The Lede: Social Media Images From Tunisia, as an Opposition Leader Is Buried

Label:

Video from the Tunisian news site Jadal showed clashes on Friday in Tunis during the funeral of an opposition leader.

Activists, bloggers and journalists in Tunisia posted a stream of images on social networks Friday, showing thousands of mourners packed into the largest cemetery in the capital, Tunis, for the funeral of Chokri Belaid, a leading opposition figure whose assassination two days ago triggered a wave of street protests against the Islamist ruling party.

Among those uploading images of the funeral — which took place as the police fired tear gas at protesters and cars were set on fire during clashes outside the graveyard — were my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Tara Todras-Whitehill, Thierry Brésillon of the French news site Rue 89, and Tunisian activists including Selim Kharrat of the rights organization Al Bawsala.

In video streamed live during the funeral by the activist blogger Slim Amamou, the 2011 revolutionary chant calling for the downfall of the regime could be heard echoing around the graveyard.

A photograph in a set uploaded to Facebook by the blogger Mon Massir appeared to show that even the late opposition leader’s young daughter was forced to shield her face from the tear gas fired by the police.

After the funeral, as photographs uploaded by Mr. Amamou and the rights activist Amira Yahyaoui showed, the security forces enforced a ban on gathering on the main Avenue Habib Bourguiba in central Tunis.

Emna Chebâane, who also works with the rights organization Al Bawsala, posted video on Facebook showing how the police moved in to clear a small number of protesters from the avenue.

It was not hard to imagine what the kind of protest the authorities were concerned about might look like. Two days earlier, when an ambulance carrying Mr. Belaid’s body to the morgue had passed through the same street, thousands of protesters swarmed around the vehicle. Video posted on YouTube late Wednesday by Jadal, a Tunisian news site, showed that scene.

Video recorded on Wednesday in Tunis as protesters gathered around an ambulance carrying the body of Chokri Belaid, a murdered opposition leader.

There were reports of protests in other parts of Tunisia on Friday, as many workers observed calls for a nationwide strike.

Video uploaded to YouTube by a blogger who said he was in the town of Sousse appeared to show the security forces, and officers in plain clothes, firing tear gas and dragging protesters away from a traffic circle pictured in a Wikipedia entry on the old town.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Friday, said to show the police cracking down on protesters in the Tunisian town of Sousse.

Earlier, the same blogger uploaded video of a loud march calling for the imposition of Islamic Shariah law.

Video of a march in favor of Islamic Shariah law, said to have been recorded in the Tunisian city of Sousse on Friday.

Video shot by bloggers for the independent news site Nawaat showed what they described as a demonstration in the city of Bizerte in honor of Mr. Belaid, outside the local headquarters of Ennahda, the Islamist party that now rules Tunisia. According to a description on Nawaat’s French-language live blog, the video shows an Islamist calling for calm and telling the demonstrators that the nation’s secularists have lost the struggle for power.

Read More..

Ex-cop hunted over California vendetta killings

Label:





BIG BEAR LAKE, California (Reuters) – A fugitive former police officer accused of declaring war on law enforcement in an Internet manifesto and wanted as a suspect in three murders eluded a manhunt for a second day on Friday in the snow-swept mountains east of Los Angeles.


Search teams combed hillsides and homes around a ski area through the night and past daybreak for Christopher Dorner, 33, a former Navy officer presumed by police to be heavily armed and intent on carrying out a vendetta against those he blames for his 2008 dismissal from the Los Angeles Police Department.






“We did not find any additional evidence, and we certainly did not locate him,” San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told a news briefing, adding that investigators were pressing ahead despite heavy snow that complicated the manhunt.


“We’re going to continue searching until either we determine that he’s left the mountain or we find him,” McMahon said at the Big Bear Lake resort, about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles.


Snowfall forced authorities to ground helicopters used on Thursday to scour the area with infrared cameras. But a team of more than 100 law enforcement officers, some of them riding on “snow cat” tractor vehicles, kept up an intense ground search with dogs.


