Category: News

LeBron James Has Something To Say To Racist Donald Sterling

Post author By Ezra Grant
Post date April 27, 2014
No Comments on LeBron James Has Something To Say To Racist Donald Sterling

Personally, I think all the black players in the NBA including the ones playing for the LA Clippers and their fans, should boycott the LA Clippers. If the racism expressed by Donald Sterling turns out to be true and he prefer blacks not come to his games, then shouldn’t that include the players?

I think it should. The way you hurt rich racists is in their wallet. A black boycott of the Clippers will not end Sterling’s racism, but it may starve the bastard for the duration.

Snoop Dogg said his piece yesterday, and based on the anger he displayed I’m pretty sure he’s done with the Clippers. LeBron James is speaking out now.

Before taking on the Charlotte Bobcats in Game 3 of Miami’s first-round playoff series, James said that if the report is true, then “there is no room for Donald Sterling in our league.”

“It’s unacceptable and as a commissioner in our league, they have to make a stand, and they have to be very aggressive with it. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but you just can’t have that in our league,” James said, via the Miami Herald. The four-time NBA MVP also said he even contemplated not playing. “I kind of wavered back and forth whether I would actually sit out. If our owner would come out and say the things that he said, I would really have to sit down with my teammates, talk to my family because at the end of the day, our family, and our teammates are way more important than that.”

James also wondered aloud what would happened to a player who “came out and said something of that stature” and called on NBA commissioner Adam Silver to “do something very fast and quickly before this really gets out of hand.”

LeBron was not alone. TNT analyst and former NBA star Charles Barkley said Silver”suspend [Sterling] and fine him immediately.” Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson described Sterling’s alleged remarks as a “black eye for the NBA.”

Tags Donald Sterling, LA Clippers

News

Connecticut high school students attend seaside vigil for murdered classmate Maren Sanchez

Post author By MelodyM
Post date April 25, 2014
No Comments on Connecticut high school students attend seaside vigil for murdered classmate Maren Sanchez

Sanchez, 16, was slashed to death Friday morning inside Jonathan Law High School after she rejected a boy who asked her to prom. The dance was scheduled for Friday night but postponed after the brutal murder, allegedly at the hands of a 16-year-old classmate.

Instead of prom Friday night, Jonathan Law High School students went to a seaside vigil for their murdered classmate.

About 200 community members and students, some wearing their prom dresses and tuxedos, gathered Friday evening at Walnut Beach in Milford, Conn., to remember 16-year-old Maren Sanchez, a junior who was murdered earlier in the day at the school after rejecting a classmate’s invitation to the dance.

Friends identified the boy as Chris Plaskon, also 16. He has been charged with murder as a juvenile, but could be charged as an adult following a court appearance Monday in New Haven.

Police did not identify the teen.

Anguished classmates funneled down to Walnut Beach around 6 p.m. — one hour before the school’s junior prom was scheduled to start at a nearby banquet hall.

The annual dance was postponed after the tragedy.

Wearing their formal wear, students cried and prayed at the local beach, the Hartford Courant reported. Friends shouted out memories of their slain classmate as they released purple balloons into the sky and yelled “Love you, Maren,” the newspaper reported.

Earlier, students covered a rock outside the school with purple spray paint and wrote the teen’s name and birthday, Aug. 26, 1997, alongside a white heart.

Sanchez was attacked, allegedly by Plaskon, around 7:15 a.m., when the boy shoved the girl down a set of stairs and started to choke her, witnesses told the Daily News.

The teen pulled out a kitchen knife he brought from home and slashed Sanchez across the neck, chest and face.

She was pronounced dead at 7:43 a.m. Plaskon was immediately taken into custody.

“She was screaming,” one friend, who was inside the building at the time of the attack, told The News. “There were students in the hallway when it happened. The kids who saw it are all a wreck.”

The school was placed on lockdown immediately after the attack, but the order was lifted soon after police arrived.

Students and staff were dismissed from school about 9 a.m.

“The unprovoked attack on Maren this morning has unfortunately, for our family, resulted in the permanent loss of Maren Victoria Sanchez: a bright light, full of hopes and dreams, with the future at her fingertips,” the girl’s adult cousin, Edward Kovac, told reporters Friday afternoon. “Maren should be celebrating at her prom this evening with her friends and classmates. Instead, we are mourning her death, and we are trying as a community to understand this senseless loss of life.”

