[unable to retrieve full-text content]When Florida Governor Rick Scott's administration began an effort to find and purge non-citizens from the voting rolls last year, life-long citizens and voters received letters asking them to prove their citizenship. That became a political embarrassment. But now, the Scott administration is ready to start the purge again, this time using a federal citizenship database. But county election officials remain wary.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/rggqouO70Ik/story.php
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Monday, October 14, 2013
Friday, October 11, 2013
German groom forgets bride at gas station
BERLIN (AP) — A German couple's marriage got off to a rocky start when the groom forgot his bride at a highway gas station on the way home from their honeymoon, only noticing she was missing after hours had passed.
Police said Friday the couple was heading home to Berlin from France when the man pulled over near the central town of Bad Hersfeld late Thursday to fill up their van.
The woman had been sleeping in the back but got up — unbeknownst to the man — to use the toilets and he drove off before she returned.
Only after 2 ½ hours on the road did he notice she was gone and called police, who said she was patiently waiting.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2013-10-11-EU-Germany-Forgetful-Groom/id-9cdcca45959e41acaccb5721125654f0Similar Articles: Cal Worthington tommy morrison Bryan Cranston usher brian wilson
Friday, June 28, 2013
Protests near Mandela hospital over 'disappointment' Obama's South Africa trip
President Obama is heading to South Africa from Senegal as part of his African tour, where Nelson Mandela's daughter says he might visit Mandela if doctors approve. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.
By Stacey Klein and Ian Johnston, NBC News
Barack Obama said Friday that he did not need a ?photo op? with Nelson Mandela, saying the ?last thing? he wanted to do was be intrusive at a time when the anti-apartheid icon?s family are concerned about his health.
However, the president did not rule out a meeting with Mandela, whose ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said Friday had made a ?great improvement? compared to a few days ago.
On Tuesday, Mandela's daughter Zindzi said that her father ?opened his eyes and gave me a smile? when she told him Obama was coming.
Speaking about her ex-husband Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela says, 'From what he was a few days ago, there is great improvement' in the former South African president's condition.
Speaking on Air Force One as he flew to South Africa from Senegal, Obama said that ?we?ll see what the situation is when we land.?
?I don't need photo op," he said. "The last thing I want to do is be intrusive at a time when the family is concerned? with Mandela?s condition.
He said the main message he wanted to deliver was ?profound gratitude? for Mandela?s leadership and to say that ?the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with him, his family and his country.?
This message could be delivered to his family and not directly to Mandela, the president said.
On Thursday, Obama said he had already had the "privilege of meeting Madiba [Mandela's clan name] and speaking to him."
"And he's a personal hero, but I don't think I'm unique in that regard," Obama added. "If and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."
Madikizela-Mandela, speaking outside Mandela's former home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto, said her ex-husband seemed to be getting better.
?I?m not a doctor but I can say that from what he was a few days ago there is great improvement," she said.
When asked by NBC News Special Correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault?whether the family would welcome a visit by Obama, Zindzi Mandela said Thursday she wasn't aware of any formal request. However, she added that decision would be left with doctors treating the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Ahead of his arrival in Johannesburg on Friday, an anti-Obama protest was held not far from the hospital where Mandela is being treated with one demonstrator claiming the U.S. president had been a ?disappointment.?
Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters
Protesters protest the visit of President Barack Obama in Pretoria Friday. One said he viewed Obama as a "disappointment" and thought Nelson Mandela would too.
Reuters reported that nearly 1,000 trade unionists, Muslim activists, South African Communist Party members and others marched to the U.S. Embassy where they burned a U.S. flag, calling Obama's foreign policy ?arrogant and oppressive.?
"We had expectations of America's first black president. Knowing Africa's history, we expected more,? Khomotso Makola, a 19-year-old law student, told Reuters. He said Obama was a ?disappointment, I think Mandela too would be disappointed and feel let down.?
South African critics of Obama have focused in particular on his support for U.S. drone strikes overseas, which they say have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, and his failure to deliver on a pledge to close the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba housing terrorism suspects.
However, Nigerian painter Sanusi Olatunji, 31, had brought portraits of both Mandela and Obama to add to a growing number of flowers, tribute notes and gifts outside the hospital.
?These are the two great men of my lifetime,? he told Reuters. ?To me, Mandela is a prophet who brought peace and opportunity. He made it possible for a black man like me to live in a country that was only for whites.?
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View images of civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, who went from anti-apartheid activist to prisoner to South Africa's first black president.
In the latest statement on Mandela?s condition, South African President Jacob Zuma said the 94-year-old was ?much better? on Thursday than he had been the previous night. "The medical team continues to do a sterling job," he added.
A statement issued by Zuma?s office said he and Obama would hold ?crucial bilateral talks that will take forward relations between the two countries? on Saturday.
