MFS - The Other News

                       Morning  Posting.

• Syria Live Blog - June 10. Here .(Al-Jazeera).

• Libya Live Blog - June 10. Here (Al-Jazeera). 

• Yemen Live Blog - June 10. Here. (Al-Jazeera).

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan  today 4.6 ! More info here.

• Japan - Latest official Situation Update No. 129.Source : Here .

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• Europe - Latest official Situation Update on E-Coli epidemic 49- On 09.06.2011 at 14:05 GMT+2
  
  Dutch authorities recalled red beet sprouts from three countries Thursday after samples were found to be contaminated with a strain of E. coli bacteria that was apparently less dangerous than the one causing Europe's deadly E. coli crisis. The Dutch Food Safety Authority said laboratories were still trying to identify the Dutch strain, but there have been no immediate reports of serious illness from it. But the agency said it was definitely not the same E. coli strain that has killed 27 people, sickened 2,900 others and left hundreds with serious complications, most of them in Germany. The cause of that outbreak, which began May 2, has so far eluded German authorities.
  
  Only one grower, a company called Hamu, was found with contaminated beets, and other produce grown on its farms were cleared of suspicion, said Esther Filon, a spokeswoman for the Dutch regulation agency. "It's not the same as in Germany. You can become ill, but as far as we know at this moment, it is not lethal," she told the Associated Press. She said the authorities were trying to trace all shipments from the grower. The agency said Hamu, based in the town of Kerkdriel 44 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Amsterdam, had exported beet sprouts to Belgium as well as selling them on the Dutch and German markets. There are hundreds of E. coli bacteria strains in nature, but only a few are deadly to humans and the bacteria is more commonly known as a source of food poisoning or severe stomach problems.
  
  People naturally carry several harmless E. coli strains in their intestines and the bacteria is also widely found in cows, sheep and other mammals. Strains which are harmless to animals can sometimes be lethal for humans. Experts worry about E. coli's constant evolution, which may result in dangerous mutations for humans. The European Union informed the Netherlands late Wednesday that contaminated beet sprouts had been found in Germany, and tests in the Netherlands confirmed it. In Berlin, the Robert Koch Institute said one more person died and 160 more were sickened in the E. coli outbreak but the rate of new illnesses was declining. It said 2,808 people have been sickened in Germany, 722 of whom are suffering from a serious complication that can cause kidney failure. The World Health Organization says 97 others have fallen sick in 12 other European countries, as well as three in the United States. The Koch institute says new cases being reported have been dropping for several days but cautioned that could be due to the fact that consumers are following the advice of health officials and staying away from cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and vegetable sprouts — all of which are being investigated as possible carriers of the E. coli.
  
  European Union farmers say that since the warning went out, they have been losing up to €417 million ($611 million) a week as ripe produce rots in fields and warehouses. On Wednesday, the EU said it would offer farmers compensation of up to €210 million ($306 million) for the E. coli losses, though a final decision will not be made until next week. Russia and Saudi Arabia have issued a blanket ban on vegetable imports from the European Union. Spanish farmers have been among the hardest hit, after authorities in Hamburg issued an early warning that Spanish cucumbers could be the source of the E. coli. Further tests showed that while the Spanish vegetables did carry E. coli, it was not the strain behind the outbreak. In Berlin on Thursday, Spain's Secretary of State for European Affairs, Diego Lopez Garrido said the compensation being offered so far by the EU is not enough. He also said both Spain and Germany believe the Russian ban on EU vegetables is "inappropriate." Russia is a huge market for EU produce
  
  Russia banned imports of EU-produced vegetables last week, in a measure condemned by Brussels as "disproportionate." Russia is the 27-nation bloc's largest market for its vegetables. Discussions on the ban are expected to dominate a biannual EU-Russia summit in the Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod later on Thursday. EU Moscow envoy Fernando Valenzuela said last week the ban went against the rules of the World Trade Organization, which Russia has been pressing hard to join. But Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia would not "poison" its people for the sake of the WTO.Source.

