شنَّ رئيس حزب "غد الثورة" الدكتور أيمن نور، هجوما عنيفا على صحيفة "اليوم السابع"، متهما إياها بأنها تمثل إعلام الأكاذيب وتروج دسائس لإحداث الفتن.

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فجر مجهولون، فجر اليوم، برج كهرباء بقوة 66 ألف فولت بطريق العدوة أبوالسعود بالفيوم، الذي يغذي عددًا من القرى بمركزي الفيوم وطامية.

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Yesterday, the sale of 1,740 remaining RadioShack stores to hedge fund Standard General was approved by a bankruptcy court. We’ve known since before the bankruptcy filing that their plan is to team up with Sprint to re-open stores that will be part phone store, part RadioShack merchandise. What would that look like? Sprint has already showed us. Well, they showed the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, which makes them public documents.

Here’s the original document: the later pages aren’t all that interesting to people who aren’t heavily into retail demolition. The document was filed on Monday: if RadioShack’s new management and Sprint stick to the same timetable, stores in the new format will be open in a week and a half.

It looks like the “Fast Start” layout is meant to use much of what’s already there in RadioShack. Of course, all of those displays from other carriers would have to go: the most important task would be removing AT&T, Tracfone, and Verizon displays in favor of Sprint and its prepaid buddies like Boost and Virgin Mobile.

The biggest change would be to the signage. Even though Sprint is supposed to take up only 1/3 of the square footage of each store, you wouldn’t know that from the sign out front.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

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قال المستشار محمد ناجي شحاتة، في حوار مع صحيفة "المصري اليوم"، أنه ناصري، وقال مدافعا عن نفسه: "قد يبدو من شكلي أنني رجل قاس في نظر جماعة الإخوان المسلمين عموما، لكنني مظلوم، مظلوم"، مضيفا "العدالة عمياء، ولا تتأثر بالأشخاص إطلاقا"، وفق قوله.

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شنَّ الكاتب الصحفي حمدي رزق هجوما عنيفا على الكاتب الصحفي الكبير محمد حسنين هيكل، لطلبه تأجيل حلقته على قناة"cbc"، لثبوت خطأ تحليله لأوضاع اليمن.

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(Xurble)

It was a little over a year ago that Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank ended months of contentious courtship and merged, with Men’s Wearhouse acquiring the smaller clothing chain for $1.8 billion. Now, the honeymoon is over, and Men’s Wearhouse is laying off or transferring some employees at Jos. A. Bank HQ in Hampstead, Maryland.

Men’s Wearhouse plans to lay off 122 employees and move many of the positions currently based in Maryland to Men’s Wearhouse offices in New York City and in Fremont, California. Shortly after the merger in June of last year, there were 778 employees at the Jos. A. Bank headquarters. A spokesperson told Baltimore Business Journal that there will be an estimated 450 employees left after the layoffs and restructuring are done.

Men’s Wearhouse plans to keep Jos. A. Bank’s HQ in Hampstead — but with far fewer workers [Baltimore Business Journal]

Report: Jos. A. Bank lays off 122 headquarters employees [Chain Store Age]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

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(Phillip Pessar)

The Great RadioShack Bankruptcy Auction Standoff may be over. The 94-year-old electronics retailer declared bankruptcy in February, and then closed around half of its stores, selling their leases. The company wanted to rid itself of the rest of its stores before April began so they won’t have to pay April rent on all of those stores out of money that should be going to their creditors.

The most important creditor here is Standard General, which is using RadioShack’s debt to the hedge fund as part of its bid for 1,740 of the chain’s remaining stores. Today, the bankruptcy court approved the sale of those remaining stores to despite the objections of other lenders. RadioShack preferred the bid from Standard General, which consisted of debt forgiveness and a modest amount of cash.

Backers of the SprintShack plan say that it will keep more than 7,000 current RadioShack retail employees working. The judge decided that Standard General’s bid was the superior one, and had the added benefit of “saving a century-old American retail icon.”

