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17 year old girl encouraged "friend" to kill himself, tells him to get back in carbon monoxide filled truck when he got out because he was afraid

PLAINVILLE — A King Philip Regional High School senior has been indicted for involuntary manslaughter, allegedly for urging a friend to commit suicide. She then raised money for mental illness in the name of her friend.

Michelle Carter, 18, of Plainville was indicted as a "youthful offender" by a Bristol County grand jury, and was arraigned in New Bedford Juvenile Court.

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http://ift.tt/eA8V8J 17 year old girl encouraged "friend" to kill himself, tells him to get back in carbon monoxide filled truck when he got out because he was afraid via top scoring links : news http://ift.tt/1FDnlKH

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FCC overturns state laws that protect ISPs from local competition

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Computer History Museum

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to preempt state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that prevent municipal broadband providers from expanding outside their territories.

The action is a year in the making. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced in February 2014 his intention to override state laws designed to protect private cable companies and telcos from public sector competition. Wheeler took his cue from the federal appeals court ruling that overturned net neutrality rules; tucked away in that decision was one judge's opinion that the FCC has the authority to preempt "state laws that prohibit municipalities from creating their own broadband infrastructure to compete against private companies."

Nineteen states have such laws, often passed at the behest of private Internet service providers that didn't want to face competition. Communities in two of the states asked the FCC to take action. The City of Wilson, North Carolina and the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, Tennessee filed the petitions that led to today's FCC action. Each offers broadband service to residents and received requests for service from people in nearby towns, but they alleged that state laws made it difficult or impossible for them to expand.

"You can't say you're for broadband and then turn around and endorse limits on who can offer it," Wheeler said today. "You can't say, 'I want to follow the explicit instructions of Congress to remove barriers to infrastructure investment,' but endorse barriers on infrastructure investment. You can't say you're for competition but deny local elected officials the right to offer competitive choices."

States have given municipalities the authority to offer broadband but made it difficult with tons of bureaucratic requirements, he said. "The bottom line is some states have created thickets of red tape designed to limit competition," he said. Local residents and businesses are the ones suffering the consequences, he argued, pointing to members of the two communities in the audience.

Some businesses are forced to move to other towns for lack of better broadband, he said. Wheeler described one person who pays $316 a month "for a collage of services that includes two mobile hotspots," while living less than a mile from a gigabit network. One woman in the FCC's audience has to drive her son 12 miles to a church where he can access Internet service fast enough to do schoolwork, he said. These people are "condemned to second-rate broadband."

Both EPB and Wilson have advanced networks but are surrounded by communities that lack advanced service, FCC wireline competition official Gregory Kwan told commissioners.

"EPB is an island of competitive high speed broadband service surrounded by areas for the most part with single or no provider of advanced broadband," he said. "Wilson's network... is a similar situation, an island of competition surrounded by a sea of little to no options for world class competitive broadband services."

"Our focus is really about wanting to serve our neighbors who have little or no access to broadband," EPB communications VP Danna Bailey told Ars yesterday. "We're hoping that the FCC votes in favor of our petition, but we'll have to understand any ramifications of anticipated legal challenges before we move forward."

The vote was followed by applause from the crowd.

Democrats say yea, Republicans nay

The vote was split 3-2 along party lines, with Wheeler joined by fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel.

"There are provisions that limit service by municipalities to specific areas but not others even if the local governmental entity has a pre-existing telecommunications network in that region," Clyburn said in today's meeting. "And just what has been the result? Certain communities have the capacity to achieve limitless outcomes, while others a few yards from town are stuck in a digital desert deprived of the means to close persistent opportunity gaps."

Rosenworcel likened municipal Internet service to "broadband barn raising."

"The Electric Power Board of the City of Chattanooga now offers gigabit service to all of its customers, and the residents of Wilson County have access to a municipal network that also supports gigabit speed," she said. "Now both municipal providers want to extend their broadband offerings to other consumers nearby. In communities where the speeds are slower and the competitive choice more limited. So today, we tear down barriers that prevent them from expanding their broadband service and offering more consumers more competitive choice."

Republican Ajit Pai dissented, pointing out that the laws in the two states were passed by legislatures controlled by Democrats and are now being overturned by unelected officials.

"I do not believe this agency has the legal power to preempt," Pai said.

Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the FCC to encourage the deployment of broadband to all Americans by using "measures that promote competition in the local telecommunications market, or other regulating methods that remove barriers to infrastructure investment." The ability to remove barriers is what Wheeler is using to preempt the state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Pai pointed out that Section 706 includes no specific language on preempting state laws. According to Pai, Democrats conceded that the FCC can't overturn total state bans on municipal broadband; rather, they argue only that they can lift restrictions that limit rather than ban the municipal networks, he said. In North Carolina and Tennessee, the providers are being prevented from expanding their service territory, but aren't banned from offering the service within their territory.

"This yields an exceptionally strange result," Pai said. "While a state would be free to ban municipal broadband projects outright, it would be forbidden from imposing more modest restrictions on such projects. In other words, the most severe state law restrictions on municipal broadband projects, prohibitions, could not be preempted, but less stringent restrictions could be preempted." This could lead states to impose complete bans rather than limited restrictions, he said.

Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly called it "arrogance" to rewrite state laws.

"It is not the government's role to offer services instead of or in competition with private actors," O'Rielly said. Today's order relies on an "illogical and tortured" reading of Section 706, he said.

The FCC could preempt laws in more states if communities file petitions asking the commission to do so. But the FCC's vote isn't the end of the road. Wheeler is relying on an untested legal theory that could face judicial scrutiny. Besides court challenges, Republicans in Congress have proposed legislation removing the FCC's Section 706 authority.

The FCC is also scheduled to vote today on reclassifying Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Title II includes authority to preempt state laws that prohibit the ability of "any entity" to provide telecommunications. But this authority has already been tested, with the Supreme Court in 2004 agreeing with the FCC that "any entity" only referred to private entities.

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Burger King franchisee owner gives $120K in bonuses to employees after winning 'Franchisee of the Year'. Sells Rolex and Corvette prize and gives the money to employees.

Employees of an Arizona chain of Burger King restaurants received a big surprise last week when they learned many employees would receive bonuses for winning Burger King's 'Franchisee of the Year.'

Barnett Management Company runs 24 Burger King restaurants throughout Arizona and won the award thanks to excellent customer service and corporate inspections, according to 3TV.

Besides the recognition, the CEO of the company received a new Corvette and a Rolex watch from Burger King's corporate offices.

Initially, employees joked with Barnett, asking just for the chance to take the brand new Corvette for a test drive. They later found out Barnett had much more in store for them, employee Eric Tejeda told 3TV.

Tom Barnett sold his prizes and redistributed that money among more than 100 employees of the restaurants.

After adding some of their own money, Barnett and his fellow owners were able to dish out more than $120,000 to the men and women behind the franchisee's success. The bonuses ranged from $100 to $5,000, reports Fox 10 in Phoenix.

The bonuses significantly impacted the lives of several employees who told their stories to news outlets.

One general manager, Fernando Enriquez, told Fox 10 that he received enough money to help his mom who was having surgery as well as pay off car and schooling bills for his children.

In 15-year employee Charity Callahan's case, she received nearly a month's worth of pay from the bonuses. "I just couldn't believe it. I was in shock," she told 3TV. "They made us all feel appreciated."

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FCC approves net neutrality rules, reclassifies broadband as a utility

It's a good day for proponents of an open internet: The Federal Communications Commission just approved its long-awaited network neutrality plan, which reclassifies broadband internet as a Title II public utility and gives the agency more regulatory power in the process. And unlike the FCC's last stab at net neutrality in 2010, today's new rules also apply to mobile broadband. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out the basic gist of the plan earlier this month -- it'll ban things like paid prioritization, a tactic some ISPs used to get additional fees from bandwidth-heavy companies like Netflix, as well as the slowdown of "lawful content." But now Wheeler's vision is more than just rhetoric; it's something the FCC can actively enforce.

Federal Communications Commission Set To Vote On Net Neutrality

From left: FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn, chairman Tom Wheeler, commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel

"It [the internet] is our printing press; it is our town square; it is our individual soap box and our shared platform for opportunity," said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel during today's open commission meeting. "That is why open internet policies matter. That is why I support network neutrality."

