- In an ironic twist, it will be the law facing polygraph
tests in one small Tennessee town. Coopertown, a town of about 4,000 people just north
of Nashville, has been plagued by consistent problems with its police
force and the recent run of problems included a police officer using a racial slur. Knowing
the reputation of the department he just took over is in tatters, Coopertown
Police Chief Shane Sullivan is taking unusual steps to clean up that image.
Part of the new way of conducting business is requiring all applicants to take
a polygraph test. "I felt that it would help me to select people with good
moral character to be police officers," Sullivan said. "The town's
had enough bad happen to it, and I want to rebuild the department and give them
professional law enforcement." Among the questions prospective officers
will be asked are whether they have ever viewed child pornography or committed
a racially motivated crime. Applicants will also be questioned about their t
criminal history, work history and possible drug or alcohol abuse. Sadly, there
will not be a direct question about whether an applicant is racist. "No
one that has been given the test has failed it," Sullivan said. "I
have had a few people come in and ask me about employment, and once I tell them
about the polygraph, I've had a couple not come back or not show any more
interest." Sullivan’s new approach stems from a scandal last summer when
an officer was caught on video using a racial slur after stopping a black
driver. That soured a few locals on the Coopertown Police Department and even
though the officer was fired, the police chief resigned and the four-member
department was dissolved, a few cynical souls tied the case to a situation
several years earlier when the department was accused of targeting Hispanic
drivers. Putting two and two together, Coopertown resident began to suspect
their men in blue might be inherently racist. Maybe a polygraph will help solve
those problems………
- Score one tolerance in Saudi Arabia. The open-minded folks
who run the country’s judicial system have sentenced two prominent political and
human rights activists to at least 10 years in prison for offenses that
included sedition and giving inaccurate information to foreign media. Mohammed
Fahd al-Qahtani and Abdullah Hamad are founding members of the banned Saudi
Civil and Political Rights Association, known as Acpra, and they are guilty….of
seeking to document human rights abuses. That was enough for a Saudi Arabian
court to sentence Qahtani to 10 years in prison, while Hamad was ordered to complete
the remaining six years of a previous jail term for his political activities
and serve an additional five years. Both plan to appeal their convictions, but
must remain in detention until a judge rules on their appeal next month. Their
trial on Saturday was open to the press and public, an ironic twist because activists
such as Hamad and Qahtani have long push for more openness in such instances.
More than 100 people were present for the hearing, most of them supporters and
relatives of the defendants. Nearly two dozen security officers were also
present in the room, a development that drew a protest from the defendants'
lawyer. As part of the court’s ruling, Acpra will also be disbanded and its
funds confiscated, the judge ruled. Acpra has had a tough run over the past
year, as a court in Jeddah sentenced member Mohammad al-Bajadi to four years in
prison late last year and one of the group's founders, Abdulkarim al-Khathar,
is on trial in Buraidah. After the verdict, police cleared all observers from
the courtroom as angry supporters of Qahtani and Hamad screamed that the trial
was unfair and politically motivated – which of course, it was……….
- Website names are in short supply as more and more people
and companies lock down their desired domain name and any similar domains in
the event a rival attempts to steal some of their thunder by mimicking their
site name. To make sure there are enough handles to go around, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is preparing to roll out new
generic top-level domains (gTLD) later this year. Amazon, seeking to get a jump
on the new .book domain and others that could link to its products and services,
has submitted applications to purchase several domains, including amazon, app,
audible, cloud, fire, imdb, kindle, and map. That isn't playing well with the
Authors Guild and The Association of American Publishers (AAP), both of which are
concerned about Amazon’s applications in three particular domains: book,
author, and read. In a letter to ICANN, Authors Guild president Scott Turow
argued that "placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly
anticompetitive." He wrote that the move would allow "already
dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power”
and that “the potential for abuse seems limitless." The AAP also weighed
in and suggested that allowing a single company – Amazon in this case – to control
“a string like '.book' […] would defeat the purposes for which the new gTLDs
are being authorized.” The two organizations’ complaints are not the first time
someone has complained about Amazon’s big plans to dominate the world of
domains. Barnes & Noble submitted its own comments to ICANN on March 1 and
its sentiments were nearly identical to those of the AAP and Authors Guild. In
addition to the disputed gTLDs, there are currently 22 potential endings for
website names, including .com, .org, and .net. ICANN approved a plan to allow
for the application of more personalized names in June 2011 and later revealed
a list of 1,930 applied-for gTLD names, meant to help usher in a "new
era" of the Web. Major corporations, including Google, Samsung, Microsoft
and Apple, are all pursuing some of those 1,930 names and several of them applied
for the same domains; Symantec, Amazon, and Google will all battle for the
rights to .cloud, for example. It will fall to ICANN, a non-profit group, to
decide which company claims which handles……..