?South Africa values its warm and mutually beneficial relationship with the United States immensely. This is a significant visit which will take political, economic and people to people relations between the two countries to a higher level, while also enhancing cooperation between U.S. and the African continent at large,? it said.
The statement noted Obama?s visit was being made as South Africa prepares to celebrate ?20 years of freedom? ? 1994 saw the first elections in the country in which all its citizens were eligible to vote. Mandela voted for the first time in his life in that year and was elected the country?s first black president, serving until 1999.
?South Africa greatly appreciates the solidarity provided by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United States during the struggle for liberation,? the statement said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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This story was originally published on Fri Jun 28, 2013 5:05 AM EDT
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Obama arrives in South Africa
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Inspired by Nelson Mandela's struggles in South Africa, a young Barack Obama joined campus protests in the U.S. against the racist rule that kept Mandela locked away in prison for nearly three decades.
Now a historic, barrier-breaking figure himself, President Obama arrived in South Africa Friday to find a country drastically transformed by Mandela's influence ? and grappling with the beloved 94-year-old's mortality.
It was unclear whether Mandela's deteriorating health would allow Obama to make a hospital visit. The former South African leader is battling a recurring lung infection and is said to be in critical condition at a hospital in the South African capital of Pretoria.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he made his way to Johannesburg, Obama said he would gauge the situation after he arrived.
"I don't need a photo-op," he said. "And the last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned about Nelson Mandela's condition."
Obama's visit to South Africa is seen as something of a tribute to the man who helped inspire his own political activism. The president will pay homage to Mandela at Robben Island, the prison where he spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. And with South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, facing questions about its effectiveness, Obama will urge the government and the South African people to live up to the democratic example set by their first black president.
"He's a personal hero, but I don't think I'm unique in that regard," Obama said during a news conference Thursday in Senegal, the first stop on his weeklong Africa trip. "I think he's a hero for the world. And if and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."
Obama and Mandela have met just once, a hastily arranged meeting in a Washington hotel room in 2005 when Obama was a U.S. senator. A photo of the meeting hangs in Obama's personal office at the White House, showing a smiling Mandela sitting on a chair, his legs outstretched, as the young senator reaches down to shake his hand. A copy of the photo also hangs in Mandela's office in Johannesburg.
Since then, the two have spoken occasionally by telephone, including after the 2008 election, when Mandela called Obama to congratulate him on his victory. The U.S. president called Mandela in 2010 after the South African leader's young granddaughter was killed in a car accident. Obama also wrote the introduction to Mandela's memoir, "Conversations With Myself."
Despite the two men's infrequent contact, people close to Obama say his one-on-one meeting with Mandela left a lasting impression.
"He is one of the few people who the president has respected and admired from afar who, when he met him, exceeded his expectations," said Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser and close friend.
Obama's own political rise has drawn inevitable comparisons to the South African leader. Both are Nobel Peace Prize winners and the first black men elected to lead their countries.
But their paths to power have been vastly different. While Mandela fought to end an oppressive government from the confines of a prison cell, Obama attended elite schools and rose through the U.S. political system before running for president.
"President Obama would believe that the challenges he has faced pale in comparison to those faced by President Mandela," Jarrett said.
Mandela had already shaped Obama's political beliefs well before their first encounter. As a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama joined protests against the school's investments during South Africa's apartheid era. In 1981, Obama focused his first public political speech on the topic.
"It's happening an ocean away," Obama said, according to a retelling of the story in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." ''But it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not."
More than 30 years later, as he traveled through the African continent, Obama recalled the influence Mandela had had on him during that period of his life.
"I think at that time I didn't necessarily imagine that Nelson Mandela might be released," Obama said Thursday. But the president said he had read Mandela's writings and speeches and understood him to be a man who believed in "treating people equally and was willing to sacrifice his life for that belief."
Following his release from prison, Mandela was elected president in 1994 during South Africa's first all-races elections. He served just one term, focusing in large part on racial reconciliation in the post-apartheid era, and retreated from public life several years ago.
The most recent images of him depict a frail man apparently approaching the end of his life. While South Africans have long been loath to talk about Mandela's inevitable death, there is now a growing sense in the country that the time is near. Well-wishers have delivered flowers and messages of support to the Pretoria hospital where he is being treated, and prayer sessions have been held around the country.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-ties-mandela-loom-over-africa-visit-173837509.html
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HandiBot Is The Robotic Carpenter Of Geppetto's Dreams
Given that I have no talent in woodworking I suspect Handibot may - dare I say it? - come in handy. The device is a motorized CNC machine - they're calling it a Universal Digital Power Tool (UDPT) - for wood. It can cut, machine, drill, and carve. Build by the guys who built the ShopBot, a similarly complex CNC system for woodworking.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hoTl_EM2-fI/
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Pope names commission of inquiry into Vatican bank
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis' new commission of inquiry into the troubled Vatican bank has a brand new money-laundering case to look into: How a Holy See monsignor withdrew more than a half-million euros in charitable donations from the bank without any flags being raised, walked out of Vatican City with the cash, and then used the money to pay off his personal mortgage.
