PENSACOLA BEACH, Florida – June 27, 2010 – The sugar-sand beach here appeared cleaner Thursday, after workers picked up tar balls overnight with shovels and nets. By noon they had collected 44,955 pounds of tar balls and oil material, according to the Escambia County Emergency Operations Center.

But a University of South Florida geologist made a grim discovery Thursday morning, 24 hours after the worst oil onslaught in Florida so far.

Ping Wang, 43, who has studied beaches for 20 years, dug a narrow trench perpendicular to the shoreline, about a foot deep and 5 feet long. A dark, contiguous vein of oil ran horizontally along the walls of the trench, about 6 inches beneath the surface of the sand.

The sheet of oil that was deposited on the beach at high tide Wednesday and stretched some 8 miles was covered by as much as a foot of sand at high tide Thursday, Wang explained.

“Beaches change very often,” he said. Depending on tides and wave action, they constantly lose or accumulate sand.

While picking up tar balls and oil patties from the surface is helpful, Wang’s discovery suggests that type of cleaning will be inadequate.

“This is going to be hard to clean up,” he said. “It’s going to need to be a much larger scale effort than what we’re seeing.”

Wang, working with a team of geologists from USF, dug trenches at various spots along the beach on the Gulf Islands National Seashore and found the buried, unbroken vein each time.

“It’s a continuous layer until it pinches off right up here,” he said, pointing to a trench near the maximum wave run-up, the point at which high-tide waves begin their retreat. “The problem is they’re only cleaning up the top of the beach.”

The geologists worry that any violent water activity – like heavy waves created by a storm or frontal passage – will lift the buried oil sheet and cast it further up shore, onto clean sand.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Unified Command in Mobile, said Wang’s finding was not surprising. She said cleanup crews will go after subsurface oil later with machines that can scoop and separate deep oil and sand.

“Overall, in the short-term plan, we’re cleaning up what’s exposed,” she said.

Wang said he wasn’t surprised by the discovery. During a study for the National Science Foundation of oil-affected beaches in Alabama and northwest Florida, he found buried tar balls after cleanup crews had left.

USF Coastal Research Lab geologist Rip Kirby raised another issue with the cleanup on a trip to the shore late Thursday night, when he shined an ultraviolet light on the sand. Flecks of orange – which Kirby identified as oil, or volatile organic compounds – were scattered across the beach. Some dime-sized flecks were spotted on the footpath leading over the dunes, 100 yards from the water – an indication that unregulated foot traffic was contaminating clean sand. Closer to the water, tiny specks of oil covered the sand.

“It’s the way they’re cleaning it,” he said. “They’re scooping it up with nets and shaking it. Yes, they’re removing the tar balls, but they’re also coating clean sand with oil.”

Those tiny flecks can’t be seen with the naked eye.

“People need to know,” Wang said. “The beach is not going to be the same for a long time.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

TORONTO, Ontario, Canada – June 27, 2010 – More than 500 people have been arrested in Toronto after a night of rioting that saw police cars burned in the financial district and storefront windows broken as leaders of the world’s largest economies gathered in the city for the G20 summit.

As clashes between police and protesters moved into their second day, there were more reports of journalists and peaceful protesters being arrested. The National Post reported that two of its photographers were arrested, and a Post blogger says a cyclist was arrested after accidentally bumping into a police officer.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Guardian confirmed earlier reports that one of its freelance journalists, Jesse Rosenfeld, was beaten and arrested at a protest Saturday night.

The arrested protesters are being held in cages at a converted film studio on the city’s downtown east side. News reports indicate that, so far, none of the arrested have been let go.

Popularity: 8% [?]

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – June 15, 2010 – For weeks now, local hospitals have tracked patients with suspicious symptoms coming in from the gulf coast. Doctors are having trouble distinguishing it from the flu.

“What makes it challenging is that patients show up with non-specific symptoms. Headaches, fatigue, problems with memory and concentration, upset stomach,” lists Dr. Claudia Miller at UT Health Science Center.

The illness is called “TILT,” or Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance. Patients lose tolerance to household products, medication, or even food after being exposed to chemicals, like burning oil, toxic fumes, or dispersants from the spill.

“Things like diesel fuel, exposure to fragrances, cleaning agents that never bothered them before suddenly bother them,” adds Dr. Miller.

TILT has been difficult to track because symptoms are similar to the flu. Currently, Dr. Miller is educating primary care doctors on how to spot and treat the illness before it gets worse. Though it’s not contagious, the best cure right now is staying away from affected areas.

“Be sure to wear protective equipment and stay out of areas with smell, if [you] feel sick,” Dr. Miller says. “The smells are usually chemicals that can make them ill.”

