"A search for answers after cab driver was allegedly shot in broad daylight for refusing a fare" by Travis Andersen, Amanda Milkovits and Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
Phillip I. Foy, 34, a Springfield native who spent time in jail on drug convictions more than a decade ago, was never brought into the courtroom during his arraignment on charges of murder, armed carjacking, and firearms offenses. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail, his next court date set for July 9.
Colleagues remembered Luckinson Oruma, 60, who moved to the United States from Nigeria in 2003 and lived in Dorchester, as an affable driver who worked for USA Taxi garage.....
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[flip to below fold]
Taxi driver killed in daytime Huntington Ave. shooting remembered as easygoing and friendly by Evan Allen, Emily Sweeney and Gal Tziperman Lotan Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
[flip back above fold]
"For three decades, a 7-year-old’s death went unsolved. Then a debris sample provided a clue" by Amanda Milkovits Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Michelle Norris had struggled in her seven years, a shy girl who grew up in poverty and neglect. Then, she suffered a death that has haunted this tight-knit city for 31 years.
The person who raped and murdered her over Memorial Day weekend in 1988 has never been caught. Now, investigators believe Michelle’s last breaths might contain clues to her killer.
Detective Jeffrey Araujo said the debris Michelle inhaled as she was forced facedown and suffocated didn’t match the soil where she was found. No one, it seems, ever asked why.
“It’s been assumed for 31 years that she died there,” Araujo said recently. “Now, we’re looking at another angle — that maybe she didn’t.”
The FBI crime lab that did the geologic testing back then had determined that Michelle had inhaled “primarily masses of mineral wool-insulation-type material, fiberglass and botanical material,” according to court records.
Not a bog. A building.
This evidence, little noticed at the time and never made public, is now bringing an old case into focus.....
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"Should gamblers see athletes’ heart rates during games?" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
As Massachusetts lawmakers consider whether to legalize sports betting, professional athletes fear that their biometric data, increasingly collected and analyzed in training, could become a commodity in this new form of gambling
Unions for professional basketball, baseball, football, hockey, and soccer players say any sports-betting legislation should prohibit the commercial use of such data without player consent.
“That’s a person’s personal health information,” David Foster, an attorney with the National Basketball Players Association, told state lawmakers at a recent hearing. “That has no business in sports. It certainly has no business being bet on.”
Professional sports leagues say they have no plans to make biometric data available for sports betting, and that any future disputes about that issue could be handled in contract negotiations.....
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Related:
"LabCorp, a medical testing company, said 7.7 million customers had their personal and financial data exposed through a breach at a third-party billing collections company. The news came just days after the same contractor, American Medical Collection Agency, notified Quest Diagnostics about the full scope of a breach affecting 11.9 million of its patients. That breach allowed an ‘‘unauthorized user’’ to gain access to financial data, Social Security numbers, and medical data, but not lab results. AMCA, which works primarily with health care companies, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. LabCorp. said the breach did not reveal information like tests ordered or lab results, the filing said, but the hacker was able to access names, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, dates of service, account balances, and other information from August 2018 to March. The breach also exposed credit card and bank numbers attached to roughly 200,000 accounts, the filing said. AMCA told LabCorp that it was of notifying those patients."
I'm sure that will make contract negations harder.
Also see:
Will Tom Brady win the ‘Tom Terrific’ trademark?
Legal experts tell you what think, and I'm on the edge of my seat.
At Harvard Art Museums, they’ll bring the Rembrandt right to you — and this retiree has made a habit of asking
Related:
Yes, black people belong at the MFA
The opinion of Sheena Collier, founder and CEO of The Collier Connection, and with all due respect, I smell a rat. I think it is a fake advance to keep these divisive issues front and center. Even the story stinks.
Boston needs to invest in a new generation of artists
Those are the opinions of James E. Canales, president and a trustee of the Barr Foundation and Paul S. Grogan, CEO of The Boston Foundation (whose organization will appear again shortly).
ART hires renowned British architectural firm to design Allston theater
City’s biggest developers look hungry for a piece of the action in Allston
They mean bu$ine$$.
"Attorney General Maura Healey’s office is suing White’s Bakery & Cafe in Brockton, its manager, and head pastry chef for allegedly discriminating against an employee on the basis of his race and disability, officials said. The alleged victim was subjected to harassment and hateful language, including the use of variations of the N-word by his supervisor” and was mocked for having a speech impediment, Healey’s office said in a statement. White’s Bakery & Cafe said in a statement on Wednesday that the lawsuit is disappointing and confusing. “For more than 30 years, we have maintained an unblemished track record as a responsible, progressive employer that embraces our workers for who they are,” they said in the statement. Managers disciplined the employee who allegedly made the racist remarks in October, according to the statement....."
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
So I flip the paper open to find this as my National lead (during breakfast):
"Trump administration sharply curtails fetal tissue medical research" by Abby Goodnough New York Times, June 5, 2019
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the federal government would sharply curtail federal spending on medical research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses, mainly by ending such research within the National Institutes of Health. The move fulfills a top goal of antiabortion groups that have lobbied hard for it, but scientists say the tissue is crucial for studies that benefit millions of patients.
Up comes the oatmeal.
The Department of Health and Human Services said it would immediately end a $2 million-a-year contract with the University of California San Francisco for research involving fetal tissue from elective abortions; the contract started in 2013. The department also said that, based on a review it began last fall, it would discontinue all research within the National Institutes of Health involving fetal tissue from elective abortions.
“Promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the very top priorities of President Trump’s administration,” the department said in a statement.
That flies in the face of so many of the Empire's policies, be it economic sanctions to military aggression or cover destabilization operations possibly leading to regime changes, one hardly knows where to begin.
Nor is that above statement in any way endorse the act of abortion here. Quite honestly, I have no idea what to do regarding the issue (in fact, the social divisions have turned me into a secessionist and state's rights advocate; you go your way, I'll go my way, and respect the community in which you live).
So who is with me?
"Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America who helped eliminate the pageant’s swimsuit competition, was part of an all-female leadership team that took over the pageant following an e-mail scandal in which male leaders insulted former Miss Americas, denigrating their appearance, intelligence, and even their sex lives. Carlson, a former Fox News host, pushed for the elimination of the swimsuit competition from the pageant, which originated in Atlantic City nearly 100 years ago. Some welcomed the change as making the pageant more relevant, but many state organizations rebelled against the new leadership team over how it ran the organization....."
Looking good, huh?
Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor specializing in public health law at Georgetown University, said the new restrictions would “devastate” crucial medical research.
The fetal tissue is used to test drugs, develop vaccines, and study cancer, AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, birth defects, blindness, and other disorders. For much of that work, scientists say there is no substitute for fetal tissue.
That's why Planned Parenthood's $elling of the $tuff has been memory-holed by the ma$$ media, in what can only be called the Abortion Indu$try now.
Scientists at UC San Francisco have been using fetal tissue to create so-called humanized mice — engrafted with the tissue to make them respond more like humans — which can then be used to test drugs and vaccines, but opponents of fetal tissue research say alternatives, such as donated thymus tissue from infants who undergo heart surgery, or adult stem cells, are better.
Now I'm starting to get que$y and am leaning against the abortion rights side while wondering where are the misanthropic animal rights activists?
“There are ample ethically derived sources and alternatives,” said David Prentice, vice president and research director for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony Fund, an antiabortion group. He called the move by HHS “a good step, but a preliminary step,” adding that he hoped the Trump administration would also end federal funding to all universities for research involving fetal tissue from abortions.
