Watkins says it was the voice of God that urged him to jump off his bus one afternoon last week to pray over a homeless man.



And it was the power of the Internet and University of Maryland, Baltimore police officer Eric Gaines that captured and transmitted that image to tens of thousands of people on Facebook.


Watkins' identity was largely unknown until Friday, when he met with Gaines for the first time and shared his story with a reporter at Lexington Market and at the bus stop where the photo was taken.

"People keep telling me about Facebook, saying 'Oh, you famous,' and I said, 'Yeah, but all glory belongs to God,'" said Watkins, 18, who says he began exploring his faith about two years ago.


The key moment unfolded as the Edmondson Village resident and his twin brother, Stephan, were on their way home from school at Friendship Academy of Engineering and Technology in Northeast Baltimore. Watkins had fallen asleep on the bus listening to gospel music. When he woke at his transfer, at Paca and Saratoga streets, he said he saw a man lying motionless on the sidewalk and heard the voice of God.


He hopped off the bus.

"I immediately went over to him and knelt over and prayed," Watkins said. He said he silently prayed, "Father and Son, Holy Spirit, Lord, I pray for this man today. This man is in need … because he's down and I'm high."

Gaines saw Watkins kneeling before the man and took a picture. Minutes later, the teen darted to his next bus. Gaines posted the photo to Facebook that day.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimore-insider-blog/bs-ae-video-homeless-man-praying-teen-20160311-story.html

Meeks became famous in June of 2014 after he was arrested on gun and gang-related charges. When his mugshot was posted on the Stockton, California, police department’s website, women (and men) swooned, and Meeks became an overnight global obsession.
According to Jordan, a modeling agent at White Cross Management in Los Angeles, his phone has been ringing off the hook with offers from the world’s “top five designers,” as well as TV producers, though he declined to say which ones.
“We were bombarded by every news media outlet and production company out there,” Jordan said, adding that Meeks has been getting ready for his close up, doing 500 sit-ups and 500 push-ups in his cell every day.
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/Hot-Mug-Shot-Guy-Jeremy-Meeks-Leaves-6880717.php

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/14/the-states-where-teachers-still-beat-kids/

In other words, one out of every 17 public school students in Mississippi can expect to get beaten by a school administrator during a typical school year.

These beatings don't happen at random, however. Startz found that overall, "black children are twice as likely as white children to be subject to corporal punishment" at school. This is partly because black kids are disproportionately likely to live in states where such punishments are allowed, and also because black students are more likely to be singled out for corporal punishment by educators.

In Mississippi, for instance, white students were physically disciplined at a rate of 4.7 beatings per every 100 students. Among black students, the rate was 8.1 per every 100 students.

Berkeley officials said Wednesday that the university's law school dean, Sujit Choudhry, will be taking an "indefinite leave of absence" after he was sued for sexual harassment by his former executive assistant.

_____
Choudhry's conduct was reported to the university's Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, which found in July 2015 that he had violated sexual harassment policies.

The university released a redacted version of the report Wednesday.

"The Respondent admitted to the following conduct towards the Complainant: hugged her; kissed her on the cheek; touched her shoulders and arms from behind while she sat at her desk; squeezed her arms while he passed by her desk and held her hands to his waist," according to the document.

UCLA community protests professor's punishment for sex harassment: $3,000 fine and 11-week suspension
UCLA community protests professor's punishment for sex harassment: $3,000 fine and 11-week suspension
In his statement, Steele said that after the investigation he docked Choudhry's salary as dean by 10%, required him to engage in counseling at his own expense and instructed him to apologize. He also granted Sorrell a fully paid administrative leave.

