Source: posidn-api.cnet.com --- Tuesday, July 30, 2013
We take a look at the recently rebuilt Zagat Android app, which offers users more access to editorial content among other features. ...
Source: http://reviews.cnet.com/2300-3513_7-10017712.html
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Jonathan Pollard.
The Israeli cabinet took a courageous and politically unpopular step by approving the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners, including many terrorists who had murdered Israeli babies, women, the elderly and other civilians.? According to Israeli intelligence some of these released murderers are likely to rejoin terrorist organizations and may kill again. ?Relatives and friends of the victims have protested the decision to release these killers.? Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet withstood these pressures and ordered their release.
The United States government had pressured the Israeli government to release these prisoners because the Palestinian Authority had made their release a condition to resuming peace talks.? The Israeli government, which had agreed to peace talks with no preconditions, submitted to the Palestinian precondition, and talks are now likely to go forward.
Prime Minister Netanyahu had reportedly asked the Obama Administration to make it easier for him to release Palestinian murderers by releasing Jonathan Pollard, who has already served 28 years for spying for Israel.? No American in history has ever come close to serving that long?indeed none has ever served a double digit sentence?for spying for an American ally.? Moreover, there were grave doubts about the lawfulness of Pollard?s sentence, as evidenced by the strong words of the dissenting judge who characterized the government?s breach of the plea agreement as a ?fundamental miscarriage of justice requiring relief??
But the Obama Administration slammed the door in Netanyahu?s face by categorically rejecting the request to commute Pollard?s sentence to the excessive term he has already served.? Despite this rebuff from the Obama Administration, Netanyahu agreed to release the prisoners.? Now the Palestinian Authority is asking for more prisoners to be released including some of the most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth.? The United States will probably continue to put pressure on Israel to risk the lives of its own civilians by releasing more Palestinian terrorists in order to get the Palestinians to continue to negotiate.
The time has come?indeed it is well passed?for the United States to do the right thing with regard to Jonathan Pollard.? Pollard poses no continuing danger to America, since he has not had access to our secrets for nearly 30 years.? Unlike the Palestinian prisoners who are to be released, he has expressed regret over his actions and has sought forgiveness.? Moreover, his life sentence is excessive by any standard of justice and it violated the government?s plea bargain which promised, in exchange for Pollard?s guilty plea, not to seek life imprisonment.
Peace between Israel and the Palestinians requires the active involvement of the United States, as evidenced by Secretary John Kerry?s intensive efforts to bring the parties together.? But if peace is in our national interest, as the Obama Administration insists it is, and if peace requires sacrifice by both Israel and the Palestinians, then we too must be willing to give a little.? Releasing Jonathan Pollard after requiring him to serve 27 years, some in solitary confinement, is not much of a sacrifice to ask of the United States.? It is the least we can do to make it easier for Israel to make far greater sacrifices and take far more dangerous risks in order to secure peace.
The request to release Pollard now has bipartisan support in the United States and multi-partisan support in Israel.? Knesset members on all sides of the Israeli political spectrum have called for Pollard?s release as a way of encouraging the peace process.? ?It?s a window of opportunity of good will to Israeli, who are not going through an easy time,? said Labor MK Nachman Shai.? ?It would build up public support for negotiations and show that the US also understands the gravity of this historic moment.?
American political leaders from both sides of the aisle, as well as from all religious backgrounds, have called for Pollard?s release on compassionate grounds, based on the length of his sentence and his deteriorating physical condition.
Israel will go forward with negotiations regardless of whether Pollard is released, because the Israeli government wants a peaceful resolution that assures security.? But in the end the Israeli public will have to vote for any deal struck between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, with the help of American negotiators.? The outcome of any such referendum will depend on whether Israeli voters believe that their security has been assured and that the United States continues to stand behind them.? Releasing Jonathan Pollard?as a gesture of good will, as a show of American support, and in the interests of justice and compassion?will go a long way toward encouraging the Israeli public to vote in favor of a peace agreement that requires great sacrifices on their part.
