One senior citizen is in trouble with the law after police say she was the instigator in a food fight at a popular restaurant for the elderly.
Wilkesboro police say a 69-year-old-man and a 62-year-old woman were assaulted, one who was hit by a flying plate.
Police say it happened at the Golden Corral in Wilkesboro around 3:45 p.m. Tuesday.
Linwood Moore says he was purposely bumped into at the salad bar by Polly Richards, who is 64 years old. Witnesses and surveillance video shows the woman cursed at the man, grabbed his shirt and shoved him against a wall. Moore was also slapped in the face at some point, according to police.
The man, who recently had stints put into his heart, was afraid the woman was going to hurt him, so police say he then grabbed Richards' arms and pushed them away as the woman fell to the floor.
Police say during the ordeal, Richards threw a plate of food, hitting Fay Cardwell and causing a knot on her shin and knee.
Employees told police it apparently started because Moore went around Richards in line to pay while she was getting a drink.
When arrested, Richards told police "Just take me to the *%$ #@!* jail then."
She was charged with two counts of assault and battery and jailed on a $1500 secured bond.
[An Nahar] Whatever you're doing this Sunday, wherever you might be, take a moment to reflect on the most popular word in the English language, OK?
It will be 175 years since OK -- or, as some prefer, okay -- first appeared in print, on page two of The Boston Morning Post, then one of the most popular newspapers in the United States.
"I think OK should be celebrated with parades and speeches," Allan Metcalf, an English professor in Illinois who is the world's leading authority on the history and meaning of OK, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"But for now, whatever you do (to mark the anniversary), it's OK."
In his 2001 book, "OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word," Metcalf calls OK "the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet" -- used more often than "Coke" or an infant's "ma."
Concise and utilitarian, it's quintessentially American in its simplicity. Etymologically, it has no direct relationship with Latin or Greek or any other ancient tongue.
Oxford Dictionaries, on its website, rejects speculation that OK is derived from the Scottish expression "och aye," the Greek "ola kala" (it's good) or the French "aux Cayes," which refers to a Haitian port famous for its rum.
Rather, it favors a theory -- shared by Metcalf -- that it's an abbreviation of "orl korrekt," a derivative of "all correct" from the 1830s when jokey misspellings were all the rage, like Internet memes are today.
- NG: 'no go'-
Credit for finding its first use in print goes to Allen Walker Read, a Columbia University professor who died in 2002 after a lifetime interest in OK and another widely used word with four letters that starts with the letter F.
It appeared in the Post in the context of an article concerning the ironically named Anti-Bell Ringing Society, founded in 1838 to oppose a municipal law in Boston prohibiting the ringing of dinner bells.
Society members were en route to New York, it reported, adding cryptically that if they should transit Rhode Island en route home, the newspaper editor in the New England state might well "have the 'contribution box,' et ceteras, o.k. -- all correct -- and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward."
Other abbreviations proliferated at the time, like NG for "no go," GT for "gone to Texas" and SP for "small potatoes."
But OK truly entered the national lingua franca in 1840, when spin doctors for Democratic presidential nominee Martin Van Buren, a native of Kinderhook, New York, insisted to voters that it meant "Old Kinderhook."
- 'I'm OK, You're OK' -
Today, OK is used "to ask for or express agreement, approval or understanding" or to add emphasis to a sentence, as in "I'm going to stay here, OK?" according to its entry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
"I'm OK, You're OK," published in 1967, remains one of the best-selling self-help books of all time, while Rodgers and Hammerstein declared Oklahoma in song to be OK! in their eponymous 1943 musical.
There's also the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona -- but in this instance, OK stands for Old Kindersley and the infamous 1881 shootout that supposedly took place there but actually occurred down the street.
Internationally, OK has traveled remarkably well on the wings of American popular culture -- and found a niche in the digital era, fitting easily into 140-character Twitter and text messages.
Using Google ...contributed $814,540 to the 2008 Obama campaign... Glass eyewear, in fact, calls for a voice command that begins: "OK, Google Glass."
"It's a nice, short abbreviation and it fits abbreviations in other languages," said Metcalf, the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society who teaches at MacMurray College.
"It's distinctive, yet easily pronounced and very readily understood... It uses the vowel O, the vowel A and the consonant K -- and those are found in almost all languages of the world," he added.
"So if you're speaking with somebody who has a totally different language than you, chances are you can get by with gestures and OK in various tones of voice."
