MANCHESTER, ENGLAND — For seven-year-old Javaid Iqbal, the holiday to Florida was a dream trip to reward him for doing well at school. But he was left in tears after he was stopped repeatedly at airports on suspicion of being a terrorist. The security alerts were triggered because Javaid shares his name with a Pakistani man deported from the US, prompting staff at three airports to question his family about his identity.The family even missed their flight home from the U.S. after officials cancelled their tickets in the confusion. The ordeal began in Manchester when Naushaba Nadeem, a doctor, and […]
SPORTO: Baseball Kills Birds
TUCSON, Ariz. — Randy Johnson does have a killer fastball. During the seventh inning of the Diamondbacks’ split-squad 10-6 victory against the Giants on Saturday [March 24, 2001], the NL Cy Young winner hit and killed a dove flying in front of home plate. Johnson’s pitch to the Giants’ Calvin Murray was about three-fourths of the way to home plate when it struck the bird. The bird flew over catcher Rod Barajas’ head and landed a few feet from the plate amid a sea of feathers. “I’m sitting there waiting for it, and I’m expecting to catch the thing, and […]
Hillary Repeats GOP’s Pro-Surge Meme — ‘It’s Working’
“We’ve begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it’s working.” –Hillary Clinton’s Remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri RELATED: The humanitarian disaster in Iraq is being compounded by a mass exodus of their medical staff fleeing chronic violence and lawlessness. A report by Oxfam International shows the lack of doctors and nurses is fracturing a health system on the brink of collapse. The research revealed that many hospitals, and medical teaching facilities in Baghdad have lost up to 80 per cent of their teaching staff. The lack […]
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: Peace Bone
From the new Strawberry Jam, due September 10th. Standby for Phawker Foreign Correspondent SIMONE SECCI’s interview with Panda Bear. Dateline: Rome.
FBI Reverses Policy, Allows Dopers To Become G-Men
The FBI recently announced it is changing its policy of not hiring people with a history of marijuana or other illegal drug use because the policy disqualifies so many people the agency cannot fill needed positions. Asking job applicants about past drug use during polygraph tests was “tripping people up” said Mark S. Zaid, a defense lawyer who works on FBI employment disputes. According to Zaid, in an interview in the August 7, Washington Post, the FBI realized that their drug policy was causing them to “lose too many good people.” Despite 30 years of “Just Say No” rhetoric and […]
A WHISTLEBLOWER IN IRAQ: The Deadest Man Alive
FORBES: For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods. There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut. He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers – all […]
MILESTONE: The Young Ones At 25
BY CITIZEN MOM It took a good five years after its debut on BBC2 for “The Young Ones” to make it all the way across the pond, to where a kid in Philly could finally watch. And even then, it was work — these were the days before the city had cable, necessitating a VCR deal with the kid who sat next to me in homeroom and got MTV at his house in Lafayette Hill. But dammit, I’d been reading about the British comedy series for years in the import Smash Hits magazines I bought on South Street, and it […]
WORTH REPEATING: Tarring The Baby
BY ALFRED LUBRANO INQUIRER COLUMNIST When you’re a white person in America saying, “The black guy did it,” you are screaming “Fire!” in the cineplex. You are conjuring night fears of the Other, and stoking cell-level hatred that metastasizes. And if you’re a silly little twit like Lindsay Lohan, you’re lamely trying to deflect culpability for your own dangerously bizarre behavior. Last month in California, the troubled 21-year-old actress commandeered a car with three passengers inside and chased after her assistant, who had moments earlier quit working for Lohan. When the cops tried to sort it out, Lohan was sputtering […]
YEAR OF THE DAWG: Sheriff Seizes 12 Pit Bulls From DMX’s House, Find The Remains Of 3 Buried In Back
PHOENIX Sheriff’s deputies raided the home of rapper DMX on Friday, seizing several pit bulls and finding the remains of three other dogs but making no arrests. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office received a tip more than a week ago about dogs being kept in inhumane conditions at the Phoenix-area home, said Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Detectives visited the home and then called one of the rapper’s lawyers and told him that the conditions for the animals at the property needed to be improved or deputies would take action, Arpaio said. The dogs were not being fed or given water. Authorities […]
TRIED TO MAKE ME GO TO REHAB: I Said ‘No, No, No’
THE DAILY MAIL: The fight in the early hours of yesterday left 23-year-old Miss Winehouse with blood staining her pink ballet shoes and the knees of her jeans. Purple bruises could be seen on the side of her neck and her knuckles were swollen. But her 24-year-old husband appeared to have come off a lot worse – with cuts and scratches on both cheeks and around his neck. Before the big fight, the singer had made a solo trip out of the hotel at 11pm, walking a few yards down the road to meet and hug a girl in her […]
ADVERTISING: Fucking Hilarious
Bud Light still sucks, tho.
NJ Teen ‘Unlocks’ Apple’s iPhone, AT&T Totally Fucked
“The iPhone is getting used and abused today with a second software-only unlocking solution making itself known. Uniquephones has now surprised with word that it will be offering a downloadable software unlock service between 12 and 2 PM EST tomorrow at iphoneunlocking.com. Pricing will be somewhere between $25 and $50 with a 25 to 50 percent discount for people who have already signed up for the service — apparently as many as 450,000 already have.” [via ENDGADGET] FOX NEWS: Best documented was a hack by George Hotz, 17, of Glen Rock, N.J. With a little soldering, a lot of command-line […]