Omar Samaha: Calling on Congress to Fix Gun Checks -- as a Brother of a Virginia Tech Victim

A horrible, familiar feeling crept over me as I saw the breaking news about a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona on January 8, 2011.

When it became clear that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was among the wounded, the coverage went into overdrive. Over several agonizing hours, we learned that six people were killed and thirteen more were injured by a deeply troubled young man who should never have had a gun. It was another one of those days in America when everyone has their eyes locked on a television, wondering the same thing: how could this have happened again?

The simple answer is that this happens again and again because Washington refuses to do anything about loopholes in the law that put guns in the hands of killers.

We all watched as Tucson joined the list of well-known tragedies: Columbine... Fort Hood... Virginia Tech...

For me and my family, the sharp pain of Virginia Tech came back in an instant. My sister Reema was killed on April 16, 2007 along with 31 other people because a gap in Virginia's gun background check system allowed a young man with serious mental illness to buy guns.

For years, I have worked with other Virginia Tech families to call for action to fix these gaps in the law. But after Tucson, when the consequences of inaction in Washington were once again made so clear, I knew it was time to make an even bigger statement.

I decided to join Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Fix Gun Checks campaign. Please take a minute to watch this video of our cross-country tour:

We drove coast-to-coast, meeting with other families who have lost loved ones to gun violence. We brought along a billboard truck that called attention to a hard, bitter truth: 34 Americans are murdered with guns every single day.

To many people we met, that was a surprising and sobering fact: each and every day, more Americans are murdered with guns than were killed at Virginia Tech. That daily death toll adds up to more than 10,000 Americans killed just since Tucson.

Along the way, I met many Americans, from all walks of life, affected by gun violence: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles. There is no one that is immune to gun violence.

I met a family from Pennsylvania whose 18 month old son was murdered in his car seat, while they filled up the tank, at a gas station.

In Chicago, I met a mother whose honor student never made it home from school because he shielded a friend from a bullet on a city bus.

I met a University of Iowa administrator who was present during the shootings there 20 years ago. As she shared her experience with me, it was like it just happened the day before.

Their stories are heartbreaking - but their courage is overwhelming. They are part of a huge and growing chorus of Americans calling for action.

During the tour, we gathered petition signatures from more than 350,000 Americans urging Congress to close the loopholes that allow dangerous people to get their hands on guns.

Now, we're preparing to deliver this campaign's message to Washington - and I'm asking you to join us.

Have a look at the video we made. Share it with your family and friends. Ask them to visit www.fixgunchecks.org/tour and join you in signing the petition calling on Washington to finally close the huge gaps in our gun laws.

We can save lives by coming together to tell Congress it's finally time to fix our broken gun background check system.

?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omar-samaha/a-brother-of-a-virginia-t_b_1091086.html

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Cookbook review: Heartland

'Heartland: The Cookbook' by Judith Fertig captures the comforts of the American Midwest through rich recipes and stories.

As the weather gets colder, I turn to comfort food. The term ?comfort? includes a lot of sensations ? soups that warm my hands as I hold the bowl, beef roasts that remind me of school night meals as a kid, and tasty desserts served fresh from the oven.

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Judith Fertig?s latest cookbook ?Heartland ? The Cookbook? (Andrews McNeel, 2011) captures all of these comforts through her rich recipes and stories of the farmers, markets, cities and towns that produce great food across the middle of America.

While the comfort food recipes were the first to jump out at me, make no mistake; this is definitely a four-season cookbook. Ms. Fertig builds dishes from farm to table, highlighting harvests and peak seasons for ingredients. She also pays special attention preserving seasonal foods, sharing recipes for pickles, chutneys, and more that will please modern homesteaders and slow food fans alike.

I was raised in Michigan, granddaughter of hearty pioneer stock from Swanton, Ohio, where the family farm still stands today. Dishes in the book bring to mind holiday celebrations, family meals together, and childhood road trips around the Midwest.

Fertig pays special attention to regional delicacies and the cultural traditions that have spurred generations to prepare meals the same way as their ancestors.? I appreciated seeing sophisticated twists that freshened the approach to dishes as familiar as chicken breasts and creamed corn.

In addition to her menu, Fertig builds a Midwest food narrative using quotes, interviews, and short essays throughout the book to deliver a rich food biography of the region. Fertig profiles farmers, fruit stand owners, and food purveyors who are shaping the modern food scene. Smokehouses, dairies, and heritage farms are listed alongside bakeries, potato chip purveyors, and craft breweries amid the recipes and in an extensive resource index.

The book is also beautifully illustrated with photos of sweeping landscapes, portraits, places, and animals that make the Midwest great. Lovely food photography in the kitchen is provided by Jonathan Chester and Ben Pieper.

One dough, six different recipes

Fertig?s no-knead doughs are fantastic, serving as the pantry staple for multiple recipes in the book. The No-knead Clover Honey Dough is an anchor for six other breads, including the Cider-Glazed Cinnamon Rolls that I made (see recipe next page).

