Sat Apr 20, 2013 at 16:12:15 PDT
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The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Sat Apr 20, 2013 at 05:13:26 PDT
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This here's the wattle - the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle or you can hold it in your hand.
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 22:06:41 PDT
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(2 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
 Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can't, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.
I routinely throw them into salads of all kinds, and finely chopped walnuts can go into everything from omelets to pungent Mediterranean nut-based sauces to soups, pasta dishes and of course desserts. I consider them a pantry staple and keep a bag of shelled walnuts in the freezer at all times. When unshelled walnuts are available at my farmers' market I keep them on hand as well. I use them up so quickly that I probably don't need to keep the shelled walnuts in the freezer, but that's where I always keep my nuts, because the oils in nuts are volatile and they can become rancid if they are not kept in a cool environment. I toast walnuts occasionally, but most often I prefer the sweeter flavor of fresh untoasted walnuts.
~Martha Rose Shulman~
Walnut Fougasse or Focaccia
Mediterranean flatbread where walnuts and their oil stand in for olives.
Leek and Turnip Soup With Kale and Walnut Garnish
The crunchy walnuts contrast beautifully with the smooth, sweet-tasting soup.
Green Bean and Fava Bean Salad With Walnuts
Two seasonal beans make a beautiful salad for spring.
Mache and Endive Salad With Clementines and Walnuts
A salad with two high-omega-3 ingredients.
Iranian Herb and Walnut Frittata
A classic Persian herb frittata with yogurt and walnuts.
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 22:11:02 PDT
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
 The controversial data sharing bill, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was passed by the House by a vote of 288 - 127, as 92 Democrats voted for the bill, while 29 Republicans voted against it. The bill passed without the privacy protections that civil liberties advocates felt were necessary, an objection that was echoed by the White House with a veto threat earlier this week. An attempt by the lead sponsors of the bill, Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), offered an amendment to mollify the objections but privacy advocates stated that it fell short of what was needed to safeguard an individual's right to privacy.
Amendments that were proposed to protect Fourth Amendment rights were not even allowed debate by the rules committee:
Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, proposed a one-sentence amendment (PDF) that would have required the National Security Agency, the FBI, Homeland Security, and other agencies to secure a "warrant obtained in accordance with the Fourth Amendment" before searching a database for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Grayson complained this morning on Twitter that House Republicans "wouldn't even allow debate on requiring a warrant before a search." [..]
CISPA is controversial because it overrules all existing federal and state laws by saying "notwithstanding any other provision of law," including privacy policies and wiretap laws, companies may share cybersecurity-related information "with any other entity, including the federal government." It would not, however, require them to do so. [..]
Because Grayson's amendment was not permitted, CISPA will allow the federal government to compile a database of information shared by private companies and search that information for possible violations of hundreds, if not thousands, of criminal laws. [..]
"The government could use this information to investigate gun shows" and football games because of the threat of serious bodily harm if accidents occurred, Polis said. "What do these things even have to do with cybersecurity?... From football to gun show organizing, you're really far afield."
At the heart of CISPA is warrantless searches a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment which reads:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This has had a strange effect of uniting the left and right in the opposition to the bill. The Tea Party aligned group Freedom Works issued this statement:
CISPA would allow for more information sharing between the private sector and the federal government regarding cyber security. Although this year's CISPA is a net improvement over last year's bill, it still leaves open concerns about private information being shared in the name of national security.
There are grave Fourth Amendment concerns with CISPA. The bill would override existing privacy laws to allow companies to share "cyber threat information" with the federal government without making any reasonable effort to strip out any personal information from the file.
They even have a site to actively Stop CISPA along with the ACLU and the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Strange bedfellows, indeed.
Passage in the Senate without addition of privacy protections is doubtful but one never knows:
The discussion now shifts to the Democrat-controlled Senate, which appears unlikely to act on the legislation in the wake of a presidential veto threat earlier this week, and an executive order in January that may reduce the need for new legislation. Today's House vote, on the other hand, could increase pressure on the Senate to enact some sort of legislation.
Sen. John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who was involved in last year's cybersecurity debate, said after today's vote that "CISPA's privacy protections are insufficient." Still, Rockefeller said, "I believe we can gain bipartisan agreement on bills that we can report out of our committees and allow [Majority Leader Harry Reid] to bring them to the Senate floor as early as possible."
We urge everyone to keep the pressure on the Senate and the White House by calling and e-mailing your objections:
The White House switchboard is 202-456-1414.
The comments line is 202-456-1111.
The White House email address is here
Numbers for the Senate are here.
E-mail addresses for the Senate are here
Please be polite and on point.
The late internet activist Aaron Swartz called CISPA the "The Patriot Act of the Internet".
Contact the White House and your Senators to protect your privacy rights.
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Sat Apr 20, 2013 at 06:00:00 PDT
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Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past "On This Day in History" here.
April 20 is the 110th day of the year (111th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 255 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1939, Billie Holiday records the first Civil Rights song "Strange Fruit".
"Strange Fruit" was written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it condemned American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred chiefly in the South but also in all other regions of the United States. He set it to music and with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York venues, including Madison Square Garden.
