Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Executing A Good Job Search | Brahmana's World

Seeking employment is a part of life that millions of people must go through. With the economy being as terrible as it is today, it can be very hard to obtain employment. Some good job search skills can help make finding work much easier.

It is work to seek employment. You should devote at least eight hours each day to finding employment. You have to make finding a job your job. The more you put into your searching, the more you will get out of it. Maintain discipline and dedicate yourself, and your time, to finding work.

A newspaper is a great resource for finding employers who are looking to hire someone. There is almost always a huge variety of positions to choose from. Usually the ads will say a brief description of duties to be performed, pay, and if any previous experience is needed. If you meet the job requirements and everything looks good to you, give the person a call.

Seek out different businesses where you would like to work and go inside them. Ask an employee if you could get an application and fill it out. When you hand it back to the employee, ask for the name of the person who will be reviewing your application. This will make it possible for you to contact that person. Be persistent and contact them every couple of days until you are able to get an answer out of them. This is a very effective way to get an interview.

The internet is a great tool to use when searching for a job. A seeker can find assistance with finding hiring employers very easily. The majority of businesses today also have their own websites. Many of these websites have the option to apply for a job with them right there.

These are just a few of many helpful ideas for creating an effective job search. Be persistent with those you have applied to, check on the status of your application periodically. Keep at it and maintain discipline.

Using the tools and facilities of the Internet makes it easier than ever before to conduct a successful job search. You can learn more about the tips and techniques for finding employment when you visit the website at http://www.jobhuntingadvice.com/ now.

Source: http://www.brahmana.web.id/business/executing-a-good-job-search.html

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Hollywood screenwriters and scientists: More than an artistic collaboration

Hollywood screenwriters and scientists: More than an artistic collaboration [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 28-Aug-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
303-228-8532 (Aug. 25-Sept. 1)
202-872-6042 (Before Aug. 25)

Michael Woods
m_woods@acs.org
303-228-8532 (Aug. 25-Sept. 1)
202-872-6293 (Before Aug. 25)

American Chemical Society

DENVER, Aug. 28, 2011 In this International Year of Chemistry (IYC), writers and producers for the most popular crime and science-related television shows and movies are putting out an all-points bulletin for scientists to advise them on the accuracy of their plots involving lab tests, crime scenes, etc., and to even give them story ideas.

They really do want to get it right, and this is very good news for young people who absorb the information from these shows, and this helps shape their positive career decisions. That's the message delivered here today by producers and writers from top television shows speaking at a special Presidential Event at the American Chemical Society's (ACS) 242nd National Meeting & Exposition.

Producers and writers for some of television's most popular medical, crime, science and science fiction shows today said they do strive for accuracy and ask more scientists to get involved and lend a hand in helping TV accurately portray science. They spoke at a symposium entitled "Science on the Hollywood Screen." In addition to CSI, other shows represented were Breaking Bad, CSI New York, Buffy, Battlestar and Torchwood.

"Science on the Hollywood Screen" is one of the meeting's special Presidential Events, and was co-organized by Nancy B. Jackson, Ph.D., ACS President, and Donna Nelson, Ph.D. Nelson, a chemist adviser for the six-time Emmy Award-winning AMC Channel show Breaking Bad, organized the program with Jackson and said Hollywood needs more scientists to volunteer to vet the scientific accuracy of scripts and storyboards.

"CSI is a great example of how a highly popular show can be both entertaining and make science understandable to the public," said Nelson, who is with affiliated with the University of Oklahoma and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The people who make TV shows and films really are interested in presenting science accurately. That's why they have been encouraging scientists like myself to serve as technical advisers. It's been great fun for me and I even have appeared in a cameo role on Breaking Bad."

The producers of this show are serious in striving for accuracy and realism, she said. For example, the credits at the start of Breaking Bad feature symbols of chemical elements from the Periodic Table. The symbols Br and Ba, which stand for the elements bromine and barium, are depicted in the title of the show.

Not only should chemists and other scientists volunteer to advise the staffs of these popular shows, Nelson said, but "we should offer script ideas. The writers and producers are open to this. The more collaboration we in our profession have with these shows and with Hollywood films, the more we can raise the public's awareness about the importance of science." She also contended that the better writers get to know scientists the better equipped they will be to accurately portray them.

With 2011 being the International Year of Chemistry (IYC), Nelson said that chemists have a perfect opportunity to help increase public awareness of chemistry's major role in improving everyday life.

Nelson said that the producers and writers in the symposium will discuss how with the help of advisers they accurately portray scientists at work and suggested how chemists and other scientists can help with scripts in the future. In addition, the symposium focused on new ideas and evaluated existing ones for better communicating science to the public.

Here are titles of presentations in the "Science on the Hollywood Screen" symposium, with summaries of the presentations:

  • CSI New York: Science personified. Aaron Thomas, Writer, Producer, CSI New York. For writers who do not have a science background, thorough research is essential. The producers of CSI New York go to great lengths ensuring that the stories they tell are grounded in reality. This includes the science and forensic aspects of the show. They base many of their stories on actual cases. The show has an intelligent and diligent staff of assistants who thoroughly cross-check their ideas with the latest science journals and publications to ensure that they are as accurate as possible with their research. Often, ideas that are pitched for episodes of the show begin with interesting science mysteries.
  • CSI: Entertaining science via methodology and analysis. Corrine Marrinan, Writer, Producer, CSI. Forensic chemistry and materials analysis is the cornerstone of any forensic drama, just as it is considered the strongest physical evidence to be presented in a legal case. Accurately depicting these microscopic events in entertainment is considered one of the greatest challenges in on-screen storytelling. Fortunately, advancements in forensic chemistry have developed in tandem with great advancements in the entertainment technology, special effects and computer-generated images. CSI has mastered the visual expression of forensic chemistry in order to make specialized scientific information more accessible to worldwide audiences.
  • Buffy, Battlestar, Torchwood Chemistry vs. Magic on Sci Fi TV. Jane Espenson, writer, producer for a variety of television shows. While writers do at times attempt to include science, including chemistry, they find that magic, which serves many of the same basic functions as science, is often more adaptable. The presentation will describe a scene showing some well-researched chemistry and will include a montage of clips from various episodes that depict uses of magic, especially chemical-type potions. For chemistry to get more screen time, it would be advantageous for it to more closely resemble magic.
  • Breaking Bad: Factual and fabulous. Donna Nelson, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Oklahoma. The presentation will describe what it is like to be a chemist adviser for Breaking Bad and explain why more chemists should offer their talents to help producers of science-related shows and movies. Today is the perfect time for more scientists to volunteer, as show producers say they are working to create programs that are as accurate as possible.
  • Damn it, Jim (Cameron) I'm a screenwriter not a chemist! Ann Merchant, The Science & Entertainment Exchange. The presentation will outline the mission and the history of The Science & Entertainment Exchange and examine some of the realities of the relationship between science and entertainment as a way to explore a "win-win" collaboration. It will cover the origins of The Science & Entertainment Exchange and its expertise in both the entertainment and science communities. It will also describe a "typical" consultation, highlight some of the special events The Exchange has hosted and ground the program objectives in the research on education/entertainment.

###

The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Hollywood screenwriters and scientists: More than an artistic collaboration [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 28-Aug-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
303-228-8532 (Aug. 25-Sept. 1)
202-872-6042 (Before Aug. 25)

Michael Woods
m_woods@acs.org
303-228-8532 (Aug. 25-Sept. 1)
202-872-6293 (Before Aug. 25)

American Chemical Society

DENVER, Aug. 28, 2011 In this International Year of Chemistry (IYC), writers and producers for the most popular crime and science-related television shows and movies are putting out an all-points bulletin for scientists to advise them on the accuracy of their plots involving lab tests, crime scenes, etc., and to even give them story ideas.

