Nielson heads into the unknown

Back in 2007 guitarist Ruban Nielson decamped from Auckland to Portland, Oregon, with his brother Kody Nielson and Paul Roper, all members of popular Kiwi indie punk band The Mint Chicks. The move came after the band, founded in 2001, cleaned up at the New Zealand Music Awards that year, winning five categories including album of the year for Crazy Yes! Dumb No!

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Oregon Woman Arrested for Scamming The Government out of a 2 Million Dollar Tax Refund

            Salem, OR resident Krystle Marie Reyes was arrested for filing fraudulent tax returns.     According to a probable cause arrest warrant, 25-year-old  Reyes used Turbo Tax, a popular tax preparation software package, to file a faked 2011 income tax return that reported wages of $3 million and claimed she was owed […]

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Lutherans accept clergy in ‘lifelong’ same-sex relationships

After hours of back and forth between members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided Friday evening to accept noncelibate clergy members and lay leaders who are in "lifelong" and "monogamous" same-sex relationships. One of the country’s largest Protestant denominations, the Lutheran church approved four recommendations to its ministry’s policies that underscore a new approach to homosexuality. While the recommendations passed at the weeklong Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, do not address recognizing same-sex marriage or civil unions, they do allow congregations to support same-sex relationships among their members and allow individuals in same-sex relationships to hold clergy positions.

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Going Too Far with Assisted Suicide?

Was there a duet playing in the back of his mind, I wonder, when Sir Edward Downes, the former conductor of Britain’s Royal Opera, held hands with his wife of 54 years and drank the poison with her? Wagner maybe, or Verdi’s Aida, one lover condemned to die, the other choosing to follow rather than live half a life, all alone

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Immigration and Marriage: Will Congress End the ‘Widow Penalty’?

It was bad enough that Natalia Goukassian, then 21, had to spend her honeymoon in June 2006 in West Palm Beach, Fla., helping her husband Tigran find alternative treatments for connective tissue sarcoma, an aggressive cancer, or that six months later, the Air Force–enlisted man, 21, succumbed to the disease. But as it turned out, her painful ordeal had only just begun.

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