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If you live in West Hollywood and PETA has not yet convinced you to go fur-free … you may soon have little choice. The City Council is considering banning the sale of any clothing or attire made of animal hair, wool, or fur. (Of course, you could still pop over…

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HTC Rhyme clicks its heels, calls O2 its exclusive UK home

Listen up, all you single ladies , err, people with style — HTC’s charm-dongled handset’s about to dash across the pond. Launching as an exclusive on UK carrier O2 , the 3.7-inch device’ll saunter its way into handbags throughout the British isles on October 17th, bringing with it that recently unveiled slew of accessories — headphones, dock, charm and leather pouch. If you were hoping for some mobile color options to match that endless wardrobe, you’re going to be sorely disappointed — the operator’s only offering this phone in its debut shade of plum. It’s not the worst hue to be stuck with, but you’ll still have to coordinate accordingly — a no-brainer for this target demo. Right, stylistas? HTC Rhyme clicks its heels, calls O2 its exclusive UK home originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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Dont Ask Dont Tell

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Dont Ask Dont Tell

President Obama repeals “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” – DADT Ends September 20, 2011 – Veterans speak ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal Takes Effect Tuesday Department Of Defense Failed to Implement News Rules For Repeal Of Dont Ask Dont Tell Smashtastic5 says: RT @ BreakingNews : ‘Don’t Ask , Don’t Tell ‘ officially lifted; gays can now serve openly in military – NYT http://t.co/sF5VwnST

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Gears Of War 3 Released

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Gears Of War 3 Released

Gears of war 3 released Gears of War 3 – Fanmade Trailer – Two Steps from Hell – Eternal Sorrow GEARS OF WAR 3 RELEASED EARLY widetrends says: Gears of War 3 Released : Gears of War 3 Released – Gears of War 3 on Xbox 360 has been confirmed released . The d… http://t.co/mLJA85St

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British School Bans Makeup And Mirrors

JanellJay says: RT @ TIME : British school bans makeup and mirrors in the fight against vanity | http://t.co/UBMfs7ND (via @ TIMENewsFeed )

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Vegemite Gets Australian Foreign Minister Questioned at U.S. Customs

Do not come between Kevin Rudd and his vegemite. Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd had a run-in with U.S. border officials on Sunday after flying from Mexico to New York when he attempted to bring his Aussie spread into the big red, white and blue. (MORE: The Vegemite Mess) U.S. customs, notorious for being one

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You thought the birther controversy was over, what with President Obama releasing his long-form Certificate of Live Birth ? Well, think again. Arizona’s fiery Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a secret five-member Cold Case Posse looking into the authenticity of said birth certificate, World Net Daily reports. Sheriff Joe explains that…

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Troy Davis will die tomorrow. Georgia’s pardons board today rejected a last-ditch plea for clemency for the death row inmate, despite calls from the likes of Pope Benedict, Amnesty International, and Jimmy Carter for his sentence to be commuted. The panel announced its decision after hearing hours of testimony from…

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Afghanistan peace process in tatters after murder of key negotiator