They really do want to get it right, and this is very good news for young people who absorb the information from these shows, and this helps shape their positive career decisions. That's the message delivered here today by producers and writers from top television shows speaking at a special Presidential Event at the American Chemical Society's (ACS) 242nd National Meeting & Exposition.

Producers and writers for some of television's most popular medical, crime, science and science fiction shows today said they do strive for accuracy and ask more scientists to get involved and lend a hand in helping TV accurately portray science. They spoke at a symposium entitled "Science on the Hollywood Screen." In addition to CSI, other shows represented were Breaking Bad, CSI New York, Buffy, Battlestar and Torchwood.

"Science on the Hollywood Screen" is one of the meeting's special Presidential Events, and was co-organized by Nancy B. Jackson, Ph.D., ACS President, and Donna Nelson, Ph.D. Nelson, a chemist adviser for the six-time Emmy Award-winning AMC Channel show Breaking Bad, organized the program with Jackson and said Hollywood needs more scientists to volunteer to vet the scientific accuracy of scripts and storyboards.

"CSI is a great example of how a highly popular show can be both entertaining and make science understandable to the public," said Nelson, who is with affiliated with the University of Oklahoma and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The people who make TV shows and films really are interested in presenting science accurately. That's why they have been encouraging scientists like myself to serve as technical advisers. It's been great fun for me and I even have appeared in a cameo role on Breaking Bad."

The producers of this show are serious in striving for accuracy and realism, she said. For example, the credits at the start of Breaking Bad feature symbols of chemical elements from the Periodic Table. The symbols Br and Ba, which stand for the elements bromine and barium, are depicted in the title of the show.

Not only should chemists and other scientists volunteer to advise the staffs of these popular shows, Nelson said, but "we should offer script ideas. The writers and producers are open to this. The more collaboration we in our profession have with these shows and with Hollywood films, the more we can raise the public's awareness about the importance of science." She also contended that the better writers get to know scientists the better equipped they will be to accurately portray them.

With 2011 being the International Year of Chemistry (IYC), Nelson said that chemists have a perfect opportunity to help increase public awareness of chemistry's major role in improving everyday life.

Nelson said that the producers and writers in the symposium will discuss how with the help of advisers they accurately portray scientists at work and suggested how chemists and other scientists can help with scripts in the future. In addition, the symposium focused on new ideas and evaluated existing ones for better communicating science to the public.

Here are titles of presentations in the "Science on the Hollywood Screen" symposium, with summaries of the presentations:

  • CSI New York: Science personified. Aaron Thomas, Writer, Producer, CSI New York. For writers who do not have a science background, thorough research is essential. The producers of CSI New York go to great lengths ensuring that the stories they tell are grounded in reality. This includes the science and forensic aspects of the show. They base many of their stories on actual cases. The show has an intelligent and diligent staff of assistants who thoroughly cross-check their ideas with the latest science journals and publications to ensure that they are as accurate as possible with their research. Often, ideas that are pitched for episodes of the show begin with interesting science mysteries.
  • CSI: Entertaining science via methodology and analysis. Corrine Marrinan, Writer, Producer, CSI. Forensic chemistry and materials analysis is the cornerstone of any forensic drama, just as it is considered the strongest physical evidence to be presented in a legal case. Accurately depicting these microscopic events in entertainment is considered one of the greatest challenges in on-screen storytelling. Fortunately, advancements in forensic chemistry have developed in tandem with great advancements in the entertainment technology, special effects and computer-generated images. CSI has mastered the visual expression of forensic chemistry in order to make specialized scientific information more accessible to worldwide audiences.
  • Buffy, Battlestar, Torchwood Chemistry vs. Magic on Sci Fi TV. Jane Espenson, writer, producer for a variety of television shows. While writers do at times attempt to include science, including chemistry, they find that magic, which serves many of the same basic functions as science, is often more adaptable. The presentation will describe a scene showing some well-researched chemistry and will include a montage of clips from various episodes that depict uses of magic, especially chemical-type potions. For chemistry to get more screen time, it would be advantageous for it to more closely resemble magic.
  • Breaking Bad: Factual and fabulous. Donna Nelson, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Oklahoma. The presentation will describe what it is like to be a chemist adviser for Breaking Bad and explain why more chemists should offer their talents to help producers of science-related shows and movies. Today is the perfect time for more scientists to volunteer, as show producers say they are working to create programs that are as accurate as possible.
  • Damn it, Jim (Cameron) I'm a screenwriter not a chemist! Ann Merchant, The Science & Entertainment Exchange. The presentation will outline the mission and the history of The Science & Entertainment Exchange and examine some of the realities of the relationship between science and entertainment as a way to explore a "win-win" collaboration. It will cover the origins of The Science & Entertainment Exchange and its expertise in both the entertainment and science communities. It will also describe a "typical" consultation, highlight some of the special events The Exchange has hosted and ground the program objectives in the research on education/entertainment.

###

The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/acs-hsa080311.php

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Monday, August 29, 2011

Pierce O'Donnell: Why Has President Obama Forgotten Katrina Victims? (Huffington post)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/128686823?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Automotive ECommerce Software ? Shopping Cart Online Websites ...

Automotive eCommerce Software ? Shopping Cart Online Website: A Brief Insight

If you are offering many products on your ecommerce website, it is important for you get an efficient shopping cart program integrated with your online store.

What Is A Shopping Cart Program?

The shopping cart program is software that runs on your web server and generates active web pages for your customers so that they can have a smooth and hassle free online shopping experience. Whether it is about choosing the right product from the extensive list of product catalogues or performing the transaction, the shopping cart program makes everything much easier and convenient for your customers.

Features Of Shopping Cart Program

The loads of tremendous features of a shopping cart program make it an essential component on your ecommerce store.

If there is a good shopping cart program on your ecommerce store, your customers will get the control of the shopping process. They can easily choose the products and services they are interested in. If at a later stage, they change their mind, they can replace the product easily and choose another one.

The shipping charges are calculated by the shopping cart program automatically based on the specfic region the customers belong to. This makes the things convenient for both you and your customers. One interesting feature of the shopping cart program is that they also have an inbuilt automated currency conversion program. This program displays the prices of the various products and services in the currency based on the country your customer lives in. It helps in invoking personal interest in customers for the products offered on your eCommerce website.

In-built search functionality is another great feature of the shopping cart program. It helps your customers find the specific products or services they are looking for with much ease without browsing through the extensive range of product categories. The customers are just supposed to enter the initials of the products they are looking for, and the in-built search functionality of the shopping cart program will display the list of relevant products and services.

However, you should also keep in mind that not every shopping cart program offers all the features. You will have to choose the right package that accommodates all your specific needs. Sometimes, you may also want to purchase a shopping cart program package and then add or delete certain features to suit the specific size and nature of your business. The difficult part of the story is that there are very few companies available on Internet that allows you such flexibility to customize the shopping cart program. However, the good news is that there are still some reputed companies, such as Shopping Cart Elite, who will offer you things the way you want. Shopping Cart Elite is considered as the leader in providing the best shopping cart program. There are many packages available with them. Based on your specific budget and other needs, you can easily choose the package that best suits your online business.

Source: http://www.articlopedia.org/automotive-ecommerce-software-shopping-cart-online-websites/

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Sunday, August 28, 2011

Drake & Scull expects record profits for 2011 | U.S Real Estate ...

The chief executive of Drake & Scull International (DSI) has forecast that the Dubai contractor will achieve a record profit this year, The National has reported. Khaldoun Tabari has said that DSI's 2011 profits will grow by 23% to Dhs200m (US$54.4m). He has added that the company is mulling its first dividend to shareholders since 2009, bucking the trend of the region's depressed development and construction industry.