The highest competing bid for the company was from another lender, Salus Capital Partners. While that bid was entirely in cash rather than debt forgiveness, it would have led to having liquidators sell store inventory, leases, and fixtures

RadioShack co-branding of stores with Sprint wins court approval [RadioShack]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

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أكد ماك ثورنبي، رئيس لجنة الخدمات المسلحة بمجلس النواب الأمريكي، أن مصر تعتبر حليفا قويا للولايات المتحدة في المنطقة.

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أكد المستشار يحيى قدري، نائب رئيس حزب الحركة الوطنية، إن الحزب لديه تصور كامل عن التعديلات المقترحة على القوانين المنظمة للعملية الانتخابية وسيتم عرضها على المهندس إبراهيم محلب، رئيس مجلس الوزراء، واللجنة المعنية بتعديل القوانين المنظمة للانتخابات البرلمانية.

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قال الدكتور صفوت النحاس، نائب رئيس حزب الحركة الوطنية، إن الحزب يضع خطة محكمة لخوض السباق البرلماني المقبل تقوم على أسس موضوعية وميدانية تستهدف الدفع بأفضل مرشحين

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قال أكمل قرطام رئيس حزب المحافظين، أنه تلقى دعوة لحضور اجتماع مع رئيس مجلس الوزراء، إبراهيم محلب، واللجنة المُشكّلة لتعديل قوانين المنظمة للعملية الانتخابية لمجلس النواب

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(Aero Icarus)

Picture this: You’re all hyped up and ready to fly across the ocean as part of an airline’s inaugural journey to a destination across the ocean, everyone is cheering, the excitement is building and then suddenly foam is spraying everywhere. Celebration over, and you’re forced to wait a night to get off the ground. Delays are annoying, yes, but rarely are they caused by celebrating firefighters pressing the wrong button.

That’s what’s reportedly behind the delay of Virgin Atlantic’s first flight from Manchester, England to Atlanta, GA, reports The Telegraph.

The Airbus A330-300 was enjoying the celebratory hullabaloo at Manchester Airport, complete with a planned salute from fire crews, who were supposed to send the plane off with a spray from water cannons, when somehow the hoses were switched, releasing jets of fire-suppressing foam.

Not only does that make a big mess, but it clogged up jet engines and turbine blades, grounding the plane so it could undergo a safety check before taking off.

The flight’s 257 passengers who were anxiously awaiting the journey were told at first there’d be a five-hour delay, but after gnoshing and swilling a few refreshments, the airline cancelled the flight until the next day. Passengers were put up in hotels overnight and returned to the airport this morning.

“The pilot explained that the plane was being given a water cannon salute. Unfortunately someone had pressed the button for foam, instead of water. It clogged up the engines,” said one passenger.

“We needed to give the aircraft a thorough check over,” Virgin Atlantic said in explaining the delay.

Plane grounded after firefighters accidentally sprayed it with foam [The Telegraph]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

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Anyone who has traveled frequently enough has likely had to deal with your flight being canceled or rescheduled and all the havoc that can ensue trying to keep the rest of your itinerary from being completely screwed up. But what’s a traveler to do when the airline screws up twice and cancels your ticket for a flight that you’re not even booked on?

This is what happened recently happened to JetBlue passenger Tim and his wife, who were scheduled to fly direct from Boston to St. Thomas on the morning of Feb. 16 with some friends.

The couple had booked their tickets months in advance and had all their confirmation numbers, etc., ready as the departure date drew near. Then they got an e-mail on Feb. 13 saying that their flight had been canceled and they would have to reschedule.

Only problem was that JetBlue had the correct flight listed in the e-mail, but the wrong date. The e-mail said that the Feb. 15 flight was canceled, not the Feb. 16 departure that Tim had booked.

When Tim contacted JetBlue to figure out what had gone wrong, he says a rep for the airline told him that their tickets had somehow been switched to that earlier flight.

