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No shots fired, Ukrainian soldiers walk out as Russian forces reclaim Ukraine naval HQ in Crimea


Asharq Al-Awsat
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:10 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko
A Ukrainian naval officer, right, passes by armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, as he leaves the naval headquarters in Sevastopol, March 19, 2014.
Russian troops and unarmed men stormed Ukraine's naval headquarters in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Wednesday and raised the Russian flag in a tense but peaceful takeover that signals Moscow's intent to neutralize any armed opposition.

Russian soldiers, and so-called "self-defense" units of mainly unarmed volunteers who are supporting them across the Black Sea peninsula, moved in early in the morning and quickly took control.

Shortly after the incident, Ukraine's acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh said in Kiev that the country's forces would not withdraw from Crimea even though Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a treaty to make it part of Russia.
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Padlock

18 yr old spends 13 days in Ohio jail for a pocketknife in EMT medical vest

Dave Urbanski
The Raw Story
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:02 UTC
Image
© WOIO-TV
Jordan Wiser
Enrolled in an Ohio vocational-technical school, Wiser was taking Firefighter 2 and EMT courses to bolster his dream of future public service.

"Last year, I completed the law enforcement course," the 18-year-old told The Huffington Post. "I received several certifications, including the National Terror Defense certification from FEMA, the Terror Recognition certification and (certification as an) Emergency Vehicle Operator."

Wiser also joined the Army, enrolling the Future Soldiers program, and was scheduled to ship out in August. After his planned military service, he figured he'd embark on a career as a police officer or firefighter.

But Wiser's big dreams of public service are on hold. In fact, he's now enduring a nightmare.

It all started Dec. 12 when administrators at Ashtabula County Technical and Career Campus (A-Tech) in Jefferson, Ohio - about 60 miles northeast of Cleveland - questioned Wiser after an alleged tip regarding videos uploaded to Wiser's YouTube account. Among the clips are reviews of video games and merchandise, home defense tactics, and an interview with a local police officer.
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Cloud Grey

Fatal Insanity: Gallup poll shows climate change near the bottom of things Americans worry about

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 10:03 UTC
Image
While some people speculate there was a climate bloviage link to the recent loss of a congressional seat in Florida, we have the name calling all nighter clownfest in the Senate last Monday.

Bjørn Lomborg writes on his Facebook page: A new survey from Gallup shows that Americans don't worry all that much about global warming.

This is very similar to the survey showing Europeans worrying a lot more about almost all other issues than global warming, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152349665523968

This does not mean that global warming is not a problem or something that needs to be addressed. But it does indicate that politicians are vastly overhyping the discussion and likely doing us a great disservice by focusing on short-term fixes like solar and wind that have huge costs but almost no benefits.

It is also encouraging that race relations is the least important worry in the US now.
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Bad Guys

Fourteen American men arrested for operating child-abuse site through Tor


Guardian
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 07:27 UTC
Image
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announces the results of the ‘major international operation’
Authorities have arrested 14 men in a secret, members-only child abuse website that involved 251 children, mostly boys, in the United States and five other countries, US officials said on Tuesday.

Some of the men assumed female online personas to connect with the children, who ranged in age from three to 17 years, on popular social networks, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The alleged US victims, who have been identified and contacted by authorities, were from 39 US states. The majority were between 13 and 15 years old and all but a handful were boys. Authorities said 23 of the 251 victims were identified in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Belgium.
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Family

Seattle teachers boycotted standardized testing - and sparked a nationwide movement

Diane Brooks
Common Dreams
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:01 UTC
Image
© Betty Udesen
Kris McBride, Garfield's academic dean and testing coordinator, at left, and Jesse Hagopian, Garfield history teacher and a leader of the school's historic test boycott.
Life felt eerie for teachers at Seattle's Garfield High in the days following their unanimous declaration of rebellion last winter against standardized testing. Their historic press conference, held on a Thursday, had captured the attention of national TV and print media. But by midday Monday, they still hadn't heard a word from their own school district's leadership.

Then an email from Superintendent José Banda hit their in-boxes. Compared with a starker threat issued a week later, with warnings of 10-day unpaid suspensions, this note was softly worded. But its message was clear: a teacher boycott of the district's most-hated test - the MAP, short for Measures of Academic Progress - was intolerable.

Comment: See also: The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education

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Stock Down

Banker suicides baffle and rattle financial world

Michael Gray
NY Post
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:27 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock; Linkedin; Zumapress.com
From left: JPMorgan Chase's headquarters in London; Autumn Radtke, the 28-year-old First Meta CEO; the Deutsche Bank entrance on Wall Street.
The financial world has been rattled by a rash of apparent suicides, with some of the best and brightest among the finance workers who have taken their lives since the start of the year.

A majority of the eight suicides of 2014 have been very public demonstrations, which has suicide-prevention experts puzzled.

"Jumping is much less common as a method for suicide in general, so I am struck by the number that have occurred in recent months in this industry," said Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Moutier also discounts the location of the act as being the driver behind the reason for the suicide.

"The suicide-research literature doesn't help very much with the question of why the method of these suicides is so out in the open," she added.
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Health

Pastor diagnosed with cancer: 'No compassion in the Affordable Care Act'

Daniel Halper
Weekly Standard
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 09:01 UTC
A pastor recently diagnosed with cancer, and who is covered under Obamacare, tells a local Iowa reporter that there's "no compassion in the Affordable Care Act."

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Map

Scottish independence is winning over uncommitted, says SNP

Severin Carell
Guardian
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 19:59 UTC
Image
© Murdo Macleod
Scottish nationalists say time is on their side as they win over uncommitted voters.
Margie Maxwell is no Scottish nationalist. But she is Glaswegian, and intensely loyal with it. It never occurred to her she would vote for independence. But then the threats were made, to shipyard jobs on the Clyde, to Scotland's right to keep the pound and to her country's economy.

"I fully want independence now. They've had their chance," she said.

There was the speech in February by George Osborne, the chancellor, vetoing any sterling pact between the UK and an independent Scotland. And Maxwell, 57, deeply resented warnings last winter that lucrative Royal Navy warship contracts for Glasgow's critically important shipyards would end if Scotland voted yes to independence.
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Stock Down

Starving college students see the ugly truth behind the meritocratic social contract

Michelle Goldberg
Common Dreams
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:40 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Amy Sancetta
Volunteers fill bags with food for part of their backpack school lunch program.
If you want to know why millennials are far more economically liberal than other generations, consider the news that colleges have started opening on-campus food banks to keep their students from going hungry.

Dozens of food pantries are "cropping up at colleges across the country in recent years as educators acknowledge the struggles many students face as the cost of getting a higher education continues to soar," the Associated Press reported this weekend. Tuition alone, the article notes, "has become a growing burden, rising 27 percent at public colleges and 14 percent at private schools in the past five years, according to the College Board. Add in expenses for books, housing and other necessities of college life and some are left to choose between eating and learning."
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Arrow Up

More than 90 percent of Russians approve of Crimea decision


RT.com
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:53 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy
Participants in the "We Are Together" rally and concert to support the residents of the Crimea, at Vasilyevsky Slope, Moscow
Over 90 percent of Russians approve of Crimea becoming a part of the Russian Federation, a poll has revealed as Crimeans voted for integration in Sunday's referendum.

Only 5 percent of Russians oppose the Autonomous Republic of Crimea joining Russia, while 91.4 percent of respondents said they welcome the idea, according to a joint poll by Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) and Public Opinion Fund (FOM). Both in Moscow and in the northern capital - St Petersburg - the idea is favored by 89 percent of citizens.

Meanwhile, 86 percent of respondents already consider Crimea - home to an ethnic Russian majority - a part of Russia.
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