Visit Source

Source: http://www.torealestates.com/2011/08/28/drake-scull-expects-record-profits-for-2011/

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Creative Answers to Your Health and fitness: Diet | Cosmetic Surgery

Author name: Joella R.C. Hippensteel

We all of the have hectic schedules. Mainly because previously spoken about, one from the biggest issues at the moment in well-being is a lessening of time. Therefore, our society is actually obsessed through convenience ? the junk food industry is without a doubt booming for your reason! Maybe it?s time for them to reevaluate our own priorities. Personal computer are numerous creative strategies to replace time-wasters through health-boosters.

Before everything else, skip the junk food. It ?s nearly impossible to fix most junk food combos inside your everyday recommended best eye cream values. Including the outrageous far more than grease, glucose, and salt. No you require that. There are many delicious meals that may be made in the comfort of the home throughout 15 short minutes or much less. It might take a touch of research as well as experimentation, but start organizing a e-book of quickly and wholesome recipes. Speak to your friends! Visit the library! Go online for different recipes.

Black conform removal can be executed by you as well as a professional that the case is amazingly bad. If you intend on carrying out the eradication yourself there are plenty of things consider to protect your overall health and the ones around you will. Here a many of the most important ones for getting your started out:

It is significant to seal the place which has been contaminated throughout. This then simply protects all your family members and other folks from using the harvest from the hazardous spores that will escape through the removal process in addition to prevent any spreading as well as multiplying in other places of the house as certainly. This is usually why an important respirator it will take so you cannot inhale any spores even though removing fungi inside the contained location.

A handy pulse monitor is a fantastic device meant for monitoring dark circles under eyes at family home. There ?s no more will need to check upward your heart manually as well as count occasion. With the following monitor requires seconds to measure up the pulse but it may currently have other built in health come by functions, also. Let us check out some regarding its advantages and disadvantages.

There are backyard garden finger heart monitors out there. You could easily Google all of them up web based. Some of those are very inexpensive and be put into basic sizing. Others are certainly expensive as well as combine a lot of functions.

Such worries will be expected throughout times that fit this description, but there does exist something that you can do about the item. Dr. Mercola has revealed using EFT, any Emotional Flexibility Techniques. Deepak Chopra heralds the following unusual method as having great no nonsense muscle building. It stabilizes the male body?s energy system and it has shown itself to work for many physical as well as emotional hardships. With the country?s simplicity as well as effectiveness, it isn?t surprising in which more recovery practitioners would like EFT Education and people seeking to read EFT tapping.

EFT tapping can be an energy recovery process which was developed as a result of Gary Craig through the 1990?s. EFT has grew quickly throughout popularity as well as a good reputation so it is consequently simple that virtually anybody can make use of to handle difficult views, stress, phobic disorders, depression, hassles, and a great deal more. And EFT usually produces this type of rapid results that folks frequently commence to experience alleviation in just one or two moments.

Source: http://iwantcosmeticsurgery.co.uk/creative-answers-to-your-health-and-fitness-diet/

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

Border town struggles to recover from gun scandal (AP)

COLUMBUS, N.M. ? Federal prosecutors have all but wrapped up their prosecution of a Mexican gun smuggling ring that snared the mayor, police chief and a trustee of this quiet, dusty border town where chile field workers and refugees from different sides of Mexico's violent drug war apparently coexist peacefully and without fear.

But the new mayor says resolution of the case is little consolation for Columbus. The town was defrocked, losing its reputation and sense of trust, and was brought to the brink of financial ruin by its former leaders now being tried in the conspiracy.

And that "is just the tip of the iceberg," said Nicole Lawson, a former city employee and losing mayoral candidate who was appointed to take the reins after Mayor Eddie Espinoza, former village trustee Blas Gutierrez and police chief Angelo Vega were accused of helping smuggle more than 200 guns into Mexico.

The now jailed officials also left the town's record-keeping in shambles. The police department has been shuttered to save money, and Lawson said has no idea how many guns, protective vests and computers are missing. Water and sewer service continues only because a laid off city worker volunteered her time to keep grant funding on track. Recreation activities were shut down for most of the summer. Most of the city's remaining 15 workers have had their hours cut and benefits eliminated.

And Lawson herself ? who is also one of three city EMTs on call seven days a week ? says she is putting in about 100 hours a week in hopes of saving the city from bankruptcy.

"It's horrific. These people not only had their trust violated by the people that were supposed to be serving and protecting them, but they have lost their income entirely or their ability to seek medical treatment.

"They have fallen through the cracks," she said, and yet some are still working.

The town's previous claim to fame was a 1916 raid by Pancho Villa. Neither hard financial times nor charges of official misconduct are new for Columbus, population about 1,800, which is made up of mostly small, one-story houses laid out on a grid in the flatlands of the Chihuahua desert with views of mountain ranges on all four sides.

Former mayor and Martha's Inn owner Martha Skinner says she had just finished cleaning things up from her predecessor ? who was caught embezzling ? when Espinoza defeated her in 2006.

"I just don't want to know anymore. I can't stand it," Skinner said.

But this case was particularly shocking because the charges went well beyond the traditional forms of municipal chicanery like embezzlement to running guns across the border into violence-plagued Mexico.

"I was surprised, by the reasons" they were arrested, said Martha Rodriguez, who owns Hacienda de Villa, the other inn in town. "I think it was a blow ? the abuse of power. I am Mexican, and when you see a Mexican revert to the same thing that is going on there, it's shocking. You want it to be getting better."

Indeed nearly everyone in this town ? which is about 90 percent Hispanic ? has some ties to its cross-border neighbor of Palomas, Mexico, where kidnappings, beheadings and other forms of drug-gang violence occurred.

So far, however, the border has been an invisible line that violence hasn't crossed.

Javier Lozano, a former Mexican police comandante in Palomas with a self-acknowledged list of enemies, is now more safely established as Columbus' elected municipal judge. He also helps his wife, Skinner, run the bed and breakfast that never locks it doors. He said he still crosses over to Palomas, but must exercise caution.

A few blocks away, a man that Lozano said had to flee Mexico and his extensive Mexican real estate holdings quietly goes about the business of serving food at his restaurant. Lozano said that it would likely be fatal if the restaurateur tried to return the three miles to Palomas.

On the U.S. side, however, Lawson can't even remember the last homicide. There hasn't been one since she arrived in 2002. There have been a few burglaries, she said, and parked cars have been shot at.

So shuttering the three-officer police force was probably one of the easier decisions Lawson has made. The county sheriff already patrolled on the perimeters and Border Patrol vehicles are more prevalent on town streets than people.

Columbus has many challenges ahead, Lawson said.

The town is essentially creating new financial books for the past few years. Debts mount and bankruptcy is close. Granting agencies are demanding repayment for fraudulent billings, including one for $24,000 and one for $26,000.

"Right now we are only looking at one week at a time," she said. "Today, we've got about $42,000."

Which might sound good, but the town's insurance payment of $85,000 for the fiscal year that started two months ago is due.

"If you could have messed it up, it looks like we did," she said. "Every time we get something squared away, we find a few other things."

For instance, she said, the town recently discovered that its gross receipts tax had not been collected or paid properly for a number of years.

"So we turned ourselves in," she said. "Hopefully we will be forgiven the fines and penalties for that."

Meantime, the gun smuggling case against the former town officials is nearing an end. Suspended police chief Vegas last week changed his plea on conspiracy smuggling and public corruption charges to guilty, the last of three town officials to plead guilty in the case that has now seen all but two of 14 defendants admit being involved in the plot.

The indictment didn't say who specifically on the other side of the border received the guns, only that they were crossing into Mexico with a ready market among drug cartels. Vega faces up to 35 years in prison, Espinosa faces 68 years and Gutierrez could be sentenced to almost 300 years.

Lawson voted for and worked for Espinoza and said she's not sure how it all went so wrong

"He just started making all the wrong choices I guess. I believed in him. The man had great potential," said Lawson, who was appointed by the town trustees to fill Espinoza's term. "He could have been the best mayor."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mexico/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110827/ap_on_re_us/us_border_town_mayor_gun_smuggling

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Home & Family ? Blog Archive ? Picking Out The Right Hen Party ...

