March 26, 2021

7 story apartment building built inches from single story wwII house

Australia's real-life The Castle: Inside couple's David and Goliath battle after HUGE unit block is built just centimetres from their lifelong home - as they turn down $1.2m offer from developers and house starts to crumble

An elderly couple's say their home has become completely unlivable after construction work next door

Adelaide, 76, and Giuseppe Garofano, 84, immigrated to Australia in the 1950s following World War II

A seven-storey apartment block has been built just metres from their front door

The huge wall now directly faces the Garofanos yard and has cast a shadow over their heritage home

The Garofano family say they've been misled by Vortex Construction and have had no support from council

view from inside:






https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9396233/Elderly-Sydney-couple-shattered-construction-company-build-seven-storey-wall-doorstep.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

Pictured: The Garofanos federation Hurstville home before Vortex demolished the house next door and built the apartment block at the center of an ugly dispute

March 26, 2021

Trump lies about Capitol riot by claiming his supporters were 'hugging and kissing' cops

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/politics/donald-trump-january-6-rioters-arrests/index.html

Calling into Fox News on Thursday night, Trump was asked if he was concerned about the US Capitol's beefed up security, including razor-wire fencing, which he derided as "disgraceful" and a "political maneuver."

"It was zero threat, right from the start, it was zero threat. Look, they went in, they shouldn't have done it. Some of them went in, and they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know, they had great relationships," Trump told Fox News' Laura Ingraham. "A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/politics/donald-trump-january-6-rioters-arrests/index.html

March 26, 2021

Sesame Street introduces two black muppets - Wes and his dad Elijah

Sesame Street introduces two black muppets - Wes and his dad Elijah - to talk to children about black identity and race






The new characters, five-year-old Wesley Walker and his father Elijah, were revealed this week in a video with Elmo
In the video, which was published on the show's website, Elmo asks the father and son why people have different skin colors
The segment is part of a new series of videos called the ABCs of Racial Literacy
In another video due out soon, a Hispanic muppet named Rosita will be confronted with 'a racist incident in a grocery store'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9403773/Sesame-Street-introduces-two-black-muppets.html

March 26, 2021

Devastating 135MPH tornado kills at least five in Alabama after ripping through multiple homes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9404003/Strong-tornado-kills-three-ripping-Alabama.html

March 25, 2021

it may take weeks to free the Ever Given involving dredging, extracting fuel and removing containers

An excavator working on Thursday to free the stranded ship, which is about 1,300 feet long and weighs around 200,000 metric tons.Credit...Suez Canal Authority, via Shutterstock

?quality=90&auto=webp


Peter Berdowski, chief executive of Royal Boskalis Westminster, which has been appointed by Ever Given’s owner to help move the vessel, told the Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur on Wednesday that the operation to free the ship could take “days, even weeks.”

Mr. Berdowski, whose company has been involved in expanding the Suez Canal, said that Ever Given was stuck on both shallow sides of the V-shaped waterway. Fully loaded with 20,000 containers, the ship “is a very heavy beached whale,” he said.




The authorities had first tried to float the vessel using tugboats, a model that worked to free the CSCL Indian Ocean, a similarly sized container ship that became stuck in the Elbe River in 2016, near the port of Hamburg, Germany. Salvaging that ship took 12 tugboats and three attempts, and part of the sandbank where the ship ran aground had to be dredged.

Mr. Berdowski said that the Ever Given, operated by a company called Evergreen, was too heavy for tugboats alone, adding that salvagers might need to extract fuel, pump out water from the ballast tanks and remove some of the containers to make the ship lighter and therefore easier to move. And the dredging may require extra equipment, he said.


Everything depends on how deep the massive container ship is stuck. “The more deeply the ship is stuck, the harder it is to lose weight, the more time it will take to free it,” Mr. Berdowski said.

The ship’s manager has said in a statement that a preliminary investigation found that the vessel grounded because of strong winds, not because of mechanical or engine failure. The company said that all 25 crew members, who the ship’s owner said were all Indian citizens, were safe and that there were no reports of injuries, pollution or cargo damage.

March 25, 2021

Jessica Walter dead at 80: Emmy-winning Arrested Development actress passes away in her sleep

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9403525/Jessica-Walter-dead-80-Emmy-winning-Arrested-Development-actress-passes-away-sleep.html

March 25, 2021

radio host fired, talk about how he finds lighter skinned black women more attractive than dark

Radio Host Fired for Racist Remarks in Toast Chat
Rob Lederman likened toaster settings to color of Black women's skin

https://twitter.com/Marcel_LJ/status/1374791800997699584

https://twitter.com/gilat_melamed/status/1374874614388625417

"I may get into trouble for this," Buffalo radio host Rob Lederman said Wednesday morning before likening his toaster settings to the skin color of Black women he finds attractive. He was correct. By the end of the day, the Morning Bull co-host had been fired by 97 Rock and denounced by the city's mayor, among many others, WGRZ reports.

