July 22, 2021

At San Francisco's only Benihana, ex-workers are being recalled amid a very real hiring crisis

At San Francisco's only Benihana, ex-workers are being recalled amid a very real hiring crisis

Our server is standing in front of me when I reopen my eyes, ready to take our orders. Her name is Ly, she’s worked here for 37 years and she’s on her eighth eight-top table of the night with still three more to go. Sweat glistens on her forehead as she jots down a cascade of food and drink asks (Lauren’s dad wants a glass of white wine right now, but when the meat is ready, he wants a glass of red, too).


Ly wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. Or ever again. The 70-year-old was coaxed out of retirement by Benihana after they struggled to find people to work in the dining room.

I scan the dining room and there are only three chefs Ninja-Turtle-Raphael-ing cutlery, despite six full eight-tops. I do a little digging when I get home, starting with the San Francisco Benihana’s jobs page — there are 23 openings. (Toronto’s location of the world-famous restaurant closed its doors in May after a whopping 48 years. That was Canada’s only Benihana.) One of the listings I find for the Japantown operation includes a $250 signing bonus for a hostess.

After he’s finished flipping an egg like no man has ever flipped an egg before, I ask our teppan chef, Javier, how long they’ve been back on the hibachi and this, it turns out, is week three. For Phil, who’s standing just behind him, cooking for the table opposite us, it’s week one, though: Phil is moonlighting from the Burlingame location because they’ve been short of chefs here. According to The Daily Meal, it can take up to six months to train a Benihana chef, which means finding replacements during an unprecedented time for worker migration is probably (?) pretty challenging.

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/San-Francisco-Japantown-Benihana-worker-shortage-16327766.php

July 22, 2021

Tokyo Olympics Fires Ceremony Director Over 1998 Holocaust Joke

Tokyo Olympics Fires Ceremony Director Over 1998 Holocaust Joke

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tokyo-olympics-fires-ceremony-director-over-1998-holocaust-joke/ar-AAMqdiD?ocid=msedgntp

(Bloomberg) -- The Tokyo Olympics faced the latest in a series of PR disasters when they were forced to fire the director of the opening ceremony a day before it takes place, after a decades-old video emerged of him joking about the Holocaust.

“We have discovered that Kentaro Kobayashi in the past made fun of a painful part of history, so he has today been removed from his post,” Olympics chief Seiko Hashimoto told reporters Thursday. “We apologize deeply for the trouble and worry caused.”

A video shared on social media showed Kobayashi, when he was working as a comedian years ago, joking about the Holocaust as part of a skit. The Mainichi newspaper said the video dated to 1998. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement condemning his remarks as “malicious.”

“Any association of this person to the Tokyo Olympics would insult the memory of six million Jews,” it cited the center’s Associate Dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper as saying.

July 22, 2021

Margaret Keane painting stolen in Hawaii returned to family after 49 years

Margaret Keane painting stolen in Hawaii returned to family after 49 years



A Margaret Keane painting stolen nearly 50 years ago from a Honolulu dentist's office has been returned to its original owners, including one of the big-eyed girls depicted in the artwork.

Known as "Eyes Upon You," the painting was consigned to Heritage Auctions by a family who purchased it from a New Jersey gallery in the 1980s, not knowing the work had been stolen. It's not known how the painting got from Hawaii to New Jersey.


The family, who wishes to remain unnamed, has spent decades searching for the work. They hired Robert Wittman, a former FBI special agent, to find it, and he contacted Heritage Auctions to let them know the artwork was stolen.

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A Tennessee native and former San Francisco resident, Keane was living in Honolulu in 1972 when she saw a little girl she wished to include in a painting of several children. The girl's father provided Keane with a photograph of the then-seven-year-old girl, pictured below, and she appears in the center of the painting, which Keane intended to "represent the racial diversity of Hawaii's population," Heritage said.

https://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Stolen-Margaret-Keane-painting-returned-to-family-16330234.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-Editors-Picks

July 22, 2021

24 year old man and 12 year old girl arrive at Oklahoma hospital "excited to deliver their newborn"

An Oklahoma man has been arrested and charged with first-degree rape after allegedly impregnating a 12-year-old girl.

Juan Miranda-Jara, 24, was arrested on July 14 after the girl went into labor and he brought her to a local hospital for her to deliver the baby, according to the Tulsa Police Department.

After police arrived on scene, Miranda-Jara allegedly admitted to investigators that he was the biological father of the baby.

Miranda-Jara also told officers that he has been "in a relationship" with the pregnant girl since October, police said in a news release.

The age of consent in Oklahoma is 16.

"They walked in just like any other couple would excited to deliver their newborn child," Officer Danny Bean told FOX23.

According to the outlet, investigators believe Miranda-Jara was fully expecting to go home with the girl and the newborn baby as if he had done nothing illegal. While the relationship between Miranda-Jara and the girl is unclear, Bean said that police "don't believe this is incest at this time."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-arrested-and-charged-with-rape-after-pregnant-12-year-old-girl-was-brought-to-hospital/ar-AAMpTQr?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

July 22, 2021

Champlain towers south is no more..all rubble removed

July 21, 2021

racist tweets coming from account linked to Alaska's asst attorney general Matthias Cicotte

Account With Racist Tweets Linked to Government Lawyer
Guardian says Alaska's assistant attorney general writes offensive feed

A Twitter account with a feed of racist and antisemitic tweets, many now deleted, has been linked to an assistant attorney general in Alaska. The Guardian newspaper reports it has uncovered the identity of @JReubenCIark, and it’s Matthias Cicotte. Cicotte is a lawyer—a graduate of the J. Reuben Clark law school at Brigham Young University—and chief corrections counsel for the state of Alaska

. The account posted plenty of identifying details—about Cicotte’s house, education, career, what kind of vehicle he drives, even a recent weight loss. Alaska’s department of law said in a statement that it is investigating.