Equity Forward, a watchdog group that promotes abortion rights, questioned why HHS had not made public any results of its review of fetal tissue research. Mary Alice Carter, the group’s executive director, said in a statement that Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, “is putting millions of dollars in lifesaving research at risk to please a small group of anti-abortion extremists.”
On the other hand, the pro-abortion extremism, which we are getting in this state, is fine.
Of course, we saw what happens when someone says something about an extreme minority controlling U.S. foreign policy. That's not extremism, and you get slapped down hard!
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Related:
Wisconsin Legislature sends abortion bills to governor
Republicans were pushing the bill merely to fire up their conservative base.
Trump administration cancels English classes, soccer, legal aid for unaccompanied child migrants in US shelters by Maria Sacchetti Washington Post, June 5, 2019
She once worked for the Globe, and did you know the Office of Refugee Resettlement is on track to care for the largest number of minors in the program’s history?
In immigration spat, Trump risks economic damage
Globe says it is a a direct threat.
"Central American migrants surged across the US border with Mexico in record numbers in May, officials announced Wednesday, as American and Mexican diplomats began discussions at the White House in a bid to avert potentially crippling economic consequences of President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports. More than 144,278 migrants were arrested and taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection along the southwest border during May, a 32 percent increase from April and the highest monthly total in seven years. Most crossed the border illegally, while about 10 percent arrived without the proper documentation at ports of entry along the border. Trump has vowed to impose a 5 percent tariff on all goods from Mexico beginning Monday and to increase the tax to 25 percent by October if Mexico does not prevent migrants from illegally entering the United States. The announcement of the surge in border crossings was designed to put pressure on the Mexican government to meet Trump’s demands that the government take action quickly. On Tuesday, Trump said that it was “more likely that the tariffs” would be imposed, but Wednesday the president said he believed Mexico was ready to make a deal to prevent the tariffs from going into effect."
"The Trump administration’s ever-tightening immigration rules are putting the lives and livelihoods of thousands of local residents in danger and threatening the social cohesion and economic well-being of local communities, according to a new report by the Boston Foundation and the Greater Boston Immigrant Defense Fund....."
There they are again, helping to pu$h the agenda forward.
Trump calls Bette Midler a ‘washed up psycho’ in 1 a.m. tweet
Globe deleted it from the web copy.
Trump says transgender people banned from military over drug use
What does the VA have to say about it?
"While department officials say they are ready, veterans groups and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have expressed concerns about the VA, which has been dogged by problems with its computer systems for years. They worry that the department is not fully prepared to begin its new policy....."
I'm tired of excuses, aren't you?
Oh, the doctor will see you now:
"An Ohio doctor was charged Wednesday with 25 counts of murder, with authorities accusing him of deliberately causing patients’ deaths by prescribing fatal doses of the powerful opioid fentanyl. A grand jury indicted Dr. William Husel, 43, who turned himself in to police Wednesday in Columbus, the state capital. The charges came after a six-month criminal investigation found that Husel purposely caused the deaths of dozens of critical-care patients over four years by ordering excessive doses of painkillers. A lawyer for Husel has said he did not intend to kill any patients....."
He was just trying to make $ome money by hu$tling some drugs.
Related:
"Drug maker Insys Therapeutics has agreed to pay $225 million to settle criminal and civil investigations into unlawful marketing of a powerful and highly addictive opioid, federal authorities announced on Wednesday. The Arizona-based company will enter a deferred prosecution agreement with the government and a subsidiary of the firm will plead guilty to five counts of mail fraud, with the company paying a $2 million fine and $28 million in forfeiture as part of the criminal resolution, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts. A plea hearing has yet to be scheduled. Insys also agreed to pay $195 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act as part of a civil resolution, officials said. The probes focused on the marketing of Subsys, a fentanyl spray that authorities say is a powerful and highly addictive opioid painkiller. The drug was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment “of persistent breakthrough pain in adult cancer patients who are already receiving, and tolerant to, around-the-clock opioid therapy,” according to the attorney’s office statement. Court documents allege that Insys used sham speaker programs to pay bribes and kickbacks to targeted practitioners “in exchange for increased Subsys prescriptions to patients and for increased dosage of those prescriptions,” authorities said."
It's called a kickback, and what they did was they paid doctors to write prescriptions for patients who didn’t have cancer but wanted pain relief, then set up a reimbursement center where employees allegedly lied to health insurers about patients’ symptoms to get them to cover Subsys for people without cancer, and it was the video that did in a company once known as the ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and that even had a former stripper perform a lap dance for an Illinois physician at a nightclub to induce him to prescribe more.
They authorities better be careful, or they will kill the golden goo$e of campaign lobbying loot.
Also see: Marijuana in Mass. should come with warnings about psychosis, group says
What is crazy is continuing to read this agenda-pushing shit.
"If the situation had been a little different, if Tom Kershaw hadn’t decided the deal was too much of a stretch, he might be the owner of the Parker House in Boston and that whole “Cheers” thing would have never happened, but the young Kershaw — a few years out of Harvard Business School and frustrated after a series of corporate jobs that bored him — instead pursued a more modest investment: a tired Georgian revival town house on Beacon Street that rented guest rooms and private function space and featured a genteel “cocktail room” and a small dining room in the basement. On June 10, Kershaw will mark the 50th anniversary of his purchase of the Hampshire House, which through a combination of business savvy and hard work remains a lucrative events venue and a popular tourist attraction long after the TV show that made it famous ended its prime time run....."
Yeah, where everybody knows your name and you can get sexually harassed.
I $uppo$e its no coincidence that the Globe is filled with liquor advertising while I have yet to see one for pot.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to hit the beach!
"Queen, Trump, world leaders commemorate 75th anniversary of D-Day" by William Booth and Karla Adam Washington Post, June 5, 2019
PORTSMOUTH, England — The world leaders arrived in helicopters and armored convoys surrounded by massive security.
They gathered here Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, still the largest combined naval, air, and land assault in history.
When President Trump took the stage, he read from a prayer that President Franklin Roosevelt spoke over the radio to the country on the eve of D-Day. ‘‘Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity,’’ he said.
I'm tired of that lying war-monger (and Churchill) being lionized for the advancing Jewish interests. All this self-adulating self-adoration is enough to make one sick.
It was a poignant affair, with military bands playing somber music as black-and-white film clips broadcast from the stage, showing the faces of young men running onto beaches and readying to jump out of planes. There was also a dance routine featuring the 1941 Andrews Sisters hit ‘‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’’
Yeah, the war was fun.
On June 6, 1944, about 7,000 naval vessels, including battleships, destroyers, and assault craft, attacked German positions on the Normandy coast and landed more than 132,000 ground troops on the beaches.
Related:
"The massive headline, rendered in 350-point type, says it all: INVASION. The front page of the Boston Evening Globe on June 6, 1944, serves up a time capsule of a different time, more than half a century away from web alerts and television news crawls. From that page, news that 155,000 American, British and Canadian troops had invaded the beaches of Normandy, France, ignited hopes that the Allied Powers might have a shot at winning World War II. An Associated Press story described how US and British troops “suffered ‘extremely small’ losses in the air” and how the soldiers found “highly vaunted German defenses much less formidable in every department that had been feared.” (Readers would soon learn, of course, of the terrible toll exacted on Allied forces.) The first reports went on to chronicle the attack throughout the day and quoted Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the German D.N.B. News Agency, which said Allied landing barges had pushed into the estuaries of the Orne and Vire Rivers between Cherbourg and Le Havre. A detailed map, headlined “100-Mile Span of Allied Attack,” illustrated the Allied powers’ invasion using arrows, dotted lines, and symbols of planes and a Nazi flag. It strove to explain the “three-pronged drive.” At the top of the page, the Globe printed the famous prayer that would be read that evening by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a message aimed at quelling Americans’ fear and to rally the troops....."