A clip of his remarks caused outrage when it was tweeted by ESPN reporter Marcel Louis-Jacques. Lederman told co-hosts Rich Gaenzler and Chris Klein that he "will never go to a Serena Williams level," but he's "very comfortable" at a "Halle Berry level," with a "little bit of mulatto still coming through." Gaenzler and Klein have been suspended by the station for their involvement in the chat, and Gaenzler has been fired as the Buffalo Sabres' in-arena host.

"There's already an unfortunate and undeserved stigma attached to dark skin—so for Rob to take something undesirable like burnt toast and compare it to the skin color of any person is reprehensible and feeds into that stigma," Louis-Jacques noted.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said in a statement Wednesday night that the "racist commentary" made on the show "is outrageous and intolerable." Lederman, who joined the station 30 years ago, tells the Buffalo News that his words were not "meant to be hurtful," but he was "horrified" when he heard a recording of the show. "I could easily see how someone could be offended by that. I get that," he says. "It sounds terrible, and it is terrible."

https://www.newser.com/story/304108/radio-host-fired-for-racist-remarks-in-toast-chat.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_world_login

March 25, 2021

with new obstacles to voting Republicans are stacking sandbags against a rising demographic change

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/23/politics/voting-rights-republicans-bills-demographics/index.html

With their drive to erect new obstacles to voting, particularly across the Sun Belt, Republicans are stacking sandbags against a rising tide of demographic change.


In many of the states where Republicans are advancing the most severe restrictions -- including Georgia, Arizona and Texas -- shifts in the electorate's composition are eroding decades of virtually uncontested GOP dominance.

In each of those states -- and others such as North Carolina, South Carolina and, in a slightly different way, Florida -- the GOP still holds a statewide advantage primarily because of its strong performance among older, non-college-educated and non-urban White voters. But in almost all those states, the Republican edge is ebbing amid two powerful demographic currents: an improving Democratic performance among white-collar voters in and around the states' rapidly growing major cities, and the aging into the electorate of younger generations defined by kaleidoscopic racial diversity.

------------------

Big battle in Texas
To civil rights organizers, and groups that work on registering voters across these states, this year's eruption of GOP proposals that would make it more difficult to vote represents a frenzied attempt to cement the party's advantages before these potential voters enter the electorate.

"They are staring down the freight train of change and they are very afraid of it, and they are trying to put down every single roadblock they can think of," says Randy Perez, program director at the Voting Rights Lab, a voting rights advocacy group in Arizona.

In Arizona, between 800,000 and 1 million eligible voters are unregistered, more than three-fourths of them people of color and close to three-fifths under age 45, according to analysis by Chris Brill, data director for One Arizona, a coalition of low-income and minority advocacy groups there.

These systems, especially voter registration, are purposefully, intentionally designed to disenfranchise those groups. The system is working as it is intended and designed.


As with many things, the scale of this battle is biggest in Texas -- as are the stakes in its outcome. One comprehensive recent academic study rated Texas as the most difficult state in which to vote or even register to vote.

March 24, 2021

FDA warns people not to drink alkaline 'Real Water' linked to 5 cases of hepatitis & 1 liver failur

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397447/Real-Water-CEO-apologizes-man-suffers-liver-failure-drinking-FDA-launches-probe.html

FDA warns people not to drink alkaline 'Real Water' linked to five cases of hepatitis - with one man suffering liver failure and needing transplant: Scientologist CEO apologizes as lawsuits pile up
By Rachel Sharp For Dailymail.com
09:43 EDT 24 Mar 2021 , updated 15:23 EDT 24 Mar 2021


Brent Jones released a video Tuesday to 'personally apologize' to customers after it was potentially tied to several cases of liver illness in in Nevada

The FDA said Friday it had been alerted to five cases of acute non-viral hepatitis in infants and children in November 2020
The 'only common link' was found to be the 'alkaline water products'

The agency launched an investigation and warned that people should not drink, cook with, sell, or serve Real Water

Jones announced he was pulling the brand from the shelves of retailers and issued a voluntary recall to customers nationwide

March 24, 2021

Alex Jones heckled by Yale students

https://www.rawstory.com/alex-jones-2651188408/