The best the airline could do was put them on a late-evening flight on Feb. 17, which wouldn’t arrive until the early morning of Feb. 18, nearly two full days after he was supposed to arrive.

Meanwhile that Feb. 16 flight he’d originally booked had departed as planned with his friends aboard.

Since extending his vacation was not a possibility, this would mean that Tim’s holiday would be ruined, so he investigated other ways to salvage his trip.

Because of the bad weather in Boston at the time, seats on planes out of the city were at a premium, explains Tim, who eventually ended up looking at the New York City area airports for more reasonable options.

“I found a flight out of Newark, NJ, Tuesday morning at 8 A.M. that would get me into St Thomas at 3:30 PM,” he writes. “I booked that flight, reserved a one-way rental car and drove 5 hours to a hotel nearest the airport. I stayed at the hotel overnight and caught a flight out Tuesday morning putting me into my final destination approximately 24 hours late.”

Not only did he have to go in the hole for the expense of the rental car and hotel just to make it to the Newark flight on time, Tim faced additional expenses once he landed. His final destination was actually the island of St. John, but since his friends who’d arrived the day before had already picked up the rental car they’d all intended to share.

“The cost to salvage our trip involved new airline tickets, a rental car, a hotel, taxis and a ferry plus the lodging cost for a night we had already reserved/paid for,” wrote Tim in a detailed letter to JetBlue asking for the airline to reimburse him for the cost, which totaled nearly $2,000.

We also wrote to our contacts at JetBlue asking them to investigate what happened. It took a couple of weeks and several e-mails but today the airline gave us the following statement: “We want all of our customer to have a great experience with JetBlue. We have been working with the customer directly and believe we have come to a solution.”

It’s not much, and doesn’t explain exactly how this screw-up happened, so we reached out to Tim, who confirmed that he has been contacted by JetBlue and that the airline has offered to reimburse him for his expenses.

“I decided to accept the refund and move on with my life,” he tells Consumerist.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

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قال أحمد إمام المتحدث الاعلامي لحزب مصر القوية، إن الحزب حضر أمس لقاء القوى السياسية والأحزاب بناء على الدعوة الموجهة له من الجمعية المصرية للمشاركة الاجتماعية، للنقاش حول إصلاح البنية التشريعية وقانون الانتخابات في مصر.

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قال المستشار أحمد الفضالي مؤسس تيار الاستقلال، إننا نستعد لإجراء الانتخابات البرلمانية من أجل مصر والمواطنين.

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أعلن البيت الأبيض منذ قليل، أن الرئيس أوباما قرر رفع الحظر عن تسليم طائرات إف 16 إلى مصر.

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قال مجلس الأمن القومي الأمريكي عبر موقع "تويتر"، إن الرئيس باراك أوباما تحدث مع الرئيس عبد الفتاح السيسي أمس الإثنين.

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Akamai’s top 10 worldwide best average internet connection speeds for the end of 2014.

It’s that time again! Internet company Akamai keeps a sharp eye on the state of broadband at home and abroad, and delivers a quarterly report lining up just how we’re doing. But despite a whole huge pile of brand new data, the story remains the same: the U.S. still has a lot of catching up to do if we want to consider ourselves among the global broadband elite.

The new report (PDF) has the usual mixed bag of news. The good bit: improvement is widespread, year over year. All 51 states (the report includes the District of Columbia) saw increases by the end of 2014, as compared to the end of 2013.

However, the rest of the world is improving, too. And in many cases, faster. While the U.S., on average clocked in at 12th globally in the first half of 2014, by the year’s end we find ourselves sitting at #16.

As usual, of course, comparing a country with an enormous web of state-level governments and a 3.8 million square mile footprint against a compact city-state like Singapore may not be the most useful metric. But rankings within the U.S., at the state level, don’t reveal that much better a picture.

The U.S. top 10 for the end of the year mostly included the usual suspects, but in a new order. In the third quarter of 2014, Delaware held the fastest average speed, followed by Washington, Connecticut, Utah, DC, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, and New Jersey.

