| Addict caught in police drugs crackdown jailed
Tara Holowienka (27) has been addicted to the deadly drug for 15 years, and had first started sniffing lighter fluid at the age of eight, Peterborough Crown Court heard yesterday.After spending years in and out of court, Judge Nicholas Coleman remarked that it was the best he had seen her yesterday, after she had finally detoxified.But Holowienka, of Ledham, Orton Brimbles, Peterborough, was still jailed for three years after she pleaded guilty to six counts of supplying heroin and crack cocaine.It was her second prison sentence for dealing drugs – she was jailed for 18 months in 2003.She was warned that a third conviction would mean a seven-year prison sentence.Mitigating, Hugh Vass said Holowienka had only three choices when it came to funding such a "strong" addiction. The first was returning to prostitution, but an anti-social behaviour order prevented her from doing that, second was through crime or third to sell drugs.Her boyfriend, James Negus (27), who has been a heroin addict for 10 years – the same length as their relationship – was jailed for two-and-a-half years after admittin .
Mirroring larger party, state GOP is deeply split
Morris said the ground started to shift in Republican politics several years ago, when evangelicals began demonstrating concern for climate change, the poor, human rights and protection of religious minorities worldwide. "It was just an inkling at first," he said, "but it's kept growing. There's much more activism in churches." Aplikowski, who backs yet another Republican, Fred Thompson, said he's seen the new religious activism in his own Catholic church. "The priest started talking from the pulpit about how we needed to contact our legislators to raise taxes," he said. "I walked right out of there." Patricia Lopez • 651-222-1288 .
Archives for: 2006
James Smith, chair of Shell UK, welcomed the decision on behalf of the developer's consortium: "The London Array offshore wind farm will make a crucial contribution to the UK's renewable energy targets." Local concerns over increased traffic and noise meant that Swale council blocked the consortium's planning application for the onshore substation in July this year. An appeal was lodged, but development as planned is still dependent on the outcome of a hearing in March next year. However, the DTI said that today's conditional consent was a major step forward and is confident that the windfarm will be built by 2011. Enviros welcome moves to increase Britain's wind power 5-fold The RSPB, which is fighting the construction of Britain's onshore windfarm proposed for the Scottish island of Lewis, has also now given its backing to the London Array project, after plans were modified to protect the endangered bird, the red-throated diver. Friends of the Earth, which has campaigned for London Array throughout, welcomed the decision, but warned that the government "must go further" in cutting carbon emissions.
Sci-fi legend's early work is an exercise in American realism
Philip K. Dick was long exiled to the science fiction hinterland, and a read through his early realist writings shows that he was at his best in alternate worlds with flying cars, time scoops, colonies on Mars and deadly automatons."Humpty Dumpty in Oakland" (Tor Books, $24.95), apparently completed in 1960, is believed to be Dick's last non-science-fiction novel. Only published posthumously in England, it is the second of Dick's early works that Tor Books is publishing for the first time in the United States. A bumbling used-car salesman attempts to thwart an attempt to sell his run-down lot in a seedy Oakland neighborhood, with tragically comic results. The salesman and the lot's owner, a retiring mechanic, each spiral into sweaty paranoia as they contemplate their next business ventures in 1950s America.
I-Team: Rescuing Child Prostitutes From Las Vegas Streets
Though they all face prostitution charges, the system strives to treat them as victims. With few resources, all agree, it's a work in progress, just like the kids. Colleen Witt is a social worker with the juvenile public defender's office. She says before she can help the girls she must first reach them. "I say to my clients what was it, what were the magical words that this pimp told you? Did they tell you you were going to have to work the track, that you were going to have sex with strange men, that you were going to have to turn over your money and that if you didn't they were going to beat you or rape you? No. I wasn't told that, I was told he was going to take care of me," Witt said. Sometimes a story begins at the end. Family Court Judge William Voy said, "A lot of people are expecting you to do the right thing, to do well." The I-Team meets "Christina," who at 17 years old is already a veteran prostitute.
October 2006
There is some discussion lately about same sex classrooms as the latest educational panacea. A few years ago the big issue was making every student wear a uniform to school. President Clinton sent every principal in the country a book promoting it. The initiative must have failed, because today you don't see many kids in school uniforms and the issue seems to have dropped from the media radar screen. It is the nature of much so-called educational innovation to capture the imagination with or without adequate evidence to support claims. People can intuitively agree that having same sex classes might help some kids, but when you look at what studies exist to support this, there isn't much. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 is the landmark legislation that bans sex discrimination in schools, whether it is in academics or athletics.
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