THE GUARDIAN: Reports of fights breaking out over a book reading about inclusive families forced police officers to separate clashing groups
A protest over a Pride month assembly at a Los Angeles elementary school reportedly broke out into fights, forcing police officers to separate groups of protesters and counter-protesters who clashed over the school’s teaching of LGBTQ+ issues.
Tensions at Saticoy elementary school, part of the Los Angeles unified school district, have been rising since last month over the Pride assembly the school has planned to hold on Friday.
The event included a reading of The Great Big Book of Families, which includes details about different family structures including single parents, LGBTQ+ parents, grandparents and foster parents, said Kelly Gonez, a member of the Los Angeles unified school district board. » | Guardian staff and agencies | Saturday, June 3, 2023
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Saturday, June 03, 2023
Thursday, December 01, 2022
USA in the 1940s: A Day in New York & Los Angeles in Colour
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Saturday, September 25, 2021
GBT Seniors Tell Their Stories | LA LGBT Center
Monday, May 14, 2018
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Three US Women Claim Sexual Assault by Saudi Prince in Beverly Hills Mansion
Three US women claim a Saudi prince assaulted them and held them captive during three days of sex- and drug-fueled partying at a Beverly Hills mansion.
The unidentified women, who have filed a civil suit in Los Angeles against Majed Abdulaziz Al Saud, 29, say they were hired by the prince as housekeepers in late September.
The suit, filed last Thursday, alleges that the prince terrorized the women and made sexual advances that included rubbing himself against one of them and asking another “to lick my entire body”.
At one point, he also ordered the staff, including security guards, to strip by the pool because he wanted to see everyone’s “naked pussy”. » | Agence France-Presse in Los Angeles | Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Friday, September 25, 2015
Saudi Prince Arrested Over Alleged Sexual Assault In Los Angeles
A Saudi prince has been arrested on charges of trying to force a worker at a Beverly Hills estate to perform oral sex, Los Angeles police said on Thursday.
Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud, 28, was arrested on Wednesday and was released on £198,000 bond the next day, according to police and online jail records.
The Los Angeles police department's special consul division said the prince does not have diplomatic immunity, according to the Los Angeles Times and KCBS-TV. » | Reuters | Friday, September 25, 2015
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Earthquake Strikes Near Los Angeles
A magnitude-5.1 earthquake shook the Los Angeles area and surrounding counties on Friday evening, authorities said.
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at about 9:09 p.m. and was centred near Brea in Orange County about 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
It was felt as far south as San Diego and as far north as Ventura County, according to citizen responses collected online by the USGS.
"Tonight's earthquake is the second in two weeks, and reminds us to be prepared," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a written statement released about an hour after the shaking stopped. » | Associated Press | Saturday, March 29, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Monday, June 10, 2013
JNS.ORG: LOS ANGELES—Europeans “need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state” to counter the growing Islamization of their countries, Dutch politician Geert Wilders said Sunday in Los Angeles.
“My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe,” Wilders, founder and leader of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, said at the “Europe’s Last Stand?” conference, organized by the American Freedom Alliance.
Wilders described that Europe’s inner cities “have come to resemble Northern Africa and the Middle East” because they are ruled by Islamic Sharia law, noting that Islamic areas border the European Union headquarters in Brussels and that “largely Islamic suburbs” surround Paris.
“Europe is in a terrible state,” Wilders said. “Bit by bit, European countries are losing their national sovereignty.” » | JNS.org | Monday, June 10, 2013
Saturday, September 29, 2012
BBC: Tehrangeles: How Iranians made part of LA their own – Google maps recently recognised "Tehrangeles" as a neighbourhood of central Los Angeles. How did this upmarket part of LA become home to the largest community of Iranians outside Iran? » | Shoku Amirani | Saturday, September 29, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
A land development company belonging to Prince Abdul Aziz, the king’s third son who also serves as deputy foreign minister, has gone to court in an attempt to push through the project after objections from neighbours.
The planning row began after the prince’s firm, Tower Lane Properties, spent $12 million on five-and-a-quarter acres of land in the wealthy enclave of Benedict Canyon in 2009, and applied for permits to build a palatial residence.
