(Meredith) – A Missouri pastor is on leave after he gave a sermon that many people say was sexist, misogynistic and inappropriate.

Pastor Stewart-Allen Clark took a leave of absence Tuesday from First General Baptist Church in Malden, Missouri – located in the state’s southeast boot heel – after receiving widespread criticism for his sermon given in late February.

In his sermon, he explained that women need to lose weight and submit to the sexual desires of their husbands to keep the men from straying.

Clark also said wives need to wear makeup, dress nicely, have nice hair and appear less “butch.”

The original video was deleted from the church’s website, but a woman who was watching the sermon that day managed to post the video to Facebook, where it has caused widespread anger and gained thousands of comments.

Clark continued to ask why women “let themselves go after marriage” and reiterated that men only marry for good looks and sex.

“Men have a need for their women to look like women. Sweatpants don’t cut it all the time. Wearing flip flops and pajamas to Walmart – that ain’t going to work. Ain’t nothing attractive about that. It’ ain’t,” Clark said in his sermon. “And men want their wives to look good at home and in public, can I get an Amen!”Your first title is on usListen to Originals, audiobooks, podcasts, & more. Try Audible free for 30 daysAd By Audible See More

Clark also claimed this topic is “so important” that a friend of his has put a weight limit on his wife before he would divorce her.

“Ladies, it’s the way God made us. It’s the way we are. Men are going to look. He made us to look. You want them to be looking at you. Don’t let yourself go,” Clark said in his sermon.

Clark also used former First Lady Melania Trump as an example of what women should strive to look like, although he acknowledged that “not everybody looks like that.”

“Now look, I’m not saying every woman can be the epic, epic trophy wife of all time like Melania Trump. I’m not saying that at all. Most women can’t be trophy wives, but you know … maybe you’re a participation trophy,” Clark said as a photo of Melania Trump appeared on the screen. “I don’t know, but all I can say is not everybody looks like that. Amen! Not everybody looks like that. But you don’t need to look like a butch either.”

The church released a statement Monday saying Clark’s sermon was “not consistent with the positions and values” of the church.

“General Baptists believe that every woman was created in the image of God, and they should be valued for that reason,” General Baptist Ministries posted on Facebook.

Clark is now on leave. It’s unclear whether that leave is paid or unpaid. The church also said Clark is now seeking “professional counseling.”

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/missouri-pastor-slammed-for-telling-wives-to-lose-weight-look-less-butch-to-keep-husbands/article_74bf3477-28bd-5efc-9c3c-f0ade3d653ed.html

Photo Credit: lipstickalley

A Russian MMA fighter dubbed “Popeye” because of his massive biceps is lamenting his “stupidity” for injecting petroleum jelly into his arms – and the coronavirus pandemic has delayed surgery to fully remove the dangerous implants, according to a report.

“I’m only 24, and my immune system is so far coping with this inflammation, but I really do not know what will happen next,” former soldier Kirill Tereshin told East2West News about his 24-inch guns.

Tereshin went under the knife in 2019, but his new girth didn’t matter much in the ring, as he lost to an opponent 20 years his senior — in just three minutes.

Shortly thereafter, he started to complain about problems caused by the implants.

“That is why I started the surgeries to get rid of this nightmare. I bulked up my arms when I was 20 due to my own stupidity. I did not think about the consequences,” he added.

Alana Mamaeva, 33, a leading campaigner against cosmetic surgery abuses, persuaded Tereshin to save his life by going under the knife to have the poisonous mounds removed, accord to the news outlet.

The fighter said he has been left with hardened slabs of the jelly and “dead muscle” tissue in his triceps.

Tereshin said he was “very lucky” there were doctors willing to treat him after surgeon Dmitry Melnikov told him he could die if his arms were not operated on.

“The hardest surgery will be on my biceps… the nerve responsible for the arms’ sensitivity is inside,” he said.

“God forbid something happens to this nerve and I cannot move my arm. I really worry about this, I am very afraid … I should have thought about this earlier, I know. I blame myself, I know I’m guilty,” said the bulked-up brawler, who had injected about 3 liters of the substance into each arm.

The cheap petroleum jelly implants led to “high fever, strong pain and weakness,” he said.

Mamaeva, who is married to Russian soccer star Pavel Mamaev, said she “had to help” Tereshin treat his “horrible, horrible” mutilations.

Later this year, he will undergo additional surgery to remove the rest of the hardened jelly.

via: https://nypost.com/2021/03/04/russian-fighter-popeye-faces-more-surgery-to-remove-fake-muscles/

Photo Credit: Alana Mamaeva

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ power grid manager was fired Wednesday amid growing calls for his ouster following February’s deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures.

Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, becomes the second senior official to depart in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history. The state’s top utility regulator resigned Monday.

Magness was given a two-month termination notice by ERCOT’s board in a meeting Wednesday night. The move came as the grid operator is now under investigation by the House Oversight Committee.

“During this transition period, Bill will continue to serve as President and CEO and work with state leaders and regulators on potential reforms to ERCOT,” the organization said in a statement.

Magness, who made more than $876,000 in salary and other compensation in 2019, was the target of much of the outrage over the blackouts that began Feb. 15 when a winter storm plunged temperatures into single digits across Texas, causing skyrocketing demand for electricity to heat homes. Grid operators unplugged more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which Magness has said was necessary to avert an even more catastrophic blackout that could have lasted months.

But the power did not flip back on for days for millions of residents, and the prolonged outages quickly escalated to a crisis of tragic proportions, as people trying to keep warm died of carbon monoxide poisoning and others froze to death. The storm and resulting blackouts have been blamed for more than 40 deaths in Texas, but the full toll may not be known for months.

At the Texas Capitol last week, lawmakers investigating the outages laid into Magness for his handling of the storm.

Over hours of testimony, Magness defended actions that he said kept the grid that serves most of Texas’ 30 million residents intact.

“It worked from keeping us (from) going into a blackout that we’d still be in today, that’s why we did it,” Magness said last Thursday. “Now it didn’t work for people’s lives, but it worked to preserve the integrity of the system.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has accused ERCOT of misleading the state about the readiness of the grid, placing blame for the outages almost singularly on the grid operators. His outrage has not extended to the state’s Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT and is led by Abbott appointees.

But the commission has also increasingly come under fire. Chairwoman DeAnn Walker resigned after struggling in two lengthy appearances before lawmakers following the blackouts, but said others should also accept responsibility for the outages.

At least six ERCOT board members have stepped down in the aftermath of the blackouts. Many of them lived out of state, a fact that only intensified anger toward ERCOT as the crisis unfolded.

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/texas-power-grid-ceo-fired-after-deadly-february-blackouts/article_d4ad068f-c16f-5300-9575-3022f68b07c7.html

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay

(CNN) — For years, artificial cacti have lined the sandy roadsides of North Scottsdale, Arizona. They look real at first glance but tucked inside are antennas and radio equipment that provide 4G LTE wireless connectivity to the area. Large concealment structures like this, which in this case are about 24 feet tall, have become so good it’s sometimes hard to tell the real cacti from the fakes.

Across the United States, clunky 4G cell towers are often “disguised” with regionally-prominent foliage. Evergreens are attached to sites in the Northeast. In the South, they’re decorated to look like palm trees. And then there’s the cacti out West. In some cases, the equipment is tucked into existing church bell towers, town square signs and on the side of historic landmarks. On farmland, 4G-enabled water towers are set up as props to give the impression they’re part of the landscape.

But with the rollout of 5G, the next-generation of wireless speed, cities like Scottsdale will rely less on elaborate cover ups and more on a piece of architecture that’s been a mainstay in urban and suburban environments for well over a century: street lights.

It’s not as creative as hiding technology in a faux plant but the shift is currently playing out all over the world. “Design will be just as important moving forward with the 5G installations, but we will have a greater focus on streetlights than the cacti,” said Keith Niederer, telecom policy coordinator for Scottsdale.

That’s because 5G radio signals for small cell sites operate at a higher millimeter wave frequency than 4G, making them more easily blocked by objects, such as wooden fixtures or leaves, and certain materials. Consequently, installations must be set up every couple hundred feet — and that distance will shrink even more as data-needy technology like self-driving cars hit the roads. They also need to be close to street level for people to access the signals and the antennas, for the most part, must remain exposed.

All this is to say, you can’t quite put 5G in a pretty box. The technology needs to be out in the open — on main streets, residential roads and frankly, everywhere.

“In Scottsdale, aesthetics are pretty important. Every street has a different theme and streetlights vary,” added Niederer, noting the technical limitations. “We want them to blend in as much as possible and not stand out.”

With speeds nearly 30 times faster than 4G in the US, 5G promises to handle significantly more internet traffic and bandwidth with zero latency, allowing for immediate response times for data transfers. 4G made services like FaceTime or Uber a reality, but 5G intends to do even more, such as help self-driving cars process all the information they need to make life-or-death decisions in the blink of an eye or enable robotic surgeries. But in the short-term, 5G deployment presents an opportunity for the businesses that conceal the technology.

