Huckabee, who finished a strong second place in South Carolina’s 2008 primary, polls at 18 percent in the survey. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) comes in second place with 17 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is in third with 14 percent of the vote and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pulls 13 percent. No other candidate reaches double digits.
President Obama at a memorial on Tuesday in South Africa called the late Nelson Mandela “the last great liberator of the 20th century” who “earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness” along with “persistence and faith.”
Under a rainy sky at the start of summer in South Africa, Obama honored the nation’s first black president and anti-apartheid leader, who was a source of inspiration in Obama’s adult life.
He likened the late leader to Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and said he “speaks to what is best inside us.”
“His struggle was your struggle,” Obama said, speaking at First National Bank Stadium before an estimated crowd of tens of thousands of people including British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, Oprah Winfrey and Bono.
“His triumph was your triumph. Your dignity and hope found expression in his life, and your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.”
Obama compared Mandela to another of his heroes: Lincoln. He said when Mandela emerged from his time in prison “without force of arms, he would, like Abraham Lincoln, hold his country together when it threatened to break apart.”
The president said “Madiba” showed the world “the power of action of taking risks on behalf of our ideals. And he quoted Mandela’s own words saying, “I’m not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
South Africans affectionately call Mandela “Madiba,” which is a term of endearment and has become a nickname. It is a family name and is derived from a chief who ruled in the 18th century, according to the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
What Causes Blue Eyes? A team at University of Copenhagen conducted a study in 2008 about the formation of blue eyes. The research showed that those who have blue eyes have a single common ancestor. They found a genetic mutation that took place between 6000 – 10,000 years ago which is the reason behind the occurrence of blue eyes and the causation of all blue eyed people today.
What is genetic mutation? Eiberg, a professor of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, says we all had brown eyes originally. A genetic mutation affected the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes which created a switch that literally switched off the ability to produce brown eyes. The OCA2 is a gene that codes for P-protein, responsible for the production of melanin. Melanin is the pigment that gives color to hair, eyes, and skin. The switch is situated in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and does not entirely switch off the gene but limits its function to reduce the production of melanin in the iris – effectively diluting brown eyes to blue. If there were no melanin then we all would be without colors in our hair, eyes, and skin, a condition known as albinism.
Genetic Variation Variation in eye color from brown to green is linked to the amount of melanin present in the iris. All blue-eyed people have a small amount of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes, leading to the conclusion that all blue-eyed people have a common ancestor and have the same switch inherited at the same place in their DNA.
The findings of Professor Eiberg and his team are the latest regarding genes. He and his team examined mitochondrial DNA and analyzed and compared people who had blue eyes in countries like Jordan, Denmark, and Turkey. Research began in 1996 when Professor Eiberg suggested the theory of the OCA2 gene as responsible for eye color.
Shuffling of genes Nature is responsible for the shuffling of genes. The mutation of brown eyes to blue ones does not represent a positive or negative mutation, it’s like many other mutations including baldness, hair color, freckles, and beauty spots, none of which affect chances of survival. Professor Eiberg explains that it is nature who is continuously and constantly shuffling the human genome thereby creating a cocktail of human chromosomes trying out changes.
Blue eye color is the second rarest color after green. Blue eyes are common among Israeli Jews, the percentage of people with blue eyes is decreasing in the US. The countries where you can find the most blue-eyed people are Netherland, Germany, the Baltic States, and Scandinavia. In Germany almost 75% of the population have blue eyes.
(CNN) — George Zimmerman’s girlfriend is asking a judge to lift an order that blocks her from seeing him and says she doesn’t want charges filed against him.
In a court document obtained by CNN Monday, Samantha Scheibe says she wants a no-contact provision against Zimmerman lifted so the couple can “talk and be together.”
“I am not afraid of George in any manner and I want to be with him,” she says.
Zimmerman was arrested on November 18 at Scheibe’s Apopka, Florida, home after the two had a heated fight. According to a police report about the incident, Scheibe said that after an argument, Zimmerman broke a table with a shotgun and then pointed it at her “for a minute.”
But in a signed affidavit filed by Zimmerman’s attorney, Jayne Weintraub, Scheibe says Zimmerman “never pointed a gun at or toward my face in a threatening manner” and claims police misinterpreted her.
“I believe that the police misinterpreted me and that I may have misspoken about certain facts in my statement to the police,” she said. “I do not feel that the arrest report accurately recounts what happened.”
Zimmerman is accused ofaggravated assault and misdemeanor counts of domestic violence battery and criminal mischief in the incident. His arraignment is scheduled for January 7.
BlizzardIn a report titled “World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games,” ProPublica lays out the framework by which the NSA and CIA allegedly worked to snoop in online games, attempting to zero in on terrorists or criminals who might try to use the hypothetically anonymous virtual environments to communicate, move money or plot attacks.
As such, says ProPublica:
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.
The findings stem from the trove of classified information released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Information from that stack has been released intermittently since June 2013.
Thousands of mourners and dozens of world leaders have gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa this morning to celebrate the life of the late Nelson Mandela.
