Posted on May 23, 2009
A Mexican crackdown on drug cartels has led to increased violence in this Olympic city as rival gangs battle over a dwindling supply of cocaine reaching Canada, police said Thursday.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Pat Fogarty said Vancouver gangs are fighting over a decrease in smuggled shipments of illegal drugs.
Posted on May 23, 2009
The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has agreed to halve a new emergency fee on U.S. banks in exchange for Congress more than tripling the agency’s borrowing authority to tap federal aid if needed to replenish the deposit insurance fund.
Bair is agreeing to cut the new emergency premium, to be collected from all federally-insured institutions on Sept.
Posted on May 23, 2009
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary insisted Thursday he’s serious about making passengers pay for the right to relieve themselves on flights and is flush with interest in the idea of mounting credit card-operated toilets.
The Ryanair boss told a dumfounded Dublin press conference Thursday the days of the unlocked potty are indeed numbered.
Posted on May 23, 2009
At least two protesters and one policeman died as ethnic violence flared anew in Nepal, with protesters calling for greater autonomy, officials said Friday.
“One protester was shot dead Thursday and another died Friday from bullet wounds while receiving hospital treatment,” chief district officer Ratnaraj Pandey told AFP from Chitwan town, south of the capital Kathmandu.
Posted on May 23, 2009
A U.N. official has called for an independent probe into the overnight killing of two Kenyan human rights activists in the Kenyan capital.
Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, had met last month with the two activists killed overnight Thursday Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu in an investigation of police killings.
Posted on May 23, 2009
The Senate, tied up in a fight over a huge omnibus appropriations bill, will have to pass a stopgap spending measure Friday in order to avoid a partial government shutdown.
With the vote postponed, senators need to pass a stopgap spending measure by midnight Friday to prevent a shutdown of most domestic agencies.
Posted on May 23, 2009
Just in time for Barbie’s 50th birthday, a West Virginia lawmaker wants to outlaw the doll.
He says the dolls influence girls to place too much importance on physical beauty, at the expense of their intellectual and emotional development.
Democratic Delegate Jeff Eldridge is proposing to ban the sale of the Mattel doll and others like her in West Virginia.
Posted on May 23, 2009
San Francisco psychotherapist Michael Halyard, MFT explains how people were traumatized by Prop 8 passing, but gays are now hopeful that the measure will be overturned by the California Supreme Court. At least one study confirms what Halyard sees in his practice–that marriage denial causes mental health problems for gays and same-sex couples.
Posted on May 23, 2009
NEW YORK–An editorial cartoon is like nothing else in a newspaper. Editorial cartoonists don’t need any special degrees. Unlike reporters and editorial writers, they don’t even have to pretend to be “fair.” Moderation in what Jules Feiffer called “the art of ill will” is the ultimate vice: boring.
Posted on May 23, 2009
A woman and four children were found shot to death in a west side home, and police were searching early Friday for the woman’s husband, who fled the house on foot.
Police SWAT, vice and gang units had swarmed on the two-family home after the Thursday night shootings on a tree-lined street of older, mostly two-story frame houses and some apartment buildings.