The search was focused on a wooded area near where Dorner‘s pickup truck was found burning in the snow on Wednesday, and in nearby higher elevations dotted with abandoned cabins, McMahon said.


Search teams had followed footprints found in the snow near Dorner’s truck on Thursday “around the forest … until we lost them where the ground got frozen and we couldn’t continue to track,” he said.


By Friday morning, sheriff’s deputies had gone door to door to several hundred vacation homes without finding signs of forced entry, and no vehicles were reported stolen. Area schools shut on Thursday as a precaution remained closed due to snow, McMahon said.


Police have said they believe Dorner was carrying multiple weapons, including an assault-style rifle, though the manifesto attributed to the suspect suggested he might be more heavily armed.


“Do not deploy airships or gunships. SA-7 Manpads will be waiting,” the message said, in a reference to a Russian-made shoulder-launched missile system.


“The violence of action will be high…I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) uniform whether on or off duty,” he allegedly wrote.


Police said they had taken steps to protect about 40 potential targets mentioned in the online declaration, but the LAPD canceled a citywide tactical alert, where officers are held over on their shifts and work overtime for as long as needed.


DOUBLE HOMICIDE


Dorner first came to public attention on Wednesday when he was named as a suspect in the weekend killings of a university security officer and his fiancée, college basketball coach Monica Quan, 28, in Irvine, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles. They were found shot to death on Sunday in a car at the top of a parking structure.


Quan was the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain who represented Dorner in disciplinary action that led to his firing in 2008. Police say Dorner was dismissed for making false statements accusing another officer of using excessive force.


Two Los Angeles police officers assigned to a search detail traded gunfire with him early on Thursday in the city of Corona, east of Los Angeles, police said.


About 20 minutes later, two other officers were ambushed and one of them was killed. They had been sitting in their patrol car at a traffic light near Corona in the town of Riverside.


The officer who died, and whose name has not been released by authorities in an effort to protect his family from Dorner, was an 11-year Riverside police veteran. His wounded partner is expected to make a full recovery, police said.


Former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton warned on CBS television that the burned-out truck was “possibly a diversionary tactic to draw people into that area while he’s actually heading south.”


The FBI said its agents had searched a Las Vegas residence owned by Dorner, who joined the Navy in 2002 and the LAPD in 2005. He was discharged from the Navy Reserves last Friday, two days before Quan and her fiance were found slain.


Dorner, who once played college football, blamed the police department not just for firing him but also for ending his Navy career and the loss of close relationships.


He listed other grievances as well, such as encountering racism both at the LAPD and as an African-American boy growing up in Southern California.


But it remained unclear what led to the violence nearly five years after his firing and three years after his petition to be reinstated to the LAPD was denied by a judge.


(Additional reporting by Nichola Groom; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Daniel Trotta, Alden Bentley, Cynthia Johnston and Leslie Gevirtz)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Ex-cop hunted over California vendetta killings
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/ex-cop-hunted-over-california-vendetta-killings/
Link To Post : Ex-cop hunted over California vendetta killings
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Blizzard Forces Katie Holmes to Miss Her Own Fashion Show

Label:



Style News Now





02/08/2013 at 01:58 PM ET



Katie HolmesKevin Mazur/WireImage


Katie Holmes spent yesterday kicking off her heels with fashion editors in a New York City hotel suite to present the latest elegant collection for her Holmes & Yang fashion line. But today, the blizzard that’s battering the East Coast caused Holmes to reprioritize. Her daughter Suri‘s school was closing early, it was explained, and she had to go pick her up.


That practical part of her life — and that of her design partner and stylist Jeanne Yang, herself a mother to twin girls — is an ever-present influence on their fashion philosophy. “Our customer is somebody who wants to be comfortable” says Yang, who walked PEOPLE through an intimate one-on-one presentation of the line. “You want to look good, but Katie and I always talk about this, it should never come at the cost of comfort.”


As Holmes herself told The New York Times, their goal is “to make high-quality pieces that are simple enough, you can wear over and over again.”