The account that appears to belong to Cicotte has tweeted calls for Black Lives Matter protesters to be thrown in jail, and for doctors performing gender confirmation surgery to be executed. The account uses hashtags promoting Deseret nationalists, some of whom want part of the western US to be a white state.

Last summer, a now-deleted tweet read, "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its Consequences Have Been a Disaster for the Human Race." Cicotte has been tasked with working on civil rights cases. There are also tweets supporting James Field, who killed Heather Heyer when he drove his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2016, and Kyle Rittenhouse, who is charged with murder in the death of a protester in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

https://www.newser.com/story/308832/paper-links-racist-account-to-alaska-government-lawyer.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_world_login









The account readily accepted its association with so-called Deseret supremacy. Many so-called 'DezNats' want to create a secessionist Mormon state - and have in some cases called for it to be a white ethno-state.

'Is it 'white supremacy' to note that some racial groups have higher IQs than others based on IQ tests?' the account posted. 'I believe that and I am only a Deseret supremacist.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9811121/Alaska-assistant-AG-heads-civil-rights-cases-accused-running-racist-Twitter-account.html

July 21, 2021

Yosemite mama bear calls to dead cub 6 hours after it dies , ranger plea to drivers to slow down

https://www.newser.com/story/308838/yosemite-ranger-shares-heartbreaking-bear-story.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top



A ranger at Yosemite National Park has shared a heartbreaking story of a bear encounter—and a plea for motorists to slow down. In a Facebook post, the ranger says they received an all too common report of "Bear hit by vehicle, dead on the side of the road," USA Today reports. When they arrived at the scene, the ranger spotted a broken car part before finding the lifeless body of a female cub, not much more than six months old, under a tree a a few feet from the road.

"The least I can do is find it a nice place to be laid," says the ranger, who carried the animal's body to a grassy spot away from the road and laid it down before realizing they were being watched by another bear. The ranger says they scared the bear away, but it returned—and made the "deep toned but soft sounding grunt" mother bears use to call to their cubs.

"This bear is the mom, and she never left her cub" in the approximately six hours since the accident, the ranger says. "The calls to the cub continue, sounding more pained each time," the ranger writes. "Now here I am, standing between a grieving mother and her child. I feel like a monster." The ranger departed after setting up a remote camera that captured an image of the mother with her dead cub to illustrate the "sad reality" behind the statistic of dozens of bears hit by cars in Yosemite every year. The ranger urged visitors to remember they are in the home of "countless animals" and follow the rules in place to protect them, KTVU reports. "Go the speed limit, drive alertly, and look out for wildlife," the ranger writes

July 21, 2021

Kevin Sorbo tweet

https://twitter.com/i/topics/1303715075421646849?s=09

July 21, 2021

A migrant hunger strike is shaking Belgium's government

https://www.politico.eu/article/two-month-migrant-hunger-strike-threatens-belgium-government/

A migrant hunger strike is shaking Belgium’s government
Once a local issue, the residency-seekers are gaining global attention.

For hundreds of hunger-striking migrants in Brussels, the situation is growing dire. And it’s threatening to fracture Belgium’s government.

Their protest — launched by migrants hoping to get formal residency after living in Belgium for years — is now nearing two months, straining their health. Six strikers have sewn their mouths shut. Five have tried to commit suicide. Some have stopped drinking water. Volunteers count a thousand hospitalizations.

Once a local issue, the strikers are gaining global attention. A U.N. human rights official came to visit them. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters is one of many famous musicians, artists and filmmakers to sign an open letter lobbying on their behalf. A famous French cultural festival featured pleas for awareness of the migrants’ plight.

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Two months without food
Inside the St. John the Baptist Church at the Béguinage, the air is saturated and it’s difficult to breathe. Faces are emaciated and exhausted.

Ambulances come and go, bringing people to the hospital for urgent care. On the floor, a rescue team and volunteers provide first aid to a striker suffering from a diabetic attack.

On top of each mattress, there is a sign with each person’s job: woodworker, electrical mechanic, computer technician, nurse, hairdresser. They come from all over — the Maghreb, Pakistan and Brazil — but have lived and worked in Belgium for years. Without official papers, the migrants face social exclusion and lack of access to labor rights and social security. In Belgium, they’re known as “sans-papiers.”

July 21, 2021

2 Men Caught On Camera In Brazen Daylight Theft From Granada Hills TJ Maxx

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CRcUDjuBkzb/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=f31a972a-70f6-4b58-a911-386585ee8385


GRANADA HILLS (CBSLA) — Two men casually walked out of a crowded TJ Maxx in Granada Hills recently, their arms full with what appeared to be stolen items.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/2-men-caught-on-camera-in-brazen-daylight-theft-from-granada-hills-tj-maxx/ar-AAMnuQo?ocid=msedgntp