WASHINGTON, March 13 (UPI) -- Blue Bell
Creameries has recalled several styles of ice cream novelties after
listeria infections sickened five people who consumed the products,
three of whom died.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationare investigating an outbreak of listeria monocytogenes infections in five patients in Kansas.
All five people were admitted at a Kansas hospital for unrelated
conditions and became ill with the infection between January 2014 and
January 2015. For the four patients whose food intake was documented,
all had consumed milkshakes made with a single-serving Blue Bell ice
cream product called Scoops while in the hospital.
Three of the patients died.
The CDC and FDA determined Blue Bell products were likely the source of the outbreak.
As part of an unrelated investigation, the South Carolina Department of
Health and Environmental Control isolated listeria monocytogenes in
single-serve products Chocolate Chip Country Cookie Sandwiches and Great
Divide Bars. Scoops products were made on the same production line.
Additionally the Texas Department of State Health Services
isolated the bacteria in products samples at Blue Bell's production
facility in Brenham, Texas.
Blue Bell said it removed all products made from the same
production line from stores and has shut down the production line. The
other items included in the recall are Sour Pop Green Apple Bar, Cotton
Candy Bar, Vanilla Stick Slices, Almond Bars, six-pack Cotton Candy
Bars, six-pack Sour Pop Green Apple Bars and 12-pack No Sugar Added Mooo
Bars.
Computers operating on the New York Police
Department’s computer network at its 1 Police Plaza headquarters have
been used to alter Wikipedia pages containing details of alleged police
brutality, a review by Capital has revealed.
“The matter is under
internal review,” an NYPD spokeswoman, Det. Cheryl Crispin, wrote in an
email to Capital after examples of the changes were presented to the
NYPD.
The edits and changes were linked to the NYPD through a
series of Internet Protocol addresses, or IP addresses, which can be
publicly tracked by various websites. (Here, for example, is one website that shows a number of IP addresses registered to the NYPD.) IP addresses can locate where a computer is when it connects to the Internet.
Computer
users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters'
network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for
several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for
Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD
addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many
users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the
department’s range of IP addresses.
NYPD IP addresses have also been used to edit entries
on stop-and-frisk, NYPD scandals, and prominent figures in the city’s
political and police leadership.
There are more than 15,000 IP
addresses registered to the NYPD, which employs 50,000 people, including
uniformed officers and civilians. Notable Wikipedia activity was linked
to about a dozen of those NYPD IP addresses.
On the evening of
Dec. 3, hours after a Staten Island grand jury ruled not to indict NYPD
Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, a user on the 1
Police Plaza network made multiple edits, visible here and here,
to the “Death of Eric Garner” Wikipedia entry. The edits, all
concerning the actions of Eric Garner and the police officers involved
in the confrontation, are as follows:
● “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”
● “[P]ush Garner's face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner's head down into the sidewalk.”
● “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”
●
The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the
officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description
of the incident.
● Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”
As
of March 12, three of these edits (“chokehold or headlock,”
“respiratory distress,” and “head down”) remained in “Death of Eric
Garner” article, while the rest had been removed in later Wikipedia
users’ revisions.
This process of revision and counterrevision is
typical of Wikipedia’s self-policing user community.
The website allows
anyone to edit entries, either logged in with a Wikipedia account, or
anonymously, in which case the website logs the user’s IP address and
creates a publicly available record of the user’s edits. Edits from 1
Police Plaza were made anonymously, therefore creating a permanent
Wikipedia log of edits made on NYPD IP addresses. Using this
information, Capital was able to write a computer program that would
search Wikipedia for all anonymous edits made on the range of IP addresses registered to 1 Police Plaza.
Over
the past decade, NYPD IP addresses have logged hundreds of anonymous
Wikipedia edits, many of which had nothing to do with police issues. A
long series of edits contributes to entries on the Catholic Church.
There is an edit to the entry on British band Chumbawamba, seven edits to the entry on ages of consent in Europe, and an edit vandalizing the entry for “stye”
with graphic comments on gay sex. However, a significant number of
edits by NYPD IP addresses have been to entries that challenge NYPD
conduct.
On Nov. 25, 2006, undercover NYPD officers fired 50
times at three unarmed men, killing Sean Bell, and sparking citywide
protests against police brutality. On April 12, 2007, a user on 1 Police
Plaza’s network attempted to delete the Wikipedia entry “Sean Bell
shooting incident”.
“He [Bell] was in the news for about two
months, and now no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore.
The police
shoot people every day, and times with a lot more than 50 bullets. This
incident is more news than notable,” the user wrote on Wikipedia’s internal “Articles for deletion” page.
A
user on the NYPD network made a second edit to the Sean Bell entry on
Dec. 23, 2009, this time changing “one Latino and two African-American
men were shot a total of fifty times” to “one Latino and two African-American men were shot at a total of fifty times” (emphasis Capital’s).
On
Nov. 23, 2013, a user on the 1 Police Plaza network edited the
Wikipedia entry for Amadou Diallo, an unarmed who was killed when police
mistook his wallet for a gun in 1999.
The person using this IP address made two edits
to a sentence about NYPD Officer Kenneth Boss, one of the officers
involved in the shooting: “Officer Kenneth Boss had been previously
involved in an incident where an unarmed man was shot, but remained
working as a police officer” was changed to “Officer Kenneth Boss had
been previously involved in an incident where an armed man was shot.”
“Unarmed” was changed to “armed,” and “but remained working as a police officer” was omitted entirely.
On
Oct. 15, 2013, a user at 1 Police Plaza edited the entry for the
“Alexien Lien beating,” an event in which bikers and an undercover NYPD
officer chased and assaulted a driver on the West Side Highway. The user
deleted
paragraphs of potentially anti-NYPD vandalism from the entry. Among the
deleted text were claims like “After this incident police were
pressuring on bikers because Alexian Lien uncle is their boss. Looks
like Alexian has influential friends in the govt and got away with the
incident.”