Sanchez was excited for the prom, posting a picture March 3 to Facebook of her wearing her prom dress.

“Yay,” she wrote next to a smiley face emoticon as she modeled her floor-length, marine blue gown. “so excited!!!”

With News Wire Services

ON A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

sgoldstein@nydailynews.com

Education News

16-year-old Connecticut girl killed by jilted teen after she refused to go to junior prom with him

Post author By MelodyM
Post date April 25, 2014
No Comments on 16-year-old Connecticut girl killed by jilted teen after she refused to go to junior prom with him

FACEBOOKMaren Sanchez, 16, has been identified as the girl who was killed after she was stabbed by a fellow student at Jonathan Law High School in Milford, Conn.

A jilted teen killed a 16-year-old girl in a Connecticut high school on Friday after she refused to go to prom with him, friends and witnesses said.

The violence erupted after Chris Plaskon, also 16, shoved Maren Sanchez, down the stairs and tried to choke her inside Jonathan Law High School in Milford about 7:15 a.m., friends told the Daily News.

The boy – using a kitchen knife he brought from home – then stabbed Sanchez in the neck, witnesses and cops said.

Emergency workers found the bleeding teen, a junior, in the stairwell and rushed her to Bridgeport Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Plaskon was cuffed by a school resource officer before cops arrived, Milford Police Chief Keith Mello told reporters.

The suspect, who was not officially identified because of his age, was not immediately charged.

The gruesome killing shocked friends of Sanchez, an honor student who was active in several after-school programs.

“She was a vibrant contributor to the school community and we will greatly mourn this loss,” Superintendent Elizabeth Feser said. “We are devastated as a community.”

But even her accused killer had a respected reputation.

“He was smart, he did well in classes,” the friend said. “Something had to snap.”

Sanchez, who was a member of the school’s drama club, was expected to appear next weekend in the group’s performance of the musical, “Little Shop of Horrors,” friends said.

She was slated to peform several small roles and act as puppeteer of the the star character, a plant.

Students mourn in front of Jonathan Law High School. A group of kids spraypainted a rock with Maren Sanchez’s first name and birthdate.

The school was placed on lockdown immediately after the attack, but the order was lifted soon after police arrived.

Students and staff were dismissed from school about 9 a.m.

The school’s junior prom was scheduled for Friday night at a banquet hall in nearby Stratford, but officials said the event would be postponed to another day.

Sanchez was excited for the prom, posting a picture March 3 to Facebook of her wearing her prom dress.

“Yay,” she wrote next to a smiley face emoticon as she modeled her floor-lenth, marine blue gown. “so excited!!!”

Christie: Classless and Clueless

Post author By Robert I. Grundfest
Post date April 24, 2014
No Comments on Christie: Classless and Clueless

It’s not enough that Governor Chris Christie is not going to make a full contribution to the state’s public worker pension system, despite promising to do so as a result of his signing the pension and benefits bill in 2011. And it’s also not enough that he continues to blame public workers for the state’s economic and fiscal messes.

It’s far too much, though, for him to blame cuts in cancer research and other programs on the fact that the state’s pension obligation would take too much money out of the budget. Yes, it’s politics. Yes, it’s a tactic to deflect interest and attention away fro the George Washington Bridge scandal, and yes, it’s not beneath a man who will say anything to become 2016-relevant again. But this kind of class warfare is disgraceful.

Blaming public workers and asking them to pay more for their pensions, which would take money out of the economy at a time when he should be stimulating it, continues Christie’s consistent failures on the economy. He could instead be asking the wealthy to pay more to help bail out the state. He could have approved the third railroad tunnel between New York and New Jersey, which would have provided jobs and a needed infrastructure project. He could have raised the nation’s lowest gasoline tax, which not only would have provided funds but would have sent a message that it’s time for New Jersey’s drivers to economize for the environment.

Hell–he could have allowed Tesla to sell some cars in New Jersey.

But no. New Jerseyans are stuck with a governor who hasn’t a clue about how to successfully grow an economy and invest in education. All he has is a surplus of bluster, and that we don’t need.

