Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Parents Arrested for Failing to Register Home-Schooled Kids

January 4, 2010

CBS Channel 6, Albany, NY - A Montgomery County couple has been arrested on child endangerment charges for failing to register their children with the school district as they were home-schooled, the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said Monday.

Richard Cressy, 47, and Margie Cressy, 41, both of the town of Glen, never registered their four children or their home-schooling curriculum with the local school district, said the Sheriff's Office.

The Superintendent of the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District confirmed the four children, ranging in age from 8 to 14, had not been registered with the school district for the last seven years.

The Cressys were issued appearance tickets to appear in the Town of Glen Court at a later date. The case has been turned over to the Montgomery County District Attorney and the Child Protective Unit.

Plan B One Step, "The Morning After Pill "

Planned Parenthood, Birth Control, Abortion, Public School Sex Education, Homosexual Agenda, Sterilization through Food and Water Supply, and Now We Have ... Plan B One Step, "The Morning After Pill," to help with the depopulation goal of the ruling elite.

January 1, 2010

FDA Wesite - FDA Approves Plan B One-Step Emergency Contraceptive; Lowers Age for Obtaining Two-Dose Plan B Emergency Contraceptive without a Prescription.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Plan B One-Step, a single dose emergency contraceptive containing levonorgestrel 1.5 mg in a single tablet. The FDA also announced a change in the labeling of Plan B, currently marketed as an emergency contraceptive consisting of two levonorgestrel 0.75 mg tablets taken 12 hours apart.

Plan B has been available to women 18 years of age and older without a prescription and to women younger than 18 years of age only by prescription since August 2006.

With the FDA's action, both Plan B One-Step and Plan B will be available without a prescription to women 17 years of age and older. They will both be available for women younger than 17 years of age only by prescription.

Plan B® One-Step is an emergency contraceptive, available in just one pill. It can help prevent a pregnancy after unprotected sex or contraceptive failure. When taken as directed—within 72 hours (3 days) after contraceptive failure or unprotected intercourse—approximately seven out of eight women who would have gotten pregnant will not become pregnant after taking Plan B® One-Step. But the sooner you take it, the more effective it will be.

Plan B® One-Step is safe and effective. Plan B® One-Step is FDA-approved and contains levonorgestrel, the same ingredient found in many birth control pills. The difference is that Plan B® One-Step requires just one pill which uses a larger dose of levonorgestrel than a single birth control pill. And, unlike many birth control pills, Plan B® One-Step doesn’t contain any estrogen, only progestin.

Plan B® One-Step isn’t RU-486 (the abortion pill); it won’t work if you’re already pregnant, and it won’t affect an existing pregnancy.

Plan B® One-Step isn’t regular birth control and should not be used that way. Plan B® One-Step is not as effective as other methods of birth control used consistently and correctly. It’s important to have another reliable source of birth control that’s right for you. Plan B® One-Step won’t protect you from HIV infection (the virus that causes AIDS) or any other sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Body Scanners Break Child Porn Laws

A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of full body scanners only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

January 4, 2010

Guardian - The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.

A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements, only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted.

The decision followed a warning from Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, that the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a "pseudo-image" of a child.

Dowty told the Guardian she raised concerns with the Metropolitan police five years ago over plans to use similar scanners in an anti-knife campaign, and when the Department for Transport began a similar trial in 2006 on the Heathrow Express rail service from Paddington station.

"They do not have the legal power to use full body scanners in this way," said Dowty, adding there was an exemption in the 1978 law to cover the "prevention and detection of crime" but the purpose had to be more specific than the "trawling exercise" now being considered.

A Manchester airport spokesman said their trial had started in December, but only with passengers over 18 until the legal situation with children was clarified. So far 500 people have taken part on a voluntary basis with positive feedback from nearly all those involved.

Passengers also pass through a metal detector before they can board their plane. Airport officials say the scanner image is only seen by a single security officer in a remote location before it is deleted.

A Department for Transport spokesman said:

"We understand the concerns expressed about privacy in relation to the deployment of body scanners. It is vital staff are properly trained and we are developing a code of practice to ensure these concerns are properly taken into account. Existing safeguards also mean those operating scanners are separated from the device, so unable to see the person to whom the image relates, and these anonymous images are deleted immediately."

But Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, had concerns over the "instant" introduction of scanners:

"Where are the government assurances that electronic strip-searching is to be used in a lawful and proportionate and sensitive manner based on rational criteria rather than racial or religious bias?" she said.

Her concerns were echoed by Simon Davies of Privacy International who said he was sceptical of the privacy safeguards being used in the United States. Although the American system insists on the deletion of the images, he believed scans of celebrities or of people with unusual or freakish body profiles would prove an "irresistible pull" for some employees.

The disclosures came as Downing Street insisted British intelligence information that the Detroit plane suspect tried to contact radical Islamists while a student in London was passed on to the US.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's name was included in a dossier of people believed to have made attempts to deal with extremists, but he was not singled out as a particular risk, Brown's spokesman said.

President Barack Obama has criticised US intelligence agencies for failing to piece together information about the 23-year-old that should have stopped him boarding the flight.

Brown's spokesman said:

"There was security information about this individual's activities and that was shared with the US authorities."