Every day, we wake up with a choice. We can choose to embrace the day as a new opportunity to learn, grow, and make a positive impact on the world, or we can let fear, doubt, and negativity hold us back. It's easy to get caught up in the challenges and obstacles we face, but it's important to remember that these challenges are what shape us into who we are. Each obstacle is a chance to learn something new, to become stronger, more resilient, and more capable than we were before.
But we don't hav
GREENBELT, Md. -- Federal prosecutors say a woman has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for her role in a mortgage fraud scheme.
Fifty-two-year-old Cheryl Brooke of Upper Marlboro also had a preliminary forfeiture judgment of more than $2 million entered against her on Wednesday.
Prosecutors say Brooke and others aired television advertisements that offered to help people improve their credit, and save their homes from foreclosure. However, the defendants took control of the homes and then failed to pay mortgages on them, causing the original owners to default.
This is becoming the norm where someone figures out a way to take advantage of the unsuspecting. Bernie Madoff Day showed America with a perfect scheme that any thing can be done with a diabolical plan. My heart goes out to the thousands of people who have been bamboozled out of their money and lost their home simply from a scam. Now that we have the culprit what do we really do with them? The fact is the money is gone, and its not coming back. Even though she will be sentenced, what is that really going to do? I mean it will ease the pain for a few minutes but what about the lifetime of damage that was created by the schemer.
The damage that these elite criminals have created is nothing short of a natural disaster, you never no it coming and after it does you wonder how are you going to regroup. No one should be left in the cold but realistically speaking after the damage is done, what do they really do?
Many of people are sitting with their hands in their pockets wondering how will I make it.
A 69-year-old man with severe medical problems has apologized for robbing a San Diego bank and says he needed money to pay his mortgage to prevent him and his 73-year-old wife from becoming homeless.
In a jailhouse interview with NBC 7/39, Michael Casey Wilson said he needed $50,000 to pay off a 17% mortgage when he walked into the Bank of America branch in the City Heights neighborhood on Monday.
Wilson told a teller he would detonate a bomb in a briefcase unless she handed over money, authorities said. He walked out with more than $100,000 but was arrested a few blocks away on the porch of a house, apparently exhausted.
"I've never done a bad thing in my life," Wilson told a television reporter. "But you get desperate; I guess you throw all that ... out the window."
Wilson, 5 feet 8 and 250 pounds, walks with a cane. His attorney said in a brief appearance in court that Wilson suffers from "major" ailments. Wilson listed those for the TV station as severe arthritis, sleep apnea, heart problems and an emotional issue.
Wilson pleaded not guilty to three charges Thursday in San Diego County Superior Court. He remains in jail on $50,000 bail. No explosive was found in the briefcase.
Wilson said his scheme was to kidnap the bank manager, take a cab to the San Diego airport, drop the manager there and then take a cab to his home. He said he had considered what would happen if he got caught.
When I watched the VMA and witnessed Kanye actions, I was shocked... The rumor was that he had been drinking. Sometime alcohol gives you a fantastic and original ideal. I think that he is realizing that maybe his Epiphany was not such a good thing. I think that just escorting you out of the show was not enough. Maybe they should give you the ass hole of the year award for your stupid behavior!
A snake with a single clawed foot has been discovered in China, according to reports.
Snake that grew a foot out of its body Photo: CEN/Europics
Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night.
"I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw," said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China.
Mrs Duan said she was so scared she grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death before preserving its body in a bottle of alcohol.
The snake – 16 inches long and the thickness of a little finger – is now being studied at the Life Sciences Department at China's West Normal University in Nanchang.
Snake expert Long Shuai said: "It is truly shocking but we won't know the cause until we've conducted an autopsy."
A more common mutation among snakes is the growth of a second head, which occurs in a similar way to the formation of Siamese twins in humans.
Such animals are often caught and preserved as lucky tokens but have very little chance of surviving in the wild anyway, especially as the heads have a tendency to attack each other.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- Doctors had to amputate the leg of a 13-year-old snack vendor who was thrown off a moving train after he reportedly did not have money to bribe a guard, authorities said Sunday.
Part of Mohammed Salahuddin's leg was removed below the knee after it was badly damaged after the fall, said Amit Lodha, a railway police superintendent.
According to published reports, the suspect allegedly hurled Salahuddin off the train on Thursday in anger because he did not have Rs 10 (20 cents) to pay in bribes for selling snacks on board.
"The (arrested) constable has denied these allegations. But he indeed has been found to have thrown the boy out of the train," Lodha told CNN.
The guard was sent to jail Sunday for the incident, which took place in India's Bihar state, officials said. He faces attempted murder among other charges.
In August, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh admitted his country was faced with "pervasive corruption".
"The malaise of corruption, so sapping of our efforts to march ahead as a nation, should be treated immediately and effectively," Singh warned
Police in Conn. say a body has been found in a building where a Yale University graduate student Annie Le, vanished.
