2007 Naked Fireman Poster
You just had to look, didn't you???!!!
(KDKA) PITTSBURGH A Pittsburgh man is in the Allegheny County Jail on $100,000 straight bond for allegedly yelling at a police dog.
Kenneth King, 23, walked by a K-9 police cruiser at a Sunoco station on the North Side shortly after midnight on Saturday and was startled by the dog, which was barking.
Police say King yelled at the dog, "Shut the [expletive] up, and charged with taunting a police animal.
King's parents call it absurd.
"To officially charge him with yelling at a dog – that's asinine to me," Annette Cash, his mother, said.
But at King's arraignment, District Justice Gene Ricciardi put him in jail and set the bond.
"A police dog is a police officer. There is no difference under the law," Ricciardi tells KDKA. "They are not pets and they are trained in the purposes of law enforcement and anyone who would taunt a police officer can be considered a threat to the community."
King's parents say their son, who was returning home from his job as a cook, has no criminal history and poses no threat to anyone.
According to the police report, King placed his hand on his back pocket and threatened to "shank" the dog. After police arrested him and patted him down, they discovered King was carrying a knife.
From jail, King told his parents he did say he would shank the dog but muttered it under his breath and didn't direct it at the officers and that he had no intent of harming the dog.
"Our son was wrong and he acknowledges he was wrong and we don't sit here and say he was right," Keith Cash, his father, said.
His parent say they have no way of coming up with his bond, so their son will stay in jail at least until next week when he faces a preliminary hearing. In the meantime, they say he stands to lose both of his jobs.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Updated: 6:10 a.m. PT Oct 9, 2007 Since 1969, the $100 bill is the largest note in circulation.
Police believe the $1 million note seized at the supermarket may have originated at a Dallas-based ministry. Last year, the ministry distributed thousands of religious pamphlets with a picture of President Grover Cleveland on a $1 million bill.
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Hey, I know the Subject: of the post had nothing to do with the post, just practicing taking Karl Rove's position next year in the White House!!! (Frish)
Fri Sep 28, 1:42 PM ET BERLIN (Reuters) - A German factory worker stole over a million screws from his employer and skewed the market with his cheap stolen goods, police said Friday.
"In the end, it became obvious that screws were being sold for much less than they usually cost," said a spokesman for police in the southern city of Wuerzburg.
Over two years, the 33-year-old assembly plant worker smuggled between 2,000 and 7,000 screws out of work each night, and auctioned them on an Internet site, police said. The scheme cost his firm around 110,000 euros ($156,000).
The man confessed after officers raided his home.
| WHAT CAUGHT MY EYE ABOUT THIS ARTICLE IS THAT MY FRIEND MARK AND I USED TO PLAY IN THE VERY PLACE THESE ROAD KILL HAD BEEN DEPOSITED! WE USED TO RIDE OUR 10 SPEED SCHWINNS UP HWY 9 TO A GRAVEL QUARRY, AND "SKI" DOWN THE GRAVEL SLOPE NARROWLY AVOIDING GETTING BURIED BY THE SLIDING DIRT... I WAS 10 - 12 AT THE TIME. THE COASTAL MOUNTAINS IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ARE QUITE IMPRESSIVE, BEAUTIFUL PINES AND REDWOODS... Sunday, September 30, 2007 (09-30) 14:24 PDT SARATOGA - -- Three Caltrans maintenance workers have for roughly the past decade violated agency policy by dumping roadkill - the remains of deer, raccoons, opossums and other wild animals struck by vehicles - into a ravine off windy Route 9 west of the city of Saratoga, a Caltrans spokeswoman said Sunday. After learning of the practice Thursday, the agency is now investigating who owns the land in unincorporated Santa Clara County where the animals were dumped and whether their decomposing carcasses could have polluted nearby Saratoga Creek, spokeswoman Lauren Wonder said. "We are doing our investigation with staff and will take appropriate disciplinary action" against the workers, Wonder said. "We will not tolerate this inhumane treatment of animals nor the violation of our policies." Caltrans will do its best to clean up the site, she said. In addition, all maintenance workers in the South Bay will be given additional training on the proper disposal of roadkill. Wild animals, Wonder said, are supposed to be taken for rendering to the San Jose Tallow Company, while pets must be delivered to one of two area animal shelters. Caltrans learned of the dumping Thursday after inquiries were made by a KPIX (Channel 5) television news reporter, Wonder said. One maintenance worker, she said, subsequently admitted the violations had gone on for about 10 years. "It sounds like it's not a regular practice, though," Wonder said. "They've used the area on and off." |
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 26, 4:36 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A day before President Bush's climate talks, China and other developing nations said Wednesday the need to provide food, shelter and clothes for their citizens must come ahead of global warming concerns.
