THROUGH THE LENS - Afro Art

CBS News "Portraits aimed at empowering young African-Americans"



CreativeSoul Photography

LIFE LESSONS - Fore Peopel From Elephants

The Animal Odd Couple

Pay close attention to Steve's closing comment.


NOTE:  "Females ('cows') tend to live in family groups, which can consist of one female with her calves or several related females with offspring. The groups are led by an individual known as the matriarch, often the oldest cow."
- Wikipedia

PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY - CDC Guard Fired

"Security guard fired after elevator ride with Obama" by Stephanie Condon, CBS News 11/3/2014

Former Secret Service Director Julia Pierson was compelled to resign last month after a series of mishaps at the agency -- including an incident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in which President Obama found himself on an elevator for a security guard armed with a gun.

Pierson, however, wasn't the only one who lost her job after the incident at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters on Sept. 16.  Kenneth Tate, the private security guard who rode in the elevator with Mr. Obama, was fired about a week after the president's visit, the New York Times reports.

"This was unjust and has been a nightmare," Tate told the Times, explaining his side of the story.

For one thing, Tate said he was assigned to accompany Mr. Obama as the President visited the CDC.  Additionally, while reports initially indicated that Tate was a convicted felon, his employer -- the private security firm Professional Security Corporation -- confirmed to the Times that Tate had no felony or misdemeanor convictions.  Tate had been arrested on robbery and assault charges but never convicted.

The security guard said he was never given an official explanation for his termination, though it seemed like the Secret Service was angry over a picture he tried to take of Mr. Obama's armored limousine, called "the beast."

After he snapped the picture, the Secret Service pulled Tate aside for questioning, he said.  He deleted the picture as requested.  After the interview, the CDC took away his badge, and he was fired about a week later.

CBS 60 MINUTES - 'War on Leaks'

"The war on leaks" CBS 60 Minutes 10/12/2014

Excerpt

What happens when the demands of national security collide with the rights of a free press?  Lesley Stahl finds out

You've just heard FBI Director Comey discuss the NSA surveillance program with Scott.

This is a story about another facet of the NSA program, involving wiretaps, and what happens when the demands of national security collide with the public's right to know.

That dilemma is at the heart of the case of James Risen, a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter for the New York Times.

Risen was the first to break the story about the NSA's secret wiretapping program that monitored Americans' phone calls without a court warrant.  He's been subpoenaed to divulge his confidential sources in a separate federal criminal trial.  He appealed the subpoena all the way up to the Supreme Court, but the court turned down his petition.  Now, if he doesn't name names, he could go to jail.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR - Elephants Show Empathy

"Elephants use their trunks to console distressed members of their herd" CBS News 2/18/2014

When elephants are feeling blue, they lend each other a trunk to cry on -- and then some.  New research shows that Asian elephants comfort each other by making sympathetic noises and touching their trunks to the others' mouths or nether regions.

Published Feb. 18 in the journal PeerJ, the study followed the behaviors of 26 elephants between the ages of 3 and 60 years old, living in a sanctuary in northern Thailand.  Adult male elephants were excluded from the study because in the wild, they are not part of the herd.

The researchers upset the animals by sending dogs walking past, placing snakes in the vicinity, and bringing in unfriendly elephants.

"When an elephant gets spooked, its ears go out, its tail stands erect or curls out, and it may emit a low-frequency rumble, trumpet or roar," said co-author Joshua Plotnik.  Plotnik is a lecturer in conservation biology at Mahidol University in Thailand and chief executive of the nonprofit Think Elephants.  "The consistency with which elephants responded to a friend in distress was quite remarkable.  Rarely did an elephant give a distress call without a response from a friend or group member nearby."

When those distress calls went out, other members of the herd exhibited several behaviors specifically geared towards calming them down.

"Elephants get distressed when they see others in distress, reaching out to calm them down, not unlike the way chimpanzees or humans embrace someone who is upset," study co-author Frans de Waal, a professor at Emory University, told Science Now.  The only other animals known to comfort peers are humans, great apes, dogs and some birds.

But while humans might offer a hug, elephants have an approach all their own: they reach out and touch their trunk to the other elephant's genitals, put their trunks in the other elephant's mouth, or make a high-pitched noise.

"Elephants do a lot of touching of others with their trunks.  Genital touching is a way for elephants to identify others, and in this case, it may also be a way for the elephants to identify the behavioral state of the others," Plotnik said.

"I think the genital touching, in combination with other touches, specifically in this context, serves to reassure the other elephant," Plotnik said.  "We also see the elephants put their trunks into each others' mouths, which seems to be a way of saying, 'I'm here to help you.'"

DETROIT - Report on Bankruptcy by 60 Minutes

Detroit on the edge (13:36)
60 Minutes CBS 10/13/2013

HEALTH - 15 Year Old Develops Early Pancreatic Cancer Test

Boy Wonder: Jack Andraka (13:36)
60 Minutes CBS 10/13/2013

MOB BOSS TRIAL - Updated Testimony by Hitman

"Will "Whitey" Bulger's "private code" prompt him to take stand?" by Amanda Cochran, CBS News 7/23/2013

Convicted killer Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, a former confidante of the reputed mobster, is back on the witness stand in the trial of James "Whitey" Bulger on Wednesday.

On his third day on the stand on Monday, Flemmi said Bulger brutally choked a 26-year-old woman in 1986.  During his testimony, Flemmi said Bulger "stepped out from behind the top of the basement stairs, grabbed her by the throat, started to strangle her.  They lost their balance and fell on the floor."

