Town leaders in a small western Idaho city intend to post donated street signs to let visitors know where they stand on gun control.
Greenleaf, population 846, doesn’t maintain a police force of its own but did in 2006 pass a citywide resolution asking that each household acquire a gun and ammunition and seek training in the use of firearms. Now a city leader and area businesses have purchased five street signs advertising the city is not a gun free zone.
“Myself, as a city councilman, and apparently the rest of the City Council agrees that gun-free zones are targets,” said City Councilman Steven Jett. “If you look at the shootings that have happened, they are gun-free zones. Schools, malls and recently churches. I want people to know that this is not a gun-free zone, and we are not a target.”
The council is waiting for input from the Idaho Transportation Department before erecting the signage. While the state has the signs under consideration, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican with a history of introducing pro-gun legislation in Washington, visited a Greenleaf town meeting and expressed his support for the message behind the signs.
Originally founded by pacifist Quakers who named the settlement for noted abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, the city responded to the national fallout from Hurricane Katrina with its encouragement to maintain firearms. Besides guns, the city asks all residents to maintain emergency stockpiles of food and water. The city not only talks the talk but walks the walk, by offering gun safety and hunters safety courses at City Hall for area residents.
The law is based on a similar one adopted by Kennesaw, Ga., in 1982 that requires all homeowners to own and maintain a firearm.
A former papal ambassador accused of sexually abusing minors has been hospitalized in an intensive care unit — pushing back his trial once set to start Saturday in Vatican City.
Jozef Wesolowski, 66, was under house arrest in Vatican City when he fell sick Friday night and was rushed to a public hospital.
A judge subsequently held a short hearing and adjourned Wesolowski’s trial to a yet undetermined date, the Vatican Press Office said. It did not provide any details on his condition.
Wesolowski, 66, is the highest-ranking former Vatican official arrested for alleged sexual abuse of minors. He is also the first tried on such charges at the Vatican.
The Earth could be headed for a ‘mini ice age’ researchers have warned.
A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.
This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.
The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.
It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.
Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.
The model predicts that the pair of waves become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022.
During Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch and this will cause a significant reduction in solar activity.
‘In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun,’ said Zharkova.
‘Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other.
‘We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder minimum”
Goldman Sachs faces the prospect of potential legal action from Greece over the complex financial deals in 2001 that many blame for its subsequent debt crisis.
A leading adviser to debt-riven countries has offered to help Athens recover some of the vast profits made by the investment bank.
The Independent has learnt that a former Goldman banker, who has advised indebted governments on recovering losses made from complex transactions with banks, has written to the Greek government to advise that it has a chance of clawing back some of the hundreds of millions of dollars it paid Goldman to secure its position in the single currency.
A health insurance company will refund roughly $1.7 million to Montana customers who have been forced to pay what the state calls unfairly high prices.
Wisconsin-based Assurant Health finalized a settlement with the state this week agreeing to pay the restitution and a $25,000 fine.
An investigation by Montana’s Insurance Commissioner found Assurant charged lower prices for healthy customers and higher prices for about 1,600 sicker customers with the same coverage.
State law prohibits health insurance companies from imposing higher prices based on any factor other than age.
“Our allegation is that they discriminated against people who were in poor health,” said Jesse Laslovich, deputy state auditor.
The commissioner’s office found Assurant subsidiaries John Alden Life Insurance Co. and Time Insurance Co. offered a “healthy discount” of 10 percent off premiums to Montana policyholders who claimed less than $500 the previous year and completed a questionnaire.
“That $1.7 million, that represents the amount that the other people who didn’t get the discounts should have gotten,” Laslovich said. “These folks don’t know they’re getting a check in the mail, so that’s something we’re excited about.”[..]
The company announced in April that it will be leaving the national health insurance market amid declining revenue. Montana customers were notified last month.
Assurant Health’s profit began dropping when the Affordable Care Act was implemented in 2010. The company attributed its projected first-quarter losses of $80 million to $90 million to higher customer claims under the ACA and a reduction in what Assurant could recover through the health law’s risk mitigation programs.
When the troops land in Texas for Operation Jade Helm next week, someone will be waiting for them.
Hundreds of people have organized a “Counter Jade Helm” surveillance operation across the Southwestern states and in an effort to keep an eye on the contentious military drill that’s sparked many suspicious of Uncle Sam’s intentions.
Eric Johnston, a 51-year-old retired firefighter and sheriff’s deputy who lives in Kerrville, is a surveillance team leader in Texas. He’ll coordinate three groups of volunteers, about 20 folks in total, who hope to monitor the SEALs, Green Berets and Air Force Special Ops in Bastrop, Big Spring and Junction when Jade Helm kicks off on July 15.
With media prohibited at the drills, the volunteers could be a main source of information for the highly-anticipate seven-state exercise.
