Society's ChildS

Attention

Mysterious Packages Of Pot Being Delivered All Over


Gothamist
Mon, 02 May 2011 09:50 UTC
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A month ago, employees at Dr. Toothy's Dental Office in Chinatown were shocked when they received a delivery of a 31-pound brick of marijuana, we assume from the Marijuana Fairy. Now, two Pennsylvanian residents have also received surprise packages with pounds of marijuana, worth $22,400 each on the street. So what the heck is going on with dealers? Is this becoming a trend? And is there any way we can win this lottery?

Because it doesn't seem like medical marijuana is coming to NYC anytime soon. Not that the question isn't amusing Mayor Bloomberg a bit. During his weekly WOR radio appearance, Bloomberg took this Twitter question (watch him answer it below), which he was "reticent" to read at first: "What's up with medical marijuana in NYC. Is it going to be OK'd soon? Need to know by this weekend." He laughed and answered it wasn't legal yet, but added:
The argument is that the only way you're ever going to end the drug trade is to legalize drugs and take away the profit motive, and the corruption...in Mexico, tens of thousands of people have been killed in wars with the government trying to clamp down on drug dealers. There's no easy answers to any of these things. There are places where they've legalized drugs, and whether it destroyed the society or didn't, it's up to debate.
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Question

US: Osama bin Laden death: "When are they going to show us the body?"


Los Angeles Times
Mon, 02 May 2011 12:29 UTC
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© Jim Young / ReutersPeople cheer and wave U.S. flags outside the White House after President Obama delivered remarks to the nation on the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
At O'Connell's bar in Long Beach, two patrons walked in, announced "Osama bin Laden is dead!" and told the bartender to change the channel on the television. At first, no one believed them.

But slowly, all eyes looked up from their pints of beer and started to fixate on television screens showing clips of President Obama's remarks and the crowd gatherin

"It's crazy that we're celebrating a death, but this is a good thing for our country," said Kristen Lawson, 30, of Long Beach.

She wondered what the news means for the war in Afghanistan: "This is exactly what we're there for," she said.

Antoinette Collins, 26, of Whittier learned the news from a text message sent by a friend in the military. ("Osama is dead," the terse message said).

Collins comes from a military family and thinks Bin Laden's death is a positive development for the war and a victory for Obama, but she worries about retaliation from terrorists.
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Info

US: Judge's revelation prompts challenge to Prop 8 ruling

Joan Biskupic
USA Today
Sun, 01 May 2011 19:13 UTC
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© Elaine Thompson, APRetired U.S. District judge recently disclosed that he's in a long-term relationship with a man.
Now that retired U.S. District judge Vaughn Walker has revealed he is in a committed relationship with a man, do grounds exist to cancel his ruling that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional?

Supporters of the ban, known as Proposition 8, say yes and have filed a motion contending Walker should not have heard the case because he might want to marry someday.

Law professors who specialize in legal ethics, such as the University of Minnesota's Richard Painter, say no and compare targeting Walker's personal relations to targeting a judge's religion or race.

The new claim filed by Washington lawyer Charles Cooper on behalf of the Proposition 8 backers is scheduled to be heard June 13. It marks the latest move in the protracted battle over the proposition adopted by California voters in 2008 and a new chapter in the debate over when judges should sit out disputes. Challenges to judicial ethics are hardly new, yet a spate of high-stakes appeals, including over new federal health-care legislation, have spawned fresh questions about judges' impartiality.

Walker, a 1990 appointee of Republican President George H.W. Bush, told reporters in April that he has been in a relationship with another man for more than 10 years. Walker retired from the bench earlier this year. In February 2010, during the Proposition 8 trial, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Walker is gay and "has never taken pains to disguise - or advertise - his orientation."
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Arrow Down

US: A much smaller May Day march

Sam Quinones
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 01 May 2011 08:08 UTC
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© Wally Skalij, Los Angeles TimesA crowd of immigrants-rights protestors march down Broadway toward 1st Street. Unlike in previous years, most of the attendees came with unions or communist or socialist groups.
Hundreds of thousands rallied in downtown L.A. for immigration reform in 2006, and last year's event drew 60,000. One student said attendance is dropping because 'people are starting to lose hope.'

Few people felt the low turnout at this year's May Day march as acutely as Salvador Ramirez.

Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico, pushed a cart among the few thousand immigrant-rights and labor activists Sunday on Broadway, selling American flags.

"It's really bad," said Ramirez, 48, who said he lost his job as an electrician due to his lack of documents and became a street vendor a year and a half ago. About halfway through Sunday's march, Ramirez had only sold about 10 to 15 flags, which he buys for $7.50 a dozen.

"I'm selling them almost at cost," he said. "It's not like the year before. Last year was great."

Only a few thousand people showed up for the nine-block march that started early and ended quickly. Los Angeles police declined to issue a crowd estimate, but marchers didn't even fill the intersection of Broadway and 1st Street, where the demonstration ended.

It marked a steep drop-off for a movement that prided itself for bringing hundreds of thousands onto the streets of downtown in 2006, and a million nationwide, to rally for legislation that would legalize the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants. Last year, galvanized by Arizona's controversial anti-illegal-immigration law, about 60,000 marchers participated in Los Angeles.
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People

US: Reactions to Bin-Laden Death: Euphoria, Concern

Kathleen Brady Shea & Amy Worden
The Inquirer
Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00 UTC
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© unknownStudents at Pennsylvania State University took to the streets to celebrate the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death.
The 61-year-old mother of a bond trader killed during the attacks at the World Trade Center said she feared she would go to her grave before Osama bin Laden did.

"Justice really has been served," said Judith Reiss of Yardley. "There's a special place waiting in hell for this man."

