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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/23/2014 12:05:37 AM
Sea-level risk in Florida

Florida is 'Ground Zero' for sea level rise

AFP

An Ibis is silhouetted as the sun sets in Marathon, Florida in the Florida Keys on February 20, 2011 (AFP Photo/Karen Bleier)


Miami Beach (United States) (AFP) - Warm sunshine and sandy beaches make south Florida and its crown city, Miami, a haven for tourists, but the area is increasingly endangered by sea level rise, experts said Tuesday.

During a special Senate hearing held in Miami Beach, Senator Bill Nelson described south Florida as "Ground Zero" for climate change and its threats to coastal communities.

The perils for Miami are particularly concerning because it has the most assets at stake in the world in terms of assets like homes, beachfront hotels and businesses, according to the World Resources Institute, a global research firm.

Not only is there $14.7 billion in beachfront property, but Miami is also home to the world's fourth largest population of people vulnerable to sea level rise, the WRI said.

Nearly 20 million people live in the entire state of Florida, and about three quarters live on the coast, said Nelson.

- Waters rising -

The waters around south Florida are rising fast. The Florida coast has already seen 12 inches (30 centimeters) of sea rise since 1870.

Another nine inches to two feet (23 to 61 centimeters) are anticipated by 2060, said the WRI.

Miami is located just four feet (1.22 meters) above sea level.

"We are on this massive substrate of limestone and coquina rock which is porous and infused by water," Nelson said at the hearing, held on the 44th anniversary of Earth Day.

"You could put up a dyke but it is not going to do any good," he added, describing the land beneath Florida as "like Swiss cheese."

"So we have to come up with new, innovative kinds of solutions," said Nelson, a Democratic senator who was born in Miami.

The mayor of Miami Beach, Philip Levine, said residents are commonly seen wading through knee-deep waters to get to their homes and businesses during high tides and floods.

"This reality is not acceptable and it is getting worse," said Levine.

Officials are investigating the use of tidal control valves and new water pumps to improve drainage, with three pumps planned for installation before October's high tides, Levine said.

"We are projecting the cost of being anywhere from three and four hundred million dollars," he said.

Discussions are also under way on urban designs and city plans that could better equip the area for rising sea levels, he said.

- High costs -

Climate change may bring more severe weather, warned Piers Sellers, deputy director of the science and exploration directorate at NASA.

"What does all of this mean to Florida? By the end of the century the intensity of hurricanes, including rainfall near the centers of the hurricanes, may increase," Sellers said.

"Rising sea levels and coastal development will likely increase the impact of hurricanes and other coastal storms on those coastal communities and infrastructure."

Fred Bloetcher, a professor of engineering at Florida Atlantic University, said sea level rise is a present threat to "nearly six million Floridians, their economy and lifestyle, 3.7 trillion dollars in property in southeast Florida alone and a $260 billion annual economy."

Meanwhile, insurance companies are still unprepared to cope, said Megan Linkin, a natural hazards expert at Swiss Re Global Partnerships.

"Presently I know of no insurance or reinsurance company that directly includes the risk of climate change," she told the hearing.

"And that is because our product is typically contracted on an annual basis, and in that time period the impact of any climate changes -- including sea level rise -- are too small and insignificant and without scientific consensus to responsibly include in our model and approach."

Despite the risks, tourism continues to boom in Florida.

In 2013, 14.2 million visitors spent nearly $23 billion in the Miami area, said William Talbert, president of the greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Last year also marked the first time in history that more visitors came from foreign countries than from the United States, he said.

Related video

Florida 'ground zero' for climate change


Sea-level rise is a threat to "nearly six million Floridians, their economy and lifestyle," a scientist says.
Land like 'Swiss cheese'

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/23/2014 12:14:44 AM

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest

Posted: Updated:

New Jersey, Paterson, Older Factories And Homes In Lower Middle Class Region.
(Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/UIG via Getty Images) | Getty

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.

While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of themost detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.

Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it. Median income in Canada pulled into a tie with median United States income in 2010 and has most likely surpassed it since then. Median incomes in Western European countries still trail those in the United States, but the gap in several — including Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden — is much smaller than it was a decade ago.

In European countries hit hardest by recent financial crises, such as Greece and Portugal, incomes have of course fallen sharply in recent years.

The income data were compiled by LIS, a group that maintains the Luxembourg Income Study Database. The numbers were analyzed by researchers at LIS and by The Upshot, a New York Times website covering policy and politics, and reviewed by outside academic economists.

The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true.

LIS counts after-tax cash income from salaries, interest and stock dividends, among other sources, as well as direct government benefits such as tax credits.


America's middle class no longer world's richest



Our neighbors to the north now hold that distinction after decades in which America held the lead.
How U.S. fell behind


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/23/2014 10:45:58 AM
Police brutality

New York police Twitter campaign backfires badly

AFP

People walk by a New York City police officer in Times Square, on August 12, 2013
(AFP Photo/Spencer Platt)


New York (AFP) - New York police Tuesday were eating extra helpings of humble pie after asking people to post images of themselves and NYPD officers on Twitter -- only to face a deluge of pictures of alleged police brutality.

"Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook," the department posted on its NYPD News Twitter feed, hoping to fuel a feel-good, low-cost public relations campaign.

The result was anything but.

Images and tweets of many arrests of demonstrators went viral, including such presumed lowlights as an officer pulling the hair of a handcuffed young black woman and another of the bloodied face of an 84-year-old stopped for jaywalking.

One image showing police after striking a protestor brought the remark "Here the #NYPD engages with its community members, changing hearts and minds one baton at a time."

Also largely criticized was the unpopular "stop and frisk" policy, which many argue unfairly targets minority youth.

The NYPD so far has yet to post any happy shots on its Facebook page from its request for public submissions.





A community outreach effort goes awry when New Yorkers are asked to share photos of themselves with officers.
Embarrassing results



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/23/2014 10:53:06 AM
Specific labeling urged

Colorado lawmakers move to tighten edible marijuana laws

Reuters


An employee brings out a display of drug-infused candies at the Botana Care marijuana store just before opening the doors to customers for the first time in Northglenn, Colorado January 1, 2014. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - Colorado lawmakers are moving to tighten laws governing the sale of marijuana-infused edibles, an issue that has gained attention following two deaths possibly linked to the ingestion of cannabis products, the measures' main sponsor said on Tuesday.

The state House of Representatives this week unanimously passed a bill limiting the amount of concentrated marijuana that can be sold, and another bill requiring more specific labeling of pot-laced products, such as candies and baked goods.

Rep. Frank McNulty, a Republican from suburban Denver, said the measures are needed to protect the public and assure that edibles are not mistakenly consumed by children.

"The packages of edibles are labeled that they contain marijuana, but once they're out of the package, they're indistinguishable from a brownie or lollipop bought at a grocery store," he said.

The bills will next be heard by the state Senate, where they appear to also have bipartisan support, McNulty said, adding that Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper has not indicated if he will sign the measures into law should they reach his desk.

Voters in Colorado legalized the possession and use of cannabis by adults in 2012, and the first retail pot shops opened in the state this January.

McNulty said the need for the legislation is punctuated by two recent deaths in Denver that have possible connections to edible marijuana.

Last month, Levi Thamba Pongi, a student from the Republic of Congo who attended college in Wyoming, leaped to his death from a hotel balcony after ingesting six times the suggested amount of marijuana cookies, according to the Denver medical examiner's office.

Pongi had come to Colorado on spring break along with several friends to sample marijuana. Investigators noted that the clerk at the store who sold the group the pot warned them not to eat an entire cookie at once.

However, Pongi ingested an entire cookie after he did not immediately feel the effects of marijuana. Hours later, he began behaving violently, culminating with his leap off the fourth-story balcony.

The Denver coroner's office listed "marijuana intoxication" as a contributing factor in Pongi's death.

In the other incident, a 47-year-old Denver man is accused of shooting his wife to death as she was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, saying that her husband had used marijuana, was hallucinating and was frightening her and the couple's three children.

A search warrant affidavit filed in the case by a Denver police sergeant said Richard Kirk had recently purchased a joint and pot-infused candy from a marijuana shop, although he noted that Kirk may have been under the influence of prescription painkillers.

Kirk has been charged with first-degree murder for his wife's slaying and what, if any, substances he had in his system has not been publicly released.

Mike Elliot, executive director of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group, said his organization asked lawmakers to clarify the current law on concentrated marijuana, such as hash oil, months before the publicized deaths.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and G Crosse)


Colorado lawmakers eye edible pot crackdown


The move to tighten laws on the sale of the products comes after two possibly drug-related deaths.
Specific labeling urged


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
4/23/2014 11:03:24 AM
Sotomayor's sharp dissent

Voice of first U.S. Hispanic justice heard in major race case

Reuters

Where does affirmative action stand now? A splintered Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 6-2 states may end racial preferences without violating the U.S. Constitution. WSJ's Ashby Jones explains the ruling and the ramifications.


By Joan Biskupic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first Hispanic Supreme Court justice has been on the bench for nearly five years but had never written an opinion addressing race in America until today.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a sharply worded 58-page dissent on Tuesday to the court's 18-page decision upholding a Michigan state ban on race-based affirmative action in education.

In strong terms that referred to the slights minorities face because of skin color, Sotomayor declared the court's majority was ignoring a U.S. history of discrimination and the needs of those on the margins of society.

For the first time since her 2009 appointment, she also took the unusual step of reading portions of the opinion from the bench, which dissenting justices sometimes do to draw special attention to their views.

Speaking for 12 minutes, nearly as long as Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke for the court's majority, Sotomayor said her colleagues "fundamentally misunderstand" the issue of racial bias at the heart of the dispute and chided them for not talking more openly about it.

Sotomayor's actions answered a question that has lingered since 2009 when Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, nominated her to the court: how would she draw on her personal experience and possibly differentiate herself from previous justices?

In her 2013 memoir Sotomayor wrote of benefiting in the 1970s from affirmative action at Princeton University and Yale Law School. On Tuesday, her words flashed across Twitter and other social media.

Still, her dissent is unlikely to change the legal landscape. Based on the court majority's stance Tuesday and the conservative majority's skepticism about remedies in racial cases dating back to 2007, the court is likely to continue chipping away at affirmative action.

Sotomayor, whose opinion was joined only by senior liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is part of a minority on the left, and her side is not likely to gain more votes in the near future. The justice most likely to retire is the 81-year-old Ginsburg.

Since Sotomayor joined the nine-justice court, it has taken up a handful of major cases involving voting rights, affirmative action and immigration. In those disputes, Sotomayor signed the opinions of more senior justices, whether in dissent or the majority.

In last term's challenge to federal voting rights law, for example, Sotomayor joined Ginsburg's dissent claiming that the five-justice majority had rolled back needed protections for minority voters in places with a history of discrimination at the polls.

In a case last term involving admissions at the University of Texas, Sotomayor signed Kennedy's opinion upholding racial criteria in admissions and asking a lower court to take another look at the Texas program.

In her dissent on Tuesday, Sotomayor said the Michigan ban was unfair. She said the voter-approved ban allowed college administrators to have admissions policies favoring, for example, students whose relatives are alumni but blocks race-based criteria. The law, she wrote, "restructures the political process in Michigan in a manner that places unique burdens on racial minorities" to win changes in admissions policies.

Her opinion addressed broader racial issues, too, as she noted the stigma of skin color and said the court majority should recognize how much race matters.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race," she wrote

(Reporting by Joan Biskupic; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Sotomayor's sharp dissent in racial bias case


The first Hispanic Supreme Court justice says her colleagues "fundamentally misunderstand" the issue.
Defends affirmative action

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