Pleasant Hill man fatally stabs pit bull that was attacking his dog - San Jose Mercury News
PLEASANT HILL -- A man walking his dog Thursday night stabbed and killed a pit bull after it attacked his pet, police said, marking the second pit bull attack in the city in the past three days.
The incident unfolded at 8:21 p.m. Thursday in the 700 block of West Boyd Road, when two loose pit bulls raced at a large dog of an unknown mixed breed that was being walked on a leash, Pleasant Hill police Corp. Jason Kleven said.
The man walking the dog initially tried to kick the other animals to stop the attack, Kleven said, but when that didn't work, the man pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed each of the pit bulls once.
One of the dogs, a 3-year-old, died from its injuries, and the other was taken to a veterinarian after being located by its owner. The dog that was attacked suffered neck wounds, Kleven said. Its condition was unknown.
No arrests were made, Kleven said.
On Wednesday, a pit bull escaped its house in the 1900 block of Helen Drive and attacked a Chihuahua mix that was in the street in front of the home. A woman living in the home tried to separate the dogs by and wound up with puncture wounds and possibly broken fingers on her right hand.
Rick Hurd covers public safety. Contact him at 925-945-4780 and follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/3rdERH.
More York families struggle with debt (From York Press) - The Press in York
More York families struggle with debt
3:59pm Friday 8th June 2012 in News 
SQUEEZED households in York are struggling to make ends meet, according to new figures from a leading debt advice charity.
Figures from the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) show that York residents contacting the charity for help last year were an average of £11 short of the amount needed to cover their basic living expenses, much less debt repayments, each month. The charity is warning that many are at risk of falling into serious debt.
A total of 792 people in the York area contacted the CCCS helpline in 2011 for advice on dealing with credit cards, store cards, payday loans and other kinds of unsecured debt. On average they owed £18,162 - above the UK average of £17,983.
The city’s Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) said the figures backed up their experiences.
CAB debt worker Kevin Butler said: “We have as high a demand now as we have ever had and we do all we can to help. What we have found is that until a few years ago the typical client was someone on a low income, someone not working or a single person with children. But for the last couple of years the people coming in have gone up the social scale. We now see more professionals, couples that are both working with families. People who have jobs are really struggling.
“In the vast majority of cases it’s because of a change in circumstances but there’s a sizeable minority of people who may be don’t work as many hours or have had cuts in overtime and that coupled with the rise in living costs have now tipped them over the edge.”
Delroy Corinaldi, CCCS director of external affairs, said: "Households in York are under relentless pressure from a combination of low wage growth and the rising cost of living. As the financial squeeze continues to tighten, many more people in York are at risk of falling into serious debt.
“FThe most important step you can take is to seek free advice as soon as you start to fall behind."
CCCS provides free and confidential debt advice at 0800 138 1111 and anonymous online debt counselling tool, CCCS Debt Remedy, at www.cccs.co.uk To contact York CAB call 08444 111444, visit www.adviceguide.org.uk or visit drop in sessions at Blossom Street on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9.30am - midday.
Where is the vision? - The Daily Star
Whatever the Congress speaks, it sounds like an evangelist's outpouring. The party was no different a few days ago at its meeting of some 100 delegates, comprising Working Committee members and state presidents. The party again acted like a preacher who wanted to stir up feelings of revival. It cannot be done by merely attacking the opponents. There have to be answers to the questions on the ever-rising prices and the never-ending scams.
The delegates and other supporters who return to their field have to tell the people among whom they live or work what are the replies they have brought back. There have been scams costing the exchequer billions of rupees and inordinate delays in taking steps to stop the down-sliding economy. Still, there is no official explanation.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's slogan, "we will overcome," or Congress president Sonia Gandhi's attack for levelling baseless charges will not do. The party men are not gullible as they have been in the past. They want proof and measure it against their living conditions.
The overconfidence, rather arrogance, that the Congress leaders effuse, particularly the seemingly humble Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, has not gone down well. People have not been taken in by the promises. The government's performance is pretty poor. True, the general elections are still two years away. Yet this period is not long enough for the government to take pertinent steps which would perk the economy and the life of the voters.
Somehow, I was expecting drastic changes in the cabinet, a bigger role for Rahul Gandhi, and innovative economic policies to give the message of a new resolve and new measures to reflect a better way of governance. The hedging because of impending presidential election is understandable. Yet the delegates and others cannot say that the paralysis of government is because the party wants first to install its own person at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Congress has missed a great opportunity if it had anything up its sleeve. I am confirmed in my view that the party is bereft of ideas and does not know how to control prices or to facilitate more production in factories and fields. It seems to have lost its way.
The seemingly alternative Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is neither here nor there. The criticism of the ruling party, with a pinch of parochialism, completes the BJP's story from A to Z. Lately, it has smelt power. It believes that the people''s alienation with the Congress will divert them to the BJP. But when its own house is not in order, how can it expect to net the catch it wants?
