Quote of the Day...
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books..."
--Samuel Langhorne Clemens "Mark Twain" (1835 — 1910), American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer.
2 Canadian Boys With Same Name And On No-Fly List
Alistair Butt of Ont., Alistair Butt of Sask., blocked from boarding flights
Last Updated: Friday, June 29, 2007 | 10:44 PM ET
CBC News
Two boys named Alistair Butt, one from Saskatchewan and one from Ontario, were stopped while trying to board flights last week because their name matches a name that appears on a no-fly list.
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The Ontario boy, a 15-year-old from the Ottawa-area town of Orléans, was trying to check in to an Air Canada flight from Montreal to St. John's when he was told he couldn't board.
Alistair Butt of Orléans, Ont., was stopped while trying to board a flight last week in Montreal.Alistair Butt of Orléans, Ont., was stopped while trying to board a flight last week in Montreal.
(CBC)
The Saskatoon boy, who's 10, was also told he couldn't get on an Air Canada flight, although it is not clear what airport he was stopped at.
Both boys were eventually allowed to board, once they were cleared by security after long delays, but their families fear they will face the same problem every time they try to fly.
"Canada is telling him he's guilty until proven innocent every time he flies," the Ontario boy's mother, Heather Butt, told CBC News.
Heather said an airline official at the airport could not say what no-fly list her son's name is on, and how to get it off.
"We said, 'What do we do?' and then, much to our amazement, she said we could possibly change our child's name," Heather said.
Transport Canada won't confirm if the boys are on a United States no-fly list, an airline no-fly list or Canada's new no-fly list, which went into effect on June 18.
Canada's list, believed to contain fewer than 1,000 names, is operated by Transport Canada. All domestic airline passengers' names are checked against a list of people deemed to be threats.
The list is not be available to the public, which means those on it will only find out when they try to travel.
Transport Canada advises families to appeal
Allan Kagedan, a Transport Canada spokesman, advised the Butt families to appeal to the organizations operating all three lists.
"You can approach all three, I suppose, and they can guide you in terms of doing what's needed to try to avoid problems in the future," he said.
He would not confirm which list contains the Alistair Butt name.
Air Canada said it's working hard to prevent delays to passengers and stressed that both boys were eventually allowed on their flights.
"We regret any inconvenience, but security must remain of paramount concern," the airline said in a statement.
Ontario's Alistair Butt, a top student who has won community service awards, said the whole ordeal has angered him.
"I'm accused of something I didn't do. It's not me. I have the same name, that's it."
20. January 2009: The End of an Error
Please visit JohnnaRyry's Broomwagon!
Sandy Tucker, the tender-yet-stern matriarch of Galilean Children's Home in Liberty, Ky., which has sheltered hundreds of children since 1984, died yesterday at St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington.
She was 62 and died of cancer.
"Numbers aren't anything to me," Tucker told The Courier-Journal in a 2004 story. "It's one life at a time, one child at a time."
Al Tompkins, a journalist who met Tucker about 20 years ago in Guatemala, where she was working to rescue children, remembered her "pure, unshakeable love for children."
"It didn't matter what disability they had, how functional or dysfunctional they were, they just could not escape her arms. With just that talent, she touched more than 800 children," said Tompkins, who later joined the board of the children's home.
"Sandy always loved children, always," her younger sister, Debbie Tucker, said yesterday.
The sisters married brothers, and when Debbie Tucker's husband died 32 years ago, "she took me and my three children in for a while, too."
A native of Arizona, Sandy Tucker grew up in Detroit and married Jerry Tucker in 1963. After years of marriage and no children, they adopted the first of 25 in 1969, and eventually had two biological daughters, too.
They came to Kentucky in the mid-1970s, learning about the Mennonite faith and adopting many of its principles.
They settled on a 22-acre hilltop farm in Casey County and founded the children's home where Tucker would be called "Mom" by hundreds of children in need. They were rescued from abuse or poverty, taken in from parents unable to care for them because of extreme medical needs or temporarily taken in from other countries for much-needed medical care.
Their ministry expanded beyond the children's home, where typically 50 to 70 children lived.
They also built Angel House, a home for as many as 50 babies of women in prison, and the Galilean Christian Academy, where children from the home attended pre-kindergarten through 12th grade with community children who paid tuition to attend.
They opened two restaurants, a bed-and-breakfast and a thrift store -- all self-supporting businesses that also supported the Galilean Home Ministries.
