Fats Domino makes rare appearance at La. concert

By STACEY PLAISANCE, Associated Press Writer Stacey Plaisance, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 40 mins ago
NEW ORLEANS – Fats Domino rarely emerges from his Louisiana home — and many wondered if he'd show up for "The Domino Effect," his namesake concert that raises funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Sure enough, the 81-year-old New Orleans native smiled and waved from his private suite to more than 3,000 cheering people who attended Saturday's concert to see two of his old friends perform — Little Richard and B.B. King. Domino is an icon in New Orleans, known nearly as much for his reclusiveness as for hits like "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame."
Little Richard, at the piano in a sparkly white suite, delivered an energetic set that included "Lucille," "Tutti Frutti" and other hits.
Between songs, he reminisced about New Orleans and Domino. Richard's breakout hit "Tutti Frutti" was recorded at Cosimo Matassa's studio in New Orleans in 1955.
"I was right here," Richard said, playing the piano as he talked. "I was right here."
Richard said he remembered being on the road with Domino, who always longed to be back home. Then Richard broke into song: "Every night about this time, I go to sleep to keep from cryin'."
While on stage, Richard was given a plaque inducting him into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. He said he was surprised and touched.
Domino and Richard met backstage, where the men hugged, made small talk and posed for pictures. Richard's handlers handed out free inspirational pamphlets to fans during the concert, and backstage, he asked Domino and others to pray with him.
"Bless this life," Richard prayed, his head bowed, "and bless this music."
Domino also met with King after his blues set, which included the hit, "The Thrill is Gone."
As King walked off stage, Domino greeted him with a hug.
"It's good to see you my friend," King told Domino. "Did you bring me some gumbo?"
King said he used to open shows for Domino in the early years of his career. In 2007, King recorded the title track on a tribute album to Domino, called "Goin' Home."
Saturday's concert ran more than four hours and included performances by Chuck Berry, Wyclef Jean, Keb' Mo' and Junior Brown. Comedian-actor Tracy Morgan, best known for his work on the TV shows "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock," also performed.
Proceeds from the event are earmarked for "Operation Kids," a program run through Saints quarterback Drew Brees' foundation to improve the city's parks and schools.
Brees attended the concert with wife, Brittany, and dozens of the couple's closest friends and family. All got to meet Domino.
It wasn't the first time Drew Brees met the music legend. Brees said he got to hang out at Domino's home in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey a few weeks ago. He said Domino showed him his gold record collection and played the piano.
"How many people get to say they got to do that?" he said.
Domino has been living in Harvey since Katrina struck in 2005, flooding his home in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood. Still, Domino enjoys visiting his publishing house, an extension of his old home. The studio is a classic shotgun double built in the 1930s that was rebuilt after Katrina. It is one of a few refurbished structures in the neighborhood, which still has blocks of abandoned homes and overgrown lots.
Brees said he was grateful such pioneering musicians could help his foundation reach its goal of raising $1.8 million in two years to rebuild the city's parks, schools and play spaces — the things needed to bring families back to New Orleans.
"These guys are legends," Brees said. "They helped define an era and build a musical genre. They're the fathers of blues and rock and roll."