On three separate occasions between October 2012 and
March 2013, a user on the 1 Police Plaza network edited the
“Stop-and-frisk” entry. The changes are as follows; bolded words
indicate edits:
“The stop-and-frisk program of New York City is a practice of the New York City Police Department to stop, question,
and search people.” was changed to “The stop-and-frisk program of New
York City is a practice of the New York City Police Department to stop,
question and, if the circumstances of the stop warrant it, conduct a frisk of the personstopped.”
●
“The stop-and-frisk program of New York City is a practice of the New
York City Police Department to stop, question and, if the circumstances
of the stop warrant it, conduct a frisk of the person stopped.” was
changed to “The stop-and-frisk program of New York City is a practice of
the New York City Police Department by which a police officer who reasonably suspects a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a Penal Law misdemeanor, stops and questions that person, and, if the circumstances of the stop warrant it, conducts a frisk of the person stopped.”
● “The rules for stop and frisk are found in New York State Criminal Procedure Law section 140.50, and are based on the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. Ohio” was added to the entry.
● “if the circumstances of the stop warrant it, conducts a frisk of the person stopped” was changed to “if the officerreasonablysuspectsheorsheisindanger of physical injury, frisks the person stopped for weapons.”
● An extraneous “and” was removed from a sentence.
On
two separate occasions, a user on the 1 Police Plaza network edited
sections of Wikipedia’s “New York City Police Department” entry that
described police misconduct. On June 30, 2006, the user deleted 1,502
characters from the “scandals and corruption” section, including a
sentence that claimed “at the end of March, 2006, NYPD started to make
changes to this very article in an attempt to censor scandals and
corruption information.” The full deleted text can be read here.
On
June 19, 2008, a user on the 1 Police Plaza network deleted the entire
“Allegations of police misconduct and the Civilian Complaint Review
Board (CCRB)” and “Other incidents” sections from the entry, for a
combined total of 25,611 deleted characters. The full deleted text can
be read here and here.
Wikipedia
discourages users from making edits that might constitute a conflict of
interest. “COI [conflict of interest] editing involves contributing to
Wikipedia to promote your own interests, including your business or
financial interests, or those of your external relationships, such as
with family, friends or employers,” Wikipedia states in its behavioral
guidelines. “COI editing is strongly discouraged.”
A list of all anonymous Wikipedia edits made by NYPD IP addresses is available here. —additional reporting by Azi Paybarah
As MSNBC continues its obvious attempts to draw conservatives away from Fox News, Morning Blow
co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have fully embraced their
roles as the Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin of the network.
Mocking rapper Waka Flocka Flame for canceling a scheduled performance at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon
frat house at the University of Oklahoma, Brzezinski said, “If you look
at every single song, I guess you call these, that he’s written, it’s a
bunch of garbage. It’s full of n-words, it’s full of f-words.
It’s
wrong. And he shouldn’t be disgusted with [the fraternity]; he should be
disgusted with himself.”
Of course, Brzezinski was suggesting that Waka Flocka shouldn’t be
disgusted by these words:
“There will never be a nigger SAE/There will
never be a nigger SAE/You can hang ’em from a tree, but it will never
start with me/There will never be a nigger SAE.”
Because, hip-hop.
Scarborough even went so far as to insinuate that SAE became familiar
with the n-word through hip-hop—as opposed to, say, the generations of
redneck ratchetry passed down to them through their Confederacy-loving
brotherhood. But it was Brzezinski—with her snide comments about Waka
Flocka’s music and side eyes at his stage name—who was given the role of
bigot-in-residence, and it has been left to her to clean up the mess.
In an appearance on MSNBC’s The Cycle, Brzezinski backpedaled as furiously as Amy Pascal did after her hacked emails at Sony were exposed.
She denied drawing a link between use of the n-word in hip-hop and
SAE’s little party-bus jam session, saying, “Lyrics have nothing to do
with the actions that happened on the bus.”
“Having said that,” Brzezinski said to the Rev. Al Sharpton (because,
of course, where else would he be?), “[Waka Flocka’s] lyrics are
inflammatory. They use the n-word and the f-bomb ... but that, again, is
a separate conversation. It is sort of like the big picture in terms of
where we are moving in terms of our society, and also how we view art
and what is art and what is dangerous, or what is art and what perhaps
could be disturbing to people. But that is a completely different and
fascinating conversation.”
Oh, now it’s a different conversation? Now it’s fascinating? What a difference a day makes when black viewership is on the line.
No, Brzezinski did not blame hip-hop for the ease with which SAE
members sang that song, nor for some white people’s casual use of the
n-word in general. Scarborough and guest Bill Kristol, however, did. And
she should be embarrassed that she’s ducking and dodging that issue on
their behalf.
Let’s be clear: The misogynoir
and violence that permeate hip-hop are not something to be dismissed,
but that is not the conversation that was being had. And despite
Brzezinski’s assertion otherwise, the only reason that she brought it up
was to race-bait and switch the conversation from SAE to hip-hop—the
black scapegoat in every single conversation about racism in this
country, along with “irresponsible,” young black mothers and “absent” black fathers. She brought it up as if to say, “If you think these SAE kids are bad, you should check out this rapper.”
Bill O’Reilly must be so proud.
There is speech, moving one’s mouth to form words, and there is language,
a “symbolic, rule-governed system used to convey a message.” And the
speech on that frat bus, the juvenile use of the word “nigger,” is of
much less concern than the language that the Morning Blow panel is trying to minimize.
The joy, the smug superiority, the frenzied, good-ole’-boy excitement of being among other white people who get it, who
find humor in nooses squeezing the life from another human being—that
is the language of racialized, state-sanctioned terrorism that taunts
black America in 2015 as much as it did in 1856, when SAE was founded.