Tags brudgegate, Chris Christie, new jersey scandal

New York News

Former France President Says Bill DeBlasio is Wrong- Horses Should Stay

Post author By Ezra Grant
Post date April 24, 2014
No Comments on Former France President Says Bill DeBlasio is Wrong- Horses Should Stay

Former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy has come out along with actor Liam Neeson to support keeping New York City’s famous horse-drawn carriages as Mayor Bill De Blasio seeks to ban the industry.

Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni took their young daughter Giulia in one of the carriages for a ride through Central Park on Wednesday.

When asked if he thinks the carriages should stay, Sarkozy offered up an enthusiastic ‘yes’, the New York Daily News reports.

Tags bill de blasio, central park, horse drawn carriages

News Politics

Did You Know That The Deficit Shrunk to $492 Billion

Post author By Ezra Grant
Post date April 23, 2014
No Comments on Did You Know That The Deficit Shrunk to $492 Billion

Image: DailyKos

With all the sensational news hunters in the media today, this little bit of actual news may have slipped by the rader. It’s a fact, not a lie so no one is shouting it from the hilltops. No cattle or guns are involved so this story is, for the most part, swept under the rug.

But did you know that under this president the national deficit has been cut to $492 billion this year?

Bloomberg News reports – The U.S. government’s deficit will fall to $492 billion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a steeper drop than originally predicted from $680 billion in fiscal year 2013.

“This will be the fifth consecutive year in which the deficit has declined as a share of GDP since peaking at 9.8 percent in 2009,” CBO said in a report released today. The 2.8 figure as a percentage of gross domestic product is lower than the 3.1 percent average of the last 40 years, CBO said.

Now back to the real news – Cattle and guns.

Tags CBO, cut, down, National deficit, shrunk

Georgia News

Police Dog Mauled Police Officer Trying to Take a Selfie With it

Post author By Ezra Grant
Post date April 22, 2014
No Comments on Police Dog Mauled Police Officer Trying to Take a Selfie With it

Whatever you do, do not put your arm around a police dog to take a selfie with it. Doing so is apparently an act of aggression, and a Georgia Deputy from Murray County, Deputy Greg Morrison found out the hard way.

“It’s an act of aggression to them whenever you do that,’ Major Greg Fowler told the Dalton Daily Citizen, referring to Morrison’s ill advised decision to wrap an arm around the dog.

‘The canine just responded by what was presented to him based on his training.’

The dog went straight for Morrison’s chin and bit hard.

The deputy was left with a slashed lip and chin after a handler ordered him to back off the the dog quickly complied.

Morrison was rushed to an area hospital where he eventually received stitches.

‘They had to do quite a bit of stitching in the lip area where (it had been opened up) in a pretty good gash,’ Fowler said.

‘We’re praying for the deputy and everything to be fine with him. He’s recuperating well, and we’re sorry for the incident, but you train animals, you train them to do certain things, and you don’t deviate from the training.’

Tags mauled officer, police dog

Chelsea Clinton Featured News

Right Wing News – Fox News Concludes, Chelsea Clinton’s Baby Is For Politics

Post author By Ezra Grant
Post date April 21, 2014
1 Comment on Right Wing News – Fox News Concludes, Chelsea Clinton’s Baby Is For Politics

This is the news the far right-wing nuts are interested in and it is why they diligently tune into Fox. Where else would you hear stuff like Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy is a political ploy for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign?

On Sunday, Fox talking head Laura Ashburn, speaking to Fox’s Howard Kurtz, explained that being cynical about Chelsea’s pregnancy is a good thing because… Hillary!

“You’ve been in this town for how many years, and you don’t have a cynical bone in your body?” Ashburn said to Kurtz. “I think a lot of reporters think maybe this was planned.”

She later continued;

“We do have to realize that this is Hillary Clinton, she’s most likely running for president. It hasn’t been good for her. A lot of people say she’s too old. And so, there is coverage.”

Roll the video tape please.

