Over the past year, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has made a substantial shift in its communications strategy. For years, the group communicated through a methodical process that involved official statements issued through official websites, along with videos released by its media arm, al Malahem Media.
A federal judge ruled Friday that Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
The judge, U.S. District Judge Callie V.S. Granade, ruled that Alabama’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, known as the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, violates the 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses.
“If anything, Alabama’s prohibition of same-sex marriage detracts from its goal of promoting optimal environments for children,” Granade writes. “Those children currently being raised by same-sex parents in Alabama are just as worthy of protection and recognition by the State as are the children being raised by opposite-sex parents. Yet Alabama’s Sanctity laws harms the children of same-sex couples for the same reasons that the Supreme Court found that the Defense of Marriage Act harmed the children of same-sex couples.”
The suit was brought against the state by two women, Cari Searcy and Kimberly McKeand, who traveled out of state to get married in order to become the legal parents of their son.
“I am a parent in every way to our son, but legally I am still considered a stranger,” Searcy told the Associated Press in May. “We just want our son to have the same protections and securities as other Alabama families.”
“There has been no evidence presented that these marriage laws have any effect on the choices of couples to have or raise children, whether they are same-sex couples or opposite-sex couples,” Granade wrote in Friday’s ruling. “In sum, the laws in question are an irrational way of promoting biological relationships in Alabama.”
Read the full ruling below:
This is a developing story and has been updated.
Katniss and Legolas, step aside: This real-life archer will put you to shame.
Danish archery maestro Lars Andersen shows off his staggering quickness, agility and accuracy with a bow and arrow — all the while debunking what he refers to as the “myths” about archery that have been promulgated by Hollywood movies.
In the clip, watch as Andersen shoots three arrows in a blink of an eye:
Shoots one with his foot:
And — get this — splits a moving arrow with another one, mid-flight:
Andersen says he honed his astounding archery skills after carefully studying historical texts to learn the ways and methods of our bow and arrow-wielding ancestors.
(Watch Andersen’s next-level archery skills in the video above.)
H/T Reddit
A British woman who took a bite out of a Chicken McNugget nearly lost her lunch after seeing what looked like a worm in the middle of the McNugget.
Nikki Sanders made the stomach-turning discovery after purchasing a Happy Meal for her 4-year-old daughter at a McDonald’s in Tamworth, England on Sunday.
Her daughter, Emily, wasn’t hungry so Sanders decided to eat the breaded chicken pieces herself.
“I just took a bite from a chicken nugget and it tasted odd,” she told the Tamworth Herald. “I suddenly saw a pink stringy thing hanging down and spat the rest of the nugget out into the bag. I couldn’t believe it, I just felt sick.”
“I’m very fussy about what I eat and when I saw what was in the McNugget I went white,” Sanders said, according to the Mirror. “I’m just thankful Emily decided she didn’t want her Happy Meal. One good thing has come out of this, though. It’s turned me off processed meat. I’m eating a lot healthier now.”
Sanders’ husband, Neil, was in the restaurant when the nauseating nugget was discovered.
“It looks like a worm, but I can’t swear it’s one until tests have been carried out,” he told the Birmingham Mail. “Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be in there.”
An employee offered the Sanders family free food for their trouble.
A McDonald’s spokesman said the company is sorry about their dining experience and that food safety “is our highest priority.”
The spokesman told the Birmingham Mail that an investigation has been launched and the suspect nugget will be sent to a specialist for identification.
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In 1960 Ruby Bridges was one of six kids to integrate a public school in New Orleans. Norman Rockwell commemorated the civil rights moment with a painting that graced the cover of Look Magazine in 1964.
On January 24th there is a fundraiser at a school named after Bridges to send 5th graders to a science camp and Bridges, now Bridges Hall is the keynote speaker.
Here are 10 things I learned about Ruby Bridges:
1. She is 60 years old and celebrated the 50th year reunion of her integrating the school in 2010.
2. The Norman Rockwell painting was entitled: “The Problem we all Live With”.
3. Bridges thought the people were shouting for Marti Gras, not in protest of her integrating the school.
4. All the white kids were pulled out of her class and for one year she was the sole student in the class.
5. She only ate food brought from home because of the threats to poison her food.
6. She met weekly with a psychiatrist who later wrote a children’s book “The Story of Ruby Bridges”.
7. She still lives in New Orleans and is chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation.
8. Bridges was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton in 2001.
9. Her home was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
10. There is a sculpture of her in the “Remember Them” monument in Oakland, California and a statute of her in front of the school she integrated.
