By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 2/13/2010 – “I want this to be a special ceremony for these kids because they have really made a major change,” says Taylor Family Foundation For Kids’ Life Management Skills program president and founder Le’Chein Taylor.

Two days a week over the last three months 22 at-risk teenagers have been a part of Taylor’s after-school mentoring program. The Taylor family foundation has works in conjunction with Soledad Enrichment Action (S.E.A.) Charter Schools in north and south Long Beach.

The Taylor Family Foundation For Kids’ Life Management Skills program is a mentor program to help change the lives of at-risk youths between 10 and 18 years of age.  “Our impact sessions are very effective in saving lives,” says Taylor. “Young adults have challenges. There are some who can’t be in the same classroom because fights would break out. We want those kids. We let them experience love, care, and we give them hope.”

“We bring individuals from the workforce into the classrooms and have open dialogue,” says Taylor. “Most of these kids don’t get to see police officers, attorneys or judges, until they’re in trouble.” The Long Beach Police Department and the Long Beach Fire Department will receive recognition at the ceremony for their participation in the program.

“The participants realize how serious the choices they make can affect their lives, both in the present and in the future,” says Taylor. Students get hands-on training from mentors who overcame troubled pasts, people turned their lives around and are paying it forward so others won’t go down the wrong path. Two of the mentors lost their sight due to gang violence. They’re helping others see the light and not get involved in gangs or violence.

Of the graduating class, ten students are chosen to go on a five to seven day trip to St. Louis, Missouri. There they’ll tour Lincoln University, sit in the front row to watch a professional race car driver race, and go to a ten-acre ranch to ride horses and go fishing.

Le’Chein Taylor says he was inspired by his brother Darren “Bo” Taylor, the founder of Unity One, a program that counseled 3,000 inmates at the Los Angeles County Jail and helped gang members turn away from violence. Bo died of cancer in 2008.  Taylor recently launched The Bo Taylor Foundation to support cancer research, education and services for cancer patients, especially for those who live in inner cities.

www.botaylorfoundation.org

www.taylorfamilyfoundationforkids.org

By Robin Rowe

Iran steals body of nephew after arresting pro-reform opposition, followers of ancient religion resist Islam

By Robin Rowe

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 12/29/2009 – “What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?” asked moderate cleric Karoubi in a report posted by Jaras. Iran arrested at least ten prominent opposition figures on Monday, including three advisers to opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, leader of the banned Freedom Movement Ebrahim Yazdi, and members of the exiled opposition group Mujahideen Khalq Organization.

A group of Mousavi supporters that had gathered in front of Ebn- e Sina hospital where his nephew’s body was kept were dispersed by police firing teargas. The body of Mousavi’s nephew was then taken from the hospital. “We cannot hold a funeral until my brother’s body is found,” said another of Mousavi’s nephews according to Parlemannews. Further clashes were expected at the funeral ceremony.

Opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi accused Iran’s hard-line rulers of killing innocent people. Thousands of people took to the streets in cities across Iran during Sunday’s Ashura festival.

YouTube videos of the Iranian protests are the top videos being viewed today as Iranian censors are losing their grip. Foreign media are banned from covering protests directly and the cellphone text messaging system was down in Tehran on Monday.

“Keep fighting Braves Zoroastrians Persians!!!”, says a comment on the YouTube video. Made using mobile phones, Iranian videos of riots is slipping through the net of Iranian censorship which searches Internet packet transmissions for words like “democracy” and “freedom”. A similar phenomena emerged during the Russian revolution as email was effectively censored by automated filters but the technology was useless against fax machines.

Zoroastrians have experienced extreme persecution in Iran including being sold into slavery. Prior to the Islamization of Iran, Zoroastrianism was the primary religion of Persia. Enslaved Zoroastrians could free themselves by converting to Islam. Once converted to Islam, the family’s children had to learn Arabic and the teachings of the Quran. Once converted, the penalty for renouncing Islam was death. The Arab Muslim conquest of Persia brought the end of the Sassanid Empire in 644.

