Enough with the grunting already, say Wimbledon officials who have grown tired of what they consider to be distracting roars made by the tournament’s female competitors. With shrieks hitting 105 decibels (here’s looking at you, Maria Sharapova), the unladylike grunts are ruining the game, say the officials, and need to…
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The Federal Reserve has acknowledged that the economy is growing more slowly than it expected. But it said it will complete its $600 billion Treasury bond buying program by June 30 as planned and announced no further efforts to boost the economy. (June 22
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Finally, empirical evidence has arrived that whining is one of the most annoying noises ever. (As if you needed proof.) In fact, childish whining is more distracting than the screech of a high-pitched table saw, according to a new study. To test people’s tolerance for various sounds, scientists asked them to do math problems in
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Residents of the town of Minot, North Dakota are evacuating as the Souris River prepares to overflow its levees with water that could mark the worst flood the area has seen in 40 years. (June 22)
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The New York Times may flinch at the thought of cutting Medicare or unemployment benefits to cut deficits, but reporters have quickly warmed to the idea of a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan in the name of cost-cutting. Reporter Michael Cooper spied an anti-war revival on Tuesday in “ Mayors Call for a Quicker End to Wars So Money Can Be Used for Needs at Home ,” picking up on a release from the liberal U.S. Conference of Mayors (once notorious for issuing f actually malnourished hunger statistics around the holidays suggesting North Korea-like levels of hunger in America): The resolution that the United States Conference of Mayors passed on Monday calling on President Obama and Congress to “speed up the ending” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was not nearly as strong as the one it passed 40 years ago, calling on President Richard M. Nixon to withdraw all American troops from Vietnam within six months….But it was nonetheless a remarkable signal of both the nation’s spreading war weariness and the lingering pain that the economic downturn has wrought on the nation’s cities. The same argument for withdrawal was made in Wednesday’s lead story by Helene Cooper, “ Sagging Economy Draws Attention to War Spending – Urgent Domestic Needs – Critics and Allies Press Obama to Redirect Afghan Funds .” President Obama will talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan when he makes a prime-time speech from the White House on Wednesday night. But behind his words will be an acute awareness of what $1.3 trillion in spending on two wars in the past decade has meant at home: a ballooning budget deficit and a soaring national debt at a time when the economy is still struggling to get back on its feet. As Mr. Obama begins trying to untangle the country from its military and civilian promises in Afghanistan, his critics and allies alike are drawing a direct line between what is not being spent to bolster the sagging economy in America to what is being spent in Afghanistan — $120 billion this year alone. On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors made that connection explicitly, saying that American taxes should be paying for bridges in Baltimore and Kansas City, not in Baghdad and Kandahar. The mayors’ group approved a resolution calling for an early end to the American military role in Afghanistan and Iraq, asking Congress to redirect the billions now being spent on war and reconstruction costs toward urgent domestic needs. The resolution, which noted that local governments cut 28,000 jobs in May alone, was the group’s first venture into foreign policy since it passed a resolution four decades ago calling for an end to the Vietnam War. And in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said: “We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.” Cooper later restated the argument from the liberal mayors' group. In Washington, the argument over whether the United States should be building bridges in Kandahar or Cleveland is bound to grow even louder as the 2012 election campaign heats up.
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The US has already tasted its first piece of the Chromebook pie, and now Samsung’s serving up a slice to our friends across the pond. That’s right, the Samsung Series 5 will grace European soil starting this Friday, and will set our European brethren back €399 (or
Continue reading …‘Fertility Management’: Al Gore Calls on Women to Have Fewer Children…to Curb Pollution
June 22, 2011 No Comment
On Monday, former Vice President Al Gore discussed climate change and pollution control at the Games for Change convention in New York City. Aside from his usual litanies of environmental advice nuggets, the 2000 presidential candidate delved into… family planning . Curiously, Gore said that couples need to learn to “feel comfortable having small families” so that pollution can be curbed . When… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Blaze Discovery Date : 22/06/2011 16:53 Number of articles : 5
