Stew of News - Mattel fine, abortion Dr., Boyle, Mitsubishi electric car, Calif. arson, Jolie, Darfur

No more toying around

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Friday said it imposed a $2.3 million civil penalty against Mattel Inc. for violating a ban on bringing dangerous products to the United States, Reuters reported.

The fine stems from Mattel's recall of 95 types of toys and up to 2 million units, from shelves in recent years, primarily for excessive lead content in paint. The toys were all made in China, the CPSC said.

The photo shows a Chinese boy holding a Mattel "Barbie and Tanner" still for sale in China despite being recalled in the U.S., at a department store in Shanghai last month. Mattel issued an extraordinary apology to China Friday, saying it was to blame for design flaws. (Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images file)

It figures I own Mattel shares...

U.S. Justice Dept. to probe Kansas abortion murder

The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it's launching an investigation into the murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, who had been reviled by anti-abortion groups, Reuters reported Friday.

The Justice Department said it would investigate whether Tiller's murder violated a 1994 U.S. law that establishes penalties for those who block access to abortion services, according to the report.

Kansas authorities have charged Scott Roeder with murder in the Sunday shooting death of Tiller in his church.

Tiller was one of only a few physicians in the U.S. willing to perform late-term abortions, those performed after the 20th week of gestation when a fetus potentially could survive outside the womb and legal under certain conditions.

Tiller's Wichita clinic had been the site of several mass protests by anti-abortion groups and was bombed in 1985. The doctor was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent in 1993.

After the shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder directed agents to protect other abortion facilities.

The killer sought to boost the anti-abortion movement, but what he achieved was set it back to barbaric times, if you ask me.

Susan Boyle leaves London clinic

Susan Boyle has left the clinic she checked into last week after the pressure of participating in the TV show Britain's Got Talent, dealing with the paparazzi 24/7, and extremely high expectations about her winning the show got to be too much.

Sources at Britain's Got Talent told US magazine that Boyle, 48, checked out of the London Priory Hospital on Wednesday. Her brother Gerry also confirmed her release on Britain's GMTV Friday, US reported.

Boyle, who sought treatment for exhaustion hours after the show ended on May 30, has relocated to a flat in central London and has since been in hiding, the sources told US.

"She wanted to be with her friends again," an insider said.

This weekend, Boyle will continue to rest, although it's not clear whether she'll have time to go back to her home town in Blackburn, Scotland. Her home on Yule Terrace is currently empty, US reported.

Next week, Boyle begins meetings with 19 Management, Simon Cowell and Sony BMG to discuss her recording contract.

"Susan wants to get on with it now," a source told US. "She's not quitting--those rumors are rubbish."

I love her and hope these music business moguls treat her well.

California man gets death sentence in arson murders

A convicted arsonist was sentenced to death Friday for setting a Southern California wildfire that killed five federal firefighters struggling to defend a rural home from raging, wind-driven flames, AP reported Friday.

Holy crap! I hope other arsonists are paying attention.

Raymond Lee Oyler, 38, was found guilty in March of five counts of first-degree murder for setting the Oct. 26, 2006, blaze about 90 miles east of Los Angeles, according to the report.

"After evaluating the same evidence that the jury had heard and going through that, I find that the aggravating circumstances do outweigh the mitigating circumstances," Riverside County Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan said.

"In particular, Mr. Oyler set on a mission ... to wreak havoc in this county by setting fires by his own design for his own purposes and as proven by the evidence he became more and more proficient," Morgan said. "He knew that young men and women would put their lives on the line to protect other people and property and he continued anyway."

The fires Oyler set killed Jason McKay, 27; Jess McLean, 27; Daniel Hoover-Najera, 20; Mark Loutzenhiser, 43, and Pablo Cerda, 23.

Oyler, a former auto mechanic, was also convicted of 20 counts of arson and 17 counts of using an incendiary device for a rash of blazes in the area that year.

One of his daughters, Heather, 22, said: "My dad is not a bad guy. He's not bad at all," she said.

Not bad? Then what do you call someone who sets fires to fry people all over town? Fiery? Yeah, he's a saint who meant to purify the victims' souls through a trial by fire. OK, seriously--what compels someone to do something like this?

The fatal blaze, known as the Esperanza Fire, destroyed 34 homes and 20 outbuildings and charred nearly 70 square miles of terrain.

Here's another one who could be burned at the stake rather than given a soothing lethal injection.

Mitsubishi unveils $47,000 electric car

Mitsubishi's electric vehicle is twice as expensive as popular hybrid cars by rivals Toyota and Honda, but Japan's No. 4 automaker said Friday the i-MiEV will help it survive increasingly intense global competition, AP reported Friday.

The i-MiEV? Who the hell will remember that name? Doesn't Mitsubishi have a marketing department...or common sense? It doesn't take a marketing degree to know that name recollection is critical for any product to make it past its launching.

