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Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

Both were shot in the head.

Lincoln's secretary, Kennedy, warned him not to go to the theatre.
Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.

Both were succeeded by Southerners.

Both successors were named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.

Both names are comprised of fifteen letters

Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?
by Matt Taibbi
America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called “giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all.” If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like.

By BNO News
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- Pakistan's Supreme Court on Thursday acquitted five men accused of participating in a 2002 gang rape in southern Muzafargarh district, Geo Television reported.
The Court upheld the verdict of the Lahore High Court (LHC) of exonerating the five men and sentencing another one, Abdul Khaliq, to life in prison. The Supreme Court suspended the initial 2005 verdict of LHC.


However, the three-member bench of the apex court maintained the LHC verdict in the case of the gang rape against Mukhtaran Mai, a 30-year-old resident of Meerwala village.
On June 22, 2002, Mai was gang raped in her village under orders of an influential local Mastoi tribe council. The victim said on Thursday that she will consult with her attorney the possibility of filing an appeal.
Initially, fourteen individuals were arrested and accused for their involvement in the gang rape. Eight of them were acquitted and the remaining six were sentenced to death penalty.
Afterwards, the Lahore High Court acquitted five of them and changed the death penalty to a sentence of life in prison. Mai filed petitions in the apex court against Khaliq and the other five people.
(Copyright 2011 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.)
Thursday, April 21st, 2011 at 12:35 pm | BNO NEWS |
Latest Headlines
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TORONTO - A Toronto janitor is cleaning up after learning his Lotto Max ticket bagged him a $16.6-million payout.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. says John Addo checked his ticket Saturday at a local store and found he had one of the three winning tickets in Friday's $50-million draw.

The Ghana native, who came to Canada 20 years ago, has been working seven days a week for an industrial cleaning company to make ends meet.

Addo said his friends teased him about his weekly ticket purchase, but he always believed he would win one day.

He plans to buy a home and visit his family in Ghana with his winnings, and also wants to invest some of the money.

Addo, who moved from Montreal to Toronto three years ago, said he couldn't stop crying when he found out that he had won.

EXCLUSIVE: American Idol's Pia Toscano Scores a Record Deal!

Credit: Kaminski/Splash News

Saturday – April 09, 2011 – 10:55am

Comments (73) »

Well that was fast!

Less than 24 hours after her shocking early American Idol exit, season 10 finalist Pia Toscano has scored a record deal, UsMagazine.com has exclusively confirmed.

PHOTOS: Idol's most shocking elliminations ever

The 22-year-old New Yorker -- booted from the Fox series Thursday -- will record her debut album under the Interscope Records imprint, which is chaired by Idol mentor Jimmy Iovine.

"Pia is being signed to a deal with Interscope Records who are rushing her into the studio to record an album ASAP," a source familiar with the contract talks tells Us. "Starting [Thursday] night after the show, Interscope told her they wanted her and first thing [Friday] morning Interscope brass started calling every top songwriter and producer in town to get an album together and rush release it."

VIDEO: Watch Pia's soaring rendition of "I'll Stand By You"

As for the contract, the insider says, "Papers are being finalized. It's basically a done deal. She's signing. They rushed everything but she's so excited."

Though Idol fans are still coming to terms with her dismissal, Toscano -- who will hit the road this summer for the Idols LIVE! concert tour -- is taking her bad news in stride.

PHOTOS: Idol stars' fashions critiqued

"You don't know for sure why things happen, but you know, it did!" she told reporters during a Friday conference call. "It was my time to go on the show and I'm excited to see what my future holds."

NDP FACT CHECK

Reality check: The Ignatieff stand-up and be counted tour?

JANUARY 12, 2011
“He is standing up and willing to be counted” Martha Hall Findlay, Globe and Mail, January 10, 2011

Standing up to be counted? Sounds like a great theme for a tour of Liberal ridings! Let’s check the record:

Michael Ignatieff was absent for a shocking 77% of House of Commons votes in 2010. That’s 107 votes missed.

That compares to 44% for Stephen Harper, 12% for Gilles Duceppe and 7% for Jack Layton.

And on confidence votes? Michael Ignatieff missed 76% of those.

If Michael Ignatieff misses work 77% of the time, is he really interested in being Prime Minister?

Analysis: who won the debate?

Canadian federal election leaders' debate

GLOBAL NEWSAPRIL 12, 2011 9:19 PM




Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, right, gestures to Prime Minister Stephen Harper as the debate during the English language federal election debate in Ottawa Ont., on Tuesday, April 12, 2011.
Photograph by: Adrian Wyld, CP Images
Dr. Royce Koop is a Post Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University. Royce is an expert in the structures and operations of political parties in Canada. His areas of expertise include how members of Parliament construct, maintain and benefit from the local party organizations in their constituencies.

Sandford Borins is Professor of Strategic Management in the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus. He has been a visiting professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and Scholar-in-Residence in the Ontario Cabinet Office. Professor Borins is the author of eight books, numerous articles on public management and a blog on information technology, politics, and government.

How well did the four leaders present their points?

Dr. Royce Koop: Harper is very effective at getting his message across. He is very clear, disciplined, and it's tough to knock him off his game. Ignatieff is not communicating as well as I thought he would. He's clearly new to this debate format.

Were there any knockout blows?

Dr. Royce Koop: There have not been any knockout blows thus far and I don't expect there to be any. There have been a few opportunities for Ignatieff to land some real blows on Harper, but he hasn't taken the opportunity. He is new to this debate forum and I do not think that he recognizes these opportunities when they present themselves.

Who were the clear aggressors and/or defenders throughout the debate?

Dr. Royce Koop: As can be expected, the three opposition leaders are the aggressors and Harper is the defender. However, Duceppe has distinguished himself as an aggressor. His opening comment was a strong, sharp attack of Harper. However, Harper is effectively defending himself in this debate. His strength is being disciplined, and he's keeping his cool very well.

Who preformed best?