_____

Choudhry previously was a professor of law at New York University and the University of Toronto. He holds law degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Toronto and was a Rhodes Scholar, according to his university biography.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-berkeley-dean-sexual-harassment-20160309-story.html

UC President Janet Napolitano is appalled by latest groping case
March 9, 2016

UC President Janet Napolitano tells The Sacramento Bee editorial board that she is appalled to confront yet another groping case at UC Berkeley, this one against UC Berkeley Law School Dean Sujit Choudhry. Choudhry, a renowned constitutional law scholar, took an indefinite leave of absence as dean after being sued for sexual harassment by his former executive assistant.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article65086572.html#storylink=cpy

?itok=yPHmBIyL

Tone-deaf posing-with-homeless photo draws flak in LA hipster haven

The homeless man seems little more than a prop as the woman stands before Dallas Clayton's mural, which reads "Stand here and think about someone you love," in the hipster stronghold of Silverlake.

"At one point the photographer directed her to move closer to the homeless man so she could center the photo. They were still at it when I drove away," Rich Michalowski, who took the picture Sunday and posted it on Facebook, said in an email to TakePart.com.

Condemnation was swift on social media.


"There's a certain amount of irony involved in posing for a warm fuzzy picture while trying not to stand on a homeless man's head," wrote one commenter on Facebook.
"I've seen a few homeless people sleeping in that spot and every time someone posts a photo of themselves against that mural it's all i can think about ... I don't know how anyone could do that i feel physically ill," wrote another.

March 9, 2016
There was plenty to take away from the Republican presidential primary results from Michigan and Mississippi, the two biggest states on the ballot last night. Donald Trump won big, John Kasich remained viable, and Ted Cruz came through with enough votes to plausibly claim that he is still the best anti-Trump candidate left in the field.

But the real news is that with his home state primary only a week away, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio looks like a dead candidate walking.

Michigan and Mississippi were the two biggest prizes on the Republican ballot Tuesday, with 59 and 40 delegates, respectively. Both states require a candidate to collect a minimum of 15 percent of the statewide vote to earn any delegates at all, and with the overwhelming majority of votes counted in both states by late Tuesday night Rubio wasn’t even within shouting distance of the cutoff in either.

As of late Tuesday, it was impossible to know how the Florida senator would do in Idaho, Hawaii and the Northern Mariana Islands, which also held primaries Tuesday, but none of the three offered the freshman senator a chance to offset his losses in Michigan and Mississippi just a week before a crucial vote in his home state.

Rubio’s performance last night will intensify calls from other GOP candidates – particularly Cruz – for him to drop out of the race entirely.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/03/09/Rubio-Now-Zombie-Candidate-Under-Pressure-Quit

The Illinois woman, 54, is facing a drunk driving charge after allegedly plowing her car into a tree and then continuing to drive with the 15-foot accessory embedded in the vehicle's grille.

Christy was nabbed in late-January after a Roselle Police Department officer spotted her driving with the tree as a hood ornament. Investigators estimated that Christy drove several miles before getting pulled over.

Christy, who was navigating with the 2004 Lincoln’s air bags deployed, told the cop that she recalled hitting a tree, but could not remember where the 11 PM collision occurred. Christy, who was arrested a few miles from her home in Schaumburg, works as a marketing consultant, according to her LinkedIn profile.

After Christy failed a series of field sobriety tests, she was arrested for drunk driving. She is next due in court in April on the misdemeanor charge.

As seen below, police responding to the arrest scene made sure to photograph Christy’s vehicle.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/drunk/tree-in-car-drunk-driver-283945

Pursuing drugs and guns on scant evidence, D.C. police sometimes raid wrong homes — terrifying the innocent

lie Taylor was sitting in her apartment in Northeast Washington one evening in January 2015 watching “Bible Talk” when her clock fell off the wall and broke. She turned and looked up. Nine D.C. police officers smashed through her door, a shotgun was pointed at her face and she was ordered to the floor.

“They came in like Rambo,” said Taylor, a soft-spoken 63-year-old grandmother who was dressed in a white nightgown and said she has never had even a speeding ticket.

The heavily armed squad thought they were searching the residence of a woman arrested two miles away the previous night for carrying a half-ounce vial of PCP.

Taylor, who did not know the woman, was terrified. Trembling, she told police that the woman did not live there. Officers spent 30 minutes searching the house anyway, going through her boxes and her underwear drawer. They found no drugs and left without making an arrest.

