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World News; News from around the world
Tweet Topic Started: May 4 2008, 04:19 PM (2,752 Views)
la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 12 2008, 03:58 AM Post #321
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what would surprise me is if we found a christian who WASNT a hypocrite


I am imagining syringes sitting around him in the pew and it makes me laugh! :ha I mean why would he have them sitting around him? It is not like heroin addicts put syringes all over and around seats that they are sitting on! :ha :ha :ha
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Julesy Jul 16 2008, 12:30 AM Post #322
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Elderly women get life in L.A. insurance killings By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent
2 hours, 38 minutes ago



LOS ANGELES - Two elderly women were sentenced to life in prison without parole Tuesday for murdering two indigent men to collect insurance policies taken out on their lives.

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Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley on Tuesday sentenced 77-year-old Helen Golay and 75-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt to two consecutive life terms each.

In April the women were convicted of a scheme in which they befriended homeless men, took out insurance policies on them and then killed them in murders staged to look like hit-and-run auto accidents. Prosecutors say the women collected $2.8 million before the scheme was uncovered.

The judge denounced the women, saying the men they killed needed only food, water and shelter and thought the women were going to help them.

"Instead, these unfortunate men were sacrificed on your altar of greed," Wesley said.

Both women were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder for financial gain in the 1999 death of Paul Vados, 73, and the 2005 death of Kenneth McDavid, 50.

Both men were run over by cars in dark alleys. Police linked the cases when a detective investigating one overheard a colleague describe a similar case.

Defense attorneys had conceded the women were involved in insurance fraud but denied they had formed a murder conspiracy. Golay's attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, said during the trial that the women's idea was to insure old, sick homeless people who would die more quickly.

The jury that convicted the women in April saw a secretly recorded videotape of the defendants in a lockup after their arrests. Rutterschmidt berated Golay, saying her actions in taking out 23 insurance policies raised a red flag when the men died.

"It's your fault," Rutterschmidt told Golay. "You can't have that many insurances. ... You were greedy. That's the problem."



:shock :shock :shock
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 16 2008, 12:36 AM Post #323
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damn that is some crazy shit!
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 18 2008, 12:11 PM Post #324
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North Korea's "Hotel of Doom" wakes from its coma

By Jon Herskovitz Thu Jul 17, 3:56 AM ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's phantom hotel is stirring back to life. Once dubbed by Esquire magazine as "the worst building in the history of mankind," the 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel is back under construction after a 16-year lull in the capital of one of the world's most reclusive and destitute countries.
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According to foreign residents in Pyongyang, Egypt's Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the three-sided pyramid-shaped hotel whose 330-metre (1,083 ft) frame dominates the Pyongyang skyline.

The firm has put glass panels into the concrete shell, installed telecommunications antennas -- even though the North forbids its citizens to own mobile phones -- and put up an artist's impression of what it will look like.

An official with the group said its Orascom Telecom subsidiary was involved in the project but gave no details.

The hotel consists of three wings rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings supposed to hold five revolving restaurants and an observation deck.

A creaky building crane has for years sat unused at the top of the 3,000-room hotel in a city where tourists are only occasionally allowed to visit.

"It is not a beautiful design. It carries little iconic or monumental significance, but sheer muscular and massive presence," said Lee Sang Jun, a professor of architecture at Yonsei University in Seoul.

The communist North started construction in 1987, in a possible fit of jealousy at South Korea, which was about to host the 1988 Summer Olympics and show off to the world the success of its rapidly developing economy.

A concrete shell built by North Korea's Paektu Mountain Architects & Engineers emerged over the next few years. A proud North Korea put a likeness of the hotel on postage stamps and boasted about the structure in official media.

According to intelligence sources, then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung saw the hotel as a symbol of his big dreams for the state he founded, while his son and current leader Kim Jong-il was a driving force in its construction.

But by 1992, worked was halted. The North's main benefactor the Soviet Union had dissolved a year earlier and funding for the hotel had vanished. For a time, the North airbrushed images of the Ryugyong Hotel from photographs.

As the North's economy took a deeper turn for the worse in the 1990s the empty shell became a symbol of the country's failure, earning nicknames "Hotel of Doom" and "Phantom Hotel."

