• From the Guardian:

    Robert Kilp, the head of the city’s public affairs department, said if a journalist was caught filming in the area the tape would be removed and a warning issued, but if he or she was caught a second time the consequences would be more serious.

    “The second time we will be really angry. This zone is owned by the city of Cologne and is not considered a public street,” Mr Kilp said.

    “Anyone filming or taking pictures there will be liable to prosecution. Prostitutes are having sexual intercourse in cars there, it is not a good thing to be filming.”

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  • From the Mail & Guardian:

    In the latest case, a 41-year-old woman was tricked into having sex dozens of times with a medium who claimed to be the “Ninth Emperor of the Kingdom of God” and said she was possessed by evil spirits, newspapers reported on Wednesday.

    The 52-year-old medium said her domestic and financial problems would be solved with the sex sessions, which took place over seven months at a cost of 20-50 ringgit ($5,50 to $13,85) each, during which he moved into her house.

    He was eventually turfed out by the woman’s husband and has threatened to put a curse on the family.

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  • From the BBC:

    Large crowds gathered at a Koranic school in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, to watch Mohamed Moallim, 16, stab Omar Hussein in the head and throat.

    Hussein had been convicted of killing the boy’s father, Sheikh Osman Moallim, after a row about Mohamed’s education.

    Islamic courts have brought a semblance of order to Mogadishu, imposing Sharia law after years of rule by warlords.

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  • From Carlotta Gall, The New York Times:

    “The security situation is not good,” Governor Munib told General Eikenberry and a group of cabinet ministers at a meeting with tribal elders. “The number of Taliban and enemy is several times more than that of the police and Afghan National Army in this province,” he said.

    Uruzgan is not the only province teetering out of control. Helmand and Kandahar to the south have been increasingly overrun by militants this year, as large groups of Taliban are reportedly moving through the countryside, intimidating villagers, ambushing vehicles, and spoiling for a fight with coalition or Afghan forces.

    Insurgents also have the run of parts of Zabul, Ghazni and Paktika Provinces to the southeast, and have increased ambushes on the main Kabul-Kandahar highway.

    The Bush administration is alarmed, according to a Western intelligence official close to the administration. He said that while senior members of the administration consider the situation in Iraq to be not as bad as portrayed in the press, in Afghanistan the situation is worse than it has been generally portrayed.

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  • From The New York Times:

    In a statement, Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat on the subcommittee who opposes the laser’s development, thanked her Republican colleagues for agreeing to curb a program “with the potential to weaponize space.”

    Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a private group in Washington that tracks military programs, said the subcommittee’s action last week was a significant break with the administration. “It’s really the first time you’ve seen the Republican-led Congress acknowledge that these issues require public scrutiny,” she said.

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  • From Wooster Collective:

    It was Ecko, and Ecko alone, who backed seven high school and college kids and sued the city of New York over the recent ban on possessing spray paint and fat tipped markers if you are under 21 years old.

    The results?

    Yesterday a federal judge ruled in favor of Ecko’s seven kids and overturned the city ruling, forcing the city to stop enforcing the ban.

    Congratulations and respect to Marc Ecko and the seven kids who took on the city. Nice one indeed.

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  • Check out the paintings at Tommy Kane’s website.

    Drawing was something I did very well, so I would do that as opposed to my homework. Hence, I’m a complete idiot who can draw really well.
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  • From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids:

    Jenny said the other women who tried to help the mad woman nearly killed her because in spite of the effort to bring down the placenta, it retreated into the womb.

    Having been relieved of the life-threatening placenta, Eka Goddy remained calm and a little shy as the crowd surged to see the baby boy, which had already been given a bath by Jenny.

    Though not hostile, the mad woman refused to answer many questions. However, when Daily Sun asked: “Do you know the father of your baby?” She replied, “I don’t know”.

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  • From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids:

    If you are diabetic, you can come to Quincy Kitchen, we have menu for patients with diabetis, hypertension, ulcer and other diseases. I have a slimming water, if you take a glass, you are sure to lose 1kg thereafter. And as you keep taking the water, you keep losing weight.

    We have so many menus, such as Ewaroni, Liveroni, Darego on tree, Parenfusi, slimming burger, slimming pizza, slimming rice, slimming Iyan and many more.