Dr. Royce Koop: Harper behaved like the PM-in-waiting. These debate formats actually favour the incumbent PM. Everyone is attacking them, and so they are able to rise above it all and act prime-ministerial. This is how Chretien survived the debates in 1997 and 2000, by riding above all the attacks, and Harper is doing so very effectively tonight.

What was your impression of the Harper-Ignatieff face-off? Who won that tete-a-tete?

Dr. Royce Koop: I think that Harper won that exchange, but it was a close call. Ignatieff has to be able to knock Harper off his game, and he hasn't been able to do so effectively. He came close at the conclusion of the first exchange between them, but Harper came out on top.

Did anything unusual or surprising jump out at you during the debate?

Dr. Royce Koop: I was surprised that Duceppe was as aggressive as he was. It was clear that he was injecting issues into the debate that he intends to pick up in tomorrow's French debate. But it's clear that he perceives the Tories as a threat in this election, and his conduct in this debate proves that.

© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.

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Ex Prime Minister Harper must now call an election after he lost his job today. MP Harper must now see the Governor General on Saturday and Announce he lost and will call a new election on Saturday. Election is suspected to be in the next 60 days
It’s official — the government has fallen from power, clearing the way for a spring election.

The opposition Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois came together Friday afternoon in a historic vote to say they no longer have confidence in the Conservative government.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed reporters after the vote and said he would meet with the Governor General on Saturday “to inform him of the situation and to take the only course of action that remains,” referring to the dissolution of Parliament and an immediate election campaign.

Harper began his remarks by saying that while Canada’s economic recovery has been strong, the global economy is still fragile.

“The budget presented this week by the minister of finance, the next phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, is critically important,” Harper said.

“There’s nothing — nothing — in the budget that the opposition could not or should not have supported. Unfortunately Mr. Ignatieff and his coalition partners, the NDP and the Bloc, had already decided they wanted to force an election instead,” Harper said. “The fourth election in seven years. An election Canadians clearly don’t want.”

“Thus the vote today that disappoints me, will, I expect, disappoint Canadians,” Harper said.

He did not take questions.

Opposition leaders react

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Harper showed his contempt for democracy by not taking questions.

“We’ve seen an historic moment in our democracy … a prime minister condemned by the chamber for contempt,” Ignatieff said. “He’s lost the confidence of the House of Commons.”

“Over 36 days we’ll present an appeal to Canadians who don’t just want to restrain him but replace him,” Ignatieff said in reference to the campaign.

Ignatieff was repeatedly pressed by reporters to state “yes” or “no” to the question of whether he would seek to form a coalition government in the event of another Conservative minority, but he would only say he was focused on presenting a Liberal alternative to the Conservatives.

“If you vote for the NDP, if you vote for the Bloc, if you vote for the Greens, you will get more of this,” Ignatieff said, gesturing back to the House chamber. “More contempt for democracy, more neglect of the priorities of Canadian families.”

NDP Leader Jack Layton portrayed his party as the alternative to the Conservatives.

MORE

By Reality Check Team on April 12, 2011 5:59 PM
Categories: Leaders' debate
Debate's on and we're off to our fact-checking pile of facts and figures.

First up tonight was Conservative Leader Stephen Harper answering a question about corporate taxes and how he would justify them.

Ready for the recession?

It quickly turned into an attack by Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe, who charged that the Conservatives were unprepared for the recession in 2008, when they introduced Jim Flaherty's fiscal update in November 2008.

That was the statment that led to the prorogation of Parliament and the attempt to form a coalition between the Liberals and NDP.

Harper said his government was in close consultation then with other G8 countries about the recession and how to respond with a stimulus package.

But at the time, Flaherty said: "We may have a technical recession when the next quarter is put with this quarter. It may be that both quarters will be slightly negative for Canada," Flaherty said. "At that point we will have had a technical recession."

A few months earlier, he said the Conservative government will not go into deficit to cushion the economy from the slump in the U.S., the global credit crunch, or the strong dollar.

Canada and jobs

In his defence on handling the economy, Harper said the Canadian economy has created more than 480,000 new jobs - more than were lost during the recession.

That's true if you measure from trough to peak. But looking at the job situation over the longer term, Statistics Canada says there has been a net increase of 53,000 jobs between October 2008 and March 2011.

That's due to an increase of 64,000 part-time jobs but a decline of 11,000 full-time jobs since the recession began.

More on the economy

Inside The Budget Deal: Vulnerable Populations Targeted, But Family Planning Saved
First 12-04-2011 11:44 AM EDT | Updated: 12-04-2011 12:00 AM EDT

But not the budget items that are off limits during elections...both democrats and republicans avoid the big three where the most money is wasted...



WASHINGTON –- Congressional leaders unveiled their final budget deal early Tuesday, a $1.049 trillion spending plan that axes billions of dollars for some of the most vulnerable populations while preserving a handful of priorities for both parties.
The budget, which will keep the government funded through the end of September, includes an across-the-board cut of 0.25 percent to every domestic agency.
Key highlights include:
$600 million in cuts to community health centers.
$414 million in cuts to grants for state and local police departments.
A whopping $1.6 billion cut in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, of which nearly $1 billion comes from grants for clean water and other projects by local governments and Indian tribes.
Cuts to homeland security programs for the first time ever, though much of the agency's two percent decrease stems from a $786 million cut in first responder grants to state and local governments.
A $7 million cut to the Bureau of Public Debt, which accounts for and provides reports on the debt.
A $1 billion cut to HIV and disease-prevention funds.
A $3 billion cut to agriculture programs, the biggest portion of which comes from the Women Infants and Children fund, which loses $504 million.
A $390 million cut to low-income heating assistance; Community Development Funds are cut by $942 million.
Contributions to the United Nations and other international institutions are cut by $377 million.
$45 million pulled from nuclear nonproliferation funds.
A $650 million cut to federal highway investments.
A rider tucked in by lawmakers from Western states that allows states to remove wolves from the endangered species list.
Democrats were able to preserve some of their education priorities, including keeping Pell Grant awards at $5,550 and giving a slight boost to funds for Head Start. They also prevented Republicans from slashing funds for the National Institutes of Health: The agency will absorb a $260 million cut, rather than the $1.6 billion cut sought by House Republicans.
Democrats also rescued family planning programs from elimination; instead, they will face a five percent cut. But the budget does restore the D.C. abortion ban, which prohibits the city from using federal or local funds for abortions, for five months.
Republicans can claim victory in defunding two programs under health care reform: the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan and Free Choice Voucher programs. They also succeeded in eliminating several of the Obama administration’s “czars” for healthcare, climate change, autos and urban affairs.

