Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/50474186/
gunner kiel gunner kiel groundhog soulja boy did the groundhog see his shadow punxsutawney phil groundhog day
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Product lets pet owners 'defend' furniture against dogs | dogs, sofa ...
NED B. HUNTER
Kathryn Alberti loves her dogs. But she hates the saliva stains, scratch marks and torn cushions they leave on her sofa and chairs.
For years, Alberti tolerated the mess, letting her dogs climb up next to her and her husband, Gordon. Then, in November 2011, she bought a new sofa and recliner and the struggle to keep her beloved pets off the furniture took on more importance.
?When we left the house, we?d cover it (the sofa and recliner) every day with chairs, or bar stools, or whatever it takes,? she said.
But the Colorado Springs couple got tired of having to engineer a barricade each day. Then Gordon Alberti had a ?eureka? moment when he used a laundry hamper with a pop-up lid to keep Dover, a yellow Labrador, and Toby and Ripken, two mixed breed pooches, off the new furniture. The spring-action top of the clothes hamper prompted him to invent the Couch Defender and Chair Defender, a device that looks a bit like an oversized Slinky, covers the sitting area of a sofa or chair and can?t be pulled down by most dogs.
Gordon Alberti said the birth of his idea was exciting and ?kind of scary? at the same time.
?Because I am thinking, maybe I have something here,? he said, ?but it is going to be a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of money.?
It took the Albertis seven months and $70,000 to develop, patent and bring their Defenders to market, Kathryn Alberti said. The Defender is an 18-inch-wide, nylon tube wrapped with a black, beige or brown colored mesh around a circular spring. The Couch Defender expands to 72 inches in length or less to cover a sofa. The Chair Defender stretches to 28 inches or less. Defenders can be locked together at the ends with plastic snaps to cover longer furniture, Kathryn Alberti said.
The secured ends also lock the spring when compressed for easy storage. The covered ends prevent pets from climbing into the tube and getting caught. The product?s spring does not have enough tension to hurt anyone if it were suddenly released, Kathryn Alberti said. Nor does the Defender use alarms or other noises to frighten dogs off the furniture, as some products do.
?And you don?t have to wash it, shake it, or anything,? she said.
Kathryn Alberti works at Roundup Fellowship as a therapist with special-needs children. Gordon Alberti works as a maritime analyst for NORAD. The Albertis sold their first Defender in October, Kathryn Alberti said, and have sold nearly 200 since.
Why not just cover the furniture with a sheet or blanket? ?
?I used to do that, but our dogs would get on the couch, do turns, dig as they turn, and ball up the blanket and sheet,? Kathryn Alberti said, ?and it would not stay where it was supposed to stay.?
The Albertis also tried to train their dogs to stay off the furniture, but were unsuccessful.?
?Our dogs are a little bit unruly,? Kathryn Alberti said.
?
Contact Ned Hunter: 636-0275.
---
ALSO IN BUSINESS
? Atmel lays off 200 at Springs plant in past month.
? Springs sales tax collections surge in December.
? Chipotle adding catering service.
??Brewer New Belgium now employee-owned.
Source: http://www.gazette.com/articles/dogs-149700-sofa-alberti.html
Colorado Lottery Pa Lottery Ebates lotto Illinois Lottery texas lottery Dell
Friday, January 4, 2013
100 billion alien planets fill our galaxy: study
Our Milky Way galaxy is home to at least 100 billion alien planets, and possibly many more, a new study suggests.
"It's a staggering number, if you think about it," lead author Jonathan Swift, of Caltech in Pasadena, said in a statement. "Basically there's one of these planets per star."
Swift and his colleagues arrived at their estimate after studying a five-planet system called Kepler-32, which lies about 915 light-years from Earth. The five worlds were detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which flags the tiny brightness dips caused when exoplanets cross their star's face from the instrument's perspective.
-
Space news from NBCNews.com
-
How Neil Armstrong planned his moon speech
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Neil Armstrong's brother tells the BBC that he gave the late astronaut feedback on his history-making speech months before it was uttered on the moon.
- First meteor shower of 2013 peaks this week
- 13 new space missions to watch in 2013
- Space may accelerate Alzheimer's in astronauts
-
How Neil Armstrong planned his moon speech
The Kepler-32 planets orbit an M dwarf, a type of star that is smaller and cooler than our sun. M dwarfs are the most common star in the Milky Way, accouting for about 75 percent of the galaxy's 100 billion or so stars, researchers said.
Further, the five Kepler-32 worlds are similar in size to Earth and orbit quite close to their parent star, making them typical of the planets Kepler has spotted around other M dwarfs. So the Kepler-32 system should be representative of many of the galaxy's planets, scientists said. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]
"I usually try not to call things 'Rosetta stones,' but this is as close to a Rosetta stone as anything I've seen," said co-author John Johnson, also of Caltech. "It's like unlocking a language that we're trying to understand ? the language of planet formation."
