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Six amazing signs from the “Stand with Texas Women” rally

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 22:53:00 +0000

While the first day of Texas' special legislative session lasted all of 30 minutes, the massive reproductive rights demonstration outside the Capitol building on Monday started early and extended well into the afternoon.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered to voice their opposition to the proposed abortion ban, many choosing to do so with a little levity.

A roundup of the best signs of the day:

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Edward Snowden releases statement from Moscow

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 22:26:00 +0000

Edward Snowden released a statement on Monday, his first in the eight days since he arrived in Russia. In it, he says that he is "unbowed" in his convictions and goes on to denounce the Obama administration for efforts to "pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions."

The statement in full:

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

X-ray vision, coming soon

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 22:20:00 +0000

Aspiring burglars and perverts, you're in luck. Thanks to MIT professor Dina Katabi and her graduate student Fadel Adlib, X-ray vision may no longer be the exclusive domain of comic books. The pair have devised a new low-cost technology that uses reflections of wireless radio signals to track a person's movements in an adjoining room. An MIT news release explains:

The system, called “Wi-Vi,” is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.

As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. “So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body,” Katabi says.

The X-ray vision device uses the same wireless antenna that helps connect your laptop to the Internet at Starbucks, so it could potentially be built into your mobile phone in the future. This means it probably will, so enjoy your baths in private while you can.

Via Tech News Daily

Dark money group lies to IRS about being dark money group

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 21:27:00 +0000

Shortly before Election Day last year, mailers went out to Texas voters featuring pictures of a Democratic congressional candidate and a rare species of spider, whose discovery had forced stoppage of an important highway construction project.

“The same left-wing extremists who support Pete Gallego want more burdensome regulations that put the interests of spiders above our need to create more jobs,” the flier declared, referring to discovery of the endangered Braken Bat Cave meshweaver. “The best way to stop left-wing extremists from killing jobs is to vote against their hand-picked candidate Pete Gallego.”

Report: Computer user believed to be Adam Lanza discovered

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 21:13:00 +0000

The Hartford Courant reports that investigators have linked an online username to Adam Lanza, who carried out the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December. The paper is not disclosing the username but has published a few of his activities online. As with so much retrospectively important online ephemera, they're alternately alarming and mundane:

[He] offers a blueprint for his laptop computer and provides YouTube links to a commercial for a laughing doll from the 1970s and for The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronics band that played in ShowBiz Pizza locations in the 1980s.

In one thread on the website thehighroad.org in October 2009 at 1 a.m., the poster believed to be Lanza asks whether a ban on a certain semiautomatic pistol might extend to other weapons.

Another poster suggests that he ask the Connecticut State Police.

"I always prefer asking through proxy when I can avoid speaking to someone directly. I was just wondering if anyone knew because I have a fetish for .32 ACP," the poster suspected to be Lanza responds, referring to ammunition.

Hey, GOP: Mexican immigrants aren’t necessarily Democrats

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Once you get past all of the posturing, opposition to immigration reform among congressional Republicans is at least partially based on self-preservation. There is a widespread belief that Mexican immigrants who become citizens are overwhelmingly disposed to vote Democratic.

Newly published research suggests that’s a complete misreading of the facts. According to this analysis, politically engaged Mexicans who move to the U.S. fall all over the ideological spectrum, very much like native-born Americans.

What’s more, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln political scientist Sergio Wals, those on the right are more inclined to participate in the American electoral process than those on the left.

Best of the worst: Right-wing tweets on the Texas abortion battle

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 20:30:00 +0000

The Texas Legislature began a short special session today that conservatives hope will make the state a much harder place to obtain an abortion. As activists stormed the state Capitol, pundits waged the abortion wars on Twitter. Here at Salon, we've published a few of these "best of the worst" roundups but they're not usually this angry:

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Texas Senate meets, promptly votes to recess until July 9

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 19:56:00 +0000

The reproductive rights demonstration outside the Texas Capitol on Monday seems to have lasted longer than the actual legislative session it was intended to bolster. After taking a roll call and discussing official time-keeping methods, the Texas Senate voted to recess until July 9 at 11 a.m.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the Senate gallery was "full but calm" during the lightning-fast meeting.

Republicans have vowed to use the special legislative session to pass the restrictive abortion ban that state Sen. Wendy Davis and her Democratic colleagues defeated with a marathon filibuster last week, but that certainly didn't happen today.

