July 4, 2016

Abortion Laws Tumble Across the Country

Less than a week after the Supreme Court's major abortion ruling in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, related restrictions across the country began falling like dominoes.

And that's just the beginning, according to advocates for abortion rights, who say their victory at the court will both strengthen existing efforts to beat back such laws and offer them a new set of tools for future challenges.

"I suspect that we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg," said Janet Crepps, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the victorious Texas abortion clinics before the Supreme Court. "This opinion is going to have long term ramifications and ripple effects in current cases and cases we'll be bringing."

Since Monday, laws restricting abortion and non-abortion Planned Parenthood funding have already been temporarily or permanently wiped out in six states. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a new case Friday challenging a whopping seven of Louisiana's new abortion restrictions. And on the heels of Whole Woman's Health, Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced an effort to pursue repealing laws in eight states through legislatures. (Even lawmakers hostile to abortion may prefer the less expensive option of repealing a law, rather than having to defend one that is unlikely to stand after the Supreme Court's decision.)

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/abortion-laws-tumble-across-country-n602721

July 4, 2016

90% of the world's fireworks come from China, sometimes they explode early, with deadly consequences

The Rockets’ Red Glare

The vast majority of the world’s fireworks come from China. And sometimes they explode early, with deadly consequences.




It was a muggy first day of fall, a morning with nothing in particular to distinguish it from the decade of Mondays Huang had toiled at the Nanyang Export Fireworks Factory in southern China’s Hunan province. By that afternoon, 14 women—her co-workers—lay dead or dying in the rubble of the exploded factory, and Huang would begin a year-and-a-half-long hospital stay to treat severe burns covering 70 percent of her body. Of the 47 people working in the factory that day, only three escaped with no injuries. The rest became casualties of one of China’s most dangerous and ignored industries: the manufacture of the world’s fireworks.

In recent interviews, Huang, now 29, and other former Nanyang factory workers described the workday that nearly killed them and left their lives irreparably damaged.

______


China’s fireworks factories, which produce an estimated 90 percent of the world’s fireworks, make up a perilous industry staffed mainly by rural women: Men typically work in the management offices while women, most of whom go straight to factory work out of high school, staff the lines. The industry developed in villages where men went outside of the village or often far away to work, either on farms or in factories, so women were hired to do the detail-oriented work of making the decorative explosives. They handle dangerous chemicals everyday with little prior training, and despite growing efforts by the Chinese authorities in recent years to make the industry safer, things frequently go wrong—often with lethal or life-changing consequences.


When things do go wrong, workers and their families are left with very little recourse. China’s worker-compensation law requires employers to pay into a fund reserved for injury and disability payments, but compensation is often tied up for years or not paid at all. At the same time, despite its many casualties, the industry has flown under the radar of most Chinese and international labor groups. And while the Nanyang workers were making products for foreign export, international law provides few protections. Consumer campaigns have had an impact naming and shaming companies with global brands to maintain, but fireworks brands are so unfamiliar to consumers that they provide little leverage for such campaigns. “That is why fireworks is a struggle,” says Richard Brubaker, a corporate accountability expert and founder of the Shanghai-based consulting firm Collective Responsibility. “The average U.S. consumer has no idea where they come from. There’s no brand around them they recognize.”


http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_grind/2016/07/china_makes_most_of_the_world_s_fireworks_and_bears_most_of_the_danger.html

July 4, 2016

Not Americans? Trump’s charge astounds Bay Area Muslims

But when his 14-year-old sister began to talk about how she felt when presidential candidate Donald Trump questioned whether Muslims could blend into American culture, Ilyaas looked up, baffled.


“This is my place,” he said confidently. “I’ve been here my whole life.”

His sister, Hanan Mubarez, seated next to him in a tiny San Leandro mosque, quickly echoed his statement: “Yeah, I don’t feel the need to assimilate because it’s already a part of me. I was born and raised here."

_____

Two days after the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people, Trump responded to a question about screening U.S. immigrants of Muslim faith by saying, “Assimilation has been very hard.

“It’s almost — I won’t say nonexistent, but it gets to be pretty close,” Trump said. “And I’m talking about second- and third-generation. They come — they don’t — for some reason, there’s no real assimilation.”

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/For-American-Muslims-claims-about-8337416.php?t=4e7f77d653

July 3, 2016

Good Samaritan buys $80 of candy from young girl 'who was being harassed by woman

Good Samaritan buys $80 of candy from teary young girl ‘who was being harassed by an elderly woman for selling the treats outside Target’
Girl was selling candy outside a California Target when she was approached by a grey haired shopper
Witnesses say older woman was yelling at and 'harassing' the youngster
She even threatened to call the cops on the girl who started crying
Shopper Jay Lopez intervened offered to buy all the girl's candy for $80

The elderly shopper even threatened to call the police before good Samaritan Jay Lopez intervened.
'When I walked up, she was crying hysterically,' he said.
Lopez stepped in and offered to buy the entire box of candy - which cost $80 - to put an end to the confrontation once and for all.