Kepler can detect planetary systems only if they're oriented edge-on to the telescope; otherwise, the instrument won't observe any star-dimming planetary transits. So the researchers calculated the odds that an M-dwarf system in the Milky Way would have this orientation, then combined that with the number of such systems Kepler is able to detect to come up with their estimate of 100 billion exoplanets.
The team considered only planets orbiting close to M dwarfs; their analysis didn't include outer planets in M-dwarf systems, or any worlds circling other types of stars. So the galaxy may actually harbor many more planets than the conservative estimate implies ? perhaps 200 billion, or about two per star, Swift said.
The new analysis confirms three of the five Kepler-32 planets (the other two had been confirmed previously). The Kepler-32 worlds have diameters ranging from 0.8 to 2.7 times that of Earth, and all of them orbit within 10 million miles of their star. For comparison, Earth circles the sun at an average distance of 93 million miles.
Because the Kepler-32 star is smaller and less luminous than our sun, the five planets are likely not as heat-blasted as their tight orbits might imply. In fact, the outermost planet in the system appears to lie in the habitable zone, a range of distances that could support the existence of liquid water on a world's system.
The new analysis also suggests that the Kepler-32 planets originally formed farther away from the star and then migrated closer in over time, researchers said.
Several pieces of evidence point toward this conclusion. For example, the team estimated that the five Kepler-32 worlds coalesced from material containing about as much mass as three Jupiters. But models suggest that this much gas and dust cannot be squeezed into the small area circumscribed by the planets' current orbits, researchers said.
"You look in detail at the architecture of this very special planetary system, and you're forced into saying these planets formed farther out and moved in," Johnson said.
The new study was published Jan. 2 in The Astrophysical Journal.
Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50348563/ns/technology_and_science-space/
jon jones chuck colson death meteor showers 2012 ufc 145 jones vs evans marian hossa philip humber
Families call Colo. movie theater invite 'disgusting'
DENVER (AP) ? Relatives of those killed at a Colorado movie theater rejected an invitation Wednesday to attend its planned reopening, calling it a "disgusting offer" that came at a terrible time ? right after the first Christmas without their loved ones.
The parents, grandparents, cousins and widow of nine of the 12 people killed in the July shooting said they were asked to attend an "evening of remembrance" followed by a movie when the Aurora theater reopens on Jan. 17. They released a letter sent to the theater's owner, Cinemark, in which they criticized the Plano, Texas-based company for not previously reaching out to them to offer condolences and refusing to meet with them without lawyers.
"Our family members will never be on this earth with us again and a movie ticket and some token words from people who didn't care enough to reach out to us, nor respond when we reached out to them to talk, is appalling," the letter said.
Cinemark had no immediate comment.
The company announced last month that it would reopen the theater on Jan. 17 and invite people affected by the attack and other guests, a move that Aurora officials said has strong support in the community. Gov. John Hickenlooper plans to attend.
The Aurora Sentinel reported that plans filed with the city call for turning the theater into one of the company's "extreme digital cinema" sites that feature massive screens. It's not clear from the plans whether there will be a memorial to the victims.
The invitation was emailed to families by the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, which said the offer was being sent on behalf of Cinemark.
It arrived two days after Christmas as Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, the mother and stepfather of Jessica Ghawi, one of the 12 people killed, were housesitting in Denver.
They had left their home in San Antonio, Texas, on the advice of their grief counselor to avoid being where they typically would have celebrated Christmas with Jessica. Sandy Phillips said they picked Denver on purpose because her daughter, a 24-year-old aspiring sportscaster, had been happy there.
The Phillipses said the invitation could be a public relations ploy to help show the public that some victims or their families are willing to attend the theater reopening.
"It was a killing field. It was a place of carnage and they've not once told us what their plans are for the theater other than that they're reopening it," said Sandy Phillips. She would like the theater where her daughter was killed to be demolished, though she acknowledged that it was unrealistic to expect Cinemark to give up the rest of the building.
The families of some victims have sued Cinemark. The father of the youngest person killed in the shooting, 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, is among them. He didn't sign the letter but the girl's grandparents did. The Phillipses have not decided whether they will sue.
Also Wednesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers said they are ready for a crucial hearing next week in which prosecutors will outline their case against James Holmes, who is charged with killing 12 people and wounding 70 during the midnight showing of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises" on July 20.
It starts Monday and is scheduled to run all week. At its conclusion, state District Judge William B. Sylvester will decide if the evidence is sufficient to put Holmes on trial.