Updated: 4:18 p.m.

The House is also adjourned until next week, but there will be a committee meeting held tomorrow.

Erick Erickson, Internet comedian, jokes about reproductive rights

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 19:43:00 +0000

I know it's hard to believe, what with all of his talk about female breadwinners being "anti-science" and his fixation on the "panties" of "emo lefties," but Erick Erickson is not a professional Internet comedian. He is a conservative pundit who gets paid money to share his ideas (about emo panties) on television and radio.

On Monday, Erickson posted a photo from the reproductive rights rally happening outside the Texas Capitol in advance of the legislature's special session, and asked if what he was seeing was "Salon's editorial board."

While we're flattered by the comparison, many of Erickson's Twitter followers were quick to point out his mistake.

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Bodies of Arizona firefighters recovered

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 19:20:00 +0000

YARNELL, Ariz. (AP) — As the windblown blaze suddenly swept toward them, an elite crew of firefighting "hotshots" desperately rushed to break out their emergency shelters and take cover on the ground under the foil-lined fabric.

By the time the flames had passed, 19 men lay dead in the nation's biggest loss of firefighters in a wildfire in 80 years.

The tragedy Sunday evening all but wiped out the 20-member Granite Mountain Hotshots, a unit based in the small town of Prescott, Prescott Fire Chief Dan Fraijo said as the last of the bodies were retrieved from the mountain. Only one member survived, and that was because he was moving the unit's truck at the time, authorities said.

The deaths plunged the town into mourning, and Arizona's governor called it "as dark a day I can remember" and ordered flags flown at half-staff.

"We are heartbroken about what happened," President Barack Obama said while on a visit to Africa. He predicted the tragedy will force government leaders to answer broader questions about how they handle increasingly destructive and deadly wildfires.

Report: Snowden asks for political asylum in Russia

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 18:00:00 +0000

The Interfax news agency says a Russian consular official has confirmed that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden asked for political asylum in Russia.

Interfax cited Kim Shevchenko, the duty officer at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s consular office in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, as saying that Snowden’s representative, Sarah Harrison, handed over his request Sunday.

Snowden has been caught in legal limbo in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23. The U.S. has annulled his passport, and Ecuador, where he has hoped to get asylum, has been coy about offering him shelter.Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says Snowden will have to stop leaking U.S. secrets if he wants to get asylum in Russia, but adds that Snowden has no plan to quit doing so.

Planned Parenthood gets the Tami Taylor seal of approval

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 17:03:00 +0000

Connie Britton -- whose "Friday Night Lights" character, Tami Taylor, is widely regarded as the patron saint of television moms/ultimate fictional wise woman/best head of hair in the business -- has partnered with Planned Parenthood on a campaign to support women's reproductive rights in Texas. (Texas forever!)

Britton commissioned a T-shirt to help support the campaign, which plays on her character's pop culture status as moral compass and asks: "What Would Tami Taylor Do?" (Answer, per the campaign website: "She would stand with Texas women.")

In a statement on the partnership, Britton said: "The character Tami on ‘Friday Night Lights’ is a Texas woman deeply committed to her community and to standing up for what is right for her neighbors and the people she loves. I have been inspired by how people around the country have united to stand with the women of Texas, and I can't help but think that, in this moment, we all have the opportunity to join with and become strong, powerful Texas men and women.”

Ohio governor signs budget laced with antiabortion provisions

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 16:14:00 +0000

Ohio Gov. John Kasich made 22 line-item vetoes before signing his state's controversial budget into law on Sunday night, but left untouched the five provisions included to restrict women's health services and abortion access in the state, including a measure to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect state funding from comprehensive reproductive health facilities to faith-based "crisis pregnancy centers."

As Salon has previously reported, the antiabortion amendments in the budget block funding for rape crisis centers that refer women to abortion service providers, impose mandatory ultrasounds on women seeking abortions, and, because of a provision blocking transfer agreements between abortion clinics and hospitals, could shutter four of the state's 12 abortion service providers.

The move was quickly denounced by state Democrats and reproductive rights advocates.

Will Egypt’s army stage another coup?

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:49:00 +0000

CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt's military said Monday that it will give the country's rival political forces 48 hours to resolve the current political crisis, or it will intervene with a roadmap for the nation's future.

The statement was read and broadcast live on state television.

Sixteen Egyptians were killed and hundreds more injured after a day of mass protests nationwide Sunday gave way to violent clashes outside the ruling Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo overnight.

