According to KOB-TV in Alberque, Antonio Darden declined to work on Martinez’s hairdo after cutting her hair three times previously. Darden, who runs Antonio’s Hair Studio in Sante Fe, said Martinez’s office repeatedly called to schedule another appointment with him only to be denied.

“The governor’s aides called not too long ago, wanting another appointment to come in,” he said. “Because of her stances and her views on this I told her aides no. They called the next day, asking if I’d changed my mind about taking the governor in and I said no again.”

Harden added: “I think it’s just equality, dignity for everyone. I think everybody should be allowed the right to be together. My partner and I have been together for 15 years.”

Martinez has stated that she believes marriage is between a man and a woman only.

WATCH: Video from KOB-TV, which was broadcast on February 21, 2012.

(H/T Think Progress)

The announcement came following publication of a letter written by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, beseeching E.U. leaders to abandon the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Act (ACTA).

Tusk was previously a strong supporter of the treaty, but weeks of demonstrations in Poland and across Europe convinced him to withdraw support. Although Poland has already signed the treaty, Tusk said the nation will not pursue full ratification.

Although ACTA has been ratified by 22 E.U. member states, along with Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore, a number of very important nations have begun to question the logic of importing American copyright standards.

Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have emerged as leaders of Europe’s ACTA opposition. The European parliament’s announcement on Wednesday seems to indicate that the E.U.’s trade chief, Karel De Gucht, has now joined them.

Crafted in the U.S., ACTA was signed by President Barack Obama without Congressional approval because the administration deemed it to be an “executive agreement” that exports U.S. copyright law and does not alter current statutes. Other nations are treating ACTA as a proper treaty, meaning the process of adoption is much more complicated.

Proponents of the global treaty say it will lower barriers for trans-national copyright enforcement, making illegal downloads and counterfeit goods easier to block — which would theoretically result in much more money for people in the creative industries.

Opponents argue that provisions in the agreement would make Internet service providers responsible for their users’ activities, which could lead to massive surveillance systems and Internet blacklists being implemented to reduce the network owners’ liability risk.

While the E.U. may be hedging its bets on ACTA, the pending court ruling will not prevent any additional states from ratifying the treaty on their own, which the U.S. has strongly encouraged them to do through its trade policies. The announcement Wednesday will, however, significantly delay an E.U. parliament vote on the treaty, which was originally scheduled for June.

Photo: Flickr user justusbluemer.

University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education examined statistics from 2008 to 2010 and determined that black and Latino retirees were more likely to be in the lowest income group. According to their report (PDF), 32 percent blacks and 47 percent of Latinos are in the bottom 25 percent of earners, while only 22 percent of whites were in the bottom 25 percent.

Senior poverty rates among people of color were even more staggering, with 19.3 percent of black seniors and 19 percent of Latino seniors in poverty. Among whites, however, only 7.4 percent of seniors were below the poverty line.

Statistics showed that blacks and Latinos were also far less likely have retirement plans or health insurance offered by their employers, factors that make saving for retirement even harder.

“Recent household surveys show that retirees of color, especially Blacks and Latinos, rely more heavily on Social Security and have less access to other types of retirement income than their white counterparts,” UC Berkeley researcher Nari Rhee noted in a press advisory.

“It is critical to improve both job access and job quality—in terms of wages and benefits, including pension benefits—to improve retirement prospects for current workers,” she explained.

Photo: Flickr/Daniel C

(H/T: Colorlines)

France’s Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said the pair had been fleeing a bombardment in the besieged rebel city of Homswhen they were killed. “It’s absolutely overwhelming, terrible,” he said.

Colvin was a renowned reporter who had covered countless conflicts over 30 years and wore a distinctive eye patch after she was wounded in Sri Lanka.

She was voted Foreign Correspondent of the Year in the 2010 British Press Awards.

Ochlik was a 28-year-old photographer represented by the IP3 agency, which he co-founded in Paris, who quit his studies aged 20 to report on Haiti and has since covered many of the recent upheavals in the Arab world.

