Women seize power from lazy men
Women seize power from lazy men
Women in a Croatian village have seized power from their lazy menfolk in local elections.
After their success, the women of Lozisca on the island of Brac vowed "to let the men back into our beds, but never back into politics".
They won all seven seats on the local council after deciding they were sick of seeing the village men doing nothing for the community.
Merica Bogdan, one of the seven women who was elected to serve on the local council, told local media: "The time has come for women to rule.
"We were not satisfied with the work the men did for the community and we launched a campaign to take political power and do something good for Lozisca.
"Men will never have power here again. We have agreed to let our men be in our beds, but never in politics again."
She added that despite having a tiny budget to work with the all-female council had already arranged for a municipal cleaning service, put up and decorated a Christmas tree in the village square and begun a project to repair the spire on the village church.
Lozisca male residents have admitted the women's work has been impressive since their election.
Tonko Valerijev, whose wife Helena is the newly-elected head of the local council, said: "They are a lot more persistent in their work than their predecessors. Frankly, they're doing a great job."
The dark side of surfing
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Disagreements, sometimes violent, about who owns the beach in Australia are not new.
Long before this month's ethnic riots in some of Sydney's most popular seaside communities, surfers, lifeguards and people who live inland were drawing battle lines in the sand.
"When you are sharing the ocean with like-minded people, the beach becomes like your church," said psychologist Richard Bennett, author of "The Surfer's Mind."
"If someone is coming into your church and blowing out the candles," he said, "you want them to leave."
Running counter to the image of easy-going nomads happy to spend their days riding the ocean's waves, surfers have a history of employing verbal and physical abuse to keep others out of the surf.
A proliferation of testosterone-packed surfing magazines, lighter surfboards and good-as-the-guys girl surf movies such as "Blue Crush" drawing more people into the water, are making matters worse.
The face of former world champion Nat Young, nicknamed "Animal" for his behavior in the water, was rebuilt with titanium mesh a few years ago after a pummeling by a fellow surfer on a popular Australian beach left him unconscious.
LOSING IT
"Increasingly, surfers are losing it. Fists are thrown, knives are brandished, out-of-towners are ganged up on, cars are vandalized and boards are speared," wrote Derek Reilly in the book "Surf Rage," compiled by Young after his recovery.
"Australia's waves have long been a battleground for young men proving their masculinity," said an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. "This is an urban war between tribes."
But it's not just Australia.
Cries of "Locals only" and "If you don't live here, don't' surf here," were coined by surfers from Malibu to Cape Town generations ago and still ring out in many communities.
Tim Banas and his son Tom were beaten when they tried to surf at Lunada Bay, a beach notoriously unfriendly to strangers in southern California.
Lunada Bay now swarms with surf monitors and police escorts, surf cams and undercover cops in the water, wrote "Waves" magazine in an article titled "Endless Bummer," a twist on the epic 1960s travel epilogue "Endless Summer," which implored a generation of young surf riders to seek the perfect wave.
NO BLONDES
In Hawaii, the center of the surfing world, "haoles," or blond surfers, are banned from certain beaches by local toughs.
Australia's lifeguards, struggling for new volunteers ever since the surf craze of the 1960s, draw the ire of surfers by enforcing no-surfing zones in the ocean to protect bathers from errant surfboards.
And in Sydney, people living inland are regarded as intruders by surfers and lifeguards alike. The factions have warred for generations.
"No one wants us here, but it's our beach too. It's just that we don't live here," says Ahmed, a Lebanese-Australian suburban youth who managed to sidestep police roadblocks on Sunday to spend a summer's day on Cronulla Beach, south of Sydney.
A week earlier, 5,000 Cronulla residents, many dressed in the uniform of the beach -- sandals, t-shirt and baseball cap -- clashed with Arabic men and women and police attempting to quell the violence.
Australian media labeled the incident, sparked by a fight between Lebanese youths and lifeguards, the country's worst day of racial tension.