The woman was Deborah Hussey, the daughter of Flemmi's longtime girlfriend.  According to Flemmi, Bulger was concerned over her drug problems and her tendency to drop their names when she got into trouble.  "It didn't take long.  She's a fragile woman," Flemmi said.  "I was there, I didn't do anything."

Flemmi, who admitted to having a sexual relationship with Hussey, as well as her mother, added that Bulger took a nap after he killed her.  Flemmi was Bulger's longtime friend and former right-hand man.

Earlier, Flemmi testified he witnessed Bulger strangle another woman with his own hands.  Debra Davis, who was then Flemmi's girlfriend.  She was murdered, Flemmi said, after she learned both men were FBI informants.

Legal analyst Gerry Leone said:  "(Flemmi) is the person who can talk in very direct terms about what Bulger did, not just what he ordered, and not just what he conspired and agreed to, but what he did."

The issue at the center of this case is Bulger's own private code, CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman pointed out on "CBS this Morning."  Bulger, she said, doesn't want it known that he may have killed women.

"I still maintain that Whitey Bulger has to testify because this is his show," she said.  "This isn't a normal trial.  This is a story of Gangsterland in Boston.  And only Whitey can tell his story, and expose the government corruption and say 'Stevie killed those women.  I didn't.'

"What Stephen Flemmi is trying to show, is that he is, is in essence, a clean, cold-blooded killer," Klieman said.  "That is, 'I killed them, I popped them, I cleaned them up, this is what I do for a living.  And why do I do it?  Because Whitey insisted.  Someone else insisted.  I never had any of these ideas of my own.'  It's why it's a cross examiner's dream."

Flemmi has admitted to lying on the stand before and has apologized.

"These are the things that I think when you're in the courtroom just make your blood boil," Klieman said.  "He apologized because he had once committed perjury in the courtroom.  I am sorry, this is the time, where no matter whether or not Whitey Bulger is convicted of all of these crimes, Stephen Flemmi needs to be exposed for who he is."

"Flemmi, to me, not only is not credible...but he is someone that is far more repulsive to me as a human being than the stone-cold killer Whitey Bulger.  And I think they both need to be kept away from society for the rest of (their) days."

AMERICA - The 93-day Ordeal, Jessica Buchanan

"The Rescue of Jessica Buchanan" CBS 60 Minutes 5/12/2013 (15:46 video)

An American aid worker's first interview about being kidnapped and held for ransom by Somali pirates in a 93-day ordeal.  Scott Pelley reports.

Rescue by SEAL Team Six 1/24/2012.

AMERICA - White Supremacist Suspect Dies in Texas Chase

AP/Wise County Messenger, Joe Duty

"Colorado murder suspect dies after Texas chase" CBS News 3/22/2013

A white supremacist parolee possibly connected to the murders of the head of Colorado's Department of Corrections and a pizza delivery man has died from wounds sustained during a shootout with police in Texas, an official said.

Tarrant County Medical Examiner's spokesman Roger Metcalf said an autopsy has begun on the man, believed to be 28-year-old Evan Spencer Ebel.  His identity must still be officially confirmed through fingerprint analysis, Metcalf said.

Ebel was gravely wounded after a high-speed pursuit Thursday, in which both he and a sheriff's deputy were shot.  He was pronounced brain-dead and placed on life support before being removed Friday morning, CBS station KCNC reports.

Ebel, a parolee in the Denver metro area, was a member of a white-supremacist prison gang called the 211s, a.k.a. the Brotherhood of Aryan Alliance, according to KCNC.  It was founded at Colorado's Denver County Jail by Benjamin Davis in 1995.

Tom Clements, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was shot dead Tuesday after he answered the door at his home in Monument.

The Denver Post reported Friday that Colorado officials are investigating whether Clements' murder was a hit ordered by white supremacist leaders.

The Texas chase began when Ebel's vehicle was pulled over by Montague County Sheriff's Deputy James Boyd.  A source told CBS Station KTVT in Dallas-Fort Worth that as Deputy Boyd approached the vehicle, the driver started shooting.

Boyd was struck by three bullets; he was taken by air ambulance to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, where he is listed in serious condition but is expected to recover.

Ebel then fled from the scene, with officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Wise County Sheriff's Office and Decatur Police Department in pursuit, in a chase reaching speeds in excess of 100 mph.

Ebel continued shooting at officers, even after crashing his older model Cadillac with Colorado plates in Decatur.

"After the suspect was struck by the 18-wheeler he exited the vehicle with a firearm and engaged our deputies in a firefight," said Wise County Sheriff David Walker.  "None of the deputies were hit by any suspect shots.  The suspect was hit as the deputies returned fire."

"He didn't plan on being taken alive," said Decatur Police Chief Rex Hoskins.  "It didn't look like he wanted to be caught or taken alive."

Ebel was struck in the head.  KTVT reports was kept on life support for a short time for potential organ donation.

Spent shells found at the scene of the Texas shootout appeared, at first inspection, to match those found at Clements' home.

Clements is the fifth criminal justice official in the United States to be targeted since the beginning of the year, including the still-unsolved murder of a Texas prosecutor shot dead outside a courthouse in January, CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports.

Texas investigators also confirmed that items found in the suspect's vehicle could be tied to the murder of a Colorado pizza delivery man.  Sources close to the investigation told KCNC that a Domino's delivery shirt and a pizza box were found in the back seat of the car.

Nathan Leon, 27, had gone missing Sunday while making deliveries for Domino's Pizza; six hours later his body was found in Golden.  He had been shot several times by an unknown person or persons.

Leon's family said he delivered pizzas as a way to earn extra money for his wife and his three girls.