WASHINGTON (AP) ? An analysis of more than 33,000 cases of foodborne illness shows that ground beef and chicken have caused more hospitalizations than other meats.
The report by the Center for Science in Public Interest says chicken nuggets, ham and sausage pose the lowest risk of foodborne illness.
The group used government data on 1,700 incidents over 12 years to analyze outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli, listeria and other pathogens that were definitively linked to a certain meat.
To calculate which meats were riskiest, CSPI ranked the foods in which contamination was most likely to cause hospitalizations. Some meats may have had more illnesses but were less likely to cause severe illness.
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) ? Investigators haven't found any ricin in the house of a Mississippi man accused of mailing poisoned letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a local judge, according to testimony Monday from an FBI agent.
Agent Brandon Grant said that a search of Paul Kevin Curtis' vehicle and house in Corinth, Miss., on Friday did not turn up ricin, ingredients for the poison, or devices used to make it. A search of Curtis' computers has found no evidence so far that he researched making ricin.
Defense lawyers for Curtis say investigators' failure to find any ricin means the government should release their client. That lack of physical evidence could loom large as a detention and preliminary hearing continues Tuesday morning. U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Allan Alexander ended the hearing after lunch Monday, citing a personal schedule conflict.
Through his lawyer, Curtis has denied involvement in letters sent to Obama, Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, and a Lee County, Miss., judge. The first of the letters was found April 15.
"There was no apparent ricin, castor beans or any material there that could be used for the manufacturing, like a blender or something," Grant testified. He speculated that Curtis could have thrown away the processor. Grant said computer technicians are now doing a "deep dive" on the suspect's computers after initially finding no "dirty words" indicating Curtis had searched for information on ricin.
Christi McCoy, who is leading the defense for Curtis, said the government doesn't have probable cause to hold her client and his history of problems related to bipolar disorder are not enough to keep him in jail.
"The searches are concluded, not one single shred of evidence was found to indicate Kevin could have done this," McCoy told reporters after the hearing.
She questioned why Curtis would have signed the letters "I am KC and I approve this message," a phrase he had used on his Facebook page, and then thrown away a processor used to grind castor beans. And she said that in any event, Curtis is not enough of an imminent danger or flight risk to justify holding him without bail.
"If they continue to demand his incarceration, it's basically bad faith," McCoy said. "Now, surely they are satisfied that there is no immediate threat from Kevin Curtis, and we want him released."
McCoy said in court that someone may have framed Curtis, suggesting that a former business associate of Curtis' brother, a man with whom Curtis had an extended exchange of angry emails, may have set him up.
Still, Grant testified that authorities believe that they have the right suspect.
"Given the right mindset and the Internet and the acquisition of material, other people could be involved. However, given information right now, we believe we have the right individual," he said.
Grant said lab analysis shows the poison is a crude form that could have been created by grinding castor beans in a food processor or coffee grinder.
"That would be a low-tech way of doing it. You're just blending up the beans to get the ricin that's on the inside on the outside," Grant testified.
The detention and preliminary hearing began Friday in U.S. District Court in Oxford, Miss. More witnesses besides Grant are expected Tuesday.
Federal investigators believe the letters were mailed by Curtis, an Elvis impersonator who family members say suffers from bipolar disorder. He wore an orange jumpsuit from the Lafayette County Detention Center in court Monday, and was quiet and attentive, sometimes whispering to McCoy.
Grant testified Monday that processing codes printed on the letter indicated they had been mailed from Tupelo, and that investigators were still trying to figure out from the codes exactly where they had been mailed from.
Grant testified Friday that authorities tried to track down the sender of the letters by using a list of Wicker's constituents with the initials KC, the same initials in the letters. Grant said the list was whittled from thousands to about 100 when investigators isolated the ones who lived in an area that would have a Memphis, Tenn., postmark, which includes many places in north Mississippi. He said Wicker's staff recognized Curtis as someone who had written the senator before.
Grant also testified that there were indentations on the letters from where someone had written on another envelope that had been on top of them in a stack.
The indentations were analyzed under a light source and turned out to be for Curtis' former addresses in Booneville and Tupelo, though the street name in one of the addresses was spelled wrong, Grant said.
All the envelopes and stamps were self-adhesive, Grant said Monday, meaning they won't yield DNA evidence. He said thus far the envelopes and letters haven't yielded any fingerprints.
