3-year-old found with 14 bags of marijuana in backpack... -

3-year-old found with 14 bags of marijuana in backpack... - 




New York City police said a 3-year-old girl was found in school Friday with more than a dozen bags of marijuana in her backpack.

Police said an employee of the New LIFE School in Harlem smelled marijuana on the girl at about 1 p.m. Friday.

They said the employee called police, who discovered 14 bags of the drug in the girl’s backpack.

As part of the investigation authorities questioned the girl and her parents.

On Friday night police arrested Kelly Mena, 24, in connection with the incident. Mena was charged with criminal possession of marijuana and criminal sale of marijuana.

Authorities said that Mena is apparently a friend of the girl’s father and that he allegedly placed the marijuana inside the girl’s pink Minnie Mouse backpack.

Read more -

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/09/27/man-arrested-charged-in-connection-with-marijuana-found-on-young-girl/

Free Shotguns Giveaway In Orlando Neighborhood - in an effort to reduce crime -

Free Shotguns Giveaway In Orlando Neighborhood - in an effort to reduce crime - 



In an effort to reduce crime, the Armed Citizens Project (ACP) is offering free shotguns to residents in an Orlando, Florida neighborhood called Sunshine Gardens.

Ron Ritter is the Armed Citizens Project director in Florida. He is trying to convince gun dealers to give free or heavily discounted firearms to homeowners in Sunshine Gardens. The group also offers free gun training courses.

ACP members have been leaving fliers on homeowners’ front doors that say: “The Armed Citizen Project of Florida is seeking volunteers to reduce crime in your neighborhood by arming volunteer households with one free shotgun per household.”

Some gun control advocates have condemned ACP’s “controversial” shotgun giveaway, criticizing the fact that Sunshine Gardens is only 20 miles away from where George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin.

But ACP members insist their efforts are simply to reduce crime, and point out that what they are doing is completely legal.

Ritter said, “This is perfectly legal, permitting guns to be handed out… These guns have to be transferred through a [federally licensed firearms] dealer.”

ACP was started in Texas after a World War II veteran was burglarized and had no way to defend himself. The group offers free firearms and self defense instruction to those who live in at-risk areas in Texas. Now they are expanding into Florida.

Read more -

http://benswann.com/free-shotguns-giveaway-in-orlando-neighborhood-sparks-controversy/

Merely holding a cellphone in a car is illegal in Ontario, appeal court rules -

Merely holding a cellphone in a car is illegal in Ontario, appeal court rules - 



Ontario’s top court says it’s illegal to hold a cellphone while driving even if it’s not transmitting and no matter how briefly it’s in a driver’s hand.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario released a pair of decisions Friday ordering two people convicted under the Highway Traffic Act for violating the ban on using cellphones while driving.

In one case, Khojasteh Kazemi argued that she had just picked up her cellphone, which had fallen off the seat to the floor of her car when she stopped at a red light, when a police officer spotted her holding it.

A lower court judge dismissed Kazemi’s charge, ruling that there must be some “sustained physical holding” in order to convict, but the Appeal Court overturned that finding.

Road safety is best ensured by a complete prohibition on having a cellphone in one’s hand at all while driving
In the other case, Hugo Pizzurro was caught driving with a cellphone in his hand but argued the Crown couldn’t prove it was capable of sending or receiving at the time.

But the Appeal Court concluded the language in the law requiring a capability of sending or receiving applies only to devices other than cellphones as cellphones have that capability built in.

“Moreover, to impose the requirement that a cellphone held by a driver while driving was capable of receiving or transmitting would be unreasonable both for enforcement and for prosecution,” the court ruled.

“The legislature could not have intended that result.”

The Ontario legislature’s purpose in enacting the law was to ensure drivers focus “on one thing and one thing only: driving,” the court wrote, quoting then-Transportation Minister Jim Bradley.

“Road safety is best ensured by a complete prohibition on having a cellphone in one’s hand at all while driving,” the Appeal Court wrote in the Kazemi decision.

“A complete prohibition also best focuses a driver’s undivided attention on driving…In short, it removes the various ways that road safety and driver attention can be harmed if a driver has a cellphone in his or her hand while driving.”

The Appeal Court made similar comments in the Pizzurro case.

“To hold out the possibility that the driver may escape the prohibition because the cellphone is not shown to be capable of communicating, however temporarily, is to tempt the driver to a course of conduct that risks undermining these objectives,” the court wrote.