Those who are most at risk are pregnant women and patients with prior medical problems, like asthma. To see how susceptible you may be to the disease, click here.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Justices overturn handgun bans in Chicago and other cities.

WASHINGTON – June 28, 2010 – A narrowly divided Supreme Court today ruled that the Second Amendment’s  right to bear arms is applicable to all states and municipalities. The ruling will most likely overturn Chicago’s strict ban on handguns.

“It is clear that the framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the five-four majority.

In 2008, the Court issued a landmark decision in the case District of Columbia v. Heller,  which established for the first time an individual’s constitutional right to have a gun in his house, striking down Washington D.C.’s, strict handgun ban. The ruling, however, applied only to federal enclaves.

Today’s ruling applies to states and cities, such as Chicago, that have similar bans.

“We hold that the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the states,” wrote Alito in the 45-page decision.

But Alito was also careful to note that in some instances the right to bear arms can be limited.

“It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” he wrote.

“We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Still, Justice John Paul Stevens disagreed with the majority decision. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

“The fact that the right to keep and bear arms appears in the Constitution should not obscure the novelty of the Court’s decision to enforce that right against the States,” wrote Stevens.

Justice Breyer, in a separate dissent, worried that today’s decision will cause havoc in the courts. “Consider,” he wrote, “that countless gun regulations of many shapes and sizes are in place in every state and in many local communities. Does the right to possess weapons for self-defense extend outside the home? In the car to work? What sort of guns are necessary for self-defense?”

Otis McDonald, 76, brought the case to the Court. He feared for his life in his crime-saturated Chicago neighborhood and wanted his city’s strict ban on handguns in the home overturned.

“Self defense in Amerika has been validated today,” McDonald said praising the Court’s decision. “Today the playing field will be level and I don’t have to be concerned about the gang bangers in my neighborhood. They will now think twice; and I hope others in my position will be safer.”

For nearly 30 years, Chicago banned possession of handguns and automatic weapons inside city limits; one of the most stringent gun laws in the country.

Popularity: 4% [?]

CLEVELAND, Ohio – June 23, 2010 – The Cleveland Branch of the NAACP is now investigating the Solon Police Department, after seeing a story that aired on Fox 8 Tuesday night.

DeAngelo Mattox, 16, and his 12-year-old sister Nechia were jogging down their street off Cannon Road in Solon Monday afternoon when Solon police stopped them.

A burglary had just occurred in the neighborhood, but instead of simply questioning the children, DeAngelo and Nechia say three officers handcuffed them, pushed them to the ground and pointed guns in their faces.

Nechia says she was terrified as she watched an officer slam her brother’s head to the ground. “I just saw the officer put his foot on his back and bash his head into the ground and I was like, why are they doing that to him,” said Nechia Mattox.

Turns out, the children had nothing to do with the burglary and a middle-aged man was arrested.

The children also say a group of Caucasian girls was across the street around the time they were stopped by police, but police didn’t question them.

Now, the NAACP is investigating.

“At some point, someone’s going to have to say enough is enough and this may be the case that breaks the camel’s back,” Stan Miller of the NAACP said.

The NAACP requested copies of the Solon Police Department’s policies and procedures and have also requested a meeting with the city’s mayor, Susan Drucker.

Solon Police Chief Wayne Godzich told Fox 8 at this point he believes the officers were following procedure.

Miller said if that’s the case, the procedures need to be evaluated. “This is the type of thing that could have been very, very dangerous. That gun or one of those guns could have gone off accidentally. When he slammed that kid’s face into the concrete he could have broken something seriously.”

The Solon Police Chief says a lieutenant with the police department is now investigating the incident. He has statements from both of the Mattox children and their mother.

He now plans on interviewing the three officers involved.

Police Chief Godzich says he hopes to have the finished report on his desk sometime next week.

Ed. Note: When is enough, enough? It is time to forcibly overthrow all governments that allow and support by inaction these thug cops who are murdering our brethren. Revolution Now! Independence Forever!

Popularity: 9% [?]

CN) – Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn’t breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson said, “Don’t Taze my granny!” an El Reno police officer told another cop to “Taser her!” and wrote in his police report that he did so because the old woman “took a more aggressive posture in her bed,” according to the complaint.

Lonnie Tinsley claims that he called 911 after he went to check on his grandmother, whom he found in her bed, “connected to a portable oxygen concentrator with a long hose.” She is “in marginal health, [and] takes several prescribed medications daily,” and “was unable to tell him exactly when she had taken her meds,” so, Tinsley says, he called 911 “to ask for an emergency medical technician to come to her apartment to evaluate her.”

In response, “as many as ten El Reno police” officers “pushed their way through the door,” according to the complaint.

The grandma, Lona Varner, “told them to get out of her apartment.”