Tags political ploy, pregnancy

Body Found In Plastic Storage Container On Brooklyn Street

Post author By MelodyM
Post date April 20, 2014
No Comments on Body Found In Plastic Storage Container On Brooklyn Street

Where the body was found – Photo (GoogleMaps)

Police are questioning a suspect after a body was found stuffed in a plastic storage container in the middle of a street in Brooklyn. According to cops, a passer-by made the discovery in front of a home on East 54th Street in Flatlands at about 12:30 p.m. Saturday. According to CBS, a Brooklyn nightclub owner called police to report that a bouncer at the club admitted to him that he’d killed a man.

Police have not identified the suspect. “Somebody was killed over there by somebody they knew and we have nothing to worry about,” neighbor Lynn Kerschner said police told her.

Neighbor Chris Savareace told CBS that he was friends with the victim, who goes by the nickname Chino. “I don’t know what made somebody so mad to do that to him. I heard they put him in a box, that’s what I heard from the cops. There’s some kind of people in the world that really ain’t that with it anymore,” he said.

h/t – gothamist

Tags body found in brooklyn, Chino

News

Grief-stricken teacher who killed himself after surviving South Korean ferry disaster

Post author By MelodyM
Post date April 20, 2014
No Comments on Grief-stricken teacher who killed himself after surviving South Korean ferry disaster

The teacher in charge of the hundreds of pupils caught in the South Korean ferry disaster killed himself because ‘surviving alone is too painful’, according to a note found in his wallet.

In his poignant last words, Kang Min-Gyu said he hoped he would become a teacher once again in the afterlife for his charges whose bodies had not been recovered.

The 52-year-old was found dead days after he and 75 of his young charges managed to escape from the stricken ferry Sewol as it sank off the south coast of Korea.

‘I take full responsibility’: Kang Min-Gyu, 52, who is believed to have hanged himself in shame after surviving the ferry disaster – more than 300 of his pupils were on board when it went down off Korea’s south coast

Fourteen of the schoolchildren have been confirmed dead and another 236 remain unaccounted for, as dive crews today began pulling corpses from the vessel.

Police found Mr Kang, deputy head of Danwon high school, Seoul, hanging by his belt from a tree early yesterday afternoon, just outside the gymnasium where families of the victims were staying.

After initially claiming he had left no suicide note, police later released part of a two-page letter they said was found in his wallet.

It said: ‘Surviving alone is too painful while 200 remain unaccounted for. I take full responsibility. I pushed ahead with the school trip.’

The note added: ‘Burn my body and scatter my ashes at the site of the sunken ferry. Perhaps I can become a teacher for the missing students in my next life.’

‘I will once again become a teacher in the afterlife for my students whose bodies have not been discovered.’

Police cut down the teacher and his body was taken to the nearby Jindo funeral parlour where it was cremated, the Telegraph reported.

Waiting: He was found hanged outside this gym, where relatives are waiting for news of the missing

Search: Rescuers are still searching for victims. This inflatable buoy marks the position of the wreckage

The Sewol sank off South Korea’s southern coast on Wednesday with 476 people aboard, most of them pupils on holiday from a single high school.

More than 270 people are still missing, and most are believed to be trapped inside the 6,852-ton vessel.

The confirmed death toll from the Sewol disaster has now reached 32, after divers working in tough conditions finally managed to reach the inside of the ship and begin pulling out bodies.

The ferry’s captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, was arrested this morning along with one of the Sewol’s three helmsmen and the 25-year-old third mate.

Lee has been charged under maritime law with negligence and failing to ensure the safety of his passengers. He has faced fierce criticism for abandoning ship while so many were left on board.

Many found themselves trapped below decks as water flooded in after he delayed the order to evacuate the vessel because of cold waters and strong currents.

News

Investigators: Car Accident Killed SD Girls Missing Since 1971

Post author By MelodyM
Post date April 17, 2014
No Comments on Investigators: Car Accident Killed SD Girls Missing Since 1971

Two South Dakota girls on their way to an end-of-school-year party at a gravel pit in May 1971 drove off a country road and into a creek where their remains lay hidden until last fall when a drought brought their car into view, authorities said Tuesday.

State and local officials held a news conference Tuesday afternoon confirming that the 1960 Studebaker unearthed in September included the remains of Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson, both 17-year-olds who attended Vermillion High School.

Women Missing Since 1970s Found in Submerged Car After Creek Dried Up in Drought

The investigators showed dozens of photographs of well-preserved clothing, Miller’s purse and even her driver’s license complete with a smiling photograph. Those personal items and DNA were used to identify the girls, said Attorney General Marty Jackley. Jackson didn’t have her purse along.