You can find plenty of possibilities in terms of preparing and buying for hen party add-ons. You initial must ascertain the model in the party just before you start to purchase. If you?re having a laid-back, innocent party the components are heading to become less adult-oriented than if you?re preparing a nuts, party-girl bash. Getting the incorrect components can kill the mood on the party and leave the guest of honor sensation embarrassed. Though some functions are meant to create her feel just like the center of interest, she could possibly not be the kind of individual to celebrate on this way.

When you are getting a hen party for any lady who is not exactly the party sort, you can still program an occasion which is a lot of enjoyable for everybody. Hen party accessories often function bridal themes. These items are a fantastic approach to make even the shyest, quietest woman really feel special. Consider acquiring several products including inexpensive recreations of bridal veils, t-shirts labeled using the phrase ?bride? plus a recreation on the traditional bridal bouquet. It is possible to make some of these products your self in case you have the time and creativeness to do so. Once the celebration group heads out to eat dinner at a restaurant, the accessories are positive to obtain the bride just a little extra consideration.

Some hen celebration add-ons are meant to become utilized in the household. If you?re preparing a home celebration to celebrate a friend or relatives last couple of days of freedom, these products will liven up the party for every person. There are actually video games which are somewhat and focus on the sexier components of becoming married. You can also personalize the video games and make them all concerning the bride. This way the concept is often as risky or as tame when you like. Develop a question video game concerning the bride making use of your own issues or perhaps a board on-line game produced just for the occasion.

Some hen celebration components are incredibly e and can give your celebration an extra-naughty flare. Components including this are ideal for your lady who?s self-assured, secure and truly ready to let down her hair in celebration of her forthcoming nuptials. In case you have a friend similar to this, or it sounds like you and you might be preparing your personal hen party, you have various items accessible to you personally. Clothing that invites the attention of strangers are commonly a hit for hen parties. The shirt may well feature a stating or invitation to accomplish something towards the bride in an work to generate consideration. The goal is usually to get the bride to drink alcohol purchased for her by strangers and friends.

When shopping for hen celebration components, don?t forget about those concerned within the marriage ceremony apart from the bride. Products are obtainable for the maid of honor and also the bridesmaids. Though the bride requirements to be the center of consideration, encouraging others to really feel special and permit unfastened can make to get a wilder, a lot more enjoyable party for every person.

Find out more info about hen party ideas with my top recommended hen party ireland blog.

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Source: http://home.blogmeout.net/2011/08/picking-out-the-right-hen-party-equipment/

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Friday, August 26, 2011

AP-GfK Poll: 87% in US disapprove of Congress (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Americans are plenty angry at Congress in the aftermath of the debt crisis and Republicans could pay the greatest price, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests.

The poll finds the tea party has lost support, Republican House Speaker John Boehner is increasingly unpopular and people are warming to the idea of not just cutting spending but also raising taxes ? anathema to the GOP ? just as both parties prepare for another struggle with deficit reduction.

To be sure, there is plenty of discontent to go around. The poll finds more people are down on their own member of Congress, not just the institution, an unusual finding in surveys and one bound to make incumbents particularly nervous. In interviews, some people said the debt standoff itself, which caused a crisis of confidence to ripple through world markets, made them wonder whether lawmakers are able to govern at all.

"I guess I long for the day back in the `70s and `80s when we could disagree but we could get a compromise worked out," said Republican Scott MacGregor, 45, a Windsor, Conn., police detective. "I don't think there's any compromise anymore."

The results point to a chilly autumn in Washington as the divided Congress returns to the same fiscal issues that almost halted other legislative business and are certain to influence the struggle for power in the 2012 elections. They suggest that politicians, regardless of party, have little to gain by prolonging the nation's most consequential policy debate. And they highlight the gap between the wider public's wishes now and the tea party's cut-it-or-shut-it philosophy that helped propel Republicans into the House majority last year.

The survey, conducted Aug. 18-22, found that approval of Congress has dropped to its lowest level in AP-GfK polling ? 12 percent. That's down from 21 percent in June, before the debt deal reached fever pitch.

The results indicate, too, that the question of trust remains up for grabs ? a sign that the government's stewardship of the economy over the next year will weigh heavily on the fortunes of both parties in the elections. Republicans and Democrats statistically tied, 40 percent to 43 percent respectively, when respondents were asked which party they trust more to handle the federal budget deficit. Nearly a third of independents said they trust neither party on the issue.

Much about the next election hinges on independent voters, the ever-growing group fiercely wooed by campaigns for years. These respondents, the poll found, were the least forgiving toward incumbents and shifted substantially toward the need to raise taxes as part of the deficit and debt solution.

Among them, 65 percent say they want their own House representative tossed out in 2012, compared with 53 percent of respondents generally.

This group, too, is helping fuel the shift toward raising taxes as a way to balance the budget. The poll found that among independents, 37 percent now say that increasing taxes should be the focus of the fiscal dealmakers, over cutting government services. That's up nine points from March, the poll found.

The backlash was personal, too. Boehner, the congressional veteran from Ohio who struggled to win enough members of his own party to pass the debt deal, won approval from 29 percent of the poll's respondents. That's the lowest such level of his tenure and also the first time his rating is more negative than positive. Forty-seven percent of Republican respondents said they approve of Boehner; only a fifth of independents have a favorable opinion of him.

The tea party, too, took a hit, according to the poll. Unfavorable views of the tea party have climbed 10 percentage points since November, when they fueled the Republican resurgence. Of those, 32 percent have a deeply unfavorable impression of the movement and just a quarter of respondents say they consider themselves supporters of the tea party ? the lowest in AP-GfK polling and a dip of 8 percentage points since June.

Overall, 87 percent disapproved of Congress' performance. Entrenched partisanship explained some of the discontent.

"They're so committed to their personal ways, and party's way, that they are having a hard time finding a middle road," Republican Frank Chase, 77, a military retiree from Hopkinton, Mass., said of both sides.

Democrat Laurie Lewis, a Rutgers University professor from Flemington, N.J., agreed with that much. "Elect those who are willing to make compromise on both sides of the hall," she said. Still, "I don't think it's smart to say throw out everyone."

On budget and debt policy, the poll finds a public warming to the idea of using tax increases to help solve the fiscal crisis, a potential boon to President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats who want to end Bush-era tax breaks for the nation's wealthiest Americans. Republicans bristle at anything called a tax increase, though some acknowledge that more revenue must be raised.

It's perhaps the most difficult issue of the debate and carries tremendous influence over the nations' economic future and the political fortunes of the candidates next year, when the presidency and the House and Senate majorities are at stake. The problem now rests on the shoulders of a dozen House and Senate members named to a supercommittee that will spend the fall digging into the morass that the broader Congress couldn't solve.

Asked which should be the main focus of lawmakers trying to solve that problem, raising taxes or cutting government services, 53 percent of respondents said cutting services and 34 percent said increasing taxes. That's a shift toward raising taxes since March, when 29 percent said increasing taxes and 62 percent said cutting services.

Since then, more Democrats and independents have shifted toward taxes as a means of balancing the budget, while Republican views on the question have not moved, according to the poll. Half of Democrats polled said raising taxes should be the focus over cutting services, up 10 percentage points from March. Independents showed a clear preference for cutting services over raising taxes in March, 64 percent to 28 percent. Now, only 42 percent of independents say focus on cutting services while 37 percent say increase taxes, according to the poll.

Overall, 57 percent of respondents believe both that that taxes will rise and government services will be cut in order to balance the federal budget.

The poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

____

Poll results: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

___

Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, Kasie Hunt and Stacy Anderson, and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius, contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110826/ap_on_go_co/us_ap_poll_congress

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NYPD partnership with CIA blurs spying lines

In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room.

