All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Cher’s Latest Road Show? The Campaign Trail – The New York Times

If there was ever a presidential election perfect for a Cher moment, this is it. Personality, outrage and a quick-off-the-keyboard insult are the political currency of 2016.She has earned a reputation as one of the more effective and entertaining Trump neutralizers on Twitter, largely because she can go toe-to-toe with him both in the sheer volume of tweets she fires off (19,000 and counting) and in her lacerating, no-filter style. She often won’t refer to Mr. Trump by name, for example, but with the toilet emoji. (And that is one of her few jokes that is printable here.)

Source: Cher’s Latest Road Show? The Campaign Trail – The New York Times

Romeo the miracle dog survives Italy quake – The Local

All hope of finding Romeo alive appeared to have disappeared until Friday evening, when the couple returned to their home in the company of a group of firemen assigned to help them recover key belongings from the rubble.Almost as soon as they came into the tiny medieval village, Romeo heard their voices and began barking.”We immediately began moving masonry from where the barking was coming from and incredibly we got to him and he was in pretty good condition,” one of the firemen told the ANSA news agency.”Luckily some beams had fallen in a way that they were holding up the weight of everything above them leaving Romeo with a little niche that he was able to survive in.”

Source: Romeo the miracle dog survives Italy quake – The Local

Black Americans on ‘what they have to lose’ if Trump becomes president | US news | The Guardian

Lou Gehrig’s disease has robbed Leroy Peete, a 72-year-old Detroit native and Vietnam veteran, of speech. He communicates by moving a pen toward letters printed on a sheet, spelling out words.Asked about Trump’s visit to Detroit, an acquaintance read aloud his response.“Don’t want his ass here.”Asked about Trump’s outreach to African Americans, Peete moved the pen again over the letters.“Bullshit.”

Source: Black Americans on ‘what they have to lose’ if Trump becomes president | US news | The Guardian

The Trolling of Mayanti Langer Shows Us Being a Woman in Sports Journalism Is No Easy Job – The Ladies Finger

In being trolled for her husband’s performance, she is not alone: actor Anushka Sharma was trolled by cricket fans when then-boyfriend Virat Kohli failed to deliver in the 2015 World Cup semi-final against Australia, and in October that year, against South Africa in an ODI in Mumbai.  Freelance writer and social media editor Susie Verrill, girlfriend of British track and field Olympian Greg Rutherford, recently spoke up about the endless, sometimes violent abuse she receives on social media whenever Rutherford is in the news.But the cons of being the spouse of a sportsperson aside, being a woman in sports journalism is a tough game. Mandira Bedi knows this, as one of India’s first female cricket anchors. Her clothes received more attention than her sports commentary did in the early 2000s, and in an interview in 2008, she said that starting out in cricket hadn’t been easy. “People were not used to seeing a woman fielding question on cricket,” she said, and when asked about being “controversy’s favourite child” as an anchor, she said, “It was all the handiwork of people who had difficulty in accepting a woman doing well in a field that was known to be dominated by men.”In the TV game, unfortunately, as former cricket editor for NDTV 24×7 Anjali Doshi pointed out in 2013, women are set up to fail. For the IPL, women with little experience in sports journalism are selected to be presenters based on their looks, and blamed for asking weak questions, while women with experience as sports journalists are sidelined. Doshi quoted Neeraj Vyas, business head at MAX as saying the women anchors change each year because they have to be “younger and fresher”. Senior sports journalist Sharda Ugra in  pointed out in a 2013 piece about sexism in the IPL that Isa Guha, former fast bowler on the England women’s team, was asked by Navjot Sindhu and Sameer Kochchar which IPL player she found hottest and which of them was the best dancer. Vyas also reportedly said, “The focus is on fun and entertainment and not on serious cricket … The girls are not chosen for their knowledge of cricket.”When TV bosses aren’t afraid of airing these views, perhaps its no surprise that cricketers like Chris Gayle think it’s acceptable to openly flirt with a TV journalist and say, “Don’t blush, baby” when she asks him about his game during the Big Bash League. Offscreen, Gayle told journalist Charlotte Edwardes he had a “very, very big bat” while she was interviewing him.In her essay “Inside Sexism” for The Cricket Monthly, Trinidad-based editor of UWI Today Vaneisa Baksh detailed her tussles with the old boys’ club of Caribbean cricket through her career, mentioning how she was deliberately excluded by male journalists and denied membership of Queen’s Park Cricket Club for being a woman. Heartbreakingly, she even included a lewd calypso sung about her, called “I Want to Be a Member”, that ends like this:Also Read:  The Most Important Thing about a Woman is Her Clothes, and Other Rubbish Lessons from SportsNow you heard the storyAbout Vaneisa versus PappyGo and get married quickly and forget about QPCCOr go and join the nunnery and keep your virginityA Parkite means men, you must knowWe don’t want no woman to spoil we show

Source: The Trolling of Mayanti Langer Shows Us Being a Woman in Sports Journalism Is No Easy Job – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Zika Virus | Ministry of Health Singapore

The Ministry of Health (MOH), Singapore has been closely monitoring the Zika virus situation, and will be introducing several measures to enhance the surveillance of the disease and the protection of Singaporeans. We also urge all Singaporeans to take the appropriate precautions to prevent mosquito breeding as vector control is critical in preventing transmission and reducing the risk of the virus from taking root in Singapore.