The i-MiEV is powered solely by electricity and can be recharged from a regular home socket, AP reported. The four-seater vehicle can run up to 100 miles after charging seven hours at 200 volts. A hybrid car switches between a gas engine and electric motor to boost mileage.

"It is a zero-emission vehicle. It does not rely on oil, which is different from hybrid cars," Mitsubishi Motors President Osamu Masuko said at a news conference.

(Photo: Mitsubishi Motors Corp. execs walk around the new electric car "i-MiEV" during its unveiling Friday in Tokyo, Japan.)

The i-MiEV costs $47,560--more than twice as much as Toyota's new Prius hybrid vehicle or Honda's Insight, the cheapest hybrid on the market. Masuko acknowledged the high price is a major hurdle to encouraging people to buy the i-MiEV.

Turns out MiEV stands for Mitsubishi innovative electric vehicle, with the initial "i" having not particular meaning. Brilliant.

Masuko said the company had spent more than 40 years to develop the i-MiEV, but declined to say how much the company had invested in its development. Globally, Mitsubishi hopes to sell 15,000 units for the year through March 2012, AP reported.

But the company can only make a profit on the i-MiEV if it produces 30,000 units per year, Masuko said.

Angeline Jolie calls for more action to end Darfur crisis

Actress (who hasn't acted in I don't know how long) Angelina Jolie has written a new article for Time magazine calling for more action to end the crisis in Darfur, US magazine reported Friday.

I was going to make fun of this, but now that I think about it every interview of Jolie I've seen has left me with the impression that she's extremely intelligent. Plus, I haven't read the article. And, furthermore, the crisis in Darfur is a serious mess.

On Friday, members of the United Nations Security Council will learn the results of the International Criminal Court's Darfur investigation, US reported.

"The evidence the prosecutor has presented is clear and compelling," Jolie writes, pointing out that "millions of people have been displaced" and "hundreds of thousands have been killed."

Jolie recalls her first trip to Chad to visit refugees from Darfur in 2004, noting that "nothing changed" since then, US reported.

Despite the Bush administration labeling the Darfur situation as "genocide," Jolie says the words have not "compelled us to intervene."

"Darfur has almost disappeared from the news, and experts now call it a 'low intensity' conflict. But the intensity of the crisis has not lessened for those who are struggling to survive," the Oscar-winning actress (who turned 34 Thursday) says in the article.

"More than 250,000 people from Darfur have lived destitute lives in refugee camps in Chad for six years now," says the mother of six. "Camps with more than two million internally displaced persons inside Darfur are even worse. Thirty percent of those displaced are school-age children. Girls leaving the camps are raped; boys leaving the camps are killed. They want an education; they want to go back to their villages, to their land; they want peace. But they also want justice."

The world is a fucked up place, if you ask me.

Sources: The Associated Press, Reuters, US magazine
Copyright © 2009

Stew of News - Flight 447, doctor killer, GM bankrupt, N. Korea missiles, Boyle, passport rules

So I wake up to find a slew of news about an Air France plane missing somewhere in the Atlantic, North Korea getting ready to launch a long-range missile, GM filing for bankruptcy protection, Susan Boyle checking into some clinic, new U.S. border laws going into effect, and that's just what I've run into so far.

People can't get enough of the horrific, so let's start with the lost plane and an update on the Kansas murder.

Missing Air France jet "hit by electric fault"

An Air France passenger jet with 228 people on board headed for Paris is missing. The airline says it received a message from the plane signaling an electric problem while going through thunderstorms and turbulence. The plane left Rio De Janeiro last night and should’ve arrived in Paris early this morning. By now it would've ran out of gas. There is a search underway near the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, but the search area is so huge, it could take weeks to find the plane...IF they find anything. The chance of fining survivors is next to none.

What a terrifying way to go down...

Distraught relatives and friends of passengers of Air France flight AF447 arrive at the crisis center at Charles deGaulle airport near Paris. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-200, left Rio on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time (2200 GMT, 6 p.m. EDT) with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board. About four hours into the 11-hour flight, the plane sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence, Air France said.

The loss of a relatively new model of one of the aviation sector's most reliable and state-of-the-art aircraft has stunned analysts who say it would take extremely violent weather to bring down such a large jet, CNN reported

Former Airbus pilot John Wiley told CNN that speculation lightning had brought down the plane was likely to prove unfounded since most modern passenger aircraft were capable of withstanding direct strikes.

"Lightning issues have been considered since the beginning of aviation. They were far more prevalent when aircraft operated at low altitudes. They are less common now since it's easier to avoid thunderstorms," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of Flight Safety Foundation, Alexandria, Va., AP reported.

He told AP that planes have specific measures built in to help dissipate electricity along the aircraft's skin. "I cannot recall in recent history any examples of aircraft being brought down by lightning."

Experts said the absence of a mayday call meant something happened very quickly, AP reported.

"The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion," Jane's Aviation analyst Chris Yates said.

Brazil's Air Force said the last contact it had with the Air France jet was at 1:36 GMT but did not say where the plane was then, AP reported

Killer of Kansas abortion doctor held without bond

Scott Roeder, 51, was being held in a Kansas jail Monday after being charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Dr. George Tiller Sunday at a church.

Roeder, who's being held without bond and expected to appear in court this week, is also charged with two counts of aggravated assault, CNN reported.

The suspect was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion, the Kansas City Star reported Monday.

In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide, according to the report.

“I know that he believed in justifiable homicide,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City abortion opponent who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. “I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn.”

OK...so...he thinks abortion is wrong because it's murder, so he murders someone. Sensible, as usual. Don't get me wrong--I'm not defending late-term abortion. To be honest, I can't even imagine it.

Tiller's clinic is one of three in the U.S. performing late-term abortions and the site of many protests. Tiller was shot by a protester 16 years ago, and the clinic was bombed in 1985.

The shooting prompted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to direct federal marshals to "offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation," according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

If it were not for the description the Wichita Police Department put out, "we wouldn't have paid any particular attention to him. He was following all traffic laws and everything," Lt. Mike Pfhannestiel of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office said according to CNN.

"We didn't find a weapon on him," he said. "We did not have a weapon on him."

Uh, oh.

Photo source unknown

GM files for bankruptcy protection

Century-old automaker legend GM is filing for bankruptcy in what will be the largest in the history of U.S. manufacturing. *sigh*

As part of the Chapter 11 reorganization, the US government will gain 60% stake in the new company, CNN and AP reported. Gain? The price tag for tax-payers: $30 billion. Who wants a stake in this company?

So what if GM is an icon? Who gives a fuck?

This is akin to keeping brain-dead people on life support to avoid emotional turmoil.

Bottom line: GM cars suck. If they didn't suck, they would've sold. They didn't sell because there are better and more economical cars on the market. It's survival of the fittest, my friends.

Frankly, it pisses me off (can you tell?) to watch these superstar corporations--overflowing with resources but apparently lacking common sense--dig their own graves only to be rescued by the government while the rest of us get fucked when the going gets rough.

Sure, why not yet again reward mediocrity? Let's bail out a company that we could do without. Let's pay for its mistakes while the ones who made the mistakes soak in their Jacuzzis and get pedicures.

Oh, but the jobs! you say. You're oversimplifying things! you say. Well...maybe. But maybe if nature was allowed to take its course, these failing companies would disappear and make way for stronger, healthier ones capable of generating more and better jobs. Plus, GM will cut 20,000 jobs and shut a dozen plants by the end of next year.

Just sayin'...

GM Graphic by The Cleveland Leader

North Korea still shooting for a longer penis

North Korea defiantly launched a few short-range missiles about a week ago, but the pleasure of such missiles was short-lived, so macho N. Korea is preparing to launch a long-range missile this time.

Reports say the regime is likely to test launch its most advanced missile, believed to be capable of reaching Alaska, from its west coast near China. Wow...I'm so turned on.

With this launch, the "reclusive" (penis-less) communist country could thumb its nose at U.N. Security Council attempts to rein it in after last week's nuclear test and a series of short-range missile launches, AP reported (minus the penis part of course).

One South Korean report said the launch could be ready by the time South Korean President Lee Myung-bak meets with President Obama on June 16. So?

The North reportedly has transported a long-range missile (wanna-be penis) to a newly completed launch pad. The Yonhap news agency said South Korea is studying an intelligence report that the North has ordered troops along the west coast to double their stocks of ammunition, but South Korea's Defense Ministry declined to confirm the report.

North Korea faced strong international criticism (a spanking) after its last long-range missile launch, on April 5. The North said the launch was of a rocket intended to put a satellite in orbit (Yeah, right). The Taepodong-2 rocket flew about 2,000 miles, crossing over Japan before crashing into the Pacific Ocean, AP reported. Must be an orbit at the bottom of the sea...

In late April, the North threatened to conduct nuclear and long-range missile tests unless the Security Council apologized for criticizing the launch. What? Oh, but of course! How do highly insecure people with an inferiority complex act? Like touchy victims with a superiority complex.

Sorry my friends...I have no tolerance for such tactics.

On Friday, North Korea threatened to take a further "self-defense" measure if the Security Council provokes it, AP reported. What fucking self-defense? Who's on the offensive here?

This is what happens when men are born with tiny dicks.