World Condemns North Korea Nuclear Test

By VOA News 25 May 2009
The international community responded swiftly with outrage and condemnation on Monday to reports of North Korea's nuclear test and firing of three short-range missiles.
President Barack Obama (file photo)U.S. President Barack Obama said North Korea's actions are violations of international law that constitute a "threat to international peace and security." Mr. Obama said North Korea's activities warrant action by the international community. The top U.S. military official, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, said the North Korean tests were not a surprise and are part of what he called growing belligerence on the part of Pyongyang. Mullen told CNN that it could take a couple of days to verify the test, but he had no reason to doubt North Korea's claims.U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is deeply worried and that any nuclear test would be a clear violation of a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution banning North Korea from such acts. He said he plans to consult with the Council when it meets in a special session later Monday.North Korea says it successfully conducted an underground nuclear test that was more powerful than the country's first test two-and-a-half years ago. South Korea's Yonhap news agency also reports that North Korea test-fired three short-range missiles in the hours after the nuclear test. Seismologists from around the world reported a tremor in northeast North Korea, near where Pyongyang conducted its first test in October 2006.Russia's Defense Ministry said the nuclear explosion had a force of up to 20 kilotons, the same size as the bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. South Korean officials called Pyongyang's actions a "serious threat to peace and stability" in the region. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency security session immediately after news broke of the nuclear test. The Chinese government said it is "resolutely opposed" to its communist neighbor and ally's actions. It also urged Pyongyang to avoid actions that sharpen tensions.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana (file)The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that six-party talks on North Korea are the only solution to the crisis.European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana threatened a "firm response" to what he called "irresponsible acts" by North Korea.The Japanese government said it has set up a task force at the crisis management center of Prime Minister Taro Aso's office.Last month, North Korea threatened to restart reprocessing work at its once closed Yongbyon nuclear complex. The move was a response to international criticism of its April launch of a rocket it says was fired to put a satellite into space. The United States and other countries believe the rocket was a test launch for a ballistic missile.Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
By VOA News 25 May 2009
The international community responded swiftly with outrage and condemnation on Monday to reports of North Korea's nuclear test and firing of three short-range missiles.
President Barack Obama (file photo)U.S. President Barack Obama said North Korea's actions are violations of international law that constitute a "threat to international peace and security." Mr. Obama said North Korea's activities warrant action by the international community. The top U.S. military official, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, said the North Korean tests were not a surprise and are part of what he called growing belligerence on the part of Pyongyang. Mullen told CNN that it could take a couple of days to verify the test, but he had no reason to doubt North Korea's claims.U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is deeply worried and that any nuclear test would be a clear violation of a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution banning North Korea from such acts. He said he plans to consult with the Council when it meets in a special session later Monday.North Korea says it successfully conducted an underground nuclear test that was more powerful than the country's first test two-and-a-half years ago. South Korea's Yonhap news agency also reports that North Korea test-fired three short-range missiles in the hours after the nuclear test. Seismologists from around the world reported a tremor in northeast North Korea, near where Pyongyang conducted its first test in October 2006.Russia's Defense Ministry said the nuclear explosion had a force of up to 20 kilotons, the same size as the bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. South Korean officials called Pyongyang's actions a "serious threat to peace and stability" in the region. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency security session immediately after news broke of the nuclear test. The Chinese government said it is "resolutely opposed" to its communist neighbor and ally's actions. It also urged Pyongyang to avoid actions that sharpen tensions.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana (file)The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that six-party talks on North Korea are the only solution to the crisis.European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana threatened a "firm response" to what he called "irresponsible acts" by North Korea.The Japanese government said it has set up a task force at the crisis management center of Prime Minister Taro Aso's office.Last month, North Korea threatened to restart reprocessing work at its once closed Yongbyon nuclear complex. The move was a response to international criticism of its April launch of a rocket it says was fired to put a satellite into space. The United States and other countries believe the rocket was a test launch for a ballistic missile.Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

4 Arrested in New York Terror Plot

May 20, 2009, 10:55 pm
By Sewell Chan
Federal authorities arrested four men on Wednesday night on charges of plotting to bomb a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and to use antiaircraft missiles to shoot down military planes at a military base in Newburgh, N.Y., 60 miles north of New York City.
The charges, which include conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, represent some of the most significant allegations of domestic terrorism in some time, and come months into a new presidential administration, as President Obama grapples with the question of how to handle detainees at the Guantánamo camp in Cuba.
The four defendants — whom federal authorities identified as James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, in Orange County — are expected to appear in Federal District Court in White Plains, in Westchester County, on Thursday morning.
(See related criminal complaint and the United States attorney’s press release, both in PDF form.)
Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement on Wednesday night that “the defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks.”
He added: “They selected targets and sought the weapons necessary to carry out their plans. Fortunately, the defendants sought the assistance of a witness cooperating with the government. While the weapons provided to the defendants by the cooperating witness were fake, the defendants thought they were absolutely real.”
Political leaders responded to the news of the arrests with statements expressing relief.
“While the bombs these terrorists attempted to plant tonight were – unbeknownst to them – fake, this latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that he had spoken with the New York office of the F.B.I. and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.
“They have told me they have been monitoring this group for sometime and that the men arrested did not have any connection to other terrorists,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism foreign or domestic.”
See---http://davidsradiotv2000.blogspot.com

Sudan President al-Bashir defies arrest warrant with trip to Eritrea

Sudan's president travelled to Eritrea on Monday, choosing one of Africa's most politically isolated nations for his first trip abroad since an international court sought his arrest on charges of war crimes in Darfur.

Last Updated: 8:44AM GMT 24 Mar 2009

The ICC charged al-Bashir on March 4 of leading a counter-insurgency against Darfur rebels that involved rapes, killings and other atrocities Photo: AFP
The one-day visit followed Eritrea's official invitation to Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, who faces an arrest warrant by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court.
Eritrean television showed live coverage of al-Bashir being greeted at the airport in the Eritrean capital Asmara by his counterpart President Isaias Afwerki, along with drummers and dancers. Sudanese state television later showed live images of al-Bashir returning to Khartoum.