Read more -

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/28/merely-holding-a-cellphone-in-a-car-is-illegal-in-ontario-appeal-court-rules/

Apple iOS 7 is sickening users, doctor confirms -

Apple iOS 7 is sickening users, doctor confirms - 



Now that’s what you’d call a rotten Apple!

The latest software powering Apple’s popular iPhones and iPads overhauls the look and feel of the interface, and features a variety of new digital animations and effects. But many users claim the new effects are more nauseating than nice.

“The zoom animations everywhere on the new iOS 7 are literally making me nauseous and giving me a headache. It's exactly how I used to get car sick if I tried to read in the car,” wrote one iPhone user on Apple’s support forums. That thread has been viewed over 15,000 times and features dozens of similar reports of carsickness and nausea.

“+1 here. Have headaches and nausea for past 3 days. Can't stand to look at my phone screen anymore while opening/closing apps. I just close my eyes or look away,” another user wrote.

Dr. George Kikano, division chief of family medicine at UH Case Medical Center in Ohio, told FoxNews.com those users are likely correct: the iPhone is making them carsick.

"There’s some validity to this, for people who are susceptible," he told FoxNews.com. But it's not the zoom animations that are responsible. It's a new "parallax" function that causes the background of the phone to subtly move back and forth, a feature that leads to an effect not unlike car sickness. 

 It’s no different than being in an IMAX theater," Kikano said. "The inner ear is responsible for balance, the eyes for vision. When things are out of sync you feel dizzy, nauseous. Some people get it, some people don’t, and some people get used to it."

Other experts said the effect is somewhat different. Charles Oman, a former director at NASA who has studied motion sickness for over 15 years, told ABC News that he's hesitant to call it motion sickness.

"It takes a couple minutes of sustained stimulation to activate motion sickness," he said. "If it were an immersive environment, like a headset or an IMAX screen, then I can believe it, but it's a little harder to believe on the small screens."

Read more - 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/09/27/is-apple-ios-7-actually-sickening-users/

Too tempting? NSA watchdog details how officials spied on love interests -

Too tempting? NSA watchdog details how officials spied on love interests - 



The world learned in early June about the National Security Agency's stunning capability to spy on just about anyone it wants to. Now we're finding out that power was just too tempting for some of its own employees -- with the agency acknowledging that workers used NSA tools to spy on love interests.

In a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, NSA Inspector General George Ellard admitted that since 2003, there have been "12 substantiated instances of intentional misuse" of "surveillance authorities," and "SIGINT," or signals intelligence.

Just about all of these cases involve an NSA employee spying on a girlfriend, boyfriend or some kind of love interest, or "loveint." Media reports had earlier claimed NSA workers were engaged in this kind of activity. The letter to Grassley gave specific details for the first time.

According to the letter, just prior to a polygraph examination in 2011 one NSA employee admitted that he queried information on his girlfriend's phone "out of curiosity."  However, that "subject retired in 2012 before disciplinary action had been taken."

Another employee went much further, tracking nine different telephone numbers for "female foreign nationals, without a valid foreign intelligence purpose" between 1998 and 2003 -- and listening to the phone conversations. The activity was uncovered after a female foreign national employed by the U.S. government, who was having sexual relations with the offending employee, told a colleague she thought her phone was being tapped.

In another instance, a female NSA employee admitted in 2004 to tapping a telephone number she found in her husband's cell phone "because she suspected that her husband had been unfaithful." In this case the NSA employee resigned before any disciplinary action.

The IG wrote that there are two additional open investigations into similar misuse of intelligence capabilities and yet another allegation for possible investigation.

Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that the NSA should have a zero-tolerance policy toward abuse.

"I appreciate the transparency that the Inspector General has provided to the American people. We shouldn't tolerate even one instance of misuse of this program," he said. "Robust oversight of the program must be completed to ensure that both national security and the Constitution are protected."

Read more - 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/27/too-tempting-nsa-details-how-officials-spied-on-love-interests/

Drugs, caffeine, and chemicals found in Lake Michigan -

Drugs, caffeine, and chemicals found in Lake Michigan - 



Pharmaceuticals, caffeine and items such as toothpaste additives have been found farther out in the Great Lakes than ever before, according to a new study that also raises concerns about their levels.