• E. Coli Mystery Deepens as Deadly Strain Found on Cucumber.(Spiegel).Confusion over the source of the deadly E. coli bacteria grew on Wednesday when health officials detected it on a discarded cucumber in the eastern city of Magdeburg. Meanwhile, German authorities said they had found two new clues pointing to a sprout farm that may have been a source of the germ.Investigators in Germany on Wednesday discovered the deadly EHEC strain of E. coli on food for the first time since the outbreak -- on a piece of cucumber retrieved from the garbage of a family infected with the bacterium. A spokesman for the Health Ministry of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt said the pathogen was the same as the one that has caused 26 deaths and infected more than 2,600 people, most of them in northern Germany, since early May. However, as the cucumber had been in the garbage bin for two weeks, it was impossible to determine conclusively where the bacteria came from and how it got into the trash, the spokesman said. He added that a member of the family of three had mentioned eating cucumbers before falling ill. The family had not visited northern Germany.Earlier on Wednesday, German authorities had said there were growing indications that bean sprouts delivered by an organic farm in Bienenbüttel first identified as a possible source on Sunday may indeed be a cause of the outbreak.Health officials found two fresh clues that point to the farm near the town of Uelzen in northern Germany, the regional Consumer Protection Ministry of Lower Saxony said. Ministry spokesman Gert Hahne said a total of 18 people infected with EHEC, the deadly strain of the bacteria, around the northern port city of Cuxhaven ate sprouts from the farm in a company cafeteria. In addition, three female workers at the farm suffered from diarrhea in the first half of May, and one of them is known to have been contaminated with EHEC. Their work included packaging the sprouts. The ministry spokesman said it was possible that one of the women accidentally "fed the pathogen into the operations of the company." Or they might have been infected with EHEC at the farm. Reuters reported that a local doctor said a worker at the farm had become severely ill with E. coli and had part of her intestine removed. The 54-year-old woman developed bloody diarrhea followed by serious blood disorders. Anton Schafmayer, a doctor who operated on her, said she had eaten the sprouts. "It went very fast. Such a pace is very rare," he told Reuters. "The surgery probably saved her. We removed a large part of the lower intestine."The Lower Saxony ministry spokesman said that despite the additional clues pointing to the sprout farm, it was still possible that the nationwide epidemic stemmed from several sources. Four company canteens and three restaurants where people caught EHEC are now known to have been supplied by the Bienenbüttel farm -- infecting about 100 of the more than 2,600 EHEC patients in Germany. So far, no EHEC bacteria have been found at the farm.German Health Minister Daniel Bahr said the number of new infections had declined, but that there was no reason to sound the all clear. The death toll in Germany rose by one to 25 on Wednesday. One other patient has died in Sweden.There is cause for optimism "that we're over the worst," Bahr told a news conference after a meeting of health officials in Berlin on Wednesday. But he added: "Sadly we can't rule out that there will be further deaths."Consumers remain deeply cautious and are shunning a wide range of fruit and vegetables -- not just the sprouts, raw tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers mentioned by health officials as possible sources. Sales of strawberries, radishes, carrots and broccoli are down sharply. Tomato sales fell by almost 50 percent in the second half of May, with a 60 percent slump in lettuces, the Agricultural Market Information service said. Radishes and strawberries were down by a third.Hmmmm.....Remains the question where did the new strain come from?Read the full story here.

• "We The People" say NO WAY!US Senators oppose Israel return to 1967 lines.(Ynet). New resolution proposed by Senators Lieberman, Hatch calls for US opposition to any Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, deals blow to Obama peace talk efforts. US senators proposed a resolution on Thursday opposing any Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, dealing a symbolic blow to President Barack Obama's efforts to renew peace talks. "It is contrary to United States policy and national security to have the borders of Israel return to the armistice lines that existed on June 4, 1967," read the text introduced by Senators Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent.The resolution, which enjoys the support of some 30 other senators, including Democrats, says US policy aims to "support and facilitate Israel in maintaining defensible borders." Last month, President Barack Obama gave rare public voice to the long-standing US policy of supporting a Palestinian state based on the borders that preceded the Six Day War, with mutually agreed land swaps.His statement provoked a public scolding from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a subsequent White House visit. The Israeli leader also stressed the "indefensible" nature of the 1967 lines. "Boundaries that existed on June 4, 1967 placed Israel in a precarious military situation that threatened regional stability," Senator Hatch said in a statement. "This resolution reaffirms that it is the policy of the United States to support and facilitate Israel in maintaining secure, recognized and defensible borders." Read the full story here.

• National Geographic exposes the secret world of the child bride.(DailyMail).Heartbreaking pictures of the girls as young as FIVE who are married off to middle-aged men.

