On a September morning, just before dawn, ICE came knocking on Fredd Reyes’ door. It was 5 am and Fredd was asleep after a long night of studying for his exam at Guilford Technical Community College that very same day. Instead of taking his exam, Fredd was rudely awakened from his sleep, handcuffed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and taken from his North Carolina home to North Georgia Detention Center. He was then transferred to the Stewart Detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which is quite infamous for corrupt and inhumane immigrant detention practices.
Twenty-two years ago, Fredd’s family fled their native Guatemala in the face of death threats and persecution. Needless to say, they haven’t been back since. Despite the clear danger they faced back in Guatemala, an immigration judge denied their bid for asylum in 2000.
Fredd worked hard and earned his Associates Degree from Davidson County Community College and transferred to Guilford Tech to continue his education. As a result, he is eligible for the federal DREAM Act, which would give undocumented youth like him a pathway to citizenship, expected to come up for a vote in the House and Senate before the end of this year. Fredd aspires to utilize his acting and singing skills to become a professional actor and renowned singer, and he’s quite good (see video below). He is neither a criminal nor a threat to this country, and completely undeserving of detention, let alone deportation from the only country he calls his home.
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Kochhar LexServe?(“KLexServe”)?is the legal process outsourcing entity of the Kochhar Group, a leading and pre-eminent Indian group specialised in providing diversified services of global and international standards to multinational corporations and their Indian subsidiaries including several Fortune 500 companies based out of North America, Europe, Canada and Japan.
Kochhar LexServe
They don’t beg for pity. At home they’re boss. They wield a hammer by day and at night cradle their children. These are the women of northern Sri Lanka. Some 15 months after the conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan authorities stopped, these women have become sort of superheroes. With their husbands lost in the fighting, war widows are taking charge of their families and their neighborhoods, too.
The idea of a female-headed household is hardly implausible. In many South American countries women have organized to gain independence in their male-dominated clans. In Sri Lanka, what’s impressive is the speed with which these households grow (some 40,000 in the north, according to the Center for Women and Development).
What forced these women to fend for their families is necessity. A fierce civil war that began in the 1970s claimed the lives of thousands of citizens. Many males died, disappeared or are still in the custody of authorities. What might have been an effective strategy to dismantle the opposition has left homes without their traditional breadwinners.
Enter war widows. They tend to their homes, feed the children and work in hard labor jobs by day. The numbers are increasing: 89,000 of them in the east and north according to official figures.
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Yee-haw! Today marks the start of the one of North America’s oldest and largest celebrations of smacking animals around: the Calgary Stampede.
This event, which takes place in Alberta, is expected to draw over one million visitors, including Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. What are these people flocking to watch? According to Calvary Stampede spokesperson Doug Fraser, 25,000 come to specifically watch calf roping. Calf roping is accurately described by SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) as “the most cowardly rodeo event.” This faux sport consists of macho cowboys roping baby cows that are usually about three or four months old. As the folks at SHARK explain, “the calf is roped so violently she becomes airborne before slamming into the ground. This process can break the calf’s neck, back or legs.”
Other intellectually stimulating highlights include steer wrestling and bronc riding. No word as to whether or not electric prods will be used for the latter event. There’s also chuckwagon racing, which has the dubious honor of being the Stampede’s deadliest event. According to the Vancouver Humane Society, nearly 50 chuckwagon horses have been killed at the Calgary Stampede since 1986, mainly due to crashes and the stress of the 10 day extravaganza.
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This week, Spirit’s online promotion displayed bikini clad ladies saturated in tanning oil. But those are not the only attractions for eager vacationers; just yesterday, an Arkansas family got to watch an oil-covered dolphin struggle for breath after it stranded on a North Florida beach. They tried to revive it, but the dolphin died en route to a rehabilitation organization in Panama City. There’s even video.
Oh, wait. I’m sorry, was that not funny? Maybe because Spirit Airlines’ promotion wasn’t funny either. Of course, that didn’t stop them.
Spirit emailed this ad to its subscribers on Tuesday at 1:21 p.m. I know this because I was one such subscriber. It’s no coincidence that the bottles of tanning oil just happen to be green and yellow; BPs colors. As you can see, the bottles are labeled “Best Protection,” with the “B” and the “P” highlighted in bold. In addition to the subject line of the email, the first sentence of the ad asked subscribers to “Check out the oil on our beaches. You won’t be disappointed.”
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