Reiss said she and her husband, Gary, whose 23-year-old son, Joshua, died on 9/11, feared that the mission to kill bin Laden had fallen off the front burner.

"We're joyous," said Gary Reiss.

They were not alone, as rejoicing resonated from the ballpark to college campuses to watering holes.

"You know I'm not a hater, but I'm glad this bastard's dead," said Patrick White whose cousin, Louis Nacke II of New Hope was on board Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Shanksville during the 9-11 attacks.
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Smiley

Royal revenge: 'We had to draw the line somewhere'

John Rentoul
The Independent
Sun, 01 May 2011 18:35 UTC
queen elizabeth,tony blair
© AFP/GETTY IMAGESTony Blair greeting the Queen outside No 10 in 2002

The Queen doesn't like him, so he wasn't invited. But the snub to Tony Blair makes a nonsense of claims that Friday's wedding has modernised a fundamentally Conservative institution

Of course it was a snub. The Royal Family wouldn't be so vulgar as to do it in the open, so there was a cover story, but it was a snub.

The cover story, which had the technical advantage of being true, was that protocol allowed Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to be left off the guest list. But it was a flying buttress of piffle.

If you care to follow me, I can explain the intricacies of precedent that sustain this nonsense. You do not need to immerse yourself in the angels and pinheads, because they are beside the point, but if you stay with it there is a kind of Catch-22 charm to the idiocy of it all.
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Bizarro Earth

Taiwan Doomsday Prophet's Blog Sparks Panic


BBC News
Sun, 01 May 2011 11:10 UTC
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© Agence France-PresseWorkers had been hired to fit out "survival" containers with doors, windows and air conditioning
Police in Taiwan are investigating a self-proclaimed prophet whose doomsday warnings on a blog have caused panic.

The man, identifying himself as Teacher Wang, said Taiwan would be struck by a magnitude-14 earthquake and 170m (560ft) high tsunami on 11 May.

More than 100 cargo containers have been bought and set up in a mountainous area of central Taiwan.

Police said they were investigating if the blogger had conspired with a container business to defraud people.

"Teacher Wang" suggested people live in such containers to survive the disaster, which he said would kill millions of people and split the island in half.
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Cloud Lightning

Storm cellar saves Alabama couple, as neighbors perish

Phil Campbell
Reuters
Sun, 01 May 2011 17:24 UTC
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© Reuters/Tami ChappellBrenda Roberts reacts after her wedding ring was found in the rubble of her home destroyed by a tornado in Phil Campbell, Alabama, April 30, 2011.

Travis Roberts invited his neighbors into the storm cellar he built for $600, but they figured they would ride out the twister bearing down on them.

Five were killed and two critically injured when it struck, splintering their homes, but Travis and his wife Brenda survived below ground in their storm-rocked concrete shelter.

"We did not respect the warning enough," said Roberts of the tiny Alabama town of 1,100 people, which was largely flattened in the deadly tornado outbreak that killed at least 350 people across seven states.
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Heart - Black

US: Pennsylvania Girl, 10, Charged with Murder in Death of Baby


The Associated Press
Sat, 30 Apr 2011 12:45 UTC
A 10-year-old central Pennsylvania girl who allegedly caused a baby's death by violently shaking him and throwing him into a crib was charged with third-degree murder.

The charges filed against the fifth-grader on Friday in Franklin County came after a coroner's inquest into the death of 11-month-old Heath Ryder. The girl was released into the custody of her parents and ordered not to have unsupervised contact with children under 5.

"This is not a kid that has a mental health disorder. She does not have a personality disorder," the girl's attorney, Jason Kutulakis, told The Public Opinion of Chambersburg. "She is not a bad person. She has no history of behavioral problems or school problems."

Also charged Friday was 56-year-old Dottie Bowers, who was babysitting both children at her home near Shippensburg, Pa., when the shaking allegedly occurred on July 29.

Bowers was charged with involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly failing to seek medical care for the infant. Ryder died of traumatic brain injury at a hospital on Aug. 2.
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Blackbox

France: Investigators find black box from Air France crash


The Associated Press
Sun, 01 May 2011 14:29 UTC
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© The Associated Press / BEA, Johann PeschelThis photo provided Sunday May 1, 2011 by France's air accident investigation agency, the BEA, shows the flight data recorder from the 2009 Air France flight that went down in the mid-Atlantic. In a statement, the BEA said the black box was 'localized and identified' on Sunday morning. The statement included photos of the recorder, a red cylinder partially buried in sand on the sea floor. Investigators hope that the black box will help determine what caused the June 1, 2009 crash of Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to the French capital, Paris. All 228 people on board were killed when the aircraft plunged into a remote area of the Atlantic during a thunderstorm.
Investigators have located and recovered the missing memory unit of the flight data recorder of a 2009 Air France flight - a remarkable deep-sea discovery they hope will explain why the aircraft went down in a remote area of the mid-Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board.

France's air accident investigation agency BEA said a search by a submarine probing 3,900 meters (12,800 feet) below the ocean's surface located and recovered the unit Sunday morning. The unit is now aboard the Ile de Sein, a ship that's helping conduct the probe, the statement said.

The statement also included photos of the recorder - a red cylinder partially buried in sand on the sea floor. Judging from the photos, the unit appeared to be in good condition.

Still, BEA officials have warned that the recordings may yet prove unusable, considering the pressure they were subjected to for nearly two years.

"We can't say in advance that we're going to be able to read it until it's been opened," a BEA spokeswoman told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. She did not give her name in accordance with her agency's policy.

Last month, the agency said the undersea search had identified the "chassis" that had held the recorder, but the memory unit was still missing. Detached from the chassis, the memory unit was found nearby, the spokeswoman said.
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