By Jeremy Page, Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2012

[....] The new details about what drew Mr. Heywood to Chongqing, how he spent some of his final hours, and his claim to possess the documents about the Bos' foreign business interests shed fresh light on his mysterious death in his hotel room. Chinese authorities on Tuesday characterized the death as an "intentional homicide."

The Chinese authorities said Mr. Bo, who was sacked as Chongqing party chief last month, had been stripped of his remaining party posts, and that his wife, Ms. Gu, was in custody as a suspect in the murder of Mr. Heywood. Beyond saying that Ms. Gu and her son had been close to Mr. Heywood and had fallen out with him over a financial matter, the authorities haven't provided details about Ms. Gu's suspected role in a case that has thrown elite Chinese politics into turmoil [....]

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, will be charged in the 17-year-old's death, a law enforcement official said Wednesday.

Special prosecutor Angela Corey will announce charges against the 28-year-old Zimmerman at a 6 p.m. Wednesday news conference, the official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. Corey confirmed that an announcement on the case would be made in Jacksonville but didn't elaborate. The person said Zimmerman's arrest is also expected soon.

Stung by high gasoline costs, outlying suburbs that sprouted in the heady 2000s are now seeing their growth fizzle to historic lows, halting American city dwellers' decades-long exodus to sprawling homes in distant towns.

New census estimates as of July 2011 highlight a shift in population trends following an extended housing bust and renewed spike in oil prices. Two years after the recession technically ended, and despite faint signs of a rebound, Americans again are shunning moves at record levels and staying put in big cities.

That is posing longer-term consequences for residential "exurbs" on the edge of metropolitan areas.

Construction of gleaming new schools and mega-malls built in anticipation of a continued population boom is cutting back. Spacious McMansions offering the promise of homeownership to middle-class families sit abandoned or half-built. Once an escape from urban problems, suburban regions hit by foreclosures are posting bigger jumps in poverty than cities.

The result: The annual rate of growth in American cities and surrounding urban areas has now surpassed that of exurbs for the first time in at least 20 years, spanning the modern era of sprawling suburban development.

The kids are finally asleep. Charlotte Hill* looks like she could use a good nap, too. She wearily blows a strand of auburn hair off her face. The toddler-­induced fatigue, the small-­liberal-arts-college degree—Hill could be an early-thirties Anymom. Until she starts talking about work. “My first shooting—some kid got shot. I think he died. Did he die?” Hill pauses, thinks. So many bullets, so many bodies in eight years as a city cop. “It was winter, but no snow. It was like ten at night, he got shot in the arm, and then the shooter had run back into the projects. The lieutenant just went crazy on us: ‘You guys fucked up the crime scene!’ Apparently we were all stepping on the shell casings. But the thing is, nobody had trained us!”

The blood didn’t bother her, and she gradually figured out the procedural stuff. But that first shooting was an introduction to dysfunction. “It’s just such a highly punitive and numbers-driven job, and it’s gotten infinitely worse over eight years,” Hill says. “You’re giving me a psychological test and sending me through an academy so I can learn how to have good judgment—and now you don’t want us to have any judgment. Every message is that the department doesn’t trust us. When a cop is out sick, we have to call in if we’re going to the doctor during our shift hours. I’m not kidding. And then they want to know why cops act like children.”

Hill wasn’t naïve when she joined the force: She’d grown up in a major city and understood that Police Department culture is about rank, discipline, and rules, and that the job often means dealing with nasty, even evil people. But as she’s become a skilled foot soldier, part of the rank and file that has strung together an extraordinary decade of declining crime statistics while foiling terrorist plots, Hill has grown uneasy about the dehumanizing cost of keeping the city safe. “You don’t realize how much everyone is going to hate you,” she says. “At least where I work now, people look at you and go, ‘I fucking hate you.’ And I go, ‘I fucking hate you, too.’ And then we move on. I have a harder time with overeducated, moneyed people. When I work on the Upper East Side, or in Downtown Brooklyn, people just talk down to you. We don’t feel supported by the courts, we don’t feel supported by the department. I think everyone would say they love being a cop”—she laughs ruefully—“and they hate being in the NYPD.”

My comment: Some parts of this sound very familiar....

By Nick Cohen, The Observer @ guardian.co.uk, April 7, 2012

[....] To the radical left, he is the political equivalent of a dull bank manager. To the right, he is a red revolutionary. At a rally in Nice, Hollande appeared to half-understand his problem when he mocked Sarkozy's pose as an outsider who wanted to overthrow a Parisian establishment headed by himself. "Sometimes during this campaign," Hollande said, "I wonder if I'm not the sitting president."

He spoke truer than he knew. Because he is the front-runner, everyone is targeting him as if he were the incumbent. The French system encourages fratricidal strife on both left and right. The parties must fight one another to see which one of them can represent their side in the final round. As the most plausible source of votes for Mélenchon is the Socialist party, and as the far left has always hated the centre left as much as it has hated the right, his Parti de Gauche is pounding Hollande. The Socialists are fakes, it argues. Hollande's commitment to reducing France's deficit shows that he is as bad as Sarkozy. The negative campaigning may chip away at Hollande's vote [....]

On this site where at least some believe that it is appropriate to stereotype Jews running for political office by presuming their pro-Israel orientation at the threshold and without regard to prior political positions, and on a site where it's OK to trash 2000 plus-years of Torah study as having zero ethical merit because some of the stories in the Bible aren't appropriate for Romper Room or whatever, I think it's important to consider anti-semitism in its ugliest form, such that the attempt to shield it behind anti-zionism becomes absurd.  These Students [allegedly] for Justice in Palestine, focused their ire on their fellow Jewish students, as opposed to their fellow Zionist students.  Imagine, heaven forbid, that the antic they pulled on 200 Jewish students was copied and pulled against another discrete minority group.  

CBS Newsman & star of the Sound of Music died today at the age of 93.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.

POLITICO:

The whole report is well worth the read.  The Repubs are in full WTF mode and Cantor has done himself some damage here.  It does seem like a major gaffe, to say the least.  Interesting, very interesting........

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor went into damage control mode Friday following the revelation that he contributed $25,000 to a super PAC devoted to defeating incumbent House members — including numerous Republicans.

The news of Cantor’s contribution to the Campaign for Primary Accountability, first reported by Roll Call Friday afternoon and confirmed by a spokesman for the super PAC, was said to have taken party leaders by surprise. House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, knowledgeable aides said, had not received advance word that the contribution had been made.

 

Shoppers have more options than ever to fight back, including hybrids, plug-ins, electric vehicles and “eco” or “super fuel economy” packages.

But opting for models that promise better mileage through new technologies does not necessarily save money, according to data compiled for The New York Times by TrueCar.com, an automotive research Web site.

Except for two hybrids, the Prius and Lincoln MKZ, and the diesel-powered Volkswagen Jetta TDI, the added cost of the fuel-efficient technologies is so high that it would take the average driver many years — in some cases more than a decade — to save money over comparable new models with conventional internal-combustion engines.

That is true at today’s pump prices, around $4, and also if gas were to climb to $5 a gallon, the data shows.

Gas would have to approach $8 a gallon before many of the cars could be expected to pay off in the six years an average person owns a car.