truesee's Blog

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2011/05/01/2011-05-01_osama_bin_laden_killed_by_us_special_forces_former_presidents_clinton_and_bush_c.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-killed/story?id=13505703

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=6451796

http://www.miamiherald.com/neglected_to_death/

Tampa woman saves man's life, then finishes triathlon

Kameel Stanley, Times Staff Writer

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/05/ny-times-law-school.html

Facebook used in 90 percent of divorce cases

Janie Porter 

WTSP News 10

9:46 AM, May 1, 2011

St. Petersburg, Florida - A St. Petersburg attorney says Facebook and social media are used in 90 percent of her divorce cases.

"You get a little bit of everything that happens on Facebook," said Carin Constantine.

"Everything from clients coming in with pictures of the opposing party doing a keg stand with high schoolers... to teenagers drinking alcohol served by a parent... to a picture of a husband at a nightclub dancing with a babysitter."

A recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that Facebook is cited in one in five divorces in the United States.  Also, more than 80 percent of divorce lawyers reported a rising number of people are using social media to engage in affairs.

"There are times when my paralegal and I sit in this office and laugh because people are stupid.  They put things out there on the internet that can last forever," Constantine said.

Divorce attorneys are becoming internet gurus.  Because websites like Yahoo and Google cache images as soon as they're put online, Constantine says she can find pictures from Facebook accounts that have been deactivated.

She simply goes to www.images.google.com, types in the person's name and searches through every single page of returns.

"Those pictures are still accessible by us, and we can still print them and we can still use them as evidence in your divorce case," Constantine said.  And that printed piece of paper can be attached to a motion within the hour.

The best advice, aside from deactivating your Facebook account, is asking friends and family not to post any pictures of you online, even if they don't tag you.

"The problem is, if you've got 400 friends, I assure you one of those friends [doesn't] have all the privacy settings correct," she explained.

And she, along with thousands of other lawyers, can find it.

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.wtsp.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=926056244001

 

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

 

President Obama skewered GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump for, among other things, acting as the bogus birther movement's mouthpiece.

 

 

Alex Brandon/AP

 

Donald Trump was not amused by President Obama's jokes.

Playing the role of comic-in-chief, President Obama relentlessly roasted Donald Trump Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington.

Just days after Obama released his long-form birth certificate, he skewered the GOP presidential hopeful for acting as the bogus birther movement's mouthpiece.

"No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," Obama said at the swanky black tie event. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter - like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"

The thousands of politicians, celebrities and journalists filling the Washington Hilton banquet hall burst out laughing. Trump, on the other hand, sat stone-faced.

The ribbing only got worse.

"All kidding aside," Obama continued, "obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example, seriously, just recently in an episode of 'Celebrity Apprentice,' at the steak house, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks, and there was a lot of blame to go around.

"But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership and so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil Jon or Meatloaf - you fired Gary Busey.

"And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night," Obama said.

The crowd erupted in applause. Still Trump did not muster a smile.

"Saturday Night Live" comedian Seth Meyers also provided some big laughs.

Referencing the bizarre fashion on display at the British royal wedding, he noted "how wonderful it is" to live in a country "where people don't wear hats like that."

Among the many bold-faced names in attendance were actor Sean Penn, actress Scarlett Johansson, "Saturday Night Live's" Andy Samberg, hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, New York Knick Carmelo Anthony and his wife, LaLa Vazquez, and actress Mila Kunis.

NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, recalling having to leave the dinner to deal with the Times Square car bomb attempt last year, said he was looking forward to a less eventful evening.

"I'd like to sit through the whole meal and the speeches," Kelly said

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90051&sitesection=nydailynews_top&VID=23410084

http://www.wftv.com/news/27724333/detail.html

Hot dog! Bedford student gets dream ride to prom

Credit: Kylie Nellis / WFAA contributor

Ben Ross with date Molly Muchow are on their way to the prom in the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile.

ALBANY, Ga. — A 71-year-old retired Albany man spotted a couple of thieves, grabbed his gun and got his man Friday afternoon.

Herbert Gladin said the backyard at 408 Florence Drive, one house over from his residence, had been robbed many times before and he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

“I heard my neighbor’s dog barking,” Gladin said. “I looked through their yard to my other house and saw two heads moving in the yard. I ran and got my gun and a man was coming out the gate pushing my lawnmower up Patricia Alley.”

Police arrived before 5 p.m. Friday to arrest a man held at gunpoint by Gladin, an Albany Police Department report stated. Two women were also arrested in connection with the crime.

Nicolas Wright, Raquell Richardson and Dominique Johnson, all 23, were charged with theft by taking. Richardson and Wright are also charged with criminal trespass, according police at the scene.
Talking at the crime scene, Gladin told how the afternoon unfolded.