The case of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano is just one example of how lax norms and incompetence, if not more serious shortcomings at the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, have sullied the Vatican's reputation in international financial circles and made it a target for Francis' clean-up and reform campaign.
Francis on Wednesday announced the creation of a commission of inquiry to look into the IOR's activities and legal status "to allow for a better harmonization with the universal mission of the Apostolic See," according to the legal document he signed creating it.
It was the second time in as many weeks that Francis has intervened to get information out of the IOR, a secretive institution best known for the scandals it has caused the Vatican. On June 15, he filled a key vacancy in the bank's governing structure, tapping a trusted prelate to be his eyes inside the bank.
Francis named five people to the commission, including two Americans: Monsignor Peter Wells, a top official in the Vatican secretariat of state, and Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and current president of a pontifical academy.
American cardinals were among the most vocal in demanding a wholesale reform of the Vatican bureaucracy ? and the Vatican bank ? in the meetings outlining the priorities for the new pope in the run-up to the March conclave that elected Francis. The demands were raised following revelations in leaked documents last year that told of dysfunction, petty turf wars and allegations of corruption in the Holy See's governance.
Francis, who has made clear he has no patience for corruption and wants a "poor" church, has already named a separate commission of cardinals to advise him on the broader question of reforming the Vatican bureaucracy as a whole.
The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it also manages the pension system for the Vatican's thousands of employees.
The bank commission's members have authority to gather documents, data and information about the bank's legal status and activities, even overriding normal secrecy rules to do so. Members can receive information from anyone in the Vatican bureaucracy as well as people who spontaneously volunteer information, and the commission can refer to outside advisers if necessary, according to the terms.
The commission will report back to Francis ? presumably with both information and recommendations ? and then will be dissolved, the document states. No timeframe was given but the commission is to start working soon.
The bank's daily management and activities continues unchanged.
The announcement came as the Vatican faces a new embarrassment involving the bank: Prosecutors in the southern city of Salerno have placed Scarano, an accountant in one of the Vatican's key finance offices, the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, under investigation for alleged money-laundering stemming from his IOR account.
Scarano's attorney, Silverio Sica, told The Associated Press that the investigation concerns transactions Scarano made in 2009 in which he took 560,000 euros ($729,000) in cash out of his personal IOR bank account and carried it out of the Vatican and into Italy to help pay off a mortgage on his Salerno home.
To deposit the money into an Italian bank account ? and to prevent family members from finding out he had such a large chunk of cash ? he asked 56 close friends to accept 10,000 euros apiece in cash in exchange for a check or money transfer in the same amount, Sica said in a telephone interview. Scarano was then able to deposit the amounts in his Italian account.
"The money came from the Vatican. He wanted to bring it into Italy. He was advised to do it in this way," Sica said.
The original money came into Scarano's IOR account from donors who gave it to the prelate thinking they were funding a home for the terminally ill in Salerno, Sica said. He said the donors had "enormous" wealth and could offer such donations for his charitable efforts.
He said Scarano had given the names of the donors to prosecutors and insisted the origin of the money was clean, that the transactions didn't constitute money-laundering, and that he only took the money "temporarily" for his personal use.
The home for terminally ill hasn't been built, though the property has been identified, Sica said.
"He declares himself absolutely innocent," Sica said.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed Wednesday that Scarano had been suspended temporarily from his job and that the Vatican's financial watchdog agency, known by its acronym AIF, was "aware of the case and is taking ? if and where appropriate ? the necessary measures."
Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported over the weekend that the Bank of Italy had flagged the case to the AIF, seeking information about Scarano's IOR account as part of the Salerno probe. Lombardi didn't respond when asked why the IOR itself didn't flag such unusually large cash withdrawals back in 2009.
There have long been questions about just what the IOR actually is and does ? questions which the commission presumably will try to iron out for Francis. Vatican officials have long insisted it's not even a bank, since it doesn't perform key banking activities like making loans.
It does however take deposits, transfer money and invest for its clients, who include Vatican officials, members of religious orders and diplomats accredited to the Holy See. The bank performs asset management services that in 2012 helped earn it 86.6 million euros in profit on 7.1 billion euros in total assets under management.
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-names-commission-inquiry-vatican-110533778.html
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Thursday, June 27, 2013
An Amazing Photo of China's Space Station Crossing the Sun
While it's the International Space Station that tends to take all the glory, there is in fact another: China's Tiangong-1, which went into low-Earth orbit in 2011. In this amazing pictures, you can see it silhouetted against the Sun.
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