French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them.
Dozens of officers in riot gear descended on a settlement near Lille shortly after dawn to oversee the evacuation of some 200 Roma living in mobile homes.
One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. Caravans and huts were destroyed in the Belleville area of central Paris on Wednesday, making another 100 people homeless.
‘Many of those evicted will be flown home to Romania,’ said an interior ministry source, who insisted the deportations were aimed at ridding France of ‘illegal’ communities.
Greece has also begun a crackdown on immigrants, with Athens claiming the country faced an ‘invasion’.
Long ago surgeons figured out that shaving a body part prior to surgery actually increased rather than decreased surgical site infections. No matter what expensive and complex weapons are used—razor blades, electric shavers, tweezers, waxing, depilatories, electrolysis—hair, like crab grass, always grows back and eventually wins. In the mean time, the skin suffers the effects of the scorched battlefield.
Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles left behind, leaving microscopic open wounds. Rather than suffering a comparison to a bristle brush, frequent hair removal is necessary to stay smooth, causing regular irritation of the shaved or waxed area. When that irritation is combined with the warm moist environment of the genitals, it becomes a happy culture media for some of the nastiest of bacterial pathogens, namely group A streptococcus, staphylococcus aureus and its recently mutated cousin methicillin resistant staph aureus (MRSA). There is an increase in staph boils and abscesses, necessitating incisions to drain the infection, resulting in scarring that can be significant. It is not at all unusual to find pustules and other hair follicle inflammation papules on shaved genitals.
Additionally, I’ve seen cellulitis (soft tissue bacterial infection without abscess) of the scrotum, labia and penis from spread of bacteria from shaving or from sexual contact with strep or staph bacteria from a partner’s skin.
Some clinicians are finding that freshly shaved pubic areas and genitals are also more vulnerable to herpes infections due to the microscopic wounds being exposed to virus carried by mouth or genitals. It follows that there may be vulnerability to spread of other STIs as well.
Pubic hair does have a purpose, providing cushion against friction that can cause skin abrasion and injury, protection from bacteria and other unwanted pathogens, and is the visible result of long awaited adolescent hormones, certainly nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.
The Perseid meteor shower is the most reliable meteor display of the year, and it will be lighting up the sky in mid-August.
The Perseid meteor shower happens every year around mid-August.
This year’s peak nights will be during the early morning hours of August 12th and 13th. During the shower you’ll be able to see up to 60 meteors per hour.
[...]
You’ll also be able to see a few Perseid meteor showers a few days before and after this time.
McDonalds breakfast has been extended to a new time: midnight. The popular fast food restaurant is currently testing their breakfast menu during later hours in 127 stores in central Ohio.
McDonalds Breakfast After Midnight menu seeks to take advantage of the different demographic that exists late at night. College students, partiers, those who work night shifts, those who work from home, and various others could participate in the late night breakfast food.
“We see this as an opportunity to continue to grow our breakfast business,” Danya Proud, a McDonalds representative, told the Chicago Tribune. “Customers are commuting longer, people are out at different hours of the day.”
“This is a good opportunity to meet the needs of those customers,” she added.
I can’t imagine wanting breakfast at midnight, unless I was working night shift or something, but I have lamented not being able to get breakfast at Mc’Ds at 4 a.m., having to wait till 5 a.m. or 6 a.m.; yes, there’s Denny’s, but that’s more costly.
Opulent Life Church’s suit against Holly Springs over its zoning ordinances was brought before a three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where justices heard arguments on Wednesday.
Opulent Life is being represented in part by the Texas-based Liberty Institute. Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty, told The Christian Post that there are two ordinances at issue in the suit.
“One requires churches to get 60 percent approval from all neighbors within a quarter mile of the property in order to exist anywhere in the city limits,” said Sasser.
“The other one completely excludes churches from the town square but allows museums, art galleries, and libraries.”
The retail giant Target is coming out with same-sex greeting cards to show its support for same-sex marriage.
The greeting cards, which hit some store shelves as early as June, are being created by Carlton Cards, a unit of American Greetings, and will feature such congratulatory phrases as “Mr. & Mr.” and “Two very special women, one very special love,” according to The Huffington Post.
The cards come out just one month after the Minnesota-based company showed its support for same-sex marriage by teaming with LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activist group Family Equality Council to sell gay pride T-shirts.
The shirts, designed by musician Gwen Stefani, carried phrases such as “love is love,” “harmony,” and “pride.”
POLICE and customs officials are turning their attention to the online marketplace of illegal drugs, Silk Road, which is achieving an estimated $22 million a year in sales.
Silk Road – started by ”Dread Pirate Roberts” in February last year – functions like a black market version of eBay, complete with vendor feedback, dispute resolution and sales promotions. Cocaine and ecstasy sell for a quarter of street prices in Australia while drugs such as cannabis and prescription medication are shipped worldwide.
Australian MPs have started to call for legislative powers to compel social networks to swiftly remove offensive content, after Facebook failed to act decisively to remove a page containing numerous racist stereotypes of Australian aboriginals.
Facebook initially did nothing about the page, which disappeared briefly and then resurfaced marked as “controversial humour”.
I thought Australians were freedom-lovers; I guess that doesn’t apply to their MPs…
The Ohio Court of Appeals late last month overturned a man’s conviction for public indecency after police refused to allow him to use the restroom during an overly long traffic stop. On March 7, 2011, Springfield Police Officer William Evan pulled over a car that passed that had a stuck horn which blew continuously. Robert S. Wilcox was a drunk passenger in the vehicle. During the stop, he refused to identify himself to the officers.
This annoyed the patrolmen who ordered him out of the vehicle for a frisking. Wilcox did finally give them his name and asked urgently for permission to use the nearest restroom, which was five blocks away at a gas station. The police refused. Wilcox was told he was not under arrest but that he needed to sit inside the stopped vehicle. Wilcox could not hold it.
While the officers were busy writing up citations for the driver, Wilcox relieved himself on the grass next to the car. Officers then arrested him for public indecency.
[...]
“He was not committing acts, but rather responding to a natural biological function, for which, under his intoxicated condition, he had diminished capacity to control and under circumstances which were acerbated by the refusal of the officers to allow him to leave to find a more appropriate facility, even though there were no facts justifying the defendant’s further detention,” the lower court wrote.
Prosecutors appealed, insisting the officers did nothing wrong. A three-judge panel ruled instead that it was Wilcox who had been treated improperly.
“A passenger, unlike the driver of a vehicle, is not legally obligated to carry identification or to produce it for a police officer,” Judge Jeffrey E. Froelich wrote for the appellate panel.
[...]
“While the officers acted lawfully in stopping the car and asking basic questions of Wilcox, the passenger, they violated his constitutional rights when they insisted that he remain in the car or at the scene of the traffic stop while the driver’s citation was issued,” Froelich wrote. “When the police determined that Wilcox would not be allowed to drive the stopped vehicle, they had no basis to keep him at the scene while the citation of the driver was completed. Wilcox should have been allowed to walk away from the scene when he expressed a need to do so.”
The above graphic appears on Iran’s state-owned news agency Press TV. Only now, Iran is claiming that if the logo isn’t a veiled homage to the Jewish State it’s at least a reference to Nazi propaganda. Press TV explains:
The London Olympics logo, as well as its designer, has been at the center of controversy since its creation and not the least for the fact that it keeps reminding people of the racial imagery of Nazi Germany or of Zionism rather than British culture or history.
Still, while the idea of Nazi propaganda surfacing on an Olympics logo is disturbing, the main concern here is this Jewish thing:
Iran said a few months ago that the logo design spells out the word “Zion” (biblical term for Bait-ul-Muqaddas) that is the perceived promise land in the Bible and the basis upon which Zionists justify their illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands. The country sent a letter to president of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge in which it threatened to boycott the Games over the “revolting” politicized logo.
Hey Iran, you’re having a terrific Olympics. Your Greco-Roman wrestler Said Mourad Abdvali is on track to win another gold. Was that a fluke or were the Jews just letting him win?
Amusing, esp. their equation of Zionism with Nazism (ZioNazis?) – hilariously offensive; you have to laugh.
Why do lefties keep accusing Rep. Paul Ryan of making Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged required reading for his staff? Maybe because he said, “It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff,” and now we can hear him say it. Last week, when Ryan called it an “urban legend” that he was a Ayn Rand devotee — “I reject her philosophy,” he told the National Review — it seemed like part of an effort to take Ryan more mainstream, now that he’s a potential running mate for Mitt Romney. (A profile in The New York Times Monday goes further in humanizing him, revealing that the congressman is a Rage Against the Machine fan and gym rat.) But The Atlas Society, the group devoted to Rand that hosted Paul’s talk, is making the mainstreaming more difficult by posting the audio of his address. You listen to the whole clip, but as the quotes from the audio below show, in 2005, before it seemed like an immediate possibility that his national ambitions could be fulfilled, Ryan was proud to be a total Ayn Rand fanboy:
“I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we’re engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand, that’s what I tell people.”
“I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.”
“It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well.”
“But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”
“And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism—that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism—you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.”
“It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are.”
“Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.”
[...]
The congressman posted a video talking about the author on his Facebook page in 2009; he said Rand’s thinking was “sorely needed right now.” Maybe Ryan looks back on his Ayn Rand fandom the way most of us look back on our Rage Against the Machine phase — as a slightly embarrassing but amusing youthful indiscretion. One that lasted until he was 39.
What was once a light, airy, crunchy snack – even touted for its antioxidant powers – made headlines today for being a health hazard.
Turns out the artificial butter flavour used in popcorn – particularly the microwave and movie theatre variety – is linked to brain deterioration. The culprit is diacetyl – a chemical compound used to make that salivating butter flavour and smell, which is a contributing factor to the progression of Alzeimer’s disease, according to the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.
Seriously, they just assumed the body they’d found was female; turns out was male…
For more than 20 years police believed it was a woman who had met an unfortunate end in a central Manitoba hay field.
The 1990 case file grew by the boxfuls as officers searched from coast to coast trying to match a weather-worn skull and a few bones found near Faulkner, Man., to a missing female.
“We just were not making headway in locating this woman,” RCMP Sergeant Line Karpish said Friday.
In 2011, cold-case detectives took stock of what they had and re-evaulated their approach.
“Basically, we decided, let’s get back to the body,” Sgt. Karpish said.
They exhumed the remains from the Ashern, Man., cemetery where they were buried and – using science not available to officers back in 1990 – they learned something that left investigators gobsmacked.
“To everyone’s shock and amazement, it turned out to be a male rather than a female,” Sgt. Karpish said.
Investigators had spent two decades searching for a woman who didn’t exist.
I’d like to know why they just assumed it was a woman. What, only women get murdered and go missing?