Separately, the French daily Le Figaro said one of its reporters, Edith Bouvier, had been among three journalists wounded in the same incident.

“I received two calls from Homs this morning to tell me that Edith was wounded in the legs. We’re trying to organise her evacuation,” foreign editor Philippe Gelie told AFP in Paris.

The bombardment of Homs continued for a 19th straight day Wednesday, activists said, while calls mounted for a truce to allow inhumanitarian aid.

The latest barrage came a day after security forces killed at least 68 people across Syria, bringing the overall death toll of violence since March 2011 to 7,636 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The toll includes 5,542 civilians, 1,692 soldiers and police, and 400 rebel fighters, the head of the Britain-based rights monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.

Activist Omar Shaker from inside Baba Amr told AFP that two Western journalists were killed and three others wounded as a shell crashed into a makeshift media centre set up by anti-regime militants.

The area remained the target of random shelling, blocking attempts to remove the bodies, the activist said.

France said one of the journalists killed was a French national, as the Syrian Observatory said the two journalists killed were an American woman and a French man.

French television reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs last month as a shell exploded amid a group of journalists covering protests in the city on a visit organised by the Syrian authorities.

Despite a plea by activists to allow women and children to flee Homs’s besieged Baba Amr neighbourhood, more troops were sent Tuesday to the outskirts of the restive city, monitors and activists said.

A call by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) for a two-hour truce daily to deliver aid to afflicted areas gained support from the United Nations, as well as from the United States and Russia.

The call came a day after the ICRC said it was in talks with Syrian authorities and rebels to halt the violence.

Syria’s main opposition group, meanwhile, demanded the international community create “safe havens” in the country and called on Russia to force the regime to allow access for humanitarian convoys.

At a news conference in Paris, the Syrian National Council said it would attend a summit of the countries known as the “Friends of Syria” and ask for safe zones to protect civilians and allow the opposition to organise.

The head of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, has welcomed the humanitarian truce call but voiced doubts that the “criminal” regime would abide by a ceasefire arrangement.

And the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Valerie Amos, called on Syria to allow aid groups unimpeded access to the country.

“This is a major human rights crisis that is now moving into significant humanitarian consequences,” Amos said.

In Washington, White House press secretary Jay Carney said “we support calls for ceasefires to allow for the provision of humanitarian supplies to Syrians who desperately need it.”

“Reprehensible actions taken by the Assad regime have led us to a situation where basic supplies, humanitarian supplies are very scarce.”

Moscow, a staunch ally of the Syrian-regime, on Wednesday also supported the ICRC call for a truce, expressing “serious concern” about the humanitarian situation, according to foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich.

And although top US military officer, General Martin Dempsey, has said it was “premature” to arm Syria’s opposition, top Republican Senator John McCain called again for the outgunned rebels to be supplied with weapons.

But State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said “from our perspective, we don’t believe that it makes sense to contribute now to the further militarisation of Syria.

“What we don’t want to see is the spiral of violence increase. That said, if we can’t get Assad to yield to the pressure that we are all bringing to bear, we may have to consider additional measures,” she said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Syria was increasingly under pressure.

The Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis on Friday will “demonstrate that Assad’s regime is increasingly isolated and that the brave Syrian people need our support and solidarity,” she said.

Clinton will take part in the meeting, the State Department announced Tuesday.

Russia announced that it will not take part in the meeting because it was being convened “for the purpose of supporting one side against another in an internal conflict,” the foreign ministry said.

China, meanwhile, refused to commit to attend the meeting.

The Friends of Syria group will meet for the first time after being created in response to a joint veto by China and Russia of a UN Security Council resolution condemning the bloody crackdown.

This video is from Reuters, published Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012.

The decision came after McDonnell’s staff held a meeting with delegates and found the ultrasounds being more invasive than originally considered. Instead of previously backing any ultrasound bill that would reach his desk, McDonnell’s spokesman Tucker Martin exhibited a notable change.

