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Singer dropped by Yankees after allegedly slurring Jews
NEW YORK (WJC)-- The Irish ‘God Bless America’ singer Ronan Tynan was dumped by the New York Yankees baseball club following anti-Semitic comments, the team said. Tynan, familiar to fans for singing ‘God Bless America’ break at Yankees play-off games, was absent last Friday for the first game of the Yankees' American League Championship Series with the Los Angeles Angels. The Yankees confirmed he had been dropped from the program because he had referred to prospective buyers at the apartment building he lives in as "scary" Jewish ladies.
He made the comment after a real estate agent had assured him the prospective buyers are not Red Sox fans."I don't care about that," Tynan said, "as long as they are not Jewish." The Yankees said Tynan had made the remark to Gabrielle Gold-von Simson, a New York University Medical Center pediatrician, who reported it to the Yankees front office. "He said it was a bad joke," team spokeswoman Alice McGillion said. "So we told him that was absolutely intolerable behavior and he needed to apologize." Tynan was not a Yankees employee, McGillion said, and the team had "no plans for him to sing" for the rest of the playoffs.
Iran threatens to enrich
uranium if deal not reached
VIENNA, Austria (WJC)—Iran will not hesitate to produce more highly-enriched uranium if there is no deal at talks with major powers starting in Vienna on Monday. The talks with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Russia, France and the United States offered the first chance to build on proposals for defusing tensions over Iran's nuclear activity that were raised at a high-level meeting in Geneva earlier this month. Before the Vienna talks, Iran’s Nuclear Energy Agency spokesman Ali Shirzadian said it was not "economically feasible" for Iran to further purify low enriched uranium (LEU) itself to yield the 150-300 kg of material that it needs for the reactor, but that it would do so if the Vienna talks "do not bring about Iran's desired result". Iran won a reprieve from harsher international sanctions by agreeing to inspections of a hidden nuclear site and, in principle, to send low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment into fuel for a Tehran reactor that makes cancer-care isotopes.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has accused the Britain, Israel, Pakistan and the United States of planning a suicide attack in a southeastern Iranian province that killed 42, among them five commanders of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. The attack occurred at a reconciliation meeting between Shiite and Sunni leaders who had gathered near the Pakistani border. The bomber was reportedly disguised in a tribal dress. "The American and Israeli intelligence agencies are behind this. We must pay them back in order to punish them, and, God willing, we hope to be able to do so," Revolutionary Guard general Mohammad Ali Jafari. The Muslim militant group Jundallah (Soldiers of God), which operates along the Iranian-Pakistani border and is said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to reports.
BANGKOK (WJC)--A Thai waxworks museum has covered up a giant billboard of Adolf Hitler giving a Nazi salute and apologized after the Israeli and German embassies in Bangkok lodged complaints. The billboard was one of four featuring pictures of famous dead people set up on a highway to the beach city of Pattaya to promote Tussaud's Waxworks opening there next month.
Alongside the picture of the Nazi dictator, erected more than two weeks ago, a large slogan in Thai said: "Hitler is not dead." Museum director Somporn Naksuetrong said the billboard had been covered up after "a lot" of complaints had come in. "We didn't choose Hitler with the intention of praising him, but because he is well-known," Somporn told the news agency AFP. Israeli Ambassador Itzhak Shoham said the billboard was "not only offensive to the Holocaust survivors but also to anyone who deplores racist behavior. How this could happen is beyond my understanding and comprehension," he was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post.
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The governor, the doctor
Violent spouses often calculate the penalties for their actions, Haifa University professor finds
HAIFA, Israel (Press Release)—Violence between couples is usually the result of a calculated decision-making process and the partner inflicting violence will do so only as long as the price to be paid is not too high. This is the conclusion of a new study by Dr. Eila Perkis at the University of Haifa. "The violent partner might conceive his or her behavior as a 'loss of control', but the same individual, unsurprisingly, would not lose control in this way with a boss or friends," she explains.
In this new study, carried out under the supervision of Prof. Zvi Eisikovits and Dr. Zeev Winstok of the University of Haifa's School of Social Work, Dr. Perkis examined intimate violence based on the fact that in most cases the offending partner is a law-abiding individual living a normative life outside of the family unit. Dr. Perkis says that in most cases the couple continues living together and sustaining a shared family unit, so it is important that we learn to understand the dynamics of such partnerships in order to treat them.
First Dr. Perkis divided intimate violence into four levels of severity: verbal aggression; threats of physical aggression; moderate physical aggression; and severe physical aggression. "These four levels follow one another in an escalating sequence; someone who uses verbal violence might well move on over time to threatening physical attack, and from there it is only downhill towards acting on the threat," she explains. Dr. Perkis warns however, that the results of this study should not be correlated to cases of murder, since the dynamics between couples in such cases are different and such offenses are not included in the chain of violent acts being examined.
The researcher found that acting on each type of violence is calculated, such that the violence constitutes a tool for solving conflict between the partners. "Neither of the couple sits down and plans when he or she will swear or lash out at the other, but there is a sort of silent agreement standing between the two on what limits of violent behavior are 'ok', where the red line is drawn, and where behavior beyond that could be dangerous," she explains. She adds that when speaking of one-sided physical violence, most often carried out by men, the violent side understands that for a slap, say, he will not pay a very heavy price, but for harsher violence that is not included in the 'normative' dynamic between them, he might well have to pay a higher price and will therefore keep himself from such behavior. "A 'heavy price' could be the partner's leaving or reporting the incident to the police or the workplace. As such, it can be said that violent behavior is not the result of loss of control and both sides are aware of where the red line is drawn, even if such an agreement has never been spoken between them," she says.
According to Dr. Perkis, it is important to point out that use of violence is not a normative behavior; it is illegal, and of course, immoral. Therefore, it is only the violent partner who is culpable for the act. Nevertheless, once we understand that violence is being used as a tool for solving conflict between a couple that is interested in staying together, we can help them subdue such behavior by providing them with better tools to cope with the source of tension and conflict in their lives together.
"In couples therapy for partners who express the wish to stay together, therapy must be focused on identifying illegitimate motives, such as nonnormative tactics for solving conflict, and assisting the couple in acknowledging their ability to convert destructive patterns into effective ones and ultimately to run their lives better," the researcher concludes.
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