Store withdraws chocolate ducklings over racism complaint
(CNN) — UK grocery chain Waitrose has apologized after being accused of racism over the names of three chocolate ducklings.
The “Waitrose Trio of Chocolate Easter Ducklings” contains a white, milk and dark chocolate version, which were named “Fluffy,” “Crispy” and “Ugly” respectively.
A Twitter user questioned why Waitrose had chosen to call the darkest duckling “Ugly.”
“Overheard women saying ‘this is not right,’ I agree, doesn’t look good at all,” wrote Livia A. Aliberti on March 7.
Waitrose has since apologized in a short statement seen by CNN.
“We are very sorry for any upset caused by the name of this product, it was absolutely not our intention to cause any offence,” reads the statement.
“We removed the product from sale several weeks ago while we changed the labeling and our ducklings are now back on sale.”
One possible explanation for the naming is a reference to the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Ugly Duckling.”
The story features an unfortunate young duckling who is bullied by all of those around him before turning into a swan.
Aliberti thanked Waitrose for changing the packaging in another tweet Tuesday.
Father beat 5-year-old daughter to death after she refused to do homework, police say
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A man was arrested Friday in the beating death of his 5-year-old daughter, Albuquerque police said, noting the girl had bruising patterns consistent with the tread of a shoe.
Brandon Reynolds, 36, was charged with child abuse resulting in death in a criminal complaint that says he told police he became upset with his daughter and started spanking her before “blanking out.” He said he had become angry when she told him she did not want to do her homework.
The death marks the latest in a series of brutal cases in recent years linked to household child abuse in Albuquerque, including the 2014 death of 9-year-old Omaree Varela, who died from internal bleeding after authorities said he was beaten by his mother.
The cases have sparked calls from politicians to enact reforms.
“How many times do we have to talk about this?” Officer Simon Drobik said outside police headquarters. “It’s unfortunate. It’s horrific.”
Online court records did not list an attorney for Reynolds who could comment on his behalf.
Drobik said authorities responded to a 911 call early Friday reporting that a child was not breathing. Reynolds had initially told police that his daughter had stopped breathing as the two were falling asleep and that he had taken her to the living room of their residence, according to the complaint.
Police said they found blood stains on the wall of the living room and carpet. The victim had suffered bruising all over her body, including her back, neck, stomach, left arm, chest, ear and legs, according to the complaint.
After his arrest, Reynolds said he did not know what came over him after he started spanking his daughter with a water slipper around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, according to the complaint.
He said he tried to cradle her after she became lethargic and then placed her in bed, where he put his ear on her chest to make sure she was still breathing. He called authorities while trying to render aid, he said.
Police said they believed only the father and daughter lived at the residence in southeast Albuquerque, and that they had moved to New Mexico from California several weeks ago.
NJ High school principal dies after donating bone marrow to help 14-year-old boy in France
WESTFIELD, N.J. (AP/Meredith) — A New Jersey high school principal has died after slipping into a coma while donating bone marrow to a 14-year-old boy in France.
Family members tell NJ.com that Westfield High School Principal Derrick Nelson underwent the donation procedure at a hospital in February. They say the 44-year-old couldn’t speak or move afterward, and remained in that condition until he died Sunday.
“His final act was one of selflessness,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted Tuesday.
Nelson’s mother says her son went into cardiac arrest during the donation process and that doctors haven’t explained why.
Friends say Nelson, who had a 6-year-old daughter, didn’t know the French teen he was trying to help.
Nelson also served as an officer in the Army Reserve for more than 20 years and had recently re-enlisted. His military service included an assignment in the Middle East.
Devastated by the loss, Nelson’s students remembered him as a “good and caring person.”
“He was so nice. He always had a huge soft spot for all his students,” sophomore Brynne Burke told PIX11 News.
Westfield Mayor Shelley Brindle also offered her condolences to Nelson’s family, friends and “all who were lucky to have known him.”
“This is a tremendous loss for our community, and I know that our children, and we as parents, will struggle with coming to terms with this over the coming days and weeks,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “He was a man of immense character and kindness, and his legacy will live on in the generations of students whose lives he touched.”
Florida man rich enough to buy private island busted for shoplifting
A wealthy Florida Keys man found the dough for an $8 million island off Key West –but was apparently too cheap to cough up the cash for household items he stole them from Kmart, according to reports.
Andrew Francis Lippi, 59, the owner of the Key Haven “Real World” house used in 2006 for the 17th season of the MTV reality series, was arrested on a charge of grand theft over the weekend just days after he purchased the luxe 4.9-acre Thompson Island of Monroe County, The Miami Herald reported.