The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.

From that apartment, about an hour outside the department's jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither the FBI nor the local police had any idea.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what's going on.

The department has dispatched teams of undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing. NYPD officials have scrutinized imams and gathered intelligence on cab drivers and food cart vendors, jobs often done by Muslims.

Many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in transforming the NYPD's intelligence unit.

A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll, was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. The CIA trained a police detective at the Farm, the agency's spy school in Virginia, then returned him to New York, where he put his new espionage skills to work inside the United States.

And just last month, the CIA sent a senior officer to work as a clandestine operative inside police headquarters.

Details of clandestine operations revealed
While the expansion of the NYPD's intelligence unit has been well known, many details about its clandestine operations, including the depth of its CIA ties, have not previously been reported.

The NYPD denied that it trolls ethnic neighborhoods and said it only follows leads. In a city that has repeatedly been targeted by terrorists, police make no apologies for pushing the envelope. NYPD intelligence operations have disrupted terrorist plots and put several would-be killers in prison.

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"The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there's not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. "And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard."

But officials said they've also been careful to keep information about some programs out of court, where a judge might take a different view. The NYPD considers even basic details, such as the intelligence division's organization chart, to be too sensitive to reveal in court.

One of the enduring questions of the past decade is whether being safe requires giving up some liberty and privacy. The focus of that debate has primarily been federal programs like wiretapping and indefinite detention. The question has received less attention in New York, where residents do not know for sure what, if anything, they have given up.

The story of how the NYPD Intelligence Division developed such aggressive programs was pieced together by the AP in interviews with more than 40 current and former New York Police Department and federal officials. Many were directly involved in planning and carrying out these secret operations for the department. Though most said the tactics were appropriate and made the city safer, many insisted on anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak with reporters about security matters.

The story begins with one man.

___

David Cohen arrived at the New York Police Department in January 2002, just weeks after the last fires had been extinguished at the debris field that had been the twin towers. A retired 35-year veteran of the CIA, Cohen became the police department's first civilian intelligence chief.

Cohen had an exceptional career at the CIA, rising to lead both the agency's analytical and operational divisions. He also was an extraordinarily divisive figure, a man whose sharp tongue and supreme confidence in his own abilities gave him a reputation as arrogant. Cohen's tenure as head of CIA operations, the nation's top spy, was so contentious that in 1997, The New York Times editorial page took the unusual step of calling for his ouster.

He had no police experience. He had never defended a city from an attack. But New York wasn't looking for a cop.

"Post-9/11, we needed someone in there who knew how to really gather intelligence," said John Cutter, a retired NYPD official who served as one of Cohen's top uniformed officers.

A mini CIA, just for New York
At the time, the intelligence division was best known for driving dignitaries around the city. Cohen envisioned a unit that would analyze intelligence, run undercover operations and cultivate a network of informants. In short, he wanted New York to have its own version of the CIA.

Cohen shared Commissioner Ray Kelly's belief that 9/11 had proved that the police department could not simply rely on the federal government to prevent terrorism in New York.

"If anything goes on in New York," one former officer recalls Cohen telling his staff in the early days, "it's your fault."

Among Cohen's earliest moves at the NYPD was making a request of his old colleagues at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. He needed someone to help build this new operation, someone with experience and clout and, most important, someone who had access to the latest intelligence so the NYPD wouldn't have to rely on the FBI to dole out information.

CIA Director George Tenet responded by tapping Larry Sanchez, a respected veteran who had served as a CIA official inside the United Nations. Often, when the CIA places someone on temporary assignment, the other agency picks up the tab. In this case, three former intelligence officials said, Tenet kept Sanchez on the CIA payroll.

When he arrived in New York in March 2002, Sanchez had offices at both the NYPD and the CIA's station in New York, one former official said. Sanchez interviewed police officers for newly defined intelligence jobs. He guided and mentored officers, schooling them in the art of gathering information. He also directed their efforts, another said.

There had never been an arrangement like it, and some senior CIA officials soon began questioning whether Tenet was allowing Sanchez to operate on both sides of the wall that's supposed to keep the CIA out of the domestic intelligence business.

"It should not be a surprise to anyone that, after 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency stepped up its cooperation with law enforcement on counterterrorism issues or that some of that increased cooperation was in New York, the site of ground zero," CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said.

Just as at the CIA, Cohen and Sanchez knew that informants would have to become the backbone of their operation. But with threats coming in from around the globe, they couldn't wait months for the perfect plan.

Looking for reasons to pull people over
They came up with a makeshift solution. They dispatched more officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and, according to one former police official directly involved in the effort, instructed them to look for reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant.

For Cohen, the transition from spying to policing didn't come naturally, former colleagues said. When faced with a decision, especially early in his tenure, he'd fall back on his CIA background. Cutter said he and other uniformed officers had to tell Cohen, no, we can't just slip into someone's apartment without a warrant. No, we can't just conduct a search. The rules for policing are different.

While Cohen was being shaped by the police department, his CIA background was remaking the department. But one significant barrier stood in the way of Cohen's vision.

Since 1985, the NYPD had operated under a federal court order limiting the tactics it could use to gather intelligence. During the 1960s and 1970s, the department had used informants and undercover officers to infiltrate anti-war protest groups and other activists without any reason to suspect criminal behavior.

To settle a lawsuit, the department agreed to follow guidelines that required "specific information" of criminal activity before police could monitor political activity.

In September 2002, Cohen told a federal judge that those guidelines made it "virtually impossible" to detect terrorist plots. The FBI was changing its rules to respond to 9/11, and Cohen argued that the NYPD must do so, too.

"In the case of terrorism, to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long," Cohen wrote.

U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. agreed, saying the old guidelines "addressed different perils in a different time." He scrapped the old rules and replaced them with more lenient ones.

It was a turning point for the NYPD.

___

With his newfound authority, Cohen created a secret squad that would soon infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods, according to several current and former officials directly involved in the program.

The NYPD carved up the city into more than a dozen zones and assigned undercover officers to monitor them, looking for potential trouble.

At the CIA, one of the biggest obstacles has always been that U.S. intelligence officials are overwhelmingly white, their mannerisms clearly American. The NYPD didn't have that problem, thanks to its diverse pool of officers.

Using census data, the department matched undercover officers to ethnic communities and instructed them to blend in, the officials said. Pakistani-American officers infiltrated Pakistani neighborhoods, Palestinians focused on Palestinian neighborhoods. They hung out in hookah bars and cafes, quietly observing the community around them.

The unit, which has been undisclosed now, became known inside the department as the Demographic Unit, former police officials said.

"It's not a question of profiling. It's a question of going where the problem could arise," said Mordecai Dzikansky, a retired NYPD intelligence officer who said he was aware of the Demographic Unit. "And thank God we have the capability. We have the language capability and the ethnic officers. That's our hidden weapon."

The officers did not work out of headquarters, officials said. Instead, they passed their intelligence to police handlers who knew their identities.

Cohen said he wanted the squad to "rake the coals, looking for hot spots," former officials recalled. The undercover officers soon became known inside the department as rakers.

Ethnic bookstores, cosmetics stores scrutinized
A hot spot might be a beauty supply store selling chemicals used for making bombs. Or it might be a hawala, a broker that transfers money around the world with little documentation. Undercover officers might visit an Internet cafe and look at the browsing history on a computer, a former police official involved in the program said. If it revealed visits to radical websites, the cafe might be deemed a hot spot.

Ethnic bookstores, too, were on the list. If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn. The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny. If a restaurant patron applauds a news report about the death of U.S. troops, the patron or the restaurant could be labeled a hot spot.

The goal was to "map the city's human terrain," one law enforcement official said. The program was modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank, a former police official said.

Mapping crimes has been a successful police strategy nationwide. But mapping robberies and shootings is one thing. Mapping ethnic neighborhoods is different, something that at least brushes against what the federal government considers racial profiling.

Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said the Demographic Unit does not exist. He said the department has a Zone Assessment Unit that looks for locations that could attract terrorists. But he said undercover officers only followed leads, disputing the account of several current and former police and federal officials. They do not just hang out in neighborhoods, he said.

"We will go into a location, whether it's a mosque or a bookstore, if the lead warrants it, and at least establish whether there's something that requires more attention," Browne said.

That conflicts with testimony from an undercover officer in the 2006 trial of Shahawar Matin Siraj, who was convicted of planning an attack on New York's subway system. The officer said he was instructed to live in Brooklyn and act as a "walking camera" for police.

"I was told to act like a civilian ? hang out in the neighborhood, gather information," the Bangladeshi officer testified, under a false name, in what offered the first narrow glimpse at the NYPD's infiltration of ethnic neighborhoods.

'It's not profiling'
Officials said such operations just made sense. Islamic terrorists had attacked the city on 9/11, so police needed people inside the city's Muslim neighborhoods. Officials say it does not conflict with a 2004 city law prohibiting the NYPD from using religion or ethnicity "as the determinative factor for initiating law enforcement action."

"It's not profiling," Cutter said. "It's like, after a shooting, do you go 20 blocks away and interview guys or do you go to the neighborhood where it happened?"

In 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department was criticized for even considering a similar program. The police announced plans to map Islamic neighborhoods to look for pockets of radicalization among the region's roughly 500,000 Muslims. Criticism was swift, and chief William Bratton scrapped the plan.

"A lot of these people came from countries where the police were the terrorists," Bratton said at a news conference, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. "We don't do that here. We do not want to spread fear."

In New York, current and former officials said, the lesson of that controversy was that such programs should be kept secret.

Some in the department, including lawyers, have privately expressed concerns about the raking program and how police use the information, current and former officials said. Part of the concern was that it might appear that police were building dossiers on innocent people, officials said. Another concern was that, if a case went to court, the department could be forced to reveal details about the program, putting the entire operation in jeopardy.

That's why, former officials said, police regularly shredded documents discussing rakers.

When Cohen made his case in court that he needed broader authority to investigate terrorism, he had promised to abide by the FBI's investigative guidelines. But the FBI is prohibited from using undercover agents unless there's specific evidence of criminal activity, meaning a federal raking program like the one officials described to the AP would violate FBI guidelines.

The NYPD declined to make Cohen available for comment. In an earlier interview with the AP on a variety of topics, Police Commissioner Kelly said the intelligence unit does not infringe on civil rights.

"We're doing what we believe we have to do to protect the city," he said. "We have many, many lawyers in our employ. We see ourselves as very conscious and aware of civil liberties. And we know there's always going to be some tension between the police department and so-called civil liberties groups because of the nature of what we do."

The department clashed with civil rights groups most publicly after Cohen's undercover officers infiltrated anti-war groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. A lawsuit over that program continues today.

During the convention, when protesters were arrested, police asked a list of questions which, according to court documents, included: "What are your political affiliations?" "Do you do any kind of political work?" and "Do you hate George W. Bush?"

"At the end of the day, it's pure and simple a rogue domestic surveillance operation," said Christopher Dunn, a New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer involved in the convention lawsuit.

___

Undercover agents like the rakers were valuable, but what Cohen and Sanchez wanted most were informants.

The NYPD dedicated an entire squad, the Terrorist Interdiction Unit, to developing and handling informants. Current and former officials said Sanchez was instrumental in teaching them how to develop sources.

For years, detectives used informants known as mosque crawlers to monitor weekly sermons and report what was said, several current and former officials directly involved in the informant program said. If FBI agents were to do that, they would be in violation of the Privacy Act, which prohibits the federal government from collecting intelligence on purely First Amendment activities.

The FBI has generated its own share of controversy for putting informants inside mosques, but unlike the program described to the AP, the FBI requires evidence of a crime before an informant can be used inside a mosque.

Valerie Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, would not discuss the NYPD's programs but said FBI informants can't troll mosques looking for leads. Such operations are reviewed for civil liberties concerns, she said.

Video: AP report: NYPD targeting ethnic communities (on this page)

"If you're sending an informant into a mosque when there is no evidence of wrongdoing, that's a very high-risk thing to do," Caproni said. "You're running right up against core constitutional rights. You're talking about freedom of religion."

That's why senior FBI officials in New York ordered their own agents not to accept any reports from the NYPD's mosque crawlers, two retired agents said.

It's unclear whether the police department still uses mosque crawlers. Officials said that, as Muslims figured out what was going on, the mosque crawlers became cafe crawlers, fanning out into the city's ethnic hangouts.

"Someone has a great imagination," Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said. "There is no such thing as mosque crawlers."

Following the foiled subway plot, however, the key informant in the case, Osama Eldawoody, said he attended hundreds of prayer services and collected information even on people who showed no signs of radicalization.

NYPD detectives have recruited shopkeepers and nosy neighbors to become "seeded" informants who keep police up to date on the latest happenings in ethnic neighborhoods, one official directly involved in the informant program said.

The department also has a roster of "directed" informants it can tap for assignments. For instance, if a raker identifies a bookstore as a hot spot, police might assign an informant to gather information, long before there's concrete evidence of anything criminal.

Putting informants to work, even from prison
To identify possible informants, the department created what became known as the "debriefing program." When someone is arrested who might be useful to the intelligence unit ? whether because he said something suspicious or because he is simply a young Middle Eastern man ? he is singled out for extra questioning. Intelligence officials don't care about the underlying charges; they want to know more about his community and, ideally, they want to put him to work.

Police are in prisons, too, promising better living conditions and help or money on the outside for Muslim prisoners who will work with them.

Early in the intelligence division's transformation, police asked the taxi commission to run a report on all the city's Pakistani cab drivers, looking for those who got licenses fraudulently and might be susceptible to pressure to cooperate, according to former officials who were involved in or briefed on the effort.

That strategy has been rejected in other cities.

Boston police once asked neighboring Cambridge for a list of Somali cab drivers, Cambridge Police Chief Robert Haas said. Haas refused, saying that without a specific reason, the search was inappropriate.

"It really has a chilling effect in terms of the relationship between the local police department and those cultural groups, if they think that's going to take place," Haas said.

The informant division was so important to the NYPD that Cohen persuaded his former colleagues to train a detective, Steve Pinkall, at the CIA's training center at the Farm. Pinkall, who had an intelligence background as a Marine, was given an unusual temporary assignment at CIA headquarters, officials said. He took the field tradecraft course alongside future CIA spies then returned to New York to run investigations.

"We found that helpful, for NYPD personnel to be exposed to the tradecraft," Browne said.

The idea troubled senior FBI officials, who saw it as the NYPD and CIA blurring the lines between police work and spying, in which undercover officers regularly break the laws of foreign governments. The arrangement even made its way to FBI Director Robert Mueller, two former senior FBI officials said, but the training was already under way and Mueller did not press the issue.

___

NYPD's intelligence operations do not stop at the city line, as the undercover operation in New Jersey made clear.

The department has gotten some of its officers deputized as federal marshals, allowing them to work out of state. But often, there's no specific jurisdiction at all. Cohen's undercover squad, the Special Services Unit, operates in places such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, officials said. They can't make arrests and, if something goes wrong ? a shooting or a car accident, for instance ? the officers could be personally liable. But the NYPD has decided it's worth the risk, a former police official said.

With Police Commissioner Kelly's backing, Cohen's policy is that any potential threat to New York City is the NYPD's business, regardless of where it occurs, officials said.

That aggressiveness has sometimes put the NYPD at odds with local police departments and, more frequently, with the FBI. The FBI didn't like the rules Cohen played by and said his operations encroached on their responsibilities.