Yonsei's Lee and other architects said there were questions raised about whether the hotel was structurally sound and a few believed completing the structure could cause it to collapse.

It would cost up to $2 billion to finish the Ryugyong Hotel and make it safe, according to estimates in South Korean media. That is equivalent to about 10 percent of the North's annual economic output.

Bruno Giberti, associate head of California Polytechnic State University's Department of Architecture, said the project was typical of what has been produced recently in many cities trying to show their emerging wealth by constructing gigantic edifices that were not related in scale to anything else around them.

"If this is the worst building in the world, the runners up are in Vegas and Shanghai," said Giberti.
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 19 2008, 12:23 PM Post #325
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FBI: Soccer team members help subdue man on flight

By Richard Green, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Jul 18, 3:55 pm EDT

*
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*
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OKLAHOMA CITY – An American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma City on Friday after a passenger stripped nude and later tried to open an emergency exit door before being subdued by members of a professional soccer team and others, the FBI said.

Members of the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer were among those who grabbed the passenger near an exit door, FBI spokesman Gary Johnson said. Tie wraps were placed on the man, whose name was not immediately released. He was taken into custody in Oklahoma City and placed under psychiatric evaluation, Johnson said.

American Flight 725, a Boeing 757, arrived in Oklahoma City at 1:35 p.m. CDT and was back in the air an hour later, said American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith. It landed without further incident at Los Angeles International Airport at 3:13 p.m. PDT.

Craig Tornberg, the soccer team’s general manager, said he confronted the man as soon as he saw him emerge naked from one of the plane’s restrooms.

“I said he should get back into the bathroom and put on his clothes,” Tornberg said after the plane landed in Los Angeles. “He said something strange to me. He said, ‘I don’t hear you. I don’t see you.’ ”

Tornberg said the man complied and got dressed but a few minutes later “made a beeline for the emergency door.”

Tornberg said he, assistant coach Gwynne Williams and Michael Burns, the team’s vice president for player personnel, grabbed the man and forced him into a seat while a flight attendant tied him up.

“It was strange, but when he put his hands on the exit door – that brought it to another level,” Burns said. “Clearly, he wasn’t thinking straight.”

The pilot diverted the flight to Will Rogers World Airport where the man was removed.

“He was taken into custody by the Oklahoma City Police Department and taken to a crisis center for a mental evaluation,” Johnson said.

Shortly before the incident, Tornberg said he saw the man, described as clean-cut and in his early 20s, crying and “talking a lot of gibberish.”

The soccer team was on its way to Southern California for a game on Sunday against Chivas USA at California State University, Fullerton. Its members were among 151 passengers and seven crew members on the flight.

As passengers left the plane in Los Angeles, several indicated they had taken the incident in stride.

Gillian Callaghan, who was traveling with her 12-year-old son, said she never panicked because the flight crew seemed to keep things well under control. She said she felt sorry for the man.

“He was just having some troubles, confused, not a scary guy,” she said.




Can we say, bad acid trip?
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Auntie Maine Jul 19 2008, 01:13 PM Post #326
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I saw that building on the news the other night.It was just plain scary.
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Auntie Maine Jul 19 2008, 09:30 PM Post #327
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CAIRO, Egypt - Archaeologists and scholars will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza's Great pyramid. They will then try to reassemble the craft.

The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces in 1954 from another pit and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.

Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images from inside the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling.

Professor Sakuji Yoshimura of Japan's Waseda University says the excavation of around 600 pieces of timber will begin in November.

:clap :clap :clap I just love these discoveries. :yahoo
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Auntie Maine Jul 20 2008, 02:06 PM Post #328
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Headline in todays news... "Pope urges Australian youths to spurn materialism" and this from the man living in a gold filled palace.Fuck him!!! :jesse
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Rodney Jul 20 2008, 03:21 PM Post #329
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What a twat. The Vatican is one of the most richest nations(a very tiny nation) in the world. With all their Gold and stuff, they could feed the entire world four times over. Stupid pope...and that hideous dress makes him look fat. Crappy crossdresser
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Auntie Maine Jul 20 2008, 04:53 PM Post #330
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Devil in a dress. :priest
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Rodney Jul 20 2008, 05:48 PM Post #331
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The Devil wears a Cassock in theaters near you.