McCoy said the evidence linking the 45-year-old to the crime has hinged on his writings posted online, which were accessible to anyone.
Much of Monday's testimony focused on Curtis' prior run-ins with police and evidence about his mental health.
"The fact that this man may be suffering from a form of mental illness, how does this make it make it more likely than not that Mr. Curtis committed to these crimes?" McCoy asked.
Grant said that it didn't, but said past evidence about mental state, "helps establish a potential behavior background for Mr. Curtis, perhaps not realizing what he's doing."
Olivia Newton-John has revealed her older sister has been diagnosed with brain cancer. The 64-year-old “Grease” star, who is a breast cancer survivor herself, has postponed her upcoming Las Vegas residency to be with her 69-year-old sister Rona. Rona is also an actress and was previously married to the late “Grease” star Jeff Conaway from ...
If you're looking for a simple way to keep your notes, outlines, and pretty much any other text in sync across computers, Fargo is a webapp that runs in any browser and syncs with Dropbox.
Fargo is essentially a text editor built for outlining ideas. That means you can use it to organize projects, to-do lists, or as a regular old notepad. The outliner function makes it so you can easily expand certain sections, hide them, and organize it all better. Files are then saved on your Dropbox and locally as an HTML 5 file.
Officers talk to residents before clearing them to return to their homes in West Texas (Adrees Latif/Reuters)
WEST, Texas?For the second day in a row, more than 100 displaced residents here lined up to gain access to their homes near the site of Wednesday?s deadly fertilizer explosion that killed 14 and injured at least 200.
City officials began allowing residents in homes farthest away from the center of the blast site late Saturday, but imposed a strict curfew, permitting people to only enter the site between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Residents have the option of staying in their homes if they aren?t heavily damaged, but most of the area remains without power or running water. The explosion leveled a five-square block area of town, destroying dozens of homes, a nursing home and an apartment building adjacent to the plant.
On Sunday morning, a time when most residents would be in church, dozens of cars snaked through town, as residents who didn?t make it inside the blast area on Saturday returned in hopes of seeing their homes for the first time.
?You don?t know what to expect,? said Joanne Nors, who was cooking dinner at her home a few blocks from the plant when the explosion happened on Wednesday night. She and her husband fled their home and have been staying with relatives ever since.
State and local officials have warned residents that the city is unlikely to get back to normal anytime soon. ?This is going to be a very long process,? Mayor Tommy Muska said Saturday.
As some residents were allowed back in to see their homes, dozens of insurance companies have descended on the region, setting up mobile offices and handing out business cards along Oak Street, the main drag in West?s downtown district.
Agents also have been spotted at the press conferences held by local officials at City Hall, just two blocks from the cordoned off neighborhood near the fertilizer plant. One agent, who declined to be named, said he was just trying to ?gather as much information as I can for my clients.?
Indeed, residents here have grown frustrated with the lack of information from city officials about how long the area will be closed and other basic information. Speaking to constituents Saturday at an impromptu town meeting, Muska, who also lost his home in the blast, apologized and said, ?I need to be doing a better job.?
"When you see this place," he added, referring to the explosion site, "you will know a miracle happened."
But residents fear the bureaucracy around the site will only get worse. Yesterday, word spread around town that the site would soon be taken over the by the Federal Emergency Management Agency?something officials in town declined to confirm.
But at the Village Bakery, one of the state's most famous Czech bakeries and a gathering point for West residents, a man announced the FEMA rumor to the entire dining room before making his displeasure clear.
?FEMA is taking over,? the man said. ?I don?t like that acronym.?
But there was some good news to emerge from the scene. Steve Vanek, a West City Council member and mayor pro-tem, told reporters most of the 60 people listed as missing on Friday had been found. He said the death toll remains at 14.
Still, that number is a huge blow to a town of less than 3,000 people, where, as one local puts it, ?everybody knows everybody.?
On Saturday evening, a group of firefighters from nearby towns gathered on an Interstate 35 overpass and dangled an American flag over the highway as a motorcade of ambulances escorted by police cars passed underneath. The vehicles reportedly were transferring first responders injured in Wednesday?s blast from a Waco hospital to another facility in nearby Hillsboro.