- It has been quite a week already for the youngest of four acting Baldwin brothers.
After dodging elimination on Sunday night’s episode of “All-Star Celebrity
Apprentice,” Stephen Baldwin has dodged an opponent tougher and more dogmatic
than Donald Trump will ever be: the tax man. Baldwin, like many celebrities and
athletes before him, tried to get away with not paying taxes. He didn’t try to
skip out on the Internal Revenue Service the way Wesley Snipes and former
“Survivor” winner Richard Hatch did, instead electing to not pay New York state
income taxes from 2008 to 2010. Whether Baldwin, who starred in 1995's
"The Usual Suspects," thought the state of New York simply wouldn’t
miss more than $350,000 in potential tax revenue or believed he had dropped off
the Hollywood radar enough that no one realized he was still making money, he
skipped out on filing his tax return and owes more than his “Usual Suspects”
residual checks will cover. That’s the bad news; the good news for Baldwin is
that his lawyer has negotiated a deal that will allow him to avoid prison and give
him up to five years to pay back taxes of about $350,000. Attorney Russell
Yankwitt worked some serious legal maneuvers in a closed-door conference with
prosecutors and a judge in Rockland County, N.Y. and under the tentative
agreement reached in that conference, Baldwin will plead guilty this month to a
tax felony. Maybe his charity that he is raising money for on “All-Star
Celebrity Apprentice” should be the Stephen Baldwin Tax Fraud Relief Fund,
because if he pays his back taxes within a year, his record will be wiped
clean. If he fails to do so, he will be sentenced to probation and given five
years to pay back the money……..
- The Liberty Flames are a perfect example of what March
Madness is all about. They were 11-20 in the regular season and tied for ninth
place in the Big South Conference,
seemingly destined for a quick end to a losing season and some extra time to
prepare for next year. Four days and four games later, the Flames are dancing
in the NCAA tournament. With an 87-76 win over Charleston Southern on Sunday, Liberty became just the second 20-loss
team to reach college basketball's marquee event. Don’t look for Liberty coach
Dale Layer or his players to offer any apologies for winning the Big South or
reaching the NCAA Tournament after opening the season with eight straight
losses. They hadn't won more than three games in a row before ripping off four
wins in four days at the first Big South tournament held at the recently
opened, $35 million HTC Center on the campus of Big South member Coastal
Carolina. Prior to this season, Charleston Southern would have hosted this
final under the Big South's home-court format because of its status as the top
seed. Maybe the neutral-court atmosphere helped Liberty and maybe it didn’t,
but the Flames were able to join Coppin State in 2008 as the only schools with
20 or more defeats in the field of 68 and make the field with the lowest winning
percentage (.429) for an NCAA tournament team since Oakland (Michigan) had a
12-18 record (.400) in 2005. "That's awesome,” Layer said. "We've got
the hats, right?" The tournament win was Liberty’s first since 2004 and John
Caleb Sanders led the way with 27 points in the championship game. Along the
road to the title, Liberty also defeated home-standing Coastal Carolina and
both Big South divisional winners in High Point and Charleston Southern. "When
you can beat Coastal by 20 on their home floor, we knew we could beat anybody
in this tournament," Sanders said. As the final buzzer sounded, the Flames
and their cheerleaders rushed the court and the players piled on top of each
other in one joyous heap of triumph………
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