Recipes are well laid out on the page and descriptive, although probably worth an extra read for less-experienced cooks. The instructions are easy to follow but feature few in-process photos. Recipes also assume that basic supplies and skills are already in-hand. While most experienced cooks will appreciate Fertig?s tone, one might think twice before giving this to a novice cook.

On that note, the book is more than a collection of recipes, but also a joy to sit and read ? at home on a coffee table as a regional interest guide as it is on the kitchen counter.

(see recipes next page)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/XK8_QO1edQo/Cookbook-review-Heartland

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Media allowed into Japan's tsunami-hit nuke plant (AP)

OKUMA, Japan ? Media have been allowed into Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant for the first time Saturday after the disaster in March touched off the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Representatives of the Japanese and international media, including The Associated Press, were allowed into the plant with the government's chief official in charge of the crisis.

Officials said the situation at the plant, which suffered meltdowns and explosions after it was deluged by the March 11 tsunami, has improved enough to allow the visit, though reporters had to wear full-body protective gear and submit to radiation scans afterward.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, was severely damaged by the tsunami and spewed large amounts of radioactive materials onto the surrounding countryside, much of which remains off-limits.

The media was allowed to view the grounds of the sprawling seaside facility and the outside of several of the damaged reactor units before being taken into the emergency operations center. Environment Minister Goshi Hosono, who heads the government's nuclear response efforts, addressed workers inside the center.

The tour, which lasted several hours, was intended to demonstrate how much the situation at the plant has stabilized in the eight months since the tsunami.

Japan's government and the utility that runs the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., say radiation leaks are far less of a danger than they were in the early days of the crisis. They say work is on track toward achieving a "cold shutdown" ? in which the temperatures of the reactors are cool and under control.

But the government has predicted that it will take another 30 years at least to safely remove the nuclear fuel and decommission the plant. It could also be decades before tens of thousands of residents forced to flee the 12-mile (20-kilometer) exclusion zone around the plant will be able to return. Some experts say even that estimate is optimistic.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111112/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_inside_fukushima

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Mexico's top Cabinet secretary dies in crash (AP)

MEXICO CITY ? The country's top Cabinet secretary, Francisco Blake Mora, a key figure in Mexico's battle with drug cartels, died Friday in a helicopter crash that President Felipe Calderon said was probably an accident.

Blake Mora, 45, was the second interior minister, the No. 2 post in the government, to die in an air crash during Calderon's administration.

Despite some tendencies to suspect a hit on the top officials leading Calderon's offensive against organized crime, the crash that killed Blake Mora and seven others may have had to do with bad weather. A Learjet that slammed into a Mexico City street in 2008, killing former interior secretary Juan Camilo Mourino and 15 others, was blamed on pilot error.

One of Blake Mora's last postings on his Twitter account commemorated the loss of Mourino. "Today we remember Juan Camilo Mourino three years after his death, a person who was working to build a better Mexico," he tweeted on Nov. 4.

Blake Mora's death, while a blow to the government, is not likely to change policy or day-to-day operations.

Calderon, visibly emotional over the loss, said the Super Puma helicopter was flying in fog when it went down in a remote area southeast of Mexico City. Still, he said all possible causes were under investigation. He said the pilot had sufficient expertise.

"Mexico has lost a great patriot ... and I lost a dear friend," said Calderon, who struggled to maintain composure at one point during an address to the country. "He was not only an exemplary minister, he was an exemplary Mexican."

President Barack Obama called Calderon to offer his condolences.

Calderon appeared to try to quell any suggestions of sabotage, saying Blake Mora's helicopter "was always under guard" in the hangar of Mexico's equivalent of the Secret Service and that it had recently undergone maintenance.

Authorities said the undersecretary for human rights, Felipe Zamora, was among the seven others killed, including the pilot.

Calderon appointed Blake Mora as interior secretary in July 2010. That put him in charge of coordinating domestic policies including security, human rights, migration and the president's relation with the legislature and opposition parties.

Blake Mora was traveling to a prosecutors' meeting in the neighboring state of Morelos when the helicopter went down in a mountainous area of Chalco in the state of Mexico on the border with Mexico City.

"In the morning, there was a whole lot of fog," said homemaker Marisol Palacios, who lives on the lower slopes of the hill where the crash occurred.

She said she didn't hear the crash and wasn't aware anything had happened until helicopters carrying rescue teams arrived. Video of the wreckage suggested the helicopter plowed into the hillside and broke in half, but did not explode or burn.

Blake Mora started his political career in the mid-1990s as an official in his native Tijuana and served as a federal congressman through the 2000s, as well as interior secretary of Baja California.

As Calderon's point man in the government's war against organized crime, he frequently traveled to the country's most dangerous places for meetings with besieged state and local security officials.

He was an embodiment of the Mexican government's get-tough attitude, publicly pledging to bring the fight to the traffickers instead of backing down.

"Organized crime, in its desperation, resorts to committing atrocities that we can't and shouldn't tolerate as a government and as a society," he said.

He also oversaw response to disasters, such as flooding and the massive oil pipeline explosion that laid waste to parts of the central city of San Martin Texmelucan last year, killing at least 28 people.

He led the creation of a new national identity card for youths under 18, with modern features including digitalized fingerprints and iris images, to prevent criminals from using false IDs.

Blake Mora's funeral was scheduled for Saturday.

Calderon canceled many of his appearances, including a trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting of world leaders in Hawaii next week.

"Polls have been showing that insecurity now tops poverty as the No. 1 concern among Mexicans, and my sense is an accident like this or an event like this ... is going to increase the senses of uncertainty and insecurity," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Suspicions commonly swirl around the deaths of prominent people in Mexico. It was hard for many to believe that two interior secretaries could die in air accidents in the same administration.

"This is very unfortunate," said Sinaloa Congressman Manuel Clouthier, whose own father, a popular politician in Calderon's National Action Party, died in a still-unexplained highway accident in 1989. "There are many coincidences because now we have two interior ministers (lost) in one presidential term ... who knows if we'll ever really know what happened."

In the crash that killed Mourino, the jet smashed into rush-hour traffic in a posh Mexico City business district, killing all nine on board and seven on the ground. Mexican investigators blamed the Learjet 45 crash on the turbulence from a larger plane flying ahead.

The investigation found that the pilots were slow to follow the control tower's instructions to reduce speed and appeared to be nearly one nautical mile too close behind a Boeing 767-300 on the same flight path to Mexico City's international airport.

Also killed in the crash was former anti-drug prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who had been the target of at least one previous assassination plot.

The Mexican government provided a detailed account of the crash aimed at quelling widespread rumors that the plane was brought down by powerful and increasingly violent drug cartels.

In 2005, a helicopter crash blamed on poor weather conditions killed Mexico's top police official, public safety secretary Ramon Martin Huerta, who was head of federal police, and seven other people.

___

Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson, Michael Weissenstein and Isaac Garrido contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111112/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_blake_mora

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TiPb Picks of the Week for November 12, 2011

Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they?re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related,...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/7o9vtXA-3Xg/story01.htm

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Castro's daughter, blogger in Twitter spat (AP)

HAVANA ? Raul Castro's daughter and an anti-government Cuban blogger have engaged in a prickly back-and-forth on Twitter, which has a small but growing presence on the island despite scarce Internet connectivity.

Mariela Castro's debut on the social media service began smoothly enough when she sent her first tweets Tuesday talking about a visit to the Netherlands and her work as the country's leading gay rights activist.

Then dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez fired the first salvo.

"They tell me Mariela Castro opened a Twitter account," Sanchez wrote. "A question for her, `When will we Cubans be able to come out of other closets?'"

Two more tweets directed at the first daughter quickly followed: "Welcome to the plurality of Twitter ... here nobody can shut me up, deny me permission to travel or impede entrance," and "How can one ask for acceptance only in one area? Is tolerance total or not?"

Castro, who is the head the National Sex Education Center, shot back at Sanchez by name, saying, "Your approach to tolerance reproduces the old mechanisms of power. To improve your `services' you should study."

Later, she grumbled about "despicable parasites" criticizing her on Twitter: "Were you ordered by your employers to respond to me in unison and with the same predetermined script? Be creative."

Cuba accuses dissidents like Sanchez of being mercenaries in the hire of Washington.

On Wednesday Sanchez tweeted, "I would love it if everyone on the (Communist Party's) Central Committee got on Twitter. We would tell them in the virtual world what they don't let us in the real one."

"Good for them to get practice with plurality starting now on Twitter, soon the day will arrive when they will have to deal with it in reality," read a second missive.

Their exchange is unlikely to be noticed by many in Cuba, where the decades-old U.S. economic embargo has left the island without a hardwired Internet connection to the rest of the world.

Cuba relies on plodding, expensive satellite service and Internet access is rare and costly, though hopes for faster service arrived earlier this year along with an undersea fiber-optic cable from Venezuela.

Authorities previously said the cable could be operational as early as July, but there has been no official word since and no noticeable improvement in Internet speeds.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111109/ap_on_hi_te/cb_cuba_twitter_spat

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Chat transcript: Why should US care about Europe?

Our Live Chat today drew lots of questions, but the one that seems to be on most people?s Monday is pretty simple: Should we really care about what happens to an economy halfway around the world?

The answer is also simple: yes.

Regardless of whether you?re a fan of European food or culture, you need Europe. The U.S. and Europe are the two largest, most interrelated economies in the world. It?s a huge market for American goods. No matter the political differences, in a global economy, the U.S. and Europe need each other.

Europe?s internal political infighting may also seem to be far removed from American life. Sure, even if Greece drops the euro and starts printing its own currency, your ATM will still work and the machine will still spit out cash. (As long as you?re not overdrawn.)

But a breakup of the euro would certainly be felt in the U.S. ? and around the world. It would unravel the? economic union that the euro was created to produce. That would send Europe ? and the world ? back into recession. For now, the loss of Greece as a member would be sustainable. But as Europe?s third largest economy, Italy is a much more important player in this tragedy.

Here are the rest of our answers ? to some really great questions:

?Click on the link below to replay the chat.??

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/09/8718323-chat-with-msnbccoms-john-schoen-about-the-european-debt-crisis-at-1230-pm-et

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