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Showing posts with label U.S.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S.. Show all posts
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Newton, Connecticut Shooting: Decembre 14th 2012
At 9:30 AM (ET) Friday, Dec 14th 2012, the Newton Police Department received a 911 call informing them that there was an incident going on at the local elementary school, Sandy Hook.
Quickly, the news broke nation-wide in the U.S., and world-wide not long after that.
What we know is this:
Adam Lanza, aged 20, shot his mother (a teacher at Sandy Hook) in her home before proceeding to the elementary school where he fired over a hundred rounds, randomly shooting twenty-seven people in two classrooms in one section of the school.
Eighteen children, between ages five and ten, died on-site. Two more children in the same age group died from their injuries in the hospital. Six adults, including the principal (who had run to the classrooms presumably to help the kids) and (unconfirmed) the school psychologist, were also killed on-site. Another, reportedly female employee, is still in hospital, but in stable condition.
The gunman perished either by his own hand or by police fire, it is unclear, as is the motive of Lanza.
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| Obama fights back tears as he addresses the nation. |
President Obama was briefed and later gave this speech, stating so rightly that "our hearts are broken", and "As a country we have been through this too many times".:
Now, what does this unspeakable tragedy mean? Should we now, after having for so long ignored it, open the discussion on stricter gun control laws, especially in the U.S.? I believe so.
On Twitter, the debate raged on almost immediately:
@The_Regionrat: "We can't limit the psychos in the world, but we can limit what they have access to."
@Cath J "After the #Aurora shooting, it wasn't the time or place to have #guncontrol discussions... How about now? Or do more innocents have to die? #ct"
@Cath J "#GunControlNow It is obviously time for a change. The right to live is bigger than the *privilege* to bear arms. #ctschoolshooting"
@Cath J "The tipping point has come and gone in this #guncontrol debate. People need to wake up and realize that more guns does not = better! #pnpcbc"
“Hours after (CT) kindergarten shooting, Michigan GOP calls for allowing guns in schoolshttp://thkpr.gs/UYhj2o ” And the NRA featured (briefly) this picture on their Facebook page after the shooting.
@MissKellyO: "Its disgusting that ppl even have access to guns at all! #GunLaws should be stricter! In this day & age things like this should not happen!"
Two tweets seemed to sum everything up:
@DamianKindler: "Just completely devastated. Gun control. Now. For the love of humanity."
@oliviawilde: "It is possible to grieve and take action on the same day. Remove the selfishness from anger and you're left with determination."
There were also some online essays about gun control.
Now, how can we talk about this? One must be aware of certain facts when thinking about opting for stricter gun control laws, keeping in mind the multiple deadliest shootings in U.S. history: And you should perhaps contact your representative and tell them that this is enough!
There is also a Facebook page for the young victims.
Catherine Pelletier, Catherine's Encyclopaedia.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Record Mega Millions numbers: 2-4-23-38-46, MB 23
"CHICAGO (AP) - Across the country, Americans plunked down an estimated $1.5 billion on the longest of long shots: an infinitesimally small chance to win what could end up being the single biggest lottery payout the world has ever seen.
The numbers drawn Friday night in Atlanta were 2-4-23-38-46, Mega Ball 23. Lottery officials expected to release details about possible winners a couple of hours after the 11 p.m. Eastern drawing.
Forget about how the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot could change the life of the winner. It's a collective wager that could fund a presidential campaign several times over, make a dent in struggling state budgets or take away the gas worries and grocery bills for thousands of middle-class citizens.
And it's a cheap investment for the chance of a big reward, no matter how long the odds - 1 in 176 million.
"Twenty to thirty dollars won't hurt," said Elvira Bakken of Las Vegas. "I think it just gives us a chance of maybe winning our dream."
So what exactly would happen if the country spent that $1.5 billion on something other than a distant dream?
For starters, it could cure the everyday worries of hundreds of thousands of American families hit by the Great Recession. It costs an average of $6,129 to feed the typical family for a year - meaning the cash spent on tickets could fill up the plates of 238,000 households.
As gas prices climb faster than stations can change the numbers on the signs, the money spent on tickets could fill the tanks of 685,000 households annually.
Or it could play politics. So far in this campaign, Republicans and President Barack Obama have spent $348.5 million. The amount spent on Mega Millions tickets could cover that tab four times over.
Could the money dig governments out of debt? That's a problem that even staggering ticket sales can't solve. It could trim this year's expected $1.3 trillion federal deficit by just over a tenth of 1 percent. In Illinois, the money would disappear just as fast into that state's $8 billion deficit.