So, trying to shift the blame to a culture born from that terror, a
culture that exposes and at times reflects white supremacy, instead of
keeping it squarely at the feet of privileged little white frat boys—and
the antebellum Southern system that spawned them—is what’s disgusting
here.
I don’t believe Brzezinski’s faux outrage over lyrics she probably
Googled right before the show just to have something to say. I don’t
believe that Scarborough is ignorant enough to believe that hip-hop is
the inspiration for a hundred-year-old song that these frat boys
reportedly had to learn upon initiation. Those attempts to shame those
of us outraged into silence won’t work, and I would have more respect
for them if they had cut through the bullshit and said what they really
felt:
Black people: Stop teaching white people to hate you.
Hip-hop isn’t the system of oppression that the Morning Blow
panel needs to dismantle. The thugs of Sigma Alpha Epsilon are just the
rotten fruit of trees stained with the blood of black people who built
this country on their backs.
And let’s be clear: When their white ancestors were holding lynching
parties and hanging us from trees, they weren’t bumping Biggie.
Kirsten West Savali is a cultural critic and senior writer for The Root, where she explores the intersections of race, gender, politics and pop culture. Follow her on Twitter.
So this cotton-picking Iran-letter-writing traitor is really
sucking up after those fat defense campaign contributions! We are so
very surprised! Via Lee Fang at the Intercept:
[...] Cotton will appear at an “Off the Record and strictly Non-Attribution” event with the National Defense Industrial Association, a lobbying and professional group for defense contractors.
The NDIA is composed
of executives from major military businesses such as Northrop Grumman,
L-3 Communications, ManTech International, Boeing, Oshkosh Defense and
Booz Allen Hamilton, among other firms.
Cotton strongly advocates higher defense spending and a more aggressive foreign policy. As The New Republic’s David Ramsey noted,
“Pick a topic — Syria, Iran, Russia, ISIS, drones, NSA snooping — and
Cotton can be found at the hawkish outer edge of the debate…During his
senate campaign, he told a tele-townhall that ISIS and Mexican drug
cartels joining forces to attack Arkansas was an ‘urgent problem.'”
On Iran, Cotton has issued specific calls for military intervention. In December he said Congress should consider
supplying Israel with B-52s and so-called “bunker-buster” bombs — both
items manufactured by NDIA member Boeing — to be used for a possible
strike against Iran.
Asked if Cotton will speak about his Iran letter tomorrow, Jimmy
Thomas, NDIA Director of Legislative Policy, said, “[M]ost members…talk
about everything from the budget to Iran…so it’s highly likely that he
may address that in his remarks.” According to Thomas, the Cotton event
was scheduled in January, “but certainly we bring people to the platform
that have influence directly on our issues.”
Here's the kind of teabagger scoundrel Tom is. Despite his Harvard
Law degree, he proposed this blatantly unconstitutional law back when he
was still in Congress, because FREEDOM:
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Wednesday
offered legislative language that would "automatically" punish family
members of people who violate U.S. sanctions against Iran, levying
sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
The provision was introduced as an amendment to the Nuclear Iran
Prevention Act of 2013, which lays out strong penalties for people who
violate human rights, engage in censorship, or commit other abuses
associated with the Iranian government.
Cotton
also seeks to punish any family member of those people, "to include a
spouse and any relative to the third degree," including, "parents,
children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great
grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids," Cotton said.
"There would be no investigation," Cotton said during
Wednesday's markup hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"If the prime malefactor of the family is identified as on the list for
sanctions, then everyone within their family would automatically come
within the sanctions regime as well. It'd be very hard to demonstrate
and investigate to conclusive proof."
Brutal,
militant group Boko Haram reportedly pledged their official allegiance
to the radical group ISIS. Ed Schultz, former Rep. Joe Sestak, Rep.
Gerry Connolly and Lacie Heeley discuss.
A 24 years old man believed to be addicted to World of Warcraft died after playing 19-hours straight.
Wu Tai was at an Internet cafe in Shanghai, China for playing the
role-playing game. After he spent 19 hours of playing, his friends saw
him away from screen and violently coughing. He slumped in his chair
after the coughing attack, and his gaming compatriots noticed he was
dabbing blood away from his mouth with a handkerchief. The gamer sitting
next to him said:
“I suddenly heard him groan and when I turned to see what had happened he was very pale and looked uncomfortable.
He was dabbing his mouth with a hankie which had blood on it.
I asked him if he was OK and he said he’d felt better, but that he would
be OK. I called for an ambulance while my friend went to get some help
from staff. But while we waited he just died in front of us, and there
was nothing the staff could do.”
The medical crews tried to rescue him but he was already dead. A police man said about this:
“An autopsy will determine the cause of death but there
seems little doubt his playing on the computer for 19 hours instead of
resting contributed to his death.”
Of course playing World of Warcraft is not dangerous as long as
people listen to developers and take 15 minutes break after each hour of
playing.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces a tight run-off campaign, trying to appeal to working families and teachers despite his track record. Ed Schultz, Mayoral Candidate Jesus Garcia discuss.
A defiant Sen. Robert Menendez forcefully denied any wrongdoing on Friday night as the Justice Department prepared to bring corruption charges against the New Jersey Democrat.
In
a hastily-arranged press conference at a Newark Hilton, the influential
Democratic lawmaker acknowledged that there is an “ongoing inquiry” and
declined to take questions about the looming charges he is set to face.
But he made clear that he had no intention of resigning,
“I am not going anywhere,” Menendez told a bank of television cameras.
The
senator made no mention of whether he will step down from his prominent
post as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Menendez
is expected to be charged over using his office to aid the business
interests of Salomon Melgen, a political ally and also a personal
friend, first reported by
CNN. In his two-minute statement, the two-term senator made no effort
to distance himself from Melgen, who he called a “real friend,” but
pushed back against the suggestion he’s done anything illegal.
“Let me be very clear, very clear. I have always conducted myself
appropriately and in accordance with the law,” Menendez said, listing
his advocacy for anti-terrorism preparation and hurricane recovery. “As
to Dr. Melgen, anyone who knows us knows that he and his family and me
and my family have been real friends for more than two decades.”
He
added that he and Melgen have “given each other birthday, holiday and
wedding presents just as friends do.” Menendez had previously paid back
$70,000 to Melgen for unreported flights on his private plane.
One
of President Barack Obama’s sharpest critics on the president’s pursuit
of a nuclear deal with Iran, Menendez highlighted his fight to make
“certain that Iran never, never achieves the ability to produce nuclear
weapons.”
No reporters shouted questions after he delivered his
statement, first in English then in Spanish. But Menendez indicated he
may have more to say in the future.
“As much as I would like to, I
cannot make any additional comments or answer any questions. The time
may come to do that, and I hope you will understand,” he told reporters.
The MSNBC host said he had the
strongest belief in wife Kathleen’s judgment and values, and if she runs
for office her campaign will be covered fairly by the network.
Six
years ago, MSNBC host Chris Matthews briefly flirted with running for
public office—a Senate seat from his native Pennsylvania—and then
quickly dropped the idea. But now it looks like his wife, Kathleen,
might actually take the plunge.
“Last night, Kathleen decided she
is going to take a serious look at running for the United States
Congress from where we live in Maryland,” Matthews told viewers of
Thursday night’s Hardball, his 7 p.m. political show. “Our local
congressman, a very good guy, by the way, just announced he is running
for the U.S. Senate, and this development is all unfolding quickly.”
Matthews
explained that he was discussing the prospect of his wife’s candidacy
on the air because “it’s important in my position here to be as
transparent as possible with you, our loyal viewers.”
Thursday
night’s disclosure was prompted by a report in Politico that Matthews’s
wife of nearly four decades—a Marriott Corp. public relations executive
and a local celebrity in her own right as a former longtime news anchor
on WJLA-TV, Washington’s ABC affiliate—is “likely” to mount a campaign
to replace Rep. Chris Van Hollen Jr. in the 2016 election cycle.
The
seven-term Democratic congressman, who represents Maryland’s 8th
Congressional District in the affluent suburbs of the nation’s capital,
including Chevy Chase where Chris and Kathleen Matthews live, on
Wednesday declared his candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by
Democrat Barbara Mikulski, who is retiring after 30 years in the Senate.
“This
is something I’ve just got to deal with,” Matthews told me Thursday
morning when I reached him at home. “I think people know who I am. I
talk about Kathleen on the show all the time, and she’s been on a good
number of times…I think viewers should have a heads-up from me about
what I know—so they’re going to get it.”
If Kathleen Matthews does
decide to run, her campaign would likely create ethical complications
for her outspoken husband, 69, who is also the author of seven books
about politics and history.
“I
know her commitment runs truly deep.In our nearly four decades together
I have always had the strongest belief in her judgment and values.”
Addressing
possible ethical issues, an MSNBC source told The Daily Beast: “As this
process moves forward, if Kathleen decides to run for office, MSNBC and
the Hardball Team would take all appropriate measures to ensure
that coverage is transparent and fair, which would include fully
disclosing Chris’ relationship to Kathleen if her candidacy is mentioned
either by him or a guest.”
The MSNBC source added: “Chris doesn’t cover individual congressional races too regularly, which is worth noting.”
The
question of campaign contributions would also be a potential sticky
wicket. The NBC Universal News Group, of which MSNBC is a subsidiary,
imposes strict rules on its anchors, who are generally prohibited from
donating to political campaigns unless they receive prior approval.
In
2010, MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann, a liberal Democrat, and Joe
Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, were punished with two-day
suspensions for writing checks to various candidates without
permission.
In Matthews’ case, he’s sleeping with the prospective
candidate, the mother of their three grown children, so it’s reasonable
to ask if he’ll receive a marital exemption.
The MSNBC source
referred me to the “all appropriate measures” vow. After all, even if
their bank accounts are not commingled and he doesn’t max out in hard
money, Matthews, if he’s a decent spouse, will definitely be making
“in-kind” contributions.
A self-styled centrist Democrat, Matthews
was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and a top aide to Speaker
of the House Tip O’Neill before joining the chattering classes as a
columnist and Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner and
later a television host and protégé of then-NBC executive Roger Ailes
on the fledgling “America’s Talking” network, a forerunner to MNSBC.
“Kathleen
and I have not had much time to talk about it—right now she’s on
business overseas, heading from Berlin to South Africa right now—but I
know she’s been involved with public issues her entire career from
anchoring the news to serving as a top executive with Marriott,”
Matthews said on the air. “I know her commitment runs truly deep. In our
nearly four decades together I have always had the strongest belief in
her judgment and values.”
He added: “I am proud of her and support her. And if she does indeed
decide to run, then we will make sure we continue to fully disclose my
relationship—I’ve never denied it—with her, as part of our commitment
here at MSNBC to be transparent and fair in our coverage.”
Whenever a corporation issues a statement declaring that it is
committed to "treating consumers fairly and with respect," chances are
it's not.
After all, if the outfit was actually doing it, there would be
no need for a statement. Indeed, this particular claim came from Encore
Capital, one of our country's largest buyers of bad consumer debt – and
it definitely has not been playing nice with the people it browbeats to
collect overdue credit card bills, car loans, etc.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman found that Encore,
based in San Diego, filed nearly 240,000 lawsuits against debtors in a
recent four-year period, using our courts as its private collection arm.
Problem is, Encore's bulk filing of lawsuits are rife with errors,
out-of-date payment data, fabricated credit card statements, etc. Tons
of them are missing original loan documents, payment histories, and
other proof of debt.