The song has been covered by numerous artists, as well as inspiring novels, other poems and other creative works. In 1978 Holiday's version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In the poem, Meeropol expressed his horror at lynchings, possibly after having seen Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. He published the poem in 1936 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine. Though Meeropol/Allan had often asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set "Strange Fruit" to music himself. The piece gained a certain success as a protest song in and around New York. Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden. (Meeropol and his wife later adopted Robert and Michael, sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage and executed by the United States.)
Barney Josephson, the founder of Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. Other reports say that Robert Gordon, who was directing Billie Holiday's show at Cafe Society, heard the song at Madison Square Garden and introduced it to her. Holiday first performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation, but because its imagery reminded her of her father, she continued to sing it. She made the piece a regular part of her live performances. Because of the poignancy of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; second, the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face; and there would be no encore.
Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about the song, but the company feared reaction by record retailers in the South, as well as negative reaction from affiliates of its co-owned radio network, CBS. Even John Hammond, Holiday's producer, refused. She turned to friend Milt Gabler, whose Commodore label produced alternative jazz. Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" for him a cappella, and moved him to tears. Columbia allowed Holiday a one-session release from her contract in order to record it. Frankie Newton's eight-piece Cafe Society Band was used for the session. Because he was worried that the song was too short, Gabler asked pianist Sonny White to improvise an introduction. Consequently Holiday doesn't start singing until after 70 seconds. Gabler worked out a special arrangement with Vocalion Records to record and distribute the song.
She recorded two major sessions at Commodore, one in 1939 and one in 1944. "Strange Fruit" was highly regarded. In time, it became Holiday's biggest-selling record. Though the song became a staple of her live performances, Holiday's accompanist Bobby Tucker recalled that Holiday would break down every time after she sang it
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 21:00:00 PDT
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MILESTONES
A blind Japanese acupuncturist who lives in San Diego is attempting to become the first sightless man to sail across the Pacific Ocean.
A research team led by scientists at the University of Tokyo say they may have found "a clue for developing drugs to kill multidrug-resistant bacteria."
Researchers at the National Cancer Center recommend consuming 20 grams of saturated fatty acid daily to ward off strokes and heart attacks. That's equivalent to "200 grams of milk a day and 150 grams of meat every other day."
Headline of the Week: "Cat and Bird Corpses Left on Store Escalator Again" (via Mainichi Japan)
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 15:00:00 PDT
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 Ashley Del Valle, 38, decided to take a vacation from her home in Queens, New York to sunny Savannah, GA.
Apparently that was her first mistake.
Del Valle has been living as a woman for 20 year and had her name legally changed in 2002. She and her cousin decided a trip to Savannah would be fun. They were wrong.
On Saturday Night, April 6, Ashley chose a sheer blouse to wear on their nightlife adventure for that day. Mistake number two.
Del Valle, who appeared on an episode of TLC's "NY Ink," said she and her cousin were club hopping and hit popular gay club Club One as well as other clubs before stopping in Ellis Square to decide where to go to eat.
She said many people recognized her from the TV show and she was posing for pictures with tourists.
--GA Voice
Early that morning (about 1am) she was arrested for indecent exposure by a Savannah Chatham Metro Police officer. The police report claims that her breasts were exposed. She disputed the arrest, which earned her a second charge of disorderly conduct.
She was then taken to the jail, where a she was examined by a nurse, who discovered she was still "technically male." So she was placed in a holding cell in the men's portion of the jail. For two days she was referred to as "a thing" and otherwise harassed.
I felt like I just wasn't being treated like a human being.
--Del Valle
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Thu Apr 18, 2013 at 21:04:55 PDT
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(2 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
While we were mostly fixed on the aftermath of explosion at the Boston Marathon, a non-partisan 11-member panel, that had been convened by the legal research and advocacy group, Constitution Project to look into the treatment of detainees after 9/11, released a 577 page report (pdf) on Tuesday.
The report relying solely on public records, interviews with detainees, military officers and interrogators, concluded that "it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture" under the Bush administration:
The use of torture, the report concludes, has "no justification" and "damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive." The task force found "no firm or persuasive evidence" that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While "a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information," much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.
At emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler points out the report contains a "number of errors, repetition of dangerous misinformation, and incomplete reporting" but it is still important and comprehensive and its conclusion valuable:
Because even this cautious, bipartisan, institutionalist report concludes the following (among other findings):
Finding #1: U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.
Finding #2: The nation's most senior officials, through some of their actions and failures to act in the months and years immediately following the September 11 attacks, bear ultimate responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of illegal and improper interrogation techniques used by some U.S. personnel on detainees in several theaters. Responsibility also falls on other government officials and certain military leaders.
Finding #3: There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.
Finding #16: For detainee hunger strikers, DOD operating procedures called for practices and actions by medical professionals that were contrary to established medical and professional ethical standards, including improper coercive involuntary feedings early in the course of hunger strikes that, when resisted, were accomplished by physically forced nasogastric tube feedings of detainees who were completely restrained.
Finding #19: The high level of secrecy surrounding the rendition and torture of detainees since September 11 cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security.
Finding #21: The Convention Against Torture requires each state party to "[c]riminalize all acts of torture, attempts to commit torture, or complicity or participation in torture," and "proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction." The United States cannot be said to have complied with this requirement.