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SAN JOSE, CA- San Jose Giants right-handed pitcher Clayton Blackburn was named California League Pitcher of the Week for the week ending on July 28. In Lancaster on Thursday night, Blackburn threw eight innings and allowed just one run on three hits in the Giants' 4-3 victory over the Jethawks. The right-hander carried a perfect game into the seventh inning, retired 20 straight hitters to begin his start, walked none and struck out six while throwing just 83 pitches.Selected by the San Francisco Giants in the 16th round of the 2011 draft, Blackburn was 8-4 with a 2.54 ERA last season for the Single-A Augusta GreenJackets. This season, he holds a 4.02 ERA and opponents are batting just .223 against him.
Blackburn is the fifth San Jose Giant to receive Player of the Week honors in 2013:
April 15 - April 21 - RHP Austin Fleet
April 22 - April 28 - OF Devin Harris
May 20 - May 26 - LHP Ty Blach
July 1 - July 7 - LHP Edwin Escobar
The San Jose Giants begin a three-game series against the Visalia Rawhide at Municipal Stadium on Tuesday, July 30. On Tuesday, the team will host its first-ever Mustache Night and all fans who have a mustache or are sporting mustache apparel will receive two free future game tickets. On Wednesday, fans will want to make arrangements to come to the stadium because the Royal Couple will be in attendance along with their newborn, the Prince of Cambridge. All fans with the name George, Alexander or Louis can show their ID at the box office and receive FREE admission to the game. In addition, fans will be able to find tickets to Wednesday and Thursday's contests at local Orchard Supply Hardware Stores. Visit sjgiants.com for a list of participating locations.
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The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
Source: http://www.oursportscentral.com/services/releases/?id=4652543
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In this photo taken July 11, 2013, Cheyne Dougan, assistant principal at Clarksville High School, is interviewed at the school in Clarksville, Ark. Dougan is one of 20 Clarksville School District staff members are training to be armed security guards on campus. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
In this photo taken July 11, 2013, Cheyne Dougan, assistant principal at Clarksville High School, is interviewed at the school in Clarksville, Ark. Dougan is one of 20 Clarksville School District staff members are training to be armed security guards on campus. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
In this photo taken July 11, 2013, a Clarksville public schools faculty member, wearing a protective mask, participates in active-shooter training at the city's high school in Clarksville, Ark. Twenty Clarksville School District staff members are training to be armed security guards on campus. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
In this photo taken July 11, 2013, a Clarksville schools faculty member, wearing a protective mask, rear center, carries a practice handgun toward a classroom in the city's high school in Clarksville, Ark., as students portray victims in a mock school shooting scenario. Twenty Clarksville School District staff members are training to be armed security guards on campus. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
In this photo taken July 11, 2013, a sign indicates "police training in progress" as police and weapons instructors walk in the hallways of Clarksville High School in Clarksville, Ark. Twenty Clarksville School District staff members are training to be armed security guards on campus. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
In this photo taken July 11, 2013, practice air-powered handguns sit on a teacher's desk in a classroom at Clarksville High School in Clarksville, Ark. Twenty Clarksville School District staff members are training during the summer to be armed security guards on campus. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
CLARKSVILLE, Ark. (AP) ? As Cheyne Dougan rounded the corner at Clarksville High School, he saw three students on the floor moaning and crying. In a split-second, two more ran out of a nearby classroom.
"He's got a gun," one of them shouted as Dougan approached with his pistol drawn. Inside, he found one student holding another at gunpoint. Dougan aimed and fired three rounds at the gunman.
Preparing for such scenarios has become common for police after a school shooting in Connecticut last December left 20 children and six teachers dead. But Dougan is no policeman. He's the assistant principal of this school in Arkansas, and when classes resume in August, he will walk the halls with a 9 mm handgun.
