Family displaced as fire damages North Wales home - North Penn ...

Firefighters respond to a house fire at 333 Washington Ave. in North Wales Friday afternoon. Photo submitted by R.S. Wilmot

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Three residents were displaced and a home was heavily damaged after a blaze broke out around 2 p.m. Friday on the 300 block of Washington Avenue in North Wales.

?The neighbors heard something popping, and ran out and saw the side of the house on fire. We don?t know, we?re still investigating if that popping was the cause or one of the effects of the fire,? said Chris Park, Chief of the North Penn Fire Company.

That company and several others battled the fire for roughly an hour before bringing it under control, but not before much of the home?s second floor and first-floor roof were charred by the fire.

The cause is still under investigation, but PECO crews were on scene and cut utility lines to the house as firefighters took turns entering the house and dousing flames visible on the wooden eaves of the house.

Park said all three residents were unhurt and staying with friends and family, but declined to identify the victims further. No information was available Friday afternoon about any pets that may have lived in the house.

Montgomery County property records identify the property owners as Lambert and Claire Liebel, and family members at the scene said Claire, her son and daughter-in-law were inside and escaped the fire.

?There?s heavy exterior damage from fire, smoke and the water. We?re going to be out here for at least several more hours, just making sure everything?s completely out,? Park said.

Volunteer Medical Service Corps of Lansdale deployed an inflatable heated tent at the scene for emergency responders to stay warm, and Park said as of 4 p.m. Friday, firefighters were using it to warm up but none had been hurt while fighting the fire.

Jayne Blackledge, Director of the nearby North Wales Area Library, said that facility had its doors open for victims and emergency responders to come inside and warm up, and several had done so as snow fell on the fire scene.

?We have a microwave, we have restrooms, it?s a good place to come in and warm up. That?s what libraries are for,? she said.

Three residents were displaced and a home was heavily damaged after a blaze broke out around 2 p.m. Friday on the 300 block of Washington Avenue in North Wales.

?The neighbors heard something popping, and ran out and saw the side of the house on fire. We don?t know, we?re still investigating if that popping was the cause or one of the effects of the fire,? said Chris Park, Chief of the North Penn Fire Company.

That company and several others battled the fire for roughly an hour before bringing it under control, but not before much of the home?s second floor and first-floor roof were charred by the fire.

The cause is still under investigation, but PECO crews were on scene and cut utility lines to the house as firefighters took turns entering the house and dousing flames visible on the wooden eaves of the house.

Park said all three residents were unhurt and staying with friends and family, but declined to identify the victims further. No information was available Friday afternoon about any pets that may have lived in the house.

Montgomery County property records identify the property owners as Lambert and Claire Liebel, and family members at the scene said Claire, her son and daughter-in-law were inside and escaped the fire.

?There?s heavy exterior damage from fire, smoke and the water. We?re going to be out here for at least several more hours, just making sure everything?s completely out,? Park said.

Volunteer Medical Service Corps of Lansdale deployed an inflatable heated tent at the scene for emergency responders to stay warm, and Park said as of 4 p.m. Friday, firefighters were using it to warm up but none had been hurt while fighting the fire.

Jayne Blackledge, Director of the nearby North Wales Area Library, said that facility had its doors open for victims and emergency responders to come inside and warm up, and several had done so as snow fell on the fire scene.

?We have a microwave, we have restrooms, it?s a good place to come in and warm up. That?s what libraries are for,? she said.

Source: http://www.montgomerynews.com/articles/2013/01/26/north_penn_life/news/doc5103ded39d09f517205915.txt

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Syrian troops and militia push to take Sunni Homs areas

AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army has stepped up an offensive on opposition Sunni Muslim strongholds in the central city of Homs, bringing in ground forces and loyalist militia to try to secure a major road junction, opposition sources said on Friday.

Around 15,000 Sunni civilians are trapped on the southern and western edge of the city near the intersection of Syria's main north-south and east-west arteries, crucial to let the army travel between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, opposition campaigners in Homs said.

Rebels said they had moved into new areas of Homs this month to grab more territory, which could explain the offensive. Activists said that rebels had asked them not to report on the advances because it could provoke retaliatory strikes.

But activists in Homs said a barrage of army rocket, artillery and aerial bombardment had killed at least 120 civilians and 30 opposition fighters since Sunday.

In the south, eight members of Syria's military intelligence were killed by an Islamist militant car bomb on Thursday night near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, opposition activists and a violence monitoring group said on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bomb was planted by Al-Nusra Front, a rebel unit fighting to oust Assad that the United States has labeled a terrorist group.

