Tag Archives: official

450 People Are Still Missing After a Passenger Ship Capsizes on China’s Yangzte River

by DenisSuggs Posted on June 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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A passenger boat carrying 458 people capsized and sank on the Yangtze River on Monday, according to Chinese state media. Just eight people have been rescued so far, and 400 remain missing, with rescue efforts being hampered by bad weather, according to Xinhua, the state-controlled news agency. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is currently heading to the accident site, CCTV has reported.

The news was first published by Xinhua just after 6 a.m. local time, more than eight hours after the accident reportedly occurred on what is one of the world’s largest and busiest rivers; passenger ferries, as well as all manner of commercial barges, are common on the Yangtze. The boat was en route from Nanjing to Chongqing, a megacity in southwest China. According to the news agency, the rescued captain and chief engineer said the vessel had been caught in a “cyclone.” (Official weather predictions for the area indicated the risk of short-term severe precipitation, thunderstorms, or gales.)

A conflicting report carried by CCTV America, the US-targeted branch of the state-run TV station, put the time of the accident at 11 p.m. local time, an hour and a half after the Xinhua report.

State news media says the boat, known as the Eastern Star, was carrying 405 Chinese passengers, 5 travel agency workers, and 47 crew, and could carry a maximum of 534 people.

A tugboat capsized on the Yangzte in January, killing 22.

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450 People Are Still Missing After a Passenger Ship Capsizes on China’s Yangzte River

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US Officially Removes Cuba From List of State Sponsors of Terrorism

by SergioWjachhinz Posted on May 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the State Department announced the decision to drop Cuba from a list of states sponsoring terrorism. The official press release:

In December 2014, the President instructed the Secretary of State to immediately launch a review of Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, and provide a report to him within six months regarding Cuba’s support for international terrorism. On April 8, 2015, the Secretary of State completed that review and recommended to the President that Cuba no longer be designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

Accordingly, on April 14, the President submitted to Congress the statutorily required report indicating the Administration’s intent to rescind Cuba’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation, including the certification that Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the previous six-months; and that Cuba has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future. The 45-day Congressional pre-notification period has expired, and the Secretary of State has made the final decision to rescind Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, effective today, May 29, 2015.

The rescission of Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission. While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation

The decision is a major step toward normalizing diplomatic relations with Havana. Among other activities, Friday’s announcement will allow Cuba to do banking in the United States. However, the move does not lift the trade embargo, which requires congressional approval.

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US Officially Removes Cuba From List of State Sponsors of Terrorism

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Ireland Is Latest Country to Approve Gay Marriage

by KishaMoncrieff Posted on May 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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I don’t have anything profound to say about this, but it’s just a nice piece of good news. And I could use some good news these day:

Irish voters have resoundingly backed amending the constitution to legalize gay marriage, leaders on both sides of the Irish referendum declared Saturday after the world’s first national vote on the issue.

As the official ballot counting continued, the only question appeared to be how large the “yes” margin of victory from Friday’s vote would be. Analysts said the “yes” support was likely to exceed 60 percent nationally when official results are announced later Saturday.

Congratulations to Ireland. This is both a human and humane gesture in a world that could use more of them.

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Ireland Is Latest Country to Approve Gay Marriage

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The Houston Rockets Fired Their Social Media Person for an Emoji Joke

by ElisaWolfe Posted on April 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday night, the Houston Rockets played their intrastate rivals the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Late in the game, the official Houston Rockets Twitter account sent out the following:

Screenshot via Deadspin

The internet being the stupid place that it is, a thousand crybabies immediately began to cry. Oh pray for the emoji horse! How dare the stupid Twitter account joke about horse slaughter! Wah wah wah!

The internet is a place where people cry about bullshit. If outrage is a currency—and it is—then the online market is drowning in counterfeits. People like to feign outrage because it allows them to demonstrate their humanity and show the world that they feel things strongly and people like to sleep with people who feel things strongly. Outrage allows people to define themselves in opposition to something, which is much easier than defining yourself on your own.

The Rockets went on to win the game (and thus the series) but not before the tweet was deleted. Today we learned that simply taking the tweet down and apologizing wasn’t enough. The Rockets fired the dude who tweeted it, their social media manager Chad Shanks!

This is such bullshit. Emoji violence lost this dude his job. EMOJI VIOLENCE. Like, who was really outraged by this? Were you? Of course you weren’t. You are smart and normal and very attractive and people like you. But let’s pretend you were outraged by it. Here is my question: What outraged you about it? Did you not know that horses get shot when they are lame? Of course you knew it. Everyone knows that! Here’s what I know about horses:

They are beautiful.
We don’t eat them.
For thousands of years they were second only to our legs when it came to helping humans get around.
Now they’re sort of ridden recreationally.
Also we race them.
They have shoes.
They get shot when they are lame.