Don't expect the net neutrality drama to end here, though. Verizon has already made vague threats about suing the agency if it went through the public utility route, and Wheeler expects other lawsuits as well. Verizon's last legal action against the FCC led an appeals court to strike down its earlier (but far weaker) open internet rules on jurisdictional grounds. That's what ultimately pushed the agency to reclassify broadband -- now that it's viewed as a utility like telephone service, the FCC is free to make stronger regulatory decisions. The agency is aiming to alleviate fears of overregulation through forbearance, a process that lets it legally ignore certain regulations that other public utilities have to deal with. That includes things like limiting rates and unbundling, which lets companies take advantage of equipment and services from competitors.

If you've been following the net neutrality debate over the past few years, you wouldn't be blamed for getting discouraged. Verizon's legal victory over the FCC last year made it seem like the big companies -- who would benefit the most from lax internet regulations -- had pretty much won the war for the web. But, it turns out, that defeat actually helped spark an unprecedented amount of grassroots activism on the web from groups like Fight for the Future, which got more than 4 million consumers to write into the FCC in support of net neutrality. Companies like Twitter, Reddit and Netflix -- whose businesses rely on unobstructed access to web users -- also did their part to lobby for an open web. All of that led to President Barack Obama announcing his support for Title II broadband reclassification last fall, which put the FCC in a pretty awkward spot.

In his Wired editorial, Wheeler pointed out that he was previously relying on "commercial reasonableness," a concept brought up in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, to keep the internet open. He ended up changing his mind, however, when he realized that line of thought could end up protecting companies more than consumers. But, far more likely, Wheeler changed his stance as the tide turned in favor of regulating broadband as a utility.

When it comes to the new mobile broadband rules, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn framed it as something that will help ensure equality: "We know many low-income Americans rely heavily on their mobile device, and some rely heavily on that mobile phone as their only access to the internet," she said. "They need, they deserve, a robust experience on par with their wired peers."

Television writer and producer Veena Sud, whose series The Killing was saved from cancellation by Netflix twice, laid out the artistic justification for net neutrality:

What the open internet means for creativity, innovation and diversity points is by no means limited to my own experience. Series like Orange is the New Black and Transparent are giving voice to worlds and people and experiences never before seen on the small screen.

Sud also mentioned an intriguing data point about web content: Around 40 percent of online comedies and dramas are backed by women, compared to just 20 percent on traditional television.

So what's next? You can expect plenty of chest thumping from Republicans, libertarians and large telecoms against the new rules. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai also railed against the agency's decision as intrusive government regulation. He was skeptical that the FCC will stick with its forbearance plan, and he warned that the open internet rules will also lead to slower broadband speeds and more taxes. Expect to hear those talking points repeatedly throughout the rest of the year.

"This proposal has been described by one opponent as, 'A secret plan to regulate the internet.' Nonsense!" Wheeler said right before the agency voted on the new rules. "This is no more a plan to regulate the internet than the first amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept: openness, expression, and an absence of gatekeepers telling people what they can do, where they can go and what they can think."

[Photo credits: The Washington Post/Getty Images (Top photo); Mark Wilson/Getty Images (FCC)]

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'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

The US Department of Justice and embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel are under mounting pressure to investigate allegations of what one politician called "CIA or Gestapo tactics" at a secretive Chicago police facility exposed by the Guardian.

Politicians and civil-rights groups across the US expressed shock upon hearing descriptions of off-the-books interrogation at Homan Square, the Chicago warehouse that multiple lawyers and one shackled-up protester likened to a US counter-terrorist black site in a Guardian investigation published this week.

As three more people came forward detailing their stories of being "held hostage" and "strapped" inside Homan Square without access to an attorney or an official public record of their detention by Chicago police, officials and activists said the allegations merited further inquiry and risked aggravating wounds over community policing and race that have reached as high as the White House.

Caught in the swirl of questions around the complex – still active on Wednesday – was Emanuel, the former chief of staff to Barack Obama who is suddenly facing a mayoral runoff election after failing to win a majority in a contest that has seen debate over police tactics take a central role.

Emanuel's office refused multiple requests for comment from the Guardian on Wednesday, referring a reporter to an unspecific denial from the Chicago police.

But Luis Gutiérrez, the influential Illinois congressman whose shifting support for Emanuel was expected to secure Tuesday's election, joined a chorus of colleagues in asking for more information about Homan Square.

"I had not heard about the story until I read about it in the Guardian," Gutiérrez said late Wednesday. "I want to get more information, but if the allegations are true, it sounds outrageous."