Source: Zika Virus | Ministry of Health

Lebanese MP Hadi Hobeish Destroys A Forest In Akkar To Build His Villa | A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

The Ministry of Agriculture allowed the MP to cut down: 295 pine trees, 578 Oak trees and 55 Pistacia trees. All of the trees that he was allowed to cut down were thousands of years old. The fact of the matter is, however, that he didn’t only cut down those but he destroyed thousands more in order to build his mansion and make the road as efficient as possible.The end result is a Lebanese MP getting what he wants, destroying an entire forest in doing so, and the Lebanese government not only letting him do that but almost rolling down the red carpet for such an atrocity to take place.Hadi Hobeish pretends to want what’s best for his hometown, which is why he throws around annual summer festivals bringing in Lebanese singers who wouldn’t visit that area otherwise. When the attention cools down, however, he proceeds to do what everyone else does and bend the laws at his will, destroy whatever he can destroy in order for him to have his way.Not only did MP Hobeish destroy the forest, but he did it using governmental money because the decree stipulated that the road needed to be done for “public reasons.”The road only leads to his house.Welcome to the jungle.

Source: Lebanese MP Hadi Hobeish Destroys A Forest In Akkar To Build His Villa | A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Trump launches new personal attacks against ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Mika Brzezinski – The Washington Post

Donald Trump launched a new round of aggressive personal attacks against MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski Friday morning, airing an unsubstantiated claim before his more than 11 million Twitter followers.”Just heard that crazy and very dumb @morningmika had a mental breakdown while talking about me on the low ratings @Morning_Joe. Joe a mess!” Trump tweeted.

Source: Trump launches new personal attacks against ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Mika Brzezinski – The Washington Post

Hermine Makes Landfall, Still Plans To Ruin Labor Day Weekend: Gothamist

By late tomorrow Hermine will have lost its tropical characteristics and become a potent extratropical storm over the western Atlantic. What Hermine will do over the latter half of the weekend is still very uncertain. Forecasters are pretty confident that the storm will get lodged in behind an upper level ridge and stay to the southeast of us well into next week. What they aren’t confident in is knowing exactly where the storm will be as it meanders about during that time (which is why their forecast map is shaped like a lollipop).Sunday looks to be a windy, rainy mess for most of the area. Southern New Jersey will be hardest hit with several inches of rain possible from Saturday night through Monday morning. Rainfall should be less than an inch in the city and across Long Island, but it will still be windy with northeasterly breezes at 25-35 mph. Beyond Sunday the National Weather Service throws up its hands and says “tropical storm conditions possible” for Monday and Tuesday. Not to be outdone in uncertainty, the Weather Channels goes with “watching the tropics.”

Source: Hermine Makes Landfall, Still Plans To Ruin Labor Day Weekend: Gothamist

A Deep, Shady Dive Into Trump’s Alleged Mob Ties: Gothamist

Trump’s connection to Shapiro was scrutinized again in 1984. Shapiro told a grand jury that he funneled thousands of dollars in contributions from Trump to Atlantic City mayor Michael J. Matthews, who Trump was barred from contributing to on his own because of his casino ownership. While Trump denied the charge, telling the Journal “I’m not interested in giving cash, OK?”, Shapiro’s brother Barry said that Trump never reimbursed Kenneth for his illegal contributions on Trump’s behalf. Trump refusing to pay a bill is of course, more believable than Trump not being interested in donating money to politicians.There was also the case of Robert LiButti, a major horse race gambler who talked about John Gotti as his “boss” and was a major gambler at Trump Plaza in the late 80s. Trump denied having anything to do with LiButti in an interview with the paper, but LiButti’s daughter told Yahoo that she rode on Trump’s helicopter and yacht, and that Trump came to her 35th birthday party. “I like Trump, but it pisses me off that he denies knowing my father. That hurts me,” she told the site earlier this year.And while most of Trump’s mob connections happened back in the 1980s, the Journal also brought up the case of Felix Sater, who worked with Bayrock Group, a real estate company that leased space in Trump Tower. Bayrock helped Trump brand his name on properties like the Trump SoHo condos and a Florida hotel, and the Journal reports Sater described himself as the number two person in the company. Sater also had been convicted in 1998 as part of a Mafia-linked boiler room scheme.Added up, it doesn’t suggest that Trump knows where the bodies are buried. On the other hand, for a man who’s been making his case that as a businessman and political neophyte he’ll just hire the right people to help him make decisions, it’s part of a pattern of a startling lack of vetting by the man. But hey, I’m sure that when he needs contractors and cheap labor for his big beautiful wall he’ll do the the most fabulous vetting we’ve ever seen.

Source: A Deep, Shady Dive Into Trump’s Alleged Mob Ties: Gothamist