"Working for the Pope is huge opportunity, a million young boys would do ANYTHING for this job"
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Auntie Maine Jul 20 2008, 05:55 PM Post #332
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Its a wonder Michael Jackson isn't Catholic. :toot
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Rodney Jul 20 2008, 05:56 PM Post #333
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he is, now! :toot
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 20 2008, 06:57 PM Post #334
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Rodney
Jul 20 2008, 03:21 PM
What a twat. The Vatican is one of the most richest nations(a very tiny nation) in the world. With all their Gold and stuff, they could feed the entire world four times over. Stupid pope...and that hideous dress makes him look fat. Crappy crossdresser

I just cant ever think of Vatican City as its own country. It just doesnt seem right.
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 20 2008, 07:29 PM Post #335
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July 15, 2008
I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty
A woman slept with her sibling for years and has good memories. Not many people understand their relationship, she says

Strangely enough, Daniel's wedding day didn't upset me at all. It was his 30th birthday six months later which really got to me, as he stood there with his wife Alison while they greeted the guests. I can honestly say that that was the only time when I felt real envy and wished desperately that it was me standing beside him, arms round each other as we showed the world how much we loved each other.

It's not as if I'm not allowed to love Daniel, but the way we feel about each other isn't something that we can share easily with anyone else. Daniel is my brother, but since I was 14 we've had a sexual relationship - and that's not something that many people would feel comfortable with.

I've only ever spoken about this once before, and even then it was very much in the abstract. While I was still at university a friend had a major misunderstanding with a relatively new boyfriend when one of his friends had reported back to him that he'd seen her hugging and kissing another man in the union bar. She was firstly annoyed at being questioned and became even more exasperated when she explained that the man in question was her brother, as her boyfriend refused to believe her. Their loud discussion took place in the union with an interested audience, until he finally stamped out in fury, still refusing to believe her. As she flounced back to join us she made a remark about preferring her brother to any other man, whereupon one of the crowd said “Yuck, how pervy!” As she sat down beside me she muttered something like “It's not that strange,” and three or four drinks later I quietly asked her what she'd meant.

Fuelled by drink or maybe just rage, she started talking in a very intense but hushed way about how close siblings could be, going on to say that she was sure that many people experimented sexually with them as they grew up and then simply grew out of it. She said it was like practising your social skills on your family and so long as it was mutual, she couldn't see the harm. I didn't say much - partly because I couldn't believe that I'd met someone who seemed to be like me - and she very quickly clammed up and moved over to talk to someone else and never brought up the subject again.
I hoped bulimia would make me beautiful

Anorexic at the age of 12 and bulimic until she was 30, a reader tells of her deceit to keep her disorder from family
Background

* Family secrets: the grief for my illicit love

* I wish I had married for money, not love

* My mother hated all women

I think the only reason that I'm talking about it now is to emphasise that I truly believe that she was right - it doesn't happen to everyone but it happens to some, and I don't want to be made to feel guilty about it. Incest is so often spoken about in the same breath as abuse, but if you're close in age and equal in relationship terms then it's entirely different. Of course abuse happens, but it can happen in any sexual relationship and there's an expectation that a family member would never hurt you in the way that someone else could. There's no comparison between siblings close in age having sexual feelings and contact and an adult forcing a younger member of the family to do something they neither understand nor want to be involved in. I think incest is traditionally seen as bad, but in some cultures that isn't the case. When I was small I asked a Sunday school teacher if Adam and Eve's children married each other since they were the first people on earth. She just laughed and didn't reply. Having children with Daniel was never an issue and we were always careful about contraception.

All my memories of my relationship with Daniel are good. He's only a year older than me and we've always been close, especially since we always seemed to be full of nonsense compared with our older sister Jane. She's four years older than Daniel and very studious and focused, while he's bursting with fun and light-hearted enthusiasm. I've adored him for as long as I can remember and my parents were always delighted by our closeness when we were small. We shared friends and moved happily in the same social circles, so I could never understand girls who didn't get on with their brothers.

Things changed when I was 14. I had spent hours getting ready for my first Christmas dance when I knocked on Daniel's bedroom door. It's a dodgy age as you're trying to come to terms with your developing body and worry endlessly about how you look, so his wolf whistle was very welcome as he swept me into his arms and we pirouetted, laughing, around the room, before going downstairs to show off our finery to our parents and Jane.

