Study: Caffeine may boost miscarriage risk - CNN.com

Study: Caffeine may boost miscarriage risk - CNN.com

FOXNews.com - Marriage Annulled After Separated Twins Marry - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

No Stinkin' Way!!!!! This is soooo way out there. Brings a pretty good case for always telling your kids they're adopted and maybe at least having the adoption open enough that you know there are siblings!!!! Holy Mackerel!!

I'm having a really hard time thinking this is true, it is such an "old" story that this could happen. I guess it did!



FOXNews.com - Marriage Annulled After Separated Twins Marry - International News News of the World Middle East News Europe News

Russians rescued after missing for 3 months - Yahoo! News

Russians rescued after missing for 3 months - Yahoo! News

The Associated Press: Spears Taken in Ambulance After Standoff

The Associated Press: Spears Taken in Ambulance After Standoff


This poor, poor, poor girl. I'm sure it is in vain, but I keep hoping she gets the help she so desperately needs. Maybe a year in a sanatorium can help her. Her life is just crumbling before our eyes. I feel guilty when links to her story come up on my computer as I certainly don't want to feed off her misery like the paparazzi. I want to send her as much love and peace as I can, not concentrate on her downfall. I hope her mother is horrified and guilt ridden. I know this can't possible be ALL her fault but.... for G*d's sake, do something for her now as you didn't in her childhood and obviously in her sisters. Get your head out of your ass lady!

Innocence on SALE,Poor Indian children are being freely traded across the globe. A merciless adoption mafia's overdrive leaves authorities back home clueless even as Dutch Parliament initiates probe after a child from Tamil Nadu reaches Holland.

Innocence on SALE-Poor Indian children are being freely traded across the globe.
A merciless adoption mafia's overdrive leaves authorities back home clueless even as Dutch Parliament initiates probe after a child from Tamil Nadu reaches Holland.

Geetha Devarajan


The recent judgment of the Madras High Court directing the CBI to investigate into the kidnapping of three children for inter- country adoptions (ICA) once again brings to light the breakdown of legal mechanism. This coupled with virtually no supervision of ICA by the government and its agencies leading to trafficking of children in the name of ICA.In May 2005, the Tamil Nadu police discovered a trafficking racket involving individuals and agencies at various levels. These traffickers target street children, or kids from poor families and those in maternity wards of government hospitals, kidnap them and sell them to so-called adoption agencies for amount ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 25,000 per child. According to the newspaper reports, these trafficking mafia have allegedly sold 350 children to the Malaysian Social Service Society, an agency involved in adoption, for over seven years.Salya lost his four-year-old daughter — kidnapped by a gang that came by autorickshaw — while she was playing on the street. Kathirvelu lost his one-year-old son, who was kidnapped while they were sleeping on the pavement. Both the families registered complaints with the local police. An FIR........





Innocence on SALE,Poor Indian children are being freely traded across the globe. A merciless adoption mafia's overdrive leaves authorities back home clueless even as Dutch Parliament initiates probe after a child from Tamil Nadu reaches Holland.

After Space Junk Goes Up, It Must Come Down, Alaska Science Forum

After Space Junk Goes Up, It Must Come Down, Alaska Science Forum


Was it space junk that made all that racket?

Is mystery object space junk? - Newstalk ZB

Oregon Star Party 1999: Space Debris Falls Near OSP, article by ...

Space Junk? - Backgrounders - Reference - Christchurch City Libraries

Space debris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NASA's nagging fear: Space junk floridatoday.com Serving ...

Visiting Her Birth Father in Iran

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/07/16/nosplit/ftiran116.xml

A voyage to find my father in Iran

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/07/2007

Given up for adoption at birth, Katharine Rayner spent two decades tracing her Persian roots before travelling to Teheran on an emotional journey

I was born in Leeds and grew up in rural Norfolk but have spent almost half my life searching for my Persian father.