While the nation’s capital and the northeast are still good places to be for the best broadband, other states have now broken into the top 10 as well. Virginia now holts the number one position for average broadband speed, clocking in at 17.7 Mbps. Delaware’s dropped to number two, with DC, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington, Oregon, North Dakota, and New York rounding out the top ten. Delaware holds on to top average peak speeds in the nation, however.

Delaware also remains at the top for penetration of speeds above 10 Mbps, with 68% of connections meeting that threshold. The entire top ten list is at 50% or higher.

Arkansas has, unfortunately, maintained its last-place position despite an increase in average connection speeds in that state. Residents in The Natural State, according to Akamai, get an average connection speed of under 8 Mbps.

The U.S. is number one regionally speaking, at least; in the Americas, Americans’ average of 11.1 Mbps (a 15% increase from the end of 2013) beats out Canada’s 10.7 Mbps, with Uruguay coming in third and the other nations of South and Central America continuing from there.

For national “high broadband” access — speeds at or above 10 Mbps — the U.S. comes in at 17th globally, with about 39% of connections meeting that threshold. The good new is: that’s a 20% increase from this time last year.

The bad news is: that doesn’t meet the FCC’s new, aspirational threshold for “broadband” access — and it’s still not even 40% of the internet connections in the country.

These figures are important to keep in mind when we talk about broadband policy, like net neutrality or the Comcast merger. Fewer than 2 in 5 Americans with broadband access have connections that support most of the big, bold new connectivity features that companies and individuals alike tout as the cornerstone of the 21st century economy.

Average broadband technology speeds as compared to uses, via the GAO.

For teleworking, distance learning, and remote medicine — the great supposed benefits of the connected age — only a fraction of existing connections support seamless use. And that’s aside from entertainment, where 15Mbps is indeed the minimum “4K ready” threshold.

For now, we can clearly get by. Because we are getting by. But as the future continues to become ever more reliant on flawless, omnipresent internet access, it will become ever more crucial to make sure that all of us, in every state, can access infrastructure that keeps up.

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

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رفض أسقف عام كنائس وسط البلد وسكرتير المجمع المقدس، الأنبا رافائيل، ،الرد على تصريحات الدكتور نبيل العربي الأمين العام لجامعة الدول العربية، حول وجود أكثر من كتاب مقدس لدى الطوائف المسيحية، لكونه غير مثقف، بحسب تعبيره.

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(ChrisGoldNY)

We need some kind of global scoreboard to keep track of which Uber services are legal in which municipality. Surely there is such a thing at Uber HQ, but we have no such thing here at Consumerist. Good news for fans of low-cost transport who are visiting France, though: Uberpop, the peer-to-peer taxi service that any safe driver can work for, can temporarily still operate in France.

Uber’s ride-summoning app offers different services at differing price points: there’s also UberBlack, a service for licensed livery drivers who pick you up in whatever the local equivalent of a Town Car is. Most countries don’t have a problem with this version of the service, but it’s the lower-cost services with a lower barrier to entry that have met with opposition from governments and taxi drivers alike everywhere from New York City to Japan.

That service is called UberX in the United States and UberPop in Europe, and the company has had to stop offering the service altogether in many countries. In France, it can operate for now, but only until a lawsuit filed by a group of transportation companies makes its way to a higher court. Since the case against Uber calls into question a new transport law, the case may reach the country’s constitutional court.

Uber Wins French Court Reprieve Over Legality of Low-Cost Service [WSJ]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

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أمر المستشار الدكتور تامر فرجاني المحامي العام الأول لنيابة أمن الدولة العليا، بتجديد حبس إسلام شعبان شحاته، المتهم الرئيسي في تنفيذ التفجيرين الإرهابيين بمحيط دار القضاء العالي ومقر مجلس الوزراء، لمدة 15 يوما احتياطيا على ذمة التحقيقات التي تجري معه بمعرفة النيابة.

