Mumia Abu-Jamal (born 1954) is an American convict, serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He was sentenced to death at his first trial in July 1982, and his case became an international cause célèbre. Before his arrest, he was an activist and radio journalist who became President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He was a member of the Black Panther Party until October 1970. Supporters and opponents disagreed on the appropriateness of the death penalty, his guilt, and whether he received a fair trial. He was described as "perhaps the world's best known death-row inmate". During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, notably Live from Death Row (1995). In 2008, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction but ordered a new capital sentencing hearing because the jury was improperly instructed. Subsequently, the United States Supreme Court also allowed his conviction to stand but ordered the appeals court to reconsider its decision as to the sentence. In 2011, the Third Circuit again affirmed the conviction as well as its decision to vacate the death sentence, and the District Attorney of Philadelphia announced that prosecutors would no longer seek the death penalty. He was removed from death row in January 2012. (more...)
... that, despite spending almost their entire lives underground, Cape mole rats nonetheless have activity cycles linked to day and night?
... that comedian Hiroiki Ariyoshi went from earning 20 millionyen a month to earning virtually nothing, only to then become Japan's top television personality?
... that the "Family Bible" was used as toilet paper?
The Pink Robin (Petroica rodinogaster) is a small passerine bird native to temperate forests and subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests of southeastern Australia. Measuring 13.5 cm (5.5 in) in length, the robin has a small thin black bill, and dark brown eyes and legs. The male (seen here) has a distinctive white crown and pink breast, grey-black upperparts, wings and tail.