Mexico's environment minister agreed. "We have always to bear in mind that half our population is at the poverty line," said Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada. "We are also extremely concerned about the consequences, the adverse affects of climate change."
They expressed a strong preference for the climate negotiations later this year sponsored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, instead of Bush's meeting Thursday and Friday for 16 "major emitter" countries, including China and India.
"All these discussions should be taken within the framework of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol," Xie said.
The 175-nation Kyoto pact rejected by Bush requires industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases and set an average target of a 5 percent cut below 1990 emissions levels by 2012. A U.N. climate summit Monday in New York sought to inject momentum behind December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, for discussing what will succeed the Kyoto climate pact that expires in 2012.
Sergio Serra, Brazil's first ambassador in charge of global warming issues, said the United States must realize that developing countries are trying to curb their emissions while also lifting the welfare of their citizens.
"It is a myth to think the developing countries are doing nothing to address climate change," he said.
As for the U.S.-sponsored talks later this week, he said, "We saw this as ... a very positive sign that this country is resuming the leadership that it always should have had."
Portuguese environment minister Humberto Rosa, whose country currently holds the European Union presidency, said it would be unfair to expect developing nations to adopt firm targets for cutting carbon emissions, the way the biggest industrialized polluters should.
"We want developing nations to do their share. This is not a moment in time for them to have such targets," he said. "We don't depart from the same situation; we do not have the same responsibilities."
On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the U.N. negotiating process as "the only forum" where the issues can be decided. Before 80 world leaders, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for "action, action, action."
At a House hearing Wednesday, three U.N. envoys on climate change and the German environment minister urged U.S. lawmakers to commit to binding caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Many of the visiting officials have sought to blunt an argument made by the White House and some congressional allies that mandatory caps would harm the U.S. economy. The visiting officials have been arguing that new markets in carbon trading and in technology to reduce emissions are economic opportunities. They say that improving energy efficiency will improve economic efficiency.
"The European Union is convinced that our climate protection efforts provide great opportunities and the transformation to a low carbon economy will enhance our competitiveness," Germany's environment minister, Signmar Gabriel told the panel.
But lingering opposition to mandatory caps was evident at the hearing.
"A decade after Kyoto, it is clear to me that the treaty produced far too few results. It is a failure," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told the officials.
The chairman of the panel, Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, said that the visitors have a difficult case to make in persuading the White House of the need for mandatory caps.
"The world has been asked to Washington to discuss this issue this week," said Markey, D-Mass. "But it is a little bit like being invited to a prayer breakfast with a group of fellow believers, but the meeting is hosted by an atheist."
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Associated Press Writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report
| Originally Posted by june sparky is a baker and a maker of all sorts of things like onion rings and cheesy things sparky is a baker that's why he is a maker and a trainer of the baker that bakes bread good, i like this!  |
Now, here is an interesting fellow, the last Jew in Afghanistan! Hopefully, over the coming decades, we can celebrate the "lasts" of many different interesting folk!
Last Jew in Afghanistan marks Yom Kippur alone by Beatrice Khadige
Sat Sep 22, 12:42 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Zebulon Simentov, the last Jew in Afghanistan, is once again marking the Jewish holy day of fasting in solitude, in a deserted synagogue in the capital of a devoutly Islamic nation.
"I have everything I need for the 24 hours of praying and fasting," Simentov tells AFP before the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, at sunset on Friday.
Around two decades ago, there were still about 20 Afghan Jewish families living in Kabul, although all were from Herat -- the largest city in northwestern Afghanistan near the border with Iran.
Through the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the subsequent civil war and the Taliban's 1996-2001 regime, all went to Israel or moved to neighbouring former Soviet republics -- undoing a Jewish presence built up from the seventh century.
Only Simentov has been left behind, becoming by default the guardian of Kabul's empty synagogue.
The room where he receives visitors was once a prayer room for women. On the wall are pictures of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the late ultra-orthodox Lubavitch rabbi, Menahem Scheerson.