‘Whenever I saw him, I hid. I hated to see him’: Tahani (in pink) was just six years old when she she married Majed, 25 (standing next to her). The young wife posed for this portrait with former classmate Ghada, also a child bride, outside their mountain home in Hajjah, Yemen.”Wide-eyed and haunted, the heartbreaking expressions on these young girls’ faces hint at an innocence cruelly snatched away.

They should be playing, learning and enjoying their childhood. But instead these youngsters, some as young as five, are being married off in secret weddings. It is estimated that every year this happens to ten to 12 million girls in the developing world.In India, the girls will typically be attached to boys four or five years older. But in Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and other countries with even higher rates of marriage at an early age, the husbands may be young men, middle-aged widowers or even abductors who rape first and claim their victims as wives afterwards.In India girls may not legally marry before the age of 18 - but ceremonies involving girls in their teens may be overlooked. The younger daughters, some aged five, tend to be added on discreetly, their names kept off the invitations.In one case in Rajasthan where her teenage sisters were also being married, a five-year-old bride named Rajani fell asleep before her wedding ceremony began.

The medical consequences are also extremely serious and in some cases fatal.One doctor based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa listed some of the medical consequences of forcing girls into sex and childbirth before they are physically mature - ripped vaginal walls and internal ruptures called fistulas which can lead to life-long incontinence.Girls are often too young to understand the concept of reproduction. The doctor said: 'The nurses start by asking, "Do you know what's happening?" "Do you understand that this is a baby that has been growing inside of you?''Few are equipped with the information of how to care for themselves or their babies after childbirth leading to high infant mortality rates.The people who work full-time trying to prevent these illegal marriages, and to improve women's lives, know that it is a far from simple plan of rescuing girls.The pictures - and more - are in the June 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine.Read and see the full story here.

• Arsenal Found in Mexico Contains Guns From U.S. Probe.(Fox).An arsenal found in Mexico included at least five assault rifles that U.S authorities trace to a federal operation gone badly awry, according to government documents. The discovery appears to confirm for the first time fears cited by Republican lawmakers that a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation called Fast and Furious failed to stop guns from ending up with drug gangs in Mexico. The Fast and Furious program, run by the ATF's Phoenix office, monitored weapons purchases by suspected gun traffickers who were believed to be funneling weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Some lawmakers say ATF didn't have the means to track the guns and shouldn't have used such tactics. An ATF spokesman declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations, including one ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder that the Justice Department's inspector general is conducting. Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, also declined to comment.Problems with Fast and Furious are emerging as one of the biggest controversies at the ATF since a lethal 1993 raid on the Waco, Texas, compound of a religious sect known as the Branch Davidians. Fast and Furious, which became public after ATF whistle-blowers contacted lawmakers earlier this year, is also now the subject of congressional probes. Mexican and U.S. officials say weapons trafficked mostly from U.S. border states are fueling the cartel wars that have killed more than 40,000 people in Mexico since 2006. The lawmakers claim the operation allowed suspected traffickers to buy more than 2,500 weapons in the U.S. and may have helped fuel the trafficking the ATF is supposed to try to prevent.Read the full story here.

• OPEC 1, USA 0.(BigPeace).Last year, the Obama Administration placed a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. After that ban was lifted, they left a permitorium in place so that American energy companies were still unable to return to work in the Gulf.The Obama Administration insisted that the rapid decline of oil production due to their anti-drilling policies would not affect the price of oil because we could just rely more on the dictators at OPEC to give us oil.Unfortunately, OPEC’s meeting shows why President Obama’s policies are so misguided. The cartel’s meeting apparently turned into a fiasco, not surprising to hear about a gathering of some of the world’s most hostile regimes. Despite growing global demand, the group decided that they will not raise oil production for the remainder of the year.In response, Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, issued the following response:

“When will President Obama finally admit that he is directly causing a national, Washington-created disaster? Less than one year ago, the Obama Administration was telling the American people that their anti-drilling policies were no big deal – we can just get more oil from OPEC. Until this Administration reverses its senseless energy agenda, which is deliberately leading to higher energy prices, we can expect more of the same in the future from OPEC.“America is home to over 150 billion barrels of oil. There is only one thing preventing the American people from accessing these resources: the Obama Administration. Hopefully today will be a reality check for those in Washington who believe that American energy production can be replaced with a reliance on state-run energy companies in unstable region of the world.”Hmmmm.....If he really wanted to destroy America would he do anything different?Read the full story here.