The big story of the week is the end of Glen Beck’s show on Fox News. Has he been cancelled? Is this a reaction to claims Beck’s show was too divisive? Had the sponsors pulled out? Well Beck claims he is ‘transitioning” off the air. His boss, Darth Vader made flesh, Roger Ailes has offered a helping hand: “Half of the headlines say he’s been canceled, The other half say he quit. We’re pretty happy with both of them.”

Loyalty.

For those unsure on Beck have a look at this video. It’s essentially as if Jeremy Clarkson lost the plot, hosted a News show and was watched by millions.

Trump

Donald Trump is potentially going to run for the Republican Nomination for President. Yep. Donald Trump. Host of the American version of “The Apprentice.” That’s the equivalent of Alan Sugar going for Prime Minister.

I can see no reason why he wouldn’t be a great President. I mean he recently bankrupted his own casino company. A casino. His own casino. Only a very special person could do that.

He also gets on with the common man. Recently saying in an interview:

“You know the funny thing, I don’t get along with rich people. I get along with the middle class and the poor people better than I get along with the rich people,”

He probably makes these friendships with comments like: (From the same interview) “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

Word of advice Trumpy. Don’t call them poor to their face and don’t bang on about how rich you are. They tend not to like that, the poor. Apart from that I’m sure you get on great.

Extra Trump

One more thing on DT. Donald the Trump has been doing interviews all over lately. My personal favourite was this one which included the opening gambit of:

“I mean this is very serious, I always take things seriously but, I’ve never taken it seriously like this, this is a very serious time in my life.”

Sound serious.

Independent.co.uk

Trump trumped in 'birther' campaign

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

The billionaire businessman Donald Trump, star of the US version of The Apprentice and aspiring Republican presidential candidate, may have put the brakes on his campaign before it even got off the ground.

Interviewed on the Fox television network on Monday, Mr Trump appeared to throw in his lot with the "birthers" who question whether President Barack Obama was even born in the US, and therefore his right to hold the White House. Producing what he claimed was his own birth certificate, Mr Trump boasted: "It took me one hour to get my birth certificate. It's inconceivable that, after four years of questioning, the President still hasn't produced his birth certificate. I'm just asking President Obama to show the public his birth certificate. Why's he making an issue out of this?"

However, the stunt produced more questions than answers after it was revealed that the document could not, in fact, have been the proof Mr Trump had hoped would legitimise his own claims on the presidency.

Officials in New York said that all genuine birth certificates are issued with the Department of Health's seal, as well as the signature of the city registrar. Much to Mr Trump's embarrassment, his document carried neither.

Mr Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, before moving with his mother to Indonesia five years later.

Leo- Tuesday, April 5, 2011

There is nothing to be gained by taking a pessimistic view of life at a time when the sky has so much to offer you. A successful outcome to a particularly difficult dilemma awaits you. Don’t take anything too seriously. The universe will soon deliver a run of positive news much to your joy. Proof is on the way.

Richard Branson unveils deep-sea submarine plans


REUTERSAPRIL 5, 2011 7:42 PM




Virgin Group head Sir Richard Branson sits on top of a solo piloted submarine during a photo opportunity at a news conference in Newport Beach, California April 5, 2011. Branson and explorer Chris Welch announced plans to launch the submarine to the deepest points of the world's five oceans.
Photograph by: Alex Gallardo, Reuters
LOS ANGELES - Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, known for such exploits as trying to balloon around the world, said Tuesday he planned to explore the deepest parts of the world's oceans with a jet-like submarine.

The 18-foot vessel is capable of descents of more than 36,000 feet below the surface, said Branson at a news conference in Newport Beach, California.

His project, called Virgin Oceanic, will undertake five dives over two years. The first is set for later this year, when the team plans to explore the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench at a depth near 36,000 feet.

Branson plans to pilot a second dive himself, into the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean.

Other areas to be explored are the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean, South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean and Diamantina in the Indian Ocean.

"There is just so much to explore, so much to discover," Branson told reporters. "We are going to obviously come across some fascinating creatures and learn some fascinating things that will hopefully be useful for mankind."

Branson said he expects the project to cost less than $10 million.

Branson said Virgin Oceanic could one day take passengers on deep sea dives, just as his Virgin Galactic project may one day take wealthy passengers on suborbital spaceflights.

Branson launched the Virgin chain of record stores in the 1970s, and his business holdings have grown to include a music recording label and Virgin Atlantic Airlines.

He has used his fortune to fund such efforts as trying to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon and set sailing records.

Last month, a suborbital spaceship owned by Branson's Virgin Galactic was attached to a carrier aircraft on a three-hour flight over California's Mojave Desert.

Its test flights are scheduled through 2011 with commercial operations targeted for 2012.

The company has collected deposits and fares from more than 330 aspiring amateur astronauts, who will each be charged $200,000 to experience suborbital spaceflight.

© Copyright (c) Reuters

Back to A story of survival rises from the ruins of a fishing village

A story of survival rises from the ruins of a fishing village

March 15, 2011

Bill Schiller

A Japanese rescue team member walks through the completely leveled village of Saito in northeastern Japan Monday, March 14, 2011.

David Guttenfelder/AP

TARO VILLAGE, JAPAN—The seawalls that buffer this once-bucolic fishing village from the ocean were supposed to keep people safe from a tsunami.

The 10-metre high walls — more than a kilometre long — gave tiny Taro the feel of a fortified village, impregnable against all comers.

But not every one felt so sure.

When fisherman Tatsuo Haroki felt the force of Friday’s earthquake, he knew there wasn’t a seawall on earth that was going to save him.

