China Calls on United States to Adopt Strict Gun Control Without Delay

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The state news agency in China, the official voice of the government, has called for the United States to quickly adopt stricter gun controls in the aftermath of the shooting rampage in Connecticut that left 28 people dead, including 20 schoolchildren.

According to the state medical examiner who was overseeing autopsies of the children, all of them had been hit multiple times. At least one child had been shot 11 times.

All of the children were in the first grade.

“Their blood and tears demand no delay for U.S. gun control,” said the news agency, Xinhua, which listed a series of shootings this year in the United States.

“However, this time, the public feels somewhat tired and helpless,” the commentary said. “The past six months have seen enough shooting rampages in the United States.”

China suffered its own school tragedy on Friday — a man stabbed 22 children at a village elementary school in Henan Province. An 85-year-old woman also was stabbed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Doctors Stunned as Brain-Computer Interface Allows Quadriplegic Woman to Feed Herself

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A woman who is paralysed from the neck down has stunned doctors with her extraordinary skill at using a robotic arm that is controlled by her thoughts alone.

The 52-year-old patient, called Jan, lost the use of her limbs more than 10 years ago to a degenerative disease that damaged her spinal cord. The disruption to her nervous system was the equivalent to having a broken neck.

But in training sessions at the University of Pittsburgh, doctors found she quickly learned to make fluid movements with the brain-controlled robotic arm, reaching levels of performance never seen before.

Doctors recruited the woman to test a robotic arm that is controlled by a new kind of computer program that translates the natural brain activity used to move our limbs into commands to move the robotic arm.

The design is intended to make the robotic arm more intuitive for patients to use. Instead of having to think where to move the arm, a patient can simply focus on the goal, such as “pick up the ball”. Read more from this story HERE.

Oklahoma’s New Open Carry Law Goes into Effect This Week

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Bryan Hull will soon strap his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver to his hip and meet his armed friends at Beverly’s Pancake House here. They have no interest in the cash register. They just want a late-night breakfast.

A new law takes effect on Thursday in Oklahoma — anyone licensed to carry a concealed firearm can choose to carry a weapon out in the open, in a belt or shoulder holster, loaded or unloaded. Five minutes after midnight Thursday, Mr. Hull and his friends — supporters of the Oklahoma Open Carry Association, a gun rights group — will mark the occasion by wearing their unconcealed handguns while dining at Beverly’s, a 24-hour restaurant.

“It’s just a peaceful assembly,” said Mr. Hull, 44, the association’s co-director. “We’re all licensed by the state to carry. We’ve all been trained and vetted. Why wouldn’t somebody want to have that kind of a group do business with them in their establishment?”

In a state with 142,000 men and women licensed to carry concealed weapons, the scene at Beverly’s will most likely become commonplace as Oklahomans take advantage of the law by displaying their handguns while they shop for groceries, eat at restaurants and walk into banks.

Advocates for gun rights said the ability to “open carry” would deter crime and eliminate the risks of a wardrobe mishap, such as when someone carrying a concealed weapon breaks the law by accidentally exposing the firearm. But the new law is a symbolic as well as practical victory. Supporters said there was no better advertisement for the Second Amendment than to have thousands of responsible adults openly carrying their weapons in a highly visible fashion.

MSNBC Guest: Profile White Men as School Shooters (+video)

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If you thought the Newtown, Connecticut shooting was one place where a refuge from racial politics could be found, you were deeply mistaken. At least one commentator on MSNBC is determined to bring the subject up.

In a conversation on MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes, Salon columnist David Sirota argued that the discussion surrounding the shooting in Newtown has been spared a larger degree of ugliness by the fact that the shooter in this case – Adam Lanza – was a white man. However, Sirota did not see this as a positive. Rather, he saw it as evidence that America is willing to leap to the easy out of racial profiling for every crime except for school shootings. Why? Because school shootings, according to Sirota, are perpetrated by white people. Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. John Kerry Expected to be Named Next Secretary of State

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President Barack Obama has decided to nominate senator John Kerry as the next secretary of state, to replace Hillary Clinton, according to two major news outlets. An announcement is possible before Christmas.

Kerry, a senior ranking Democrat who ran for the White House in 2004, emerged as favourite after the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, withdrew from contention on Thursday. That speculation hardened over the weekend, with both ABC and CNN reporting that Obama had opted for Kerry.

His appointment would require Kerry to resign from the senate, with a special election having to be held by the summer. His replacement as Democratic candidate would almost certainly face a strong challenge from the former Republican senator Scott Brown, who lost the other Massachusetts seat to Elizabeth Warren in November.