I'm buying it all!' he said during the incident, which was captured on film by Lizarraga and has been viewed more than 6million times since she posted it to Facebook.
'I'm gonna come out right now and get your cash,' said Lopez, who told the older woman she should 'be ashamed' of herself.
He proceeded to hand out many of the sweets to shoppers and passersby.
Lopez believes that, if the seller, who was black, had been a white girl selling Girl Scout cookies then the elderly shopper would have had little to say.
'I'm not putting race into this, but I bet it would've been a whole different story.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3672550/Good-Samaritan-buys-80-candy-spotted-young-girl-harassed-selling-treats-outside-Target.html#ixzz4DNbTgYGs
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US
Video of Old Woman Scolding Kids for Selling Candy Outside of Target Goes Viral

Last week, a boy was selling candy with his sister outside a Target store in Rowland Heights, California, when they were approached by an angry elderly woman. Witnesses watched as the woman proceeded to lecture the children, demanding to see a license to sell.

Andy Lizarraga, who was leaving the Target with her mom at the time, recorded a cellphone video of the exchange and posted it to Facebook. In less than a week, the clip amassed more than 5.5 million views and 70,000 shares.


The altercation began when the woman walked up to confront the kids.

“She comes up to the little kid and is like, ‘Where is your license? Have you asked permission to be here?’ And then the kid is like, ‘No, I’m just selling candy. I’m trying to make some money,’ ” Lizarraga told KCBS-TV.

In her Facebook post, Lizarraga added that the woman “started harassing him to the point where he started to cry.”

When other shoppers entering and exiting the store began to notice what was happening, a group of people approached the woman, telling her to leave the young candy vendors alone, according to Lizarraga.

After this, a man walked over to give the woman a piece of his mind. Then he bought $80 worth of candy.

“I’m buying it all,” the man said, taunting the woman. “I’m gonna buy it all, and I’m gonna give it away to all these people. You should be ashamed of yourself.”



The man who purchased the candy, Jay Lopez, described to KCBS what he witnessed that caused him to intervene.

“She continued to yell at her and scream at her and tell her if she didn’t have a permit, that she was going to go to jail, that sheriffs were on their way,” Lopez said. “When I walked up, she was crying hysterically.”

That’s when he decided to put an end to the argument and purchase all of the candy.

“Mind your own business. Take care of yourself and your family and everything will come together for you,” Lopez said.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/06/28/video-of-old-woman-scolding-kids-for-selling-candy-outside-of-target-goes-viral/

July 3, 2016

Army vet rescues bald eagle dangling upside down from a rope tree by mowing down branches w rifle

Army veteran rescues bald eagle dangling upside down from a rope in 75-foot tree by 'mowing down the branches' with his rifle

Army veteran Jason Galvin rescued helpless bald eagle dangling from tree

Eagle had been hanging from the rope in the tree for more than two days

Galvin spent 90 minutes firing 150 shots into tree branches to free bird

The eagle, now named Freedom, is recovering at a rehabilitation center


Neighbors called the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Rush City police and fire departments, but were told there was nothing the agencies could do because of how high the eagle was in the tree.

At one point Galvin joked that he might have to shoot the eagle down and his wife responded by telling him 'that's what you're going to do', according to KARE 11.
Galvin then spent 90 minutes taking nearly 150 shots from a .22 caliber rifle 'while mowing down three branches, and finally the rope, holding up the eagle'.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3671801/Army-veteran-rescues-bald-eagle-dangling-upside-rope-75-foot-tree.html#ixzz4DKUQDtKa
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July 3, 2016

Artists Buy Trump Campaign Bus on Craigslist, Turn It Into Anti-Trump Art Project

A former Greyhound bus with “TRUMP” emblazoned along its side slowly made its way down the Pacific Coast Highway, trailed by the occasional honk, a burst of expletives or a show of thumbs — some up, some down.

When it pulled into the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Torrance on Thursday, electrician Louis Canal, 48, of Diamond Bar, walked up to it and posed for photos.

The Trump supporter didn't see what was off about the bus, which is not associated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and is a piece of traveling protest art.