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 12/29/2009 – “What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?” asked moderate cleric Karoubi in a report posted by Jaras. Iran arrested at least ten prominent opposition figures on Monday, including three advisers to opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, leader of the banned Freedom Movement Ebrahim Yazdi, and members of the exiled opposition group Mujahideen Khalq Organization.

A group of Mousavi supporters that had gathered in front of Ebn- e Sina hospital where his nephew’s body was kept were dispersed by police firing teargas. The body of Mousavi’s nephew was then taken from the hospital. “We cannot hold a funeral until my brother’s body is found,” said another of Mousavi’s nephews according to Parlemannews. Further clashes were expected at the funeral ceremony.

Opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi accused Iran’s hard-line rulers of killing innocent people. Thousands of people took to the streets in cities across Iran during Sunday’s Ashura festival.

YouTube videos of the Iranian protests are the top videos being viewed today as Iranian censors are losing their grip. Foreign media are banned from covering protests directly and the cellphone text messaging system was down in Tehran on Monday.

“Keep fighting Braves Zoroastrians Persians!!!”, says a comment on the YouTube video. Made using mobile phones, Iranian videos of riots is slipping through the net of Iranian censorship which searches Internet packet transmissions for words like “democracy” and “freedom”. A similar phenomena emerged during the Russian revolution as email was effectively censored by automated filters but the technology was useless against fax machines.

Zoroastrians have experienced extreme persecution in Iran including being sold into slavery. Prior to the Islamization of Iran, Zoroastrianism was the primary religion of Persia. Enslaved Zoroastrians could free themselves by converting to Islam. Once converted to Islam, the family’s children had to learn Arabic and the teachings of the Quran. Once converted, the penalty for renouncing Islam was death. The Arab Muslim conquest of Persia brought the end of the Sassanid Empire in 644.

By Robin Rowe

New airport security delays passengers, not terrorists

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 12/28/2009 – Airport security has scrambled to introduce new security measures in the wake of the Delta Christmas underpants bomber terrorist incident. Pat-down searches of all passengers on transatlantic flights, restricting passengers from going to the lavatory an hour before landing or even having blankets, are all rubbish according to aviation experts and common sense. However, there is a simple security measure that hasn’t been done yet.

“Patting down passengers is very tiring for staff when there are 300 people on a flight,” said former head of Heathrow BAA security Norman Shanks in an interview with the Guardian. “Limiting carry-on bags is simply an attempt to control the amount of baggage that needs to be searched, but is not a long-term option. I am not sure the 60-minute rule achieves anything.”

The problem with the 60-minute rule is that most terrorists prefer to blow up aircraft not at the airport but at altitude over the Atlantic, where 50 degree below zero outside temperatures and falling tens of thousands of feet tend to ensure that there are no survivors. Furthermore, such wreckage will be spread across the bottom of the ocean making it difficult to retrieve. It was only a flight delay that caused the Lockerbie bomb to explode while an airliner was over Scotland, which aided investigators in piecing together what happened.

Some news reports suggest that the reason Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to fly undetected from Lagos in Nigeria to Detroit via Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is because airport metal detectors do not pick up explosives. However, Delta flies out of  Lagos and only has a stop in Amsterdam. It was in Nigeria that Abdulmutallab evaded detection. In Amsterdam all he had to do was simply not get off the aircraft.

 No amount of security at Amsterdam would help unless all international passengers are required to deplane and go through security again. There are no reports of this relatively small measure being taken. Instead, everyone else flying from Europe is being subjected to pat-down searches. Abdulmutallab would still get through. Major airport hubs that serve America, such as Heathrow and Schiphol, have better security than developing world airports…if that better security is used.

While airport securty is important, the big failure with the Delta bomber incident is not airport security, but homeland security. Abdulmutallab’s father had warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son was dangerous, yet his name was not on a watch list or a no-fly list. The U.S. no-fly list has half a million names on it, but not Abdulmutallab. U.S. congressmen have found it difficult to get their names off the U.S. no-fly list after being included in error. Apparently, it’s not easy to add names to the list either, that the whole no-fly list system is in desperate need of overhaul.