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Palestinian Freedom Riders to Challenge Segregation By Riding Settler Buses to Jerusalem: 11.15.11

Palestinian activists will reenact the US Civil Rights Movement's Freedom Rides to the American South by boarding segregated Israeli public transportation in the West Bank to travel to occupied East Jerusalem.

Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli public transportation headed from inside the West Bank to occupied East Jerusalem in an act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 60′s.


Fifty years after the U.S. Freedom Riders staged mixed-race bus rides through the roads of the segregated American South, Palestinian Freedom Riders will be asserting their right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience.

The Freedom Riders seek to highlight Israel's attempts to illegally sever occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and the apartheid system that Israel has imposed on Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Several Israeli companies, among them Egged and Veolia, operate dozens of lines that run through the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, many of them subsidized by the state. They run between different Israeli settlements, connecting them to each other and cities inside Israel. Some lines connecting Jerusalem to other cities inside Israel, such as Eilat and Beit She'an, are also routed to pass through the West Bank.

Attention

US: Battle Still Rages for Vets in College

War Vets
© ChameleonsEye | ShutterstockThey may not be on the battlefield anymore, but young war veterans in college struggle with PTSD, which may lead to risky behaviors.

Americans on Veteran's Day often remember the old-timers who served in past wars. But two new studies reveal how some of the youngest veterans, enrolled in college, are having trouble putting their military service behind them despite having no visible scars.

Recent veterans from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq who now attend college are far more likely to engage in risky behaviors, such as fighting, weapon carrying, and binge drinking compared with their non-veteran counterparts enrolled at a university.

And some of this risky behavior appears to be the result of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to researchers at the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis VA Medical Center.

The two studies, both published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, highlight the fact that efforts to send vets to college should be coupled with programs that cater to their special behavioral health needs.

More than 270,000 veterans from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom enrolled in college in 2009 on the G.I. Bill, according to U.S. Army data, and likely more will attend college in the coming years as the troops come home, according to the study researchers.

Syringe

US, Oklahoma: Parents avoid chicken pox vaccine with mail ordered candy

Chickenpox Vaccine
© KXII-TV
It is a new trend that health officials are calling dangerous, parents ordering candy online that is infected with a contagious disease and giving it to their children.

Vaccines have always been a controversial issue for some parents but others believe in them.

Mother of two Erin Bantis said, "Yes, I have gotten vaccines. All of them that are required at this point for my kids."

Originally parents who did not want their child to receive the chicken pox vaccine, Varicella, let their child contract it naturally.

Now, thanks to a growing trend, hard candy, like lollipops, are being infected with the chicken pox virus and sold online, and some parents are buying them to infect their children.

Ardmore Public School nurse Renita Dotson said, "I just cant believe it. I can't believe that when you look at things that are out there and the things on the internet I guess I'm not really surprised."

Comment: Considering all the contaminants and adjuvants and other toxic substances used in vaccines, could a chicken pox infected lollipop really be that bad? While we certainly cannot condone letting kids eat potentially infected candy from strangers, the dangers of vaccines should also be weighed by the authorities as well - which doesn't seem to be the case here. The CDC calling the chicken pox vaccine "effective and safe" means absolutely nothing beyond propaganda value.


Info

US, Virginia: Authorities say Marine was beaten to death by fellow Marine


A Marine found dead in his barracks room at Camp Pendleton early Sunday was beaten to death, a spokesman for the investigating agency said Tuesday.

Ed Buice of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said Lance Cpl. Mario Arias Jr. died from injuries he suffered at the hands of another Marine sometime late Saturday night or shortly after midnight. That Marine then jumped from a third-floor balcony of the barracks and suffered what Buice described as "significant" injuries.

Authorities are refusing to release that Marine's name and rank until charges are filed, Buice said.

"The pace of the investigation depends on his recovery," Buice said during a telephone interview from the agency's headquarters at Quantico, Va.

Arias' death is considered a homicide and the Marine who leaped from the balcony is the sole suspect.

Bomb

US, Colorado: Man Threatens To Blow Up Store When Video Game Not In Stock


Employees at a Best Buy in Aurora said a man threatened to blow up the store after he learned a video game he had pre-ordered was not in stock.

The man walked into the Best Buy just after midnight in the 3500 block of N. Salida Court near Interstate 70 and Tower Road.

"The last store I called was the Best Buy by my house and they said okay, we have three copies, two are on reserve and one is here available," said Lomon Sar. "She charged the card, it was $108... She put my name on the box."

Police said Sar, 31, went to pick up a hardened copy of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 he said he pre-ordered and paid for earlier in the day. When he arrived, it wasn't there and he became irate and angry at the customer service desk.