Last year, I found him. Amir Parsei, a 22-year-old student in Portsmouth, had held me just once before he reluctantly signed my adoption documents and relinquished his right to be my parent.

Katharine Rayner spent two decades searching for her Persian father
My birth mother, who was just 19, did not want to keep me but nor did she want to marry him or let him take me back to Iran as he had offered. My father returned home convinced that he would never see me again.
That was nearly 40 years ago.

I was adopted into a loving family with three boisterous older brothers. My dad has Yorkshire farming roots, my mum is of Yugoslav, English and Spanish origins.

I grew up with no knowledge of Iranian culture, aware only that sometimes I felt adrift from my family and peers.

After I graduated, I started a tentative search for Amir, but it wasn't easy. My social worker deemed it "impossible" to track him down, as did the British institution to which he had been seconded for a year.

But an Iranian television director heard of my search and got in touch. With the help of his contacts, we tracked Amir down last March. When he emailed me, my yelp of delight sent my husband and children pelting up the stairs.

We arranged for him to come to London in the autumn and I met him at St Pancras station. The long search was over. Finally, we could get to know each other. That evening, my family and my mum had dinner with him. It was a wonderful but emotionally draining day.

For me, the next step was to visit my father in the country that could have been my homeland. Four months ago, just days before the detention by the Revolutionary Guard of 15 British military personnel, I flew to Iran. It was not an easy journey to make and I was scared as I boarded the plane.

My destination was a city at the heart of the "axis of evil", but my fears were more personal than that.

Following the 1979 revolution my father, like many other Western-leaning Iranians, had been sentenced to death. He served four years in the "Hotel Evin", a notorious Teheran prison.
His younger brother was tortured before being executed. I was an illegitimate child and it was vital that my link with Amir be kept from the authorities. Even now, revealing such family ties could have resulted in another prison term for him.

So I travelled to Iran on a £110 tourist visa and as long as I stipulated the purpose of my journey was to sightsee and visit "friends", I would be safe.

As the plane began its descent into Teheran, the glamorous women around me, clad in tight T-shirts and jeans, began to shroud themselves in black mantoux (obligatory knee-length coats) and headscarves.

But, perhaps in an act of defiance, they also touched up their lipstick and donned designer shades. Nervously, I joined the line for foreigners at passport control and, within minutes, had been pulled aside and taken to a darkened office.

Two officials scrutinised my visa. Looking me up and down, one said: "Tourist, yes?" I nodded. He stamped my visa and let me through. I was free to go, a stranger in my own land.

During the years I had searched for Amir, I had mourned the loss of an idealised Persian childhood - the sight of the mountains that ringed Teheran, the sound of Persian poetry, the taste of apricots on a child's tongue.

But my first impressions were far less romantic. I gaped at the empty vastness of the Ayatollah Khomeini's mosque as my taxi sped past and at the fluttering banners proclaiming the glories of the Islamic revolution.

I listened to a language I could not understand - shamefully, the only phrase of Farsi I managed on that first day was: "Shoma ingilisi baladin?" (Do you speak English?)

Later, I met Amir at my hotel. It was only our second meeting and we were both still too shy to embrace. Besides, kissing or hugging someone of the opposite sex who is not a relative is haram (forbidden) in Iran, so we shook hands instead. My father had instructed me to explain to hotel staff that he was the father of a friend.

We ordered hot chocolate and settled down to talk. Before long, Amir had launched into an attack on Islamic mores.

He railed against girls being married off before puberty and told me how he hated the hypocrisy of middle-class life in Iran, whereby children whose parents openly drink or play cards at home have to pretend that their parents are good Muslims when they go to school.

And when I asked him about the mourning flags that were draped everywhere, he exploded: "We love the dead more than we love the living. We are never out of mourning for some imam or other."

He made me nervous, but it became clear that such feeling against the Islamic state was not unusual.

The next day I met a television director, Arash Minovi, and quizzed him about the kind of life I might have lived as a middle-class woman in Iran.