The wireless carriers in the Phoenix metro area, including Scottsdale, are working with Valmont Industries, one of the largest concealment companies in the world and the first maker of the camouflaged pine tree tower nearly 30 years ago in the Denver market, to ensure the colors, designs and use cases fit with neighborhoods. (Valmont just wrapped a similar project with the city of San Antonio, Texas, swapping its signature fluted poles with swooping arms for ones with a similar style but a stronger base and thicker steel to support the 5G equipment.)MD: If You Have Toenail Fungus, Do This Immediately (Watch)If You Have Toenail Fungus, Do This Immediately (Genius!)Ad By TruthAboutFungus.com See More

“There’s no form factor we won’t consider using,” said Mark Schmidt, general manager of communication concealment at Valmont. “Our goal is to bridge the gap between the aesthetics in a community, what a jurisdiction would like to see and what the wireless carrier requires as a form factor. … But the most natural fit here will be traffic lights and street lights.”

Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T, which owns CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia, are pouring billions of dollars into 5G. The new networks and associated technologies are expected to add $17 trillion to global economic growth by 2035, according to ABI Research, a tech market firm. Carriers continue to deploy their networks across the US despite some disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic, such as overcoming engineering problems and installing new cell sites as workers maintain social distancing and city permitting offices were closed in the early days of the outbreak. However, tech companies such as Cisco say the pandemic has highlighted the need for 5G’s high-speed and high-bandwidth connections.

Swapping out older street lights for 5G-capable ones to support that growth may sound like relatively minor process, but doing so will serve as a big step for many communities to become smart cities.

According to Dean Tan, analyst at ABI Research, a lamp posts’ access to a power supply will make them an “integral part of any smart city project.” They can double as electric charging stations, security camera installations or feature LED displays for advertising. The Japanese government has been trialing this approach in Tokyo, where smart poles have public Wi-Fi, cameras, provide real-time traffic updates to help the local administration with city traffic management and have digital advertising and information boards.

Tan said there is a “growth opportunity” for concealment companies as they play a big role in the global rollout of 5G. “Other potential options [beyond smart poles] include bus stop displays, manhole covers and even traffic lights,” he said. However, street lamps are ideal as they have elevation and an existing source of power.”

Tom Kuklo, a global product manager for Radio Frequency Systems (RFS), which is already rolling out components for smart street lights in some international cities, agrees street lamps will soon become crucial communication hubs. “We’re already seeing this in China and some other locations where smart poles are very predominant,” he said. “They’re becoming part of the landscaping; you walk right past them and don’t even know that’s what’s giving you a 5G signal unless you’re looking for it.”

He said there’s an increasing interest in concealment for security reasons, too. Some groups in the UK have vandalized 5G streetlights, shooting them down or setting fire to them, over baseless fears about health risks and conspiracy theories that it’s linked to Covid-19.

“Concealment is absolutely the buzzword and what everyone is trying to do right now,” said Kuklo, noting the various reasons for deployment. “We have at least double of the interest in 5G that we did last year, but we are still rolling out 4G concealment. Not everyone in the world is in the same place when it comes to wireless connectivity.”

via: https://www.kmov.com/inside-the-complicated-business-of-disguising-5g-equipment/article_1da9bb45-2413-5269-ac12-ada5c9c58803.html

Photo Credit: Valmont Industries

A black Florida school resource officer was fired after he was caught on his body camera using the N-word multiple times, authorities said.

Delvin White, an officer at Middleton High School, was dismissed Tuesday for “violations of policy that prohibit discriminatory conduct,” the Tampa Police Department said.

The officer used the racial slur while on the phone and driving home from an off-duty assignment on Nov. 13, the Tampa Bay Times reported. He repeated it again while on the phone with his wife.

Footage also captured White saying the N-word twice while arresting someone for trespassing on Nov. 30, police said.

White told his supervisor that he did not intend for the word to be derogatory during the arrest, authorities said.

Instead, he claimed he was using it as it is “commonly used in today’s society as a means of shared culture and experiences among the African American community,” police said.

Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan said in a statement that such statements can “jeopardize the trust that our department works to establish with our community.”

“Tampa Police officers are held to a higher standard and incidents like this negatively impact the entire law enforcement profession,” Dugan said.

via: https://nypost.com/2021/03/03/florida-school-officer-fired-after-using-n-word-on-bodycam/

Photo Credit: nypost.com