Wednesday, 20 July 2016
Friday, 19 December 2014
Black Boy Shot Down By Police
Photo Credit: Beverly Bell.
We will never learn of the names, lives and deaths of countless Black men and boys murdered by police -- and slavery enforcers, hate groups, vigilantes, and a host of others -- dating back to the earliest days of this country's history. The names and stories of a slew of recent victims of extrajudicial executions, such as Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and the exoneration of their killers, have become widely known through the blowback of public fury.
NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Finds 1st Alien Planet of New Mission
NASA's Kepler space telescope is discovering alien planets again.
The prolific spacecraft has spotted its first new alien planetsince being hobbled by a malfunction in May 2013, researchers announced today (Dec. 18). The newly discovered world, called HIP 116454b, is a "super Earth" about 2.5 times larger than our home planet. It lies 180 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Pisces — close enough to be studied by other instruments, scientists said.
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Duminy could miss Test series
Cape Town - All-rounder JP Duminy could miss all three of the Proteas' upcoming Tests against the West Indies, Die Son newspaper reports.
Duminy is currently undergoing rehab treatment for a left knee injury.
The target for his return was initially stated as the second Test starting in Port Elizabeth on December 26, but it appears that the 30-year-old could be sidelined for the entire three-Test series.
Duminy participated as celebrity a chef on a local TV programme on Monday when he revealed that a more likely return to action would be the T20 and ODI series.
The first Test against the Windies starts in Centurion on December 17, with the series concluding in Cape Town from January 2-6.
The three-game T20 series starts on January 9. It will be followed by a five-game ODI series starting on January 16
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http://www.sport24.co.za/Cricket/Proteas/Duminy-could-miss-Test-series-20141209
AS IT HAPPENED: Anni's sister - Justice system failed us
Cape Town - The sister of slain honeymoon victim Anni Hindocha says the decision to dismiss her former-brother-in-law Shrien Dewani’s murder trial will haunt their family for the rest of their lives.
Sister Ami Denborg, along with other. Members of the Hindocha family outside the Cape Town - The sister of slain honeymoon victim Anni Hindocha says the decision to dismiss her former-brother-in-law Shrien Dewani’s murder trial will haunt their family for the rest of their lives.
Sister Ami Denborg, along with other members of the Hindocha family, left the Western Cape High Court on Monday in tears following Judge Jeanette Traverso’s decision to dismiss the case against Dewani due to contradictory evidence.
And while some commentators feel Traverso was simply following the letter of the law, sister Ami feels that they have been left with only more unanswered questions.
“We waited patiently for four years to hear what really happened to Anni, and to hear the full story of what happened,” she told reporters outside the Western Cape High Court.
“We came here looking for the truth, and all we got, was more questions.
“We just wanted to hear all the events, and the hope of actually finding that out has kept us going as a family.
“Unfortunately, we believe that this right has now been taken away from us. Today has been really, really sad, because we never heard the full story from Shrien."
Inconsistent testimonies
The ruling by Traverso, whose stance in the trial has been called into question recently following claims of bias, came down to the inconsistent testimonies of witnesses and co-accused Zola Tongo, Monde Mbolombo and Mziwamadoda Qwabe.
Inconsistent testimonies
The ruling by Traverso, whose stance in the trial has been called into question recently following claims of bias, came down to the inconsistent testimonies of witnesses and co-accused Zola Tongo, Monde Mbolombo and Mziwamadoda Qwabe.
Tongo is serving an 18-year jail term and Qwabe a 25-year jail term. Xolile Mngeni was serving life in jail for firing the shot that killed Anni, but died in prison from a brain tumour on 18 October, Sapa reported.
Hotel receptionist Mbolombo was granted immunity from prosecution on two charges during Mngeni's trial, but was warned he faced possible prosecution on various charges if he did not testify truthfully during Dewani's trial.
Traverso ruled on Monday that she would not grant Mbolombo immunity.
She found that the evidence presented by Tongo, Qwabe, and Mbolombo was replete with fundamental contradictions.
"I take into account that all three witnesses are intelligent and more than capable of twisting their versions to implicate the accused," she said.
"They may have been amateurs, but I do not believe any of them would have been so stupid as to commit the crimes for a few thousand rands."
Double life
Ami also addressed revelations from the case that the now-free Dewani had lied about his sexual orientation, which seemed a clear sticking point for the family as she continued her statement.
“We heard that Shrien had lived a double life, and Anni knew nothing about it,” she continued.
“We just wish Shrien had been honest with us, especially with Anni.
