Several Confederate flags placed on the graves of Civil War soldiers got pulled up by a black Auburn city councilman, who called them symbols of racism and hatred. Mary Norman, president of Auburn Heritage Association, said she was at her family’s burial plot in Pine Hill Cemetery when Councilman Arthur Dowdell removed the small Confederate flag from her great-grandfather’s grave Thursday afternoon. “He pulled up the flag, snapped it in two and put it in his car,” said Norman, who is white. Dowdell said Friday he did not break the flag’s stick intentionally. Instead, it broke when he pulled it out of the ground. But, he said, “I should have broken them all. They are offensive to me. They represent racism and the Ku Klux Klan.”
Assault nail gun used to kill Australian man. These deadly weapons should be banned.
A SHOCKING X-ray shows how a man died with up to 30 nails fired into his skull by a high-powered nailgun. Sydney homicide squad detectives have released the graphic image as they make a fresh appeal for information about Chen Liu’s murder. The decomposed body of the 27-year-old, also known as Anthony Liu, was found dumped in the Georges River last November, wrapped in a domestic rug.
A strain of flu never seen before has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and also appeared in the United States, where eight people were infected but recovered, health officials said on Friday. Mexico’s government said at least 20 people have died of the flu and it may also be responsible for 40 other deaths. It shut down schools and canceled major public events in Mexico City to try to prevent more deaths in the sprawling, overcrowded capital. Authorities said they had enough antiviral medicine to treat about 1,000 suspected cases reported so far. The World Health Organization said tests showed the virus from 12 of the Mexican patients was the same genetically as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas. “Our concern has grown as of yesterday,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters in a telephone briefing.
A small, single-engine plane strayed into restricted air space near the U.S. Capitol on Friday, forcing anxious officials to place the White House in temporary lockdown and take steps to evacuate the U.S. Capitol. The episode was over within minutes as two F-16 fighter jets and two Coast Guard helicopters were dispatched to intercept the plane and escort it to an airport in Maryland, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. U.S. Northern Command spokesman Michael Kucharek said the two helicopters established communications with the pilot. The plane landed at Indian Head Airport in Charles County, Md., where airport owner Gil Bauserman said the aircraft had been flying from Maine to North Carolina. Bauserman said the military notified the airport that the plane would be making an unscheduled landing at 12:45 p.m. EDT. The plane landed 15 minutes later, escorted by the F-16s and the helicopters. “It was just a navigation mistake, the GPS went and the pilot got confused,” Bauserman said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This has happened many times. The restricted zone in D.C., all it does is catch poor innocent people. They’ve never caught a terrorist, it’s just people making a mistake,” he said.
At an electricity substation on a bleak industrial estate north of Paris a masked union militant is preparing to deprive a neighbourhood of power. His colleague is outside, dragging nervously on a roll-up cigarette while keeping a lookout for police or security guards. “Get a move on,” he says. “And then let’s get out of here.” A switch is pulled down, the door of the sabotaged transformer is locked and the two activists — employees of EDF, the French state electricity supplier — drive off.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he appreciated U.S. President Barack Obama’s friendly gestures at last weekend’s Summit of the Americas, but said they don’t change his view of the United States as an imperialist nation. (snip) “The hand[shake], yes. And the smile, yes — one time and a second time and a third time and a fourth time,” Chavez said during a televised address. “But nobody should be mistaken. The empire is there, alive and kicking.”
Hold the Obama jokes. Blank birth certificate forms missing from New York City health department.
A stack of blank birth certificates has been stolen from the city Health Department’s offices, leading investigators to worry that they may have fallen into the hands of terrorists, The Post has learned. (snip) “It’s like hitting the Lotto for a terrorist,” one investigator said. “Forged documents are one of the primary concerns of Homeland Security. After you get that birth certificate, you can get any document you want. This is extremely serious.”
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Rita Yamaoka, a mother of three who immigrated from Brazil, recently lost her factory job here. Now, Japan has made her an offer she might not be able to refuse. The government will pay thousands of dollars to fly Mrs. Yamaoka; her husband, who is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent; and their family back to Brazil. But in exchange, Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband must agree never to seek to work in Japan again.
Former pirate hostage felt certain he was going to die on that little lifeboat.
Former hostage Richard Phillips says he thought he’d never get out of the lifeboat where Somali pirates held him after an aborted hijacking attempt. In his first interview, Phillips tells NBC’s Matt Lauer he was resigned to dying at some points during his five-day Indian Ocean ordeal, which ended April 12 when U.S. Navy SEALs on the USS Bainbridge shot his three captors, freeing him. Phillips, 53, said he discussed escaping in front of the pirates, who he described as “a little lax in their control on some things.”
84 year old man fends off carjackers….with his feet.
An 84-year-old man has a black eye, but he still has his car, after fighting off two would-be carjackers. Ted Mazetier said he stopped Wednesday night to help two men with a disabled car when one punched him in the face and demanded his keys.
Amazing pictures taken by the Hubble space telescope.
Entering its 20th year of service, the Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 880,000 observations, taken 570,000 images of 29,000 different celestial objects, and piled up a load of impressive scientific accomplishments. After a rocky start that included a delay due to the Challenger shuttle disaster and a flaw in the optical mirror that prevented the fine focus the telescope was designed to achieve, Hubble has had a glorious career.
Conficker computer worm finally starting to get busy.
A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said. Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware, they said.
No wonder so many of our college students are stark raving lunatic lefists.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wasn’t the first to discover the book he gave to President Obama last week in an attempt to ease diplomatic tensions — college students in the U.S. have been turning its pages for years. The 317-page “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” has been identified on the syllabi of at least 20 U.S. colleges and universities since 2003, and it’s been taught for decades on American campuses. The virulently anti-American book tells how for 500 years Europe and then the U.S. exploited Latin America, leaving it impoverished and governed by corrupt leaders.