Is there any war they didn't lie about?
Roosevelt left Pearl Harbor exposed to draw the U.S. in, they invaded on D-Day because by that time the war was already lost for Germany and the western allies had become bogged down in Italy (the alleged soft underbelly). Without D-Day, the Soviets would have taken all of Europe. That was the real reason for the globe-kickers to do it.
All of history is on its head when it comes to the agenda-pushing jew$papers, even the invasion of Russia. Turns out it was a preemptive attack forestalling Operation Storm, the planned Russian invasion of Poland (I always wondered why so many Soviet troops were in the area to be taken as POWs). Hitler's big mistake was making a deal with Russia after the western allies had set him up to go against Russia, with the taking of territory in Poland the cases belli for all the rest.
Also see:
"Carnival Corp. will no longer operate cruises to Cuba, effective immediately, the travel company announced Wednesday. The decision, coming one day after the Trump administration banned cruises, private yachts, and fishing vessels from visiting Cuba, has left many travelers frustrated and confused, especially those currently en route to the island nation. “I’m one of hundreds of very angry passengers aboard a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean,” wrote Cindy Hamilton on Twitter. “We all planned this cruise anticipating our stop in Cuba. Very upset!”
That Bay of Pigs was called off!
Historians consider the D-Day invasion ‘‘the beginning of the end of the war’’ and stress that it was an international effort.
There will be a Ken Burns special out soon.
In the wide-ranging interview that aired Wednesday morning with British journalist Piers Morgan, Trump was asked about not serving in Vietnam. He received multiple deferments — four for college and one because of ‘‘bone spurs’’ in his heels.
‘‘I was never a fan’’ of the Vietnam War, Trump told ITV.
Who was (except for the lying politicians and war profiteers who brought it to you)?
It's an idiotic statement in answer to an idiotic question.
Asked whether he would have served if he could have, Trump said: ‘‘I would not have minded that at all. I would have been honored’’ to serve.....
Now all bow down and worship at the altar of militarism.
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I'm told ‘‘young people today need to know what happened, because if it didn’t happen, they’d all be wearing swastikas,’’ (still could if you read the papers) and yet they are more concerned with this:
"The past five years have been the warmest in recorded history, but the president blamed China, India, and Russia for polluting the environment and as the White House gears up to counter the consensus on climate change, it has tapped William Happer, a National Security Council senior director, to lead the effort. Happer once said, ‘‘The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.’’
The Globe has the answer!
"A Dutch teenager who suffered from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia after being raped as a child was allowed to die at her home, her sister confirmed on Sunday. In what she termed a ‘‘sad last post’’ on Instagram, Noa Pothoven, 17, wrote Saturday that she would be dead within 10 days. But it had been ‘‘so long,’’ she added, since she had ‘‘really been alive.’’ ‘‘After years of struggling and fighting, it’s over,’’ she reported. The teenager, from the city of Arnhem in the eastern part of the Netherlands, said she had stopped eating and drinking and would soon be ‘‘released because my suffering is unbearable.’’ Her decision was not ‘‘impulsive,’’ she emphasized. Rather, it was the result of ‘‘many conversations and assessments.’’ Offering her own blunt review of her condition, she observed, ‘‘I breathe but no longer live.’’ Assisted suicide is legal in parts of Europe and the United States. Active euthanasia, as it is known, is lawful in only a handful of countries, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands."
I guess they would be saying good girl while Trump plays golf:
"For the backdrop to his first official visit to Ireland, President Trump wanted to promote his golf course on the nation’s rocky west coast. The Irish government countered with the grand staging of an ancient castle. In the end, neither side got what they wanted, and the meeting itself was more than just a warm handshake for the cameras....."
No handshakes here:
"The European Commission recommended Wednesday that legal action be launched against Italy because it failed to respect EU debt rules last year and is likely to do so again in 2019 and 2020, setting up a new confrontation with the populist government in Rome. In coming weeks, EU member states must assess whether an ‘‘excessive deficit procedure’’ should be opened against Italy and the extent of any penalties. It could face billions of euros in fines. EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters that ‘‘Italy pays as much in debt servicing as for the entire education system. He added that Italian economic ‘‘growth has come to almost a halt.’’ The action comes at a time of rising tensions between Brussels and the Italian government, in particular Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who has been emboldened by his right-wing League party’s strong gains in last month’s EU elections....."
I can't think of a better argument for getting out of that globali$t racket.
"The top humanitarian official at the United Nations sounded the alarm on Wednesday about the looming risk of famine in the Horn of Africa because of drought, warning that more than 5 million people are threatened, mostly Somalis, adding that many of them could face a serious food crisis by September. Somalia and parts of Ethiopia and Kenya have suffered from repeated seasons of failed rains that have shriveled crops, depleted livestock, and left food and water supplies increasingly insecure....."
Unfortunately, it looks like another excuse for the U.N. to insert itself into the area under cover of famine. There is a famine in Yemen and they aren't doing much about it.
The sad fact is, the U.N. is nothing more than a tool to advance western interests, or else is discarded.
Exhibit A:
"New Palestinian premier warns of a ‘very hot summer’" by David M. Halbfinger New York Times, June 5, 2019
Yeah, talk about food and water supplies being increasingly insecure!
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Pressured by the Trump administration, confronted with Israeli talk of annexing the West Bank, increasingly isolated in the Arab world, and running out of money, the beleaguered Palestinian Authority is staring at what its new prime minister acknowledges could be its own demise.
I'm sure that was/is the plan.
A new Israeli antiterrorism law that withholds some Palestinian revenue has precipitated a financial crisis that could bankrupt the authority by July or August, he said. If that happens, the authority would have to furlough its police officers, he said — a not-so-veiled threat to Israel, which depends on Palestinian security forces to police the West Bank.
Yeah, right. Then Israel can just annex the whole thing like they want.
Who wrote this pile of swill?
Oh, New York Times. Now it makes sense.
In one of his first interviews with a major Western news organization, the premier, Muhammad Shtayyeh, also attacked as “blackmail” the Trump administration’s pressure tactics in pushing for a peace plan, beginning with a conference this month on economic development on the West Bank.
There is no peace plan, for it is unexecutable, and besides, the Palestinians just can't govern themselves (you see, Jewi$h racism and supremacism is just fine and not worthy of remark).
Shtayyeh, 61, was a top economic-development official and an occasional participant in peace talks with the Israelis before being appointed to the number-two job in the Palestinian Authority in March. His boss, President Mahmoud Abbas, is in his 80s and in poor health.
Is he, because I was told Adelson was on death's door but got better.
Ironically, Abbas was the agent who some believe poisoned Arafat. What goes around comes around, 'eh?
So this guy is going to be the next head of the PA?
Since then, Shtayyeh has set about trying to increase public confidence in the authority, while also showing a common touch, as if he hoped to be a candidate to succeed Abbas, but he starts his job facing an immediate financial crisis. In February, under a 2018 law modeled on the American Taylor Force Act, Israel began deducting about $138 million in what it calls “pay-to-slay money” from the roughly $2.5 billion a year in taxes and tariffs that it collects for and transfers to the Palestinians.
By that logic, all U.S. aid to Israel would have to be cut off.
