Fox News Creating Racism

Classrooms or Prison Cells?

State spending on prisons has been growing and eating away at other priorities, like higher education. Now that’s beginning to change.

Faced with a $19 billion budget deficit this spring, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was taking a cleaver to state health and welfare programs for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. And rather than removing another slice from the state’s vaunted higher education system—which had already experienced years of reductions in state aid, ensuing tuition hikes, and student protests in response—budget cutters took more than $1 billion out of the state corrections programs, particularly prison health care.

It may seem odd that state funding for college kids often competes with money for prisoners, but if you track spending in California over the past 30 years, you’ll see evidence of a long-standing tug of war between these two very different constituencies. Over much of the past decade, funding for corrections has gone steadily up, while spending on state colleges has tumbled. “The state seems to be saying we have more of a future in prisons than in universities,” University of California president Mark Yudof said in a recent speech.

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Ancient City Found in Caribbean Sea

WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) – EXCLUSIVE – Researchers have revealed the first images from the Caribbean sea floor of what they believe are the archaeological remains of an ancient civilization. Guarding the location’s coordinates carefully, the project’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, says the city could be thousands of years old; possibly even pre-dating the ancient Egyptian pyramids, at Giza.

The site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Russian explorers near Cuba in 2001, at a depth of 2300 feet. “To be seen on satellite, our site is much shallower.” The team is currently seeking funding to mount an expedition to confirm and explore what appears to be a vast underwater city. “You have to be careful working with satellite images in such a location,” the project’s principle researcher said, “The digital matrix sometimes misinterprets its data, and shows ruins as solid masses. The thing is, we’ve found structure – what appears to be a tall, narrow pyramid; large platform structures with small buildings on them; we’ve even found standing parallel post and beam construction in the rubble of what appears to be a fallen building. You can’t have post and beam without human involvement.”

MORE PHOTOS AND INFO AFTER THE JUMP

Smh:Gary Coleman Wife 911 call

smh shes thirsty for this one

Kanye West Joins Protest Of Arizona’s Immigration Laws

Kanye West has joined a musical boycott of Arizona’s new immigration law, which has caused a firestorm of controversy.

Zack de la Rocha has issued a statement on behalf of an organization called the Sound Strike urging music fans and fellow artists to boycott Arizona “to stop SB 1070,” which he labels an “odious” law. Among those artists joining de la Rocha’s boycott are Conor Oberst, Kanye West, Rage Against the Machine, Rise Against, Cypress Hill, Serj Tankian, Joe Satriani, Sonic Youth, Tenacious D, Street Sweeper Social Club and Michael Moore.

De la Rocha said their boycott of the state was comparable to the legendary boycott of the Montgomery Bus system in the 60’s, which sparked the Civil Rights Movement.

“When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, they arrested her. As a result, people got together and said we are not going to ride the bus until they change the law. It was this courageous action that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott,” a statement read. “What if we got together, signed a collective letter saying, “we’re not going to ride the bus”, saying we are not going to comply. We are not going to play in Arizona. We are going to boycott Arizona?!”

Cops and coalition at odds over fatal shooting of Aiyana Stanley-Jones

The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners has instructed its chief investigator to review policies, procedures and standards, and whether they were followed, not followed or inadequate when 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was fatally shot during a police raid early May 16, the chairman said Thursday.

“We will determine if new policies need to be created or installed,” Chairman Mohamed Okdie said at the board’s weekly meeting at Detroit police headquarters.

Before the meeting began, just more than a dozen people gathered outside the building to protest what they called military-style tactics by police, including the use of a flash-bang grenade in the raid on the Lillibridge duplex where Aiyana lived.

“We have to stop the violence now,” Ron Scott of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality said as he led the demonstrators in a chant. He said the coalition wants police to join with it in “Peace Zones for Life” efforts to mediate conflict in the city’s neighborhoods.

During the board meeting, Police Chief Warren Evans refuted claims the coalition made at an earlier meeting that there were eight police-related fatalities in 2009. Evans said there were no police-related deaths in 2009, and asked the board to demand that Scott provide documentation.

