Woman: China police ask to ax White House petition

BEIJING (AP) — Upset about plans for a petrochemical plant near her hometown in China, a woman turned to a new method that Chinese are using to air their complaints: she posted a petition on the White House's website. Then, Chinese police asked her to remove it.

Last week's run-in with internal security agents turned into an unexpected lesson for the woman.

"I didn't think (the petition) was a big deal and didn't foresee the ensuing events," said the woman, who asked to be identified only by the initials she used on the petition, B.Y., for fear of further angering the police.

B.Y., who is in her late 20s and works in the finance industry in the central city of Chengdu, said the officers asked her last Friday to delete the petition from the White House open petition site.

Set up in 2011, the "We the People" site allows the public to directly petition the White House. But she said she discovered the site does not allow people to remove petitions so she was unable to comply.

The Chengdu police department declined comment and would not provide the unlisted number for its domestic security protection branch.

B.Y.'s petition problem, which was first reported by Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper, shows how prickly Chinese authorities are about Internet dissent, probably particularly when it involves the White House.

Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has been on edge over plans to build a petrochemical plant 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the city. The plant is expected to produce 10 million tons of oil and 800,000 tons of ethylene per year. Residents are concerned that the plant, operated by state-owned PetroChina, will aggravate air and water pollution, and question its safety because it is near a seismic fault where two deadly earthquakes have occurred in the past five years.

Authorities thwarted a planned demonstration over the plant on May 4 by filling the streets with police for a supposed earthquake drill, and have censored discussions of protest on the Internet.

Internet sites, particularly social media, are China's most unfettered forums for discussion, and many, especially younger Chinese, chafe at increasingly intrusive censorship.

At about the same time, Chinese discovered that the White House petition site was beyond the censors' reach. Discussions about an unsolved case involving the poisoning of a university student named Zhu Ling in Beijing 18 years ago were being deleted from Chinese sites, so someone turned to the White House site. In a few days, a petition calling for an investigation of a suspect living in the U.S. gathered 100,000 online signatures — the threshold for an official White House response — and kept the discussion alive in China.

B.Y. said she went to the White House site to sign the petition for Zhu Ling. Then, she saw she could start her own petition as well.

"So, I wrote about Chengdu," B.Y. said in an interview conducted by instant message. Her petition, posted in English on May 7, notes public concern about the project and urges the international community to evaluate the plan and monitor its environmental impact.

The next day, she received a call from the domestic security personnel. "I got a shock today," she wrote on her Sina Weibo microblog. Two days later, she met with the officers at a police station near her workplace.

"I will be out to have some tea," she wrote Friday. "If I should not return in two hours, please report me as missing." Having tea usually means someone has been called by the domestic security personnel for a talk.

"It was merely a chat," B.Y. said in the interview. "They wanted to know what the opposing views were and if there were other issues the public are worried about."

Asked whether the White House had provided any information to Chinese authorities to help them identify the petition writer, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said it does not disclose users' information to any outside person or organization.

Unable to remove the White House petition, B.Y. attempted to comply with the police request by deleting a Sina Weibo post that had called attention to the petition. But she is also continuing to post Chengdu pollution levels on her microblog.

Quoting a well-known Chinese author, Hao Qun, who goes by the pen name Murong Xuecun and whose own microblog was recently censored, B.Y. said, "I am going to stay here until the stone blossoms."

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106-year-old woman and 73-year-old man find love

Hands make the symbol of a heart (Thinkstock)

A 106-year-old woman and a 73-year-old man have found love in a nursing home, Australia's news.com.au reports.

Neither Marjorie Hemmerde nor her special fella Gavin Crawford expected to fall for anyone.

"We just sort of melted into each other," Hemmerde told news.com.au. "We get along like old friends, the age gap doesn't seem to matter."

Crawford said, "Marjorie is very outgoing and has good outlook in life." He also told news.com.au that she is "always very cheerful and appreciative and we laugh together all the time."

"I think we both have learned that life is far too short not to enjoy it," he continued.

Neither lovebird has ever married before, which raises the question of whether Hemmerde and Crawford might consider tying the knot. It would surely be the wedding of the year, but—alas—it appears it isn't going to happen.

"I'm too irresponsible," Hemmerde told news.com.au. "I quite like living in sin."

