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The brightest and largest full moon of 2012 came over the horizon Saturday night in what is being billed by scientists as the rare appearance of a “supermoon” when the celestial body is closest to Earth this year.
At 11:34 p.m., about the time these photos were taken, the moon was about 221,802 miles from Earth — 15,300 miles closer than average.
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May Day at Occupy Birmingham’s permanent encampment (one of the longest standing in the country) at “The People’s Square” on the corner of 20th St. & 5th Ave. North. For more visit OccupyBirmingham.org.
Thousands of working families are gathering outside the Verizon shareholder meeting Thursday morning in Huntsville, Ala., to protest the company’s “VeriGreedy” treatment of customers, workers and taxpayers.
Even as Verizon tripled the compensation of CEO Lowell McAdam to $23.1 million last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, the corporation was outsourcing U.S. jobs, gutting worker pensions and charging current and retired employees and their families thousands of dollars more for health benefits while cutting disability coverage.
Verizon employees have been struggling to win a new contract for nearly a year, according to the Communication Workers of America and the AFL-CIO.
Verizon is a $100 billion company that paid no federal income taxes in 2010 — but that didn’t stop the corporation from socking customers with a new $30 fee to upgrade phones, giving Verizon another $1 billion a year.
Victory Lapse – The Anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s Death
Republicans are accusing Barack Obama of taking all the credit for Osama bin Laden’s death, despite the president thanking everyone else.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $2 million in grants to be awarded to community health centers in Alabama due to the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act.
Grants from the Affordable Care Act will help build and expand health centers, create jobs, and expand access to an additional 860,000 patients nationwide, according to a White House press release.
“President Obama’s health care law is making community health centers in Alabama stronger,” Secretary Sebelius said. “For many Americans, community health centers are the major source of care that ranges from prevention to treatment of chronic diseases. This investment will expand our ability to provide high-quality care to millions of people while supporting good paying jobs in communities across the country.”
People from all around the Birmingham metropolitan area braved downtown this weekend to check out the art on sale at the Magic City Art Connection, which celebrated its 29th year and featured more than 200 artists at Linn Park.
Some came to support artists with their checkbooks. The spring weather was just about perfect, until it warmed up into the 80s in the afternoon in the sun. But there was a little breeze in the shade by the fountain.
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The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson
It may seem an odd thing to say from a middle-class suburban perch with lawn mowers and weed eaters gnawing at the nearby landscape on a Saturday morning in April, but I woke up this morning with one thing on my mind: subversive writing.
That is, how to explain to readers what subversive writing is and why it’s important, and the role we play on the Web in getting ideas out to people that challenge the status quo.
Perhaps one of the reasons this is on my mind is because of the Chinese activist who escaped custody and may be under the protection of the United States embassy about now, although my thoughts are focused on another Chinese activist who was literally sentenced to nine years in jail for “subversive writing.”
A Chinese court sentenced this so-called “veteran democracy activist” to prison for “inciting subversion,” in what the Associated Press reports appears to be “the most severe punishment handed down in a crackdown on dissent” at least in 2011. Chen Wei was convicted of incitement to subversion over four essays he wrote and published online.
MIT students having been dropping a piano off the roof for 40 years on the last day students can drop classes without having them appear on their college transcript. Watch this video to see this year’s drop.
Harper’s No Comment
