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Riverside, Calif. (AP) -- Citing rampant health and safety violations, a federal judge on Monday appointed two special masters and a temporary receiver to help manage a Coachella Valley trailer park on Indian land that is home to up to 6,000 migrant workers. U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson appointed as special masters Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former U.S. ambassador in the Clinton administration and an expert on war crimes, and Jack Shine, president and chief executive of First Financial Group. Attorney Mark S. Adams was named temporary receiver, with the power to order emergency repairs at the park and control...

WEIRD BUT TRUE By LUKAS I. ALPERT, Wire Services May 23, 2007 -- Some people sleep like the dead, but one West Virginia man took it to a new extreme. Michael Lusher somehow managed to sleep through being shot in the head, not realizing he had been struck until he woke up four hours later and noticed he was bleeding. The shot was one of five that an unknown gunman sprayed through Lusher's mobile home as he slept.

FEMA abruptly closed down a site housing Hurricane Katrina victims Sunday because of health and safety concerns, and its weary residents said they were being left in the lurch once again since losing everything in the storm. A 48-hour deadline to leave fell on Sunday night, and FEMA scrambled to find new places for the 58 households. Although many residents said they would have been happy to keep on living there, the Federal Emergency Management Agency determined it was too risky because of ongoing problems with raw sewage and periodic power outages. "They know how to put me out, but...

Police tonight arrested two young women, a bank teller, and a fourth accomplice in connection with Tuesday's robbery of a Bank of America branch in Acworth, Georgia. The inside job was allegedly pulled off by Ashley Nicole Miller and Heather Lyn Johnston who are pictured in the below mug shots (Miller is at left). The women, both 19, were aided by Michael Chastang, 27, and Benny Herman Allen, a 22-year old bank employee. The men are pictured in these booking photos.

NOW WITH ACTIVE LINKS!   (just when you thought the clintons couldn't get any more shameless... or tacky....)SELF-AGGRANDIZING CHACHKAS FOR SALE AT CLINTON "MUSEUM" STORE by Mia T, 5.02.06 thanx to RichInOC for the scoop   READ MORE

Cessation of meal services, propane delivery spurs charges: The NAACP collected affidavits Friday from residents at the FEMA Renaisssance Village in Baker that contain complaints alleging lack of services, harassment and intimidation. Kwame Asanté, director of the Louisiana chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said NAACP representatives have been going to the village council meetings. “There are a lot of people who feel that their rights have been violated,” Asanté said Friday afternoon. About 1,650 hurricane evacuees have been living at the 572-unit trailer park on Groom Road since it opened in October. Most residents...

Two Central Valley levees broke Tuesday, flooding a trailer park in Merced and inundating farmland in Sacramento County as heavy rain continued to fall across Northern California, the State Department of Water Resources said. A breach on Black Rascal Creek at the confluence of Bear Creek was threatening about 50 nearby homes in Merced, said Michael Miller, a department spokesman. A couple hours later, a private levee built by a farmer east of Highway 99 at the crossing of the Consumnes River south of Sacramento swamped fields but posed no threat to homes, the highway or railroad tracks. The same...

FEMA's Baker trailer park is a mysterious sanctuary, as 225 found out when we asked freelance writer Chuck Hustmyre to write about life in B.R.'s instant subdivision. The quest to simply enter the park became a story in itself as FEMA has surrounded the place in a baffling veil of secrecy and red tape. But once inside, Hustmyre met frustrated, angry people eager to tell the world about their troubled daily lives. Do you know what life is like at the FEMA trailer park in Baker? No? Don't feel badly. Hardly anyone does. Much within Renaissance Village--the grandiosely named smudge...

Mukshifa, Iraq -- Three armored humvees rolled into the backyard of the al-Tair family compound and out poured heavily armed American soldiers. They handcuffed three al-Tair brothers and ordered the young men to kneel in the dust facing the wall of their rundown mud-brick house.

Love it or hate it, you have to admit: A mullet hairstyle is distinctive There are two kinds of people in this country, and forget that blue-state, red-state thing. You're either for a mullet or against a mullet. What's a mullet? Do not mock us. Yes, a mullet is a spiny-finned, feeble-toothed fish, but we all know it's so much more. A mullet is a hairstyle characterized by the hair cut short in front and on the sides but kept long down the back. It's not a cutting-edge style. But recently, the mullet has re-emerged as a pop culture object...

The man being credited with stopping the accused kidnapper is no stranger to danger. He moved to Bowie after retiring from the New York City Fire Department where he was one of the first people into the World Trade Center after terrorists first attempted to topple the towers in 1993. He says, "I just drew and fired." His one shot went thru 24-year-old Johnny Williams's shoulder and through the cinder block of the building. Ritchie doesn't want his last name known. He says the suspect walked into the Mountain View RV Park in Bowie at 5:45 a.m. and told him this...