He was right: he estimates the waves triggered by the quake that landed on top of Taro were between “12 and 15 metres high.”

They just sailed over Taro’s ramparts, he says, and pulverized the village into a mess of matchsticks and a whirling whirlpool that turned Taro into slurry.

“That earthquake was so huge, we’d never experienced anything like it before,” says the 64-year-old Haroki, standing amid the ruins of Taro. His decision to move quickly was just a “gut instinct,” he says.

He had been down by the sea, fixing his fishing nets when the 9.0 temblor hit. Almost immediately, warning signals were issued from a portable radio he had been listening to.

He ran to his car and sped home to find his wife, Misa, who was visiting neighbours. She leapt in to the car with him and the two sped up the hill that acts as a backdrop to the village

“We didn’t stop to pick up anything,” says Haroki, who has been a fisherman here for more than 40 years. “We just wanted to escape.”

And so they did, just as they had been drilled to.

Incredibly, just a week before, this village of 5,000 had held its annual tsunami drill, an event that occurs every March 3 to commemorate a devastating tsunami that struck Taro in 1933 and nearly wiped it out.

There’s a solemn minute of silence and people pray.

How many survived last week’s tragedy is not yet known, but many locals here estimate as many as 2,000 might be missing or dead.

In the end, engineering didn’t save a soul in Taro.

What saved lives here was good sense.

On Wednesday, Haroki and his wife returned to the village in search of their sodden belongings, whatever they could find.

It wasn’t an easy task and took luck: entire houses after all had disintegrated.

Taro resembled a garbage dump: hectares upon hectares of smashed wood, crushed cars, overturned boats, boats on roofs, kitchen appliances, stereo speakers, clothing, children’s books, a plastic folder of Japanese post cards based on fairy tales, a record album of Jo Stafford featuring Cole Porter’s “You’d be so nice to come home to.”

One boat, more than 30 metres long, had been hurled upside down like a toy.

Another was smashed into shreds and stuck to the entrance of what used to be the local Lawson’s convenience store.

This was village life violently interrupted on a grand scale.

But happily and almost miraculously, the Harokis happened upon a treasure trove of memory: their two family photos albums.

“We burst into tears when we found them,” said Haroki, opening one album to gaze at the pictures. “These are our babies,” he said, referring to their children and grandchildren.

But Taro was by no means unique in its reliance on a massive and intricate seawall. About 40 per cent of Japan’s 35,000-kilometre coastline is marked by concrete seawalls or breakwaters meant to protect the coast.

They are ubiquitous in a country where the expectation of the next big earthquake is part of national consciousness.

And many believe seawalls serve mainly as make-work projects, and to hand out big concrete contracts.

Taro’s is just one of about a dozen major seawalls around the country. But locals like to tell foreigners here how people from “all over Asia” come here to see its famous seawall and to learn from it.

But while many have praised Japan for its demanding building codes and quake-resistant buildings, Friday’s earthquake — and the failure of its elaborate seawall system — could call for a reconsideration of seawalls altogether.

In Taro, once the water cleared the seawall and hit the village, it stayed and raged there, having trapped the entire village inside a kind of ‘bowl’ formed by the seawall itself and the mountains behind the village.

In fact, it could be said that it contributed to trapping victims and drowning many inside the perimeter’s powerful waters.

For 55-year-old grandmother Mikako Watanabe, in her moment of need, the seawall was simply a barrier that had to be overcome. After the quake, with the clock ticking on the tsunami, she had to climb over it to get to her home quickly, in order to save herself and her 5-year-old grandson Yoh.

The two exited out the back door and climbed to higher ground.

“Everyone had said this area was a safe area,” Watanabe said, as she picked through the rubble Wednesday. “We hadn’t had a real tsunami since 1933 and we never really thought that we would see a big one in our lifetime. And of course they built this good seawall and so . . . we were quite happy and relaxed.”

Perhaps that is another risk of seawalls: a fall sense of security.

When Watanabe reached the top of the hill and looked back and saw the waves of the tsunami roaring in, that sense of seawall security was gone forever.

“I was really shocked when I saw it with my own eyes — sawing it breaking over the wall,” she says.

Up on that same hill were her fellow villagers, the Harokis.

Looking down, with the tsunami fast approaching, they all watched in horror as a traffic jam took shape on the village’s main street.

Tragically, people wouldn’t give up their cars and run to save themselves.

Instead, they perished in them.

HUFFINGTONPOST.COM - Unlike most of us, Irving Przyborski didn't wait until April 14 to fill out his taxes this year. He got around to it in mid-March -- a decision that turned out to be worth nine million dollars.

Going through his tax documents, WBBM radio reports, Przyborski came across an old Illinois Lottery ticket from March of 2010. He had bought a number of tickets around that time, and went through most of them, finding no winners. But one of them had apparently fallen into his tax file inadvertently. After he unearthed the missing numbers, he took them to his local corner store, only to discover that he was suddenly, and narrowly, a millionaire.

The ticket was set to expire at 5 p.m. on March 24, nine days after his accidental find. Winning tickets are invalid one year after the drawing date.

As the Chicago Tribune reports, the ticket would have been by far the largest unclaimed sum in Illinois Lottery history. Lotto winnings that go unclaimed are donated to the state's education fund, which, according to LotteryPost.com, receives about $2 million a month of such unredeemed dollars.

Przyborski, whom Lottery spokeswoman Tracy Owens describes as "quiet" and "laid-back," took his winnings in a lump sum. He bought the winning ticket at a 7-Eleven at 107th and Ewing on Chicago's Southeast Side.

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Colonel SandersCARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR

4) The Colonel’s suburban bungalow: Colonel Harland Sanders wasn’t actually a Colonel. He wasn’t actually a Kentuckian either. But he was one of the most famous residents ever to move to Mississauga, living at 1337 Melton Dr. for several months a year from 1964 until his death in 1980. Sanders, who sold his American shares of the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1964, held onto his Canadian assets and purchased the bungalow near the Queensway ...