That the RSS will continue to dominate it is not something the party can wish away even if the bulk of it wants to have a different image. One, it cannot deny the parenthood because the RSS gave birth to the Jana Sangh, later renamed as the BJP, to be the organisation's political arm. Two, the party does not have any cadre of its own. The leadership, drawn from the middle class, does not like the smell of sweat of the pracharaks (the RSS preachers). But they are their main strength.
The BJP has never been a party in the real sense. It was a reaction to the ousting of old Jana Sangh members by the Janata Party which wanted them to make their promise to cut off links with the RSS good. And the RSS on its part has kept the BJP under its control. Even a tall person like Atal Behari Vajpayee had to wear khaki knickers and stand at attention in the RSS organised drills to show who the boss was. That is the reason why the RSS leaders chip-chop the party in the way they want and whenever they want. BJP chief Nitin Gadkari is the RSS choice; and even when he was not to the liking of veteran L.K. Avani or the opposition leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, Gadkari was reappointed.
Such an imposition is maybe disliked by some members who feel that by this time they have won recognition on their own. Yet they never challenge the RSS because they have seen that a few who did went out unsung and unwept. Since their differences are never over the ideology, they continue to be a part of the big family.
The RSS knows whom to project and when. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has started behaving as if he will be the prime minister when the BJP forms the government after the 2014 general elections. The RSS has criticised the party for having too many persons harbouring the ambition of becoming prime minister. Maybe it feels that it is too early to project Modi. Maybe, it believes that his name will daunt many liberals sitting on the fence thinking of voting for the BJP.
But what the RSS doesn't seem to realise is that Modi's candidature will divide the nation, which does not accept him in any shape after what he did to the Muslims in Gujarat. He is yet to clear himself from the various cases filed against him. That the Supreme Court misjudged the credentials of former IB chief R.K. Raghavan when it appointed him as head of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which has exonerated Modi, does not mean that the mistake cannot be rectified. His report is anything but unbiased. The RSS should wait till Modi is exonerated.
The unhappiness of Advani is understandable because he led the oustees from the Janata Party to assemble them under the umbrella of the BJP. He finds the RSS, which he served as a loyal soldier, has not allowed him to become the opposition leader of the house, the Lok Sabha. In fact, he owes it to the BJP parliament members who rehabilitated him by creating the position of chairman of the parliamentary party.
The people's dilemma is that both national parties, the Congress and the BJP, riven as they are with groupism and ambitions, do not qualify to lead the nation. How I wish there was some party, even though small, that had the vision to retrieve the country and take it forward.
Visit my website: www.kuldipnayar.com
A fractured BJP - DAWN Group
THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the only political party to have been established and run by an outside body, the militant Hindu communal body the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Some time ago, the truth about its grip on the BJP became more evident than ever before and so also its indiscipline. What emerged was the ascendancy of Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, on whose watch, a pogrom of Muslims was conducted. Some 2,000 were killed, very many injured, and there was a massive uprooting of Muslims from their homes and surroundings. To this day, a decade after the killings, there is not the slightest indication of efforts at their rehabilitation. Gujarat goes to the polls at the end of the year. Modi is certain to win. But he has set his sights on the general
elections to the Lok Sabha in 2014 which he hopes to fight as the BJP’s candidate for the prime minister’s office.
L.K. Advani, the former deputy prime minister, has not forgiven Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for defeating him twice over, in 2004 and 2009. This is his last chance and his desperation is expressed in ways pitiable and comic. But the RSS has dumped himNarendra Modi pushed ahead his programme for industrialisation and development with all the determination of an autocrat, eliminating rivals in the state. Topnotch industrialists showered praises on him; namely, Ratan Tata, Mukesh and Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal. Two of them openly hailed him as India’s next leader. Modi also showed his mettle as its prime fundraiser. Not only the BJP but also the RSS became indebted to him.
Modi’s performance at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Mumbai on May 24-25 must be viewed against that background. He began by stipulating that a rival from Gujarat, Sanjay Joshi, be ousted from the executive. No face-saving formula was acceptable, Joshi had to be humiliated publicly. The BJP president, Nitin Gadkari obliged; for his term cannot be extended without amending the party’s constitution and this could not be done in Modi’s absence.
Modi came. The constitution was amended to give Gadkari a second-term for three years from January 2013. All were happy except L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj. Both skipped the traditional rally at the end of an executive meeting. Advani is now a man with many grievances. The remarks he wrote at Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum at Karachi in 2005 cost him his job as BJP’s president.
The ploy reeked of cynicism. The remarks were not aimed at winning friends in this country. Crafted on a journalist friend’s advice, their target was Indian Muslims. After 2004, Advani came to realise that the minorities’ support is very essential to governing India, even if the party won without that support and formed a coalition. Advani was eager to shed his image. The move backfired. The RSS nominated Rajnath Singh to succeed him as BJP’s president. He failed to revive its fortunes. An obscure Nitin Gadkari was planted on the throne by the RSS.