The presence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products — or PPCPs — has previously gone largely unstudied within the Great Lakes, according to Rebecca Klaper, a co-author of the study released last month.

Klaper, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, said the expectation has been that the Great Lakes’ huge volumes of water would dilute the PPCPs into undetectability. Lakes Michigan and Huron, which are connected, together have 2 quadrillion, or 2,000 trillion, gallons of water, for example.

Pharmaceuticals found in Lake Michigan 2 miles offshore from two Milwaukee wastewater treatment plants included a diabetes medication and a hormone used in birth-control pills. The new findings are alarming researchers, even as they continue to learn more about what the presence of PPCPs means. The concern is that the products, or mixtures of them, might affect fish and other aquatic life in ways that harm the ecosystem, Klaper said.

“If it does cause an impact, we need to start targeting some of our treatment processes,” she said.

Klaper and her team looked for 54 PPCPs and hormones in Lake Michigan surface water and sediment samples at varying distances from Milwaukee’s two main wastewater treatment plants. The samples were collected on six dates over two years.

Thirty-two of the PPCPs were found in Lake Michigan’s water and 30 in the lake’s sediments. The most frequently found products — detected as far out as 2 miles from the waste water treatment facilities — included:

■ Metformin, a prescription diabetes medicine.

■ Caffeine, found from some natural sources but also from coffee, tea, pop and energy drinks.

■ Sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic used to treat ailments such as urinary tract infections and inner-ear infections.

■ Triclosan, an antibacterial and antifungal agent found in many consumer products, including toothpaste and antibacterial soaps.

Of the detected drugs and care products, 14 were found to be in concentrations of “medium” or “high” ecological risk, according to the study.

“The concentrations found in this study ... indicate a significant threat by PPCPs to the health of the Great Lakes, particularly near-shore organisms,” the research report states.

While only Lake Michigan was studied, PPCPs likely persist in other Great Lakes that take wastewater outflows, according to Klaper.

It’s alarming that the chemicals are found that far from shore in the new study, said Olga Lyandres, research manager for the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonprofit lake advocacy group.

“The argument used to be the lakes are so large, of course right by the discharge point you need to check for the stuff, but it’s not affecting the lake as a whole,” she said.

The number and variety of PPCPs making their way into the environment from many sources raises the concern, Lyandres said.

“There are some questions that are still unanswered,” she said. “You can study one chemical at a time, but in reality, we’re exposed to a chemical soup.”

Read more - 

http://www.freep.com/article/20130927/NEWS06/309260196/Drugs-caffeine-chemicals-found-in-Lake-Michigan-worry-researchers

Residents Want Concrete Traffic Safety Posts Removed Because They Look Like Penises... -

Residents Want Concrete Traffic Safety Posts Removed Because They Look Like Penises... - 



New traffic barriers, known as bollards, are causing some controversy in the Glendale section of Scott Township. It’s not the function, but the form.

“When you really look at all four close together, they look like male body parts, which I don’t think is appropriate,” says Glendale resident Pat Martin.

She raised the issue at Tuesday night’s township commission meeting.

“Everyone’s laughing about them,” she adds, “because of the way they’re put and what they resemble to people.”

Commissioners Eileen Meyers and Pat Caruso disagree.

“We looked through and found something that we thought was pleasing to the eye, but apparently to one person it was not,” Commissioner Meyers says.

Six more of the controversial posts have been installed further down the hill, at the intersection of Carothers and Magazine Street. That brings the total to 10.

Would they tear them all down?

“I can’t imagine spending taxpayers’ dollars for a situation like this because somebody has a narrow mind,” says Commissioner Caruso.

Director of Public Services Randy Lubin says cheaper options are possible.

“Is there something that could go over top of these bollards that we could retrofit,” Lubin says, “and again there will be a cost to that.”

To replace, to cover, or leave alone?

Randy Lubin has one more question: “What’s to say the next replacement isn’t going to offend somebody else?”

Read more - 

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/09/26/scott-township-concrete-posts-the-talk-of-the-town/

Curiosity rover finds - About 2% of the soil on Mars' surface is water -

Curiosity rover finds - About 2% of the soil on Mars' surface is water - 



Curiosity, the Mars rover, reached out its robotic arm to hold a Canadian-made device over a dark grey rock sitting in a crater.