Debt predators, however, scoot around this lack of facts by
simply having their employees sign affidavits asserting that the level
of money owed is accurate. Judges, overwhelmed by the unending flood of
lawsuits filed by Encore et al, have accepted those affidavits as true,
thus ruling in favor of the corporations. But Schneiderman found that –
Surprise! – affidavits were simply being rubber-stamped by company
employees, who didn't have time to check for accuracy. An employee of
one large debt-buyer testified that he was having to sign about 2,000
affidavits a day!
This is no minor scam – one in seven adults in the U.S. is under
pursuit by debt collectors. It's hard enough for struggling families to
claw their way out from under the economic crash without having lying,
cheating, predator corporations twist the court system to pick their
pockets and shut off their hope of recovery.
"Debt Buyer Faces Fine In Doubtful Lawsuits," The New York Times, January 9, 2015.
Every week, a landslide of video game
trailers hit the Internet, hyping up the games that have just been
released, the games that are about to be released and even the games
that don’t have release dates. It can be a bit overwhelming to keep up
with all of them, which is why we’ve decided to collect our favorites
into a single post.
A Batman game with a mature ESRB rating? Count me in. Arkham City didn’t blow me away like it did many others, but with the Batmobile in tow and the darker tone of Arkham Knight, I’m ready for it to be June already.
This isn’t Final Fantasy XV, but it’s the next best thing. Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
pleasantly surprised me when I had a chance to go hands-on with it last
year. The game has supposedly received a few major tweaks since then as
well, so I’m hoping for a polished port when this game hits PS4 and
Xbox One in March.
The final DLC for Shadow of Mordor brings Celebrimbor face-to-face with the Dark Lord himself. The DLC for Shadow of Mordor
has been surprisingly competent up to this point, but even if you’ve
missed out on everything before it, The Bright Lord DLC looks like it
will be the one to pick up.
I have no idea why this exists, but it’s free to download and you don’t even need to own Forza Horizon 2 to play it. Still no word on whether Vin Diesel did any voice over work for the game.
OlliOlli was a hit in 2014, and just over a year later, the
sequel is nearly ready to launch on PS4 and PS Vita. It looks like more
of the same, so if you enjoyed the first one, OlliOlli2 shouldn’t disappoint.
CPAC is like a nonstop comedy show. One hit after another. Scott
Walker tried to steal the show by comparing ISIS to those vicious union
members he battled in his state, and he was rightfully and roundly
ridiculed for that. It'll take some serious backtracking and spinning to
undo the damage to the Republican darling. But he was far from the only
standup comedian on the roster.
1. Duck Dynasty star to CPAC: Bring your Bible to the Oval Office, and your woman, 'cause the hippies are coming to get you.
Phil
Robertson issued the above piece of advice to the CPAC audience, and no
one is exactly clear what it means, honestly. Nor did the rest of his
speech make a whole lot of sense. His biggest concern seems to be that
Republicans not get sexually transmitted diseases.
“There is a
penalty to be paid from what the beatniks, who morphed into the hippies
(did)!” the Duck Commander rambled, rather incoherently. “What do you
call the 110 million people who have sexually transmitted illnesses?
It’s the revenge of the hippies! Sex, drugs and rock & roll have
come back to haunt us!”
Head for the hills, people! With your
Bible under one arm, and your woman under the other! "You lose your
religion," Duck Commander bellowed. "And you lose your morality."
Robertson
actually claimed, though he "hated to admit it," that he had done some
research on the CDC website and found out that only one encounter was
necessary to contract a sexually transmitted illness. “How many seconds
does it take to get genital herpes?” he asked the CPAC audience,
rhetorically. “It said 30 seconds. I’m like, whoa, that’s pretty quick.”
Well, thanks Phil. This has all been terribly enlightening.
Here's the video in case you'd like to enjoy it yourself:
2. Sarah Palin says a bunch of nonsense at CPAC, then inadvertently says something extremely true.
It’s
a bit disorienting, really. In her speech at CPAC, Sarah Palin stayed
in her usual history-mangling character when she suggested that the U.S.
killed all the Nazis in WWII, when a passing acquaintance with the
subject shows is laughably far from the truth. She said we should do the
same to ISIS, just kill all of them—both impossible and plain old
stupid and dangerous. So far, so good. Palin doing Palin.
Then she did something totally off brand, and wandered into the thickets of truth. It was a mistake, we’re sure. She
said: “It’s said that old men declare wars, and then they send the
young ones to fight ‘em. So it’s the duty of he who sends them to
actually make sure that we can win those wars. And it’s our duty to
elect an honorable commander-in-chief who is willing to make the same
sacrifices he sends others away to make.”
So, as Raw Story figures, Palin
is essentially saying that neither she, nor any other Republican
hopeful is qualified to be president, since none has been willing to
make such a sacrifice. Governors Jeb Bush of Florida, Chris Christie of
New Jersey, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin
have not served, nor have Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of
Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida. Nor, of course, Sarah Palin
herself, although her son Track, who served in Iraq for a year.
So, basically, everybody out of the pool!
Except Track. Track Palin for President! Woohoo!
3. Jim Inhofe reduces climate change debate to a snowball.
There
has been some snow this winter, in case you have not heard. And to
Senator Jim Inhofe, that can only mean one thing. It’s cold out! Also,
snowball fight! Oh yeah, and obviously climate change must be a hoax.
To
drive his point home, darned if the Senate’s chief climate change
denier didn’t bring a snowball to the Senate floor and toss it. Oh! Feel
the burn, all you science believers!
"In case we have forgotten,
because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I
ask the chair, 'You know what this is?'" Inhofe said, holding up his
secret weapon. "It's a snowball, from outside here. So it's very, very
cold out. Very unseasonable."
Yes it is. Very very cold.
Never
mind that despite some record low temperatures in various parts of the
country, 2014 remains the warmest year on record, and the nation overall has
been experiencing a warmer-than-average winter. It’s cold where Inhofe
is—he has to bundle up—and he’d rather just throw a snowball than deal
with all that pesky data.
