Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/25/2012

Well, the news feed is back. I can’t say we’re fully up to speed yet, but the engine is consistently firing on four cylinders, and occasionally on five or six.

A young African-American lady named Tawana Brawley gained notoriety in New York State twenty-five years ago by accusing several white men of abducting her, holding her prisoner, and raping her repeatedly. After a firestorm in the media, Ms. Brawley’s accusations turned out to be utterly bogus, and the men she falsely accused won lawsuits against her and the race-baiting “civil rights activists” who helped her concoct her story. Al Sharpton eventually paid up (with a little help from his friends), but Tawana Brawley disappeared, and the judgment was never served against her.

A New York newspaper has discovered Ms. Brawley, now 40 years old, living in Hopewell, Virginia and commuting to her nursing job in Richmond. She is licensed to work in her field under two different names, neither of them Brawley.

In other news, the French actor Gérard Depardieu recently moved to Belgium in disgust over the high rate of taxation in France, which he says took 85% of his income last year. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered Mr. Depardieu a Russian passport, and says the actor will be welcomed if he wants to move to Russia.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.