Child Marriage Victims Call for Ban in California
When Sara Tasneem was 15 years old, she met the 28-year-old man she would marry. They met over a glass of orange juice and were married by nightfall.
The marriage was arranged by Tasneem’s father, when he learned she had a boyfriend and feared she might engage in premarital sex.
“I was really scared of my dad,” Tasneem told The Epoch Times. “I grew up in a household where he was extremely abusive towards me. So I never questioned him. I also didn’t really realize what he was talking about.”
Tasneem is now 40 and she is one of several former child-brides who are now rallying behind legislation to ban child marriages in California.
Irvine Neighborhood Raises Stink Over Asphalt Plant
The smell of burnt rubber and worries over air pollution are keeping some residents up at night in neighborhoods surrounding an asphalt-mixing plant in Irvine, California. The air, they say, is so foul they have to close their windows.
At a community meeting led by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) on Dec. 9, more than a dozen residents demanded answers from a panel of air quality experts and enforcement officials.
The culprit is All American Asphalt, a paving company whose hot mix and batch plant has been in the same location on Jeffrey Road for nearly 30 years, long before Orchard Hills and nearby residential areas existed. But since February 2019, AQMD has received 834 complaints about the nocturnal stench.
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We have some things in common, such as a typical breakfast consisting of cold cereal with a banana and apparently a love for dark chocolate, which I crave and eat a bit too much at times. I usually have either one cup of coffee in the morning or none at all compared to Jo’s four to six cups each morning. She looks to be way more of a reader than I am by virtue of her word puzzles and reading fiction. “Jeopardy!” is one of her favorite TV programs, but I wonder if she will continue with that once they find someone to replace the late Alex Trebek.
Irvine City Council Limits Agenda Items to Those With Support by 2 Members
The freshly minted city council in Irvine, California, voted 4–1 on Dec. 8 to permanently extend a policy that requires two council members to support an item before it can be put on the agenda.
The idea is to efficiently limit council discussion to items that more than one member feels are of importance. However, opponents of the policy argue that an item may be of interest to only one member, but even so may be of interest to the thousands of residents that one member represents.
The limitation has been scrutinized by the public, both last year when it was first adopted and in recent months when the council was considering whether to let the rule expire (it was set to expire at the end of 2020). The topic received 91 electronic comments that were read aloud during the meeting. Many commenters voiced opposition.