With luxe fabrics and silhouettes that show subtle peeks of skin, Holmes & Yang, produced entirely in America, was inspired this season “by the 40s by way of the 70s, Katherine Hepburn, and menswear with little touches of femininity,” says Yang.


One of Holmes’s favorite looks is a figure-flattering, shoulder exposing peplum power suit because, “Katie and I always talk about our shoulders,” says Yang. “The fact is that shoulders are always sexy, and you never lose your shoulders.”


The designers took an equally beauty-conscious yet practical approach to the Bobbi Brown makeup their models wore (Holmes is the face of the line). Get all the details on what Brown called the “dewy faces and feminine raspberry stained lips” of the makeup looks, including which products were used, in an exclusive first peek at the below sketch.


Katie Holmes Bobbi Brown Holmes & Yang Beauty LookCourtesy Bobbi Brown


–Suzanne Zuckerman


PHOTOS: SHOP EDITOR-APPROVED BEAUTY PRODUCTS!


Read More..

Health officials: Worst of flu season may be over

Label:

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.


The number of states reporting intense or widespread flu dropped again last week, U.S. health officials said Friday.


The season started earlier than normal, spiking first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths have been dropping for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.


"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said in an email.


It's been nine years since a conventional flu season started like this one. That was the winter of 2003-04 — one of the deadliest in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths. Like this year, that season had the same dominant flu strain, one that tends to make people sicker.


But back then, the flu vaccine didn't protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated each year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed this year's version is about 60 percent effective.


So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.


The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 such deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week.


On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.


Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older.


___


Online:


CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm


Read More..

Bar trivia is more than just fun and games

Label:








The door to the bar in Palms swung open, and strains of the theme from "Rocky III" burst into the street: "It's the eye of the tiger / It's the thrill of the fight!"


It was the call to arms for the Tuesday trivia night at the Irish Times pub.


A tall man stood among the Irish flags and faux-antique Guinness etchings and shot off the first question: "An NFL broadcaster who earned a law degree." Regulars nursing craft brews and munching on mozzarella sticks at the bar ignored him. But in the corner, John Verran and his trivia team worked intently on the correct answer.








"It's very competitive," said Verran, 27, a geographical information systems graduate student.


Bar trivia in Los Angeles is no trifling matter. Building on the runaway popularity of the game Trivial Pursuit in the 1980s, the pub quiz phenomenon exploded in British and Irish watering holes, spread to the East Coast and arrived in Southern California in earnest five years ago. As many as 70 local bars put on trivia nights, with more joining every day, said Andy Roth, owner of Action Trivia, one of the larger promoters.


"It's Manifest Destiny, man," said Roth, talking of the trend's momentum after hosting a pub quiz Wednesday at Michael's Bar & Grill in Burbank. "The hipsters love this."


The Irish Times game is highly organized — printed answer forms, weighted categories, intricate scoring. Some promoters hire staff members to research questions; others rely on hosts and players for suggestions. Prizes are usually nominal: a free dinner, or cash off the bar tab.


It's a know-it-all's paradise, and I should know. My childhood nickname was "Mrs. Dictionary." Does anyone else remember the Knowledge Bowl at the Balboa Fun Zone?


The players are Type-Aers whose idea of relaxation is a savage intellectual dogfight. All in good fun, of course. The top teams skew young, 20-somethings who spend all day online and are hungry for human contact. Structured play is safe ground for a generation raised in day care with their off-hours strictly regimented, and who suffer from early-onset nostalgia — Teletubbies, '90s pop.


Verran's team, Deliveries in the Rear ("It seemed amusing at the time," he said), formed around a nucleus of classmates from USC law school. They've been playing trivia at Irish Times for four years, returning week after week to face familiar rivals.


Verran was captain of his high school's championship Quizbowl team in Huntington Beach and is a lifelong trivia buff. "My mind just works that way," he said. Avi Schwartz, a patent lawyer with a chemistry degree, is the science nerd. Kristen Sales, who writes about movies for a film website, just likes games. "I grew up playing games," Sales said. "Me at 25 and me at 12 are basically the same person."