Btw, did the Palestinians get their mail yet?
The deduction is equal to Israel’s tally of the financial support that the authority provided last year to Palestinians in Israeli prisons for attacking Israelis, to their families, and to the families of those “martyred” or killed long ago in uprisings against Israel, including suicide bombers.
Israel and Western countries see those payments, which began in the 1960s, as incentivizing terrorism, but the Palestinians see them as a vital form of welfare that rewards the sacrifices made by freedom fighters and their families, and say that many prisoners had no part in violence and did not receive fair trials. Unilateral deductions by Israel, they say, violate the agreements under which Israel collects revenue for the Palestinians.
Nothing new for Israel!
Abbas responded by refusing to accept any revenue transferred from Israel, effectively giving up more than half the authority’s income and setting it on a kamikaze course if Israel does not repeal or suspend its new law.
That's WWII!
The authority has already slashed its payroll, with tens of thousands of West Bank civil servants and police officers receiving only 50 percent of their salaries. Palestinian banks, stretching to lend the authority money while struggling to collect on consumer loans, are exhausting their liquidity, Shtayyeh said, but accepting the reduced monetary transfer from Israel, he said, would be tantamount to acknowledging that the payments support terrorism, a premise he rejects.
“Politically, we cannot take it that our kids in jail are terrorists,” he said, and legally, it could expose the authority and Palestinian banks alike to lawsuits in Israeli and American courts.
That threat has a specific meaning in Israel, whose security forces work closely with their Palestinian counterparts to root out terrorist cells, prevent attacks on Israelis or pursue the perpetrators, and deconflict Israeli military raids in areas of the West Bank under Palestinian security control, but Israel generally treats such threats with great skepticism, because its security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority is largely aimed at preventing Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, from entrenching itself on the West Bank. The Fatah officials who dominate the authority may have even more to fear from their rivals in a resurgent Hamas than from Israel.
It's what is known as divide and conquer and Fatah is nothing more than a bunch of collaborators and enforcers!
Shtayyeh said he had expected that Israel would seek a resolution of the impasse after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a new government following his reelection in April, but Netanyahu’s failure to do so, and the prospect of another election in September, makes it less likely that the standoff will end quickly, he said.
Hmmmmmm!
I'm starting to wonder about that unexpected inability to form a coalition!
It's always something!
“Our backs are really tight to the wall,” he said. “We are now in control of the situation. I don’t know for how long.”
No longer in print because that is where my printed pos ended.
In the interview in his Ramallah office, he did not deviate from the party line in attacking the Trump administration’s plan for an “economic workshop” this month in Bahrain, where it hopes to gather donor nations to convince Palestinian business executives of the financial windfalls they can expect if they embrace the administration’s eventual peace plan.
That means no Palestine!
The Bahrain event has put Palestinian leaders on the defensive politically, pressuring West Bank business leaders to boycott the event while lamenting that other Arab leaders are likely to participate.
Well, there are good boycotts, and then there are bad boycotts which must carry the force of law against those advocating them.
Shtayyeh said it was rich for the Trump administration to talk of improving the Palestinian economy after it had eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid to projects in the West Bank and Gaza, to the main United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, and to hospitals in East Jerusalem.
“These same people are the ones who have been working on the drying up of the financial resources of the Palestinian Authority,” he said.
He said the workshop was doomed to go the way of other attempts to promote an “economic peace” or improve Palestinians’ quality of life, from the Reagan era to the Obama administration. “Nothing has materialized,” he said. “And now this Bahrain conference. It will be born dead. Nothing will come out of it.”
Then it will have served its purpose well!
Asked why Palestinians did not defy expectations and attend the Bahrain conference, if only to disprove Israeli and American critics who call them rejectionist, Shtayyeh said the authority was not invited, but argued that to participate in any part of the Trump process would be to fall into a trap.
That's the set up. By not accepting an unacceptable plan, they are tarred as rejectionist.
He cited a litany of moves by the Trump administration that favored Israel, including moves to strip millions of Palestinians of their refugee status, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and abandoning the pursuit of a two-state solution based on the June 1967 armistice lines.
“We know the political agenda,” he said. “They are saying no to refugees. They are saying no to Jerusalem. They are saying no to two states. They are not respecting ’67 borders. And if this economic track is part of the overall package, what are we accepting? If we are there, people will use our presence there to capitalize on that.”
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"Australia may well be the world’s most secretive democracy" by Damien Cave New York Times, June 5, 2019
SYDNEY — One journalist is being investigated for reporting that several boats filled with asylum-seekers recently tried to reach Australia from Sri Lanka. Another reporter had her home raided by authorities this week after reporting on a government plan to expand surveillance powers.
Then on Wednesday, the Australian federal police showed up at the main public broadcaster with a warrant for notes, story pitches, emails, and even the diaries for entire teams of journalists and senior editors — all in connection with a 2017 article about Australian special forces being investigated over possible war crimes in Afghanistan.
The aggressive approach — which Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has defended — fits with a global trend. Democracies from the United States to the Philippines are increasingly targeting journalists to ferret out leaks, silence critics, and punish information sharing — with President Trump leading the verbal charge by calling journalists “the enemy of the people,” but even among its peers, Australia stands out. No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say, and the raids are just the latest example of how far the country’s conservative government will go to scare officials and reporters into submission.
“To be perfectly frank, this is an absolute international embarrassment,” said Johan Lidberg, an associate professor of journalism at Monash University in Melbourne who works with the United Nations on global press freedom. “You’ve got a mature liberal democracy that pursues and hunts down whistleblowers and tries to kill the messenger.”
The symptoms of what Lidberg describes as a national illness go beyond the latest investigations, and the causes are rooted in Australia’s history, law, and public complacency.
What's ill is this hypocritical, never-ending $elf-$erving whining from the pre$$ when they are nothing but a mouthpiece, and they have this double game going on where they cry persecution at the hands of government while failing to defend Assange (who is dying in custody) and bloggers.
Australia does not have a constitutional protection for freedom of speech, but its criminal code does have Section 70, which makes it a crime for any public official to share information without “lawful authority or excuse.”
No whi$tle-blowing in Australia?
This all comes on the heels of a rigged election.
Maybe it is time to get out of Australia.
That “secrecy foundation” — the law cited in the warrant against the Australian Broadcasting Corp., the target of Wednesday’s raids — essentially states that no one in government can share information without a supervisor’s permission. It has been on the books since 1914, just after the outbreak of World War I, and is modeled on Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act of 1911.
Pulling all this ancient shit out shows how desperate they are, and it's pathetic.
It also needs to be noted that Australia is one of the Five Eyes spying consortium, meaning all the data is being shared and then recycled back for collection. That's in a "liberal democracy," -- whatevertf that means.
Layered on top of that are a wide range of measures and court cases involving privacy — a web of legal restrictions that, among other things, keep trials like the sexual abuse conviction of Cardinal George Pell out of public view.
Just call them military tribunals and you're all set (the best part is never having to hold them).
See: Australian Cardinal Pell appeals child sex convictions
Defamation law adds another hurdle. Sexual assault cases are especially rare in Australia because of the risks to accusers — and to journalists who cover such cases. The journalists who report such accusations can easily be sued (and lose), as Geoffrey Rush’s recent court victory in a defamation case clearly shows, but none of this may be as significant as the squeeze around national security. Since the 9/11 attacks, Australia has passed or amended more than 60 laws related to secrecy, spying, and terrorism, according to independent studies.
And woe to those reporters who violate it.