Roger Ebert @ebertchicago, the esteemed movie critic of the Chicago Tribune and the famed Siskel and Ebert show, has discovered Twitter in a big way.

A prolific journalist, Ebert has become an even more prolific tweeter who seemingly suffers from insomnia as do I.

It’s not so much insomnia as a life long desire to watch late night movies like the Ninth Gate on television.

“Prophesying the End of Days can make you money, but has a limited shelf life.”was his post around midnight last night.

“People have short memories,” @sdpate replied. “you can repeat the act after a reasonable amount of time. JWs have been doing it since the 1860s.” They have named the date for the End of Days at least 16 times since then.

I’ve watched the religion for 6 decades and marvel at their 7 million adherents who regularly ignore the stupidity of believing one wrong End of Days prediction after another.

For a time, I was one of them. My mother converted to be a Jehovah’s Witness when I was 5, much to the anger of my father who was the typical lapsed Catholic. He wasn’t so much as lapsed as a man working two jobs to support a family and weekend tavern habit with a journalist’s cynicism about religion.

So for the next 25 years I heard nothing but Armageddon warnings, about the war between Jesus and Satan and how only Jehovah’s Witnesses would make it through to paradise on earth.

Fire would dance on the surface of the world in the End of Days consuming the wicked – which meant everyone not out selling Watchtowers on the weekends.

As a child, it was an intriguing concept and held in place by daily bible readings, five hours of meetings at the Kingdom Hall, bible study at the dining room table and sundry other bits of brainwashing. I went along for the ride.

Then around 14 years old, the normal age for boys to seek adventure beyond church, I discovered Beyond the Fringe. You were perhaps expecting me to say girls. I had discovered them long before that.

Beyond the Fringe was a London West End satirical skit with Dudley Moore (10, Arthur), Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. In many ways they were the forerunners for Monty Python and were successors to The Goon Show, Hancock’s Halfhour and other post-war British comedy.

The Beyond the Fringe LP of their performance was produced by George Martin who would soon produce for The Beatles records. His early days at EMI Parlophone records included odd jobs like producing comedy records which he he apparently enjoyed.

Along with sacred topics like British participation in the World War II, Beyond the Fringe lampooned people who prophesied the end of the world in a skit called “The End of the World.”




I won’t repeat the punch line and spoil the audio clip but suffice it to say, my rebellious teen mind latched onto this and never believed in Armageddon with the same breathless fervor of the devout Jehovah’s Witness. My mother tried in vain to destroy the record. She understood it’s corrosive danger.

Of course, comedy records are a poor substitute for religious belief. Other than the ridiculous image of people sitting on a high mountain waiting for God to end it all, I had no proof He wasn’t coming.

Rock and roll, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and life were much more interesting to this teenager than marching door to door on Saturday telling people to buy the Watchtower and Awake and avoid the end of the world.

And here is how they get people to stay in a religion based on the most ludicrous of propositions while failing over and over to deliver – “love and marriage, love and marriage, go to together with a baby carriage.”

I fell in love or lust with a girl at 19 and got married. She was a Jehovah’s Witness and zip goes the strings of your heart. I was married, bought a house and fathered two wonderful children before long. So for another five years I tried my darnedest to fall into line and believe God was coming with fire next time.

Luckily the Watchtower announced the date He was coming – October 1, 1975. Just like the Beyond the Fringeskit, JW leaders had read the ancient scrolls, manuscripts and papyrus to determine this was THE END OF DAYS.

Even if I didn’t believe, what were the odds? It was like insurance. Hang in there with a really bad premise because it was only 5 years away and you might hit the jackpot.

As time marched on closer and closer to October 1, 1975, people were leaving their jobs, selling homes, moving to far away places to become missionaries and otherwise prove to God they were his kind of people. The excitement started to build around 1973 and JW’s were adding new members at a rapid clip.

Of course, God didn’t end the world on October 1st, 1975. Nothing happened and just like those silly people sitting on the mountain top, JW’s did a collective “Huh? What happened?”
Like the satirical skit, the Watchtower leaders shrugged their shoulders and said they would try again. “Same time tomorrow. We must get a winner one day.”

Restless, I headed into Charlottetown to UPEI Library and later the Confederation Library to research the Jehovah’s Witness religion. One of the secrets the leaders of the JW’s learned was that publishing builds a religion. If you can create another “world view” in print, people will believe it. That’s why they come to your door regularly with The Watchtower and Awake magazines. They print their own bibles and books with their slant to theology.

What I discovered was that the Jehovah’s Witness religion (International Bible Students IBS back then) started back in the 1860s on the same premise – prophesying the End of Days.

During the 1830s and 1840s, Seventh Day Adventists had predicted the end of the world so many times, their faithful lost faith. Charles Taze Russell, the IBS / JW founder, took some of their bible dating techniques and teachings from other religion and started predicting the End of Days on his own.

In a corporate raider move that Donald Trump would admire, he stole The Watchtower magazine from another religious man and started churning out magazines predicting the End of Days.

From then until now, Jehovah’s Witnesses have prophesied the End of the World incorrectly at least 16 times -I’ll put the list from Wikipedia as end note.

Amazingly, I remembered some of them vaguely from things people would tell me. In every instance of getting it wrong, the faithful Jehovah’s Witnesses had swallowed the rationalization given them in the pages of The Watchtower.

So you can make money prophesying the End of Days. The Jehovah’s Witness religion is rich. They own very valuable real estate all over the world, including some of the choicest spots in Brooklyn New York, printing plants and the free labour of 7 million magazine and book sellers around the world.