Congressman Danny Davis, a Democrat who represents the Chicago west-side neighbourhood where Homan Square is located, said he was "terribly saddened" to hear of the allegations. Davis said he "would certainly strongly support an investigation" by the US Department of Justice, as two former senior justice department civil-rights officials urged the department on Wednesday to launch.

Earlier in the day, as a county commissioner urged the top law-enforcement investigators in the country to do the same, another reporter and photographer waited to accompany him on a visit outside the premises of Homan Square.

A man, in a jumpsuit and a ski mask, pulled out of the Homan Square parking lot in an SUV and made multiple circles before coming to a stop.

"You can take a picture," said the man, who then offered what he considered a joke: "We are all CIA, right?"

Homan Square 2 — This man circled around a reporter and photographer for the Guardian twice while waiting for a local politician. Photograph: Chandler West for the Guardian

'Not in America'

Outside the red-brick Homan Square compound on Wednesday, a young mother ushered her two children to the sidewalk on West Fillmore Avenue. "I am at the police station," she yelled into her phone, over traffic noise. "Can I call you back?"

The woman held her children close, shivering against the wind as plain-clothes officers and pedestrians scurried across the busy four-way intersection.

Until this week, the Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin only knew of the warehouse next-door – like the mother – as a police facility in a struggling Chicago neighbourhood.

"I hadn't heard of the sort of CIA or Gestapo tactics that were mentioned in the Guardian article until it was brought to my attention," Boykin said in an interview outside Homan Square. "And we are calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these allegations."

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that police in Chicago detain suspects at Homan Square without booking them, thereby preventing their relatives and lawyers from knowing their whereabouts, reminiscent in the eyes of some lawyers and civil-rights activists of a CIA black site.

While people are held at Homan Square, which lawyers described as a process that often lasted between 12 and 24 hours, several attorneys said they had been refused access to the facility, and described entrance to it as a rare occurrence. One man interviewed by the Guardian said that ahead of a Nato protest in 2012, he was handcuffed to a bar behind bench for 17 hours inside Homan Square and refused a phone call before police finally permitted him to see his attorney.

In an interview Wednesday, another Nato protester, Vic Suter, offered a similar account of close shackling and an estimated 18 hours without access to an attorney.

"You are just kind of held hostage," Suter told the Guardian. "The inability to see a lawyer is a drastic departure from what we consider our constitutional rights. Not being able to have that phone call, the lack of booking, makes it so that when you're there, you understand that no one knows where you are."

A third person, Kory Wright, came forward to the Intercept in a story published Thursday. He described spending six hours at Homan Square without being booked or having access to a lawyer, as well as being zip-tied to a bench "like a cross".

Wright's friend, Deandre Hutcherson, told the Intercept that he, too, was held at the facility, without either of the men being read their Miranda rights.

Boykin, the county commissioner, looked up at the warehouse and said that a potential US justice department investigation would be "an extension of reform – making sure people's basic rights are not violated but that they have opportunity to counsel".

"It's one thing to quell demonstration and protests," Boykin said, "but it's another thing to use antiquated Gestapo tactics that are more commonly found in parts of the underdeveloped world or in places like China or Russia."

"Not in America."

Obama's task force on improving police relations in the wake of the shooting of the unarmed teenager Michael Brown six months ago in Ferguson, Missouri, was expected to release its first set of recommendations on community policing as soon as Monday. The third anniversary of the killing of unarmed teenager teenager Trayvon Martin is Thursday, two days after a Department of Justice civil-rights investigation brought no charges against George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watchman who shot him dead.

Amnesty International USA called for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to launch his own independent investigation into allegations of police tactics at Homan Square. Photograph: Chandler West for the Guardian

'I thought we were making progress'

Scott Waguespack, the alderman of Chicago's 32nd ward, said he, too, was unaware of potential abuses at the Homan Square warehouse until he read the Guardian's investigation this week. During the 2012 Nato summit, he said, Chicago police officials told local politicians that arrestees would end up bussed to the department's Belmont district precinct on the city's West Side, and not Homan. "That's where we assumed they went," he told a third Guardian reporter.

Waguespack claimed meaningful police reform has stalled under Emanuel, citing the mayor's failure to pass a city ordinance designed to enforce more oversight to the controversial police oversight board, as well as inconsistencies in crime statistics.