4. Stupid Giuliana Rancic makes racist comment about black hair and Solange Knowles has a great response.
Joan
Rivers’ replacement, Giuliana Rancic, may have apologized for her
idiotic and racist snark about 18-year-old actress and singer Zendaya’s
dreadlocks at the Oscars, but the comments spoke volumes about
Hollywood’s inability to regard African Americans as equals and creative
forces to be reckoned with. In her “Fashion Police” roundup, Rancic
ventured away from talking about Zendaya’s Vivienne Westwood gown, to
suggest that her hair probably smells of “patchouli oil” and “weed.”
Really? Why?
Twitter erupted in understandable outrage over the fact that black women's hair just
keeps being an obnoxious topic of discussion and object of bewilderment
and scrutiny by white powers that be. As HuffPo says, “From TSA agentspatting down Afros, a womanhaving to cut her locks to keep her job, and the Army'sdiscriminatory ban on particular African American hairstyles—the list goes on and on.”
It’s
not a random comment, and Rancic’s “I’m sorry if I offended you”
apology really does not wash. Zendaya’s eloquent outrage put the
“Fashion Police” to shame, as did Solange Knowles’ nifty response.
just shut up, white people. Shut up.
5. Fox News doctor: Crack babies come from women who smoke weed!
Fox
News Medical A-Team (ha!) doctor David Samadi is not one for scientific
reports. Or science, or, like, facts. So he certainly was not going to
admit that a recent study published in Scientific Reports found that pot is quite possibly the least harmful drug humans ingest, including alcohol and cigarettes.
“I
think it’s a very dangerous study,” Samadi argued. “People need to be
very careful about not getting the wrong message from this study.
They’re using a lethal dose as a comparison. For example, they’re
putting pot against or weed against cocaine or alcohol. We know you need
less amount of alcohol to die. So, they’re using death to see what’s
dangerous and what’s not.”
Wait, what?
He went on to make
various hysterical claims, such as that pot causes heart attacks and
psychosis.
Then this bit of nonsense: “Now we have crack babies coming
in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.”
They are smoking the whole marijuana business.
Looks
like his brain is misfiring, and the dangerous drug he is on appears to
be a combination anti-science pathology, anti-pot hysteria and just not
having done his homework about the fact that the whole crack baby scare
was a myth. Not to mention the fact that the mythological crack babies
were not born to mothers who smoked pot.
Gov. Scott Walker proudly touts his ability to survive a recall election and his union busting ways, but a poorly planned analogy at CPAC fails to impress. Ed Schultz, John Nichols, and Jean Ross discuss.
AP/The Atlantic New videos released on Thursday
apparently show ISIS militants destroying Assyrian and Akkadian
artifacts in Mosul—smashing statues and scraping through a winged bull
from the 7th century B.C.
This is only the latest episode in a spree of iconoclasm ISIS has
unleashed across the areas under its control in Iraq and Syria. In May
2014, there were reports of separate Assyrian artifacts being excavated and destroyed. In July 2014, fighters destroyed the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah in Nineveh.
One way to think about this is as part of a concerted attack on civilization itself. "I'm totally shocked," a professor at the University of Mosul's college of archeology told the AP. "It's a catastrophe. With the destruction of these artifacts, we can no longer be proud of Mosul's civilization."
But another way to think about it is as squarely in a tradition of
iconoclasm. Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
himself destroyed idols, according to tradition.
There's a strong tradition of icon-destruction in Christianity. And in
pre-Islamic Mecca, the Kaaba was the site of multiple idols, which
Muhammad cleared out before rededicating the site to God. This is
certainly the tradition to which ISIS wishes to claim
a connection. The Taliban, another group that claimed fidelity to the
principles of early Islam, also spent a great deal of time destroying
images of people—most notably the massive Buddhas at Bamiyan in
Afghanistan. The tomb of Muhammad in Mecca was itself destroyed by Ibn
Saud, the first monarch of Saudi Arabia, early in the 20th century.
In
reality, the relationship with icons in all three Abrahamic religions
is rather more elaborate than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would want us to
believe—but the tradition is there. Destroying traces of forebears, and
even robbing and destroying tombs, has perhaps a longer tradition in
civilization than preservation.
ISIS can't claim total purity on the matter itself, either. The group has widely been reported to be profiting by selling plundered artifacts on the black market.
In fact, there's speculation among archeologists that some of the
destruction in the new videos is a sham. While the winged-bull sculpture
was most likely original, the other statues appear to be replicas. Some
of the artifacts have been removed to Baghdad, while others may have
been sold off. "You can see iron bars inside," Mark Altaweel of the
Institute of Archaeology at University College London told Channel 4.
"The originals don't have iron bars." Other reports, such as the AP's,
quoted experts familiar with the museum saying most of the pieces are
genuine.
The Daily News has a video of the event:
Even in the scope of the destruction wrought by ISIS and the Syrian
civil war, the damage to irreplaceable pieces of history is enormous.
That's especially true since the region's archaeological history is so
rich—stretching from the beginnings to civilization through the biblical
period and on into the history of Islam—and because it follows on the
American invasion of Iraq, which was itself a huge blow to museums and
preservation. Not all of the damage results from religious zealotry or
plain malice; in many cases, civilians dig for artifacts to sell simply for subsistence in the midst of war. Even when items aren't destroyed, they may be scattered to private collections through the black market and never recovered.
In September, Secretary of State John Kerry and UNESCO
Director-General Irina Bokova spoke at an event at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art about preserving heritage. "How shocking and
historically shameful it would be if we did nothing while the forces of
chaos rob the very cradle of our civilization," Kerry said.
"So many different traditions trace their roots back to this part of
the world, as we all know. Our heritage is literally in peril in this
moment, and we believe it is imperative that we act now."
Those are strong words. But as the fighting drags on and the
U.S. and its allies struggle to find effective ways to reckon with ISIS,
the futility of the words becomes clearer, and priceless objects disappear into dust.
