Hasta La Gadget!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Model Janice Dickinson sued Bill Cosby for defamation on Wednesday over denials made by the comedian’s representatives after she accused him last year of raping her in 1982.

Dickinson’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages on defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims. The suit states Dickinson has been re-victimized and her reputation has suffered because of pointed denials by Cosby’s attorney that the comedian drugged and raped her in a Lake Tahoe, California, hotel room more than 30 years ago. The allegations were first made in an interview with “Entertainment Tonight” after numerous other women accused Cosby of drugging them and inappropriate sexual conduct dating back several decades.

The lawsuit states Dickinson, 60, sought a retraction of the denials from Cosby, but the request was denied.

An email sent to Cosby’s attorney Martin Singer was not immediately returned. Singer called Dickinson’s rape allegations “false and outlandish” in a letter to The Associated Press last year.

The lawsuit details Dickinson’s allegations that Cosby raped her after giving her wine and a pill in the hotel room, and how she wanted to go public with her story in a 2002 autobiography but was prevented from doing so by the book’s publisher.

She did not report the incident to police in the early 1980s out of fear of retaliation by Cosby, her lawsuit states. The statute of limitations to criminally prosecute the actor-comedian has long since passed, as has the statute on civil claims directly related to the incident.

“This is Janice Dickinson’s chance for justice,” her attorney Lisa Bloom said Wednesday.

Three women who have accused Cosby of abuse have sued him for defamation in a Massachusetts federal court.

One of the women, Therese Serignese, said after a court hearing earlier this month that she wanted her reputation restored after Cosby’s camp branded her a liar.

Dickinson’s lawsuit is seeking a similar outcome.

“Cosby knows that he drugged and raped Ms. Dickinson,” the lawsuit states. “He knew that calling her rape disclosure a lie was a false statement.”

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

WASHINGTON — Earlier this week, a key element of President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, which substantially increased deportation relief for roughly 4.1 million people, should have gone into effect.

It didn’t, but the most outspoken immigration advocate in Congress is optimistic about the future.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) told The Huffington Post that the public debate leading up to the 2016 presidential election will change everything, particularly since two of the major contenders, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican potential candidate Jeb Bush, have voiced support for immigration reform.

“You get the Republican and the Democrat nominee. Hallelujah, we made it to prime time,” Gutierrez said. “Our issue now is center. It’s national. No one can walk away from it. Hillary is speaking about it, Jeb Bush is speaking about it, the Republicans are speaking about it.”

Obama’s executive action is stalled because 26 states brought a lawsuit claiming that the new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program would hurt them. DAPA would allow work authorization and temporary, renewable suspension of deportation for undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

Gutierrez said he had helped in preparing some 13,000 people in Chicago alone to apply for deportation relief this week.

Though disappointed about DAPA’s delay, he sees the larger cause of immigration reform moving forward.

“Regardless of what happens in the court, regardless of what the Republicans do, this will be an issue that will need to be debated November 2016. People are going to go to vote,” Gutierrez said.

“You know what they’re going to be thinking?” he added. “They’re going to be thinking, ‘Who will protect the millions of people under the president’s executive order? Who’s going to expand it?’”

If Clinton is successful in nabbing the Democratic nomination for 2016, Gutierrez suggested he’d be on board, citing her promise to be more expansive in granting American citizenship to the undocumented.

If it’s Bush for the Republican nomination? Gutierrez said the former Florida governor’s stance on immigration is “almost better” than Clinton’s.

“I think better than that, because it’s another Republican, is Jeb Bush,” Gutierrez said. “While he was really screwing up with the whole issue of Iraq, he said, ‘I want to eliminate DACA and DAPA, but I’m not going to do it until I find a substitute for the folks that are in the DAPA and DACA programs,’ which are the executive orders of the president. In other words, ‘anybody impacted by the executive orders of the president in a positive nature, I’m for.’”

DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is another program that allows young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to seek temporary deportation relief and work permits. Obama expanded the program in his November executive action.

Bush did say he wants to replace DAPA and DACA with other reforms, but he hasn’t clarified whether he would make sure those reforms were in place before ending the programs.

Still, Gutierrez argues that “everybody is evolving” on the issue.

“I remember Hillary, when the children first came to the border, and Hillary said, ‘Oh, they can’t just show up. They have to be sent back home.’ She’s not there anymore. You remember when in 2008 they asked Hillary a question about driver’s licenses for the undocumented? She was paralyzed. ‘Oh my God. I don’t know. I don’t think so?’” Gutierrez recalled.

“Here’s the good thing. Democrats and many Republicans, they’re not there anymore. There’s a lot less confusion about the way forward on immigration reform,” he said.

For his part, Gutierrez said he will continue to help as many undocumented immigrants as he can get their birth certificates, IDs and other papers in order so they’re ready when the lawsuit is over and, he predicts, won by his side.

