CRIME STATS SPATChicago cops fudge stats for Rahm, report says

 

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy frequently insists that warm weather does not cause shootings. However,the last week’s temperatures support the notion that a break from the cold brings gun-toting gang members back to the streets.

Vendettas, which were on ice over the long brutal winter, are hot and fresh again.

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Temperatures on Thursday nudged up into the 60s and eight people were shot, including a 12-year-old boy.

Last weekend, restaurant owners scrambled to set up their outdoor dining in the sunshine. At the same time, 36 were shot in 36 hours.

“We’re making progress but we need to do more,” McCarthy said.

However, an investigation published by Chicago Magazine claims that the “progress” is an illusion. The article says that under pressure from Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago cops have been reclassifying murders and violent crimes. The result is a nearly unprecedented drop in numbers.

"This is a betrayal of public trust in a sense that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Superintendent Garry McCarthy are public servants. They are paid by our tax dollars and we deserve in return truth from them,” said Elizabeth Fenner, Editor in Chief of Chicago Magazine.

McCarthy responded that the article is “patently false” and he criticized the near total reliance on anonymous sources. “I'm troubled by it because it hurts our credibility while we're trying to build our credibility," he said.

McCarthy and Emanuel held a press conference Friday morning, announcing their response to the spike in gun battles was to increase bike patrols in the “impact zones” – cop speak for bad neighborhoods.

Once again, they both continued to insist the problem would not be solved without toughening up gun laws. “One of the things we also need to do is, obviously, change our gun laws to make sure that our strategy of more police on the street, kids, guns, and drugs off the street is as effective and coordinated as we can be,” Emanuel said.

McCarthy has insisted for a long time that laws need to toughen up on two points: discouraging third party or “straw” purchases in which a legal buyer acquires a gun for a felon, and keeping offenders from bouncing back to the street after serving just a fraction of their time.

“If you don’t go to jail for gun possession, you don’t learn not to carry a gun. If there’s no consequence for bad behavior, you don’t learn not to carry a gun,” he said.

 

Michael Tobin joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in 2001 and currently serves as a Chicago-based correspondent.

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Published on: 6:17 PM

BOSTON ATTACK PROBE Report: Failed chances to pursue marathon bomber

Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.AP

Officials across multiple federal agencies failed to take steps to investigate warning signs they had received since 2011 about Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the intelligence agencies' inspectors general report revealed Thursday.

The findings, released in an unclassified summary of the classified report, highlighted instances where information sharing among 17 federal agencies may have been required in Tsarnaev’s case and where the FBI could have been more vigilant in its investigation of him before the 2013 attack, which killed three and injured over 200.

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It cautioned it is impossible to know whether increased measures would have yielded information that could have prevented the attack, and found for the most part the agencies followed procedure appropriately.

One example cited is that the FBI Legal Attaché in Moscow did not coordinate with the CIA after it received information about Tsarnaev from the Russian government in March 2011. Russia informed the FBI that Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat practiced radical Islam and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was planning to travel to Russia to join “bandit underground groups” in Dagestan and Chechnya.  

After investigating this information, the report states the FBI closed the probe of Tsarnaev because the agency found no links between him and terrorism. To determine this, an FBI special agent interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents, conducted “drive-bys” of his home and reviewed references to him in other counterterrorism cases.

However, the DOJ inspector general notes that the agent did not use several investigative tactics, including contacting local law enforcement about Tsarnaev or speaking with his wife. He also never interviewed the girlfriend Tsarnaev had been arrested for assaulting in 2009.

The Russians subsequently provided nearly identical information to the CIA in September of that year, the report states, which led to Tsarnaev being placed on a terrorist watchlist. Despite this distinction, the report found that when Tsarnaev did travel to Russia in 2012, his trip was not investigated.

The report states that although a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent noted that Tsarnaev had been placed on the watchlist, Tsarnaev’s Russia trip did not result in additional vetting at the airport. It also did not lead to additional investigative steps to determine whether he posed a threat to national security.

FBI agents differed on the significance of the trip, and whether it should have been probed further. One counterterrorism agent told investigators he would not have done anything differently had he learned about Tsarnaev’s travel at the time, because the FBI probe had already been closed.

However, other FBI officials disagreed. One told the watchdog that he did not know about Tsarnaev’s trip until after the bombings, and had he had known he would have ordered a second investigation into Tsarnaev and interviewed him upon his return to the U.S.

