- Well THAT was certainly different. Instead of police in
a nation where individual rights and freedoms are routinely ignored or trampled
underfoot by a repressive regime being the ones to beat down protestors, police
in Yemen flipped the script and became the protestors. A group of policemen loyal
to Yemen's ousted leader Ali Abdullah Saleh stormed the country's Interior
Ministry in Sanaa on Tuesday, sparking clashes that left at least 15 people
killed and 43 wounded, according to the government. The incident underscored the
volatility of the situation in Yemen nearly six months after Saleh stepped down
following a popular uprising and suggests that his supporters are both
plentiful and extremely angry. Many of those supporters still hold key
positions in the government and can definitely cause trouble if they so desire.
According to a security official, the attack followed a demonstration outside
the ministry in the capital a by policemen loyal to the former president. A
large group of pro-Saleh tribesmen later joined the protest as demonstrators accused
the current government of corruption. Whether its word can be believed or not, Yemen's
security operations room said in a report that at least 15 people were killed
in the clashes, according to figures from the police and military hospitals.
Officials accused Saleh's nephew Yahia Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, who commands
the police's Central Security forces, of sending additional policemen to
participate in the demonstration shortly before the ministry was stormed just because
t he ministry is in charge of the police force and its building is located on
the road to the airport. To their credit, the policemen loyal to Saleh remained
in control of the building hours after they stormed it, along with nearby streets.
During their time in control, they also paved the way for the headquarters of
the ministry to be looted and people were seen walking out with computer sets
and furniture with little interference from security in the area…………
- He was ejected from the offensive huddle late in the final
game of the 2011 season as his team was finishing off a three-game collapse to
miss the playoffs and go down in a giant ball of flame. He had been named a
captain for the game, but watched from a solitary spot on the bench as the
final seconds ticked off the clock in a disastrous end to a once-promising
year. However, New York Jets receiver Santonio
Holmes doesn’t believe he deserves the bulk of the blame for his actions,
either in the game or in the final weeks of the season. Holmes is still upset
he got benched in the season finale and claimed Monday he was the
"scapegoat" for the Jets' disappointing season. "It was the end, it was playoffs on
the line, and your best receiver doesn't get but two passes thrown his way in
60 minutes of football," Holmes said. "That's just hard to understand
and to cope with when you want everything just as bad as everybody else does,
and it just doesn't even happen. And nobody has the answers for it, but 'the
scapegoat' is the answer, and that's what happened." In a career filled
with controversy and one in which he once famously told a critical Twitter follower
to commit suicide by drinking something to poison himself, Holmes has brought
much of his trouble on himself. He has already done so this preseason when he questioned
the viability of two-quarterback systems -- the Jets plan to use two
quarterbacks -- prompting a mild rebuke from Jets coach Rex Ryan. He followed
that up by cracking the media for not being positive enough and took only
partial responsibility for last season's turmoil, saying he needs to do a
better job of measuring his words with the media. He probably means not
publicly cracking quarterback Mark Sanchez and the offensive line, which are
always wise options for a receiver. For an underperforming receiver making $9
million a season, shutting his yapper and actually living up to his hype are
also wise options………
- Prepare to be stunned, world. Snoop Dogg is abandoning
hip-hop for the one musical genre that has more pot being smoked than the rap
game. The D-O-double-G says he's tired of hip-hop, is Bob Marley reincarnated and is embracing
reggae instead of the hip-hop world he has long been at the forefront of. Snoop
announced at a news conference Monday in New York that he was "born again"
during a visit to Jamaica in February and is ready to make music that his
"kids and grandparents can listen to." Why they can’t listen to songs
about guns, chron and bitches remains unclear, but as he moves to a new genre,
Snoop is taking on a new stage name: Snoop Lion. He is releasing a reggae album
called "Reincarnated" in the fall and attributes his renaissance to a
trip to Jamaica where he connected with Bob Marley's spirit and is now
"Bob Marley reincarnated." To lend credence to his claim, Bob
Marley's son Rohan attended the conference and gave Snoop his blessing. "I
feel like I've always been Rastafarian," Snoop said. That could be because
he has smoked more ganja than just about any Rastafarian, so that part of the
lifestyle will feel like home. Along with his Snoop Lion moniker, he was also
given the Ethiopian name Berhane, meaning "light of the world." He
did not explain the switch from "Dogg" to "Lion," but it's
likely a reference to the Lion of Judah, a religious symbol popular in Rastafarian
and Ethiopian culture. To cap the event, he played five songs for a small
crowd, including one called "No Guns Allowed." The sight of the man best
known for hits like "Gin and Juice" and "Drop It Like It's Hot”
going all mellow and Rastafarian is jarring, but Snoop made it clear he isn't completely
retiring from hip-hop but is "tired" of the genre because it is no
longer challenging. "Reggae was calling ... it's a breath of fresh
air," he said. "Rap isn't challenging; it's not appealing." He
will promote his new album with a documentary of the same name that will debut
at the Toronto International Film Festival in September……….