The defense could waive the hearing but legal analysts said defense lawyers sometimes go ahead with the hearing to get an idea of how strong the prosecution's case is.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former federal prosecutor, said preliminary hearings sometimes set the stage for a plea agreement as each side gets to assess the strength of the other.
Holmes is charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder and hasn't been asked to enter a plea yet. His lawyers have said he suffers from mental illness.
Next week's hearing will give the public its first officially sanctioned look at much of the evidence against Holmes.
A judge imposed a gag order shortly after Holmes' arrest barring attorneys and investigators from speaking publicly about the case, and many documents have been sealed.
The University of Colorado, where Holmes was enrolled in a Ph. D. neuroscience program, has also been tight-lipped about the case. Investigators said he began stockpiling firearms and ammunition while taking classes in the spring.
In June, he made threats to a professor and on June 10 filed withdrawal papers after failing a year-end exam, prosecutors said. The next day he saw his school psychiatrist who tried to report him to a campus security committee, according to Holmes' lawyers.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/colo-theater-shooting-kin-reject-movie-invitation-184020439.html
school shootings cbs news Jenni Rivera chase Adam Lanza Facebook Golden Globes the hobbit
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
No Excuses Not To Eat Right or Exercise - Fitness Nutrition Denver ...
Posted on January 2, 2013 by FitNut ?
looking for healthy recipes to start the year off right? this AMAZING healthy recipe for a fab topper will leave your mouth watering!
The following are the top 10 reasons why people don?t exercise, but you could just as easily apply the very same excuses to just about any form of change such as diet.
1. Fear
2. No Time
3. Negative Image of ?(Exercise)
4. Slow Results
5. Expense
6. Lonely
7. No Motivation
8. Too Many Other Things to Do
9. Too?. Hot, cold, rainy, sunny, hazy
10. I Hate to ?(Exercise)
When it comes to a better diet, #2 ?Time? and #5 ?Expense? definitely comes into play. Sure, some of those savory old fashioned recipes only taste right when somebody spends the entire day preparing them, but that shouldn?t stop you from treating yourself like a King or Queen within what might feel like limiting constraints. You can change recipes from drab to fab with just a few ingredients to make a great tasting topping.
Here, I used some pumpkin seeds, herbs, salt, and the heal of a loaf of bread to turn my quick bowl of soup into a real treat. You can use the same technique to dress up casseroles, veggie side-dishes, and the like.
- 1 tsp butter
- ? tsp crushed garlic
- ? cup raw pumpkin seeds (or sunflower)
- some breadcrumbs ? fresh (this recipe was created from a very small heal piece)
- 1 ? Tbsp fresh parsley chopped fine
- 1/8 tsp sea salt
- 1/8 +/- Spice Blend (I used Rogan Josh by Savory Spice Shop)*
Melt butter in a small sauce pan. Add garlic and seeds. Cook on medium heat until seeds start to brown. Add breadcrumbs and spices. Stir until evenly coated. Serve immediately over soup or whatever you are dressing up.
*Don?t freak out about my spice choices. Use what you have and like. Just know that you need to spice this accent a little heavier to carry through the dish.
jacoby ellsbury lionel richie kenny rogers avatar the last airbender david wright cory booker cubs
Taylor Swift, Psy perform for New Year's Eve in Times Square
Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, and others performed for New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square in New York City.
Taylor Swift sings in Times Square.
Joshua Lott/Reuters
EnlargeThrongs of revelers in and around New York's Times Square bid farewell to 2012 and extended a raucous greeting to 2013 early Tuesday.
Skip to next paragraph' +
google_ads[0].line2 + '
' +
google_ads[0].line3 + '
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
The crowd in midtown Manhattan, which police expected to approach 1 million, cheered and counted down the final seconds of 2012 as a large lighted crystal ball descended for the last minute of the old year - a tradition started in 1907.
Thousands cheered as the new year officially began and a blizzard of colorful confetti fell on the famous square. But the cheers - and a spirited crowd rendition of the song "New York, New York" - were quickly drowned out by a fireworks show.
Paul Hannemann, the head of an incident response team at the Texas Forest Service, was in New York to help with the reconstruction efforts in areas hit by Superstorm Sandy.
Even as he spent his first New Year's Eve in Times Square, Hannemann's thoughts were on Washington, D.C., where lawmakers worked late into the night to reach a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that many economists fear could send the nation back into recession.
"I hope everybody can come together in 2013 so our country can get its finances in order and our economy back in place," Hannemann said.
In addition to the crowd on hand in Times Square, another billion people were expected to watch on television, city officials said.
People filled pens in the center of Times Square hours before the end of 2012. Police set up barricades to keep away the overflow crowd. Once people entered the police pens, they were not allowed to leave, no alcohol was permitted and there were no restrooms.