The panel was formed after Pres. Barack Obama decided in 2009 not to support a national commission to investigate the post-9/11 counterterrorism programs, as proposed by Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) and others. "Look forward, not backward", the president said. included former Senator Asa Hutchinson (R-AL), who served in President George W. Bush's administration from 2003-2005 as the Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security in the Department of Homeland Security, and former Representative James Jones (D-OK) who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico from 1993-1997. Among the other members were a three-star general and former president of the American Bar Association.
Significantly the New York Times article notes this:
The United States is a signatory to the International Convention Against Torture, which requires the prompt investigation of allegations of torture and the compensation of its victims. [..]
While the Constitution Project report covers mainly the Bush years, it is critical of some Obama administration policies, especially what it calls excessive secrecy. It says that keeping the details of rendition and torture from the public "cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security" and urges the administration to stop citing state secrets to block lawsuits by former detainees. [..]
The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.
The report compares the torture of detainees to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. "What was once generally taken to be understandable and justifiable behavior," the report says, "can later become a case of historical regret."
Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch, joined Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh to discuss the report,s "indisputable" evidence that the Bush administration tortured.
What Marcy said:
In short: it was torture, it was illegal, it was not valuable, and it still needs to be prosecuted.
Instead, The Justice Department instead chose to prosecute Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower John Kiriakou, who refused to participate in torture and helped exposed the torture program. Mr. Kiriakou was sentenced to prison while the torturers he exposed walk free. Nice job, Barack.
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 01:37:07 PDT
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Parts 2 - 4 below the fold.
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Thu Apr 18, 2013 at 21:09:19 PDT
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Within seconds of the two blasts that ended the Boston Marathon, doctors and emergency personnel were faced with decisions that are only usually made in combat, life or limb. Confronted with horrific lower extremity injuries the life saving device that was used over and over was the tourniquet. Around for millennia but fallen into disfavor years ago, tourniquets were only to be used as a last resort to stop life threatening bleeding from a limb when direct pressure, elevation and pressure above the wound did not work. The common belief was that the prolonged cutting off the blood to the limb would lead to amputation. The problem was that there were no good studies to prove it. So up until recently the tourniquet was a last resort.
Then along came the wars in the Middle East. Studies showed there that the timely use of a tourniquet resulted in survival rates as high as 90 percent. Contrary to past fears, the tourniquets themselves didn't cause any limb loss, even in the rare cases when patients had to keep them on for two to three hours. Considering that blood loss is the leading cause of death in a trauma patient and a person can bleed to death in three minutes from a severed femoral artery, the large blood vessel in the upper leg, the choice is simple. Every paramedic is now trained to apply a tourniquet. Since 2006, a tourniquet is issued to every soldier.
Here are some simple guidelines to use if you are ever confronted with a major limb bleed:
First, apply direct pressure with your hand or a cloth. Don't worry about clean, at this point it doesn't matter. If you're not alone have someone call 911. If you are alone do it first, you can always put the phone down and yell into it while you're applying pressure.
Elevate the extremity if possible.
If you're unable to control the bleeding quickly, or the injury is really big, or an partial or full amputation, then you need a tourniquet. Find something long, strong and pliable. Shirts, pants, something that can be torn onto a long strip; belts (Should be at least 1 1/2 inches wide).
Place the tourniquet around the arm or leg between the wound and the heart.
Tie a half-knot - the same as the first part of the knot when you tie a shoe, but have not finished the knot.
Place a strong stick on top of the half knot. Anything long and rigid will do, improvise. If at home, a large serving spoon or kitchen utensil; in the workshop a screw driver; a pen, pencil, you get the idea.
Tie a full knot over the stick.
Twist the stick until the material is tight around the limb and/or the bright red bleeding has stopped.
If you have enough length, loop the loose ends of the tourniquet over the ends of the stick. Bring the ends around the arm or leg and tie the ends together around the limb. This is so that the tourniquet cannot loosen. Or, tie other material around to hold the stick.
Belts of course can be pulled as tight as needed to stop the bleeding but you may be "married" to holding it tight until help arrives, if it can't be secured so it won't come loose.
Outside a controlled hospital setting, this is called damage control, or how to save a life.
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 06:00:00 PDT
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Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past "On This Day in History" here.
April 19 is the 109th day of the year (110th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 256 days remaining until the end of the year.
 On this day in 1775, the American Revolution beginsAt about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town's common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.
First shot
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his "Concord Hymn", described the first shot fired by the Patriots at the North Bridge as the "shot heard "round the world."
A British officer, probably Pitcairn, but accounts are uncertain, as it may also have been Lieutenant William Sutherland, then rode forward, waving his sword, and called out for the assembled throng to disperse, and may also have ordered them to "lay down your arms, you damned rebels!" Captain Parker told his men instead to disperse and go home, but, because of the confusion, the yelling all around, and due to the raspiness of Parker's tubercular voice, some did not hear him, some left very slowly, and none laid down their arms. Both Parker and Pitcairn ordered their men to hold fire, but a shot was fired from an unknown source.