- When did modern society form? According to a group of
researchers led by South African archaeologist Lucinda Backwell, poisoned-tipped arrows
and jewelry made of ostrich egg beads found in South Africa show modern culture
may have emerged about 30,000 years earlier in the area than previously thought.
This international team claims to have discovered the
earliest unambiguous evidence for modern human behavior and suggested in their
report that the 44,000-year-old artifacts are characteristic of the San
hunter-gatherers. Descendants of the San people live today in southern Africa,
so the items can clearly be traced forward to modern culture, unlike other
archaeological finds. Backwell said the findings are the earliest known
instances of "modern behavior as we know it” and pointed to the artifacts
as proof for the theory that modern man came from southern Africa. Using carbon
dating, researchers learned that traces of the San culture may have existed
earlier than the previous estimate of somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years
ago. The items were discovered at Border Cave close to South Africa's
northeastern border with Swaziland and contain a diverse collection of hunting
kits and jewelry made of ostrich egg and marine shell beads. "They all
have a specific reason we understand, that's why we can name them,"
Backwell said. With poisoned arrows to hunt and put spiral engraving on arrowheads
to indicate ownership, the artifacts
are fairly advanced, whenever they were actually made. Professor
Francesco d'Errico of the French National Research Centre, who led the research
team, was fired up about the find. "They were fully modern genetically and
cognitively," d'Errico said. Critics pointed out that there is no way to
link these tools to all modern culture, but read the team’s report in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to form a firsthand
opinion………
- Flash mobs have jumped the shark, right? Could someone
not have alerted Joey Lanianese of Sewickley, Pa. to that fact? Maybe if someone had
tipped Lanianese off to the fact that a) grown men should not be rocking the
name Joey and b) that proposing to the love of your life with a bunch of ass
hats in matching outifts staging a choreographed dance-and-song routine in a
public place, he would not have embarrassed himself with one of the most
asinine proposals in the history of such declarations of love. Lanianese’s lady
friend, Alex DeLoia, thought she was going out for a dinner date with friends. “And
we met them there and then they started a flash mob,” she said. “I didn’t have
dinner that night.” Little did she know when she and Lanianese met six years
ago as freshmen at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, that Lanianese would
some day propose marriage in one of the most moronic fashions possible. Hiding
the ring at the bottom of a glass of champagne thinks flash mob proposals are
lame. To set up his stunt proposal, Lanianese spent two months lying to his
would-be wife about where he was going when he was really headed to rehearse
with his fellow flash-mobbers. “The go-to excuse was, ‘I’m going to a softball
game’ so she bought it for a couple of months anyway,” he said. To pull off the
flash mob, he had to shut down a portion of Sewickley’s main thoroughfare for
37 minutes, but the effort sadly had borough manager Kevin Flannery’s blessing.
“They probably had about 150 to 175 people participating in this flash mob,” he
said. “By the time it got started, there was a good 200-300 people here.” This
debacle took place at 7:15 p.m. Saturday at the corner of Beaver and Broad and
the ass-hattedness was topped off when the dance was performed to he beat of
Bruno Mars’ song “Marry You.” Lanianese earned some points by designing the
diamond and rose gold engagement ring himself, but the flash mob should earn
him mockery for years to come………..