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Police called after woman sees kittens having sex in her yard

Who would actually call the police to complain about kittens? (AP)Sure, cats aren’t for everyone. But we can’t remember the last time someone called the police to complain about a pair of kittens.

But that’s exactly what happened in Wisconsin on Thursday when a woman called police after she reportedly witnessed two kittens “having sex” in her front yard.

As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s not the only recent time someone has called 911 to report on a cat. Back in February, a Washington State man called 911 to report on a stray cat that had wandered into his back yard. But, at least in that case, the man was calling out of concern for the cat’s welfare (it was cold outside), rather than to complain about its mere presence.

The Wisconsin Rapids Police Department included the truly unusual call in their public list of request calls received. However, there’s still no word on how the department responded to the unnamed woman’s call.

And besides, at least one Wisconsin law officials have said citizens shouldn’t be too reliant on the service, saying waiting on 911 responders may not loner be their best option after budget cutbacks have delayed response times.

Either way, we doubt this incident will be making it into the next installment of the “Cat Crimes” book series.

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OLD MOVIES ARE LACKING THE NEW WOMAN

WASHINGTON -- Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which show on TV here in Washington around-the-clock, have had a strong and lasting effect on me. This is not because all of the movies are perfect or even that good. It is not because they improve my moral mettle. And it is not because they have taught me how to be Betty Hutton during the day and Greta Garbo after 8. No, it is something more.

If anyone has addictively watched Turner Classics as I have, I wonder whether he -- or, particularly, she -- has any of the same responses I've been having.

Ted Turner, whose sins in other venues will, I am certain, be mitigated by the good Lord for creating TCM alone, started this replay of old American movies some years ago. They run from silent movies from the 1920s and the advent of the talkies, to the frightening war films of the '40s, to the nuttier comedies and film noir of later years.

What is so valuable for viewers like me, who came to adulthood in the 1960s and '70s, is that they show us dramatically what we were watching in our growing-up and young-adult years; what the influences upon us were and the degree to which we rejected them; and how our lives today reflect the enormous changes in the world, from nuclear war to equality of men and women to the perverse attractions of gangland and Gangnam.

Watching the changes in the depiction of women in these films is what has particularly fascinated me -- to the degree to which I now find myself turning down attractive dates or evenings outside to immerse myself in this world of my youth.

Above all, I have found one element repeated in almost any serious (or even not so serious) film. The women are not stupid. They are not unkind or cruel people. They are very much the kind of people you would want to have next door. But they are virtually always unimaginative. Far from creating anything, they do everything in their power to keep their men from creating, too.

I am sure there are some old films in which the women push their men ahead, brave and true. But I have not seen them.

What I will go on the record as saying irrevocably is that the women in these films have left me very sad. I am tired of it. The only actress who seems always ready to go along, now that I think of it, is Lauren Bacall. If you think of "To Have and to Have Not," and you can remember her skipping along with Bogie out of the Caribbean bar, you realize what a great gal she really is. But, also, the degree to which she was leaning against the tides and times.

It seems to me, if I am not being unfair, that the producers and scriptwriters must have been reflecting a deep feeling of the times or, at least, THEIR feeling of the times -- that women's role was to hold their men back, period. And that the only thing that women wanted was to stop anything that was really fun.

There is another part of the TCM movies, however, that I can see with far greater sympathy. These are the short, newsy features, usually written by James A. Fitzpatrick and often called "News of the World," that were run in between feature films.

One superb one I saw was Fitzpatrick's filming of Soviet Russia. Even at that contradictory time he managed to be remarkably truthful about the barbarities of the "New Russia" and to film it honestly. When you compare this with the insanely brutalizing previews that come before our main features now, focusing on which killer film will come next, one can only wish we were back in 1936.

Today, of course, films and their stories are so very different. Now it is not the women who hold their men back from adventure, but the men who hold their women back. As women proclaim they can "do anything," the men too often look like sad sacks warmed over.

I have no idea, being in the newspaper business and not in the movie business, whether this is because there are more women in movie production and writing now. But I do know that, when I watch these otherwise precious old movies, I find myself feeling sorry for the men -- and that's a heck of a place to be for a woman!

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Obama appoints first woman Secret Service director

Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...

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