BEIJING (Reuters) - Three people have been detained for digging up part of the Great Wall just days before strict new penalties are introduced to protect China's most famous tourist attraction, Xinhua news agency said.
The men used excavators to take earth from the remains of part of the Great Wall in Inner Mongolia, built at least 2,200 years ago, to use as landfill for a village factory. "It's just a pile of earth," Erhaihao village head Hao Zengjun was quoted as telling officials from the Municipal Office on Cultural Relics Protection.
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Wearing Superman pajamas and covered with his Batman blanket, comic book illustrator Dave Cockrum died Sunday.
The 63-year-old overhauled the X-Men comic and helped popularize the relatively obscure Marvel Comics in the 1970s. He helped turn the title into a publishing sensation and major film franchise.
Cockrum died in his favorite chair at his home in Belton, South Carolina, after a long battle with diabetes and related complications, his wife Paty Cockrum said Tuesday.
At Cockrum's request, there will be no public services and his body will be cremated, according to Cox Funeral Home. His ashes will be spread on his property. A family friend said he will be cremated in a Green Lantern shirt.
At Marvel Comics, Cockrum and writer Len Wein were handed the X-Men. The comic had been created in 1963 as a group of young outcasts enrolled in an academy for mutants. The premise had failed to capture fans.
Cockrum and Wein added their own heroes to the comic and published "Giant-Size X-Men No. 1" in 1975. Many signature characters Cockrum designed and co-created -- such as Storm, Mystique, Nightcrawler and Colossus -- went on to become part of the "X-Men" films starring Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry.
Cockrum received no movie royalties, said family friend Clifford Meth, who organized efforts to help Cockrum and his family during his protracted medical care.
"Dave saw the movie and he cried -- not because he was bitter," Meth said. "He cried because his characters were on screen and they were living."
Cockrum was born in Pendleton, Oregon, the son of an Air Force officer. He set aside his interest in art while serving in Vietnam for the U.S. Navy.
He moved to New York after leaving the service and got his big break in the early 1970s, drawing the Legion of Super-Heroes for DC Comics before moving to Marvel.
In January 2004, Cockrum moved to South Carolina after being hospitalized for bacterial pneumonia. As his diabetes progressed, his drawings became limited.
His last drawing was a sketch for a fan, who attended a small comic book convention in Greenville, Paty Cockrum said.
Meth said Cockrum will be remembered as "a comic incarnate."
"He had a genuine love for comics and for science fiction and for fantasy, and he lived in it," Meth said. "He loved his work."
A play criticising hardliners in Saudi Arabia descended into a brawl when angry Islamists stormed onto the stage, Saudi newspapers and websites reported on Tuesday. Gosh. What were they criticizing them about to set them off like that?
As the play Wasati Bila Wasatiya (A Moderate without Moderation) began, a group of men surged forward to stop the performance at a cultural festival in the Yamama College in Riyadh on Monday, Al Hayat newspaper and website Elaph said.
Police fired shots into the air to break up violence which ensued, as the Islamists, students and actors threw chairs and attacked each other with sticks.
Police fired shots into the air to break up violence which ensued, as the Islamists, students and actors threw chairs and attacked each other with sticks. How very... ummm... Islamic. Something tells me it's the hegemonic Olde Tyme Religion in the eduhmacation system. As for the cultural thingy, well, that is their culture.
Al Hayat published some pictures of the clashes. Elaph said 17 men were arrested. An Interior Ministry spokesman was not available for comment. "We got nuttin' to say. Nuttin'."
There are no public theatre houses or cinemas in Saudi Arabia. Yup. That's why Allan built the causeway to Bahrain.
Islamist hardliners believe that liberals are gaining the upper hand in Saudi Arabia. Heh. Any change since Mo Wahhab drew his last breath would be an improvement, er, an outrage, of course.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/29/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
LUCIANNE > a Muslim man was drawn-and-quartered in front of family by angry Radics on Motorbikes. His crime was trying to get females in his family an education. Tore his limbs off.
A man with no legs who crudely attached two metal poles to the pedals to drive his car then led police on an 80mph chase was jailed. Robert Bate, 27, used gaffer tape to secure the poles in place before strapping them to his wrists in a desperate bid to get behind the wheel, a court was told. There really is a hundred and one uses for duct tape. And sometimes, well, ya just gotta go for a spin, y'know?
Bate lost both his legs after collecting coal for his father from the railway line near his childhood home in Seaham, Co Durham. After climbing onto a coal wagon he lost his footing when the train shunted and he slipped onto the track whereupon the carriages severed both his legs.
High on a cocktail of drugs, including heroin and cocaine, he sped off with two male passengers on board before being spotted by police driving "erratically."
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German doctors and midwives sternly warned pregnant women not to try to delay labor until Jan. 1 to qualify for better childcare benefits that come into effect next year.