_____

Almost all of the 284 raids occurred in black communities. In 276 warrants in which The Post could determine a suspect’s race, just three originated with arrests of white suspects. The remaining 99 percent involved black suspects. In the District, 94 percent of people arrested in 2013 for gun or drug charges were black, according to FBI crime data.

_____

They have turned any arrest anywhere in the city into an automatic search of a home, and that simply cannot be,” said Karakatsanis, who spent three years studying the issue, starting when he worked at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. “It would work a fundamental change in the balance of power in our society between government agents and individual rights.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2016/03/05/probable-cause/

http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Salesman-sign-language-connect-with-autistic-boy-6872125.php
MenuSECTIONS
Somerville: Kind salesman uses sign language to connect with boy with autism
By Frank Somerville and KTVU 5-6 and 10 pm Published 8:35 am, Saturday, March 5, 2016



This is a beautiful story about what happened when Caden (1st picture) and his mom went into a Famous Footwear in Eureka to buy some shoes.

Afterward she was so touched by the salesman (2nd picture) that she wrote a letter to the company.
I don’t want to give the story away. But if you read about half way through, you’ll understand why Caden’s mom was so overcome with emotion.

It all started after she grabbed several pairs of shoes for her son to try on. Here’s what she wrote:

Caden is slowly getting more uncomfortable and visibly anxious. He starts to take some of the shoes and throw them in the box or in the trash. A worker comes by and asks me if I need any help.

I tell him that Caden is having a difficult time. He immediately starts using sign language with Caden and talking to him. Caden continues to be anxious and sits down on my lap to hug me.

The salesman lowers his voice and looks right at me and says “Autism?” and a lump begins to form in my throat. I can’t get a word out…I’m in the motion of feeling something so strong that all I can do is nod.

He tells me that his nephew has autism and that he gets it. The wall that I put up literally crumbled all around me.

I acknowledged to this stranger out loud that this is a very difficult thing for Caden and any help he could provide us would be wonderful. He sat on the floor with Caden and tried on 4 different Nike’s.
It took a bit for Caden to trust him, but with his knowledge of sign language it was getting easier. Caden helped Michael get the shoes that he had thrown and also the one he put in the trash.
Caden picked the winning shoe and walked hand in hand to the front counter to pay with the salesman.

While he was ringing our purchase up, I signed the receipt and he said that my signature reminded him of a heartbeat. He said it is so evident that your heart beats for this little guy right here.
I was speechless after that.

To Michael, the salesman at Famous Footwear with the blue Mohawk, you made this mom’s heart burst wide open in the car while driving home.

You took the time to see my son. You REALLY SAW HIM. You got down on the floor to his level and made it work. You were calm and patient. And you really wanted Caden to feel comfortable. And we found a pair of bitchin’ red and black Nikes.

BE KIND ALWAYS
Thank you!
Fatima Naylor

Months later, Flint residents still have tainted water

The hits keep coming for Flint's housing market.

The Michigan city that sits roughly 60 miles north of Detroit is currently under a state of emergency after it was discovered that residents were exposed to unsafe levels of lead from the city's water system.

And the fallout is starting to hurt its already-bruised real estate market.

The 2008 housing crash that sent the nation's economy into a tailspin hit Flint particularly hard.


In the past couple of years, Flint's housing market was just starting to get back on its feet, but the water crisis has been a "momentum killer," said Chris Theodoroff, a real estate agent and president of the East Central Association of Realtors.

The median home price in Flint is $14,000, according to the ECAR.

And it's clear that the water problems have become a concern since well water is now on many buyers' wish lists, Moen said. "All of a sudden, we started getting people asking for houses with well water, they didn't want city water."

Real estate agent Jonathan Schlinker said Fannie Mae recently rejected an all-cash offer from his client on a foreclosure the agency owned because of the water crisis.

(Fannie Mae has temporarily taken homes it owns in Flint off the market to conduct water tests.)
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/04/real_estate/flint-housing-water-crisis/index.html