Scott had agreed earlier to provide evidence for the board, but so far, there has been no supporting documentation, Evans said. “We have yet to see it,” the chief said.

Evans — who has been in a war of words with Scott since the May 3 shooting of Officer Brian Huff and a heated debate on Fox TV’s “Let it Rip” shortly afterward — also questioned Scott’s claim that complaints against the department’s gang squad have gone up 300%.

The police distributed a news release at the board meeting that compared the first four months of 2010 with the same period last year. It showed that complaints per 1,000 citizen contacts against the Gang Enforcement Unit were down 22%, and complaints against the Tactical Mobile Unit down more than 74%.

“We have made all those complaints available to the coalition,” Evans said.

Okdie asked Scott to speak, but it was after Evans had left the meeting. Scott confirmed that he will be meeting with Evans at 1:30 p.m. next Thursday. He said he intends to use the meeting to go over information the coalition has that it believes shows police responsibility in eight fatalities last year.

Okdie urged both sides to talk.

BLACK FARMERS CALL ON CONGRESS TO PAY RACIAL BIAS SETTLEMENT

By CNN

Story Published: Apr 21, 2010 at 7:32 PM PDT

Story Updated: Apr 21, 2010 at 7:52 PM PDT

African-American farmers hoping for government settlement money in a racial bias case met with lawmakers Wednesday and called on Congress to come up with a way to fund the $1 billion deal.

Litigation known as the Pigford Case established a longstanding pattern of discrimination at the U.S. Agriculture Department against African-American farmers who had applied for farm loans and support from federal programs.

Under the terms of an involved process overseen by a federal judge and dating to 1999, qualified farmers could receive $50,000 each to settle claims of racial bias. In addition, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said those farmers may pursue a claim for actual damages from the bias and potentially receive up to $250,000.

Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, said Wednesday that he believed that Congress was “very close” to coming up with a way to pay the settlement, which covers as many as 80,000 African-American farmers.

“These farmers have suffered much, much too long, and it’s time that this thing get behind us. We can settle Pigford once and for all and send a clear message to the country that we are on the right track as a nation,” Paige said at news conference.

“We’re talking about much more than the money. We are talking about remedying past discrimination,” Paige said.

A March 31 deadline to appropriate the funds has passed, and farmers now may withdraw from the settlement and pursue independent litigation against the government. Congress now has a target date of the end of May to come up with a plan.

“We spend a billion dollars on a jet to go bomb somebody. We’re talking about a billion dollars to help feed our country, and I just don’t see why Congress and the president can’t go ahead and find [the funds]. It is an emergency,” said Gary Grant, with the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-North Carolina, said there is a “total commitment” from President Obama and the majority party in the House and Senate to make sure the settlement is taken care of. Butterfield represents his state’s First Congressional District, which is home to Timothy Pigford, who filed the class-action lawsuit more than a decade ago.

Butterfield said lawmakers need to work out how to pay for the settlement under the PAYGO rule, meaning Congress must balance any increased spending with equal savings elsewhere. The other option would be to designate the settlement as an emergency, which would be exempt from PAYGO.

Lawmakers are looking for an appropriate piece of legislation in which to include the settlement to avoid adding to the deficit, Butterfield said.

“If we cannot find the appropriate vehicle, then I would certainly support declaring this settlement as a national emergency and adding it to the next supplemental that may be on the House floor,” he said.

Farmers have until May 31 to withdraw from the pending class-action settlement and pursue an independent claim against the government if they feel their chances would be better for a payout. If they choose to stay in the class, they will wait as a group to apply for the promised monetary damages.

Vilsack has said there’s no question the damages are due for African-American farmers. In a statement last week, he said, “I have met with and talked to key stakeholders and members of Congress reiterating the administration’s ongoing efforts to close this chapter in the history of the department.”

CNN’s Paul Courson and Kristi Keck contributed to this report.