“That’s more than any other mature liberal democracy on the globe,” Lidberg said. “A lot of countries have amended terrorism laws, but none like Australia.”
The most recent expansion of governmental secrecy came last year with an espionage bill that increased criminal penalties for sharing information deemed classified, even if a document happened to be as harmless as a cafeteria menu, and broadened the definition of national security to include the country’s economic interests.
And yet Australians, we are told, are more concerned about guns in the wake of the New Zealand crisis event.
The journalist whose home was raided Tuesday, Annika Smethurst of The Sunday Telegraph of Sydney, had authorities rifling through her belongings for more than seven hours. At the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday, police downloaded more than 9,000 documents based on a warrant giving them authority to examine phones and notebooks of many journalists that had nothing to do with the articles in question.
At least they return the stuff here.
Joseph Fernandez, a media law expert at Curtin University in Perth, said that it was hard to imagine how any of these articles could have been construed as a threat to national security rather than simply an embarrassment for officials and politicians.
There you go. The West is so full of corruption these days, these are the steps they must take to keep looting.
Take the investigation into the revelation about boats with asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia from Sri Lanka. Just a few years ago, the Australian government sent out news releases when smugglers’ boats tried to reach the country, critics noted, but now that the home affairs minister wants to keep such attempts secret, they are considered a threat to national security.
You are going to wear out that last term like the Jews have worn out the charge of anti-semitism.
Or consider the investigative article about Afghanistan from the Australian Broadcasting Corp., which explored the impact of at least 10 episodes from 2009 to 2013 in which Australian special forces troops shot and killed not just insurgents, but also unarmed men and children.
They call it liberation!
The journalists involved were careful not to identify certain operational details that appeared in the documents they had obtained, and their report mainly highlighted the rift between elite military units and leaders trying to grapple with where to draw the line in grisly combat.
What type of "combat" we unarmed men and children engaging in?
Many of the journalists involved have asked why information from so long ago would be a threat to national security now when Australia has only a few hundred troops in Afghanistan playing more minor roles.
“What they’re trying to do, I think, is essentially send a message to people doing their job, journalists, that ‘From now on, you’re on notice that anyone you talk to, anyone you have text contact with, any digital footprint at all, we will know about it,’” said John Lyons, the head of investigative journalism at the Australian Broadcasting Corp., who chronicled the raids on Twitter.
No wonder the paper reads like a piece of sh!t.
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Related:
"YouTube said Wednesday it will remove false videos alleging that major events such as the Holocaust didn’t happen, as well as a broad array of content by white supremacists and others in a move to more aggressively crack down on hate speech. The Google-owned video site, along with its Silicon Valley peers, is starting to take a broader view of hate speech in the face of criticism that it has failed to prevent the spread of harmful videos that distort world events, hurt children, or promote discriminatory ideologies. While YouTube, which has more than 1.8 billion daily users, has long prohibited videos that promote violence or hatred against people based on their age, religious beliefs, gender, religion, immigration status, sexual orientation, and other protected categories, the new hate speech policy will go further. The policies will specifically ban videos ‘‘alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation, or exclusion,’’ based on those categories. That would include groups that ‘‘glorify Nazi ideology,’’ the company said in its announcement, because such beliefs were ‘‘inherently discriminatory.’’
The pre$$ and $ocial media are now the same! They have lost the narrative, and are now trying to get it back.
Of course, the Jewish supremacism that is in our faces every day will still be allowed.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Might as well just forget the pre$$:
"Pfizer had clues its blockbuster drug could prevent Alzheimer’s. Why didn’t it tell the world?" by Christopher Rowland Washington Post, June 5, 2019
A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.
The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed.
Seems to be a theme.
The company told The Post that it decided during its three years of internal reviews that Enbrel did not show promise for Alzheimer’s prevention because the drug does not directly reach brain tissue. It deemed the likelihood of a successful clinical trial to be low. A synopsis of its statistical findings prepared for outside publication, it says, did not meet its ‘‘rigorous scientific standards.’’
Science was the sole determining factor against moving forward, company spokesman Ed Harnaga said. Likewise, Pfizer said it opted against publication of its data because of its doubts about the results. It said publishing the information might have led outside scientists down an invalid pathway.
Pfizer’s deliberations, which previously have not been disclosed, offer a rare window into the frustrating search for Alzheimer’s treatments inside one of the world’s largest drug companies. Despite billions spent on research, Alzheimer’s remains a stubbornly prevalent disease with no effective prevention or treatment.
Some outside scientists disagree with Pfizer’s assessment that studying Enbrel’s potential in Alzheimer’s prevention is a scientific dead end. Pfizer did share the data privately with at least one prominent scientist, but outside researchers contacted by The Post believe Pfizer also should at least have published its data, making the findings broadly available to researchers.
‘‘Of course they should. Why not?’’ said Rudolph Tanzi, a leading Alzheimer’s researcher and professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
If they can't make money of it, neither will anyone else.
“It would benefit the scientific community to have that data out there,’’ said Keenan Walker, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins who is studying how inflammation contributes to Alzheimer’s. ‘‘Whether it was positive data or negative data, it gives us more information to make better informed decisions.’’
Internal discussions about possible new uses of drugs are common in pharmaceutical companies. In this case, Pfizer’s deliberations show how decisions made by industry executives — who are ultimately accountable to shareholders — can have an impact well beyond corporate board rooms.
Meanwhile, Enbrel has reached the end of its patent life. Profits are dwindling as generic competition emerges, diminishing financial incentives for further research into Enbrel and other drugs in its class.
‘‘I’m frustrated myself really by the whole thing,’’ said Clive Holmes, a professor of biological psychiatry at the University of Southampton in Great Britain who has received past support from Pfizer for Enbrel research in Alzheimer’s, a separate 2015 trial in 41 patients that proved inconclusive.
He said Pfizer and other companies do not want to invest heavily in further research only to have their markets undermined by generic competition.....
But they care about you and your health, yeah.
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Yeah, about those prices:
"National group launches ad campaign supporting Baker’s plan to rein in drug prices" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
A national political group is wading into the contentious debate over Governor Charlie Baker’s proposal to control prescription drug costs, pledging hundreds of thousands of dollars to sway lawmakers to support the measure.
Imagine if that money was spent somewhere else, like for care or reducing costs.
This is insane, folks, and the rot in this $ociety is so deep it is beyond saving.
Baker, in his state budget proposal in January, included a plan to tackle drug costs in the state Medicaid program by giving the state more power to negotiate drug prices directly with manufacturers, and subjecting expensive drugs to more oversight.
The Washington-based group Patients for Affordable Drugs Now launched an ad campaign Wednesday to support Baker’s effort — which drug companies oppose.
The ads appeared as Massachusetts House and Senate leaders met to begin hashing out a final budget plan for the state. Drug pricing may be the most contentious piece of those closed-door negotiations, which are expected to continue for several weeks.
But, but, but, we are a liberal democracy!
Don't worry; Globe pre$$titutes will get the word out.
This f***ing s*it is written for the elite ruling cla$$ and no one else, and that is why doing this everyday sucks!
The Senate largely adopted Baker’s drug pricing plan, but the House — after heavy lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry — approved a weaker version of it. Now lawmakers are trying to find a compromise, which they will send to Baker for his signature.
It is what I've said above, and the opioid crisis is nowhere to be found.
The state Medicaid program, known as MassHealth, provides health coverage for more than 1.8 million low-income Massachusetts residents. The cost of prescription drugs in MassHealth has nearly doubled to $1.9 billion since 2012, according to the Baker administration.
