- What does the always-combustible situation in the Middle
East have to do with France? As anyone who has spent more than a layover at
Charles DeGaulle International Airport knows, France is home to plenty of
Muslims and people who have called the Middle East home in the past, so what
happens in the Gaza Strip does not stay in the Gaza Strip. France
is home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population and largest Jewish
community. With Israelis and Palestinians once again vowing to
obliterate one another with various weaponry, pro-Palestinian Parisians are
eager to make their voices heard. An angry mob of them tried to force their way
into a Paris synagogue with bats and chairs on Sunday, brawling with security
officers who blocked their way, according to police and a witness. A cynic
might note that the unrest was caused by only a few dozen demonstrators, but
those cynics ignore the fact that everything great starts with a few embittered
souls who want to make a point. In this case, the synagogue clash came at the
end of sizable protest in the French capital demanding an end to Israeli
strikes on Gaza and accusing Western leaders of not doing enough to stop them.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls decried unspecified violence that he called
"inadmissible” at two synagogues and issued a statement in which he said,
"France will never tolerate using violent words or acts to import the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict on our soil." The biggest clash came at the
Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue in eastern Paris, where worshippers were blocked
inside while police pushed protesters back. Witnesses told tales of protestors
descending on the building from multiple directions, picking up chairs from
sidewalk cafés and swinging bats at security guards. Ironically, some 150
people were inside for a ceremony honoring three Israeli teens recently killed,
said Le Bail-Kremer, a representative of anti-racism group SOS Racisme. The
protest that spawned the synagogue attacks involved about 10,000 people and was
largely peaceful. Thankfully, a few sadistic maniacs changed that boring
scenario………
- The Apes have won. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” was
promoted to the hilt and those promotional dollars were enough to garner a box
office earnings win in its debut weekend with $73 million. Clearly, a movie
with a $170 million budget needs to earn more than 40 perccent of its cost in
its domestic debut, but a win is still a win. “Transformers: Age of Extinction”
had just such a win last weekend, but its earnings fell off 56 percent this
time and it slipped to second place with a mere $16.5 million. That gives the
Michael Bay blockbuster $209 million in three weeks. Über-low-brow comedy “Tammy”
snagged third place with $12.9 million in its second weekend, boosting the
Melissa McCarthy-led film $57.4 million in its first two weeks. The impressive
run continued for “22 Jump Street,” which slotted fourth in its fifth weekend,
adding $6.7 million to its domestic coffers and bumping its overall American
take to a robust $171.9 million and counting. “How to Train Your Dragon 2”
claimed fifth place with $5.8 million and pushed past the break-even point with
$152 million domestically through five solid weeks in theaters. “Earth to Echo”
continued to succeed on a lesser scale with $5.5 million in its second weekend
for a two-week bank roll of $24.5 million against a meager $13 million budget. “Deliver
Us From Evil” earned a seventh-place result with $4.7 million for the weekend,
giving the demonic flick $25 million in two weeks of work. It was a seventh
straight top-10 performance for “Maleficent,” which banked $4.2 million to make
its cumulative haul a whopping $222 million thus far. “Begin Again” was next on
the list, securing ninth place with a $2.9 million weekend in limited release.
That gives the indie flick $5.2 million after three weeks. “Jersey Boys”
rounded out the top 10 with $2.5 million and inched past the point of
profitability with $41.7 million against a $40 million budget. “Think Like a
Man Too” (No. 11) and “Edge of Tomorrow” (No. 13) both lost their spots in the
top 10 from last weekend………
- Drones are not going away. Thankfully, not all of them
are owned by the U.S. government and not all of them are earmarked for spying
on and/or killing people who are deemed to be terrorists or too closely linked
to terrorists. Some of those drones are in the control of red-blooded Americans
who simply want to chase their own version of the American dream by cashing in
on a burgeoning industry. Philadelphia
resident Raj Singh is one such entrepreneur and he dreams of drones flying up and down the Las Vegas
Strip, mimicking larger manned crafts by flying advertising banners. The
Federal Aviation Administration isn't down with Singh’s vision and is hiding
behind the totally lame rationale that commercially flown unmanned drone
flights are illegal. Singh hatched his plan after seeing a story about Amazon’s
plans to eventually expand its online empire by using drones to deliver orders.
He created his own company, DroneCast, and set about making it a profitable
enterprise. "We have 15 employees and I just hired a president who used to
work at Merrill Lynch, used to be an executive at Merrill Lynch. Now we have
him at DroneCast," Singh said. This young businessman held a demonstration
on the Strip last week, flying in the face of FAA regulations prohibiting
anyone from flying an unmanned craft for commercial purposes. Just don’t tell
Singh that he’s breaking the law because he is having none of it. "We are
not violating any laws. There are policies in place that are not enforceable
because they are not laws," Singh said. "They basically just say fly
under 400 feet, five miles from airports.” As per the FAA Modernization Act of
2012, anyone who wishes to operate unmanned aircraft is subject to FAA
regulation. Time will tell if Singh is right or wrong, but he insisted that if
the FAA bureaucrats crack down, he will back down. "If the FAA comes out
and says you got to do this or this, we'll comply. We want to show everybody
that drones can be used responsibly, and we're going to set that
standard," he said. Until then, DroneCast will keep chugging toward its
projected earnings of $1.5 million this year………
- Get it, Baltimore Ravens. That title of NFL’s most wanted
team is there for the taking and your roster of aspiring felons and straight-up
knuckleheads is doing work this offseason and the rest of the league simply
cannot keep pace. Big ups to Ravens
cornerback Jimmy Smith for joining the growing line of Baltimore players in the
mug shot line with his arrest for misdemeanor disorderly conduct late Saturday
night after an alleged incident at suburban Baltimore bar. Smith, who is
considered one of the top young cornerbacks in the game, racked up his first
arrest as a professional, but did have off-the-field issues at Colorado that
caused him to slide to No. 27 overall in the draft three years ago. He becomes
the fifth Ravens player arrested this offseason and there is nothing
sophisticated or intelligent about his arrest. According to police, Smith was
helping an intoxicated woman in the bathroom of a Towson, Md. bar when she
because nauseated. Up to that point, he had yet to do anything worthy of an
arrest even though he was in a restroom with a person of the opposite sex. The
issue arose when medics arrived and rather than allow them to do their job and
handle the situation, Smith refused multiple orders from officers to step
aside. He informed them that he was helping the woman and didn’t need their
assistance. He bristled when officers asked him to step into the hallway,
according to police. Thankfully, he didn’t exacerbate his problems by fighting
further but was nonetheless detained and issued a citation. This ordinarily
wouldn’t be a major point of concern for the team, but arrests tend to compound
headaches when running back Ray Rice (felony aggravated assault, accepted into
pretrial diversion program), offensive lineman Jah Reid (misdemeanor battery,
accepted into pretrial diversion program), wide receiver Deonte Thompson
(felony possession of marijuana, charges dropped) and rookie running back
Lorenzo Taliaferro (misdemeanor destruction of property, drunk and disorderly)
have already dinged the police blotter in recent months………..
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