Senate rejects firearms on more federal lands

Associated Press /Susan Walsh - FILE - In this Dec. 31, 2012 file photo, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. gets into an elevator on Capitol Hill in Washington. Gun control senators are discussing revising the defeated background check bill in attempt to revive it. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate rejected an effort Wednesday to expand the use of firearms on some of the nation's most frequently visited federal lands, handing gun control advocates a modest success.

The measure, backed by the National Rifle Association, represented one of two efforts Wednesday by gun rights supporters to take the offensive in Congress. Across the Capitol, a Republican-run House committee voted to make it easier for some veterans with mental difficulties to get firearms.

The rejected Senate proposal would have let people use guns for any legal purpose on lands managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees nearly 12 million acres that abound in lakes, rivers, campsites and hiking trails. Currently, guns on those properties are limited to activities like target-range shooting and hunting, and weapons must be unloaded while being carried to those activities.

Senators voted 56-43 for the proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., but it fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage.

Eleven Democrats and one Democratic-leaning independent voted for Coburn's plan, underscoring the party's divisions on the gun issue.

Those voting for Coburn's proposal included all four Democrats who opposed the bipartisan bill expanding required federal background checks to more gun buyers that the Senate rejected three weeks ago.

The background check expansion has been the pillar of President Barack Obama's effort to restrict guns following December's elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Top Democrats and other supporters hope to win fresh support and stage a new vote on background checks, perhaps next month. Advocates hope that voting for Coburn's proposal might let some senators show voters they support gun rights and give them more leeway to reverse themselves and vote for background checks next time.

Also backing Coburn's proposal were the two chief authors of the defeated background check measure, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Patrick Toomey, R-Pa.

Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, a supporter of the Manchin-Toomey plan, was the only Republican to vote against expanding gun use on Corps land.

Coburn said gun rights on Corps land should be the same as in national parks and federal wildlife refuges, where federal law has allowed visitors to carry guns since 2010. He said after the vote that he would keep reintroducing the measure until it passes.

"Fifty-six votes, a majority of the Senate believes we ought to have one sane policy" on gun rights on federal lands, Coburn said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said allowing more guns onto Corps property would increase danger to the dams, flood control systems and other crucial water projects.

"This critical infrastructure is a target for terrorists," she said. Allowing more guns "sets up a national security threat. It endangers people."

Army Corps lands are used for recreation by 370 million people annually, more than visit the property of any other federal agency. About 80 percent of them are within 50 miles of urban areas, making them accessible destinations.

Also Wednesday, the House Veterans Affairs Committee voted by voice to require a judge or magistrate to declare a veteran is dangerous before the person's name is entered in the background check system's database of people barred from getting firearms.

Currently, the Veterans Affairs Department sends the system the names of veterans it has declared unable to manage their financial affairs — 127,000 names since 1998.

Supporters of the measure said veterans who can't handle their money aren't necessarily dangerous.

"It's arbitrary. It's inconsistent and it's unreasonable," Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the committee, said of the current process.

The Veterans department opposes the measure, saying veterans in the database already have the ability to appeal.

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China urges Israel to hold talks with Palestinians

China urges Israeli prime minister to remove obstacles to restarting talks with Palestinians

Associated Press -

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, left, gestures to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Wednesday, May 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)

BEIJING (AP) -- China's premier has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remove obstacles to restarting talks with the Palestinians, as Beijing seeks to bring its growing international influence to bear on the Middle East peace process.

Greeting the Israeli leader at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made no direct mention of his meeting two days earlier with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads his people's efforts to achieve statehood. Talks between Israel and the Palestinians on the statehood issue have been deadlocked for four years, despite pressure on Jerusalem from the United States, Russia and the European Union, long the major players in Middle East diplomacy.

The Palestinian issue lies "at the core of factors influencing peace and stability in the Middle East," Li told Netanyahu, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

"China expects Israel and Palestine to work together, take substantive measures to remove obstacles and create conditions for the restoration and progress of peace talks," Li said. As a friend to both Israel and Palestine, China wants to work as a broker to bring the sides together, he said.

The near simultaneous visits to China by Abbas and Netanyahu underscore China's desire to play a greater role in the Middle East, a region Beijing has long seen as a key source of energy.

"The Middle East confuses the Chinese," said China expert Yoram Evron of Israel's University of Haifa. "But in the past two years, there are people in China who think it needs to expand its activities in the region in order to safeguard its interests."

Evron's view was echoed by Middle East expert Li Weijian of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies, who said the region was far too important for China to ignore, particularly in light of Beijing's increased economic and political clout elsewhere in the world.

"China needs to play a role in major international affairs, including the affairs of the Middle East, and China has been stepping up efforts in this respect," he said.

