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Protesters March Against Police Brutality in Oxnard

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© Heber Pelayo
The family of Robert Ramirez, a 26-year-old Oxnard man who was allegedly beaten by officers in a struggle while he was overdosing on meth and later died this past June, protested at the last Oxnard City Council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 11. The family was joined by more than 150 activists against police brutality.
Alleged wrongful death sparks controversy

California - "Killer cops, off our streets."

That was the refrain chanted by a crowd of nearly 150 gatherers as they made their way from Camino del Sol Park to the Sept. 11 Oxnard City Council meeting. Led by a troupe of Aztec dancers and a squad of uniformed National Brown Berets, the procession wound their way through the Colonia neighborhood toward City Hall.

Drawn, perhaps, by the reverberating drumbeat, dozens of residents along the way stepped out to lend their support. Others looked on in bewilderment.

Tuesday's march was organized by Colectivo Todo Poder al Pueblo (All Power to the People Collective). The group led a similar march from Plaza Park to the Community Relations Commission meeting on Aug. 20, in response to accusations of brutality on behalf of the Oxnard Police Department following the death of Robert Ramirez, a 26-year-old Oxnard resident, on June 24.

Several of Ramirez's relatives and Colectivo supporters spoke out during the public comments segment of the Aug. 20 meeting.

"We want the community to have the power to fine anybody who touches unjustly or harasses our youth in our community," said Francisco Romero, a Colectivo organizer and 2006 candidate for City Council. "The time has come."

Document

Chicago mayor, striking teachers reach "agreement in principle"

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© Reuters/John Gress
Members of the Chicago Teachers Union carry placards outside the Benito Juarez High School on the fifth day of their strike in Chicago September 14, 2012.
The Chicago Teachers Union and the nation's third largest school district reached an "agreement in principle" to end a five-day strike over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's demand for education reforms, the school district said on Friday, raising hopes that teachers would be back in class on Monday.

"CPS (Chicago Public Schools) and CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) have come to an agreement in principle," the school district said in a message posted on Twitter.

Chicago School Board President David Vitale said the framework deal should allow students to be back in school on Monday morning.

More than 350,000 Chicago students marked a week off classes on Friday after some 29,000 Chicago teachers and support staff walked off the job over the education reforms.

The union's house of delegates, a larger consultative body than the negotiating team, was meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss the state of negotiations. It was not clear if they would vote on the agreement in principle.

The school district said the framework would first have to be approved by the union's delegates and then go to the full membership before it was final.

The teachers walked out on Monday in the first Chicago Teachers Union strike since 1987. It was the largest strike in the United States in a year and has galvanized the labor movement and exposed a rift within the Democratic Party over reforms of urban schools.

Meteor

Disguising Celestial Intentions? US Military claims it launched three test missiles over Southwestern US

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© Ryan Eiger
Stargazer Ryan Eiger captured this stunning photo of an Army missile contrail along with Venus and the moon over Scottsdale, Ariz., before dawn on Sept. 13, 2012.
A spectacular U.S. Army missile test in New Mexico Thursday (Sept. 13) lit up the predawn sky over the southwestern United States, triggering a flood of frantic UFO reports and hundreds of calls to military officials from as far away as Denver and Los Angeles.

The amazing night sky sight was created by the launch of an Army Juno missile early Thursday from Fort Wingate in New Mexico, which soared high into the atmosphere on its way to the White Sands Missile Range to be intercepted by a Patriot missile. The unarmed Juno rocket flew so high that its long contrail reflected sunlight from the yet-to-rise sun, sparking a dazzling night sky light show.

"We kind of hope folks enjoy the light show we put on over the western U.S.," White Sands Missile Range spokeswoman Monte Marlin told SPACE.com.

Marlin said her office received more than 100 calls and a flood of emails from observers who saw the Juno rocket's contrail from states across the Southwest. According to the Associated Press, the missile test led to widespread reports from people who regarded the shiny rocket exhaust as a UFO sighting in the sky.

Marlin said she received calls from as far away as Denver, Salt Lake City in Utah, Las Vegas and Los Angeles reporting the sighting.

Comment: It seems pretty clear to us that they were tracking this large meteor or cometary fragment (MoCF) which exploded in the upper atmosphere and missiles were sent up there as part of damage control.

Reading Celestial Intentions Through the Wrong End of the Telescope: Missiles, UFOs and the Cold War


Heart - Black

Terry Williams Sentenced to Execution for Killing Two Men Who Sexually Abused Him as a Child

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Terrance Williams of Pennsylvania has been sentenced to death after killing two men when he was 17- and 18-years old. What the jury did not know, however, was that Williams had been brutally raped as a child by the two men he killed.

Williams and another teen killed one man just a few months after Williams had turned 18, according to Change.org. He also admitted that he killed another man five months earlier. One man was a church leader and another was a sports booster. The men used their positions to get access to young boys.

Williams was allegedly sexually abused for years by these men, but he was also abused by other older individuals throughout his life. His mother had abused him frequently and his father was absent from the home. His first experience with sexual assault was when he was just six years old, and the abuse continued steadily for the next 12 years of his life.

He did not receive treatment or help from anyone for the duration of his suffering.

How do we know these abuse accusations are true -- and not just Williams making a calculated attempt at saving his life?

According to The Nation, "It was not until this past winter that another witness would come forward, a former pastor named Charles Pointdexter, who knew Norwood for thirty years. He admitted having known that he had sexually abused teen boys.

"Amos seemed to have lots of close relationships with young men..." he stated in an affidavit signed February 9, 2012, saying that he began to suspect that they were "inappropriate" in nature. A few years before Amos's death, one of the parishioners, the mother of a 15-year-old boy, told him that he had "touched her son's genitals" during a car ride and that "Amos had inappropriately touched a number of boys at the church." Pointdexter kept the knowledge to himself.

X

Kansas State Board May Remove President Obama from Election Ballot over Birth Certificate

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Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said that the State Objections Board was considering removing President Barack Obama from the Kansas ballot this November, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.

Kobach, an informal advisor to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said the State Objections Board agreed consider whether to take President Obama off the ballot because they lacked sufficient evidence about his birth certificate.

Kobach told the Topeka Capital-Journal: "I don't think it's a frivolous objection, I do think the factual record could be supplemented."

The State Objections Board is looking at a complaint filed by Joe Montgomery, of Manhattan, Kansas, who claims President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen.

The State Objections Board will send records requests to Hawaii, Arizona and Mississippi for more documentation of President Obama's birth.

President Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate in 2011.

Info

Billboard that Compares Pres. Obama to Bin Laden Spreads to T-Shirts, Bumper Stickers

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A controversial Texas billboard on interstate 35 that compares President Obama to the late terrorist Osama Bin Laden is now spreading to T-shirts and bumper stickers.

The billboard shows two camouflaged armed men and recalls the Navy SEALS' removal of a threat to America and tells Americans to remove another threat in November [President Obama].

Tom Schad, who put the billboard up originally, told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth: "I'm amazed. It started out there was no reaction. Then all a sudden it evidently got on Facebook. It got on the Internet. Then it was everywhere. It went viral."

Schad started making a few t-shirts for friends, but now has many orders.

Schad falsely claimed that President Obama took all the credit for the death of Bin Laden: "He needs to understand its 'we', a team effort. He didn't pull the trigger those seals pulled the trigger."

Retired Marine Roger Herman has printed up one thousand bumper stickers and cliams that they were all ordered on Tuesday night.

However, some people have complained that the ad as advocates violence against President Obama.

Info

Topless Tempest: Kate Photos Spark Palace Fury

Kate Middleton, Prince William
© The Associated Press/Mark Baker
Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge take their shoes off before entering a mosque in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Friday, Sept. 14, 2012.
London - Paparazzi, French media and a British royal: The publication of topless photos of Prince William's wife Kate has reunited the same players whose clash ended with the untimely death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a Parisian car crash.

William, who has long harbored a grudge against the paparazzi who chased Diana in the days and hours leading up to her 1997 death, was clearly infuriated. The royal couple hit back with an immediate lawsuit against the popular French gossip magazine Closer.

The blurry photos, called a "grotesque" abuse of privacy by royal officials, show Kate _ the Duchess of Cambridge _ wearing only a skimpy bikini bottom. They are the first to show Britain's likely future queen with her bosom exposed.

St. James's Palace officials sharply criticized the magazine moments after the photos hit French newsstands, comparing the intrusion on the young couple's privacy to the tragic paparazzi pursuit of Diana, which many believe was a contributing factor in her early death on Aug. 31, 1997.

