As if the media needs another example of sparing no expense to making Barrack Obama more king-like. And they say the US election is about issues, not images? That the conventions are news worth events? Looks like a week of me watching coverage news from the BBC or France24 instead of the CNN Infomercial.
Expect to hear jokes and asides about this and the media’s love-in with Obama in the next week.
Henry Cejudo, the son of undocumented Mexican immigrants, became the first American to win a gold medal in freestyle wrestling in 16 years when he beat Japan’s Tomohiro Matsunaga to win the 55-kilogram (121 pounds) freestyle final on Tuesday.
Gotta love the American dream, even if it did involve a bit of fence jumping at the border. Of course the way the USCIS works, even if he was a Mexican national they might have been able to rush through a naturalization in time for the Olympics (as they have done in the past for soccer players and athletes in other sports)
Raj Bhavsar has a nice story. He was an alternate in 2004, and when the 2008 trials came he was named alternate once again, thinking his Olympic dream was over. He almost was ready to pack it in after 2004 but some self-reflection brought him around to thinking he should try again.
When Paul Hamm pulled out with a hurt hand, Raj was elevated to the national team and on his way to China.
In his role as Hamm’s replacement, Bhavsar will perform in five of six events in Saturday’s team prelims, based on the schedule that the U.S. men used Wednesday. Five gymnasts compete in each event in prelims, and the top four scores count.
You can see some of his Youtube videos here from the Olympic trials.
China, Macau and Hong Kong have come to some agreements on the proposed Hong Kong – Macau Bridge. The HK Standard is writing that the final agreements on who is going to pay what bit of the approximately $3 billion in costs has been hammered out recently.
Guangdong and the central government will put 7 billion yuan (HK$8 billion) toward the 37.45 billion yuan bill, Hong Kong 6.75 billion yuan and Macau 1.98 billion yuan, according to Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam- kuen, who unveiled financing details during the 11th Hong Kong- Guangdong Cooperation Joint Conference with provincial governor Huang Huahua.
The remaining 21.72 billion yuan for the project will come from loans.
However, neither Tsang nor Huang revealed further details of the loan plan. Tsang said work will start no later than 2010.
Kind of a bummer because I really liked taking the hydrofoils from Hong Kong over to the gambling dens of inequity, but maybe they’ll still run for those who want to enter Macau from the sea.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed to the Washington Post what many people have mentioned in recent months: DHS border guards are seizing laptops, Blackberries and other electronic items at the border with little or no probable cause of wrongdoing.
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies theDepartment of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The full policy is here. Interesting that they don’t actually cite any law as authority for the seizures, though the 9th Circuit of California (i.e. the ‘Whacky Circuit) has upheld the searches.
Typical ’security guard turned cop’ mentality going on here. My friends in the intelligence community really get tired of law enforcement stuff like this as the giant ‘hoovering’ effect of pulling in more and more intelligence yields very little nuggets but encourages the bad guys to find systems of communicating ‘off the grid’ which they simply cannot penetrate.