At 6 p.m. the ball rose to the top to the top of its 70-foot (21-meter) pole and fireworks went off.
A few minutes earlier, the cheering crowd turned silent when the ceremony released balloons for each of the victims of the Dec. 14 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Mark Barrigan, a medical software product manager, traveled from Dallas to witness the ball drop live for the first time this year, fulfilling a longtime wish.
"It was one of those bucket list items," Barrigan said, referring to a list of activities people plan to do before they die.
Asked what he was hoping for in the new year, Barrigan replied, "Hopefully they'll make some good decisions in Washington, D.C."
Elsewhere in America, same-sex marriage became legal at 12:01 a.m. in Maryland.
Maryland, Maine and Washington state became the first three U.S. states to approve gay marriage by popular vote on Nov. 6. Nine states and the District of Columbia now have statutes legalizing gay marriage.
Freezing?temperatures
The temperature in Times Square was predicted to hover just above freezing around midnight, with a possibility of rain or snow flurries, forecasters said.
The revelers came for the people-watching for which Times Square is famous, and to see performers such as Taylor Swift, Psy, Carly Rae Jepsen and Neon Trees.
"For me, 2013 is about leaving everything behind and starting from scratch," said Mara Trevin, a 26-year-old who moved from Buenos Aires to New York last week to start a new life.
"That's my resolution."
The illuminated, crystal-covered ball - some 12 feet (3.7 metres) in diameter and weighing nearly 12,000 pounds (5,443 kg) - began its descent on schedule at 11:59 a.m. EST, dropping 70 feet (21 metres) in 60 seconds.
One of those crystals was engraved with the name of Dick Clark, the American entertainer who hosted a popular television presentation of the Times Square New Year's celebrations for decades.
He died in April of a heart attack. Clark had suffered a stroke in 2004 that sidelined from the New Year's Eve show for the first time since he launched the annual broadcast in 1972.
But he gamely returned to the program the following year, and had continued to announce the annual countdown to midnight.
As part of the city's New Year's Eve celebration, more than one ton of confetti was to be released from the rooftops of surrounding buildings in Times Square.
The end-of-the-year crowds capped a year in which 52 million people visited New York City, the third straight record-breaking year for tourism, city officials said on Monday.
More than a million additional tourists visited the city in 2012 compared to 2011, a 2.1 percent increase, they said.
The first version of the ball in Times Square descended in 1907 from a flagpole.
(Additional reporting by Joshua Lott; Editing by Daniel Trotta, James B. Kelleher, David Gregorio, M.D. Golan and Eric Walsh)
school shooting in ohio shooting at chardon high school sasha baron cohen stacy keibler stacy keibler all star game oscar red carpet
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Careers: Has the post-university job dearth and debt crisis hit even ...
veterinarian neutering a pet cat/US Navy
So says?law professor William D. Henderson, pointing to Dr. Andrew Clark, who runs a consulting business for veterinary doctors.
Dr. Clark, who has a DVM and an MBA, notes,
From my position in the industry, in the economy in which we all work, the demand for veterinary services appears smaller than the supply of veterinarians. I routinely look at the financial statements of over 50 veterinary practices; equine, mixed and companion animal. Those financial statements demonstrate that practices do not generate enough profit to pay Veterinarians sufficiently to repay student loans under the repayment terms commonly available. That is a remarkably bad situation since the successful transfer of the Veterinary Profession from one generation to another is dependent upon the next generation being solvent and content.
One reason he fingers is too great a supply of new veterinarians, and the reasons are a cautionary tale:
When the dust all settles, Veterinary Colleges are in the business of selling Veterinary Medical Degrees to students who buy a degree with the intention of using it to make a living. In the age of austerity, Veterinary colleges have faced massive budget cuts. One response has been to increase class size, generating tuition revenue for the school. In effect, the colleges are generating more customers for their product and increasing the supply of veterinarians. From my perspective and experience, the veterinary profession is upside down as far as supply and demand goes. We have inadequate demand for Veterinary services to support the number of veterinarians in practice. Increasing class size diminishes the earning potential and therefore the value of a Veterinary Medical degree yet the cost of the degree continues to escalate. That strategy only works for schools because student loans are easy to acquire and young consumers following their life?s dream are still willing to borrow the money to purchase the degree at an ever higher price with challenging terms. The cost of the Veterinary degree goes up while the value of a veterinary degree goes down and students continue to purchase degrees on borrowed money.
Ominously,
Bankruptcy on student loans used to be a big loss for lenders. However, under the new regulations, student loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy so there is significantly less risk now.