Even in an area dotted with multi-million dollar homes, other occupants were outraged by the initial proposal for an 85,000-square-foot compound, and likened it to “building a Walmart in our neighbourhood.”
That was later scaled back to a 60,000-square-foot project but opponents argued it was still out of proportion with surrounding houses.
They called for an environmental impact study, objecting to the disruption and damage that could be caused by construction crews moving up and down narrow canyon roads. » | Nick Allen, Los Angeles | Wednesday, May 23, 2012
VANITY FAIR: There Goes the Neighborhood: Tucked away in Beverly Hills, the secluded neighborhood of Benedict Canyon is home to the sprawling estates of Jay Leno, Bruce Springsteen, and David Beckham, as well as moguls David Geffen and Ron Burkle. But when a mysterious Saudi prince announced plans to build a big spread of his own—85,000-square-feet big, complete with servants’ quarters and a private “sons’ villa”—the claws came out. Led by Martha Karsh, the hard-charging wife of a billionaire investor, the neighbors have hired a team of lawyers and launched a publicity blitzkrieg to stop construction. Michael Shnayerson documents the real-estate war galvanizing this once quiet Los Angeles enclave. » | Michael Shnayerson | Saturday, October 29, 2011
Sunday, September 12, 2010
MSNBC: Envoy says he fears persecution if he leaves the U.S. and returns home
A ranking Saudi diplomat told NBC News that he has asked for political asylum in the United States, saying he fears for his life if he is forced to return to his native country.
The diplomat, Ali Ahmad Asseri, the first secretary of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, has informed U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials that Saudi officials have refused to renew his diplomatic passport and effectively terminated his job after discovering he was gay and was close friends with a Jewish woman.
In a recent letter that he posted on a Saudi website, Asseri angrily criticized his country’s “backwardness” as well as the role of “militant imams” in Saudi society who have “defaced the tolerance of Islam.” Perhaps most provocatively of all, he has threatened to expose what he describes as politically embarrassing information about members of the Saudi royal family living in luxury in the U.S.
If he is forced to go back to Saudi Arabia — as Saudi officials are demanding — Asseri says he could face political persecution and even death. >>> Michael Isikoff, National investigative correspondent, NBC News | Saturday, September 11, 2010
HT: Marisol of Jihad Watch >>>
Comment here
Quote: “C'mon, homosexuality is as common as sand in the Islamic world!” – Kepha [Source: Jihad Watch]
Saturday, May 15, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The first openly lesbian bishop in the Anglican church will be consecrated this weekend, deepening divisions over homosexuality.
The Rev Mary Glasspool will become Assistant Bishop of Los Angeles in a “grand event” taking place at a 13,500-seat arena on the Californian coast.
Her appointment is being made despite warnings from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, about the “serious questions” it will raise for the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion.
It is being viewed by traditionalists as another “provocative” move by the ultra-liberal Episcopal Church of the USA in “defiance” of pleas not to go against tradition and Scripture by ordaining homosexual bishops.
The Communion was first driven to the brink of schism over sexuality in 2003 when the Episcopal Church, the official Anglican province of the USA, consecrated the first openly homosexual bishop, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson.
Since then hundreds of orthodox American clergy and congregations have joined other provinces or formed breakaway movements, triggering bitter legal battles over the ownership of church property. >>> Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent | Saturday, May 15, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
LOS ANGELES TIMES: After a long day of work in Washington and a long transcontinental flight to Los Angeles, President Obama told a crowd of Democratic donors in Los Angeles Monday night that he was "fired up!"
Turns out so were some of the crowd members.
The president's 29-minute speech was interrupted several times by gay protesters impatient with the lack of progress in repealing the military's "Don't Ask-Don't Tell" policy regarding gays.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have both often urged patience on gay-lesbian and transgender advocates, promising to repeal the policy in time. But tonight the protesters would have no more talk of patience, rejecting the president's repeated promise that he would repeal the policy and at one point breaking out into the trademark Obama chant of "Yes We Can!" >>> | Monday, April 19, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
MAIL ON SUNDAY: A white supremacist group rallied against illegal immigration in Los Angeles city centre yesterday as hundreds of counter-protesters gathered in a tense standoff that resulted [in] several arrests, thrown rocks and police in riot gear.
