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the canadian player is a center and has been with the kings since 2008.
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(CNN)Hockey player Jarret Stoll of the L.A. Kings was arrested Friday at the swimming pool of a Las Vegas resort on a drug-possession charge, CNN affiliate KSNV reported, citing a police spokesman. Stoll, 32, was charged with possession of controlled substances, including cocaine and ecstasy, according to KSNV. He was released from the Clark County Detention Center late Friday on $5,000 bail. The Kings said in a statement, "We are aware of police reports out of Clark County, Nevada regarding Jarret Stoll. Our organization is concerned and has begun conducting a thorough internal investigation. While we continue to actively gather facts, we are withholding further comment at this time." The Canadian player is a center and has been with the Kings since 2008. The Kings, who won the Stanley Cup two of the past three seasons, did not make the NHL playoffs this season. He is reportedly involved with TV personality Erin Andrews, who is a Fox Sports reporter and co-hosts "Dancing with the Stars." CNN contacted the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to confirm details on Stoll's arrest, but according to the dispatcher no information was available until the beginning of the week.
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the airline shipped more than 200 pets last year.
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Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (CNN)Lost luggage after a long flight is a common, frustrating occurrence of modern air travel. And sometimes, airlines lose things that are irreplaceable. American Jennifer Stewart says she was devastated to learn that Etihad Airways lost her most important baggage following a recent trip from Abu Dhabi to New York City: her 2-year-old pet cat, Felix. Stewart said that she and her husband, Joseph Naaman, booked Felix on their Etihad Airways flight from the United Arab Emirates to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 1. Shortly after the plane arrived in New York that evening, Felix went missing somewhere on the grounds of Kennedy Airport, according to Etihad Airways. Felix was able to get loose, Stewart said she believes, because the cat's plastic carrier was badly damaged at some point either during the flight or the transfer from the airplane to the pickup area. Stewart said a cargo manager called the couple to an office after they landed at Kennedy last week and notified them that their cat's carrier had been crushed. Photographs taken by Stewart showed a large hole in the top of the cat's carrier. At least one of the corners of the case appeared partially collapsed. Nearly one week later, Felix remains missing. "For them to take a cat and ship him like he was cargo, not a live animal, makes me sick," Stewart said. "You trust that people care and are doing the job well, and then this happens." A representative for Etihad Airways told CNN that that the loss of pets during air travel is "extremely rare." The airline shipped more than 200 pets last year. Etihad Airways is investigating the incident and is working with ground handlers at the New York airport to help locate the missing cat. The Abu Dhabi-based carrier also said it hired "third-party specialists" to help in the hunt for Felix. "We deeply regret this unfortunate incident and are keeping the owner apprised of the progress of the search," Etihad Airways told CNN in a statement. "We will review our pet handling procedures in the wake of this incident, as the safety and care of pets traveling with Etihad Airways is a top priority." Stewart and her husband booked the cat's flight as part of their job relocation to the United States after living in Abu Dhabi for more than three years. The couple said they spent $1,200 to ship Felix on the 14-hour flight. "You pay all of this money, but for what? People assume you pay extra to have your pets taken care of, but they're treated no differently than a free piece of checked luggage," Stewart said. It isn't the first time a pet has gone missing at New York's busiest airport. In August 2011, a cat escaped from its carrier before an American Airlines flight from New York to San Francisco. That cat was eventually discovered -- alive -- two months later in a customs room at the airport. But the cat later had to be euthanized because of injuries and malnutrition it suffered while lost. This weekend, Stewart enlisted the help of a local nonprofit, which provided a highly trained detection dog, to help track down Felix's scent. A wildlife biologist who works with the airport has also placed traps to facilitate Felix's safe return, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Officials at Kennedy have offered to assist Etihad Airways as the airline investigates what happened, the Port Authority said. Stewart said the couple will continue to search the airport until they have answers. "We just want to find Felix. But I just don't know if we will," she said.
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a nasa astrophysicist has named an asteroid after the teenage education activist from pakistan, who was gravely wounded by a pakistani taliban gunman for promoting the right of girls' to go to school.
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(CNN)Malala Yousafzai's stellar career has included a Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, she made it into outer space. A NASA astrophysicist has named an asteroid after the teenage education activist from Pakistan, who was gravely wounded by a Pakistani Taliban gunman for promoting the right of girls' to go to school. It took a meticulous medical response to save her life more than two years ago. But Malala recovered with no serious neurological damage to become a powerhouse for her cause. After reading her story, scientist Amy Mainzer, who also consults for PBS on a children's educational science show, decided Malala deserved to be immortalized. So, she attached her name to the heavens. Thousands of asteroids swarm through the solar system mainly between Mars and Jupiter. Mainzer, working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discovered Asteroid 316201 in June 2010, which gave her the right to name it. "My postdoctoral fellow Dr. Carrie Nugent brought to my attention the fact that although many asteroids have been named, very few have been named to honor the contributions of women (and particularly women of color)," Mainzer wrote in a note to Malala. Mainzer gave it the name 316201 Malala, or 2010 ML48. Malala's asteroid circles the sun between Mars and Jupiter every five and half years, Mainzer said. "It is about 4 kilometers in diameter, and its surface is very dark, the color of printer toner." As a scientist, her support for Malala's work is logical. When girls around the world also get educations, it increases human potential. "We desperately need the brainpower of all smart people to solve some of humanity's most difficult problems, and we can't afford to reject half the population's," Mainzer wrote.
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eyewitness video showing white north charleston police officer michael slager shooting to death.
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(CNN)Eyewitness video showing white North Charleston police Officer Michael Slager shooting to death an unarmed black man has exposed discrepancies in the reports of the first officers on the scene. Slager has been fired and charged with murder in the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott. A bystander's cell phone video, which began after an alleged struggle on the ground between Slager and Scott, shows the five-year police veteran shooting at Scott eight times as Scott runs away. Scott was hit five times. If words were exchanged between the men, they're are not audible on the tape. It's unclear what happened before Scott ran, or why he ran. The officer initially said that he used a Taser on Scott, who, Slager said, tried to take the weapon. Before Slager opens fire, the video shows a dark object falling behind Scott and hitting the ground. It's unclear whether that is the Taser. Later in the video, when Slager approaches Scott's body, Slager appears to drop a dark object near Scott. Slager is seen in the video handcuffing Scott after the shooting. Witness: I nearly erased shooting video out of fear Feidin Santana, the witness who recorded the video, said he didn't see Scott grab Slager's Taser. His account contradicts what Slager told dispatchers. In two interviews with NBC, Santana said that he was walking to his job in North Charleston on Saturday morning when he saw Slager chase Scott, who had been pulled over for a broken taillight. Santana told NBC's Lester Holt on Wednesday that he saw the two men struggling on the ground. "They were down on the (ground) ... before I started recording," Santana said. "I remember the police (officer) had control of the situation. He had control of Scott." Santana said he heard the sound of a Taser being used. He believed Scott was trying to get away from it. But Scott never got the Taser or used it on the officer, Santana told NBC. Who was Walter Scott? A North Charleston Police report included brief statements from eight police officers, but not Slager. One officer, identified as Sgt. J. Gann, said in the report he was conducting a separate traffic stop about 9:30 a.m. Saturday when he heard -- apparently via radio -- Slager say he was "in foot pursuit" of another motorist. Gann said that while driving to the officer's location, "Slager advised that he deployed his Taser and (requested) back up units." Seconds later, Gann reported, he heard Slager tell a dispatcher, "Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser." Hours after the shooting, The Post and Courier of Charleston quoted a statement from police spokesman Spencer Pryor, who said Slager attempted to use his Taser to stop a fleeing suspect. The men struggled over the device, with the suspect taking the Taser and attempting to use it against Slager, the newspaper reported. In the police report, another officer, J. Banias, said he was heading to the scene about 10 minutes after the initial call. Slager asked him to "secure his vehicle at the site of the traffic stop." Banias said he spoke to a passenger in the car Scott was driving. "The passenger was ... detained and placed in the back seat of my vehicle," the officer reported. The passenger's identity was not given in the report, but the officer said in the report that the passenger was detained. Scott family spokesman Ryan Julison confirmed to CNN that a man was with Scott and said he is not related to the family. The family declined to provide any more information. A timeline of events The North Charleston Police Department is not providing additional information, citing an ongoing investigation of Scott's killing by the independent South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Gann said when he arrived at the shooting scene, an officer identified only as Habersham "was administering first aid" to Scott. "I exited my vehicle and assisted Officer Habersham with first aid and CPR to the driver," Gann said in the report. "We continued to perform first aid and CPR until EMS arrived... When EMS and first responders arrived, EMS took care over providing care to the driver, who was pronounced deceased a short time later." Habersham, in his account, did not mention performing CPR. "I attempted to render aid to the victim by applying pressure to the gunshot wounds and (directing) the best route for EMS and fire to get to the victim faster," he said in the report. An officer identified as Sgt. Webb said that he requested an ambulance. Webb said that at 9:41 a.m. he saw Habersham "administering chest compression to the defendant." North Charleston Police Chief Eddie Driggers was asked at a news conference this week whether CPR was performed on Scott. "I do not know. I was told that life-saving ... that they tried to save his life," Driggers said. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey added that not every North Charleston police officer is CPR certified. What we know about Officer Slager
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but all that changed thursday when trey asked ellie to be his prom date.
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(CNN)He's a blue chip college basketball recruit. She's a high school freshman with Down syndrome. At first glance Trey Moses and Ellie Meredith couldn't be more different. But all that changed Thursday when Trey asked Ellie to be his prom date. Trey -- a star on Eastern High School's basketball team in Louisville, Kentucky, who's headed to play college ball next year at Ball State -- was originally going to take his girlfriend to Eastern's prom. So why is he taking Ellie instead? "She's great... she listens and she's easy to talk to" he said. Trey made the prom-posal (yes, that's what they are calling invites to prom these days) in the gym during Ellie's P.E. class. Trina Helson, a teacher at Eastern, alerted the school's newspaper staff to the prom-posal and posted photos of Trey and Ellie on Twitter that have gone viral. She wasn't surpristed by Trey's actions. "That's the kind of person Trey is," she said. To help make sure she said yes, Trey entered the gym armed with flowers and a poster that read "Let's Party Like it's 1989," a reference to the latest album by Taylor Swift, Ellie's favorite singer. Trey also got the OK from Ellie's parents the night before via text. They were thrilled. "You just feel numb to those moments raising a special needs child," said Darla Meredith, Ellie's mom. "You first feel the need to protect and then to overprotect." Darla Meredith said Ellie has struggled with friendships since elementary school, but a special program at Eastern called Best Buddies had made things easier for her. She said Best Buddies cultivates friendships between students with and without developmental disabilities and prevents students like Ellie from feeling isolated and left out of social functions. "I guess around middle school is when kids started to care about what others thought," she said, but "this school, this year has been a relief." Trey's future coach at Ball State, James Whitford, said he felt great about the prom-posal, noting that Trey, whom he's known for a long time, often works with other kids Trey's mother, Shelly Moses, was also proud of her son. "It's exciting to bring awareness to a good cause," she said. "Trey has worked pretty hard, and he's a good son." Both Trey and Ellie have a lot of planning to do. Trey is looking to take up special education as a college major, in addition to playing basketball in the fall. As for Ellie, she can't stop thinking about prom. "Ellie can't wait to go dress shopping" her mother said. "Because I've only told about a million people!" Ellie interjected.
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pg&e said it has paid more than $500 million in claims to the victims' families.
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(CNN)The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday said it is ordering Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to pay a record $1.6 billion penalty for unsafe operation of its gas transmission system, including the pipeline rupture that killed eight people in San Bruno in September 2010. Most of the penalty amounts to forced spending on improving pipeline safety. Of the $1.6 billion, $850 million will go to "gas transmission pipeline safety infrastructure improvements," the commission said. Another $50 million will go toward "other remedies to enhance pipeline safety," according to the commission. "PG&E failed to uphold the public's trust," commission President Michael Picker said. "The CPUC failed to keep vigilant. Lives were lost. Numerous people were injured. Homes were destroyed. We must do everything we can to ensure that nothing like this happens again." The company's chief executive officer said in a written statement that PG&E is working to become the safest energy company in the United States. "Since the 2010 explosion of our natural gas transmission pipeline in San Bruno, we have worked hard to do the right thing for the victims, their families and the community of San Bruno," Tony Earley said. "We are deeply sorry for this tragic event, and we have dedicated ourselves to re-earning the trust of our customers and the communities we serve. The lessons of this tragic event will not be forgotten." On September 9, 2010, a section of PG&E pipeline exploded in San Bruno, killing eight people and injuring more than 50 others. The blast destroyed 37 homes. PG&E said it has paid more than $500 million in claims to the victims and victims' families in San Bruno, which is just south of San Francisco. The company also said it has already replaced more than 800 miles of pipe, installed new gas leak technology and implemented nine of 12 recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board. According to its website, PG&E has 5.4 million electric customers and 4.3 million natural gas customers. The Los Angeles Times reported the previous record penalty was a $146 million penalty against Southern California Edison Company in 2008 for falsifying customer and worker safety data. CNN's Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
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the white walkers will be the characters to watch this season.
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(CNN)Where do you go from here? The fourth season of "Game of Thrones" saw massive battles, major deaths (Tywin!) and White Walkers, but what can fans expect Sunday as we head into a fifth season of one of the most popular shows in HBO history? It's the most high-profile premiere yet, airing simultaneously in 170 countries for the first time. (HBO is a Time Warner company, like CNN.) We sought out "Thrones" aficionado Doug Gross, a writer for Nerdwallet and a former CNN employee, who had a few thoughts on the matter (beware, TV fans, he has read the books). "We're going to start seeing some of the show's major story arcs coming together," Gross said (as confirmed by the executive producers). "Already, Stannis has shown up at the Wall to save Jon Snow and the rest of the Night's Watch from the wildlings," he said. "Now we'll see how his quest for the Iron Throne collides with the Watch's supposedly non-political role protecting the realm." Tyrion's path should cross with Daenerys' this season, according to the trailers. "Season five also will be unique in that some of the major story arcs will clearly be moving ahead of where George Martin is in the 'Song of Ice and Fire' books," Gross pointed out. Executive producer David Benioff told Rolling Stone, "We are starting to build to a crescendo, which means the battles have to get bigger and things have to get more dramatic." Indeed, this fifth season means we're past the halfway point, with the show currently set to end after seven years. The Stark daughters, Arya and Sansa, will be the characters to watch this season, as will Cersei. The world of Westeros is constantly plagued by war, but is there a time when people have just had enough? "Wars are waged by the nobles, but it's the common folk who suffer," Gross noted. "And, this season, we'll get a glimpse of what happens when those common people have had enough."
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the atlanta hawks described his injury as "significant"
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(CNN)NBA player Thabo Sefolosha says police caused his season-ending leg injury when he was arrested last week after leaving a nightclub in New York. In a statement Tuesday, the guard/forward for the Atlanta Hawks described his injury as "significant," and said it "was caused by the police." Sefolosha suffered a fractured fibula and ligament damage when he and teammate Pero Antic were arrested near the scene of the stabbing of Indiana Pacers forward Chris Copeland and two other women early April 8. Police said Sefolosha and Antic were not involved in the stabbing incident, but they were charged with misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration. TMZ Sports released video last week that shows a group of police officers arresting the 6-foot-7 Sefolosha and taking him to the ground. It also shows an officer within that group getting out a baton and extending it near him, but what may have caused the injury is not clear in the video. Sefolosha appears to be limping as he is led away by officers. New York Police Department Sgt. Daniel Doody said Wednesday that the matter is being reviewed by the Internal Affairs Bureau and would not comment further. Internal Affairs had no comment. Sefolosha did not specify his injury in his statement Tuesday, but the Hawks said last week that he has a fractured fibula and ligament damage, will undergo surgery and will miss the rest of the season, including the playoffs, which begin this weekend. The Hawks enter as the top seed in the NBA's Eastern Conference. Sefolosha, who turns 31 in May, is in his ninth NBA season and his first with the Hawks. He averaged 5.3 points per game this season. "I am extremely disappointed that I will not be able to join my teammates on the court during the playoffs and apologize to them for any distraction this incident has caused," Sefolosha said in his statement. "I will be cheering for them every step of the way and will be diligent in my rehabilitation. "On advice of counsel, I hope you can appreciate that I cannot discuss the facts of the case. Those questions will be answered by my attorney in a court of law. I will simply say that I am in great pain, have experienced a significant injury and that the injury was caused by the police." Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said in a statement last week, "This is a very difficult situation for Thabo and our thoughts and support will be with him during his recovery. We know that his approach and dedication will serve him well in his rehabilitation. Our team remains focused and will be prepared as we head into the postseason." Antic, a 31-year-old, 6-foot-11 center/forward, missed the April 8 game against the Brooklyn Nets, but has played since then. In a joint statement last week, Sefolosha and Antic said they will contest the charges. According to the Pacers, Copeland underwent surgery on his abdomen and left elbow for stab wounds. He was released from the hospital two days after the incident, according to Bleacher Report. The Pacers, with one regular-season game left, are trying to secure the last spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs. If they do, their first-round opponent would be Atlanta. CNN's Camille Cava contributed to this report.
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one person died, according to the school.
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Nairobi, Kenya (CNN)University of Nairobi students were terrified Sunday morning when they heard explosions -- caused by a faulty electrical cable -- and believed it was a terror attack, the school said. Students on the Kikuyu campus stampeded down the halls of the Kimberly dormitory, and some jumped from its fifth floor, the university said. Hundreds were injured and were taken to hospitals. One person died, according to the school. The confusion and panic came less than two weeks after Al-Shabaab slaughtered 147 people at a college in Garissa, Kenya. Kenyan teachers and students have said they fear being targeted by the Somalia-based terrorists. On Sunday, as many as 108 students from the University of Nairobi were admitted to Kenyatta National Hospital. Among them, at least 63 students have been discharged, and at least four are slated for surgery, the school said. Almost all of the 54 students being treated at PCEA Kikuyu Hospital have been released, the university said. Kenya Power authorities and its CEO are at the school and looking into the electrical issue. Normal power supply will resume after repairs, the university said. "As we mourn the unfortunate loss of the departed student, we are also praying for the quick recovery of those who were injured," said Vice Chancellor Peter M.F. Mbithi in a statement. He called on the students, staff and public to remain calm. CNN's Lillian Leposo reported from Nairobi and Ashley Fantz wrote this story in Atlanta.
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the antique ring was found at finns beach in finn, australia.
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(CNN)Caught up in a rip current while snorkeling at Finn's Beach in Bali, Roxy Walsh was holding on to some rocks when she spotted something special. Engraved with the words, "Darling Joe, Happy 70th Birthday 2009. Love Jenny," the antique ring lodged in the rocks clearly meant something to both Joe and Jenny. But there were no other clues (besides the fact that the words were written in English) as to where the couple might live. When she returned home to Palm Beach, Australia, Walsh was determined to reunite the ring with its owner. She went to the 5,000 members of her company's Facebook page, Kids in Adelaide, to reunite Joe and Jenny with the ring. She also created a "Find Joe and Jenny" page to track them down. "Hi all. It's Roxy here. This is a reaaaallyy long shot but would love some SHARE love on this post to help find Joe. Found this gold ring snorkeling at Finns Beach in Bali today. It's got a family crest on it, and engraved with the message 'Darling Joe, Happy 70th Birthday 2009. Love Jenny' How amazing would it be to find him! Please click share." The post got shared all over the world. Nine months earlier, Joe Langley had been snorkeling in the same spot in Bali when he lost the ring, which his wife, Jenny, had purchased an antique store and had engraved for his birthday. "I went for a swim, got caught in a rip, decided the rip was going to take me and finished up on the rocks," Langley told Sunshine Coast Daily. "In clawing my way over the rocks, the ring pulled off my finger." The Langleys' 19-year-old granddaughter saw the Facebook post April 9 and made the connection. It turns out that the Langleys are fellow Australians, living in the town of Noosa, just three hours from where Walsh lives in Palm Beach. Walsh had the ring professionally cleaned before she met the happy Langleys in Noosa to return it.
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the evidence of ugly and explicit racial discrimination was devastating.
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(CNN)Change is coming to Ferguson. In the next few weeks the Department of Justice (DOJ) will begin to negotiate in earnest with the city to restructure the police department, which the department has charged with engaging in a pattern and practice of racial discrimination. It should not be forgotten that the DOJ review of the Ferguson Police Department was precipitated by months of protests and activism following the killing of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer and by revelations about the town's dysfunctional government and court system by local civil rights law groups. Now, after a half year of unrest, and with citizens on Tuesday electing two new black city council members, change is beginning to come to Ferguson. The question is, what kind of change? The report from the Department of Justice offered a devastating insight into a police department and court system that preyed on its own citizens. Through illegal traffic stops and arrests, and the use of excessive force, the police department held town residents in bondage. The municipal court system used excessive court fines and fees to ensure that citizens arrested for even minor infractions would be charged thousands of dollars or face jail time. Court costs and fees constituted the second-largest sources of revenue for the town. Rather than a force for public safety, the Ferguson Police Department became, according to Attorney General Eric Holder, "a collection agency" -- one that preyed disproportionately on the town's African-American residents. The evidence of ugly and explicit racial discrimination was devastating. It included blatantly racist emails traded among officers, and evidence that African-Americans were victims in all of the police canine bite incidents recorded by the department. But just a few weeks before the release of the report, the Ferguson police chief declared there were "no racial issues" in his department. Ferguson's ugly, racist emails released The recommendations in the report, ranging from new training and supervision of police officers, addressing racially discriminatory conduct to structural revisions in the court system, will, if implemented, remake the law enforcement system in the town. (A grand jury that investigated the shooting of Brown by Officer Darren Wilson chose not to file charges against him and the Justice Department also didn't find reason to prosecute.) Without question, change is coming to the town's government. Town Manager John Shaw, Ferguson's most powerful official and, until the DOJ's blistering report, the one who inexplicably managed to elude public scrutiny, resigned weeks ago and has been replaced by the city's deputy manager. Three sitting city council members chose not to run for office again and, on Tuesday, citizens elected two black candidates to the city council, changing its racial composition: Five of six members and the mayor were white. Now the council will be 50% black. Ferguson's hapless police Chief Thomas Jackson also finally resigned after holding on through a months-long display of astonishing incompetence. The department first drew the attention of the nation for its display of military weaponry and tear gas in response to civilian protests. The appointment of a commander from the State Highway Patrol was deemed necessary to begin quelling the unrest and to build community trust in the early days of the protest. Jackson's departure sent an important signal to the population of a town preyed upon by officers under his command. And so we can be certain that along with the new makeup of the city council, there will be a new police chief in Ferguson. But does that mean that fundamental change will come to Ferguson? Not necessarily. Not unless protest and activism during this critical period turns to influence the vitally important opportunities that lie ahead in the coming weeks. The Department of Justice's full-on negotiations with the leadership in Ferguson will determine the shape of the new Ferguson Police Department. Indeed, the DOJ report alludes to the possibility of disbanding the department in favor of a regional policing integration with St. Louis County. Many local activists have suggested just such a solution, but given ongoing problems with policing in the county -- including the role of county forces in some of the most controversial clashes with activists in Ferguson last fall -- community representatives will have to fight hard to ensure that the DOJ can fold St. Louis County Police into its monitoring and reform process. Equally important were the April 7 general elections. Turnout in municipal elections has been notoriously low in Ferguson, with white voters nearly three times more likely to turn out than African-Americans. But local groups had engaged in vigorous voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns.. The Mayor has two years left to his term and has defiantly insisted that he will not resign (although a petition for his recall has been circulating). That means that he will be a lead voice in negotiating with the DOJ to remake the police department. Has he committed to a clear set of principles that will guide his participation in those talks? Community activists and residents must ensure that Mayor James Knowles plans to represent their vision of new Ferguson Police Department. But there is an opportunity to begin thinking about even more ambitious structural change in Ferguson and throughout St. Louis County. Ferguson's governing structure, with a strong city manager and a weak council and mayor, mirrors that of thousands of other suburbs in the United States. That form of governance might have been precisely what thriving, middle class white suburbanites wanted when they fled racial integration in cities like St. Louis. But working class suburbs like Ferguson with a majority black population in which the needs of the population in the areas of education and economic opportunity more closely hews to the needs of urban residents, may need a more robust form of governance. In any case, a system in which the elected officials have minimal power, but non-elected leaders, like the town manager and the chief of police, have inordinate power, is a recipe for the kind of unaccountable, non-representative government that controlled Ferguson's residents. Yet this precise form of government is in wide use across the country. Likewise, Missouri, like the vast majority of states, holds municipal elections in non-presidential election years, guaranteeing a significantly lower voter turnout -- although only a few states hold the primary and general election in March and April as Missouri law requires Ferguson to do. It's not that Ferguson is so different than towns across America. It's precisely because Ferguson holds up a mirror to flaws in our democratic system of government in towns across this country that the stakes are so high. Ferguson residents now have the opportunity to begin a movement for change in the other 89 jurisdictions in St. Louis County plagued by similar governance flaws, including those towns led by African-Americans. And Ferguson's example should provoke self-examination in working class suburbs across the country, where the power and effectiveness of weak elected local government is inadequate to meet the needs of the population. Change is coming to Ferguson. But the scope and breadth of that change will depend upon the ambition and discipline of activists and residents, whose passion and tenacity have already transformed the trajectory of leadership in a typical American town.
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easter is a cornerstone event in the christian faith.