In short, there is little incentive from within the system to warn the student that the dream might be a mirage?where nothing turns out to be real except the debt.
Henderson adds,
Suffice to say, what is happening in the veterinary education, and the broader vet industry, is eerily close to the problems in legal education and the legal profession.
More on that later.
An underlying problem may be that companion animals are a discretionary expense. We want them, but we don?t ?need? them to live. A prolonged decline in fulltime employment in a rust belt may mean that people either do not acquire as many of them or do not spend on them what they otherwise would.
None of this need discourage the determined student in principle. The student must realize two things: Veterinary practice is a business as well as a profession, and the proceeds from the practice must sustain both the vet?s living expenses and any debt incurred. Therefore, some careful research is needed about whether, when, and where these conditions can be met. Second, not all sources of advice in this area are of equal value, for the reasons that Dr. Clark has indicated. There is no substitute for personal, on-the-ground research when taking such a big step as going into student loan debt for a career you love.
the curious case of benjamin button secret service prostitute rich ross april 20 jennifer love hewitt secret service prostitution 4 20
Violence, gangs scar Chicago community in 2012
CHICAGO (AP) ? It was February, the middle of lunch hour on a busy South Side street. The gunman approached his victim in a White Castle parking lot, shot him in the head, then fled down an alley.
The next month, one block away, also on West 79th Street: Two men in hooded sweatshirts opened fire at the Bishop Golden convenience store. They killed one young man and wounded five others, including a nephew of basketball superstar Dwyane Wade. The shooters got away in a silver SUV.
In July, a Saturday night, two men were walking on 79th when they were approached by a man who killed one and injured the other. This shooting resulted in a quick arrest; police had a witness, and a security camera caught the shooting.
These three violent snapshots of a single Chicago street are not exceptional. It's been a bloody year in the nation's third-largest city.
A spike in murders and shootings ? much of it gang-related ? shocked Chicagoans, spurred new crime-fighting strategies and left indelible images: Mayor Rahm Emanuel voicing outrage about gang crossfire that killed a 7-year-old named Heaven selling candy in her front yard. Panicked mourners scrambling as shots ring out on the church steps at a funeral for a reputed gang leader. Girls wearing red high school basketball uniforms, filing by the casket of a 16-year-old teammate shot on her porch.
A handful of neighborhoods were especially hard hit, among them Auburn-Gresham; the police district's 43 homicides (as of Dec. 21) ranked highest in the city, and represent an increase of about 20 percent over 2011. The outbreak, fueled partly by feuds among rival factions of Chicago's largest gang, the Gangster Disciples, rippled along 79th street, the main commercial drag. That single corridor offers a window into the wider mayhem that claimed lives, shattered families and left authorities scrambling for answers.
The scars aren't obvious, at first. Drive down West 79th and there's Salaam, a pristine white building of Islamic design, and The Final Call, the restaurant and newspaper operated by the Nation of Islam. Leo Catholic High School for young men. A health clinic. A beauty supply store. Around the corners, neat brick bungalows and block club signs warning: "No Littering. No Loitering. No Loud Music."
Look closer, though, and there are signs of distress and fear: Boarded-up storefronts. Heavy security gates on barber shops and food marts. Thick partitions separating cash registers from customers at the Jamaican jerk and fish joints. Police cars watching kids board city buses at the end of the school day.
Go a few blocks south of 79th to a food market where a sign bears a hand-scrawled message: "R.I.P. We Love You Eli," honoring a clerk killed in November in an apparent robbery. Or a block north to the front lawn of St. Sabina church where photos were added this year to a glass-enclosed memorial for young victims of deadly violence over the years.
Then go back to a corner of 79th, across the street and down the block from where two killings occurred, both gang-related.
There, in an empty lot, a wooden cross stands tall in the winter night. Painted in red is a plea:
"STOP SHOOTING."
___
THE TOLL: Chicago's murder count reached 500 last Friday ? the first time since 2008 it hit that mark. In 2011, there were 435 homicides. More than 2,400 shootings have occurred. Gang-related arrests are about 7,000 higher than in 2011.
___
Gang violence isn't new, but it became a major theme in the Chicago narrative this year.
Maybe it was because of the audacity of gang members posting YouTube videos in which they flashed wads of cash and guns. The sight of police brandishing automatic weapons, standing watch outside gang funerals. The sting of one more smiling young face on a funeral program. Or dramatic headlines in spring and summer, such as: "13 people shot in Chicago in 30-minute period."
It was alarming enough for President Barack Obama to mention it during the campaign, noting murders near his South Side home. Then, addressing gun violence in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, he cited Chicago again.
