wishididntknowthat:

Picture This - Church Sign ‘Mother’s Best Gift’ (WIDK)

(WIDK) — Church sign tells us what is a mother’s best gift.

Source: Happy Place

See an interesting sign?  Send it to us at info@fisherbrothersmedia.com

Original Article

mgolladwyne:

 

MIAMI (CBS/WFOR) — North Miami Beach Police are piecing together an officer-involved shooting and killing of a mentally disabled man. The man was originally thought to be carrying a gun but it was later determined to be a toy rifle.

Officials told CBS station WFOR that the incident began Wednesday afternoon when officers responded to several calls about a man seen walking around with a rifle. Witnesses told the station that at one point the man aimed the rifle at a neighborhood dog.

According to police reports, when officers arrived there was some sort of confrontation which caused one officer to open fire on the man. However, a subsequent investigation revealed that the “rifle” was a toy. The injured man was then taken to a local hospital where he later died. Family members say the man police killed was 56-year-old Ernest Vassell.

“They murdered him in cold blood for a toy gun!” cried Vassell’s older sister Claire Harding. “That’s no reason for you to kill somebody!”

Vassell’s sisters say they have never seen him with a toy gun and believe he must have found it somewhere. They say he was mentally disabled after a brain injury as a child and that he has never been violent.

“They could tell him to drop the gun. They say they told him to drop it and he raised his hand,” Harding told WFOR. “He probably raised his hand to hand them the gun because he is afraid of police.”

The family is now demanding answers and changes to the North Miami Beach Police Department.

“They should train these police officers better,” said Harding. “This is ridiculous, they just go around killing people for nothing.”

Police maintain the toy gun appeared to be a real rifle. One officer is on administrative leave while police and the state attorney’s office investigate this incident.

wishididntknowthat:

Man DECAPITATES HIMSELF after Argument with Wife (WIDK)

(Daily News By MICHAEL SHERIDAN) — A divorced man decapitated himself with a cable in Virginia on Tuesday after getting into a dispute with his ex-wife, authorities said.

Police arrived at the home in Yorktown after receiving a call about a domestic dispute around 10 a.m., according to the Virginia Gazette.

They were talking with the ex-wife when a deputy saw a white Ford Explorer towing a utility trailer. The trailer was on fire, and a man identified as her ex-husband was behind the wheel.

Firefighters arrived, and authorities attempted to get the man to exit the SUV. That’s when they noticed a cable tied to a nearby tree was wrapped around his neck.

Officers pleaded with the man to surrender, but instead he hit the gas. He was pulled from the car, and his head was yanked clean off his body. The vehicle continued moving for about 150 yards.

“Nobody has ever heard of anything like this,” Sheriff Danny Diggs said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s a really bizarre incident.”

Authorities did not release the man’s name because his death was ruled a suicide.

Originally from Chicago, the man had spent the night with his ex-wife and got into an altercation with her that morning, police said.

Original Article

gaywrites:

Joe Solmonese, the president of the major gay rights nonprofit Human Rights Campaign, has announced he will step down from his job when his contract ends in March 2012.

Co-chairs of the organization’s board of directors and foundation board said Solmonese will still be involved in the organization, at the very least until a suitable replacement is found. A search committee is in the works.

From the Washington Blade:

Solmonese has received mixed reviews by LGBT activists during his tenure as head of HRC. Supporters say he has worked well in navigating HRC and its LGBT rights agenda during a hostile Bush administration and during a supportive Obama administration, using behind-the-scenes political skills to prod allies in Congress and the White House to move its agenda forward. Critics say Solmonese and HRC have been too closely aligned with the Democratic Party and Democratic congressional leaders, which they say have failed to adequately advance LGBT legislation, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and LGBT-supportive immigration legislation while Democrats controlled the House of Representatives.

Thanks for the hard work, Joe! 

wishididntknowthat:

Quantas Apologizes For ‘Appalling’ Racism Of ‘Blackface’ Stunt On Twitter

Submitted to WIDK by Emily Moore

(Daily Mail Reporter) — Australian airline Qantas has been forced to issue a grovelling apology after one of its attempts at social media advertising was branded racist.

The airline had offered two tickets to the deciding game of the Bledisloe Cup between Australia and New Zealand national rugby teams in Brisbane on Saturday night.

Set up earlier in the month, the Qantas Twitter giveaway promised two exclusive tickets to the game, at Suncorp Stadium, to the two fans who could best show their support for the Australian team.

The tickets were awarded to two Wallabies fans who dressed up in ‘afro’ wigs, daubed black paint on their faces and wore the Australian rugby green-and-gold uniform.

The pair said they were copying their ‘favourite player’, Fijian-born flanker Wallabies flanker Radike Samo, by blacking up their faces, arms and legs.

Qantas awarded the tickets to the pair, but only if they promised to wear their costume to the game. The airline posted pictures of the two fans on Twitter after the game, saying they had ‘lived up to their promise! Good work’.

In one picture the pair were seen smiling either side of Samo himself.

However, after Twitter uses slammed the ‘blacked up’ pictures as ‘appalling’, the posting it was hastily withdrawn.

Qantas originally tweeted: ‘We understand it caused offense to some people, which is why it was removed. We are really sorry if it has upset anyone.’

But that only served to anger offended Twitter users more, with one typical response reading: ‘Cut it out with the faux pologies. Say you’re sorry for posting the photo that DID offend people (not if). What that image represents to most people is appalling.’

Another wrote: ‘For company like @Qantasairways [which claims] to represent our nation, this is completely unacceptable.’