When you lose the cover for your Amiga 1200's expansion port, or even
worse damage the front door to your Commodore 1702 monitor's control
panel, what do you do? Similar to the Nintendo Game Boy's battery cover,
replacing these individual parts is a difficult task requiring you to
rely on eBay users to lists spares, as and when they find them. That's
all about to change though as a 3D printing enthusiast has set up shop
selling those easily lost parts from retro computers and consoles.
Starting out with a selection of Commodore based replacements, online
shop Pixelwizard has begun providing retro gamers with the all
important parts needed to fix up their kit. All printed from scratch
using accurate 3D models of the originals as reference, all sales come
in white nylon plastic with a matte finish and slight grainy feel.
Looking through each product's page, you'll soon notice how each and
every one of these newly printed pieces fits into place perfectly, at
what also appears to be a reasonable price too.
As of speaking here's what's currently available thanks to the wonders of 3D printing:
While all of these products may be for Commodore systems, Pixelwizard
does leave things open for consoles and handhelds too. Although there
are no products currently in the category, there is a section marked for Nintendo hardware
- one we can only assume will soon be flooded with Game Boy battery
covers and Nintendo 64 expansion port flaps. That said, should you be
looking for a specific part, this might be the one shop you want to drop
a line.
A class action lawsuit alleges a mold byproduct used in kibble is leading pets to agonizing deaths.
Despite years of online allegations that one of the most popular dog food brands has been poisoning pets,
it wasn’t until just weeks ago that the cat was let out of the bag in a
court filing. A class action lawsuit was filed that blames the deaths
of thousands of dogs on one of Purina’s most popular brands of chow.
Googling Nestle Purina Petcare’s Beneful brand will get you the pet
food manufacturer’s website, a Facebook page with over a million likes,
and, in stark contrast, a Consumer Affairs page with 708 one-star ratings supported with page after grim page detailing dogs suffering slow, agonizing deaths from mysterious causes.
Internal
bleeding. Diarrhea. Seizures. Liver malfunction. It reads like
something from a horror movie or a plague documentary, but a suit
brought in California federal court by plaintiff Frank Lucido alleges
that this is all too real—and too frequent to be a coincidence.
But it all relies upon finding a chemical that may be in the food—and has been a staple in dog food recalls in the past—with an experiment that neither Lucido, his lawyers, or even independent scientists have even begun to conduct.
Lucido
said it began last month when his beloved German shepherd began losing
an alarming amount of hair, smelled strange, and wound up at the vet
with symptoms “consistent with poisoning.” A week later, his wife found
one of their other dogs, an English Bulldog, dead. An autopsy showed
signs of internal bleeding in the stomach and lesions on the liver,
symptoms eerily similar to the shepherd’s, according to the complaint.
Then their third dog also became ill.
“All these dogs are eating Beneful,” explained Jeff Cereghino, one of
the attorneys representing Lucido in the action. “And the dogs are all,
for a variety of reasons, not in the same house. So you take away the
automatic assumption that the neighbor didn’t like the dogs or whatever.
He was feeding them Beneful at the start of this, and one got sick and
died, the other two were very ill. And then he started doing a little
research, and he realized the causal link, at least in his mind, was the
food.”
It doesn’t take much digging to uncover what appears to be
a pattern of allegations, Cereghino said. Lots and lots of allegations.
After hearing Lucido’s story, Cereghino checked it out for himself.
“We found a significant number of folks who were trying to draw exactly the same causal link.
Thousands,” he said.
The
sheer volume is what made the seasoned lawyer—one who said “a good part
of our business is class action work”—realize something may be fishy.
“But when I look at 4,000? Holy hell, there’s a lot of people out here.”
“If
it’s a hundred or so, it’s like, ‘Okay, a lot of dogs eat Beneful;
things happen.’ But when you start getting into the thousands… The long
and short of it is the complaint pyramid is such that even with the
Internet–easy access to complain about things– there’s still a very
large percentage of folks who simply don’t complain, or whose vet tells
‘em, ‘We don’t know what happened,’ and they’re not drawing conclusions
or leaping to assumptions, “ he said.
“But when I look at 4,000? Holy hell, there’s a lot of people out here.”
So Cereghino and his partners started talking to those people, comparing more and more of the stories of heartbreak.
“There
seems to be somewhat of a singular event. [The dogs] are vomiting.
They’re having liver problems, failures,” he said. “I’m not a vet, but
you look at some of this stuff and say, ‘OK, we’re starting to have
similar symptoms across the board, and we’re starting to have
causation.’”
When these dire accusations first started appearing online years ago,
the initial accusation was that one of the additives in the food,
propylene glycol, was the culprit.
Purina maintains
the type of propylene it uses is perfectly safe for consumption, saying
on its website: “Propylene glycol is an FDA-approved food additive
that’s also in human foods like salad dressing and cake mix.”
It’s also the same substance that caused the spiced whiskey Fireball
to be recalled in Europe, which found excessive amounts of the chemical,
also used in antifreeze, in the cinnamon swill last fall.
The tainted liquor was from the North American batch because, in the
U.S., much higher volumes of antifreeze additives are OK for human—or
canine—consumption.
“It’s horrible. That is something that you don’t want in dog food,” noted veterinarian and author Karen "Doc" Halligan
when reached by phone. “It’s controversial. Why do you want to take a
risk if there’s any kind of chance that that could be bad for them?”
But
whether it’s good for dogs or not, food grade propylene glycol has been
approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It also hasn’t been
linked to toxicity, especially the type being alleged against Beneful.
Cereghino thinks there’s another culprit in the mix, and he’s named it in the lawsuit. They’re called mycotoxins.
Translated
directly from the Greek words for “fungus poison,” mycotoxins are,
essentially, a toxic byproduct of mold. When it comes to ducking
discovery, they’re an especially crafty brand mold byproduct, and one
found in all types of grains.