Alan Grayson entered Florida’s 2016 U.S. Senate race Thursday, casting himself as a sick child from the tenements in the Bronx who made it, first at Harvard then as a lawyer fighting war profiteers and now a champion of everyday people in Congress.
I’m Congressman Alan Grayson, and I would like to explain why I’m now a candidate for the U.S. Senate,” the Orlando Democrat says in a video, the script of which was first provided to the Tampa Bay Times.
The move sets up a fierce battle among the Democratic Party’s liberal activists, which Grayson will rely on, and the establishment that has coalesced behind U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Palm Beach County.
Murphy has racked up endorsements statewide, and on Wednesday announced he had raised $1.4 million in the second quarter. But Grayson contends that Florida voters will rally behind a more forceful voice, and he can raise money.
“In 2012, and again in 2014, I was the only member of the House of Representatives who raised most of his campaign funds from small donors — not lobbyists, or special interests, or millionaires, or multinational corporations,” Grayson says in the video. “I don’t work for them; I work for you. I am unbought, and unbossed.”
The NOPD confirms they questioned veteran Officer Jeardine Daniels-Sparks as part of the investigation into how accused cop killer Travis Boys escaped police custody. Now, an exclusive Fox 8 investigation uncovers troubling information about her past.
We obtained Officer Sparks personnel file and information about her Public Integrity Bureau record. According to her file, on May 16th, 2001, the NOPD recommended she be suspended for 85 days for being untruthful, abusing her position and testifying on behalf of a defendant. That defendant was her son.
NOPD documents say Sparks appeared in court twice while off duty and in full uniform on behalf of her son which was against department regulations. She was also cited for using rude, profane language in court and ignored a judge’s instructions.
An administrative investigative report says Sparks was untruthful on numerous occasions by indicating she had a subpoena for that court date when the investigation revealed she didn’t. The report also says Sparks denied that she asked a deputy to give her son a summons instead of arresting him even though witnesses reportedly overheard that conversation.
“Well, obviously from the initial suspension that was rendered it was considered extremely serious because the allegations not only involved the use of inappropriate language before the public, but professionalism and untruthfulness,” said Rafael Goyeneche with the Metropolitan Crime Commission. “When you get to an untruthful element or as an administrative rule if an officer can’t be trusted to tell the truth in an administrative than they can’t be trusted to be a police officer. ”
Sources told Fox 8 that Officer Sparks’ son may be an acquaintance of accused cop killer Travis Boys. A home owned by Officer Sparks near where Officer Daryle Holloway was murdered may have been used by Boys to cut of his handcuffs and change clothes prior to his capture.
Police records obtained by Fox 8 show Sparks is now being investigated by the department’s Public Integrity Bureau for failing to take appropriate and necessary police action as well as failing to thoroughly search for, collect, preserve and identify evidence in an arrest or investigative situation. While those neglect of duty allegations don’t specify whether they’re connected to the Boys case. The date specified on the investigation is June 24th, 2015, just for days after Police say Boys killed Holloway and escaped.
A thunderous blast heavily damaged the Italian Consulate in Cairo and killed one person early Saturday, an attack that appeared to deviate from a pattern of strikes by Islamic militants against Egyptian military and security installations.
It was not immediately clear whether the explosion was meant to harm diplomatic personnel or merely embarrass Egypt’s security establishment. The powerful detonation took place soon after dawn on a weekend day; the consulate was closed at the time, and relatively few people were out on nearby streets.
Thousands of Hispanic leaders from across the country are coming to Kansas City Friday.
Over the next five days they will attend attend a conference sponsored by the National Council of La Raza at Bartle Hall, this national group intends to promote the positive aspects of the Latino culture while providing valuable resources to Hispanic leaders.
Some of the conference is open to the public. There will be free health screenings and a family expo. It is expected to attract more than 40,000 people to downtown Kansas City.
Democratic presidential candidates Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will fly to town Monday to speak at the conference.
Organizers say they invited all of the Republican presidential candidates to the conference, but they all declined to attend. La Raza officials believe one reason might be because immigration is such a hotbed issue.
While many Republicans want to deport all illegal immigrants, La Raza supports helping those who have lived here for years to become legal citizens, which is something they hope to address with their constituents this week.
“It’s an opportunity for us to hear what’s going on in our community, working with those other agencies that our affiliates of NCLR to talk about issues like education, health care, workforce development, housing and of course, immigration is a big topic right now and one we pay close attention to,” Enrique Chaurandwith the National Council of La Raza said.
The question is not whether Iran can be trusted to uphold the nuclear deal now being negotiated in Vienna (it can’t), but whether the Obama administration and its P5+1 partners can be trusted to punish Iran when it violates the agreement?