On a personal level, that much money staggers. Giving $1.46 billion to a broker could purchase 2.4 million shares of Apple stock. (It would also be enough to buy about 2.4 million iPads at the starting price of $499. That's almost as many as the 3 million new iPads that Apple has already sold.)
Or consider the whimsical: A family of up to 12 could live for more than a century at Musha Cay, magician David Copperfield's $37,000-a-night private island resort in the Exuma Cays of the Caribbean.
For a more celestial vacation, the nearly $1.5 billion wagered could purchase about 7,300 tourist tickets for a ride into space aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. And it would pay for 26 rides for U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
It would even buy a stake in pop culture. Want to influence the next winner of American Idol? If it costs a quarter to text in a vote to Ryan Seacrest, and it takes 122 million votes to win as it did last season, the money could control the outcome of the next 47 seasons.
For the states that participate, the money spent on lotto tickets is hardly a waste. It doesn't all end up as the winner's personal fortune - much of it is used by states to fund education and other social service programs, which is why advocates promote the lottery.
Though the specifics vary among the 42 participating states and the District of Columbia, only about half of ticket sales go into the actual jackpot. Another 35 percent goes to support government services and programs, while the rest funds lottery operating costs.
On Friday, the lottery estimated that total ticket sales for this jackpot, which has been building up since Jan. 28, will be about $1.46 billion, said Kelly Cripe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Lottery Commission.
You're about 20,000 times more likely to die in a car crash than win the lottery, but that doesn't matter to most people.
"Part of it is hope. ... The average person basically has no chance of making it really big, and buying a lottery ticket is a way of raising the ceiling on what could possibly happen to you, however unlikely it may be," said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied how rich and poor consumers make a choice to buy lottery tickets.
The odds are much better that someone will begin their weekend a winner. Aaron Abrams, a mathematician at Emory University, said he calculated that there was only a 6 percent chance that no one would hold the winning numbers.
"Every time the jackpot gets higher, more and more people buy tickets, which makes it more and more likely that someone will win," Abrams said. "So the chance that it rolls over this many times in a row is very small. It's quite a rare event."
The estimated jackpot dwarfs the previous $390 million record, which was split in 2007 by two winners who bought tickets in Georgia and New Jersey.
The rarity of Friday's jackpot was fueling the fervor. Lines formed at grocery stores, gas stations, liquor stops and other venues across the country.
In Arizona, a café worker reported selling $2,600 worth of tickets to one buyer. In Indiana, hundreds lined up for a giveaway of free tickets. Hundreds from Utah and Las Vegas streamed in to neighboring California or Arizona to buy tickets because their states don't participate.
Accountant Ray Lousteau, who bought 55 Mega Millions tickets Friday in New Orleans, knows buying that many tickets doesn't mathematically increase his odds, and that his $55 could have gone elsewhere. He spent it anyway.
"Mathematically, it doesn't make a difference, and intellectually we know that. But for some reason buying more tickets makes you feel more lucky," Lousteau said. "Even people who know better are apt to feel that way."
In Chicago, Peter Muiznieks bought a ticket at a liquor store. He knows his chance of winning is a long shot, and that the money the country is spending on tickets could go elsewhere. He still couldn't help himself, and laughed as the apparent contradiction of his opinion and his actions.
"Lottery and games of chance are a stupidity tax and the more we all buy into this, the less rational we are as a society," he said." - Noreen Gillespie and Paul Wiseman, Associated Press.
U.S. to sue Apple and ci for prices of eBooks
"WASHINGTON (AP) - The government says avid best-seller readers who use electronic books have been getting ripped off. Tina Fey's "Bossy Pants," Tim Tebow's "Through My Eyes" and Keith Richards' "'Life" - maybe they should have cost less.
The Justice Department and 15 states sued Apple Inc. and major book publishers Wednesday, alleging a conspiracy that raised the price of electronic books. They said the scheme cost consumers more than $100 million in the past two years by adding $2 or $3, sometimes as much as $5, to the price of each e-book.
If there was price fixing, even the e-book version of the hot-selling Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, the late genius behind Apple computers, may have cost too much.
Attorney General Eric Holder said executives at the highest levels of the companies conspired to eliminate competition among e-book sellers. Justice's antitrust chief, Sharis Pozen, said the executives were desperate to get Amazon.com - the marketer of Kindle e-book readers - to raise the $9.99 price point it had set for the most popular e-book titles, because that was substantially below their hardcover prices.