Adjoining this room is the bare-walled "small synagogue" for men, where he prefers to pray.
Simentov, approaching 50, dislikes the "big synagogue" across the corridor -- another large and dirty room in which stands only a platform traditionally reserved for the rabbi.
A cupboard built into the wall faces Jerusalem. Its doors are open and it has been stripped of its treasure, a scroll of the Torah.
The precious document was stolen by a Taliban during the rule of the Islamist movement which was driven from government six years ago by a coalition led by the United States.
The man "wanted to sell it, thinking it was valuable," Simentov says in Dari, one of the main languages in Afghanistan. He says he reads Hebrew perfectly but prefers not to speak it.
"Today that Taliban is jailed at Guantanamo Bay and I am waiting for him to be freed so I can ask him to return the Tables of the Law," says Simentov, who wears a Jewish cap called a kippa, but is otherwise dressed like an Afghan.
Simentov is alone. His wife and two children are in Israel, which he says he has not visited since 1998.
"I have been the only Jew in Afghanistan for two years," he says. Ishaq Levin, the synagogue's former guardian, died from illness two years ago aged around 80.
Simentov says it is not easy to practise his religion alone.
But he has obtained special permission from a rabbi in Tashkent, capital of neighbouring Uzbekistan and home to 15,000 Jews, to slaughter his own meat in the kosher way that can normally only be done by a special rabbi.
Otherwise this former carpet salesman appears perfectly integrated into Kabul, where he is well-known by people who live around the synagogue, and warmly greeted when he is outside.
Jews have lived in several regions of Afghanistan and legends abound about their presence.
One says the Pashtuns, one of the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, descended from a tribe from Israel. Another says the name Afghanistan comes from Afghana, grandson of King Saul -- the first king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel.
The court also found that the state has an interest in promoting procreation and that the General Assembly "has not acted wholly unreasonably in granting recognition to the only relationship capable of bearing children traditionally within the marital unit."
(If they have "not acted wholly unreasonably" how unreasonably did they act? The decision is a bad one, since there is no connection between
"granting recognition of traditional marriage" and any state interest, except to create more taxpayers. Certainly marriage does not change the capability of procreation...or, confer much benefit to either partner or children, and marriage is the cause of every divorce!!!!)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_on_re_us/maryland_gay_marriage
I think that the "state's interest" may be in non-creation instead of procreation, if there is to be a "state" in the future...
Les, if you've answered this on the website, please point us to it, otherwise, I think we ought to establish exactly what the "state's interests" are, from OUR perspective (the state (at least in the USA) is NOMINALLY We the People~...).
By James Kilner
ULYANOVSK, Russia (Reuters) - The governor of a central Russian province urged couples to skip work on Wednesday and make love instead to help boost Russia's low birth-rate.
And if a woman gives birth in exactly nine months time -- on Russia's national day on June 12 -- she will qualify for a prize, perhaps even winning a new home.
"It's normally something for the home -- a fridge or a television set," Yelena Yakovleva at the Ulyanovsk regional administration press office, said.
"It doesn't matter if it's a girl or a boy."
Newly-weds Karina and Anton Bukhanovsky walked hand in hand down the main street of the regional capital of Ulyanovsk. They live in St Petersburg but travelled to Ulyanovsk to soak up the atmosphere on Wednesday.
"I used to live here," said Karina, aged 19.
"We plan to come back on the same day next year and try for a baby and the prize nine months later," she said.
Anton, aged 21, kissed her gently on the cheek and they strolled off arm in arm.
Regional governor Sergei Morozov told employers to contribute to a Kremlin campaign to boost the birth rate by giving couples Wednesday off to have sex.
Russia wants to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year as births fail to outpace a high death rate boosted by AIDS, alcoholism and suicide.
This is the third year Ulyanovsk region, famous as the birthplace of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin, has dedicated a day to encouraging couples to produce more babies.
Prizes will extend equally to unwed women who produce children on the right day, though the biggest prizes will go to married couples.
On Russia Day this year, a family won a jeep after their fourth baby was born on the holiday.
Next year, the top prizes will include an apartment, Morozov told Reuters. "We need more people," he said.
This year a record 78 babies were born on June 12 at the main hospital in the regional capital of Ulyanovsk, beating the 2006 total of 26, said chief doctor Andrei Malykh.