The human remains were found inside a wall in a Yale laboratory by Connecticut State Police just after 5 p.m., reports CBS affiliate WFSB - Hartford. It was in an area holding utility cables that run between floors. More than
100 police officials have been searching for Le since Tuesday, when she was last seen.
New Haven's assistant police chief says officials presume the body is that of the missing doctoral student. He says Le's family has been told. Police also say the missing persons investigation is now being treated as a homicide.
New Haven Assistant Police Chief Peter Reichard says the body has not been identified as doctoral student Annie Le, who has been the focus of a massive police search since she vanished in the building on Tuesday.
Le swiped her identification card to enter the building that morning, but there was no record of her leaving, despite some 75 surveillance cameras that cover the complex. Investigators pored over blueprints and surveillance video footage while searching for her.
Le was from Placerville, California. She was set to get married Sunday in Syosset, N.Y., on Long Island's north shore.
The South African government has said it is considering legal action against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) over its handling of a gender verification test on South African runner Caster Semenya.
Speaking at a news conference in Pretoria on Friday, Sport and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile said he was "shocked and disgusted" at the treatment that Semenya has received from both the international media and the IAAF. He said lawyers were being consulted over possible human rights violations amid concerns that Semenya was tested without her consent. (See pictures of Caster Semenya's triumph and trials.)
The press conference came after an Australian newspaper reported that a gender test revealed that Semenya has an intersex condition. In a story published on Friday, the Daily Telegraph said that the test shows the 18-year-old has no ovaries, but rather internal male testes. Semenya came to the world's attention after winning the African Junior Championships in Mauritius in August and then the 800 meters at last month's World Championships in Berlin by an amazing 2 seconds. Her extraordinary times and masculine appearance led the IAAF to request gender verification tests. (Read: "Is a Female Track Star a Man? No Simple Answer.")
South African athletic officials say they have not received results from the tests — and the IAAF has refused to confirm the Telegraph's story. But Stofile said the results are irrelevant: "She may be a hermaphrodite, but so what? She is still a girl ... a young girl enjoying growing up." Stofile added that if Semenya is ruled ineligible for further competition by the IAAF, "it will be a third world war."
On Friday, the IAAF issued a statement confirming that it had results from the tests in hand but urging caution over the Australian reports. "We would like to emphasize that these [reports] should not be considered as official statements by the IAAF," the federation said. "We can officially confirm that gender verification test results will be examined by a group of medical experts. We do not expect to make a final decision on this case before the next meeting of the IAAF Council which takes place in Monaco on November 20-21." (See pictures of the Beijing Olympics.)
Concerns over Semenya's understanding of the gender verification process first surfaced earlier this week, when Wilfred Daniels, her coach at the time of her World Championships victory, told a British paper that Semenya had undergone gender testing before leaving for Berlin with the mistaken belief that they were anti-doping investigations. But that assertion contradicts claims by Athletics South Africa president Leonard Chuene, who has insisted that no gender tests were carried out on Semenya prior to her departure for Berlin. (IAAF spokesman Nick Davies could not be reached for comment on the South African government's possible lawsuit against the federation over human rights abuses.)
In its story, The Daily Telegraph did not say which intersex condition the test has revealed Semenya has. But if the paper's report is accurate, it is possible that she has partial androgen-insensitivity syndrome (AIS), a condition in which a genetic male is partially resistant to androgens, the male sex hormones that include testosterone. In many cases of partial AIS, the testes never descend from the abdomen, the genitalia may resemble female genitalia, and the individual will display both female and male characteristics. People with AIS often have high levels of testosterone as the body produces more to try to exert its actions. Last month, a British paper reported that Semenya's testosterone levels were three times as high as normally expected in a female, which could be in keeping with an AIS diagnosis. (Read a TIME postcard from the home of South Africa's gender bending runner.)
Athletes with AIS and similar intersex conditions are often allowed to compete in international athletics. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, seven genetically male athletes with AIS were allowed to compete as women. On Friday, the IAAF emphasized that Semenya's gender verification tests were a medical issue, not a doping one, and there were no insinuations that the athlete — whose family in South Africa insist she is female — cheated.
IAAF spokesman Davies told the Associated Press on Friday that, whatever the test reveals, Semenya would probably keep her world championship medal. "Our legal advice is that if she proves to have an advantage because of the male hormones, then it will be extremely difficult to strip the medal off her, since she has not cheated," he said. "She was naturally made that way, and she was entered in Berlin by her team and accepted by the IAAF." (See pictures of South Africa.)
The report in the Daily Telegraph and South Africa's response only serve to keep in the public sphere that which is a very private matter. Semenya, at least, seems to be displaying the same gritty fortitude that propelled her to victory in Berlin. When asked by South African magazine You about the gender issue, she reportedly said: "I see it all as a joke, it doesn't upset me. God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I'm proud of myself. I don't want to talk about the tests — I'm not even thinking about them."
Okay when you look at the pictures she realyy does not look much like a woman and to make matters worse when she talks, she sounds like a man...So if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck right? You tell me, although I am sure that their is some man out their claiming this young lady.