Some teams study on their own time, or enlist ringers to shore up their weak areas. Players size each other up in competition, then come together to form superteams.


"There are even headhunters out there recruiting," said entertainment attorney and Deliveries member Vanessa Flanders.


Greg Beron of Dreambuilders Multi-Media was the evening's host. A former lawyer, he runs a home brewing supply store in Culver City and does trivia on the side.


The Irish Times game is tough, he conceded. His musical interludes are sometimes clues to the answers, but not always. Beron doesn't want me to say which were which, and was touchy about my printing answers to any of his questions; he's saving the game for another pub quiz.


"We're not there to make it easy for people," Beron said.


Early in the first round, Deliveries faced their first big challenge, a four-part bonus question: Name double-word song titles performed by musicians David Bowie, Billy Idol, Paula Abdul and Run DMC.


A thrill of excitement ran through me when I heard it: "Rebel Rebel!" I cried. Bowie, my era!


Deliveries also got the Bowie tune and Idol's "Mony Mony" ("Spelling counts on this one," Beron said.) But Run DMC's "Mary, Mary" and Abdul's "Rush Rush" eluded the team.


"We almost had it — we put 'Hush Hush,' " Verran said of fluffing the Abdul answer.





Read More..

Senate Panel Will Question Brennan on Targeted Killings

Label:




By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE







Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

John O. Brennan, President Obama’s choice to be director of the C.I.A., has been the president’s counterterrorism adviser.






WASHINGTON — As a new debate intensifies over the Obama administration’s targeted killing program, John O. Brennan, President Obama's nominee to be C.I.A. director, acknowledged as his confirmation hearing began Thursday that there is “widespread debate” about the administration’s “current counterterrorism policies.”


But, he said, the United States remains “at war with al-Qa’ida and it’s associated forces,” which “still seek to carry out deadly strikes against our homeland and our citizens.”


Senator Dianne Feinstein,the California Democrat who is the committee chairman, said in her opening statement that the she intends to propose legislation to create a new court to oversee the targeted killings. Such a move would bring judicial oversight to drone strikes for the first time. on Thursday afternoon for John O. Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, amid new revelations about the Obama administration’s targeted killing program that Mr. Brennan has helped oversee.


Mr. Brennan, who has wielded tremendous power as the president’s top White House counterterrorism adviser, is expected to face occasionally sharp questioning on a range of topics from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee: from the drone campaign in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere to his role in the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation program carried out while he was a top official at the C.I.A


Before the hearing began, a group of protestors angrily stood up an began shouting at Mr. Brennan before they were escorted out of the hearing room. One man yelled, “assassination is against the Constitution!” and one woman held up a sign that read “Drones Fly Children Die.”


But the protests continued throughout Mr. Brennan’s opening statement, forcing Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, to temporarily stop the hearing and close the room.


The hearing comes just days after the leak of a Justice Department document explaining the legal rationale for the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was killed in Yemen in September 2011. Mr. Brennan, a former C.I.A. station chief in Saudi Arabia, has been central to the Obama administration’s clandestine war inside Yemen.


Pressured by members of Congress in the days before the hearing, the White House on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to provide the Congressional Intelligence Committees with the formal, classified memos that provide the legal justification for the killing of Mr. Awlaki and other American citizens overseas who are considered terrorists. The Obama administration had previously refused to give lawmakers the full memos, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.


Because so much of the targeted killing program remains shrouded in secrecy, however, it is unclear how much the Senate Intelligence Committee will press Mr. Brennan for detailed answers about the program during the public session, or whether it will wait until the additional “closed hearing” that is routine for the confirmation hearings of C.I.A. directors.


If he returns to the C.I.A. as its director, he will inherit an agency that has changed drastically in the years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a new focus on hunting down terrorists that has led some to say that the agency has strayed too far from its traditional mission of foreign espionage and analysis.


In his responses to questions posed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in advance of the hearing, Mr. Brennan hinted that he shared some of these concerns. For instance, he said that the agency’s performance in anticipating and analyzing the tumult in the Arab world since 2011 shows “that the C.I.A. needs to improve its capabilities and its performance still further.”


Read More..

Father Gives Daughter $200 to Quit Facebook

Label:





Spending too much time on Facebook? More than half of Facebook users say they’ve taken vacations from the site. Now comes the story of a 14-year-old who did better — she managed to get paid for quitting.


Rachel Baier, a high school freshman in Massachusetts, went to her dad with a deal: no Facebook for the rest of the school year in exchange for cash.






“She approached me. She has been frustrated she hasn’t been able to find a babysitting job and she has been looking for ways to get cash,” Baier told ABC News. “So she asked, ‘If I didn’t use Facebook for so long would you pay me?’”


RELATED: Facebook Vacation: 61 Percent of Users Take Breaks From Site


Baier, knowing that his daughter spends hours and hours on the site every day, thought she was joking at first. “I said, ‘Go away, you can’t live without Facebook!’” But Rachel was serious. Her dad drew up the paperwork. “I went back and thought about it, and said if you are going to do it, we are going to sign a contract. And she said okay.”


The contract says that from Feb. 4, 2013 through June 26, 2013, Rachel will have her Facebook account deactivated. She will receive $ 50 halfway through and the remaining $ 150 on June 26, which is the last day of ninth grade.


Baier says that he thinks his daughter will keep her part of the bargain. “She has deactivated a few times for the weekend,” he said “She has spent two to three years on Facebook for 24/7, she realizes there is a lot of talk and noise.”


RELATED: Mom Has Son Sign 18-point Agreement for iPhone


Rachel, who was at school when we spoke to her father, told him she doesn’t worry about being left out by friends.


“I asked her about that. She said, ‘Dad, I see my friends at school. I am in the loop and I can still text them,’” Baier said.


But even if Rachel does have a moment of weakness and yearn to see her Newsfeed, her dad now holds the keys to the castle. “Part of the agreement,” he says “was that she allowed me to change the password. She can’t get back in and turn it back on.”


Also Read
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Father Gives Daughter $200 to Quit Facebook
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/father-gives-daughter-200-to-quit-facebook/
Link To Post : Father Gives Daughter $200 to Quit Facebook
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

William & Kate Enjoying Private Mustique Babymoon

Label:




By Amanda Orr and Simon Perry





02/07/2013 at 02:10 PM EST







The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (inset) visited Aurora House, Mustique


IPHOTO; Inset: Splash News Online


The The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are keeping a low profile on their "babymoon" to the idyllic island of Mustique.

The couple – expecting their first baby in July – are staying at a five-bedroom villa set in lush gardens, which normally costs an eye-popping $25,000 a week. Also enjoying paradise are Kate's parents Carole and Mike and siblings Pippa and James.

On previous visits, William, 30, has stopped by to grab a drink and play the piano at the bar at Firefly, and together the couple have participated in Sunday night Karaoke at Basil's Bar.

But on this visit, the couple are mostly keeping to themselves, and they have good reason.

With a staff of six (including a chef on standby), a 60-foot infinity pool and a media room and guest cottage, the villa has everything they need. And, best of all for the private couple, it's completely hidden from the main road and with just the tips of the pitched roof line visible from the beach down below.

The stunning beach, which many believe to be the finest on the island, is just a short walk down a private path from the house. On their past trips the sporty pair made several trips a day down that path to stroll on the beach, take quick dips in the ocean and also to snorkel well past the rocky outcrops that border the cove. The beach is still public however, and the couple save their sunbathing for the villa's expansive pool deck. 

From the lounge chairs, pregnant Kate, 31, will be able to look along the surface of an infinity pool and out to the other islands of the Grenadines spread out in the ocean below.

Mustique, a favorite of the Middletons for years, and made famous by William's great aunt Princess Margaret and her friends in the 70s, ensures the privacy of its high-end visitors. A local tells PEOPLE, "The island is locked-down – that always means some royalty is here."