According to one member of Parker's militia none of the Americans had discharged their muskets as they faced the oncoming British troops. The British did suffer one casualty, a slight wound, the particulars of which were corroborated by a deposition made by Corporal John Munroe. Munroe stated that:
"After the first fire of the regulars, I thought, and so stated to Ebenezer Munroe ...who stood next to me on the left, that they had fired nothing but powder; but on the second firing, Munroe stated they had fired something more than powder, for he had received a wound in his arm; and now, said he, to use his own words, 'I'll give them the guts of my gun.' We then both took aim at the main body of British troops the smoke preventing our seeing anything but the heads of some of their horses and discharged our pieces."
Some witnesses among the regulars reported the first shot was fired by a colonial onlooker from behind a hedge or around the corner of a tavern. Some observers reported a mounted British officer firing first. Both sides generally agreed that the initial shot did not come from the men on the ground immediately facing each other. Speculation arose later in Lexington that a man named Solomon Brown fired the first shot from inside the tavern or from behind a wall, but this has been discredited. Some witnesses (on each side) claimed that someone on the other side fired first; however, many more witnesses claimed to not know. Yet another theory is that the first shot was one fired by the British, that killed Asahel Porter, their prisoner who was running away (he had been told to walk away and he would be let go, though he panicked and began to run). Historian David Hackett Fischer has proposed that there may actually have been multiple near-simultaneous shots. Historian Mark Urban claims the British surged forward with bayonets ready in an undisciplined way, provoking a few scattered shots from the militia. In response the British troops, without orders, fired a devastating volley. This lack of discipline among the British troops had a key role in the escalation of violence.
Nobody except the person responsible knew then, nor knows today with certainty, who fired the first shot of the American Revolution.
Witnesses at the scene described several intermittent shots fired from both sides before the lines of regulars began to fire volleys without receiving orders to do so. A few of the militiamen believed at first that the regulars were only firing powder with no ball, but when they realized the truth, few if any of the militia managed to load and return fire. The rest wisely ran for their lives.
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Fri Apr 19, 2013 at 03:10:09 PDT
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Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Up Date 08:00 EDT: The two suspects have been identified as brothers who have been living legally in the US:
The suspects are Chechen brothers with the last name Tsarnaev, law enforcement officials told NBC News. The suspect at large, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is 19, was born in Kyrgyzstan and has a Massachusetts driver's license, they said. The dead suspect was identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, born in Russia.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was run over by a vehicle during the firefight, law enforcement officials told NBC News. Law enforcement officials also told NBC News that the brothers entered the United States in 2002 or 2003, and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev became a legal permanent resident in 2007. [..]
Law enforcement officials said the tumult began just before 11 p.m., when the suspects approached a police officer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and shot him in the head.
The two then stole the officer's cruiser, robbed a nearby 7-Eleven, carjacked a Mercedes SUV and briefly kidnapped the driver, the sources said. The suspects threw explosives out the window during the chase that followed, they said. A Boston transit police officer was shot and wounded, authorities said.
Up Date 06:05 EDT: From The Guardian:
All public transport has been suspended including buses and subways in the Massachusetts Bay area - Boston and the surrounding areas - it was announced. People at stations were asked to "please go home" and not congregate waiting for the system to come back.
The authorities want the residents of Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Bellamont, Cambridge, and the Austin and Brighton neighbourhoods of Boston to stay indoors for the time being. They are also asking businesses there not to open.
The person who was identified as suspect #1 came into the hospital in "traumatic arrest" and was pronounced dead at 01:35 EDT. He died of multiple gunshot wounds and blast injuries. Suspect #2 is still at large. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous.
Up Date 04:57 EDT: The Guardian is reporting that one of the suspects was shot and killed as per police at a news conference. The other is still at large.
A shooting late last night on the campus of MIT that left a campus police officer dead and a shoot out in Watertown, MA with explosions, may be related to the deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon. The FBI released photos of two suspects in that case.
There are a lot of conflicting reports that about these two incidents and whether or not they are related to each other or the marathon explosions. There is one person in custody but it is unknown if this person one of the suspects.
One suspect apprehended, another remains on the loose
By Wesley Lowery, Akilah Johnson, Eric Moskowitz and Lisa Wangsness, The Boston Globe
WATERTOWN, MA - One suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon bombings has been captured, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation. Another remains on the loose in Watertown after a firefight with police. Authorities have established a 20-block perimeter as they search for him.
A scene of chaos descended on Cambridge and Watertown late Thursday night and early Friday morning, as police confirmed an MIT police officer was shot and killed, and an apparent carjacking led police on a wild chase into Watertown.
Witnesses in Watertown said they heard explosions. Police officers were screaming about improvised explosive devices.
Authorities would not comment on whether the events were connected to Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. At least one of the suspects in Watertown appeared to be a man in his 20s.
Here is the live feed from MSNBC. The commentators are being very cautious in their reporting.
Here is the live feed from The Guardian.
Update from Think Progress-
Law enforcement officials believe that one suspect in Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon was killed Friday morning after a shootout and car chase with police, while the other is still on the loose. NBC's Pete Williams reports that the two are brothers, age 19 and 20, and are legal permanent residents of the United States, living in Cambridge. The first suspect was taken into custody by police and was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Hospital at 1:35 AM. As many as nine thousand police officers are now conducting a door-to-door search for the second individual, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev according to NBC, and are asking residents to stay in their homes.
