I visited one of our country’s many and burgeoning homeless tent encampments last week. None of the residents wanted me to take a photograph of their face.
“I don’t want my mom to see me like this,” said one man who appeared in his thirties. Another would only allow photos of the unbandaged and bleeding venous ulcers on both of his shins, a familiar sight from my days of outreach nursing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It seemed important to him that I share the evidence of his physical deterioration. But absolutely not his face.
At least 50 thieves descended on a freight train in Chicago’s West Side to ransack whatever items they could get their hands on.
The group of wayward opportunists swarmed the Union Pacific train on Friday to steal multiple boxes before officers arrived.
The robbery occurred just before 4pm in the 400 block of North Lamon Avenue in the South Austin neighborhood.
HAPPENING NOW: Over 100 people are currently looting a train in Chicago.
A freight train carrying boxcars was stopped on the tracks near Lake Street and Laramie Avenue, and several boxcars were open. pic.twitter.com/NvIZ8tttR7
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) October 11, 2024
Expressing traditional beliefs on marriage and the family has become “the potential end of a political career or employment,” which presents “a serious threat to religious freedom” in the West, religious liberty experts were told at a Berlin conference.
The event, held alongside the Berlin Ministerial of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA), focused on the difficulties that believers in traditional teachings on marriage, family, gender, and human nature face in Europe and North America.
The event, titled “FoRB and Tolerance for Tradition: The Challenge for the Pluralistic West,” drew speakers from Asia, America, and Europe.
Portland’s ‘open-air asylum experiment’ is largely over, making the city – with its fantastic food scene – an appealing holiday option again
I get off the bus at SW 6th Avenue, a handsome tree-lined street at the heart of downtown Portland. The site of the notorious former open-air fentanyl market outside an abandoned shopping mall, where until last year the strong and very cheap synthetic opioid was being freely traded, is now boarded up. The streets are quiet. On the next block I admire the handsome, historic facades of the US National Bank and Wells Fargo buildings and the securely-fenced new Midtown Beer Garden throngs with smart professionals seeking lunch from a score of food carts.
First and foremost, I avoid all confrontation,” Robert Freeman, a 47-year-old bus driver in Queens, remarked to the New York Times. “Me, I just concentrate on driving, and I don’t say nothing.” It was an apt summary of the city’s attitude towards petty criminals, who have been all too happy to take advantage of New York’s deteriorating public order — including in Freeman’s line of work.
Toronto wants to be a world-class city, but after years of constant construction I’m getting out — as soon as I sell my condo
“We’re in a holding pattern,” said my real estate agent. “It’s a buyer’s market and it’s slow everywhere right now. In fact, there’s a surplus of condos in your sector right now.”
Great.
A surplus.
Just when I thought I had an exclusive condo based on size and location for sale in downtown Toronto, buyers have a broad selection. I’m on this adventure in the real estate market featuring motivated sellers (me) and cautious buyers (everybody else) as, after 12 years in one place, my wife and I have decided to join the exodus of Torontonians searching for a little tranquility elsewhere.
A California bike mob ransacked three separate 7-Eleven stores in under 20 minutes just hours after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a “landmark” package to crack down on retail thefts.
Approximately 20 bicycling riding thieves targeted the Hollywood area convenience stores two miles apart on Friday night, according to NBC Los Angeles, citing the LAPD.
The brazen bunch broke into each store and stole food and drink items beginning with the 7-Eleven located at 7040 West Sunset Boulevard just after 8 p.m.
A palpable tension hangs over Encino as news of the latest burglary spreads through the San Fernando Valley neighborhood after months of reported break-ins.
It’s all people seem to talk about while walking their dogs or in group text chats with neighbors. Some residents want to form a neighborhood watch, while others are taking quotes from private security companies to patrol the streets outside their multimillion-dollar homes.
At least 10 burglaries were reported in Encino in the last month, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Residents say there have probably been more in this Valley neighborhood, which is home to roughly 60,000 people.
To showcase his city, the mayor puts his antipolice policies on hold until after the convention.
The Democratic National Committee presented its 2024 convention site as a show of confidence. “Chicago is a world-class city that looks like America and demonstrates the values of the Democratic Party,” Brandon Johnson, then mayor-elect, said in the DNC’s April 2023 announcement.
Fast-forward to this July 4. Over the four-day holiday weekend in Chicago, 19 people were fatally shot and more than 100 wounded by gunfire. One of them, 8-year-old Bryson Orr, was killed along with two women in a drive-by shooting. This wasn’t unusual. On Memorial Day weekend, 10 people lost their lives to gun violence, including 5-year-old Reign Ware. On Father’s Day weekend, more than 70 people were shot and eight killed. The child victims this summer include 7-year-old Jai’Mani Amir Rivera, fatally shot in the chest while walking to a neighbor’s house on June 18. A 3-month-old boy named Jemimah—his parents, fearing for their safety, have kept the family name out of the news—was shot in the chest on July 27 while riding in a car and remains in critical condition. On Thursday, a 3-year-old boy was grazed by a bullet fired by an adversary of his father.
I recently traveled by car to Baltimore to seek medical testing at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.
I was shocked to see the many empty and boarded-up buildings between the Inner Harbor area, the athletic arenas for baseball, and football and the Johns Hopkins Medical campus.
The city is gripped in an opioid crisis worse than America’s. Locals say overly liberal drug laws have sparked a catastrophe
“Hailey, are you okay? You have to communicate with me,” says Larry.
“Yes, I feel fine,” she replies.
“Okay, hold still.”
Eyes wide and hands trembling, Larry, 32, flicks the syringe’s needle before crouching over his friend and injecting a mixture of fentanyl and benzodiazepines into a prominent vein in her neck.
Car theft and drugs just two of the categories putting Canada on the world stage.
In most crime-infested blue cities, officials make at least the pretense of caring about law and order. Sometimes they even take temporary or sporadic action in response to particularly egregious events, hoping to placate the public until the next blow-up.
Checking in on California and we find that civilization continues to unravel at an alarming rate, but nowhere is that more obvious than taking a look at the Bay Area. Here’s the latest, from an item out at a local outlet:
Thirteen senior citizens reported being brutally attacked and robbed in just one week in an Oakland community. But according to leaders at one senior living facility in the city, they say the number is much higher and closer to an astounding 30.
I was at a gathering recently for my aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary. The party also served as a farewell: my cousin and his family were moving the next day from the GTA to Alberta.
They told us of the job opportunities, and of the six-bedroom house with ample parking and yard space they were able to afford on their southern Ontario budget.
The California governor paints a rosy picture of a state that is failing badly.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a 28-minute pre-recorded State of the State address and ominously opined that the state’s values and status as “a beacon of hope” are “under assault.”
