Though its roots are in Trinidad and Tobago, the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade has always been an all-inclusive Caribbean affair, and this year, Haiti’s going to get some special attention, according to carnival spokeswoman Jean Alexander.

Under the theme “Bridging Cultures,” the 43rd annual festivities will include a benefit concert on Thursday for survivors of Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake. The Thursday show kicks off the annual five-day event, which culminates with the massive carnival parade on Labor Day, Sept. 6, along Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway.

Text continues after Pictures of the week gallery…

The parade of costume and music and floats begins at noon at Schenectady Ave. and Eastern Parkway. WIADCA President Yolanda Lezama-Clark cuts a ribbon to start the procession, which travels down the parkway to Grand Army Plaza.

The “Caribbean Peoples Unite For Haiti” concert stars calypsonian David Rudder, soca singer Kevin Lyttle, dance hall star Serani, kompa music band Carimi and other performers. Showtime is 7 p.m. Admission is $30 and $35 at the door.

Read entire article at NYdailynews.com

RELATED:

Pennsylvania Parents Sue, Claiming Priest Got Daughter Pregnant

Wyclef Jean Records Song Against Haitian Official Who Rejected Candidacy

Wyclef Jean Can’t Appeal Electoral Decision, Say Haitian Law Experts

LOS ANGELES – A $1.6 billion congressional bailout of sorts could help financially flailing groups that fight to keep young people out of trouble, yet lawmakers are reluctant to take up the expensive proposal amid a sour economy and other, more pressing issues.

The Youth Promise Act would dole out money to organizations like Homeboy Industries, a gang rehabilitation center founded in 2001 under the motto “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” The group’s founder Father Greg Boyle recently had to lay off more than 300 of his 427 workers, most of them former gang members, when expected revenues plummeted.

His organization isn’t the only one suffering. The recession has hit other nonprofits across the country hard and left some wondering how they will survive.

“It would be a lifeline for us and a lifeline for many other organizations,” Omar Jahwar, founder of and chief executive of Dallas-based Vision Regeneration, said of the Youth Promise Act. His group works to prevent youth violence in Dallas County.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who authored the bill, said the tough-on-crime rhetoric that politicians campaign on has proven ineffective. He faulted slogan-driven crime initiatives, such as the “three strikes and you’re out” law, which create lengthy and expensive sentencing requirements.

Scott’s bill currently has 235 co-sponsors in the U.S. House but only 14 in the Senate. Scott does not know if it will get approved this session, in part because it is also competing with another crime bill he opposes, proposed by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif. That bill would create a string of new criminal offenses and enhanced penalties for gang members.

Scott and Feinstein are negotiating over whether the bills could be combined.

But another bailout bill will be a tough sell, especially among Republicans.

“We cannot afford to throw more money toward another expensive government program at a time when our citizens are burdened with higher and higher federal debt,” said Tracy Hancock, president of Texas-based Golden Corridor Republican Women.

But for Scott, the cost pales in comparison to how much is already spent on punishing young criminals.

In Los Angeles County, it costs $140,000 a year to keep a minor in juvenile hall.

“It’s totally counterproductive,” Scott said. “If you put a small portion of that money into prevention and early intervention, you would have a much better result.”

The Youth Promise Act would distribute money to organizations that form a panel and can show their programs are effective. A city official would be on the panel along with law enforcement agencies, which would also be eligible for funding of their own crime prevention and gang intervention programs.

David Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst with conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, said youth crime prevention should be left to state and local governments.

A central provision of the bill is that the programs getting funding must be replicated from programs that have been proven to work.

“These programs almost always fail when replicated in other jurisdictions,” Muhlhausen said.

Rick Velasquez, executive director of Youth Outreach Services in Chicago, said his nonprofit has seen revenues decline by about 15 percent and he’s had to cut 15 workers from the payroll. He has encouraged one of his senators to support the Youth Promise Act.

“It is a piece of legislation that will help us,” said Velasquez, whose group provides counseling to at-risk young people. “We have to seriously reinvest in our young people and this one of the mechanisms to do that.”

At Homeboy Industries, Boyle employs former gang members to work in the center’s bakery, restaurant or T-shirt press. However, workers in these businesses were largely insulated from recent cuts.

Most of those laid off were getting paid simply to attend training and carry out maintenance and administrative work at the center’s downtown headquarters.

For many, it was the only place hiring.

“I never got a call back,” said former gang member Robert Trejo, reflecting on his dozens of attempts to get hired elsewhere.

He was fired as a receptionist in May. After applying without success to 50 jobs, the 23-year-old father of three was left wondering if he had any choice but to return to the street.

“I think I will probably go back to the life, it’s the only thing I know,” Trejo said. “It’s so easy making money. I can make $15-$500 in an hour or two (selling drugs) or robbing.”