Advani threw caution to the winds a week later, and publicly attacked the BJP president, though without naming him. “The mood within the party these days is not upbeat”. He cited the debacles in the elections to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, the welcome accorded to corrupt ministers of the erstwhile regime, the mishandling of affairs in two other states and concluded:
“All these events have undermined the party’s campaign against corruption”. He added, “If people are today angry with the United Progressive Alliance government, they are also disappointed with us. The situation calls for introspection.”
Last came the proverbial sting in the tale which gave him away. He highlighted a news report about the 97-year-old actor A.K. Hangal returning to the small screen with a new show. The hint that the 83-year-old Advani was eligible to have a go at prime ministership in 2014 was not concealed.
But Modi also came under attack from within the party, precisely for the same reason. His obscene exercise of clout alarmed many. An editorial in the BJP’s Hindi mouthpiece Kamal Sandesh attacked him for his ‘individualistic’ attitude. It reminded Modi that “sometimes in a crowded situation even a traveller who has an urgency (to travel) is compelled to stay back. He has to wait for another train. In his rush, he never pulls out any other traveller nor does he wreck the train or stone it”. There were several chief ministers from the BJP who had “the capacity and competence for the PM’s post”. The RSS will not let him outgrow the party.
Modi faces another hurdle. Two erstwhile socialists, who were the BJP’s allies in the National Democratic Alliance, which ran the government at the centre from 1998-2004, are strongly opposed to him. They include the powerful Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. Not only the Muslims but the articulate secular forces, who still battle in courts to bring Modi to book, will oppose him. He might face the worst defeat in his life at the very moment when he imagined that he had reached the post.
Those who hoped that the BJP would shed its Hindutva ideology and emerge as a right-wing force, a secular conservative party though with a saffron tinge, betray profound ignorance. Its predecessor the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) was set up in 1951 by the Hindu Mahasabha leader Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerji under a pact with the RSS. It would lend its cadres. He was party to the constituent assembly resolution condemning communal parties. No one was fooled by the false label.
In 1977, the Jan Sangh merged itself with other parties to fight the polls against Indira Gandhi under the flag of the Janata Party. In 1980, it walked out of it on the issue of dual membership of the RSS and formed the BJP. In the last 60 years, the RSS has sacked three presidents of the BJS and BJP, Advani included. It has riveted its control. The BJP cannot survive without the RSS cadre and the RSS will not provide them unless it controls the BJP.
The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.
Joshi quits, Modi’s hold reaffirmed? - Daily Pioneer
Well-placed sources said the Gujarat Chief Minister suspected Joshi’s hand in anti-Modi write-ups in BJP and RSS mouthpieces as well as putting up anonymous hoardings and banners in Delhi and Ahmedabad rooting for the RSS leader and hitting out at Modi.
While the Joshi camp had firmly denied any hand in the poster war and blamed it on mischief makers, this gave Modi an opportunity to settle scores with his long-time bete noire. Sources even claimed that Modi threatened to resign as Chief Minister if Joshi was not removed.
Modi had forced Joshi out from the BJP National Executive recently as part of a compromise with party president Nitin Gadkari. Modi agreed to attend the National Executive in Mumbai on May 24-25 only after Gadkari persuaded Joshi to put in his papers.
While BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar claimed Joshi had quit the party, sources close to the RSS pracharak disputed the claim, saying he had only relinquished his assignment in UP. “Sanjay Joshi has requested BJP president Nitin Gadkari to relieve him from the party. And his request has been accepted by the party president,” Prakash Javadekar said on Friday without elaborating on the reasons for his resignation. “This is factually not correct. Joshi has just requested the party president to release him of all official assignments of the party,” sources close to the pracharak claimed.
Joshi was handling the BJP’s election programme for the forthcoming local bodies polls in Uttar Pradesh. The developments possibly hint at a Gadkari-Modi alignment to ensure a greater role for the Gujarat Chief Minister in national politics.
The moves of the RSS, which has backed Joshi, will be closely watched, as Gadkari has to cross a few more hurdles to get an extension as party chief. Some reports said that Joshi is likely to be rehabilitated by the RSS as general secretary of its affiliate unit, Bharatiya Itihaas Parishad.
The last few weeks have seen hectic parleying in the BJP. Party organ Kamal Sandesh made a scathing yet veiled attack on Modi for arm-twisting party leadership, a view also articulated by parivar ideologue Devendra Swaroop in his write-up in RSS’ Panchjanya. The editorial in another RSS publication Tarun Bharat, a Marathi daily from Nagpur and Mumbai, too criticised Modi for becoming bigger than the party.
On Friday, even Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi hit out at Modi, without taking his name, and said no one should try to hijack the party and force a decision on it.
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