According to the news outlet, Lippi had swiped $300 worth of goods that included a Keurig coffeemaker, a Hamilton Beach coffeemaker, eight light bulbs and a bed skirt from a Key West Kmart.
Sometime between March 30 and April 5, Lippi bought the wares from the big box department store and then returned the original packaging boxes with other items packed inside, The Miami Herald reported, citing a police report.
Cops say Lippi put a basketball in the Keurig box instead of the $165 coffeemaker, put old light bulbs in the box for the bulbs, and put a pillowcase in the packaging instead of the bed skirt.
The Hamilton Beach coffeemaker was swapped out with an older model, according to the report.
Lippi denied the allegations to The Miami Herald but refused to go into detail.
“Basically it has to do with a commercial dispute,” Lippi said. “I will say this, that the way it was handled by Key West police and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department was wonderful. Some of the finest people I’ve ever dealt with who were kind throughout the whole process.”
When asked about the theft accusation, Lippi said: “It’s very complicated and I’d rather not get into it.”
He added that he purchased the bed skirt from Kmart, but when he got home the pillowcase was inside.
According to cops, Kmart handed over security footage to authorities that showed Lippi with a cart that had the bed skirt in it, the report said.
A week before Lippi’s Saturday arrest, he bought Thompson Island from philanthropist Edward B. Knight.
The island, which is connected to A1A in Key West by a land bridge, is the only private island with direct access to Key West.
The lavish island compound features four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a caretaker’s cottage, a four-car garage and views of the Atlantic Ocean, according to an online listing.
Lippi was released from the Stock Island Detention Center the morning after his arrest, according to the report.
His arraignment is scheduled for April 18.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/09/florida-man-rich-enough-to-buy-private-island-busted-for-shoplifting/
A 7-Eleven owner caught a hungry teen shoplifting. Instead of calling the police, he gave him food
A 7-Eleven store owner was working in the back office when an employee alerted him to a possible shoplifter.
Via the store’s security cameras, Jitendra Singh watched as a teen slyly pocketed items such as gum and candy.
By the time Singh went into the main store area, the shoplifter was at the counter paying for a few items.
“I asked him, ‘Take out whatever you have in your pocket,’ so he took out one of the items,” Singh told CNN.
But Singh knew the teen had taken more. He told the boy to empty the rest of his pockets or he’d have to call the cops.
When the store owner asked why he was stealing the merchandise, the teen said it was because he and his younger brother were hungry.
At this point, an employee had a 911 operator on the phone — but Singh told him to hang up.
“I said, ‘Well that’s not food. You’re stealing gum and candies. That’s just something for munching,’” Singh said. “I said, ‘If you’re hungry, ask me. I’ll give you food.’”
Singh, who has owned the 7-Eleven in Toledo, Ohio, for five years, said his store offers pizza, chicken wings, taquitos, nachos and sandwiches — all of which make for a much better meal.
The store owner understood why the teen was stealing
The store owner decided not to report the boy to the police. Instead, Singh gave him some real food and sent him on his way Saturday night.
“When he said, ‘I’m hungry and that’s why I’m stealing,’ I said OK, he has some genuine problem. He’s not a thief who’s going and stealing stuff and selling it,” Singh said.
He didn’t want the boy’s life to be ruined for trying to feed himself and his family.
“At least (he) won’t go to jail,” Singh said. “Once you go to jail, you’ll have a criminal record later in life. You’re not going to be able to get any good job or anything.”
Customers are praising his generosity
A customer who witnessed the incident posted about it on Facebook. The post has resonated with thousands of people, garnering more than 1,600 shares and 3,700 likes.
Singh said he didn’t expect his good deed to impact so many people.
“Customers are now coming back and saying, ‘You’re a good guy and you did a good thing,’” Singh said. “For me, it was not a big deal. … I did what any normal human being would’ve done in that situation.”
Elfen’s Neosoul Hip Hop EXTRA EXTRA Hip Hop artist Quelle Chris
Again the album cover caught my eye! You can also find Quelle Chris on Bandcamp.com
Every time a shooting makes the news talking heads pop up in small boxes and make loud arguments about how we shouldn’t rush to politicize what just happened. After all, the heads argue, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But how true is that? Are the tools we use simply tools, innocuous until we give them meaning? Or are the things we surround ourselves with –– the things in our arsenal –– begging to be weaponized, for good or for evil? Guns, the new album from the critically acclaimed rapper and producer Quelle Chris, is a careful study of all these questions, an urgent record for urgent times.