The tiny device, a cube just seven centimetres across, bombarded the rock with alpha particles and X-rays and then picked up the backscatter helping reveal a rock unlike any ever seen on Mars.

Jake_M, as the scientists have dubbed the Martian rock, resembles a type of volcanic rock found on ocean islands and continental rift zones on Earth.

It also raises the tantalizing possibility that there may be water beneath the Martian surface, say scientists, who describe the rock Thursday in a report published the journal Science.

“It was a good pick,” Ralf Gellert, at the University of Guelph, said of the Martian rock that was the first one analyzed using the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).

Gellert leads the international team responsible for the powerful spectrometer, Canada’s $18-million contribution to the Martian rover that touched down on Mars just over a year ago.

Curiosity, which also carries an on-board geology lab, a rock-zapping laser and 17 cameras, is designed to get a better read on Martian geology and find out if the planet was ever habitable.

Curiosity has yet to find signs of life, which Gellert described as “the jackpot.”

But it has turned up plenty of evidence of water, which is essential to life on Earth and indicates life may have once had a foothold on Mars.

Curiosity found water in one of the first scoops of Martian soil it picked up, according to another of the five reports published Thursday. They focus on Curiosity’s first three months of exploration in the Gale crater.

“About two per cent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water,” said Laurie Leshin of New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whose team has a suite of instruments in Curiosity’s belly that assesses chemicals and elements.

Her team fed a scoop of dust and dirt from a sandy patch in the crater known as Rocknest into instruments that heated the Martian soil to a temperature of 835 C.

Baking the sample at such high heat revealed Martian soil contains not only water but chlorine — which can be toxic — and oxygen. Other experiments revealed the soil contains plenty of hydrogen.

Read more - 

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/26/mars-water-find-by-nasas-curiosity-rover-as-moisture-discovered-in-planets-soil/

The iPhone Is a Bigger Business Than Coca Cola and McDonald's Combined -

The iPhone Is a Bigger Business Than Coca Cola and McDonald's Combined - 



Eric Chemi, head of research for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, pulls an amazing stat. iPhone sales in the last year exceed all revenue to Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast, or Google. The iPhone alone outsells Coca-Cola and McDonald's, perhaps the world's two most famous brands, combined.

Put differently, but no less dramatically, a product that did not exist in May 2007 is now a bigger business than 474 companies in the S&P 500.


So there you have it. Apple is "dead money" in the words of one investor, and I don't know enough about the future to tell you he's wrong. But let's pause for a moment during the funeral procession to observe that the iPhone could be the most successful branded product in the history of the world, and that's something amazing to behold, no matter what direction the company's stock is headed this afternoon.

Read more - 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/the-iphone-is-a-bigger-business-than-coca-cola-and-mcdonalds-combined/280023/

Engineers build first carbon nanotube computer -

Engineers build first carbon nanotube computer - 



Move over silicon. There’s a new player in town in the semi-conductor category. Meet the carbon nanotube. Its use in electronics means faster and more efficient devices. And now, engineers at Stanford University have successfully built the first computer to ever use carbon nanotube technology.

As electronic devices are getting smaller, the current standard of semi-conductor, silicon, is beginning to have problems. Transistors with silicon are now being fit into smaller spaces, which causes a device to waste power and generate more heat. An example of this would be how warm a laptop gets after a few hours of usage. Using carbon nanotubes would be a simple solution to resolve that problem.

Unfortunately, carbon nanotubes have limitations that have prevented their usage, at least in consumer electronics. These long thin microscopic lines of carbon atoms have a tendency not to grow in perfectly straight lines, something required for use in electronics. And sometimes, they don’t act the way they’re supposed to. Instead of being semi-conductors that can be turned on and off, they are sometimes always on, constantly conducting electricity.

The Stanford scientists started their project by fixing these issues. The most complicated process was figuring out how to work with misshapen carbon nanotubes. However, the scientists came up with an algorithm that would guarantee that these imperfect nanotubes still worked as expected on a circuit. That still left the problem of the always-on always-conducting nanotubes. After adding the nanotubes to a circuit, the research team then shut off all the carbon nanotubes that worked properly. Then, they added electricity into the circuit. That electricity burned up those nanotubes that were constantly conducting it so that they vaporized, only leaving the good nanotubes.

Read more - 

http://www.dvice.com/2013-9-26/engineers-build-first-carbon-nanotube-computer