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(CNN)Easter is a cornerstone event in the Christian faith, but it's surrounded by interesting quirks. It celebrates the completion of Christ's mission of salvation in the Crucifixion and Resurrection. By dying on Good Friday, Christ atoned for the sins of others; by rising from the grave on Sunday, Christ conquered death. Simple enough and reason for Christians to celebrate. But, like Christmas with its tree, ornaments and Santa Claus, Easter has picked up its peripheral trappings -- the bunny and colorful eggs. Unlike Christmas, it doesn't fall on the same day every year but shifts around in spring depending upon cosmic events. And that blood moon we just had -- is it pure coincidence that it fell around Easter? (No.) Here's a journey from the Vatican to the Holy Land, around the moon and the Earth's tilting axis, to Germany and the United States to try to explain the complex holiday called Easter. And you'll learn to how to color Easter eggs with Kool-Aid. Let's start at the Vatican. At the Vatican, Holy Week began with Palm Sunday last week and culminated in Easter Sunday Mass with multiple celebrations in between to mark the final week of Christ's mortal life. Jesus rode on the back of a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday where crowds celebrated him as the Messiah and laid down palm branches in his path. But the crowd and the Romans turned on him in the course of the week, according to the Bible, leading to his crucifixion and resurrection. Rain sprinkled down on worshipers standing under a sea of umbrellas as they gathered in a gray St. Peter's Square on Sunday to partake in the outdoor services held by Pope Francis. Afterward, the Pontiff took a moment to tell the world to do right those in need in his Urbi et Orbi address. Francis lamented the suffering of people in many of the conflicts around the globe. From Nigeria to South Sudan, Iraq to Ukraine, he expressed hope that violence would end. Francis also doesn't put on airs. This week he washed the feet of believers, repeating the Biblical account of a woman, a sinner, washing Jesus' feet and anointing them with oil. Let's move on to old Jerusalem, the birthplace of Easter. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in old Jerusalem unifies the spot where Christ was crucified -- Calvary -- with his tomb, or sepulcher. On Sunday, Catholics and Armenian Christians celebrated the Resurrection there. In the morning, the Latin Patriarch, the Archbishop of Jerusalem, entered the basilica. Then mass was held followed by a procession. But a large group of indigenous Christians didn't join them. It's not quite Easter yet in the Holy Land for Eastern Orthodox Christians. They'll be celebrating a week from now, because they determine Easter's date by a different calendar than Western Christians -- the Julian calendar. Which brings us to the question of how astronomy is used to determine the date of Easter Sunday. A blood moon appeared in the sky early Saturday, right between Good Friday and Easter Sunday and during Passover. Just a coincidence? Not completely, because the dates for both Passover -- the Jewish holiday celebrating the deliverance from slavery in Egypt -- and Easter are determined by moon phases, according to timeanddate.com. Easter's timing is related to Passover, because Jesus was crucified around then, according to the Bible. Many Jewish holidays, including Passover, fall on full moon, which is also a prerequisite for a lunar eclipse, the event that turns the moon a blood red color. Since the timing of moon phases doesn't jibe with Earth's orbit -- which is how we determine the length of a year now -- Passover's exact date moves around -- and so does Easter's. When Christian bishops first convened at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325, they made a rule to determine the date of Easter, so as to fairly reliably pin it to Passover: It would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. That's the day in March when Earth's axis reaches a midpoint between winter and summer and the day and night are of equal length. But ... if the full moon fell on Sunday, Easter would be pushed down a week. Confusing? It got worse. When the West moved from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, Orthodox Christians stayed put, resulting in -- usually -- two separate dates for Easter. In 1997, the World Council of Churches pushed for a unified method of determining a date based on astronomical occurrences. It didn't catch on. But some odd Easter trappings that popped up after the Middle Ages very much have -- the eggs and the bunny. The bunny is an egg-laying pagan that worships the moon. That's one notion of its origins, but probably not the actual one. German immigrants appear to have brought it to North America in the 1700s. German historians are not clear on its beginnings, but the first known mention of the bunny and the eggs in writing was in 1682. Professor of medicine Georg Franck von Frankenau described in his paper "De ovis paschalibus," or "On Easter eggs," a custom in the Alsace region involving a bunny and eggs, according to German public television. Some also credit the region with inadvertently inventing the Christmas tree. But von Frankenau left out any explanation of how the tradition arose, leading to a number of theories in Germany. One common idea: During Lent, people had to abstain from eating eggs, but hens kept on laying them, so farmers boiled and preserved them. By the time Easter rolled around, they were practically swimming in them. They had to figure out something to do with them when the holiday hit. Play hide and seek with them; color them; give them as gifts. Parents may have invented the bunny as a playful explanation for children on where the Easter eggs came from. If you're coloring eggs this year, here's an interesting tip. Instead of stinking up your place with the smell of vinegar, use Kool-Aid, YouTube science geek Grant Thompson suggests. And it appears to work. Just use a whole packet in a small glass of hot water and gently lay the eggs in. They turn out as bright as they would in any other food dye. But be careful, it stains everything else, like clothes and upholstery, Thompson warns. That's why your tongue changes colors when you drink it. Happy Easter! Happy Passover!
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the outlines of a nuclear deal with iran are in place because of tough sanctions imposed by the u.s. congress.
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(CNN)The outlines of a nuclear deal with Iran are in place. Unfortunately, it seems like too many in President Barack Obama's administration have forgotten that the only reason this terrorist-supporting state came to the negotiating table in the first place was because of tough sanctions imposed by the U.S. Congress. Indeed, the reality is that President Obama is giving up enormous leverage in his nuclear deal with Iran -- and I worry we will lose it for good. Bleeding money, and faced with falling oil prices, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei gave his government rare permission to bargain with the "Great Satan" -- the United States. But just as U.S. and European sanctions were forcing Iran to the nuclear crossroads, President Obama has given Tehran an easy exit. For Khamenei, the "framework" announced last week looks like a win-win: He gets to keep his nuclear infrastructure, and in return gets billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Congress offered a better strategy when the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, and I introduced a bill to hit Tehran with its toughest sanctions yet. Unfortunately, this bill -- which passed the House in a 400-20 vote -- was blocked in the Senate last year, despite the fact that it would have sharpened the Ayatollah's choice: Dismantle your nuclear weapons program or see your economy collapse. President Obama once had a tougher line, when in 2012 he said: "The deal we'll accept is they end their nuclear program. It's very straightforward." But the framework announced last week does nothing of the sort. Negotiated between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, the framework concedes that Iran can maintain "a mutually defined enrichment program," operate thousands of centrifuges, and continue its research and development of nuclear technologies. The deal currently on the table would hand Tehran billions of previously sanctioned funds, filling the coffers of the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism, with strongholds in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Meanwhile, the strictest restrictions on Iran's enrichment will expire in only 10 years, despite the President receiving a letter from 367 Members of Congress -- both Democrats and Republicans -- in which we insisted that "verifiable constraints on Iran's nuclear program must last for decades." The President admitted as much when he conceded that "in year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero." But as bad as these concessions are, the most concerning aspect of the April 2 deal is that it lacks tough safeguards to stop Iran from cheating. The key question is this: Will the inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency be allowed to inspect these military sites without warning? Because if the IAEA cannot conduct "anytime, anywhere" inspections, Iran will be able to "sneak out" to a bomb. It has been done before. Remember, in 1994, when President Bill Clinton told us he had struck a deal with North Korea that would "make the United States, the Korean Peninsula, and the world safer"? President Clinton sounded a little too much like the current Secretary of State John Kerry, when he promised that the North Korea agreement "does not rely on trust" and that "compliance will be certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency." Twelve years after these assurances, North Korea detonated its first nuclear bomb. Iran could easily do the same. The best predictor of its future behavior is its past behavior -- between 2004 and 2009, the Iranian government built a huge centrifuge facility named Fordo under a mountain deep in the Iranian desert. Luckily for the world, Western intelligence agencies discovered Tehran's deception. But we cannot rely on such luck in the future, particularly when Iran still hasn't come clean about its history of secret weapons development and is still dodging basic questions from the IAEA. Let's not forget the other things Iran has been doing while its diplomats have been bargaining with the U.S. and its partners. While Iran was showing its friendly new face to the world, it has simultaneously been helping Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad kill his own people, training and funding the terrorist group Hezbollah, which aims to annihilate Israel, and supporting the Houthis, who started a civil war and overthrew the government in Yemen -- one of America's more reliable counterterrorism partners in the region. If President Obama is going to hand over billions of dollars to a regime that behaves like this, run by a man who publicly declares: "Death to America," it has to be a better deal. The framework we have before us keeps Iran's nuclear door well and truly open.
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the u.s. religious freedom restoration act became law in the u.s. civil rights law law laws.
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(CNN)The United States has seemingly erupted this week about what it means to live your religion, especially in Indiana, where its new Religious Freedom Restoration Act faces a firestorm from critics who say it uses faith as a pretext to discriminate against gay people. Such state laws have been growing ever since the U.S. Religious Freedom Restoration Act became law in 1993, designed to prohibit the federal government from "substantially burdening" a person's exercise of religion. So far, 20 states have some version of the religious liberty law, and the legal controversies have grown, too. Nonetheless, claims under those state RFRAs are "exceedingly rare," and victories involved mostly religious minorities, not Christian denominations, experts say. "There is reason to doubt whether these state-level religious liberty provisions truly provide meaningful protections for religious believers," wrote Wayne State University law professor Christopher Lund in a 2010 analysis, when there were only 16 states with such laws. Here are some of the more interesting cases arising from the federal and state laws, touching upon an array of religious matters from a knife carried by an IRS accountant to a tea from the Amazon: He was a Native American with eagle feathers at a religious gathering of tribes. But not in the eyes of the feds. In 2006, Robert Soto and Michael Russell attended an American Indian powwow while in possession of eagle feathers, in violation of the federal Eagle Protection Act, which outlaws the killing of bald and golden eagles and even picking their feathers off the ground. Soto, a Lipan Apache, asserted he was participating in an Indian religious ceremony. The feathers are sacred to Native Americans. But a federal Fish and Wildlife Service agent found his tribe wasn't federally recognized, and Soto surrendered his feathers. Russell, who is married to Soto's sister, isn't American Indian and agreed to pay a fine, according to court papers and the America Bar Association Journal. Soto, however, petitioned the federal Interior Department to return his feathers. The feds said no, because he wasn't from a recognized tribe. Soto and Russell sued the federal government, but a federal district court ruled in favor of the government, rejecting the two men's First Amendment assertions and their claims under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the same 1993 statute that Indiana legislators used in developing their new state law. But last August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's decision and sent the case back to that court after finding the government's action would violate the federal RFRA. On March 10, the federal government returned the eagle feathers to Soto. But the legal war isn't over. The federal government still maintains it can criminally prosecute Soto and his congregants, so Soto is seeking a preliminary injunction, claiming the feds are violating the federal RFRA, said Luke Goodrich, Soto's attorney who's with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. A tea used by a Brazilian faith is to them like wine used by Catholics at communion, but U.S. agents considered the brew an illegal drug. The religious organization O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal uses a sacramental tea called hoasca, made from two plants native to the Amazon that contains dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogen, in violation of the Controlled Substances Act. The religion is a Christian spiritist faith that originated in Brazil and includes Amazonian and indigenous spiritual traditions. About 140 members of the church live in the United States and use the tea in a sacred communion. In May 1999, U.S. Customs agents entered the church headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and seized all of its hoasca. The church became alarmed and cited how the federal government allows an exception for American Indians to use another illegal drug, peyote, in their religious ceremonies. In fact, the federal RFRA was designed partly to protect the Native Americans' use of peyote, said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. "They were a legitimate religion, and this was a legitimate ritual of the religion, and Congress wanted to make sure it was protected," Toobin said of peyote and the 1993 law. The Uniao do Vegetal, which means "the union of the plants," cited that federal law in suing the federal government. "The government has never explained why it has accommodated The Native American Church's use of peyote (which contains mescaline, also a controlled substance) but cannot accommodate the UDV's use of hoasca," the church said in a statement. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the church's favor, saying the federal government failed to show a compelling interest to ban the substance for religious use. "The peyote exception also fatally undermines the government's broader contention that the Controlled Substances Act establishes a closed regulatory system that admits of no exceptions under RFRA," the court ruling said. Bruce Rich, an Orthodox Jewish prisoner in Florida, wanted kosher meals, but the warden said no. So Rich sued the state prison system in 2010, saying its denial of a kosher menu violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, a landmark civil law rights law for inmates whose predecessor was the federal religious freedom law. Rich, 66, is serving a life sentence for murdering his parents, in their 70s, in 1995 allegedly to inherit their home. The prison system argued the meals were costly and would lead to security concerns, namely "retaliation against the kosher inmates" if other inmates believed the higher costs of kosher meals impacted the quality of their food, court papers said. At least 35 other states and the federal government, however, provided kosher diets to inmates. After losing before a magistrate, Rich won an appeal before the 11th Circuit Court, which cited "the defendant's meager efforts to explain why Florida's prisons are so different from the penal institutions that now provide kosher meals such that the plans adopted by those other institutions would not work in Florida." Recently baptized in the Sikh faith, Kawal Tagore went to her job with the IRS in Houston in 2005 carrying a new religious item: a 9-inch kirpan, a small ceremonial sword that resembles a knife but has an edge that is blunted or curved. Tagore needed to carry the kirpan at all times as a mandatory article of faith. But the federal government banned her from the building, citing the kirpan as a "dangerous weapon" with a more than 3-inch blade, and she was later fired from her accounting job because she refused to keep the kirpan out of the workplace. Tagore sued the government under the federal law. Tagore cited how the government allowed the public to enter the federal building with more threatening objects: real 2.5-inch blade knives and metal canes, said her attorneys with the Newar Law Firm and the Becket Fund. Also, federal employees inside the building were allowed to use box cutters and cake knives. In November, the federal government agreed to settle the case shortly after the start of Tagore's trial. The settlement included no admission of wrongdoing, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Tagore's attorneys described the settlement as "a groundbreaking policy allowing Sikhs and other religious minorities to wear religious symbols and attire in federal buildings," they said in a statement. Invoking a religious freedom law and related statutes doesn't always equate to victory. In Chicago, an association of 40 churches called the Civil Liberties for Urban Believers found it too onerous to erect houses of worship in business and commercial zones. The ministers needed a special use permit, but such permits were often thwarted by aldermen or it was too bureaucratic and costly to obtain one, the church leaders claimed. In fact, it was easier to get a club, lodge or community center approved. So the pastors sued the city of Chicago in 2000, alleging that its zoning laws violated the Illinois religious freedom statute, the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the U.S. Constitution. But in 2003, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision and rejected the church group's claims, finding no substantial burden on the churches, which also failed to establish their RLUIPA claim. Defeated, church leaders were angry. "The forty (40) churches in C.L.U.B. and certainly people of all faiths throughout Chicago are outraged by the majority opinion which neuters the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act passed unanimously by Congress in 2000," Apostle Theodore Wilkinson, the group's chairman, said in a statement. "Also alarming is the court's conclusion that Chicago's religious assemblies have no free speech protection from zoning laws. The majority opinion would apparently extend free speech protection to religious assemblies only if they allowed live nude dancing," he said. At the same time, the city of Chicago revised its zoning ordinance to avoid "the threat of heightened scrutiny under RLUIPA," according to a League of California Cities report in 2002. CNN's Alexandra Meeks contributed to this report.
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steve esmond, his teenage sons and the teens' mother fell ill more than two weeks ago in st. john, where they were renting a villa at the sirenusa resort.
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(CNN)A Delaware father is in stable condition and improving as his two boys remain in critical condition after they became sick -- perhaps from pesticide exposure, federal officials say -- during a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Steve Esmond, his teenage sons and the teens' mother fell ill more than two weeks ago in St. John, where they were renting a villa at the Sirenusa resort. The family has confidence in their medical professionals and is hopeful for a full recovery, according to a statement released Monday from the family's attorney, James Maron. The teens' mother, Theresa Devine, was treated at a hospital and released, and is in occupational therapy, Maron said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that the presence of a pesticide at the rented villa in St. John may have caused the illnesses, which were reported to the EPA on March 20. Paramedics were called to the villa, which the family was renting. Esmond was found unconscious; the boys and their mother were having seizures, Maron said. The lawyer did not say who called the paramedics. Elias Rodriguez, an EPA spokesman, said the agency's preliminary test results "do show that there was a presence of methyl bromide in the unit where the family was staying." Exposure to methyl bromide can result in serious health effects, including central nervous system and respiratory system damage, according to the EPA. The use of the pesticide is restricted in the United States because of its acute toxicity. It's not allowed to be used indoors. Only certified professionals are permitted to use it in certain agricultural settings. For example, the pesticide is injected into the soil of some U.S. strawberry fields, said Judith Enck, an EPA regional administrator. "We trust that the strawberry producers are making sure that there's not excess pesticide residue on strawberries," Enck said. "You definitely want to wash them really good. "This is a pesticide that's been around for a long time, and ironically because of its impact and damage to the ozone layer, it's being phased out because of the air impacts of this fumigant," Enck added. Field workers at a Connecticut nursery were poisoned by the chemical in 1990, according to the Journal of Industrial Medicine. In 2011, warehouse workers in California fell ill after exposed to grapes imported from Chile fumigated with methyl bromide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, said many parts of the world banned the chemical, a neurotoxin. The agent is to be used only outdoors. The chemical is also odorless and colorless, Gupta said. "It's not something that you would have any warning of," Gupta said. The chemical is often mixed with tear gas so people can be aware of its presence, he added. The EPA said it is working with local government agencies to investigate whether the family was made ill after a fumigation at the resort on March 18 and whether any environmental regulations or laws were violated. Enck, the EPA regional administrator, said paramedics were called early on March 20. Sea Glass Vacations, which acts as a rental agent for several units at Sirenusa, said the unit directly below the one where the family stayed was recently treated for pests, but that the family's unit was not treated. The company said it licensed an outside company, Terminix, for the pest control services. On Monday, it ended its contract with Terminix. In an email to CNN before the termination, a spokesman for Terminix wrote that the company is "committed to performing all work ... in a manner that is safe for our customers, employees, the public and the environment" and is "looking into this matter internally, and cooperating with authorities." The U.S. Department of Justice has initiated a criminal investigation. "Many questions remain why an odorless pesticide of this level of toxicity could be manufactured, distributed and applied in a residential area resulting in this family's injuries," Maron said. The attorney added: "The family is confident that the responsible parties will be brought to justice and held accountable." CNN's Rob Frehse, Jean Casarez, Sara Ganim, Jason Hanna, Laura Ly and Michael Martinez contributed to this report.
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white will wrap his touring efforts in support of "lazeretto" with a brief, first-ever acoustic tour.
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(Billboard)Fresh off his scorching performance at Coachella Saturday night (and days before his next one on the festival's second weekend), rocker Jack White announced he'll take a hiatus from touring. White will wrap his touring efforts in support of "Lazeretto" with a brief, first-ever acoustic tour that will hit "the only five states left in the U.S. that he has yet to play," according to White's website. Rounding out the acoustic quartet on tour will be Fats Kaplin, Lillie Mae Rische and Dominic Davis. The shows will be unannounced until day-of-show, with tickets priced at $3 and limited to one ticket per person, to be purchased only at the venue on a first-come, first-served basis. Billboard: Jack White on Not Being a 'Sound-Bite Artist,' Living in the Wrong Era and Why Vinyl Records Are 'Hypnotic' The purposely vague announcement surely has fans (and journalists) scouring the Internet for White's touring history. Unclear is whether White includes his work with The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and Dead Weather in his touring history, or just his solo road work. Presumably, he's including all of his touring, with all bands, as Billboard could find only 29 states in which he has performed as Jack White. Tour dates with White Stripes add another 12 states. That leaves nine states for which we could not find a show for White: Hawaii (where a show is scheduled for tomorrow, April 15), Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Vermont, Iowa, and North and South Dakota. Billboard: Jack White Plays The Hits, Declares 'Music Is Sacred' at Coachella Through the process of elimination (surely he has played Boise, Little Rock, and Salt Lake?), our guess as to which five "states" White will play on the brief acoustic run: South and North Dakota, Wyoming, Vermont and ... Puerto Rico? If that's the case, this tour is in for some long jumps, with Puerto Rico to Vermont being a potential beast. (Though shipping acoustic instruments and ribbon mics will be a lot less taxing than a full electrified stage setup.) ©2015 Billboard. All Rights Reserved.
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same-sex partners who are registered with the district's ward office will be able to hold visitation rights in hospitals and co-sign tenancy agreements.
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(CNN)One of Tokyo's most prominent districts has taken a small, but potentially significant step to recognizing same-sex unions in Japan. The government of Shibuya ward, one of the capital's most famous shopping and trendy entertainment districts, passed ordinance on Wednesday paving the way for "partnership certificates" for same-sex couples, allowing them some of the rights of married heterosexual couples. Same-sex partners who are registered with the district's ward office will be able to hold visitation rights in hospitals and co-sign tenancy agreements. Other advantages that heterosexual married couples enjoy, such as joint filing of taxes, are controlled by the federal government and are outside the remit of individual municipalities. The measure was proposed in February by Shibuya's mayor, Toshitake Kuwahara. While the certificates will not be issued until later in the summer and are not legally binding, proponents of marriage equality in socially conservative Japan say that the ward's decision is a step in the right direction. "It is not a marriage license and advantages will be limited but still better than nothing," Gon Matsunaka, a gay rights activist, told CNN. While Shibuya's decision does not yet equate to heterosexual marriage, the hope is that the move will be the beginnings of promoting marriage equality for gay communities. "What is important for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in Shibuya is the ruling will make us visible in society," Matsunaka said "It could be a strong driver for Shibuya citizens to learn and know what kind of problems LGBT people are facing." Taiga Ishikawa, Tokyo councillor and the first male gay local assembly member in Japan, told CNN the ordinance was a "big first step for the protection of human rights." He called the decision "happy" but said that it must go alongside education about alternative lifestyles. He said that the most important part of today's announcement is that it "should be actually put into practice, as should education for understanding (LGBT individuals) especially they suffer as they find out their sexuality when they are young." Neighboring Setagaya ward has indicated that it would look into following Shibuya's lead. However, former councilor Ishikawa cautioned against taking the movement's momentum for granted. "To realize equal rights for gay couples, a national law has to be made," he said. While outright discrimination against the LGBT community is rare in Japan, its effects can be hidden and gay people often find themselves at a disadvantage. Many hide their sexuality from their employers, co-workers, families and friends. But the tide may be turning. A recent poll found that a slight majority at 52.4% oppose gay marriage, but support amongst young adults in their 20s and 30s is as high as 70%. An editorial in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which commissioned the poll, welcomed the Shibuya decision, calling it "a bold and important step forward." Only traditional marriages are recognized under Japan's constitution, but the wording is vague enough to open it to interpretation, according to Mari Miura, a professor of gender and politics at Sophia University in Tokyo. "The constitution does not rule out same-sex marriage, so an interpretation can be made that it is constitutional," Miura told Bloomberg Business. While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party "don't like the idea of same-sex marriage, but at the same time the issue is gaining momentum." Conservative groups were vocal in their opposition, with one, known as the Network Pushing for Normalization of Education, telling the Japan Times that granting same-sex couples the same rights as all other Japanese citizens would degrade the "familial system and practice that heterosexual unions have long preserved in human history." While Shibuya's registration system will be a first for Japan, Yodogawa ward in the western Japanese city of Osaka was the first in the nation to recognize and support the LGBT community. In 2013 the ward government pledged to give consideration to the issues that the community faced, and to train staff to accommodate needs specific to LGBT individuals. Journalist Chie Kobayashi contributed reporting from Tokyo
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the "classic game" has been in japan's upper house for a second stint in politics in 2013.
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(CNN)The classic video game "Space Invaders" was developed in Japan back in the late 1970's -- and now their real-life counterparts are the topic of an earnest political discussion in Japan's corridors of power. Luckily, Japanese can sleep soundly in their beds tonight as the government's top military official earnestly revealed that the country's Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) had never encountered an extraterrestrial unidentified flying object. Responding to a query from flamboyant former wrestler-turned-lawmaker Antonio Inoki, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told the Diet, Japan's parliament, that his jets had, to date, never come across any UFOs from outer space. "When the Air Self Defense Force detects indications of an unidentified flying object that could violate our country's airspace, it scrambles fighter jets if necessary and makes visual observation," Nakatani said. He continued: "They sometimes find birds or flying objects other than aircraft but I don't know of a case of finding an unidentified flying object believed to have come over from anywhere other than Earth." Inoki has appeared in the U.S.-based WWE -- which describes him as "among the most respected men in sports-entertainment" -- and is the founder of the New Japan Pro Wrestling organization. He entered Japan's Upper House for a second stint in politics in 2013. He also famously fought Muhammad Ali in 1976, in one of the first-ever mixed-discipline matches, which would later pave the way for today's wildly popular Mixed Martial Arts contests. Before his return to politics he was a regular fixture on Japanese TV variety shows and has promoted a slew of products, from hot sauce to banks. The maverick politician also traveled to Iraq in 1990 to try to secure the release of Japanese hostages, and has more recently attempted to replicate former NBA star Dennis Rodman's "basketball diplomacy" by staging a wrestling tournament in North Korea. He reportedly converted to Islam in the 1990s, although he says he practices both Islam and Buddhism. The lawmaker, who is universally known in Japan for his colossal chin and once-ever-present red scarf -- these days often replaced with a red necktie -- as much as for his political achievements, had asked a Upper House Budget Committee meeting if aircraft were ever scrambled to meet extraterrestrial threats, and if research was being done into alien visitors, prompting Nakatani's response. Inoki also claims to have seen a UFO with his own eyes, but admitted that he didn't know personally if aliens existed. The exchange wasn't the first time Japanese politicians have discussed the implications of visitors from another planet. In 2007 then-Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba pondered the legal ramifications, under Japan's pacifist constitution, of a defense against an invasion from outer space. READ MORE: Japan unveils Izumo, its largest warship since World War II
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new: blaze began at the general electric appliance park in louisville, kentucky.
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(CNN)A mammoth fire broke out Friday morning in a Kentucky industrial park, sending plumes of thick smoke over the area as authorities worked to contain the damage. The blaze began shortly before 7 a.m. at the General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville, according to Mike Weimer from the city's emergency management agency. He said that there were no reports of anyone injured or trapped. Video showed both smoke and bright orange flames. Firefighters took up positions around the affected buildings, spraying water from the periphery. Weimer told CNN that authorities didn't know what had caused the fire, which had gone to at least four alarms. According to a GE website, its facility in the Louisville Appliance Park is "revitalizing manufacturing in the United States." The park is large, such that 34 football fields could fit in one of its warehouses in the facility.
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the confusion and panic came less than two weeks after al-shabaab slaughtered 147 people.
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Nairobi, Kenya (CNN)University of Nairobi students were terrified Sunday morning when they heard explosions -- caused by a faulty electrical cable -- and believed it was a terror attack, the school said. Students on the Kikuyu campus stampeded down the halls of the Kimberly dormitory, and some jumped from its fifth floor, the university said. Hundreds were injured and were taken to hospitals. One person died, according to the school. The confusion and panic came less than two weeks after Al-Shabaab slaughtered 147 people at a college in Garissa, Kenya. Kenyan teachers and students have said they fear being targeted by the Somalia-based terrorists. On Sunday, as many as 108 students from the University of Nairobi were admitted to Kenyatta National Hospital. Among them, at least 63 students have been discharged, and at least four are slated for surgery, the school said. Almost all of the 54 students being treated at PCEA Kikuyu Hospital have been released, the university said. Kenya Power authorities and its CEO are at the school and looking into the electrical issue. Normal power supply will resume after repairs, the university said. "As we mourn the unfortunate loss of the departed student, we are also praying for the quick recovery of those who were injured," said Vice Chancellor Peter M.F. Mbithi in a statement. He called on the students, staff and public to remain calm. CNN's Lillian Leposo reported from Nairobi and Ashley Fantz wrote this story in Atlanta.
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aaron ramsey was enough to separate the two sides and secure arsenal's hold.
