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Coffee

Rising energy, food prices spark global protests

Andre Damon
World Socialist Website
Sun, 24 Apr 2011 11:54 UTC
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© REUTERS/James AkenaSupporters of Uganda's Forum for Democratic Change leader Kizza Besigye participate in a protest along the road in the Kasangati suburb of the capital Kampala, April 14, 2011.
Oil prices hit their highest level in over two years this month, cutting into workers' incomes, compounding the effects of high unemployment, and fueling protests around the world.

West Texas intermediate crude oil reached $112 Friday, up 32 percent from a year ago. Average prices at the pump hit $3.84 in the United States, up 30 cents from a month ago, and over one dollar from April 2010, according to the American Automobile Association. Gas prices on the West Coast of the United States are even higher, averaging over four dollars per gallon.

Food prices edged down slightly from their February high last month, but remained higher than any other month on record, according to the world food price index published by the World Bank. Prices were up by 36 percent compared with a year ago.
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No Entry

US: Man Sentenced To Over 250 Years for Rape, Assault, Robbery


Fox 4KC
Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:38 UTC
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© unknown
A 25-year-old man was sentenced to over 250 years in prison Friday after a home invasion and robbery that left a woman raped and her boyfriend beaten. The presumptive sentence by Missouri Sentencing Commission guidelines would have been 20 years.

Taurian J. Burton, of Kansas City, had only been out on parole for seven months from another home invasion burglary in Jackson County. In July 2009, Burton and another person invaded the victims' home to steal their plasma TV. Once inside the home, prosecutors said Burton pistol-whipped and bound the pair.

"Our male victim had a skull fracture and a broken finger and was lying unconscious in the living room while his girlfriend was dragged into a bedroom, gang-raped at gunpoint, and sexually assaulted with the barrel of a handgun," Clay County Prosecutor Daniel White said.

The victim told jurors the rape lasted 45 minutes.
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Handcuffs

US: FBI arrests Tenn. pastor in custody case of former lesbian partners

John Curran
MSNBC
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 22:27 UTC
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© Vyto Starinskas / AP Janet Jenkins, of Fair Haven, Vt., holds up a photo of her daughter, Isabella, in Rutland, Vt. The FBI has arrested Tennessee pastor Timothy David Miller, who is accused of helping Jenkins' former lesbian partner of fleeing to Central America with the girl.
Mother allegedly absconds to Central America with couple's daughter

A Tennessee pastor who allegedly helped a woman abscond to central America with her 9-year-old daughter has been charged with aiding a kidnapping, the latest twist in a long-running custody dispute between former lesbian partners.

Timothy David Miller, 34, of Crossville, Tenn., is accused of helping to arrange passage for Lisa Miller of Virginia and daughter Isabella Miller Jenkins, who have been on the run since 2009 and now are believed to be living in Nicaragua.

It doesn't appear that Timothy Miller is related to the mother. He works with an Ohio-based Christian ministry and people with links to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University may have provided a beach house where the two could live, according to an FBI affidavit.

"I know very little at this point, but I really hope that this means that Isabella is safe and well," said Lisa Miller's former partner, Janet Jenkins, of Fair Haven. "I am looking forward to having my daughter home safe with me very soon," she said in a statement released by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which has provided legal help to her.
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Bizarro Earth

Nuclear Fallout: You won't hear this on any mainstream news

rulesofethics
YouTube
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:05 UTC
Nuclear Facts. A very clued in professional who will not be bought or intimidated into silence:


Disclose.tv - Nuclear Facts You wont hear on any mainstream news Video
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Alarm Clock

Yemeni president agrees to step down

Ahmed Al-Haj
Associated Press
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:00 UTC
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© Muhammed Muheisen/APAn anti-government protester reacts during a demonstration demanding the resignation of of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa, Yemen, on Saturday.
Sanaa, Yemen - Yemen's embattled president agreed Saturday to a proposal by Gulf Arab mediators to step down within 30 days and hand power to his deputy in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a major about-face for the autocratic leader who has ruled for 32 years.

The protest movement demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh's immediate departure said Saturday that it also accepted the latest draft of the deal but with reservations.

A day earlier, protesters staged the largest of two months of demonstrations, filling a five-lane boulevard across the capital with a sea of hundreds of thousands of people. A deadly crackdown by government forces and Saleh supporters has killed more than 130 people and prompted key allies to abandon the president and join the protesters.