“Guns is an arsenal of both sounds, styles, and subjects, Quelle says, taking a thorough look at “the words we say, what we fear, how we love, how we live, what we ingest, what we believe in, who we idolize, shit like that.” To this end, the New York by-way-of Detroit savant attacks his topics from multiple angles: there’s the jagged, minimal “Obamacare,” which plays like a confrontation, but there’s also “Wild Minks,” where Quelle and the enigmatic New Jersey rapper Mach-Hommy spin silk out of the softest textures in their parents’ record collections. In the service of examining big ideas with grave consequences, we get to hear a master technician deploying every piece of ammo he has.
In times that are often beyond parody, Quelle has never been a writer to shy away from the absurd. But Guns is dotted with references to the very real, painfully ordinary fates that might befall us –– be they getting gunned down in church on a Sunday or simply being forgotten by our friends after we’re gone. In preparation for both, Quelle lays his psyche bare. Maybe his identity is best summed up by the three-word descriptor he gives himself toward the record’s end: “handsome, black, and headstrong.”
Quelle handles the vast majority of production duties himself, with assists coming from Dane and Chris Keys. Guns covers sonic ground quickly: it opens with the skeletal creep of “Spray & Pray” and closes with “WYRM,” which is sweeping and contemplative. In between there are detours to the lush and playful (“PSA Drugfest 2003”) and to the grim and digital (“Mind Ya Bidness”). As always, Quelle delivers music that’s innovative and idiosyncratic without sacrificing the gut-punch of more commercial releases; in fact, there are moments when Guns rattles trunks like few rap LPs in recent memory.
Slated for release via Mello Music Group on March 29, Guns is Quelle’s third studio album in three years: each Quelle Chris album is distinct and fully-realized: see 2017’s Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often, an off-kilter probe into the ways we see ourselves, or see last year’s collaboration with Jean Grae, Everything’s Fine, which was biting satire for the dawn of a new dystopia –– and which was adored by critics, being named to ‘best album of the year’ lists by countless publications, including Pitchfork, The Wire, and Bandcamp, who dubbed it the best album of 2018.
Guns is not content to rest on those laurels. “My goal with this and all albums is to create pieces people can enjoy, start to finish, for decades to come,” Quelle notes, fully aware that in a fractured, streaming ecosystem, any shard of your identity released into the world might be the lone artifact that survives. This is a record that is constantly aware of the peril all around us, but instead of shrinking in the face of that knowledge, it reasserts its creator’s identity. Aided by excellent guest turns from the likes of Jean Grae, Denmark Vessey, Cavalier, Mach-Hommy, Bilal Salaam, and more, Quelle Chris has delivered perhaps the most pointed, most personal, and all-together perfectly crafted album of his career.
Elfen’s Neosoul Hip Hop New Music Tuesday Nappy Ninja The Tree Act
I am such a sucker for the unusual visually pleasing album artwork. I mean just look at it. The album cover made me want to press play. The concept of the album is unique in its own right.
The Tree Act is a sonic story of Nina’s navigation through the current world of corrupt marijuana laws and white collar weed , white women’s rights and black women’s work, the inner woes of a black queer body in brooklyn. It is a tribute to inner oakland , to outer spaces and to summer cyphers in chicago where this album first started.
Children at ‘Peppa Pig’ movie in tears following trailers for horror films
Children eagerly waiting to see the new film “Peppa Pig: Festival of Fun” began their theater experience in tears after trailers for horror movies featuring blood and violence were played before the screening.
Parents briefly removed their children from the screening at Empire Cinema in Ipswich, England, on Saturday after trailers for the films “Ma” and “Brightburn” were played before the children’s movie.
“Brightburn,” a superhero horror film featuring Elizabeth Banks, shows a child wearing a mask and seemingly killing a bloodied woman at the end. The trailer shows flashes of hanging bodies. The trailer for “Ma,” starring Octavia Spencer, is filled with sexual violence, blood, bodies and includes a scene of a teen being hit by a truck.
Charlie Jones, a BBC journalist, said she took her daughter to the film screening and attempted to cover her eyes when the scary trailers were played.
“Normally I would expect her [my daughter] to be singing and dancing when watching something like [Peppa Pig] but she was just really subdued,” Jones said. “I tried to cover her eyes during the trailers and told her they were silly films for mommies and daddies, but there were lots of kids crying and she was very confused and started crying too.”
Jones said she went “mad” at the manager after the incident.
“It was meant to be a special day for Annie. I don’t think he understands the impact of it,” she added. “Annie is very imaginative and scared of monsters and things like that at the moment.”
“You go to the movies and you expect it to be a safe family day out, you don’t expect her to be exposed to anything which could do harm,” Jones said.
