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A 61-YEAR-OLD man from Donegal has been charged in relation to an attack in London’s Hyde Park that killed four soldiers in July 1982.
John Anthony Downey is due at Westminster Magistrates Court later this afternoon charged with the murder of Roy John Bright, Dennis Richard Anthony Daly, Simon Andrew Tipper and Geoffrey Vernon Young – all members of the Royal Household Cavalry who were travelling from their barracks to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard.

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After hearing from aldermen, angry parents and community members in a meeting interrupted several times by protesters, the Chicago Board of Education today approved a plan to close 49 elementary schools and one high school program.

The board voted 4-2 to close Von Humboldt Elementary, then unanimously approved the rest of the closings in a single vote. (Read a recap of the meeting on our blog HERE.)
Before that, the board voted 6-0 to approve a last-minute recommendation by the district to spare four elementary schools: Manierre Elementary on the Near North Side, Mahalia Jackson and Garvey on the South Side and Ericson on the West Side.

After more than two hours of public comments, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and board members defended the plan to close the highest number of schools the city has ever shut down in a single year.

“We can no longer embrace the status quo because the status quo is not working for all Chicago school children,” Byrd-Bennett said before the vote was taken. “It is imperative that you take the difficult decision but essential steps.”

The district says it needs to close schools to address a looming $1 billion deficit and declining enrollment.

Board President David Vitale, in his remarks before the vote, said that while closing schools is difficult “ultimately it is our responsibility to choose.”

“Today's reality requires change,” he said.

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Thomas Jefferson – one of my long-time heroes – was convinced that he and his friends blew the chance they had to establish true freedom in America. I know that a hundred thousand self-praising textbooks, speeches, pundits and songs claim that Jefferson and the rest established freedom, but that’s NOT what Jefferson thought, and that is NOT what he said. (You can choose who to believe for yourself.)

Nearly fifty years after the declaration of independence, he was of the opinion that the founders did not fully live up to the moment presented to them.

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Washington (CNN) -- The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" immigration reform bill on Tuesday, sending the measure to the Senate floor for further consideration and giving the bill's backers their first major legislative victory.

Members of the Democratic-controlled panel voted 13-5 in favor of the measure.
If enacted, the plan would constitute the first overhaul of the nation's immigration policy since 1986.

The committee's ten Democrats were joined in supporting the bill by three Republicans: Arizona's Jeff Flake, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, and Utah's Orrin Hatch.

Flake and Graham are two of the bill's four Republican authors.
Both party leaders in the Senate appeared supportive of the effort, a positive sign for backers hoping to win a solid majority in the full chamber.

"I think the 'Gang of Eight' has made a substantial contribution to moving the issue forward," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. "I'm hopeful we'll be able to get a bill that we can pass here in the Senate."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, praised the "masterful" job of Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, in navigating roughly 300 proposed amendments and advancing the 844-page bill to the floor.

The measure will create a 13-year path to citizenship for most of the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

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It went largely unnoticed at the end of last week due to the Obama scandalpalooza, but the Congressional Budget Office's score of President Obama's budget was released on Friday afternoon. The short summary is that a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts would decrease the budget deficit over the next four years, but the Obama budget does very little on entitlement reform and the coming tsunami of entitlement spending pushes the government ever more into the red.

The Associated Press' summary led with "Obama budget cuts deficits by $1.1 trillion" but, as Nick Gillespie points out, delving down into the actual numbers yields some worrying results. The short-term deficit is larger than the CBO's baseline, and the long-term budget only cuts the deficit relative to the baseline by - you guessed it - massive tax hikes.



Moreover, the largest spending cut in President Obama's budget comes from winding down overseas contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A quirk of the federal budget causes the CBO to assume that OCOs would never cease. So President Obama uses the over $600 billion in budget "savings" from winding down overseas wars and puts it towards more spending programs. In total, as the AP reported, there's $172 billion in spending cuts - which means that most of that war draw-down "savings" are put towards more spending.

President Obama's budget is pretty typical for what we know about his economic philosophy. He's a Keynesian, which means the short-term deficit reduction makes sense. He also doesn't think that America's long-term entitlement problems are actually problems that need addressing - so his failure to address them, and then allow budget deficits and debt to rise in the medium- and long-term, also makes sense. While you may have read that President Obama's budget gets the deficit under control, it's mostly a one-time occasion that is predicated by an economic recovery and President Obama's tax hikes.

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It has long been part of the Washington game for officials to discredit a news story by playing up errors in a relatively small part of it. Pfeiffer gives the impression that GOP operatives deliberately tried to “smear the president” with false, doctored e-mails.

But the reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes of e-mails that could not be kept. The fact that slightly different versions of the e-mails were reported by different journalists suggests there were different note-takers as well.

Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor e-mails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did). Clearly, of course, Republicans would put their own spin on what the e-mails meant, as they did in the House report. Given that the e-mails were almost certain to leak once they were sent to Capitol Hill, it’s a wonder the White House did not proactively release them earlier.

The burden of proof lies with the accuser. Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists.

Three Pinocchios

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WASHINGTON — Even as Apple became the nation’s most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday.

The investigation is expected to set up a potentially explosive confrontation between a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at a public hearing on Tuesday.

Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.

“Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that is holding the public hearing Tuesday into Apple’s use of tax havens. “Apple successfully sought the holy grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”

Thanks to what lawmakers called “gimmicks” and “schemes,” Apple was able to largely sidestep taxes on tens of billions of dollars it earned outside the United States in recent years. Last year, international operations accounted for 61 percent of Apple’s total revenue.

