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Monday, March 11, 2013

Air Force stops reporting data on Afghan drone hits

Ho / AFP - Getty Images

Two freshly assembled Grey Eagle unmanned aerial vehicles sit on the tarmac at Forward Operating Base Shan in Logar Province, Afghanistan in April, 2012.

By David Alexander, Reuters

WASHINGTON - With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was "disproportionately focused" on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out - which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.

The debate over the use of drones in Afghanistan and elsewhere was triggered in part by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to nominate his chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, an architect of the drone campaign, as the new director of the CIA.

The Air Force Times said air force chiefs had started posting the drone data last October in an attempt to provide more detail on the use of drones in Afghanistan.

The University of Missouri's journalism school is the oldest in the country and now among the first to experiment with the new -- and controversial ? drone technology. NBC's Thanh Truong reports.

The newspaper said the statistics were provided for November through January, but the February summary released on March 7 had a blank spot where the drone data had previously been listed.

"A variety of multi-role platforms provide ground commanders in Afghanistan with close air support capabilities, and it was determined that presenting the weapons release data as a whole better reflects the air power provided" in Afghanistan, Central Command said in its statement.

"Protecting civilians remains at the very core of AFCENT's (Air Force Central Command's) mission," it said. "The use of all AFCENT aerial weapons are tightly restricted, meticulously planned, carefully supervised and coordinated, and applied by only qualified and authorized personnel."

The statement said the decision to stop reporting the drone strikes was taken with the International Security Assistance Force - the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Brennan was sworn into office on Friday following a protracted confirmation battle that saw Senator Rand Paul attempt to block a vote on the nomination with a technical maneuver called a filibuster, in which he tried to prevent a vote by talking continuously.

Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama's administration might use the aircraft to target U.S. citizens in the United States.

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/10/17255533-us-air-force-stops-reporting-data-on-afghanistan-drone-strikes?lite

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Researcher: Zombie fads peak when society unhappy

FILE - Costumed actors, promoting the Halloween premiere of the AMC television series "The Walking Dead", shamble along the Brooklyn Bridge while posing for pictures in New York, in this Oct. 26, 2010 file photo. Clemson University English professor Sarah Lauro says people are more interested in zombies when they're dissatisfied with society as a whole. As of last year, Lauro said, zombie walks had been documented in 20 countries. The largest gathering drew more than 4,000 participants at the New Jersey Zombie Walk in Asbury Park, N.J., in October 2010, according to the Guinness World Records. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? Zombies seem to be everywhere these days.

In the popular TV series "The Walking Dead," humans struggle to escape from a pack of zombies hungry for flesh. Prank alerts have warned of a zombie apocalypse on radio stations in a handful of states. And across the country, zombie wannabes in tattered clothes occasionally fill local parks, gurgling moans of the undead.

Are these just unhealthy obsessions with death and decay? To Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro, the phenomenon isn't harmful or a random fad, but part of a historical trend that mirrors a level of cultural dissatisfaction and economic upheaval.

Lauro, who teaches English at Clemson, studied zombies while working on her doctoral degree at the University of California at Davis. Lauro said she keeps track of zombie movies, television shows and video games, but her research focuses primarily on the concept of the "zombie walk," a mass gathering of people who, dressed in the clothes and makeup of the undead, stagger about and dance.

It's a fascination that, for Lauro, a self-described "chicken," seems unnatural. Disinterested in violent movies or games, Lauro said she finds herself now taking part in both in an attempt to further understand what makes zombie-lovers tick.

"I hate violence," she said. "I can't stand gore. So it's a labor, but I do it."

The zombie mob originated in 2003 in Toronto, Lauro said, and popularity escalated dramatically in the United States in 2005, alongside a rise in dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

"It was a way that the population was getting to exercise the fact that they felt like they hadn't been listened to by the Bush administration," Lauro said. "Nobody really wanted that war, and yet we were going to war anyway."

The mid- to late 2000s also saw an uptick in overall zombie popularity, perhaps prompted in part by the release of post-apocalyptic movies including "Dawn of the Dead" and "28 Days Later."

As of last year, Lauro said, zombie walks had been documented in 20 countries. The largest gathering drew more than 4,000 participants at the New Jersey Zombie Walk in Asbury Park, N.J., in October 2010, according to Guinness World Records.

"We are more interested in the zombie at times when as a culture we feel disempowered," Lauro said. "And the facts are there that, when we are experiencing economic crises, the vast population is feeling disempowered. ... Either playing dead themselves ... or watching a show like 'Walking Dead' provides a great variety of outlets for people."