As grim as it is, Chicago's murder rate was almost double in the early 1990s ? averaging around 900 ? before violent crime began dropping in cities across America. This year's increase, though, is a sharp contrast to New York, where homicides fell 21 percent from 2011, as of early December.
Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says while murders and shootings are up, overall crime citywide is down about 9 percent. He says crime-fighting strategies against gangs ? some just put into place this year ? are working, but they take time.
"The city didn't get in this shape overnight," he says. "I think that we're doing ourselves a disservice by advertising a Vietnam-type body count. I've got to tell you when I speak to people ... they generally say, 'You know what? We don't even hear that anymore. It's white noise.'... The fascination unfortunately seems to be in the media and it's become a national obsession."
After the 500th homicide was reported, McCarthy released a statement saying the pace of violent crime had slowed since early 2012. Murders skyrocketed 66 percent in the first quarter of the year over the same period in 2011; by the fourth quarter, the increase had dropped to 15 percent, he said. For shootings, it was a 40 percent hike in the first quarter and 11 percent in the last quarter compared with 2011. The superintendent called the numbers "great progress."
Up to 80 percent of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions; most are on the South and West sides.
Gangs in Chicago have a long, dangerous history, some operating with the sophistication and hierarchy of corporations. In the 1980s, the leaders of the El Rukns were convicted of conspiring in a terrorism-for-hire scheme designed to collect millions from the Libyan government. Before the feds took down the leadership of the Gangster Disciples in the 1990s, the group had its own clothing line and political arm.
Nowadays, gangs are less structured and disputes more personal, says Eric Carter, commander of the Gresham district, home to 11 factions of the Gangster Disciples. "It's strictly who can help me make money," he says. "Lines have become blurred and alliances have become very fragile."
Carter says a gang narcotics dispute that started about six years ago is at the root of a lot of violence in his district.
Another change among gangs is the widespread use of YouTube, Facebook and other social media to taunt one another and spread incendiary messages. "One insult thrown on Facebook and Twitter becomes the next potential for a shooting incident on the street," Carter says.
McCarthy, who has consulted with criminologists, has implemented several plans, including an audit that identifies every gang member and establishing a long-term police presence in heavy drug-dealing areas, aimed at drying up business.
In two districts, police also have partnered controversially with CeaseFire Illinois, an anti-violence group that has hired convicted felons, including former gang members, to mediate street conflicts. McCarthy, who has expressed reservations about the organization, is taking a wait-and-see attitude.
"It's a work in progress," he says. "It hasn't shown a lot of success yet."
___
AMONG THE DEAD: An 18-year-old walking on a sidewalk. A 36-year-old at a backyard party. A 28-year-old in a car two blocks from the police station. A 40-year-old convenience store clerk, on the job just two months.
__
In a storefront on 79th, Curtis Toler has a map of the street and surrounding area with 10 stick pins. Each represents a homicide in 2012.
Toler, a former gang member, spent much of his life causing chaos. Now, he's preaching calm. As a supervisor at CeaseFire, his job is to ease tensions and defuse disputes before they explode.
Violence, he says, has become so commonplace, people are desensitized to death.
"I don't think we take it as hard as we should," he says. "When someone gets killed, there should be an uproar. But the ambulance comes, scoops them up, nobody says anything and it's back to business."
Toler's own life was shaped by guns and drugs. "In the early '90s, I was going to funerals back to back to back," he says. "When you're out there, you think you pretty much got it coming. It's a kill-or-be-killed mentality."
As he tells it, he was in a gang (in another neighborhood) from ages 9 to 30, including a six-year prison stint for involuntary manslaughter. He was shot six times, he says; he lifts a gray stocking cap pulled low over his head and presses a thumb over his right eyebrow to show the spot where a bullet struck. "I was blessed" to survive, he says, with a gap-toothed smile.
He was once so notorious, Toler says, that one day about a decade ago his grandmother returned from a community policing gathering and began crying. "She said, 'The whole meeting was about you. ... You and your friends are destroying the whole community. ... You're my grandson, but they're talking about you like you're an animal.'"
Now a 35-year-old father of four, Toler says he decided to go straight about five years ago. He knows some police don't believe his transformation. He regrets things he's done, he says, and for a time had trouble sleeping. "Life has its way of getting back at you one way or another," he says. "I believe in the law of reciprocity."
Toler's message to a new generation on the streets: I keep asking them,' What's the net worth on your life? There is no price.... You only get one. It's not a video game.'"
"You get some guys who listen," Toler says, "and some who really don't care. ... They say, 'I'm going to die anyway.'"
Two blocks east in another storefront on 79th, Carlos Nelson works to bring a different kind of stability to Gresham.
As head of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp., he lures businesses to a community that despite its problems, has well-established merchants and middle-class residents who've lived here for decades.