Dates Jehovah’s Witnesses prophesied as the End of the World

1877: Christ’s kingdom would hold full sway over the earth in 1914; the Jews, as a people, would be restored to God’s favour; the “saints” would be carried to heaven.[52]
1891: 1914 would be “the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men.”[53]
1904: “World-wide anarchy” would follow the end of the Gentile Times in 1914.[54]
1916: World War I would terminate in Armageddon and the rapture of the “saints”.[55]
1917: In 1918, Christendom would go down as a system to oblivion and be succeeded by revolutionary governments. God would “destroy the churches wholesale and the church members by the millions.” Church members would “perish by the sword of war, revolution and anarchy”. The dead would lie unburied. In 1920 all earthly governments would disappear, with worldwide anarchy prevailing.[56]
1920: Messiah’s kingdom would be established in 1925 and bring worldwide peace. God would begin restoring the earth. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful patriarchs would be resurrected to perfect human life and be made princes and rulers, the visible representatives of the New Order on earth. Those who showed themselves obedient to God would never die.[57]
1922: The antitypical “jubilee” that would mark God’s intervention in earthly affairs in 1925 would take place in “probably the fall” of that year.[58] The chronology was described as “correct beyond a doubt”,[44]“absolutely and unqualifiedly correct”,[45] bearing “the stamp of approval of Almighty God”[45] and “too sublime to be the result of chance or of human invention”.[45]
1924: God’s restoration of the Earth would begin “shortly after” October 1, 1925. Jerusalem would be made the world’s capital. Resurrected “princes” such as Abel, Noah, Moses and John the Baptist would give instructions to their subjects around the world by radio, and aeroplanes would transport people to and from Jerusalem from all parts of the globe in just “a few hours”.[59]
1938: In 1938, Armaggedon was too close for marriage or child bearing.[60]
1941: There were only “months” remaining until Armageddon.[61]
1942: Armageddon was “immediately before us.”[62]
1966: It would be 6000 years since man’s creation in the fall of 1975 and it would be “appropriate” for Christ’s thousand-year reign to begin at that time.[63] Time was “running out, no question about that.”[64]The “immediate future” was “certain to be filled with climactic events … within a few years at most”, the final parts of Bible prophecy relating to the “last days” would undergo fulfillment as Christ’s reign began.
1968: No one could say “with certainty” that the battle of Armageddon would begin in 1975, but time was “running out rapidly” with “earthshaking events” soon to take place.[65] In March 1968 there was a “short period of time left”, with “only about ninety months left before 6000 years of man’s existence on earth is completed”.[66]

Kristin M. Swenson, Ph.D.
Author, 'Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time'
Five Things Everyone Should Know About The Bible, Believe It or Not


The Bible is a peculiar book, and it's hard to get straight information about it. If you're one of those people with a nagging feeling that you should know more about the Bible than you do -- or even if you can recite chapter and verse (but don't know that those chapters and verses come from a 13th century archbishop of Canterbury and a 16th century Parisian, respectively) -- then these five basic things will catapult you to a new level of biblical literacy. Though I might be handing you clunky corrective eyewear instead of sexy kitten glasses, I promise that they will change the way you look at the Good Book, clarifying and focusing your understanding.

1. Every Bible is actually a collection of books. The word itself means something like "little library." Many of the Bible's books developed over a long period of time and include the input of a lot of people (ancient Israelites, Babylonian Jews and Greek pastors, to name a few), reflecting particular places (urban Jerusalem, the northern Galilee, rural Judah and ancient Persia, for example) and times (spanning as much as 1,000 years for the Old Testament and a couple of centuries for the New Testament). Plus, the collection as a whole developed over centuries. This helps to explain the tremendous variety of theological perspectives, literary style, and sometimes perplexing preoccupations (which animal parts go to which parties in which categories of sacrifices, e.g.), as well as why some texts disagree with others.

2. Not everyone who believes in it has the same Bible. There are actually different bibles, though they all started with Jews (but before Judaism, per se). The Christian bible includes and depends upon the Jewish bible -- the Protestant Christian Old Testament is composed of the same books as the Jewish Hebrew Bible, arranged in a different order; and non-Protestant Christians include a few more books and parts of books (which also originated in Jewish circles) in their Old Testaments. The books of the Christian New Testament reflect the process of Jesus' followers gradually distinguishing themselves from his religion, Judaism.

3. The Bible came after the literature it comprises. In other words, the material that became biblical wasn't written in order to be part of a Bible. This helps to explain the existence of a book of erotic love poetry (Song of Songs), one that doesn't mention God (Esther), another of intimate personal correspondence (Paul's letter to Philemon) and maybe why none of it was written by Jesus. The biblical texts are not disinterested reporting of objective facts but come from people of faith informed by particular beliefs.

4. If you're reading the Bible in English, you're reading a translation. With the exception of a small minority of Aramaic texts, the books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible were all written in Hebrew. The books of the New Testament were written in Greek. Every translation is by nature interpretation. If you've ever studied a foreign language, you know that it's impossible to convert exactly and for all time the literature or speech of any given language into another. A translator has to make choices. There are often several ways to render the original text, and changes in English affect the meaning we read as well.

5. Finally, this information about the Bible is compatible with belief in it. A person can simultaneously accept these truths about the Bible and the Bible as the Word of God. Doing so may require recalibrating assumptions, though, to allow for the possibility that God patiently works through people and time, enjoys a good debate and prefers inviting conversation over issuing absolutes. (Even the Ten Commandments, which would seem to be as absolute as anything, show up in two places in the Bible -- and with some differences.)

The Bible's endurance is astonishing. It continues to instruct and to inspire (in all sorts of interpretations and ways) the millions of people for whom it is their sacred and authoritative text. And it continues to ignite the imagination and enrich the speech, literature and art of people outside of the biblical faiths, too. Knowing the few bits of information provided here, as plain and pedantic as they may seem, makes it possible to make sense of the Bible -- its uses and abuses -- for yourself. It's like having the kind of friend who you know will keep you straight, surprise and delight you and encourage you to keep becoming exactly you. This information is more than a starting point. It's also a companion along the way, enabling new insights, providing correctives, and allowing space for the dynamism of your own ideas and learning.
Kristin Swenson is the author of Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time (Harper, 2010; Harper Perennial, 2011) now available in paperback! She is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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SkiDon 26 minutes ago (8:20 AM)
1 Fans
While some believe the Bible is nothing more than the Goatherders Manifesto and others believe it is the inspired word of a sentient being, the operative word is believe. Faith is a component for both points of view. As someone once said, for those who believe no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible. Since I have only been on the planet a short time, I'm still learning and lean toward a creator who has an enormous sense of humor.
Gaz90 29 minutes ago (8:17 AM)
6 Fans
6. It is a work of fiction.
Toddynho 20 minutes ago (8:26 AM)
496 Fans
You read my mind.
DaleR 30 minutes ago (8:16 AM)
83 Fans
#1 -> Its a fictional book of short stories written centuries ago by primitives.
downeastcajun 31 minutes ago (8:15 AM)
7 Fans
the sixth thing to know about the 'bible', and the most important thing, in my view, is that it is written by men, not men guided by some boogeyman 'god', but men, some delusional, some just bent on gaining power over other people ... it's a fairy tale book, people. i'd sooner lead my life guided by the words of aesop or hans christian anderson. grow up!!! santa, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny were created to rule your life, the same as 'god'!