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(CNN)Arsenal kept their slim hopes of winning this season's English Premier League title alive by beating relegation threatened Burnley 1-0 at Turf Moor. A first half goal from Welsh international Aaron Ramsey was enough to separate the two sides and secure Arsenal's hold on second place. More importantly it took the north London club to within four points of first placed Chelsea, with the two clubs to play next week. But Chelsea have two games in hand and play lowly Queens Park Rangers on Sunday, a team who are themselves struggling against relegation. Good form Arsenal have been in superb form since the start of the year, transforming what looked to be another mediocre season struggling to secure fourth place -- and with it Champions League qualification -- into one where they at least have a shot at winning the title. After going ahead, Arsenal rarely looked in any danger of conceding, showing more of the midfield pragmatism epitomized by the likes of Francis Coquelin, who also played a crucial role in the goal. "He has been absolutely consistent in the quality of his defensive work," Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger told Sky Sports after the game when asked about Coquelin's contribution to Arsenal's current run. They have won eight games in a row since introducing the previously overlooked young Frenchman into a more defensive midfield position. "He was a player who was with us for seven years, from 17, he's now just 24," Wenger explained. "Sometimes you have to be patient. I am very happy for him because he has shown great mental strength." Now all eyes will be on next week's clash between Arsenal and Chelsea which will likely decide the title. "They have the games in hand," said Wenger, playing down his club's title aspirations. "But we'll keep going and that's why the win was so important for us today." Relegation dogfight Meanwhile it was a good day for teams at the bottom of the league. Aston Villa continued their good form since appointing coach Tim Sherwood with a 1-0 victory over Tottenham, who fired Sherwood last season. Belgian international Christian Benteke scored the only goal of the game, his eighth in six matches, to secure a vital three points to give the Midlands club breathing space. Another Midlands club looking over their shoulder is West Brom, who conceded an injury time goal to lose 3-2 against bottom club Leicester City. But it was an awful day for Sunderland's former Dutch international coach Dick Advocaat, who saw his team lose 4-1 at home against form team Crystal Palace. Democratic Republic of Congo international Yannick Bolasie scored Crystal Palace's first ever hat trick in the Premier League to secure an easy victory.
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the shariya refugee camp opened around six months ago.
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Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan (CNN)The children laugh and shriek, as some of them seem to always have the capacity to do no matter how depressing the circumstances. Their bright clothes provide splashes of color against the otherwise drab monotone white of the endless rows of tents. A small group plays with rocks, replacements for the toys they left behind when they fled, while others clamber through a jagged tear in the wire fence surrounding the refugee camp. The Shariya refugee camp opened around six months ago, made up of some 4,000 tents and counting. Thousands of Yazidis now call this corner of Iraqi Kurdistan home, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from one of the front lines with ISIS, where one can hear the occasional reverberation in the distance of what we are told are airstrikes. The vast majority of the camp's occupants are from the town of Sinjar, which is near the border with Syrian Kurdistan, and fled the ISIS assault there back in August. But not everyone escaped. ISIS took thousands of Yazidis captive. The fighters separated the young women and girls, some as young as 8 years old, to be sold as slaves, for their "masters" to use as concubines. Men faced a choice: Convert to Islam or be shot. Mahmoud was out running errands when ISIS fighters arrived, taking his wife, Ahlam, their three children -- the youngest of which was just a month old -- and his elderly parents. "They took our phones, jewelry, money," Ahlam recalls. "They had guns. They forced us at gunpoint into big trailer trucks." They were taken to a school turned prison in Tal Afar. From there, the family was moved from village to village -- and at one stage taken to Mosul. "They wrote everyone's name down and they asked where we want to work, in the fields, as cleaners or as herders," she says. Ahlam and her family chose to herd goats. They were then taken to a Shia village whose residents had fled, where they were part of a group of around 40 living in one house. In the home, Ahlam found a cell phone left behind by its former occupants and called her husband. "I said we are alive but we are prisoners." Ahlam's husband, who up until that moment had lost the will to live, thinking his family was dead, says he cried out of happiness despite his pain. Ahlam would call when she could, briefly, after midnight, hiding under her bedcovers. If she was caught with a phone, she would be killed. The village itself was a massive prison, its entrances guarded by ISIS fighters. She recalls that two men, in their late 40s or 50s, tried to escape. When they were caught, their bones were broken, their bodies tied to the back of a truck and then driven through the streets. The Yazidi captives were forced to watch the gruesome spectacle. The men's corpses were then tossed into a ditch and an order given not to bury them. One night, some of the Yazidi men risked their lives to toss dirt onto the bodies, to give those slain what dignity they could. Ahlam tells us that about a week before we met, ISIS fighters came by and took away her in-laws and the other elderly people living in the house. "We didn't know where they were taking them, we thought we would be next," she remembers. So she and the rest of the group realized that they had to try to flee. "We decided that either we survive or we don't." They left at midnight. Ahlam cradled the baby, as her two other children, ages 3 and 4 years old, clutched at her clothes. She prayed the baby wouldn't cry, that the children could keep walking. They knew the general direction to take, but not the exact route, and they could only hope it was toward freedom. "When the sun started to come up, I thought that's it, we are going to get caught," Ahlam says. "And what am I going to do with the kids? I can't carry all three of them and run." Luckily, Ahlam never had to answer that impossible question. The group made it into Iraqi Kurdistan. The couple can't put into words their emotions when they were reunited. Mahmoud, gently caressing his daughter's palm, says he could hardly believe that the woman whose stunning eyes and gentle words he had fallen in love with, and their three children, were by his side again. It had been eight agonizing months. But their joy was tainted by fear for Mahmoud's parents. A few days after Mahmoud and Ahlam were reunited, ISIS released 217 captives. No one is disclosing exactly why. Among them were 60 children, a handful of men and women, and the rest were elderly -- including Mahmoud's parents. "We didn't know if they were going to slaughter us or what they were going to do with us," Mahmoud's father says. "They moved us around a lot, and at one stage we stayed in in one place for three days." But Ahlam's parents are still with ISIS. Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of Iraq's parliament, speculates that the Yazidis ISIS released are individuals they were struggling to care for. Dakhil is part of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's delegation to the United States this week. She will be addressing the United Nations -- pleading for more international support for Iraq and more airstrikes to help defeat ISIS -- and she will address the plight of the Yazidis. "We sometimes say that we wish we had been massacred. This would be better than being kidnapped and raped. We prefer death now over the fate of what is happening to these girls and women," Dakhil says. "It is now on the government and on the international community to focus on this. How to get these captives back. It's inconceivable that in the 21st century, something like this is happening as if we were living in the Stone Age." Ahlam says she was spared because she was breastfeeding and she had young children, which, we're told, makes her impure and therefore unable to be used as a sex slave. For Ahlam, what she went through was not the hardest part of her ordeal. It's the moment when the ISIS fighters began taking away the girls and young women. She's haunted by their screams, the image of them being dragged away sobbing and screaming.
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ghitis says obama needs to be in the middle east.
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(CNN)President Barack Obama tied himself to the mast of a nuclear deal with Iran even before he became the Democratic candidate for president. Reaching a good, solid agreement with Iran is a worthy, desirable goal. But the process has unfolded under the destructive influence of political considerations, weakening America's hand and strengthening Iran. Obama's political standing and his historic legacy in foreign policy are so deeply intertwined with reaching an accord with Iran that if the deal ultimately collapses, he may fear that historians will conclude that his legacy in global affairs collapsed with it. There is a reason one gets the feeling that it is the United States and not Iran that is the more eager, even desperate, side in these talks, even though Iran is the country whose economy was sent into a deep chill by international sanctions; the country whose only significant export, oil, lost more than half of its value in recent months. The reason is that Obama has a huge political stake in these negotiations. The President may insist that the United States will choose no deal over a bad deal, but few people truly believe he has a credible Plan B. Few believe it, particularly in the Middle East and notably among America's Arab friends, who hold the view that Iran is running circles around the United States and outplayed Obama. As the writer David Rothkopf aptly put it, "Iran is having a great Obama administration." That's a belief that has already started shaking up the region. Saudi Arabia has said that it will pursue nuclear weapons if it believes Iran has not been stopped, and there is little doubt that other countries among Iran's Muslim rivals will do the same. In fact, the notion that Obama is not handling the Iranian threat effectively is contributing to a new war in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and other Arabs are trying to push back against gains by Iran's allies. We can trace it all back to the Democratic primaries in 2007, when then-Sen. Obama said he would meet Iran's leaders "without preconditions," leading his rival, Hillary Clinton, to call the idea "Irresponsible and frankly naive." As the years of his presidency unfolded, and the Middle East started coming apart, finding a deal with Iran started to look like the one major foreign policy achievement Obama might leave behind. The political imperative started to intrude in strategic considerations on an issue that is of transcendent importance to world peace. The framework agreement announced on Thursday came two days after Obama's March 31 deadline. The U.S.-imposed deadline served only to pressure the United States, and the French ambassador very publicly decried as a "bad tactic." That bad tactic was a political move, a push to produce some sort of result, however vague, to protect the talks from critics. Again, a solid agreement that ensures Iran will not produce nuclear weapons would be a most welcome development. But the agreement so far does not look promising. It certainly shows the final outcome will differ greatly from what Obama had vowed. In a presidential debate in 2012, Obama described a crystal clear goal for negotiations. "The deal we'll accept is they end their nuclear program. It's very straightforward." Nobody is talking about Iran ending its nuclear program. Not even close. Iran will be allowed to keep one-third of its more than 6,000 centrifuges. That's not a small symbolic number. And it does not appear as though any of its nuclear facilities will be dismantled, although Fordow will contain no nuclear materials. Iran has insisted all along that its nuclear program has only civilian uses. The fact is that Iran has a well-established record of lying and concealing the elements of its nuclear program to U.N. inspectors. And the U.N. agency chief says that has not stopped. A couple of weeks ago, with days left until the negotiating deadline, U.N. nuclear chief Yukiya Amano said Iran is still stonewalling. "We are still not in a position to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is [for a] peaceful purpose," he warned. The negotiations' starting point is that Iran would like to have the bomb and the international community wants to delay that as much as possible -- and preferably, forever. The world only learned about Iran's secret facilities at Arak and Natanz after dissidents raised the alarm. Iran, we have learned repeatedly, is very good at lying to international inspectors. It is well-established that it has had something to hide about its nuclear program. It is well-established that many of Iran's neighbors don't trust it and are anxious about the U.S.-led international dealings with Iran. It is well-established that Iran has engaged in international terrorism and in destabilizing the region. It is also clear that it took harsh international sanctions and a collapse in oil prices to bring Iran to the negotiating table. It was Iran that had the most to lose from a failure of talks. But political considerations turned the United States into the supplicant. The framework agreement starts lifting those indispensable sanctions much too soon. Nuclear enrichment will continue, although at a lower level. Iran officially, legally, becomes a nuclear threshold state, with the capability to make the final dash to a bomb within a "breakout" period of one year, the time when presumably inspectors would discover violation and allow the rest of the world to act. Even the Fordow facility, conveniently inside a fortified bunker in a mountain, will remain in existence, though "converted" to a nuclear "research facility" And without nuclear material on site. International sanctions lifting will begin almost immediately. Its nuclear infrastructure will remain largely in place, even if operating at a reduced pace, giving Iran much of what it wanted. With Iranian forces gaining ground in Arab lands and Iranian commanders declaring the destruction of Israel "nonnegotiable" and threatening Saudi Arabia, this deal does not look reassuring. Obama is right that a diplomatic solution is the most desirable option. But the deal so far looks like (another) win for Iran. It introduces enough restrictions that it could give the President the political cover he wants, but it does not do enough to make the world safe from nuclear proliferation and more potentially catastrophic instability in the Middle East.
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the fbi says the fbi is trying to travel overseas to fight for isis.
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(CNN)The FBI charged a Philadelphia woman on Thursday with trying to travel overseas to fight for ISIS. She's one of three women arrested this week on terror charges. Two New York women were also taken into custody. An FBI complaint cites numerous social media messages dating back to August 2013 that were sent by Keonna Thomas, 30, also known as "Young Lioness" and "Fatayat Al Khilafah." One Twitter message said, "If we truly knew the realities ... we all would be rushing to join our brothers in the front lines pray ALLAH accept us as shuhada [martyrs]." Another said, "When you're a mujahid [violent jihadi fighter] your death becomes a wedding." The FBI said Thomas purchased an electronic visa to Turkey on March 23. Turkey is known as the easiest place from which to enter Syria and join ISIS. An ISIS manual advises recruits to buy round-trip tickets to vacation spots such as Spain and then purchase tickets for their real destination once they arrive overseas, the FBI said. On March 26, Thomas purchased a ticket to Barcelona, with a March 29 departure and an April 15 return to the United States, the complaint said. It's not clear when or where she was arrested. She was charged with knowingly attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. She could be sentenced to 15 years in prison. On Thursday, Noelle Velentzas, 28, and her former roommate, Asia Siddiqui, 31, were arrested in New York and accused of planning to build an explosive device for attacks in the United States, federal prosecutors said. In the past 18 months, the Justice Department's National Security Division has prosecuted or is prosecuting more than 30 cases of people attempting to travel abroad to join or provide support to terrorist groups. Of those cases, 18 allegedly involve support to ISIS. "The terrorist threat is more decentralized, more diffuse, more complicated," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told reporters Thursday. "It involves the potential lone wolf actor, it involves the effective use of social media, the Internet."
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the 56-year-old said he crafted the artwork as a way of mourning.
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(CNN)A hooded angel with black wings appeared on Tuesday near the spot where Walter Scott was shot and killed by a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday. Since then, it's been taken up as an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement. When protesters held the winged figure at a Wednesday morning rally outside North Charleston's City Hall, the artwork was widely photographed. Creator Phillip Hyman grew up in the neighborhood where Scott, an unarmed black man, was shot in the back several times by a white police officer on Saturday. Hyman now lives in another part of the city and couldn't stop thinking about it. He woke up about 3 a.m. a couple of days after Scott was killed and began searching for materials. "Art is really about that moment. I just couldn't take it any longer," he said. Hyman dug into the trash and found a piece of wood that was the perfect size. Then he picked up a can of black house paint and started making the reclaimed wood into a work of art. The 56-year-old said he crafted the artwork as a way of mourning with the family. "That's who all this should really be about, not about the propaganda and making it your own story," said Hyman, who talks quickly and passionately about his subject material. "Shooting him in the back and just the indignity of it all." The figure, painted black in mourning for the family, has wings because it's going to heaven, Hyman said. The man depicted in Hyman's piece is dressed in a hooded sweatsuit, though that's not what Scott was wearing when he was killed. Hyman said he prefers not to say too much about who the black angel figure is. People can look at the art and make their own interpretations, he said. "It's a statement of where we are in America today. It's relevant in Charleston, Ferguson, Florida, anywhere now." After Hyman put the piece up on Tuesday near where Scott was killed, he got a call from a local protester with the Black Lives Matter movement, which has staged protests around the country in the wake of high-profile deaths at the hands of police. The group asked for permission to use his artwork in its demonstrations at the North Charleston City Hall. Hyman was happy to oblige. Each day, the protesters call Hyman and he either carries the angel-winged artwork to the protest, or the protesters come over to his home to pick it up. "It's taken a life of its own, so I'm letting it do what it's supposed to do now," he said. Freelance photographer Joel Woodhall spotted the artwork and wondered where it came from. Woodhall, who lives in nearby Charleston, said the artwork made him feel sorrow for a life ended too soon. "It was very emotionally moving. It's beautiful," he told CNN. This isn't the first time Hyman has used artwork to effect change: He restored a local theater to its former glory. He commemorated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday by painting a mural in a bad neighborhood that needed light. Hyman's wife, Kay, says her husband always paints from the heart. "To see this recognized, he just goes into tears because it's very special to him."
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if words were exchanged between men, they're not audible on the tape.
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(CNN)Eyewitness video showing white North Charleston police Officer Michael Slager shooting to death an unarmed black man has exposed discrepancies in the reports of the first officers on the scene. Slager has been fired and charged with murder in the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott. A bystander's cell phone video, which began after an alleged struggle on the ground between Slager and Scott, shows the five-year police veteran shooting at Scott eight times as Scott runs away. Scott was hit five times. If words were exchanged between the men, they're are not audible on the tape. It's unclear what happened before Scott ran, or why he ran. The officer initially said that he used a Taser on Scott, who, Slager said, tried to take the weapon. Before Slager opens fire, the video shows a dark object falling behind Scott and hitting the ground. It's unclear whether that is the Taser. Later in the video, when Slager approaches Scott's body, Slager appears to drop a dark object near Scott. Slager is seen in the video handcuffing Scott after the shooting. Witness: I nearly erased shooting video out of fear Feidin Santana, the witness who recorded the video, said he didn't see Scott grab Slager's Taser. His account contradicts what Slager told dispatchers. In two interviews with NBC, Santana said that he was walking to his job in North Charleston on Saturday morning when he saw Slager chase Scott, who had been pulled over for a broken taillight. Santana told NBC's Lester Holt on Wednesday that he saw the two men struggling on the ground. "They were down on the (ground) ... before I started recording," Santana said. "I remember the police (officer) had control of the situation. He had control of Scott." Santana said he heard the sound of a Taser being used. He believed Scott was trying to get away from it. But Scott never got the Taser or used it on the officer, Santana told NBC. Who was Walter Scott? A North Charleston Police report included brief statements from eight police officers, but not Slager. One officer, identified as Sgt. J. Gann, said in the report he was conducting a separate traffic stop about 9:30 a.m. Saturday when he heard -- apparently via radio -- Slager say he was "in foot pursuit" of another motorist. Gann said that while driving to the officer's location, "Slager advised that he deployed his Taser and (requested) back up units." Seconds later, Gann reported, he heard Slager tell a dispatcher, "Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser." Hours after the shooting, The Post and Courier of Charleston quoted a statement from police spokesman Spencer Pryor, who said Slager attempted to use his Taser to stop a fleeing suspect. The men struggled over the device, with the suspect taking the Taser and attempting to use it against Slager, the newspaper reported. In the police report, another officer, J. Banias, said he was heading to the scene about 10 minutes after the initial call. Slager asked him to "secure his vehicle at the site of the traffic stop." Banias said he spoke to a passenger in the car Scott was driving. "The passenger was ... detained and placed in the back seat of my vehicle," the officer reported. The passenger's identity was not given in the report, but the officer said in the report that the passenger was detained. Scott family spokesman Ryan Julison confirmed to CNN that a man was with Scott and said he is not related to the family. The family declined to provide any more information. A timeline of events The North Charleston Police Department is not providing additional information, citing an ongoing investigation of Scott's killing by the independent South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Gann said when he arrived at the shooting scene, an officer identified only as Habersham "was administering first aid" to Scott. "I exited my vehicle and assisted Officer Habersham with first aid and CPR to the driver," Gann said in the report. "We continued to perform first aid and CPR until EMS arrived... When EMS and first responders arrived, EMS took care over providing care to the driver, who was pronounced deceased a short time later." Habersham, in his account, did not mention performing CPR. "I attempted to render aid to the victim by applying pressure to the gunshot wounds and (directing) the best route for EMS and fire to get to the victim faster," he said in the report. An officer identified as Sgt. Webb said that he requested an ambulance. Webb said that at 9:41 a.m. he saw Habersham "administering chest compression to the defendant." North Charleston Police Chief Eddie Driggers was asked at a news conference this week whether CPR was performed on Scott. "I do not know. I was told that life-saving ... that they tried to save his life," Driggers said. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey added that not every North Charleston police officer is CPR certified. What we know about Officer Slager
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a man gave up his umbrella for the cause "while the mom was going crazy"
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(CNN)It was like a scene out of "Make Way for Ducklings" on Tuesday on a rainy street in Washington. CNN Situation Room correspondent Brian Todd and photojournalist Khalil Abdallah were on their way to interview a legal analyst on L Street NW when they happened on a brood of baby ducks causing a stir. Abdallah reports the ducklings and their mom had crossed heavily trafficked street, and some restaurant patrons stopped on the sidewalk to corral them. A man gave up his umbrella for the cause "while the mom was going crazy." "One duckling tried to run back to the street but they caught it in time," Abdallah said. The mother duck followed the umbrella while pedestrians stopped cars on L street for them to safely cross the road. The Washington Post reports the pedestrians took the bird family to "a more enclosed grassy area" at 16th and L streets NW. (Yes, baby ducks warrant two national news stories.) "We thought it was an extraordinary situation," Todd said. "You see pigeons, you see squirrels, you see the occasional raccoon in the D.C. area, and ... you see deer ... We've never seen anything like this in the middle of town."
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the shariya refugee camp is thousands of yazidis in duhok, iraqi.
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Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan (CNN)In the canvas expanse of the Shariya refugee camp, thousands of Yazidis live within hearing distance of one of Iraqi Kurdistan's frontlines with ISIS. The vast majority of the camp's occupants are from the town of Sinjar and fled the ISIS assault there back in August. But not everyone escaped. ISIS took thousands of Yazidis captive. Men faced a choice -- convert to Islam or be shot. But the Islamist militants separated the young women and girls to be sold as sex slaves. In its fourth edition of "Dabiq," the ISIS online magazine, an article titled "The revival of slavery before the hour," outlines the group's twisted justification and guidelines for the enslavement of the Yazidis. "One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar (infidels) and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of Shariah," the article reads. We're told that women who have just given birth or are breastfeeding are considered impure and cannot be taken as sexual slaves -- but Hanan, 19, was neither of those things. "They separated all of us," she says. "They dragged us away by our hair. They took married women, young ones. The youngest with us was just 10. We were all crying. "They said we are going to marry you off, you will forget your family." ISIS: Enslaving, having sex with 'unbelieving' women, girls is OK For the first week, Hanan was held with 50 others, regularly beaten and threatened with torture, and fed just a bowl of rice. The group was then taken to a three story building in Mosul she described as a sex slave warehouse, where hundreds of girls and women were held. "They would line about 50 of us up at a time, in rows of 10. They would say don't move, don't cry or we will beat you. The men would come in and describe the kind of girl they wanted and then they would pick and choose as they pleased," she recalls. She was eventually chosen, part of a group of 25. From that group Hanan was separated into a smaller group of seven and taken into a house in a village. 'Treated like cattle': Yazidi women sold, raped, enslaved by ISIS Two ISIS fighters guarded the door and ordered the girls to clean and bathe themselves. "They brought in a Yazidi girl who had been with them for two months. She was wearing the black niqab. They said to us we are going to do to you what we did to her," Hanan says. "The girl spoke to us in Kurdish and said they beat me, they cuffed me and raped me." Hanan and the others decided they had to try to escape. That night they crawled out the bedroom window. "The fourth girl jumped out, I was the fifth. I crawled to the wall and was about to jump over it and then I saw their flashlight," she tells me. "They caught the last two girls." They ran, and somehow evaded capture. Four hours later they were out of ISIS territory. "If I just see someone with a beard I start shaking," Hanan says. Now physically free but mentally still captive, Hanan remains tormented -- like so many others, by what she has been through and what those still with ISIS are being forced to endure -- a fate worse than death. Fleeing ISIS -- A Yazidi family's tale
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aaron hernandez is on trial for the shooting death of odin lloyd.
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(CNN)It took prosecutors months to present 131 witnesses to support their claim that former NFL star Aaron Hernandez killed semi-pro player Odin Lloyd. On Monday, Hernandez's defense gave its side of the story, wrapping up its witnesses in less than a day. Hernandez, 25, is on trial for the shooting death of Lloyd, whose body was found in a Massachusetts industrial park in June 2013. Now that the defense has rested, it won't be long before the jury begins deliberating. Much of the evidence in the former New England Patriots' case is circumstantial. Here are some key points jurors will have to consider after each side makes closing arguments on Tuesday: As news spread that Hernandez was under investigation in June 2013, Patriots owner Robert Kraft called in the tight end for a meeting two days after Lloyd's death. "He said he was not involved," Kraft testified last week. "He said he was innocent, and that he hoped that the time of the murder incident came out because he said he was in a club." There's only one potential problem with that claim: The time Lloyd was killed hadn't been made public yet by the time Hernandez met with Kraft. So how could Hernandez have known when Lloyd was killed? "What a great, great witness for the prosecution," CNN legal analyst Mel Robbins said. "Basically what happened is Aaron Hernandez lied to his boss. And the only way you rebut it is if you put him on the stand." When questioned by a defense attorney, Kraft said that he'd never had any problems with Hernandez and that the player was always respectful to him. Hernandez's fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins, revealed for the first time last week that Hernandez told her to dispose of a box from the couple's home that she said reeked of marijuana. She also said she didn't know what was in the box. That revelation may contradict the prosecution's contention that the weapon used in the killing was in the box. The murder weapon in the case has not been recovered. During cross-examination by the defense, Jenkins testified that she suspected marijuana because the box smelled "skunky." Earlier, she told prosecutors during direct examination that she didn't know what was in the box. She said Hernandez never told her, and she never looked. After concealing the box with her daughter's clothing, Jenkins said she threw it away in "a random dumpster" but could not remember exactly where. Much testimony has focused on the shoes Hernandez wore the night Lloyd was shot. A Nike consultant testified that Hernandez was wearing Nike Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows. About 93,000 pairs of that shoe were made, significantly fewer in a size 13. The shoe's sole makes a distinct impression, said Lt. Steven Bennett of the Massachusetts State Police. The consultant testified under questioning from defense attorney Jamie Sultan that other Nike shoes -- more than 3 million -- make the same impression. Yet Bennett, who works in crime scene services, testified that the footprint left near Lloyd's body was "in agreement" or consistent with the Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows size 13. Although he did not have the shoes that Hernandez wore that night, he used an identical pair to make his determination. Bennett did so by creating a transparency of the sole and laying it over a photo of the footwear impression. Jurors watched as he drew lines showing how the sole aligned with the impression. What may have been a key moment for the prosecution was quickly derailed by defense attorney Jamie Sultan. Sultan questioned the science behind analyzing footprints. He introduced a March 2014 investigative report written by Bennett saying the partial footwear impression lacked certain detail and quality to be able to make a comparison. Prosecutors used grainy footage from Hernandez's home security system to suggest he was holding a .45-caliber handgun -- the same kind of gun police said was used to kill Lloyd. Hernandez could be seen on camera pulling into his driveway minutes after Lloyd was shot to death in an industrial park about a mile from Hernandez's home. "In my opinion, the firearm shown in the video stills is a Glock pistol," Glock sales manager Kyle Aspinwall testified. The video is time-stamped minutes after workers in a nearby industrial park describe hearing loud noises like fireworks -- the moment prosecutors say Lloyd was gunned down after getting out of a car Hernandez was driving. Hernandez's lawyers then showed a different part of the video time-stamped a few seconds earlier with Hernandez holding what appeared to be a shiny object in one hand, suggesting it may be an iPad. "Glock pistols don't have white glows to them, do they?" defense attorney James Sultan asked. "No, they do not," Aspinwall answered. Sultan then displayed a soft-pellet gun similar in shape to a Glock, suggesting it could also be the object Hernandez is holding. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in Lloyd's death. But already, his arrest has led to deep consequences, including his release from the New England Patriots and the loss of millions of dollars in expected earnings. So what might make a young man who had signed a $40 million contract risk everything? Prosecutors have said Lloyd might have done or said something that didn't sit well with Hernandez. They claimed Hernandez rounded up some friends and orchestrated a hit to settle the score. Hernandez's co-defendants, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, also pleaded not guilty and will be tried separately. But the case gets more complicated. Evidence collected in Lloyd's death investigation led to two more murder charges against Hernandez in a separate case in Boston. Hernandez is also accused of shooting Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, allegedly over a spilled drink at a nightclub. That double shooting took place in July 2012, almost a year before Lloyd was killed. Prosecutors have said in pretrial hearings that Hernandez may have been mad at himself for possibly showing Lloyd the spot where that double murder happened. During trial, prosecutors suggest a text written by Hernandez the day before the murder saying he was "buggin" for showing Lloyd "the spot" may have played a role in plotting to kill Lloyd. The judge has banned any mention of the double murder in Lloyd's trial, ruling it is prejudicial. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in those deaths as well. But when the Lloyd trial ends, that murder trial awaits him. CNN's Jason Hanna, Lawrence Crook, Laura Dolan and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.