For many years, Tucker was also a midwife. She delivered more than 200 babies, mostly for women who did not want to go to hospitals because of their religious beliefs. She agreed to stop delivering babies in the early 1990s, instead of obtaining a license required by state.
With a philosophy of "no government money, no government control," as Sandy Tucker once put it, they managed to keep everything running with donations -- raising more than $225,000 in monthly expenses and covering a $1 million annual payroll with money raised through mailings and publicity.
"I guess it's just the Lord's work," Tucker told a television reporter in 1988 at Louisville's airport as she returned to Kentucky with a Haitian boy who had been in the public spotlight. The Tuckers brought him back from a "children's prison" in Haiti.
"It gets in your blood. If you love children, you can't not do it," she said.
Tucker's funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at Galilean Children's Home. Visitation will begin there at noon Saturday. She will be buried at Chapel in the Woods Cemetery there. McKinney-Brown Funeral Home is handling arrangements.
Reporter Paula Burba can be reached at (502) 582-4800.
20. January 2009: The End of an Error
Please visit JohnnaRyry's Broomwagon!
--Sitting Bull "Tatanka Iyotake" (c.1831 - 1890), Lakota Nation Hunkpapa Clan
20. January 2009: The End of an Error
Please visit JohnnaRyry's Broomwagon!
20. January 2009: The End of an Error
Please visit JohnnaRyry's Broomwagon!
Now I know who's responsible for my serious burger habit...
Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food: "
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
June 18, 2007 — Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite.
According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food 'on the run.'
Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D."
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press
June 20, 2007 — The musket blast was sudden and deadly, the killing nearly 500 years ago of what may have been the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere.
"We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist who found the remains near Lima, Peru.
But he realized that the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it, Cock said in a telephone interview.
The skull was found among a large group of bones of ancient Incas, who had died violently in the early 1500s as the Spanish Conquistadors battled the native empire...(Read the rest HERE)
20. January 2009: The End of an Error
Please visit JohnnaRyry's Broomwagon!
I think it says a lot when a military judge throws the case out due to it sheer lack of merit. And of course Omar will now be inspired to join the Republican Party and sing the praises of the 'American Way', enit?
Guantanamo Canadian Case Dropped
A US military judge has dropped charges against a Canadian held at Guantanamo Bay, saying he could not be tried under new laws governing military tribunals.
Omar Khadr was just 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan.
He appeared in court charged with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and providing support for terrorism.
But the judge ruled he could not be tried under current laws because he was not classified as an "unlawful" enemy combatant in previous hearings.
The charges were dismissed "without prejudice", said Col Peter Brownback, the presiding judge.
His decision deals a big blow to the trial system, says the BBC's Justin Webb, in Washington.
Tribunal issue
Mr Khadr had been classified as an "enemy combatant" under a previous tribunal system that was eventually thrown out in 2006 by the US Supreme Court.
But under new legislation approved by President George W Bush, only detainees classified as "unlawful enemy combatants" can face trial at Guantanamo Bay.
The defendant appeared in court on Monday wearing a prison uniform, light sandals and a straggly beard, reports said.
He is accused of killing a US soldier during a battle at a suspected al-Qaeda base in 2002.
The judge left open the possibility that Mr Khadr could be re-charged if he appeared before an official review panel and was formally classified as an "unlawful" enemy combatant.
He said prosecutors could lodge an appeal within 72 hours, although it was not immediately clear who they could appeal to.
The word "unlawful" has not been used in any of the other pending cases, so it looks as though the whole tribunal system will once again come to a juddering halt, our correspondent says.
Marine Col Dwight Sullivan, chief defence lawyer for the Guantanamo Bay trials, agreed that the latest verdict cast doubt on the entire system.
"We don't need any more evidence that it's a failure. This system should just stop," he told the Reuters news agency.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6720315.stm
Published: 2007/06/04 18:02:38 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Yes, a big thanks for reviving the Nuclear Cold War. I mean, like damn, we've really missed having the the guillotine blade of MAD hanging over our very existence on a daily basis. Thank you, thank you so much for smearing your crap on the doorstep of the Bear's cave...I mean like, now that you've pissed him off we all get to pay (well not you of course).
Wow! Does time fly by or what? "Sgt Pepper" is like a fine, fine wine: it just keeps getting better and better with each passing year...