When they return, William is due back at his north Wales base, from where he flies search-and-rescue helicopters, while Kate is scheduled to visit a drug treatment center in London that is run by one of the charities she supports, Action on Addiction.

Read More..

Southern diet, fried foods, may raise stroke risk

Label:

Deep-fried foods may be causing trouble in the Deep South. People whose diets are heavy on them and sugary drinks like sweet tea and soda were more likely to suffer a stroke, a new study finds.


It's the first big look at diet and strokes, and researchers say it might help explain why blacks in the Southeast — the nation's "stroke belt" — suffer more of them.


Blacks were five times more likely than whites to have the Southern dietary pattern linked with the highest stroke risk. And blacks and whites who live in the South were more likely to eat this way than people in other parts of the country were. Diet might explain as much as two-thirds of the excess stroke risk seen in blacks versus whites, researchers concluded.


"We're talking about fried foods, french fries, hamburgers, processed meats, hot dogs," bacon, ham, liver, gizzards and sugary drinks, said the study's leader, Suzanne Judd of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.


People who ate about six meals a week featuring these sorts of foods had a 41 percent higher stroke risk than people who ate that way about once a month, researchers found.


In contrast, people whose diets were high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish had a 29 percent lower stroke risk.


"It's a very big difference," Judd said. "The message for people in the middle is there's a graded risk" — the likelihood of suffering a stroke rises in proportion to each Southern meal in a week.


Results were reported Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.


The federally funded study was launched in 2002 to explore regional variations in stroke risks and reasons for them. More than 20,000 people 45 or older — half of them black — from all 48 mainland states filled out food surveys and were sorted into one of five diet styles:


—Southern: Fried foods, processed meats (lunchmeat, jerky), red meat, eggs, sweet drinks and whole milk.


—Convenience: Mexican and Chinese food, pizza, pasta.


—Plant-based: Fruits, vegetables, juice, cereal, fish, poultry, yogurt, nuts and whole-grain bread.


—Sweets: Added fats, breads, chocolate, desserts, sweet breakfast foods.


—Alcohol: Beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, salad dressings, nuts and seeds, coffee.


"They're not mutually exclusive" — for example, hamburgers fall into both convenience and Southern diets, Judd said. Each person got a score for each diet, depending on how many meals leaned that way.


Over more than five years of follow-up, nearly 500 strokes occurred. Researchers saw clear patterns with the Southern and plant-based diets; the other three didn't seem to affect stroke risk.


There were 138 strokes among the 4,977 who ate the most Southern food, compared to 109 strokes among the 5,156 people eating the least of it.


There were 122 strokes among the 5,076 who ate the most plant-based meals, compared to 135 strokes among the 5,056 people who seldom ate that way.


The trends held up after researchers took into account other factors such as age, income, smoking, education, exercise and total calories consumed.


Fried foods tend to be eaten with lots of salt, which raises blood pressure — a known stroke risk factor, Judd said. And sweet drinks can contribute to diabetes, the disease that celebrity chef Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cuisine — revealed she had a year ago.


The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, drugmaker Amgen Inc. and General Mills Inc. funded the study.


"This study does strongly suggest that food does have an influence and people should be trying to avoid these kinds of fatty foods and high sugar content," said an independent expert, Dr. Brian Silver, a Brown University neurologist and stroke center director at Rhode Island Hospital.


"I don't mean to sound like an ogre. I know when I'm in New Orleans I certainly enjoy the food there. But you don't have to make a regular habit of eating all this stuff."


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


Read More..

Police on high alert after ex-LAPD cop's alleged serial shootings

Label:



Authorities across Southern California were on high alert Thursday morning as a massive manhunt was underway for an ex-Los Angeles police officer sought in connection with a double homicide and the shootings of three police officers, one of whom was killed.


Local, state and federal authorities are involved in the search for Christoper Jordan Dorner, 33, who threatened "unconventional
and asymmetrical warfare" against police in a manifesto posted on his Facebook page.