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the trial will next move into a penalty phase, where the jury will hear testimony.
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Boston (CNN)Guilty across the board. But will he face death? After deliberating for 11½ hours, jurors found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on Wednesday of all 30 counts he faced in the Boston Marathon bombing trial. Seventeen of the 30 counts were capital charges, meaning he is eligible for the death penalty. The trial will next move into a penalty phase, where the jury will hear testimony and arguments from both sides and ultimately be tasked with deciding whether Tsarnaev, 21, will be executed. A look at all of the charges Jurors will be asked to weigh aggravating factors such as the heinousness of his crimes against mitigating factors such as his family and mental health history, as well as his relative youth. Tsarnaev was 19 at the time of the bombing. The start date of the penalty phase has not yet been set. Since testimony began March 4, federal prosecutors have called 92 witnesses, and the defense just four. It seemed a mismatch from the start. "He was there," Tsarnaev's defense attorney Judy Clarke conceded as the trial opened, but many say the defense strategy always had been to focus on persuading the jury to spare Tsarnaev's life. Tsarnaev lawyer keeps hated criminals off death row Clarke tried to convince jurors that her client's older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with police days after the terror attack, was the instigator of the marathon plot. The younger man, Clarke said, was only following his older brother. After the verdict, CNN legal analyst Paul Callan said Clarke now faces an uphill battle. "Because No. 1, he (Tsarnaev) is almost functioning as an officer of a military organization attacking the United States -- the claim of course that he's an Islamic radical and that this is almost an army-like attack on civilians. "And the second thing -- it was so well planned and so callously planned so that civilians would die, so that children would be maimed. And all of this, she has to get around and convince the jury he's not worthy of the death penalty. "Boy, she's climbing the Mount Everest of death penalty cases in this case," Callan said about Clarke. Survivors react to the verdict Ann O'Neill reported from Boston. Dana Ford reported from Atlanta.
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zulkifli bin hir was believed to be the fbi to a member of southeast asian terror group jemaah islamiyah's central command.
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(CNN)The FBI has confirmed that one of its most wanted terrorists, the Malaysian bomb maker known as Marwan, was killed in an otherwise disastrous raid in the Philippines in January. Marwan, whose real name is Zulkifli bin Hir, was believed by the FBI to a member of southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah's central command. The FBI said in February that a DNA sample -- understood to be from a severed finger -- taken from a man killed in a raid in the southern Philippines showed a link with a known relative of Marwan. But the FBI now says tests have confirmed that the dead man was the wanted Islamic extremist. "After a thorough review of forensic data and information obtained from our Philippine law enforcement partners, the FBI has assessed that terrorism subject, Zulkifli Abdhir ... is deceased and has been removed from the FBI's list of Most Wanted Terrorists," David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles field office, told CNN in a statement. The FBI had been offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Marwan's capture in the wake of his 2007 indictment on terror charges in a California court. It accused him of being a supplier of IEDs to terrorist organizations, and having conducted bomb making training for terror groups, including the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf. Marwan had previously been falsely reported dead after a raid by Philippine security forces in 2012. The Philippines has been fighting an insurgency in the predominantly Muslim south for years, and last year signed a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest rebel group in the region. But in January it launched a surprise raid in pursuit of Marwan at Mamapasono, in the southern province of Maguindanao. The mission went disastrously awry. Forty-four members of the police's elite Special Action Force (SAF) unit were killed in the assault, targeting an area controlled by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) -- a hardline splinter group which has rejected the peace deal with the Philippines government. According to a report released by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) last month, the BIFF faction sheltering Marwan had sworn allegiance to ISIS. In the immediate aftermath of the assault, the SAF company charged with executing Marwan came under fire, before another SAF company stationed in nearby MILF territory as a "blocking force" became engaged in an eight-hour firefight with MILF fighters. According to the IPAC report, the SAF "blocking" company eventually ran out of ammunition and only one of their number survived, Eighteen MILF fighters were killed and a number of BIFF fighters may also died. The clash shattered a three-year ceasefire with the MILF, authorities said. A national day of mourning was declared as the men were laid to rest. Bowdich expressed the FBI's "sincere condolences to the brave officers of the Special Action Force who lost their lives while attempting to apprehend this dangerous fugitive." While an SAF superintendent said at a eulogy for the fallen commandos that their sacrifice had been worth it, controversy has dogged the botched mission in the Philippines. The IPAC report argued that the "single-minded focus" of authorities on killing Marwan has threatened the peace agreement with the MILF, which is yet to cross the final hurdle of being passed into law by the Philippines Congress. "The best chance the southern Philippines has ever had for peace may now be in jeopardy," read the report, which argued that the Mamapasano fiasco was the result of a misguided emphasis on killing Marwan. The report argued that, although Marwan had aided terror attacks and provided funds and equipment to MILF and Abu Sayyaf, he was not "the master bomber that his reputation suggested." Yet for the Philippines authorities and their U.S. allies, killing Marwan had become such a priority that security forces bypassed the mechanisms that had been established to alert the MILF to such operations, for fear of word leaking to their target. The report quoted an anonymous Indonesian associate of Marwan's who described the Malaysian as "a little snake who has been blown up into a dragon." READ MORE: Dozens of Philippine police killed in raid on 'high value' bomb makers READ MORE: Philippines honors 44 slain commandos with day of mourning CNN's Arlene Samson-Espiritu and Kathy Quiano contributed to this report.
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he suffered eye problems, dehydration, malnutrition and a cut to the back that has raised infection.
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(CNN)For more than four days, police say, a 21-year-old quadriplegic with cerebral palsy was left lying in the woods of Philadelphia's Cobbs Creek Park with only a blanket and a Bible. The person responsible is the man's mother, who on Sunday faced a host of charges after allegedly abandoning her son and catching a bus to Maryland to see her boyfriend, said Philadelphia police Lt. John Walker. Low temperatures reached the mid-30s during the week, and rain was reported in the area Wednesday and Thursday. The man is unable to communicate how he came to be in the park, but Walker told reporters that the man's mother, whom he did not identify for CNN, left him there Monday morning. "Sometime at 11 a.m., the mother went to visit her boyfriend down in Maryland, over in Montgomery County, and we believe she placed the child into Cobbs Creeks Park," Walker said at a news conference. Walker told CNN the man was transported to Presbyterian Hospital, but CNN affiliates reported he was being treated at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He suffered eye problems, dehydration, malnutrition and a cut to the back that has raised infection concerns, the lieutenant told reporters. "This kid's obviously a fighter," Walker said during a Saturday news conference. "It's just unbelievable how we found him out there last night. To see that kid laying there, it's heartbreaking to see another human, especially a mother, can treat someone like that." Officials at Philadelphia's School of the Future, which the man attends, became concerned when he didn't show up for classes and tried to contact his mother but eventually reached an aunt, CNN affiliate WPVI reported. When police tracked down the mother, she told them her son was with her, Walker said. "She indicated to both family members and the police officers that the child was with her down with her boyfriend in Maryland," he said. The boyfriend was not aware of what happened, Walker told CNN affiliate KYW-TV. The mother now stands charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment of another person, neglect of a care-dependent person, unlawful restraint, kidnapping and false imprisonment, the station reported. Walker told reporters she bore "clear criminal liability in this case." Maryland police took her into custody on Sunday, and she will face the charges in Philadelphia following an extradition hearing, WPVI reported. There was no reason for the man to suffer, Walker told philly.com, because the mother had sisters willing to take care of him. Two of his aunts, who have tried to obtain guardianship of him, were staying with him at the hospital, police told the website. The mother has another child, a 16-year-old, who is also being taken care of by family members, WPVI reported. The mother's arrest was only the beginning of the investigation, Walker told reporters. Authorities are interested in learning more about "how this kid was cared for, and what actions were taken and providing of services by different agencies." CNN's Carma Hassan contributed to this report.
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parents who refuse to vaccinate children can lose up to $11,000 of welfare benefits a year under a new government policy.
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(CNN)Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children can lose up to $11,000 of welfare benefits a year under a new government policy, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced. Currently parents can choose to opt out of vaccinations for medical or religious reasons, or by stating they are "conscientious objectors," and still receive taxpayer funded child care benefits. Under the new "no jab, no pay" policy, the exemption as a conscientious objector will be removed starting January 2016. "The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments," said Abbott in a joint statement with Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison. Thousands of families could lose out on welfare payments, with the Australian government estimating more than 39,000 children under the age of seven have not been vaccinated because of their parents' objections. The number of children in Australia who have not received immunization against measles and other diseases has almost doubled in the past decade, according to the government. Anti-vaccination campaigns have recently gained traction in Western countries. Some parents believe the shots cause autism, but the theory has been widely discredited. Existing exemptions on medical or religious grounds will continue said Abbott, but guidelines on religious exemptions will be tightened. "It requires the formal position of that religious body being advised to the government and approved by the government. This is a very significant narrowing," Morrison told reporters in Sydney on Sunday. He added that no mainstream religious organizations have made any formal objection to immunizations. In response to the announcement, more than 7,000 people have signed a petition in opposition to the reforms.
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easter is a major point in the cycle of the religious year, and one has always been able to resist the commercialization and culture warring.
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(CNN)Easter is unique on the Christian calendar, a major point in the cycle of the religious year, and one that has always been able to resist the commercialization and culture warring that surrounds Christmas. That's in part because Easter is genuinely about how religious impulses, and patterns, can operate in ways that affect our lives. Nevertheless, I'm often surprised by how little people, even those supposedly within the Christian tradition, actually know about what is called Holy Week and its culmination on Easter Sunday. At a time when our culture is roiled by questions of identity and ethics (and tolerance) that have profound religious implications, it's worth pausing to explore this crucial holiday -- and the awareness of the human condition, in all its sadness and glory, that it engenders. After all, Holy Week calls mostly to those who incline their minds and hearts in its direction with seriousness of intent. Still, the fuss must puzzle those looking on, wondering what it all means. Why do Christians make so much of this springtime week, and make so much of Easter weekend? There is a phrase that many never come across, even among Christians: Easter Triduum. This refers to the three days of Easter that begin with Good Friday, proceed through Holy Saturday, and conclude with Easter Sunday. It's definitely a progression, although the word itself -- triduum -- can refer to any three days of prayer. Easter Triduum has a kind of major prologue in Maundy Thursday, the day when, by tradition, Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem on the night before he was crucified. The idea of Holy Communion begins with this meal, which was a Passover meal. Jesus, of course, was Jewish, as were all his disciples. He was never trying to erase Judaism and found a new religion. His work involved modifying and extending Judaism in fresh ways. On Maundy Thursday, Christians sometimes practice the washing of feet, recalling that Jesus washed the very dusty feet of his disciples at the Last Supper as a way of demonstrating profound humility -- showing that he was himself a servant -- and modeling a kind of ideal behavior. Good Friday isn't, in fact, so good. It's the day of the crucifixion, when Jesus was scourged and beaten, forced to carry his cross to Golgotha, the "place of the skull," and nailed to the cross itself for what must have been an agonizing death. The actual scene of the Crucifixion varies from gospel to gospel, as do his last words, assembled into the so-called "seven last words" of Jesus by adding up fragments from different gospels. Some of these words are quotations, as when Jesus asked God why he has abandoned him: This is a quote from the 22nd Psalm, which opens: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Good Friday is a day of death, sacrifice, displacement, fear. Holy Saturday is probably the least understood day of the Easter Triduum. It's a passageway between the darkness of the crucifixion and the bright hope of Easter. This day occupies an anxious space in human experience, when the certain knowledge of something dreadful isn't quite erased -- can't be erased -- simply by hope. It's a day of depression, a day of suspension. Then comes Easter, with the aura of the resurrection. I'm always moved by the deep symbolism of this mythic moment, when the body of Christ becomes what is called a "glorified body." This was not, as I've said elsewhere, the Great Resuscitation, although that's part of it, too. Resurrection implies a total transformation, something beyond the physical realm. It's very important that almost nobody who encounters Jesus after the resurrection can really recognize him, know him, or understand him as the same person who was with them before he was crucified. Easter embraces the great mystery of resurrection, with its promise of transformation -- a shift from one form to another, and a change that moves well beyond any literal understanding. The three days of Easter, the Triduum, occur only once a year on the calendar. But the really interesting thing is that we all experience the pattern of the three days again and again. We find ourselves emptied out in small ways, nailed to our own trees in life, embarrassed or broken by life. It was the Buddha who famously observed that life is suffering. Good Friday embodies the Christian version of that truth. Jesus suffered in the way all of us must suffer. We must all die, perhaps less ignominiously but just as certainly. Our friends and families must die. We all experience illness, loss, sadness, a loss of confidence, darkness. This is simply part of the human experience. We dive again and again into Holy Saturday, too -- a period of transition, when the bleakness of suffering is perhaps slightly behind us but nothing restorative seems in view. We know well this in-between time; it's an anxious passage, with only a glimmer on the horizon of potential hope. And we've all been resurrected, again and again, perhaps in tiny ways. This is the joy of Easter, and it's not something reserved for one day on the calendar. It's there whenever we experience what T.S. Eliot once called the "timeless moment," which can only occur -- paradoxically -- in time itself. It's a mystical point where timelessness intersects with time. I suspect we all experience the Triduum frequently, sometimes more than once in a single day. But the ritual enactment of these three days of the Easter season reminds all of those who practice Christianity -- and perhaps those who don't -- that we should expect to move through darkness into light. It's a pattern that describes a kind of spiritual progression. It's good cause for celebration, too: and one that won't easily be co-opted by secular culture.
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"a rape on campus" registered 2.7 million hits following its publication in november.
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(CNN)A jury of Rolling Stone's media peers has dissected the magazine's disastrous, discredited story about rape on the campus of the University of Virginia, and the emerging consensus is that Rolling Stone's lapses and sloppy blunders amount to journalistic malpractice -- made all the worse by the magazine's head-in-the sand reaction to the thorough, devastating report released by a panel of investigators from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Rolling Stone's egregious mistakes of reporting and editing are regrettable but understandable. The magazine's decision not to fire anybody or reorganize its newsroom operation is not. Before the original story, "A Rape on Campus," was pulled from the Rolling Stone website, it registered 2.7 million hits following its publication in November -- more than any noncelebrity story in the magazine's history. An anonymous undergraduate, given the name "Jackie," told Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely she had been invited to a party thrown by Phi Kappa Psi fraternity in 2012 -- only to end up beaten and gang-raped by seven boys, who were allegedly coached along in the attack by the same student, a casual acquaintance, who had invited Jackie to the party. The horrific allegations sparked protests against the fraternity, a police investigation, the temporary suspension of all fraternities at the school and a nationwide debate about the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses. But the story began to unravel almost immediately when Washington Post reporter T. Rees Shapiro took a closer look, leading Rolling Stone to back away from the story and request a review by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. That review, which is considerably longer than the original article, reveals startling lapses in basic journalistic practice. Rolling Stone writer Erdely never verified the identity of the attacker and therefore never confronted him with the allegations; she never spoke to three of Jackie's friends who allegedly talked with Jackie immediately after the attack, and she never gave the fraternity a fair chance to respond, refusing to provide specific information about what happened and when. And at every step of the way, when Jackie began acting flaky -- refusing to provide basic information needed to verify her story or vanishing for weeks at a time without returning calls from the reporter -- neither Erdely nor her editors or the magazine's fact checkers made the hard but necessary decision to hit the pause button and decline to run the story. Having worked part time as a journalism professor for a decade (including one semester at Columbia), I would agree with colleagues who call Rolling Stone's lapses the kind that would be unacceptable in a freshman classroom. I've told students for years: You should never print allegations without giving people a fair chance to respond. And you should never take a source's word about important facts without verifying the truth. (There's a reason we call it reporting and not dictation.) Most of all, I tell students, remember that you're writing about human beings, who are complicated creatures: The good guys are never all that good, and the bad guys usually aren't completely bad. People can be mistaken or deceitful, I tell young reporters, they frequently forget and often lie to themselves. That doesn't make a source useless, but it must make you extra careful. Unfortunately, the early word from Rolling Stone is that they've absorbed none of these lessons. Publisher Jann Wenner has apparently decided not to fire, demote or discipline anybody at Rolling Stone, provoking expressions of disbelief among seasoned journalists. "No one fired at Rolling Stone. Really?" wrote CNN media critic Brian Stelter. "What would Rolling Stone in its heyday write about an institution that screwed up unbelievably, damaged people's lives, but punished no one?" tweeted John Bresnahan, the Capitol bureau chief of Politico. "Rolling Stone outsources its investigation to Columbia and proceeds to do nothing in terms of individual accountability afterward? OK...," tweeted pundit Joe Concha. Worse still, the editors who committed the blunder seem unprepared to revamp their operation to prevent a repeat of the debacle, framing the error as an earnest but misguided attempt to believe the word of a sexual assault victim. "Rolling Stone's senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story's failure does not require them to change their editorial systems," the Columbia report says. And check out this amazing conclusion from Will Dana, the managing editor who presided over the disaster. Dana told the Columbia team: "It's not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don't think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things. We just have to do what we've always done and just make sure we don't make this mistake again." That smug attitude pretty much ensures Rolling Stone's newsroom managers will commit another goof in the future. At a minimum, they should heed the wise counsel of my friend Bill Grueskin, an executive editor at Bloomberg who formerly served as dean of academic affairs at the Columbia J-school. "When doing big, investigative stories, reporters face many challenges: recalcitrant sources, complex numbers, buried records. Editors, whose labors are usually cloaked in anonymity, are spared most of those hurdles. But they face their own internal newsroom challenges, particularly when handling a potential blockbuster story," Grueskin writes. "They must keep their star reporters happy, trim verbiage that interrupts the narrative, and deal with the expectations of bosses hungry for prizes and traffic." The problem could be, says Grueskin, that Rolling Stone had too many chefs in the kitchen, instead of "a single, talented editor with an intact set of vertebrae." Until Wenner and his team learn that basic lesson -- and revamp their hiring, editing and fact-checking process accordingly -- the Rolling Stone fiasco will eventually be followed by another, one made less forgivable because we all saw it coming.
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raju admitted inflating profits with fictitious assets and nonexistent cash.
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New Delhi (CNN)An Indian software pioneer and nine others have been sentenced to seven years in jail for their role in what has been dubbed India's biggest corporate scandal in memory, police said. Ramalinga Raju, the former chairman of software services exporter Satyam Computers Services, was also fined $804,000, R.K. Gaur, a spokesman for India's Central Bureau of Investigation, told CNN. In 2009, Satyam Computers Services was at the center of a massive $1.6 billion fraud case after its then-chairman Raju admitted inflating profits with fictitious assets and nonexistent cash. Investigators say losses to investors resulting from the company's book manipulation were much higher. A special court convicted Raju and nine other people of cheating, criminal conspiracy, breach of public trust and other charges, said the Central Bureau of Investigation, which looked into the case. In the media, the case has been compared to the 2001 Enron Corp. scandal, in which a Houston energy company's earnings had been overstated by several hundred million dollars. When the scam made headlines, Satyam, which means "truth" in Sanskrit, was India's fourth-largest software services provider. It was serving almost 700 companies, including 185 Fortune 500 companies, and generated more than half of its revenue from the United States. The company had about 53,000 employees and operated in 65 countries. After Raju's shock disclosures six years ago, the Indian government fired Satyam's board. In a subsequent state-backed auction, the company was bought by Tech Mahindra, part of the country's Mahindra Group. A heavyweight of the nation's software industry, Raju, 60, has been in jail for the past 32 months. He had founded Satyam in 1987. His company made giant strides as the outsourcing business grew in India in the 1990s.
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the minnesota republican and former representative wrote in a facebook comment.
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(CNN)Michele Bachmann is comparing President Obama to the co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight. "With his Iran deal, Barack Obama is for the 300 million souls of the United States what Andreas Lubitz was for the 150 souls on the German Wings flight - a deranged pilot flying his entire nation into the rocks," the Minnesota Republican and former representative wrote in a Facebook comment posted March 31. "After the fact, among the smoldering remains of American cities, the shocked survivors will ask, why did he do it?" Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, is accused by authorities of deliberately crashing the plane in the French Alps. He died in the crash along with 149 other crew and passengers. The motive of the March 24 crash is under investigation, though investigators are looking in to whether Lubitz feared a medical condition would cause him to lose his pilot's license. Many comments posted on her Facebook page blasted the former representative. Melissa Coca wrote, "Comparing this tragedy to anything is moronic and despicable." Michael J Pristash wrote, "Your allusion is so inappropriate and divisive, not to mention disrespectful on so many levels. Shame on you." Some also accused her of taking desperate measures to stay in the public eye. Lynda Anderson wrote, "Posting outrageous things in a pathetic attempt to stay relevant?" Negotiations are coming down to the wire between Iran, the United States and other nations on restricting Tehran's nuclear program to prevent the ability to develop an atomic bomb. One deadline passed Tuesday, but there is a June 30 deadline for a comprehensive deal -- with all technical and diplomatic impasses fully worked out. Bachmann is no stranger to voicing her opinion on the President's dealing with Iran, personally telling him to "bomb Iran" during the 2014 White House Christmas Party. "I turned to the president and I said, something to the effect of, 'Mr. President, you need to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, because if you don't, Iran will have a nuclear weapon on your watch and the course of world history will change,'" she told the Washington Free Beacon. The congresswoman, who sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, said Obama had a "condescending smile on his face and laughed at me." She said he told her: "Well Michele, it's just not that easy."
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vietnam war veteran martin o'malley and jim webb share stage at the polk county democrats awards dinner in des moines, iowa, on friday night.
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Waterloo, Iowa (CNN)Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb share little in common. Both Democrats are toying with a presidential run, both are facing long odds in that endeavor, and both shared a stage at the Polk County Democrats Awards Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday night. But, as was evident at the dinner, that is where the similarities end. O'Malley is a former mayor and Maryland governor who seems most at home when he is pressing the flesh at events and introducing himself to anyone who would extend their hand. Webb, on the contrary, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former senator from Virginia who comes across as more stoic and, at times, uncomfortable with retail politics. Before the event, O'Malley confidently cruised the union hall. He took selfies with young environmental activists and chatted with sometimes tepid supporters who admitted their other political allegiances. "It is a marathon, not a sprint," one man told O'Malley, a nod to his long odds in the 2016 Democratic nomination process. "Yes, it is; it's a marathon," O'Malley responded. "Welcome to Iowa," said another man. "We hope to see you here more." O'Malley smiled, "Thanks a lot. I hope you do, too." Webb wasn't nearly as active, opting instead to stay close to his seat near the front of the venue and chat with a small group of people around him. As Webb cut into his sizable helping of pork, O'Malley was standing directly behind him, shaking hands. The former Virginia senator, after possibly seeing O'Malley making the rounds, did stand up and shake hands with a few of the diehard Democratic activists in the room. "Seven months old," Zach Smith, a new father, said of his baby boy, Noah. "I have a bunch of kids. The youngest one is 8 years old," Webb said. The baby looked up at the senator. "He is pretty calm," Webb remarked, himself calm. Despite coming from bordering states, Webb and O'Malley don't know each other. When they passed each other in a Des Moines hotel lobby on Friday morning, it was the first time the two had met. That said, the two Democrats find themselves in the same position. Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who is set to announce her presidential bid Sunday, leads every national and state poll of the Democratic field. She has begun to build a sizable staff and is expected to have massive amounts of money to win the nomination. O'Malley and Webb are both looking up at her. In a March CNN/ORC poll (PDF) of national Democrats, only 1% said O'Malley and Webb were their top choice. In a January poll from Bloomberg Politics and the Des Moines Register (PDF), O'Malley was at 1% among Iowa Democrats, while Webb found himself at 3%. The speaking portion of the night further showed Webb and O'Malley's differences. Webb, who spoke before the governor, gave a more subdued, biographical speech that mentioned three areas he would focus on if he ran for president: Basic governance, economic justice and criminal justice reform. To the approval of the audience, Webb promised to come back to Iowa regularly. "I am committing to you right now," he said, "we are going to go over the whole state." And the biggest applause came near the end of his speech, when he urged his party to get back to talking about issues. "Money is ruining our political process," Webb said to a chorus of applause and "hear hear." O'Malley, on the other hand, gave a speech littered with intentional applause lines. At points, the governor would deliberately stop to allow for the silence to be filled with clapping hands. "When the American Dream is denied, our lives shrink, our hopes fade, and our days unfold not in the light of possibility but in the darkness of fear," O'Malley said, delivering the same stump speech he usually gives. "To make the dream true again, we must fight for better wages for all workers, so that Americans can support their families on what they earn." As the event wound down, Webb and O'Malley stuck around to shake more hands and meet people. O'Malley, who spent the previous day in Iowa, left Friday night for New York. Webb, who is in the midst of a four-day trip to Iowa, stayed in Des Moines and headlined a veterans event on Saturday morning in Waterloo. Webb regularly speaks about his service and appeared more at home at the event. He told war stories with young and old veterans and spoke at length about how the government could be doing more for veterans. He also touted his work on passing the 21st Century G.I. Bill of Rights, a 2008 act that expanded education benefits for veterans, and stressed that more needed to be done. "You want the next greatest generation, give them the same opportunity the the greatest generation had," Webb said to applause. "If you really want to thank them, hire a vet." After the event, Webb shook hands with people veterans who told stories about dropped benefits and problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He occasionally smiled and thanked people for coming on a sunny Saturday morning. Asked whether he enjoys the retail politics that is crucial in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire, Webb smiled. Skepticism of retail politics is not new for Webb. As a one-term Democratic senator, Webb was rumored to loathe the burdens that came with campaigning, namely fundraising and retail politics. This time, he put on a rosy view. "This is the good part of it, "Webb said, with a laugh. "Talking to the media, that is not always the good part."