Experience shows that unless Iran violates the deal egregiously, the temptation will be to ignore it. For instance, Iran got away with selling more oil than it should have under the interim agreement. More ominously, Tehran repeatedly pushed the envelope on technical aspects of the agreement—such as caps on its uranium stockpile—and got away with it. The Obama administration and other Western powers have so much invested in their diplomatic efforts that they’ll deny such violations ever occurred.
More evidence of Iranian violations has now surfaced. Two reports regarding Iran’s attempts to illicitly and clandestinely procure technology for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs have recently been published. They show that Iran’s procurement continues apace, if not faster than before the Joint Plan of Action was signed in November 2013. But fear of potentially embarrassing negotiators and derailing negotiations has made some states reluctant to report Tehran’s illegal efforts. If these countries have hesitated to expose Iran during the negotiations, it is more likely they will refrain from reporting after a deal is struck.
The head of Jackson County’s NAACP wants Mississippi to adopt a new flag. And Curley Clark says he’ll ask for the national NAACP’s support to change the current Mississippi flag.
On Saturday, Clark will be in Philadelphia at the NAACP National Convention. During that meeting, he’ll request the NAACP’s assistance to work with Mississippi lawmakers on a plan to remove the confederate battle symbol from the state flag. “It is time to have the divisive Confederate symbol re-moved from our state flag and replaced with a symbol that all Mississippians can embrace”, Clark said.
Mississippi’s two U.S. Senators have both said in recent weeks they believe it’s time for Mississippi to approve a new flag.
One person who’s against that idea is Rep. Steven Palazzo. On his Facebook page, Palazzo posted this comment Friday, “They’ve tried to take our guns. They’ve tried to take our flag. They’re trying to take our freedom. We will not let them. We will fight. And we will win.”
David Thul served 22 years with the Minnesota National Guard, and even though he was a dedicated and loyal service member, Thul — like any employee and employer — had some frustrations with the military. After a stint in Kosovo in 2003 and deployment to Iraq from 2005 to 2007, Thul retired last year, thinking those work-related annoyances were behind him.
In June, he received a letter from the federal Office of Personnel Management, informing him that his information was among millions of records stored in a hacked government database, and he would receive 18 months of free credit monitoring to help him identify any fraud that may arise from the compromised information.
After a seven-time felon and five-time deportee from Mexico apparently shot and killed a California woman at random last week, the nation’s long-standing partisan divides over immigration and deportation policies took a sudden and unexpected twist.
Before the shooting, liberal-leaning states and cities had been moving to take the reins of immigration reform, legal experts say, even as such efforts stalled in a rancorously divided Congress.
From expanded access to driver’s licenses, new forms of municipal IDs, as well as expanded access to education and health services, many liberal states and local jurisdictions were working to integrate more of the nation’s 11.7 million undocumented workers into the fabric of American life with a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to public services. […]
But the case of Francisco Lopez-Sanchez is promising to bring this momentum of progressive immigration reform, at the local level, to a dramatic halt.
Mr. Lopez-Sanchez, who was released by the San Francisco sheriff’s office even though it had received a “detainer” request from ICE agents, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to what police described as a random shooting of Kathryn Steinle as she walked with her father on a popular San Francisco pier.
Take Action:Who is working to stop the trafficking of people, especially children and women around the world, both as slaves and sex workers?
Indeed, many Republicans have begun to pounce on the logic of sanctuary laws, saying the case illustrates the dangers posed by such resistance to deportations. And many this week are calling for these jurisdictions to be stripped of federal funds.
This week, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) of California is planning to reintroduce legislation to penalize sanctuary cities like San Francisco that do not assist federal authorities with deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Violent crime is nearly unheard of in the villages snuggled between rolling meadows and medieval castles of Germany’s northern Bavaria. So, on Friday, when a gunman in a convertible allegedly shot two people dead in a drive-by shooting spree, jaws dropped.
“In a town with 5,500 residents, where we’ve always lived in tranquillity, we only know situations like this from television shows,” Siegfried Hess, mayor of Leutershausen told regional news site nordbayern.de.
Police apprehended the gunman but not before he fired upon or threatened at least four people with his gun, Middle Franconia Police said.
The man accused of killing nine people in a historically black church in South Carolina last month should not have been able to buy the gun he used in the attack, the F.B.I. said Friday, in what was the latest acknowledgment of flaws in the national background check system.
A loophole in the system and an error by the F.B.I. allowed the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite having previously admitted to drug possession, officials said.
Pope Francis on Thursday launched a blistering attack on the “new colonialism” of austerity, describing unfettered capitalism as “the dung of the devil” and apologising for the Catholic church’s role in the conquest of indigenous populations in the Americas.
He delivered a powerful mea culpa on the part of the church in the highlight of his South American pilgrimage, “humbly” begging forgiveness during an encounter in Bolivia with indigenous groups and other activists and in the presence of Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president, Evo Morales.