FOUR MONTHS AFTER ‘THE CATASTROPHE,’ HAITIANS STILL IN EMERGENCY MODE

By MONI BASU, CNN

Story Published: May 13, 2010 at 1:43 AM PDT

Story Updated: May 13, 2010 at 1:43 AM PDT

Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Horror has given way to acceptance; it can be seen on people’s faces. But desperation surfaces everywhere:

In the rubble still strewn about the streets, in the steadily rising piles of garbage, in the 1,300 makeshift camps that still house so many people.

Four months on, the tragedy of the massive January 12 earthquake is fresh.

Relief operations thwarted widespread hunger here and so far, there have been no reports of killer disease outbreaks. But Port-au-Prince is very much running in emergency mode. Still.

No humanitarian worker will argue with that sad fact.

Despite the efforts and good intentions of a host of foreigners and a government that got a wake-up call, progress has been timidly slow.

The future has a different meaning now for Haitians such as Edline Pierre, who worries not about where to enroll her three daughters in school but how to get them up off the floor fast enough when the rains start falling.

She poured cement around her shack in the city’s central Champs de Mars plaza. But that doesn’t keep the water out or her girls safe at night.

The future means getting through the night and when the sun comes back out, scrounging together a meal.

On the streets, a bright spot: the sight of schoolchildren in uniforms. But only 700 of the 5,000 or so schools around the Haitian capital have opened. Some were destroyed; others are occupied by the displaced.

Another welcomed sight: Hundreds of street vendors, many of whom are women, sit under a rainbow of umbrellas to sell mangoes, plantains and coconuts. Or they display a collision of goods in one basket — shoe polish, spaghetti, shampoo, cigarettes and molasses.

These are snippets of life as it was once, before that fatal day.

Give us work — not handouts

In the aftermath of what most Haitians refer to as “the catastrophe,” people asked for food. They patiently lined up for hours to receive a sack of rice, a quart of oil.

The lines are gone, along with the massive aid drops. International agencies are wary that too much help could stymie the local economy.

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RussianJailed Billionare interview for CNN

Yes Lil Wanye and Ti arent the only rich dudes in jail. Check out this story about Russian Billionare Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Moscow, Russia (CNN) — Russia’s most famous prisoner, and once its richest citizen, says the latest corruption charges against him are designed to prevent his release from jail.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the giant Yukos oil company, has been jailed since his arrest, as his private jet was about to take off, in 2003. He was charged with fraud and tax evasion and subsequently sentenced to nine years behind bars. A Moscow court later reduced the sentence to eight years.

At the time of his arrest Khodorkovsky had been funding opposition political parties and considered running for public office himself.

He claims his trial was part of a Kremlin campaign to destroy him and take the company he built from privatization deals of the 1990s. The Kremlin has denied this.

Yukos, once the country’s biggest oil producer, eventually went bankrupt in 2006 as a result of a $27.5 billion back-tax bill. A Russian court also ordered Khodorkovsky and his partner to pay about $600 million in back taxes.

But in March last year, when Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, who was also arrested in 2003 and sentenced to eight years, had only two years left on their sentences, they went on trial on new charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

If convicted, they face up to an additional 22 years in prison

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Khodorkovsky maintained his innocence, insisting it is the charges that are fraudulent.

CNN was denied access to the former tycoon but managed to get written questions to him in his jail cell and he was able to respond.

Why have these new charges been brought against you? Do you suspect political motives?

The new charges have been brought to prevent my release from prison. They are undoubtedly politically-motivated since they have no merit whatsoever. To date, the prosecutors have failed to explain where they got the idea that all the oil produced by Yukos had been stolen. And that is exactly what I have been accused of.

Are you simply defending yourself and your former business, or is there a bigger principle at stake?

It was a painful experience for me to see my perfectly functional company laid to waste. However it is all history now. It is common knowledge today that things like a ban on businesses to finance independent opposition [parties], widespread illegal takeovers of property in Russia, and a manifold increase in corruption-motivated arrests of businessmen (their businesses are then seized), all began with the Yukos case.