The alderman said the "best thing" that the "next mayor" of Chicago could do about the Homan Square allegations was bring in federal investigators: "Then the civil rights division of the justice department can say: 'Here's how we scrutinized it'."

The Guardian sent a list of detailed questions about Homan Square to Emanuel's office on Wednesday. A spokesman for the mayor referred a fourth reporter to a Chicago police department statement issued to multiple media outlets on Tuesday, and declined to return multiple calls seeking clarification.

"If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them," the statement reads, without elaborating on when those meetings take place. "There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square," the statement continues, without addressing specifics as to how or when those records are logged.

Amnesty International USA has called for the mayor to open his own "independent and impartial investigation" into the Homan Square facility, with the human-rights group requesting "unrestricted access" to the site.

In a letter to Emanuel, Amnesty USA's executive director Steven Hawkins wrote: "As the mayor of Chicago, you have a responsibility under US and international law to ensure that human rights violations are not committed within the city."

The group lobbied Emanuel during the mayoral campaign to commit to a program of reparations for victims of abuse between 1972 and 1991 at the hands Jon Burge, the notorious former Chicago police commander who was released from home custody this month.

Emanuel has not made a financial commitment to reparations but has promised a route to "closure" for the surviving victims.

"It is his responsibility as the mayor of Chicago, as a public figure to make sure that his city is complying with international law," Amnesty USA's senior campaigner, Jasmine Heiss, told the Guardian. "Because without a clear commitment to addressing things like police torture, it gives torturers the go ahead to continue to undermine the rule of law and ignore international guidelines."

A representative for the Chicago branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said the group was gathering facts about Homan Square as well.

Jesús "Chuy" Garcia, the county commissioner challenging Emanuel in an April runoff vote that local political watchers warned could become a national "free-for-all", did not respond to multiple requests for comment after a separate Guardian interview on Monday. But his colleague, Boykin, said the mayor had an obligation to find more answers. "Fifty-plus percent of the people voted against the mayor yesterday," Boykin said outside Homan Square. "I think the mayor has a problem."

Davis, the US congressman whose west-side offices were located near Homan Square for 15 years, said the activities alleged at Homan Square potentially "undermined and torn up" efforts to promote police as "positive role models".

"One of the things that for many years some of us, people like myself, have been working on [is] to try and help foster a different sense of what law enforcement ought to be among people and especially young people as they are growing up," Davis said.

Karl Brinson, president of the Chicago Westside Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the NAACP was attempting "to find out what's going on" at Homan Square.

"We knew the facility was there, but we didn't know what all it encompassed exactly and what was taking place there," he told the Guardian. "You're never going to build trust with anybody or get any kind of community relationships going on while doing this."

The justice department declined to comment to the Guardian on Wednesday.

(The spouse of Guardian US national security editor Spencer Ackerman works in the press office of Amnesty International USA. Ackerman was not involved with the group in any reporting for this article.)

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'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

Emanuel's office refused multiple requests for comment from the Guardian on Wednesday, referring a reporter to an unspecific denial from the Chicago police.

"I had not heard about the story until I read about it in the Guardian," Gutiérrez said late Wednesday. "I want to get more information, but if the allegations are true, it sounds outrageous."

A man, in a jumpsuit and a ski mask, pulled out of the Homan Square parking lot in an SUV and made multiple circles before coming to a stop.

"You can take a picture," said the man, who then offered what he considered a joke: "We are all CIA, right?"

'Not in America'

The woman held her children close, shivering against the wind as plain-clothes officers and pedestrians scurried across the busy four-way intersection.

Until this week, the Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin only knew of the warehouse next-door – like the mother – as a police facility in a struggling Chicago neighbourhood.

In an interview Wednesday, another Nato protester, Vic Suter, offered a similar account of close shackling and an estimated 18 hours without access to an attorney.

Wright's friend, Deandre Hutcherson, told the Intercept that he, too, was held at the facility, without either of the men being read their Miranda rights.

"Not in America."

'I thought we were making progress'

Emanuel has not made a financial commitment to reparations but has promised a route to "closure" for the surviving victims.

A representative for the Chicago branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said the group was gathering facts about Homan Square as well.

Karl Brinson, president of the Chicago Westside Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the NAACP was attempting "to find out what's going on" at Homan Square.

The justice department declined to comment to the Guardian on Wednesday.

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'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

'Not in America'

'I thought we were making progress'

'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

'Not in America'

'I thought we were making progress'