“Our position is: If the General Assembly passes this bill the governor will review it, in its final form, at that time,” Martin said in a statement.

The Virginia House postponed a final vote on the bill for a second consecutive day Tuesday afternoon. Both the state’s House and Senate have already approved their versions of the bill.

According to the Post, a crowd of 1,200 men and women held a silent protests outside the state capital in Richmond Monday evening, wearing T-shirts that read “Virginia is for lovers, not probes.”

The ultrasound bill would require a woman to undergo a medically unnecessary ultrasound by inserting a probe into the vagina to determine the gestation age of the fetus. A woman who declines to look at the ultrasound would have to sign a statement that would become apart of her medical file along with the printed image.

The legislation has been widely criticized for invading a woman’s privacy, including by Comedy Central host Jon Stewart slamming McDonnell Tuesday evening.

The proposed law, put forward by Rep. Yasmin Neal (D), would ban the practice of male sterilization except in cases where a man faces serious health risks without one. It was crafted as a response to a so-called “fetal pain bill” proposed by Republicans, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks.

A measure similar to what Georgia Republicans are considering was recently defeated in Virginia following the heart-wrenching testimony of one woman who told lawmakers that she had an abortion after 20 weeks because doctors said her unborn child would suffer tremendously due to health defects.

So-called “fetal pain” bills have swept conservative-leaning states in recent years, with more than 16 legislatures considering tighter regulations on women’s health matters.

“Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies,” Rep. Neal explained in a video published online. “It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States.”

Neal also said she would stage a public hearing on the matter Wednesday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Activists and conservative lawmakers insist that 20 weeks is when an unborn fetus can feel pain, although scientists and doctors disagree with that conclusion. 

The Centers for Disease Control notes that abortions after 21 weeks are already very rare: a report in 2003 found that just 1.4 percent of abortions happen past 21 weeks.

This video was published to YouTube by Georgia Rep. Yasmin Neal (D) on Feb. 21, 2012.

(H/T: Think Progress)

“This is a spiritual war,” Santorum said during a speech as Ave Maria University in 2008. “And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America.”

Asked about the comments after a campaign event on Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate insisted that they were “not relevant to what is being discussed in America today.”

Christie, who is supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, told ABC’s George Stephanopolous on Wednesday that “anything you say as a presidential candidate is relevant.”

“It is by definition relevant,” he explained. “You’re asking to be president of the United States. I don’t think [Santorum's] right about that. I think it is relevant what he says. I think people want to make an evaluation, a complete evaluation of anyone who asks to sit in the Oval Office.”

Watch this video from ABC’s Good Morning America, broadcast Feb. 22, 2012.

Worse yet: Feingold, who collaborated with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on an elaborate piece of campaign finance reform that the Supreme Court struck down with its ruling, said that the situation will not change unless the Supreme Court’s balance is tipped back in favor of liberals — which is not guaranteed, even if President Barack Obama wins a second term.

Should be not win a second term, Feingold fears the worst, although he didn’t confess that to Stewart. Speaking to Huffington Post reporter Amanda Terkel this week, Feingold warned that voting for any of the Republican candidates poses “a threat to our country” due to their lack of interest in and understanding of foreign policy.

Feingold’s latest book, “While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era,” is in stores now.

This video (part one of two) was broadcast by Comedy Central on Feb. 21, 2012.

Part two:

The Real Time host explained to Ferguson how Rick Santorum is a true contender to win the primary before slamming the former Pennsylvania Senator again.

“This guy thinks about gay sex more than Richard Simmonds,” Maher said of Santorum.

The two comedians also discussed how the field has dwindled down to just four candidates remaining, prompting Maher to draw up a movie analogy.

“That’s my favorite part of the campaign is when they start killing them off like those repulsive teenagers in a slasher movie,” he said. “So now they are down to the final four.”

“So these are the hot teenagers that are left?” Ferguson slyly quipped. “These are the hot ones?”

Watch this video from CBS’s Late Late Show, broadcast Feb. 21, 2012.