Investigators have not accused Apple of breaking any laws and the company is hardly the only American multinational to face scrutiny for using complex corporate structures and tax havens to sidestep taxes. In recent months, revelations from European authorities about the tax avoidance strategies used by Google, Starbucks and Amazon have all stirred public anger and spurred several European governments, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based research organization for the world’s richest countries, to discuss measures to close the loopholes.

Still, the findings about Apple were remarkable both for the enormous amount of money involved and the audaciousness of the company’s assertion that its subsidiaries are beyond the reach of any taxing authority.

“There is a technical term economists like to use for behavior like this,” said Edward Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a former staff director at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “Unbelievable chutzpah.”

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The Treasury Department announced further steps to keep funding the government without going over the nation’s debt limit, amid a stalemate between Congress and the Obama administration on approving an increase in the ceiling.

The U.S. declared a “debt-issuance suspension period” under the statute governing the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. That allows the U.S. to redeem existing Treasury securities held by the fund as investments, and suspend new investment. Each month a debt-issuance suspension period lasts frees up about $6.4 billion, according to the Treasury.

During this period, civil service benefit payments will continue to be paid and won’t be affected by the action. However, once all of the so-called extraordinary measures it has at its disposal to avoid breaching the limit have been exhausted, the U.S. government will be limited in its ability to make payments across the government, the Treasury says.

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Math teacher Tommi Kuusisto was in life threatening situation in March of last year, when school shooter was aiming hunting rifle at him.

City of Orivesi and parent union of local school applied him for lifesaving medal, President Sauli Niinistö approved it yesterday.


Incident started when 22-year old man tried to enter the classroom during school day. Earlier he had shot a father of his ex-girlfriend with a flare gun. And now he was in search of the girl.


Teacher heard a knock and opened a door, he was face to face with a man who was aiming a hunting rifle at his chest and demanded for him to pass.


When the teacher did not comply the perpetrator tried to fire the rifle, but the rifle jammed. The teacher then managed to shove him back to the hallway and was able to lock the door. After that the perpetrator shot five times through the door.


Despite the life threatening situation the teacher was able to call the police and inform them of the situation. He told students to go by the wall and stay behind desks. He kept his calm and doing so was able to calm the students down.


- I was thinking of what would happen if he managed to open the door.


Incident took place in Friday and he was back at work on Monday.


- I thought it's better if I just faced my workplace as soon as possible and continued working.


The perpetrator was charged with three attempted murders and one attempted manslaughter. Because of his mental state the charges were dropped and he was put on involuntary mental care (pretty much a life sentence in mental hospital).

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Dan Pfeiffer – Mr. Irrelevant

POSTED AT 10:45 AM ON MAY 20, 2013 BY DUANE PATTERSON




I realize the gang here was all over all the relevant irrelevance spouted by Dan Pfeiffer, addressed mainly by subject. But it’s worth noting that for the first time in American culture, we now have two reigning men that are Mr. Irrelevant. And I don’t think Dan Pfeiffer played much football.
In an annual tradition that began in 1976 by former player, businessman and part-time actor Paul Salata, the very last person picked in the NFL draft each year, sometimes 450 selections after the draft commences, hosts a week long golf tournament, regatta, roast, and presents Mr. Irrelevant with the Lowsman Trophy, which is of course the opposite of the Heisman Trophy. The trophy itself strikes the same pose as the Heisman, except with the player fumbling the ball.
Until yesterday, Mr. Irrelevant lived only in the hearts of minds of only the most loyal followers of the draft. Thanks to his stunning performance on the Sunday show circuit yesterday, Mr. Irrelevant should now forever be linked to Obama special assistant Dan Pfeiffer, who saw the law, the Benghazi talking points, and where Obama was the night of the attack last September 11th on our consulate, all as being irrelevant.
Now if only we could undo the damange of Obamacare and make the rest of the administration just as irrelevant. The country would be far better off.

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Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has caused controversy in Greece by suggesting that he would send anyone who does not support SYRIZA to a “gulag”.


Zizek met with SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras in Croatia last week when the pair were taking part in the Subversive Festival. Tsipras also met US director Oliver Stone there.


During a panel discussion with Tsipras, Zizek expressed his appreciation for SYRIZA. The academic had appeared alongside Tsipras in Athens ahead of last summer’s national elections as well.
“SYRIZA is one of the bright lights in Europe today,” Zizek told the audience in Zagreb.
However, it was his comments regarding those who do not support SYRIZA that attracted criticism in Greece on Monday, when the video drew attention on social media.
“If they don’t support SYRIZA then, in my vision of the democratic future, all these people will get from me a first class one-way ticket to [a] gulag,” he said.

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Link
More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.

The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million).
President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income.
The government has been forced to redraft a proposed bill to levy a temporary 75 percent tax on earnings over 1 million euros, which had been one of Hollande's campaign pledges.
The Constitutional Council has judged such a high rate of taxation to be unfair, leaving the government to rehash it to hit companies rather than individuals.

Since then, a top administrative court has determined that a marginal tax rate higher than 66.66 percent on a single household risked being considered as confiscatory by the council.
Les Echos reported that nearly 12,000 households paid taxes last year worth more than 75 percent of their 2011 revenues due to the exceptional levy.

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