• Good luck charging your Chevy Volts, losers: EPA shutting down five coal plants for reasons that can best be described as... bulls***.(DougRoss).It's going to be hard to charge your golf cart-sized electric auto what with those rolling brownouts and all.Utility giant American Electric Power said Thursday that it will shut down five coal-fired power plants and spend billions of dollars to comply with a series of pending Environmental Protection Agency regulations.The company’s dramatic plan to comply with the regulations could give Republicans and moderate Democrats ammunition in their ongoing fight against EPA's efforts to impose new regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants including mercury and arsenic...The agency also stressed that the regulations are essential for protecting public health... “These reasonable steps taken under the Clean Air Act will reduce harmful air pollution, including mercury, arsenic and other toxic pollution, and as a result protect our families, particularly children,” EPA said in a statement.Mercury? Mercury? Mercury???These are the same crackpots who have outlawed conventional lighting and mandated "Compact Fluorescent Lamps" (or CFLs). These are the curly bulbs, each of which contains 4 to 5 milligrams of mercury, which is a sufficient amount to warrant special handling and disposal methods in the event you break one. Which you most assuredly will.Consider this reason #3,405 to completely de-fund the EPA, which is nothing less than a Marxist front group.The costs of complying with these specious EPA regulations will spike electricity prices by between 10 to 35 percent and cost 600 jobs. Well done, EPA.Hmmmm......Dictatorship or Democracy.Read the full story here.

• Here Come Obama’s ‘Necessarily Skyrocketing’ Electricity Rates.(Heritage).President Obama’s infamous words—saying electricity rates will “necessarily skyrocket” under his cap-and-trade program that would impose a costly energy tax on American consumers—are set to come true. Just ask the market.Although cap and trade is not law, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) backdoor train wreck of energy regulations is forcing utilities to file for significant rate hikes in years to come because of the upgrades they will have to make or the complete shutdown of older plants.Take Louisville Gas and Electric (LGE), for instance. In what’s labeled as an “environmental cost recovery,” the utility says ratepayers will see their electric bills increase 19.2 percent by 2016. Why? LG and E spokesman Chip Keeling answered,

The EPA is forcing utilities to do this. We don’t have a choice. It’s not a question of are we going to meet them. The question is when and how and how much money. We have to meet these regulations because the EPA is mandating it for us to do it. They’re forcing us to do it.LG and E isn’t the only one building cost increases into its projects as a result of EPA regulations. PJM is a regional transmission organization that manages the electric grid and coordinates the wholesale electricity market for 13 states and the District of Columbia. The organization conducts electricity capacity auctions for future years to meet anticipated demand, and it projects EPA regulations are going to increase capacity costs in the magnitude of $2 billion–$3 billion for a one-year period. PJM also “concluded that “60 to 80%” of the increase in generators bid costs in the May 2011 auction was due to environmental regulations.”As this American Legislative Exchange Council study shows, the EPA’s train wreck of energy regulations leaves a complicated and expensive mess of new requirements for U.S. power plants. A new analysis from the National Economic Research Associates (NERA) looked at just two of those regulations, the Clean Air Transport Rule and the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT). The study finds “Average U.S. retail electricity prices in 2016 would increase by about 12%, with regional increases as much as about 24%.”Hmmmmm........"Change".Read the full story here.