Daniel's appreciation really helped my confidence and I was aware of him smiling approvingly as boy after boy asked me up to dance, though my greatest pleasure was when he claimed me for the last dance. We giggled home to gossip and hot chocolate with our parents and by the next day all the finery was discarded and life was back to normal.

On New Year's Eve Daniel went to a party and by the time he got home I was already asleep. I was extremely sleepy when he crept into my room and curled up on my bed, which was something we'd both done for years, especially if we wanted to share some snippet of gossip. When he started stroking my hair and face it was a surprise, but I could feel myself drifting pleasurably back to sleep as he caressed me gently. Then I became aware of his hand drifting lower and suddenly I was wide awake as he stroked my neck and started sliding his hand down my vest top. I wasn't scared but I was surprised as he started stroking me, though my overriding sensation was one of sheer pleasure. I instinctively lifted my mouth to his as he kissed me and then he hugged me very tightly and left.

I lay in complete confusion with my mind racing and my body totally turned on. All the sex education I'd had said that this was wrong, that it was abuse and incest. But it hadn't felt wrong and I certainly hadn't felt forced. Rather, I felt that Daniel had stopped long before I'd wanted him to. It was hours before I finally fell asleep but I was sure of two things - that I'd really enjoyed it and I still adored my brother.

The next morning it was clear that Daniel had a hangover but as he grinned up at me from his prone position on the couch there was no awkwardness or regret between us. We didn't discuss what had happened, but went for a long walk that afternoon with Jane and the dog and everything felt the same, down to Jane chiding us about being irresponsible about leaving our parents to do all the tidying up after new year's dinner.

Over the next few years we had sexual encounters every six months or so, each time going farther and farther until I was 17, when we had full sex for the first time. We both went out with other people and there was never any jealousy, although I found it hard to be physically intimate with anyone else. Part of that was because sex with Daniel was so amazing that I had no patience for all the fumbling that seemed to happen with other boys. The sex was never pre-planned, but just always seemed to happen when there was no chance of being discovered.

Every so often I would wonder what people would think if they found out, especially our parents, but it always felt so right and was so exciting that these concerns were never enough to stop me. Sometimes he initiated sex and sometimes I did, but in between times our relationship was as easy, relaxed and affectionate as ever, with the incredible passion of each encounter quietly banked away until the next time.

I missed Daniel when he went to university, but went to stay with him every three months or so. Sometimes we would have sex and at other times neither of us seemed interested. By the time he met Alison he was working and I was a student, and I knew that this relationship was different, but it still came as a shock when he told me he wanted to marry her. However, I was more shocked when he said: “You only have to say and I won't marry her, but then I want us to stay together and not see anyone else. We could be the old boring brother and sister who never got married, but ended up sharing a house because no one else would have them! I know this is meant to be wrong but I've never felt anything so right.” This echoed everything that I've thought about our incestuous relationship over the years. After hours of discussion we agreed that it was time to stop the sexual side of our relationship and also decided that telling anyone else was a bad idea, parting in tears afterwards.

I know Daniel loves Alison, but she's very wary of me. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't see me as a sexual threat, but she thinks of me as an emotional rival and I suppose she's right. It's not unusual - there are countless people dealing with all the emotions that result from partners becoming officially family.

I have wondered if there will ever come a time when I'll look back on my relationship with Daniel in disgust, but I don't think so. Everyone has relationships where the sexual element has ended but a great friendship remains, and that's as good a way as any of summing up what's happened with us. Daniel has a unique place in my affections, as I do with him, and that will never change.

As an academic I have a tendency to draw logical conclusions. I like to see a pattern and resolution, so it does pain me that what appears so lovely and natural to me would be regarded as abhorrent by most people. It's not my subject, but I would be really interested to see a study on incest done on these terms, moving it away entirely from the concept of abuse. However, I simply cannot imagine that many people are happy to talk about it and I certainly wouldn't put my family through hell by being the first to go public.

