Obama Commits Embarrassing Gaffes at G8 Summit

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Photo Credit: NDTV

Photo Credit: NDTV

US President Barack Obama repeatedly called British finance minister George Osborne “Jeffrey” at the G8 summit, media reported on Thursday.

The US president said three times that he agreed fully with “Jeffrey” during his presentation on G8 host Britain’s plans to crack down on tax avoidance, leaving Osborne red-faced.

Realising his blunder afterwards, Obama joked that he had mistaken Britain’s chancellor for the US soul singer Jeffrey Osborne, The Sun and the Financial Times reported.

“I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R and B singer,” Obama was quoted as saying.

The chancellor, 42, bears little resemblance to Jeffrey Osborne, a 65-year-old African-American hit singer-songwriter known for his 1982 classic “On the Wings of Love”.

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Abuse of Power and Deceit: Obama Imposed Rules as Early as 2009 to Defeat Government Transparency

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Even as the freshly minted Obama administration was pledging a “new era of open government” in 2009, officials were quietly adding new rules that had the potential to slow down public requests for documents.

Those rules, detailed in memos reviewed by FoxNews.com, could even trip up present-day efforts to dig into the IRS’ practice of targeting conservative groups. The rules detailed in the memos largely emanated from the Treasury Department and, specifically, the IRS.

“It would seem to repudiate this notion that this is going to be the most transparent government in history,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, the group that first obtained the memos.

The memos follow reports about the administration’s use of private email accounts, and coincide with ongoing debate about government transparency — particularly with recent disclosures about widespread surveillance programs.

Epstein said the document request procedures are “troubling” since the media are “really concerned about the limits of government power.”

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Japanese Scientists to Grow Human-Animal Chimeras to Harvest Organs for Transplant

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Photo Credit: Alamy

Photo Credit: Alamy

A panel of scientists and legal experts appointed by the government has drawn up a recommendation that will form the basis of new guidelines for Japan’s world-leading embryonic research.

There is widespread support in Japan for research that has raised red flags in other countries. Scientists plan to introduce a human stem cell into the embryo of an animal – most likely a pig – to create what is termed a “chimeric embryo” that can be implanted into an animal’s womb.

That will then grow into a perfect human organ, a kidney or even a heart, as the host animal matures.

When the adult creature is slaughtered, the organ will then be harvested and transplanted into a human with a malfunctioning organ.

“This recommendation is a very important step forward and one that has taken us three years to achieve,” Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi, head of the centre for stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of Tokyo, told The Daily Telegraph.

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Day of Prayer to be Held across Interior Alaska

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TCC Day of PrayerA resolution calling for a “Day of Prayer” as a time for prayer for the land, waterways, andimals, and people who use God’s creation on June 21st was passed in March of 2013 by the Tanana Chiefs Conference Full Board of Directors. The resolution introduced by the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in Tribal Government explains that the “decline of the king salmon stock has forced us (indigenous Alaskans) to abandon our traditional and spiritual lifestyle of gathering food.”

Tanana Chiefs Conference is encouraging communities across Alaska, including its 42 members, to participate in the upcoming “Day of Prayer” on June 21st, beginning at 12:00 P.M. The “Day of Prayer” is to gather people and communities who are concerned with the health of our resources and declining fish and wildlife throughout Alaska in one unified voice.

Tanana Chiefs Conference is dedicated to protecting traditional subsistence ways of life. This includes protecting our wildlife and fish resources, and understanding the current trends of decline we are seeing across the State.

Communities across the Interior are asked to organize their gatherings at the local level and submit photos to TCC’s newsletter, “The Council”.

For more information, contact Doreen Deaton, Communications Director, (907) 452-8251 Ext. 3570.
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About Tanana Chiefs Conference: TCC is a non-profit organization that works toward meeting the health and social service challenges for more than 10,000 Alaska Natives spread across a region of 235,000 square miles in Interior Alaska.

Chelsea Clinton Stuck on Stupid: Laments Great-Grandmother’s Lack of Access to Planned Parenthood

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

From the stage at the recent Women Deliver conference, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea revealed that her much-admired maternal grandmother was the child of unwed teenage parents who “did not have access to services that are so crucial that Planned Parenthood helps provide.”

Chelsea’s grandmother was born of an unintended pregnancy. And new research shows that her family is not alone in treasuring a person who – if Planned Parenthood had been successful – would not have been born.

“Every child a wanted child” is the rallying cry of family planning organizations that promote abortion as a way to achieve that goal. The New York Times Magazine recently described a study of women who were turned away from abortion clinics because their pregnancies were too far along. Researchers found that in the vast majority of cases – 95% – the mothers bonded with their babies. A significant percentage later denied having ever sought an abortion, despite the fact they were included in the study on that basis.

In a different long-term study, Dr. Rebecca Callahan observed a similar change in attitude among mothers with unwanted pregnancies in rural Bangladesh. Although 42% of the women initially labeled their pregnancies as unwanted, over half of them changed their views retrospectively. Over 60% of women who originally stated their intention to have no more children classified subsequent births as wanted or, at worst, mistimed. Callahan presented her findings at the 2013 meeting of the Population Association of America.

Instead of focusing on the positive finding that women’s initial aversion or ambivalence about pregnancy does not mean the child will be unwanted, Callahan expressed concern that “the rationalization of births as wanted distorts the true level of unintended pregnancy.”

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The Palin Doctrine

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Photo Credit: Facebook

Photo Credit: Facebook

On U.S. military intervention in Syria’s civil war, where “both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line ‘Allahu akbar’ … I say let Allah sort it out.”

So said Sarah Palin to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference. And, as is not infrequently the case, she nailed it…

Four fundamental changes make it “no longer realistic, or even desirable, for the U.S. to dominate” the Middle East as we did from the Suez crisis of 1956 through the Iraq invasion of 2003.

The four changes: the failures of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Great Recession, the Arab Spring and emerging U.S. energy independence.

Indeed, with $2 trillion sunk, 7,000 U.S. troops dead, 40,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead, and millions of refugees, what do we have to show for this vast human and material waste?

Can a country with an economy limping along, one that has run four consecutive deficits in excess of $1 trillion, afford another imperial adventure?

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Jimmy Carter Leading Efforts to Undercut Sanctions on Known Islamic Terrorist Groups

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Photo Credit: gademocrats

Photo Credit: gademocrats

Former President Jimmy Carter is spearheading an effort to convince the U.S. to weaken sanctions on terrorist groups so peace organizations can legally work with them.

In a petition to Secretary of State John Kerry delivered Thursday, Carter and other foreign policy experts ask Kerry to exempt peace groups from policies that make it a crime to offer negotiation training and humanitarian law classes to terror groups.

“The Secretary of State can, and should, exempt peacebuilding activities from this counterproductive application of the law,” says the petition. “Doing so would open the door for professional peacebuilders to fully engage in helping to end armed conflicts and suffering around the world, while making the U.S. safer.”

The Charity and Security Network, which is spearheading the petition, declined for legal reasons to provide examples of current programs impacted by anti-terrorism sanctions. The organization told The Hill that in the past, efforts to build bridges with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and leftist guerillas in Colombia have all been stymied.

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Troopers Use New Armored Vehicle to Arrest Homer Man Firing Pistol

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Photo Credit: Megan Peters

Photo Credit: Megan Peters

Alaska State Troopers used an armored tactical response vehicle Wednesday night to persuade a Homer man to surrender after troopers said he fired a .44-caliber handgun when troopers announced themselves outside his house on Char Court.

Timothy A. Magee, 39, was arraigned Thursday on two counts of third-degree assault, a felony, for causing fear of injury to Wildlife Trooper Trent Chwialkowski and Trooper David Chaffin. He also was charged with fourth-degree misconduct involving weapons for allegedly being drunk while shooting a weapon.

The Special Emergency Response Team responded to the scene with a BearCat armored tactical vehicle, one of three $280,000 trucks purchased last March. This was the first use of a BearCat on the Kenai Peninsula.

No weapons were fired by troopers and no one was hurt in the incident, including a woman at the home at the time, said Lt. Dane Gilmore, deputy commander for E Detachment.

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Mountain Rescue Ends Well (+video)

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Photo Credit: Wolfgang Kurtz

Photo Credit: Wolfgang Kurtz

A distressed hiker on Mount Marathon called into City of Seward Dispatch via 911 at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12. Dispatch advised the Seward Fire Department that the hiker was calling from his cell phone and had said that “he was in a bad spot.” Fire department personnel made contact with the stranded hiker to determine an approximate location and identify the best access to him.

Phone conversations and visual scanning of the mountain eventually helped locate the hiker who was clinging precariously to the mountainside on a near vertical slope south of the established climbing and hiking paths.

Rescue crews were transported to the top by Seward Helicopter Tours and then hiked down the ridge to a point above the stranded hiker. During the operation, the fire department volunteers set off a flare which brought another couple of good samaritans racing to the scene.

According to SFD Chief Eddie Athey and Assistant Fire Chief Sean Corrigan, the hiker had received a laceration to the head, and was dehydrated and disoriented.

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Six Women Picked as Jurors in George Zimmerman Trial (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Six women were chosen Thursday to decide the fate of George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch captain accused of murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The six jurors were seated after a nearly two-week long jury selection process, in which potential jurors were grilled about their prior knowledge of the case and their personal beliefs on guns, law enforcement and media coverage of the fatal shooting.

Two men and two women also were picked as alternate jurors.

The six final jurors are all women – five are white and one is Hispanic.

“We’ve got a jury, which is great,” Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. “I sort of hoped that we would get one in Seminole County, thought we would and I’m very glad that I was right, because this way we don’t have to trouble moving around.”

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