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Federal court upholds California ban on foie gras sales

“A US federal appeals court upheld California’s ban on the sale of foie gras Friday, 13 months after the block on the controversial delicacy came into force. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims that the ban interferes with free trade, made in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by a group of Canadian and US foie gras producers. California lawmakers agreed the ban in 2004, but gave the western US state’s only foie gras producer seven-and-a-half years to comply before it came into effect on July 1 last year. Restaurants serving the gourmet item — made by force-feeding ducks or geese, a practice some animal rights campaigners regard as cruel — can be fined up to $1,000.” Continue reading →

Fleeing Oppression

“The mayor of Los Angeles has declared a ‘state of emergency’. Hollywood’s movie industry is being ceded to other states and countries whose favorable tax ‘credits’ are increasingly luring away movie and television production. As competition both in the US and abroad continues to grow, the state’s market share and longtime stronghold on production jobs and spending are fast evaporating. The main problem is taxes. California’s government has so destroyed the state that its only option to keep afloat is a continued rise in taxes. In response, people with money have been fleeing the state for other states. New York and California have lost the most in the last decade.” Continue reading →

Parents from faith-healing church charged in diabetes death of daughter

“On Thursday, authorities in Albany, Oregon arrested the parents of a 12-year-old girl who died because they withheld treatment for her type 1 diabetes. Syble Rossiter, the daughter of Travis and Wenona Rossiter, died at her home from complications related to untreated type 1 diabetes. It is unknown to what degree the couple embrace the doctrine of prayer healing, but as of this moment, they are facing first- and second-degree manslaughter charges in the death of their daughter. The Department of Human Services will look after their two surviving children while the couple awaits trial in jail.” Continue reading →

Republican Mississippi sheriff indicted on 31 counts for abusing powers

“The charges against Sheriff Mike Byrd include 10 counts of embezzlement, and 10 counts of fraud, two counts of extortion and one count of perjury, among other charges. Authorities contend that Byrd, a Republican currently in his fourth term in office, has used his position to target personal and political opponents and fudge his record to boost his re-election prospects. Byrd is also accused of pressuring a detective in 2007 to deliver an arrest warrant in a murder case against a man the detective did not believe committed the crime, so that Byrd could say during his re-election campaign at the time that there were no unsolved murders in the county.” Continue reading →

Roger Waters backs Bulgarian protesters during performance of ‘The Wall’

“Red captions ‘No f*cking way’ and ‘Ostavka’ in Cyrillic — which means resignation in Bulgarian — flashed upon Waters’ famous Wall during the performance of the song ‘Mother’. The slogans appeared right after Rogers sang the line ‘Mother, should I trust the government’ and were met with rounds of applause and shouts of ‘Ostavka’ by the crowd of over 40,000 people in Sofia’s national stadium. Thousands of Bulgarians have taken to the streets of the capital every evening since June 14 to protest against the three-month-old Socialists-backed cabinet of technocrats, which they see as corrupt and too easily swayed by shady business interests behind the scenes.” Continue reading →

50 unmarked graves found on segregated reform school campus in Florida

“A century-old Florida state school for troubled boys is now the site of a forensic investigation after more than 50 bodies were discovered, some in unmarked graves, next to a garbage dump on the side of campus where the African-American students were housed. Students like Richard Huntley, who was sent to the school in the late fifties, told Al Jazeera that he and his fellow inmate-students were forced to do farm work under dangerous conditions under threats of worse. ‘This, to me, is a form of slavery,’ he said, ‘because they, damn it, beat you to what they wanted you to be.’ Boys who didn’t comply with orders were sent to ‘The White House,’ which Huntley likened to a ‘torture chamber.'” Continue reading →

School & Experts Put Genius Boy In Special Ed, Now On Track For Nobel Prize

“Numbers were his passion and he was getting bored of early grades of elementary school as they did not come close to challenging him. Finally, his parents made the decision to take him out of public school and special ed programs regardless of the fact doctors had diagnosed him with ASD. Jacob’s incredible memory and mind allowed him to attend university classes after he taught himself all of high school math in just two weeks. He is currently on track to graduate from college by the age of 14 and it is believed his research into math and physics may begin to challenge some of the established theories in physics.” Continue reading →

AT&T paid for access to 4 billion call records a day for federal, local drug investigations

“US law enforcement officers working on anti-drugs operations have had access to a vast database of call records dating back to 1987, supplied by the phone company AT&T. The project, known as Hemisphere, gives federal and local officers working on drug cases access to a database of phone metadata populated by more than four billion new call records each day. Unlike the controversial call record accesses obtained by the NSA, the data is stored by AT&T, not the government, but officials can access individual’s phone records within an hour of an administrative subpoena. AT&T receives payment from the government in order to sit its employees alongside drug units to aid with access to the data.” Continue reading →