Interesting News Items

[allfalldown]

People are upset about $200k cost of giant rubber duck

Ontario just spent $200,000 of tax payer's money on a giant rubber duck to put in Toronto harbour this summer to celebrate Canada's 150th. It's going on tour through a bunch of different cities. What do ducks have to do with Canada, no idea...maybe a Canadian goose would have smoothed some feathers (sorry).

[kevinquinn]

Brooke Covington, a 58-year-old at the Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, faces up to two years in prison.
She is the first of five church members to face trial. The other defendants – Justin Covington, 20, Robert Walker Jr, 26, Adam Bartley, 25, Sarah Covington Anderson, 27 – will be trialed on a separate date.
Former church member Matthew Fenner, 23, has said he was leaving a prayer service on 27 January 2013 when around two dozen people surrounded him.
They slapped, punched, choked and ‘intensely screamed’ at him for two hours as they tried to expel his ‘homosexual demons’.
In the trial, it was heard how Fenner ‘thought he was going to pass out’ from the assault exorcism.
The church is disputing Fenner’s claims, as well as allegations of abuse others say they have also endured, according to WSPA-TV.
The Associated Press reports how four former church members who say they witnessed Fenner’s attack.
The sect, which Fenner joined with his mother and brother in 2010, has previously made headlines for throwing parishioners through walls intended to ‘purify’ sinners.
e regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in a violent form of deliverance meant to “purify” sinners by beating out devils.
‘You can’t imagine the emotional toll this has taken on my life,’ Fenner previously told AP. ‘I had to put a lot of things on hold because of this. … I can’t do anything until this is over.’
The trial continues.

2 June 2017 by Joe Morgan

Minister charged with kidnapping and assaulting man to 'expel his homosexual demons'

[lizsquiz]

Originally Posted by allfalldown

People are upset about $200k cost of giant rubber duck

Ontario just spent $200,000 of tax payer's money on a giant rubber duck to put in Toronto harbour this summer to celebrate Canada's 150th. It's going on tour through a bunch of different cities. What do ducks have to do with Canada, no idea...maybe a Canadian goose would have smoothed some feathers (sorry).

We've had that duck in Australia before. It's good fun. A big duck!

[FingerLakes]

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...icle-1.3214524

[Lanfear]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...f=project_link

[OnmyojiOmn]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...for-first-time

Los Angeles (AP) -- The victim of Roman Polanski's sex assault 40 years ago is going to appeal directly to a judge to end the long-running case against the fugitive director, his lawyer said Thursday.

Samantha Geimer, 13 at the time of the crime, has long supported Polanski's efforts to end the legal saga that limits his freedom, but Friday will be the first time she's appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court on his behalf, attorney Harland Braun said.

"She's tired of this case," Braun said. "The judge is just playing games with him."

The Oscar-winner has been a fugitive since he fled to France in 1978 on the eve of sentencing for the crime of having unlawful sex with a minor. Prosecutors dropped charges that he drugged, raped and sodomized the girl.

Polanski feared the judge was going to renege on a plea agreement and send him away for more time than the six weeks he served in prison during a psychiatric evaluation prior to sentencing.

His lawyers have been fighting for years to end the case and lift an international arrest warrant that confined him to his native France, Switzerland and Poland, where he fled the Holocaust.

The warrant prevented Polanski from collecting his Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film "The Pianist." He was also nominated for 1974's "Chinatown" and 1979's "Tess."

Polanski, 83, is trying to get the Interpol warrant lifted so he can move freely among nearly 190 countries in the global policing network. If that happened, the California warrant would still be valid.

Polanski contends he is the victim of judicial misconduct because the now-deceased judge who handled the case suggested in private remarks that he would not honor a plea bargain agreement. It called for no more time behind bars for the director after he spent 42 days in a prison undergoing a diagnostic screening.

The hearing Friday is an effort by Braun to get the court to unseal testimony by the now-deceased prosecutor in the case, who is believed to have testified in a closed session about backroom sentencing discussions.

Braun wants to use the transcript to show Polanski has served his time so the international warrant is dropped. Braun also argues that Polanski served an additional 10 months under house arrest during a failed extradition effort from Switzerland in 2010.

Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee urged the court to reject Polanski's latest efforts, saying two previous Superior Court judges and an appeals court have ruled against him.

"The people implore this court to deny defendant's motions and to summarily deny any future request to re-litigate these issues absent a showing of new facts or a change in circumstance," Hanisee wrote.

Judge Scott Gordon has rejected Polanski's efforts to resolve the case in the director's absence or with a promise that he wouldn't be sentenced to more time or be arrested if he voluntarily returned for a sentencing hearing.

Geimer has previously said she forgives Polanski for the assault that happened at Jack Nicholson's compound in the Hollywood Hills during a March 1977 photo shoot.

Polanski plied the girl with champagne and part of a sedative pill before raping her, according to grand jury transcripts. Nicholson was not home at the time.

In addition to the criminal charges, Geimer sued Polanski and reached a settlement in 1993 for $500,000 that included over $100,000 in interest payments. Her longtime lawyer Lawrence Silver did not return phone and email messages seeking comment.

The Associated Press doesn't typically name victims of sex abuse, but Geimer went public years ago.

She wrote memoir titled "The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski" four years ago. The cover features a photo shot by Polanski.

[Keith]

Fingers crossed.

YAWWWWWN

What do you think, Onmy?

[starscream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM

Bret Weinstein is a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Weinstein, who identifies himself as “deeply progressive,” is just the kind of teacher that students at one of the most left-wing colleges in the country would admire. Instead, he has become a victim of an increasingly widespread campaign by leftist students against anyone who dares challenge ideological orthodoxy on campus.

This professor’s crime? He had the gall to challenge a day of racial segregation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/o...-own.html?_r=0

And today's follow up:

One arrested after pro & anti-Trump demonstrators clash at Evergreen State College | KOMO

[FingerLakes]

Idina Menzel to Lead Reading of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill Musical | Broadway Buzz | Broadway.com

I forget if this was mentioned on this show but Chemda's golden god is making a broadway musical out of her life. And the Witch from Wicked is playing her as the lead

Can we have a KATG event to see this as a group? and become the gayest people ever?

[Keith]

I think you've done gayer...