An official with Boston's Joint Terrorism Task Force agreed, telling the watchdog if counterterrorism agents had been notified of the trip it would have “changed everything.” She agreed that she believed the FBI would have opened a second probe into Tsarnaev.

Ultimately however, the report found that for the most part federal agencies shared information about and followed procedure regarding Tsarnaev appropriately. It also said the FBI investigation into Tsarnaev was appropriate, considering what the agency knew at the time.

It states that broader information sharing could have been helpful to the investigation, and that the agencies should consider being more proactive in information sharing in the future in certain areas.

The report also states that Russia withheld some information from the U.S. about Tsarnaev, despite its initial flagging of him in 2011. The report did not address specifics. 

Tsarnaev died following a shootout and a police chase a few days after the bombings. His alleged accomplice, his younger brother Dzhokhar, has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction.

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Published on: 10:37 PM

A BUNCH OF HOT AIR?New report blasts UN findings on climate change

 

A U.N.-commissioned panel says climate change is hurting the growth of crops, affecting the quality of water supplies and forcing wildlife to change the way it lives – but what if it’s all just smoke and mirrors?

A new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), written by an international collection of scientists and published by the conservative Heartland Institute, claims just that, declaring that humanity's impact on climate is not causing substantial harm to the Earth.

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“All across the planet, the historical increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration has stimulated vegetative productivity,” reads a portion of the 1,063-page report, called “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts.” “This observed stimulation, or greening of the Earth, has occurred in spite of many real and imagined assaults on Earth’s vegetation, including fires, disease, pest outbreaks, deforestation and climatic change.”

The Heartland Institute says more than 30 scientists served as authors and reviewers for the new report, which it claims cites more than 1,000 peer-reviewed studies supporting the belief that climate change is not detrimental to the biosphere. The Heartland Institute describes itself as a think tank promoting public policy "based on individual liberty, limited government and free markets."

The panel of scientists says human impact on the global climate is small, changing temperatures are within a historic scope of temperature variables and there is no net harm to human health of the production of food.

The findings are a stark contrast to the messages from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which in a report released last week concluded that in many regions of the earth, changing precipitation and melting snow are altering hydrological systems, which negatively impact the quantity of water resources.

The IPCC’s report also states that climate change is forcing terrestrial, freshwater and marine species to shift their geographical ranges and migration patterns.

But the Heartland Institute says the scientific community is under tremendous financial and peer pressure to reach the conclusion that global industry is damaging the environment.

“Ethical standards have been lowered, peer review has been corrupted, and we can’t trust peers in our most prestigious journals anymore,” Joe Bast, President and CEO of Heartland Institute, told Fox News.

However, scientists are questioning the credibility of the NIPCC’s findings.

Donald Wuebbels, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Indiana Champaign Urbana, says the report is not peer-reviewed.

“Mostly it’s a bunch of old, retired guys that got together and wrote a report for the Heartland Institute that is basically full of misinformation,” he told Fox News.

The Heartland Institute, which is going to publicly roll out the report Wednesday in Washington, D.C., insists that it is peer-reviewed.

Meanwhile, government officials and top climate scientists are meeting in Berlin this week to approve a draft U.N. study on fossil fuel emissions.

The study asserts that world powers are running out of time to cut their use of high-polluting fossil fuels and stay below agreed limits on global warming, according to Reuters.

The study says nations will have to make drastic pullbacks of greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial times.

The draft study outlines ways to cut emissions and boost low-carbon energy, such as nuclear and solar power, Reuters reports.

Fox News’ Mike Tobin contributed to this report.

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Published on: 4:19 PM

Most States Improve Election Performance: Report

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A new report by a nonpartisan public policy group says Americans spent an average of three minutes less standing in line to vote in the 2012 presidential election than they did four years earlier. An exception was Florida, where the wait increased by 16 minutes.

The report by Pew Charitable Trusts, released Tuesday, said states generally did a better job of handling elections in 2012 than in 2008. It examined 17 points about election administration, including the percentage of provisional ballots cast, the proportion of voter-registration applications rejected and the percentage of people 18 and older who voted.

"If you look at the states that perform well, they are the states that have good voter lists," David Becker, director of election initiatives for Pew, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

Up-to-date lists — with accurate information about people who recently registered and without names of voters who have moved or died — make elections more efficient by reducing the need for people to use provisional ballots if there are questions about where they live, he said.

"One of the sad truths about election administration in many states is if someone moves in December of 2012, election officials will likely not learn of it until October 2016, if they learn about it at all," Becker said.