Trejo was eventually rehired, thanks to a flurry of donations after Boyle carried out a publicity blitz, but how many workers Homeboy can hire back without the Youth Promise money remains in question.

“We can’t just rail at the fact that they are in a gang,” Boyle said. “We have to also offer them an opportunity to get off this crazy freeway, and that is the part the Youth Promise Act hopes to put out there.”

RELATED STORIES

L.A. To Train Anti-Gang Workers In New Academy

Homeboy Industries Creates Green Jobs For Ex-Cons

Marchella’s body exhibited bruises that were consistent with trauma, police sources said.

The girl’s mother, Carlotta Pierce, 30, who calls herself “a proud parent” on her MySpace page, told investigators she checked on her daughter about 4 a.m. and she was fine, the sources said.

Text continues after Pictures of the week gallery…

The mother claims that she checked on her again at 6 a.m. and was found unresponsive.

The city Administration for Children’s Services has previously investigated at least two complaints involving Marchella, the sources said.

The first case involved allegations Pierce had marijuana in her system when Marchella was born. The second case remains open, and no details were available, the sources said.

A spokeswoman for ACS confirmed the agency is investigating Marchella’s death, but refused to comment further.

Marchella, who had underdeveloped lungs, had at least two limbs tied to the crib with what appeared to have been twine, the police sources said.

Read entire article at NYdailynews.com

RELATED:

NC Man Waits For ‘Ghost Train,’ Killed By Real One

Body Of Missing Woman Found In Clutter At Home

UK Lab Assistant Nearly Kills Schoolgirl He Tricked Into Wearing Chloroform Mask

YouTube search the term “DXM.” You’ll find thousands of videos that chronicle the adventures teenagers “robotripping,” or getting high on dextromethorphan. This drug is known on the streets as DXM, CCC, Triple C and Skittles. It’s also known as Robo because it is found in a number of over the counter cough and cold medications like Robotussin DM.

An alarming number of young adults are abusing DXM by chugging bottles of cough medicine or taking excessive does of tablet and gel capsules that contain the compound. According to the Food and Drug Administration, between 2004 and 2008, the number of dextromethorphan abuse related emergency room visits increased over 70 percent. In 2008 approximately 8,000 people were hospitalized due to DXM injuries, and more than half of these cases were people 12-20 years old. The Department of Health and Human Services is currently reviewing ways to counter this dangerous drug abuse trend in the United States.

Pharmacologicaly, the dextromethorphan acts similar to hallucinogens like PCP. It produces euphoric effects when it is ingested in concentrations 10 to 20 times greater than the recommended 10-30 mg dose. FDA researchers say “robotripping” has increased over the past few years because DXM is cheap and easy to access. It is currently found in over 125 over the counter medications.

Furthermore, many people think dextromethorphan is harmless. YouTube footage often features teens having fun or enjoying their high in the company of others. Few videos, depict the health hazards of abusing dextromethorphan. When used inappropriately, DXM can increase blood pressure and heart rate and cause a fever. Large quantities of cough and cold medication can also cause an abuser to overdose on the other active ingredients present in the mixture. These ingredients may damage the liver, suppress the central nervous system, prohibit respiratory function, and even lead to death.

Read more at TheGrio

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Cough Sizzurp Dangerous Drug For Athletes, Children

T.I. May Have Been Caught With Codeine Ingredient For Sizzurp

NEW ORLEANS, La—The Coast Guard is responding to a rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
The explosion on Vermilion rig 380 happened around 9:30 a.m. Thursday. A Coast Guard spokesman said 12 of the 13 people on the rig have now been rescued from the water. One person is still missing.

Seven Coast Guard choppers, two planes and four boats from New Orleans and Houston responded to the scene.
The rig located south of Louisiana’s Vermilion Bay is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy. “Mariner Energy is among the largest independent oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico,” according to its website. At year-end 2009, the company had interests in nearly 350 Federal offshore leases, with more than 110 of those in development.
The Vermilion rig is west of the site of the April BP blast that caused a massive oil spill.

Source:

GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott on Thursday morning announced that state Rep. Jennifer Carroll of Jacksonville will be his running mate as lieutenant governor.

`I am honored that Jennifer is the first African-American Republican woman to be part of a statewide ticket in Florida,” Scott said.

`Jennifer Carroll is the embodiment of the American dream. She came to America as a young girl, decided to serve her country with the United States Navy, pursued a higher education, started a small business, and then was elected the first African-American female Republican in the Florida Legislature,” said Scott, who launched a new website featuring his new running mate (www.ScottCarrollforFlorida.com).