We ate lunch at a traditional chelo kababi (a kebab house): tender lamb flavoured with saffron and served with buttered rice. We were unmarried and therefore should not have been there unchaperoned, but no one seemed to care.

The ladies who lunched alongside us in their Chanel headscarves were immaculately made up, their peeping hairlines hinting at glossy highlights, their coats - which, by law, should have been loose-fitting and worn to the knee - were sharply tailored, some barely grazing the thigh.
When I expressed my surprise at the relaxed scene, Minovi replied: "We are not all one-eyed women and sweaty men here, you know."

This, he reminded me, was uptown north Teheran, where the parties are legendary and frequent, the black market in alcohol and opium is booming, and where couples can live together if their landlord will turn a blind eye.

The coffee shops are full of handsome young men in leather jackets and jeans, flirting with beautiful women. The malls sell silk lingerie and strapless dresses.

The young, Minovi told me, have their own ways of overcoming restrictions on their freedom, sculpting their hair into artful quiffs in the usual teenage quest for individuality and arranging amorous liaisons on buzzing internet chat rooms.

But this world is in stark contrast to the other Iran - the Iran of bellicose Islamists who deny the Holocaust and defy Western imperialism. This image has more truth in southern, downtown Teheran, where government stooges gather for demonstrations lauding their hardline president.
Women struggle home with the shopping from the bazaar, shrouded in their chadors, which they have to clutch to their faces, leaving just one eye open to the outside world.

The two worlds are often bizarrely juxtaposed. A billboard confiding (in English) that "I am closer to Allah than his jugular vein" sits close to a Benetton concession.

An advertisement exhorting faithful parents to send their children to a madrassa (religious school) is just 50 yards from a full-length poster of David Beckham in a sports shop.

I was keen to explore outside the capital and, later that week, caught the midnight train south to Esfahan, a cornerstone of the ancient Persian empire and one of Iran's largest cities.
I had booked a sleeper compartment to be shared with five other "sisters".

One, a beetle-browed youngster, frowned furiously at me when she discovered I was English. A theology student with impeccable language skills (in her spare time she liked to translate the Koran into Farsi), I think she suspected me of being a spy.

The others were far friendlier. Sahar, a student of English literature, was a Jane Austen enthusiast.

"The relationship between men and women here in Iran now is very similar to Jane Austen's time," she told me. I was intrigued.

"So do you live in modern times?" I asked her. She looked flustered, wary of the others listening in, and suggested we meet up the next day.

I woke in Esfahan, breakfasted on eggs, and refused the offer of a smoke on a qalyan (a hookah pipe) with my glass of tea. I had arranged to meet Sahar and her brother, Karim, who sells air-conditioning. We strolled over Bozormeghr Bridge and I asked her again about Jane Austen.
"Sometimes we live in modern times, but religion divides us," she told me.

"You cannot discuss so many things with the religious."

Her brother, spying a mullah ahead, spoke with a sudden passion.

"She is right. Those people use religion like a needle. And they stab us in the eye with it."
Later we visited the Imam mosque, one of the most beautiful in the Islamic world. Karim told me that once worshippers were so plentiful that they would spill out into the vast square outside.

"Now nobody comes - except the tourists."

I heard this many times; how the intellectuals have turned their back on Islam as a once-proud and ancient Persian culture has become tarnished by Islamic extremism, and by the aggression of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a landslide victory two years ago.

The violent demonstration outside the British Embassy during the hostage crisis, when students from the University of Teheran threw petrol bombs, were symbolic of a very different Iran from that which I saw during my visit.

Back in Teheran, Amir showed me Evin Prison, where he spent most of his stay blindfolded and where he was beaten regularly while the guards played Koranic recitations to "re-educate" him.
It is a forbidding, sprawling complex, surrounded by barbed wire and we dared not stop or take photos. Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian Canadian journalist who did so in 2003, was arrested and beaten to death.

On my last day, we ate at Amir's favourite Armenian restaurant. "The next time you come," he said, "you will stay with me. You won't need a hotel."