The North Korea government has told its people it faces imminent attack and has threatened everything from the new rocket launch to all-out war if the U.N. blockades Pyongyang, according to news reports. It claims it's being provoked by South Korea and the U.S., noting that the number of spy planes operating in its airspace has risen dramatically. *yawn*

"The U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppets perpetrated at least 200 cases of aerial espionage against the DPRK in May, or 30 cases more than those in the same month of last year," penis-yearning N. Korea said in a report in its official Korean Central News Agency.

Blow me.

Susan Boyle hospitalized for exhaustion

Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle was taken to a London clinic for treatment following her second-place finish in Britain's Got Talent, according to several news reports Monday.

The 48-year-old charity worker was admitted to the Priory Clinic, which reportedly specializes in addiction recovery and mental health care, on Sunday.

Boyle was the favorite to win the finals, watched by more than 19 million people, after becoming a YouTube star following her first appearance on the show in April. By Friday, the pressure appeared to be building up on the shy singer, who reportedly went into seclusion after an emotionally charged incident with journalists from Britain's notoriously aggressive tabloids.

TV company Talkback Thames said Boyle was "exhausted and emotionally drained" and taking a few days off.

"She has been seen by her private GP, who supports her decision to take a few days out for rest and recovery," the company said. "We offer her our ongoing support and wish her a speedy recovery."

Britain's Sun newspaper reported that, after tears and a tantrum from Boyle, her handlers had to help her into an ambulance to get her to the clinic. OMG, what a scandal!

This is so freaking typical...and why most celebrities are certifiably nuts.

The public puts them up on a golden throne in the clouds one day and shoves them down below the stinking sewers the next. The average person cannot withstand these drastic mood changes, not to mention the relentless persecution by the mean-spirited tabloids.

"It's kind of what everybody's saying, really. I think it's taken its toll on her," Amanda Holden, one of the show's judges, said on The Early Show Monday.

"She's gone from a woman nobody knew to worldwide fame, and I think, for anybody in the business to handle that kind of stress is an enormous amount of pressure, and I think she probably has just crumbled under it," Holden said. "She will just need some time to recuperate and rest. And actually, it's probably a blessing she didn't win, because now the spotlight is not so heavily on her. So, perhaps now she can just relax and enjoy what's happening to her, rather than feel the pressure."

"She needs to get away from everyone...get away from the show, from the media, from the public, and just have a bit of downtime to herself to sleep," said Piers Morgan, also a judge in the show."

Boyle's first voice coach, Fred O'Neil, said Monday that the show seemed like "a great, great thing for Susan to do" but that he started to worry about her when it became "like an absolute media circus" around her house. "You really couldn't even drive down her street."

I wish SuBo a speedy recovery from this craziness. Peace of mind is priceless and much better than fame, if you ask me.

Photo source: susanboyletalent.com

Tighter U.S. border security requires passports

Coming back to the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda or the Caribbean could be a headache if you don't have your passport with you, CNN reported.

Beginning today a rule known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative takes effect requiring U.S. and Canadian citizens to present passports--or a very limited number of other travel documents--when entering the U.S. at land and sea borders.

Uh...I don't know about this. Surely the borders need to be better protected, but renewing a passport no longer costs $35, know what I mean?

Air travelers have been required to carry travel documents since January 2007, but the number of people crossing land borders is far greater, and the June 1 deadline is being viewed with some trepidation, especially in Canadian border communities where cross-border travel by citizens of both countries historically required minimal documentation, CNN reported.

The same rules will be in effect for U.S. residents attempting to re-enter the country at the southern border, and existing document requirements will remain in place for Mexican nationals wanting to enter the U. S., according to the report.

The rule was originally scheduled to take effect more than a year ago, but Congress delayed it amid complaints that people weren't prepared and that trade, tourism and commerce with Canada--our biggest trading partner--would be hurt.

The Department of Homeland Security says 80-90% of routine border crossers have the required documents, and new technology has been installed at all major border crossings to speed up passenger and pedestrian identification. In addition, the U.S. government is promising "soft" enforcement for the indefinite future, CNN reported.

But business and tourism groups aren't entirely at ease, saying this and other border restrictions are hurting regional commerce. Hardest hit, they say, are retail businesses and restaurants on both sides of the border as some shoppers opt to stay in their home countries rather than get travel documents. Tourist destinations also could be hit as families calculate the cost of getting passports.

So what will happen to U.S. citizens who attempt to re-enter the country without proper travel documents? Well, it turns out that the U.S. Constitution trumps all these new requirements, according to CNN's report.

"If you're a U.S. citizen, they're going to let you in," a Detroit Chamber source told CNN. "That's the little secret they really don't want you to know. Because if you're an American citizen, there may be a hassle at the border for the couple hours, but they're going to be letting you in."

Passport photo source: unknown

Sources: CNN, The Associated Press, CBS News, USA Today
Copyright © 2009