Construction Maison

A racist flyer that made waves on social media today after a resident of an Irvine, Ca. apartment building found it hanging in an elevator is fraudulent, according to a spokesman for property company Equity Residential . “This flyer is a fake. It wasn’t produced by us. It wasn’t posted by us. I don’t know where it came from,” Equity representative Marty McKenna said over the phone this morning. The flyer—a notice about noise complaints in Irvine’s Toscana apartment complex—included a bolded section directed specifically at African-American residents. It read: We also would like to remind our African-American residents to keep conversation volume down and reduce music levels between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Multiple complaints have been made regarding this issue. The notice attracted attention after Toscana Apartments tenant and Instagram user @teyent_theequeenb posted a photo and video to her page. “This is what it means to be black in Irvine,” she says in the video. “Blatant ra...

Image Gallery 7 PHOTOS Photo Courtesy: Glen Kumamoto TEMPE, Ariz. (KSAZ) - As students move into dorms and apartments in Tempe, prior to the start of classes at Arizona State University , some say the apartments they decided to rent is in poor condition. Some apartments reportedly had no furniture, when they were supposed to be furnished. Some had leaky faucets, and some even had mold. Some say many of the apartments are unlivable. "I think it's a 'bait and switch'," said Glen Kumamoto, parent of a student. "It's not fair to the students." "I'm pretty pissed about it," said Krystal Scott, who is also a parent of a student. Pictures taken inside some of the apartment units show cockroaches on the floor, mold on the ceiling, and conditions some describe as unlivable. "There's no doors on any of the rooms, so the bathrooms don't have any doors," said Kumamoto. "The sinks are broken, so you can't use the sink...

Photo by Andrea Yori | CC BY 2.0 In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington pursued its elusive enemies across the landscapes of Asia and Africa, thanks in part to a massive expansion of its intelligence infrastructure, particularly of the emerging technologies for digital surveillance , agile drones, and biometric identification. In 2010, almost a decade into this secret war with its voracious appetite for information, the Washington Post reported that the national security state had swelled into a “fourth branch” of the federal government — with 854,000 vetted officials, 263 security organizations , and over 3,000 intelligence units, issuing 50,000 special reports every year. Though stunning, these statistics only skimmed the visible surface of what had become history’s largest and most lethal clandestine apparatus . According to classified documents that Edward Snowden leaked in 2013, the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies alone had 107,035 employees and a combined “b...

A U.S. Navy jet crashed into an apartment complex in Virginia Beach , Virginia, on Friday afternoon . CNN reports that the plane -- an F/A-18D assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106 -- slammed into the Mayfair Mews Apartment complex , setting several apartments on fire. The US Navy reported that both pilots ejected from the plane, but are being transported to the local hospital for observation. The burning fuselage of an F/A- 18 Hornet lies smoldering after crashing into a residential building in Virginia Beach , Va., Friday, April 6, 2012. (AP Photo) The video posted below appears to show the fire and smoke after the crash: [embedded content] SEE MORE VIDEOS on HuffPost here. The U.S. Navy released the following statement: VIRGINIA BEACH , Va. (NNS) -- An F/A-18D assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106 crashed in Virginia Beach , Va. April 6. Initial reports indicate that at approximately 12:05 p.m., the jet crashed just after takeoff at a location just off of the b...

Megyn Kelly is excited about bonding with her fellow human beings . She’s so excited she’s bouncing in her chair, hands waving, as she talks about empowerment and laughter and tears. It’s a recent summer evening , and we’re in her living room on Manhattan’s Upper West Side —a simple space of modern furniture, earth tones, and bookshelves (mostly hardcover novels, De­Mille to Franzen). The apartment is quiet, uncharacteristically so, as her husband, the tech CEO turned novelist Douglas Brunt , and their children—sons Yates and Thatcher, eight and four, and six-year-old daughter Yardley—are all at the beach. Kelly, barefoot in a loose cream-colored sweater and black leggings, is telling me about her new perch at NBC and the morning show, Megyn Kelly Today , that’s set to debut later this month. Not that she can get into specifics. Occupying what used to be the 9:00 a.m. hour of the Today show, her new venture, she says, will have a live studio audience and guests of various sorts. It w...

Regeni was undeterred. Proficient in five languages, he was insatiably curious and exuded a low-intensity charm that attracted a wide circle of friends. From 12 to 14, he served as youth mayor of his hometown, Fiumicello. He prided himself on his ability to navigate different cultures, and he relished Cairo ’s unruly street life : the smoky cafes, the endless hustle, the candy- colored party boats that plied the Nile at night. He registered as a visiting scholar at American University in Cairo and found a room in Dokki, a traffic-choked neighborhood between the Pyramids and the Nile, where he shared an apartment with two young professionals : Juliane Schoki, who taught German, and Mohamed El Sayad , a lawyer at one of Cairo’s oldest law firms . Dokki was an unfashionable address, but it was just two subway stops from downtown Cairo with its maze of cheap hotels, dive bars and crumbling apartment blocks encircling Tahrir Square . Regeni soon befriended writers and artists and practi...