I was so touched by his words. I do want to return - and not as a tourist. Physically, I fit in. I lost count of the times that I was asked for directions in the street. But, on occasion, I also felt like Mr Bean on holiday, forever fiddling with my coat and headscarf, feeling that, at any moment, I would commit some horrendous gaffe.

All my life I have wondered whether I was lucky or unlucky to have been given away as I was. I will never know. I know I am lucky now, though, to be loved by all my parents, and forced by none to choose between them. England is my home but Iran pulls me to her as well.

The fates of both countries matter to me - those I love live in both, and part of me is always where I am not.

But, most of all, I grieve that the warmth, the kindness and the intelligence of so many of the Iranian people is unknown to most in the West - and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.

Names have been changed and faces disguised to safeguard identities. Katharine Rayner is writing a book about her experience of being adopted from a Middle Eastern background

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/06/08/003.html

Friday, June 8, 2007.

Thousands of Babies Left in Hospital Limbo

By Svetlana Osadchuk Staff Writer

photoOne of the rejected babies looking out the window at the Pskov hospital.

Seven hours after Kristina Smirnova, 17, gave birth to her son, the doctor came into her room and said she should hand the baby over to the state. "The baby is ill. He will not live more than a week. I think signing rejection papers is the only wise thing for a girl like you to do," the doctor said, Smirnova recalled.

Smirnova had the baby at the Motorshchiki maternity ward in the east Siberian city of Barnaul on the morning of Oct. 31, 2005. She had no identification papers, no relatives, no place to live and no money. She had spent the last year living with her boyfriend, the baby's father, but he broke up with her when he learned that his son was ill.But Smirnova refused to sign the rejection papers, sparking a 2 1/2-month struggle to prevent the boy from joining thousands of babies caught in a hospital limbo.

The babies, usually referred to as otkazniki, live in almost every children's hospital in the country. No accurate figures are kept because the babies themselves do not officially exist. The babies are only counted once they are moved to orphanages -- a process that by law should take no more than four months but in practice can take several years. While they wait, they are often neglected and sometimes abused. Hospital staff commonly advise mothers who are single, very young or struggling financially to give up their babies, even those who are healthy

photoSmirnova holding her son, Vladimir, whom doctors advised her to give up.

"If Beethoven's mother had been in one of our hospitals, they would have told her to give him up because she was from a poor family and ill with tuberculosis," said Igor Beloborodov, head of Maternity and Childhood Protection, a nongovernmental organization.

Mothers of sickly babies often heed the hospital staff's advice, including about 85 percent of those whose children are diagnosed with Down Syndrome, said Sergei Koloskov, head of the Down Syndrome Association. His wife was told to leave their daughter, Vera, at the hospital when she was diagnosed with the genetic disorder. She refused.

Ten years ago, Moscow health officials advised city maternity wards not to discourage new mothers by telling them that they would be unable to care for their babies. But that has not changed what people say privately.Smirnova was released from the Barnaul hospital after a week, but the baby was kept in intensive care. Each time she returned to check up on him, she was urged to sign the rejection papers."Doctors, nurses and even cleaning ladies told me that I was stupid to ask for my baby back," Smirnova said during a recent visit to Moscow to get medical treatment for her 19-month-old son.

Even though she had never seen the baby, she gave him a name -- Vladimir. The boy was the only relative she had in the world, she said. Her mother and grandmother died in her home village of Gordeyevo when she was 14. She tried for a few months to live with her father, who had divorced her mother and lived in another town with a new wife and their children. "I was a burden for them. I came back to my village and stayed with friends," she said. She met Vladimir's father in the neighboring village of Belmesevo, and they fell in love. Smirnova said she thought he was a reward from heaven for the loneliness she had felt after her mother's death. Many young women who give up their babies share similar stories, Beloborodov said. They are from poor families and are in relationships where they sought a substitute for parental love. They often live with landlords who would evict them if they had a baby. In Moscow, many babies are given up by mothers who came to the city from the regions seeking a better life, Beloborodov said.