The remarkable complaint continues: “Instead, the apparent leader of the police [defendant Thomas Duran] instructed another policeman to ‘Taser her!’ He stated in his report that the 86 year-old plaintiff ‘took a more aggressive posture in her bed,’ and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.

“Lonnie Tinsley told them, ‘Don’t taze my Granny!’ to which they responded that they would Taser him; instead, they pulled him out of her apartment, took him down to the floor, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police car.

“The police then proceeded to approach Ms. Varner in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation.

“The police then fired a Taser at her and only one wire struck her, in the left arm; the police then fired a second Taser, striking her to the right and left of the midline of her upper chest and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out.

“The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed her.

“The police freed Lonnie Tinsley from his incarceration in the back of the police car and permitted him to accompany the ambulance with his grandmother.”

Tinsley says the cops capped it all off by having his grandmother “placed in the psychiatric ward at the direction of the El Reno police; she was held there for six days and released.”

“As a result of the wrongful arrest and detention, the plaintiff Lona M. Varner suffered the unlawful restraint of her freedom, bodily injury, assault, battery, the trashing of her apartment, humiliation, loss of personal dignity, infliction of emotional distress and medical bills.”

They seek punitive damages for constitutional violations, from the City of El Reno, Duran, Officers Frank Tinga and Joseph Sandberg, and 10 Officers Does.
They are represented by Brian Dell of Oklahoma City.

Popularity: 13% [?]

TORONTO, Ontario, Canada – June 22, 2010 – At City Hall, employees arrived at work to find a burly security guard demanding their access passes before they entered the normally unlocked doors. At a downtown law firm, lawyers were told to leave their suits and high heels at home and dress casual-like to avoid being set upon by anti-capitalist rioters. At one provincial government office, bureaucrats were told in late afternoon that the building was going under “lockdown” because protesters were in the neighborhood. Many scooted for exits to avoid being trapped in the closed-up building.

All of a sudden on Monday, our calm, mild, pacific city took on a changed feel as the security noose tightened in advance of this weekend’s G20 summit. In the downtown, packs of police officers on bikes roamed the streets – followed, incongruously, by a golf cart-type vehicle transporting water, juice and granola bars for the boys and girls in blue. Around the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the shiny metal security fence neared completion, a ghastly thing, like all such barriers, that made the notoriously ugly convention center that will welcome foreign leaders even more unsightly than usual.

Also downtown, the first significant protest march made its noisy way through the streets, decrying the “police state” created for the summit. In the name of animal rights, native rights, poor people’s rights and numerous other causes, they occupied a gas station for a few minutes before cops on bikes made them leave.

Despite all the advance warning, this comes as a bit of a shock to the system for a generally safe city where the hand of authority is light and the cops keep a low profile. Go to Europe and you see soldiers walking around the airport with automatic rifles at the ready; go to the States and you see military men and women all the time. Not in Canada, not in Toronto.

Because we are so unused to security measures like this, there is a good measure of overreaction and even paranoia around. At one security briefing, reporters and camera folk were told to wear wool underwear to the protests – in a humid Toronto summer – because it is less flammable than other kinds. In a security memo to staff at a downtown law firm, staff were reportedly instructed on how to curl themselves into a protective ball if set upon by protesters and roll to the side of the street – conjuring up the remarkable image of balled-up lawyers rolling down Bay Street like so many bowling balls.

The very idea of all those downtown lawyers, bankers and executives coming to work in jeans, flip flops and polo shirts to foil the dastardly anarchists seemed a little craven. Pity the poor guy who doesn’t get the memo and comes to work in his Zegna suit.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to put the summit in Toronto partly to showcase the relative health of our Canadian banking industry. Yet when the summit is on, everyone downtown will be doing their darnedest to look as unlike a banker as they possibly can. The whole week is turning into a casual Friday.

“If you unexpectedly encounter demonstrators,” a city landlords’ group advises tenants, “you will be better treated if you are in jeans and a casual shirt than if you are in a business ‘power suit.’ ” Other tips: don’t rub your eyes if you are tear gassed or pepper sprayed; and don’t wear your security pass on a lanyard around your neck – the bad guys might pull it off and abscond with it.

At first blush it all seems very silly and annoying – as if Paul Blart: Mall Cop were suddenly in charge of the city. In its list of “Things the G20 is ruining now,” the Torontoist runs through a list of complaints about shuttered liquor stores and farmers markets, adding a photo essay of the horrid fence.

But, then, the security folks have a serious job to do and they have to prepare for any eventuality. Inevitably, some of their rules will seem arbitrary and excessive. But “better safe than sorry” seems a good way to go when the safety of world leaders and the security of Canada’s largest city is at stake. It will all be over in a few days anyway and Toronto can go back to being its usual self: pleasant, banal and safe.