Under an upcoming law in Germany, either one of a newborn's parents can stay at home to look after the baby for up to 14 months while receiving two-thirds of their net salary, up to a cut-off point of 1,800 euros ($2,365 dollars) per month.
Since this only applies to babies born after Dec. 31, the medical profession is expecting women to try to wait until midnight to give birth.
Experts warn against artificial delays
"We warn against any intervention in the natural birth process," Christian Albring, president of Germany's gynecologists' federation, said Tuesday.
He said medication to stop early contractions should only be given for sound medical reasons and not for financial gain.
But Albring had some conventional wisdom to offer women who feel it is in their interest not to hasten matters -- avoid sex, stress and hot baths.
The head of a maternity hospital in the Berlin district of Neukölln, Klaus Vetter, said nature -- not parents -- decided the time of a child's birth.
"You cannot really tell babies to wait," he said.
Grace for New Year's babies
The midwives' federation warned it was "dangerous and unethical" to manipulate the natural birth process, but conceded that the date of a Caesarean section could generally be pushed back.
The head of the federation, Edith Wolber, said that "in the odd case" of a baby born just minutes before the new law takes effect, the truth might be stretched a bit on its birth certificate.
The law is the brainchild of Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen, a mother of seven, and is a bid to encourage Germans to have children to boost the birthrate, which at 1.36 children per woman is one of the lowest in Europe along with Italy and Spain.
1) If we taxpayers have to keep paying for Katrina victim housing after 18 months, when do we stop having to pay?
2) If we have to pay for Katrina victims, why not other victims - maybe people who ran up too much credit card debt, etc?
Judge Orders Bush Administration to Resume Paying for Katrina Housing
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
WASHINGTON A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Wednesday to immediately resume making housing benefits available to thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to adequately explain why it ended the 18-month housing assistance program for people who lost their homes in the 2005 storm.
Leon's ruling was issued as a temporary injunction requested by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which filed suit in August saying FEMA had violated the rights of Katrina victims by abruptly stopping housing payments.
The judge ordered the federal agency to explain its reasoning and allow the displaced hurricane victims to appeal its decision. While that process goes forward, the judge said, FEMA must keep making payments and must pay storm victims for two months of housing since the decision to stop the program.
#1
Most of them have never made a house payment in their lives anyway. You'll be paying for them one way or the other for the rest of their lives. Welfare or relief, it's your choice, but their kind don't work.
#3
saying FEMA had violated the rights of Katrina victims by abruptly stopping housing payments
The hell? Which amendment guarantees housing?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
11/29/2006 20:35 Comments ||
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#4
Nice scam these parasites have going.
Man, if we ever have a hurricane up here, I'll be outside in the middle of it tearing my house down with a backhoe just to make sure I can get in on this.
#6
Man, if we ever have a hurricane up here, I'll be outside in the middle of it tearing my house down with a backhoe just to make sure I can get in on this.
It helps mightily if you're black...er...uh, one of the protected classes.
tu3031 - no need to tear down your house, just go to the next hurricane disaster zone and claim you have been displaced, that would work.
Nope. You do actually have to prove residency. The only way it could work, is if he had family in the disaster area.
I worked two Hurricane seasons with the SBA Disaster Assistance Office, and we always shared space and worked hand-in-hand with FEMA. If you are not a minority and have any means at all you get kicked over to the SBA's Disaster Loan program. You might get some immediate assistance from FEMA, but it ain't much.
Katrina/Rita was a weird deal, a lot was done that was atypical of how things normaly get handled. While I was in Shreveport, LA I encountered numerous families that had been on welfare for four or more generations*. Never worked a day in their lives. They'd come over and want to fill out loan apps for getting a business back up and running. Yeah right. All of the womens were cosmotologists, and the guys truck drivers.
*(Great Grandma (60ish), Daughter, Grand Daughter and Great Grand daughter (teens) with a baby on her hip) I guess that's really five generations.
Funny thing, I used to drive a big rig, and none of these yahoos knew the first thing about driving, and the womens didn't know anything about cosmotology (one of my loan officers was a retired cosmotologist). They would sit there and lie, lie, lie. When you called them on it, they'd just say: "Where my check?". Some of the most worthless human beings I've ever encoutered.
A little known fact, most of the people that work these disasters are temporary employees that work the disaster seasons. You can make GREAT $$$'s, but they (the Gubmint) nearly kill you with the hours. 10 - 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for as long as the need exists.
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.
A play criticising hardliners in Saudi Arabia descended into a brawl when angry Islamists stormed onto the stage, Saudi newspapers and websites reported on Tuesday.
A man with no legs who crudely attached two metal poles to the pedals to drive his car then led police on an 80mph chase was jailed. Robert Bate, 27, used gaffer tape to secure the poles in place before strapping them to his wrists in a desperate bid to get behind the wheel, a court was told.
