the decision, one day after hundreds of people took to the streets of St. Louis briefly to block a major intersection to protest the death of Brown.
Dozens of protesters could be seen lying down in the street outside of a movie theater hosting a film festival, pretending to be shot in an action intended to evoke the memory of Brown, according to Reuters.
"This is a mature movement. It is a different movement than it was in August. Then it just had anger, justifiable anger," DeRay McKesson, a 29-year-old protest leader, told Reuters.
Both protests Sunday, which marked the 100th day of demonstrations, were peaceful.
Residents and officials in the region fear another wave of rioting if the grand jury decides not to indict Wilson.
"We are bracing for that possibility. That is what many people are expecting. The entire community is going to be upset," said Jose Chavez, 46, a leader of the Latinos en Axion community group.
For some cities, a decision in the racially-charged case will, inevitably, re-ignite long-simmering debates over local police relations within minority communities.
"It's definitely on our radar," said Lt. Michael McCarthy, police spokesman in Boston, where police leaders met privately Wednesday to discuss preparations. "Common sense tells you the timeline is getting close. We're just trying to prepare in case something does step off, so we are ready to go with it."
In Los Angeles, rocked by riots in 1992 after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King, police officials say they've been in touch with their counterparts in Missouri.
"Naturally, we always pay attention," said Commander Andrew Smith, a police spokesman. "We saw what happened when there were protests over there and how oftentimes protests spill from one part of the country to another."
In Las Vegas, police joined pastors and other community leaders this week to call for restraint at a rally tentatively planned northwest of the casino strip when a decision comes.
In Boston, a group called Black Lives Matter, which has chapters in major cities, is organizing a rally in front of the police district office in the Roxbury neighborhood the day after the grand jury's decision.
In Albuquerque, N.M., police are expecting demonstrations after dealing with a string of angry protests following a March police shooting of a homeless camper and more than 40 police shootings since 2010.
Philadelphia police spokesman Lt. John Stanford said he anticipated his city will see demonstrations, regardless of what the grand jury returns.
But big-city police departments stressed they're well-equipped to handle crowds. Many saw large but mostly peaceful demonstrations following the 2013 not-guilty verdict in the case of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman. In New York, hundreds of protesters marched from Union Square north to Times Square, where a sit-in caused gridlock.
The New York Police Department, the largest in the nation, is "trained to move swiftly and handle events as they come up," spokesman Stephen Davis said.
In Boston, McCarthy said the city's 2,200 sworn police officers have dealt with the range of public actions, from sports fans spontaneously streaming into the streets following championship victories to protest movements like Occupy.
"The good thing is that our relationships here with the community are much better than they are around the world," he said. "People look to us as a model. Boston is not Ferguson."

GAO finds federal health websites not giving Medicare patients enough information



 A congressional investigation has found that federal websites meant to inform Medicare patients about healthcare costs and quality are failing in their mission. 
A report to be released this week by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) find that Medicare lacks clear procedures for getting useful information to consumers.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press before its public release, finds "critical weaknesses" in five consumer-information websites run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that seek to inform how well hospitals, nursing homes, physicians and other Medicare providers are doing.
The GAO said a confusing layout, data gaps and lack of customized information make it virtually impossible for consumers to get the information they need and won't be fixed anytime soon, even as the federal government plans new websites on the quality of hospice, inpatient rehabilitation and long-term care.
It is the latest report to detail problems in the government's health care websites. The Obama administration has already grappled with the technology meltdown experienced last year by HealthCare.gov as well as glitches in the Sept. 30 rollout of data on payments doctors receive from drug companies.
"The GAO report reveals that there is a need to empower patients with better information on health care price and quality," said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., home to the nation's fourth-largest share of residents 65 and older, at roughly 1 in 7. Only Florida, West Virginia and Maine have higher percentages of seniors.
"Armed with the facts, it will be possible for consumers to obtain high quality care and drive down costs," he said.
The GAO cautioned that due to a lack of clear policies or performance measures, CMS will likely continue to have "limited effectiveness in conveying relevant and understandable information on cost and quality to consumers."
It cited a growing need for the information due to rising health care costs.
Jim Esquea, an assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, concurred with the recommendations. He wrote that CMS, an agency of HHS, was planning to expand its star ratings, already in use on its "Nursing Home Compare" website.
He also said HHS was committed to providing detail on estimated out-of-pocket costs "to the extent feasible" and had developed many internal procedures, although GAO said it had found no evidence that was the case.
In the study, GAO compared data on CMS' websites with that of third-party vendors providing similar information on gallbladder surgery, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, of the lower back and maternity care. They also examined documents and interviewed company and government officials and experts on best practices.
In all, the audit found wide variation in charges for the same medical procedures in the same geographic area regardless of quality — information it said was not readily available on the CMS sites. Esquea said there were challenges in providing cost information.
In addition, the CMS sites often lacked critical data on quality of care, such as patient-reported outcomes on common procedures such as a colonoscopy, according to the report. In interviews with the GAO, CMS officials said they plan to add patient-reported outcomes on a number of medical procedures.
The investigators cited a likelihood of continuing problems despite the government's 2011 pledge under the Affordable Care Act to provide consumers complete and understandable information. While CMS has said it will make improvements, GAO pointed to limitations due in part to resistance from medical providers.
In recent months, the American Medical Association has opposed Medicare's release of billing records for 880,000 physicians, citing the danger of data being reported inaccurately or taken out of context; much of that information was eventually released.
"People deserve to know information on the cost and quality of the health care services they need," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of the lawmakers who requested the report. "The new GAO study makes important recommendations on how to better empower consumers, and I look forward to working with this bipartisan group of senators to establish more transparency."

Obama orders full review of US hostage policy


President Obama has ordered a complete review of the government's policy regarding U.S. hostages taken overseas, the White House confirmed to Fox News late Monday. 
National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Alistair Baskey said the review was ordered over the summer in response to what he called "of the increasing number of U.S. citizens taken hostage by terrorist groups overseas and the extraordinary nature of recent hostage cases."
The review, which was first reported by The Daily Beast, became public one day after the White House confirmed that American aid worker and former Army Ranger Peter Kassig had been beheaded by ISIS in Syria. The terror group had posted a video claiming that it had beheaded Kassig to various social media sites early Sunday. Kassig is the third American to be beheaded by ISIS since August. The group is also holding an American woman, a 26-year-old aid worker whose identity has not been revealed by U.S. officials out of concern for her safety. 
The Daily Beast quoted a letter written last week by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., as saying that the review will include "specific emphasis on examining family engagement, intelligence collection, and diplomatic engagement policies."
The beheadings have sparked a fresh debate over the U.S. government's policy of not paying ransom to terror groups. The parents and brother of journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS in August, told Fox News in September that government officials had told them that they could face prosecution if they attempted to negotiate a ransom. U.S. law prohibits American citizens from paying money to terror groups. 
However, an October article in Foreign Policy magazine reported that U.S. efforts to free hostages held in Syria had become bogged down amid general confusion as to the exact policies of the U.S. government on issues such as ransom payments. 
"No one's really in charge," one person involved in negotiations told the magazine. The article also reported that U.S. officials had acknowledged that family members of hostages, such as the Foleys, had not received frequent enough updates on what the government was doing to free their loved ones. In addition, a lack of actionable intelligence about ISIS activities in Syria has also been deemed responsible for undercutting U.S. efforts. 
According to Foreign Policy, the debate over ransom payments pits the White House, NSC, and State Department against the Justice Department and the FBI. The former entities believe that paying ransoms to terror groups would encourage more kidnappings of Americans abroad. By contrast, the latter offices believe that the issue of whether to pay ransom should be made on a case-by-case basis, and reportedly are willing to aid families if they believe that paying up represents the best method to ensure the hostages' freedom. 
A U.S. policy on hostage negotiations signed by President Bush in 2002 states that ransoms can be paid if officials believe doing so would help gain intelligence about terror groups, but can not be paid for the sole purpose of freeing an American.

'Cruel murder': Terror attack on Jerusalem synagogue kills four, injures six


Four worshippers at a Jerusalem synagogue were killed and six were wounded Tuesday when two Palestinians armed with meat cleavers and a gun stormed the building and began attacking people before they were killed in a shootout with police. 
The attack in the ultra-Orthodox Har Nof neighborhood in the western part of Jerusalem, was the deadliest in Israel's capital since 2008, when a Palestinian gunman shot eight people in a religious seminary school. 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel will "respond harshly" to the attack, which he denounced as a "cruel murder of Jews who came to pray and were killed by despicable murderers." U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he spoke to Netanyahu after the assault and denounced it as an "act of pure terror and senseless brutality and violence."
Kerry blamed the attack on Palestinian calls for "days of rage," and said Palestinian leaders must take serious steps to refrain from such incitement. He also urged Palestinian leaders to condemn the attack "in the most powerful terms."
Hours after Kerry spoke, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, the first time he has done so since a recent spike in deadly violence against Israelis began. He also called for an end to Israeli "provocations" surrounding the sacred site.
In a statement, Abbas' office said he "condemns the killing of the worshippers in a synagogue in west Jerusalem." The statement called for an end to the "invasion" of the mosque at a contested holy site in the city and a halt to "incitement" by Israeli ministers.
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the attackers were cousins from east Jerusalem, which has been the scene of relentless clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in recent months. She identified the assailants as Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal from the Jabal Mukaber neighborhood.
Soon after the attack, clashes broke out outside the Abu Jamals' home where dozens of police had gathered to carry out arrests in connection with the attack. Residents hurled stones at police who responded using riot dispersal weapons.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group, said the cousins were its members. A PFLP statement did not specify whether the group instructed the cousins to carry out the attack.
Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, praised the attack as retaliation for what it claimed was the murder of a Palestinian bus driver who was found hanged in his vehicle late Sunday. Israeli police, citing autopsy results, have classified the man's death as a suicide, but that has not been accepted by the man's family. 
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said two police officers were among the six wounded, four of whom were reported in serious condition. He said police were searching the area for other suspects.
Associated Press footage from the scene showed the synagogue surrounded by police and rescue workers following the attack.  Wounded worshippers were being assisted by paramedics and a bloodied meat cleaver lay near the scene of the attack. Initially, police had described the weapons used as knives and axes.
The Times of Israel cited witnesses who said the two men shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the attack and entered the synagogue without their faces covered. 
"I tried to escape. The man with the knife approached me. There was a chair and table between us ... my prayer shawl got caught. I left it there and escaped," a man who identified himself as Yossi, who was praying at the synagogue at the time of the attack, told Israeli Channel 2 TV. He declined to give his last name.
Another witness, identified only as Zohar described panic at the scene.
"I heard shooting and one of the worshipers came out covered in blood and shouted 'There’s a massacre,'" he told The Times of Israel. 
A photo in Israeli media from inside the synagogue showed what appeared to be a body on the floor draped in a prayer shawl, with blood spattered nearby.
Jerusalem has seen a spate of attacks by Palestinians against Israelis, most of which have involved cars being driven into pedestrians. At least six people had been killed in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Tel Aviv prior to Tuesday.
Jerusalem residents have already been fearful of what appeared to be lone wolf attacks, but Tuesday's early morning attack on a synagogue harkens back to the gruesome attacks during the Palestinian uprising of the last decade.
Israel's police chief said Tuesday's attack was likely not organized by militant groups, similar to other recent incidents, making it more difficult for security forces to prevent the violence.
"These are individuals that decide to do horrible acts. It's very hard to know ahead of time about every such incident," Yohanan Danino told reporters at the scene.
Tensions appeared to have been somewhat defused last week following a meeting between Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordan's King Abdullah II in Jordan. The meeting was an attempt to restore calm after months of violent confrontations, with Israel and the Palestinians saying they would take steps to reduce tensions that might lead to an escalation.
The Jerusalem holy site is referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount because of the Jewish temples that stood there in biblical times. It is the most sacred place in Judaism; Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The site is so holy that Jews have traditionally refrained from going there, instead praying at the adjacent Western Wall. Israel's chief rabbis have urged people not to ascend to the area, but in recent years, a small but growing number of Jews, including ultranationalist lawmakers, have begun regularly visiting the site.

CartoonsTrashyDemsRinos