- If you noticed lights all around your neighborhood or city going off tonight at about 8:30, don’t worry about some sort of bizarre power outage striking your area. That was more than likely just the local incarnation of a worldwide event known as Earth Hour. For the third straight year, lights went off across the world Saturday as millions of homes and businesses went dark for one hour in a symbolic gesture highlighting concerns over climate change. According to event organizers, more than 2,800 cities and towns worldwide dimmed their lights at 8:30 p.m. local time for the third annual Earth Hour -- a day-long energy-saving marathon spanning 83 countries and 24 time zones. This wasn’t just in small towns or suburbs, either;
major cities in the United States, Asia, the Middle East and Europe had already gone dark for the event by Saturday night on the U.S. East Coast. In Washington, the lights of the Capitol dome were shut down and in New York the Empire State Building, Central Park and the George Washington Bridge went dark. Over in Asia, the Philippines carried the banner for the event with more than 650 communities taking part. In England, the light illuminating the face of the landmark Big Ben clock tower was turned off. All of this began in 2007, when Sydney, Australia became the birthplace of the Earth Hour campaign with 2.2 million people turning off their lights. This year, the movement got a nice dose of irony when the Chinese - whose cities comprise three-fourths of the 20 most polluted cities in the world - turned off lights at major buildings including the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube. Thanks for that, China, now we ALL believe that you are truly serious about the envir- cough, hack….cough, cough - the envior- hack, hack, wheeze….never mind. Even with the hypocritical Chinese participation, the World Wildlife Fund did get a solid turnout for this event. When famous landmarks around the world, including the Egyptian pyramids, Vatican, Niagara Falls, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Acropolis in Athens and the Las Vegas casino strip, all take part in an event, that’s a big thing. Not that people turning off their lights means they’re going to make significant changes to their lives and to the way they use energy, but I guess you can’t be too greedy in what you ask for……
- All of those investigative stories on your local news about the dangers of thieves stealing your bags at the airport aren’t just false fear after all. Maybe if people flying through Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport had paid attention to those stories and the warnings that accompany them, Patrick Brown, of Farmers Branch, Tex. would not have been able to steal more than 400 bags from passengers at the airport. According to police, Brown operated right out in the open, taking one bag here and stealing another there, many of them right in front of unsuspecting passengers. “He freely admitted to taking over 400 bags," said Lt. Lonnie Freeman of the airport’s Public Safety department. "This guy accounts for probably more than half of our baggage thefts we've had out here,” said Alan Black, vice president of D/FW Airport Public Safety. “It's a little mini-crime wave that's really come to an end." But Brown was an equal-opportunity thief and he didn’t just touch up careless idiots at D/FW. He also worked the crowd at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport and stole 200 bags there, along with a smaller number of thefts at the airport in Tulsa. On average, police said, he stole three bags a day between July 2008 and January 2009. His style was to wait at the baggage claim carousel, watch for bags s that circled the carousel at least once and grab them. Once he snagged the bags, Brown kept them inside a storage unit in Irving. He sifted through their contents, sold any valuable items at Trader's Village in Grand Prairie and sell the bags separately. His fatal mistake came last December, when he sold a piece of luggage to the store and left a luggage tag inside. The person who bought the bag found the tag, called the Milwaukee man whose name was on it and then tipped off police. Brown’s explanation for the thefts was simple; it was an easy way to make money. Of course, it’s also an easy way to face 20 years in prison, which is what Brown could get if convicted of the third degree felony charge he faces. Bottom line here, as always, pay attention to your bags when traveling and when your flight lands, book it to the baggage carousel at top speed…….