Patients For Affordable Drugs Now is a bipartisan political group funded by the foundation of billionaire couple John and Laura Arnold. John Arnold formerly ran a hedge fund.
OMFG!
We are beyond the Gilded Age and approaching Lords and Serfdom stuff! All dependent on how many crumbs the riches will throw at us.
An affiliated political action committee funded by the Arnolds spent nearly $500,000 to help Baker’s reelection campaign last year.
Zachary Stanley, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, said it was troubling that a national group is “coming in at the very last minute and trying to influence this debate in Massachusetts.
This has reached the point of absurdity, ha ha ha!
“All they’re doing is putting the most extreme positions out there with no regard for what impact the legislation may have on protecting patients and the development of new therapies,” Stanley said.
Lot of that in the paper today, too. The f***ing thing takes the extremes and presents them as the middle, and I'm tired, so tired, of this crap.
MassBio lobbies on behalf of drug companies in the state. It strongly opposes Baker’s plan to control drug costs and has argued the policy will stifle innovation and threaten access to drugs for patients who need them.
Are you tired of the excu$es yet?
They’re not planning a paid advertising campaign, but representatives from MassBio plan to continue lobbying legislators over the next several weeks.
“We are definitely going to be in touch with members of the conference committee,” Stanley said. “We’ve set up one-on-one meetings.”
Behind closed doors, no doubt.
Another industry group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also opposes the governor’s plan.
Baker’s proposal would allow state officials to negotiate drug prices directly with drug manufacturers. If those talks are unsuccessful, state officials could, through a public process, set a target value for a drug. They could also refer certain high-cost drugs to the state Health Policy Commission, a watchdog agency.
Could, if, pfffft!
The commission then could require drug company executives to testify at public hearings to justify their prices, and if the commission determined a drug price is unreasonable or excessive, it could refer the matter to the attorney general’s office for investigation under state consumer protection law.
Could, if, pfffft!
The Senate mostly backs this policy, but House lawmakers support a stripped-down alternative. They would allow drug companies to keep price information private, and they would not require pharmaceutical executives to testify under oath at public hearings.
“We have been following pharma’s attempts in the House to water down the bill,” said Ben Wakana, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now. “Our message is keep the bill strong.”
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s office did not comment Wednesday.....
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Also see:
U.K. patients form a buyer’s club to get a cheaper version of a Vertex cystic fibrosis drug
Maybe that is what you need to do.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Speaking of lobbying:
"Convicted of corruption, DiMasi now wants to be a lobbyist. The state has other ideas" by Matt Stoutand Andrea Estes Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
State officials have barred former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi from registering as a lobbyist, opening a potentially precedent-setting fight with the convicted felon over what he says is his “constitutional right” to peddle influence on Beacon Hill.
Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office rejected DiMasi’s application in late March, just days after the 73-year-old registered to lobby both the Legislature and executive branch, according to documents the Globe obtained through a public records request.
DiMasi has since appealed and is due to appear before an administrative hearing officer June 13 in a public session.
The former North End Democrat’s attempt at entering the lucrative industry came just months after he completed his federally supervised release following his 2011 conviction on public corruption charges. DiMasi, who had received an eight-year sentence, suggested as recently as January he was weighing whether to register as a lobbyist.
We were told he was sick and dying of cancer, so I was calling for his release and felt his treatment was to keep him quiet.
Boy, was I ever fooled!
Sal is as much of a scum as he ever was!
DiMasi’s federal counts — including mail fraud, wire fraud, and extortion — aren’t specifically included as disqualifying convictions in state statute, but Laurie Flynn, Galvin’s chief legal counsel, argued that DiMasi’s criminal record includes “conduct in violation” of state lobbying and ethics laws, which automatically bars him from lobbying for 10 years after his conviction, or until June 2021.
The revolving door of ju$tu$ for the political cla$$, and fuck this!
The decision could be groundbreaking. Galvin’s office said it’s the first time it’s denied a lobbyist application based on federal convictions since the state rewrote the ethics and lobbyists laws a decade ago amid DiMasi’s criminal case. That’s also because it’s never had an applicant with federal convictions “comparable to violations” in state law, said Debra O’Malley, a Galvin spokeswoman.
I have been doing this too long because all I'm doing is writing the same comments over and over while chronicling the comings and going of the elite. This is worthless.
DiMasi, who now lives in Melrose, formally appealed in April, arguing that because lawmakers did not include any of the federal statutes on which he was convicted into the law, he shouldn’t be prohibited from registering.
“The Secretary participated in the law making process, and like the lawmakers and the public, was well aware of the federal prosecutions against us,” DiMasi wrote in his two-page appeal letter, referring to the federal cases of “other elected officials.” Dianne Wilkerson, a former state senator, was charged federally with accepting bribes months before DiMasi was indicted in June 2009.
She is some sort of role model now!
Then-Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation strengthening the lobbying and conflict of interest laws that July, including creating the 10-year prohibition.
“Lobbying is a constitutional right,” DiMasi wrote to Galvin’s office. “Now that I have paid the severe price for my convictions, I want to do what I know best: advocating for the things I believe in.”
DiMasi had indicated months earlier he could seek to become a lobbyist, saying the State House is “what I know.”
“Between my knowledge, my experience, my expertise in certain areas, I can be helpful,” DiMasi told the Globe in January. “I still have a lot of things I would like to accomplish.”
DiMasi wielded outsized influence during his four-plus years as speaker, helping to shepherd the state’s landmark 2006 health care law requiring insurance for most residents and championing same-sex marriage while in office, but he resigned amid an ethics cloud in 2009, and two years later he was convicted on charges of taking $65,000 in kickbacks in exchange for using the power of his office to help a software company win $17.5 million in state contracts.
The charge itself was peanuts, and it was to remove him because he stood in the way of casinos, and I'm so ashamed I felt sorry for the scum.
DiMasi received an eight-year sentence, but within months was diagnosed with cancer.
He eventually earned an early release shortly before Thanksgiving in 2016, and as of the end of last year, he said he was in remission for throat and prostate cancer.
DiMasi’s friend Richard McDonough, a lobbyist and codefendant, also was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.
McDonough, also released from prison early, attended a public hearing on sports betting at the State House on May 28. He has not tried to re-register as a lobbyist, and it was unclear whether he was at the hearing on behalf of a client.
In 2008, Galvin moved to suspend McDonough’s right to lobby for allegedly failing to disclose all payments he received from Cognos, the software company at the center of DiMasi and McDonough’s federal corruption case. Galvin suspended his efforts after McDonough turned over the information.
That DiMasi’s case was inextricably tied to the lobbying world is not lost on DiMasi himself.
In his appeal letter, he said the 2009 bill that rewrote the state’s lobbying and ethics law was “widely heralded as a reaction to the lobbying efforts associated with my federal cases” and others.
He also argued that other federally convicted officials have since registered as lobbyists.
Former speaker Charles F. Flaherty has lobbied for years after pleading guilty to tax evasion charges in 1996, and his successor, Thomas M. Finneran, has been a lobbyist for more than a decade, after he pleaded guilty in 2007 to one count of obstruction of justice.
Both, however, were convicted — and later registered as lobbyists — before the Legislature revamped the law in 2009.....
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Turns out the law could be on Galvin’s side.
