Poor Mojo's Newswire

Do you know who deserves to skip lines at amusement parks? People with disabilities. Do you know who probably doesn’t deserve to skip lines at amusement parks? People who just can’t stand the thought of waiting with the rest of us peons but who don’t want to pay for VIP guides or fast passes. Unfortunately, one report says the latter has recruited the former so wealthy parents and their children can cut to the front of lines at Disney World. The New York Post spoke to a social anthropologist who claims to have discovered a scheme that makes us feel icky inside: Wealthy Manhattan moms and dads who hire disabled people to act like family members, so they and their children can cut to the front of the line. These so-called “black-market Disney guides” use the amusement park’s policy of allowing handicapped guests to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.” The price for such a service runs $130 an hour or $1,040 for an eight-hour day at the park. Compare that to Disney’s VIP guided tours, which go from $315 to $380 per hour. It’s reportedly organized by a tour company out of Florida, and is apparently all the rage among the one percenters.

Last week we reported Israel supporters were pressuring the Newseum to drop two Palestinian journalists, Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama, from its yearly event honoring reporters killed in the line of duty. Al-Kumi and Salama worked for Al-Aqsa television and were killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza last November. Although the Newseum originally defended their inclusion, this morning the Washington, DC-based museum dedicated to the news industry announced that al-Kumi and Salama would in fact not be a part of today's ceremony.

Shortly after he first heard about the policy under consideration at an April meeting of Kutztown’s Administrative Council, the president of the faculty union, Dr. Paul Quinn, began receiving anonymous death threats. Faculty first learned of these threats at a May 9th meeting of the union’s Representative Council and the Morning Call reported on the threats this past Friday. I spoke with Quinn over the weekend about what happened. Quinn, a physics professor, said after his classes on Thursday, May 2, he walked into his office to find that someone slipped a folded note under his office door. “At first, I didn’t think anything of it,” he said. “I opened the note and it said, ‘Drop the gun issue or else.’” Quinn said that after he read the note he immediately made several calls, including one to the Executive Director of Kutztown’s Human Resources department. She told Quinn to go to the police immediately. “I alerted my Chair and my Chair said yes, go.” Quinn and a union representative met with Kutztown University’s Director of Police Services and Acting Chief of Police, John Dillon shortly afterwards. “The only time I could get there was around two o’clock,” Quinn explained. “I had an office hour from 1:30 to 3:00. So, I normally would have been in my office. I went at two o’clock to deliver that note to Public Safety. When I got back an hour and a half later, there was a second note under the door. The second note said, ‘What scares you more, guns or death?’” “What this means,” Quinn said, “is that someone was watching.” “What’s weird is that I have not taken a position on this new policy,” Quinn said.

A prominent barrister specialising in reproductive rights has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13. Barbara Hewson told online magazine Spiked that the move was necessary in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal to end the "persecution of old men". She also said that complainants should no longer receive anonymity. The NSPCC called her views "outdated and simply ill-informed" and said to hear them "from a highly experienced barrister simply beggars belief". Her remarks come after a number of high-profile arrests over allegations of historical sexual offences in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.