An Empire Cinemas spokeswoman apologized for “any distress” caused by the incident.
“As soon as the staff on site were made aware of the situation, the program was stopped and trailers were taken off-screen immediately. We do sincerely apologize for this and for any distress caused and will be reviewing our internal procedures to ascertain how this came to be,” the spokeswoman said in a statement to the BBC.
FL man found a body at his childhood home’s backyard during renovations. It was his mom
When Aaron Fraser began excavating behind his childhood home in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a renovation in 2014, he made a gruesome discovery: human remains.
They were the skull and bones of his mother, Bonnie Haim, who had gone missing in January 1993 and whose body had not been found.
Prosecutors say that discovery led officials to arrest her then-husband, Michael Haim, and charge him with second-degree murder.
“The truth was always out there, buried in their backyard,” Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi said in opening statements in the murder trial on Tuesday.
Michael and Bonnie Haim had been having marital problems, and he has long been a prime suspect in the case, his defense attorney Janis Warren said in her opening remarks.
But he has maintained his innocence since her disappearance. In an interview with CNN affiliate WJXT shortly after Bonnie Haim disappeared in 1993, Michael Haim said she left their home on the night of January 6 after a relationship issue.
“Basically she just wasn’t happy and she wanted to leave, and I couldn’t stop her from leaving,” he told WJXT.
Warren said prosecutors did not have enough evidence to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“We agree she’s dead. We agree that’s her body in the backyard. But they have to prove to you that he did it,” she said. “When you listen to the evidence, ladies and gentlemen, and when you’re finished, you’re gonna see the lack of evidence in this case far outweighs any evidence they brought you.”
The childhood memories of Fraser, who was 3 when his mother disappeared, are expected to be a major part of the case against Michael Haim, CNN affiliate WJXT reported.
After his mother disappeared, he told a child welfare worker at the time, “Daddy hurt Mommy,” WJXT reported.
“Aaron also stated that ‘Daddy shot Mommy’ and ‘My daddy could not wake her up,’” a 2015 arrest affidavit said, according to WJXT.
Opening statements in the trial
Bonnie Haim’s remains were found under a shower pallet in the home’s backyard, Mizrahi said. A .22-caliber shell was also found near the body, he said, and Michael Haim owned a .22-caliber rifle.
Although a medical examiner could not affirmatively determine how she was killed, Mizrahi argued that Michael Haim shot her and then buried her there in 1993.
“The defendant’s actions before the killing and after the killing demonstrate his depraved indifference to Bonnie Haim’s life,” he said.
Investigators had searched the property several times in the years after her disappearance, but did not find her remains until Fraser’s discovery two decades later.
“That was the piece of the puzzle that we really felt we were missing,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Director Mike Bruno told WJXT in 2015. “There are so many unsolved or cold cases that are in this same situation of we just need that one clue, that one tip, that one piece. Here, we were able to get it, and to start that piece of closure.”
Warren, Haim’s attorney, said on Tuesday that prosecutors would not be able to prove that he killed her and placed her body there on the night she disappeared.
“The only thing that’s important is: Can they prove he killed her? And can they prove he put the body in the yard? There’s no evidence of either one of those,” she added.
Woman screamed ‘You broke my heart’ while shooting pastor and his wife
COLLIERVILLE, Tenn. — “You broke my heart.” Those are the final words police say Latoshia Daniels told Pastor Brodes Perry before shooting him several times, according to WREG.
According to police, officers were called to the Meridian Place Apartments in Collierville on Thursday after receiving calls from residents stating they had heard multiple gunshots and screams.
When they arrived they found Brodes Perry, executive pastor at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, and his wife suffering from gunshot wounds.
Authorities said the shooter, Latoshia Daniels, was still armed and refused to put down the gun.
Perry’s wife told police Daniels showed up at her home unexpectedly the night of the shooting. Having known her from her time living in Little Rock, she agreed to let her inside the home.
She was escorting Daniels back out when the suspect pulled a handgun and started shooting, screaming “You broke my heart” at the husband, according to a court affidavit.
A police report says his wife knelt by him and Daniels told her to get out of the way, then shot her in the left shoulder.
Perry’s wife told police she didn’t know of any affair taking place between the two but Daniels actions made that seem to be a possibility.
Both victims were taken to the Regional Medical Center where Brodes Perry later died.
While at the hospital, police said Daniels also attacked an officer. Police said the officer was trying to take her into custody and that’s when she jerked away and shoved him before taking off running. Officers said they had to force her to the ground before they could get her handcuffed.
Daniels was charged with first degree murder, attempt first degree murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, assault on a police officer and resisting arrest.
She is being held without bond.