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the isis magazine article titled "the revival of slavery".
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Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan (CNN)In the canvas expanse of the Shariya refugee camp, thousands of Yazidis live within hearing distance of one of Iraqi Kurdistan's frontlines with ISIS. The vast majority of the camp's occupants are from the town of Sinjar and fled the ISIS assault there back in August. But not everyone escaped. ISIS took thousands of Yazidis captive. Men faced a choice -- convert to Islam or be shot. But the Islamist militants separated the young women and girls to be sold as sex slaves. In its fourth edition of "Dabiq," the ISIS online magazine, an article titled "The revival of slavery before the hour," outlines the group's twisted justification and guidelines for the enslavement of the Yazidis. "One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar (infidels) and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of Shariah," the article reads. We're told that women who have just given birth or are breastfeeding are considered impure and cannot be taken as sexual slaves -- but Hanan, 19, was neither of those things. "They separated all of us," she says. "They dragged us away by our hair. They took married women, young ones. The youngest with us was just 10. We were all crying. "They said we are going to marry you off, you will forget your family." ISIS: Enslaving, having sex with 'unbelieving' women, girls is OK For the first week, Hanan was held with 50 others, regularly beaten and threatened with torture, and fed just a bowl of rice. The group was then taken to a three story building in Mosul she described as a sex slave warehouse, where hundreds of girls and women were held. "They would line about 50 of us up at a time, in rows of 10. They would say don't move, don't cry or we will beat you. The men would come in and describe the kind of girl they wanted and then they would pick and choose as they pleased," she recalls. She was eventually chosen, part of a group of 25. From that group Hanan was separated into a smaller group of seven and taken into a house in a village. 'Treated like cattle': Yazidi women sold, raped, enslaved by ISIS Two ISIS fighters guarded the door and ordered the girls to clean and bathe themselves. "They brought in a Yazidi girl who had been with them for two months. She was wearing the black niqab. They said to us we are going to do to you what we did to her," Hanan says. "The girl spoke to us in Kurdish and said they beat me, they cuffed me and raped me." Hanan and the others decided they had to try to escape. That night they crawled out the bedroom window. "The fourth girl jumped out, I was the fifth. I crawled to the wall and was about to jump over it and then I saw their flashlight," she tells me. "They caught the last two girls." They ran, and somehow evaded capture. Four hours later they were out of ISIS territory. "If I just see someone with a beard I start shaking," Hanan says. Now physically free but mentally still captive, Hanan remains tormented -- like so many others, by what she has been through and what those still with ISIS are being forced to endure -- a fate worse than death. Fleeing ISIS -- A Yazidi family's tale
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deputy robert bates charged with second-degree manslaughter.
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(CNN)The Tulsa County reserve deputy who fatally shot a man instead of using his Taser turned himself in to authorities Tuesday at the Tulsa County Jail. Video shows Reserve Deputy Robert Bates announcing he is going to deploy his Taser after an undercover weapons sting on April 2 but then shooting Eric Courtney Harris in the back with a handgun. Bates was charged with second-degree manslaughter Monday. He surrendered Tuesday morning, accompanied by his attorney, Clark Brewster, and immediately posted bail of $25,000. As he exited the jailhouse, Bates paused in front of television cameras for a moment but did not speak. His attorney reiterated that he believes the charge against his client is unwarranted. The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office says a sting operation caught Harris illegally selling a gun. Harris ran when officers came in for the arrest. Authorities say Bates thought he pulled out his Taser but "inadvertently" fired his gun. Harris' brother, Andre Harris, told CNN that he is pleased District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler pressed charges. In his opinion, however, no type of force should have been used in the arrest of his brother. Watching the video of the shooting, Andre Harris said he can see that three or more officers were already on top of his brother. That manpower should have been enough to arrest him, he said. "It was a situation where I didn't necessarily think that a Taser should even be used," Andre Harris said. Scott Wood, another Bates' attorney, has said the shooting was an "excusable homicide." Investigators' efforts to defend Bates and the other deputies involved in the arrest have sparked a mounting chorus of criticism online. Harris' relatives are demanding an independent investigation of what they call unjustified brutality. They're also questioning why the 73-year-old Bates -- the CEO of an insurance company who volunteers as a certified reserve deputy -- was on the scene in such a sensitive and high-risk sting operation. Daniel Smolen, an attorney representing the Harris family, said Bates paid big money to play a cop in his spare time. Bates, who was a police officer for a year in the 1960s, had been a reserve deputy since 2008, with 300 hours of training and 1,100 hours of community policing experience, according to the sheriff's office. He was also a frequent contributor to the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, including $2,500 to the re-election of Sheriff Stanley Glanz. The sheriff's office has said that Bates had law enforcement certification, but Smolen said he has not seen any field training records. "We're holding up all right at this point," Andre Harris said. "We're putting our faith in God that justice will be served, and we can get some closure in this situation." How easy is it to confuse a gun for a Taser? In a statement released Tuesday, Eric Harris' family members said they know there are many good deputies working in Tulsa County. "However, the treatment of Eric of April 2 clearly shows that there is a deep-seated problem within the TCSO," the statement said. The family said that the sheriff has not apologized and that the department has not shown remorse or indication it will change its policies. CNN's Jason Morris and Ed Lavandera contributed to this report.
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the most serious injuries were assigned to maintenance and cleaning work at the sheriff's firing range.
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(CNN)A natural gas line explosion at a law enforcement shooting range in Fresno, California, injured 11 people, including some inmates who were on a work detail there. Others being treated include a county road worker and two sheriff's deputies, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said. The exact cause of Friday's blast is under investigation, Mims said, but it happened at the spot where a county worker was operating a front loader. The explosion sparked a fire that roared like a jet engine, Mims said. The operator of the front loader was injured but able to walk to an ambulance, the sheriff said. The most serious injuries were suffered by a group of inmates who were assigned to maintenance and cleaning work at the sheriff's firing range. There were 10 inmates near the blast site who were also injured, officials said. Three other inmates at the site were not hurt. Earlier, the sheriff's office included them in the injury count. After the blast, Mims said, two sheriff's deputies who were at the firing range ran toward the fire to move the injured. CNN affiliate KFSN posted a video of the scene that shows a tall ball of fire rising from near a highway. One inmate was airlifted to the hospital, the sheriff said. That inmate and the county worker were undergoing emergency surgery, she said. The others suffered mostly burns. The pair of deputies who provided aid also went for treatment for ringing ears and sunburn-like conditions, she said. Firefighters put out the blaze, revealing a crater at the blast site and a blackened front loader, Mims said.
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frida ghitis: president barack obama's the mast of a nuclear deal with iran is a worthy.
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(CNN)President Barack Obama tied himself to the mast of a nuclear deal with Iran even before he became the Democratic candidate for president. Reaching a good, solid agreement with Iran is a worthy, desirable goal. But the process has unfolded under the destructive influence of political considerations, weakening America's hand and strengthening Iran. Obama's political standing and his historic legacy in foreign policy are so deeply intertwined with reaching an accord with Iran that if the deal ultimately collapses, he may fear that historians will conclude that his legacy in global affairs collapsed with it. There is a reason one gets the feeling that it is the United States and not Iran that is the more eager, even desperate, side in these talks, even though Iran is the country whose economy was sent into a deep chill by international sanctions; the country whose only significant export, oil, lost more than half of its value in recent months. The reason is that Obama has a huge political stake in these negotiations. The President may insist that the United States will choose no deal over a bad deal, but few people truly believe he has a credible Plan B. Few believe it, particularly in the Middle East and notably among America's Arab friends, who hold the view that Iran is running circles around the United States and outplayed Obama. As the writer David Rothkopf aptly put it, "Iran is having a great Obama administration." That's a belief that has already started shaking up the region. Saudi Arabia has said that it will pursue nuclear weapons if it believes Iran has not been stopped, and there is little doubt that other countries among Iran's Muslim rivals will do the same. In fact, the notion that Obama is not handling the Iranian threat effectively is contributing to a new war in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and other Arabs are trying to push back against gains by Iran's allies. We can trace it all back to the Democratic primaries in 2007, when then-Sen. Obama said he would meet Iran's leaders "without preconditions," leading his rival, Hillary Clinton, to call the idea "Irresponsible and frankly naive." As the years of his presidency unfolded, and the Middle East started coming apart, finding a deal with Iran started to look like the one major foreign policy achievement Obama might leave behind. The political imperative started to intrude in strategic considerations on an issue that is of transcendent importance to world peace. The framework agreement announced on Thursday came two days after Obama's March 31 deadline. The U.S.-imposed deadline served only to pressure the United States, and the French ambassador very publicly decried as a "bad tactic." That bad tactic was a political move, a push to produce some sort of result, however vague, to protect the talks from critics. Again, a solid agreement that ensures Iran will not produce nuclear weapons would be a most welcome development. But the agreement so far does not look promising. It certainly shows the final outcome will differ greatly from what Obama had vowed. In a presidential debate in 2012, Obama described a crystal clear goal for negotiations. "The deal we'll accept is they end their nuclear program. It's very straightforward." Nobody is talking about Iran ending its nuclear program. Not even close. Iran will be allowed to keep one-third of its more than 6,000 centrifuges. That's not a small symbolic number. And it does not appear as though any of its nuclear facilities will be dismantled, although Fordow will contain no nuclear materials. Iran has insisted all along that its nuclear program has only civilian uses. The fact is that Iran has a well-established record of lying and concealing the elements of its nuclear program to U.N. inspectors. And the U.N. agency chief says that has not stopped. A couple of weeks ago, with days left until the negotiating deadline, U.N. nuclear chief Yukiya Amano said Iran is still stonewalling. "We are still not in a position to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is [for a] peaceful purpose," he warned. The negotiations' starting point is that Iran would like to have the bomb and the international community wants to delay that as much as possible -- and preferably, forever. The world only learned about Iran's secret facilities at Arak and Natanz after dissidents raised the alarm. Iran, we have learned repeatedly, is very good at lying to international inspectors. It is well-established that it has had something to hide about its nuclear program. It is well-established that many of Iran's neighbors don't trust it and are anxious about the U.S.-led international dealings with Iran. It is well-established that Iran has engaged in international terrorism and in destabilizing the region. It is also clear that it took harsh international sanctions and a collapse in oil prices to bring Iran to the negotiating table. It was Iran that had the most to lose from a failure of talks. But political considerations turned the United States into the supplicant. The framework agreement starts lifting those indispensable sanctions much too soon. Nuclear enrichment will continue, although at a lower level. Iran officially, legally, becomes a nuclear threshold state, with the capability to make the final dash to a bomb within a "breakout" period of one year, the time when presumably inspectors would discover violation and allow the rest of the world to act. Even the Fordow facility, conveniently inside a fortified bunker in a mountain, will remain in existence, though "converted" to a nuclear "research facility" And without nuclear material on site. International sanctions lifting will begin almost immediately. Its nuclear infrastructure will remain largely in place, even if operating at a reduced pace, giving Iran much of what it wanted. With Iranian forces gaining ground in Arab lands and Iranian commanders declaring the destruction of Israel "nonnegotiable" and threatening Saudi Arabia, this deal does not look reassuring. Obama is right that a diplomatic solution is the most desirable option. But the deal so far looks like (another) win for Iran. It introduces enough restrictions that it could give the President the political cover he wants, but it does not do enough to make the world safe from nuclear proliferation and more potentially catastrophic instability in the Middle East.
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the suspect, who the spokesperson said never entered 1oak, stabbed copeland and saltara in front of fulton houses.
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(CNN)Chris Copeland of the Indiana Pacers was stabbed after leaving a trendy New York nightclub early Wednesday, and two Atlanta Hawks -- who had just finished a home game hours before the incident -- were among those arrested, according to police and CNN affiliates. The Hawks were not involved in the stabbing incident, police said, but were arrested on obstruction and other charges later. Though New York Police Department Det. Kelly Ort initially told CNN the incident occurred just before 4 a.m. at 1OAK, a club in New York's Chelsea neighborhood known to draw celebrities among its clientele, the club later told CNN that the stabbing occurred in front of the Fulton Houses project down the street. "1OAK staff was unaware of the incident when it happened, as it occurred beyond their view in a different location. However, 1OAK's team assisted Mr. Copeland to their fullest capabilities, and called for help as soon as he was seen walking back towards the venue," the statement said. The statement continued, "A review of the video footage seems to reveal the incident did not originate from the venue or its immediate surroundings that are under 1OAK supervision." Copeland and a female companion, Katrine Saltara, were in the club for about 10 minutes before leaving and walking down the street toward Fulton Houses, where their car was parked, said a 1OAK spokesperson. The spokesperson gave CNN additional details on condition of anonymity because 1OAK's legal team had approved only the club's official statement. The suspect, who the spokesperson said never entered 1OAK, stabbed Copeland and Saltara in front of Fulton Houses, and according to the club's statement, "Mr. Copeland's driver sprang to accost and detain the apparent perpetrator and that individual is now in police custody." Charges against the suspect are pending, and his name will be released once charges are filed, Ort said. Copeland and Saltara tried to make their way back to the club to seek help from the 20 or so security personnel on hand, leaving a "bloody trail of handprints" between the site of the stabbing and the club, the spokesperson said. Copeland "almost landed right next to the club," the spokesperson said, adding that surveillance footage will not show the actual stabbing because it occurred too far away from the club. The club shut down immediately after the incident, the spokesperson said. A male and two females were taken to area hospitals, Ort said. A knife was recovered, a suspect was arrested and two individuals not involved in the dispute -- the Hawks' Pero Antic, 32, and Thabo Sefolosha, 30 -- were arrested on charges of obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct, she said. Sefolosha faces an additional charge of resisting arrest, Ort said. Word of the stabbing quickly spread through the club, reaching Antic and Sefolosha, who went outside to check on their friend, Copeland, the 1OAK spokesperson said. At one point, the two began pushing their way through a crowd that had gathered around the scene, leading to their arrests, the spokesperson said. "We will contest these charges and look forward to communicating the facts of the situation at the appropriate time," the players said in a joint statement released by the team. "We apologize to our respective families, teammates, and the Hawks' organization for any negative attention this incident has brought upon them." The Hawks are in New York for a Wednesday night game against the Brooklyn Nets. Neither player will be in uniform, the team said. Police released little information Wednesday, but local media identified the injured man as Copeland, 31, who is from Orange, New Jersey. The Pacers released a statement saying Copeland suffered a knife wound to his left elbow and abdomen, and he's in stable condition at a New York hospital. "We are aware that Chris Copeland was injured early this morning in New York City. We are still gathering information and will update when we know more. Our thoughts are with Chris and those injured," Larry Bird, the Pacers' president of basketball operations, said in a statement. Copeland's agent, John Spencer, issued a statement saying, "We're concerned about the safety of Chris and Katrine. We don't have any details at this particular time. All we can do is pray and wait." The NBA and the Hawks front office said they were looking into the incident. "We are aware of the situation involving Pero Antic and Thabo Sefolosha this morning. We are in the process of gathering more information and will have further comment at the appropriate time," Hawks spokesman Garin Narain said in an email. Copeland's Pacers are slated to play the New York Knicks on Wednesday night. The pair apparently had only recently arrived in New York prior to their arrests, as both were on the court for the Hawks' 96-69 win over the Phoenix Suns in Atlanta on Tuesday night. Antic played 12 minutes, and Sefolosha played 20. The game ended around 10 p.m. Copeland, a former Knick, was near the nightclub with Saltara when a 22-year-old Brooklyn man approached them, police told CNN affiliate WABC. There was some sort of dispute before the suspect stabbed the 6-foot-8-inch Copeland in the abdomen, slashed Saltara and then slashed another woman, the station reported. Saltara suffered cuts to her arm, breast and buttock, and the other woman suffered a slash to her stomach, CNN affiliate WCBS reported. While WCBS reported that the second woman was 53 years old, WABC reported she was 23. Images published in the New York Daily News showed a considerable amount of blood on the sidewalk and a white sports coupe, roped off with police tape, with several streaks of blood on its driver's side. Antic and Sefolosha interfered with officers trying to establish a crime scene, and one of the Hawks pushed a police officer, WABC reported. The Hawks are preparing for a historic playoff run after clinching the No. 1 seed in the NBA's Eastern Conference. Tuesday's win over the Suns marked a franchise-best 58 wins in a season for the club. The Pacers sit in the conference's 10th spot but are only one game out of playoff contention. CNN's Laura Ly, Jason Durand and Jill Martin contributed to this report.
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he was released on $5,000 bail.
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(CNN)Hockey player Jarret Stoll of the L.A. Kings was arrested Friday at the swimming pool of a Las Vegas resort on a drug-possession charge, CNN affiliate KSNV reported, citing a police spokesman. Stoll, 32, was charged with possession of controlled substances, including cocaine and ecstasy, according to KSNV. He was released from the Clark County Detention Center late Friday on $5,000 bail. The Kings said in a statement, "We are aware of police reports out of Clark County, Nevada regarding Jarret Stoll. Our organization is concerned and has begun conducting a thorough internal investigation. While we continue to actively gather facts, we are withholding further comment at this time." The Canadian player is a center and has been with the Kings since 2008. The Kings, who won the Stanley Cup two of the past three seasons, did not make the NHL playoffs this season. He is reportedly involved with TV personality Erin Andrews, who is a Fox Sports reporter and co-hosts "Dancing with the Stars." CNN contacted the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to confirm details on Stoll's arrest, but according to the dispatcher no information was available until the beginning of the week.
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oliver minatel, 22, said he was sleeping on air canada flight 8623 from toronto when he felt something around his neck.
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Atlanta (CNN)A passenger on an Atlanta-bound Air Canada flight told a CNN reporter on the plane Friday that a stranger sitting behind him tried to choke him. Oliver Minatel, 22, said he was sleeping on Air Canada Flight 8623 from Toronto when he felt something around his neck. "With a rope, something that he has, he just jumped on me. That's what happened," Minatel told CNN's Paula Newton moments after the incident. She was seated four rows behind Minatel, a professional soccer player traveling with his team. The incident occurred about a half-hour before the flight landed, after the pilots had begun their descent. "I forced it (the cord) down and then other people came to help, and then I got out and he started saying that we were here to kill him," Minatel said. The man was not restrained for the rest of the trip, but the flight crew told him to stay seated with his seat belt on. The man kept trying to get out of his seat but other passengers yelled at him whenever he tried to stand up. The two-hour flight landed at Atlanta's Hartsfield airport at about 4:30 p.m. where it was met by U.S. authorities. The suspect was escorted off the plane. An FBI spokesman confirmed the agency responded to the incident. "The passenger, however, was transported for medical/mental evaluation under the direction and coordination of the Atlanta Police Department," Special Agent Stephen Emmett said. "While there are currently no federal charges pending, the facts of the matter are being relayed to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta." Minatel, a forward from Brazil, was traveling with his teammates from the Ottawa Fury Football Club of the second-division North American Soccer League. They are scheduled to play the Atlanta Silverbacks on Saturday. "We're very thankful to everyone who came to the aid of Oliver and relieved that he's O.K. and ready to play in our game," Fury FC Head Coach Marc Dos Santos said in a statement posted on the team's website. Several witnesses said they saw the suspect try to choke Minatel with the cord of his headphones. Kevin Kerr says he was seated next to the suspect. "He was talking about how this soccer team was trying to kill him. I thought he was maybe a deranged fan," said Kerr. Kerr said he fell asleep and he awakened to see the suspect trying to choke Minatel. "I assisted to make sure that didn't happen," Kerr said. The Canadian businessman said he and members of the soccer team kept a close eye on the suspect as the plane landed to make sure he did not threaten other passengers.
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barrientos, now 39, is facing two criminal counts of "offering a false instrument"
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New York (CNN)When Liana Barrientos was 23 years old, she got married in Westchester County, New York. A year later, she got married again in Westchester County, but to a different man and without divorcing her first husband. Only 18 days after that marriage, she got hitched yet again. Then, Barrientos declared "I do" five more times, sometimes only within two weeks of each other. In 2010, she married once more, this time in the Bronx. In an application for a marriage license, she stated it was her "first and only" marriage. Barrientos, now 39, is facing two criminal counts of "offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree," referring to her false statements on the 2010 marriage license application, according to court documents. Prosecutors said the marriages were part of an immigration scam. On Friday, she pleaded not guilty at State Supreme Court in the Bronx, according to her attorney, Christopher Wright, who declined to comment further. After leaving court, Barrientos was arrested and charged with theft of service and criminal trespass for allegedly sneaking into the New York subway through an emergency exit, said Detective Annette Markowski, a police spokeswoman. In total, Barrientos has been married 10 times, with nine of her marriages occurring between 1999 and 2002. All occurred either in Westchester County, Long Island, New Jersey or the Bronx. She is believed to still be married to four men, and at one time, she was married to eight men at once, prosecutors say. Prosecutors said the immigration scam involved some of her husbands, who filed for permanent residence status shortly after the marriages. Any divorces happened only after such filings were approved. It was unclear whether any of the men will be prosecuted. The case was referred to the Bronx District Attorney's Office by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security's Investigation Division. Seven of the men are from so-called "red-flagged" countries, including Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Pakistan and Mali. Her eighth husband, Rashid Rajput, was deported in 2006 to his native Pakistan after an investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. If convicted, Barrientos faces up to four years in prison. Her next court appearance is scheduled for May 18.
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it's all part of national park week, happening april 18 through april 26, and it's hosted by the national park service and the national park foundation.
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(CNN)From the giant sequoias of Yosemite to the geysers of Yellowstone, the United States' national parks were made for you and me. And for Saturday and Sunday, they're also free. Though most of the National Park Service's 407 sites are free year-round, the 128 parks that charge a fee -- like Yellowstone and Yosemite -- will be free those two days. It's all part of National Park Week, happening April 18 through April 26, and it's hosted by the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation. Check out night-time astronomy parties, daytime Revolutionary War programs, Earth Day parties and family-friendly Junior Ranger activities at national park sites across the country. Not sure how to start? Go to FindYourPark.com to learn more about park sites near you. Go to www.nationalparkweek.org for more ideas on how to explore. Then the park service wants people to share their stories using the hashtag #FindYourPark and at FindYourPark.com.
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pence is drawing huge heat for his controversial decision to sign a religious freedom law.
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(CNN)A year ago Bloomberg published a story with the following headline: Mike Pence, a Koch Favorite, Mulls 2016 Run for President. The story ticked off items on Pence's conservative things-to-do list while also noting his close ties to the deep-pocketed Koch brothers, as well as other right-wing lobbying groups. Last August the Indiana governor was in Dallas for an Americans for Prosperity event; the group is backed by the conservative Koch brothers, and supported Gov. Pence's tax-slashing budget. Now, Pence is drawing huge heat for his controversial decision to sign a religious freedom law last week that opens the door to discrimination against gays and lesbians. Why would Pence ignore the pleas of Indiana's Chamber of Commerce as well as the Republican mayor of his state capital and sign such a bill? Because there's a very powerful wing of his party that wants a conservative as its 2016 candidate and this bill was Pence's way of shoring up his street cred. It is also the reason why Republican Jeb Bush, Pence's fellow White House hopeful, who is viewed as a little light in that category, was first to rush in to defend Pence and the law. One lesson here: Just because more than 70% of the country now lives in states where same-sex marriage is legal does not mean 70% of the country is happy about it. Backlash aside, the fact is Pence has scored a lot of points this week among ultraconservatives. And while that may not be enough to get him over this political hump, the very public debate that now embroils him — and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and likely 14 other states considering similar proposals this year -- is more than enough to drag the entire Republican field farther to the right than the party had hoped. Pence: 'Was I expecting this kind of backlash? Heavens no.' For there is no way a Republican can get through the pending primary without denouncing LGBT rights, which unfortunately will turn numerous Americans into single-issue voters. I foolishly hoped the issue of LGBT rights would be a bit player in the 2016 general election, overshadowed by foreign policy and the economy. Instead it looks like it's going to be dragged down to a replay of Pat Buchanan's "cultural war" speech, during which he told the 1992 Republican National Convention: "We stand with (George H.W. Bush) against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women" and later followed with "There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America." Progressives may enjoy watching Pence's temporary fall from grace, but his policy rhetoric has echoed that of 2016 hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has indicated a federal ban on same-sex marriage is not off the GOP table. And even if you think neither Pence nor Bush nor Cruz will win the nomination, someone has to. In light of that, listen to conservative former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a potential 2016 candidate describing conservatives' discomfort with same-sex marriage: "It's like asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli." Or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: "I certainly will support Ted Cruz and others that are talking about making ... a constitutional amendment to allow states to continue to define marriage." Or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has a long history of fighting against same-sex marriage and civil unions. And Ben Carson said jail turns people gay, so there's that. Remember: Pence didn't act alone. He only signed a bill that first passed muster with other elected officials. In fact, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, "the Indiana RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] is one of 24 introduced in 15 states this year that could allow someone to use their religious beliefs to discriminate. Numerous other bills specifically single out the LGBT community for unequal treatment." Who supports, denounces Indiana law? Gallup Polls may suggest voters nationwide are more gay-friendly, but the trend on the state level tells a different story. Perhaps we're witnessing the final gasp of long-ago biases. Or maybe those biases are having a rebirth we had underestimated. Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the first member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex while in office, said he believes Republicans want the Supreme Court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage to provide political cover in the GOP primary. "We're winning," he told a crowd in Chicago recently while promoting his latest book. I guess if you look at where the country was on LGBT issues 10 years ago, we definitely are. That's assuming you are part of the "we" who believe LGBT people should have the same rights as their heterosexual/cisgender counterparts. But as the situation in Indiana has shown, "winning" should not be mistaken for having "won." For it is doubtful that a candidate will be able to avoid taking a position on the wave of so-called "religious freedom" bills snaking through red-state legislatures. Or to sidestep the topic of a constitutional amendment when it's raised in a debate or at a campaign stop, especially with Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate. Pence, and to a lesser extent, Jeb Bush, may be toxic now but America has a short attention span. More importantly, they are not alone. Frank said when progressives get angry they march in the streets, and when conservatives get mad they march to the polls. If that holds true in 2016, "winning" is going to feel very strange.
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hernandez is accused of killing odin lloyd, his body was found in the box.
