stuff in the news....
Wed Mar 11 00:12:25 EDT 2015Pit Bull Fatally Attacks Neighbor Trying To Save Its Owner
A pit bull fatally attacked a neighbor as he was helping the dog's ailing owner, according to police.
Roy Higgenbotham Jr, 62, was visiting 63-year-old David Wallace's apartment in Wheeling, West Virginia, when the animal turned on him.
Wallace, who owned the dog, was suffering a medical emergency at the time of Sunday morning's attack, Sgt. Michael Roxby told NBC News. The two men were transported to a local hospital where they were both pronounced dead.
Wallace's cause of death was not immediately clear, officials said.
First published March 10th 2015
© 2015 NBCNews.com
I keep hearing Pit Bull owners saying 'It's not the breed, it's the owners', but you just don't see stories like this about other breeds - not even German Shepherds.CIA Sought to Hack Apple Devices
The Central Intelligence Agency aspired to hack its way into Apple products including the iPhone and iPad, investigative news website The Intercept reported on Tuesday, citing documents provided by Edward Snowden. The documents, which date from 2010 through 2012, do not say whether the intelligence agency was ever successful in hacking into Apple's products, or what information might have actually been obtained, according to The Intercept.
First published March 10th 2015
© 2015 NBCNews.com
Why is this even surprising? Isn't that their job? Don't you expect them to be trying to hack into absolutely everything? Anybody can buy an iPhone - the good guys, and the bad guys. So there is clearly interest in being able to monitor anything people may be doing on an iPhone - or an Android phone, or a Blackberry, or any other data-processing device.
Granted, there are things they have no business monitoring. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't (try to) develop the capabilities to do this for the actors who are in their mandate.
Friday 01:05
Related to my thoughts earlier on capital punishment by carbon monoxide....Utah Lawmakers OK Firing Squad As Execution Backup
Utah lawmakers on Tuesday approved a measure that would make firing squad the method of execution in the state if authorities can't obtain increasingly scarce lethal injection drugs.
Before the 18-10 vote by the state Senate, Gov. Gary Herbert declined to say explicitly if he would sign the bill but noted that Utah is having trouble finding chemicals to kill death-row inmates.
There are a handful of inmates on Utah's death row who can already choose firing squad as their execution method because they were sentenced before 2004, when the state took that option away.
The last prisoner to be executed by firing squad was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Randy Gardner told NBC News that his brother - who was sentenced to death for killing a lawyer in court while facing charges for a previous murder - opted to be shot by his executioners because he believed it would stir opposition to capital punishment.
Utah is one of several states that have turned to alternate execution procedures because pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling their products to prisons for capital punishment. Tennessee brought back the electric chair as a backup last year, but inmates have sued to stop it from being used.
A raft of executions across the country are on hold either because the states cannot find the drugs or because inmates are challenging the chemicals in the protocol.
A poll commissioned by NBC News last spring, in the wake of a badly botched lethal injection in Oklahoma, found Americans are open to alternatives if the needle no longer becomes a viable way to carry out the death penalty.
Twenty percent of those polled expressed support for the gas chamber, 18 percent for the electric chair, 12 percent for the firing squad and 8 percent for hanging.
Last July, a federal appeals judge said lethal injections are a "misguided" effort to mask the brutality of executions and suggested a method most closely associated with the French Revolution would be better. "The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos," Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a dissent at the time. "And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps," he continued. "The firing squad strikes me as the most promising. Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time."
First published March 10th 2015, 8:34 pm by Tracy Connor
© 2015 NBCNews.com
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/726974.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
A pit bull fatally attacked a neighbor as he was helping the dog's ailing owner, according to police.
Roy Higgenbotham Jr, 62, was visiting 63-year-old David Wallace's apartment in Wheeling, West Virginia, when the animal turned on him.
Wallace, who owned the dog, was suffering a medical emergency at the time of Sunday morning's attack, Sgt. Michael Roxby told NBC News. The two men were transported to a local hospital where they were both pronounced dead.
Wallace's cause of death was not immediately clear, officials said.
First published March 10th 2015
© 2015 NBCNews.com
I keep hearing Pit Bull owners saying 'It's not the breed, it's the owners', but you just don't see stories like this about other breeds - not even German Shepherds.CIA Sought to Hack Apple Devices
The Central Intelligence Agency aspired to hack its way into Apple products including the iPhone and iPad, investigative news website The Intercept reported on Tuesday, citing documents provided by Edward Snowden. The documents, which date from 2010 through 2012, do not say whether the intelligence agency was ever successful in hacking into Apple's products, or what information might have actually been obtained, according to The Intercept.
First published March 10th 2015
© 2015 NBCNews.com
Why is this even surprising? Isn't that their job? Don't you expect them to be trying to hack into absolutely everything? Anybody can buy an iPhone - the good guys, and the bad guys. So there is clearly interest in being able to monitor anything people may be doing on an iPhone - or an Android phone, or a Blackberry, or any other data-processing device.
Granted, there are things they have no business monitoring. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't (try to) develop the capabilities to do this for the actors who are in their mandate.
Friday 01:05
Related to my thoughts earlier on capital punishment by carbon monoxide....Utah Lawmakers OK Firing Squad As Execution Backup
Utah lawmakers on Tuesday approved a measure that would make firing squad the method of execution in the state if authorities can't obtain increasingly scarce lethal injection drugs.
Before the 18-10 vote by the state Senate, Gov. Gary Herbert declined to say explicitly if he would sign the bill but noted that Utah is having trouble finding chemicals to kill death-row inmates.
There are a handful of inmates on Utah's death row who can already choose firing squad as their execution method because they were sentenced before 2004, when the state took that option away.
The last prisoner to be executed by firing squad was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Randy Gardner told NBC News that his brother - who was sentenced to death for killing a lawyer in court while facing charges for a previous murder - opted to be shot by his executioners because he believed it would stir opposition to capital punishment.
Utah is one of several states that have turned to alternate execution procedures because pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling their products to prisons for capital punishment. Tennessee brought back the electric chair as a backup last year, but inmates have sued to stop it from being used.
A raft of executions across the country are on hold either because the states cannot find the drugs or because inmates are challenging the chemicals in the protocol.
A poll commissioned by NBC News last spring, in the wake of a badly botched lethal injection in Oklahoma, found Americans are open to alternatives if the needle no longer becomes a viable way to carry out the death penalty.
Twenty percent of those polled expressed support for the gas chamber, 18 percent for the electric chair, 12 percent for the firing squad and 8 percent for hanging.
Last July, a federal appeals judge said lethal injections are a "misguided" effort to mask the brutality of executions and suggested a method most closely associated with the French Revolution would be better. "The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos," Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a dissent at the time. "And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps," he continued. "The firing squad strikes me as the most promising. Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time."
First published March 10th 2015, 8:34 pm by Tracy Connor
© 2015 NBCNews.com
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/726974.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]