Suicide bomber with hidden explosives has killed Hamid Karzai’s chief peace envoy in the heart of Kabul Hopes for a peaceful end to the 10-year war in Afghanistan were in tatters after a suicide bomber with explosives concealed in his turban killed Hamid Karzai’s chief peace envoy. The assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani by men posing as leading Taliban envoys looked certain to tip the country even deeper into crisis. Rabbani was a former president of Afghanistan, respected religious scholar and chairman of the country’s high peace council. The explosion in the heart of Kabul’s diplomatic district kills off a peace process that was already on life support. It also deprives President Karzai of an important ally who had flown into Kabul specifically to meet the men claiming to be Taliban envoys and emboldens his enemies who are implacably opposed to the idea of powersharing with armed insurgents. “This absolutely shows that peace with the Taliban is dead,” said Ahmed Wali Massoud, the brother of a famous anti-Taliban guerrilla leader who was killed by suicide bombers days before the terrorist attacks of September 11. “It doesn’t work, it won’t work,” he added. The high peace council, a body set up last year by Karzai, has been trying to get talks off the ground against an increasingly inauspicious background. Insurgent groups have stepped up their attacks, not least launching spectacular assaults in the Afghan capital and assassinating key Karzai allies. And a set of secret talks mediated by the German government with a senior Taliban official has already collapsed. Last week Rabbani led a conference of provincial governors and officials in the southern city of Kandahar to develop policies for reintegrating insurgents who want to give up the fight. Not surprisingly a meeting with two men claiming to be senior Taliban officials was the first thing on Rabbani’s agenda after flying back to Kabul from a subsequent trip to Dubai. According to an aide to Rabbani they said they represented the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s governing body, and had an important message to deliver. Not only were the visitors deemed too important to search thoroughly, inspecting a turban is still generally seen as disrespectful, even though there have been three other cases this year of the headgear used to conceal bombs. The aide said that when Rabbani entered the room one of them approached him, hugging him tight and placing his head on his victim’s chest. Shopkeepers nearby heard a muffled bang from inside the building, which was still loud enough to set off the “duck and cover” alarms at the US embassy a short distance away. The former president was killed instantly while four others in the room were injured, including Masoom Stanekzai, a highly-regarded technocrat who runs the day-to-day operations of the peace council and had brought the men to Rabbani’s house. The second man was also seriously injured. His turban was burning when he was found, according to an official from the country’s interior ministry. He was taken to hospital, where strenuous efforts were made to keep him alive in the hope he would help investigators with their enquiries. On hearing the news Karzai scrapped plans to participate at the United Nations general assembly and announced that he would immediately return from New York to Kabul. Rabbani’s killing is also looks set to exacerbate already acute ethnic tensions in the country. A Tajik and former warlord from northern Afghanistan who fought against the Taliban, Rabbani was a controversial choice as a point man on reconciliation issues. But although many observers argued that the Taliban would never take a man with his background seriously, his appointment was also designed to appease northern, non-Pashtun Afghans who were deeply suspicious of any peace deals. Haroun Mir, a political analyst with a background in northern mujahideen groups, said the death would “increase the ethnic and geographic divide” in Afghanistan. “There were voices in the north that were critical of the peace process, but because of Rabbani’s involvement, and because he was so respected, they kept quiet. These more critical voices will not now remain quiet.” Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s leading opposition figure, said the death of Rabbani showed the insurgents were trying to wipe out the political figures who ruled the country before the emergence of the Taliban in the 1990s. “We should recognise and know our enemy from lower ranks up to the top officials of the country because by any means, by any way, they are trying to kill us and eliminate all high ranking officials and jihadi leaders.” Former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, a northerner who has warned in the past that the north might be forced to rearm if a Karzai cut a “deal” with the Taliban, once again warned of the risk of “civil unrest”. “The killing of Rabbani who had devoted his life to serving Afghanistan and to peace once again reminds us that reconciliation cannot be possible from a position of weakness but strength only,” he said. “It is time for us to unite for change and for defeat of the Taliban.” Afghanistan Taliban Global terrorism Middle East Jon Boone guardian.co.uk

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Sex Toys, Lies and Videotape: The Continuing Saga of My Unlawful Arrest