• Leon Panetta Obama’s CIA Director Linked to Communist Spies.(EmergingCorruption).New research from writers and researchers Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid shows that Leon Panetta, the CIA director being considered on Thursday for the position of Secretary of Defense, had a previously undisclosed personal and friendly relationship with Hugh DeLacy, a prominent member of the Communist Party USA. DeLacy visited such countries as China and Nicaragua and was himself a personal contact of identified Soviet spies Solomon Adler and Frank Coe and accused spy John Stewart Service. Panetta spoke at DeLacy’s memorial service, directed a series of letters to him personally as “Dear Hugh,” and placed a tribute to him in the Congressional Record.Former Washington State Rep. DeLacy, named by Communist Party lawyer John Abt as a fellow member of the party, remained a communist operative until his death in 1986.One “Dear Hugh” letter from then-Rep. Panetta to DeLacy offered a summary of a report on U.S. military operations that Panetta said was “unavailable for distribution.” Panetta concludes the March 24, 1977, letter, “If there is anything I can do for you in the future, Hugh, please feel free to call on me.”The Panetta SecDef hearing is being held June 9 by the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 a.m. in open session in Room SD-G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, with a closed session later in the day in Room SVC-217, the Office of Senate Security in the Capitol Visitor Center.Like DeLacy, Panetta shared a preference for communist regimes in Latin America, including the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. DeLacy had visited Nicaragua and had honored the Sandinistas, who were pawns of the Soviets and Cubans in Central America, while Panetta, as a member of Congress in 1983, strongly opposed President Reagan’s effort to undermine the Sandinista regime through CIA covert action. In addition, Panetta actively collaborated with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a Washington, D.C. think tank that provided a cover for Chilean Marxist and Cuban agent Orlando Letelier to conduct communist political influence operations in the nation’s capital. Panetta, a member of Congress from 1977 to 1993, was a vocal opponent of Chile’s anti-communist government. In 1986, Panetta publicly endorsed protests against Reagan’s “illegal and extraordinarily vicious wars against the poor of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.”“Panetta’s bias in favor of revolutionary Marxist movements in Latin America helps explain why the CIA has been spectacularly unsuccessful in stopping the advance of Hugo Chavez and his minions south of the U.S. border,” Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid said in a joint statement. “His only apparent success as CIA director has been the killing of Obama bin Laden, an impressive operation that has nevertheless backfired in the sense of sending a nuclear-armed Pakistan into the arms of Communist China.”“It is astounding that Panetta was confirmed as Obama’s CIA director without any of this being considered by the U.S. Senate,” Loudon and Kincaid went on. “But now that Panetta is set to move on to another critical national security post — Secretary of Defense — with new Senate hearings being held on Thursday, it is time to get all of this information out in the open. One of the most important matters that deserves scrutiny is Panetta’s apparent failure to be forthcoming about his personal relationship with DeLacy. It is time for the Senate to investigate this previously undisclosed relationship.”Loudon and Kincaid, writers and researchers on national security issues, have assembled critical information about Panetta from important sources that have apparently been overlooked by Senate investigators and even FBI agents who investigated Panetta’s background. Among these sources, Loudon reviewed the Hugh DeLacy papers at the University of Washington, while Kincaid examined hearings conducted on “Communist Political Subversion” by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and “Un-American Activities in California” by the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities.“When this information is examined in context,” Loudon and Kincaid stated, “it is clear that Panetta, whose nomination to be CIA director was considered mystifying even to those in the intelligence business, has been a key component of a network of left-wing activists and socialist organizations for over two decades. These individuals and groups include not only Hugh DeLacy and his communist associates but the communist-dominated Progressive Party, Democratic Socialists of America and the neo-Marxist New American Movement. Panetta, in short, was a player in the network that sponsored the political career of a young Barack Obama in Chicago. This helps explain why Panetta was picked, seemingly out of nowhere, for the CIA job.”Hmmmm......Dictatorship,Thugocracy or conspiracy ?Read the full story here.

• 10 Signs That Wall Street Is About To Go Into Panic Mode.(TheAmericanDream).Can you smell the fear? Right now world financial markets are visibly nervous and many are worried that Wall Street is about to go into panic mode. It really is eerie how 2011 is shaping up to be so similar to 2008. Major Wall Street banks are laying off workers in droves, oil prices are at very high levels, pessimism is permeating the financial markets, debt ratings are being downgraded all over the place and consumer confidence is stunningly low. Sadly, none of the fundamental things that were wrong with the financial markets back in 2008 have been fixed. In fact, many believe that Wall Street is even more vulnerable now. A ton of bad economic numbers have come pouring in lately and that has put investors in a really sour mood. All it would probably take is for one really significant "trigger event" to take place for Wall Street to go into full-fledged panic mode.Let us hope and pray that we do not see another Wall Street disaster this year. But right now things do not look promising. Japan has been absolutely devastated, Europe is struggling with the Greek debt crisis and the U.S. economy resembles a dead horse at this point. Meanwhile, world financial markets are getting more bad news on an almost daily basis. Many investors are holding their breath and hoping that a worst case scenario does not play out.The following are 10 signs that Wall Street is about to go into panic mode....

