UNITED STATES
Star teacher shows pride
Rhode Island’s Teacher of the Year is drawing attention for his display of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) pride in a photographic opportunity with President Donald Trump. The photograph posted on Facebook from Nikos Giannopoulos’ visit to the Oval Office in April shows the teacher wearing a rainbow pin on his suit jacket and casually waving a lacey black fan alongside Trump and the first lady. Giannopoulos posted the photograph to Facebook on Thursday. His caption for the image included three rainbow emojis and said: “Rhode Island Teacher of the Year 2017 meets the 45th President of the United States. That’s all.” In a previous post, Giannopoulos said he wore the pin “to represent my gratitude for the LGBTQ community” and brought the fan “to celebrate the joy and freedom of gender non-conformity.” “Taking pride in queer identity means rejecting the shame imposed upon us by a harsh society,” he wrote. “It means opening yourself up to a lifetime of criticism and misunderstanding, but knowing that it’s worth it to be able to live authentically.”
UNITED STATES
Man dies in Niagara plunge
The first person to survive a death-defying plunge into Niagara Falls without protection has died after apparently attempting the feat again in an inflatable ball, US media said. A body discovered in the Niagara River has been identified as Kirk Jones, 53, who had jumped into the falls in 2003 and lived, the Syracuse Post-Standard said, citing New York State Park Police. Jones had tried going over the 51 meter-high falls — which straddle the Canada, US border — on April 19, local authorities said. The inflatable ball was found empty at the foot of the thundering water. Having miraculously survived the drop in 2003 in nothing more than his normal clothes, Jones swam to a rock at the bottom of the gorge, where he was found by emergency crews. “There was a whirlpool. I can see why people die... it’s hard to escape,” Jones had said at the time.
UNITED STATES
Five years for hate crime
A California woman has been sentenced to five years of probation for breaking windows and leaving bacon at a mosque near Sacramento. The Sacramento Bee Web site said that 30-year-old Lauren Kirk-Coehlo of Davis was sentenced on Friday after pleading guilty in April. She had been jailed since her arrest in mid-February. She admitted vandalizing the Davis Islamic Center in January, destroying six windows and two bicycles, and placing strips of bacon on door handles. She had faced up to six years in prison after also admitting to a hate-crime allegation. She is also to undergo counseling and must stay off the Internet and away from the mosque. She formerly worked for Google and as a legal intern for the Sacramento County Prosecutors’ Office.
UNITED STATES
Cosby jury at an impasse
The jury in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault case on Friday ended a fifth day of deliberations without reaching a verdict. Judge Steven O’Neill pushed back on repeated defense requests for a mistrial, saying that jurors could talk as long as they wanted. “There’s a misperception that there’s a time limit,” he said. Jurors tried to break the deadlock by making repeated runs through testimonies, including Cosby’s 2006 deposition testimony about Quaaludes, a now-banned sedative.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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