But, Lauro pointed out, the display of dissatisfaction isn't always a conscious expression of that feeling of frustration.

"If you were to ask the participants, I don't think that all of them are very cognizant of what they're saying when they put on the zombie makeup and participate," she said. "To me, it's such an obvious allegory. We feel like, in one way, we're dead."

___

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP .

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-03-11-US-Zombie-Popularity/id-9f81636fc7d946749c78cd4aa60d539c

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Karzai Inflames U.S. Tensions (WSJ)

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Get Your Bikini Body With MuTu! Finally A DVD That Gives Mums ...

There are so many women who have tried everything to get their bikini bodies back only to be left with a saggy belly and a frustrated mind! But finally there is a proven solution that can help women young and old get their bikini bodies back: MuTu System.

MuTu System is for every mum, It gives them the vital exercises they must do first, if they want their tummy to be flat.? It shows women how to target and restore their core muscles, with expertise, focus and understanding.

A ?mummy tummy? overhang, is the unwelcome but all too-common bane of many mother?s lives. But there is help on hand. MuTu Focus is the missing link, the vital information that makes women?s tummies and pelvic floor muscles work correctly.

MuTu Focus DVD is an 8 week course which comes with a manual that mums can do in the comfort of their own home, whilst watching their bodies finally get back to where they want them to be.

Wendy Powell, MuTu System founder, has been a pregnancy and postpartum specialist for over a decade and is also a mother of 2. She demonstrates and guides you step by step in this groundbreaking new program that is available to watch on DVD.?

In each video Wendy guides, reassures, demonstrates, and picks mums up if they fall, in order to get real results.

Wendy teaches Mums to understand:
?- Why their tummy still pooches out, even if their pregnancy weight has gone
?- Which exercises they should avoid and why
?- How to test & assess their own core strength and degree of abdominal ??separation (diastasis recti)
?- Exactly what to do to build the foundations of a flatter tummy. Step by step, week by week.

Wendy dispels the myths, explains the ?science bits?, and demonstrates clearly how to perform the exercises. She takes you step by step through 8 weeks of highly effective exercises and adjustments that will get your waistline, tummy and pelvic floor right where you want them! Muffin tops are a thing of the past after the 8-week MuTu DVD course. It is the perfect way to start your New Year fitness goals!

MuTu Focus has been approved by Women?s Health Physiotherapists as highly beneficial and restorative for all these mentioned pelvic and abdominal conditions.

Source: http://www.missecoglam.com/prenancy/item/5268-get-your-bikini-body-with-mutu-finally-a-dvd-that-gives-mums-their-bodies-back

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We Have The Tools To Repair Your Damaged Credit! - Forex

There are millions of bad credit scores out there today. It?s no surprise, not with a poor economy, rising living costs, stagnant wages, and a nasty employment market. The following tips are presented to help you improve your credit score and help you be more disciplined with your money.

If you are attempting to raise your score with the credit bureaus, but are encountering road blocks whenever you apply for new credit, then open an account with a credit union. Local credit unions might have different credit products than national banks, because they can focus on local market conditions.

Give your credit card company a call and ask them to lower your credit limit. This will stop you from racking up giant credit card bills, and show lenders you are responsible.

You can improve your credit by making your payments on time, every month. You should always contribute something, even if it is only the minimum payment. One little forgotten payment can negatively impact your credit score.

One way to improve your credit score is to open up a new line of credit, and pay if off in a fast time period. This accomplishes two things. First, it puts your credit in better standing. Second, it demonstrates your ability to repay a debt responsibly.

Credit Score

When you pay your bills on time, you are keeping your credit score high. Credit card companies are one of the few businesses that report on a regular basis. Paying late can severely hurt your credit score.

Some of the worst stress you experience with bad credit is caused by debt collection agencies. A consumer had the option of making use of cease and desist statements to persuade collection agencies, but remember that C&D statements only prevent them from harassing you. Letters such as these prevent calls from collections agencies, but the consumer must still pay the debts under dispute.

Consider debt consolidation as a possible tool to help you repay your debt and rebuild your credit record faster. For many cases, debt consolidation is the best way to reduce debt, and it can repair your credit quickly. You will only have to make one payment, since all your debts will be together. You want to be sure that consolidation is right for you, and how it works, to be sure it would benefit you most.

Find a reputable, no-cost credit counseling agency to help you if you find budgeting and paying debts off to be hard or confusing for you. These companies will work out a repayment plan with your creditors, and help you to take control of your finances. With assistance from credit counselors, you can learn valuable financial management skills while responsibly paying back your debt.