#1 According to The New York Post, nearly all of the major Wall Street banks are planning huge layoffs....Read the rest of the story here.

• President MENSA Hints At Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.(AceOfSpades).The strategic petroleum reserve, or SPR, currently holds about 727 million barrels of crude oil and was established to provide a short term buffer for supply disruptions caused by wars, natural disasters and the like.The newest natural disaster: falling poll numbers!President Obama’s recent hints at tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be just the third major sale since the creation of the emergency oil reserve and the only time a drawdown didn’t involve a major domestic production disruption or a war.But, hey, 727 million barrels is a lot of oil, right? Ummm, no. We use around 18.5 million barrels a day. In keeping with Ace's no math for teh morons rule, that's about 40 days' worth.So what's the plan here, Barry? Oil prices are built around long-term supply and demand projections. 40 days of U.S. consumption won't move the needle. Oh, and that SPR ... it has to be refilled:

“Releasing oil from the SPR when there is not a disruption in supply would be nothing short of catastrophic,” said Brian Kelly of Brian Kelly Capital. “It would indicate panic within the administration over the state of the economy, but more importantly it would take the markets less than a second to realize the US will need to fill up the tanks again.”“Oil would soar,” added Kelly.Read the full story here.

• GOP Rep. Peter King Announces Second Round Of Congressional Hearings On Radical Islam In America.(Breitbart) — A key US House of Representatives committee next week will hold the second in a controversial series of hearings on Muslim radicalization in the United States, the panel’s chairman announced Thursday.House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, a Republican whose first session on the issue in March drew angry charges he was carrying out a religiously-based witch hunt, said the new hearing would take place June 15.“At this hearing, we will look specifically at the extent of the dangerous problem of radicalization in US prisons,” King said in a statement.“We have seen cases in which inmates have been radicalized at the hands of already locked-up terrorists or by extremist imam chaplains.“We will focus on a number of the serious cases in which radicalized current and former inmates have planned and launched attacks or attempted to join overseas Islamic terrorist organizations.”King has said Muslim leaders and mosque imams are doing too little to stop the radicalization of young Americans and are not cooperating with law enforcement.Read the full story here.

• Post A Picture That 'Causes Emotional Distress' And You Could Face Jailtime In Tennessee.(TechDirt).from the outlawing-jerks? dept.Over the last few years, we've seen a troubling trend in various state laws which attempt to come up with ways to outlaw being a jerk online. Many of these are based on politicians and/or the public taking an emotional reaction to something bad happening after some does something online that angered someone else. Of course, while it would be nice if jerks would go away or jerky behavior would cease, that's just not realistic. The real issue is: how can it be constitutional to outlaw being a jerk? In many cases it raises serious First Amendment issues, among other things. The latest to jump into this game is the state of Tennessee, which apparently decided that just throwing people in jail for sharing music subscription passwords wasn't enough: now they want to put people in jail for "causing emotional distress" to others.The specific law outlaws posting a photo online that causes "emotional distress" to someone and has no "legitimate purpose." While the law does state that there needs to be "malicious intent," it also includes a massive loophole, in that it says that you can still be liable if the person "reasonably should know" that the actions would "frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress." Eugene Volokh notes all sorts of problems with this:

1. If you’re posting a picture of someone in an embarrassing situation — not at all limited to, say, sexually themed pictures or illegally taken pictures — you’re likely a criminal unless the prosecutor, judge, or jury concludes that you had a “legitimate purpose.”
2. Likewise, if you post an image intended to distress some religious, political, ethnic, racial, etc. group, you too can be sent to jail if governments decisionmaker thinks your purpose wasn’t “legitimate.” Nothing in the law requires that the picture be of the “victim,” only that it be distressing to the “victim.”
3. The same is true even if you didn’t intend to distress those people, but reasonably should have known that the material — say, pictures of Mohammed, or blasphemous jokes about Jesus Christ, or harsh cartoon insults of some political group — would “cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person of reasonable sensibilities.”
4. And of course the same would apply if a newspaper or TV station posts embarrassing pictures or blasphemous images on its site.

Honestly, any time you have a law where the liability is based on how some other person feels, you've got a pretty serious problem. You can criminalize actions, but making someone a criminal because someone else feels "emotional distress" seems like a huge stretch.Hmmmm......I feel emotionally distressed when i see certain politicians.Read the full story here.