Three months ago I met Derek and I think this is going to be a lasting relationship. The sex is certainly amazing and he's a warm and lovely man, so I have high hopes for this. The trouble with having someone like Daniel in your life is that it leaves you with very high expectations, but it's hard knowing that the one person you love above everything is out of bounds. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that you can't tell anyone, as his or her disgust would ruin everything.
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 20 2008, 07:40 PM Post #336
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this is really interesting:

The End of White Flight
For the First Time in Decades, Cities' Black Populations Lose Ground,
Stirring Clashes Over Class, Culture and Even Ice Cream
By CONOR DOUGHERTY
July 19, 2008; Page A1

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close.

In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents.

"The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul."
[Bens Chili Bowl]
From the Collection of the Ali family
Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington has become a melting pot as the area's racial mix changes.

For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably -- and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.

The changing racial mix is stirring up quarrels over class and culture. Beloved institutions in traditionally black communities -- minority-owned restaurants, book stores -- are losing the customers who supported them for decades. As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.

Part of the demographic shift is simple math: So many whites had abandoned cities over the past half-century, there weren't as many left to lose. Whites make up 66% of the general U.S. population, but only about 40% of large cities. Sooner or later, the pendulum was bound to swing back, and that appears to be starting.
[Bens Chili Bowl]
From the Collection of the Ali family
Ben's exterior in 1958

The Census data "suggests that white flight from large cities may have bottomed out in the 1990s," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

For instance, while most of the 50 largest cities continue to see declines in the share of whites, it is at much-reduced rates. In Los Angeles the share of the white population declined only about a half a percentage point between 2000 and 2006, compared to a 7.5-point decline the previous decade. Cities including New York, Fort Worth and Chicago show a similar pattern.

'Natural Decrease'

Demographic readjustments can take decades to play out. But if current trends continue, Washington and Atlanta (both with black majorities) will in the next decade see African-Americans fall below 50% for the first time in about a half-century.

Meantime, in San Francisco, African-American deaths now outnumber births. Once a "natural decrease" such as this begins, it's tough for the population to bounce back, since there are fewer residents left to produce the next generation. "The cycle tends to be self-perpetuating," says Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.
[San Francisco Filmore photo]
Ramin Rahimian/WpN for The Wall Street Journal
[San Francisco Filmore photo]
San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, from the book "Harlem of the West" by Elizabeth Pepin & Lewis Watts, Chronicle Books
San Francisco's Fillmore (top) is losing black businesses; the same corner in the mid-1940s (bottom).

There are myriad factors driving the change. In recent years, minority middle-class families, particularly African-Americans, have been moving to the suburbs in greater numbers. At the same time, Hispanic immigrants (who poured into cities from the 1970s through the 1990s) are now increasingly bypassing cities for suburbs and rural areas, seeking jobs on farms and in meat-packing plants.

Cities have spent a decade tidying up parks and converting decaying factories into retail and living space. That has attracted young professionals and empty-nesters, many of them white.

The shift has put the future at odds with the past. New York City's borough of Brooklyn has seen its proportion of whites grow to 36.1% in 2006 from 35.9% in 2000 -- the first increase in white share in about a century.

Hoarding Computers

While the root of neighborhood conflicts is often money or class differences between white-collar and blue-collar workers, it often unfolds along racial lines. About two years ago Public School 84, in a largely Hispanic section of Brooklyn, meetings of the Parent Teacher Association started drawing a more professional, wealthier and whiter group of parents.

Soon, disagreements spilled into the open. Arguments concerned everything from how PTA money was spent, to accusations that some white parents were hoarding computers for their kids.

Even ice cream became a point of contention: In the past year, a group of mostly white parents took issue with a school tradition of selling ice cream to raise money. They felt the school shouldn't be serving sugary foods to kids, but the break with tradition angered many minority parents who felt the sales were an important source of money and that ice cream is a harmless treat.

"It was a gigantic fight," says Brooke Parker, who is white and whose daughter attended the school last year. "If the school is saying 'It's OK to give out ice cream' while at the same time they're holding workshops on how to deal with your kid's Type 2 diabetes, maybe we should rethink the message we're sending."

Relations got testy enough that about 20 kids, most of whom were white, transferred to private schools or other public schools. "I don't think the battleground against gentrification should take place in the schools," says Ms. Parker, who withdrew her own daughter from P.S. 84 as tensions built. "It seemed nothing could get accomplished," she said.

Cries of 'Segregation'
[Reverend John Blanchard]
Patrice Gilbert for The Wall Street Journal
The Rev. John Blanchard (right) at his Washington church, which plans to woo whites.

A few months later, a small group of families, most of them white, proposed establishing a new public school, to be located inside the existing P.S. 84. Hundreds of minority parents reacted by putting out a press release calling it de facto segregation. The proposal is "clearly discriminatory," the release said. "Children will suffer the effects of negative stigma as a result of this segregation which will send our City back 120 years!"

"I honestly felt like they didn't want to mix our children with their children," says Virginia Reyes, vice president of the PTA at P.S. 84 who has two foster children at the school. "It upset me a lot."

A spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education says, "We obviously would not and could not open segregated schools." The department says the new school didn't get the go-ahead because it didn't have broad enough community support.

Backers of the new school couldn't be reached.
[Charts]

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, in a majority African-American section of the borough, Councilwoman Letitia James says a handful of predominantly white parents last year asked her if some of their local tax money could be steered to schools in a nearby neighborhood. The parents wanted their kids in schools with a more diverse racial mix, Ms. James says, rather than the majority-black schools in her district.

The parents felt "tax dollars should follow the children, and not the school," Ms. James says. She denied their request.

There's a century's worth of history behind the ebb and flow of whites and minorities in urban America. Rural blacks began flocking to cities more than a century ago, lured by factory jobs. After World War II, whites headed for the suburbs as the great postwar building boom got rolling, while African-American families stayed in the cities, partly because they were often denied access to home loans that whites could get. In the 1970s Hispanic immigrants surged into cities, chasing service jobs and further diluting the share of whites. By the 1980s, as cities hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs, blacks and whites both left -- but whites at a higher rate.

Cities Get a Makeover

Today, cities are refashioning themselves as trendy centers devoid of suburban ills like strip malls and long commutes. In Atlanta, which has among the longest commute times of any U.S. city, the white population rose by 26,000 between 2000 and 2006, while the black population decreased by 8,900. Overall the white proportion has increased to 35% in 2006 from 31% in 2000.

In other cities, whites are still leaving, but more blacks are moving out. Boston lost about 6,000 black residents between 2000 and 2006, but only about 3,000 whites. In 2006, whites accounted for 50.2% of the city's population, up from 49.5% in 2000. That's the first increase in roughly a century.

Tracking population shifts is an inexact science. Changes in how Census data are tallied makes for imprecise comparisons across decades. Hispanics, for instance, were mostly lumped in with whites until 1980, potentially overstating the white population in earlier decades. Also, losses of African-Americans from cities are often disproportionate to other minorities because unlike, say, Hispanics or Asians, the inflow of black immigrants into the U.S. isn't big enough to offset the loss of African-Americans to the suburbs.

Washington -- where African-Americans have been in the majority for a half-century -- has lost about 80,000 black residents between 1990 and 2006. Whites had been leaving, too, but recently they've started coming back. Between 2000 and 2006, Washington gained 24,000 whites and lost 21,000 blacks. Whites are now 32% of the population, up from 28% in 2000.

Churches Take a Hit

This is a problem for Washington's African-American churches. The past few years, numerous black churches have relocated to suburban Prince George's County, Md., to follow their parishioners. Later this year, Metropolitan Baptist Church (founded by freed slaves during the Lincoln administration) plans to leave town as well.

Some of the remaining black churches are now courting white members. On a recent Sunday, the Rev. John Blanchard, the 64-year-old pastor at Ebenezer United Methodist Church, preached to a thin crowd; several pews were empty. About half his parishioners now live in the suburbs and drive into the city for services. High gasoline prices aren't helping attendance.

So Mr. Blanchard says he's planning to add a white intern to preach with him, in hopes of filling more pews. "You've got to love the one you're with," he says, "but you also need to adjust to the environment you're in."

While his church flounders, the predominantly white Capitol Hill United Methodist Church just down the street is flourishing. There the average attendance on Sundays has doubled to about 120 people the past five years. "Demographics are in our favor. We're attracting the folks that are moving in," says the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, 38, who headed the church for five years before recently leaving for a position elsewhere.

