Announced to star Vin Diesel as the title character last year, Universal Picture's Kojak looks like it may have found a helmer in Life of Pidirector Ang Lee.http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=111824
"Kojak… New York… Ang Lee…" Diesel posted to his Facebook wall moments ago in response to a fan's question about what director he'd like to work with in the future.
Although it's entirely possible that Diesel is merely pointing out his top choice, to specifically name Kojak as the project coupled with the fact that the film has not yet announced a director suggests that Diesel's dream is about to come true.
Screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Skyfall) are providing the screenplay to the television series adaptation. The original show, which ran on CBS from 1973 to 1978, starred Telly Savalas as NYPD Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak, known for his penchant for lollipops and his catchphrase, "Who loves ya baby?"
Kojak has never before been brought to the big screen but a short-lived series reboot was attempted in 2005 with Ving Rhames in the Kojak role.
Diesel is also set to produce the feature version alongside Samantha Vincent.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/20...d-mentally-black-man-sing-make-animal-noises/A suburban Detroit police officer admitted he asked a mentally ill black man to sing and dance and video recorded the incident.
Videos and and photos with degrading portrayals of black men were submitted earlier this month to the blog, Motor City Muckraker, purportedly from officers who disseminated them to friends and colleagues in the upper class, majority-white Michigan suburb of Grosse Pointe Park. One video portrayed a voice alleged to be an officer asking black men to do humiliating tasks, including “dance like a chimp.” In another incident, an officer allegedly texted a photo of a black man in the back of his trailer with the text, “Gotta love the coloreds.” The journalist, Steve Neavling, told the Huffington Post that he has more than a dozen videos shot by officers, but has not shared most of them because of their “humiliating nature.”
The unnamed officer has been taken off duty and is expected to face discipline, according to Neavling. But it is not clear whether that officer was the only one responsible for the photos and videos.
The incident is one of the most overt manifestations of recent minority mistreatment by law enforcement, particularly young black men. This week, an exposé in Florida revealed an aggressive police program in minority-dominated Miami Gardens is stopping the same individuals hundreds of times on disingenuous allegations of trespassing and other minor offenses. And on Friday, a federal appeals court declined to reverse a federal judge’s ruling that the New York Police Department engaged in unconstitutional racial profiling in its stop-and-frisk program.
Criminal charges are pending against a Calgary mother who police allege relied on holistic treatments instead of getting medical help for her seven-year-old son's strep infection.http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/mother-to-face-criminal-charges-in-son-s-strep-death-1.2436945
On the morning of March 2, emergency crews were called to a 17th Avenue S.W. basement suite where a young boy was having a seizure. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
An autopsy found the cause of death was a strep infection, which would have been treatable with penicillin.
Police allege the mother did not take the boy for treatment, giving him holistic remedies instead.
"The treatment rendered at home was homeopathic in nature. This would include herbal remedies. The mother refused to take the child to a medical professional. No excuse given — just her belief system," said Staff Sgt. Mark Cavilla.
The boy was bedridden for 10 days prior to his death, police allege.
Charges are pending against his 44-year-old mother.
Those charges include criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessaries of life.
GENEVA — Iran and six major powers agreed early Sunday on a historic deal that freezes key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief on some economic sanctions.Link:
The agreement, sealed at a 3 a.m. signing ceremony in Geneva’s Palace of Nations, requires Iran to halt or scale back parts of its nuclear infrastructure, the first such pause in more than a decade.
Illegal immigrants blockaded a federal office that handles deportations in Atlanta on Tuesday morning, and later in the day others in Chicago chained themselves to the wheels of a bus they said was headed to the airport on a deportation run.
The moves were designed to call attention to President Obama’s deportation policies, which the immigrant-rights activists say have gone too far. They want the president to use executive authority to stop almost all deportations.