Previously on  The Jersey Shore  my C&L blog,  the Situation ate a steroid-infused meatball sub  I recalled the events of my unlawful arrest at a National Organization for Marriage anti-gay marriage rally. And now the stunning continuation… To say that I sweated through the night is no metaphor. The air conditioning was on the fritz and, although there was a temporary system pumping in air from a semitrailer outside, the cells were hot enough to give Sheriff Joe Arpaio a spring in his step. I did some metaphorical sweating, too. This was the Erie County Holding Center. Although it’s a relatively quaint 680-cell facility, its “suicide” rate is five times the national average. And although it’s recently been dropped, the ECHC was the focus of a two-year DOJ investigation, which alleged such constitutional violations as “elevator rides” (guards taking inmates to a floor without cameras and beating them senseless) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome -style inmate-on-inmate combat – done, apparently, for the guards’ amusement. “Who run Bartertown?” I softly whispered to myself throughout the night. “Master Blaster.” Rachel Maddow even did a segment on this place a while back. While Erie County Sheriff Tim Howard refused to let the Feds inspect the jail, he had no problem opening up the door to Keanu Reeves. He was researching a role – like he wasn’t just going to play Keanu Reeves. I’m not kidding: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy It’s been widely speculated – by me alone – that his visit was the true origin of the Sad Keanu meme. Aww. Sad Keanu is sad. Anyway, a couple guards came to my cell before…I’d call it “lights out,” but the lights never did go out, and I presumed I’d been chosen in some sadistic lottery to fight another inmate to the death. In reality they just wanted to chuckle and say things, like, “So, uh, you the dildo guy?” “Yeah,” I said. “I ran for Congress, too, you know!” They didn’t care. “I pranked Scott Walker!” They didn’t care. They just wanted to know about the dildo. The lesson I took away from this is that the next time I run for public office I’ll do it with a dildo (Murphy and Dildo for President 2016!). Sleep wasn’t happening, so I kept myself busy by reading my prisoner rights. I was the only one being processed that day who accepted the booklet offered. All prisoners are to be issued a pillow! I didn’t get a pillow. Things could be worse. I could be black in Georgia . “Wake-up” call at 5 am. Handful of generic Cinnamon Toast Crunch on a Styrofoam plate, with bad orange juice, milk and bread. Yum. Then the confounding movement from one locked room to another, each smaller than the next, until many of the 18 detainees were forced to sit on the filthy floor. Eventually, some of the other prisoners wanted to know if I was, in fact, “The Dildo Guy.” “I ran for Congress!” I yelled, indignant, like that was somehow better than being The Dildo Guy. After explaining the purpose of the prop, and suffering a solid ten minutes of expected mockery, I was treated to the jail house rock version of how people become gay. Bad parenting, lack of religion in early childhood, and…Justin Beiber. I didn’t ask. The motley crew also agreed that if I was tough enough to “take a fat d— in the a–,” I was likely strong enough to hold my own in a fight. I didn’t understand how they made this logical leap, but I did not disabuse them of the useful notion that was a hardened queer. Arraignment hearing at 9:30. Paul Fallon, BEAST publisher and lawyer, was there waiting with the arrest report and I got my first look at the charges against me (the red annotations are, obviously, mine): I’d like to wait to thoroughly rebut these charges, for a later post, but I would like to mention one thing: The person that I reportedly shoved, which would be the “complainant,” is listed as “Sony”. Sony. What is that, I don’t even. A Freudian slip? Baffling. List of confiscated property: Wallet Watch Digital voice recorder Blue notebook Bible Dildo Cell phone Aside from being likely the funniest list of confiscated property in the history of Erie County, there was one very big omission: my video camera – Mr. Sony: race unknown. Fallon and I were told that the camera was “too big” to be held at the Holding Center, which is utter nonsense, and that it was taken to a precinct downtown. This was obvious done so that officer Donovan could erase the footage of the unlawful arrest–or to disappear the camera entirely. After getting the runaround, we eventually did get the camera back and, yes, all the footage from the rally was gone. Fortunately, they failed to completely wipe the hard drive, so we may be able to recover the data. In fact, I shipped the camera off to LA earlier today for forensic analysis. John Amato “knows a guy.” [Personal note to Amato's tech geek: there's a lot of deleted footage on that camera. Focus on files _0061 through _0082. Yup. Nothing to see before that. Nothing at all. Nothing. Seriously. No sexy business or anything like that. Nothing. OK! ] *Another issue I’d like to tease right now is the Buffalo News report of my arrest: Buffalo police made one arrest, charging Ian Murphy, the Green Party candidate for the Congressional seat that Democrat Kathleen C. Hochul won in a special election in May, with disorderly conduct. Police said in a report that Murphy, 35, of Amherst, was using abusive, obscene language and shoved a person in the crowd. Officers asked Murphy several times to stop, according to the report. Instead, Murphy directed a sex toy toward officers and told them that it was a microphone, the report said. Murphy also was charged with harassment and disruption of a religious service. Notice the discrepancy between the police report and the Buffalo News account. Maybe it’s not a huge deal, but the difference between “having a dildo in [my] possession” and “direct[ing]” it “toward officers” seems like trivia worth mentioning on the police report. These things are supposed to be as detailed as possible. But it’s late, I’m already blowing deadline here, and I’m kind of (very) scared of Tina Dupuy (she looks sweet, but you don’t know her!), so the rebuttal of charges and the incredibly — like, really, really — strange story of how learned about the discrepancy between the accounts will have to wait. But I assure you, as a dude who’s done some exceptionally weird things, this is absolutely bizarre. —- Murphy is the editor of The BEAST .

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