Dougan is among more than 20 teachers, administrators and other school employees in this town who will carry concealed weapons throughout the school day, making use of a little-known Arkansas law that allows licensed, armed security guards on campus. After undergoing 53 hours of training, Dougan and other teachers at the school will be considered guards.
"The plan we've been given in the past is 'Well, lock your doors, turn off your lights and hope for the best,'" Superintendent David Hopkins said. But as deadly incidents continued to happen in schools, he explained, the district decided, "That's not a plan."
After the Connecticut attack, the idea of arming schoolhouses against gunmen was hotly debated across the country. The National Rifle Association declared it the best response to serious threats. But even in the most conservative states, most proposals faltered in the face of resistance from educators or warnings from insurance companies that schools would face higher premiums.
In strongly conservative Arkansas, where gun ownership is common and gun laws are permissive, no school district had ever used the law to arm teachers on the job, according to the state Department of Education. The closest was the Lake Hamilton School District in Garland County, which for years has kept several guns locked up in case of emergency. Only a handful of trained administrators ? not teachers ? have access to the weapons.
Clarksville, a community of 9,200 people about 100 miles northwest of Little Rock, is going further.
Home to an annual peach festival, the town isn't known for having dangerous schools. But Hopkins said he faced a flood of calls from parents worried about safety after the attack last year at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
Hopkins said he and other school leaders didn't see why the district couldn't rely on its own staff and teachers to protect students rather than hire someone.
"We're not tying our money up in a guard 24/7 that we won't have to have unless something happens. We've got these people who are already hired and using them in other areas," Hopkins said. "Hopefully we'll never have to use them as a security guard."
State officials are not blocking Clarksville's plan, but Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell is opposed to the idea of arming teachers and staff. He prefers to hire law enforcement officers as school resource officers.
There are other dissenters, too. Donna Morey, former president of the Arkansas Education Association, called the idea of arming teachers "awful." The risk of a student accidentally getting shot or obtaining a gun outweighs any benefits, she said.
"We just think educators should be in the business of educating students, not carrying a weapon," Morey said.
Participants in the program are given a one-time $1,100 stipend to purchase a handgun and holster. Hopkins said the district is paying about $50,000 for ammunition and for training by Nighthawk Custom Training Academy, a private training facility in northwest Arkansas.
The Nighthawk training includes drills like the one Dougan participated in, with various role-playing scenarios involving shooters on campus. Dougan and other teachers in the program practiced using "airsoft" pellet guns, with students wearing protective facemasks and jackets.
"There's pressure on you, because you're shooting real bullets if this actually happened," said Dougan, who has three children attending Clarksville schools. "I was nervous to start, but once it started and I was going through what they had taught us, it just took over."
The training is narrowly tailored for teachers to respond to shooters on campus.
"That teacher is going to respond to one thing and one thing alone, and that's someone is in the building either actively or attempting to kill people," Jon Hodoway, director of training for Nighthawk. "That's it. They're not going to enforce the law. They're not going to make traffic stops. If somebody is outside acting the fool, they're going to call the police."
Using students as actors helps trainers re-create the environment that teachers and staff would face in a typical school shooting, Hodoway explained. The students who participated in the exercise were children of the teachers and staff who were being trained.
Sydney Whitkanack, who will enter seventh grade this fall, said she's grown up around firearms and doesn't mind if teachers or staff are armed at school.
"If they're concealed, then it's no big deal," said Whitkanack, who was an actor in the training scenario. "It's not like someone's going to know 'Oh, they have a firearm.'"
The district will post signs at each school about the armed guards, but the identities of faculty and staff carrying weapons will be kept secret, Hopkins said.
Those who participate in the program will continue to receive regular training, he said.
Sherry Wommack said the program is one reason she's taking her son, an incoming eighth-grader, out of Clarksville's schools before the school year begins. Wommack said she doesn't believe teachers should make life-or-death choices involving students.