The two robbed a 7/11, killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus police officer in his car after 10 PM on Thursday night and later carjacked a Mercedes SUV. Pete Williams of NBC News reports that the suspects told the man that they killed a police officer and were the marathon bombers. The owner of the car was held at gunpoint for 30 minutes and later released near a gas station in Cambridge.
The men then led police on a chase to Watertown, where they exchanged gunfire and threw bombs out of the vehicle window at law enforcement, including one made from a pressure cooker. They stopped the car in Watertown, where the first suspect got out, was shot and likely detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) strapped to his chest. The second suspect drives on and later abandons the car.
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Thu Apr 18, 2013 at 02:48:10 PDT
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Apparently it was a drive by shooting.
Ringling Bros circus elephant recuperates from Mississippi shooting
Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian
Monday 15 April 2013 13.59 EDT
The Asian elephant was touring with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Tupelo, when she was shot near the shoulder while relaxing in her enclosure. A suspect was witnessed fleeing the scene, and multiple agencies have contributed money in a bid to track him or her down.
...
"It was surreal, I just couldn't believe it," Carden said of the moment she realised Carol had been wounded. "I saw a hole in my elephant, and a trickle of blood running down her leg, and she was just standing there like nothing had happened."
...
The Asian elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and there are believed to be fewer than 50,000 left in the wild.
Carol has entertained crowds across the US during her career, but Carden said the elephant had no known enemies. Although two other elephants in the enclosure escaped unharmed, Carden ruled out the possibility of the gunman having a grudge against Carol specifically.
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Thu Apr 18, 2013 at 05:10:41 PDT
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(2 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Adapted from Rant of the Week at The Stars Hollow Gazette
Empire of the Gun
The Senate preserves America's right to sell weapons to international terrorists and drug lords.
Senate votes 53-46 to stop US from joining UN Arms Trade Treaty
by Ramsey Cox, The Hill
In the last batch of amendment votes to the budget, the Senate voted on several foreign policy proposals.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment that would prevent the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty in order to uphold the Second Amendment. His amendment passed on a 53-46 vote.
Republicans have been critical of President Obama's decision to consider the treaty, although Obama has said he would not vote for anything that would violate the Second Amendment.
The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty would regulate international arms sales. Negotiations end on March 28.
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Thu Apr 18, 2013 at 01:57:15 PDT
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Republicans pull plug on Mark Sanford
By ALEX ISENSTADT, Politico
4/17/13 1:47 PM EDT
Blindsided by news that Sanford's ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford's behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.
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The NRCC's move comes hours after Tuesday night's report by the Associated Press that Sanford's ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, filed a court complaint accusing him of trespassing at her home in early February - which would be a violation of the terms of their divorce agreement.
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(T)he news of the alleged trespassing once again thrusts Sanford's damaged family life to the forefront of the campaign. It threatens to undercut his already shaky support among women, who polls show are unenthusiastic about voting for an admitted adulterer.
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And, most dangerous of all, it undermines what had been the driving theme of the ex-governor's campaign: that he has learned from his personal mistakes and put them behind him.
"The reason this is bad is because it takes all of Sanford's problems in the past and takes them right into the present," said one GOP official. "Every dollar that he's spent reforming his image has been wiped away."
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"It's an unfortunate reality that divorced couples sometimes have disagreements that spill over into family court," he said. "I did indeed watch the second half of the Super Bowl at the beach house with our 14 year old son because as a father I didn't think he should watch it alone. Given she was out of town I tried to reach her beforehand to tell her of the situation that had arisen, and met her at the back steps under the light of my cell phone when she returned and told her what had happened.
"There is always another side to every story, and while I am particularly curious how records that were sealed to avoid the boys dealing with embarrassment are now somehow exposed less than three weeks before this election, I agree with Jenny that the media is no place to debate what is ultimately a family court matter, and out of respect for Jenny and the boys, I'm not going to have any further comment at this time," Sanford said.
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Thu Apr 18, 2013 at 06:00:00 PDT
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Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past "On This Day in History" here.
April 18 is the 108th day of the year (109th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 257 days remaining until the end of the year.
 On this day in 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Minutemen.
By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
On the night of April 18-19, 1775, just hours before the battles of Lexington and Concord, Revere performed his "Midnight Ride". He and William Dawes were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army, which was beginning a march from Boston to Lexington, ostensibly to arrest Hancock and Adams and seize the weapons stores in Concord.
The British army (the King's "regulars") had been stationed in Boston since the ports were closed in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, and was under constant surveillance by Revere and other patriots as word began to spread that they were planning a move. On the night of April 18, 1775, the army began its move across the Charles River toward Lexington, and the Sons of Liberty immediately went into action. At about 11 pm, Revere was sent by Dr. Warren across the Charles River to Charlestown, on the opposite shore, where he could begin a ride to Lexington, while Dawes was sent the long way around, via the Boston Neck and the land route to Lexington.