But Nelson, a 49-year-old engineering graduate raised in Gresham, sees changes since he was a kid, most notably the easy access to guns. "These aren't six-shooters," he says. "These are automatic weapons."
Police say they've seized more than 7,000 guns in arrests this year. Strict gun control measures in Chicago and Illinois have been tossed out by federal courts, most recently the state ban on carrying concealed weapons.
Nelson says he sees limited progress despite new crime-fighting approaches. "The Chicago police department is a lot like a rat on a wheel," he says. "They're getting nowhere. They put metal detectors in the schools but they don't put that same amount of money in to educate our kids."
But Nelson also believes the problem goes beyond policing. A cultural shift is needed, he says, to break the cycle of generations of young men seeing no options.
"It's almost like the walking dead," he says. "They're emotionless about shootings or death or drugs. They think that's all that's expected of them ... that they will die or end up in jail. That's a hell of an existence. That's truly sad."
___
AMONG THE LIVING: A 17-year-old hit in the leg, wrist and foot while in a park. A 13-year-old struck in the back while riding his bicycle, A 38-year-old shot in the face while driving.
___
Cerria McComb tried to run when the bullet exploded in her leg, but she didn't get far.
Someone heard her screams, her mother says, and rushed outside to help her make a call.
"Mommy, mommy, I've been shot!" Cerria cried into the phone.
Bobbie McComb ran six blocks, her husband outpacing her. "I'm panicking," she recalls. "I can't catch my breath. All I could think of was I didn't want it to be the last time I heard her voice, the last time I saw her."
Cerria and a 14-year-old male friend were wounded. The bullet lodged just an inch from an artery in the back of Cerria's right knee, according to her mother, who says her daughter is afraid to go out since the early December shooting.
Police questioned a reputed gang member they believe was the intended target; Cerria, they say, just happened to be in the wrong place.
"I'm angry," McComb says. "I'm frustrated. I'm tired of them shooting our kids, killing our kids, thinking they can get away with it. ... If it was my son or my daughter standing out there with a gun, I would call the police on them."
A few blocks west, on 78th Place, another mother, Pam Bosley, sits at the youth center of St. Sabina Church, trying to keep teens on track. The parish is run by the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a firebrand white priest in an overwhelmingly black congregation whose crusades against violence, drugs and liquor and cigarette billboards are a staple of local news.
Bosley's 18-year-old son, Terrell, a college freshman and gospel bass player, was killed in 2006 when he and friends were shot while unloading musical equipment outside a church on the far South Side. A man charged was acquitted.
"I think about him all day and all night," Bosley says of her son. "If I stop, I'll lose my mind."
Bosley works with kids 14 to 21, teaching them life and leadership skills and ways to reduce violence. Sometimes, she says, neglectful parents are the problem; often it's gangs who just don't value life.
"You know how you have duck (hunting) season in the woods?" she asks. "In urban communities, it's duck season for us every day. You never know when you're going to get shot."
In December, Bosley phoned to console the grieving mother of Porshe Foster, 15, who was shot a few miles away while standing outside with other kids. A young man in the group has said he believed the gunman was aiming at him.
"I know how it feels to wake up in your house without your child, and you don't want to get out of bed, you don't feel like living," Bosley says.
St. Sabina is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Bosley sent balloons to the girl's funeral.
On Dec. 6, hundreds celebrated the A-student who liked architecture and played on her school's volleyball and basketball teams.
Her brother, Robert, 22, says his sister "knew what was going on in the streets as well as we did," but he didn't worry because she was either at school, home or church.
"She was always a good girl," he says. "She didn't have to look over her shoulder. She was a 15-year-old girl. She didn't ever do any wrong to anybody."
___
In March, St. Sabina parishioners, led by the Rev. Pfleger, marched through the streets in protest, calling out gang factions by name. They planted the "Stop Killing" cross on 79th.
In April, the priest and other pastors returned to 79th to successfully stop the reopening of a store where there was a mass shooting; they condemned it as a haven for gangs.
In December, Pfleger stood in his church gym, watching gang members hustle down the basketball court.
On this Monday night, in this gym, it was hard to tell who was who.
The basketball teams wore different colored T-shirts with the same word: Peacemaker. They're all part of Pfleger's 12-week basketball league, aimed at cooling gang hostilities by having rivals face each other on the court. Many players, from 16 to 27, have criminal records.
The league grew out of a single successful game this fall and has high-profile supporters, including Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls.
Pfleger says the games have helped players build relationships, see beyond gang affiliation and stop shooting each other, at least for now.
"I have people tell me I'm naive, I'm stupid, I should be ashamed of myself working with these gangs," he says. "I could care less. We've demonized them so much we forget they're human beings."