At the same time, someone placed a bouquet of silk flowers on the door of a flower shop downtown, where one resident said the owner had lost her brother and her husband in the explosion. The men had been a part of West?s volunteer fire department.
?We?re just waiting for the funerals to start,? a woman, who declined to be named, said as she stood outside City Hall on Sunday. ?That?s going to be real tough.?
State and local officials have said they still have no cause for Wednesday's explosion.
Is your organization still on the fence about BB10 and casting around for alternatives? Then here's a little first-party business app for Nokia Windows Phones that might be worthy of some evidence-based evaluation. It's called Conference and it's only at the beta stage, but it's already able to serve its primary purpose: namely, letting you join a conference call on your Lumia without needing to grab details out of your calendar and key them in. The app receives the invite, with the necessary ID/PIN details supplied by the sender, and then lets you join a call with a single tap -- or a voice instruction if you're on a WP8 handset. It also integrates with Lync and vibrates whenever someone uses corporatese in lieu of gravitas.
Police officers stand by as an ambulance passes after the successful operation to capture 19-year-old bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev on April 19, 2013 in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken to a Cambridge hospital in ?serious condition? on Friday night. Police described him as ?uncommunicative? and the owner of the boat where Tsarnaev had taken shelter said he was ?covered in blood.? Is it legal to interrogate someone with potentially life-threatening wounds?
It could be. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in the case Chavez v. Martinez that an interrogation that occurred in a hospital emergency room, while the plaintiff was screaming in pain and in danger of dying from gunshot injuries, did not violate the injured man?s Fifth Amendment rights.
Here?s more background on Chavez v. Martinez: In 1997, two police officers stopped Oliverio Martinez to question him about drugs. The violent altercation that ensued left Martinez blind and paralyzed from the waist down. A third officer, Benjamin Chavez, accompanied Martinez to the hospital, where he conducted an incriminating, tape-recorded interrogation. Throughout, Martinez was fading in and out of consciousness, begging for treatment, and complaining of intense pain. He was not, subsequently, charged with a crime, nor were his statements used against him in any criminal proceeding.
Martinez sued Chavez for violating his rights by interrogating him in these circumstances, and without reading him his Miranda warnings. Chavez invoked ?qualified immunity? as a defense, saying that he had not trespassed on the plaintiff?s civil liberties. A federal district court thought otherwise, and Chavez appealed to the Supreme Court.
The SCOTUS justices were deeply divided, but the majority essentially found that you can?t violate the Fifth Amendment until the case goes to trial?that as long as Chavez didn?t seek to use Martinez?s statements as evidence in court, he hadn?t done anything wrong. Yet they remanded the suit to the Ninth Circuit to determine whether Martinez could win under the Fourteenth Amendment right to ?substantive due process? if he could show the police had stooped to coercive investigative techniques. The Ninth Circuit found that if Chavez had in fact interfered with Martinez's treatment to extract a confession?a clear case of police brutality?he?d be entitled to damages.
What does this legal precedent mean for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? If he is interrogated while in serious condition, he?d have no complaint under the Fifth Amendment unless the feds hoped to submit his answers as evidence. He could be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, but only if a court rules that questioning him in his current medical state is brutal or shocking to conscience.
Bonus Explainer: Who decides if an interrogation can proceed, the doctor or the cops? The cops have the most say, but if the doctor recommends against questioning and police proceed anyway, they could be accused of violating the suspect?s Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Can the government withhold treatment in order to interrogate first, or are they obliged to treat? Any confession extracted while treatment is withheld would almost certainly be seen to be obtained coercively?and thus, illegally. Same goes for informing a suspect that necessary treatment is being withheld, even if it isn?t. (Such tactics would likely be deemed ?mental torture.?)
?Woe to the land whose king is a child and whose leaders are already drunk in the morning. Happy the land whose king is a nobleman, and whose leaders work hard before they feast and drink, and then only to strengthen themselves for the tasks ahead?. (Eccl 10: 16-17)
"When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe." ? Frederic Bastiat
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Source ? The Declaration of Independence
The awesome photographer Flora Borsi, who once showed how Photoshop would look like in real life, is up to her awesomely hilarious tricks again. This time, Borsi splices herself taking a picture with a cell phone camera into old photographs. It's a commentary on how ridiculous we look trying to capture every waking moment through our camera's screen. It's fantastic. More »
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Syrian families have been burned in their homes, people bombed waiting for bread, children tortured, raped and murdered and cities reduced to rubble in Syria's two-year-old war that has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, the United Nations said on Thursday.