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(CNN)It took prosecutors months to present 131 witnesses to support their claim that former NFL star Aaron Hernandez killed semi-pro player Odin Lloyd. On Monday, Hernandez's defense gave its side of the story, wrapping up its witnesses in less than a day. Hernandez, 25, is on trial for the shooting death of Lloyd, whose body was found in a Massachusetts industrial park in June 2013. Now that the defense has rested, it won't be long before the jury begins deliberating. Much of the evidence in the former New England Patriots' case is circumstantial. Here are some key points jurors will have to consider after each side makes closing arguments on Tuesday: As news spread that Hernandez was under investigation in June 2013, Patriots owner Robert Kraft called in the tight end for a meeting two days after Lloyd's death. "He said he was not involved," Kraft testified last week. "He said he was innocent, and that he hoped that the time of the murder incident came out because he said he was in a club." There's only one potential problem with that claim: The time Lloyd was killed hadn't been made public yet by the time Hernandez met with Kraft. So how could Hernandez have known when Lloyd was killed? "What a great, great witness for the prosecution," CNN legal analyst Mel Robbins said. "Basically what happened is Aaron Hernandez lied to his boss. And the only way you rebut it is if you put him on the stand." When questioned by a defense attorney, Kraft said that he'd never had any problems with Hernandez and that the player was always respectful to him. Hernandez's fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins, revealed for the first time last week that Hernandez told her to dispose of a box from the couple's home that she said reeked of marijuana. She also said she didn't know what was in the box. That revelation may contradict the prosecution's contention that the weapon used in the killing was in the box. The murder weapon in the case has not been recovered. During cross-examination by the defense, Jenkins testified that she suspected marijuana because the box smelled "skunky." Earlier, she told prosecutors during direct examination that she didn't know what was in the box. She said Hernandez never told her, and she never looked. After concealing the box with her daughter's clothing, Jenkins said she threw it away in "a random dumpster" but could not remember exactly where. Much testimony has focused on the shoes Hernandez wore the night Lloyd was shot. A Nike consultant testified that Hernandez was wearing Nike Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows. About 93,000 pairs of that shoe were made, significantly fewer in a size 13. The shoe's sole makes a distinct impression, said Lt. Steven Bennett of the Massachusetts State Police. The consultant testified under questioning from defense attorney Jamie Sultan that other Nike shoes -- more than 3 million -- make the same impression. Yet Bennett, who works in crime scene services, testified that the footprint left near Lloyd's body was "in agreement" or consistent with the Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows size 13. Although he did not have the shoes that Hernandez wore that night, he used an identical pair to make his determination. Bennett did so by creating a transparency of the sole and laying it over a photo of the footwear impression. Jurors watched as he drew lines showing how the sole aligned with the impression. What may have been a key moment for the prosecution was quickly derailed by defense attorney Jamie Sultan. Sultan questioned the science behind analyzing footprints. He introduced a March 2014 investigative report written by Bennett saying the partial footwear impression lacked certain detail and quality to be able to make a comparison. Prosecutors used grainy footage from Hernandez's home security system to suggest he was holding a .45-caliber handgun -- the same kind of gun police said was used to kill Lloyd. Hernandez could be seen on camera pulling into his driveway minutes after Lloyd was shot to death in an industrial park about a mile from Hernandez's home. "In my opinion, the firearm shown in the video stills is a Glock pistol," Glock sales manager Kyle Aspinwall testified. The video is time-stamped minutes after workers in a nearby industrial park describe hearing loud noises like fireworks -- the moment prosecutors say Lloyd was gunned down after getting out of a car Hernandez was driving. Hernandez's lawyers then showed a different part of the video time-stamped a few seconds earlier with Hernandez holding what appeared to be a shiny object in one hand, suggesting it may be an iPad. "Glock pistols don't have white glows to them, do they?" defense attorney James Sultan asked. "No, they do not," Aspinwall answered. Sultan then displayed a soft-pellet gun similar in shape to a Glock, suggesting it could also be the object Hernandez is holding. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in Lloyd's death. But already, his arrest has led to deep consequences, including his release from the New England Patriots and the loss of millions of dollars in expected earnings. So what might make a young man who had signed a $40 million contract risk everything? Prosecutors have said Lloyd might have done or said something that didn't sit well with Hernandez. They claimed Hernandez rounded up some friends and orchestrated a hit to settle the score. Hernandez's co-defendants, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, also pleaded not guilty and will be tried separately. But the case gets more complicated. Evidence collected in Lloyd's death investigation led to two more murder charges against Hernandez in a separate case in Boston. Hernandez is also accused of shooting Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, allegedly over a spilled drink at a nightclub. That double shooting took place in July 2012, almost a year before Lloyd was killed. Prosecutors have said in pretrial hearings that Hernandez may have been mad at himself for possibly showing Lloyd the spot where that double murder happened. During trial, prosecutors suggest a text written by Hernandez the day before the murder saying he was "buggin" for showing Lloyd "the spot" may have played a role in plotting to kill Lloyd. The judge has banned any mention of the double murder in Lloyd's trial, ruling it is prejudicial. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in those deaths as well. But when the Lloyd trial ends, that murder trial awaits him. CNN's Jason Hanna, Lawrence Crook, Laura Dolan and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.
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cassandra was diagnosed with hodgkin lymphoma in september and medical experts gave her an 85% chance of survival if treated with chemotherapy.
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(CNN)A Connecticut teen who has been forced to have chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin lymphoma will remain in temporary custody of the state for the time being, according to her attorney, Josh Michtom. A Connecticut juvenile court judge issued a written decision Wednesday denying a motion to let the teen, identified in court documents as "Cassandra C.," go home. The judge also denied a motion for visitation. The 17-year-old is in remission after nearly six months of forced chemo treatments. On March 16, Michtom tried to convince the court that she should be able to return to her mother's home because she was no longer at imminent risk of harm from her illness. Michtom and attorney Michael Taylor, who represents Cassandra's mother, Jackie Fortin, released a written statement after receiving the judge's decision Wednesday: "We are disappointed in this ruling, not least of all because it draws a factual conclusion that is directly contradicted by the weight of the evidence. We're conferring with our clients now about next steps, including whether to take another appeal." Cassandra was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in September and medical experts gave her an 85% chance of survival if treated with chemotherapy. Without it, doctors said at the time, she was likely to die within two years. She started chemotherapy in November but ran away after two days, according to court documents, when she decided she did not want to put the poison of the treatment into her body. In December, a judge ordered the young woman to be under the custody of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. At that time, she was admitted to Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford and has remained there since then. Doctors surgically implanted a port in Cassandra's chest to administer chemotherapy medications, which began in spite of legal maneuvers to halt them. Cassandra is feeling well and is in good shape as far as her health is concerned, according to Michtom. "She's seen in her case the side effects weren't bad, and she's been well-treated by the nurses and doctors and does want to complete the treatment," he said. Her treatment is scheduled to wrap up this month. Michtom and Taylor failed in their effort before the Connecticut Supreme Court to make the case that Cassandra was mature enough to make her own medical decisions. Joette Katz, the commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, told CNN in March the agency is "very pleased with Cassandra's progress toward a complete recovery. We understand how difficult this has been for Cassandra and her family, but we have had full confidence throughout that the medical professionals involved in her treatment would be successful in saving her life." The agency has denied CNN's request to speak with Cassandra or her physicians. According to Michtom, the Department of Children and Families could have withdrawn its position for an order of custody but hasn't. He said the department sees Cassandra as a flight risk because she has run away before. Representatives for the department have said in court and in conversations with Michtom and Taylor that they will withdraw their pending neglect petition once Cassandra completes her last round of chemo -- expected around the end of April -- and that she'll be allowed to return home. So for now, Cassandra is said to spend her days reading, watching TV and drawing. "The hospital is effectively jail," Michtom said.
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cnn situation room correspondent brian todd and photojournalist khalil abdallah were on their way to interview a legal analyst on l street nw.
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(CNN)It was like a scene out of "Make Way for Ducklings" on Tuesday on a rainy street in Washington. CNN Situation Room correspondent Brian Todd and photojournalist Khalil Abdallah were on their way to interview a legal analyst on L Street NW when they happened on a brood of baby ducks causing a stir. Abdallah reports the ducklings and their mom had crossed heavily trafficked street, and some restaurant patrons stopped on the sidewalk to corral them. A man gave up his umbrella for the cause "while the mom was going crazy." "One duckling tried to run back to the street but they caught it in time," Abdallah said. The mother duck followed the umbrella while pedestrians stopped cars on L street for them to safely cross the road. The Washington Post reports the pedestrians took the bird family to "a more enclosed grassy area" at 16th and L streets NW. (Yes, baby ducks warrant two national news stories.) "We thought it was an extraordinary situation," Todd said. "You see pigeons, you see squirrels, you see the occasional raccoon in the D.C. area, and ... you see deer ... We've never seen anything like this in the middle of town."
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nevertheless, i'm often surprised by how little people, even those supposedly within the christian tradition, actually know about what is called holy week and its culmination on easter sunday.
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(CNN)Easter is unique on the Christian calendar, a major point in the cycle of the religious year, and one that has always been able to resist the commercialization and culture warring that surrounds Christmas. That's in part because Easter is genuinely about how religious impulses, and patterns, can operate in ways that affect our lives. Nevertheless, I'm often surprised by how little people, even those supposedly within the Christian tradition, actually know about what is called Holy Week and its culmination on Easter Sunday. At a time when our culture is roiled by questions of identity and ethics (and tolerance) that have profound religious implications, it's worth pausing to explore this crucial holiday -- and the awareness of the human condition, in all its sadness and glory, that it engenders. After all, Holy Week calls mostly to those who incline their minds and hearts in its direction with seriousness of intent. Still, the fuss must puzzle those looking on, wondering what it all means. Why do Christians make so much of this springtime week, and make so much of Easter weekend? There is a phrase that many never come across, even among Christians: Easter Triduum. This refers to the three days of Easter that begin with Good Friday, proceed through Holy Saturday, and conclude with Easter Sunday. It's definitely a progression, although the word itself -- triduum -- can refer to any three days of prayer. Easter Triduum has a kind of major prologue in Maundy Thursday, the day when, by tradition, Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem on the night before he was crucified. The idea of Holy Communion begins with this meal, which was a Passover meal. Jesus, of course, was Jewish, as were all his disciples. He was never trying to erase Judaism and found a new religion. His work involved modifying and extending Judaism in fresh ways. On Maundy Thursday, Christians sometimes practice the washing of feet, recalling that Jesus washed the very dusty feet of his disciples at the Last Supper as a way of demonstrating profound humility -- showing that he was himself a servant -- and modeling a kind of ideal behavior. Good Friday isn't, in fact, so good. It's the day of the crucifixion, when Jesus was scourged and beaten, forced to carry his cross to Golgotha, the "place of the skull," and nailed to the cross itself for what must have been an agonizing death. The actual scene of the Crucifixion varies from gospel to gospel, as do his last words, assembled into the so-called "seven last words" of Jesus by adding up fragments from different gospels. Some of these words are quotations, as when Jesus asked God why he has abandoned him: This is a quote from the 22nd Psalm, which opens: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Good Friday is a day of death, sacrifice, displacement, fear. Holy Saturday is probably the least understood day of the Easter Triduum. It's a passageway between the darkness of the crucifixion and the bright hope of Easter. This day occupies an anxious space in human experience, when the certain knowledge of something dreadful isn't quite erased -- can't be erased -- simply by hope. It's a day of depression, a day of suspension. Then comes Easter, with the aura of the resurrection. I'm always moved by the deep symbolism of this mythic moment, when the body of Christ becomes what is called a "glorified body." This was not, as I've said elsewhere, the Great Resuscitation, although that's part of it, too. Resurrection implies a total transformation, something beyond the physical realm. It's very important that almost nobody who encounters Jesus after the resurrection can really recognize him, know him, or understand him as the same person who was with them before he was crucified. Easter embraces the great mystery of resurrection, with its promise of transformation -- a shift from one form to another, and a change that moves well beyond any literal understanding. The three days of Easter, the Triduum, occur only once a year on the calendar. But the really interesting thing is that we all experience the pattern of the three days again and again. We find ourselves emptied out in small ways, nailed to our own trees in life, embarrassed or broken by life. It was the Buddha who famously observed that life is suffering. Good Friday embodies the Christian version of that truth. Jesus suffered in the way all of us must suffer. We must all die, perhaps less ignominiously but just as certainly. Our friends and families must die. We all experience illness, loss, sadness, a loss of confidence, darkness. This is simply part of the human experience. We dive again and again into Holy Saturday, too -- a period of transition, when the bleakness of suffering is perhaps slightly behind us but nothing restorative seems in view. We know well this in-between time; it's an anxious passage, with only a glimmer on the horizon of potential hope. And we've all been resurrected, again and again, perhaps in tiny ways. This is the joy of Easter, and it's not something reserved for one day on the calendar. It's there whenever we experience what T.S. Eliot once called the "timeless moment," which can only occur -- paradoxically -- in time itself. It's a mystical point where timelessness intersects with time. I suspect we all experience the Triduum frequently, sometimes more than once in a single day. But the ritual enactment of these three days of the Easter season reminds all of those who practice Christianity -- and perhaps those who don't -- that we should expect to move through darkness into light. It's a pattern that describes a kind of spiritual progression. It's good cause for celebration, too: and one that won't easily be co-opted by secular culture.
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john t. booker jr. of topeka, an american citizen, was arrested friday.
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(CNN)A former U.S. Army enlistee who posted on Facebook about "the adrenaline rush" of dying in jihad was arrested Friday and charged with trying to detonate a car bomb at Fort Riley military base in Kansas, authorities said. A second man, who allegedly knew about the bomb plot but didn't call authorities, was charged with failing to report a felony. John T. Booker Jr. of Topeka, an American citizen also known as Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, was taken into custody near Manhattan, Kansas, in a van that contained what he thought was a bomb, the criminal complaint said. The "bomb" had actually been put together by two confidential informants with nonexplosive materials, the complaint said. Fort Riley's security was never breached and no people were in danger, the U.S. Justice Department said in a press release. Booker enlisted in the Army last year and was due to ship out to basic training April 7, 2014, said Army spokesman Wayne Hall. The criminal complaint said the FBI questioned him March 24, 2014 about comments posted on Facebook, such as, "Getting ready to be killed in jihad is a HUGE adrenaline rush. I am so nervous. NOT because I'm scare to die but I am eager to meet my lord." Booker waived his Miranda rights and told the agents he enlisted to commit an insider attack against American soldiers like Maj. Nidal Hassan had done at Fort Hood, Texas, the complaint said. Hassan opened fire in a building in November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30. His enlistment was terminated March 24, 2014, at the request of Army Criminal Investigation Command, Hall said. Booker began communicating with a confidential informant later in 2014, the complaint said, and often talked about his plans to engage in violent jihad in support of ISIS. He and the informant watched ISIS videos together, the complaint said, and Booker talked about how he wanted to go to Iraq and turn his weapon on American soldiers when ordered to shoot the enemy. On March 9, Booker said he believed ISIS wanted him to commit a truck bombing in the United States and thought a good target would be nearby Fort Riley, a large Army base that's home to the 1st Infantry Division, known as "The Big Red One." Booker said "that detonating a suicide bomb is his No. 1 aspiration because he couldn't be captured, all evidence would be destroyed and he would be guaranteed to hit his target," the criminal complaint said. He made a video with a Fort Riley airfield in the background and said ISIS was coming to kill American soldiers, both abroad and in the United States, the complaint said. Booker acquired components for a bomb and rented a storage locker to store the components, the complaint said. The plan was for confidential informants to build a bomb and for Booker to drive to Fort Riley and detonate it, the complaint said. But the bomb was built with "inert" parts and would never explode, the complaint said. On Friday, the informants and Booker drove to what Booker thought was a little-used utility gate near Fort Riley, the complaint said. While Booker was making final connections on the "bomb," the FBI arrested him, the complaint said. He was charged with one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, one count of attempting to damage property by means of an explosive and one count of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq, a designated foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, he could face life in prison. Alexander E. Blair, 28, of Topeka was taken into custody Friday and charged with failing to report a felony. The FBI said agents interviewed Blair after Booker's arrest. Blair said he shared some of Booker's views, knew of his plans to detonate a vehicle bomb at Fort Riley and loaned him money to rent storage space, according to the FBI's criminal complaint. He said he thought Booker would carry out his plan but did not contact authorities, the complaint said. If convicted, Blair faces a maximum of three years in prison.
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cult sci-fi series remains one of the most critically acclaimed shows on tv.
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(CNN)SPOILER ALERT! It's not just women getting cloned. That was the big twist at the end of "Orphan Black's" second season. The kickoff to the new season leads the list of six things to watch in the week ahead. 1. "Orphan Black," 9 p.m. ET, Saturday, April 18, BBC America The cloning cult sci-fi series remains one of the most critically acclaimed shows on TV, thanks in large part to the performance of Tatiana Maslany, who has taken on at least six roles on the show so far, including a newly introduced transgender clone. Maslany told reporters this week that we can expect even more impressive scenes with multiple clones. "We like to push the boundaries of what we're able to do and the limits of those clone scenes," she said. "So, yes, you'll definitely see more complex clone work this season and that's just because we're getting more comfortable with the technology and we're excited by getting to sort of further complicate things." And the introduction of a group of male clones will certainly increase the suspense. "There definitely is a shift towards the Castor clones that we get to explore them a little bit more," she said. The fans of the show, dubbed the "Clone Club" have a lot to look forward to when the show premieres on Saturday the 18th, and Maslany is blown away by the response to the series so far. "We've always been really humbled and really inspired by our fans and by their dedication to the show and their knowledge of the show, and just how it changes their own lives. It's incredible." 2. "Turn: Washington's Spies," 9 p.m. ET, Monday, AMC The series about spies in the early days of the Revolutionary War returns with a new subtitle, "Washington's Spies," and a new Monday night time slot. Series star Jamie Bell told CNN what we can expect in the second season. "This year we have a lot more battles; we have the journey of [George] Washington and we're getting under his skin a little bit as well. We also introduce new characters like Benedict Arnold, a very infamous character in American history." Bell hopes the series might bring more recognition to the Culper spy ring and everything it did. "I think there should be a monument to all of the Culper ring somewhere. I was amazed that there is nothing [in Washington] about these people who did something extraordinary." 3. "Game of Thrones," 9 p.m. ET, Sunday, HBO The world of Westeros returns for a fifth season in one of the biggest season premieres of the year. Click here for more on what to expect. 4. "Justified," 10 p.m. ET, Tuesday, FX Timothy Olyphant's tour de force performance as Raylan Givens comes to an end Tuesday night, as the modern-day Western airs its season finale. We'll have to see how his final showdown with Boyd Crowder goes. 5. "Veep," 10:30 ET, Sunday, HBO Hugh Laurie joins the cast and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is now the president of the United States on HBO's hit comedy. 6. "Nurse Jackie," 9 p.m. ET, Sunday, Showtime The final season of Showtime's long-running melodrama begins.
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television network tv5monde was gradually regaining control of its channels and social media outlets.
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(CNN)A French-language global television network regained control of one of its 11 channels Thursday after a cyberattack a day earlier crippled its broadcasts and social media accounts. Television network TV5Monde was gradually regaining control of its channels and social media outlets after suffering what the network's director called an "extremely powerful cyberattack." In addition to its 11 channels, TV5Monde lost control of its social media outlets and its websites, director Yves Bigot said in a video message posted later on Facebook. On a mobile site, which was still active, the network said it was "hacked by an Islamist group." ISIS logos and markings appeared on TV5Monde social media accounts. But there was no immediate claim of responsibility by ISIS or any other group. As day broke Thursday in Europe, the network had regained the use of one of its 11 channels and its Facebook page, Paul Germain, the chain's editor in chief, told BFMTV, a CNN affiliate in France. However, by late morning, a number of pages on the network's website had messages saying they were under maintenance. The outage began around 8:45 p.m. Paris time (2:45 p.m. ET) on Wednesday. TV5Monde offers round-the-clock entertainment and news programming that reaches 260 million homes worldwide, according to the Ministry of Culture and Communications. It functions under a partnership among the governments of France, Canada and Switzerland, as well as the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Other networks that provide content to TV5Monde include CNN affiliates France 2 and France 3, France 24 and Radio France International.
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jutting allegedly lived at the murder scene, an upmarket apartment in the middle of wan chai.
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(CNN)When Hong Kong police answered a call in the early hours of a Saturday morning last November, they encountered a grisly scene and an alleged crime that shocked the city. One woman was lying on the floor with cuts to her neck and buttocks. Another was stuffed inside a suitcase on the balcony. A former banker, 29-year-old Briton Rurik Jutting, was charged with two counts of murder. On Thursday, a court hearing that was to determine whether there was enough evidence to proceed to trial was adjourned until May. Here's what we know so far about the victims and their alleged attacker. Jutting allegedly lived at the murder scene, an upmarket apartment in the middle of Wan Chai, an inner-city suburb that's home to an eclectic mix of late-night bars, residential tower blocks and local markets selling groceries and assorted cheap goods. In the early hours of Saturday morning, November 1, police say Jutting called them to the apartment. There they found a woman lying on the blood-splattered floor, later identified as 29-year-old Seneng Mujiasih. During a search of the apartment, officers uncovered another body hidden in a suitcase on the balcony. It's alleged 25-year-old Sumarti Ningsih was killed on October 27, five days before her body was found. Sumarti Ningsih was from Cilacap, in Central Java, and was the mother of a five-year-old girl. In a statement, her cousin, Jumiati, described her as "just an ordinary woman from Indonesia" who, like many others, was "forced to work abroad to feed her poor family and make her dream comes (sic) true." "She wanted to work as professional so she can earn money and dignity for her family," Jumiati wrote. "She is good girl and did not deserve this treatment." According to the Asian Migrant Coordinating Body, Ningsih was visiting Hong Kong as a tourist and had been due to fly back to Jakarta the day after her body was found. Last year, her grieving father, Ahmad Khaliman, told Agence France-Presse that his daughter had worked in Hong Kong as a domestic helper between 2011 and 2013. She'd since returned on two occasions, Khaliman said. He said the family had been shocked by her murder, and called for the perpetrator to be executed. "If not, I cannot accept it. He has already taken my daughter's life, so he has to pay with his life," he told CNN affiliate Trans7. Seneng Mujiasih had more recently worked as a domestic worker in Hong Kong but had overstayed her visa, according to the Asian Migrant Co-ordinating Body. Also known as Jesse Lorena, Mujiasih was from the city of Muna in Sulawesi province, in southeast Indonesia. Other than that, few details are known about her life and why she stayed on in Hong Kong. After news of their death spread, fellow domestic workers held a vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park. Around 200 people gathered to sing and pray, and lay flowers besides photos of the two women. The victims' bodies were buried after being repatriated to Indonesia in November. Before being taken into custody, Rurik Jutting lived in the upmarket J Residence in Wan Chai. He was detained at the scene, where police found the bodies of two women and seized a knife during a search of the premises. It's unclear when Jutting left his job as a trader at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch; a BoA spokesman would only confirm that a man of the same name had worked there in the past. Jutting's profile on LinkedIn said he haad been employed at the bank's structured equity finance and trading division in Hong Kong since July 2013. Before that, he worked in the same unit in London for three years. According to the profile, Jutting previously worked in capital markets for the British bank Barclays and studied history and law at the prestigious University of Cambridge, between 2004 and 2008. As part of the trial process, tests were conducted to determined if Jutting was psychologically fit to enter a plea. He was. The case was then adjourned to allow for more than 200 pieces of forensic and DNA evidence to be analyzed.
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the thursday massacre was the most deadly assault so far, with 147 dead.
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(CNN)This week's attack on Garissa University College is Al-Shabaab's fifth major assault in Kenya in the past year and a half. The Thursday massacre was the most deadly assault so far, with 147 dead, easily eclipsing the terrorist group's most notorious attack, a four-day siege in late September 2013 at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in which 67 people were killed. After the Westgate attack, Al-Shabaab unleashed a string of attacks in Kenya that have killed more than 100 people -- assaulting the coastal town of Mpeketoni on June 16, 2014; shooting bus passengers who could not recite the Quran on November 22, 2014; and then, days later, executing Christian quarry laborers. Why is Al-Shabaab, a Somali nationalist, Islamist group affiliated with al Qaeda, targeting Kenya? Al-Shabaab says its attacks are to protest the more than 3,500 Kenyan soldiers participating in the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. But if that is the case, why doesn't Al-Shabaab target Kenyan military bases rather than attacking undefended so-called soft targets such as Kenyan malls and universities? In fact, Thursday's attack on the university is one more sign of the weakness of Al-Shabaab, which has steadily been losing ground for years in Somalia as a result of the African Union forces fighting them there, as well as a covert U.S. drone and Special Operations Forces campaign that has also degraded the group's capabilities. In 2006, Al-Shabaab controlled the Somali capital of Mogadishu and, in the following years, much of central and southern Somalia. Six years later, African Union forces had recaptured Mogadishu, parts of southern Somalia and critical cities such as Kismayo. The loss of Kismayo, Al-Shabaab's last city stronghold and an important port, took a financial toll on the group. Ground battles with African Union forces have decimated Al-Shabaab's rank-and-file, while U.S. drone strikes and Special Operations raids have killed some of the group's leaders. In the past four years, according to a count by New America, the U.S. has launched a dozen drone strikes and six Special Operations raids against Al-Shabaab. These strikes and raids -- almost all occurring in southern Somalia -- have targeted the terrorist group's training camps and leaders. American drones or special operators have killed 10 leaders: Aden Hashi Ayro, the top commander; Ahmed Abdi Godane, Ayro's successor; a top commander, Sheikh Muhidin Mohamud Omar; Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior official who operated training camps; commander Jabreel Malik Muhammed; Bilal al-Berjawi, the deputy of military leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed; chief bomb-maker Ibrahim Ali Abdi; intelligence chief Tahlil Abdishakur; Yusef Dheeq, the chief of external operations and planning for intelligence and security; and Adan Garar, who was involved in planning the Westgate Mall attack. Al-Shabaab has been unraveling for years. Thursday's attack should remind the world that the group is a pale shadow of the organization that once dominated much of Somalia but now is reduced to high profile attacks against undefended civilian targets.
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mexican state oil company pemex said 45 workers were injured in the blaze.
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(CNN)Four workers died in a massive oil rig fire that raged for hours off the coast of Mexico Wednesday. Mexican state oil company Pemex said 45 workers were injured in the blaze, which began early Wednesday morning. Two of them are in serious condition, the company said. Authorities evacuated about 300 people from the Abkatun Permanente platform after the fire started, Pemex said. At least 10 boats worked to battle the blaze for hours. The fire had been extinguished by Wednesday night, Pemex said in a Twitter post. The company denied rumors that the platform had collapsed and said there was no oil spill as a result of the fire. The state oil company hasn't said what caused the fire on the platform, which is located in the Gulf of Mexico's Campeche Sound. The fire began in the platform's dehydration and pumping area, Pemex said. CNN's Mayra Cuevas contributed to this report.
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lippert was stabbed march 5 during an event organized by the korean council.
