Armando Rodríguez, at El Diario newspaper, was the top crime reporter in the deadliest city in Mexico. He had seen it all. But this was different. This was personal. Earlier this month, someone had hung the decapitated body of a local drug thug from a bridge on the airport road. Later the head appeared downtown at the Plaza of Journalists, wrapped in a plastic bag, carefully placed at the foot of a statue of a newsboy hawking papers.
A study by the U.S. Green Building Council in Texas found that the yearly carbon consumption fron a single digital billboard is enough to power 13 homes. Beyond excessive power usage, the light pollution these signs emit is so intense that, for instance, one billboard that was erected this year — near Topanga Canyon and Victory boulevards in the San Fernando Valley — can be plainly seen by hikers on Top o’ Topanga’s scenic overlook, four miles away.
Drivers on La Brea Avenue report being mesmerized by three billboards flashing high-intensity images into their faces near Pico, Olympic and Melrose boulevards. Kevin Glynn, a member of the Miracle Mile Residents Association and Mid-City West Neighborhood Council, says, “It’s just a matter of time before somebody is run over by a driver bedazzled by the graphics. They’re really hideous and cheap. Where are the billboard taggers when we need them?”
“Dear Folks,” the letter begins, “I think of you when I hear a Beethoven symphony or the words of a childhood hero repeated and more beautiful as I approach my forties. The strength and principles you planted into me at an early age, though inconsistent with the larger culture I grew up in, is now flowering in fertile soil. I see your faces in my mind and remember the courage both of you demonstrated during the McCarthy period when you were alone. How fortunate that Gail and David can grow up in a community that supports their ideals — it shows — they are so strong and independent, you would be proud. I work hard. I’m the administrator of the medical system in Jonestown. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. There is a song we sing that begins, ‘It feels good to rise with the morning sun,’ and ends, ‘It feels good to see all the work we’ve done and to know the future is now,’ it sums up my feelings about my life here. I am thousands of miles from you, the electronic communications are limited between us, but I am more your daughter than I’ve ever been before.”
The section I’ve spent the most time in is the Audiotape Project Index, which includes copies of original recordings made by People’s Temple members in California and Guyana
After years in relative obscurity, the Shining Path, one of Latin America’s most notorious guerrilla groups, is fighting the Peruvian military with renewed vigor, feeding on the profits of the cocaine trade and trying to win support from the Andean villagers it once terrorized, according to residents and Peruvian officials.
The first batch of Kim-is-fine photos was released Oct. 11, but they flunked the seasonal leaf test. They showed Kim inspecting a military unit near trees whose foliage looked suspiciously summery.
The photos released Sunday featured authentic autumnal colors, but newspapers in Seoul have remained dubious, seeking input from photo experts and neurosurgeons.
Click Note: The Click is politically neutral.
WASILLA, AK – Records and eyewitnesses have come to light that prior to announcing her candidacy for the Vice Presidency; Sarah Palin shot a Bigfoot from a helicopter.
Are you a woman being lured to Moscow, the Russian capital, for prostitution? You had better watch it. You may be heading for an early grave. Moscow is not the best of places for the profession, particularly for blacks. If you dare, you may learn too late, in the hands of a certain group of Russian youths popularly called the ‘skin heads.’
A grave digger in Lagos who was arrested recently for being in possession of 9 human heads said it was the desire to build a new house that pushed him into the illegal act. Tunde Adenuga, had been exhuming corpses from the Atan Cemetery, Yaba, Lagos, chopping off the heads and other vital parts for sale to ritualists, before he was nabbed by the police.
This is me, Trent, talking: This is my new favorite website. Is there any better way to pass the time than to take in these wonderful mug shots and see what they got popped for?
Jail Bookings and Citations in the last 48 Hours
by time, descending. Includes Cite and Release.
UPDATE: Thanks to Grayson, here are the Summit County (Park City) bookings. The difference between Summit County and Washington County seems to be the difference between cocaine and meth.
The chaos that is engulfing Pakistan appears to represent an especially frightening case of strategic blowback, one that has now begun to seriously undermine the American effort in Afghanistan. Tensions over Washington’s demands that the militants be brought under control have been rising, and last week an exchange of fire erupted between American and Pakistani troops along the Afghan border. So it seems a good moment to take a look back at how the chaos has developed.
Somali pirates plying the Gulf of Aden in speedboats equipped with grenade launchers and scaling ladders have launched what the maritime industry calls the biggest surge of piracy in modern times, sending shipping costs soaring and the world’s navies scrambling to protect the main water route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe
Could you please stop tearing apart my record so loudly? I just put my special needs child down for a nap. You remember my poor, Down syndrome baby, don’t you? The developmentally disabled child I carried to term despite knowing that he had special needs? The child who would be helpless without my constant care and attention? Well, he’s just nodded off, and if you continue to provide such damning evidence of my inexperience in both foreign and domestic policy, you’ll wake him.
You wouldn’t want him to start crying, would you?
We may soon have to rename Bigfoot “Bigbelly.” Researchers warn that the elusive backwoods creatures are hooked on junk food and have become dangerously overweight!
Kim Jong Il’s mysterious failure to show up for his country’s 60th birthday bash has set off a wave of speculation about Dear Leader’s health. To find out what might be happening in Pyongyang, FP spoke with expert Ken E. Gause, who has been studying the North Korean regime for two decades.
Seven years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden remains as elusive as ever. Most analysts believe the al Qaeda leader is hiding out in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. So, FP asked five Pakistani experts to tell us how to catch him.
A series of preemptive police raids on Twin Cities anarchist groups prior to last week’s Republican National Convention roiled the blogosphere, after prominent progressive writers such as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake posted video from the scene. But according to a warrant affidavit filed by the Ramsey County sheriff, it was a YouTube video that may have piqued the authorities’ interest in the first place.
PAKISTAN’S WILD, LARGELY ungoverned tribal areas have become an untouchable base for Islamic militants to attack Americans and Afghans across the border. Inside the tribal areas, Taliban warlords have taken near-total control, pushing aside the Pakistani government and imposing their draconian form of Islam. And for more than a year now, they have been sending suicide bombers against government and military targets in Pakistan, killing hundreds of people. American and Pakistani investigators say they believe it was Baitullah Mehsud, the strongest of FATA’s Taliban leaders, who dispatched assassins last December to kill Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister. With much of the North-West Frontier Province, which borders the tribal areas, also now under their control, the Taliban are increasingly in a position to threaten the integrity of the Pakistani state.
Check it out here.
George Bush does not want anyone feeling bad for him. Hates the idea, in fact. Why should anyone feel bad for him? He knew what he was getting into, and he is doing what he thinks is right. But as he enters the twilight of his presidency, he finds it both a liberating and a deeply frustrating time.
Check it out here.
“They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,” Malia’s mayor, Konstantinos Lagoudakis, said in an interview. “It is only the British people — not the Germans or the French.”
Check it out here.