Metcalf, who blogs about the English language for the Chronicle of Higher Education, personally celebrates OK's birthday by ordering up to four dozen frosted cookies with OK in green on a white background.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
"How I loathe this linguistic competitor,"
Cried the diplomat and wannabe Senator.
"My whole public show,
I've promoted 'you know,'
But I've just, you know, maddened my editor!"
[AnNahar] Among the aspiring Asian designers competing for the limelight at Tokyo Fashion Week, one of the most striking was an Indonesian label's bid to blend a traditional Moslem headscarf with haute couture.
The twice-yearly show, which wraps up on Saturday, saw NurZahra roll out its autumn/winter collection "Layers of Fidelity", turning the modest hijab into sophisticated fashion.
The label -- whose name means "the luminous light" in Arabic and takes from Fatimah Zahra, the daughter of Prophet Mohammed -- wanted to prove that the female hair-and-neck-covering wrap, common in the Islamic world, could still take on playful elements.
"The modest hijab is not actually a restriction" in fashion, designer Windri Widiesta Dhari told news hounds after her stylish designs hit the catwalk.
"It's how you cover yourself and look more elegant in a way that has a loose fit."
The wearing of the Islamic veil, limited historically to conservative Gulf monarchies, gained ground, including in sports, since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the creation of an Islamic republic.
Use of the veil spread quickly as Islamist movements grew in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings.
La Belle France has outraged many Moslems with a law against full face-covering veils, while the use of the hijab in sport, including football, has sometimes stirred cultural festivities.
- 'Wearing hijab is not difficult' -
But Dhari sees the traditional scarf as not just a modesty covering, but also a stylish, comfortable accessory.
"We want to inspire people to think that wearing hijab is not something difficult, and could be worn by anyone," she said.
Her collection also bucks a contemporary design trend for simplicity and minimalism.
Blending cotton or silk into her hijab, she includes natural dye prints that rely on a traditional Japanese tie-dye technique called shibori and the Indonesian batik method.
With patterns ranging from mini mandalas to Turkish geometrics, Dhari plays with multiple layers of fabric to freely shape her silhouettes.
Another eye-catching element of the collection was a hat that spreads wide in the back, a throwback to the sixties with elements resembling a long-ago royal head piece.
"The concept of the hat was actually inspired by the style in one from 1963," Dhari said. "I was looking for vintage hats that could be used to cover your hair and also your neck.
"I used that inspiration and then mixed it with a traditional ethnic concept, so it becomes something very unique."
[An Nahar] Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika ... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third or fourth term, who will probably die in office of old age... said Saturday his ailing health does not "disqualify" his bid to run for a fourth term in polls next month.
"The difficulties linked to my health do not appear to disqualify me in your eyes," he said in a message to the Algerian people on the eve of the start of campaigning, carried by national news agency APS.
Bouteflika, who used to date God's grandmother,
is 77 and has been in office since 1999, was hospitalized in Gay Paree last year for three months after suffering a mini-stroke. Opponents say he should not run in the April 17 presidential election.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Death doesn't "disqualify" re-election in Algeria, either.
CONAKRY (Reuters) - Guinea has received confirmation that a mysterious disease that has killed up to 59 people in the West African country, and may have spread to neighbouring Sierra Leone, is the haemorrhagic fever Ebola, the government said on Saturday. Cases of the disease - among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans, with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent - have been registered in three southeastern towns and in the capital Conakry since February 9. It has never before been recorded in Guinea.
"It is indeed Ebola fever. A laboratory in Lyon (France) confirmed the information," Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters.
Six of the 12 samples sent for analysis tested positive for Ebola, Dr. Sakoba Keita, who heads the epidemics prevention division at Guinea's health ministry, told Reuters. He added that health officials had registered 80 suspected cases of the disease, including 59 deaths.
"But you have to understand that not all the cases are necessarily due to Ebola fever. Some will have other origins, including a form of severe dysentery," Keita said.
World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said that cases showing similar symptoms, including fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding, had also been reported in an area of Sierra Leone near the border with Guinea.
Sierra Leone's chief medical officer, Dr. Brima Kargbo, said authorities were investigating the case of a 14-year-old boy who died in the town of Buedu in the eastern Kailahun District. The boy had travelled to Guinea to attend the funeral of one of the outbreak's earlier victims.
Perhaps not the best idea...