When it opened two months ago, Bill Clinton's presidential library was supposed to draw so many visitors that the city of Little Rock would become a tourist mecca. However early reports claiming that over 100,000 had visited in just the first six weeks have turned out to be bogus. The National Archives and Records Administration, which operates the facility, tells U.S. News & World Report that only 42,054 paid to enter. The rest were guests of the former president and freebies to VIPs. Despite wall-to-wall television coverage of its opening, and a deluge of favorable press, attendance figures for the...

Former President William Jefferson Clinton formerly opens his Presidential Center, which will hold the papers from his two term presidency.Attending the ceremony will be President George W. Bush, former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, along with First Lady Laura Bush ,Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosalyn Carter and Barbara Bush.

A 2-foot-long sword was used to kill a 42-year-old man and injure an elderly woman during a fight in north Harris County early Thursday, the sheriff's department said. Jose Alberto Martinez, 18, was charged with murder and aggravated assault, said Sgt. James Parker, a sheriff's homicide investigator. Martinez was drinking beer with his neighbor Gabriel Flores at a trailer park in the 1700 block of Greens when a fight broke out between them about 1 a.m. Parker alleged that Martinez, who had taken the sword from his residence earlier in the evening to show his neighbor, stabbed Flores with it...

Trailer park resident kills neighbor with sword By S.K. BARDWELL Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle A 42-year-old man was killed and a woman injured when a sword was brought to a fight at a trailer park in north Harris County overnight. Harris County Sheriff's Department deputies said two neighbors drinking outside their trailers in the 1700 block of Greens road got into a fight about 3:30 a.m., and one went to retrieve his sword. The 18-year-old suspect killed the victim, then went to the victim's trailer and attacked the victim's relatives. One woman was taken to a nearby hospital with non-life...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The autobiography of "Star Trek" actor George Takei will be among the books on display starting this month in a preview exhibit for the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. "To the Stars," written by Takei in 1994, details the actor's life from his childhood days in Japanese-American internment camps in Arkansas and California during World War II to his rise to stardom portraying Hikaru Sulu in the original "Star Trek" TV series and in six "Star Trek" movies. Takei, who spent a year at an internment camp in Rohwer, sent a copy of his book to Clinton...

WASHINGTON — On the road to change, the quarters are halfway there. The U.S. Mint's 50-state quarter program, which began with Delaware and will end with Hawaii, reached the halfway mark last week with the debut of the Arkansas 25-cent piece. Quarters are produced in the order that the states ratified the U.S. Constitution and joined the Union. The states come up with the design, which features images or themes honoring the state.An employee of the U.S. Mint inPhiladelphia loads a cart with freshly minted Arkansasquarters, Monday, Nov. 3, 2003. On the road to change,the quarters are halfway there. The...

The story is this: My mom and I were visiting this Mexican friend of hers (legal resident, if you ask) who is pregnant, and this lady lives in a trailer park strategically located in Chesterfield, an upscale suburb of St. Louis. The leftists always rant and rave about how the "poor" are oppressed here in the "evil American empire", but the reality is very different: -Half of the trailers sported a satellite dish, the other half have digital cable with HBO and Cinemax. -None, and I say none, of the cars at the park, looked like it was more than...

It has taken two weeks, 402 fine-tip markers and a college student with a bad case of writer's cramp to sign the names of more than 5,000 donors onto the white beam. Armed with a new Sharpie and surrounded by workers building the multimillion-dollar presidential library that the beam is a part of, Bill Clinton made the marker count 403. More than 3,000 people cheered Friday as the former president signed his name to the beam that completes the skeleton of his presidential library in Little Rock. The Starship rock song "We Built This City" played from a speaker...

Speaking at U of Arkansas

MADONNA poses for the most amazing photograph of her career — with her leg bent behind her head. Yoga-mad Madge, 44, was snapped in the position during a stunning photoshoot after calling normal poses “boring”. She said: “I’m not interested in just going for a fashion shoot. If I don’t feel like I’m creating something that means something, I don’t want to do it.” Madonna — whose hit films included the documentary In Bed With Madonna — also talked about her marriage to Lock, Stock director Guy Ritchie in the interview with US magazine W. And she admitted once “just...

Excerpt - Life has been tough for Roger Clinton since his big brother left the White House. Bill Clinton's 45-year-old half brother, who last year pleaded guilty to reckless driving after being charged with drunken driving and disturbing the peace, and was investigated by Congress for collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars to procure presidential pardons and other favors, is now facing foreclosure on his house in Torrance, Calif. [snip]

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) --  A little-known trailer park that dates to the 1920s may be enshrined as an important piece of the city's history.</p> <p>The City Council is considering naming the Monterey Trailer Park to the list of historic and cultural monuments, joining 715 other sites that range from an avocado grove to the Hollywood sign.</p>

(Columbia S.C.) May 31, 2002 - The stereotypical view of mobile homes is not very positive. People told WIS News 10 the homes are more associated with overgrown lawns and an unkept appearance. Other stereotypes suggest the homes are "not very strong as far as the weather. But, manufactured housing is a booming business in South Carolina. Charleston Highway is dotted with retailers; more than 400 are licensed around the state. Burch Antley of the Manufactured Housing Institute of South Carolina explains part of the appeal, "We have a lot of rural land, a lot of less expensive land that...