Jesse Rifkin contributed reporting.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

WASHINGTON — A congressional watchdog on Wednesday provided new details on a $36 million facility in Afghanistan that was regarded as unnecessary by commanders on the ground, and ultimately was never used by the United States. The revelation highlights what’s considered one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer funds in the Afghan war, and potentially threatens the confirmation of the next top military officer in the U.S.

The report, from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, focuses on the construction of a 64,000 square foot facility at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It features jarring photographs of the facility taken on May 8, 2013: Chairs still have plastic shrink-wrapping on them, boxes of supplies stand closed and stacked. And it sheds light on what the inspector general says is a failure at specific command levels in the Army to stop spending money once it was appropriated — even if the funds were clearly redundant.

The inspector general’s report comes a year and a half after the Army’s own investigation into the spending absolved a top commander of blame for it. The commander, now-retired Lt. Gen. Peter Vangjel, was identified by both the Army and the inspector general as responsible for greenlighting the spending. Per the investigations, Vangjel instructed that the project continue even after the top Marine commander in the province, along with other generals, had informed the Army that he did not see a need for the $36 million facility.

The report reads:

In August 2010, then-Major General Peter M. Vangjel, Deputy Commanding General of USARCENT, rejected the advice of General Mills, General McHale, and General Buckler, and disapproved the request to cancel the 64K building, stating that:

“Currently, this facility is also listed in the FY 12 OCO emerging requirements . . . . Therefore, cancelling the FY10 project, which has appropriated funds, and reprogramming it for a later year is not prudent.”

General Vangjel’s memorandum did not contain any other basis for rejecting the request to cancel the 64K building, nor did it dispute General Buckler’s prior statement that the building was not required under the “ISAF Campaign Plan, the Afghanistan Basing Strategy and Base Master Plans.”

Mills was the Marine commander, McHale was a support commander for the U.S. Afghan mission and Buckler was the chief of the Afghan mission’s engineers. ISAF refers to the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led coalition that took charge of Afghanistan’s security after the U.S.-led invasion following Sept. 11.

Work on the facility only stopped in April 2013. By that point, it was 98 percent complete, $36 million had already been spent on it, and the commander at the U.S. base where it was being built had again notified his superiors there was no need for it. The base, Camp Leatherneck, has since been handed over to Afghanistan.

The inspector general’s report recommends Vangjel face disciplinary action. It then goes a step further and connects the years-old issue to a current political question by suggesting the Army also discipline two military officials who the inspector general argues helped prevent the exposure of the massive waste: Maj. Gen. James Richardson, who conducted the 2013 Army investigation that failed to assign blame, and Col. Norman Allen, a legal adviser to the Obama administration’s recently announced nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former top Afghanistan commander Gen. Joseph Dunford.

According to the inspector general, Allen shared portions of Richardson’s report with Vangjel — the commander who made the call to continue building the facility even after officers on the ground deemed it unnecessary — saying that Dunford had “directed [him] to follow-up directly.”

“Colonel Allen may have effectively ‘coached’ General Vangjel, thereby compromising the integrity of the investigation. Rather than simply asking General Vangjel why he thought it was prudent to approve the [$36 million] building, Colonel Allen appears to have provided him with the answer,” the inspector general’s report reads.

In other emails included in the report, Allen also told Pentagon officials to “slow roll” their responses to the inspector general.

Photographs of the never-used facility taken by officials with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction on May 9, 2013.

The inspector general blasted Allen, the Dunford adviser, for what appears to be an attempt to discourage cooperation with an investigation. “It is particularly surprising that a senior lawyer with substantial experience as a commissioned officer in the Judge Advocate General branch of the U.S. Army, would appear to condone violation of Section 6 of the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, which requires Federal agencies to provide all information requested by an inspector general and to cooperate with an inspector general’s audits and investigations,” the inspector general’s report adds.

Allen’s response to the inspector general, attached to the just-released report, states that he “disagree[s] with the characterization of my communications and actions.

“I take strong exception to allegations that I interfered in the process and demonstrated a lack of integrity or compliance with legal and ethical standards. Many efforts were taken to ensure we got timely and accurate information in order for the commander to take appropriate measures.”

He is declining to comment beyond that response, according to ABC News.

The Pentagon has declined to take disciplinary action against Allen or the two other officers the inspector general recommends it act against, according to a Feb. 9 Pentagon response to the report provided by the inspector general. The Defense Department says it has already reviewed all three officers’ actions.

The report, based on interviews with senior Pentagon personnel and a review of thousands of Pentagon documents, is causing a stir on Capitol Hill. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a Senate Armed Services Committee member who has focused on uncovering waste in Afghanistan, called the facility “one of the most outrageous, deliberate, and wasteful misuses of taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan we’ve ever seen.”