Once, undercover officers were stopped by police in Massachusetts while conducting surveillance on a house, one former New York official recalled. In another instance, the NYPD sparked concern among federal officials by expanding its intelligence-gathering efforts related to the United Nations, where the FBI is in charge, current and former federal officials said.

The AP has agreed not to disclose details of either the FBI or NYPD operations because they involve foreign counterintelligence.

Both Mueller and Kelly have said their agencies have strong working relationships and said reports of rivalry and disagreements are overblown. And the NYPD's out-of-state operations have had success.

A young Egyptian NYPD officer living undercover in New Jersey, for example, was key to building a case against Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte. The pair was arrested last year at John F. Kennedy Airport en route to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab. Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Cohen has also sent officers abroad, stationing them in 11 foreign cities. If a bomber blows himself up in Jerusalem, the NYPD rushes to the scene, said Dzikansky, who served in Israel and is the co-author of the forthcoming book "Terrorist Suicide Bombings: Attack Interdiction, Mitigation, and Response."

"I was there to ask the New York question," Dzikansky said. "Why this location? Was there something unique that the bomber had done? Was there any pre-notification? Was there a security lapse?"

All of this intelligence ? from the rakers, the undercovers, the overseas liaisons and the informants ? is passed to a team of analysts hired from some of the nation's most prestigious universities. Analysts have spotted emerging trends and summarized topics such as Hezbollah's activities in New York and the threat of South Asian terrorist groups.

They also have tackled more contentious topics, including drafting an analytical report on every mosque within 100 miles of New York, one former police official said. The report drew on information from mosque crawlers, undercover officers and public information. It mapped hundreds of mosques and discussed the likelihood of them being infiltrated by al-Qaida, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

For Cohen, there was only one way to measure success: "They haven't attacked us," he said in a 2005 deposition. He said anything that was bad for terrorists was good for NYPD.

___

Though the CIA is prohibited from collecting intelligence domestically, the wall between domestic and foreign operations became more porous. Intelligence gathered by the NYPD, with CIA officer Sanchez overseeing collection, was often passed to the CIA in informal conversations and through unofficial channels, a former official involved in that process said.

By design, the NYPD was looking more and more like a domestic CIA.

"It's like starting the CIA over in the post-9/11 world," Cohen said in "Protecting the City," a laudatory 2009 book about the NYPD. "What would you do if you could begin it all over again? Hah. This is what you would do."

Sanchez's assignment in New York ended in 2004, but he received permission to take a leave of absence from the agency and become Cohen's deputy, former officials said.

Though Sanchez's assignments were blessed by CIA management, some in the agency's New York station saw the presence of such a senior officer in the city as a turf encroachment. Finally, the New York station chief, Tom Higgins, called headquarters, one former senior intelligence official said. Higgins complained, the official said, that Sanchez was wearing both hats, sometimes acting as a CIA officer, sometimes as an NYPD official.

The CIA finally forced him to choose: Stay with the agency or stay with the NYPD.

Sanchez declined to comment to the AP about the arrangement, but he picked the NYPD. He retired last year and is now a consultant in the Middle East.

More CIA presence in New York
Last month, the CIA deepened its NYPD ties even further. It sent one of its most experienced operatives, a former station chief in two Middle Eastern countries, to work out of police headquarters as Cohen's special assistant while on the CIA payroll. Current and former U.S. officials acknowledge it's unusual but said it's the kind of collaboration Americans expect after 9/11.

Officials said revealing the CIA officer's name would jeopardize national security. The arrangement was described as a sabbatical. He is a member of the agency's senior management, but officials said he was sent to the municipal police department to get management experience.

At the NYPD, he works undercover in the senior ranks of the intelligence division. Officials are adamant that he is not involved in actual intelligence-gathering.

___

The NYPD has faced little scrutiny over the past decade as it has taken on broad new intelligence missions, targeted ethnic neighborhoods and partnered with the CIA in extraordinary ways.

The department's primary watchdog, the New York City Council, has not held hearings on the intelligence division's operations and former NYPD officials said council members typically do not ask for details.

"Ray Kelly briefs me privately on certain subjects that should not be discussed in public," said City Councilman Peter Vallone. "We've discussed in person how they investigate certain groups they suspect have terrorist sympathizers or have terrorist suspects."

The city comptroller's office has audited several NYPD components since 9/11 but not the intelligence unit, which had a $62 million budget last year.

Video: AP report: NYPD targeting ethnic communities (on this page)

The federal government, too, has done little to scrutinize the nation's largest police force, despite the massive federal aid. Homeland Security officials review NYPD grants but not its underlying programs.

A report in January by the Homeland Security inspector general, for instance, found that the NYPD violated state and federal contracting rules between 2006 and 2008 by buying more than $4 million in equipment through a no-bid process. NYPD said public bidding would have revealed sensitive information to terrorists, but police never got approval from state or federal officials to adopt their own rules, the inspector general said.

On Capitol Hill, where FBI tactics have frequently been criticized for their effect on civil liberties, the NYPD faces no such opposition.

In 2007, Sanchez testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and was asked how the NYPD spots signs of radicalization. He said the key was viewing innocuous activity, including behavior that might be protected by the First Amendment, as a potential precursor to terrorism.

That triggered no questions from the committee, which Sanchez said had been "briefed in the past on how we do business."

The Justice Department has the authority to investigate civil rights violations. It issued detailed rules in 2003 against racial profiling, including prohibiting agencies from considering race when making traffic stops or assigning patrols.

But those rules apply only to the federal government and contain a murky exemption for terrorism investigations. The Justice Department has not investigated a police department for civil rights violations during a national security investigation.

"One of the hallmarks of the intelligence division over the last 10 years is that, not only has it gotten extremely aggressive and sophisticated, but it's operating completely on its own," said Dunn, the civil liberties lawyer. "There are no checks. There is no oversight."

Exemplary policing?
The NYPD has been mentioned as a model for policing in the post-9/11 era. But it's a model that seems custom-made for New York. No other city has the Big Apple's combination of a low crime rate, a $4.5 billion police budget and a diverse 34,000-person police force. Certainly no other police department has such deep CIA ties.

Perhaps most important, nobody else had 9/11 the way New York did. No other city lost nearly 3,000 people in a single morning. A decade later, police say New Yorkers still expect the department to do whatever it can to prevent another attack. The NYPD has embraced that expectation.

As Sanchez testified on Capitol Hill: "We've been given the public tolerance and the luxury to be very aggressive on this topic."

____

Associated Press writers Tom Hays and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44255142/ns/us_news-security/

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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Brain tumour uk and macmillan cancer support charity event

Hello all. There's going to be a charity paintball event on 27th August ( this Saturday ! ) in aid of BT UK & Macmillan.
It's being held to raise cash and awareness of brain cancer and also in honour of my husband, Shawn, who passed away on the 7th July from advanced brain cancer, 4 months after diagnosis, he was 42.
Shawn served for a number of years for the Royal Artillery and also The Royal Irish regiments. It would be great to get some of you guys down there for the day.
The event is to be held at :
Ape Paintball?
Addiston Lodge
Ratho, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH28 8NT
0131 333 3001
If your up for getting shot at in aid of charity then let me know via message and I will get you booked in, or call the number above. Feel free to invite friends and family to play. And no you cant shoot the marshalls.

Price for the day is ?30
Includes - Entry and Equipment, 400paintballs, BBQ
***Please could you let me know how many people will be attending in your party as soon as you can***

Thanks, Rachel.

Source: http://www.arrse.co.uk/scotland/168265-brain-tumour-uk-macmillan-cancer-support-charity-event.html

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Create and Maintain a Budget ? Finance 101

The first step to avoiding the troubles of financial debt is to create and maintain a budget. Itís not as intimidating as it sounds, donít worry.