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أصدر الرئيس عبد الفتاح السيسي، اليوم الثلاثاء، قرارًا جمهوريًا بتفويض رئيس مجلس الوزراء، والوزراء، والمحافظين، كل فيما يخصه، لمباشرة بعض اختصاصات رئيس الجمهورية المنصوص عليها

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استنكر طارق الخولي المرشح البرلماني على قائمة في حب مصر الانتخابية، دعوات القوى السياسية المطالبة بجعل النظام الانتخابي بنسبة 50% لمقاعد الفردي ومثلها للقائمة.

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(Atwater Village Newbie)

Baseball season is only days away, and the L.A. Dodgers are fresh off a 94-win division title season. Yet a large number of Dodgers fans can’t watch the games on TV because the cable sports channel owned by the team and Time Warner Cable has yet to reach deals that would let other pay-TV operators in the region carry the station. And TWC’s answer to these fans is mind-bogglingly idiotic.

Fierce Cable’s Daniel Frankel is the latest to try to get a real reading from TWC on the odds that SportsNet L.A. will be made available to anyone in the L.A. area other than TWC customers. He even indicts himself for picking up a recent news item that gave a glimmer of hope to many Dodgers fans that they might see a game on TV this spring.

Frankel notes that TWC is even telling its investors that they should expect the company to continue losing money on the SportsNet L.A. deal for the foreseeable future because the likelihood of reaching a carriage deal with other pay-TV providers is not so great.

But what really drives home TWC’s antipathy toward Dodgers fans is the statement the company provided to Frankel regarding the status of SportsNet L.A. [last sentence bolded for emphasis]:

“We want all Dodger fans to have access to SportsNet LA. Despite our repeated attempts, other providers are unwilling to engage in any discussions. If Dodger fans want to enjoy SportsNet LA this season, we encourage them to switch to a provider that carries the network.“

This sentiment — if you want to watch the Dodgers, get a pay-TV provider that carries them — only really applies to current DirecTV and Dish customers, as they may also live in an area serviced by TWC. But a look at the coverage maps for each of the major non-satellite providers in the region tells a very different story.

Here are the individual coverage maps for TWC, Cox, and Charter in the L.A. area:

Notice anything? There’s little to no overlap in coverage between these three sizable cable companies. Here’s what happens when you put the three together:

So all those people in red and blue areas, not to mention the areas not covered by any of these companies? TWC wants you to switch to a non-existent pay-TV provider who both operates in your neighborhood and offers SportsNet L.A.

It’s TWC’s choice if it wants to keep bleeding money on SportsNet L.A., but the company shouldn’t be blaming Dodgers fans who have no choice in who provides cable TV service in their area.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

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(Amazon on YouTube)

Reaching for another roll of paper towels in the pantry only to find you’ve run out just when little Timmy has flung yet another bowl of pureed peas against the wall is annoying, as is realizing your roommate hasn’t bought toilet paper during your moment of need. In an attempt to solve that problem, Amazon announced a new line of branded buttons that reorder certain common household products with one push, using your home’s WiFi connection and a connected Prime account.

We first heard rumblings of Amazon testing out a one-button system for ordering things last fall, at which point it was still uncertain whether such a thing would make it market or not.

It seems that’s going to be a reality, as Amazon unveiled a line of free Dash buttons that can be stuck to say, the washing machine or the bathroom mirror, allowing Prime customers to simply push them when they need more Tide or Olay moisturizer.

From Amazon:

Dash Button comes with a reusable adhesive and a hook so you can hang, stick, or place it right where you need it. Keep Dash Button handy in the kitchen, bath, laundry, or anywhere you store your favorite products. When you’re running low, simply press Dash Button, and Amazon quickly delivers household favorites so you can skip the last-minute trip to the store.

Each brand included in the lineup — along with Tide and Olay there’s Clorox, Huggies, Bounty and more — has its own button. Once you’ve pushed it (or little Timmy has because you positioned it within his reach, sigh), an alert pops up on your smartphone so you can cancel the order if you need to.

