Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out.

Sitting in the food court at a mall near his Maryland home, he sees that some of the restaurants are hiring. He says he can’t wait much longer to find a job. But he’s not ready yet.

“I’d work for them, but they’re only willing to pay $10 an hour,” he said, pointing at a Chick-fil-A that probably pays most of its workers less than that. “I’m 49 with two kids — $10 just isn’t going to cut it.”


Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/unemployment-the-vanishing-male-worker-how-america-fell-behind.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article&abt=0002&abg=1#

Mikia Hutchings, 12, whose writing on a wall at school led to a juvenile criminal case, and her lawyer, Michael J. Tafelski, waiting for a meeting held last month by a Georgia state committee studying school discipline.

Even more of a surprise was the penalty after her family disputed the role she was accused of playing in the vandalism and said it could not pay about $100 in restitution. While both students were suspended from school for a few days, Mikia had to face a school disciplinary hearing and, a few weeks later, a visit by a uniformed officer from the local Sheriff’s Department, who served her grandmother with papers accusing Mikia of a trespassing misdemeanor and, potentially, a felony.

As part of an agreement with the state to have the charges dismissed in juvenile court, Mikia admitted to the allegations of criminal trespassing. Mikia, who is African-American, spent her summer on probation, under a 7 p.m. curfew, and had to complete 16 hours of community service in addition to writing an apology letter to a student whose sneakers were defaced in the incident.

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Her friend, who is white, was let go after her parents paid restitution.

For all the attention placed on problems that black boys face in terms of school discipline and criminal justice, there is increasing focus on the way those issues affect black girls as well.

Data from the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education show that from 2011 to 2012, black girls in public elementary and secondary schools nationwide were suspended at a rate of 12 percent, compared with a rate of just 2 percent for white girls, and more than girls of any other race or ethnicity. In Georgia, the ratio of black girls receiving suspensions in the same period compared with white girls was 5 to 1, and in Henry County, that ratio was 2.3 to 1, said J D Hardin, the spokesman for the county’s school district. And researchers say that within minority groups, darker-skinned girls are disciplined more harshly than light-skinned ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/school-discipline-to-girls-differs-between-and-within-races.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Mapp's Supreme Court case, Mapp v. Ohio, is a staple of law school textbooks and considered a milestone case on the Fourth Amendment, which requires law enforcement officers to get a warrant before conducting a search. The case curbed the power of police by saying evidence obtained by illegal searches and seizures could not be used in state court.

Mapp's path to the U.S. Supreme Court began on May 23, 1957, when three Cleveland police officers arrived at her home. There had just been a bombing at the home of Don King, who later became famous as a boxing promoter, and police believed that a person wanted for questioning was hiding in Mapp's home. The officers demanded to enter, but Mapp refused to let them in without a search warrant. More officers later arrived and police forced open a door, according to a summary of the case in the Supreme Court opinion.

When the officers confronted Mapp, one held up a piece of paper, claiming it was a warrant, and Mapp snatched it away. After a struggle an officer got the paper back, Mapp was handcuffed for being "belligerent," and officers searched her home. They didn't find the person they were looking for, but they did find some pornographic books and pictures. At the time, an Ohio law made having obscene material a crime, and Mapp was convicted, though she said the materials belonged to a former boarder. Prosecutors never produced a search warrant at trial.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court overturned Mapp's conviction in a 6-3 decision, ruling in 1961 that illegally obtained evidence could not be used in state court. The court had previously ruled that this was the case in federal court, but Mapp's case extended the "exclusionary rule" to states where the vast majority of criminal prosecutions take place, broadening the protection.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/dec/10/woman-at-center-of-1961-supreme-court-case-dies/

When the Florida Lottery released an image of its latest jackpot winner, proudly holding a sign showing off his $3 million win, the photograph quickly went viral on the Internet as people recognized the smiling 450-pound man as a sexual predator.

Timothy Poole, 43, instantly became a member of the top one-percent after buying a $20 Super Millions scratch-off ticket at a 7-Eleven in his hometown of Mount Dora, Fl. Upon cashing out his ticket at Florida Lottery headquarters in Tallahassee on Monday, he opted for the one-time, lump-sum of $2,219,807.90. This will undoubtedly provide a huge boost in the bank account of a man who has been driving for his mother’s taxi cab company.

In the media spotlight, Poole’s checkered past is surfacing. Poole has been arrested 12 times in Florida, according to the Orlando Sentinel, on charges ranging from grant theft to sexual battery to forging a check, and he has spent over three years in prison total.

“In 2001, The Orange County Sheriff’s Office arrested Poole on charges of sexual battery on a female victim under 12, records show,” The Sentinel reports.

http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2014/12/10/registered-florida-sex-predator-wins-3-million-lottery-jackpot/

Widespread police protests draw old, young, white and black: 'a moment or a movement?'

At 26, Rachel Tuszynski is hardly new to protest. She marched against the Iraq war in 2007 and, more recently, demonstrated in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. Then, last Thursday, Tuszynski and her girlfriend drove into downtown Chicago on an errand and, motivated by spontaneous curiosity, went looking for a march against police brutality that they'd heard about on the radio.

"We drove down Michigan Avenue until we couldn't," said Tuszynski. "I was in slippers ... and I heard helicopters and police and I just hopped out of the car," joining protesters shouting "Hands Up. Don't Shoot." When someone handed her a sign with the message, "Ferguson is Everywhere," she grabbed it.

"It's like I have an internal fire and I am deeply, deeply upset by injustice. To me, this is injustice," she said.

Tuszynski, who works as a cook in a restaurant and who shares Puerto Rican, Italian and Polish ancestry, acknowledges that it's not injustice that victimizes her directly.

And yet, with short-cropped hair that draws attention to her identity as a lesbian, she said she is often stared at by passersby and sometimes hassled. She has heard from black, male friends about being pulled over by police and ordered out of their cars for little if any apparent reason. While their experiences are different, it is easy to relate, she said.

So much so that in the days since Tuszynski has grown hoarse from shouting at protests and taken time off from work to participate.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/09/widespread-police-protests-draw-old-young-white-and-black-moment-or-movement/

Yahoo! owns the photo sharing platform and announced its plans last week. The Wall Street Journal reports the company will start selling prints of 50 million "Creative Commons-licensed" (CC) images on canvas for around $49 each — and no payments will go to the people who actually took the shots. Only a "small sticker bearing the name of the artist" will feature on the canvasses. There will also be some handpicked images, which don't have the CC license. Of those, 51% of sales revenue will go to the photographers in these cases.

Photographers who label photos on Flickr's with the CC category make those images free for commercial use. Anyone can have them. You can take them and sell them if you want, too. Photographers generally offer their work for free like this because it's a good way to get your name out there in a market saturated with cheap/free photos.

The problem is that photographers generally don't expect CC images to be used in a way that makes any money. Yahoo, however, has the power to create a massive market in these images but it is creaming off the CC images (for which no payment is required) and not focusing on the "rights reserved" images which legally require payment.

The effect of this, some photographers believe, will be that artists stop offering their work for free. That would stop Yahoo from selling their images, but it would also stop the free exposure and credit they get when their pictures appear on blogs and news sites (like Business Insider). Yahoo seems not to have taken a more obvious route: to sell CC photos but offer the originators a cut of the sale, the same way Google and Apple offer app developers a cut of sales from apps that are distributed in their apps stores. (Of course, it's much more difficult to verify the original owner of an image than an app.)

One photographer, Jeffrey Zeldman, has written an enraged blog post about the situation, where he calls Yahoo! "cheesy" and "desperate".

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Photographers-Are-Angry-That-Yahoo-Is-Selling-5944698.php

Wall, 50, of Willow Spring, was freed from the Harnett County jail on Oct. 30, after more than three months behind bars on charges of first-degree rape of a child, first-degree sex offense against a child and felony conspiracy. His release, according to the dismissal statement, was prompted by further investigation of the case, which revealed the "wrong person" was charged.

The events that led to Wall’s arrest were set in motion in early January, when detectives began investigating Bailey Joe Mills, 33, after an exchange of inappropriate Facebook messages with a 12-year-old girl.


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Wall sat behind bars for 105 days -- fearing he'd be stabbed or worse the whole time -- before the prosecution played the supposed evidence in court. That was the moment, Wall said, that the sheriff's office and prosecutors realized they had made a big mistake.

"When they did show it, they noticed I was not the man in the video," Wall said. "I have tattoos on my back, the guy in the video did not. The voice was different, the hair was different, the glasses were different, the man had a big mole on his head -- everything was different."

Webb said the first time he was permitted to view the video was in court. He said he was shocked that authorities had not bothered to closely examine it prior to Wall's arrest.

"It was crazy," Webb said. "The detective finally admitted that he was absolutely sure it was not Mr. Wall. Well why didn't he watch it to begin with? You'd think that would be first thing they would do when arresting someone on a charge like that."

Unfortunately for Wall, the damage was already done. At the time of his release from jail, he was homeless, out of work and in debt to creditors he was unable to pay while incarcerated.

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Harnett County District Attorney Vernon Stewart, Sheriff Larry Rollins and lead investigator B.M. Byrd all declined to comment about the case to The News Observer, and a request for comment from HuffPost was not replied to Thursday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/04/tommy-wall-child-rape_n_6271070.html

Washing away his troubles: Puppy relaxes during bath time... just weeks after being abandoned in a dumpster

Three puppies were abandoned in a dumpster and left for dead but are now recovering in Dallas
The two-week-old pups have been relaxing at a rescue center












This adorable puppy might look like the most chilled canine on the planet as he blissfully settles into bath time, but just two weeks ago he was close to death.

The two-week-old was close to death when he was found abandoned in a dumpster with his two sisters - but now it looks like his troubles are a million miles away.

They were found by Dallas Animal Service in Texas and referred to the DFW Rescue Me animal shelter where volunteer Claire Fowler was tasked with looking after them.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2867469/Washing-away-troubles-Puppy-relaxes-bath-time.html#ixzz3LSM40ZT3

#t=32

The footage, recorded by a dashboard camera inside a police car, shows a night pursuit of an off-road UAZ car on a narrow slippery road. According to GPS coordinates, the incident happened near Naberezhnye Chelny, the second-largest city in Tatarstan.

After some twenty seconds, accompanied by the wailing of a police siren, the chase takes a sudden twist, as an officer jumps out of the moving patrol car into the snow and chases down the getaway vehicle on foot.

In one ferocious charge, the policeman reaches the fleeing car, flings its door open, and jumps inside.

The vehicle can be seen abruptly stopping after this, as the surprised perpetrator jumped out of his car and tried to evade the “supercop.” Within seconds, the police officer is again seen racing after the guy – this time along a snowy field.

Uploaded on YouTube, the clip left most Russian viewers in awe, as they dubbed the policeman a “superhero.” Some said the officer should race against Usain Bolt in the Olympics, while others joked criminals should now be ready to face such a cop when trying to escape the long arm of the law.

http://rt.com/news/212623-russian-cop-dashcam-foot-chase/

That'll kill the moment! TGI Friday's mistletoe drone smashes woman in the face and slices end of her nose on its maiden flight

TGI Friday launched mistletoe drone to tempt diners into kissing
But the flying machines drew blood at launch event in New York yesterday
Photographer Georgine Bevenuto was hit in face as she took photos
The machine became tangled in her hair and 'would've taken out her eye'
Pilot blamed fellow journalist, saying she flinched as he tried to land craft on her hand


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2866658/That-ll-kill-moment-TGI-Friday-s-mistletoe-drone-smashes-diner-face-slices-end-nose.html#ixzz3LR44i4qx