Police officers stood between the white supremacists and counter-demonstrators on the south lawn of Los Angeles' City Hall, where about 50 members of the National Socialist Movement waved American flags and swastika banners for about an hour.
Five people, all of them counter-protesters, were arrested at the demonstration.
The white supremacists, many of them wearing flack helmets and black military fatigue uniforms, shouted 'Sieg Heil' before each of their speakers took the podium to taunt counter-protesters with racial, anti-Semitic and misogynistic epithets.
'We will meet you head on,' one of the white supremacists warned the crowd from behind several phalanxes of police in riot gear.
Members of the Detroit-based group said they picked the location for their rally because of Los Angeles' large immigrant population. They accused some of the immigrants of stealing jobs and committing crimes. >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A member of the radically-orthodox Catholic group Opus Dei has been appointed as the new Archbishop of Los Angeles.
Jose Gomez has been parachuted into the archdiocese of five million to try to lure the increasingly lapsing faithful of southern California back to Church.
The appointment was described as the Pope's revenge on Hollywood for filming The Da Vinci Code.
Benedict XVI's choice comes after Colombia Pictures depicted Opus Dei as a secret society of murderous monks who, according to author Dan Brown, were trying to cover up the truth of Jesus's secret affair with Mary Magdelene.
The appointment will give Opus Dei enormous influence in the American Church and Vatican, and is the most senior appointment for a member of the group.
It will also lead to Mexican-born Gomez, formerly the Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas, becoming the first Latin American US cardinal, a position that will give him influence in Rome and the right to vote at a papal conclave.
The choice is likely to dismay the Catholics of Hollywood, which falls within the archdiocese. The reigning archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, avoided confrontation, but Archbishop Gomez is less likely to duck controversy.
Opus Dei, which he joined in 1978, is seen as one of the most devout of all the Catholic groups. Some of its priests practise self-flagellation while praying to the Virgin Mary and also wear a cilice – a spiked garter – to help them to mortify the flesh and avoid sexual sins.
One of Archbishop Gomez's primary tasks will be to deal with the fallout from the abuse crisis.
None of the 2,000 priests of Opus Dei, which has the status of a "personal prelature" of the Pope, has ever been embroiled in a sexual scandal.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, however, is one of the worst afflicted by the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has convulsed the US Church since 2002. >>> Simon Caldwell | Tuesday, April 06, 2010
LOS ANGELES TIMES: The archbishop is a champion of immigrants yet embraces strict orthodoxy on such matters as abortion and gay marriage.
Reporting from San Antonio and Los Angeles
When Archbishop Jose Gomez introduced himself to the faithful Tuesday morning, he described Los Angeles as "the global face of the Catholic Church." He might as well have been talking about himself.
Gomez, 58, who will succeed Cardinal Roger Mahony, is a reflection of the future of American Catholicism. Born in northern Mexico, now an American citizen, he is one of the millions of Latinos who will make up the majority of Catholics in the United States within the next 10 years.
And like many of those Latinos, he is at once a conservative and a progressive: unyielding in his opposition to abortion and gay marriage, passionate in his advocacy for immigrants and the poor, confounding to those who try to wedge him into the traditional right-left political paradigm.
During his six-year tenure atop the San Antonio archdiocese, Gomez emerged as a leading advocate for doctrinal conformity, determined to stave off what he saw as creeping secularism in the church.
He denounced one Catholic university when it invited then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to campus, because she favored abortion rights, and another when it invited a Benedictine nun, because she had advocated the ordination of women. Under his reign, a local Catholic high school ended its relationship with an organization that raised money to fight breast cancer, because the same organization gave grants to Planned Parenthood. After a 17-year-old lay advisory commission created by his predecessor suggested that gay marriage might be a human rights issue under one reading of the church's teachings, Gomez disbanded the commission.