The opposition movement, fed up with poverty and corruption under Saleh, took inspiration from the toppling of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt.
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2 + 2 = 4

US: Homeless woman prosecuted for enrolling son in Connecticut school

Liz Goodwin
Yahoo News
Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:13 UTC
Connecticut authorities have filed theft charges against Tanya McDowell, a homeless woman, alleging that she used a false address to enroll her son in a higher-income school district, The Stamford Advocate reports. If she's convicted, McDowell may end up in jail for as many as 20 years and pay a $15,000 fine for the crime.

McDowell is a homeless single mother from Bridgeport who used to work in food services, is now at the center of one of the very few false address cases in the Norwalk, CT, school district that is being handled in criminal court--rather than between the parent and school. Authorities are accusing McDowell of enrolling her 5-year-old son in nearby Norwalk schools by using the address of a friend. (Her friend has also been evicted from public housing for letting McDowell use her address.)

McDowell says she stayed in a Norwalk homeless shelter sometimes--but she didn't register there, which would have made her son eligible to attend the school.

"I had no idea whatsoever that if you enroll your child in another school district, it becomes a crime," the 33-year-old told the paper.
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Family

Venezuela to spend oil income on social programmes


Indo-Asian News Service
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:11 UTC
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© Miraflores Palace/ReutersHugo Chavez
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced that extra income from the country's oil exports will be used for social spending.

Venezuela, South America's biggest oil producer, has been receiving sharply higher income from its oil exports in recent months. Global prices on Venezuelan oil averaged $107 per barrel last week, while the 2011 state budget was balanced with the $40 per barrel benchmark, RIA Novosti reported.

'I have signed a decree that authorises spending additional revenues from oil sales on the implementation of various social programmes for the country's population,' Chavez, who will seek re-election next year, said on national television Friday.
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Radar

The inevitability of the imperial presidency

Eric A. Posner
Washington Post
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:32 UTC
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© Unknown
About this blog: President Bush asserted his executive power in managing the war on terror. President Obama showed the muscle of the White House in managing the financial crisis. Since the Republic's early days a subtle balancing act has negotiated power between the president, Congress and the courts. But by the 20th century, power had tipped in favor of the president and has continued to grow. In their book The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic, recently released by Oxford University Press, Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule explore the inevitability of the "imperial presidency" and argue that it must be accepted and is nothing to fear. Posner is a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, while Vermeule is a law professor at Harvard Law School. Here, Posner takes us through the evolution and impact of an assertive executive branch.
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Heart - Black

Massino testimony sheds light of mysterious disappearance of Nick Cirillo


International Business Times
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:55 UTC
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© Creative Common/Vincent BascianoMassino testimony sheds light of mysterious disappearance of Nick Cirillo
Court testimony by Joseph Massino, the former boss of New York's Bonanno crime family, indicates that a top capo in a rival family might have ordered the killing of his own son.

Massino, who is testifying in the murder trial of his former underling, Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, was asked by Nicholas Cirillo, the son of Genovese family gangster, Dominick "Quiet Dom" Cirillo.

Nicky Cirillo (who was reportedly not a member of organized crime) disappeared on May 9, 2004 (Mother's Day). Three weeks later, his abandoned automobile was found, but his body has never been located.
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Bomb

Bomb In Belarus: Who Was Behind Last Week's Mysterious Bombing In Belarus?

Jamie Kerchick
New Republic
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:38 UTC
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© ReutersFlowers are left on the platform at the subway station in Minsk where 13 were killed.
Of all the countries in the world that one would expect to be a target of terrorist attacks, Belarus surely ranks near the bottom of the list. Unlike its neighbor, Russia, where a January bomb that killed 35 people at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport was just the latest in a string of attacks related to the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, Belarus is not fighting an Islamic insurgency -- or, in fact, any type of insurgency. It's an ethnically and religiously homogenous nation mostly composed of Orthodox Christian Slavs, kept in the tight grip of its authoritarian leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. There aren't violent sectarian rifts of the sort that brought decades of terrorism to Northern Ireland or ethnic cleansing to the Balkans. And Belarus is not participating in any foreign military operations of the kind that might inspire overseas terrorist organizations to strike.
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