Peace, love, compassion, and blessings.
When the Son of Man comes in his glory…all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” –Matthew 25:31-36
“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. Not too many years ago, Dr. Kirtley Mather, a Harvard geologist, wrote a book entitled Enough and to Spare. He set forth the basic theme that famine is wholly unnecessary in the modern world. Today, therefore, the question on the agenda must read: Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life?”
In January 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took a very rare “sabbatical” at an isolated house in Jamaica far away from telephones and the constant pressures of his life as a very public civil rights leader to write what would become his last book: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The excerpt above could have been written yesterday. Professor Mather’s book arguing that mankind had achieved the ability to move beyond famine was published in 1944, yet in 2015, despite seventy more years of unparalleled advances in scientific and technological capability and global resources and wealth, hunger and want are still rampant – most shamefully in the United States with the world’s largest economy. Hear again Dr. King: “There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will . . . The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’”
When Dr. King died in 1968 calling for a Poor People’s Campaign, there were 25.4 million poor Americans, including 11 million poor children. Today there are more than 45.3 million poor Americans, including 14.7 million poor children, living in our boastfully rich nation. The question is why we allow poverty still to exist, especially among our children who are the poorest age group of Americans, and the answer remains the same: the deficit in human will and genuine commitment to a fair playing field for all by a critical mass of leaders and citizens in our morally anemic nation. How can it be that the top one percent of Americans enjoy more of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined and that millions of children are hungry and homeless and poorly educated? If the qualification for individual and national greatness is genuine concern for the ‘least of these’ as those of us who are Christians say we believe, and if nations and our concurrent role as members of nations and not just as individuals are accountable, then too many of our political, corporate, and faith leaders and citizens – all of us who live in America – are failing.
The national holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday is over, but I hope we will heed and act on his 1967 declaration —“the time has come for an all-out world war against poverty”—and work to win the first victory right here at home in the biggest economy on earth and end the shame of 14.7 million children being the poorest Americans by ending child poverty now.
Dr. King’s voice guides us if we are willing to hear and act on it and use it as a road map for action no matter the political weather. Reflecting on the direction the struggle for civil rights and social justice should take in Where Do We Go from Here?, he shared a story about the need to commit to difficult struggles for the long haul and described a nine and a half hour flight he had taken from New York to London in an older propeller airplane. On the way home, the crew announced the return flight from London to New York would take twelve and a half hours. When the pilot came out into the cabin, Dr. King asked him why. “‘You must understand about the winds,’ he said. ‘When we leave New York, a strong tail wind is in our favor, but when we return, a strong head wind is against us.’ But he added, ‘Don’t worry. These four engines are capable of battling the winds.’”
Dr. King concluded: “In any social revolution there are times when the tail winds of triumph and fulfillment favor us, and other times when strong head winds of disappointment and setbacks beat against us relentlessly. We must not permit adverse winds to overwhelm us as we journey across life’s mighty Atlantic; we must be sustained by our engines of courage in spite of the winds. This refusal to be stopped, this ‘courage to be,’ this determination to go on ‘in spite of’ is the hallmark of any great movement.”
As I ponder the miraculous progress sparked by ordinary citizens and people of grace and courage who risked limb and life to crumble the seemingly impenetrable fortresses of Jim Crow and unjust racial segregation in our land during the Civil Rights Movement, portrayed movingly in the film Selma which I hope every American, especially young people, will see, let it inspire us to put on new shoes of courage and will now to ensure that never again will our children and grandchildren have to fight those same battles as the forces of regression seek to turn our nation’s racial and social progress backwards. African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American youths need to be taught our history and remember that they can never take anything for granted in America – especially now as racial profiling, intolerance, and poverty resurge over our land. Some are as blatant as the disproportionate killing of Black males at the hands of law enforcement personnel entrusted to protect life, huge racial disparities in school discipline policies against Black males and children with special needs, unequal educational offerings for poor children of color, and a mass incarceration system fueled by a Cradle to Prison Pipeline™ which feeds 1 in 3 Black and 1 in 6 Latino boys born in 2001 into prison. Incarceration has become the new American apartheid. Other forms of racism are more subtle, technical, and very polite. Although they may be wrapped up in new euphemisms and better etiquette, as Frederick Douglass warned, it’s still the same old snake. So, inspired by the movie Selma’s timely jogging of our collective memory about where we have come from against all odds, I hope a critical mass of citizens will rev up our engines of courage and will today and persistently and strategically combat the fierce head winds of poverty, racism, and education and economic inequality and greed that threaten to undo the progress of the last fifty years. Let’s stay true to the course Dr. King set for us and take up his last campaign to end poverty in America, beginning with our children, especially those of color, whose minds, bodies and spirits are being formed today. They cannot wait. Sign up to receive CDF’s groundbreaking new report on January 28th, Ending Child Poverty Now, and learn about the concrete actions all of us urgently need to take.
Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law, more than 15 million Americans have received some type of health coverage. This open enrollment period alone has seen almost 7 million new sign-ups. Still, there are many more to reach, especially in the Latino community, where one in four remains uninsured.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Latino population is a community that is especially vulnerable to disparities. They often require special health care needs, and in some instances the ACA now provides important protections and benefits to ensure LGBT people can access that care.
New civil rights provisions in the ACA expressly prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, class, sex, age, disability, and certain other categories. The provision, known as Section 1557, applies nondiscrimination protections to any and all health programs that receive funding from the federal government. The federal Health Insurance Marketplace and the plans sold through it are all covered under this nondiscrimination provision.
For many LGBT people living with HIV, diabetes, cancer, or other chronic conditions, even obtaining health coverage has long been a challenge. Before the ACA, having a preexisting condition meant that someone could be legally barred from getting insurance. Now companies must adhere to strict rules that disallow companies from refusing health care to anyone with any preexisting condition.
Reaching communities that are especially susceptible to our health system’s disparities is paramount if the promise of the ACA is to be fulfilled. We must communicate what the ACA means and connect eligible individuals to information and resources necessary to understanding their options for enrolling in a plan that meets their budget and needs. Let’s work to make sure the promise and benefits of the ACA reaches our entire community!
The deadline to enroll in coverage through the Marketplace is February 15, 2015. To learn more, head to healthcare.gov or call 1-800-318-2596.
This was first posted to the NCLR Blog.
UNICEF’s Innovation Unit works on creating inventive technologies and practices to enhance the organization’s mission, but with such high costs, it can be difficult to convince drug companies to invest in developing countries’ needs.
As part of HuffPost Live’s continued coverage of 2015 World Economic Forum, UNICEF Innovation Unit co-founder Chris Fabian explained to host Nancy Redd that his team developed a set of principles around innovation that they use to engage a “common ground” between corporations and civic needs.
“By having an approach where we look at creating good business, in all of the ways that term means something, that helps a company move its for-profit agenda forward, but also really keeps equity in terms of looking at the most vulnerable populations. … We at UNICEF can be a good broker of that,” Fabian said.
Shannon Firth, a contributor for MedPage Today, also joined the conversation, emphasizing how investing in preventative measures is much cheaper than repair. She explained:
Things like clean water and immunization and a device that is very affordable and accessible that allows for a male circumcision in a very cheap easy way, that can cut down on massive healthcare costs and it’s a good business as well. It’s a good business model to have because it’s not something that will break easily and it’s not something that takes a lot of know how to use.
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These days, most polls are centered on the intent to vote and the popularity of political leaders. We at The Huffington Post Greece understand the people’s need to know these percentages. However, we do not think that the upcoming election should be thought of only as a struggle between parties. This election comes at an extraordinarily important time for Greece and its people, who — exhausted from extended economic and social crisis as they may be — must decide about the country’s future.
In collaboration with research firm Focus Bari, we have turned our attention to the people, who have revealed their opinions, worries and anticipation concerning the election. The results of this pan-Hellenic poll will challenge many stereotypical perceptions about the psychology of the pre-election period.
— Citizens believe that Syriza can negotiate on a better level, economically and politically, by 10 percentage points, compared with a New Democracy government.
— A majority of citizens want the new government to negotiate with Europe and not to enter into conflict. Those who would prefer conflict are not the youngest participants. People who identify with the left are split on the “negotiation or conflict” dilemma with Europe.
— Even though more people believe that a Syriza government can better negotiate matters of fiscal politics, they do not believe in a socialist government, but rather a liberal one.
— The poll clearly shows that in this election, Greeks are voting for a renewal of political life and a change in the national situation.
— Slightly more than half of voters feel more confident about a coalition government.
— Two in five Greeks identify with the political center.
— One in five Greeks have yet to decide how they will vote.
— More than half of voters believe that the economic situation will remain unchanged after the election.
— People believe that corruption has increased during the debt crisis.
Finally, in this election Greeks will vote mostly based on the hope that the crisis will recede, and not on the fear that it might get worse.
The graphics below highlight details of the poll:
Top Senate Republicans are considering gutting the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees — a move that could yield big rewards for whichever party controls the White House and Senate after 2016.
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