Casey Anthony Sentenced to 4 Years
Casey Anthony, who earlier this week was found not guilty of killing her daughter, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in jail, not including the nearly three years she has served for lying to investigators, though the precise time she will spend in jail has not yet been determined.
Judge Belvin Perry said that he would have to meet with lawyers for at least an hour or so to decide how much time Ms. Anthony should be credited with serving. A decision is to be reached sometime Thursday. She was also fined $1,000 for each of the four counts of lying she has been convicted of.
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Man Connected to The Notorious B.I.G.’s Murder Comes Forward: Report
Just weeks after a New York based inmate allegedly confessed to robbing Tupac Shakur in 1994, a man named Clayton Hill has reportedly come forward to confess who allegedly murdered The Notorious B.I.G. and speaks on his own involvement.
On June 8, former Nation of Islam member, Hill, contacted HipHopDX and confessed to being handed a semi-automatic handgun that was allegedly used in the shooting of B.I.G. on March, 1997.
According to a reported email exchange between Hills, 41, and HipHopDX, via CorrLinks, in mid-May 1997 Western Regional Minister from the Nation of Islam, Tony Muhammad, with the approval of Supreme Captain of the Southern Region, Abdul Sharrieff Muhammad, via Account Executive Brother Melvin Muhammad, ordered Hill to pick up Dawoud Muhammad from the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Atlanta. Dawoud's name was kept from Hill till Dawoud introduced himself as such when meeting....
UNHCR concerned about malnutrition levels among new Somali refugees
GENEVA, July 5 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency is concerned about the high incidence of malnutrition among Somali refugees flowing into Ethiopia and Kenya amid a devastating drought in their conflict-racked country.
The relentless violence, compounded by drought, has forced more than 135,000 Somalis to flee so far this year. In June alone, 54,000 people fled across the two borders, three times the number of people who fled in May.
"UNHCR is particularly disturbed by unprecedented levels of malnutrition among the new arrivals – especially among refugee children," UNHCR's chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, said in Geneva on Tuesday. "More than 50 per cent of Somali children arriving in Ethiopia are seriously malnourished, while among those arriving to Kenya that rate is somewhat lower, but equally worrying – between 30 to 40 per cent," she added.
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My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
By JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS
One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.
My mother wanted to give me a better life, so she sent me thousands of miles away to live with her parents in America — my grandfather (Lolo in Tagalog) and grandmother (Lola). After I arrived in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang. One of my early memories is of a freckled kid in middle school asking me, “What’s up?” I replied, “The sky,” and he and a couple of other kids laughed. I won the eighth-grade spelling bee by memorizing words I couldn’t properly pronounce. (The winning word was “indefatigable.”)...
The Draft Ends in Germany, but Questions of Identity Endure
BERLIN — Germany formally discontinued the draft at midnight on Thursday to make way for a smaller, tighter army that will draw people like Johannes Beckert and Steven Stadler, both volunteers signing up for duty at a sprawling, suburban recruitment center that once housed the East German military’s overseas espionage agency.
The two men are part of a military evolution spanning more than half a century, from rearmament in the divided Germany of the 1950s through the cold war, which placed hundreds of thousands of young German soldiers on either side of the Iron Curtain, and on to a reunification that was not just geographic and political but also created a single army bonded by conscription.
They are part, too, of a long-running German quest for antidotes to its Nazi past, ensuring that its military is subservient to the will of a democratic Parliament....
Beyonce Album Sales Are a ‘Vindication,’ Columbia’s Rob Stringer Says
After reports of dissatisfaction, panic and other pre-release drama, executives at Columbia Records are feeling vindicated by the positive early returns for Beyonce's new album, "4."
"All the speculation that gets around is frustrating when it's just not true," Columbia/Epic Label Group Chairman Rob Stringer tells Billboard.biz. "The story about us being unhappy with the record and stuff is just not true. There's never been any doubt or conversations about moving the record or changing it... Those conversations never existed. We're really, really happy with it."
The label is particularly pleased with sales reports from "4's" initial days of official availability. Stringer says early indications are that the album will debut at No. 1 in as many as 14 countries, including the U.S., and in the Top 3 worldwide. It went triple-platinum in Brazil on its first day of sale, while U.K. projections have it selling "well over" 90,000 copies in its first week -- which more than doubles "I Am...Sasha Fierce's" roll-out in 2008 -- and 1.6 million over its lifespan. The album's second single, "Best Thing I Never Had," is No. 1 on the U.K. iTunes charts and currently sits at No. 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 29 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts....