"He says what's your name and starts typing in my name and he couldn't find anything. The manager deleted me off their system! Like, took me out of the system! Took all my information out of the system everything," said Sar.

Evil Rays

US: Emergency Alert System Fails

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© Paul Keleher/Flickr
At 2 pm today the National Emergency Alert System is supposed be tested for the first time in its history on a federal level. As of 2:03 the system has yet to be activated.

Every TV and radio station in the nation is supposed to broadcast the test alert - sent from inside the White House - for 30 seconds.

The system was created in 1963 to allow the President to address the nation in the time of nuclear attack or other national crisis.

UPDATE: Brian Stelter tweets: At the NYT media desk, we heard the test via a radio, but we haven't seen it via cable television.

UPDATE 2: It's 2:07 and we still haven't seen the test on any cable network. We're calling the FCC, which oversees the system, for comment.

Phoenix

Blast hits Egypt gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan: security source

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© Agence France-PressePrevious attacks have disrupted gas deliveries to both destination countries several times
An Egyptian pipeline sending gas to Israel and Jordan was hit by a fresh explosion early Thursday, Egypt's security services said.

The blast occurred 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, a security source said.

The pipeline, which carries gas through the Sinai and on to Jordan and Israel, had already been attacked six times since former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February.

Witnesses said they had seen armed men at the scene, the source said. He did not know if there had been any victims.

Previous attacks have disrupted gas deliveries to both countries several times, but it was not immediately clear what impact the latest incident would have.

MIB

Doctor Turned Serial Killer in World War II Paris

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© The Associated PressThis March 17, 1946 file photo shows Dr. Marcel Petiot in Paris. The doctor, a serial killer who was convicted of 26 murders and guillotined as punishment for his crimes, regularly treated refugees, businessmen and Gestapo agents, but also had a predilection for killing wealthy Jews and burning their bodies in a basement furnace. He was one of the most unusual informers used by one of America's most secretive espionage agencies, known simply as the Pond.
Nazi-occupied Paris was a terrible place to be in the waning days of World War II, with Jews, Resistance fighters and ordinary citizens all hoping to escape. Disappearances became so common they often weren't followed up.

And one man used the lawlessness for his own terrible purposes, killing perhaps as many as 150 people.

Yet it wasn't until thick black smoke seeped into buildings in a fashionable part of the city that firefighters and police were called to an elegant townhouse where they found body parts scattered around -- setting off a manhunt that led them, eventually, to Marcel Petiot.

The crime was very much of its time, said David King, who chronicled the hunt for Petiot in Death in the City of Light.

"Paris was not a good place to be. A lot of people were trying to leave Paris, a lot of people just disappearing. He had it plotted out, a very devious plan," said King, in a telephone interview.

Che Guevara

US: Occupy Protesters Start March from NYC to DC

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© The Associated Press / Mary AltafferDemonstrators affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement start a march from the encampment at Zuccotti Park to Washington DC, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011 in New York
Flanked by police scooters, about two dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters started a two-week walk from New York to Washington on Wednesday.

The activists left Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, marched past the World Trade Center site and boarded a ferry to New Jersey. The group planned to stay overnight at a private home in Elizabeth, N.J., and resume their walk on Thursday morning.

"Everything is going well so far, everyone is in good spirits" Kelley Brannon, the walk's main organizer, said during a phone interview Wednesday night, shortly before they arrived in Elizabeth. "We're doing well and looking forward to our travel."

They plan to walk through Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland and arrive in Washington by Nov. 23 - the deadline for a congressional committee to decide whether to keep President Barack Obama's extension of Bush-era tax cuts. Protesters say the cuts benefit only rich Americans.

Document

US, Washington: Democrats push repeal of Defense of Marriage Act

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© unknown
Senate Democrats who back gay marriage have decided now is the time to repeal a federal law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The Democrats may satisfy their gay marriage supporters, but the bill won't get very far.

The repeal could be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but the next stop - the full Senate - could be a long way off. The bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says she doesn't have the votes for Senate passage, and the bill would have no chance in a House controlled by Republican conservatives.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., defended the timing of the panel's likely vote on the Defense of Marriage Act. "It is never the wrong time to right an injustice," he said.

Feinstein's bill has 31 Senate sponsors, all Democrats. Most Republicans fiercely oppose the repeal.

"Traditional marriage between a man and a woman has been the foundation of our society for 6,000 years," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary panel. "The Defense of Marriage Act protects this sacred institution, which I believe in, and attempts to dismantle this law are likely to be met with a great deal of resistance."