Also see:
At UMass, selective accountability lives on
Related:
"Amid an unprecedented financial crisis, the university has hired at least seven people with connections to state government and politics as administrators with salaries between $81,000 and $222,000 in the past year and a half, records show. The hires include the former head of the state Democratic Party, a former legislative aide, and a former state commissioner of environmental protection. Together, the seven people earn nearly $1 million. A UMass campus spokesman said in a statement that hiring is based on merit, and the hires underscore UMass’s reputation as a place where the politically connected of Beacon Hill can land a job with a single phone call. It’s an attractive place to work in part because the UMass system is part of the state retirement system, so state employees can continue to earn toward their pensions, which are based on their three highest years of pay and their number of years of service. And the campus’s location is for many more appealing than traveling to the other campuses in Lowell, Dartmouth, Worcester, or Amherst."
What you begin to realize is that the entire Massachusetts state government is staffed for purposes of political patronage.
"House approves bill to boost unions, allowing them to charge non-members some fees" by Matt Murphy and Michael P. Norton State House News Service, June 5, 2019
The House voted Wednesday to pass legislation enabling unions to charge non-members for reasonable costs associated with representing them through the grievance process, a bill designed to restore some of financial support that unions lost last year in a federal court ruling.
They need your campaign checks.
The bill emerged as a response to a 2018 US Supreme Court ruling, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. The court ruled public employees cannot be forced to pay fees or dues to a union to which he or she does not belong — a decision cheered as a victory for freedom of speech and also decried as an attack on organized labor.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo called the bill “necessary and just” to ensure the strength of public sector unions, but some have criticized provisions of the bill for infringing on worker privacy.
“The union bosses just got the green light to harass and intimidate state workers who are not enrolled in a union,’’ said Paul Craney, spokesperson for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “They can flex their muscle as much as they want, to the detriment of our state workers, and Massachusetts can thank the 155 House lawmakers who voted for it.”
Let the thugs loose!
State Representative Paul Brodeur dismissed the privacy criticisms before the debate began after explaining the bill to colleagues during a Democratic caucus meeting.
They didn't get to read it.
“That’s simply not accurate. What we are doing is making sure the unions have access to the information they need to get in touch with people,” Brodeur said.
The Melrose Democrat said the “status quo” is to give unions an employee’s residential address and a landline. “That doesn’t work anymore. That’s not the way people communicate in the modern world. This is just really, in my opinion, updating it so there’s fair access and better communication,” Brodeur said.
After the vote, a number of unions cheered the bill’s passage.
“It is reassuring to know that we continue to have a strong partner in the Massachusetts Legislature,” said David Holway, national president of the National Association of Government Employees.
And there you go!
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Now for the money grab:
"Hands-free driving bill to get vote in Senate this week" by Aidan Ryan Globe Correspondent, June 5, 2019
The Massachusetts Senate is set to vote Thursday on a bill that would ban the use of hand-held devices while operating a vehicle, marking yet another step forward for the legislation that aims to prevent distracted driving.
Three weeks after the House overwhelmingly passed its own version of the ban, the Senate will consider requiring hands-free use of mobile devices while driving, except when the device requires “a single tap or swipe to activate, deactivate or initiate the hands-free mode feature.”
Senate President Karen E. Spilka said the bill will pass because similar legislation was OK’d in the Senate in each of its last two sessions. Governor Charlie Baker has already indicated his support as well.
“I do believe that this bill will be on the governor’s desk and will become law,” Spilka said in an interview. “And I do believe that this will decrease accidents, injuries, and fatalities.”
The House held up the legislation in recent years because some lawmakers expressed concerns that such a law would increase racial profiling from law enforcement. The Senate bill requires recording the “perceived race and ethnicity” of each driver stopped, which lawmakers have said will help combat racial profiling.
The provision slightly differs from the House bill, which requires police officers to record the race of drivers only when they are issued a warning or a citation.
“We want to try to make sure that this law does not lead to a disparate impact in certain communities or any community for that matter,” Spilka said. “I think gathering data to the best that we can makes sense and then we take a look at it, and certainly try to improve upon that as the time goes on.”
Senators have proposed a total of 29 amendments....
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The fines range from $100 to $500.
Also see:
"The payroll taxes that will pay for the state’s new paid family and medical leave program are likely to take effect as scheduled on July 1, according to House Speaker Robert DeLeo who all but ruled out a delay in the law on Wednesday after being given a deadline by Gov. Charlie Baker. DeLeo, when asked if the House this week would take up a three-month delay in the implementation of the paid family and medical leave, told reporters, after a Democratic caucus, that it was unlikely. “I don’t think we will be,” DeLeo said. Baker, DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka have been talking in recent days about a possible delay and changes to the law requested by a coalition of business, labor, community and religious groups. Baker said Monday that his administration was “ready” to implement the law as scheduled, but suggested that if legislative leaders wanted to pursue a delay it would have to happen this week. The Department of Family and Medical Leave plans to begin collecting a 0.63 percent payroll tax from employers July 1 to fund the estimated $800 million paid family and medical leave program, which would allow workers and new parents to more easily take care of themselves, new children or family members....."
The "grand bargain" took away time-and-a-half for overtime and Sundays.
I wonder how many tax credits Adam Sandler will get for his movie as they make the credit permanent.
Maybe you should take a walk:
Biden’s Boston campaign stop highlights fine line mayor walks in race filled with friends and allies
He also likes Mayor Pete.
Democratic rivals blister Biden’s stance on abortion
Yeah, but will it be enough?
"Undemocratic Democrats" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist, June 5, 2019
Democratic Party bigs are fully committed to making Congress look more like America, but not right now, thank you.
That’s the dismal upshot of an effort by House Democratic leaders to prevent members of their own party from primarying incumbents in 2020. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will no longer work with any consultant employed by an opponent of a sitting member of the House Democratic Caucus.
In other words, if you have the audacity to help somebody challenge a Democratic incumbent, you’re dead to the DCCC. Even if you do it in a safely Democratic congressional district.
This is happening because some incumbents are freaked out by last year’s election, in which Ayanna Pressley defeated 10-term incumbent Mike Capuano to become the first black woman in the Massachusetts congressional delegation, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pulled off a similar upset in New York. The DCCC wants to protect other incumbents from that fate, even if it means maintaining a Congress where women, minorities, and younger Americans are starkly underrepresented.
“It sends a cold message about who is deemed to be the future of the party,” said Wilnelia Rivera, the political consultant who helped Pressley to victory last year. Rivera isn’t bothered by the prospect of being blackballed by the DCCC, but she’s rightly distressed that the party is shooting itself in the foot by attempting to close off opportunities to rise for women and minority candidates.
Maybe the party’s fear of primaries in seats Democrats barely won last year is understandable, though that would still be no excuse for blocking them so aggressively, but it makes absolutely no sense when it comes to seats like Pressley’s, and it veers into parody when it comes to the super safe seat held by Dan Lipinski, the Chicago congressman who is antiabortion, and who waffles on gay rights, yet who still enjoys DCCC support despite a credible primary challenge by a more progressive Marie Newman.....
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Also see:
"A Rhode Island library says it will go forward with a Drag Queen Story Hour after an earlier decision to cancel the event amid “threats of protest.” Rogers Free Library in Bristol will hold the story hour on June 15. The library said in a statement on its website that with the support of staff, trustees and volunteers it now feels confident it can ensure a safe environment for kids and families. The public library in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts held a similar event Saturday....."
I was told about it, but the Globe never followed up.
"Woman’s husband arrested in connection with Lexington slaying" by Danny McDonald Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
The husband of a Lexington woman found dead in her SUV last week was arrested and charged with her murder Wednesday, according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office.
Hongyan Sun, 50, of Lexington, is accused of killing Shen Cai, 49, in their home and then putting her body into their white Honda CRV and leaving the car on Worthen Road, prosecutors said in a statement.
He is expected to be arraigned Thursday in Concord District Court, the statement said.
Cai was found dead in the vehicle early on May 30. The state medical examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide “by mechanical asphyxiation,” according to the district attorney’s statement.
During the course of the investigation, officials learned that the couple were in the process of going through a divorce.
Cai, authorities said, had reported to her friends and her attorney a history of “verbal abuse and controlling behavior, as well as one prior instance of physical violence.”
Cai, according to prosecutors, told her friend she feared for her safety.
Authorities learned of an alleged physical altercation between Cai and Sun on May 28 “and observed injuries on both the victim and the suspect consistent with a violent struggle,” according to the statement.
“The investigation suggests that after the struggle in their home, Ms. Cai’s body was allegedly staged and left in her vehicle on Worthen Road in an apparent attempt to mislead law enforcement,” the district attorney’s statement said.
Cai moved to the United States from China in 2015. She was last seen on the evening of May 28, according to authorities.
The following day her friends became concerned after she missed two scheduled appointments.
They searched for Cai for several hours before finding her body on Worthen Road, which intersects the street where she and Sun have owned a home since 2016, according to town records.
The grisly discovery shook people in the neighborhood where the couple lived as well as in the church where Cai worshipped.
“It’s really very sad news,” Yuegang Zhang, a minister at Chinese Bible Church of Greater Boston in Lexington, said Saturday. “It’s really shocking.”
Sun had filed for divorce last September, citing an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, court records show. The couple met through mutual friends in 2013 and married two years later, according to divorce records.
Cai left her job in Shanghai as marketing director for Danone, the international food and beverage company, to move to Massachusetts with her daughter and marry Sun, who lived in Waltham at the time, court records show. The marriage didn’t produce any children, but Sun has a son, Ryan said.
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Above I asked where the animal rights people were.
Well, here they are:
"First right whale of the year reported dead off Canada; researchers concerned" by David Abel and Sabrina Schnur Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, June 5, 2019
A North Atlantic right whale was found dead in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence — the first known mortality of the critically endangered species this year, federal officials said Wednesday.
The discovery of the 9-year-old whale, known to scientists as Wolverine, comes at a dire time for the mammals. Their numbers have fallen in recent years to little more than 400, making them among the most endangered species on the planet.
The deceased whale was spotted Tuesday afternoon by an aerial survey team from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. According to US and Canadian officials, it was drifting in a relatively shallow part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which is between Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec.
Marine specialists were trying to relocate the whale’s carcass so they could install a satellite tag and bring it to shore for a necropsy. The whale apparently sustained fatal injuries shortly before it was spotted.
“The observers said it was very fresh and may have died recently given the bleeding they saw,” Jennifer Goebel, a spokeswoman for NOAA, wrote in an e-mail.
The whale recently reached maturity, which begins between 8 and 10 years for males, said Tony LaCasse, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium.
“He was named for three propeller cuts on his tail stock,” LaCasse said.
Scientists at the aquarium, who identified the whale from photographs, have been tracking Wolverine since he was born in 2010. They know the whale’s mother and know that it suffered at least one vessel strike and three entanglements.
“Wolverine endeared himself to the right whale research community, as he was seen many times in all the main habitats from Florida to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence,” said Amy Knowlton, a senior right whale scientist at the aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. “The right whale community is saddened by the loss of Wolverine, especially at such a young age.”
The death is the first loss to the small population this year. With a significant decline in the birth rate — last year there were no calves born, which was unprecedented — scientists say the species is in peril. Even one death a year puts the species at risk of extinction.
Last year, officials recorded three deaths of right whales. That followed a record 17 that were found dead in 2017, 12 in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
Right whales had rarely been seen that far north until 2017. Scientists suspect that their migration patterns have changed as their food source, a tiny crustacean known as calanus, has declined in their main feeding areas in the Gulf of Maine, which scientists have attributed to the waters’ rapid warming.
The deaths in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence triggered a wave of reforms in Canada, including sweeping closures to fishing areas and speed limits for vessels.
It remains unclear how the whale died, but the vast majority of right whale deaths has been attributed in recent years to entanglements in fishing gear — mainly lobster and crab lines — and ship strikes.
More than 80 percent of right whales have scarring on their bodies that indicate they’ve been tangled at least once in fishing lines, LaCasse said.
“This news is a grim reminder that these critically endangered animals aren’t dying of old age. We are killing them,” said Patrick Ramage, director of marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an advocacy group based on Cape Cod. “This latest mortality is a devastating reminder that we need to act — on both sides of the border — and to do so now.”
And it has nothing to do with the warming water, not with the frozen turtles being plucked from them.
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Related:
Mount Washington Observatory sues cog railway over failure to pay fees
Has the snow melted yet?
Be careful hiking.
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Time to fold this post up:
"IKEA will start selling Ori’s robotic furniture next year" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff, June 5, 2019
Ori, the Boston-based maker of robotic furniture, is on track to get its technology in front of millions of new customers. The company this week announced that the home furnishings giant IKEA will begin offering products powered by Ori next year.
IKEA said it will launch the collaboration in Hong Kong and Japan with an integration called ROGNAN. The companies said the product “will be able to turn small spaces into smart spaces that have all the comfort and convenience of a home.”
Renderings released by IKEA and Ori show a combination couch and bookshelf that pulls away from a wall with the touch of a finger to reveal space for a bed and closet.
As they cram us all together and gate their mansions.
The product is similar to others that Ori has introduced on its own. The MIT-born company’s first offerings were combinations of sleeping, storage, and entertaining space that were sold directly to developers looking to add flexibility and appeal to studio apartments and other small spaces.
Last year, the company launched its first product for sale directly to consumers — a convertible closet that also functions as a desk and entertainment center. The “pocket closet” starts at about $6,000 for the smallest model.
IKEA and Ori haven’t said what they’ll charge for the products they’re making together. The companies said they’ve been working together on the product integration for a few years.
“We share IKEA’s passion to enable people to make the most of their living spaces, and look forward to helping realize this as we continue to develop living spaces for the next generation,” Ori founder Hasier Larrea said in a statement.
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How is that economy doing, anyway?
"US companies added the fewest jobs in nine years, a private survey found, as manufacturers, construction firms, and mining companies cut workers. Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday that businesses added just 27,000 jobs in May, the fewest since March 2010. Jobs in construction fell 36,000 and in manufacturing by 3,000. The figures come just after ADP reported strong hiring in April, when companies added 271,000 jobs, the most in nine months."
Yeah, that Trump immigration plan that is going to double the amount of immigrant work visas while the "labor force participation rate fell to 62.8 percent in April from 63 percent the prior month, meaning a smaller percentage of the population is working."
As long as stocks rise, 'eh?
"Stocks closed higher on Wall Street for a second straight day Wednesday, extending Tuesday’s strong gains as investors bet an interest rate cut could be ahead. Technology, industrial, and health care companies accounted for much of the broad gains, which were tempered by a slide in energy stocks following a 3.4 percent plunge in the price of US crude oil. Traders shrugged off a report showing private US companies added the fewest jobs in nine years last month. The bleak jobs snapshot may have been welcomed by investors hoping it could help persuade the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates......"
As long as they stay faithful.
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"In 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, 25 hours after he was shot by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan."
Is that who shot him?
Related: Last Rites
This blog is dead.