Is merely mentioning the reality that horses are shot when they are lame outrageous? If you are outraged by the fact that horses are shot when they are lame, be outraged about the fact that horses are shot when they are lame, not someone remarking on the fact that horses are shot when they are lame.

In conclusion:

The Houston Rockets are cowards.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the best team in sports.

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The Houston Rockets Fired Their Social Media Person for an Emoji Joke

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How Hillary Clinton May Have Violated Government Rules on Emails

by GiaSteffanoni Posted on March 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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The New York Times set off a Clinton bomb when it revealed Monday night that Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, used a personal email account instead of a government account for all of her official business. The newspaper reported that Clinton had turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department—yet only after her aides had vetted the massive collection of emails and decided which ones to give to the agency. And it noted that the probable 2016 candidate “may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.”

Ka-boom. Another round in the Hillary wars. Her Republican antagonists pointed to this as a sign of Clinton antipathy toward transparency. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza quickly penned a piece headlined, “Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Address at State Reinforces Everything People Don’t Like About Her.” Clintonistas rushed to her defense. Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton outfit, zapped out talking points: She had followed State Department precedent with regard to the use of email; she knew her emails sent to State Department officials at their official accounts would be retained; she has fully cooperated with State Department requests to produce her emails; and Colin Powell used his personal email account when he was secretary of state. Some pro-Clinton observers pointed out that the federal regulation instructing government employees to “not generally use personal email accounts to conduct official agency business” was not issued until September 2013, months after Clinton had left Foggy Bottom.

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How Hillary Clinton May Have Violated Government Rules on Emails

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Democrats Like It When Forecasts Show Democrats Winning

by RobertDeGillern Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Justin Wolfers shows us an intriguing example of confirmation bias today. It turns out that Leo, the New York Times election forecasting model, bases its forecasts on running hundreds of simulations and then taking an average. But readers who want to play around can go ahead and toss the dice themselves, generating their own random simulations. So what do readers do?

This is where confirmation bias comes in. If you’re convinced that the Republicans are going to win but your first two spins suggest a Democratic victory, you may feel deflated; perhaps you’ll spin again, in the hopes that you’ll finally get to see what a Republican victory looks like….85 percent of the time that your first two spins show a Democratic victory, you’ll keep spinning, perhaps hoping to see a Republican victory.

The same logic says that those who see the Democrats as likely to win are more likely to spin again after seeing the Republicans win in their first two spins, and once again, 85 percent of you do so.

Presumably readers are smart enough to know that these really are just random rolls of the dice that don’t mean anything. Only the average of hundreds of simulations are meaningful. And yet, many of us do it anyway. Why?

Properly speaking, I’m not sure this is actually confirmation bias. I suspect that partisans just want to avoid a feeling of hopelessness. Sure, the official results will tell them that, say, Democrats have a 34 percent chance of holding the Senate, and that should be enough. But it’s not. Democratic partisans want to see the concrete possibility of a Democratic win. Rather than confirmation bias, this shows a human preference for examples vs. statistical forecasts.

Now, I’d expect that Democrats would do this more than Republicans. After all, if Leo says Republicans have a 66 percent chance of winning, that should make Republicans pretty happy. Why bother running even a single simulation that might spoil the good news? Unfortunately, Leo’s data doesn’t tell us if this happens, because it doesn’t know who’s a Democrat and who’s a Republican. But I’ll bet I’m right.

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Democrats Like It When Forecasts Show Democrats Winning

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The Heartwarming Story of Arab Support for Our Bombing Campaign

by Crystal6117 Posted on September 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Speaking of things to remain skeptical of, the very top of the list certainly has to include the news that our staunch allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan participated in yesterday’s airstrikes in Syria:

A U.S. official said that all five Arab countries were believed to have joined U.S. warplanes, although it is still unclear how many countries dropped bombs during the operation. The official asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive operational details.

Dempsey said that the first Arab government told U.S. officials that it would participate in attacks on Syria “within the last 72 hours” and that once that occurred, the other four soon promised to participate. He would not identify which country was the first to back the U.S. airstrikes.

….There are still major questions about how committed governments in the region are to helping the U.S. and Iraq, whose government is dominated by Shia Arabs, against the well-armed militants, who have claimed large areas of eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq over the last year.

Here’s the nickel version: After months of bellyaching about America’s commitment to fighting ISIS, one single Arab country finally agreed to help out. Only then did anyone else also agree to pitch in. But the extent of their involvement can’t be revealed because it’s a “sensitive operational detail.”

Can you guess just how extensive that involvement is? Or do you need a hint?

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The Heartwarming Story of Arab Support for Our Bombing Campaign

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The Gulf Is Still So Far From Recovering. Just Ask This Oyster Farmer.

by Jonatho39T Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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John Tesvich slices open oysters on the deck of his boat, the “Croatian Pride”. Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

John Tesvich is a fourth-generation oyster farmer in Empire, a tiny Gulf Coast enclave south of New Orleans. He’s spent his life working in the rich oyster beds here, the most productive in the nation, and has weathered his share of storms: During Hurricane Katrina, his house ended up under 17 feet of water. But last week, as he navigated his 40-foot oyster boat out into open water, he admitted that the turmoil this region has faced in the last decade was beginning to wear him down.