Armed with new powers to make more arrests rushed into law last week, police may have to declare beaches off limits to outsiders over Christmas in hopes of averting a second wave of rioting after learning of telephone text messages calling for "Arabs to unite" against beach residents.
Stolen church money used for breast implants
MEDIA, Pa. - Instead of feeding children in third-world countries and fixing the leaky roof, a woman used money from First Church of Lansdowne collection plates to buy a shore home and breast implants."I was very dishonest and selfish," Colleen Lacombe, 34, of Drexel Hill, told Judge Robert C. Wright tearfully.Lacombe pleaded guilty in September to theft by deception, and made full restitution of $325,000 to the church. Wright sentenced the mother of two to two years of house arrest Tuesday, followed by two years of probation
Lacombe embezzled the money while handling finances at the church from June 2000 until January 2005, when the irregularities were discovered, according to court records.A church co-worker told authorities Lacombe had packages delivered so often they became friends with the UPS delivery man, and took off in the spring of 2001 to have her breasts enlarged, saying it would cost "around $3,000."A church elder, Don Lewis, showed pictures of needed repairs the church had been unable to make and compared them to photos of Lacombe's large, well-kept stone home, saying the theft shook the trust of some parishioners."I have been humiliated and very humbled," Lacombe said.
She said she was grateful to family members who refinanced their homes to enable her to make restitution."I wish I could turn back the clock," she said, adding that what she "thought was important in life, wasn't." Turning to church members filling three rows in the courtroom, she said, "I hope you can forgive me someday."Defense attorney Hugh McElhenney said Lacombe suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder and was undergoing therapy. "A lot of this was out of her control," McElhenney said.Lacombe also must perform 750 hours of community service such as picking up trash along county highways. District Attorney G. Michael Green said prosecutors and church officials were satisfied with the sentence since the money was returned.The Rev. Nancy Wolfe-Holt, the church's pastor, said the missing money had left the church unable to fund promised missionary programs from Chester to China, and now that it was returned, "We are trying to make good on every promise."
Women in a Croatian village have seized power from their lazy menfolk in local elections.
After their success, the women of Lozisca on the island of Brac vowed "to let the men back into our beds, but never back into politics".
They won all seven seats on the local council after deciding they were sick of seeing the village men doing nothing for the community.
Merica Bogdan, one of the seven women who was elected to serve on the local council, told local media: "The time has come for women to rule.
"We were not satisfied with the work the men did for the community and we launched a campaign to take political power and do something good for Lozisca.
"Men will never have power here again. We have agreed to let our men be in our beds, but never in politics again."
She added that despite having a tiny budget to work with the all-female council had already arranged for a municipal cleaning service, put up and decorated a Christmas tree in the village square and begun a project to repair the spire on the village church.
Lozisca male residents have admitted the women's work has been impressive since their election.
Tonko Valerijev, whose wife Helena is the newly-elected head of the local council, said: "They are a lot more persistent in their work than their predecessors. Frankly, they're doing a great job."
The dark side of surfing
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Disagreements, sometimes violent, about who owns the beach in Australia are not new.
Long before this month's ethnic riots in some of Sydney's most popular seaside communities, surfers, lifeguards and people who live inland were drawing battle lines in the sand.
"When you are sharing the ocean with like-minded people, the beach becomes like your church," said psychologist Richard Bennett, author of "The Surfer's Mind."
"If someone is coming into your church and blowing out the candles," he said, "you want them to leave."
Running counter to the image of easy-going nomads happy to spend their days riding the ocean's waves, surfers have a history of employing verbal and physical abuse to keep others out of the surf.
A proliferation of testosterone-packed surfing magazines, lighter surfboards and good-as-the-guys girl surf movies such as "Blue Crush" drawing more people into the water, are making matters worse.
The face of former world champion Nat Young, nicknamed "Animal" for his behavior in the water, was rebuilt with titanium mesh a few years ago after a pummeling by a fellow surfer on a popular Australian beach left him unconscious.