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Losing Florida Senate Race In 2012 May Haunt Dems

GOP Candidate Caught Stealing Campaign Signs

About 72 percent of adult mobile phone users send text messages with their phones, according to a report released Thursday from the Pew Research Center. That’s up from 65 percent just a year ago. About 87 percent of teenagers use their phones to tap out messages to each other, the survey said. And they’re way busier. Teens send an average of 50 text messages a day, five times more than the 10 that adults send daily.

“Texting among adults has reached the mainstream … ,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the author the report. “Of course, none of these adult groups hold a candle to teens when it comes to texting, who swamp adults in messages sent per day by a factor of five.”
But while they’re texting more, Americans still have mixed feelings about mobile phones. In a nutshell: They like their own, but they hate yours.

Almost all mobile phone users, 91 percent, say having the phone makes them feel safer, and 88 percent say they like how the phone helps them make plans with family and friends. But nearly as many, 86 percent, say they think it’s rude when other people repeatedly check their phones during meetings or conversations.

Full Story:

Earl’s Impact: AIR Worldwide Estimates $50 to $150 million in Insured Losses in Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, and St. Martin.

Earl is a powerful hurricane; it battered the islands of Antigua and St. Maarten Monday morning, tearing roofs from homes, toppling power poles and knocking out electricity for thousands, reports CBS News correspondent Don Teague.

“Any small shift in the track could dramatically alter whether it makes landfall or whether it remains over the open ocean,” said Wallace Hogsett, a meteorologist at the center. “I can’t urge enough to just stay tuned.”

VIDEO:

In the Caribbean, Earl caused flooding in low-lying areas and damaged homes on islands including Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla and St. Maarten. Several countries and territories reported power outages. Cruise ships were diverted and flights canceled across the region.

The storm’s center passed just north of the British Virgin Islands on Monday afternoon. By nighttime, the hurricane was pulling away from the Caribbean, but heavy downpours still threatened to cause flash floods and mudslides in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands by drenching already saturated ground.

Earl was forecast to approach the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region around Thursday, before curving back out to sea, potentially swiping New England or far-eastern Canada.

Text continues after Pictures of the week gallery…

The Hurricane Center said it was too early to say what effect Earl would have in the U.S., but warned it could at least kick up dangerous rip currents. A surfer died in Florida and a Maryland swimmer had been missing since Saturday in waves spawned by former Hurricane Danielle, which weakened to a tropical storm Monday far out in the north Atlantic.

RELATED:

DC Comics Has New Hurricane Katrina Comic Book

After Hurricane Katrina, Cops Told They Can Shoot Looters

Lessons Of Hurricane Katrina: Transform Our Military From Destroyers To Saviors

SILVER SPRING, Md. – A gunman police shot to death after he took hostages at Discovery Channel’s headquarters said he hated the company’s shows such as “Kate Plus 8″ because they promote population growth and its environmental programming because it did little to save the planet.

Three hostages — two Discovery Communications employees and a security guard — escaped unhurt after the four-hour standoff Wednesday in Silver Spring, just outside the nation’s capital. After several hours negotiating with the gunman, tactical officers moved in when authorities monitoring him on building security cameras saw him pull out a handgun and point it at a hostage, Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said.

Capt. Paul Starks, a county police spokesman, identified James J. Lee on Thursday as the suspect.

Manger said and officer shot and killed Lee after hostages began moving and police heard a “pop” they believed to be either a gunshot or an explosive device detonating.

Lee repeatedly said he was “ready to die,” according to Manger.

It wasn’t the first time Lee, a homeless former Californian, had targeted Discovery’s headquarters. In February 2008, he was charged with disorderly conduct for staging a “Save the Planet Protest.” In court and online, he had demanded an end to Discovery Communications LLC’s shows such as TLC’s “Kate Plus 8″ and “19 Kids and Counting.”

Instead, he said, the network should air “programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility.”

“Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding cultures,” Lee wrote in a bitter manifesto on his website.

Lee, 43, also objected to Discovery’s environmental programming. He wrote in 2008 that a show he called “Planet Green” was “about more PRODUCTS to make MONEY, not actual solutions.”

Police say the gunman burst into the building about 1 p.m. and took hostages in the lobby on the first floor. A gun wasn’t his only weapon, as an explosive device on his body detonated when police shot him, Manger said. Authorities later sent in a robot to disarm a device on the gunman’s body.

Manger told CBS News on Thursday that the hostages were very courageous. He said the gunman “repeatedly said that he was ready to die.” Manger said the hostages “had to be terrified.”

Starks said Thursday that the gunman had four crude explosive devices strapped to him. He described two of them as green propane cylinders with pipes attached that contained shotgun shells. The other two were pipe bombs. He said Lee also had what appeared to be a remote radio frequency or a remote switch with an antenna on it. Starks said that had officers concerned that Lee could use remote control to set off bombs. Police also discovered batteries, two handguns and two ski masks at the scene.