“The knowledge of not ever knowing what happened to my dearest little sister will haunt me, my brother, and my parents for the rest of our lives.”
The Hindocha family, though, reserved kind words for the South African public and the world at large, thanking them for all their support during what proved a short-lived trial.
“We’ve had tremendous support from the South African public, and many others around the world," she added.
“We’re grateful to all of them, and thank them from the bottom of our hearts.”
“This is a really sad day for us. And we hope that no other families ever have to go through what we’ve been through.
“We as a family will make no further comments, and respectfully ask that we be given some private space for reflection.”
Original post from
Couple Spends $50K to Choose Baby's Sex, Shining Light on Trend
Jayne and Jon Cornwill with baby Emmerson. Photo by Facebook.
Ever heard of “gender disappointment”? Jayne and Jon Cornwill certainly have. It’s what drove the Australian couple to mortgage their house, fly to California, and cough up nearly $50,000 to take advantage of technology called pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) for a single purpose: to choose the sex of their baby at the outset of pregnancy, a practice that’s illegal in their home country.
“My husband wanted a little girl that he could one day walk down the aisle. I wanted that relationship — the bond between a mother and daughter,” Jayne explained recently on Australia’s “Today” show. After giving birth to three sons, she says she suffered from “gender disappointment,” noting, “It’s like mourning the death of a child you never had” and “like any other form of depression.” In a first-person piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald, she elaborated on why she traveled to Newport Beach to see Dr. Daniel Potter, who has serviced more than 1,000 other Australian clients. She wrote, “My desire for a daughter caused me to spiral into depression and left me virtually housebound. Every time I went out, toddlers in pink seemed to taunt me.”
The story of the Cornwill’s successful quest for a baby girl has been widely covered in the Australian and British presses this week, reigniting discussion over the controversial practice of sex selection using PGS technology. The process — which can only be conducted as a part of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment — screens embryos to make sure they have the right number of chromosomes and that they are free of abnormalities that could signal disorders such as Downs Syndrome and Trisomy 18.
Baby Emmerson. Photo by Facebook.
But PGS also reveals the sex of an embryo with a nearly 100-percent accuracy rate, leading to an explosion of perfectly fertile couples opting for unnecessary IVF treatments.
“Our numbers have doubled over the past ten years — and these are happy, healthy, fertile clients,” notes Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, founder ofthe Fertility Institutes, with locations in New York and Los Angeles, which pioneered the PGS-for-sex-selection practice in the U.S. He now sees about 600 non-fertility-challenged couples a year who want to choose the sex of their baby — 70 percent of which are from foreign countries where the practice is banned. Of his clients who do have a medical need for IVF, Steinberg tells Yahoo Parenting, 28 percent choose sex selection.
One IVF cycle, he says, costs $12,000; add in the sex-selection technology and it’s about $18,000 — although Steinberg stresses that his clients very rarely want the technology used solely for male-female identification. Instead, they “want it all,” meaning a thorough check that all chromosomes are normal, to make sure that none of the 400 testable disorders are present in the embryos before they are implanted into the potential mom’s womb. Those that aren’t the “right” sex, he says, can either be frozen for the couple’s own possible future use, donated to another couple, or donated to science for stem-cell research — an option chosen by “90 percent” of his clients.
When clients first meet with Steinberg for his required two-hour intake session, “they think they owe me an excuse, but they don’t,” he says. Still, reasons given by some foreign clients include needing a boy in order to receive an inheritance (in India) and wanting to avoid aborting more girls (in China). Reasons offered up by Americans are pretty much always the same. “Ninety-nine percent are doing it for ‘family balancing,’” he says.
He adds that he’s deflected a wide range of criticism over the years — for using important technology for shallow reasons, for “playing God,” and for generally going down an ethically slippery slope.
The Cornwill’s four children. Photo by Facebook.
That’s what most concerns various medical bodies, such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG),which opposes the use of “family balancing” sex selection on ethical grounds. It’s also a worry for Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, which examines the ethical, political, and social implications of assisted reproductive technologies. “Taken to the extreme, this would lead to an enhancement rat race, which has many larger social implications,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “Having the desire for a girl or a boy — who can fault that? But even though our society tends to put an emphasis on individual desires, we need to think about their broader implications, as well as how they might affect our relationship with the child.”
Because, as Darnovsky notes, “If you go to a lot of trouble and expense to have a child of a certain sex, it’s probably because you have a set of expectations tied to that sex.” What if a boy wants to write poetry? What if a girl wants to play basketball? Not wear dresses? Announce that she’s transgender? “It seems to just reinforce the very rigid gender distinctions we make in this society,” she says.
The Center has myriad other concerns with the practice —women undergoing unnecessary IVF treatments, for one, which are not risk-free to either the woman or to the potential child, Darnovsky says. Because fertility technology is a “lucrative business,” she notes, it’s set competition into motion, leading to a lack of transparency about health risks, and to the growth of a largely unregulated industry. She also points out that people considering sex selection should be aware that they are doing something “that’s leading to a credible crisis in other parts of the world…by making it normalized” and contributing to dire problems from gender inequality to sex trafficking.
Still, Darnovsky acknowledges, people who want to be able to choose a baby’s sex “have a strong desire, and we should be careful about telling people what to do about family formation,” particularly sincethose who oppose abortion, she says, “have used the issue of sex selection to undermine abortion rights” because of the possibility of tossing embryos. “But it’s a question of how much do we want to normalize these kinds of things?”
There’s already an easier way to go about sex selection — during pregnancy, through a non-invasive prenatal screening, a blood test taken at around the eighth week of pregnancy to look for chromosomal abnormalities. “It is being used for gender selection,” Steinberg says. “Are women aborting based on the results? That we don’t know yet.”
Finally, ethicists fear that selecting for certain traits could lead to the actual modification of genes — something that’s not far down the pike here, Steinberg believes, considering the U.K.’s recent move toward allowing mitochondrial replacement. The technique, commonly referred to one that creates “three-parent babies,” replaces the nucleus of an egg affected by debilitating mitochondrial disease with a healthy one from a donor egg. “The nightmare scenario,” Darnovsky says, “is that we would really start engineering children.”
But Steinberg sees such advances as a “godsend,” pleading for society to “not put handcuffs on the scientist.” The same goes for details less crucial than avoiding disease, as Steinberg is about to reintroduce a service that caused quite a stir when he first announced it back in 2009: the ability to select your baby’s eye color. “We put it on hold because there was such an outcry. Even the Vatican called [to protest],” he says. “But there is so much demand for it. We’ve got a waiting list of 70 to 80 people.”
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LeBron James wears 'I Can't Breathe' T-shirt before game in Brooklyn
In protest of a New York grand jury's decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner,Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James wore an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt before Monday's game against the Nets in Brooklyn. Cavs teammate Kyrie Irving joined James and several Nets players in wearing similar shirts.
Photo: LeBron James during warmups sporting the "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt. #ICantBreathepic.twitter.com/MyzNjbqy9A
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) December 9, 2014
Nets guard Jarrett Jack provided the shirts to James and Irving,the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
“It’s more a notion to the family than anything,” James said of the shirts. “Obviously as a society we have to do better, we have to be better for one another. It doesn’t matter what race you are. It’s more of a shout out to the family more than anything. They’re the ones that should be getting all the energy and effort.”
[Adrian Wojnarowski: Adam Silver supports players' social commentary]
Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose wore an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt during pregame warmups prior to Saturday's home game against the Golden State Warriors. When asked Monday morning by the Daily News about his fellow former NBA MVP's attire, James said, “It was spectacular. I loved it. I’m looking for one."
Jack made sure he got one. This isn't the first time James has taken a stand on racial issues. In 2012, he posted a photo to Instagram of his Miami Heat wearing hooded sweatshirts in solidarity over the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. Last year, James also coordinated Miami's decision to wear warm-up shirts inside-out in protest of then L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's racist remarks.
Following the Ferguson ruling, James posted on his Instagram account a drawing of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin walking arm in arm. "As a society how do we do better and stop things like this happening time after time!! I'm so sorry to these families," the caption read. "Violence is not the answer people. Retaliation isn't the solution as well. #PrayersUpToTheFamilies #WeHaveToDoBetter."
Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton are were reportedly scheduled to attend Monday's Cavs-Nets game at the Barclays Center, where protesters staged a die-in on Thursday night, so LeBron's statement could have a global reach.
Video of the incident shows Garner, an African-American, repeating the phrase, "I can't breathe," numerous times after the Italian-American police officer placed him in a chokehold in an attempt to make an arrest for the alleged sale of untaxed cigarettes. The grand jury's decision ignited protests across the country — as did a similar ruling in the shooting death of black teen Michael Brown by a white Ferguson, Mo., police officer last month — and athletes have been at the forefront of activism efforts.
Several NFL players, including St. Louis Rams guard Davin Joseph, made similar gestures on Sunday.
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