“A lot has changed over the years,” he said. “It seems like one crisis after another sometimes.”

One crisis was particularly damaging to Tesvich’s industry: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The fourth anniversary of the busted undersea well’s sealing (after it gushed crude into the Gulf for nearly five months) is coming up next week, and Tesvich, who also chairs the oyster industry’s main statewide lobbying group, says his crop is still struggling to rebound.

Tesvich got some good news last week, when a federal judge in New Orleans found that BP’s “willful misconduct” and “gross negligence” had been the principle causes of the spill, a ruling that could eventually force BP to pay billions for ecological restoration in the Gulf. But for oystermen here, whose day-to-day income depends on these reefs, those dollars still seem very far away.

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The Gulf Is Still So Far From Recovering. Just Ask This Oyster Farmer.

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Cop Being Sued Over Beating Is Now a Ferguson City Councilwoman

by JaxonAshcraft Posted on August 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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In 2009, police in Ferguson, Missouri, arrested Henry M. Davis on suspicion of driving under the influence and took him to jail. What followed is described in court documents as “physical contact between the officers and Mr. Davis.” One officer, Kim Tihen, allegedly “struck Davis in his head with a closed fist and hit him in the head with handcuffs.” Davis suffered a concussion and severe facial lacerations, while an officer was left with a broken nose. Afterwards, prosecutors charged Davis with four counts of destruction of property—because his blood had dirtied the officers’ uniforms.

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Davis pleaded guilty to reduced charges and ended up moving to Mississippi. Officer Tihen, for her part, is no longer with the Ferguson Police Department. In 2012, after four years on the force, she won election to the city council, becoming one of the six-person body’s five white members. (The sixth is Latino.) Two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are black, but the city holds elections in the spring, making for low turnout—in April 2012, when Tihen was elected, less than 9 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. (The Ferguson police force is even less representative of the city’s African American majority: Just 4 percent of its members are black.) Last week, after police cracked down on residents protesting the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed teen, Tihen and the rest of the city council issued a statement calling on demonstrations to cease at dusk.

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Cop Being Sued Over Beating Is Now a Ferguson City Councilwoman

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John Brennan Needs to Leave the CIA, One Way or Another

by EloyK20turtjze Posted on August 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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What’s going on with the CIA hacking into Senate computers? Here’s a very brief, very telescoped timeline to get you up to speed:

2009: The Senate Intelligence Committee begins working on an investigation of CIA torture during the Bush administration. CIA Director Leon Panetta secretly orders a parallel internal review.

December 2012: The Senate finishes a draft of its report and submits it to the CIA for review and declassification.

March 2013: John Brennan takes over from Panetta as CIA director.

June 2013: The CIA issues a blistering response to the Senate report, vigorously disputing its conclusions that the CIA routinely engaged in brutal torture of detainees.

December 2013: Sen. Mark Udall reveals the existence of the “Panetta Review”—actually a series of memos—written at the same time Senate staffers were collecting material for their report. He suggests that it “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.” In plainer English: the CIA lied about what its own review concluded.

The CIA, apparently under the impression that Senate staffers had gotten access to the Panetta Review improperly—and had removed copies from their secure reading room at CIA headquarters—hacks into the computers used by Senate staffers. As part of their secret investigation, they read emails and do a keyword search to find out how the Senate staffers had gotten access to the memos.

January 2014: The CIA presents the results of its investigation to the Senate Intelligence Committee and accuses its staffers of misconduct.

March 2014: Sen. Dianne Feinstein launches a blistering attack on the CIA for hacking into the Senate computers in violation of an explicit agreement that they wouldn’t do so. Brennan counterattacks vigorously. “As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth,” he says.

Yesterday: The CIA inspector general releases a report admitting that Senate staffers had done nothing wrong and that five CIA staffers did indeed hack into Senate computers. In other words, Panetta was very badly mistaken in March when he loudly insisted that nothing of the sort had happened.

So then: The CIA lied about the conclusions of its own internal review. The Senate found out about this. The CIA then hacked into Senate computers to find out how they had discovered the incriminating evidence. Then they lied again, denying that they had done this. David Corn lays out two possible explanations for Brennan’s misleading statements in March:

Either he knew that his subordinates had spied on the Senate staffers but had claimed otherwise, or he had not been told the truth by underlings and had unwittingly provided a false assertion to the public. Neither scenario reflects well upon the fellow who is supposed to be in-the-know about the CIA’s activities—especially its interactions with Congress on a rather sensitive subject.

Nope. Either way, he ought to resign or be fired. This is simply not excusable behavior in a public official.

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John Brennan Needs to Leave the CIA, One Way or Another

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