But Pfleger also says games alone won't change anything. These young men need jobs and an education, and he's working on that.
"When there's no alternative," he says, "you'll continue to do what you do."
___
Sharon Cohen is a Chicago-based national writer. She can be reached at scohen(at)ap.org.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/violence-gangs-scar-chicago-community-2012-174051760.html
michelle williams the descendants the descendants packers giants game golden globe winners 2012 ricky gervais golden globes epidermolysis bullosa
Rwanda vows to help on Congo at U.N., assails "blame game"
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Rwanda warned on Monday it will not tolerate attempts to blame it for a rebel insurgency in eastern Congo but vowed to use its two-year U.N. Security Council stint to help put an end to the conflict that has destabilized its much larger neighbor.
Rwanda - along with Argentina, Australia, Luxembourg and South Korea - was elected in October as a temporary member of the 15-nation U.N. Security Council for 2013-14.
Analysts say the new group will likely be more friendly to the West on crises like Syria or North Korea but lacks the power to force an end to the impasses on those issues.
The Security Council's "Group of Experts" has accused Rwanda and Uganda of backing so-called M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in their fight against the Congolese army. Uganda and Rwanda deny the group's allegations.
"Our role (on Congo) will be positive as it has always been," Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwanda's deputy U.N. ambassador, told Reuters. "We will continue supporting the peaceful resolution of the conflict."
"We will also support (U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's) efforts in bringing together leaders of the region, in order to address the root causes of the conflict," he said.
But he made clear Kigali would not tolerate any further finger pointing regarding what he said were unfounded charges.
"Rwanda will not be part of and will not support any attempt to continue the blame game initiated by a politicized and discredited Group of Experts," Nduhungirehe said.
Security Council diplomats have told Reuters on condition of anonymity that they worry it will be more difficult to achieve consensus on Congo with Rwanda on the council. At the same time, they said, any solution for eastern Congo must include Rwanda, so having it on the council is not necessarily a bad thing.
Diplomats say that Rwanda's leverage is its influence over M23.
The last time Rwanda was on the council was in 1994-95. That coincided with a genocide in which 800,000 people were killed when Rwanda's Hutu-led government and ethnic militias went on a 100-day killing spree, massacring Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
DEADLOCKS
The council's new composition will not break the deadlocks on Syria or North Korea, council diplomats say. The Security Council has been at an impasse on Syria since that conflict began 21 months ago, with veto powers Russia and the United States unable to agree on whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be required to step down or not.
That deadlock will remain for now, as Russian President Vladimir Putin strives to "fight with the West for the sake of prestige, rather than on the basis of rational diplomatic calculations," said Richard Gowan of New York University.
Assad's ally Russia rejects Western and Syrian opposition calls for Assad to step down as a condition for peace talks.
On North Korea, the United States and China have been unable to agree on a formal council response to Pyongyang's December 12 missile launch. The Security Council issued a brief condemnation of the launch on the same day, but Western powers, Japan and South Korea want to see the existing U.N. sanctions on North Korea expanded.
China, North Korea's traditional protector, on the council has resisted such moves.
"South Korea's presence on the council will increase the visibility of the North Korean issue but it will not alter the fundamental dynamics," an envoy said. "It is ultimately a bilateral issue between Washington and Beijing at the U.N."
Even though the council rotates in five new temporary members every January 1 as five non-temporary members step down, the five permanent council members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - hold the most of the power.
But the five veto powers always need at least nine votes to pass any resolution, which means they are forced to cultivate support among the 10 non-permanent council nations.
George Lopez, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, said that overall "the incoming five Security Council members will be more active and helpful to Western interests in matters like Syria." But he added that none of them has any substantial influence over Russia that could affect the dynamics on Syria.
The loss of India and South Africa will change the atmosphere on the council, diplomats say. Both are influential non-aligned nations that often supported the non-interventionist philosophy of Russia and China, which are loathe to back any council action they see as violating national sovereignty.
It is unclear if Argentina will use its council stint to raise its long-standing dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands, envoys said. When Argentina was last on the Security Council in 2005-06, it generally kept quiet about the dispute.
But President Cristina Fernandez has launched a wide-ranging diplomatic offensive to re-assert Argentina's claims to the British-ruled islands 30 years after the Falkland war. She has accused London of maintaining colonial enclaves and demanded sovereignty talks - which Britain has rejected.
In addition to India and South Africa, Colombia, Germany and Portugal are leaving the Security Council. Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Pakistan, Togo and Morocco will remain through 2013.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rwanda-vows-help-congo-u-n-assails-blame-210200808.html
beyonce and jay z baby droid 4 tom brady sister dad shoots daughters laptop brandon jennings the vow review luol deng
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)