The procedure to give up a baby is simple, said a spokeswoman for the family, maternity and childhood department of the Health and Social Development Ministry. A married or single mother just needs to write a statement on a blank sheet of paper that she wants to put her child up for adoption for financial reasons or "difficult family circumstances," the spokeswoman said. After the statement is signed, the child usually is placed in the nearest children's hospital until all bureaucratic procedures are completed.

About 460 rejected babies live in hospitals in the Moscow region and 250 live in hospitals in the Sverdlovsk region, according to a presidential administration report on child welfare issues. The internal report dated April 2007, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, gave no figures for other regions."The development of orphanages is neglected in many regions, so rejected babies are kept in hospitals too long," the report said. "As a result, they are deprived of walks outside and lie in bed for months. They are delayed in their mental and physical growth."In Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Sverdlovsk region, only about 20 of the 90 children living in hospitals are sick, said the city's health department.

Two cases of abuse have made national headlines this year. Yekaterinburg prosecutors opened a criminal investigation in January into a nurse suspected of taping babies' mouths shut to stop them for crying at the city's Infectious Diseases Hospital No. 15. In March, prosecutors in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, a town 85 kilometers east of Moscow, began investigating a hospital where children were tied to their beds with sheets. In both cases, hospital patients photographed the abuse with their cell phones and the pictures were shown on state television.The rejected babies are a burden to the children's hospitals, said Boris Altshuler, who advises ombudsmen Vladimir Lukin on the problem. Most hospitals do not allocate money to feed them or hire nurses to care for them. That means nurses typically visit their rooms three times a day -- to feed them and change their diapers. Some hospitals don't even have diapers, so the babies lie in wet sheets for hours, Altshuler said. Feeding is also a problem. Nurses rarely have time to hold a bottle of milk for each baby, so they put bottles into the babies' mouths and leave them; if a bottle falls out, the baby goes hungry. When mothers visiting their own children in the hospitals try to pick up the babies, they are often told, "Don't touch them. They will then get used to being touched and will cry after you leave," Altshuler said.Since hospitals are closed institutions in Russia, volunteers are not welcome as they are in the West, said Nadezhda Davydova, who volunteers at several Moscow hospitals under a special agreement with administrators. "The administration has no right to let in sympathetic people," she said. Davydova said she, other volunteers and children's rights activists were lobbying the government to place the babies in foster families and get them adopted.

"It is naive to think that the problem is bad nurses all around the country," Davydova said. In a rare exception, a Christian charity is paying for a new hospital ward for 40 rejected babies in the city of Pskov, about 20 kilometers east of the Estonian border. Initiative Pskov, a Protestant-sponsored group, is also covering the salaries of a team of specialists to care for the babies and help place them in families.By law, the babies can be adopted while still in the hospital. But information about them is entered into a national adoption database very slowly and is often incomplete.

Two years ago, prosecutors in the Altai republic fined a social services official for failing file information about a baby who had lived at a hospital for 18 months. Some children never recover from their months in the hospital without someone to walk them, talk with them and hug them, Altshuler said."When the time comes to decide whether to place them in a regular orphanage or one for the mentally disabled, they are at risk of being placed in the second. This means they will never go to a regular school," Altshuler said. Smirnova only got her son, Vladimir, out of the hospital when a friend helped her obtain a passport and rent an apartment. She receives 3,000 rubles per month from the state to care for the boy, who has neurological and heart problems. Doctors still advise her to give him up.Smirnova recently invited another young woman, Nastya, to move into the rented apartment with her. Nastya's sad story mirrors her own. She is expecting her child in August.

Hope Fades for Reuniting Siblings

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

Time has run out for a family who sought special permission to adopt the older sister of their Russian son.

"Everything was denied," says Joan Knipe, the Scottsdale, Ariz., mother who asked the Department of Homeland Security for what is called "humanitarian parole" so Olga, the sister, could enter the USA.