South Dakota Attorney General’s Office/AP Photo

Cheryl Miller’s driver’s license, purse and other belongings were recovered after the car was discovered.

Classmates who saw the teens before they disappeared and other evidence indicated that they had not been drinking, he said. In addition, mechanical tests on the car pointed away from foul play, Jackley said. He noted that the car was in the highest gear and the headlight switch on the dashboard showed the lights were on.

“It’s consistent with a car accident,” Jackley said. “To start with, the forensic pathology and anthropology reports indicate that there’s no type of injury that would be consistent with or caused by foul play or inappropriate conduct.”

He said the bodies were found in the front seats, as opposed to the back seat or trunk, and that their clothing did not appear to be missing — all of which points away from their deaths being caused by a crime.

There is no way to know whether a blown tire might have cause a crash, but one was damaged and the tread was quite thin, he said.

Family members, law enforcement and others had searched the area countless times without luck.

“They were searching and they simply didn’t find it,” Jackley said.

Jackson’s father, Oscar, died Sept. 18, five days before the car was found.

“If you look at that obituary, it indicates one of the saddest parts of Oscar’s life is not knowing about the disappearance of his daughter Pam,” Jackley said.

South Dakota Attorney General’s Office/AP Photo

The odometer mileage reading of the 1960 Studebaker unearthed in September, 2013.

The girls’ disappearance was one of the initial investigations of South Dakota’s cold case unit in 2004.

A September 2004 search of a Union County farm turned up apparently unrelated bones, clothing, a purse, photographs, newspaper articles and other items, but not the car.

In a warrant authorizing the search, authorities said that David Lykken, who lived at the farm in 1971 and was a classmate of the girls, might have been involved in the disappearance of Miller and Jackson as well as three other unnamed people. Lykken is in prison serving an unrelated 227-year sentence for rape and kidnapping.

In July 2007, a Union County grand jury indicted Lykken on two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of felony murder and two counts of murder in the disappearance of Miller and Jackson. But state prosecutors dropped all six murder charges after concluding a jailhouse informant apparently lied about Lykken supposedly admitting to causing the deaths.

h/t – ABCNEWS

News

Drowsy orangutan shot by poachers has his wounds tended to on extended operating table in Sumatra

Post author By MelodyM
Post date April 17, 2014
No Comments on Drowsy orangutan shot by poachers has his wounds tended to on extended operating table in Sumatra

This drowsy Orangutan is a dead ringer for the mythical Big Foot as he is treated in hospital after being shot by poachers.

The enormous 14-year-old male dwarfed the petite vet as she worked to remove several metal pellets from his body at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme centre.

Docile: This huge Orangutan looked extremely grateful as he lay back for a medical examination after being shot by poachers in Sumatra

Lookalike: The hulking male great ape is a dead ringer for the mythical Big foot, seen here in the classic 1987 movie Harry and the Hendersons

The team conduct medical examinations on a 14-year-old male orangutan found with air gun metal pellets embedded in his body in Sibolangit district in northern Sumatra island.

More…

The center has cared for over 280 orangutans rescued from palm oil plantations, poachers and pet owners.

Over 200 have been reintroduced in the wild.

The critically-endangered primates population are dwindling rapidly due to poaching and rapid destruction of their forest habitat that is being converted into palm oil plantation.

The great ape was rescued by Indonesia’s ministry of forestry personnel and Orangutan Information Center earlier this week in nearby Langkat district.

He was found in a small patch of forest and agricultural plantation.

SOCP began in 1999.One of its first targets was to establish a quarantine facility for confiscated illegal pets and a reintroduction programme to release these animals back to the wild.

In 2002 the Batu Mbelin orangutan quarantine center was finally completed near Medan in North Sumatra.

SOCP monitors the status of remaining wild orangutan populations in Sumatra using remote sensing and field surveys.

There is a growing problem of human-orangutan conflict, where orangutans at the forest edge are increasingly attacked for raiding the crops of local farmers.

Safe hands: The center has cared for over 280 orangutans rescued from palm oil plantations, poachers and pet owners and over 200 have been reintroduced in the wild