Thirteen states had online voting registration in 2012. That's up from two, Arizona and Washington state, in 2008. Becker said five more states are in the process of starting online registration.

Mississippi was the lowest-performing state in Pew election reports for 2012, 2010 and 2008, partly because it doesn't allow online voter registration. Democratic state Sen. David Blount of Jackson, who worked for a Democratic secretary of state's office before his own election to the Legislature seven years ago, said Monday that Mississippi should change its laws to allow online registration.

"It reduces error. You don't have to read somebody's handwriting," Blount said.

Mississippi's current secretary of state, Republican Delbert Hosemann, said he is talking to his counterparts in states that allow online voter registration, including Arizona and Georgia. Hosemann said Monday that he would support such registration if it can be done securely and save the state money.

Florida's secretary of state, Ken Detzner, said, "The previous practices reviewed in the report no longer reflect today's voting laws because of last year's reforms, and we will continue to work with Pew as they develop their next report."

"This 2012 report validates the actions we took in working with supervisors of elections and the Legislature last year that created an historic amount of early voting locations and more voting hours than ever before," Detzner said.

The Pew report also says fewer non-voters in 2012 cited illness, disability or problems with registration or absentee ballots as reasons for not taking part in an election. It says the South had the lowest rate of voter turnout and the highest rate of people who didn't vote because of disability.

The information about how long people stood in line to vote came from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology team that surveyed at least 200 voters in every state and Washington, D.C., within two days after the 2012 and 2008 presidential elections, Becker said.

____

Online:

Voting report: http://www.pewstates.org/EPI

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Published on: 1:05 PM

OBAMACARE 'IRONY'Union report says plan will hasten income inequality

A new report from a major U.S. union says ObamaCare will hasten income inequality.

Although it defends the intent behind the Affordable Care Act, the report, entitled “The Irony of ObamaCare: Making inequality worse,” concludes that the law will transfer a billion dollars in wealth to insurance companies, uneven the playing field in the market, force employers to cut back on hours and result in pay decreases, Ralston Reports said.

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“The promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending healthcare coverage to the un-and under-insured a step in the right direction,” the report says. “Yet the unintended consequences will hit the average, hard-working American where it hurts: in the wallet.”

The report says it’s “ironic” that the Obama administration is publicly discussing income inequality though it has yet to make the changes to ObamaCare that Unite Here believes are necessary to avoid exacerbating income disparity.

“Having already made efforts to accommodate businesses, churches and congressional staff, it is ironic that the administration is now highlighting issues of economic inequality without acting to preserve health plans that have been achieving the goals of the ACA for decades,” the report concludes. “Without a smart fix, the ACA will heighten the inequality that the Administration seeks to reduce … We cannot sit idly by as the politicians carve up our health plans while they carve out exceptions for themselves and every special interest feeding at the trough in Washington.”

The report comes about three weeks before the enrollment deadline for ObamaCare. While officials say 4 million have signed up for private insurance on the exchanges so far, the program is still short of its unofficial 7 million goal.

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Published on: 8:11 AM

BITCOIN MYSTERY Calif. man denies creating digital currency after report

A 64-year-old Japanese-American man is vehemently denying any connection to bitcoin, despite a Newsweek cover story identifying him as the brains behind the bits. 

?Dorian S. Nakamoto, whom Newsweek identifies by his given name, Satoshi Nakamoto, told the Associated Press he has nothing to do with the bitcoin, a digital currency that has no physical form and lacks any ties to a country. Bitcoin is also wildly successful, as far as currencies go, with everyone from football teams to food shops announcing plans to accept the digital currency.

Reached at his home in Temple City, Calif., Nakamoto acknowledged that many of the details in Newsweek's report are correct, including that he once worked for a defense contractor. But he strongly disputes the magazine's assertion that he is "the face behind bitcoin."

Widely circulated stories have said in the past a genius kid in Tokyo came up with the concept. Not so, writes Leah McGrath Goodman in a cover story for the recently re-launched Newsweek magazine.

'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people.'

- Satoshi Nakamoto

“Far from leading to a Tokyo-based whiz kid using the name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ as a cipher or pseudonym (a story repeated by everyone from Bitcoin's rabid fans to The New Yorker), the trail followed by Newsweek led to a 64-year-old Japanese-American man whose name really is Satoshi Nakamoto. He is someone with a penchant for collecting model trains and a career shrouded in secrecy, having done classified work for major corporations and the U.S. military,” Goodman wrote. (See a picture of Nakamoto at Newsweek.com.)