The international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) announced on Saturday it was reinforcing its medical and logistics teams in Guinea in response to the epidemic. It is also flying in 33 tonnes of medicines and equipment and is setting up isolation units in the three affected towns in Guinea.
Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with infected animals including chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines, according to the WHO. The disease, which is transmitted between humans through contact with organs, blood, secretions, or other bodily fluids, is most commonly found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan and Gabon.
Though no epidemics of the disease have been recorded among humans in West Africa, a variety of Ebola infected a colony of chimpanzees in Ivory Coast's Tai National Park, near the country's border with Liberia, in 1994.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2014 12:14 ||
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#1
There's nothing like hemorrhagic fever
To beggar the old joie de vivre.
I'll wager a guinea
You'll never find any
At ease as they head for that freezer.
[An Nahar] Thousands of demonstrators marched on Saturday in the Venezuelan capital Caracas against what they see as President Nicolas Maduro's heavy-handed repression of dissent.
At least 31 people have been killed in more than six weeks of student-led protests against the government, representing the biggest challenge yet to Maduro, the elected socialist heir to longtime late president Hugo Chavez.
"In the name of freedom, put an end to dictatorship now," read one of the many banners held aloft at the latest rally.
Maduro and his government have been the target of near-daily protests fueled by public anger over soaring crime, hyper inflation, shortages of such basic goods as toilet paper and further stoked by heavy-handed police tactics.
Demonstrators partly blame Caracas's close ties to Cuba, the only Communist one-party state in the Americas.
Maduro, who succeeded leftist leader Chavez last year, has combined calls for dialogue with a hard stance against opposition rivals and demonstrators.
Maduro says he has fended off a coup bid aided or supported by the United States and other "fascists."
Protests have mainly taken place in middle-class opposition strongholds and Maduro still enjoys support among Venezuela's larger, poor population, allowing him to weather the weeks-long protests.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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Russias partners are understandably spooked. Early in the Ukraine crisis, when pro-Western protesters were camping out in Kiev, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus president, seemed happy to see Russia encourage the Ukrainian regime to crack down. Like Putin, he had no desire to see Ukraines fellow Slavs in Russia or Belarus copying the slogans and tactics of the Ukrainian protestors. (Lukashenko is still scarred by the demonstrations that followed the controversial 2010 elections, in which he won a fourth term in office.) But Russias military intervention in Crimea was a very different matter. Lukashenko pointedly refused to send observers to Crimeas March 15 referendum. He has also defied Moscow by saying that he will work with the new pro-Western government in Kiev (which Putin has described as illegitimate).
There are good reasons for Belarus to feel threatened. It does not have any single enclave with a majority ethnic-Russian population like Crimea, although approximately eight percent of the population in eastern Belarus is ethnically Russian. But Russia is the dominant language across all of Belarus. According to Putins reasoning for seizing Crimea, even Belarus could one day be a target of Russian pressure. (Its similarly plausible, if not even more likely, that Russia would stage an intervention in Kazakhstans Russian-speaking north.)
Even if it is unlikely that Russia would invade Belarus anytime soon, Lukashenko does have reason to worry about the consequences of joining Putins Eurasian Union. For one, Lukashenko may already sense that the Eurasian Union wont be the economic boon for Belarus that he had once imagined. Although he may have hoped that it would provide an open market for cheap Belarusian goods, its precursor, the Customs Union, has so far underscored that Belarusian goods have difficulties competing in a free market, even with goods produced in Russia or Kazakhstan.
Further, even as Russia talks of creating a mutually beneficial partnership, it has been trying to weaken the states around itself. Ukraine is not the only such example. Georgia and especially Moldova have come under pressure as they try to tie up their EU Agreements in 2014. The last thing that Lukashenko wants is to become another weak leader challenged by domestic revolt, often fomented by Russia, who then becomes dependent on Russia to survive -- as Yanukovych would have become if he had not overreacted to the protests in Kiev and been forced to flee, or as Serzh Sargsyan has already become in Armenia. Even worse, Lukashenko knows he could end up as a tin-pot dictator of a mini-state, like Yevgeny Shevchuk, the president of Transnistria, or Sergei Aksyonov, the new prime minister of Crimea.
[AnNahar] All but one of the 30 largest banks are now strong enough to weather another severe economic crash, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
In the newest of the series of health examinations mandated after the 2008 financial crisis, only Zions Bancorp could not measure up to a basic capital standard in a theoretical drastic meltdown of the economy.