The parallels between the past and the present were eerie. Diana was hounded by paparazzi who took telephoto shots of her vacationing on a yacht with her boyfriend Dodi and tailed them relentlessly in Paris.

Earlier this month, a photographer with a similar long lens captured Kate and William relaxing in the sun at a private estate in Provence, a vacation spot near the French Riviera.

Instead of challenging the authenticity of the blurry photos, palace officials said they appear genuine _ and should never have been taken, much less published.

Handcuffs

Salem Man Arrested After Flying Powered Paraglider On 9/11


Patrick Tarmey calls his airborne toy a "powered paraglider." But on September 11th of this year, some people in Salem thought his quirky-looking glider may have posed some kind of threat.

"I was flying it over the harbor just practicing doing some 360s and some spins," Tarmey said.

Tarmey owns a business called Paramotor Tours. But while he was flying Tuesday, the phones at the Salem police department lit up.

"Are you aware of the guy that's in this, like, gyrocopter that's flying over the Bridge Street bypass, and stopping traffic basically?" asked one caller.

Telephone

All-Clears After Bomb Threats Evacuate Campuses in Texas and North Dakota

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© The Associated Press/The Forum/Ryan Bab
Lt. Joel Vettel of the Fargo Police Department talks to the media near the North Dakota State University campus in Fargo, N.D., following a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the campus on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012.
Austin, Texas - Tens of thousands of people streamed off university campuses in Texas and North Dakota on Friday after telephoned bomb threats prompted officials to warn students and faculty to get away as quickly as possible. Both campuses eventually were deemed safe and reopened by early afternoon, as authorities worked to determine whether the threats were related.

The University of Texas received a call about 8:35 a.m. from a man claiming to be with al-Qaida who said he had placed bombs all over the 50,000-student Austin campus, according to University of Texas spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon. He claimed the bombs would go off in 90 minutes and all buildings were evacuated at 9:50 a.m. as a precaution, Weldon said.

The deadline passed without incident, and the university reopened all buildings by noon. Classes were canceled for the rest of the day, but other university activities were to resume by 5 p.m.

"We are extremely confident that the campus is safe," UT President William Powers told a news conference.

North Dakota State University President Dean Bresciani said 20,000 people also were evacuated from his school's main and downtown campuses in Fargo after the school received its threat. FBI spokesman Kyle Loven said a call that included a "threat of an explosive device" came in about 9:45 a.m., but he declined to give further details. He said the agency was trying to determine if the two campus threats were related.

NDSU buildings reopened about 1 p.m. and classes were set to resume an hour later, said Bresciani, adding that the campus had been "deemed safe."

Arrow Up

Consumer inflation rises by most in three years

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© Mark Bugnaski/AP
Driving prices higher. Rising gas prices are behind the biggest increase in consumer inflation in three years. Minus fuel, inflation is pretty tame.
More expensive gas drove up consumer prices in August by the most in three years. Aside from energy, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department says consumer prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent last month, the first increase since March. Higher gas prices accounted for 80 percent of the increase. Food prices rose 0.2 percent.

In the past 12 months, prices have increased 1.7 percent. That's down from a peak of 3.9 percent in September 2011.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices edged up 0.1 percent for the second straight month. Rents, medical care and new cars got more expensive, while clothing, furniture and airline fares fell in price.

Core consumer prices rose 1.9 percent in the past 12 months, the smallest annual increase in a year and still below the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target.

The Fed on Thursday launched a third round of bond purchases and extended its pledge to hold interest rates near zero to at least through mid-2015 from late 2014, in an effort to tackle stubbornly high unemployment.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said he believed inflation would remain close to the Fed's target, noting that longer-term inflation expectations were quite stable.

Last month, overall inflation was boosted by a 9.0 percent surge in gasoline prices after a 0.3 percent rise in July. Gasoline prices at the pump increased 28 cents in August and could squeeze household budgets.

Comment: Being pacified by economic hyperbole or are you paying attention to the signs?
8 Shocking Truths the 'War on Terror' and the 'Global Financial War' Have in Common
Dollar no longer primary oil currency - China begins to sell oil using Yuan

"Give me control over a nations currency, and I care not who makes its laws." -Baron M.A. Rothschild

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln