Liberal_in_LA
Liberal_in_LA's Journalbike-gate: Kerry photographed riding girl's bike
Cruising through the crisis: John Kerry photographed on GIRLS' bike in Nantucket as the Middle East descends into chaos
US Secretary of State was nowhere to be found over the weekend despite tensions between Israel and Hamas
Instagram user posted a pic of him riding a bike on Nantucket island
Kerry's curious bicycle choice was a pink ladies' model
He got in trouble last year for spending time on his sailboat as Egypt descended into chaos
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2717030/Cruising-crisis-John-Kerry-photographed-GIRLS-bike-Nantucket-Middle-East-descends-chaos.html
Should he resign? 
Australia considering excluding males from certain child care roles in wake of huge abuse scandal
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/police-sort-jigsaw-of-horrific-abuse-images/story-fn59niix-1227002006548?nk=f2f91576cb9c3c779fb1455cb131dc49everything is up for review, with the department considering radical proposals — such as excluding men from certain roles — in response.
“If the allegations … are proven true, then an evil shadow has descended on our state,” he said. He warned the potential scope of the man’s offences may prove to be one of “the most catastrophic events in Australian history”.
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IT is the most gruesome of jigsaw puzzles. A group of 10 seasoned detectives are piecing together images of infants.
A body part in one is matched to a child’s face in another.
With more than 100,000 images and 600 videos to view, it is slow and tedious work.
The images are repellent. Infants — some too young to even talk — are being abused by a 32-year-old male carer in a case that is shaping to become one of the worst sexual abuse crimes in South Australia’s, if not the nation’s, history.
Police say the photographs and videos are so “horrendous and graphic” that each officer is limited to viewing the material for just two hours per shift.
Since June 10, when a government carer was arrested at his home in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, this has been the daily work of investigators.
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Beavers Are Mysteriously Back in Britain- govt plans to put them in captivity
Environmental Change
More important, however, beavers cut down trees, build dams, and flood waterways. Apart from humans, no other species alters its environment more. And in its decision, the British government raises a much broader question about the animal's place and potential impact in modern Britain.
"Beavers have not been an established part of our wildlife for the past 500 years," said a department spokesman. "Our landscape and habitats have changed since then."
In truth, no one's sure exactly when the beaver went extinct in Britain. The rodent was highly valued for its fur and medicinal glands. The last written record is a bounty paid for a beaver head in Yorkshire in 1789, although the species would have vanished from other regions of the country long before then. What is certain is that the beaver is native to Britain and the River Otter is just the latest front in a contentious, decades-old battle over whether to reintroduce the species, with a cadre of ecologists on one side that touts the beaver's environmental benefits, and farmers, landowners, and fishermen on the other who fear the animal could disrupt a way of life to which the British have grown accustomed.The government is concerned about the return of a destructive animal thought extinct.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140804-beavers-science-environment-britain-extinct-animals/?google_editors_picks=true
6 yr old drives toy car onto freeway. drivers protect him with their cars until one grabs him
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A 6-year-old boy drove his battery-powered toy car onto a suburban parkway before grown-up motorists rescued him, police said Monday.
Westchester County police spokesman Kieran O'Leary said three drivers formed a slow-moving shield around the boy on the Bronx River Parkway, then one pulled over and ran to grab the boy and his little vehicle and move them onto the shoulder.
"A couple of cars were behind him, maybe another alongside him a little bit, somewhat protecting him from the possibility of being struck by a car that wouldn't have seen him in time," O'Leary said.
The names of the boy and his rescuers were not made public.
O'Leary said the boy had been out with relatives in a Mount Vernon park about 10 blocks from the parkway. A cousin who was watching him got distracted and the boy took off in his blue-and-gray toy ATV, O'Leary said.
"It kind of just happened in the blink of an eye," he said.
The family spent 20 to 30 minutes looking for him, then went to police at about 7:40 p.m., "just as we started getting 911 calls that there's a child on the Bronx River Parkway operating a toy vehicle," O'Leary said.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Boy-6-drives-toy-ATV-onto-Bronx-parkway-5666517.php
Israelis feel like nobody understands them
http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/31/in-israel-many-people-just-feel-like-nobody-understands-them/?hpt=hp_bn9Mick Krever, CNN
Growing international condemnation of Israel’s conduct in its offensive against Hamas in Gaza seems to have totally backfired in Israel, The New York Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Jodi Rudoren, told CNN’s Hala Gorani, in for Christiane Amanpour, on Wednesday.
“Many people just feel like nobody understands them,” Rudoren said.
Indeed, the Israeli public is overwhelmingly supportive of the operation in Gaza – 95% according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. (Rudoren said the numbers she had seen were somewhat lower.)
In her two years covering Israel, Rudoren said she has been examining what effect, if any, the criticism writ large of Israel – from European countries, among others – would have on public opinion.
“I think we've really seen that it's just reinforced this notion that nobody outside of Israel really understands what they're going through, that they're surrounded by enemies, and that they have no choice but to defend themselves”
The astronomical support for the Gaza operation can be attributed, she told Gorani, to several factors.
head of ny police unions incredibly stupid remark -
(NEWSER) – Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the NYPD chokehold that killed an unarmed man, was arrested Saturday night for allegedly trying to pass off a stolen gun—and was denounced by the head of the police union. "It is criminals like Mr. Orta who carry illegal firearms who stand to benefit the most by demonizing the good work of police officers," the union president said in a statement that the Rev. Al Sharpton called the "sickest logic that I ever heard," reports the New York Daily News. Orta, who has been arrested 24 times since 2009, recorded police as they pinned 43-year-old Eric Garner to the ground last month despite the asthmatic 350-pound man's pleas that he couldn't breathe.
http://www.newser.com/story/191954/man-who-filmed-deadly-nypd-chokehold-arrested.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=united&utm_campaign=rss_topnews
Around the world, discarded tires tread again
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20140802-discarded-tires-tread-again://
from Kenya to India to Detroit to Sweden, clever and eco-minded niche entrepreneurs are turning one of industrialized society’s most ubiquitous and difficult-to-dispose-of waste products (an estimated 1.5 billion tires are discarded each year worldwide) into weirdly appealing – and super-tough – items with a little bit of, um, soul.
Enterprising locals in Kenya have made a cottage industry out of hand-crafting so-called akala sandals from the “pelts” of old car tires. They sell on the streets of Nairobi for anywhere from $2 to $5 a pair – considerably less than retail footwear sold nearby, and boasting 10 times the longevity.
In fact, Maasai tribesmen, who roam southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, have commonly worn these durable sandals – also known as “thousand-milers” – for decades to walk through brush tougher than rhino hide. And the footwear is trending mainstream as you read this, at e-tailers like Maasai Treads and Akala Sandals and soleRebels, whose $80 "tooTOOs" womens shoes, which feature outsoles made of hand-cut discarded tire treads, are pictured above.
Then there is Detroit Threads, where the Reverend Faith Fowler ripped a page from the thousand-miler pagebook. At Cass Community Social Services in Detroit, she employs dozens of workers who turn old tires – the group’s Green Industries division collects about 35,000 discards a year – into $25 flip-flops with some serious tread life. Aimed at urban hipsters who are tired of the same old look, the sandals are designed by students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
http://www.web2carz.com/lifestyle/shopping/2546/10-cool-ways-to-recycle-car-parts
Palin daughter is now broke
...if this was Obama's daughter.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2714084/Bristol-Palin-fighting-child-support-Levi-Johnston-earning-ZERO-income-two-years.html
Palin, 23, bought a five-bedroom Arizona home with all cash just four years ago, but now she can't make a dollar.
The daughter of former Alaska governor and one-time Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has filed paperwork to try and get child support payments dating back nearly two years from Levi Johnston, her former fiance and the father of her son Tripp, five.
Bristol claims in the paperwork that her 2013 income was zero dollars, and so far in 2014 it's zero as well.
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While she has flamed out professional, it appears Levi has been making a regular income. After posing for Playgirl in 2009 and writing a tell-all a year later, Levi has gotten married, had a baby girl and gotten a job.
Johnston made $62,400 in 2014 and $39,067.25 the year before, according to the paperwork. His wages are currently being garnished 40% as he works to pay his outstanding bills.
Walmart: 'Going to a very dark place'
Walmart may not go the way of RadioShack (RSH) any time soon. But Goldman Sachs says that customers are abandoning the big-box pioneer in droves.
On Tuesday, the investment bank downgraded Walmart (WMT)'s stock to 'Neutral,' saying that big-box stores are losing out to online retailers and stores with more focused inventories.
With $469 billion in annual sales, Walmart isn't quite going out of business, but the retailer has seen sales slip for five straight quarters. Online shopping is clearly hurting the store, as more customers turn to Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) and other merchants for everyday items such as hardware and groceries.
E-commerce is making Walmart's vast breadth of merchandise less appealing to shoppers. Instead, customers are looking for better deals on a more narrow assortment of goods available at stores like Costco (COST) and dollar stores The bank upgraded Costco's stock to Buy.
Goldman noted that Amazon's move into grocery sales is the biggest threat facing Walmart and a risk to Costco.
Despite the bank's pessimism about big-box retailers, maintained a 'Buy" rating on Target (TGT).
Related story: Walmart seizes on Amazon's move against publisher
Walmart grew to be the world's largest retailer by promising the lowest prices and getting shoppers to pick up things like screwdrivers or towels on a whim when they came in for cold medicine. Today, though, Walmart's customers are "rationing" purchases and checking the store's prices against Web-based stores, according to Brian Sozzi, CEO of Belus Capital Advisors.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/30/news/companies/goldman-walmart-downgrade/index.html?hpt=ob_articleallcontentsidebar&iid=obnetwork
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