Free Republic

Two pizza delivery chains refused to send drivers to a public housing community Thursday afternoon, shocking and angering members of the AIDS/HIV Services Group and the president of the local NAACP. Kathy Baker, ASG’s executive director, said that when Domino’s and Papa John’s were called to deliver to an HIV testing event at Westhaven public housing community, the businesses responded that they don’t deliver to Hardy Drive. “I find it quite inappropriate. Whether it’s intended or not, it results in socioeconomic and racial discrimination,” Baker said. “We order pizzas from them all the time and it never occurred to me...

SAN FRANCISCO — The man infamous for setting his son on fire in a Buena Park motel room 22 years ago was convicted Tuesday of weapons charges and could face imprisonment for life. Charles Rothenberg, who has legally changed his name to Charley Charles, had admitted possessing a loaded .38-caliber revolver and dozens of rounds of ammunition, which are felonies for such a convicted offender. Taking the stand in his own defense, Rothenberg, 64, claimed a rare "necessity defense," saying that a constant threat of vigilante violence accompanied his pariah status and that he had no viable legal method of...

SAN FRANCISCO — The man infamous for setting his son on fire in a Buena Park motel room 22 years ago was convicted Tuesday of weapons charges and could face imprisonment for life. Charles Rothenberg, who has legally changed his name to Charley Charles, had admitted possessing a loaded .38-caliber revolver and dozens of rounds of ammunition, which are felonies for such a convicted offender. Taking the stand in his own defense, Rothenberg, 64, claimed a rare "necessity defense," saying that a constant threat of vigilante violence accompanied his pariah status and that he had no viable legal method of...

One of Zimbabwe's leading junior athletes, who has won several gold medals in women's events, is really a man, police say. Samukeliso Sithole, 17, has been charged with impersonation. At her court appearance, she insisted that she was a woman, despite a doctor's report to the contrary. Ms Sithole said she was born with both male and female sexual organs and a traditional healer had made the penis disappear but it had since regrown. She told the court that the penis had returned because the healer had not been fully paid for his services. She said that she had already...

Mescal's signature ingredient survives Mexico's liquor police By Jeremy Schwartz Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service Wednesday, February 09, 2005 MEXICO CITY — The world nearly lost a peculiar piece of Mexico's cultural tradition this week after the government, without regard to drinkers anywhere, targeted the lowly worm at the bottom of the mescal bottle for extinction. It seems the worm was almost a victim of Mexico's labyrinthine bureaucracy, which sought to remove it with a set of new laws governing the production of mescal — a liquor lower in quality and rougher in taste than tequila — scheduled to go...

Packin' Heat LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A police spokeswoman called it "unusual" that a 19-year-old almost smuggled a loaded pistol tucked between his buttocks into a county jail last week. Clifton Alexander Carter was transported to the Gwinnett County Jail (search) last Tuesday after a school resource officer at Central Gwinnett High School recognized him as a suspect wanted in Barrow County. Upon searching him, officers found a loaded .25-caliber handgun hidden in the man's buttocks. There was a bullet in the chamber, sheriff's spokeswoman Stacey Kelley said. "I don't now how he was able to conceal the weapon in...