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| Cairo levee |
While some of the state's poorest residents and children have been living in public housing here described as "third world" and unfit for humans, some employees and management of the Alexander County Housing Authority have collectively taken home hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars via questionable payments, bonuses, consultant contracts, retirement incentives and legal settlements in addition to their regular pay, according to federal and agency documents obtained by The Southern Illinoisan.When he was a candidate for the US Senate in 2004, Barack Obama made a campaign appearance in Cairo--which he recounted in his book The Audacity of Hope. Clearly Obama has forgotten about the people of Cairo.
While denying any wrongdoing, even the agency's former executive director who authorized much of the spending, and much of it for himself, admitted that part of the agency’s financial disaster can be attributed to salaries, benefits and incentives that were "too fat" over the years.
Meanwhile, those who are living in the housing authority’s developments, particularly the two in Cairo designated family developments and that predominantly house African-American adults that are not elderly and dozens of children, have just been barely hanging on as housing conditions deteriorate and violence escalates.
At one family housing development, McBride Place, residents -- at least 97 percent of whom are African-American -- describe serious problems with roaches, rats and, on occasion, bed bugs. They describe calls to the management office to register problems that are not followed through on, or cases where staff are rude when they ask for something as simple as rat poisoning. In a small playground area at the complex sits a rusty jungle gym and a swing-set frame without any swings. Weeds are growing through the cracks of sidewalks, orange concrete barriers are placed at random locations in the parking lot, and low-voltage wiring, presumably for cable and Internet, is strung haphazardly across the exterior of the building.
The president of France pinned his country's highest award, the Legion d'Honneur, on three Americans and a Briton on Monday, saying they "gave a lesson in courage" by subduing a heavily armed attacker on a high-speed train carrying 500 passengers to Paris.The attacker was a jihadist originally from Morocco with known terror ties.
President Francois Hollande said that while two of the Americans who tackled the gunman were soldiers, "on Friday you were simply passengers. You behaved as soldiers but also as responsible men."
Hollande then pinned the medals on U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and their longtime friend Anthony Sadler. All took part in subduing the gunman as he moved through the Amsterdam-to-Paris train with an assault rifle strapped to his bare chest. British businessman Chris Norman, who jumped into the fray, also received the medal.
A sinkhole in Detroit has turned into a fishing hole on Hull Street and McNichols.Last month I was in this same Detroit neighborhood, Grixdale, although I didn't encounter the fishing hole.
People who live nearby say after about four years of dealing with the hole, they decided to turn it into something they could enjoy.
Residents started putting fish into the sinkhole. Now, the fish have multiplied. They have blue gill, goldfish, and carp.
"We like our fish, but honestly we'd like the road fixed," said one neighbor named Pete Bolden.
Militants from the Islamic State destroyed a temple in the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria, activists and government officials said on Sunday, continuing a pattern of destruction that they have visited upon historical sites across the territory they control there and in Iraq.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist and monitoring group based in Britain, said Sunday in a statement that Islamic State fighters detonated "a large quantity of explosives" that they had arranged around the Temple of Baalshamin, one of the most grand and well-preserved structures in the sprawling complex of ruins. A government official told reporters that it was heavily damaged by the blast.
The temple stood "dozens of meters" away from a Roman amphitheater where the Islamic State held a mass execution, killing 25 prisoners, in a video released last month, the activist group said. The entire ancient city of Palmyra is a Unesco World Heritage site.
