(AP) NY paper sues Putnam Co. for pistol permit records
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.
A suburban New York newspaper has sued Putnam County to compel it to release its pistol permit records.
The Journal News says it sued Thursday after the county denied two Freedom of Information requests and a subsequent appeal.
The newspaper first requested information from Westchester, Rockland and
Putnam counties following the Newtown, Conn., shooting massacre. It
made another request after the state passed a gun control law allowing
permit holders to apply to keep their names and addresses private.
Putnam County officials declined to comment on the lawsuit because they
had not yet been served with the papers. But County Executive MaryEllen
Odell told the newspaper she's confident the county will prevail.
Westchester and Rockland counties provided the information to the
newspaper, which published a clickable map on its website identifying
residents there with handgun permits.
In a new undercover, investigative video, a staffer at an abortion clinic in Bronx, New York is shown on film telling a customer to flush the body of a baby born alive following a failed abortion down the toilet.
The video shows how the kinds of gruesome late-term and live-birth abortions done at abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell‘s “House of Horrors” abortion clinic are not limited to his abortion facility alone.
The pro-life group Live Action today released an undercover video of an abortion counselor at a clinic describing, in gruesome details, what is done with a baby that survives an abortion attempt. This is the first in a series of videos Live Action will release videos , found at www.liveaction.org/inhuman, that will show a number of late-term abortion clinics engaging in illegal and inhuman practices, as well as explaining in explicit detail what happens to the victims of late-term abortion.
“Dr. Kermit Gosnell is not an aberration, ” said Lila Rose, Founder and President of Live Action. “The gruesome and brutal practices exposed in Gosnell’s ‘House of Horrors’ are business as usual for the abortion industry in America. Nationwide, it’s just another day at the office.”
In the video, the abortion counselor is caught on tape describing, in gruesomely precise terms, how late-term abortions happen. She details what is done with a baby after the abortion and advises to “flush” the baby down the toilet if he or she is delivered at home before the final stage of the two- or three-day abortion procedure.
“If it comes out, then it comes out. Flush it. … if anything, you know, put it in a bag or something or somewhere and bring it to us.”
When Live Action’s undercover investigator asks what happens to the baby after the abortion – or what the clinic would do if, after the abortion, the baby is moving – the counselor says:
“If it did come out in one piece, it’s very small. So they would still have to put it in a container – like, a jar – with solution and send it to the lab.”
When asked what happens if the baby after the abortion is breathing or twitching, the Bronx counselor responds:
“The solution will make it stop. It’s not going to be moving around in the jar … that’s the whole purpose of the solution.”
“It’ll automatically stop. It won’t be able to…not with the solution.”
Rose is calling on the New York state government and health officials and U.S. prosecutors to investigate the Bronx clinic and conduct a statewide investigation into other abortion clinics that perform late-term abortions.
From the letter her group sent to Health Commissioner Shah: [W]e have reason to believe that abortionists and staff at Dr. Emily are operating under conditions that endanger women and children to the point of disease and even death. We therefore ask you to use every resource at your disposal to initiate health inspections of the Dr. Emily Woman’s Health Center.
“These abortion clinics are abusing human life in unimaginable ways,” Rose said, “but our society has become so numb to what is going on behind their doors. Babies born alive from a failed abortion should not be put in a jar of toxic solution, or flushed down a toilet. How could anyone condone this kind of inhuman and brutal treatment of a helpless, innocent little child?”
(CNN) -- A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, has ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make the morning-after birth control pill available to people of any age without a prescription.
The order overturned a 2011 decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to require a prescription for girls under 17.
The FDA said it couldn't comment on an ongoing legal matter. But the U.S. Justice Department indicated an appeal of the ruling was under consideration. "The Department of Justice is reviewing the appellate options and expects to act promptly," department spokeswoman Allison Price said.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended last year that oral contraceptives be sold over the counter in an effort to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in the United States. Opponents of prescription requirements say prescriptions can delay access to the drug.