"The scheme is working. People want the prizes," he said.
A mass wedding and special lessons for children at school on how to deal with having a brother or sister are also planned in Ulyanovsk city, which is about 900 km (560 miles) from Moscow.
At the town's central post office, a sign urges locals to write love letters for free to anywhere in Russia, with postage pre-paid.
This week First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, said he wanted to stabilise the population at about 142 million by 2015 and boost it back to 145 million by 2025.
Despite his later influence, scholars say, Nietzsche was not highly regarded before his death in 1890. But nowadays, critiques of religion, his specialty, are popular.
Just check out the New York Times bestseller list.
Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great spent the past 16 weeks in the top five of the list after making its debut in the top spot. Still ranked among best sellers, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is holding out in the top 30 despite being published last September. Other prominent authors include Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
According to activists, this band of atheist authors heralds a turning point in American society -- when the irreligious stand up and take their place at the table of political power.
The success of these authors is directly proportional to the dramatic rise in religious conservatism and public piety in national politics, said Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry, a magazine published by the Council for Secular Humanism.
"With (President) Bush trumpeting his faith-based initiatives in the face of the separation of church and state, you have a lot of those in the nonbelieving community who feel their civil liberties are in danger," Flynn said.
Add that to the growing number of American atheists and you have a recipe for political activism, he added.
Record numbers of people are living without God, according to a Pew Charitable Trust study conducted by researchers at the University of Akron for the 2004 presidential race.
The study found the highest share of people yet, 16 percent, who said they had no religious affiliation. Some of those were actually nonspecific spiritual seekers or people between denominations, but almost 11 percent of the respondents said they were atheist or secular.
"And if you know anything about minority politics, 10 percent is the magic number," Flynn said. "All of a sudden, you have a place at the table. I think that has a lot to do with the sudden popularity of atheism and these books."
But the Rev. Martin Marty, an author, Lutheran minister and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said just because the books reveal a cultural current in America, don't expect a march on Washington.
The history of the various agnostic and atheist movements in this country, he said, is one of a failure to organize.
"Religions have the power to form groups," Marty said. "When you look at the intellectual expression of atheism, it is very individualistic."
The run-of-the-mill atheist is less concerned with the trappings of religion than its political influence, said Marilyn Westfall, a lecturer and board member of the American Humanist Association.
She said there is genuine concern about the strength of the religious right in this country.
"It seems that humans have gone through cycles in which religious fervor must be opposed for the sake of ethics," Westfall said.
Amy Birtcher has seen this thought reflected in Columbus. As president of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, she has watched the organization's numbers swell from the historic average of about 40 to almost 100 in the past two years.
She said people are turning to atheist authors' works because they validate what they have been thinking for a long time.
"New members tell us quite regularly that the Bush administration and the current wave of conservative politics brought them out of the closet," Birtcher said.
Still, she said, atheists remain one of the most maligned minority groups in the United States. Political polls reveal that people are less likely to vote for a nonbeliever than for a homosexual, she said.
"A lot of people are afraid," Birtcher said. "They can't tell their families. They can't tell their co-workers because they fear real reprisal."
The Rev. Richard Burnett, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church Downtown, said he can understand how invocations of the divine by public officials can feel alienating to unbelievers, though unintentionally.
Having read Hitchens' book, Burnett said it's a good read for Christians, if only to help reaffirm their belief. He suspects that the book's best-seller status is due in part to the faithful trying to find out "what the devil it's all about."
"When we are honest with each other, I think there's a great potential to find truth," Burnett said about the dialogue the books have created between the faithful and nonbelievers. "When the discourse is mocking or trying to score points for either side, I don't think it is helpful."
He said it's important to remember that God does not need to be defended.
Flynn predicts that the popularity of these books is the first step in a coming wave of atheist activism. "It took a very concentrated effort on behalf of the gay community to make people realize you know a gay person," Flynn said. "People realized, 'Hey, I have a gay co-worker, and they're fine.' We need to do that for the nonreligious."
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The gay analogy is interesting but not quite spot on, since Gays have a natural reason to form a group and atheists don't, except to be defensive of our fragile civil rights to be Free To Believe or Not as we so desire! Seems so simple and nothing to argue about really, I respectfully request the right not to believe anything I have to take solely on faith...
Cheers,
Frish