• The Economist responds to row with Erdoğan, says he may lose credibility.(TodaysZaman).The Economist, which has been under fire by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over a recent editorial column that called on Turkish voters to cast their votes for the main opposition party in Sunday's elections, said in another article on Thursday that Erdoğan's accusations of the magazine being part of a “global gang” are unlikely to add to his credibility in the West.“In the past week, this newspaper has been a target for daring to suggest in our June 4th issue that Turks should vote for the [Republican People's Party] CHP to deny the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AK party the two-thirds majority it needs unilaterally to rewrite the constitution. At successive rallies Mr. Erdoğan has accused The Economist of acting in concert with ‘a global gang' and taking orders from Israel. This may win him votes at home, but it will hardly add to his credibility in the West,” the article, titled “Turkey's bitter election: On the last lap,” said.Hmmmm.....Welcome to Turkey.....Iranian style.Read the full story here.

• Egypt - Nuclear reactor leak cover up?The Anshas nuclear reactor, located on the outskirts of Cairo, has leaked ten cubic meters of radioactive water for the second time in a year, according to Samer Mekheimar, the former director of the Nuclear Research Center’s atomic reactions department. Mekheimar submitted a note to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, saying the leakage took place on 25 May as a result of operating the reactor without taking into account safety precautions. He also said the Atomic Energy Agency kept the incident secret and threatened to fire the staff if they talked about it. “The fact that the reactor was by mere chance not operated the next day saved the area from environmental disaster,” he wrote. “All ministries were changed after the revolution, except the Ministry of Electricity and Energy,” he added. “It still kept the same minister and his deputies from the dissolved ruling party.” Meanwhile, sources at the Nuclear Safety Authority said they were denied entry to the reactor to conduct an inspection. Director of the Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed al-Kolaly, said that levels of radiation inside the reactor are normal, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has praised the reactor. Read the full story here.

• Obama Welcomes Thieving African Dictator to White House.(ABCNews).The family that has ruled the African nation of Gabon for decades has been accused of taking bribes, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, and presiding over a system rife with corruption, but that hasn’t stopped President Obama from inviting President Ali Bongo of Gabon to the White House Thursday.White House press secretary Jay Carney conceded to ABC News Wednesday that President Bongo has a “less than sterling” record, but said that it was “very important” for President Obama to grant Bongo the coveted Oval Office meeting anyway.“First of all, the president of Gabon is making reform efforts, which we support,” said Carney. “Secondly . . . Gabon has been an important partner in some of the issues that are very important to American national security.”Jack Blum, a United Nations consultant and expert on offshore banking, said that the invitation sends a disturbing message. Blum estimates that in years past the Bongo family and its cronies have “siphon[ed] off 25 percent of the gross domestic product of the country. And it’s made them incredibly rich.”“There’s absolutely no shame,” said Blum. “I would say that the people who are running the country are guilty of grand theft nation.”Hmmm....A man is known by the 'friends' he keeps , they might exchange tips how to 'slim down' the tax payer?Read the full story here.

• Afghan Women Facing Death Threats For Playing Soccer, CNN Fails To Mention Islamic Fundamentalism As The Reason…Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — It is rare that you see a football match interrupted by a military helicopter landing. But that is what the Afghan women’s football team, a group of remarkably hardened and brave soccer enthusiasts, regularly face.That’s after the death threats, and parental disapproval and the ostracizing. You see to many Afghans, in this conservative society, women just aren’t meant to play sports at all.Khalida Popal, their captain, has received threatening text messages from those who say she must stop shaming her society. She’s even persevered in the face of her family telling her to stop playing for her own safety.“I love football and football is everything for me and when I come and feel the football I forget everything and I become very happy when I see my team”, she said.Now her team has a real problem on their hands: They have nowhere to practice.For the past few months, they were allowed into the main stadium in Kabul. It’s where the Taliban used to publicly execute people — but now it’s covered in real grass.Not that the girls got used to it: They were relegated to a patch of concrete down at one end.But even that’s now out of bounds — local officials telling them they can’t use the space any more.So we join them in a strange new world. NATO has taken pity on them and loaned them a small patch of grass just inside the outer walls of its main headquarters in Kabul.Hmmm......No word on the role of the 'misunderstanders of Islam'.Read the full story here.