"Go-Topless Day" in New York seeks equal rights to bare chests

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some two dozen topless women protested in a New York City park on a hot, sweaty Sunday as part of what they called "National Go-Topless Day" to draw attention to inequality in topless rights between men and women.

There were topless men in the park, too, but nobody paid them much attention, a disparity, organizers said, that demonstrated the need for the event.

The topless women drew crowds of onlookers who took pictures and video with their cell phones.

"We say there is nothing wrong with the female nipple," Karen Heaven, an organizer of the event, told the crowd that quickly formed around her in Manhattan's Bryant Park. She was wearing white pants and not much else besides a purse over her shoulder. "My dog has six, I have two, but I can be put in jail for showing my nipples. It's 2012 -- what are we thinking?"

It is legal for women to go topless in public in New York City but laws vary widely across the United States. Heaven and her colleagues say discrimination is unconstitutional and they want full equality.

Similar protests were scheduled in about 30 U.S. cities and 10 around the world, organisers said.

The annual Go-Topless Day was established in 2007 by a former sports car journalist called Rael, who founded a religion called the Raelian Movement after he said he was visited by a space alien in a French volcano park who told him life on Earth was created by extraterrestrial scientists, according to an account on his website.

Occasional references to alien creators did not seem to register with the crowd, which focused mostly on the breasts.

"I'll show these to a few friends and then delete them after a few days," Rudy Sison, a New Yorker who happened to visit the park on Sunday, said as he thumbed through photographs and video he had just taken on his phone. "They're topless."

Several women waved signs saying: "Equal Topless Rights For All."

After the speeches, a guitarist led the crowd in a reworking of The Beatles' song "Let It Be."

"Let 'em breathe," people sang. "Let 'em breathe."

(Editing by Daniel Trotta)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/topless-day-york-seeks-equal-rights-bare-chests-205231776.html

solar flare joseph kony 2012 arian foster dennis kucinich apple ipad kony kony 2012

S. Africa police fire at striking mine workers

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South African police opened fire Thursday on a crowd of striking workers at a platinum mine, leaving an unknown number of people injured and possibly dead. Motionless bodies lay on the ground in pools of blood.

Police moved in on striking workers who gathered on a rocky outcropping near the Lonmin PLC mine Thursday afternoon. On TV footage, a volley of intense gunfire could be heard. Private television broadcaster e.tv showed images of still bodies lying in the blood in the dust. Another image showed some miners, their eyes wide, looking in the distance at heavily armed police officers in riot gear.

Police Capt. Dennis Adriao, a spokesman for the officers at the mine, declined to immediately comment. Jeff Wicks, a spokesman for private ambulance company Netcare Ltd. that was standing by at the mine, also declined to comment.

Barnard O. Mokwena, an executive vice president at Lonmin, would say only: "It's a police operation." Lonmin is the world's third largest platinum producer

In a statement earlier Thursday, Lonmin had said striking workers would be fired if they did not appear at their shifts Friday.

"The striking (workers) remain armed and away from work," the statement read. "This is illegal."

The unrest at the Lonmin mine began Aug. 10, as some 3,000 workers walked off the job over pay in what management described as an illegal strike. Those who tried to go to work on Saturday were attacked, management and the National Union of Mineworkers said.

On Sunday, the rage became deadly as a crowd killed two security guards by setting their car ablaze, authorities said. By Monday, angry mobs killed two other workers and overpowered police, killing two officers, officials said. Officers opened fire that day, killing three others, police said.

Operations appeared to come to a standstill Tuesday as workers stayed away from the mines, where 96 percent of all Lonmin's platinum production comes from. The stoppage has spooked those investing in Lonmin. Stock in Lonmin plunged 6.33 percent in trading Thursday afternoon on the London Stock Exchange.

While the walkout appeared to be about wages, the ensuing violence has been fueled by the struggles between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the upstart Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. Disputes between the two unions escalated into violence earlier this year at another mine.

Both unions have blamed each other for the strife at the mine at Marikana, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

___

Associated Press writer Emoke Bebiak in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-08-16-South%20Africa-Mine%20Violence/id-b7afa499d0614a79af5d853e2839f3fa

Pepco tour de france instagram Magic Mike Anderson Cooper Gay adele Tom Cruise