In 2011, Teva Women's Health Inc., maker of Plan B One-Step, had asked the FDA to make the drug available without prescription to all sexually active girls and women. Sebelius overruled the FDA's recommendation, saying, "I do not believe enough data were presented to support the application."
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman said in his order, "The decisions of the Secretary with respect to Plan B One-Step and that of the FDA with respect to the Citizen Petition, which it had no choice but to deny, were arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable."
Friday's order came in response to a lawsuit launched by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The group was seeking to expand access to all brands of the morning-after pill over the counter, such as Plan B One-Step and Next Choice, so that women of all ages would be able to purchase them without a prescription.
"Today science has finally prevailed over politics," Nancy Northup, the center's president and CEO, said in a statement. "This landmark court decision has struck a huge blow to the deep-seated discrimination that has for too long denied women access to a full range of safe and effective birth control methods."
In a press briefing, Northup said that according to the order, within 30 days, the pill would be available over the counter without "point of sale restrictions," such as needing to show identification or being a certain age.
There may be other settings besides drugstores where the morning-after pill will be sold, Susan Wood, associate professor at the George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services, told reporters.
"We no longer have to find, on a Sunday morning or a Saturday night, an open pharmacy counter with a pharmacist on duty," she said.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine also supported the decision, applauding the stance that "science should guide policy."
But other groups,including the Family Research Council, expressed concerns about the order.
"There is a real danger that Plan B may be given to young girls, under coercion or without their consent. The involvement of parents and medical professionals act as a safeguard for these young girls. However, today's ruling removes these common-sense protections," Anna Higgins, director of the organization's Center for Human Dignity, said in a statement.
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights also disagreed with the ruling, citing what he sees as a "contempt shown for parental rights."
"A 12-year-old girl in a New York City school cannot be given an aspirin by her teacher, even if she has a fever. The same girl cannot buy a large soda during lunchtime because Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decreed that it is not good for her. But she can be given a pill, unbeknownst to her parents, that could arguably abort her baby," he said in a statement.
The FDA approved Plan B in 1999. The key ingredient in Plan B is a synthetic hormone called levonorgestrel.
This drug stops an egg from being released from the ovary, or preventing fertilization of the egg by sperm.
If there has been fertilization, Plan B may prevent a fertilized egg from embedding in the uterus. But if the egg has already been implanted in the uterus, the morning-after pill will not work.
Emergency contraceptives are intended for use within 72 hours after sex but are most effective if taken within 24 hours.
Many developed countries require a prescription for oral contraceptives, including Canada and most of Europe, but other countries sell the pill without a prescription even formally or informally.
A 2012 study in the journal Pediatrics found that there is misinformation about emergency contraception, including about what age women can obtain it without a prescription, and who can take it in general.
As far as pricing, the morning-after pill goes for about $50, said Susannah Baruch, interim president and CEO of Reproductive Health Technologies Project.
CNN's Miriam Falco and Jacque Wilson in Atlanta and Terry Frieden in Washington contributed to this report.
Some fashonistas strive for sexy when it comes to clothes, but one artist from New York is taking a rather utilitarian approach with outfits — he’s about to unveil a whole line of garments designed to make the wearer nearly invisible to drones.
Brooklyn-based artist Adam Harvey used to work primarily with photography, but he undertakes an entirely different medium with his newest project. He says that in the years since the United States post-9/11 PATRIOT Act has been in place, cameras have stopped becoming “art making tools” and have instead become “enablers of surveillance societies.”
That was Harvey’s explanation last year when he discussed his projects with the website Rhizome. At the time, Harvey was experimenting with how household make-up could render it harder for computers to use facial recognition programs to pluck people out of crowds. And while the practice of examining facial features using biometrics and sophisticated surveillance cameras has certainly intensified in the months since, Harvey has found another type of evasive practice that is a bit harder to avoid: the drone.
The United States currently has a modest arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles — UAVS, or drones – that it uses in surveillance missions on its border with Mexico and in war zones overseas. By the year 2020, however, the Federal Aviation Administration expects the number of domestic drones in American airspace to be as large as 30,000.
At the moment, law enforcement agencies across the country are trying to get their hands on their own surveillance drones, some of which “can zoom in and read a milk carton from 60,000 feet,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And while escaping a space-age robotic spy machine thousands of feet above the Earth might not be as easy as, say, putting on some blush or mascara to make it harder to be detected, Harvey has designed an entire clothing line that will help disguise people from the all-seeing eye of Big Brother.
On January 17, Harvey will unveil Stealth Wear at a studio in London. There he’ll debut his “new counter surveillance fashions” that he plans to also test before his private audience.
“Building off previous work with CV Dazzle, camouflage from face detection, Privacy Mode continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance,” the press release reads.
In collaboration with NYC fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield, Harvey has tried to tackle “some of the most pressing and sophisticated forms of surveillance today.”
Ultimately, it’s a fashion statement that says an earful to those enabling a growing spy state.
“I think building privacy into modern garments can make them feel more comfortable and, like armor, more protected,” Harvey told Rhizome last year. “Data and privacy are increasingly valuable personal assets and it doesn’t make sense to not protect them. It’s also a great conversation starter.”
Harvey hopes to get those conversations starting next week in London, where he will unveil an anti-drone hoodie and matching scarf, a shirt that shields the wearer from X-rays and a pocket protector that he says blocks cell phones from sending and receiving signals.
For the hoodie and scarf set, Harvey and Bloomfield use materials designed to thwart thermal imaging, which the artist says most UAVs employ in order to zero-in on targets. The t-shirt allegedly protects a person’s internal organs from harmful X-rays and the “Off Pocket” pants accessory disconnects mobile devices from service providers with special materials.
“Smartphones infiltrate our senses. They cause anxiety, phantom vibrations, and keep us on alert,” he told Rhizome. “We expend energy maintaining an always-on connection. Smartphones should come with a switch to turn this off, but they don’t. Turning my iPhone off and back on takes 45 seconds. Using flight mode is also clumsy. I wanted a way to quickly and politely disconnect myself without relying on the phone’s software or hardware features. The Off Pocket circumvents this design flaw.” “[W]hen I first modified my pants with signal attenuating fabric, it felt odd to be unplugged. It was as if I had blocked out part of the world, covered my ears, or closed my eyes. But then I adjusted and realized that I had just opened them again.”
The artist says accompanying each project will be either recorded and in-person demonstrations that reveal the process behind each specific technology and counter technology relevant to his work.
Speaking to the UK’s Register back in 2010, Harvey said even then that surveillance was becoming more prevalent.
"The number of sensors that are going into the public spaces has been increasing,” he said, adding that we very well might be “heading to the point where we as a society need to think about what we are comfortable with."
"Maybe you could go to a privacy hair stylist in the future,” he quipped.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks during the 67th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York.(Reuters / Mike Segar)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eighth address to the UN
General Assembly was defined mostly by its absences: The Syrian conflict
and an infamous anti-Muslim film weren’t mentioned, and the US
delegation wasn’t present in the chamber.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for world leaders to serve their
people, not rule over them during his speech before the UN General
Assembly on Wednesday.
In a surprise turn, Ahmadinejad’s speech took on an almost poetic bent evoking “the spring of humanity and the greenery of all ages.”
During his address, the word “peace” was used 12 times, “justice” 15 and “love” 13.
Peace
and love were not the only items on the agenda, as Ahmadinejad
enumerated a litany of injustices that had occurred throughout history
despite the striving of “righteous people and justice seekers.”
Several barbs were specifically directed towards the West.
Ahmadinejad decried the “current abysmal situation of the world,” saying it resulted from “the self-proclaimed centers of power who have entrusted themselves to the Devil.”
He further lambasted the“arms race” and “nuclear intimidation" being perpetuated by “hegemonic powers," as well as “the continued threat by uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action.”
US leans on Jewish holiday to explain UN absence
The Iranian leader's comments came as the seats for the US diplomatic mission remained conspicuously empty.
The US had called for a boycott of Ahmadinejad's address on Wednesday, accusing the Iranian President of spouting "paranoid theories and repulsive slurs against Israel." "It’s
particularly unfortunate that Mr. Ahmadinejad will have the platform of
the UN General Assembly on Yom Kippur, which is why the United States
has decided not to attend," a statement posted by Erin Pelton, the spokesperson for the US Mission to the United Nations, read.
Video still
Ahmadinejad's last serenade
Before
delivering his last address the the UN assembly before his term expires
next year, the president of the Islamic Republic had made several
comments in the run-up to Wednesday's address which incited the ire of
Western powers.
On Tuesday, Ahmadinejiad talked at length with the
AP on the sidelines of the UN summit in which he unfavorably
characterized Western policy regarding Iran.
Speaking through
a translator, the Iranian president claimed that Western outrage over
Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program was a pretext for dominating
Iran, as “even elementary school kids throughout the world have
understood that the United States government is following an
international policy of bullying.”
While speaking before
the UN General assembly on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama said
that the window of opportunity to resolve the dispute over Iran’s
nuclear program. Though Obama charged that the US would not allow Tehran
to acquire of nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejiad reiterated his country’s
longstanding claim that their uranium enrichment program was strictly
for energy production. “Everyone is aware the nuclear issue is
the imposition of the will of the United States,” Ahmadinejiad said. “I
see the nuclear issue as a non-issue. It has become a form of
one-upmanship.”
'Same slave masters rule the world'
One
problem central to the current tensions is that the US never accepted
the legitimacy of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejiad said,
calling for the creation of a new, less polarized world order. "I do believe the system of empires has reached the end of the road. The world can no longer see an emperor commanding it," he said.
His
comments echoed the contentious statements he made before the UN
Generally Assembly last year, when he referred to current international
powers as “the same slave masters” who “imposed colonialism for over four centuries upon this world.”
He incited further walkouts with his insinuations that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks, proclaiming that “instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator [Osama bin Laden] and threw his body into the sea.”
'Israel has no roots'
The Iranian president also stirred controversy on Monday when he referred to modern-day Israel as a mere blip in world history. “Iran has been around for the last seven, ten thousand years. They [Israelis] have
been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the
support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in
history,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “We don't even count
them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase,
they [Israelis] represent minimal disturbances that come into the
picture and are then eliminated.”
Ahmadinejiad also dismissed threats of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities: "Fundamentally
we do not take seriously the threats of the Zionists…We have all the
defensive means at our disposal and we are ready to defend ourselves."
Despite Western condemnation of his remarks, the Iranian president refused to back down during Wednesday interviews. “When have we threatened to attack the Zionists? We have never threatened them,” Ahmadinejiad said in an interview broadcast on CBS’s ‘Early Morning.’ He argued that Israel’s “occupation,” “war-like behavior” and “terrorism” need
to end, repeating his long-running claim that Palestinians should be
allowed to achieve democratic self-determination on their own historical
lands.
He also called on the United States to patient, as he
routinely was forced to exercise patience as he listened to the US
president berate Iran before the General Assembly.
Having served two terms as Iran’s president, Ahmadinejiad will step down once his term ends next year.
Passengers line up to a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer to go through airport security at Portland International Airport (Natalie Behring/Getty Images/AFP)
While trying to board a flight out of Buffalo, New York recently, a PhD student at Arizona State found out the hard way that being on a no-fly list isn’t the only way to attract the attention of the TSA — wearing a funny shirt will do the trick, too.
In a post published to his personal blog on Tuesday, a 31-year old doctoral candidate named Arijit recounts the horrors he experienced while attempting to fly from Buffalo-Niagara International Airport to Phoenix over the weekend after attending a funeral. In around 3,000 words he goes into great detail about being booted from a domestic flight, getting stuck renting a car and scrounging for overnight accommodations — something he argues most likely wouldn’t have happened if authorities didn’t make such a big fuss over his t-shirt.
The article of clothing that caused such a concern was a red t-shirt that featured a mock-up of the US Department of Homeland Security’s seal, surrounded with phrases such as “Bombs ZOMG,” “ZOMG Terrorists” and “Alert level bloodred — run, run take off your shoes.”
Image from arijitvsdelta.blogspot.co.uk
Arijit says he made it through the Transportation Security Administration’s standard screening routine without incident and that he was only questioned after arriving at his departure gate. There, he says, a supervisor from Delta Airlines started inquiring about the clothing, and soon after Arijit was quickly interrogated by others. He writes that he was then surrounded by agents with both the TSA and a crew from the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, the law enforcement agency that patrols Western New York’s mass transit system.
“I politely explained that it was ‘mocking the security theater charade and over-reactions to terrorism by the general public,’” Arijit writes. A supervisor for Delta Airlines, however, argued that it had made numerous passengers and employees “very uncomfortable.”
After being vigorously screened and questioned multiple times, Arijit says he was finally given permission, once more, to board his plane. The pilot of the aircraft, however, had had enough of the whole ordeal and asked the Delta supervisor to relay the message that, due to the discomfort the shirt had caused, neither Arijit nor his wife would be allowed to board the aircraft.
“Passengers on the plane supposedly felt uncomfortable with my very presence on the flight,” Arijit writes, “And the Delta manager went out of his way to point out that he wholeheartedly agreed with the pilot’s decision.”
“You’re f------ kidding me,” Arijit says he responded. “Why can’t I board? What’s the concern?”
“Just use your imagination,” the Delta supervisor informed him.
On his blog, Arijit says his reaction is still the same a few days later: “Wow.”
“Whatever I do, I am suspicious. Why?” he asks. “[It’s not] because the shirt I’m wearing presents some sort of legitimate threat. Not because I have weapons or potential bomb-making tools in my luggage. And not because I’ve shown any other indication of any sort that I’m a potential terrorist.Rather, the pilot and some Delta rep can project upon me their worst fears of what I am possibly capable of.”
“If that’s the case,” he continues, “why even bother with the bloated security apparatus — since Delta pilots have discretion to kick off passengers who've passed multiple checks, after all?”
By the time his entire ordeal was over, Arijit and his wife were forced to rent a car and find a place to stay for the evening on their own — they were rebooked for a flight the following morning.
Not before being interrogated further, though, and this time by local law enforcement officers with the NFTA. Even after being booted, Arijit says that transit cops questioned him relentlessly, asking him about where he got his shirt and for details about his family.
According to Arijits account, an NFTA officer named Mark radioed in on his walkie-talkie for permission to further interrogate the dangerous potential terrorist.
“He gave a stupid answer,” Arijit recalls hearing the officer say to a supervisor. “And he looks foreign.”
“Certainly he wasn’t implying that dark-skinned people are not real Americans and that white people are the only true Americans,” Arijit writes in part of his snark-filled synopsis. “Fortunately, Mark’s request was denied. Apparently, someone at NFTA recognized this bigoted meathead for the bigoted meathead he was and that nationality is simply a concept that exists solely on paper and cannot be discerned from just looking at someone.”
In the end, though, the alleged racism on the part of the NFTA was just a sliver of a seriously troubling ordeal that Arijit could assume is likely to occur again and again. On his personal Twitter account, he writes that that, although he might not agree with it, he certainly learned a lesson: “mock the security charade or offend racists by being brown and @Delta won't let you fly.”