Source:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/police-state-%20%20in-power-suits-out-as-toronto-goes-into-security-shock/article1612636/

Popularity: 6% [?]

HOUSTON, Texas – June 23, 2010 – A Texas man has sued his local police department, saying he was arrested for taking a picture of a police officer when the officer entered his home without permission.

According to the lawsuit, Sgt. Justin Alderete of the Sealy, Texas Police Department arrived at the home of Francisco Olvera in October 2009, apparently responding to a noise complaint. Olvera had been playing music on his computer speakers while working outside on his patio.

The sergeant asked Olvera for identification. When Olvera went inside his home to grab his ID, Sgt. Alderete followed him inside. Believing the officer didn’t have a right to enter his home without permission; Olvera picked up his cellphone and took a photo of the officer. At that point, the lawsuit states, Alderete accused Olvera of “illegal photography” and arrested him.

Olvera was charged with “loud music” and “public intoxication” – the officer had seen a beer can on the kitchen table, the lawsuit asserts.

In January, Olvera was acquitted of all charges.

The lawsuit names Alderete, Sealy Police Chief John Tollett, and the city of Sealy. It alleges that Olvera was the victim of “unlawful search and seizure,” “unlawful arrest” and “malicious prosecution.”

The lawsuit further alleges that Alderete made a racist remark against Olvera during booking.

“Do you know what I tell Mexicans when they get loud?” the lawsuit alleges Alderete asked. “No chinges con migo pinche culero.” (“Don’t be f**king with me,” another officer translated,)

Olvera’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for his legal costs in the criminal trial; for “emotional distress” and punitive damages “as allowed by law.”

Popularity: 7% [?]

BUFFALO, New York – June 22, 2010 – Non-tribal people who buy cigarettes from Native American retailers in New York will have to pay taxes on those smokes under a measure approved yesterday – a move that will end an important source of income for some tribes.

Earlier, as the Legislature contemplated the move, J.C. Seneca, a Seneca Nation leader, said the tribe would regard it as “an act of war,” according to the Buffalo News’ Tom Precious. Seneca has called it “economic terrorism,” and some legislators worried about a “class of cultures” and a backlash from tribes.

The move to raise taxes on all smokes, and to collect them on the tribal cigarettes, makes cigarette taxes in New York the highest in the nation, and will raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes to $9.20 a pack in the state, and more than $11 in New York City, which has its own taxes. More to the point, as far as New York state is concerned, it will add $440 million to the state’s short-of-cash coffers.

The legislation will permit the state to start collecting taxes on Indian cigarette sales on September 1, a move the state has threatened during the regimes of the past four governors. But critics said the bill includes a loophole to make it easier for Indian tribes, including the Seneca Nation, the nation’s largest Native American seller of tax-free cigarettes, to seek redress in federal courts.

The bill also does not end tax-free Indian sales of non-cigarette tobacco products, such as cigars, and also does not cover gasoline sales. It also could make it easier, and more lucrative with the hike in cigarette taxes, for Indian businesses to manufacture and sell tax-free their own brand of cigarettes, an increasingly popular route in New York.

The Seneca Nation has argued that the legislation could cost 3,000 tribal and nontribal jobs. A similar effort to collect the taxes in the 1990s resulted in sporadic violence as tribes shut down portions of the New York Thruway in protest.

“This is nothing less than a deliberate effort to sabotage our federal treaty rights and rape our economy to bail out New York State. Governor Paterson and members of the state legislature should be ashamed of themselves for looting our economy because they’ve squandered theirs through overspending and poor management,” Seneca President Barry Snyder Sr. said in a statement.

Popularity: 16% [?]

COLUMBUS, Ohio – June 22, 2010 – A woman claims federal agents burst into her house while she was naked, and would not let her put on pants or even underwear when she had to walk her bear.

Marion Thompson claims “12 or more” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents “used a ruse” to get her husband out of their Zanesville home and arrest him on June 18, 2008. She says “as least 14 agents” then “burst through and broke [her] kitchen door … pointing their guns at her” while she was naked in the kitchen.

They had a warrant, but wouldn’t let her see it, Thompson says.

She claims the agents allowed her to cover herself only with a T-shirt while they searched the house for “five to six hours.” They would not let her put on pants or underwear during the entire ordeal, she says, but “forced [her] to sit on a metal chair outside in the plain view of the agents naked, except for a T-shirt.”

During the course of the search, plaintiff was only allowed to leave the chair once, when she requested to take a baby bear out of its cage to walk it around the patio.

Thompson says she has no criminal history, and the agents knew it. She claims that a federal judge found the agents’ treatment of her unjustified.

She seeks punitive damages for constitutional violations.

She is represented in Federal Court by Stuart Scott with Spangenberg Shibley & Liber of Cleveland.

Popularity: 6% [?]