The federal government reached a settlement with three of the publishers, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Shuster. But it will proceed with its lawsuit in federal court in New York City against Apple and Holtzbrinck Publishers, doing business as Macmillan, and The Penguin Publishing Co. Ltd., doing business as Penguin Group.
Connecticut and Texas, two of the 15 states filing a separate lawsuit, reached agreements with Hachette and HarperCollins to provide $52 million in restitution to consumers, using a formula based on the number of states participating and the number of e-books sold in each state. Other states in the case may sign onto the agreement, and other companies might be persuaded to join.
Susan E. Kinsman of the Connecticut attorney general's office said it's too early to say how consumers can go about getting refunds. But there could be millions of people applying. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 21 percent of adults said they had read an e-book in the last year.
Since Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, e-book sales have surged. They represented just 2 percent of all titles sold in the United States that year, but soared to 25 percent last year. In 2010, about 114 million e-books were sold at a total cost of $441.3 million.
Holder told a Justice Department news conference that "we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles" as a result of the alleged conspiracy. Pozen said the scheme added an average of $2 to $3 to the prices of individual e-books.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said the individual book markups went as high as $5 and the total cost to consumers was more than $100 million since April 2010, when the scheme allegedly took effect.
The government lawsuits did not disclose individual titles whose prices were allegedly jacked up. The Fey, Tebow, Richards and Isaacson books all came out in electronic versions from the named publishers after April 2010.
According to Pozen, Apple's Steve Jobs told publishers involved in the alleged conspiracy that "the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway."
The lawsuit said the effort to get e-book prices increased by Amazon.com came as Apple was preparing to launch the iPad. The government said the conspirators agreed that instead of selling books to retailers and letting them decide what retail price to charge, the publishers would convert the retailers into "agents" who could sell their books but not alter the publisher-set retail price. The scheme called for Apple to be guaranteed a 30 percent commission on each e-book it sold, the lawsuit said.
"To effectuate their conspiracy, the publisher defendants teamed up with defendant Apple, which shared the same goal of restraining retail price competition in the sale of e-books," the lawsuit said.
The European Union conducted an investigation that paralleled the U.S. probe. The Union's JoaquÃn Almunia, vice president of the commission in charge of competition policy, said in Brussels that he welcomes the fact that the five companies are making proposals to reach an early resolution of the EU case. "We are currently engaged in fruitful discussions with them," said Almunia.
Hachette denied it was involved in any conspiracy to illegally fix the price of e-books and said it changed its pricing structure - the central government allegation - to facilitate entry by a new retail competitor, Apple.
"Two years ago, Amazon effectively had a monopoly on the sale of e-books and e-readers, and was selling products below cost in an effort to exclude competitors," said Hachette.
Amazon called the settlement "a big win for Kindle owners, and we look forward to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books."
After reading the federal complaint, the Consumer Federation of America called it "a 'slam-dunk' case of collusive, anti-competitive behavior."
At Apple, spokesman Tom Neumayr declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Macmillan CEO John Sargent said in a letter to authors, illustrators and agents that the company has not settled because it is "hard to settle a lawsuit when you know you have done no wrong."
Sargent said there were months of discussions with the Justice Department over a possible settlement, but the government's proposed terms "were too onerous" and "could have allowed Amazon to recover the monopoly position it had been building before our switch to the agency (pricing) model."
"We also felt the settlement the DOJ wanted to impose would have a very negative and long-term impact on those who sell books for a living, from the largest chain stores to the smallest independents." he said.
Sargent denied he colluded with competitors to change Macmillan's pricing. "After days of thought and worry, I made the decision on January 22nd, 2010, a little after 4:00 AM, on an exercise bike in my basement. It remains the loneliest decision I have ever made, and I see no reason to go back on it now," he wrote.
"We have done nothing wrong," said Penguin Group's chairman and CEO, John Makinson. "The decisions that we took, many them of them costly and difficult, were taken by Penguin alone."
At the heart of the e-book pricing debate is the industry's ongoing concern about Amazon. Publishers see the "agency model" as their best, short-term hope against preventing the online retailer from dominating the e-book market and driving down the price of books to a level unsustainable for publishers and booksellers.
What the agency model achieved was to shift the power for setting retail prices on e-books from the retailer - in this case primarily Amazon - to the alleged conspirator publishers, who then exerted pressure on Amazon to comply with the higher prices. The alleged scheme applied to New York Times bestselling titles, all titles that have gone on sale in the current year and mass market paperback titles.
Amazon's $9.99 price for best-sellers was such a deep discount from list prices of $20 and more that it was widely believed Amazon was selling the e-books at a loss to attract more customers and force competitors to lower their prices. Amazon also has been demanding higher discounts from publishers and stopped offering e-books from the Independent Publishers Group, a Chicago-based distributor, after they couldn't agree to terms.
When Apple launched its tablet computer two years ago, publishers saw two ways to balance Amazon's power: Enough readers would prefer Apple's shiny tablet over the Kindle to cut into Amazon's sales, and the agency model would stabilize prices.
Apple's iBookstore has yet to become a major force, but publishers believe the new price model has reduced Amazon's market share from around 90 percent to around 60 percent, with Barnes & Noble's Nook in second at 25 percent. The iBookstore is believed to have 10 percent to 15 percent.
Macmillan's Sargent has been at the heart of the dispute. In early 2010, as publishers were trying to get Amazon to agree to Apple's pricing system, Amazon pulled all the listings for Macmillan books, including titles like Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickle and Dimed." Sargent refused to back down and Amazon eventually gave in.
New e-books from Macmillan and the other publishers investigated by the Justice Department often are priced initially between $12.99 and $14.99, with Amazon making a point of noting that the price was set by the publisher. Ironically, publishers usually make less money off the agency model than the traditional one because they receive a smaller percentage of the proceeds.
Random House Inc. was the only "Big Six" publisher not to agree to the agency model in 2010 and was not part of the lawsuit. But it did agree to terms with Apple last year. Spokesman Stuart Applebaum said Random House would have no comment Wednesday.
According to federal court papers, the settlement agreement with three publishers said that for two years they will not restrict, limit or impede an e-book retailer's ability to set, alter or reduce the retail price of any electronic book. It said the retailers will be able to offer price discounts and other forms or promotions to encourage consumers to buy one or more electronic books.
The 15 states in the state complaint are Texas, Connecticut, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia. Puerto Rico also joined that lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Austin, Texas." - Pete Yost, Associated Press.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Stop SOPA or loose your internet rights! Watch this video and pass it along!
Watch and pass it along to everyone you know!
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Harper takes aim at pipeline opponents
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper says there are some Americans who want to turn Canada into a "giant national park" and he wants to ensure their opposition to the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline doesn't delay regulatory hearings into the project.
Harper made the comment in an interview with CBC broadcaster Peter Mansbridge aired Monday.
In the interview, Harper answered questions on topics such as the controversial pipeline, health care, publicsector pensions, Iran and Aboriginal Affairs.
The prime minister was asked if the proposed pipeline - which would bring Alberta bitumen from that province's oil fields to the British Columbia coast so it can be shipped to Asia - is a fait accompli.
"What I think I'd make clear is that I believe selling our energy products to Asia is in the country's national interest," said Harper.
"It is in our interests for all kinds of reasons, that we diversify our exports, particularly our energy exports."
Still, Harper stressed there is a regulatory process in place and he is not ready to endorse any specific project.
The $5.5-billion Northern Gateway project is now being reviewed by a National Energy Board panel. In recent days, Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver have complained that foreign-financed "radical" opponents of the plan have hijacked the Northern Gateway debate and threaten to slow down the hearings.
Harper was pressed by Mansbridge on whether the government was guilty of a double-standard by attacking environmental groups while not doing likewise with foreign-backed entities that support the pipeline.
"These are all valid questions," Harper said. "But just because certain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park for the northern half of North America, I don't think that's part of what our review process is all about." " - Mark Kennedy, Post Media.
What do you think? Should we deface our beautiful Canada, like Harper says we should?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Days left to Stop Canada's Deadly Oil (Click here)
"Canada mines deadly oil that creates toxic sludge lakes and destroys forests in Alberta -- and Harper needs Obama's help to sell it. Our own government is captured by powerful oil interests, but Obama is wavering on building a new cross-border pipeline. If enough Canadians ask him to protect the world from our deadly oil, we could tip the balance away from pollution.
Within days, President Obama could decide whether to allow a massive tar sands pipeline right through the middle of the U.S. -- boosting tar sands production and risking the contamination of major fresh water sources in his own country. PM Harper and his oil cronies have tarnished Canada's beauty and reputation, but Obama has the ultimate say on pipeline approval and he’s keen to strengthen his green credentials. He could override Harper's stubborn support for deadly oil.
Harper stopped listening to Canadians about climate a long time ago. Now, we have the chance to lobby the US and cut-off deadly oil for good. When we reach 50,000 signatures, we'll deliver our call directly to the White House. Let’s save Canada’s tarred image -- sign now and forward to everyone you know!" - Avaaz.org
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
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