Nakamoto, who lives in the foothills of Los Angeles, called the cops on Goodman when she showed up at his door.

"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he said, according to Goodman. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

Nakamoto graduated from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, Calif., with a degree in physics, but Newsweek found him through his interest in model trains -- which he upgrades and modifies through computer-aided design (CAD). He lives in a “modest, single-family home in Southern California” and drives a silver Toyota Corolla CE, Goodman wrote -- and is worth an estimated $400 million.

In bitcoins. Of course.

That wealth may not last long. Mt. Gox, a Japanese company that is the world’s largest exchange of bitcoins, filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of February, announcing a massive theft of several hundred million dollars worth of the digital currency.

The bitcoin market had been tumultuous before that, with massive fluctuations in price driving exchange rates up and down by tens or even hundreds of dollars per day. The stress of the industry may be one reason 28-year-old Autumn Ratke, CEO of U.S.-based bitcoin exchange First Meta, committed suicide recently.

The explosion in popularity of the coin made reported early investors like Nakamoto instantly wealthy. Goodman interviewed Bitcoin's chief scientist, the 47-year-old Gavin Andresen. Another early investor, he has done well by bitcoins.

"I made a small investment in bitcoin and it is actually enough that I could now retire if I wanted to," Andresen told Newsweek. "Overall, I've made about $800 per penny I've invested. It's insane."

Nakamoto has been reluctant to spend his fortune, Goodman wrote -- money his family could use. The reason might be simple: He does not want to participate in the bitcoin madness, she noted.

“If you come out as the leader of bitcoin, now you have to make appearances and presentations and comments to the press and that didn't really fit with Satoshi's personality," Andresen told Newsweek.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Published on: 8:07 PM

ANOTHER ONE GONE? S. Korea probes report of new Pyongyang purge

The South Korean government is investigating reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has purged the man widely believed to be the new power behind the dictatorial throne after Kim had his uncle deposed and executed late last year.

Free North Korea Radio, a Seoul-based service which broadcasts news to North Korean listeners, first reported rumors that Choe Ryong-hae had been arrested and was being interrogated Friday. Rumors and speculation continued to grow over the weekend to the extent that South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations between the two Koreas, told The Times of London that it was "looking into" the rumors. 

Choe is believed to have succeeded Jang Song-taek as the Stalinist dictatorship's military politburo chief. Jang, who was married to Kim's aunt, the sister of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, was executed last December after being accused of plotting to commit "crimes against the state."

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported that South Korean intelligence had assumed that Choe would sooner or later be purged based on the fact that he had not been seen at two major events in late February. The paper cited unnamed experts in suggesting that the root of the possible purge might be a falling-out that occurred in a scramble for control of state-run businesses in the aftermath of Jang's execution. 

Other South Korean officials warned that there would not be any more concrete information as to Choe's possible whereabouts until later this month. "There is no concrete information so we need to wait and see until the Supreme People's Assembly convenes on March 9," one official told the Chosun Ilbo. 

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Published on: 10:02 AM

ANOTHER ONE GONE? S. Korea probes report of new Pyongyang purge

The South Korean government is investigating reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has purged the man widely believed to be the new power behind the dictatorial throne after Kim had his uncle deposed and executed late last year.

Free North Korea Radio, a Seoul-based service which broadcasts news to North Korean listeners, first reported rumors that Choe Ryong-hae had been arrested and was being interrogated Friday. Rumors and speculation continued to grow over the weekend to the extent that South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations between the two Koreas, told The Times of London that it was "looking into" the rumors. 

Choe is believed to have succeeded Jang Song-taek as the Stalinist dictatorship's military politburo chief. Jang, who was married to Kim's aunt, the sister of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, was executed last December after being accused of plotting to commit "crimes against the state."

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported that South Korean intelligence had assumed that Choe would sooner or later be purged based on the fact that he had not been seen at two major events in late February. The paper cited unnamed experts in suggesting that the root of the possible purge might be a falling-out that occurred in a scramble for control of state-run businesses in the aftermath of Jang's execution. 

Other South Korean officials warned that there would not be any more concrete information as to Choe's possible whereabouts until later this month. "There is no concrete information so we need to wait and see until the Supreme People's Assembly convenes on March 9," one official told the Chosun Ilbo. 

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Published on: 8:53 AM