First off, create a list of all your monthly income and also a list of your monthly expenses. When determining income, list all sources including alimony, child support, side jobs, etc. In calculating expenses, be sure to include housing, food, transportation, utilities, entertainment, etc. To gain an accurate reflection of actual expenses, sit down each night and write down expenses, just make sure to save receipts. Determine if your income covers all of your expenses. If the answer is no, then some expenses need to be reduced.

Adjust expenses. If it is a small discrepancy, it may mean reducing some minor expenses like entertainment or cell phone plan. If the deficit is larger, you may need to downsize your vehicle or living arrangements. If your income covers all of your expenses, you still may want to trim some of the excess fat off your spending habits. This can free up extra money for things such as vacations or college funds for your children.

Additionally, consider if you need to add new categories. Some areas that are often overlooked are debt reduction, emergency savings funds, and retirement savings. An emergency fund ensures there is an adequate amount available to cover unforeseen events (car emergency, etc), should it arise. This will eliminate the need for using credit which can quickly damage your budget.

There are several advantages to sticking to your budget. Firstly, most people have set financial goals that they would like to reach in the future. Sometimes it may be a trip, a brand new car, or a college education. A budget can help people save money to make these goals a reality. Additionally, many people are crushed under heavy consumer debt. Without a disciplined pattern of spending, it is virtually impossible to make much headway in reducing debt. A personal budget will provide the necessary framework to begin eliminating these inflated account balances.

If executed properly, a budget will allow a person to simultaneously meet their expenses, place money into savings, and pay back outstanding debts. Therefore, it is anyoneís best interest to create and implement a budget.

Cut Back on Spending

At first it may seem difficult to limit spending and stick to a budget, however there are a few practical changes that you can make everyday that will cut your spending more than you expect.

Firstly, alter credit car behavior. Start to pay cash whenever possible. This will help you avoid making a purchase unless you actually have the money available. If you decide to make a credit card purchase, be prepared to pay the balance off monthly. This will save a lot of money through avoiding interest charges. If you already have a credit card balance, then transfer to a card with a low interest rate. Also, find a card that does not charge an annual fee.

Another tip is to pack your lunch everyday. All of those lunch hours spent at restaurants will add up. Bringing your own lunch can save you several dollars every day, which will add up over time.

Use your cell phone during off peak hours. Some people will spend a couple hundred dollars a month on phone charges. Avoid this by making most calls during off peak times. Check with your service and plan to find out when you have cheaper or unlimited calls.

Stop throwing away the Sunday newspaper before skimming through the advertisements. Clip some of those coupons and check out the sales. This may seem tedious, but the savings are often worth it. Many stores will double or triple the amount of the coupon. This technique can save you up to 20 or 30 dollars each time you head to the food store.

Additionally, refinance. Mortgage rates have been extremely low over the past year. This has been a great opportunity to reduce the monthly house payment significantly. If you are planning to have your house paid off prior to retirement, then you may want to factor this in before refinancing.

Finally, bundle your insurance. Many insurance companies will offer their customers lower rates if they purchase multiple policies. For instance, some people use the same agent for multiple cars, and others combine their cars and house. Always keep in mind that a dollar here and there really begins to add up. Avoid the temptation of thinking that changing your spending habits wouldnít save that much money.

Start Saving! So you are loaded down with bills to pay each month and are wondering how you can begin a savings account for emergencies and other high-expense endeavors. In other words, where can you find that extra cash to put away for later? Firstly, when configuring your budge, plan for your savings first. You will grow richer each month if you begin to pay yourself first. Before paying any bills, decide on a set amount that you will pay yourself firstómaybe five or ten percentóor whatever you decideóof your paycheck. Then, deposit the amount into a savings account before paying any bills. When you do this at the beginning of the month, your entire paycheck will not suddenly slip through your fingers. If you wait until the end of the month, there may be nothing left to save. Paying yourself first will give you a systematic way to make your money grow. Regardless of your profession or your income, this system will work if you stick to it. Another technique you may try for saving money is to empty your extra change into a coffee can or a jar each day. At the end of the month, roll the coins and put them into your savings account. You may be able to save 30 or 40 dollars each month just with your spare change. Remember that good money management is more than just a mathematical formula. Itís too closely tied with the ups and downs of living to be just that. Your money management plan is always subject to change if your life situation changes. The object of a good budget is to make your money go the farthest in helping you reach your goals, it is not there to force to you to abide by rules. Donít get discouraged if the budget plan doesnít work perfectly right away. It may involve some revising and editing until it fits your needs. Then, make sure to review it often, and be sure it is making the best use of every penny! Because we know how helpful those spare pennies can be!

Avoid Spending Pitfalls! With all the advantages that are evident from personal budgeting, it is no wonder that more and more people are relying on them to reduce debts and increase their savings. However, all ëbudgetersí need to be careful to avoid some common pitfalls that appear often.

Credit cards may seem like small pieces of plastic, however they can cause a great deal of trouble for the owners. It is common for people to make unwise purchases, which they would have avoided otherwise, because they had the credit card in their wallet. The best solution for many people is simply to get rid of credit cards and begin paying only by cash, check, or debit cards. You may want to keep one card handy for emergencies, but it is probably best to keep it out of reach, and far away from your wallet.

Another problem with budgeting is impatience. There are financial goals set, but people do not have the patience to complete a savings program. For instance, an individual begins setting aside money for a new car; however, after a few months they discover the car of their dreams. Rather than waiting, they make the purchase. This could pose some serious financial strains. Discipline is a must to prevent impatience from breaking your budget.

Once a person makes a budget, they often fail to adjust it when necessary. A budget is created using a set of expenses and income figures that are liable to change. As these figures do change, it is important that the budget changes to reflect the adjustments. There could be some major deficits if this is not done appropriately and promptly. Of course nobody forgets about Christmas or Hanukkah, however many people do not consider budgeting for holidays when creating a budget. Therefore, adequate funds have not been set aside for presents, food, parties, etc. These items should be factored in and saved for throughout the year. Finally, many people factor in transportation and accommodations for vacations in their budget, however they underestimate money needed for food, entertainment, and spending money. Keep in mind that all the resorts and tourists areas are double or triple what you would normally pay. With a little planning, youíll be on your way to saving more money than you ever thought possible!

Easy Money-Saving Changes One of the most obvious and easy ways to save some extra cash is to change some of the way you use products and items in your everyday life. The key is to make minor changes. For instance, always buy the cheapest hand soap you can find. The quality doesnít necessarily go up with the price and you can use it in place of ëbath soap.í Always use the whole product. Turn bottles upside down and drain to get the last bit from them. Tear open sugar and flour sacks to get everything; squeeze or cut open tubes to use it all before running out to buy more. Youíll be surprised at how much there really is left!

Also, never use more than you need. Just because it says on the box that you need a full cup, doesnít mean that you really do it need it. Half a measure of laundry detergent and a half teaspoon of dish soap are examples of what are usually enough, rather than what the manufacturer says.

To save some cash, you can use some of the things in your house in some unique ways. Instead of spending lots of money on the fancy floor cleaners, try using ammonia. It does a great job, and you can use plain water in between times. If your furniture needs some polishing, mix equal parts of white vinegar and vegetable oil and rub on the furniture. Buff with a cloth until it shines.

For a freezer bag, use empty chip bags and close with masking taps. Also try a bowl with a lid, such as a margarine tub.

If your skin is feeling a little dry, there are several substitutes for expensive lotion. Petroleum jelly rubbed into your hands at night after a warm water soak, mayonnaise (rinse w/ cold water after), or any other oil based food. Just be sure to put it on immediately after your hands have been in water.

To save some money on laundry, dissolve a bar of handsoap in water to replace laundry detergent. Add three gallons of hot water, mix thoroughly and add a cup of washing soda.

Sure, these are small changes, but added up, they can put some extra change into your pocket throughout the year!

Source: http://newsmarket.talkposts.com/2011/08/22/create-and-maintain-a-budget-%E2%80%93-finance-101/

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