"The doors were closed for collaborative communication," Mary Moreno, one commission member, said in an interview Tuesday. "We just got a letter. And when things are done like that, it kind of leaves a sting." >>> Scott Gold and, Jessica Garrison and Louis Sahagun | Wednesday, April 07, 2010
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Opus Dei seeks to make everyday life holier: Members attend daily Mass and set aside prayer time. Not all engage in corporal mortification, and those who do say it's nothing like in 'The Da Vinci Code.' >>> Carla Hall | Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels >>>
Sunday, October 11, 2009
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: LOS ANGELES | Le procureur général de Los Angeles a déclaré vendredi que l’appel déposé en Californie par le réalisateur Roman Polanski, arrêté en Suisse le 26 septembre, devrait être rejeté et qu’aucun «exposé des moyens devant le tribunal» ne devrait se tenir.
La requête avait été faite en réponse à une lettre des avocats du cinéaste, adressée à la cour d’appel en début de semaine et demandant un «exposé accéléré des moyens devant le tribunal». Ses avocats soutenaient que la justice californienne ne devrait pas chercher à extrader Roman Polanski de Suisse, parce qu’il avait déjà purgé sa peine pour avoir eu des relations sexuelles avec une mineure en 1977.
Les procureurs ont expliqué que la seule question en suspens, avant qu’il comparaisse devant le tribunal, était de savoir s’il y aurait une audience, sans que Roman Polanski soit présent, pour examiner sa demande d’annuler les accusations retenues contre lui. Mais maintenant qu’il a été arrêté et fait l’objet d’un mandat d’extradition, cette question est sans importance, ont-ils ajouté. >>> AP | Samedi 10 Octobre 2009
Sunday, October 04, 2009
VIRTUE ONLINE: The ultra liberal Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles J. Jon Bruno offered a formal apology to Hindus for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination including attempts by Christians to convert them.
He then authorized a joint Hindu-Anglican service at St John's Cathedral in Los Angeles permitting Hindu devotees to receive the consecrated elements.
According to a statement read on his behalf by suffragan Bishop Chester Talton, he vowed not to proselytize non-Christians. "I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve, in this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community," said the bishop's statement reported by the Los Angeles Times.
A Hare Krishna provided music along with the St John's cathedral choirs. When the Eucharist was celebrated Hindus were invited to receive the consecrated elements. Some Hindus who abstain from alcohol received only the host, the Los Angeles Times reported.
An icon was venerated at the Communion service. While a Hindu band sang a hymn the Anglican celebrant anointed the icon with sandalwood paste, draped a garland of flowers over the icon and lit a lamp, "as a sign of Christ, the light in the darkness." >>> David W. Virtue | Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The suspected arsonist who started the Station wildfire that swept through the hills above Los Angeles last week could face the death penalty, prosecutors say.
Two firefighters died when their vehicle crashed off the road as they worked with a group of inmates battling the blaze during some of the most intense hours of the operation.
Sheriff Lee Baca has said police have launched a murder investigation following the deaths during the biggest fire in the history of Los Angeles County.
A law enforcement source told The Los Angeles Times on Saturday that "material that didn't belong there" has been found at the site suspected to be where the fire started, a twice-scorched slope near Mile Marker 29 along Angeles Crest Highway.
The suspicious substance was reportedly found in the brush off the highway and has been sent for laboratory testing.
The fire, which was 42 per cent contained by Saturday morning, has destroyed more than 154,000 acres and 76 homes. It has cost more than $37 million to fight but the much greater damage to property, wildlife is still being assessed.
There is a recent precedent for an arsonist receiving the death penalty.
In June, Raymond Lee Oyler, a mechanic, was sentenced to die for setting the 2006 Esperanza blaze that claimed the lives of five firefighters.
Even if the fire was accidental, the newspaper reported that the starter could face jail time if charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide resulting from a tossed cigarette, fuel spill or other careless act that caused the fire. >>> Philip Sherwell in San Francisco and agencies | Saturday, September 05, 2009
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