In the days before April 18, Revere had instructed Robert Newman, the sexton of the Old North Church, to send a signal by lantern to alert colonists in Charlestown as to the movements of the troops when the information became known. In what is well known today by the phrase "one if by land, two if by sea", one lantern in the steeple would signal the army's choice of the land route, while two lanterns would signal the route "by water" across the Charles River. This was done to get the message through to Charlestown in the event that both Revere and Dawes were captured. Newman and Captain John Pulling momentarily held two lanterns in the Old North Church as Revere himself set out on his ride, to indicate that the British soldiers were in fact crossing the Charles River that night. Revere rode a horse lent to him by John Larkin, Deacon of the Old North Church.
There were other riders that night besides Dawes, including a woman, Sybil Ludington. The other men were Israel Bissel and Samuel Prescott. a doctor who happened to be in Lexington "returning from a lady friend's house at the awkward hour of 1 a.m."
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Tue Apr 16, 2013 at 21:22:16 PDT
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(4 pm. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Former Greek Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou inherited a failing economy when he was sworn in on October 9, 2009. He resigned two years later during failed talks of a bailout with the "troika" of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank and the European Union. Mr. Papamdreou discussed the cost of austerity with Chris Hayes, the host of "All In," economics journalist Chrystia Freeland, managing director and editor of Consumer News at Thomson Reuters, and economics professor Radhika Balakrishnan, executive director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University.
In the news today, Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournara announced that Greece had reached an agreement on economic measures for the release of €2.8bn in the coming weeks, followed by a further €6bn in May. The cost to bail out the banks: some 15,000 employees would be fired by 2015 with 4,000 redundancies by the end of the year.
Meanwhile Greek unemployment has reached a record high:
Greece's unemployment rate reached a new record of 27.2 percent in January, new data has showed, reflecting the depth of the country's recession after years of austerity imposed under its international bailout. [..]
The jobless rate has almost tripled since the country's debt crisis emerged in 2009, and was more than twice the eurozone's average unemployment reading of 12 percent. [..]
Unemployment among youth aged between 15 and 24 stood at 59.3 percent in January, up from 51 percent in the same month in 2012.
Despite the "happy talk" from Prime Minister Antonis Samaras about this deal showing that the six years of austerity was paying off, the people of Greece are not very optimistic and are still suffering under the weight of EU demands for more austerity.
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Tue Apr 16, 2013 at 21:10:34 PDT
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How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake?
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy ReSearch
Tuesday, 16 April 2013 09:49
Just to remind folks, Reinhart and Rogoff (R&R;) are the authors of the widely acclaimed book on the history of financial crises, This Time is Different. They have also done several papers derived from this research, the main conclusion of which is that high ratios of debt to GDP lead to a long periods of slow growth. Their story line is that 90 percent is a cutoff line, with countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above this level seeing markedly slower growth than countries that have debt-to-GDP ratios below this level. The moral is to make sure the debt-to-GDP ratio does not get above 90 percent.
There are all sorts of good reasons for questioning this logic. First, there is good reason for believing causation goes the other way. Countries are likely to have high debt-to-GDP ratios because they are having serious economic problems.
Second, as Josh Bivens and John Irons have pointed out, the story of the bad growth in high debt years in the United States is driven by the demobilization after World War II. In other words, these were not bad economic times, the years of high debt in the United States had slow growth because millions of women opted to leave the paid labor force.
Third, the whole notion of public debt turns out to be ill-defined. Countries can sell off assets to pay down debts, would this avoid the R&R; high debt twilight zone of slow growth? In fact, even the value of debt itself is not constant.Long-term debt issued in times of low interest rates will fall in value when interest rates rise. If there is a high debt twilight zone effect as R&R; claim, then we can just buy back bonds at steep discounts and send our debt-to-GDP ratio plummeting.
But HAP (Herndon, Ash, and Pollin) tells us that we need not concern ourselves with any arguments this complicated. The basic R&R; story was simply the result of them getting their own numbers wrong.
After being unable to reproduce R&R;'s results with publicly available data, HAP were able to get the spreadsheets that R&R; had used for their calculations. It turns out that the initial results were driven by simple computational and transcription errors. The most important of these errors was excluding four years of growth data from New Zealand in which it was above the 90 percent debt-to-GDP threshold. When these four years are added in, the average growth rate in New Zealand for its high debt years was 2.6 percent, compared to the -7.6 percent that R&R; had entered in their calculation.
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If facts mattered in economic policy debates, this should be the cause for a major reassessment of the deficit reduction policies being pursued in the United States and elsewhere. It should also cause reporters to be a bit slower to accept such sweeping claims at face value.
Holy Coding Error, Batman
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
April 16, 2013, 1:38 pm
The intellectual edifice of austerity economics rests largely on two academic papers that were seized on by policy makers, without ever having been properly vetted, because they said what the Very Serious People wanted to hear. One was Alesina/Ardagna on the macroeconomic effects of austerity, which immediately became exhibit A for those who wanted to believe in expansionary austerity. Unfortunately, even aside from the paper's failure to distinguish between episodes in which monetary policy was available and those in which it wasn't, it turned out that their approach to measuring austerity was all wrong; when the IMF used a measure that tracked actual policy, it turned out that contractionary policy was contractionary.