- I’d say I feel bad for the ultimate me-first athlete, Terrell Owens, when he claims that he was "blindsided" by his release from the Dallas Cowboys, but I’d be lying. Owens may have told Rogers Sportsnet, a Canadian television channel, that he never saw the move coming and that may even be true, but how can you feel anything but happy at that revelation? Owens, more than any other athlete of his generation, is all about himself and does things without giving a damn who is affected or how. He opens his mouth and says ignorant, self-aggrandizing and offensive things and doenst give a second thought to who might be blindsided or hurt. So if team owner Jerry Jones told T.O. that he would remain with the Cowboys and then reversed field, so what? "You hear all the speculation, and you talk to the owner of the team, and he reassures you, you're not going anywhere and then, out of left-field & you get blindsided," Owens said. Oh freaking well, T.O. If you couldn’t look at that bloated, ill-advised four-year contract extension you signed with Dallas last summer, factor in your impact as a growing distraction off the field with your declining production on it and realize that you might be released, I don’t know what to tell you. Besides, how bad can anyone feel for you when you signed a one-year, $6.5 million contract with Buffalo? You’re employed, you’re making a boatload of money and I can all but guarantee that you’ll pull your same destructive, me-first act in your new town this season. Nice of you to try and sow seeds of dissent in Big D even after you left, alleging that the decision to release you was not completely made by Jones. “I know whole-heartedly he wanted me there," Owens said. "There were some people I know who got in his ear that pressured him to make that decision. For that, it's sad. You let two or three people conspire to get me out of the situation.” No, it’s not sad T.O. It’s a smart business decision and one that will make the Cowboys a better, more cohesive and less fractious team this season……
- Political censorship is omnipresent in Africa, making filmmaking a near-impossible art form to carry out. But an interesting trend is growing to help aspiring filmmakers find a way around those government bans and red tape. While toting around video cameras might be out of the question, resourceful African filmmakers are using cell phones as an unobtrusive, covert way to get footage without being discovered. At least one great film has already come out of this new tactic: "Voiture en Carton" ("Cardboard Car"), a film by Kiripi Katembo Siku, an art school student from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shot entirely on his cell phone, the movie looks inside street-life in Kinshasa, the country's capital. The video quality may not be stellar, but with omnipresent government censorship restricting the every move of would-be filmmakers, you can't quibble with how good the video is. Rather, admire the ingenious plan Siku devised to make his dream a reality. He attached his cell phone to a toy car, set it to film, and gave it to a young girl to pull behind her on a piece of string as she walked through the streets of Kinshasa. The film is seven minutes long and is a bit uneven at times because the toy car stops, starts and upends a number of times and has to be righted by Siku's young camerawoman. Even so, it gives viewers a frank, gritty look at life in the city and the awful conditions in which many people live. You have to imagine that films like Siku’s don’t sit well with government officials who try to keep the rampant poverty and corruption in their country quiet. To that end, they issue virtually no filming permits and treat anyone trying to film without one harshly. "[They] try and stop stories of corruption from coming out by refusing accreditation to locals from the Ministry of Information. That's the way they weed out people who will be critical to government," says Salim Amin, Chairman of Kenya-based African news organization, Africa 24 Media. Those with the kahones to defy the authorities and shoot without permission usually incur hefty fines, arrest, or worse. Because of those restrictions, people like French filmmaker Marie-Dominique Dhelsing are offering workshops for aspiring filmmakers like Siku to help them understand how to use cell phones as movie-making tools. “After her course here in Kinshasa I fell in love with directing, editing and working in a team," Siku declared. I have an incredible level of respect and admiration for Siki, Dhelsing and anyone like them who so willingly stands up to an oppressive, brutal government to tell the truth on film………
- Never, ever accuse motorists in and around Middleborough, Mass. of being good Samaritans. If they were, dozens of them wouldn’t have sat idly by (or driven by at high speeds) as a woman was viciously attacked in broad daylight Friday afternoon on a heavily traveled road. The woman pulled over to the side of the road on Route 28 in Middleborough after a fender bender when the other driver involved in the accident attacked her and began a brutal assault that lasted for more than 10 minutes. This attack occurred in broad daylight at about 4:30 p.m., but other drivers passed by without stopping. The woman was knocked unconscious, brutalized and sexually assaulted, but not a single soul stopped to help her. “She was definitely violently assaulted,” said Middleborough police Lt. Charles Armanetti. Surveillance video from a nearby gas station confirms that hypothesis, with footage showing the victim driving on Route 28, followed by what police believe to be the attacker's car. Minutes later, the woman's car was bumped from behind and when she pulled over, the man got out of his car and began the attack. “Within that 12-minute time frame, in heavy traffic, this individual got out of his car and attacked the woman,” Armanetti said. “At that point she went unconscious, and that's all she remembers.” By the time police arrived, the man and his car were gone, and the woman was found unconscious. Thankfully she was revived and taken to a hospital, but sadly only one person did a single thing to help and even that came after the fact, as a driver who stopped to help after the man had left called 911. Because of that total lack of concern, care, decency and integrity from those who passed by without stopping, the attacker is still at large. He is described as a white man in a dark, zippered coat driving a dark-colored sedan, but hopefully the police don’t expect any help from the public in tracking him down…..
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