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bbriani3842 25 minutes ago (8:21 AM)
488 Fans
Then his daughters raped him ... ironic.
European1919 17 minutes ago (8:29 AM)
150 Fans
A great randy goat god.

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Julia_Bailey 39 minutes ago (8:07 AM)
163 Fans
I still like the Lot story where he gives his virgin daughters to be raped by the villagers all night in the name of his god. What a great god is that!
darter22 43 minutes ago (8:03 AM)
128 Fans
6. The BuyBull is a work of poorly written fiction by men who weren't even there and then translated by another bunch of angry old white men. No wonder that women and minorities are treated so poorly in it.
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Brant_Kelsey 44 minutes ago (8:02 AM)
87 Fans
I can't even begin to understand what you are asking. If you are asking me do I believe in the infallible Word of God? That's Easy. No. If you are asking me if my life is a Miracle and if I am a Spiritual Being. My Answer is Yes. If you are asking that bastardized renditions of Spirituality handed down as Text and eventuated as Dogma is essential to Peace. No don't buy it. Am i better of for not having erected a belief system that I have adopted and submitted to as some crazy counter intuitive Absolute. Yes I am Better Off. There is much Wisdom in the Bible. There is much Wisdom in Thoreau. Render unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser. Rubs me the wrong Way. Just from a historical perspective and the legacy of Organized Religion.........no not for me. Inquisitions Suck. Crusades Suck. And yet: Thou Shalt not enter the kingdom of Heaven lest ye be as a small child....is wondrously spiritual, and evokes meaning and thought. Implicit in it's understanding is to never relinquish the innocence, the acceptance and the Wonder found in the mind of the Child. This works for me. This I understand. The retribution, the Fear, the Vengeful God, the Wrath of God......Shame coupled with this ethic having been incorporated as a tool of demagoguery, exploitation, conquest, enslavement and robbery. Bad Legacy. Simply anachronistic Superstition. Harm far outweighs the Good

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elijah24 44 minutes ago (8:02 AM)
348 Fans
I'm not sure what was the point of this piece. All of her "facts" seem fairly accurate, but if she wants to teach people things about the Bible that will color their understanding about it, how about the origin of the book itself, and the reason for its compilation? Caesar Constantine, saw his nation about to go into a civil war, as Christians had come to outnumber Pagans for the first time ever. To avoid a civil, holy war; he commissioned the Council of Nicaea; where religious and political leaders, sifted through all the holy books and scrolles and chose the ones which were most conducive to keeping good order and discipline among the citizens of Rome. Then, they announced that Christianity would be the new state religion. They also kept around many of the pagan traditions and incorporated them into Chrisianity. For example, they moved the holy day of worship from the Sabbath (Saturday) to Sunday, because Pagans were accustomed to worshiping the Sun god every week. They also incorporated the celebration of a roman goddes of fertility (Eostre) who's symbols were eggs and rabbits. Maybe if we realize that the reason we even have a Bible had nothing to do with faith, and everything to do with political pragmatism, it would show just how credible (or not) that the Bible really is.
Toddynho 16 minutes ago (8:30 AM)
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Analysis: Let’s cool the political meltdown over nuclear power plants
By Slate slate Mon Mar 14, 11:56 am ET

By William Saletan
Slate

Less than a year ago, a drilling rig exploded off the coast of the United States, killing 11 workers and pouring 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No natural disaster caused this tragedy. It was entirely man-made. President Obama halted deep-water drilling but lifted the moratorium less than six months later. On Friday, while fielding questions about Japan's nuclear reactors, he proudly noted that his administration, under new, stricter rules, had "approved more than 35 new offshore drilling permits."

That's how we deal with tragedies in the oil business. Accidents happen. People die. Pollution spreads. We don't abandon oil. We study what went wrong, try to fix it, and move on.

Contrast this with the panic over Japan's reactors. For 40 years, they've quietly done their work. Three days ago, they were hit almost simultaneously by Japan's worst earthquake and one of its worst tsunamis. Not one reactor container has failed. The only employee who has died at a Japanese nuclear facility since the quake was killed by a crane. Despite this, voices are rising in Europe and the United States to abandon nuclear power. Industry analysts predict that the Japan scare, like Chernobyl, will freeze plant construction.

Let's cool this panic before it becomes a political meltdown.

Early reports said four Japanese plants were in trouble. Now it appears only two were disabled. Early reports said three employees had radiation sickness. Now we're hearing only one is sick, and even in that case, the radiation dose appears relatively low. Two reactor buildings exploded, but these were explosions of excess hydrogen, not nuclear fuel, and neither of them ruptured the inner containers that encase the reactor cores. Some radiation has leaked, but according to measurements outside the plants, the amount so far is modest. Any leak is bad, and the area of contamination, even at low rates, will probably spread. Japan needs our sympathy and our help. But let's not exaggerate the crisis.

In advanced countries like Japan and the United States, nuclear plants are built to standards no drilling rig can touch. If a sensor, cable, or power source fails, another sensor, cable, or power source is available. Containers of steel or concrete envelop the reactors to prevent massive radiation leaks. Chernobyl didn't have such a container. Three Mile Island did. That's why Three Mile Island produced no uncontrolled leakage or injuries.

