WWH/CJE Friday News Briefs
Gasoline Runs Short, Adding Woes to Storm Recovery
UNION, N.J. — Widespread gas shortages stirred fears among residents and disrupted some rescue and emergency services on Thursday as the New York region struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.
Tiny increments of progress — some subway and bus lines were back in service — were overshadowed by new estimates of the storm’s financial cost, struggles to restore power, and by the discovery of more bodies in flooded communities.
The lines of cars waiting for gas at a Sunoco here ran in three directions: a mile-long line up the Garden State Parkway, a half-mile line along Vauxhall Road, and another, including a fleet of mail trucks that needed to refuel before resuming their rounds, snaking through a back entrance. The scene was being replayed across the state as drivers waited in lines that ran hundreds of vehicles deep, requiring state troopers and local police to protect against exploding tempers. More…
EX-PENN ST. PRESIDENT CHARGED IN SANDUSKY CASE
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The “conspiracy of silence” that protected Jerry Sandusky extended all the way to the top at Penn State, prosecutors said Thursday as they charged former university President Graham Spanier with hushing up child sexual abuse allegations against the former assistant football coach.
Prosecutors also added counts against two of Spanier’s former underlings, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who were already charged with lying to a grand jury.
“This was not a mistake by these men. This was not an oversight. It was not misjudgment on their part,” said state Attorney General Linda Kelly. “This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials to actively conceal the truth.”
Spanier’s lawyers issued a statement that asserted his innocence and described the new charges as an attempt by Gov. Tom Corbett to divert attention from the three-year investigation that began under his watch as attorney general.
“These charges are the work of a vindictive and politically motivated governor working through an unelected attorney general … whom he appointed to do his bidding,” the four defense lawyers wrote. More…
Video purports to show rebels’ atrocities
US made weapons!
DAMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 2 (UPI) — A video on the Internet purportedly shows anti-government fighters in Syria executing prisoners, which is evidence of a war crime, human rights activists say.
The video, which couldn’t be independently verified, attracted the attention of Amnesty International and other rights groups that say it is another instance that both sides in the Syrian conflict were committing atrocities, The New York Times reported Thursday.
In the video, 10 prisoners are shown being forced to lie either next to or on top of each other inside a building. Their captors, anti-government fighters who cannot be identified, are yelling “Allah Akhbar!” (“God is great!”) while kicking the prisoners and corralling them into one area before opening fire.
More…
U.S. officials: CIA ran Benghazi consulate
Told you so… Hillary in 2016?
Wikileaks documented that the CIA and The State Department, run by Hillary are one in the same. Remember the body fluid collection at the UN?
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (UPI) — The CIA was the real commanding agency at the attacked U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, not the State Department, senior U.S. intelligence officials said.
In addition, two of the four men who died in the Sept. 11 attack — former Navy SEAL commandos Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty — were actually CIA contractors killed defending the mission, not State Department contract security officers, as originally publicly identified, the officials told several news organizations on condition of anonymity.
Also killed in the attack were U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.
The intelligence officials said that within 25 minutes of being alerted to the attack in a desperate phone call, the CIA rushed a half-dozen security operatives to the mission from a secret base about a mile away. More…
Suit: Officer shot boy, 10, with stun gun
What’s the big deal? In a Lawless America, this in not so rare. What is rare is the Media reporting it. When will the citizenry realize it’s not assault when officers do it. It’s Safety. That little bastard was a threat. You got a problem with that?
TULAROSA, N.M., Nov. 1 (UPI) — A New Mexico 10-year-old is suing police after he was allegedly shocked with a stun gun during a career fair.
The Tularosa boy’s lawsuit against the New Mexico Department of Public Safety alleges Motor Transportation Police Officer Christopher Webb shot the boy with a stun gun after the youngster made a joke about the officer, KRQE-TV, Albuquerque, reported Thursday.
“Let me show you what happens to people who do not listen to the police,” Webb allegedly said before firing the weapon, which caused the boy to black out, the Albuquerque Journal reported. More…
Tax study withdrawn after GOP complaints
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (UPI) — Congressional researchers pulled a report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth after Republican complaints about the study.
The non-partisan Congressional Research Service withdrew the report Sept. 28, two weeks after it was issued. The decision to withdraw the report was made against the advice of the service’s top economics specialists, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The withdrawal came after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans complained about the tone and methodology of the report — which challenges the assertion that reducing top marginal tax rates promotes growth and job creation, the Times said.
Corrupt Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — who referred to the report in a speech more than a week after the CRS withdrew it — said the decision to withdraw it under political pressure “has hues of a banana republic.” More…
Nations fail to agree plan to protect seas around Antarctica
(Reuters) – Major nations failed to reach agreement on Thursday to set up huge marine protected areas off Antarctica under a plan to step up conservation of creatures such as whales and penguins around the frozen continent.
The 25-member Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) agreed, however, to hold a special session in Germany in July 2013 to try to break the deadlock after the October 8-November 1 meeting in Hobart, Australia.
Environmentalists criticized the failure to agree new marine protected areas in the Ross Sea and off East Antarctica, home to penguins, seals, whales and seabirds as well as valuable stocks of shrimp-like krill.
“We’re deeply disappointed,” Steve Campbell of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance, grouping conservation organizations, told Reuters at the end of the CCAMLR annual meeting. He said that most resistance had come from Ukraine, Russia and China. More…