The bleak assessment by top U.N. humanitarian officials motivated the Security Council, which has been deadlocked over how to deal with the crisis since it began, to reach agreement on a non-binding statement demanding an end to the escalating violence and condemning human rights abuses by all sides.
A quarter of Syria's 22 million people are displaced within the country and 1.3 million have fled to other states in the Middle East and North Africa, U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told the U.N. Security Council.
It was a rare public briefing of the Security Council on the conflict in Syria, which was called for by Australia, and Amos pleaded for the 15 council members to "take the action necessary to end this brutal conflict."
"The situation in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe with ordinary people paying the price for the failure to end the conflict," Amos said. "I do not have an answer for those Syrians I have spoken to who asked me why the world has abandoned them."
The Security Council has been deadlocked on how to end the conflict. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's close ally Russia, with the aid of China, has used its veto power to block any condemnations or attempts to sanction Assad's government.
The United Nations says the war in Syria, which began as peaceful protests that turned violent when Assad tried to crush the revolt, has claimed more than 70,000 lives.
"Children are among the ones who suffer most," Amos said. "Children have been murdered, tortured and subjected to sexual violence. Many do not have enough food to eat. Millions have been traumatized by the horrors ... This brutal conflict is not only shattering Syria's present, it is destroying its future."
U.N. envoy on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, and U.N. envoy on children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, also briefed the council on the Syrian conflict.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari blamed terrorism and sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and others for the plight of its people and accused neighboring countries of preventing refugees from returning to Syria.
"Syrian people will not forgive facilitating the movement of thousands of European and Western terrorists and jihadists, sponsored by well-known intelligence agencies ... to the Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders with Syria," he said.
"They are accommodated in training camps to then enter my country and spread destruction and sabotage, and shed innocent blood," Ja'afari told the Security Council in comments that echoed what Assad said in a television interview on Wednesday.
RARE SECURITY COUNCIL AGREEMENT
The bleak briefings pushed the deadlocked Security Council to reach a rare agreement on a non-binding statement.
"The escalating violence is completely unacceptable and must end immediately," the council said, adding that it "urged all parties to ensure safe and unimpeded access for aid organizations to those in need in all areas of Syria."
The council also "condemned the widespread violations of human rights by the Syrian authorities, as well as any human rights abuses by armed groups" and said there should be "no impunity for serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law."
Guterres said that since February, there have been 8,000 Syrians a day fleeing across the country's borders and at that rate the number of refugees was forecast to more than double by the end of the year to 3.5 million.
"This is not just frightening. It risks becoming simply unsustainable. There is no way to adequately respond to the enormous humanitarian needs these figures represent," he told the Security Council. "And it is difficult to imagine how a nation can endure so much suffering."
He warned of the conflict spilling over into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq - Syria's neighbors bearing the refugee burden. He said that taking into account only registered refugees, Lebanon's population had grown by 10 percent.
"But taking into account refugees who are not seeking registration, and Syrian migrant workers, some even estimate that up to a quarter of the population of Lebanon may now be Syrian," Guterres said.
Amos said there were 6.8 million people inside Syria in need of aid.
She said that of the $1.5 billion pledged by international donors to cover Syria's humanitarian needs until June, only about half had been paid. She also painted a dire picture of international efforts to deliver aid within Syria.
Bureaucratic obstacles make it almost impossible for aid to be distributed and the Syrian government has reduced the number of aid groups approved to work in the country to 29 from 110, Amos said, adding that aid convoys were also regularly attacked or shot at and staff intimidated or kidnapped.
"People in opposition-held areas are in the most urgent need," she said. "I was horrified to hear accounts during my recent visit to Turkey of children dying from hunger in these areas. We need to get aid into these hard-to-reach areas."
Amos warned that the limitations on the ground have left the United Nations "precariously close to suspending some critical humanitarian operations."