He said Richardson and Johnson sat in a parked silver Ford on Patricia Alley.

Wright pushed the stolen lawnmower in front of the car, Gladin said.

When he saw Gladin with a .38-caliber Rossi pistol heading toward him, he jumped in the drivers seat and drove over the lawnmower, officers said.

The crash-grind sound of metal over metal caught Donnie Rogers’ attention as he grilled burgers in his backyard on Patricia Alley. He grabbed his nunchuck and headed toward the sound.

When the Ford mashed the lawnmower, the three suspects threw open the car doors and ran in different directions.

As Wright circled back, possibly to get his car, Gladin got the drop on him.

“I’m glad that boy showed up with his nunchucks,” Gladin said of Rogers. “I think he (Wright) was getting ready to run again.”
Somehow during the confusion, Gladin found time to call 911, he said. Police corralled all three suspects quickly, he said.

Gladin said, “I am very proud of the Albany Police and how they handled this situation.”

Meantime, a suspect who may be linked to a string of burglaries in the north-central area of the city, was arrested early Friday, stated an Albany Police Department report.

Jeffrey Porter, 35, was arrested on burglary charges at about 2:40 a.m. after he tried to run away from 1216 N. McKinley St., a police report stated.

“After the suspect was captured, he showed the officers where he got the stolen property,” said Phyllis Banks, police spokeswoman. “The property was turned back over to the owner.”

The property returned was a push mower and a riding lawnmower, Banks said. Porter could be connected to other property thefts in the area around First and Fourth avenues and Rawson Circle, she added.

 

Police handcuff a woman suspect at the scene of a lawnmower theft behind 408 Florenece Drive after 5 p.m. Friday. Another woman and a man were also arrested.

 

Hotels don't always change the sheets between guests

Chris Elliott

Chicago Tribune 

The Travel Troubleshooter

April 27, 2011

Glenn Robins is grossed out. As a frequent traveler, he assumed the sheets on hotel beds are changed between guests.

But a new TV ad by the Hampton Inn chain calls that assumption into question. It shows housekeepers changing sheets in hazmat suits, at what appears to be a competing hotel chain.

"The implication was obviously that other hotels do not change the sheets for every new guest," he says.

Robins is troubled by that.

"It's a disgusting enough thought that the sheets were not changed," he told me. "It gets even more disgusting when one considers the previous tenant's possible activity."

A confession: I changed the last part of Robins' quote to spare you some graphic detail. Use your imagination.

Room hygiene is a hot topic among travelers. Always is. A recent post on my blog that featured a guest at a budget hotel who discovered her housekeeping staff hadn't changed the sheets in her room and failed to clean a shower between guest visits, sparked a spirited discussion. Some felt the traveler was entitled to a full refund for the lapse in hygiene.

This topic is already well covered -- sorry about the pun -- by the travel press. Sheets are usually changed between guests, and sometimes state law requires it, but there's no guarantee that they will be.

As for bedspreads, forget it. As countless hidden-camera investigative TV programs have confirmed, they aren't washed regularly.

Yuck.

But I digress. Is the Hampton ad right? Kinda.

It's probably safe to say that all major hotel chains, including Hampton, instruct their housekeepers to change sheets between guests. Yes, you'll always find some no-tell motel out in the sticks that tries to skip a guest or two, but as a general rule, the sheets are swapped out.

But here's a situation where the rules may allow a housekeeper to skip it: What if a guest checks in for one night and it appears the bed was unused? Is it OK to just tidy up, or should you strip it down to the mattress and replace the sheets?

I would have said "yes" -- just tidy up.

But wait. What if the previous guest is actually just really neat, and makes the bed like a pro? The housekeeper might assume the guest never used the bed. But that would be wrong.

Point is, it's possible for you to end up sleeping on someone else's sheets. But if you're staying at a major hotel chain, it's highly unlikely.

Still, should there be a law -- perhaps at the federal level -- that hotels meet a certain level of hygiene? Maybe.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2068227_2068229,00.html

Florida charters less diverse than other public schools

Cara Fitzpatrick and Marc Freeman

Sun Sentinel

May 1, 2011

Racial imbalance is making a comeback in Florida's public schools with the new wave of charter schools springing up across the state.

One out of eight charter schools has a student body comprising 90 percent or more of a single race or ethnicity, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of the state's 456 taxpayer-financed charters shows. That compares with one out of 12 traditional public schools.

Those top-heavy charters are adding to the list of out-of-balance public schools that have perplexed educators since integration 40 years ago. They have worked for decades to reduce the racial imbalance through rezoning, school transfer options, magnet schools and other devices to shift students.