Last week, China's Foreign Ministry said it would be willing to arrange a meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu, but with the Israeli side casting Netanyahu's visit in largely commercial terms, the meeting didn't take place. Instead, Netanyahu devoted much of his time on his trip to pressing for an expansion of his country's $8 billion annual trade with China, and encouraging Chinese investment in Israeli industry.

Following their meeting, Li and Netanyahu presided over the signing of five agreements on aerospace, agricultural research, financial cooperation, science and technology, and on Chinese language instruction.

"There is a perfect marriage between our mutual capabilities," Netanyahu said at a ceremony marking the signing of business agreements between Israeli and Chinese companies. "The Israeli government stands firmly behind cooperation between Israeli and Chinese companies, (and) between Israeli research institutes and Chinese research institutes."

Adopting a strongly pro-Palestinian stand in the mid-1950s, Beijing recognized Palestinian statehood in 1988, four years before establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

While ties between Jerusalem and Beijing have expanded rapidly over the past 15 years — China is now a major purchaser of Israeli know-how, from high-technology to agriculture, engineering and military-related services — it maintains its Palestinian sympathies, amid a general critique of what it sometimes sees as Israeli belligerence in the area.

After last weekend's Israeli airstrike on a Syrian military complex, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying avoided criticizing Israel by name, but left little doubt that Beijing saw it as an unwelcome curtain raiser to Netanyahu's visit.

"We oppose the use of force and believe any country's sovereignty should be respected," she said.

Cause of Port Wine Birthmarks & Rare Disorder Found

Photo of a woman with Sturge-Weber Syndrome. One of the classic symptoms of the condition is a port-wine stain that typically appears on the face.

A single genetic mutation is the cause of "port wine" birthmarks, as well as a rare neurological condition of which the birthmarks are a distinctive feature, researchers have discovered.

The mutation occurs after conception — it is not present in sperm or egg cells — but exactly when it occurs could determine whether a baby develops only a birthmark, or the serious neurological disorder Sturge-Weber syndrome, the researchers say. People with this disorder have port wine birthmarks (reddish to purplish discolorations), typically on the face, and also can suffer seizures, paralysis, blindness and learning disabilities.

Finding the genetic cause of Sturge-Weber syndrome and port wine birthmarks is the first step in developing new treatments for the conditions, the researchers said.

"One has to know what one's trying to fix," said study researcher Jonathan Pevsner, director of Bioinformatics at Kennedy Krieger Institute, an organization in Baltimore that researches child developmental disorders.

While it was suspected that the Sturge-Weber syndrome was caused by a mutation that occurs after conception, rather than an inherited mutation, this study is the first to prove that hypothesis.

It will be a relief to parents to know that they didn't pass on the condition to their child, said Karen Ball, founder and president of the Sturge-Weber Foundation, and the mother of a child with Sturge-Weber syndrome.

"[It's] is going to bring great comfort to people," Ball said.

Understanding the cause

People with Sturge-Weber syndrome have abnormal blood vessels in the skin, brain and eyes, which cause the symptoms of the disorder. When cells of the skin are affected, the result is the port wine birthmark.

About 1 in 20,000 babies are born with Sturge-Weber syndrome, while port wine birthmarks are more common, affecting about a million people in the United States. [See What are Birthmarks?]

When Ball gave birth to her daughter with Sturge-Weber syndrome in 1986, she could find virtually no information about it. In 1987, she started the Sturge-Weber Foundation to facilitate research into the condition.

Only recently have researchers had the technology to investigate the genetic cause of Sturge-Weber syndrome.

In the new study, researchers sequenced the entire genomes of three people with Sturge-Weber syndrome, comparing the genes from normal and abnormal cells. They found a single place where the genomes differed, in a gene called GNAQ.

In a larger study, the researchers found the same mutation in 23 out of 26 with Sturge-Weber syndrome, and 12 of 13 people with port wine stains, but not in any of six healthy people they tested who did not have either condition.

The Sturge-Weber Foundation syndrome provided funding and many of the tissue samples used in the study.

New treatments

Currently, there is no cure for either Sturge-Weber syndrome or port wine stains. Treatment for Sturge-Weber syndrome includes managing the symptoms, such as medications to treat seizures, and surgeries to treat glaucoma and overgrowths of tissue.

Doctors can attempt to lighten or remove port wine stains with laser treatments, but they often reoccur.

Now that researchers know the genetic cause of the conditions, they can begin to investigate drugs that affect the cellular signaling pathways the gene is involved in. It's possible such drugs could reverse the progression of the Sturge-Weber syndrome, said Dr. Anne Comi, director of the Kennedy Krieger Institute's Hunter Nelson Sturge-Weber Center.