Since Yukos was first seized, the cost of corruption in the [Russian] economy has grown from $30 billion to $240-300 billion. My trial is both a landmark and a symbol for this country.

Has your time in prison served any positive purpose?

At a certain point in my life I realized that I personally needed to do something to help build civil society in this country. However it was difficult for me to break free from what was a comfortable business routine, both psychologically and in terms of the public’s perception of me. In that particular sense, prison has given me a chance to stop and rethink my values.

To what extent has this become a personal battle between you and Vladimir Putin?

Clearly, Putin finds me more than disagreeable. It’s difficult for me to say to what extent my persecution and prosecution are based on political calculations, self-interest, or emotion. As for me, my career in business has taught me to keep my emotions under control.

What does your legal situation say about the rule of law in Russia?

There is not one serious-minded individual in Russia right now who would tell you that this trial is lawful. There is talk of whether such methods of achieving political goals are acceptable, and whether the goals are appropriate in the first place.

That the motives are political is no longer — and hasn’t been for a long time — a subject for discussion. The legally sophisticated part of [Russian] society has also reached a consensus that charges against me are knowingly absurd. Therefore even answering a question about rule of law would be redundant.

New Research Shows Lucky Charms Actually Work

Heres a article from UK Daily Mail News

They are taken to exams, job interviews and weddings in the hope they will bring good fortune.
But rather than being mere superstition, lucky charms do actually work, psychologists claim.
Researchers told half the golfers on a putting green that they were playing with a lucky ball, and the rest that they were playing with a normal one.

The research found that golfers given a ’lucky ball’ managed to sink 35 per cent more putts than those who were playing with an ordinary ball
Those with the lucky ball sank 6.4 putts out of 10, nearly two more putts on average than the others – an increase of of 35 per cent.

The results have sparked huge interest among behavioural psychologists who say they put luck in a different light.

The research from the University of Cologne was on just 28 students but the results are being considered significant.

But the figures will also be an encouragement for the millions who cling to a lucky shirt or ring on special occasions to bring them fortune.

And even celebrities have often admitted relying on a lucky charm.

Cameron Diaz has a necklace given to her by a friend because she thinks it will ward off the effects of aging, while Julie Walters kept a lucky piece of coal in her bag during one Oscars ceremony.

Perhaps the most bizarre tradition among celebrities is that Atonement star James McAvoy says ’white rabbit’ on the first of every month to the first person he sees – because his grandmother taught him that it brings good luck.

In recent years office desks have seen a proliferation of teddy bears and trinkets intended to bring good luck.

Also, quiz shows such as Deal Or No Deal and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where treasured items are brought on in the hope they will give contestants the edge in the quest to win a fortune.

Lysann Damisch, co-author of the study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science in June, said: ’Our results suggest that the activation of a superstition can indeed yield performance-improving effects.’

Stuart Vyse, professor of psychology at Connecticut College, added: ’Simply being told this is a lucky ball is sufficient to affect performance.’
Mathematicians have demonstrated in the past the role that randomness plays in people’s lives, but this has not stopped many believing the opposite.

A recent survey found that 77 per cent of people were at least a little superstitious and/or engaged in some form of superstitious behaviour.
A total of 42 per cent said that they were ’very or somewhat’ superstitious.
Peter Thall, a biostatistician at the University of Texas, said: ’The idea that wearing a red shirt, saying some sort of incantation or prayer or carrying a lucky charm will bring good luck is very appealing because it gives people the illusion that they have some degree of control over future events in their lives.’

’The painful truth is that we have little or no control over the most important events in our lives.’

Sometimes, however, people overestimate how much control they have over their lives.

A team of British researchers in 2003 asked 107 traders at investment banks to play a game simulating a live stock exchange.

They were told that pressing the letters Z, X and C on the keyboard ’may have some effect on the index,’ when in fact it didn’t.

Traders in the study who held this false belief the strongest had lower salaries, indicating the idea they made their own luck could be harming their decisions.