Twenty-nine bank holding companies held up in the worst-case scenario with a cumulative 7.8 percent Tier 1 common ratio, a basic measure of capital strength, down from 11.5 percent at the end of the third quarter last year, but ending well above the 5.0 percent minimum target.
That represented a steady strengthening of the sector since the tests began three years ago,
Salt Lake City, Utah-based Zions Bancorp was the only one which fell below the threshold, finishing the nine months of the theoretical meltdown period with just a 3.5 percent Tier 1 common ratio -- the level of shareholder equity and reserves.
The banks were measured against a situation when real gross domestic product contracts 4.75 percent, the unemployment rate hits 11.25 percent, equities shed half their value and home prices lose a quarter of their value.
In that scenario, banks saw $501 billion in losses over nine months.
"The severely adverse scenario features a deep recession in the United States, Europe, and Japan, significant declines in asset prices and increases in risk premia, and a marked economic slowdown in developing Asia," the Fed report said.
The scenario also included for the eight largest banks a default by their own largest counterparty.
The banks that held up the best included American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, Fifth Third Bank, Northern Trust and State Street. All ended the tests with core capital far above the industry average.
Frank Keating, president of the American Bankers Association, said the tests showed that banks continue to strengthen.
"Regulators threw every economic calamity they could think of at our nation's largest banks, and these institutions once again proved their ability to handle even the most extreme financial distress," he said in a statement.
Except for the unknown unknowns that define a black swan event...
#1
The banks were measured against a situation when real gross domestic product contracts 4.75 percent, the unemployment rate hits 11.25 percent, equities shed half their value and home prices lose a quarter of their value.
Given the govt has already been caught cooking the books on stats, why do they assume those values are any indicator of a 'crisis' (vs what is happening right now?). Thus, why does it constitute a 'stress' test?
#2
The banks were essentially the first to be compromised. Then came GM, the insurance companies, and big pharma. Wall Street investments are the final target, the end game.
Thin edge of the wedge, or just providing standard language for wills that have been written this way for two generations now?
Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up "Sharia compliant" wills.
Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether.
The documents, which would be recognised by Britain's courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock and even those who have been adopted from being counted as legitimate heirs.
Anyone married in a church, or in a civil ceremony, could be excluded from succession under Sharia principles, which recognise only Muslim weddings for inheritance purposes.
#2
There has never been any requirement that wills be fair, though there are traditions of equally dividing property among sons or, contrariwise, of primogeniture so that the property is passed on to the eldest son undivided. But beyond that, a person may leave what he owns in the manner he chooses, even if it leaves nothing to his offspring, but instead all for the support of stray cats. I am more concerned about stories that Sharia is given equal legal status over divorces, what is taught in the schools, and whether Muslims are arrested and punished equally for crimes like rape.
[DAWN] Russia's foreign ministry said on Saturday that Moscow has the right of a tit-for-tat response to the second wave of sanctions imposed by the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... over Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea.
The EU imposed a new set of sanctions on Friday adding 12 Russians and Ukrainians to a list of people targeted by EU asset freezes and travel bans. There are now 33 on the list.
"It's a pity that the European Council made a decision that is divorced from reality," the ministry's front man Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement on the ministry's website.
"We believe it is time to return to the platform of pragmatic cooperation that reflects the interests of our countries. However, women are made to be loved, not understood... of course, the Russian side reserves itself the right to give a comparable answer to the actions taken."
In a separate statement, the ministry said Moscow hoped the decision to send to Ukraine a monitoring mission of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe would help resolve what it called an "internal Ukrainian crisis".
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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[Kyiv Post] SEVASTOPOL, Crimea -- Russian forces and Russian-backed Crimean "self-defense" units have moved against Ukrainian army bases in Crimea, following Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexiation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on March 18.
The Ukrainian navy headquarters in Sevastopol was besieged by Russian soldiers and local self-defense units, assisted by unarmed local people, on the morning of March 19.
Beyond the snark there are 2 noteworthy points:
This is an open and official mockery of the President of the US by the Government of Russia.
The snark touches on the taboo subject of Obama's background and past. It is an implicit threat to Obama from Russia: 'We know about your past and if you don't behave yourself we'll leak what we know.'
In future, please check to make sure you pasted the article URL in the Source box before posting. I did a google search of your title, and used the first article that popped up, but possibly it is not the one you intended.