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16-year-old boy allegedly killed ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Aylward, 15, in Bridgend woods as ‘sick’ bet to win a free breakfast A pupil murdered a former girlfriend by battering her with a rock after he was promised a free breakfast if he carried out the killing, a jury heard. The alleged killer, aged 16, lured Rebecca Aylward, 15, to woods near Bridgend in south Wales where he attacked her, Swansea crown court heard. The teenage boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denies murdering Rebecca in October last year and blames his best friend. Greg Taylor QC, prosecuting, said the accused and Rebecca had briefly been in a relationship about a year before the murder and had kept in touch. The defendant used to meet friends at a local cafe for breakfast, the court heard. At one meeting, he openly discussed killing the girl. His friends assumed he was joking but, in a text, he asked one friend: “What would you do if I actually did kill her?” the court heard. The friend replied: “Oh, I would buy you breakfast.” Two days before the killing the defendant contacted his friend to confirm he would attend a breakfast date. He added: “Don’t say anything but you may just owe me a breakfast.” His friend replied: “Sick, sick boy.” After the killing, the teenager is alleged to have asked one friend: “Do you know how hard it is to break someone’s neck?” The jury heard that he told two friends: “She was facing away from me and I thought: ‘This is it, I’m going to go for it.’ I tried to break her neck. She was screaming so I picked up the rock and started to hit her with it. The worst part was feeling and seeing her skull give way.” The “academic” teenage boy and Rebecca had dated for three months and had a sexual relationship, the court heard. Taylor said: “When they split up it was not amicable – all of their friends observed a love-hate relationship between them. They gave different reasons for the break-up. “The boy said Rebecca tried to trick him into getting her pregnant. She told him she was on the pill and he found out that she wasn’t and that she had lied to him. The boy was also telling people that Rebecca was going to go to the police and alleged that he raped her. “Rebecca’s version was that the boy refused to wear condoms and she asked him repeatedly to wear them.” The boy allegedly told a friend: “Wouldn’t it be easier if she wasn’t here? I am going to kill her – it would be real easy.” The jury heard another friend said the defendant claimed he would “kill her, cover it up and not get caught”. He also allegedly claimed he would make “a poison” out of foxgloves and kill her with it. Hours after murdering Rebecca the accused tried to lay a false trail by using Facebook as an alibi, it was claimed. Taylor said: “The boy updated his Facebook saying: ‘I’m just chilling with my two friends”. He used his Facebook to say this was just an ordinary day.” Later he wrote: “I enjoyed a rather good day and a lovely breakfast.” Police were led to Rebecca’s body by a friend of the accused after he had broken down in tears and told his parents, the court heard. Taylor said: “It was the following morning when the boy went into his parents’ bedroom. He told them a girl he knew was going to be missing and he feared she had been hurt or worse. “They could see the state he was in – pale, frightened and obviously upset. “They phoned the police straight away. The boy took police to the forest.” A post mortem examination of Rebecca – who was just 5ft 2ins and weighed six stone – showed she had died of head injuries. The trial continues. Crime Children Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Amid American debate about illegal immigration, Pulitzer Prize winner causes shock with admission he is an undocumented immigrant One of America’s top journalists has admitted he is an undocumented alien. In a startling first person piece in the New York Times , Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas, who has written for the Washington Post, the New Yorker and the Huffington Post, reveals he is not a legal US resident and was brought into the country with faked papers when he was a child. The news is certain to shock many observers and add more controversy to the debate over illegal immigration. “We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you read,” Vargas writes in an article for the paper’s magazine section. He explains his decision to reveal himself in simple terms: “I’m done running. I’m exhausted. I don’t want that life anymore.” Vargas, who was born in the Philippines, describes how a man who he thought was an uncle brought him to the US in 1993 when he was aged 12 to live with his grandparents in California. He attended high school in America and learned English. He only learned his papers were fake when, aged 16, he tried to get a driver’s permit. It was then that his grandparents revealed the man who brought him to the US had been a smuggler who was paid $4,500 (£2,800) to get him through immigration control with a false passport. Vargas, who is gay, admits his life, that has been highly successful professionally, has been marked by secrecy when it came to his illegal status. “Tough as it was, coming out about being gay seemed less daunting than coming out about my legal status. I kept my other secret mostly hidden,” he writes. But no longer. Vargas has revealed he is one of at least 11 million illegal aliens living in the US and his confession comes as the issue is rarely out of the headlines. Republican Senator John McCain caused controversy earlier this week with remarks suggesting the recent devastating wildfires in Arizona had been caused by illegal immigrants. The comments prompted outrage from immigrants rights’ groups and Hispanic activists, although McCain later expressed surprise that his words were deemed controversial. Vargas’ revelations are likely to have a similar polarising effect. On the New York Times website , many comments praise his bravery in speaking out. “I hope you earn the citizenship you deserve. Best of luck. And keep your head up; you have nothing to be ashamed of,” says one commenter from New York. But others are less forgiving and call for Vargas to be sent back to the country of his birth. “It is important that everyone come here the right and legal way so that it is fair to everyone. Mr Vargas should go back to his homeland and apply like everyone else,” writes one reader in Washington DC. The journalist’s future in America is now unclear. He has launched a website, called Define American, that will seek to campaign on the immigration debate and press for the passage of the Dream Act, which aims to grant permanent residency to some illegal alien students who have graduated from US high schools. US immigration United States New York Newspapers Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
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Police in a Philadelphia suburb say they have found the car involved in a hit-and-run that injured a man in a convenience store parking lot, a crime recorded by surveillance cameras. (June 22)
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