"I think police officers are trained to make those decisions, not teachers," Wommack said.
___
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Officials said they discovered a body thought to be Mark Lennon, pictured in this family photo. (Rockland County Sheriff?s Office)
PIERMONT, N.Y. (KTLA) ? A second body was pulled from the Hudson River on Sunday after two people, including a bride-to-be, went missing when a speedboat carrying a wedding party crashed into a barge on the Hudson River.
The body of a man was located about a mile from where a woman?s body was found a day earlier, according to Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco.
Neither body was positively identified but they were believed to be best man Mark Lennon and bride-to-be Lindsey Stewart.
Stewart, 30, and her wedding party were boating near the Tappan Zee Bridge 25 miles north of New York City when their water craft struck a construction barge on Friday at 10:30 p.m.
All six people on the 21-foot Stingray motor boat were thrown into the water, police said.
The driver of the boat was arrested and charged Saturday.
Jojo K. John, 35, was arraigned on one count of first-degree vehicular manslaughter and three counts of second-degree vehicular assault, according to Robert Van Cura, undersheriff of the Rockland County Sheriff?s Office.
Source: http://ktla.com/2013/07/28/second-body-found-after-hudson-river-wedding-party-boat-crash/
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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) ? Olympic champion Sun Yang comfortably led the 400-meter freestyle heats on the opening day of the traditional pool events at the swimming world championships Sunday.
For Chinese teammate Ye Shiwen, it was a different story.
Ye, the surprise winner of both women's individual medleys at last year's London Olympics as a 16-year-old, had to settle for second in the 200 IM prelims behind Katinka Hosszu of Hungary.
Hosszu clocked 2 minutes, 8.45 seconds ? a nearly unheard of time for heats and one that would have earned her a bronze medal in London. Ye, swimming in the next lane, touched in 2:10.20.
Sun led the 400 in 3:44.67 and Ryan Cochrane of Canada was second with 3:45.74. Olympic silver medalist Park Tae-hwan skipped the meet.
Also, American teenager Katie Ledecky led the women's 400 free heats by a large margin, touching in 4:03.05.
And the United States led both the men's and women's 4x100 free relay heats.
Four finals were scheduled for later on Day 1, in the men's and women's 400 free and the men's and women's 4x100 free relays.
The women's 200 IM final isn't until Monday.
Hosszu has been hailed as a top medal contender since winning the 400 IM and taking two bronzes at the 2009 worlds in Rome. But she failed to bring home any hardware from both the 2011 championships in Shanghai and the London Games.
If her prelim swim was any indication, that should change here.
"I was very surprised," Hosszu said. "That's a really good sign for me because I can usually feel about where I rank. I thought it was like 2:10 or 2:11."
Ye's Olympic-winning time of 2:07.57 appears in reach for Hosszu, or even the world record of 2:06.15 set by American Ariana Kukors in 2009 at the height of rubberized suit era.
"I definitely feel like I can go faster," Hosszu said. "In the final there will be eight swimmers and we all want to win. We will see who is the fastest."
Ye did not appear concerned.
"That was pretty good for the morning," she said through a translator. "I just followed what my coach told me to do. He said if I finished in the top two, that was good enough.
"The most important thing is the first 100," Ye added. "The breaststroke is most important. I cannot get too far behind in the breaststroke. I'm very confident in my freestyle."
In his event, Sun was more than four seconds off the time he won with in London.
"I tried to get a good place in the final," he said. "I saw that the field was very good and I had to go hard to get a place in the final."
In the women's 400 free, Ledecky was under world-record pace early on.
"Oh really?" she said. "I wanted to take the prelims really seriously so I would make it back to finals in a good spot. I'm excited to race the world's best tonight."
Ledecky burst onto the scene a year ago as a 15-year-old when she won the 800 free in London with the second fastest time in history. Then at the U.S. trials last month, she became the first American woman to qualify for the worlds in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 free.