[An Nahar] Turkey's government on Saturday defended its internationally condemned ban on Twitter as a "preventive measure" to stop "character liquidations" following a wave of corruption investigation leaks.
"Twitter has been used as a means to carry out systematic character liquidations by circulating illegally acquired recordings, fake and fabricated records of wiretapping," the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi only they haven't dumped him yet... said in a statement sent to Agence La Belle France Presse in English.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
You can't assassinate somebody's character, if it's been dead for years.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/23/2014 9:48 Comments ||
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Something tells me Erdogan is really loosing this Twitter Battle and he is really a sitting duck.
An anti-terrorism court on Friday ordered release of one of the main suspects in the kidnapping, rape and murder case of a 13-year-old schoolgirl after police filed a final investigation report citing that they did not find any incriminating evidence against him.
However, the investigating officer charge-sheeted a female cousin of the deceased, her husband and their accomplice on the basis of ocular and documentary evidence, according to the final investigation report filed under Section 173 of the criminal procedure code.
The girl was taken away from her school in Federal B Area on Sept 24, 2013 and a couple of days later her body was found near the Seaview.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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The Supreme Court directed the police on Friday to arrest all those involved in the "honour" killing of two girls in Shikarpur.
A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, was seized with the suo motu ...a legal term, from the Latin. Roughly translated it means I saw what you did, you bastard... proceedings against a jirga that was held for settling a dispute over honour killings.
According to media reports, PML-F MNA Ghous Bakhsh Mahar had presided over the jirga to settle the dispute between two tribes. Both parties had accepted the jirga decision, but no one was punished for killing the girls, who were paternal cousins.
The bench, also comprising Justices Khilji Arif Hussain and Amir Mohammedan Hani, ordered the police to conduct transparent investigation into the incident and submit a report within a week.
The investigation officer informed the court that the father of one of the girls, Abdullah Mahar, had lodged an FIR against his brother Sanaullah Mahar who, according to him, had killed the girls over some domestic dispute.
The IO said efforts were under way to arrest the prime suspect.
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An officer in the Iraqi president's guard shot dead a well-known radio journalist during a quarrel Saturday near the leader's east Baghdad residence, police said, the Associated Press reported. The shooting of Radio Free Iraq's Baghdad bureau chief Mohammed Bdaiwi drew condemnation from Iraqi politicians and highlights the resentment many residents of the capital feel toward the often aggressive bodyguards of Iraq's VIPs.
Bdaiwi was allegedly shot by a junior officer working for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at a checkpoint near his residence, police said. Talabani is an ethnic Kurd and his bodyguards are also Kurdish. After the shooting, Iraqi security forces besieged the residency compound and the alleged killer was handed over to them, police and state TV said.
Talabani suffered a stroke last year and is being treated in Germany. His office issued a statement expressing deep sorry of the "murder" of Bdaiwi. "This act runs against all the values of the Presidential Brigade ... We stress that the perpetrator will stand trial and receive his fair punishment," it said.
State-run TV showed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arriving at the crime scene near the presidential palace. "All the people behind this should stand trial. Blood for blood and this is a violation of the law," he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2014 00:00 ||
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One down.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/23/2014 9:49 Comments ||
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#3
Meanwhile the Ukrainians get a three 463L Pallets of surplus MRE's, and one of two SAR birds searching for the Boeing-777, goes down for maintenance. Hey, this regime is alright !
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[AnNahar] Among the aspiring Asian designers competing for the limelight at Tokyo Fashion Week, one of the most striking was an Indonesian label's bid to blend a traditional 
Bouteflika
[AnNahar] All but one of the 30 largest banks are now strong enough to weather another severe economic crash, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
[Kyiv Post] SEVASTOPOL, Crimea -- Russian forces and Russian-backed Crimean "self-defense" units have moved against Ukrainian army bases in Crimea, following Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexiation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on March 18.
[An Nahar] Turkey's government on Saturday defended its internationally condemned ban on Twitter as a "preventive measure" to stop "character 
An anti-terrorism court on Friday ordered release of one of the main suspects in the kidnapping, rape and murder case of a 13-year-old schoolgirl after police filed a final investigation report citing that they did not find any incriminating evidence against him.
The Supreme Court directed the police on Friday to arrest all those involved in the "honour" killing of two girls in Shikarpur.
