Warren Jeffs Sentenced to Life in Prison

Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for sexually assaulting two underage followers he took as child brides, the Associated Press reports.

The 55-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was convicted last Thursday.

The jury deliberated for less than 30 minutes before returning the maximum sentence on both counts. Earlier in the day, several jurors broke down in the courtroom while prosecutors played a recording of Jeffs instructing the girls on how to service him sexually and threatening God would “reject them” if they didn’t have sex with him, Fox News reports.

Related articles

• Warren Jeffs sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault (news.blogs.cnn.com)
• Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Gets Life in Prison For Sexually Assaulting Underage Followers (perezhilton.com)
• Warren Jeffs gets life in prison (bbc.co.uk)

Billionaires Invest in Young Black and Latino Men

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

There's not much in the media today that bears anything close to something positive or something that leaves you with some hope for the future.  Unfortunately, the idiotic antics of our law makers takes center stage to other news so we don't hear much about someone actually trying to do something positive. But I read a story in The Grio that lifted my spirits:

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the billionaire financier George Soros have teamed up to aid African-American and Latino youth.

The Young Men's Initiative, as it is called, will overhaul how the city government interacts with the 315,000 African-American and Latino males between the ages of 16 and 24. The aim is to be pro-active: by addressing the much discussed, but rarely confronted, issues affecting this undereducated, over-incarcerated and underemployed minority.

Oprah Winfrey and James Earl Jones Receiving Honorary Oscars

Oprah Winfrey, James Earl Jones and makeup artist Dick Smith have been picked to receive honorary Oscars.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says the three will be honored with Oscar statuettes at the Governors Awards in November. The academy's Board of Governors voted Tuesday to recognize the entertainment industry veterans.
Winfrey will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which honors philanthropic and humanitarian contributions. The 57-year-old media mogul, who was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for 1985's "The Color Purple," supports various charitable and educational causes, including her own namesake foundations and Academy for Girls in South Africa.
Jones and Smith will receive honorary Oscars for their outstanding careers.

Pakistani Man Kills 6 Daughters in Honor Killing

A Pakistani man gunned down six of his daughters on suspicion that two of them were in relationships with older boys in the neighborhood.
Arif Mubashir, 40 of shot the teen-aged girls after his son told him that they were dating boys who attend a nearby college in Faisalabad.
Mushabir unregrettably admitted to police that he had killed his daughters because they were both “without honour.”
The father said he shot the other daughters, because they “sided with each other.”
Police took Mushabir into custudy, and filed a case against him, according to The Express Tribune.

He does not regret what he did. He boasted that he would do it all over again if he had to,” Police Inspector Javed Sial told reporters.

Related articles

• Pakistan: man kills six daughters for "honour" (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
• Muslim Guns Down Six Daughters To Cleanse Family's "Honor" (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• Muslim Guns Down Six Daughters To Cleanse Family's "Honor" (americandefenseleague.wordpress.com)

Rosa Parks Reveals Rape Attempt

Long before Rosa Parks was hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement," she wrote a detailed and harrowing account of nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931.
The six-page essay, written in her own hand many years after the incident, is among thousands of her personal items currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey's Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive.
Civil rights historian Danielle McGuire said she had never before heard of the attempted rape of Parks and called the find among Parks' papers astounding.
It helps explain what triggered Parks' lifelong campaign against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, said McGuire, whose recent book "At the Dark End of the Street" examines how economic intimidation and sexual violence were used to derail the freedom movement and how it went unpunished during the Jim Crow era.

SCLC Head Howard Creecy Dies

The president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Howard Creecy Jr., has died seven months after taking office, the venerable civil rights group said Thursday.
Damien Conners, the SCLC's national program director, said the 57-year-old Creecy died of an apparent heart attack in Atlanta early Thursday. Creecy, pastor of The Olivet Church in Fayette County, was elected SCLC president in January after the position was declined by Bernice King, daughter of the organization's co-founder, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Before that, Creecy had served as the interim president of the civil rights organization founded in 1957. He was a native of Alabama.

Related articles

• SCLC president Howard Creecy Jr. dies (cnn.com)
• SCLC president Creecy dies; apparent heart attack (sfgate.com)
• SCLC leader Howard Creecy Jr. dies (ajc.com)

Old Spice Guy Wins Over Fabio

In this publicity image released by Old Spice, Italian model Fabio, left, arm wrestles with former American football player Isaiah Mustafa during a press event for Old Spice in Los Angeles, Thursday, July 28, 2011. Mustafa has been lead spokesman for the Procter & Gamble Co. brand of men's body washes and deodorants for nearly two years, starring in a popular series of marketing campaigns relying heavily on YouTube, Twitter and other social media. Now, he has held off a playful effort by the Italian model to become "the new Old Spice Guy." In a series of videos culminating Thursday, the muscular pitchmen dueled in tongue-in-cheek challenges from one another and viewers.

The Old Spice Guy has won his hunk-off with Fabio. Proctor and Gamble says Mustafa won based on consumer feedback such as "likes" and online comments. They called the competition "Mano a Mano en El Bano" (hand-to-hand in the bathroom).

Mustafa said he wasn't worried, even though Fabio has been "the epitome of the sex symbol as a pitchman."

Related articles

• Reigning 'Old Spice guy' defeats Fabio in online duel (ctv.ca)
• Old Spice guy wins online hunk-off over Fabio (msnbc.msn.com)
• Old Spice guy wins out over Fabio (sfgate.com)
• Old Spice guy wins out over Fabio (seattletimes.nwsource.com)