In San Francisco, the African-American population has fallen by a third, or about 30,000 people, since 1990, largely due to surging housing costs and redevelopment that destroyed some public housing. Mayor Newsom's African-American Out-Migration Task Force, set up last year, has a two-pronged strategy: keep African-Americans from leaving, and promote affordable housing and cultural institutions like a jazz center to try to lure blacks back. "The greatness of our city and region is in its diversity," Mayor Newsom says.

So far, his efforts have focused on residents of public housing, about half of whom are black. The city is trying to prevent evictions by building new community centers where residents can get job training and help with the rent. The city is also giving residents displaced by redevelopment, many of whom are black, an inside track on affordable-housing units.

From Poor to Poorer

As middle-class African-Americans have left San Francisco, the remaining black population has gone from poor to poorer. In 1990, half of the city's African-American population was very low-income; by 2005, that number swelled to about two-thirds. The number of black-owned businesses fell 25% between 1997 and 2002.

As blacks migrated to San Francisco's suburbs, so too have many social activities centered on the community. The San Francisco Chapter of the National Black MBA Association has started hosting many of its events across the bay in Oakland.

The Western Addition, a historically black neighborhood in San Francisco once home to many jazz clubs, has lost much of that character. Powell's Place, an iconic soul-food restaurant that had been located in or around the neighborhood since the 1970s, has moved to Bayview-Hunters Point. Charles Spencer, who owns a barbershop catering to black men, says he has lost many of his customers and is trying to diversify. His Web site has a picture of a white client to go with three black faces.

'An Act of Faith'

The city has celebrated its traditional black culture by designating a stretch of Fillmore Street the "Fillmore Jazz Preservation District," yet the businesses that defined the era are now gone or dying. Raye Richardson, owner of Marcus Book Stores -- its motto is "Books by and about black people everywhere" -- has been in the Fillmore district since 1946. She remembers the clubs, the black tailor shops and the many black residents who supported her shop. Today, Ms. Richardson says her store is losing money; much of her business comes from mail-order traffic.

"San Francisco has so few blacks now, that it's just an act of faith to stay open," says Ms. Richardson, 88.

Sherri Young, executive director at the African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, is one of the few blacks at her theater company who still lives in San Francisco. "I'm a single woman in my late 30s," Ms. Young says. "Culturally, it's difficult."

Recently, she says, her production of "The Comedy of Errors" drew a mostly white audience. It's the first time that's happened since she founded the company 14 years ago.
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Julesy Jul 21 2008, 01:59 PM Post #337
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Group says it ordains 3 women Catholic priests By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 20, 8:06 PM ET



BOSTON - An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday.

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Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated.

The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.

The group said the three women — Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City — are responding to a heartfelt call to serve the church as priests.

A fourth woman, Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J., was ordained as a deacon, the group said.

The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church," the archdiocese said.

The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not.

Sunday's ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops — Ida Raming of Struttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.

The ceremony "is not in compliance with their man-made rules, but it's certainly in compliance with the Roman Catholic ordination rituals because our bishops were ordained by all-male Roman Catholic bishops who are in good standing with the church," as provided by the church's ordination rituals, said Bridget Mary Meehan, the group's spokeswoman.

The group, which was formed in 2002, has conducted similar ceremonies in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

In March, the archbishop of St. Louis excommunicated three women — two Americans and a South African who were part of the Womenpriests movement — for participating in a woman's ordination.

Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on the requirement that priests be male.

Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.



:priest
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la anaconda de chocolatee Jul 21 2008, 02:02 PM Post #338
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why do they want to become priests, so that they can molest children? They dont need to be ordained to do that! :toot
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Julesy Jul 21 2008, 02:08 PM Post #339
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this made me lol

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Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.


:priest

I think id feel safer if I had kids if my priest was a woman. :toot
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Rodney Jul 21 2008, 03:52 PM Post #340
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Women can be abusers too! They are just cleverer about it. they hardly ever get caught! :toot


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why do they want to become priests, so that they can molest children? They dont need to be ordained to do that!


yeah but then you can scare them by saying: "If you tell anyone you have been fiddling with my Holy Host, you'll burn in hell. I have a direct line with the Big Guy upstairs , you know? "
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