Kerry, who is currently chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, is in the classic diplomatic mould, with decades of experience in foreign policy and a desire to be engaged in the big issues of the day, from Syria to Iran. While Clinton also wanted to be involved in the major issues of the day, she also pursued single, universal issues such as championing women’s rights.

Conventional thinking in Washington has it that Clinton has never been close to Obama and has tended to be excluded from decision-making on major issues such as Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though she played an important part in shaping policy on Libya. Likewise, Kerry is not thought to be part of Obama’s inner circle, but he will harbour hopes that he will not be left on the sidelines, having been used by the president as an envoy to resolve awkward issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unlike Rice, Kerry, as a senator, can expect a smooth nomination process.

Due to Alleged Concussion, Hillary Clinton Will Not Testify at Benghazi Hearings 5 Days from Now

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Photo Credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Creative Commons

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sustained a concussion last week after becoming extremely dehydrated and fainting while suffering from a stomach virus, the State Department said.

The 65-year-old Clinton is recovering at home and has been advised by her doctors to continue to rest and avoid strenuous activity and cancel all work events for the next week. She had been scheduled to testify before a pair of congressional panels looking into the Sept. 11 attack against a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mt. Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Saturday that Clinton was suffering from a stomach virus and fainted after becoming extremely dehydrated.

Clinton was diagnosed with a concussion Thursday after fainting at home earlier this week, according to a State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Clinton’s injury publicly. The doctors did not determine it to be a “severe” concussion, the official said.

Clinton, who is expected to leave her job soon, skipped an overseas trip this past week because of the stomach virus, the State Department said Saturday.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Lawmaker Wishes Sandy Hook Principal Was Armed with Assault Rifle (+video)

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photo credit: 401st AFSB

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, says he wishes Dawn Hochsprung, the principal of the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was armed with an M-4 assault rifle when she confronted Adam Lanza, the shooter who killed 20 children.

“I wish to God she had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” Gohmert said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

Dawn Hochsprung, Sandy Hook’s principal, was reportedly killed when she confronted Lanza after he forced his way into the school.

The M-4 carbine is a smaller version of the M-16 and AR-15 assault rifles. It was developed for urban combat and its semi-automatic version, which is available to civilians, can fire 45 rounds per minute.

Lanza was armed with a semi-automatic M-4 Bushmaster rifle and two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer. Read more from this story HERE.

Associated Press Story: Believe It or Not Mass Killings Are Not on the Rise, They Are on the Decline

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(AP) — A gold plaque hangs next to a bullet hole in the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., where a lone gunman killed six worshippers and injured three others last August. It is engraved with the words, “We Are One.”

“It frames the wound,” says Pardeep Kaleka, son of former temple president Satwant Singh Kaleka, who died in the massacre. “The wound of our community, the wound of our family, the wound of our society.”

In the past week, that wound has been ripped open with shocking ferocity.

In what has become sickeningly familiar, gunmen opened fire on innocents in what should be the safest of places – first, at a shopping mall in Oregon, and then, unthinkably, at an elementary school in Connecticut.

Once again there were scenes of chaos as rescuers and media descended on the scene. Once again there were pictures of weeping survivors clutching one another, of candlelight vigils and teddy bears left as loving memorials. And once again a chorus of pundits debated gun control and violence as society attempted to make sense of the senseless.

Read more from this story HERE.

Family, Friends Remember Heroic Sandy Hook Teacher Vicki Soto

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She took a bullet for her kids.

Teacher Victoria Soto used her body to shield her students from the maniacal gunman who launched a massacre at a Connecticut school, relatives said Saturday.

Soto paid for her bravery with her life. But in doing so, the 27-year-old may have saved her first-graders from the murderous wrath of Adam Lanza — and became a hero.

“The family received information she was found shielding her students in a closet,” Soto’s cousin Jim Wiltsie told the Daily News. “She put herself between the gunman and her students.”

Wiltsie said police told the family of Soto’s bravery at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unhinged Union Activists Threaten Gov. Snyder: ‘We’ll Be At Your Daughter’s Soccer Game’ (+video)

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photo credit: MML

Union officials in Michigan are looking more and more desperate these days, stooping even to veiled (and not so veiled) threats. I’m not sure how they think that helps the cause. This governor doesn’t appear to be one to cave in to pressure.

Political reprisal may be somewhat understandable, but implicating a man’s child is just reprehensible! How sick is that?

But hey, look on the bright side. Assuming the First Family’s safety, this could turn out really well for the good guys. Beating up reporters, threatening the opposition’s children, engaging in outlandish rhetoric . . . It can’t be a good PR strategy.

Watch the video below, and note the desperate tone: