Catch me if you can
Using a fake ID is one thing, but using a fake ID with a picture of American actor Jack Nicholson, is another. Brazilian police caught a man suspected of multiple counts of fraud including being accused of presenting false identification forms and going under an assumed name. The accused, Ricardo Sergio Freire de Barros, 41, is 33 years Nicholson’s junior and presumably, didn’t think anyone would notice. It didn’t help matters that Nicholson’s photo attached to the name Joao Pedro dos Santos is already a pretty hard sell. He was arrested last Tuesday in the city of Recife, which concluded a three month police fraud investigation.
American students rally for education funding
American college students staged demonstrations on Monday in Albany, NY and Sacramento, Calif. to protest education funding. In Albany, where representatives process the budget, over 200 students and Occupy Albany protesters occupied two floors of the Capitol building for more than an hour, the Associated Press reported. In Sacramento, thousands of students rallied at the state Capitol to protest the rising cost of public universities. Some were outraged by the recent revelation that it costs less to attend the private Harvard University than to enroll at the public California State University or University of California.
BP oil pays out billions
Everyone remembers the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster as the biggest offshore oil spill in American history, which also makes it one of the most expensive. BP PLC, the company which operated the oil prospect which caused the drilling rig to explode, will be paying out a settlement of $7.8 billion to individuals and organizations who were affected. The spill, which occurred off the coast of Louisiana, killed 11 workers and poured over four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a span of several months. BP has paid for the accident already in more ways than one, losing massive stock and spending $22 billion on cleanup and damage control to date.
Obama not afraid to pick up the phone
It’s not every day an average American gets a phone call from the president, and when it does happen, it’s usually Will Smith on the other end. This was no action movie however, just a sympathy call made from President Barack Obama to a third-year law student who was slandered on air by Republican talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. The student, Sandra Fluke, was called a “slut” and “prostitute” by Limbaugh for addressing congress on Feb. 23 about the importance of providing contraceptives in health care plans. Limbaugh himself later apologized for “insulting word choices.” This is just a taste of the ongoing discussion regarding social policies in the U.S. as Democrats and Republicans alike prepare for battle, or as we call it, electoral season.