The government grants that special kind of visa in rare cases for what it calls a "very compelling emergency."
Olga needed to be in the country by Friday, her 22nd birthday, to be eligible for adoption in Arizona.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Hope Department of Homeland Security Joan Knipe Olga

"It's over. She's completely aged out," says Knipe, whose adoptive son Ruslan, 13, yearns for his big sister. "It's tough for the family."

In a story last month, USA TODAY reported the efforts of Knipe and other parents to reunite biological siblings torn apart by international adoption.

Dozens of families have joined a non-profit group, Save Orphaned Siblings, to press for a change in immigration law, such as a visitor program, that would allow brothers and sisters to see each other for a few months each year.

"There may be a pathway in the immigration bill" now pending in the Senate, says Maureen Flatley, a Boston-based adoption policy consultant who is advising the families. She plans to discuss such a program, aimed at children under 18, with members of Congress.

"The kids are in limbo," Flatley says. She says U.S. adoption agencies have not done enough to keep siblings together, and now families are facing more obstacles in trying to adopt the siblings.
Russia is putting a hold on most adoptions by not renewing the licenses of American adoption agencies since issuing new, more demanding rules last year. China tightened eligibility, beginning this month, of Americans who can adopt. Guatemala received a U.S. government warning in March for suspected fraud and child smuggling. Those countries account for 70% of orphans who have come to the USA for adoption in the past five years.

Knipe and her husband, Steve Pettyjohn, say they would have adopted Olga Lukinova at the same time they adopted Ruslan four years ago, but they didn't know about her until too late in the process. They have since tried but failed to get tourist or student visas for her.
Olga looked after her brother for years in the orphanage after their birth mother died. To give him a better life, she signed off on his adoption.

Knipe says Olga is sickly and lives in a rural village in a condemned building without running water. She says she hasn't been able to reach Olga yet to tell her the final application was denied because phone lines are often faulty in the area.

Knipe says she will try to call again Friday, Olga's birthday.

Just In

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

Foreign Adoptions in U.S. Drop in 2006 - AP News Story - David Crary

NEW YORK -- After tripling over the past 15 years, the number of foreign children adopted by Americans dropped sharply in 2006, the result of multiple factors which have jolted adoption advocates and prompted many would-be adoptive parents to reconsider their options.
The consequences could be profound for the ever-growing numbers of Americans interested in adopting abroad. Already, some have had their hopes quashed by tightened eligibility rules in China; adoptions from Africa, where millions of children have been orphaned by AIDS and wars, could increase if those from China and Eastern Europe continue to decrease.

Click on link for more....

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Parents worry about 'nature-deficit disorder' in kids

By LISA STIFFLER

P-I REPORTER
After squishing through mud, crawling under tree boughs and skirting a glassy pond, the small troop of kids and teachers stopped at a clearing in the woods.
Squatting in the wet leaves, instructor Sol Doran placed a sprig of fir on the ground in front of her and another a foot away.

Click on link for more...........

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Cookie's roundup of the best DVDs and TV shows for kids

This list includes Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

My little brother's absolute favorite book and record (ahem, yes we're old) .

"Big trucks and construction rigs are almost always a hit with young children. Here, along with Virginia Lee Burton's classic 1939 title story, kids also get animated renditions of three others centering around loud engines and oversize tires. The touching underdog tale of Mike Mulligan and his outdated rig, Mary Anne, is done justice here."

******************************

Cookie Magazine is a new magazine for Moms and kids.

It is billed as Mom Style, Kid Culture

Remembering a Foster Mother of 59 Babies

The Denver Post published a very special story about Lenore Schlenz, who was a foster mother for 59 babies during her time here. After answering an ad in a church bulletin asking for foster assistance Schlenz never stopped accepting newborns into her home for care. Many were there briefly as their adoption paperwork was completed, but a few little ones had a longer stay. Leaving notes with each child she cared for Schlenz was said to have a special bond with each little one she brought into her care. There is no doubt in mind that she will be remembered with great love by her daughters, sons, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

I'm in a Time-Out

I'm leavin' Cali for Texas. Goin' to see Grandma.

While I'm gone chew on this stuff. Yep Steph- I'm the Link Queen!

Happy Festive Occasion to ya'll!

A Cool Place to Shop for your Youngin' = Nova Natural Toys & Crafts

Thank You for the Phallic Toy Alert My Pre-Midlife Crisis

All I have to say is "Yeesh Almighty"

November News from Love Without Boundaries

The Dave Thomas Foundation

A New Face and Profile Emerge on Adoption

thank you
The Philadelphia Enquirer

Good Bye Mr. Altman

I Love NPR

Grandma's Veggies May Have Been More Nutritious

Popular Belgian Party Rejects Multicultural Society

Americans and African Adoptions
& Adopting a Baby from Africa, Famous or Not

Did you know that there has never been an International Symbol for Breastfeeding until now?

In Search of an Icon: Breastfeeding Symbol Contest

And last but certainly not least: The Turkeys are Fighting Back!!

When Turkeys Attack: Bostonians Battle Wild Birds

Did You Vote?

Things I Care About Today:

1. California Gov. Race
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Phil Angelides OR Arnold Schwarzenegger
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

2. I haven't even made it to Review Yet! CCAA probably has my file stuffed some dusty old cavern somewhere reminicent of Gringott's Bank.

3. I'm with her ----->

4. An Open Letter From An American Mother of Russian Children

5. Boys For Sale- Russia's Forgotten Children

Demonstrations In Moscow

Moscow Police Detain Ultranationalists Saturday, November 04, 2006 - 03:13 PM

MARIA DANILOVA Associated Press Writer MOSCOW

Police arrested hundreds of ultranationalist demonstrators who took to Moscow´s streets on Saturday, forcefully putting an end to the banned protest amid an increase in hate crimes in Russia, organizers said.

In Russia´s second largest city, St. Petersburg, police broke up a scuffle between far-right activists and antifascists. They detained dozens of ultranationalists for participating in a banned rally there, as well as a number of their leftist opponents, the Interfax news agency reported.
The decision by authorities in the Russian capital and other cities to prevent the far-right supporters from marching, and the subsequent police response, appeared to mark an effort to dispel accusations that the government is doing little to combat rising xenophobia in Russia.
Russia has seen an increase in hate crimes against dark-skinned foreigners, Jews and immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. This year, 39 people have been killed in apparent hate crimes and a further 308 attacked, according to the Sova rights center, which monitors xenophobia.

A year after security forces failed to intervene as marchers celebrating a national holiday gave the Nazi salute and cried "Heil Hitler," Moscow police enforced a ban on marches, carting away demonstrators. Rights activists say authorities have done too little to halt anti-foreigner acts.
Police in one Moscow street encircled groups of young men and hauled them off into buses, said Lidia Mikhailova, a spokeswoman for Dmitry Rogozin, a nationalist politician who had been involved in organizing the event.

Mikhailova told The Associated Press that she had seen dozens detained in this way and, citing other witnesses, estimated that several hundred people were taken into police custody.
Interfax news agency quoted a law enforcement source as saying that police detained more than 200 activists. A police desk officer in Moscow, who did not give his name, denied there were arrests.

Several hundred police, some wearing black helmets and carrying truncheons, surrounded a central square where up to 1,000 people rallied near a Russian Orthodox convent. Demonstrators waved flags from radical parties while some held religious icons.
Triumphant music played over loudspeakers. At one point, many in the crowd stretched out their hands in a Nazi-type salute.

Demonstrators complained of the presence in Russia of dark-skinned migrants from other former Soviet republics, whom they derisively refer to as "blacks."
"I came here to remember that I am also a Russian man. I live well, I earn well, I have a family, but the blacks, they spoil my life," said a 32-year-old man who identified himself only as Pavel.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov forbade Saturday´s procession, saying that ultranationalists had used the Nov. 4 Day of People´s Unity last year to express extremist views.
"Don´t confuse German fascists with Russian patriots," said a banner held up by a young man with close-cropped hair.

Similar marches were also expected in several other Russian provinces.
Meanwhile, liberal politicians and rights group held an authorized counter-rally in Moscow to protest the rise of xenophobia and to promote tolerance. About 500 people gathered holding flags with the words "Russian Anti-Fascist Front" and banners that read: "I am Russian and therefore not a fascist."

The political and economic turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union generated hostility toward foreigners, especially millions of migrant workers. The trend has worsened in recent years despite a rise in incomes and political stability as authorities failed to crack down on extremist groups and hate crimes.

See also: Russia Blog/Crime

Senior Muslim cleric triggers outrage in Australia by blaming women for rape

"The uncovered meat is the problem," he was quoted as saying. "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred," he said, referring to the head covering worn by some Muslim women.
"Young Muslim men who now rape women can cite this in court, can quote this man ... their leader,"- Goward

Prime Minister John Howard also condemned the comments as unacceptable.
"They are appalling and reprehensible comments," Howard told reporters. "The idea that women are to blame for rapes is preposterous."

****click on the title for entire Associated Press article in the International Herald Tribune****

Ummmm...... Meat? I am so angry I could vomit!

LendingTree Sued For False Advertising and Unfair Business Practices

Do your homework on your lender before you sign people!

Good Lord I want out of this business. I am ashamed of these people! Look below the article for related links.

Sheridan Shuns Dog Food, Gilbert Is Game

Ok- So I know California is legendary for well, weirdness according to my mother's family from Wisconsin but this is just ridiculous. Our governor......

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nebraska and West Virginia proclaimed Oct. 21 as "Dine With Your Dog Day." But the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza decided to un-leash the party two days early.
Acid-tongued fashion critic Mr. Blackwell was on hand to applaud the best-dressed bowsers and a pet psychic read paws.
Former "Eight is Enough" TV patriarch Dick Van Patten, whose Natural Balance dog food company was behind the event, said he wanted to show dog lovers how delicious pet chow can be. It celebrates the bond between man and dog by encouraging pet owners to share a meal with their dog, Van Patten said.

Ummm......... I love my dog but there is no way in hell I'm gonna eat his food. Nicollette Sheridan agrees w/ me- Melissa Gilbert does not.

dine w/ dog in CA

Soft U.S. Real Estate Market and Weak Dollar Means Great Potential for Foreign Investors

“These international buyers know it’s a buyer’s market in the U.S. right now—there are a lot of properties available and fewer U.S. buyers”

****So why don't I have the balls to buy more property? Maybe its 'cause I'm a REALTOR and I don't have any international buyers- the prices are just too d#$% high here****

This is the "investment" home I can afford here.

How a slum child from India changed my life

I'll bet this adoptive mom was PISSED when this article came out. Can you believe the frickin' title? Bastards!

If she wasn't pissed- I agree w/ "Katy in London" in the comments.

Dead Bachelors in Remote China Still Find Wives

NY Times article.

Interesting headline no?

Click on the Title for the article.

CA Is Now Exporting Prisoners

5,000 California Inmates To Pack Their BagsFriday, October 06, 2006 - 12:00 PM
Bill Johnson
MML News Director
Sacramento, CA -- According to the Governor Schwarzenegger's office, Indiana will start housing 1,200 California inmates starting in November.
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels says his state will provide housing in unused portions of the New Castle Correctional Facility. New Castle is a medium-security prison 40 miles east of Indianapolis. The facility has a capacity for 2,416 inmates but currently it only houses 1,063.
Earlier this week Schwarzenegger issued an emergency order for the state corrections department to immediately make arrangements to transfer as many as 5,000 California inmates to out of state facilities because of overcrowded conditions. California prisons now house 170,000 inmates.