If you read the ingredients label of Beneful, it sounds an awful lot
like breakfast cereal: ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, whole wheat
flour, rice flour, soy flour. Sure, there’s some “chicken byproduct
meal” and “animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols,” but the food is
certainly more grain than meat.
“In the channels of trade, grain
is quite a lot like hamburger these days. As in ‘There’s multiple cows
in a hamburger,’ if you will,” explained Dr. Gregory Möller, professor
of environmental chemistry and toxicology at the University of Idaho and
Washington State University joint School of Food Science. “It’s a mixed
and blended commodity. So one farmer, one granary, or one mill, may
have not stored their product well, which allowed for mold growth in
storage.”
Even if a scientist were to stumble upon a load of grain rife with
mycotoxins, Möller added, he or she could test it and still miss them.
“You
can go into a sample that is known contaminated,” Möller noted. “But
the particular sub sample you pull may not have enough on it to actually
see. There is that challenge.”
This can be exacerbated when the host grain is earmarked for non-human use.
“Commodities
that are targeted towards pet foods are managed a little bit
differently, in terms of the regulatory criteria they have to pass,” he
continued. “It is a very large industry. There is attention and concern
about quality, but there is a difference in how the concern is managed.”
In layman’s terms?
“I think what’s put forth here is a plausible scenario,” Möller said.
When
asked about the alleged symptoms described in the class action suit and
online, especially the repeated liver failure, Halligan was clear in
her potential diagnosis, especially as it pertained to animals of a
variety of ages.
“Toxins would be real high on my list. If an
animal ingests some type of toxin, that can lead to liver disease
because the liver has to process it,” said Halligan.
But there have not yet been any tests to determine if mycotoxins are in Beneful at all—or any other dog food, for that matter.
Cereghino said he’s determined to find that out.
“As soon as we are able to, and the federal courts move at a fairly rapid rate, we will get discovery,” said Cereghino.
That’s
when Cereghino will get to find out where Beneful’s products come from,
how they’re stored, whether there’s a “connecting piece in the storage
or the grain, the sourcing of it all, that sort of make sense.” He plans
on running tests on the food both he and other members of the class
action suit have saved to send over to a lab in the next few weeks.
That’s
when they’ll know if those potentially dangerous chemicals are in the
formula. And, if they are, they’ll still have to fight to prove that the
mycotoxins are dangerous enough to make thousands of dogs sick.
As
for Purina, when approached for comment, Keith Schopp, vice president
of corporate public relations, read this statement to The Daily Beast:
“We believe the lawsuit is without merit and we intend to vigorously
defend ourselves. Beneful is a high-quality nutritious food enjoyed by
millions of dogs each year and there are no product quality issues with
Beneful.”
When
reporting on a TV personality possibly getting the boot from their
network, it’s par for the course to request for official comment on the
matter. When you do this long enough, you begin to notice some patterns
as it pertains to certain networks. In the case of MSNBC (and NBC News
in general), I think I’ve found — as they say in poker — their tell.
A tell, of course, is that trait or sign in regard to the poker hand
they hold. Is that person bluffing? Doesn’t he have a straight flush? A
tell — as seen in the classic Rounders with Matt Damon and John Malkovich as the great Teddy KGB — can make or break who wins the pot. With MSNBC, I first noticed its tell following my original exclusive about the demise of Ronan Farrow’s daytime show.
To review, when asking if the network was planning on cancelling the ill-fated program for the 26 year old Cronkite Award Winner, the answer was the following: “No. We’re fully committed to Ronan.”
So, I took that as a standard denial without reading between the
lines too much. But in retrospect, the tell is obvious: Being fully
committed to Ronan is one thing, being fully committed to his program is quite another. Network spokespeople are meticulously trained in this stuff and, in this case, thought of that response very
carefully before replying. The language specifically engineered so that
if I went back to them now and called them out, they can always say,
“Hey, we never said we were committed to the show, just committed to the host staying on at the network in a different capacity,” or something to that effect.
Fast forward to last week and the announcement around the aforementioned Farrow and Joy Reid‘s
respective 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. ET programs being cancelled. Not a big
surprise given the anemic numbers — even by MSNBC standards. But the
bigger story to emerge was that the network is eying Chris Hayes
as well, who isn’t exactly killing it at 8 p.m. (the most important
time slot out there), falling to third and sometimes fourth place behind
HLN’s Forensic Files repeats.
Any objective media critic or fan will tell you Hayes isn’t a prime-time host (he was great on weekend mornings in his old Up
spot, where his style, pace and topic selection was and would be a
better fit) — and that reportedly includes Griffin, who made the big bet
(at the reported behest of Rachel Maddow) on Hayes and is seeing very little return on investment.
All of that said, when asked if the network planned to cancel Hayes following the report in The Daily Beast, here was the response below
from an MSNBC spokesperson: “Contrary to the rumors from unnamed
sources, we have no plans take Chris Hayes’ show off the air or move
Rachel Maddow’s show.”
Given the Farrow example, you see the tell, right? No plans to take Chris Hayes’ show off the air will likely mean not taking it off entirely, but instead moving it to a different home out of prime time. Or no plans could be flackese for no finalized plans at this exact moment in time.
This isn’t the first time NBC has gone this route either. Just think back to the time the network denied that Ed Schultz was being removed from weekday primetime to a weekend slot (Hint: It happened, despite denials). Or the times NBC News repeatedly denied the ousting of David Gregory from his moderator spot on Meet the Press (Hint: He did). Or Ann Curry being safe on the Today Show (Yeah, you get the idea).
Of course, this just doesn’t pertain to MSNBC, but all networks
trying to hang on and control the narrative after word is leaked of a
program’s or personality’s impending doom.
But given his network’s track record, if I’m Chris Hayes, I see the
tell and start looking forward to getting my weekday dinner time back
with the wife and kid again soon.