(What's in the radioactive vapors)

Japan's plants were designed to withstand quakes and tsunamis, but not a combination of this magnitude. At the affected facilities, the quake knocked out the primary cooling systems, and the tsunami wiped out the backup diesel generators. Then a valve malfunction thwarted efforts to pump water into one of the reactors. Everything that could go wrong did.

Despite this, the reactor containers have held firm. The explosions around them have blown outward, relieving pressure, as designed. Meanwhile, plant operators, deprived of their primary and secondary power sources for cooling the cores, have tapped batteries and deployed alternate generators. To relieve pressure, they've released vapor. And in some cases, they've pumped seawater and boric acid into the reactors, destroying them to protect the public. Cooling systems are back online at two previously impaired reactors, and a backup pump has averted cooling problems at a third plant.

The reactor where the crisis began, Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, is one of Japan's oldest. It was two weeks from its 40-year expiration date when the quake hit. Similar plants in the United States have been upgraded to ensure that in the event of power failure, water can still be pumped in to cool them. And nuclear plants are indisputably getting safer. Since 1990, worker radiation exposure and automatic reactor shutdowns worldwide have declined by a factor of three. According to an analysis last year by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, plants being constructed by today's standards are 1,600 times safer than early nuclear plants, in terms of the predicted frequency of a large radiation leak. Even if a reactor core is damaged, as in Japan, the NEA report notes that today, "the probability of a release to the environment is about ten times less than that of core damage," thanks to improvements in fuel, circuits, and containment.

(Follow Slate's coverage of the Japanese devastation)

If Japan, the United States, or Europe retreats from nuclear power in the face of the current panic, the most likely alternative energy source is fossil fuel. And by any measure, fossil fuel is more dangerous. The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last 40 years, Chernobyl, directly killed 31 people. By comparison, Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute calculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than 20,000 people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than 15,000 people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—11,000 in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power.

Even if you count all the deaths plausibly related to Chernobyl—9,000 to 33,000 over a 70-year period—that number is dwarfed by the death rate from burning fossil fuels. The OECD's 2008 Environmental Outlook calculates that fine-particle outdoor air pollution caused nearly 1 million premature deaths in the year 2000, and 30 percent of this was energy-related. You'd need 500 Chernobyls to match that level of annual carnage. But outside Chernobyl, we've had zero fatal nuclear power accidents.

That doesn't mean we can ignore what has happened in Japan. Precisely because nuclear accidents are so rare, we have to study them intensely. Each one tells us what to fix in the next generation of power plants. The most obvious mistake in Japan was parking the diesel generators in an area low enough to be flooded by a quake-driven tsunami. The batteries that backed up the generators weren't adequate, either. They lasted only eight hours, and power outage fallback plans at U.S. reactors are even shorter. Moreover, this is the second time an advanced nuclear facility has had to vent radioactive vapor (Three Mile Island was the first). Maybe it's time to require filtration systems that scrub the vapor before it's released.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut says we should "put the brakes" on nuclear power plant construction until we figure out what went wrong in Japan. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts wants a moratorium on new reactors in "seismically active areas" while we study the problem. That's fine. But let's not block construction indefinitely while we go on mindlessly pumping oil. Because nuclear energy, for all its risks, is safer.

Visit Slate for more political news.

A co-host of two popular home improvement TV shows has been accused by Toronto Police of being a chiseler.

Barrington Anthony Sayers, the featured carpenter on all 52 episodes of W Network’s series Me, My House and I, and co- host of The Unsellables show on HGTV, was arrested Saturday by officers from 53 Division.

In a statement Monday, Toronto Police said an investigation was launched after a woman complained about incomplete renovations on her home and accused the owner of Anthony Sayers Custom Builder and Design of doing shoddy work, harassing her and extortion.

Police said the 41-year-old also uses the name Anthony Sayers.

A graduate of George Brown College with 17 years of professional experience in the building trades, he is charged with two counts of criminal harassment, attempted fraud under $5,000 and extortion.

On its website, HGTV promotes The Unsellables as a show that "transforms unsightly and unsellable properties into real estate gems ‹ and encourages homeowners to let go of the past, get smart and prepare for a sale."

It invites viewers to "join property guru and British TV personality Sofie Allsopp and her trusty contractor Anthony Sayers as she coaches and cajoles home sellers through a major clean-up and targeted makeover that will help them seal the deal. There’s plenty of drama and inspiration along the way--and lots of how-to tips for turning real estate lemons into lemonade!"

Allsopp took the show back to the UK in 2009, but returned to Toronto for a subsequent series that began in 13 months ago.

Filmed in Toronto, The Unsellables airs in Canada on HGTV and in the U.S., Real Estate TV in the UK and The Lifestyle Channel in Australia.

A website for Me, My House and I says Sayers, a native of Jamaica, "worked for some of the top custom builders in Toronto," loves to work out at a gymn, dancing at clubs and calls Bingo at a senior's centre.

The latest episode of The Unsellables aired at 7:30 a.m. and will be repeated at 4:30 p.m. on HGTV.

Sayers, who is not in custody, was ordered to appear at College Park Court on March 28.

© NBC Universal
Original Survivor winner Richard Hatch has been ordered back to prison to serve nine months behind bars.

The reality star, who won the first season of the CBS series in 2000, was sentenced on Friday after failing to correct tax issues stemming back from money owed from both his prize fund and subsequent media appearances.

According to The AP, Hatch currently owes $2 million in both taxes and penalties, and his failure to refile his taxes from 2000 and 2001 caused the residing judge to impose the maximum penalty.

"You can continue to proclaim your innocence," Judge William Smith said during the sentencing. "It needs to be a severe punishment. That's the only thing that will deter you in the future."

Hatch served three years in prison between 2006 and 2009 for the same legal problem, after which he claimed that he would pay back everything he owed to the IRS.

Hatch is currently appearing on the NBC series The Celebrity Apprentice, and had been scheduled to appear on the show's live final on May 22.

The former Survivor star must submit himself to the authorities on Monday.