Geisy Arruda Sues Brazilian University Over Miniskirt Expulsion

A Brazilian university student expelled for causing an uproar while wearing a pink miniskirt has sued her school.
Geisy Arruda asks for $570,000 in damages from Bandeirantes University in Sao Paulo, her lawyer, Nehemias Melo, told the privately run Agencia Estado news service, on Friday.
The university expelled the 20-year-old tourism student in October, then reinstated her after a national furor.
Arruda has said she is afraid to return after she was loudly heckled by hundreds of students when she wore the dress. Melo said earlier Friday in a statement that he asked school officials to provide special protection, but they have not.
Melo's statement said the lawsuit also seeks to force Bandeirantes to let Arruda take her final exams.
University officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Watch the uproar over Arruda and her miniskirt:

• Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A Brazilian university student expelled for causing an uproar while wearing a pink miniskirt has sued her school. Geisy Arruda asks for $570,000 in damages from Bandeirantes Univers...

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A Brazilian university student expelled for causing an uproar while wearing a pink miniskirt has sued her school. Geisy Arruda asks for $570,000 in damages from Bandeirantes Univers...

Bill O'Reilly Slams "Law & Order" Creator Dick Wolf: 'Despicable Human Being'

Bill O'Reilly slammed "Law & Order" and its creator, Dick Wolf, Thursday night on "The O'Reilly Factor."
O'Reilly took particular offense to a recent segment in which one character said:

Garrison, Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, all of them. They're like a cancer spreading ignorance and hate. I mean, they have convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that fail to pay a living wage or a broken health care system.

O'Reilly called that "simply defamatory and outrageous," and labeled Wolf "a coward" and "a liar."
"I have consistently defended poor people who only want a better life," O'Reilly said. "If you watch 'The Factor' you know my beef is with the federal government not controlling illegal immigration and with violent aliens who wreak havoc once they get here."
O'Reilly went on to call Wolf "a despicable human being for distorting and exploiting this very complicated situation."
WATCH:

O'Reilly would discuss the situation with Laura Ingraham in a following segment:

"The Cove" Released On DVD

One of the most controversial films of 2009 is now available on DVD. "The Cove" won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2009, then went on to shock spectators at the Tokyo Film Fest -- you can watch it in your living room. Watch as a group of activists avoid the Japanese government in order to reveal Japan's most hidden animal rights and human health offense - the yearly mass slaughter of thousands of dolphins.
Watch these videos with Ric O'Barry, who's featured in the film, and environmental activist Robert Kennedy Jr. as they discuss water, the environmental sustainability of seafood and mercury in fish.
WATCH:
CLIP ONE

CLIP TWO

The Fair Food Project Tells Farmworkers' Stories

If you eat, you rely on farmers, but you also rely on the labor of 2.5 million farm workers in the United States who earn wages below the poverty limit ($10,000 per year) while risking their lives in the harshest conditions in order to bring us most of the food we eat on a day to day basis.
Photographer and writer Rick Nahmias and the California Institute for Rural Studies have created a multimedia project called "Fair Food: Field to Table," allowing farm workers to tell their own stories, and featuring the voices of farm worker advocates and producers who are pursuing solutions to creating socially just conditions on the farm and in food businesses.
Part one takes a look behind the scenes of the food system, to the places where most farm workers live (because farm workers are often transient, they can get stuck sharing very small spaces with people they don't even know while get submitted to poor drinking water and other demeaning conditions), and to the fields, where the conditions can sometimes look indistinguishable from slavery.
Part two focuses on the solutions growers have found to dignify the work of farm workers -- having a dialog with them, providing health insurance, helping them buy their own home in the community or providing them with separate living spaces with air conditioning. Amy Hepworth from Hepworth Farms in Milton, New York says in the film, "Its so simple when it comes down to labor: happy worker turns into a productive farm."
Part three focuses on what you can do to change conditions for farm workers, and features the voices of organizations, students, chefs and others changing the system.
Watch part one of the project below, and then go here to watch part two and three.

Partner As Guru: Relationship As An Evolutionary Tool

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"Jersey Shore" Girl Punched : Snooki Hit On MTV Reality Show

MTV knew it was courting controversy with its new reality show Jersey Shore, which stars eight of the "hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos" who live and party together for a summer, but a whole new level of criticism is sure to come when they air the epsiode in which one of the stars, Snookie, gets punched in the face by a random man at a bar. (Click HERE for more information on the assailant, a New York gym teacher.)
At the end of the episode tonight MTV shows a teaser clip of Snookie getting punched out and then lying on the floor of the bar. The next shot is of a man in handcuffs being escorted to a police car.
MTV is attempting to defuse the growing storm by showing an anti-violence PSA after next week's episode.
WATCH:

Climate change in northern China: The evaporating tourist trade

Jonathan Watts reports from Anguli Lake in Hebei province near the border with Inner Mongolia, which used to provide resort owners such as NaMuHua and her father, Bianden, with a healthy livelihood. But the changing climate has caused the lake to dry up, along with the tourist trade.

For the full story about how photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer put a human face to climate change, read Weekend magazine on Saturday

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 11 December 2009