Millions took to the streets in Cairo and other cities — in demonstrations that dwarfed the protests of the uprising two years ago — to call for President Mohamed Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader, to step down after a turbulent year in power.

As night fell, demonstrators besieged the Islamist movement’s headquarters — throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, to which Brotherhood members holed up inside responded with gunfire, witnesses said. Eight peopled were killed in ensuing clashes, and protesters eventually ransacked and looted the office, according to the health ministry.

Putin: Russia won’t turn over Snowden

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:37:00 +0000

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not turn over leaker Edward Snowden to the U.S. but was fuzzier on whether the fugitive can stay in Russia, Reuters reported:

If Snowden wants to stay in Russia he "must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners".

Snowden "is not a Russian agent", Putin said, repeating that Russian intelligence services were not working with the fugitive American, who is believed to remain in the transit area at a Moscow airport eight days after arriving from Hong Kong.

He said Snowden should choose his final destination and go there.

The high cost of giving birth in the U.S.

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:30:00 +0000

Giving birth in the United States is far more expensive than in other countries, and the additional cost does not appear to come with additional benefits -- Americans do not have more access to care or better access to care than citizens in other developed nations, according to an analysis from the New York Times.

“It’s not primarily that we get a different bundle of services when we have a baby,” Gerard Anderson, an economist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who studies international health costs, told the Times. “It’s that we pay individually for each service and pay more for the services we receive.”

This is an unusual model among other countries, as the Times notes:

Vatican monsignor questioned in corruption plot

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 13:05:00 +0000

ROME (AP) — A Vatican monsignor arrested in a 20 million euro ($26 million) corruption plot has been questioned by Italian magistrates for the first time and has asked for house arrest.

Attorney Silverio Sica says Monsignor Nunzio Scarano is not well at Rome's Regina Coeli prison and wants to await a decision on his fate at home.

Scarano was interrogated for some three hours on Monday by Judge Barbara Callari, who must decide whether to confirm his arrest.

Scarano was arrested Friday with two other people in an elaborate plot to bring 20 million euro from a Swiss bank account into Italy without reporting it to customs officials.

Sica said Scarano "recognized it wasn't licit," but acted to help out his friends.

Prosecutors have identified the friends as Italy's d'Amico shipping family.

Wendy Davis gears up for round two of Texas abortion battle

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 12:53:00 +0000

Less than a week after state. Sen. Wendy Davis' 11-hour filibuster defeated Texas' highly restrictive abortion ban, the Legislature is reconvening to vote on the Republican-backed measure, which is strongly opposed by Democrats, reproductive rights groups, the Texas Medical Association, the Texas Hospital Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The second special session, called for by Gov. Rick Perry after the measure failed to pass in the previous session, will begin Monday at 2 p.m. (3 p.m. ET) and could last up to 30 days.

The bill is expected to pass in the Republican-controlled Legislature, and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who supports the measure, told the Dallas Morning News on Saturday that the second session leaves little hope for a successful filibuster: “We’re not going to get it back from the House within filibuster range,” Dewhurst said. “We’re going to make sure that we’ve got plenty of time, and no human being can talk for two weeks.”

Obama, Bush heading to the same African city

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 12:45:00 +0000

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) — President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush are planning to be in the same city a world away from home, but the question is whether they will get together.

The Democratic president was to fly Monday into Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the last stop on a weeklong tour of Africa that wraps up Tuesday. His Republican predecessor coincidentally also plans to be there for a conference on African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute.

Their wives plan to team up at the conference Tuesday for a joint discussion on promoting women's education, health and economic empowerment. President Bush plans to be in attendance, before delivering his own speech there the following day, after the Obamas will have left.

Initially aides said the men had no plans to meet, but Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes indicated Sunday that could change. "There may be something," Rhodes said.

Having both presidents in town "sends a very positive message that both political parties in the United States share a commitment to this continent," Rhodes said.

During his African visit, Obama has credited Bush with helping save millions of lives by creating the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

Report: NSA spied on European diplomats

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 12:39:00 +0000

The United States spied on European Union offices and broke into private computer networks of EU officials in the US and Europe, according to a new report.

German magazine Der Spiegel claims that top secret documents from 2010 leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden show that the US bugged offices in Washington, New York and Brussels.

The NSA also tapped European Union private computer networks to read e-mails and listen to phone calls and meetings by government officials.

The NSA document refers to the European Union as "a target."