Qantas finally issued a longer apology, in which it said: ‘We apologise that the photo of two Radike fans offended some of our followers.’

Ironically, Samo could not understand what all the fuss was about.

He said: ‘These guys were actually paying me a tribute. It was a bit of fun, and I think its great they regarded me as their favourite Wallaby. I didn’t have an issue with it at all. I was glad to be in a photo with them. So I don’t know why anyone’s getting worked up. That (sort of reaction) is just silly.’

But Stephen Ryan, the chairman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, said he was shocked by the behaviour of the men, but more stunned that Qantas ‘wouldn’t have known such a stunt could backfire’.

It’s not the first time Australia’s dubious sense of humour regarding racism has caused controversy.

In 2009, U.S. singer Harry Connick Jnr was outraged after an Australian TV show he was a guest on featured a comedy skit of singers with ‘blacked up’ faces and wigs mimicking the Jackson Five.

Connick Jnr was acting as a judge on a viewer talent segment of Channel 9 show Hey Hey It’s Saturday when the skit was performed.

Giving the performers - who had done a similar act on the show 20 years earlier - a mark of zero, a visibly shaken Connick Jnr said: ‘If I knew that was going to be part of the show I definitely wouldn’t have done it.’

He later received an on-air apology from the show’s host, Daryl Somers.

Original Article

wishididntknowthat:

‘Austin Powers’ Actor Faces Life In Prison Over Abduction, Torture, Rape Of 20-Year-Old

Submitted to WIDK by Bianca Coombs

(Meena Hartenstein, Daily News)- A former on-screen villain could spend the rest of his life in jail after being found guilty of a horrific real-life crime.

Joseph Hyungmin Son, 40, who played Dr. Evil’s sidekick “Random Task” in the first “Austin Powers” movie, was convicted of torture last week in connection with the 1990 abduction and gang rape of a 20-year-old California woman.

The Orange County woman was walking her dog on Christmas Eve and looking at holiday lights in the neighborhood when she was snatched off the street and attacked, KTLA reported.

Son was accused along with one other suspect of holding the victim at gun point and raping her numerous times as well as sexually assaulting her with the weapon.

The victim’s lawyer claimed the assailants then released the woman naked with her pants tied around her eyes.

Son wasn’t arrested in connection with the crime until 18 years after the incident.

In 2008, after violating probation on vandalism charge, he was charged with numerous counts of assault when his DNA was found to match a sample from the victim.

Many of those charges were ultimately dropped due to the amount of time that had elapsed since the alleged incident, KTLA reported.

Son is slated to be sentenced on September 19, and faces 15 years to life in prison.

Original Article

ausetkmt:

 

In every corner of the country, a portrait of hidden hunger has now emerged. The recession has pushed 2.4 million more children into poverty. Seventeen million children are “food insecure,” meaning their parents often don’t know where the next meal will come from.

Simply put, one in six Americans don’t have enough food.

….

Dr. Mariana Chilton, founder of Witnesses to Hunger, says the recession has hit the middle class hard.

“People who have been middle class who are now struggling to put food on the table are feeling an enormous amount of stress,” she said. “They are starting to experience the pain of poverty, of what it’s like to be poor.”  […]

wishididntknowthat:

Dumber and Dumber – Texans Try to Reclaim COCAINE from Sheriff’s Office and Arrested (WIDK)

Submitted to WIDK by Jim Rose

(Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard) — Two Texans remain held in the county jail days after allegedly attempting to reclaim their cocaine from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office.

The two men — Winston Dempsey Wright, 18, and Adam Poynor Brewer, 37 — were denied release on their own recognizance Monday and remain held in the Humboldt County jail after pleading not guilty to charges of possessing a controlled substance. Bail in the case remains set at $25,000.

At about 3 p.m. on Aug. 16, Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a property on Singley Road in Loleta after someone called reporting they had

found a pair of motorcycle saddlebags. According to Sgt. Wayne Hanson, the responding deputy looked inside the bags in an effort to determine ownership and found a digital camera, an iPad and identification belonging to both Brewer and Wright.

The deputy also found three bags of a white substance — each weighing between 1.7 and 4.4 grams — that tested presumptively positive as cocaine, according to Hanson. The deputy then looked for a further indication the bags belonged to Brewer and Wright.

”He looked at pictures on the camera and found two pictures of Adam (Brewer), taken while he was sniffing a white substance off his hand and into his nose,” Hanson said.

The deputy found a phone number for Brewer, Hanson said, and left a message asking him and Wright to come to the sheriff’s office to reclaim their property. The deputy, Hanson said, did not mention the cocaine.

About 1 p.m. the next day, Brewer and Wright walked into the sheriff’s office main station looking to reclaim their saddle bags. After identifying themselves and claiming ownership of the bags, both were arrested on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance, Hanson said, adding that the two made no further statements to deputies.

”They didn’t want to talk about the cocaine,” he said.

During his brief court appearance Monday, Brewer told the judge he has proof the substance in question is not cocaine, and Wright’s attorney, Kaleb Cockrum, said his client also disputes that the bags contained cocaine.

Hanson said the sheriff’s office routinely fields calls reporting found property and that it is standard practice to search the property for any information that might lead to its owner. That’s exactly what the deputy did in this case, Hanson said.

”Then, low and behold, when he looks in the bag, he finds cocaine, identification and a camera with photographs of one of these guys doing cocaine,” Hanson said.

Original Article

motherjones:

Women isolated from secular society, scarred for life, and beaten for crossing the religious authorities. Kandahar? No, Missouri. And conservatives keep the system running.