A mutation in the GNAQ is also involved in uveal melanoma, a type of melanoma that occurs in the eye. As a result, there has already been significant research into GNAQ and the pathways it affects.

"This is helpful to us because we can move quickly to understand the basic biology" of how the mutation leads to Sturge-Weber syndrome and port wine stains, Pevsner said.

Pass it on: The genetic cause of Sturge-Weber syndrome and port wine stains has been discovered.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND,Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily.

Quote:

Pregnant Mom of 4 Sentenced To Prison For Refusing To Serve In Iraq

• by Judy Molland
• May 7, 2013

Private First Class Kimberly Rivera, mother of four children and pregnant with a fifth, was sentenced on April 29 to 14 months imprisonment, which was lowered to 10 months based on a plea agreement.

Her crime?

After serving a tour of duty in Iraq in 2006, she found herself unable to return.

She tells Amy Goodman in the Guardian why:

“I had a huge awakening seeing the war as it truly is: people losing their lives for greed of a nation, and the effects on the soldiers who come back with new problems such as nightmares, anxieties, depression, anger, alcohol abuse, missing limbs and scars from burns. Some don’t come back at all.”

Her attorney, James Branum, who defends soldiers who resist deployment, told me:

“She felt that she morally could not do what she was asked to do; at the same time, she realized that she would put other soldiers in danger if she didn’t pull the trigger when the time came. She talked to a chaplain about it. The chaplain largely pushed her aside, did not give her the counsel that she really needed.”

Never Advised Of Her Rights As A Conscientious Objector

This so-called Christian chaplain could have advised her that there was a regulation, AR 600-43, that gave her the right to petition to be classified a conscientious objector. He chose not to do the Christian thing.

Since she was never advised of her rights as a conscientious objector, she believed that she had no options but to return to Iraq or to emigrate to Canada. Rivera and her husband and two children fled to Canada in February, 2007, settling in Toronto.

Amnesty International identifies Rivera as a prisoner of conscience, the first American female conscientious objector to flee to Canada; she has the support of many Canadian members of Parliament, as well as that of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Yet the Canadian government denied her refugee application, and she turned herself in to US authorities at the border on September 20, 2012.

Now the United States Army has sentenced Rivera to 10 months behind bars, where she will give birth to her fifth child.

Kimberly Rivera had the courage to refuse to shoot at children in Iraq; she had the courage to dissent, to resist. As a reward for this act of bravery, she will now sit in prison, away from her husband Mario, and their four young children: Christian, 11; Rebeca, eight; Katie, five, and Gabriel, two.

Who Is The Real Hero: George W. Bush Or Kimberly Rivera?

Just two days after Rivera was sentenced to sit behind bars for 10 months for courageously giving voice to her conscience, George W. Bush was proudly holding forth at the dedication of his Presidential Library in Texas.

“Ultimately, the success of the nation depends on the character of its citizens,” declared the former president.

Rivera stopped believing she was doing the right thing in Iraq, and she stopped believing the United States was doing the right thing in Iraq. Americans were getting wounded and killed, but she saw more of Iraqi suffering.

As iPolitics.ca reported in 2012:

Rivera was troubled by a two-year-old Iraqi girl who came to the base with her family to claim compensation after a bombing by US forces.

“She was just petrified,” Rivera explained. “She was crying, but there was no sound, just tears flowing out of her eyes. She was shaking. I have no idea what had happened in her little life. All I know is I wasn’t seeing her: I was seeing my own little girl. I could imagine my daughter being one of those kids throwing rocks at soldiers, because maybe someone she loved had been killed. That Iraqi girl haunts my soul.”

George W. Bush, by contrast, refused to admit that he might have made a mistake, refused to listen to the thousands of protestors who demanded an end to the war in Iraq, a war which killed over 114, 000 people, including over 4,500 US soldiers. He never apologized, never admitted that he had any regrets at all about this mass slaughter.

He gets a Presidential Library, while Kimberly Rivera, who dared to speak her mind, gets to sit in prison.

And do you remember hearing too that Bush also went AWOL? But of course he was not punished. Unlike Ms. Rivera.

If you believe this sentence is outrageous, and that Kimberly Rivera is being punished for acting honorably and courageously, please sign the petition, demanding that she be released from prison and reunited with her husband and children.

Related Care2 Coverage

A Decade Of Mistakes: A Timeline Of The Iraq War

With One War Ending, The Military Community Remembers

WiKiLeaks Puts Secret Documents On Iraq War In Spotlight

Read more: awol, canada, childrens rights, conscientious objector, george-w-bush, iraq, iraw, kimberly rivera, military prison, pregnant

Photo Credit: Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/pregnant-mom-of-4-sentenced-to-prison-for-refusing-to-serve-in-iraq.html#ixzz2SkclgyuC

Quote:

This article is a liberal piece of crap. It is a hit piece on GWB and Americans in general. The woman here took the oath, the money and the benefits then refused to do her part. No story here except for some bleeding hearts with nothing better to do.

Quote:

Pregnant Mom of 4 Sentenced To Prison For Refusing To Serve In Iraq

• by Judy Molland
• May 7, 2013

Private First Class Kimberly Rivera, mother of four children and pregnant with a fifth, was sentenced on April 29 to 14 months imprisonment, which was lowered to 10 months based on a plea agreement.

Her crime?

After serving a tour of duty in Iraq in 2006, she found herself unable to return.

She tells Amy Goodman in the Guardian why:

“I had a huge awakening seeing the war as it truly is: people losing their lives for greed of a nation, and the effects on the soldiers who come back with new problems such as nightmares, anxieties, depression, anger, alcohol abuse, missing limbs and scars from burns. Some don’t come back at all.”

Her attorney, James Branum, who defends soldiers who resist deployment, told me:

“She felt that she morally could not do what she was asked to do; at the same time, she realized that she would put other soldiers in danger if she didn’t pull the trigger when the time came. She talked to a chaplain about it. The chaplain largely pushed her aside, did not give her the counsel that she really needed.”

Never Advised Of Her Rights As A Conscientious Objector

This so-called Christian chaplain could have advised her that there was a regulation, AR 600-43, that gave her the right to petition to be classified a conscientious objector. He chose not to do the Christian thing.

Since she was never advised of her rights as a conscientious objector, she believed that she had no options but to return to Iraq or to emigrate to Canada. Rivera and her husband and two children fled to Canada in February, 2007, settling in Toronto.

Amnesty International identifies Rivera as a prisoner of conscience, the first American female conscientious objector to flee to Canada; she has the support of many Canadian members of Parliament, as well as that of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Yet the Canadian government denied her refugee application, and she turned herself in to US authorities at the border on September 20, 2012.

Now the United States Army has sentenced Rivera to 10 months behind bars, where she will give birth to her fifth child.

Kimberly Rivera had the courage to refuse to shoot at children in Iraq; she had the courage to dissent, to resist. As a reward for this act of bravery, she will now sit in prison, away from her husband Mario, and their four young children: Christian, 11; Rebeca, eight; Katie, five, and Gabriel, two.

Who Is The Real Hero: George W. Bush Or Kimberly Rivera?

Just two days after Rivera was sentenced to sit behind bars for 10 months for courageously giving voice to her conscience, George W. Bush was proudly holding forth at the dedication of his Presidential Library in Texas.

“Ultimately, the success of the nation depends on the character of its citizens,” declared the former president.

Rivera stopped believing she was doing the right thing in Iraq, and she stopped believing the United States was doing the right thing in Iraq. Americans were getting wounded and killed, but she saw more of Iraqi suffering.

As iPolitics.ca reported in 2012:

Rivera was troubled by a two-year-old Iraqi girl who came to the base with her family to claim compensation after a bombing by US forces.

“She was just petrified,” Rivera explained. “She was crying, but there was no sound, just tears flowing out of her eyes. She was shaking. I have no idea what had happened in her little life. All I know is I wasn’t seeing her: I was seeing my own little girl. I could imagine my daughter being one of those kids throwing rocks at soldiers, because maybe someone she loved had been killed. That Iraqi girl haunts my soul.”

George W. Bush, by contrast, refused to admit that he might have made a mistake, refused to listen to the thousands of protestors who demanded an end to the war in Iraq, a war which killed over 114, 000 people, including over 4,500 US soldiers. He never apologized, never admitted that he had any regrets at all about this mass slaughter.

He gets a Presidential Library, while Kimberly Rivera, who dared to speak her mind, gets to sit in prison.

And do you remember hearing too that Bush also went AWOL? But of course he was not punished. Unlike Ms. Rivera.

If you believe this sentence is outrageous, and that Kimberly Rivera is being punished for acting honorably and courageously, please sign the petition, demanding that she be released from prison and reunited with her husband and children.

Related Care2 Coverage

A Decade Of Mistakes: A Timeline Of The Iraq War

With One War Ending, The Military Community Remembers

WiKiLeaks Puts Secret Documents On Iraq War In Spotlight

Read more: awol, canada, childrens rights, conscientious objector, george-w-bush, iraq, iraw, kimberly rivera, military prison, pregnant

Photo Credit: Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/pregnant-mom-of-4-sentenced-to-prison-for-refusing-to-serve-in-iraq.html#ixzz2SkclgyuC