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Seoul, South Korea (CNN)The man accused of stabbing U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert in Seoul last month is now charged with attempted murder, a South Korean court official said Wednesday. Kim Ki-Jong has also been charged with assaulting a foreign envoy and business obstruction, the Seoul Central District Court official said. According to South Korean law, Kim's trial must begin within 14 days of receiving today's indictment. Lippert was stabbed March 5 during an event organized by the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, which advocates peaceful reunification between North and South Korea. Shortly before Lippert was supposed to give a speech, the attacker slashed him in the face and jaw. The ambassador suffered a gash from his right cheekbone to his lower jaw that required 80 stitches. That wound measured 10 centimeters (4 inches) long and 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) deep, but there was no serious facial nerve damage, said Dr. Jung Nam-shik of the Yonsei Severance Hospital. Lippert also suffered five cuts in his left arm and hand, but was not expected to have permanent damage to his arm function. Police said Kim stabbed Lippert with a 10-inch knife because he opposed the joint South Korean-U.S. military drills, which happen every year and frequently draw the ire of North Korea. Police official Yoon Myeong-seong told reporters that Kim had visited North Korea seven times between 1999 and 2007, and that authorities were investigating a possible connection between his visits to the reclusive state and the attack against Lippert. Kim, 55, has a history of unpredictable behavior. In 2010, he received a suspended two-year prison sentence for throwing a piece of concrete at a Japanese ambassador to South Korea, according to the Yonhap news agency. South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned the attack. "This incident is not only a physical attack on the U.S. ambassador," she said, "but an attack on the South Korea-U.S. alliance and it can never be tolerated." CNN's Madison Park and Greg Botelho contributed to this report.
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ansar beit al-maqdis claims many attacks against the army and police in sinai.
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Cairo (CNN)At least 12 people were killed Sunday, and more injured, in separate attacks on a police station, a checkpoint and along a highway in Egypt's northern Sinai, authorities said. Six people, including one civilian, were killed when a car bomb exploded near the police station in Al-Arish, capital of North Sinai, Health Ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel-Ghafar told Ahram Online. He said 40 people were injured. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, an ISIS affiliate, claimed responsibility for the attack, which came hours after another operation that the group also claimed. In that earlier attack, a first lieutenant, a sergeant and four conscripts were killed when their armored vehicle was attacked on the highway from Al-Arish to Sheikh Zuweid in northern Sinai, the military said. Two other soldiers were injured and taken to a military hospital. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has claimed many attacks against the army and police in Sinai. A third attack Sunday on a checkpoint in Rafah left three security personnel injured, after unknown assailants opened fire at them, according to state media. The attacks come as the military announced a reshuffle of several senior military positions, state media reported. Among those being replaced are the generals in charge of military intelligence and Egypt's second field army, which is spearheading the battle against the insurgents in the northern Sinai. Egypt's army has been fighting a decade-long militant Islamist insurgency, which has spiked since the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsy in the summer of 2013. Hundreds of police and soldiers, as well as civilians, have been killed in militant attacks in the past months. Ian Lee reported from Cairo. Anas Hamdan reported from Atlanta.
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paddy power is backtracking after tweeting that "newcastle have suffered more kop beatings over the last 20 years than an unarmed african-american male" the tweet, a pun on the name of the famous home end at liverpool football club, alluded to recent controversial incidents in the united states in which unarmed african-american men have been killed by police.
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(CNN)Irish betting company Paddy Power is backtracking after tweeting that "Newcastle have suffered more Kop beatings over the last 20 years than an unarmed African-American male." The tweet, a pun on the name of the famous home end at Liverpool Football Club, alluded to recent controversial incidents in the United States in which unarmed African-American men have been killed by police. Paddy Power -- well-known for its use of publicity stunts -- used it to link to a piece showing statistics for games between Liverpool and Newcastle United ahead of their English Premier League match on Monday. A Paddy Power spokesman told CNN before Liverpool's 2-0 victory at Anfield: "It was a joke, and no offense was meant." The tweet has since been deleted, but its removal -- along with the statement -- did little to placate social media users who condemned the organization, with some calling for the person who wrote the tweet to be sacked. In January, Paddy Power attracted headlines after backing David Ginola's failed candidacy for the presidency of world football's governing body. The former Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham player could not persuade enough FIFA football associations to back his bid. He needed five to have any chance of unseating Sepp Blatter. Paddy Power started the funding for the candidacy, but its penchant for publicity stunts quickly led many people to dismiss Ginola's bid as another attempt to grab headlines. Paddy Power, the son of one the company's founders and its marketing spokesman, explained: "We've been known for some mischievous activity around the world. This is not that. This is for real." Last year, the company generated anger when it promised "money back if he walks" in relation to the trial of disgraced South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius. Monday's win put Liverpool fifth in the table, four points behind defending champion Manchester City, which holds England's final European Champions League qualification spot with six games left to play this season. Young England forward Raheem Sterling, who has turned down a new contract, scored a fine solo goal in the first half, and midfielder Joe Allen's 70th-minute strike condemned 13th-placed Newcastle to a fifth successive league defeat. Newcastle, which had France international midfielder Moussa Sissoko sent off in the 83rd minute, has not won at Anfield since a 1-0 victory in the League Cup in November 1995.
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scott's daughter samantha read a poem of love dedicated to her father.
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Charleston, South Carolina (CNN)Police officers Saturday accompanied the hearse carrying the body of Walter Scott to his South Carolina funeral service, where hundreds of mourners celebrated his life and death as a catalyst for change in America. A pair of officers on motorcycles were part of the large procession delivering the father of four -- who was fatally shot in the back by a police officer -- to a service open to the public. An overflow crowd gathered on a humid and occasionally rainy April afternoon at W.O.R.D. Ministries Christian Center in Summerville, which has a capacity of about 300 people. The flag-draped casket of the U.S. Coast Guard veteran was wheeled inside the church as Scott's relatives and friends followed. Some dabbed tears; others embraced. Hundreds, including local officials, assembled inside the packed sanctuary -- in corridors, under an awning at the entrance, wherever they could stand. Silence filled the vast space as Scott's daughter Samantha read a poem of love dedicated to her father. Anthony Scott said God had selected his brother as a candidate for change in America. "The change will come," he said, bringing to the crowd to its feet. The head of the church, George Hamilton, spoke of how Scott had brought members of his family to the church, of the agony of not only losing a family member but having to watch it happen on video. The death of Scott, who was black, at the hands of a white police officer was "motivated by racial prejudice," Hamilton said. It was "an act of overt racism." "Hate came because Walter was an African-American," he said. Hamilton said his remarks were not meant as an indictment of law enforcement, but he singled out the officer who killed Scott as a "disgrace to the North Charleston Police Department." "There is gong to be change," he said. "Walter's death will not be in vain." After the service, pallbearers gently lifted Scott's casket into the hearse. Crowds poured from the church. A slow-moving procession of black cars then made its way to Live Oak Memorial Gardens in Charleston for the private burial. Chris Stewart, an attorney for the Scott family, said the death represented more than an race issue. "It's a human issue," he said. "We're getting emails from people in Arkansas telling us, 'I'm a white male, and I'm supporting this family.' Their son is going to be remembered for changing the way we look at each other." On Friday night, Scott's open casket was draped with an American flag, and he was in a dark suit for his private visitation in Charleston. A Dallas Cowboys banner -- his favorite NFL team -- was placed outside the casket, and a figurine of a Cowboys player stood at his side. But Scott's family was missing. They needed privacy, said Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley, who attended. A week ago, Scott was killed in North Charleston after getting pulled over for a broken taillight. A passer-by caught the shooting on cell phone video, and Officer Michael Slager was swiftly charged with murder. He was fired and faces life in prison or the death penalty if convicted. Who was Walter Scott? The video shows Scott running from an officer, who fires eight shots. Scott is struck five times; he falls to the ground. "Nothing in this video demonstrates that the officer's life or the life of another was threatened," National Urban League President Marc Morial said. "The question here is whether the use of force was excessive." But one witness is speaking of a struggle before the shooting. And at least one expert believes a murder charge may not hold up. On Thursday, Gwen Nichols told CNN's Brian Todd that she saw Scott and Slager scuffling at the entrance to a vacant lot. "It was like a tussle type of thing, like, you know, like, 'What do you want?' or 'What did I do?' type of thing," Nichols said. "I didn't hear Mr. Slager saying 'Stop!' " Nichols' account has similarities to Slager's. He had told investigators that he had tussled with Scott over his Taser and that he feared for his safety. A timeline of events Criminal defense attorney Paul Callan said he believes Slager's defense will play up the reported scuffle in arguing that this is not a murder case. "Defense attorneys will say this was a heat of passion shooting -- (that) this was something that he did suddenly after some kind of an altercation, a physical altercation with a suspect," Callan said. "And that would constitute manslaughter under law, as opposed to murder, and it makes a huge difference in sentencing." In South Carolina, a murder conviction requires a measure of premeditation. But the account from the witness who recorded the cell phone video, Feidin Santana, paints a different picture. He was walking to work when he saw Slager on top of Scott, he said, who was on the ground. Santana said he could hear the sound of a Taser in use. He said he didn't see Scott go after the Taser, as Slager initially claimed. He said he believes Scott was trying to get away. "Mr. Scott never tried to fight," Santana said. Neither the struggle nor the use of a Taser was captured on video, because Santana started recording shortly after that. Investigators from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division found troubling inconsistencies from the very start, it said in a statement. "We believed early on that there was something not right about what happened in that encounter," division Chief Mark Keel said in a statement. "The cell phone video shot by a bystander confirmed our initial suspicions." Slager's lawyer, Andy Savage, has complained that he "has not received the cooperation from law enforcement that the media has." Savage's office said in a statement that it has yet to receive "any investigative documents, audio or video tapes, other than a copy of Mr. Slager's arrest warrant." The news release added that the lawyer has been advised that the police union that Slager belongs to "is no longer involved in the case." Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said Slager's wife, Jamie, who is eight months' pregnant, and his mother had a visit with him at the county detention center Friday. Slager was being held in isolation and being "monitored for his mental health," Cannon said. In a statement, one of Slager's lawyers said the meeting lasted about an hour. "His wife and mom were tearful but strong, and they were all very grateful for the chance to see him in person, even if separated by a thick pane of glass," the statement said. "They held up family photos -- and even Jamie's ultrasound from earlier that day -- to remind him of all those who love him. Throughout the visit, Michael was focused on Jamie and their baby and was very relieved to know that she is being shown so much love and support by their families." A second video, taken from a police dash cam, has also emerged from the day Scott died. It shows moments before the shooting, when things seemed to be going smoothly between Scott and Slager. Scott apparently tells the officer that he has no insurance on the vehicle, and Slager returns to his car to do paperwork. Then Scott gets out of the car and runs out of the camera's frame. Scott was the subject of a bench warrant over $18,104.43 in unpaid child support at the time of the stop, according to court records. That was why he ran, lawyers for the family said after the funeral service. U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-South Carolina, told reporters outside the service that Scott lost a $35,000-a-year job the first time he was jailed for failing to pay child support. "He said it was the best job he's ever had," Clyburn said. "Now you have to ask ... if you want to collect child support, there's got to be income. And you ain't going to make much income from jail. It seems to me that we need to take a look to how to deal with that issue without causing unemployment and the loss of freedom." On Friday afternoon, police met with a man who was in Scott's car, but the passenger's name wasn't in a police report obtained by CNN. He was detained briefly after the shooting, one officer wrote in the report. Scott family attorney Chris Stewart said he was a co-worker and friend. But he did not identify the passenger by name. On Friday, a few mourners trickled into the Fielding Home for Funerals. A white banner with a blue star near Scott's casket displayed his favorite NFL team. It said: "Tradition, the Cowboys way." "This is a heartbreaking tragedy for everyone in our community," said Riley, the mayor. "It breaks everyone's hearts." CNN's Polo Sandoval and Martin Savidge reported from Charleston, and Ben Brumfield and Ray Sanchez reported and wrote in Atlanta and New York.
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manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents.
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(CNN)Imprisoned soldier Chelsea Manning can now communicate with the world -- in 140 characters or less. Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking thousands of classified documents, appears to have joined Twitter this week. In a series of tweets, the prisoner formerly known as Bradley Manning said she will be using a voice phone to dictate her tweets to communications firm Fitzgibbon Media, which will post them on her behalf. She is not allowed Internet access in prison, according to The Guardian. "It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning posted to her nearly 26,000-plus followers. Manning was sentenced in 2013, and in August of that year, she said she wanted to transition to a female. The Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, where she is serving her sentence, has authorized hormone therapy for her treatment. Manning said she suffers from gender dysphoria. Her lawyers describe it as "the medical diagnosis given to individuals whose gender identity -- their innate sense of being male or female -- differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, causing clinically significant distress." Last year, a Kansas judge granted her request to be formally known as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning. The former Army intelligence analyst was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks in what has been described as the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history. She was found guilty of 20 of the 22 charges, including violations of the U.S. Espionage Act. Manning has written opinion pieces for The New York Times and The Guardian from prison.
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the world meteorological organization is in the process of setting up an international ad-hoc committee of 10 blue-ribbon climatologists and meteorologists to begin collecting relevant evidence.
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(CNN)A high temperature of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit might sound like a pleasant day in early spring -- unless you're in Antarctica. The chilly continent recorded the temperature (15.5 degrees Celsius) on March 24, possibly the highest ever recorded on Antarctica, according to the Weather Underground. The temperature was recorded at Argentina's Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctica Peninsula, according to CNN affiliate WTNH. (Note to map lovers: The Argentine base is not geographically part of the South American continent.) The World Meteorological Organization, a specialized United Nations agency, is in the process of setting up an international ad-hoc committee of about 10 blue-ribbon climatologists and meteorologists to begin collecting relevant evidence, said Randy Cerveny, the agency's lead rapporteur of weather and climate extremes and Arizona State University professor of geographical sciences. The committee will examine the equipment used to measure the temperature, whether it was in good working order, whether the correct monitoring procedures were followed, whether the equipment was placed in the correct location and whether the measurement is matched by corresponding records from surrounding stations, Cerveny said. The committee will discuss the issues and make a recommendation to Cerveny, who will make an official finding, probably by late summer or early fall. Researchers who study climate change carefully watch weather changes in the Antarctic region and elsewhere for evidence that the Earth is getting warmer.
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this is the lowest ebola epidemic in history has died down.
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(CNN)Over the last year more than 25,000 people, a population about the size of Key West, Florida, have fought Ebola infections. More than 10,000 have not survived. But for those who have survived, life will never be the same. And even for those who did not experience Ebola personally, the "most severe public health emergency seen in modern times" showed the world its vulnerability to disease. It revealed real flaws in government systems that are supposed to protect us. While the intensity of the largest Ebola epidemic in history has died down, and the initial dire predictions that there would be over a million infections by January never came true, dozens are still newly infected each week. The latest World Health Organization Report confirmed a total of 30 new confirmed cases of Ebola were reported in the week of April 5. This is the lowest weekly total since May 2014. But reports are mixed on stopping the virus completely: In Liberia and Sierra Leone, the number of cases has fallen so much, there are more treatment facilities than demand. WHO in Liberia is in the process of decommissioning surplus facilities. But in Guinea, of the 19 confirmed deaths from April 5, seven were only identified as Ebola post-mortem and there were reports of 21 unsafe burials. "Taken together these data indicate that though surveillance is improving, unknown chains of transmission could be a source of new infections in the coming weeks," the latest WHO report said. Click on the photos above to learn how a grave digger, a first responder, and many others have changed in the wake of Ebola.
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the victim filed a complaint after seeing images of herself on his phone last year.
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(CNN)A judge this week sentenced a former TSA agent to six months in jail for secretly videotaping a female co-worker while she was in the bathroom, prosecutors said. During the investigation, detectives with the Metro Nashville Police Department in Tennessee also found that the agent, 33-year-old Daniel Boykin, entered the woman's home multiple times, where he took videos, photos and other data. Police found more than 90 videos and 1,500 photos of the victim on Boykin's phone and computer. The victim filed a complaint after seeing images of herself on his phone last year. Boykin plead guilty to unlawful photography, aggravated burglary and violation of the computer act, the Nashville District Attorney's Office said. Police said the incident happened in a TSA-only restroom, and that there was no evidence public restrooms were targeted. A TSA official tells CNN that Boykin worked in an administrative capacity and didn't engage in public security screening. Assistant District Attorney Amy Hunter said this case was one of the worst invasion of privacy cases she's seen. "We are thankful that the sentence includes periodic confinement so that the sentence will hopefully make an impression on this defendant and others," Hunter said in a statement. The judge, Randall Wyatt, on Friday called the invasion of privacy "egregious." His sentence also includes five and a half years of probation, which will include GPS monitoring. Boykin was terminated last year when the investigation began. "TSA holds its employees to the highest ethical standards and has zero tolerance for misconduct in the workplace," TSA's Ross Feinstein said in a statement.
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dzhokhar tsarnaev guilty on wednesday of all 30 counts he faced in the boston marathon bombing trial.
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Boston (CNN)Guilty across the board. But will he face death? After deliberating for 11½ hours, jurors found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on Wednesday of all 30 counts he faced in the Boston Marathon bombing trial. Seventeen of the 30 counts were capital charges, meaning he is eligible for the death penalty. The trial will next move into a penalty phase, where the jury will hear testimony and arguments from both sides and ultimately be tasked with deciding whether Tsarnaev, 21, will be executed. A look at all of the charges Jurors will be asked to weigh aggravating factors such as the heinousness of his crimes against mitigating factors such as his family and mental health history, as well as his relative youth. Tsarnaev was 19 at the time of the bombing. The start date of the penalty phase has not yet been set. Since testimony began March 4, federal prosecutors have called 92 witnesses, and the defense just four. It seemed a mismatch from the start. "He was there," Tsarnaev's defense attorney Judy Clarke conceded as the trial opened, but many say the defense strategy always had been to focus on persuading the jury to spare Tsarnaev's life. Tsarnaev lawyer keeps hated criminals off death row Clarke tried to convince jurors that her client's older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with police days after the terror attack, was the instigator of the marathon plot. The younger man, Clarke said, was only following his older brother. After the verdict, CNN legal analyst Paul Callan said Clarke now faces an uphill battle. "Because No. 1, he (Tsarnaev) is almost functioning as an officer of a military organization attacking the United States -- the claim of course that he's an Islamic radical and that this is almost an army-like attack on civilians. "And the second thing -- it was so well planned and so callously planned so that civilians would die, so that children would be maimed. And all of this, she has to get around and convince the jury he's not worthy of the death penalty. "Boy, she's climbing the Mount Everest of death penalty cases in this case," Callan said about Clarke. Survivors react to the verdict Ann O'Neill reported from Boston. Dana Ford reported from Atlanta.
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the person responsible is the man's mother, who faced a host of charges.
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(CNN)For more than four days, police say, a 21-year-old quadriplegic with cerebral palsy was left lying in the woods of Philadelphia's Cobbs Creek Park with only a blanket and a Bible. The person responsible is the man's mother, who on Sunday faced a host of charges after allegedly abandoning her son and catching a bus to Maryland to see her boyfriend, said Philadelphia police Lt. John Walker. Low temperatures reached the mid-30s during the week, and rain was reported in the area Wednesday and Thursday. The man is unable to communicate how he came to be in the park, but Walker told reporters that the man's mother, whom he did not identify for CNN, left him there Monday morning. "Sometime at 11 a.m., the mother went to visit her boyfriend down in Maryland, over in Montgomery County, and we believe she placed the child into Cobbs Creeks Park," Walker said at a news conference. Walker told CNN the man was transported to Presbyterian Hospital, but CNN affiliates reported he was being treated at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He suffered eye problems, dehydration, malnutrition and a cut to the back that has raised infection concerns, the lieutenant told reporters. "This kid's obviously a fighter," Walker said during a Saturday news conference. "It's just unbelievable how we found him out there last night. To see that kid laying there, it's heartbreaking to see another human, especially a mother, can treat someone like that." Officials at Philadelphia's School of the Future, which the man attends, became concerned when he didn't show up for classes and tried to contact his mother but eventually reached an aunt, CNN affiliate WPVI reported. When police tracked down the mother, she told them her son was with her, Walker said. "She indicated to both family members and the police officers that the child was with her down with her boyfriend in Maryland," he said. The boyfriend was not aware of what happened, Walker told CNN affiliate KYW-TV. The mother now stands charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment of another person, neglect of a care-dependent person, unlawful restraint, kidnapping and false imprisonment, the station reported. Walker told reporters she bore "clear criminal liability in this case." Maryland police took her into custody on Sunday, and she will face the charges in Philadelphia following an extradition hearing, WPVI reported. There was no reason for the man to suffer, Walker told philly.com, because the mother had sisters willing to take care of him. Two of his aunts, who have tried to obtain guardianship of him, were staying with him at the hospital, police told the website. The mother has another child, a 16-year-old, who is also being taken care of by family members, WPVI reported. The mother's arrest was only the beginning of the investigation, Walker told reporters. Authorities are interested in learning more about "how this kid was cared for, and what actions were taken and providing of services by different agencies." CNN's Carma Hassan contributed to this report.
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the first phase of tsarnaev's trial began march 4.
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Boston (CNN)The Boston Marathon is traditionally an event in which people in and around the Massachusetts capital come together, celebrate and enjoy. But not in 2013, when three people died and over 200 were injured when a pair of bombs went off within 12 seconds of each other at the finish line. And not this year -- at least not if you're a member of the jury that convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the bombings. That's what federal Judge George A. O'Toole told jurors Tuesday, stressing the importance of avoiding anything that could be prejudicial in the trial's sentencing phase. That begins April 21, a day after this year's edition of the landmark race. "Do not attend the Boston Marathon or any events or gatherings related to the anniversary or the current running of the Boston Marathon," O'Toole said in court. The judge spoke for less than 10 minutes, and stressed the seriousness of his warnings. The first phase of Tsarnaev's trial began March 4, after which federal prosecutors called 92 witnesses, and the defense just four. Timeline of the bombings, manhunt and aftermath Tsarnaev's lawyers never disputed that their client was at the scene of the bombings and part of the days-long mayhem that followed. Tsarnaev lawyer Judy Clarke acknowledged in opening arguments that: "It was him." But Clarke argued that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev only took part in the plot under the influence of his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after the bombings, but before his brother was captured in a boat parked in a Watertown backyard, That argument wasn't enough to sway the jury, though. Rather, they convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on all 30 counts he faced -- including using weapons of mass destruction, bombing a place of public use, conspiracy and aiding and abetting. A look at all of the charges The only question now, short of a successful appeal of that verdict, is what price he'll now pay. The maximum penalty for several of the charges is death. Talking to the jury on Tuesday, O'Toole predicted that the sentencing phase will last four weeks before cautioning that forecasting a specific timetable is less reliable than guessing the weather. The plan is for the court to be in session for four days a week, as long as the process takes. Until then, O'Toole told the jurors, "Please put the case out of your minds. Enjoy the warm weather." What's next for Tsarnaev? CNN's Ann O'Neill reported from Boston. CNN's Catherine E. Shoichet, Alexandra Field, Aaron Cooper, Kevin Conlon, Jason Hanna and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
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the marches follow recent violent attacks on foreigners in the country that have claimed five lives.
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(CNN)As thousands of South Africans took to the streets of the city of Durban to rally against violence and xenophobia, an online community has joined the protests. The marches follow recent violent attacks on foreigners in the country that have claimed five lives. During the protest march Thursday, Twitter followers voiced their support through hashtag campaigns. #PeaceMarch and #SayNoToXenophobia were some of the most popular. South African Police Services said more than 10,000 people attended the march, including civil rights groups and nongovernmental organizations. Hashtags are now pouring out of South Africa. But many are asking, some via Twitter, is it enough to fight #xenophobia? Attacks this week in Durban alone have killed two immigrants and three South Africans, including a 14-year-old boy, authorities said. For South African Tim Flack, tweeting wasn't going to make a bit of difference. Flack, who lives in Cape Town, has brought allegations of hate speech and human rights violations against Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, who he said referred to foreigners as "lice" and has said "they should pack their bags and go." "People listen to him," Flack said. "He is a monarch. The Zulu people in South Africa take him very seriously, they don't question what he says." Flack said he was motivated to make the allegations after seeing multiple complaints about xenophobic violence on social media and thinking they weren't enough. So he filed a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission, and then tweeted about it. "The activists sit around feeling accomplished because they retweeted five times," Flack said. "I want to reach people who see that they can lay a charge and it won't cost them anything, but I will have done something to change the country and push it into a better state of being." Now, the Human Rights Commission must decide whether to investigate Flack's allegations against the King, who denies fueling any violence. Flack hopes others will also make complaints. Flack added that Zulus aren't the only people in South Africa who share in the xenophobic sentiment. "People are frustrated and unemployed, and people in South Africa pay foreign nationals a lot less," he said of the tension between nationals and immigrants. "A domestic worker would ask for 250 rand a day to clean a house, whereas a foreign national would ask for 150 rand, so it causes resentment." Imtiaz Sooliman, founder and chairman of the Gift of Givers Foundation in Durban, doesn't think most South Africans are against foreigners. "South Africans are against xenophobia," said Sooliman, who insists the majority of the country is providing an overwhelming amount of support for foreign nationals. Gift of Givers has been administering assistance at five refugee camps set up by the South African government that now hold roughly 8,000 foreign national refugees, he said, passing out things like clothing and hygiene packs. The organization posts its work at the camps online and tags it on social media with #xenophobia. Why? "In South Africa, everyone knows xenophobia," Sooliman said, "and the way a disaster agency works is we post what people understand. So if you say #tsunami or #war, people follow it. So here, people say #xenophobia, and they all know what it is -- it is a disaster, so you are going to post what people understand." He said South Africans also have been going to the camps, which are on sports fields with makeshift tents, bringing cooked food and other necessities. "This is different from what happened in 2008," Sooliman said. That year, scores were killed in attacks in the poorest areas of Johannesburg. Most of the victims were Zimbabweans who had fled repression and dire economic circumstances. Sooliman said that along with the government strongly condemning the violence, community engagement is happening now as it never happened before. It is a kind of national unity that can be best summed up with another hashtag that has emerged from this story: #WeAreAfrica. Only time, or, tweets will tell if it works.
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7-eleven is hosting the first bring-your-own-cup slurpee day at united states stores from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. saturday.
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(CNN)Bring your own beaker, goblet or vase and slurp it up. 7-Eleven is hosting the first Bring-Your-Own-Cup Slurpee Day at United States stores from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday to kick off peak Slurpee season. This shot at brain freeze isn't free, but customers at participating stores can fill their "cup" of choice for $1.49, the average cost of a medium Slurpee. Note: A garbage can is not a cup. In-store displays with a 10-inch-diameter hole will rule out anything too ridiculously large for Slurpee consumption, and cups must be sanitary. But within those parameters, pretty much anything goes: "From sand buckets to trophies, customers can unleash their creativity by bringing in their choice of a unique, fun Slurpee cup," said Laura Gordon, 7‑Eleven's vice president of marketing and brand innovation, in a statement. The promotion isn't to be confused with Free Slurpee Day, traditionally celebrated each July 11.