Heck, that would be a staggering commitment to make even if the Lakers knew that Bryant is sure to be fully healthy and 100 percent of the player he was before going down last year, because using about 37 percent of your salary-cap space (based on a projected 2014-15 cap line of $62.9 million) on a player who mitigates his prodigious offense with dangerous defense makes it incredibly difficult to field a true title-contending team. As it stands, the Lakers will now be paying Bryant, Steve Nash and Nick Young just over $34.4 million next year — add in cap holds to fill out the remainder of the roster, and L.A.'s available cap space this summer dips down to between $22.2 million and $28.5 million, according to salary cap wizard Larry c00n, depending on whether the Lakers decide to keep Nash around for the final year of his deal. (For his part, the injured point guard has said he does not plan to retire at the end of this season, and that he has every intention of coming back for the final year of the contract he signed in the summer of 2012.)
The Los Angeles Lakers have signed Kobe Bryant to a two-year contract extension, it was announced today by General Manager Mitch Kupchak. Per team policy, terms of the contract were not released.
“This is a very happy day for Lakers fans and for the Lakers organization,” said Kupchak. “We’ve said all along that our priority and hope was to have Kobe finish his career as a Laker, and this should ensure that that happens. To play 20 years in the NBA, and to do so with the same team, is unprecedented, and quite an accomplishment. Most importantly however, it assures us that one of the best players in the world will remain a Laker, bringing us excellent play and excitement for years to come.”
Bronx resident Kalief Browder was walking home from a party when he was abruptly arrested by New York City police officers on May 14, 2010. A complete stranger said Browder had robbed him a few weeks earlier and, consequently, changed the 16-year-old's life forever.
Browder was imprisoned for three years before the charges were dropped in June 2013, according to a WABC-TV Eyewitness News investigation.
At the time of the teen's arrest, Browder's family was unable to pay the $10,000 bail. He was placed in the infamously violent Rikers Island correctional facility, where he remained until earlier this year.
Now that he's free, the young man is speaking up about his experience.
"I spent three New Year's in there, three birthdays...," Browder, now 20, said in a recent interview with WABC, adding that he was released with "no apology."
In October, Browder filed a civil lawsuit against the Bronx District Attorney, City of New York, the New York City Police Department, the New York City Department of Corrections and a number of state-employed individuals.
The official complaint states Browder was "physically assaulted and beaten" by officers and other inmates during his time at Rikers Island. The document also maintains the accused was "placed in solitary confinement for more than 400 days" and was "deprived meals." In addition, officers allegedly prevented him from pursuing his education. Browder attempted suicide at least six times.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Browder's current lawyer Paul Prestia summarized his client's experience as "inexplicable" and "unheard of." Based off one man's identification, Browder was charged with robbery in the second degree, he notes. It took three years to dismiss these charges, even though it was, in Prestia's words, a "straightforward case to try."
"The city needs to be held accountable for what happened," Prestia said. "[Browder] had a right to a fair and speedy trail, and he wasn't afforded any of that. He maintained his innocence the entire time, and essentially got a three year sentence for that."
Still, when Browder was offered a plea deal in January, he refused to take it, because he did not want to plead guilty to the crime, WABC-TV notes. (Had Browder been tried in a timely fashion and pled guilty to the crime, Prestia told HuffPost, he might have spent less time in prison.)
Prestia adds that his client has suffered lingering mental health problems, and though he's currently going to school for his GED, he's "clearly way behind from where he would have been."
"We need someone to be held accountable," Prestia said. "This can't just go unnoticed. To the extent that [Browder] can be financially compensated -- although it's not going to get those years back for him -- it may give him a chance to succeed."
The District Attorney's office said it was unable to comment, as Browder's allegations are currently the subject of ongoing litigation.
Incidentally, Browder's claims about his experience at Rikers Island are consistent with findings from a recent report commissioned by the New York City Board of Correction. The report, obtained by The Associated Press, notes that the use of force by prison staff has more than tripled from 2004 to 2013, from seven incidents of force per 100 inmates, to almost 25. Additionally, the number of self-mutilation and suicide attempts by Rikers inmates have increased by 75 percent from 2007 to 2012. According to the report, 40 percent of the city jail's 12,200 inmates are mentally ill, and many of these inmates are placed in solitary confinement "holes" as punishment.
Credit - Amanda Scherker
