SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Society's ChildS
Wildwood bills itself as a family friendly resort on the Jersey Shore, but suddenly, it's a city dealing with an incident of racism.
"I thought maybe someone thought this is prank," says Uyvonne Robinson, "but it's not a prank to us. This is our livelihood."
On Wednesday morning, someone posted a sign outside Nana's Apartments that read "Parking for whites only." Robinson and her husband have owned the motel for eleven years, but they have never seen anything like this.
© Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, center, and Councilman Tom LaBonge, to his right, join construction officials and members of the media as they wave at the first motorists to travel on the southbound 405 Freeway under the Mulholland Drive bridge after half of it was demolished. The feared "Carmageddon" scenario was avoided in Los Angeles and a 10-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway was reopened ahead of schedule.
The first drivers roared up the newly reopened 405 Freeway at high noon Sunday, honking horns, kicking up roostertails of demolition dust, arms stretched through open windows to wave at no one in particular.
And so the reprieve from freeway traffic ended early, along with the planned weekend closure that had threatened to unleash "Carmageddon" if not for the public's cooperation.
Contractors had padded the schedule to allow for unforeseen mishaps in tearing down half of the Mulholland Drive bridge before the Monday morning rush, risking enormous fines and public distain under an international spotlight if they were late.
It wasn't needed. The demolition went smoothly, enabling contractors to finish about 17 hours ahead of schedule, pocket an extra $300,000 in incentive payments and win acclaim from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other officials who jockeyed for position in front of television cameras.
"Mission accomplished," the mayor said, beaming as if he had just won a war.
It's already extremely hard for rape victims to come to court and testify. This alleged rape victim says the only reason she came back was to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else.
This woman found the courage to come back to court and testify against one of the men who she says beat her with everything from a chair, to a two-by-four and raped her repeatedly before she found a way to escape from this Strasberg Street in Detroit.
That nightmare only continued at a Wednesday hearing , when she claims defense attorney Gabi Silver kept badgering her on the stand insinuating that she brought this attack on herself, causing this victim to snap in court.
"I said just get to the point bitch, it slipped out, it was inappropriate... all the bottled anger" says the alleged victim.
© YouTube/Berjuan Toys
The doll is made by Berjuan Toys, a company out of Spain. It comes with a special halter top that has two flowers where nipples would be. When a little girl puts on the top and holds the baby doll up the flowers, it makes suckling sounds.
The company says the doll is a top-selling toy in Europe and on its website, says the toy "lets young girls express their love and affection in the most natural way possible, just like mommy!"
But the toy has many parents asking if it's going too far.
Born in Haifa in 1957, General Avi Mizrahi was drafted into the IDF in 1975. He has been head of Israeli Central Command since October 2009
In unusually outspoken comments, Major General Avi Mizrahi took aim at extremist Israeli settlers, and said the settlement of Yitzhar, one of the most radical Jewish strongholds in the West Bank, should be closed, calling it a source of terror against Palestinians.
The general's comments are likely to put him at odds with Israel's pro-settler government, which has resisted US-led efforts to curb settlement expansion in a bid to revive stalled peace talks. The foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, himself lives in a West Bank settlement. All settlements are regarded as illegal under international law.
The army has anxiously watched an upsurge in violence by hardline settlers, who in recent months have set fire to a West Bank mosque, burned Palestinian olive groves, and vandalised Palestinian property. Settlers have killed three Palestinians this year.
The number of immigrants illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico has declined according to a new study, and some California farmers are already seeing the effects on their crops.
"We've seen in the valley this year a reduction of labor that we haven't seen for five or six years," said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, Calif.
"There could be crops that could go down as being damaged because they cannot be harvested fast enough. Many of the vegetables growing in the valley are going to be in competition for the labor as well," he said. "You're going to see rotting."
Net immigration from Mexico has fallen sharply, and may even be down to zero, according to a recent study by Princeton University demographer Douglas S. Massey. Massey credits several factors for the shift: smaller family sizes and more job opportunities in Mexico, rising border crime, and immigration crackdowns in the United States.
"We've seen in the valley this year a reduction of labor that we haven't seen for five or six years," said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, Calif.
"There could be crops that could go down as being damaged because they cannot be harvested fast enough. Many of the vegetables growing in the valley are going to be in competition for the labor as well," he said. "You're going to see rotting."
Net immigration from Mexico has fallen sharply, and may even be down to zero, according to a recent study by Princeton University demographer Douglas S. Massey. Massey credits several factors for the shift: smaller family sizes and more job opportunities in Mexico, rising border crime, and immigration crackdowns in the United States.
© unknown
Owling, believed to have started in Australia, consists of nothing more taxing than crouching on one's haunches and staring into the middle distance like the nocturnal birds.
Participants then take photos of themselves and post them on Facebook or on other social networking sites, reports the Daily Mail.
Hundreds of young people in America, Australia and now, Britain, have taken up the new 'owling' craze.
The trend is a development of the popular craze of 'planking' in which people would take pictures of themselves lying face down in strange locations.
© unknown
Peter MacDonald, who is in his fifties, is serving a life sentence after being found guilty of second-degree murder in the 2000 death of James Campbell in Toronto.
He was charged with the deaths of the three sex workers last October.
The bodies of Julianne Middleton, 23, Virginia Coote, 33 and Darlene MacNeill, 35, were found near Toronto's Sunnyside Beach between 1994 and 1997.
The Crown withdrew the charges "because there is no longer any reasonable prospect of conviction," Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, wrote in an email.
"I understand the police investigation into the murders is ongoing."
© ReutersFormer Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak's lawyer says the former leader suffered a stroke, while director of Red Sea hospital denies claim; 83-year old is due to appear in Cairo court for questioning.
Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in February and has been detained in a hospital at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, has fallen into a coma, his lawyer said on Sunday.
"I was informed about the sudden deterioration in Mubarak's health and I am now on my way to Sharm el-Sheikh. All that I know so far is that the president is a full coma," Mubarak's lawyer Farid el-Deeb told Reuters. He did not give more details.
The director of a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh were Hosni Mubarak is being treated has denied Mubarak's lawyer's claim that the former president fell into a coma, state television reported Sunday.
© UnknownMountain top removal near Rawl, West Virginia
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials met last week with one of the study's authors, and EPA is concerned about growing evidence about mountaintop removal's potential adverse effects on public health in the coalfields.
Nancy Stoner, acting assistant EPA administrator for water, testified to a congressional committee last week about her agency's concerns regarding the findings of a series of West Virginia University studies.
"In 2010, an independent, peer-reviewed study by two university professors found that communities near degraded streams have higher rate of respiratory, digestive, urinary and breast cancer," Stoner told a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government and Regulatory Reform.