McCaskill added, in a statement provided to HuffPost, that she would support efforts to hold the three officers accountable as the inspector general suggested.

Dunford, who is not directly implicated by the report, will need to be confirmed by the Senate before he can take up his new position as the chief military official in the country. It appeared Wednesday that Allen’s behavior could become an issue around the time of Dunford’s confirmation hearing, which could come next month.

The inspector general for Afghanistan has uncovered scores of examples of U.S. waste there as part of his congressionally mandated mission. However, his office at times has had tension with federal agencies it accuses of mismanaging taxpayer dollars, and has seen its capacity to monitor the massive U.S. investment in Afghanistan shrink as the American footprint there diminishes. President Barack Obama has promised to fully end the U.S. mission there by the end of 2016 — even as worries grow about the Afghan army’s ability to face off the Taliban insurgency and other extremist groups on its own.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Co-authored with Kjølv Egeland, Advisor, International Law and Policy Institute

As we write this blog, the parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) are gathered in New York to discuss the past and future five years in the treaty’s life. National delegations are desperate to achieve consensus on an outcome document to determine the next steps for disarmament. History suggests, however, that the adoption of such a document will have zero effect on nuclear stockpiles.

The first two weeks of the NPT Review Conference saw national delegations read set-piece statements, but the second part is all about negotiating an outcome document that will determine actions for the 2015-2020 review cycle. As before, disarmament is the most divisive issue also this year. While most non-nuclear-weapon states consider nuclear disarmament a matter of urgency, the nuclear-weapon states predictably regard it as a long-term goal, or mere “vision,” at best.

The review conferences’ success or failure is usually measured by whether or not the parties agree on an outcome document. After all, outcome documents are adopted by consensus, and consensus, by definition, means that everyone agrees. Consensus is difficult, however: the NPT parties have thrice failed to reach one (1980, 1990 and 2005). These occasions are often described as “failures,” “disappointments,” or even “disasters,” because the nuclear-weapon states would not agree to outcome documents that called on them to disarm. In contrast, “successful” NPT review conferences adopt outcome documents intended to advance the treaty’s stated aims of nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and facilitation of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. For example, the outcome documents from 2000 and 2010 both “unequivocally” affirmed that the nuclear-weapon states should take steps to accomplish “the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament.”

Before and during this year’s conference, some governments and independent analysts expressed their hopes that an outcome document would be adopted. Many states insist that a step-by-step approach inside the NPT framework is the most viable route to disarmament and, as they like to point out, there are no “shortcuts” to a world free of nuclear weapons. This raises the question of whether there is in fact a correlation between the successful adoption of an NPT outcome document, on the one hand, and a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons during the following five-year period, on the other. One may also ask whether the failure to adopt such a document results in the growth or stagnation of nuclear stockpiles. In other words, is there really a functioning, multilateral “long road” to disarmament?

As it turns out, no such correlation exists.

The table below shows the results of a bivariate correlation between the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenal of each NPT nuclear-weapon state, and whether the preceding five-year period had an effective NPT outcome document. For those with a faith in the NPT disarmament process, these results are disheartening.

It so happens that the adoption of an outcome document in all cases is associated not with disarmament, but with armament. Due in part to the low number of observations (there are only 14 five-year cycles since the start of the nuclear era in 1945), we cannot be sure that this overall association is not due to chance. Only in the case of the UK can we confidently say that the adoption of an outcome document is systematically associated with armament: when the NPT adopts an outcome document, the UK’s nuclear arsenal grows. As for China, France and Russia, we can only be reasonably sure that the relationship holds (with 85, 80, and 70 per cent confidence, respectively). When it comes to the U.S., an outcome document appears to have no statistical association with disarmament whatsoever.

The following graph shows how the five NPT nuclear-weapon states’ arsenals have evolved over time. Those years in which a successful outcome document was adopted are flagged with blue dots. “Failures” are flagged with red dots. As is evident from this graph, it is difficult to detect any relationship between outcome documents and stockpile sizes. (Keep in mind that China and France did not accede to the NPT until the early 1990s.)

So what?

This admittedly limited statistical analysis nevertheless suggests that the NPT is not particularly effective as a disarmament treaty. With or without outcome documents, other factors determine stockpile sizes. And yet, the “success” or “failure” of NPT review conferences continues to be premised on the adoption or non-adoption of an outcome document. We suggest that this be rethought.

As its name reveals, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was intended primarily as a tool with which to stem the horizontal spread of nuclear weapons. It has done so quite well, and the NPT is indeed a valuable legal instrument in that respect. When it comes to disarmament, however, it is time to think afresh. A nuclear-weapon free world will need new international legislation. Seventy years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is well and truly high time.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Horseshoe bats’ unique noses and big, flexible ears make them nature’s most dynamic sonar arrays. Engineers built a mechanical version, and they’re testing it on a quadcopter drone.

Read more…