The other paper, which has had immense influence - largely because in the VSP world it is taken to have established a definitive result - was Reinhart/Rogoff on the negative effects of debt on growth. Very quickly, everyone "knew" that terrible things happen when debt passes 90 percent of GDP.
Some of us never bought it, arguing that the observed correlation between debt and growth probably reflected reverse causation. But even I never dreamed that a large part of the alleged result might reflect nothing more profound than bad arithmetic.
Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems.
Mike Konczal, Next New Deal
Apr 16, 2013
(T)hree main issues stand out. First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth. Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries. Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries. All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don't get their controversial result.
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This error is needed to get the results they published, and it would go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible for others to replicate these results. If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.
So what do Herndon-Ash-Pollin conclude? They find "the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0.1 percent as [Reinhart-Rogoff claim]." [UPDATE: To clarify, they find 2.2 percent if they include all the years, weigh by number of years, and avoid the Excel error.] Going further into the data, they are unable to find a breakpoint where growth falls quickly and significantly.
Reinhart/Rogoff is the study all the Austerian politicians and pundits, Republican AND Democratic, cite to claim we have a debt/deficit problem.
Well today, with no more changes in policy at all, we no longer have a defict problem and Reinhart/Rogoff is wrong, Wrong, WRONG!
You think that will stop them?
Heh.
Republicans embrace Obama's offer to trim Social Security benefits
By Lori Montgomery, Washington Post
Apr 15, 2013 11:53 PM EDT
President Obama's offer to trim Social Security benefits has perplexed and angered Democrats, but GOP leaders are embracing the proposal and rushing to jump-start a debate that will delve even more deeply into the touchy topic of federal spending on the elderly.
This week, two House subcommittees plan to hold hearings on "reforms to protect and preserve" programs for retirees, starting with Obama's proposal to apply a less generous measure of inflation to annual increases in Social Security benefits.
Also on the table are higher Medicare premiums and reduced benefits for better-off seniors, and a higher Medicare eligibility age.
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Tue Apr 16, 2013 at 21:19:01 PDT
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Cross posted Messing With the Wrong City] from [The Stars Hollow Gazette
Time to take action. As I reported last week the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act(CISPA) was sent to the House for a vote.
From an e-mail that Joan McCarter at Daily Kos posted the e-mail from the White House issuing a veto threat of the bill as it currently stands:
The Administration recognizes and appreciates that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) adopted several amendments to H.R. 624 in an effort to incorporate the Administration's important substantive concerns. However, the Administration still seeks additional improvements and if the bill, as currently crafted, were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill. The Administration seeks to build upon the continuing dialogue with the HPSCI and stands ready to work with members of Congress to incorporate our core priorities to produce cybersecurity information sharing legislation that addresses these critical issues.
H.R. 624 appropriately requires the Federal Government to protect privacy when handling cybersecurity information. Importantly, the Committee removed the broad national security exemption, which significantly weakened the restrictions on how this information could be used by the government. The Administration, however, remains concerned that the bill does not require private entities to take reasonable steps to remove irrelevant personal information when sending cybersecurity data to the government or other private sector entities. Citizens have a right to know that corporations will be held accountable-and not granted immunity-for failing
to safeguard personal information adequately. [emphasis in original]
House Democrats are now rallying in opposition to the bill:
Four Democratic members say the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, as written "would undermine the interests of citizens and their privacy" despite the addition of five privacy-focused amendments adopted to the bill last week. They argue that the amendments do not go far enough to ease their concerns.
"Without further amendments to protect privacy and civil liberties, we cannot support the bill," the House Democratic lawmakers write in the "Dear Colleague" letter.
"The bill has improved from earlier versions, but even with the amendments adopted, CISPA unacceptably and unnecessarily compromises the privacy interests of Americans online," they add.
Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Rush Holt (D-N.J.) signed the letter.
The House Rules Committee will meet on Tuesday afternoon to approve the rule for the bill, which will determine what amendments will be voted on in the House later this week. House members have until Tuesday morning to file their proposed amendments to the bill.
There are twelve Democratic co-sponsors to the bill. We need to send tell them to withdraw their support:
Ruppersberger, A. Dutch [D-MD2]
Costa, Jim [D-CA16]
Cuellar, Henry [D-TX28]
Enyart, William [D-IL12]
Gutierrez, Luis [D-IL4]
Hastings, Alcee [D-FL20]
Kilmer, Derek [D-WA6]
Lipinski, Daniel [D-IL3]
Peters, Scott [D-CA52]
Sewell, Terri [D-AL7]
Sinema, Kyrsten [D-AZ9]
Vargas, Juan [D-CA51]
The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EEF) is urging action:
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is supposed to promote cybersecurity- a goal EFF wholeheartedly supports - but it doesn't address common-sense network security issues. Instead, it creates a new, dangerous exception to existing privacy laws. That's why hundreds of thousands of concerned Internet users have joined EFF and other civil liberties groups in opposing the bill. This is our last chance to stop it in the House.
Despite recent amendments, CISPA still features vague language that could put your personal information in the hands of military organizations like the National Security Agency.
Can you call your representative and tell him or her to oppose this bill? We'll give you the phone number for your representative and a very brief suggested script. Click here to call Congress now.