"Members of the international community, particularly members of this council, must urgently come together in support of the Syrian people," she said.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Lisa Shumaker)
The moulds used to create plastic Lego pieces are engineered with extreme precision so that the bricks stay connected via friction alone. But over time your Lego pieces will wear out with use and eventually stop sticking, and Phillipe Cantin wanted to know exactly when that would happen. More »
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I need a way for the bullet to have the coordinates of its target, so i thought i could use a pointer. But it isnt exactly working out.
Here is the code i attempted:
//class Bullet_TrackingMissile Bullet_TrackingMissile (sf::Texture& spriteSheet, Enemy& target, int x, int y,int range) { this->target = target; //other code cut because it is irrelevant } void Update() { //check if target is null(if null that means it has died) target->//no members available float deltaX = target->GetX() - xPos; float deltaY = target->GetY() - yPos; float angle = std::atan(deltaY/deltaX)/DEGTORAD; if( deltaX < 0 ){ angle += 180;} if( deltaX >= 0 && deltaY < 0 ){ angle+= 360;} }
pls respond
Is This A Good Question/Topic? 0
Replies To: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
#2 jimblumberg ?
Reputation: 2945
Posts:8,948
Joined:25-December 09
Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 07:19 AM
Quote
But it isnt exactly working out.
So would you mind telling exactly why it's not "working out"?
You need to ask specific questions based on the code you provided.
Jim
#3 Nano511 ?
Reputation: 1
Posts:92
Joined:07-October 12
Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 07:37 AM
Oops sorry. The problem was that target has no available members in line 12
#4 jimblumberg ?
Reputation: 2945
Posts:8,948
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Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 07:41 AM
So how can we help? You haven't told us anything about this "target" or really any relevant data. In your snippets "target" seems to be uninitialized but I really can't tell with the paltry amount of code you've shown.
You need to post the smallest complete program that illustrates your problem.
Jim
#5 Nano511 ?
Reputation: 1
Posts:92
Joined:07-October 12
Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 07:53 AM
#pragma once #include "Bullet.h" class Bullet_TrackingMissile : public Bullet { private: Enemy* target; public: Bullet_TrackingMissile (sf::Texture& spriteSheet, Enemy* target, int x, int y,int range) { this->target = target; s_Sprite.setTexture(spriteSheet); xPos = x; yPos = y; speed = 4; this->range = range/speed; rangeCnt = 0; damage = 10; s_Sprite.setTextureRect(sf::IntRect(22, 8, 5, 5)); s_Sprite.setOrigin(2,2); } void Update() { target->//no members } };
#6 jimblumberg ?
Reputation: 2945
Posts:8,948
Joined:25-December 09
Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 08:01 AM
So like I said it looks, from the paltry code you provided, that target is not initialized. What is an Enemy? Where and how are you initializing this pointer? Either show all the relevant code or I can't help you.
Jim
This post has been edited by jimblumberg: Today, 08:02 AM
#7 Nano511 ?
Reputation: 1
Posts:92
Joined:07-October 12
Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 08:03 AM
okay i changed it to this:
Bullet_TrackingMissile (sf::Texture& spriteSheet, Enemy* target, int x, int y,int range) { this->target = new Enemy(); this->target = target;
but this->target still doesnt have any available members.
edit: should have been this->target = new Enemy();
This post has been edited by Nano511: Today, 08:15 AM
#8 jimblumberg ?
Reputation: 2945
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Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted Today, 08:29 AM
Since you won't provide the necessary information I can be of no further help. Good luck with your project.
By the way your last snippet probably generates a memory leak when you reassign the pointer you allocated with new to point to something else.
Jim
#9 Nano511 ?
Reputation: 1
Posts:92
Joined:07-October 12
Re: Confused about pointers, trying to make homing missile
Posted 24 minutes ago
My problem was that Enemy wasnt included. Thanks for the help though
Daft Punk's newest song Get Lucky from their upcoming album Random Access Memories has come with so much buzz that the only thing that can rival its thousands of leaks and millions of rumors is the next iPhone. Some people stitched together catchy loops from the SNL commercial, other people prayed for Coachella, but it's finally official. You can download it here. More »
Olivia Newton-John has revealed her older sister has been diagnosed with brain cancer. The 64-year-old “Grease” star, who is a breast cancer survivor herself, has postponed her upcoming Las Vegas residency to be with her 69-year-old sister Rona. Rona is also an actress and was previously married to the late “Grease” star Jeff Conaway from ...