Dorner also threatened more than two dozen people -- including police officials -- in his manifesto. Officers from around Southern California have been deployed
to protect those people. In some cases, police said, those at risk have relocated for their safety.


PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer


 LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is expected to hold a news conference at
10 a.m.


When asked if police felt they were under attack, Riverside Police Lt. Guy Toussaint said: “Based on the circumstances of the
shooting, yes I do.”


Hours after authorities announced they were looking for Dorner in connection with a double homicide in Orange County, the search intensified after three police officers were shot in Riverside County and Dorner was identified as a possible suspect.


Ex-LAPD cop tried to steal boat, flee to Mexico, authorities say


Freeway signs urged motorists to call 911 if they saw the suspect's vehicle as officers patrolled the streets near one of the Riverside County crime scenes with rifles at the ready. Los Angeles was put on a citywide tactical alert and California Highway Patrol issued a "blue alert" for nine Southern California counties warning Dorner was considered "armed and extremely dangerous."


The first shooting occurred about 1:30 a.m. Thursday in Corona, where two Los
Angeles Police Department officers providing protection for
someone mentioned in Dorner's manifesto, officials said. One
officer suffered a graze wound to the head during a shootout and Dorner fled
the scene, police said.


A short time later, two Riverside officers were shot at the corner of Magnolia Avenue and Arlington
Avenue in
Riverside. Toussaint said the officers were
sitting at a red light when they were ambushed. One was killed, the
other was still in surgery Thursday morning.


Ex-LAPD officer threatened to kill in online manifesto


There was no indication the officers were "actively seeking Dorner," Toussaint said.


“Our
officers were stopped at an intersection at a red light when they were
ambushed," he said. "Because of the close proximity to the timeline, we believe there is a
strong likelihood that former LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner was involved in
our incident.”


In the online manifesto, Dorner specifically named the father of
Monica Quan, the Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach who was
found dead Sunday in Irvine along with her fiance, Keith Lawrence.


Randy Quan, a retired LAPD captain, was involved in the review
process that ultimately led to Dorner’s dismissal. A former U.S. Navy
reservist, Dorner was fired in 2009 for allegedly making false
statements about his training officer. In the manifesto, he complained that Randy Quan and others did not fairly represent him at the review hearing.


“The violence of action will be high .... I will bring unconventional
and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off
duty," Dorner wrote.







As authorities swarmed the area, two officer-involved shootings occurred in Torrance after police came across vehicles they thought might be Dorner's.

The first Torrance incident occurred about 5:20 a.m. in the 19500
block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance, Lt. Devin Chase said. That incident involved
Los Angeles police detectives from the Hollywood division, sources said.


Two people were struck by gunfire and transported to an area hospital with unknown injuries, Chase said. No officers were injured.


The second incident, which involved Torrance police officers,
occurred at Flagler Lane and Beryl Street about 5:45 a.m. No injuries
were reported in that incident.


Chase said both incidents involved vehicles matching the description of the one sought in connection with Dorner.


"Now it appears neither of them are directly related," Chase said. "In both of them, officers believed they were at the time."


Authorities said they believe Dorner attempted to steal a boat from an elderly man about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday
at the Point Loma Yacht Club in San Diego, hours before the shootings in
Riverside County.


The boat owner reported being accosted by a burly man who tied him up, threatened
him with a gun and said he wanted the boat to flee to Mexico.


PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer


But while they were trying to get underway, a rope became entangled
in the propeller and the boat was inoperable, authorities said.


The suspect fled the scene and the boat owner was unharmed.


About 2 a.m., a citizen reported finding property belonging to Dorner
on a street near Lindbergh Field, not far from the scene of the
attempted boat theft. The property included a briefcase and Dorner's
LAPD badge.


ALSO:


Riverside police 'ambushed' by shooter, official says


Police shoot two in Torrance in search for ex-LAPD cop


Manhunt underway for ex-LAPD officer suspected of shooting 3 cops


— Andrew Blankstein, Kate Mather, Phil Willon and Tony Perry


Read More..

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)