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  • From the monthly report from International Crisis Group:

    Thirteen conflict situations around the world deteriorated in April 2006, according to the new issue of CrisisWatch,* released today. Tensions mounted over Iran’s nuclear program as Tehran defied the UN Security Council’s 28 April deadline to stop enriching uranium. An increasingly bitter rivalry between Hamas and Fatah cast a shadow over the Occupied Territories, while violence between Israelis and Palestinians increased. In Afghanistan, a Taliban “spring offensive” saw increased suicide attacks and bombings in the south and east. A series of bomb attacks in the Sinai peninsula rocked Egypt, which was also shaken by sectarian clashes in Alexandria. In Chad, rebels launched a major attack on the capital, N’Djamena, as the effects of the conflict in Darfur continued to spill over Sudan’s borders. A dramatic upsurge in violence in Sri Lanka prompted fears of a return to full-scale civil war. And a wave of separatist attacks in Kashmir marked the first major violence there since November 2005. The situation also deteriorated in Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar/Burma, Pakistan, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.
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  • From AP via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog:

    House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill., center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a news conference at a local gas station in Washington, Thursday, April 27, 2006 to discuss the recent rise in gas prices. Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive the few blocks back to the U.S. Capitol.

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  • From the Washington Post:

    After midnight on a bare stretch of highway near this ramshackle town last week, Staff Sgt. Jason Hoover saw what looked like a fishing line strung across the road and ordered his Humvee to a screeching halt.

    The cord was connected to an old, Russian artillery shell half-buried in the earthen shoulder and rigged to activate with a firm tug. Hoover traced its path nearly a half-mile though a plowed field, over another highway, and across a canal, where he found four Iraqi infrastructure policemen who were supposed to be guarding an oil pipeline. They said they had no idea what the cord was doing there.

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  • From the Mail & Guardian:

    The Moskovski Komsomolets newspaper reported that Alkhanov had banned Kadyrov from bringing more than two of his private army with him into meetings. It reported that Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov had rung President Alu Alkhanov and given him 30 minutes to flee the presidential administration as his men wanted to storm it. Both sides called for reinforcements and there was further shooting before the situation was defused. Kadyrov later rang Alkhanov to apologise, the paper said.

    An aide to Kadyrov played down the clash, saying Kadyrov had attended the meeting. “It was simply a fight between two young sporty guys who don’t know how to use their energy and so had a fight,” he said.

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  • From SportsShooter:

    The lively debate between Villa’s photograph of a goose attacking a high school cross country runner as she nears the finish line and Miralle’s black and while image of a sumo wrestler standing on a up side of an escalator as a gawking woman passes on the down side had Brown and Hanashiro voting for the action photo with Rickman and Skalij opting strongly for the feature.

    Skalij: “The escalator (photo) is such an immediate read, you laugh right away. With the goose (photo) you had to read the caption to actually see what’s happening.”

    Brown: “I didn’t have to read the caption! That animal’s (obviously) gone wild! I knew immediately that a goose was slapping her. I didn’t have to read the caption!”
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  • From Furilla:

    Pink is the new Black. Or is Black the new Pink? No matter what, this Fluffy Pink Friend is always in fashion.

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  • From The Moscow Times:

    It reads like a grade-school math problem: “If there’s five of you, you can jump two people. If there’s seven of you, then you can jump three.”

    What follows, though, is not long division but advice on pummeling a “darky” or “slant-eyed monkey” into “porridge” in less than a minute:

    “As a rule, one of them will inevitably run away. Typically, the main portion of Russian hate is reserved for only one savage out of several.”

    The advice, for skinheads hunting dark-skinned people from Africa, Asia and the Caucasus, can be found in the “Manual of Street Terror,” a sort of “Dummy’s Guide to Hate Crimes” that has been bouncing around dozens of neo-Nazi web sites.

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  • From the Cape Argus:

    Huge rocks were also hurled from a nearby bridge, narrowly missing cars and landing in the middle of the freeway, according to a police source at the scene.

    The latest attack follows a similar incident on the N2 yesterday morning, when strikers set a burning barricade to try to halt motorists who were then stoned.

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  • From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog:
    the late, great Dr. Gene Scott. Here’s the good doctor on the attack, throwing out every rule in the televangelist / NPR fundraising handbook, frothing at the mouth and insulting his viewers, one of whom Scott challenges to a duel.

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  • Just noticed that Manowar has an RSS feed (in their news section). Bought Into Glory Ride in 1983 at the Record Exchange, Walnut Creek, California. The same day Jef bought Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All but it was too fast so he sold it to me for $5. Then around that time, bought Mercyful Fate’s Melissa. Set it on fire in my backyard with a couple kids from church.
    From the loudest band in the world, Manowar:

    “The whole purpose of playing live is to blow people’s heads off,” says Manowar bassist Joey DeMaio . “That’s what we do; that’s the energy of this band. We’re out there to kick ass. We’re out there to turn our gear on and blast. We’re out there to kill. That’s what metal is. Anybody who says otherwise is not playing heavy metal. We will melt your face!”
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