Not in the United States? Click here to sign our petition.
We want to generate thousands of calls between now and the vote-likely on Thursday. Please call now and then tell your friends to speak out on this important issue. It's as easy as posting this on your social networking accounts:
Congress is about to vote on CISPA. If you care about online privacy, you've got to speak out now: https://eff.org/r.5bPw
You can also use Twitter tool to tell key members of Congress to stand up for your privacy and vote NO on CISPA.
The White House switchboard is 202-456-1414.
The comments line is 202-456-1111.
Numbers for the Senate are here.
Numbers for the House are here.
The late internet activist Aaron Swartz called CISPA the "The Patriot Act of the Internet".
Call the White House and your representatives to protect your privacy rights.
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Wed Apr 17, 2013 at 06:00:00 PDT
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Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past "On This Day in History" here.
April 17 is the 107th day of the year (108th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 258 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1961, The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a CIA-financed and -trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. The attack was an utter failure.
Fidel Castro had been a concern to U.S. policymakers since he seized power in Cuba with a revolution in January 1959. Castro's attacks on U.S. companies and interests in Cuba, his inflammatory anti-American rhetoric, and Cuba's movement toward a closer relationship with the Soviet Union led U.S. officials to conclude that the Cuban leader was a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train and arm a force of Cuban exiles for an armed attack on Cuba. John F. Kennedy inherited this program when he became president in 1961.
Political Background
On March 17, 1960, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a document prepared by the 5412 Committee (also known as the 'Special Group'), at a meeting of the US National Security Council (NSC). The stated first objective of the plan began as follows:
A PROGRAM OF COVERT ACTION AGAINST THE CASTRO REGIME
1. Objective: The purpose of the program outlined herein is to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the U.S. in such a manner to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention.
The outline plan (code-named Operation Pluto) was organized by CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Mervin Bissell, Jr., under CIA Director Allen Dulles. Having experience in actions such as the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'etat, Dulles was confident that the CIA was capable of overthrowing the Cuban government as led by prime minister Fidel Castro since February 1959. The first detailed CIA plan proposed a ship-borne invasion at the old colonial city of Trinidad, Cuba, about 270 km (170 mi) south-east of Havana, at the foothills of the Escambray Mountains in Sancti Spiritus province. Trinidad had good port facilities, it was closer to many existing counter-revolutionary activities, it had an easily defensible beachhead, and it offered an escape route into the Escambray Mountains. When that plan was rejected by the State Department, the CIA went on to propose an alternative plan. On April 4, 1961, President Kennedy then approved the Bay of Pigs plan (also known as Operation Zapata), because it had an airfield that would not need to be extended to handle bomber operations, it was further away from large groups of civilians than the Trinidad plan, and it was less "noisy" militarily, which would make any future denial of direct US involvement more plausible. The invasion landing area was changed to beaches bordering the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) in Las Villas Province, 150 km south-east of Havana, and east of the Zapata peninsula. The landings were to take place at Playa Giron (code-named Blue Beach), Playa Larga (code-named Red Beach), and Caleta Buena Inlet (code-named Green Beach).
In March 1961, the CIA helped Cuban exiles in Miami to create the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC), chaired by Jose Miro Cardona, former Prime Minister of Cuba in January 1959. Cardona became the de facto leader-in-waiting of the intended post-invasion Cuban government.
 Bay of Pigs: The Invasion
The first part of the plan was to destroy Castro's tiny air force, making it impossible for his military to resist the invaders. On April 15, 1961, a group of Cuban exiles took off from Nicaragua in a squadron of American B-26 bombers, painted to look like stolen Cuban planes, and conducted a strike against Cuban airfields. However, it turned out that Castro and his advisers knew about the raid and had moved his planes out of harm's way. Frustrated, Kennedy began to suspect that the plan the CIA had promised would be "both clandestine and successful" might in fact be "too large to be clandestine and too small to be successful."
But it was too late to apply the brakes. On April 17, the Cuban exile brigade began its invasion at an isolated spot on the island's southern shore known as the Bay of Pigs. Almost immediately, the invasion was a disaster. The CIA had wanted to keep it a secret for as long as possible, but a radio station on the beach (which the agency's reconnaissance team had failed to spot) broadcast every detail of the operation to listeners across Cuba. Unexpected coral reefs sank some of the exiles' ships as they pulled into shore. Backup paratroopers landed in the wrong place. Before long, Castro's troops had pinned the invaders on the beach, and the exiles surrendered after less than a day of fighting; 114 were killed and over 1,100 were taken prisoner.
Bay of Pigs: The Aftermath
According to many historians, the CIA and the Cuban exile brigade believed that President Kennedy would eventually allow the American military to intervene in Cuba on their behalf. However, the president was resolute: As much as he did not want to "abandon Cuba to the communists," he said, he would not start a fight that might end in World War III. His efforts to overthrow Castro never flagged-in November 1961, he approved Operation Mongoose, an espionage and sabotage campaign-but never went so far as to provoke an outright war. In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis inflamed American-Cuban-Soviet tensions even further.
Fidel Castro is still Cuba's symbolic leader today, although his younger brother Raul (1931-) has taken over the presidency and serves as commander in chief of the armed forces.
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