More of the charters with skewed enrollments may be on the way as lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott push for changes in state law to allow more such schools.

"Charter schools really do fulfill the notion of parent choice," said Marie Turchiaro, principal of The Palm Beach Maritime Academy in West Palm Beach, which focuses on maritime studies, science and technology.

Charter schools are taxpayer-funded but privately run public schools.They are exempt from many regulations placed on mainstream schools and sometimes are not graded by the state.

Of Broward County's 68 charter schools, seven are 90 percent or more black; two are more than 70 percent white. In Palm Beach County, five of 32 charter schools have enrollments of 90 percent or more black; two were greater than 70 percent white.

Joseph Littles-Nguzo Saba charter school in Palm Beach County offers an African-based curriculum for an enrollment that is 97 percent black, Principal Cleveland Bryant said.

"Our focus is on children of African-American origin," he said of the 230-student kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Riviera Beach. "The focus is on putting people in front of them who look like them."

But at Imagine Schools at North Lauderdale, the 78 percent black enrollment simply reflects the neighborhood, Principal Rebecca Dahl said.

"We're sitting in a minority area, that's just where we are," she said, noting that the Imagine campus in Coral Springs is mostly white, while the Weston campus is mostly Hispanic.

'We seem to be reverting'

In 1970, Broward County was under court order to desegregate but problems persisted into the 1990s. A grassroots group filed a lawsuit in 1995 over school inequities that was finally settled in 2000.

Now, more than 38 percent of the district's 256,000 students are black, 25 percent are Hispanic and 30 percent are non-Hispanic whites.

Jody Perry, director of charter schools for the Broward County school system, said the district has little control over racial makeup of charter schools.

'It is a choice process, and parents can choose to enroll the student in the charter that best meets their needs," she said.

But critics say creating racially imbalanced public schools is not a model Florida should follow.

"The parents aren't doing the kids any favors because they're going to grow up and have to deal with other kinds of people," said Catherine Kim Owens, a member of the Broward School District's diversity committee.

Ernestine Price, a Pompano Beach activist who attended segregated Broward schools in the 1950s, said she has seen the ups and downs of desegregation. Her children were bused miles to white schools. Her grandchildren were in school when she was part of the grassroots group that filed suit over school inequities.

"We seem to be reverting back to segregation," said Price, who doesn't have a problem with the concept of charters, but worries about the lack of oversight.

In Palm Beach County, 11 of the charters — about a third — are top heavy with black, white or Hispanic students.

Juanita Edwards, director of charter schools in Palm Beach County, said the demographics of charter schools "hasn't been anything we've been monitoring."

'Vanilla public school'

More than 155,000 students across the state, 6 percent, are enrolled in charters, including about 23,000 in Broward and 8,700 in Palm Beach County.

Often there is nothing academically wrong with the public schools that students are leaving. Many earn A's or B's in state grading.

But parents who don't want their children to attend "just another vanilla public school" have a choice through charters, Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith says.

G-Star School of the Arts for Motion Pictures and Broadcasting in Palm Springs, with 890 students, touts itself as the only high school in the world with a working motion picture studio on campus.

And Ben Gamla Charter School, which has campuses in Hollywood, Plantation and Miami-Dade, offers Hebrew language.

Other schools, such as the ones run by the city of Pembroke Pines, were set up to relieve the school district's extremely overcrowded facilities. Today, that system serves 5,000 students and has a long waiting list.

Other schools also skewed

A lot of traditional public schools are heavily of one race or ethnicity, say charter advocates.

Dillard High in Fort Lauderdale and Blanche Ely in Pompano Beach, for instance, are nearly all-black.

But many of those schools struggle with underfunding, high teacher turnover, poorer quality teachers and low student performance that often are duplicated in charters with similar demographics.

"It is important to consider if we are creating these patterns in charter schools that public schools have worked for decades to alleviate," said Erica Frankenberg, an assistant professor of education at Penn State University, who studies segregation in charter schools.

With high start-up costs, charter schools often struggle for years to get the financial stability of established public schools. Minority charters typically don't have deep-pocket backers.

Some experts say diverse schools help students develop both socially and academically.

New research by the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, shows the best way to improve academic achievement of low-income students, who often are minorities, is to scatter them among more affluent schools.

Virginia Farace, former education liaison for Boynton Beach, said parents have urged the school district for years to diversify the city's schools with students from a variety of economic backgrounds.

"When schools rely so much on parental support, when you need money for field trips, for PTAs, you don't have a pool to draw from in a poor school," Farace said. "This leaves the poor schools behind."

Staff writer Dave Weber contributed to this report.