Free Republic

Squatting cases in LondonÂ’s most affluent neighbourhoods have doubled in a year as the economic crisis has led to an influx of foreigners who struggle to find work or accommodation, figures suggest. Squatters at a house belonging to Saif Gaddafi in London's Hampstead The number of applications for court orders to evict intruders from properties in areas such as Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Notting Hill has risen sharply. While poor European migrants are being blamed for the increase in squatting, property experts say super-rich foreigners are also responsible. A surge in foreign billionaires seeking homes in desirable postcodes has seen numerous...

Even as Sonoma County faces tremendous demand for government-subsidized apartments, affordable housing proponents say the money to pay for new projects is drying up. Housing groups expect to lose $1 billion a year in redevelopment funds as a result of recent cutbacks. Other state and federal funds have been reduced or eliminated. "The funding has just been decimated," said Matt Schwartz, president and CEO of the California Housing Partnership Corporation in San Francisco. Schwartz was in Santa Rosa on Monday to speak to an annual breakfast gathering of the Sonoma County Housing Coalition, a consortium of housing groups and advocates....

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Friday a bill that will dramatically increase fines for people who take part in protests that violate public order rules, just days ahead of the next planned rally against his 12-year rule. Putin told a meeting of top judges in his native St. Petersburg that he decided to sign the bill despite objections from his own human rights adviser, Mikhail Fedotov, who asked the president to veto it. Participants in protests where public order is violated could now face fines of 300,000 roubles ($9,100)—more than the average annual salary and up from...

A six-year-old girl found something that tasted like "fireworks" in her lunch bag. Police say it turns out her sandwich had the drug PCP in it. Police arrested her mother, 34-year-old Toriana Gutierrez, in Del Valle late Friday afternoon. Investigators say her daughter was acting strangely in her first grade classroom last month and was under the influence. She told her teacher she could her “banging in her head” and was talking to people that weren’t there.

An unsolicited memo to State Attorney Angela Corey: You are a public official, and people have the right to express an opinion about how you are doing your job. When those opinions are negative, throwing a hissy fit and making threats do not reflect well. With Corey, there's a pattern of that. Last December when I wrote a column critical of how she handled the Cristian Fernandez case, she fired off a two-page, single-spaced letter on official state attorney letterhead hinting at lawsuits for libel. In the letter, she called me out for my "lack of knowledge and objectivity about...

Zach Hilary, aged two, suffered a heart attack on Jan 26, when his mother, Trudy, found him collapsed on the floor, groaning, at their home. She called 999 and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her son for 10 minutes until the paramedics arrived and took over. The boy received more than half an hour of CPR, including on his transfer to hospital. Mrs Hilary, 40, a paramedic, and her husband Dave, 37, an IT consultant, were told that Zach had swelling on his brain. Doctors warned them to prepare for the worst. The boy was put into a medically induced coma...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends a massive ceremony of a children union at a stadium with some 20,000 children in Pyongyang. Thousands of children arrived in Pyongyang by air, train and bus from across the country for the ceremony, which will run until Friday. The country's state-run television broadcast the pre-taped ceremony on Wednesday to mark the 66th anniversary of the Korean Children's Union (KCU). Emotions appeared high when Kim walked into the stadium as children wearing red scarves wept and covered their faces. "Beloved comrades of Children Union, you are the successors of military-first revolution and protagonists of...

CNN was called the 'Clinton News Network' during the 90s for a reason. After letting Bill Clinton get away with his ridiculous excuse for supporting a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts, Wolf Blitzer kissed up to the former president by fawning over his daughter Chelsea in the Thursday interview. And Blitzer had a sugary introduction ready. "[W]hen we spoke about the President's daughter, Chelsea, his face lit up with pride," Blitzer cooed. Are journalists supposed to sound like next-door neighbors marveling over how the kids on the block are all grown-up? "I have known her since she was...

...June 29, 2012 SNIP Session #1A Mormonism and the MediaSNIP Thomas G. Evans Journal of Religion, Identity and Policy: “Cross-Cultural Case Studies: The ‘Mormon Jesus’ in Mexico and in Cyberspace” SNIP Session #2A Reconsidering Joseph Smith’s Marital PracticesLawrence Foster Georgia Institute of Technology: “Why Polyandry Isn’t the Right Term to Describe Joseph Smith’s Marriages to Women Who Remained Legally Married to Other Men: Reflections on a Difficult and Challenging Issue” Brian C. Hales Layton, Utah: “Joseph Smith’s Sexual Polyandry and the Emperor’s New Clothes: On Closer Inspection, What do We Find?” Commentator: D. Michael Quinn ...June 30... Session #4B Early...

I got this data from the "League of Nations Statistical Yearbook". It is amazing how much petroleum we produced. 60% of the world's output !!!

A new study by 22 biologists and ecologists has found that environmental changes on our planet are reaching a point of no return that leads to mass extinctions and harms human welfare. The situation, said one scientist, “scares the hell out of me.” That would be James H. Brown, one of the authors of alarming paper published by Nature, talking to New York Times Green blogger Justin Gillis. Brown is not one of your everyday cranks predicting raptures and the end of days. He is a macroecologist at the University of New Mexico. And as The Atlantic's James Fallows, who...

GOP Congressional District 9: Quinones gets McCollum endorsement; Melendez gets two nods Uncategorized — posted by scottpowers on June, 7 2012 4:54 PM Former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has endorsed Osceola County Commissioner and former State Rep. John Quinones in the multi-person race for the Republican nomination to run for Congress in the new District 9. Meanwhile, one of Quinones’ opponents, Osceola County School Board Vice Chairman Julius Melendez, announced endorsements from his board’s Chairwoman Barbara Horn and from State Rep. Steve Crisafulli (R-Merritt Island). Former Congressman Alan Grayson is running on the Democratic side. The district takes in...

More than 700 home builders made their way to Capitol Hill this morning to meet with their representatives and senators on several key housing issues, including legislation to help restore the flow of credit for new housing production, GSE reform, and housing tax incentives. "Though we are seeing some hopeful signs of recovery in many markets throughout the nation, our industry still faces stiff headwinds," said NAHB Chairman Barry Rutenberg, a home builder from Gainesville, Fla., in a statement from NAHB. Persistently tight lending standards for home builders and home buyers, uncertainty regarding the future of the housing finance system,...

When President Obama looks back on the past week, perhaps he’ll remember fondly the pies that first lady Michelle Obama purchased for him at a bakery in Virginia – because the rest of his week was a political nightmare. Mr. Obama’s week to forget began with a disappointing report on the economy on Friday, June 1, showing that the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent in May, up from 8.1 percent in April. It was hardly the kind of news to give Mr. Obama momentum heading into the final five months of his reelection campaign, and he seemed subdued as...

Maria Gomez stood with the Class of 2011, waiting to climb the stage. The sun was bright on the UCLA campus, her fellow graduates buoyant. To reach this elite company, she'd worked baby-sitting and housecleaning jobs, scraping up tuition from quarter to quarter. She'd lived on Cup Noodles and granola bars from the food bank when money ran out. She'd spent nights sleeping on the floor of the campus printing room. At 26, she was getting her master's in architecture from one of the nation's top schools. But the triumph felt hollow, her sense of achievement tangled up with bitterness...

Beloved if I was in attendance at the Cyprus Bay High School graduation ceremony I would have thought that Vice President Biden was preaching from Isaiah 11 and on the Kingdom of Heaven! “Imagine the breakthroughs that are on the horizon and just beyond it. Imagine by the time you're in a position to buy your first home, putting a roof of solar shingles that will cost no more than today's ordinary shingles [that] will be able to power your home, heating, cooling, running appliances at a FRACTION of the cost your parents pay today! Imagine a world in which...

TOMBSTONE — The City of Tombstone is embroiled in another dynamic showdown. The “Town too Tough to Die” is now squaring off against the U.S. Forest Service in what could be the fight of its life, a battle over water rights. On Friday and Saturday, a group called the Shovel Brigade will gather in Tombstone and head to the Huachuca Mountains to make repairs to the city’s waterline, which was damaged by mudslides and boulders after last summer’s Monument Fire flooding. While the 26-mile waterline — fed by springs in the Huachuca Mountains — has been Tombstone’s main water source...

Tallahassee - Rumors that former Florida governor Charlie Crist is gay have been around for years, but new allegations have surfaced that he had affairs with two men and paid them to leave the state to avoid embarrassment. The allegations are made in Discovery documents related to Jim Greer's case involving alleged illegal use of Republican Party funds, according to a 10 News WTSP report. Damon Chase, attorney for Greer, who is set to go to trial on July 30 for allegedly paying himself to raise money for the Republican Party of Florida, says Crist is homosexual and once tried...

US President Barack Obama has demanded that European leaders act “right now” as ministers in Brussels deliberate over whether to impose a bail-out on Spanish banks. In Madrid, Berlin and Brussels officials denied that a rescue plan for Spanish banks was ready to launch this weekend, but Mr Obama blew their cover. “The focus must be on strengthening the banks, like we did in 2008,” he said. “EU leaders are in discussions about that and they are going in the right direction.” At the White House Mr Obama said: “The sooner [leaders] act, the more decisive and concrete their action,...

SOUTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO (KTVI)– The Walmart on Telegraph Road at I-255 was evacuated for close to three hours Thursday night after a shoplifter was caught with a portable meth lab that was actually cooking the volatile drug in her purse. Quick thinking cops may have prevented a bad situation from being much worse. Police say it was about 6:30pm when they received the call about the couple shoplifting. Beat cops arrived to make the arrests with little thought of drugs. Police say A 32-year-old woman had stolen a purse and was filling it with cosmetics. But when they...