A terrible credit situation would be having many different debts you can?t afford to pay back. Make sure you pay all your creditors instead of limiting it to just a few. Even if it?s only minimum payments, send as much as you can to each creditor in order to avoid them sending your account off to collection agencies.

Credit Score

Improve your credit score, as well as make some profit, through an installment account. You have to keep a monthly minimum on an installment account, so make sure you open an account that you can afford. If these accounts are properly managed, they can provide a quick boost to your credit score.

Credit counseling is a great place to start when you are in need of credit score repair. They can show you a better way to manage and pay down your debt, making it much easier for you to live. They?ll help you learn to rely on credit cards less, if at all, and they will teach you how to handle the outstanding debts you have already incurred.

In order to start repairing your credit, you need to start paying your bills. You can?t just pay whatever you want whenever you want. You need to pay your entire balance when it?s due. Your credit score will increase if you are consistently paying back your debts.

If you want to fix your credit avoid companies claiming they can remove all of your issues, even those properly reported. Regardless of their claims, these debts will stay on your report for seven years at a minimum. However, if there is incorrect information, you can have it cleared up easily by yourself.

Make sure you will get a plan in writing if you decide a payment plan is the best option for you with your creditor. This is for your protection. It allows you to have valid documentation of the terms in the event that a creditor reneges on its offer or changes owners. Once the debt is fully paid, you need to get a statement verifying this from the creditor and send it to each of the major credit bureaus.

Check any negative items on your reports carefully when you begin fixing your credit. Even if the negative report is true, if you can locate an error in the report, it may be possible to get it removed.

Frequently contact any credit bureaus with which you are engaged in conflicts to expunge false or erroneous claims appearing on your credit report in order to stay updated on their progress. Write down each person that you speak to, each letter that you send or receive, and save any pertinent emails. Certify your letter of dispute for later use so that you can prove it was mailed and picked up by the company.

Now that you know how to improve your credit score, why wait? Use this information to help increase your credit rating.

Blue widgets may be confusing at first, but eventually it will be easier to understand. You should definitely increase your knowledge base prior to moving forward. This article contained many effective tips you can use to build a basic knowledge of mutual funds with best returns.

Source: http://www.stockmarketfinances.com/2013/03/10/we-have-the-tools-to-repair-your-damaged-credit/

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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Dred Scott decision still resonates today

On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dred Scott case, which had a direct impact on the coming of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln?s presidency four years later.

dredscott The case of Dred Scott v. Sanford was one of the most controversial decisions in the court?s history. At the time, the Supreme Court?s majority came from pro-slavery states or had connections to pro-slavery presidents.

Link: Library of Congress resources

The case had been in the court system for more than a decade. Scott had been born into slavery in 1795. In subsequent years, he lived in two parts of the United States that didn?t allow slavery, Illinois and Wisconsin, along with his master.

When his current master died in 1846, Scott filed suit on behalf of himself and his wife, also a slave, to gain their freedom. The case was heard by three other courts as it made its way to Washington.

The Dred Scott decision came just two days after President James Buchanan took office, and it set the tone for his controversial term that led to the Civil War.

Chief Justice Roger Taney gave the court?s opinion; it had ruled 7-2 against Scott.

Taney announced that slaves were not citizens of the United States and had no rights to sue in federal courts, and in fact, blacks couldn?t be citizens.

?There are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government then formed,? Taney argued.

The court also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. And it said that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.

The decision was celebrated in the South and by slavery supporters. There was outrage in the North and among abolitionists.

One person who was publicly upset with the Dred Scott decision was Lincoln, who was a rising figure in the newly formed Republican Party. The Dred Scott case was a focal point of the famous debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858.

The decision also made the Republican Party a national force, and led to the division of the Democratic Party during the 1860 presidential elections.

The growing power of the Republicans, who received considerable support from the northern states, directly led to fears in the South that slavery would be ended, and those fears started the momentum for secession and the Civil War.

Scott died in 1858 about a year after he and his family had gained their freedom, when his owner (under pressure from her husband) sent the Scotts back to their original owners, who promptly freed them.

Taney passed away in 1864. A year later, a request to include a bust of Taney in a hall that recognized chief justices was blocked by Republicans.

?I declare that the opinion of the chief justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion,? said Charles Sumner, a leading Radical Republican.

Sumner had been brutally beaten and almost killed on the Senate floor in 1856 when he made antislavery remarks. His attacker was Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina.

After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment and 14th Amendment effectively overturned the Dred Scott decision.

Today, the words ?Dred Scott? are tossed out by politicians when they vehemently try to link a recent Supreme Court decision to a historically bad precedent. In 2010, for example, some critics compared the Citizens United v. FEC decision to it.

In 2007, Lynette Jackson, Scott?s great-great-granddaughter, told NPR on the 150th anniversary of the decision that the lesson from the case is that people should try to do what is right.

?Even if it doesn?t look like it?s going to work out, in the end, it usually does,? she said.

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Senate panel approves Obama's CIA pick

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Tuesday to approve President Barack Obama's pick to lead the CIA after winning a behind-the-scenes battle with the White House over access to a series of top-secret legal opinions that justify the use of lethal drone strikes against terror suspects, including American citizens.

John Brennan's installation at the spy agency has been delayed as Senate Democrats and Republicans have pressed the Obama administration to allow a review of the classified documents prepared by the Justice Department. The senators have argued they can't perform adequate oversight without reviewing the contents of the opinions, but the White House had resisted requests for full disclosure.

The intelligence committee's chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement Tuesday that the committee voted 12-3 to send Brennan's nomination to the full Senate for confirmation. The panel's deliberations were held behind closed doors. Feinstein said all eight Democrats on the committee voted yes. She did not identify the Republican senators who voted against him.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee vice chairman, said he voted against Brennan because he didn't think Brennan would create the kind of "trust relationship" between Congress and the CIA. He did not specify what his concerns were, however. But Chambliss said he would not encourage other Republican senators to attempt a filibuster of the nomination.

"He'll probably be confirmed," Chambliss said.

Feinstein said the full Senate should act quickly confirm Brennan, who spent 25 years at the CIA before later becoming Obama's top counterterrorism and homeland security adviser in the White House.

Although Brennan has made it out of the committee, Republicans have threatened to hold up his nomination unless the White House supplies them with classified information, including emails among top U.S. national security officials, detailing the Obama administration's actions immediately following the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed during the raid.

Feinstein said the White House has delivered the "great bulk" of the Benghazi records, and lawmakers are awaiting "a few odds and ends that need to come."

The White House released two out of a total of 11 Justice legal opinions to the intelligence committee just hours before Brennan's Feb. 7 confirmation hearing in front of the panel. Two other memos had already been released to the committee.

Feinstein attributed the White House's resistance to providing the memos to a difference of opinion between lawmakers and the Obama administration over what the documents represented.

"The White House tends to look at this as advice to the president, and therefore that advice is protected," she said. "We looked at it as the legal advice that undermines possible actions of agencies that we are charged with overseeing. So there are different views of this."

Brennan so far has escaped the harsh treatment that former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the president's choice to lead the Defense Department, received from Senate Republicans, even though Brennan is one of Obama's most important national security aides and the White House official who oversees the drone program.

During President George W. Bush's administration, Brennan served as a senior CIA official when waterboarding and other forms of "enhanced interrogation" and detention practices were adopted. Brennan has publicly denounced the use of these tactics, but the cloud hasn't gone completely away.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has said Brennan's stance on waterboarding and torture is inconsistent. Although Brennan has decried these methods, he also has said they saved lives, according to McCain, who said he is awaiting an explanation from Brennan. McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are also leading the charge for the Benghazi records.

Brennan vigorously defended the use of drone strikes during his confirmation hearing. He declined to say whether he believes waterboarding, which simulates drowning, amounted to torture. But he called the practice "reprehensible" and said it should never be done again. Obama ordered waterboarding banned shortly after taking office.

Drone strikes are employed only as a "last resort," Brennan told the committee. But he also said he had no qualms about going after U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011. A drone strike in Yemen killed al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both U.S. citizens. A drone strike two weeks later killed al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, a Denver native.

Brennan spent 25 years at the CIA before moving in 2003 from his job as deputy executive director of the agency to run the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. He later worked as interim director of the center's successor organization, the National Counterterrorism Center.

When Bush's second term began in 2005, Brennan left government to work for a company that provides counterterror analysis to federal agencies. After Obama took office in 2009, he returned to the federal payroll as the president's top counterterrorism adviser in the White House.

If confirmed by the full Senate, Brennan would replace Michael Morell, the CIA's deputy director who has been acting director since David Petraeus resigned in November after acknowledging an affair with his biographer.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-panel-votes-approve-obamas-cia-nominee-203345068--politics.html

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Monday, March 11, 2013

Credit Score

Credit Score

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Thursday, March 7, 2013