SABC, South Africa’s public broadcaster, is live streaming its coverage. We’re live-blogging the event, here. We’ve embedded SABC’s coverage below:
McLEAN, Va. — U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida lost $18 million in a scheme that cheated him and about 120 other investors out of more than $35 million, according to court papers.
The Virginia man who ran the scheme, William Dean Chapman, was sentenced Friday in federal court to 12 years in prison. Prosecutors say Chapman used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle including a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a $3 million home.
In most of the court papers, Grayson’s identity is protected — prosecutors say only that an elected official with the initials A.G. was the primary victim — but documents twice mention Grayson by name. The Democratic congressman on Monday confirmed he is the A.G. mentioned in the documents.
Nothing in the court papers suggests Grayson was anything but a victim of the scheme. Grayson, a former trial attorney, said he has had a long record for picking winning stocks, which formed the basis for his personal fortune.
The scheme worked like this: clients would turn over their stocks to Chapman as collateral for a loan, and Chapman would let customers borrow about 90 percent of the stocks’ value.
If the stocks did badly, borrowers could walk away and keep the money they were loaned. But if the borrowers’ stocks did well, they would repay the loan with interest, and Chapman was supposed to return the stocks to the investor at their increased value.
But, according to court papers, Chapman sold the stocks and had no way to fulfill his obligations if a client’s stock portfolio did well.
“That’s why (Chapman) is going to prison for a long, long time,” Grayson said. “At least in the end, some kind of justice was served.”
A 23-year-old St. Louis woman who was badly beaten by her boyfriend blamed the act on 3 innocent black men. Police charged 25-year-old Justin Simms and his girlfriend Ashley DePew, 23, with filing false police reports.
The two insisted that DePew was sucker-punched by a “random thug” outside the Trophy Room bar in south city.
DePew told police and KMOV-TV (Channel 4) that she may have been the victim of the violent phenomenon turned national mania known as the “knockout game,” where groups, especially of teenagers, viciously attack random victims.
The fake knockout narrative went like this: DePew and Simms stopped by the Trophy Room on Arsenal early on November 17 to pick up a drunk friend. The couple was separated in the crowd gathered outside, and someone stepped forward to punch DePew in the face.
The truth is that the couple was arguing while driving when Simms struck DePew in the eye out of anger. The couple originally told the lie to DePew’s parents, who made the connection to the “Knockout” game. DePew filed a police report two days later.
DePew suffered from a double fracture and needed reconstructive surgery. Police noticed inconsistencies in DePew ‘s story early on which prompted them to further look into the case.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has waded into the health care debate with a broad endorsement of the kind of universal health plan found in Europe, Canada and South Korea.
“I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life,” Powell said, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, last week at an annual “survivors celebration breakfast” in Seattle for those who, like Powell, have battled prostate cancer. “And I don’t see why we can’t do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing.”
Europe, Canada and Korea all have a “single-payer” system, in which the government pays for the costs of health care.
Some Democrats who strongly advocated for, and failed to get, a single-payer system in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, still believe the current law doesn’t go far enough to reform the US health system.
A retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell told the audience about a woman named Anne, who as his firewood supplier, faced a healthcare scare of her own. Anne asked Powell to help pay for her healthcare bills, as her insurance didn’t cover an MRI she needed as a prerequisite to being treated for a growth in her brain. In addition, Powell’s wife Alma recently suffered from three aneurysms and an artery blockage. “After these two events, of Alma and Anne, I’ve been thinking, why is it like this?” said Powell.
“We are a wealthy enough country with the capacity to make sure that every one of our fellow citizens has access to quality health care,” Powell. “(Let’s show) the rest of the world what our democratic system is all about and how we take care of all of our citizens.”
Attorneys for Elias Montoya say the veteran officer intends to file an appeal for wrongful termination.
State Police Chief Pete Kassetas fired Montoya on Friday, one day after a disciplinary hearing
Video from a police cruiser’s dashboard camera taken during the October 28 traffic stop has drawn national attention. It showed Montoya shooting at the minivan as a Memphis, Tennessee, woman drove away from a traffic stop after an officer knocked out her van’s window with a baton.
The motorist, 39-year-old Oriana Farrell, had been stopped by another State Police officer for speeding. She fled twice after that officer tried to give her a ticket and then arrest her.
The officer was placed on administrative leave last week following an investigation into the shooting outside the northern New Mexico tourist town of Taos.
Vice President Cheney said on Monday that the deal the U.S. and its international partners reached with Iran last month over its nuclear program is suspect because of some of the Obama administration’s initial missteps in implementing the president’s new health care law.
“I don’t think that Barack Obama believes that the U.S. is an exceptional nation,” Cheney complained on Fox and Friends. “Nobody cares much in the Middle East anymore what the U.S. thinks because we don’t keep our commitments.”
The former vice president moved to Iran and without mentioning any specific criticisms of the agreement, claimed it’s bad because of unrelated health care issues. “We don’t follow through and Iran we’ve got a very serious problem going forward and a deal now been cut,” he said. “The same people that brought us you can keep your insurance if you want are telling us they’ve got a great deal in Iran with respect to their nuclear program. I don’t believe it.”
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