"We think the blast might have killed a colonel who has been leading the fight against rebels in the area," Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory said. The building targeted is in the town of Saasa, 14 miles (23km) from the frontier with the Golan Heights, he said.

Syrian authorities have banned most independent media, making it difficult to verify such reports on the ground.

The nearly two-year-old conflict has now killed an estimated 60,000 people and a military stalemate has formed while hundreds of thousands of refugees flood into Syria's neighbors.

The Syrian Interior Ministry called on Thursday for Syrian refugees to come home and said they would be guaranteed safety.

A statement on the state news agency SANA said the government was "offering guarantees to all political opposition sides to enter the country ... (and) ... take part in the national dialogue without any query."

Few who left have returned, especially opposition supporters, and Assad said in a speech this month that he would not talk with opposition members he said had betrayed Syria or "gangs recruited abroad that follow the orders of foreigners".

The war has reached every province in the country and fighting has encroached on the heart of the capital Damascus, with residents reporting the daily thud of artillery being fired on rebel-held districts in the outskirts.

U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told CNN on Thursday that Assad's mother Anisa Makhlouf and his sister Bushra had both moved to the United Arab Emirates. It is not clear why they left.

SHABBIHA BROUGHT IN

Activist Nader al-Husseini, speaking by phone from the western sector of Homs, said at least 10,000 pro-Assad shabbiha militiamen had been brought from the coastal city of Tartous to back up the regular army.

"They go in infantry formations behind the soldiers and their specialty is looting and killing civilians," he said, adding that among dozens killed by the shabbiha were a family of five in the village of Naqira.

Husseini said 100 wounded civilians were trapped in Homs' western neighborhood of Kafar Aya and that the Free Syrian Army rebels had tried to negotiate a deal to evacuate them but failed.

Opposition sources blame shabbiha for the death of more than 100 Sunni men, women and children when they overran a nearby area 10 days ago.

Mostly Sunni Homs, a commercial and agricultural hub 140 km (90 miles) north of Damascus, has been at the heart of the uprising and armed insurgency against Assad and his establishment, composed mostly of Alawites, who follow an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam and comprise about 10 percent of the population. There is a large Alawite minority in Homs.

Syrian authorities have not commented directly on the latest offensive, but official media have in the past referred to the need to ?cleanse' the city of what they described as terrorists who were terrorizing peaceful neighborhoods.

Tareq, another activist, said the fall of Kafar Aya and the adjacent neighborhoods of Jobar and al-Sultaniya would make the position of Sunnis in the city untenable.

"These districts are the front line with Alawite areas from where rebels have been sometimes disrupting the road between Damascus and Tartous. If they fall the Assad army will have carved a big hole to proceed deep into Homs and secure the link to the capital."

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes, Mariam Karouny and Reuters TV in Beirut, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-sends-ground-forces-try-seize-sunni-areas-105159473.html

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Actor Burt Reynolds reportedly in intensive care with flu

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - American actor Burt Reynolds is battling the flu in the intensive care unit of a Florida hospital, CNN reported on Friday.

The "Smokey and the Bandit" actor arrived at the unnamed hospital with dehydration and was later transferred to intensive care, Reynolds' manager, Erik Kritzer, told CNN.

"He is doing better at this time," Kritzer was quoted as saying on Friday afternoon. "We expect, as soon as he gets more fluids, he will be back in a regular room."

Reynolds, 76, is famous for roles in 1970s movies including "Deliverance" and "The Longest Yard." More recently, he won a Golden Globe award for his role as a porn king in 1997 film "Boogie Nights."

Reynolds had heart bypass surgery in 2010.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/actor-burt-reynolds-reportedly-intensive-care-flu-003903559.html

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Was the last assault weapons ban effective?

By Polly DeFrank, Researcher, NBC News

As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., consider President Obama's proposal to institute a new assault weapons ban, we thought it would be helpful to take a look at the last one.

What was the 1994 assault weapons ban?

The law banned the manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain semiautomatic assault weapons (otherwise known as simply ?assault weapons? or ?AWs?). The law applied to several named weapons, as well as any semiautomatic pistol or weapon that has ?an ability to accept a detachable magazine? and at least two of five specific features listed in the law.

It also banned the transfer or possession of ?large capacity ammunition feeding devices? (otherwise known as ?large-capacity magazines? or ?LCMs?).? These were defined as ?a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar Device???that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition; but does not include an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition.??

Officially known as Title XI of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the ban went into effect on Sept. 13, 1994.? It was repealed 10 years later.

Did the ban have any major limitations?