The building was to reopen briefly Thursday for employees to return, although the lobby remained closed as police investigate. Counselors were offering assistance to Discovery Channel employees, said Catherine Frymark a company spokeswoman.

NBC News reported that after its producers called Discovery’s general number, a man identifying himself as Lee got on the phone and said he had a gun and several bombs.

“I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off. I have a device that if I drop it, if I drop it, it will … explode,” the man told NBC.

He said he built the bombs in about three weeks. “I did a lot of research. I had to experiment,” he said.

One hostage, Discovery employee Jim McNulty, posted a message on the company’s website, thanking authorities for “helping to ensure the safety of all my colleagues” and “for helping to get me and my fellow hostages out safely.” He said he wouldn’t talk now about what happened because police were still investigating.

Starks said the suspect had shot a gun at least once and that authorities believe he was acting alone but are investigating all possibilities.

Lee’s mission against the Discovery Channel goes back at least a few years.

In the February 2008 protest in which he was arrested, he threw fistfuls of cash in the air and paid homeless people to carry signs condemning the network. Police found his pockets stuffed with more than $20,000, according to court records.

Lee served two weeks in jail after his arrest during which doctors evaluated his competency to stand trial. County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said Lee was ordered to stay 500 feet away from Discovery headquarters as part of his probation, which ended two weeks ago.

Lee faulted the Discovery Channel for shows as varied as “Future Weapons,” “It Takes a Thief” and “Planet Green.” Instead, he sought programming based on “My Ishmael,” a book by philosopher Daniel Quinn in which a telepathic gorilla instructs a 12-year-old girl on society’s failings. On his MySpace page, Lee said his heroes were Quinn and “Star Trek” commander James T. Kirk.

Quinn said in an interview from his Houston home that Lee misinterpreted his book’s message about the folly of continually increasing food production to meet population demands.

The author said he hadn’t heard of Lee before Wednesday but called his death “pretty horrible.” Had he been able to speak with him, he would have told Lee “he’s giving a bad name to the ideas that he’s trying to espouse.”

Lee in 2008 also held a related contest promising $200,000 worth of Hawaiian real estate for the best essay proposing a save-the-planet TV show. On his MySpace page that has since been taken down, he lists his home as Hawaii.

The Maui News and KHON-TV reported that Lee had lived in the Lahaina area of West Maui. The newspaper reported that he was a 1985 graduate of Lahainaluna High School and his former classmates and principal described him as a normal person who didn’t cause any trouble.

“As far as I’m concerned, he was a good kid,” former Lahainaluna principal Henry Ariyoshi told The Maui News.

None of the 1,900 people who work in the building were hurt, and most made it out before the standoff ended Wednesday.

“We’re relieved that it ended without any harm to our employees,” said David Leavy, Discovery’s executive vice president for corporate affairs.

RELATED STORIES

Hostage Taker Shot, Killed at Discovery Building

UPDATE: Seattle Police Kill Cop-Shooting Suspect

A woman has sued American Airlines, saying she was traumatized when the plane she was on ran off the runway at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, passenger Jewel Thomas said she has suffered severe mental and emotional problems because of the incident on Sept. 22, 2008. American Flight 268, a Boeing 757, was flying nonstop from Seattle to New York when it made an emergency landing at O’Hare, skidding onto the grass next to the runway.

“That day changed my whole life – it changed my whole world,” Thomas said, adding: “This is one problem I can’t solve.”

The woman from Bellevue, Wash., said she is on unpaid disability from her job at Microsoft. Though an experienced world traveler, she said she is no longer able to fly and will sometimes “freak out” when she hears an airplane.

No physical injuries were reported among the 185 passengers or seven crew members, and the aircraft had little damage beyond its landing gear and several blown tires.

Thomas contended in her lawsuit that shortly after takeoff, the flight crew received multiple warnings about problems with the plane’s electrical system. Following a reference handbook, the crew switched the plane’s standby power for some systems to the main battery, although the handbook noted the battery could provide backup power for only 30 minutes.

Thomas’ lawsuit alleges that the flight crew should have diverted sooner to another airport before the battery ran out and key systems were crippled. It accused American Airlines and the plane’s two pilots of negligence and seeks unspecified damages.

Click here to view photos:

Andrea Huguely, a spokeswoman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based airline, said that the company had not seen the complaint and had no comment.

The lawsuit claimed the captain was aware the main battery charger wasn’t functioning and of the battery’s 30-minute reserve, but the crew elected to continue the flight to New York.

RELATED:

JetBlue Flight Attendant Curses Passengers, Jumps From Plane

Why We Support JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater