Tang & Fang.

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Two female thieves, named Tang Shuiyan and Fang Yunyun, were caught trying to break into the home of an official in Hefei, Anhui Province.   The duo established their name by stealing from officials only.

Tang had been arrested on a burglary. She fled and later joined Fang [2009] in her stealing rampage. Three days before they were arrested, Fang broke into the home of the deputy director of the banking watchdog in Anhui and made off with pre-paid shopping cards, valued at 1.5 million yuan.

Tang had once worked for a telecoms company, where she stole the information of her desired victims, including home address and phone number. Before her “unannounced visits,” she would call to make sure no one was home or in the office.

For instance, Tang once blew the whistle on her two victims, ex-head of Rural Credit Cooperatives in Guizhou Province, and ex-director of the Transportation Department in Guizhou. Her expose led to the duo’s being investigated for disciplinary violations and later indicted for taking bribes.

The duo would take photos of the stolen items and send them to an accomplice, to be used as a warning to victims against calling the police. Since most of the stolen properties were predictably ill-gotten gains  their value way exceeded the owners’ official salaries most victims had chosen to remain silent.               Just a thought.

All direction.

Hired at St. John’s after graduating from its master’s program. Three years later, she was named a dean. 

 Dr. Chang associated with a whirlwind of characters: Catholic priests, Chinese gangsters, American lawmakers, a Taiwanese general and a fantastically corrupt city politician, to name a few.

She had been married three times. One husband was involved in organized crime; another told the police before succumbing to gunshot wounds that she was behind it.  Police suspected her as having a role in the murder of her first husband.

She offered honorary degrees to people of wealth or influence, then soliciting donations. Two such honorees were Taiwanese industrialists who were later charged with multimillion-dollar frauds.

      

Many of the grants, under her control, went to the children of her friends or associates, including one given in 2004 to the granddaughter of Frank H. Murkowski, a former senator and governor of Alaska.

In 2003, in a letter, she congratulated Mr. Murkowski, who was then governor, on his daughter’s election to the Senate and offered them both honorary degrees.
      

Four years later, she asked him to enlist his daughter, Senator Lisa Murkowski, to write a letter supporting the immigration application of “a St. John’s honorary alumni chairman." Wang You-Theng, a Taiwanese businessman under investigation for embezzling millions of dollars, was a fugitive, and remains so today.
      

Federal prosecutors accused her of forcing foreign students to perform household labor in exchange for tuition grants, stealing over $1 million from the university and taking $250,000 from a Saudi prince to organize academic conferences that never occurred.   

As her legal troubles mounted, she found friendship among bartenders and casino bus drivers. She would curry favor by lending money to people from Chinese communities in Flushing and to fellow gamblers at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, where she was spending more time. She ended her life.

Let us learn of her ways. Just a thought.             

You'r out...

The Navy Reserve discharged Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter this year after he tested positive for cocaine, U.S. officials confirmed.

 

The discharge of Biden, a 44-year-old lawyer and managing partner at an investment firm, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. He confirmed the report.

 

"It was the honor of my life to serve in the U.S. Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge. I respect the Navy's decision. With the love and support of my family, I'm moving forward," he said.

Biden was commissioned as an ensign in May 2013 and assigned as a public affairs officer in a Norfolk, Virginia-based reserve unit. A month later, he tested positive for cocaine, and he was discharged in February, according to the report.

 

The U.S. official said the Navy never had contact with the vice president's office over the issue, and that standard procedure for failed drug tests is administrative discharge.

The vice president's office didn't comment on the report.

 

Hunter Biden is the younger of Biden's two sons. His older brother, Beau Biden, is Delaware's attorney general and a major in the Delaware Army National Guard. He was deployed for a year in Iraq.  [CNN reported].

 

I am impressed. Just a thought.

A little about E...

The current Ebola outbreak is the most widespread ever recorded.  It is by far the biggest in terms of numbers of people affected and geographical spread.  EVD is a haemorrhagic disease and the mortality rate is 53%.

It is believed the virus resides in animal reservoirs. Outbreaks are thought to be caused by animal-to-human transmission after people consume or come into contact with species of animal harbouring the virus, including monkeys and bats. The disease is transmitted by direct contact with the body fluids of an infected patient or contact with a corpse of a person who has succumbed to disease.

Viral entry is usually via mucus membranes, cuts or abrasions, and the virus can be transmitted from the dried body fluids of an infected individual on an object (e.g. bedsheets). Ebola can be sexually transmitted

The virus can be killed by a variety of disinfectants, including the hypochlorites used in household bleach and swimming pool chlorine. Disinfection of surfaces, therefore, is an important control measure. And as soap will kill the virus, hand washing with soap and water is another important measure. There are no specific treatments for EVD.

There is no risk of transmission during the incubation period, which usually lasts between 4–16 days following infection, with a range of 4–21 days. There is no transmission by air droplets (i.e. sneezing or coughing) and only a low risk of transmission during the early stages of the disease.
In the prodromal phase, it may present with non-specific flu-like symptoms including:

• fever, diarrhea, vomiting, muscle ache, sore throat, headache.

Full symptoms of EVD can develop rapidly. Clinical signs may include:

• vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, haemorrhage, including conjunctival injection (red eye), rash, chest pain and shortness of breath. The condition progresses to serious haemorrhagic complications and organ failure.

Family members or health workers caring for infected patients are at the greatest risk of infection.

To minimize the risk of infection when visiting an Ebola-endemic area travellers should be advised to:

• Avoid contact with symptomatic patients and their body fluids, deceased patients and their body fluids and wild animals (alive and dead);
• Avoid bush meat in endemic areas (i.e., the meat of wild animals that could be a reservoir for the disease);
• Wash hands regularly using soap or an alcohol-based hand sanitiser;
• Consider avoiding unessential travel to affected countries;
• Identify appropriate in-country healthcare resources in advance of travelling;
• Check that medical insurance will cover repatriation in the event of infection. 

Just a thought.

US Economy.

US Treasury reported that tax receipts in 2014 grew by $247 billion, or 9%, because of an improving economy as well as the expiration of some tax provisions and higher tax rates on high-income individuals.
The economy not only bolstered tax receipts from wages and payroll taxes, it also boosted corporate profits and therefore business tax revenue.

On the spending side, outlays grew by just $50 billion or 1%.
A big reason for the modest growth in spending was controlled dollars going to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In addition, spending in many other areas of the budget fell. These included defense, homeland security, justice, unemployment benefits, and housing programs.

The drop in the 2014 deficit is the fifth consecutive annual decline. That trend has come as economic stimulus programs to counter the damage of the financial crisis dried up and Congress implemented broad spending cuts known as the sequester. It was also spurred by changes in tax rates for high-income households.

Great improvement and perhaps a surplus by the end of the coming 2 years.

Just a thought.

Republican Senate candidate.

 

Republican Senate candidates have been holding the firewall in the most high-profile races around the country: Joni Ernst in Iowa, Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, Cory Gardner in Colorado. But one Republican Senate candidate in Michigan is doing exactly the opposite getting disowned by her own party.

 

The critics of Terri Lynn Land’s campaign have turned harsher recently, accusing Land of ignoring the normally requisite advance notice given before public appearances, and of ducking the press any time she feels threatened by its line of questioning, among other problems.  

 

U.S. News called her campaign “invisible”.  Conservative radio host F. Beckmann published an “autopsy” of Land’s campaign in the Detroit News. The National Republican Senatorial Committee pulled almost a million dollars from Land’s campaign.

 

Bill Ballenger, a former Republican senator, told ABC News that no one in Michigan had guessed Land was going to be “as inept and inarticulate as she’s proven to be.”

 

What an encouragement    !!!!?

 

Just a thought.

Doubtful...*!

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman told ABC News that President Obama has made more lasting changes to the country while in office than President Bill Clinton.

“Bill Clinton is an incredibly gifted politician, but Clinton was not a consequential president. Obama, although clearly not the natural politician, is a consequential president.”

Krugman has previously been a harsh critic of Obama. In 2009, he was featured in a Newsweek cover story titled “Obama is Wrong: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman,” which identified him as the leading liberal voice against the president.
“People who had this idea that Obama was going to bring a transformation of America, I thought were being naïve,” Krugman said.

But, by God, we got health reform, and a significant financial reform. We are getting the environmental action … it’s not everything you would have wanted, but it’s more than anyone else has done for decades.

Krugman also said that Obama’s achievements were more consequential than those of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

“In the end, Reagan did not leave the structure of America’s society particularly different,” Krugman said. “He did not in fact change the basic legacy of Lyndon Johnson and FDR.”

Krugman’s ranking of consequential presidents, he said, would be Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, followed by Obama and then Reagan. Well said, then.

Just a thought.

Who Done it?

An ex-con enjoyed 15 minutes of freedom before he was shot by a former inmate he once had beef with in prison.

Devon Simmons served 15 years on an assault conviction and was released from the Otisville State Penitentiary. He planned to take a train from a nearby Metro-North station in Orange County to Manhattan.

A car rolled up. Police said Simmons got in the car - even though he didn’t know the driver. He was apparently duped into thinking it was sent by relatives to pick him up.

The car stopped, the trunk latch is released and a guy jumped out of the trunk and starts shooting,” State Police Capt. Pierce Gallagher said. “The minute he sees the guy, Simmons start running.”

He managed to get to a nearby train station, where someone called 911. State police say the man underwent surgery at Westchester Medical Center.

 

Two men spotted fleeing the scene in a car with Illinois plates. Cops busted the two in Manhattan. Welcome Back to Jail boys.
 

 Just a thought.

Solicitation...

They were planning their future together. She said the relationship had its bad times and that Schellpfeffer was jealous and abusive.  

She filed a restraining order against him, then later dropped it.

“I grabbed a  knife, and I said to him… ‘If you do not give me my car keys and let me leave, I’m going to slice this couch.’ And I did a slice and then he screamed. He threw my keys at me.”

Even with all the drama, the relationship endured and Strom and her children moved in with him. “We always made up right afterwards,”  “We have such a strong bond of love…that we would continue to stay together.” 

She hired a man to kill her fiancé and boyfriend of six years.  He was an informant for the local police department. Their meeting was taped.

“She was young, vibrant, beautiful... We just clicked,” Schellpfeffer recalled.

He believes his life was never in danger and Strom did not intend for the hitman to go through with the plan. He says he attributes her plot to mental illness. At one restraining order hearing, Schellpfeffer proposed to Strom in front of the judge and she accepted. He still cares about his former fiancée

She was sentenced.... after a plea for solicitation to commit first degree intentional homicide.

This guy's behavior is questionable. He knows it all.     Just a thought.

A Famous Dog..!!...

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A nurse, Teresa Romero, is the first person known to have contracted the deadly virus, Ebola, outside West Africa.

She had treated two missionaries who later died from Ebola. The virus has killed 3,879 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

She might have become infected when removing her protective suit after cleaning one of the missionaries' room. The cause is still unknown.

A court order to euthanize Ms. Romero's dog was issued despite uncertainty over whether the animal was also infected or risked spreading the disease.

The fate of the dog sparked huge interest on social networks, after Ms. Romero's husband, who is kept in isolation, alerted animal protection groups via social networks.

Two protesters were hurt when they tried to stop the van in which the animal was being transported.

Ebola is a serious disease. One patient in Taxes required contact at least 150 individuals and quarantine some. It is all about our habits, some needs to be changed.

Just a thought.