Post Your Interesting News Articles Here

[A.]

This is the first time I've heard of anyone taking legal means to be called black.  But yet, I bet if someone wanted to beat their ass because they were black, they'd want to be Chinese again.  SMH.

And they won!

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/06/19/in-south-africa-chinese-is-the-new-black/?mod=yhoofront

[pikey]

This is the first time I've heard of anyone taking legal means to be called black.  But yet, I bet if someone wanted to beat their ass because they were black, they'd want to be Chinese again.  SMH.

And they won!

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/06/19/in-south-africa-chinese-is-the-new-black/?mod=yhoofront

I don't see what the big deal is.  The program is meant to benefit those who were harmed by apartheid and other previous discrimination.  If the other "coloreds" (Indians, etc) can benefit, I don't see why Chinese can't, especially since the benefit is narrowly tailored (yeah conlaw  ) by only applying to those who were in SA before 1994.

[A.]

I'm not saying it's a big deal.  I just find it amusing.  The Chinese are now black.  Blackinese.  lol

[pikey]

SA is an interesting place.  We have 'colored' friends from there who look everything from black, mixed, white and Indian.

[A.]

lol yeah when we went on our blsa trip, some of our yellower members were kindly corrected when they said they were black

[A.]

Damn:

 Triplets born to teenager - again
By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News, Buenos Aires

A 16-year-old Argentine girl has given birth to female triplets - for the second time.

The girl, named only as Pamela, had her first set of female triplets aged 15, having first given birth to a son when she was just 14.

All seven children were born prematurely but without any kind of fertility treatment.

While doctors say the three newborns and their mother are well, the case has sparked debate across Argentina.

In bars and cafes, as well as the letters pages of newspapers, there has been widespread criticism of Pamela's alleged promiscuity.

Seeking more

Pamela's family already receives help from the provincial authorities, which donated land and built them a house when the first set of triplets was born.

Pamela's mother, who cleans houses to support her daughter and rapidly increasing number of grandchildren, says they will now seek more assistance from the government for the new additions to the family.

Some Argentines are arguing that perhaps what Pamela needs is more advice on contraception.

The teenager, who will be 17 on Monday, comes from the remote town of Leones in the central Argentine province of Cordoba.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7258072.stm

[A.]

More AP Gov't exam quotes:

Kids Say the Darnedest Things - Part 2 of 2

Following up on yesterday's post, here are some additional passages from a 15th Amendment essay on the Advanced Placement U.S. Government Exam.

    * The Montgomery buss boycott led to the doctrine of “separate but equal” which helped give blacks more civil rights.
    * Congress passed the 1/3 act. Each African American vote counted for a 1/3 vote.
    * 15th Amendment made it leagle for African Americans to vote.
    * Discriminatory behavior is not tolerated today, and everyone is completely equal. While voting.
    * Back in the 1960s there was a high proportion of African American slaves whom were not able to vote.
    * Greater turn out among African American voters has increased the margin of error in our elections.
    * Whites purposefully wrote ballots cryptically so they couldn’t be used properly. This discouraged the black voter and perpetuated hatred.
    * Some African Americans joined the mafia was a result of John Crow laws.
    * During the 1960s civil rights movement, protestors sent letters and emails peacefully to the President LBT.
    * Rosa Parks was an elderly African American woman who became the cover girl for racial integration.
    * MLK marched down the streets of a small Alabama town singing songs. When he arrived at a voting booth, a woman was asked to guess how many jelly beans were in a jar. When she guessed wrong the police arrested her.
    * The literacy tests were graded unfairly (something I hope you will not do on this exam).
    * Many blacks were illiterate, or couldn’t even talk, so voting was out of the question.
    * It’s not a lie that we’ve had racial segregation.
    * The NATO was an African organization that helped abolish discrimination in a way.
    * African Americans may have been freed, but they were still mad at the government for making them go through all that labor.

http://www.supremedicta.com/2008/06/kids-say-darnedest-things-part-2-of-2.html

[Statistic]

During the 1960s civil rights movement, protestors sent letters and emails peacefully to the President LBT.

 

[SKW]

Thought I'd kick off the summer:

Teen ‘pregnancy pact’ has 17 girls expecting
Many moms-to-be at Mass. high school are aged under-16

MSNBC News Services
updated 3:41 a.m. ET, Fri., June. 20, 2008

BOSTON - An investigation has been launched into an apparent teenage "pregnancy pact" that has at least 17 high-school girls expecting babies, four times more than last year, including many aged 16 or younger.

A high school health clinic in the city of Gloucester, Mass., became suspicious after seeing a surge in girls seeking pregnancy tests. Local officials said Thursday nearly half of those who became pregnant appear to have entered into a pact to have their babies together over the year.

"Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine, which broke news of the pact on its Web site.

Some of the girls reacted to the news they were pregnant with high fives and plans for baby showers, Sullivan said. One of the fathers "is a 24-year-old homeless guy," Sullivan told the magazine. Others were boys in the school.

Statutory rape charges?
Superintendent Christopher Farmer confirmed the deal to WBZ-TV, saying the girls had "an agreement to get pregnant."

He said the mothers-to-be are generally "girls who lack self-esteem and have a lack of love in their life."

Carolyn Kirk, mayor of the port city 30 miles northeast of Boston, said authorities are looking at whether to pursue statutory rape charges. "We're at the very early stages of wrestling with the complexities of this problem," she said.

"But we also have to think about the boys. Some of these boys could have their lives changed. They could be in serious, serious trouble even if it was consensual because of their age — not from what the city could do but from what the girls' families could do," she told Reuters.

Under Massachusetts law, it is a crime to have sex with anyone under the age of 16.

The ‘Juno’-Jamie Lynn effect?
"At the very least these men should be held responsible for financial support, if not put in jail for statutory rape as the mayor has suggested," Greg Verga, chairman of the Gloucester School Committee, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Landry cautioned against attributing the trend to Hollywood following the recent hit movie "Juno," in which a teenager gets pregnant and decides to have the baby, and "Knocked Up," a comedy about a one-night stand.

"The trend emerged before those movies," he said.

In Gloucester, the 1,200-student school administered 150 pregnancy tests to students in the past academic year. The school forbids the distribution of condoms and other contraception without parental consent — a rule that prompted the school's doctor and nurse to resign in protest in May.

"But even if we had contraceptives, that pact shows that if they wanted to get pregnant, they will get pregnant. Whether we distribute contraceptives is irrelevant," said Verga.

Nationwide, teen pregnancies are showing signs of rising after steadily declining from 1991 to 2005. This trend was highlighted Thursday when Britney Spears' 17-year-old sister Jamie Lynn, star of Nickelodeon's popular TV show "Zoey 101," gave birth to a baby girl, according to People magazine.

"The data seem to be indicating that the declines that we had seen through the 1990s are coming to a close," said David Landry, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit group focusing on reproductive issues.

Birth rates for teenagers aged 15 to 17 rose by 3 percent in 2006, the first increase since 1991, according to preliminary data released in December by the National Center for Health Statistics.

[A.]

yeah that's a HAM.  But I'd be curious to know their backgrounds, e.g., broken home, poverty, etc.