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Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor said the visit was "important" and reflected Eritrean "solidarity ... with Sudan against the ICC." Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told The Associated Press that al-Bashir was accompanied by heads of security and intelligence and was there to discuss regional security.
The ICC charged al-Bashir on March 4 of leading a counter-insurgency against Darfur rebels that involved rapes, killings and other atrocities against civilians. His government has been accused of unleashing Arab militiamen against Darfur civilians in a drive to put down a revolt by ethnic Africans in the region.
Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million driven from their homes in the conflict since 2003, according to the U.N.
Under the ICC charter, member states are bound to arrest those indicted when they enter their territory. Eritrea is not a signatory, however, and has vehemently condemned the indictment, making it a safe haven for al-Bashir to visit.
"It's unjustifiable and illegal and illogical and futile, the so-called ICC decision," said Mr Abdu. "We believe it's an extension and symptom of the ongoing world hegemony and domination by a few powers in this world."

The Harlem Miracle

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 7, 2009
The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.
That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”
Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.
They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.
Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap. “The results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes,” Fryer wrote in a subsequent e-mail. What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It’s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn’t matter if we stop there. We don’t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying — literally and figuratively.”
These results are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can’t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right. The Promise Academy does provide health and psychological services, but it helps kids who aren’t even involved in the other programs the organization offers.
To my mind, the results also vindicate an emerging model for low-income students. Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.
To understand the culture in these schools, I’d recommend “Whatever It Takes,” a gripping account of Harlem Children’s Zone by my Times colleague Paul Tough, and “Sweating the Small Stuff,” a superb survey of these sorts of schools by David Whitman.
Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

They also smash the normal bureaucratic strictures that bind leaders in regular schools. Promise Academy went through a tumultuous period as Canada searched for the right teachers. Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.
The approach works. Ever since welfare reform, we have had success with intrusive government programs that combine paternalistic leadership, sufficient funding and a ferocious commitment to traditional, middle-class values. We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap. Which city is going to take up the challenge? Omaha? Chicago? Yours?

Brooklyn bodega owner Salah Ahmed found guilty of attacking teen with hammer

BY Scott Shifrel AND Dave Goldiner DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
A Brooklyn bodega owner was found guilty Wednesday of attacking a teen with a hammer in a wild fracas inside the East New York corner store.
Salah Ahmed, 36, faces up to 25 years behind bars for pounding Bunkless Bovian, 16, unconscious in a fight with another store clerk on April 14, 2008.
Ahmed, who prayed to himself moments before the jury read its verdict, looked stunned as he was taken into custody.
"We're obviously disappointed," defense lawyer David Epstein said.
"The verdict was against the weight of the evidence."
The panel of eight men and four women took just five hours to convict Ahmed of first-degree assault, which carries a minimum penalty of five years in prison.
A videotape of the fight showed Bovian and a pal fighting with a clerk, whom they accused of insulting them.
The argument woke up Ahmed, who was napping in a back room. He came out and whacked Bovian once in the head with a hammer.
The teen was placed in a medically-induced coma, but has mostly recovered.
He testified that his speech is still slurred, he suffers from headaches and he is no longer a star basketball player.
Ahmed was ordered held without bail until a May 28 sentencing.
The conviction was the latest stunning setback for Ahmed.
He confidently believed he would be cleared in the case because the video showed he was coming to the aid of the clerk.

See--http://harlemvoiceblogs.blogspot.com

I started fight, sez pal of hammer vic

By Scott Shifrel
Tuesday, April 28th 2009, 4:00 AM
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Charged in attack with hammer on teen, deli worker points to recent bodega murders
A teen whose pal was critically injured when a Brooklyn bodega clerk hit him in the head with a hammer last year admitted to jurors Monday that he helped sparked the melee.
Joshua Bloomfield, 16, went behind the counter to confront another clerk who said something about his mother, he told jurors in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
"I went back there and said what I had to say to him," said Bloomfield, later adding that he pleaded guilty in family court to assault in connection with the April 13, 2008, fracas.
"He put his hands on me - I grabbed him back."
The clerk then punched him, Bloomfield punched back and within seconds the clerk was threatening him with a knife and a 2-foot long stick, the youth testified. Another clerk, Salah Ahmed, 36, is charged with running out of a backroom of the East New York bodega and hitting Bloomfield's friend Bunkless Bovian in the head with a hammer.
"I heard Bunkless get hit, I heard him make a sound," Bloomfield said, adding that his friend walked outside before collapsing