Is she worried about taking on too much?
"No. Not at all," she said. "I've put in the preparation this year so I think I'm up for it."
Melanie Costa of Spain qualified second behind Ledecky, a distant 1.15 seconds behind, while Olympic champion Camille Muffat of France got through in sixth.
In other prelims, Olympic and defending world champion Dana Vollmer of the United States led the women's 100 fly in 57.22.
Olympic silver medalist Christian Sprenger of Australia topped the men's 100 breast in 59.53 while London champion and world-record holder Cameron van der Burgh of South Africa advanced in seventh. Alex Dale Oen, the Norwegian who won this event at the last worlds, died of a heart attack last year.
And in a non-Olympic event, 33-year-old Roland Schoeman of South Africa led the 50 fly in 23.02. Local favorite Rafael Munoz of Spain qualified second in 23.17. Defending champion Cesar Cielo of Brazil made the semifinals in eighth.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sun-leads-ye-2nd-prelims-swimming-starts-111315743.html
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By Christian Lowe
WARSAW (Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has agreed to consider a second case against Poland over allegations it allowed the CIA to run a secret jail on its soil, intensifying pressure on Warsaw to reveal how closely it was involved in the U.S. "war on terror".
The Strasbourg-based court will consider an application from Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah, who alleges that he was held illegally about a decade ago in a CIA-run facility on the grounds of an intelligence training academy in a Polish forest.
His case will be considered alongside one brought earlier by Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who says he was held in the same place as part of a CIA program of "extraordinary rendition" to detain and interrogate suspected al Qaeda operatives.
According to applications submitted to court by lawyers for the two men, they were flown by private jet to a remote Polish airfield and then driven to the facility near a village called Stare Kiejkuty. While there, they say they were subjected to interrogation techniques - including water-boarding - that human rights activists say amount to torture.
Polish officials deny hosting a CIA jail. Poland's foreign ministry said it had received details of the case from the ECHR.
"Poland is obliged to reply to the complaint by the deadline of September 16 this year. The case is currently being analyzed by the legal services of the ministry," it said in a statement.
The twin court cases are awkward for Poland's government: it is caught between a desire to be seen as a model of human rights and respect for the law on the one hand, and its close security relationship with the United States on the other.
GUANTANAMO INMATES
The United States has acknowledged that, as part of its "war on terror" it had facilities around the world where it held al Qaeda suspects. Putting them on foreign soil meant the detainees were not entitled to the protections afforded under U.S. law.
Washington has never disclosed the location of any of the prisons, and President Barack Obama signed an order ending their use after taking office in 2009. Both Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri are now being held in the U.S. military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Warsaw has so far declined to answer questions from the court about the allegations made by al-Nashiri, citing national security concerns and worries about interfering with a separate criminal investigation inside Poland.
"As a member of the Council of Europe, Poland is obliged to cooperate with the Court," said Helen Duffy, senior counsel for Abu Zubaydah on behalf of Interights, a human rights group.
"It needs to begin to engage with the detailed allegations against it and to account for its central role in the rendition program," she said.
Abu Zubaydah's application against Poland was on Monday listed by the ECHR as having been "communicated", which means that on a preliminary examination the court believed there was a case to answer.
The court usually takes several years between receiving an application and communicating it, but it acted more swiftly in the two cases against Poland: 14 months for al-Nashiri and six months for Abu Zubaydah's application.
Some people with expertise in the court's workings say this could mean a ruling will be made as early as this year.
The U.S. government says Abu Zubaydah ran a camp in Afghanistan that trained some of those who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities. It accuses al-Nashiri of directing an attack on the U.S. warship Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.
Prosecutors in Poland have been conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that Polish officials knew there was a CIA jail. It has been running now for five years, with no sign any prosecutions are imminent.
(Additional reporting by Dagmara Leszkowicz; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/european-court-hear-cia-jail-case-against-poland-150155823.html
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