Newsbreak! (2)
Hello Everyone,
Time for another newsbreak! Enjoy!
COUPLE GIVES BIRTH TO THIRD OCT. 2 BABY
MARYSVILLE, Ohio - It won’t take much for Jenna and William Cotton to remember the birthday of the newest member of their family.
Daughter Kayla was born Tuesday, which was Oct. 2 — the same date her brothers were born on.
Ayden Cotton arrived on Oct. 2, 2003; Logan was born Oct. 2, 2006.
The parents said they had a feeling their baby daughter might come a couple of days past her Sept. 30 due date. Sure enough, Jenna Cotton, 23, began having contractions early Tuesday, hours before a planned birthday party for the boys.
She had a doctor’s appointment scheduled later in the day and hung in for the party. Ayden, the 4-year-old, wanted to know if his new baby sister would make the festivities, Jenna Cotton said.
Kayla, at 7-pounds, 8-ounces, was born at 7:07 p.m. Tuesday.
The odds of a family having three children born on the same date in different years are about 7.5 in 1 million, said Bill Notz, a statistics professor at Ohio State University.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Some family should be playing the godd**n lottery. Can you believe that? Having 3 kids born on the same day? That’s freaky!
Next story!
WOMAN TURNS IN BAG STUFFED WITH $65,000
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A county garbage operations employee found a plastic bag on the road stuffed with $65,000 Thursday — and immediately turned it in to authorities. It turned out the money had fallen off a Loomis armored car half an hour before Debbie Cole found it near the Pinellas County solid waste operations facility where she works.
Cole’s boss, Bob Hauser, said he can’t give her a raise or a bonus for her good deed because she’s a government employee. But maybe, he said, he can arrange some extra time off.
Cole, who grew up in Long Island, said she was raised to be honest. She said she raised her four daughters the same way.
Did she think for just a minute about keeping the money?
“Everyone keeps asking me that,” Cole said. “To be honest, no. It didn’t even cross my mind.”
First, as a man who’s one paycheck away from living in my car, that is so unfair that bags of money don’t fall near me. That never happens to me and I’m annoyed by it.
Second, with all due respect to Debbie Cole, she’s nuts and despite being a good role model to the country I think she deserves a smack in the back of the head for giving the money back. Anytime I hear about a story like this it always makes me want to smack the person. But it’s not right to do that, especially a 53 year old woman who was raised right.
I forgive her. Next story!
BILL CLINTON ENVISIONS DIPLOMATIC ROLE
By D’ARCY DORAN
LONDON - Former President Clinton has said his wife wants him to lead efforts to rebuild the United States’ tarnished reputation abroad — if she is elected to the White House next year. The former president made the comments in interviews released Friday in Britain where he was fundraising for Hilary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for next year’s presidential election.
Clinton was asked what his public role might be if his wife becomes president, in interviews with The Guardian newspaper and British Broadcasting Corp. television.
He joked to The Guardian that Scottish friends have suggested his title could be “first laddie.”
“What Hillary has said is that if she were elected she would ask me, and others — including former Republican presidents — to go out and immediately try to restore America’s standing, go out and tell people America was open for business and cooperation again,” he was quoted as telling the newspaper.
Well I’m still not yet convinced that Hilary would be a good president, but I think sending out Slick Willie might be a good idea. The man may be a liar and adulterer, but people are okay with that. So let him loose and let that charisma of his sweeten up the countries who currently hate America.
Sadly that despite his many flaws, Bill was also a good president and people loved him. The people of America loved him (for the most part), the world loved him and he’s just a guy you have to like. So I’m okay with Bill Clinton, goodwill ambassador.
Next story!
COUNCIL OF EUROPE FIRMLY OPPOSES CREATIONISM IN SCHOOL
By Gilbert Reilhac
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe’s main human rights body voted on Thursday to urge schools across the continent to firmly oppose the teaching of creationist and “intelligent design” views in their science classes. The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted “in forms of religious extremism” and amounted to a dangerous assault on science and human rights.
The text said European schools should “resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion.” It said the “intelligent design” view defended by some United States conservatives was an updated version of creationism.