LOSING IT
"Increasingly, surfers are losing it. Fists are thrown, knives are brandished, out-of-towners are ganged up on, cars are vandalized and boards are speared," wrote Derek Reilly in the book "Surf Rage," compiled by Young after his recovery.
"Australia's waves have long been a battleground for young men proving their masculinity," said an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. "This is an urban war between tribes."
But it's not just Australia.
Cries of "Locals only" and "If you don't live here, don't' surf here," were coined by surfers from Malibu to Cape Town generations ago and still ring out in many communities.
Tim Banas and his son Tom were beaten when they tried to surf at Lunada Bay, a beach notoriously unfriendly to strangers in southern California.
Lunada Bay now swarms with surf monitors and police escorts, surf cams and undercover cops in the water, wrote "Waves" magazine in an article titled "Endless Bummer," a twist on the epic 1960s travel epilogue "Endless Summer," which implored a generation of young surf riders to seek the perfect wave.
NO BLONDES
In Hawaii, the center of the surfing world, "haoles," or blond surfers, are banned from certain beaches by local toughs.
Australia's lifeguards, struggling for new volunteers ever since the surf craze of the 1960s, draw the ire of surfers by enforcing no-surfing zones in the ocean to protect bathers from errant surfboards.
And in Sydney, people living inland are regarded as intruders by surfers and lifeguards alike. The factions have warred for generations.
"No one wants us here, but it's our beach too. It's just that we don't live here," says Ahmed, a Lebanese-Australian suburban youth who managed to sidestep police roadblocks on Sunday to spend a summer's day on Cronulla Beach, south of Sydney.
A week earlier, 5,000 Cronulla residents, many dressed in the uniform of the beach -- sandals, t-shirt and baseball cap -- clashed with Arabic men and women and police attempting to quell the violence.
Australian media labeled the incident, sparked by a fight between Lebanese youths and lifeguards, the country's worst day of racial tension.
Armed with new powers to make more arrests rushed into law last week, police may have to declare beaches off limits to outsiders over Christmas in hopes of averting a second wave of rioting after learning of telephone text messages calling for "Arabs to unite" against beach residents.
Stolen church money used for breast implants
MEDIA, Pa. - Instead of feeding children in third-world countries and fixing the leaky roof, a woman used money from First Church of Lansdowne collection plates to buy a shore home and breast implants."I was very dishonest and selfish," Colleen Lacombe, 34, of Drexel Hill, told Judge Robert C. Wright tearfully.Lacombe pleaded guilty in September to theft by deception, and made full restitution of $325,000 to the church. Wright sentenced the mother of two to two years of house arrest Tuesday, followed by two years of probation
Lacombe embezzled the money while handling finances at the church from June 2000 until January 2005, when the irregularities were discovered, according to court records.A church co-worker told authorities Lacombe had packages delivered so often they became friends with the UPS delivery man, and took off in the spring of 2001 to have her breasts enlarged, saying it would cost "around $3,000."A church elder, Don Lewis, showed pictures of needed repairs the church had been unable to make and compared them to photos of Lacombe's large, well-kept stone home, saying the theft shook the trust of some parishioners."I have been humiliated and very humbled," Lacombe said.
She said she was grateful to family members who refinanced their homes to enable her to make restitution."I wish I could turn back the clock," she said, adding that what she "thought was important in life, wasn't." Turning to church members filling three rows in the courtroom, she said, "I hope you can forgive me someday."Defense attorney Hugh McElhenney said Lacombe suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder and was undergoing therapy. "A lot of this was out of her control," McElhenney said.Lacombe also must perform 750 hours of community service such as picking up trash along county highways. District Attorney G. Michael Green said prosecutors and church officials were satisfied with the sentence since the money was returned.The Rev. Nancy Wolfe-Holt, the church's pastor, said the missing money had left the church unable to fund promised missionary programs from Chester to China, and now that it was returned, "We are trying to make good on every promise."
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