Right now it’s only available by invitation for Prime customers, with Amazon’s site saying the Dash buttons will be available in a few weeks.

If you’re suspicious that this announcement is popping up pretty darn close to April Fool’s Day (the Consumerist team was), it does seem that the Dash button is for real. The Washington Post staffer who wrote about the product on the companys The Switch blog, Sarah Halzack, Tweeted that the button isn’t a joke — and she would very possibly know that, as Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post as well as Amazon:

BTW, Amazon Dash is not an April Fool's joke.

— Sarah Halzack (@sarahhalzack) March 31, 2015

Timing the release of such a product this close to April Fool’s Day is actually kind of a genius move, as it gets people to talk about whether it’s real or not, thus creating free publicity for Amazon and all the brands involved.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

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يعقد "تيار الاستقلال"، مؤتمرًا صحفيًا طارئًا بقاعة جمعية الشبان المسلمين في تمام الساعة الواحدة من ظهر الغد الأربعاء، يعرض فيه قراره بشأن الحوار مع رئيس الوزراء إبراهيم محلب واللجنة الوزارية المشكلة لتعديل قوانين الانتخابات.

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نظمت جامعة القاهرة احتفالية تسليم الدفعة الأولى من المقاعد المدرسية التي تم تصنيعها بالورش الإنتاجية بكلية الزراعة والتي تم إهداؤها لمدارس محافظة الجيزة

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أعلنت وزارة الموارد المائية والري، اليوم الثلاثاء، أنه تمت إزالة 2508 حالات تعد على نهر النيل من إجمالي نحو 50 الفا و399 حالة تستهدفها الحملة القومية لإنقاذ النيل

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(kevindean)

Will calling emergency services repeatedly about a bar bill summon the cops? Sure, but they won’t be helping to sort out whether or not you were overcharged for a beer, they’ll be charging you with abusing the 9-1-1 system, an offense that can bring up to a year in jail and a fine that is the equivalent of many, many beers.

Police say an Idaho man dialed up 9-1-1 a dozen times early Monday morning with an urgent non-emergency, reports KXLY.com: He claimed that the bar he’d just been booted from had overcharged him for his beers.

“He was demanding that the place he got kicked out of didn’t over charge him for him being down there,” the town’s police captain said.

According to the police report, the man was kicked out of a bar around 1:13 a.m. and an officer gave him a courtesy ride home. Apparently he felt close to the police at that point, and decided to give’em a few more rings.

“He had been intoxicated, so we gave him a ride home and shortly after we started receiving 911 calls from him,” the police captain said, noting that he then called 12 times total.

First he called to say he wanted officers to come back to his house to talk about his bar tab. Then he called back seven minutes later to ask when an officer would be showing up. He called twice and hung up, then called three times and put his phone up to the radio. Telling a dispatcher that she’s “just like his ex-wife,” he then hung up, police say.

Such antics are a drain on police resources and could prevent them from helping others with real emergencies, the captain says. And besides, receipts from the bar show he was only charged $30 for the 10 beers he’d had, which is a lot smaller bill than the $1,000 he could now be facing as the result of a misdemeanor citation for misusing 911.

Man calls 911 to report he was overcharged on his bar tab [KXLY.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

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في الفترة الأخيرة أخذت الحركة الحوثية حيّزاً هائلاً من الاهتمام الإعلامي، ودار جدل واسع على ماهية تلك الجماعة وأهدافها، وأختلفت الأراء حول خطورة تلك الجماعة ما بين من رجح انها جماعة تسعي للسيطره علي الحكم في اليمن وإعادة الرئيس اليمني السابق علي عبدالله صالح وما بين السيطرة علي مضيق باب المندب الملا

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بدأ اجتماع حزب المحافظين، منذ قليل، برئاسة أكمل قرطام لمناقشة رؤية الحزب المقرر عرضها خلال اجتماع المهندس إبراهيم محلب، رئيس مجلس الوزراء

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