For starters, there was the sign on the back reading, "Save water, only waterboard on Mon/Wed/Fri." Then there was "Manhood measuring station" painted on the driver's side — a riff on Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s comments earlier in the campaign about the size of Trump’s hands.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-donald-trump-bus-iowa-california-20160702-snap-story.html






Late last year, David Gleeson and Mary Mihelic, cofounders of politically minded art collective T. Rutt, learned via Rachel Maddow that a Donald Trump campaign bus was up for sale on Craigslist in Des Moines, Iowa. Trump’s team had used the bus — a former bachelor party bus, complete with a stripper pole — to campaign at the Iowa State Fair. Gleeson, who’d been working on a series of political artworks protesting Trump, seized the opportunity: The next day, he flew to Des Moines and purchased this “nice piece of raw material,” as he calls the vehicle.

Now, Gleeson and Mihelic have transformed Trump’s bus into a rolling art project protesting the Republican presidential nomination frontrunner’s divisive rhetoric. In this “kind of seedy” bus, which the artists say has a million miles on it, they’ve been traveling to Trump rallies across the country, as well as to Miami Beach during Art Basel for the Conception Art Fair. With red paint, they’ve amended the slogan on one side of the bus to read “T.RUMP: Make Fruit Punch Great Again”; on the other side, it now reads “T.RUTT: #WomenTrumpTrump,” protesting Trump’s negative comments toward women. In the evening at every rally they attend, Gleeson stands on top of the bus in a neon jacket and drives a golf club into a ball with Trump’s face on it. “We’re driving Trump into the sunset,” Gleeson tells Hyperallergic.



Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” printed on the T.RUMP bus in Arabic

http://hyperallergic.com/272099/artists-buy-trump-campaign-bus-on-craigslist-turn-it-into-anti-trump-art-project/

July 3, 2016

Republican women organize to support Clinton

Huddled around a corner table during happy hour at the swanky St. Regis Hotel bar in downtown Washington, five young Republicans busily brainstormed how they could help Hillary Clinton become the next president of the United States.

The group included an unlikely gang of pro-Clinton foot soldiers, including a Mississippi-born Southern Baptist who got her start in GOP politics as an intern in the second Bush White House, a conservative health care policy analyst who has volunteered for anti-abortion causes and a former president of the Cornell University College Republicans.

Over glasses of wine and champagne Monday night, they kicked off the first steering committee meeting for a new organization: "Republican Women for Hillary."
Their motivation? Stop Donald Trump.

"It's really important that Republican leaders, especially Republican women leaders, stand up right now and say we're not OK with Trump representing our party," said Jennifer Lim, a group founder who works at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has spent much of her life volunteering for Republican causes and campaigns. "This is not a position I ever wanted to find myself in. But it's important that when things like this happen that people speak up."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/02/politics/republican-women-organize-to-support-clinton/index.html

July 2, 2016

A French Street Artist Turns Discarded Mattresses Into Giant Food Sculptures

Parisian artist Lor-K has spent the past six years turning wayward street trash into ephemeral urban sculptures. For her latest project, “Eat Me,” she transformed a series of discarded mattresses into tantalizing larger-than-life caricatures of pizza, cake, sushi, waffles, and other treats.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2016/06/30/eat_me_by_lor_k_is_a_series_of_discarded_mattresses_turned_into_food_sculptures.html

July 2, 2016

How Donald Trump’s 1993 comments about ‘Indians’ previewed much of his 2016 campaign

REP. GEORGE MILLER (D-CALIF): Is this you, discussing Indian blood: "We're going to judge people by whether they have Indian blood whether they're qualified to run a casino or not?"

TRUMP: That probably is me, absolutely. Because I'll tell you what. If you look, if you look at some of the reservations that you've approved, that you, sir, in your great wisdom have approved, I will tell you right now -- they don't look like Indians to me. And they don't look like the Indians ... Now, maybe we say politically correct or not politically correct, they don't look like Indians to me, and they don't look like Indians to Indians.

And a lot of people are laughing at it. And you're telling me how tough it is and how rough it is to get approved. Well, you go up to Connecticut and you look. Now, they don't look like Indians to me, sir.

MILLER: Thank God that's not the test of whether or not people have rights in this country or not -- whether or not they pass your "look" test.

TRUMP: Depends whether or not. ... Yeah. Depends whether or not you're approving it, sir.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/how-donald-trumps-1993-comments-about-indians-previewed-much-of-his-2016-campaign/

July 2, 2016

Timelessly elegant at 100: Gone With The Wind's Olivia de Havilland celebrates milestone birthday

Timelessly elegant at 100: Gone With The Wind's Olivia de Havilland celebrates milestone birthday

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3670080/AP-Interview-De-Havilland-breaks-silence-sibling-feud.html#ixzz4DElnsq2C
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