According to the 2004 National Institute of Justice Assessment of the ban, it had one big one:? Assault weapons and large-capacity magazines manufactured before the effective date of the ban were ?grandfathered? and thus legal to possess and transfer. That?s a whole lot of firepower:

• In 1990, there were an estimated 1 million privately owned assault weapons in the U.S. that would have been grandfathered.
• Americans possessed an estimated 25 million guns equipped with large-capacity magazines in 1994, and gun industry sources estimated that -- including aftermarket items for repairing and extending magazines -- there were at least 25 million LCMs available in the U.S. as of 1995, with at least 4.7 million pre-ban LCMs imported into the U.S. during the ban.

Has anyone measured the ban?s effectiveness?

The Law Enforcement Act of 1994 required a study by the U.S. attorney general to determine the effects of the ban, to be conducted within 30 months after it was enacted. The National Institute of Justice awarded a grant to The Urban Institute for an evaluation, which was titled ?Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994.? That evaluation was updated in 2004 by one of the original authors (findings below). Since the ban was allowed to lapse in 2004, there hasn?t been another comprehensive national study.

What was the criminal use of assault weapons before the ban?

According to the 2004 assessment mentioned above:

• By most estimates, assault weapons were used in less than 6 percent of gun crimes before the ban (about 2 percent in most studies and up to 8 percent in others). The relatively small number can be attributed to the higher cost of AWs and the fact that longer AW?s are difficult to conceal. Most of the AWs used in crime were assault pistols rather than assault rifles.
• Guns equipped with LCMs ? of which AWs are a subset ? were used in roughly 14 percent to 26 percent of most gun crimes. Although this range was based on a small number of studies, it is generally consistent with national survey estimates stating that approximately 18 percent of all civilian-owned guns and 21 percent of civilian-owned handguns were equipped with LCMs as of 1994.

What were the effects of the ban?

According to the official NIJ assessment:

• The share of gun crimes involving AWs declined by 17 percent to 72 percent for the locations observed in this study (Baltimore, Miami, Milwaukee, Boston, St. Louis, and Anchorage) during all or some of the? 1995-2003 post-ban period. This is consistent with patterns found in national data on guns recovered by police and reported to ATF.
• However, in the jurisdictions studied, the decline in AW use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with LCMs. The failure to reduce LCM use has likely been due to the immense stock that was in place prior to the ban as well as imports, the report found.
• The few available studies do, however, suggest that attacks with AWs and other semiautomatics equipped with LCMs result in more shots fired, more people hit, and more wounds per victim than do attacks with other firearms.

What is the trend in crimes involving assault weapons since the ban?s expiration?

As explained above, there has been no comprehensive nationwide study done since 2004. However, the Police Executive Research Forum reported several findings in "Guns and Crime: Breaking New Ground by Focusing on the Local Impact" in 2010.? Since the ban?s expiration in 2004:

• 37 percent of police agencies who responded to this survey reported that they?ve seen noticeable increases in the use of assault weapons by criminals.
• 53 percent reported seeing increases in large-caliber handguns, such as .40 caliber weapons.
• 38 percent reported noticeable increases in criminals? use of semiautomatic weapons with high-capacity magazines (holding 10 or more rounds).

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16549416-was-the-last-assault-weapons-ban-effective?lite

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Supervisor deserves termination? - Business Management Daily

Hey, it happens: Sometimes, supervisors screw up. Go ahead and discipline them for their mistakes, even if you?re afraid your actions might trigger a discrimination or harassment lawsuit.

Recent case: Robert, a supervisor at a retirement community, had a spotty employment record. He sometimes didn?t listen to directions, ignored aspects of his work and behaved poorly.

For example, another employee once complained that Robert took her pen, put it in his pants pocket and asked her to retrieve it, telling her, ?Feel how hard it is.? When confronted, Robert complained that the woman had harassed him. Neither claim resulted in disciplinary action against either employee.

Robert?s neglect piled up. He forgot to tell HR about a subordinate?s FMLA request. He brought his son to work and allowed him to be disruptive. He mishandled an employee?s need for sick leave. He was finally fired.

Robert fired back with a retaliation lawsuit. He tacked on a hostile work environment claim, stating that another supervisor had made disparaging comments about Mexicans. (Robert has a Hispanic last name.)

The court threw out his case. It reasoned that the retirement community had good reason to fire Robert, given his poor work record. The court didn?t think an isolated comment that might be tinged with prejudice was enough to create a hostile work environment, especially when it hadn?t been directed at Robert. (Gutierrez v. The Meadows of Napa Valley, No. A132705, Court of Appeal of California, 2012)

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