Creationism says God made the world in six days as depicted in the Bible. Intelligent design argues some life forms are too complex to have evolved according to Charles Darwin’s theory and needed an unnamed higher intelligence to develop as they have.
Anne Brasseur, an Assembly member from Luxembourg who updated an earlier draft resolution, said the report showed how creationists — most recently a shadowy Turkish Muslim writer Harun Yahya — were trying to infiltrate European schools.
“The purpose of this report is to warn against the attempt to pass off a belief — creationism — as a science and to teach the theses of this belief in science classes,” she said. “Its purpose is not to fight any belief.”
The vote was due in June but was postponed because some members felt the original text amounted to an attack on religious belief. A few changes were made to spell out that it was not directed against religion.
The Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, oversees human rights standards in member states and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.
The resolution, which passed 48 votes to 25 with 3 abstentions, is not binding on the Council’s 47 member states but reflects widespread opposition among politicians to teaching creationism in science class.
Some conservatives in the United States, both religious and secular, have long opposed the teaching of evolution in public schools but U.S. courts have regularly barred them from teaching what they describe as religious views of creation.
Pressure to teach creationism is weaker in Europe, but has been mounting. An Assembly committee took up the issue because Harun Yahya has been sending his lavish Islamic creationist book “Atlas of Creation” to schools in several countries.
Supporters of intelligent design want it taught in science class alongside evolution. A U.S. court ruled this out in a landmark decision in 2005, dismissing it as “neo-creationism.”
This is a topic I prefer to avoid, but I shall dip into it a little. I think both should be taught in two separate classes and allow the chips fall as they may. That’s it! I’m done!
Next Story!
Bush says US ‘does not torture’
By JENNIFER LOVEN
WASHINGTON - President Bush defended his administration’s detention and interrogation policies for terrorism suspects on Friday, saying they are both successful and lawful.
“When we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we’re going to detain them, and you bet we’re going to question them,” he said during a hastily called appearance in the Oval Office. “The American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That’s our job.”
Exactly! Which is why I’m not opposed to torture in any way.
Bush was referring to a report on two secret memos in 2005 that authorized extreme interrogation tactics against terror suspects. “This government does not torture people,” the president said.
The two Justice Department legal opinions were disclosed in Thursday’s editions of The New York Times, which reported that the first 2005 legal opinion authorized the use of head slaps, freezing temperatures and simulated drownings, known as waterboarding, while interrogating terror suspects, and was issued shortly after then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took over the Justice Department.
That secret opinion, which explicitly allowed using the painful methods in combination, came months after a December 2004 opinion in which the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” and the administration seemed to back away from claiming authority for such practices.
A second Justice opinion was issued later in 2005, just as Congress was working on an anti-torture bill. That opinion declared that none of the CIA’s interrogation practices would violate the rules in the legislation banning “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of detainees, The Times said, citing interviews with unnamed current and former officials.
“We stick to U.S. law and international obligations,” the president said, without taking questions afterward.
White House and Justice Department press officers have said the 2005 opinions did not reverse the 2004 policy.
Bush, speaking emphatically, noted that “highly trained professionals” conduct any questioning. “And by the way,” he said, “we have gotten information from these high-value detainees that have helped protect you.”
There was more, but I wasn’t interested. Here’s my lowly opinion.
Torture of criminal terrorists such as these extremists is not wrong. It could be morally reprehensible but it serves a purpose and that purpose is: Protect us from them! These zealots want to destroy us simply because we will not live our lives as they want us to.
I understand the use of torture against an innocent person or the abuse of a police state is wrong. Torture for the sake of taking pleasure from the abuse or too stifle the voice of democracy or social change is wrong. The regime of Pinochet for example, or a serial killer who gets off on it. Torture to break the spirit of a person is wrong and should be stopped. Torture to break the will of a suspect is a necessary evil in an evil world. Sorry to have to say it, but that’s how it is.
And in case anyone wants to say that I wouldn’t like to be tortured, duh!! But no one has a reason to torture me as I’m a law-abiding citizen who believes in the system, a little. No slippery slope here unless we become a police state so that’s all.
Anyway, I’ll see you all later.
I bid adieu,
your Origami reporter,
L.Manly
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