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so far, the government has frozen 86 accounts, but that number could go up.
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Nairobi, Kenya (CNN)Kenya froze dozens of accounts linked to suspected terror supporters after militants massacred 147 people last week at a university in Garissa. The government is tracking the finances of people suspected of ties to Al-Shabaab, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack. So far, the government has frozen 86 accounts, but that number could go up, said Mwenda Njoka, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. The government has tracked supporters of the terror group since 2011, and efforts to freeze their assets have gone on since then. It has a list of suspects from various parts of the country, but mostly in Nairobi and Mombasa, he said. Kenyans mourned the victims of the attack Tuesday night at Nairobi's Uhuru Park, where hundreds gathered. Organizers unloaded 147 crosses, some draped with the nation's flag, as candles flickered in the dark. Of the fatalities, 142 were students at the university, and the rest were security forces and campus security. "I can't even look at pictures of the people killed without crying," said Mary Wambui, 32, who lives in Nakuru, hundreds of miles from Garissa. "They were just children. They were trying to make a better life for themselves. Some were first to go to college in their communities. They died trying to get an education." Using the hashtag #147notjustanumber, Kenyans used social media to talk about the lives of the victims. They shared pictures of beaming faces, full of life and energy, in happier days. They talked about parents too shocked to speak after identifying their children's bodies. Some students remain unaccounted for, and wailing relatives alternate their searches between hospitals and morgues. Kenyan authorities have not released the names of the victims. Kenyan authorities had prior intelligence that a university in Garissa could be attacked, yet the country's rapid response team was stuck in Nairobi for hours after the massacre awaiting transport, a police source said Monday. The frozen accounts is the latest in a series of actions as the government faced heavy criticism for the siege, which lasted hours. A spokesman for President Uhuru Kenyatta said authorities "got the job done" and saved lives. The university had about 800 students. "With the benefit of hindsight, you can always say things could have been done better," Manoah Esipisu said. Kenya also launched airstrikes Monday targeting Al-Shabaab's training camps in Somalia, according to a military source, who said they were not retaliation for last week's massacre. "The latest attack of Al-Shabaab bases by the Kenya military is part of the ongoing operations that started in 2011," the source said Monday. Kenya has also offered 20 million Kenyan shillings, or about $215,000, for information on the whereabouts of Mohamed Mohamud, who allegedly organized the attack. Mohamud is a senior Al-Shabaab leader known by the aliases Dulyadin and Gamadhere, authorities said. Al-Shabaab is based in Somalia, and its violence has spread to Kenya before. In 2013, militants attacked Nairobi's upscale Westgate Mall, leaving 67 people dead. The terror group has intensified attacks in Kenya since the country sent troops to Somalia four years ago to help battle the militants. CNN's Joseph Netto reported from Nairobi, and Faith Karimi reported and wrote from Atlanta.
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judge ronald coen also lowered knight's bail to $10 million from $25 million, a figure that defense lawyers called excessive.
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Los Angeles (CNN)Former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight was ordered Thursday to stand trial for murder and other charges stemming from a deadly hit-and-run confrontation on the movie set of the biopic "Straight Outta Compton" earlier this year. In addition to that ruling, Judge Ronald Coen also lowered Knight's bail to $10 million from $25 million, a figure that defense lawyers called excessive. The judge also dismissed one of the two counts of hit-and-run against Knight. In all, Knight will stand trial on one count of murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of hit-and-run, the judge ruled after holding a two-day preliminary hearing this week that ended Thursday. Knight, 49, faces up to life in prison if convicted. Knight suffers diabetes and blot clots, and the case has clearly strained him: He collapsed in court last month after learning of the $25 million bail and he was taken to the hospital for treatment. Knight was in court Thursday. At the end of hearing, he turned around and looked at his family in the gallery, and he smiled to his fiancee as deputies led him handcuffed out of the courtroom. In a press conference after the hearing, fiancee Toi Kelly said regarding Knight's health that he is "doing much better." The judge dismissed the other hit-and-run count because California law says no more than one charge of hit-and-run should be brought against a defendant when the same weapon, in this case the vehicle Knight was driving, is used against several people. Knight is accused of running over two men, killing one of them, during an argument. Killed was Terry Carter, 55. The survivor is Cle Sloan, 51, who in testimony this week declined to identify Knight as his attacker because Sloan doesn't want to be a "snitch" who sends Knight to prison, according to CNN affiliates KABC and KTLA. Prosecutors offered Sloan immunity, but he still refused to testify against Knight on Monday, the affiliates reported. The deadly incident happened on January 29, after a flare-up on the set of the biopic "Straight Outta Compton," a film about the highly influential and controversial rap group N.W.A. The alleged argument spilled over to the parking lot of Tam's Burgers in Compton. At the time, Knight was out on bail in a separate robbery case. The hit-and-run was captured on videotape and allegedly shows Knight inside a red truck. In the video, the truck pulls into the entrance of the Compton restaurant, and he is then approached by Sloan, who was working security on the site. The two men appear to talk for a few moments, with Knight still in his vehicle. Suddenly, the vehicle backs up, knocking Sloan to the ground. While still in reverse, the truck moves out of range of the security camera. The vehicle is then seen zooming forward, back into camera range, running over Sloan a second time, and then running over a second man, Carter, a former rap music label owner. Carter later died. In closing arguments prior to the judge's ruling, Knight's attorney Matthew Fletcher argued that Knight was the victim. Knight was only defending himself against Sloan, whom the defense attorney accused of possessing a gun at the time. "Mr. Sloan is the initial and consistent aggressor," Knight's attorney argued. "There's no intent to kill, there's an intent to survive." "Even without a gun, we know Mr. Sloan was brave enough to attack in broad daylight," the defense attorney said. Fletcher added that Knight's defense was to stand his ground. Sloan "needed immunity because he was the actual aggressor," Fletcher said. "He is the person who got Terry (Carter) killed." Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Barnes argued, however, told the judge that Knight was engaged in "mutual combat situation" where he used his car as deadly weapon. If Knight "ever had the right of self-defense, the moment he backed-up and Mr. Sloan was ran-over, he lost the right of self-defense," Barnes said. "There was pre-mediation and intent when he (Knight) ran over him a second time." Knight is scheduled to be arraigned on April 30. The incident is the latest run-in with the law for Knight, who founded the wildly successful Death Row Records in 1991 and signed artists such as Snoop Doggy Dogg (now known as Snoop Lion) and Tupac Shakur. Knight was driving the car in which Shakur was a passenger when the rapper was shot to death in Las Vegas in 1996. Shortly afterward, Knight spent several years in prison for violating parole on assault and weapons convictions. That prison time -- along with Shakur's death, feuds between Knight and a number of rappers, and desertions by Dr. Dre, Snoop and others -- contributed to the label's bankruptcy in 2006. In August, Knight and two other people were shot while inside a celebrity-filled Sunset Strip party hosted by singer Chris Brown on the eve of the MTV Video Music Awards.
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as hillary clinton prepares to launch her presidential campaign, she will need to make a choice about how much to highlight issues relating to economic inequality.
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(CNN)In response to reports of big banks threatening to withhold campaign funds from Senate Democrats, Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week offered a defiant response: "Bring it on." Warren said she isn't going to slack off on her calls for breaking up banks and other measures to rein in Wall Street. As Hillary Clinton prepares to officially launch her presidential campaign this month, she will need to make a choice about how much to highlight issues relating to economic inequality. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is also running for the Democratic nomination, is trying to steal Clinton's thunder by talking about the problems of disproportionate wealth. In other words, there are many signs that Democrats are planning to take on the big issue of economic inequality. But in other recent news, the likelihood that New York's Chuck Schumer will replace Harry Reid as leader of the Senate Democrats means the dreams of a more economically leftward party are crashing into political reality. While Schumer has been a very effective Democrat and skilled legislative leader, he is also a Wall Street Democrat who has spent much of his time courting and protecting powerful financial interests who run one of the dominant industries in his state. He is not alone. Even at his most progressive moments, President Barack Obama relied on Wall Street donations for both of his campaigns. Despite all the talk from conservatives about left-wing "socialism" in the White House, the financial community has been willing to open its coffers to Democrats without much concern, even in the 2012 election. Democratic populism can't really work within the current campaign finance system. The enormous pressures for parties to raise funds in campaigns has for many decades created pressure on Democrats, despite their political base, to court big donors. During the 1980s, California Democrat Tony Coelho, serving as the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and then as majority whip, made a strong appeal to savings and loans executives before the crash of the industry to catch up to Republicans who had been outflanking them in raising money. The Democrats were, and have continued to, losing their traditional base of campaign support --organized labor -- which had been a central source of campaign muscle since the 1930s, providing money and campaign assistance during campaigns. Without organized labor to serve as their foundation and with the pressure for raising private funds increasing, many Democrats concluded they needed business by their side. Democrats running for president have made the same kind of choices. In 2008, Obama disappointed many supporters upon becoming the first president to abandon the post-Watergate public finance system for campaigns altogether, preferring to raise money himself for the general campaign. While small donors were enormously important to his victories, so too were business and Wall Street executives. At the height of the financial crash, when public sentiment had clearly turned against Wall Street, the administration agreed to a financial regulation bill (Dodd-Frank) that was structured in such a way as to give powerful interests more than enough opportunity to limit the bite over the coming years. Wall Street, with an army of counsel, succeeded in eroding the impact of the legislation. Not only does the acceptance of our campaign finance system limit the policy choices Democrats can make, but it also greatly damages the party's brand name. As The Washington Post reported, the scandal that might bring down New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez is the first involving large scale super PAC donations. At the heart of the story is almost $600,000 that physician Salomon Melgen gave to Senate Majority PAC, possibly in exchange for favors. This is not simply some sort of accommodation of Democrats to the corporate system. They don't have much of a choice. Without these funds, they won't be able to compete. In this election cycle, independent campaign donors are causing a huge stir. In conservative circles, the Koch brothers and their allies are throwing around enormous amounts of money to candidates who will support their deregulatory agenda. Individual donors such as Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson are causing ripples every time candidates speak, pressuring them to adjust their agenda. Democrats have found their own magnates for political support, such as Tom Steyer and George Soros. This is why campaign finance reform is so important, Without Congress changing the fundamental dynamics, there won't be much room for populism to thrive. Even if Democrats select someone like a Elizabeth Warren as their candidate or Hillary Clinton decides to move sharply to the left on economic policy, there won't be much room for reform when the time of governance actually starts. The Democratic Party needs Wall Street more than it needs to take a stand against Wall Street. Those are the facts on the ground. If Democrats really want to take on Wall Street and tackle economic inequality, they first have to bring about reform of the campaign finance system. If campaigns were publicly funded or there were more stringent limits on independent expenditures, Wall Street would have much more trouble achieving disproportionate influence. Reform could level the playing field. More often than not, campaign finance reform is an issue that gets sidetracked with little more than some pro forma words of support. A more populist economic agenda that revolved around progressive taxation and substantial public assistance to strengthen the middle class can only work in a different kind of political system. If things stay the same, Democrats can only continue to win elections by turning to their corporate and financial base of support.
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somalia-based al-shabaab has been behind a string of recent attacks in kenya.
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(CNN)The terrorist group Al-Shabaab has claimed an attack on Garissa University College in eastern Kenya, in which many people have been killed and still more taken hostage. The attack is another step in the ongoing escalation of the terrorist group's activities, and a clear indicator that the security situation in East Africa is deteriorating fast. Somalia-based Al-Shabaab has been behind a string of recent attacks in Kenya, the most well-known of them being the massacre at the Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi in 2013. Cross-border raids into Kenya by the group, however, date back to 2011. Al-Shabaab incursions triggered a military response by the government in Nairobi, which sent troops to Somalia as part of an African Union mission in support of Somalia's internationally recognized government that had been under pressure from Al-Shabaab and other militants for several years. Al-Shabaab is predominantly driven by the same radical interpretation of the Koran as al-Qaeda and ISIS (also known as Islamic State), but also employs more opportunistic approaches to shoring up local support. Its origins lie in Al-Ittihad al-Islami (Unity of Islam), one of several militant factions that emerged in the wake of the fall of Siad Barre in 1991. These disparate groups fought each other and a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Somali civil war that led to the complete collapse of the country, from which it has yet to recover almost quarter of a century later. Al-Shabaab (literally "the Youth") split from Unity of Islam in 2003 and merged with another radical Islamist group, the so-called Islamic Courts Union. As their alliance obtained control of Somalia's capital Mogadishu in 2006, Ethiopia, the only majority Christian country in the region, took military action against the group. The offensive weakened Al-Shabaab and pushed it back into the rural areas of central and southern Somalia, but it failed to defeat it. To the contrary, Ethiopia's invasion and occupation of parts of Somalia -- although invited by the Somali government and backed by the African Union -- enabled Al-Shabaab to partially re-invent itself as both an Islamist and nationalist force opposing a foreign "Christian" invasion. Initially, the group primarily attacked Ethiopian forces, but soon began to "expand" its activities against the Somali government as well. The first attack outside Somalia was an attack in the Ugandan capital of Kampala in 2010. Soon after this, cross-border raids in Kenya began, predominantly targeting Christians there. Increasing its links with al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab declared its full allegiance in 2012 -- and it is not clear whether it will switch allegiances to ISIS. Much will depend on how the relationships between al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a long-time ally of Al-Shabaab based in Yemen, and ISIS develop. The key point is that Al-Shabaab's attack in Garissa is part of a broader regional context of instability fueled by a huge number of factors. It must not be interpreted simply as another act of garden-variety fundamentalist terrorism. Clearly, the presence and activities of terrorist groups in the region is a major concern, and it is undoubtedly driven by radical and exclusivist interpretations of Islam. But the entire region also suffers from a range of other problems: from economic development challenges to environmental degradation; from organized crime to inter-tribal and inter-communal violence; from corruption to serious deficits in human rights and good governance. These entrenched inequalities help Al-Shabaab appeal to a wide variety of potential recruits, who may sympathize with and actively support the group for any number of reasons. Attacking a university in northern Kenya and separating Christian from Muslim students epitomizes the way Al-Shabaab advances itself by exploiting religious, tribal and nationalist identities. Ultimately, though, this all comes down to a struggle for control -- over people, over territory, and over resources. As long as the majority of people in the region remain excluded from any meaningful political, economic, and social participation in their societies -- which are dominated by primarily self-interested elites that put their own advance before that of their communities -- human lives matter little in the pursuit of selfish interests. It is important to counter Al-Shabaab directly, including by military means. But there won't be any lasting solution to the wider region's security problems without a more comprehensive and concerted effort to address the deeper problems of exclusion suffered by the citizens of the countries challenged by Al-Shabaab. As Garissa shows, these problems are still providing oxygen for nihilistic ideologies and their deadly fruit. Copyright 2015 The Conversation. Some rights reserved.
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judge: the importance of avoiding anything that could be prejudicial in the trial's sentencing phase.
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Boston (CNN)The Boston Marathon is traditionally an event in which people in and around the Massachusetts capital come together, celebrate and enjoy. But not in 2013, when three people died and over 200 were injured when a pair of bombs went off within 12 seconds of each other at the finish line. And not this year -- at least not if you're a member of the jury that convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the bombings. That's what federal Judge George A. O'Toole told jurors Tuesday, stressing the importance of avoiding anything that could be prejudicial in the trial's sentencing phase. That begins April 21, a day after this year's edition of the landmark race. "Do not attend the Boston Marathon or any events or gatherings related to the anniversary or the current running of the Boston Marathon," O'Toole said in court. The judge spoke for less than 10 minutes, and stressed the seriousness of his warnings. The first phase of Tsarnaev's trial began March 4, after which federal prosecutors called 92 witnesses, and the defense just four. Timeline of the bombings, manhunt and aftermath Tsarnaev's lawyers never disputed that their client was at the scene of the bombings and part of the days-long mayhem that followed. Tsarnaev lawyer Judy Clarke acknowledged in opening arguments that: "It was him." But Clarke argued that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev only took part in the plot under the influence of his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after the bombings, but before his brother was captured in a boat parked in a Watertown backyard, That argument wasn't enough to sway the jury, though. Rather, they convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on all 30 counts he faced -- including using weapons of mass destruction, bombing a place of public use, conspiracy and aiding and abetting. A look at all of the charges The only question now, short of a successful appeal of that verdict, is what price he'll now pay. The maximum penalty for several of the charges is death. Talking to the jury on Tuesday, O'Toole predicted that the sentencing phase will last four weeks before cautioning that forecasting a specific timetable is less reliable than guessing the weather. The plan is for the court to be in session for four days a week, as long as the process takes. Until then, O'Toole told the jurors, "Please put the case out of your minds. Enjoy the warm weather." What's next for Tsarnaev? CNN's Ann O'Neill reported from Boston. CNN's Catherine E. Shoichet, Alexandra Field, Aaron Cooper, Kevin Conlon, Jason Hanna and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
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the temperature was recorded at argentina's esperanza base on the northern antarctica peninsula.
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(CNN)A high temperature of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit might sound like a pleasant day in early spring -- unless you're in Antarctica. The chilly continent recorded the temperature (15.5 degrees Celsius) on March 24, possibly the highest ever recorded on Antarctica, according to the Weather Underground. The temperature was recorded at Argentina's Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctica Peninsula, according to CNN affiliate WTNH. (Note to map lovers: The Argentine base is not geographically part of the South American continent.) The World Meteorological Organization, a specialized United Nations agency, is in the process of setting up an international ad-hoc committee of about 10 blue-ribbon climatologists and meteorologists to begin collecting relevant evidence, said Randy Cerveny, the agency's lead rapporteur of weather and climate extremes and Arizona State University professor of geographical sciences. The committee will examine the equipment used to measure the temperature, whether it was in good working order, whether the correct monitoring procedures were followed, whether the equipment was placed in the correct location and whether the measurement is matched by corresponding records from surrounding stations, Cerveny said. The committee will discuss the issues and make a recommendation to Cerveny, who will make an official finding, probably by late summer or early fall. Researchers who study climate change carefully watch weather changes in the Antarctic region and elsewhere for evidence that the Earth is getting warmer.
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bates is charged with second-degree manslaughter in harris' death.
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(CNN)Two deputies involved in the fatal attempt to arrest Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have been reassigned because of threats against them and their families, Sheriff Stanley Glanz said Monday in a news conference. The deputies were trying to arrest Harris when Reserve Deputy Robert Bates shot him. Unlike Bates, they are not charged with a crime, but have come under criticism for pinning Harris' head to the ground as he said, "I'm losing my breath." Police appear on video saying, "F*ck your breath," apparently in response. Sheriff Stanley Glanz didn't specify the nature of the threats, but said he was "very concerned" for their safety and that of their families. He did not say what the deputies had been assigned to do. Another sheriff's official said the office has temporarily suspended operations of the agency's drug unit pending the review of the April 2 shooting of Harris following a weapons sting. Glanz indicated he has not yet decided how to proceed with a review of their actions, saying any action may be delayed until after the court case involving Bates has been settled. Bates is charged with second-degree manslaughter in Harris' death. Bates, who is free on $25,000 bond pending trial, shot Harris with his handgun after calling out, "Taser, Taser," -- an indication he planned to use a stun gun to subdue Harris following a brief foot chase with the other deputies. Amid questions about his age -- 73 -- training and friendship with Glanz, Bates has said the shooting was accidental, and has apologized to the family. Lawyer releases training records for Tulsa deputy charged in killing On Monday, Glanz also apologized to Harris' family. "We are sorry Eric was taken from you," he said. But he said his office holds itself to the highest national standards of policing, and said Monday that the FBI had cleared the agency of any civil rights violations in the shooting. Bates is white. Harris was black. There have been allegations, first reported by the Tulsa World newspaper, that some of Bates' training records had been forged, or that he was unqualified to be serving on the force. The sheriff denied those allegations, saying he was certain Bates had qualified on the gun range and had extensive additional training. He said he was unaware of any forgery involving training records, and said he had not issued any training waivers for Bates, with whom he has been friends for more than two decades. But he said he supported prosecutor's decision to proceed with the case. He also said he had brought in a Dallas police consultant who had previously examined the office's policies and procedures for another look. Harris' family has said the shooting reveals "a deep-seated problem" within the department and has demanded justice, and changes in policy.
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the operator of the front loader was injured but able to walk to an ambulance.
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(CNN)A natural gas line explosion at a law enforcement shooting range in Fresno, California, injured 11 people, including some inmates who were on a work detail there. Others being treated include a county road worker and two sheriff's deputies, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said. The exact cause of Friday's blast is under investigation, Mims said, but it happened at the spot where a county worker was operating a front loader. The explosion sparked a fire that roared like a jet engine, Mims said. The operator of the front loader was injured but able to walk to an ambulance, the sheriff said. The most serious injuries were suffered by a group of inmates who were assigned to maintenance and cleaning work at the sheriff's firing range. There were 10 inmates near the blast site who were also injured, officials said. Three other inmates at the site were not hurt. Earlier, the sheriff's office included them in the injury count. After the blast, Mims said, two sheriff's deputies who were at the firing range ran toward the fire to move the injured. CNN affiliate KFSN posted a video of the scene that shows a tall ball of fire rising from near a highway. One inmate was airlifted to the hospital, the sheriff said. That inmate and the county worker were undergoing emergency surgery, she said. The others suffered mostly burns. The pair of deputies who provided aid also went for treatment for ringing ears and sunburn-like conditions, she said. Firefighters put out the blaze, revealing a crater at the blast site and a blackened front loader, Mims said.
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yahya rashid, a uk national from northwest london, was detained at luton airport on tuesday.
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London (CNN)A 19-year-old man was charged Wednesday with terror offenses after he was arrested as he returned to Britain from Turkey, London's Metropolitan Police said. Yahya Rashid, a UK national from northwest London, was detained at Luton airport on Tuesday after he arrived on a flight from Istanbul, police said. He's been charged with engaging in conduct in preparation of acts of terrorism, and with engaging in conduct with the intention of assisting others to commit acts of terrorism. Both charges relate to the period between November 1 and March 31. Rashid is due to appear in Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, police said. CNN's Lindsay Isaac contributed to this report.
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chris rock made light of racial disparities in police treatment of whites and blacks.
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(CNN)Comedian Chris Rock made light of racial disparities in police treatment of whites and blacks with a tongue-in-cheek guide to not being beaten by the police. He encapsulated the frustration and grief caused by a New York grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer in the death of a black man with a simple tweet: "This one was on film." Now, he's stirring things up again with a series of tweets documenting three traffic stops in seven weeks. "Stopped by the cops again wish me luck," he posted early Tuesday, along with a photo showing him behind the wheel of a car with what looks like blue police lights in the background. He posted similar photos in February. Many African-Americans have long bemoaned the phenomenon of being pulled over for no apparent reason, calling it "driving while black." Blacks are about 30% more likely to be pulled over by police than whites, according to figures reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013. And in amid increased conversation over race and policing after the high-profile deaths last year of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the issue is even more sensitive. Rock hasn't commented on the tweets and didn't say how the police stop turned out. He got lots of support on Twitter. "My heart legit dropped, no kidding," one Twitter fan posted. Many praised him for documenting the stops. Some accused him of race-baiting. But one bit of advice in particular lit up social media. Actor Isaiah Washington urged Rock to "#Adapt" to avoid racial profiling. "I sold my $90,000.00 Mercedes G500 and bought 3 Prius's, because I got tired of being pulled over by Police," Washington tweeted. Some saw that as a sell-out, saying Rock shouldn't have to take steps others might not have to as a way to avoid being pulled over. "Let me guess..you also make sure your pants are pulled up as well?." Twitter user YeshaCallahan posted. Appearing on CNN, Washington defended the tweet, saying he wanted to "excite a conversation." Years ago, Rock filmed a sketch for his "Chris Rock" show on HBO in which he detailed ways to avoid being beaten by police as a black man. Besides obeying the law, he suggested bringing a white friend along for the ride. He did just that last year in a segment of "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" with Jerry Seinfeld. The two chat as Seinfeld drives an orange Lamborghini. And what happened? They get pulled over after Seinfeld goes a bit heavy on the gas. "Here's the crazy thing," Rock tells Seinfeld as the police officer stops the duo. "If you weren't here, I'd be scared."
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law bans what it describes as "dismemberment abortion"
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(CNN)A new Kansas law banning a common second-term abortion procedure is the first of its kind in the United States. The law, signed by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on Tuesday, bans what it describes as "dismemberment abortion" and defines as "knowingly dismembering a living unborn child and extracting such unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus." Supporters of the measure described it as a groundbreaking step, while opponents warned it was dangerous and among the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The law does not spell out a specific time frame that limits when an abortion can occur, but it bans the dilation and evacuation abortion procedure commonly used during the second trimester of pregnancy. The law allows for the procedure if "necessary to protect the life or health of the mother," according to a statement on Brownback's website. On Twitter, Brownback, a Republican, said he was proud to sign a law "protecting life at its most vulnerable stage." Planned Parenthood Advocates of Kansas and Mid-Missouri sharply criticized the move, which it described as the latest in a series of "extreme political measures aimed at denying women access to health care and at undermining their decision-making ability." "Kansas is now not only the sole state with this atrocious law; it also now has more restrictions on abortion than any state in the U.S.," the advocacy group said in a Facebook post. Both sides appear to be prepared to take their battle over such measures to other states -- and to court. Carol Tobias, the president of National Right to Life, said in a statement that the Kansas law was the first of what her organization hopes "will be many state laws." "This law has the power to transform the landscape of abortion policy in the United States," she said. Julie Burkhart, CEO of Wichita-based South Wind Women's Center, said on Twitter that the signing of the law marked a sad day for Kansas and the United States. "This law puts women at risk and ties doctors' hands," she said. "We'll continue to fight!" CNN's Sam Stringer contributed to this report.
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one woman was lying on the floor with cuts to her neck and buttocks.
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(CNN)When Hong Kong police answered a call in the early hours of a Saturday morning last November, they encountered a grisly scene and an alleged crime that shocked the city. One woman was lying on the floor with cuts to her neck and buttocks. Another was stuffed inside a suitcase on the balcony. A former banker, 29-year-old Briton Rurik Jutting, was charged with two counts of murder. On Thursday, a court hearing that was to determine whether there was enough evidence to proceed to trial was adjourned until May. Here's what we know so far about the victims and their alleged attacker. Jutting allegedly lived at the murder scene, an upmarket apartment in the middle of Wan Chai, an inner-city suburb that's home to an eclectic mix of late-night bars, residential tower blocks and local markets selling groceries and assorted cheap goods. In the early hours of Saturday morning, November 1, police say Jutting called them to the apartment. There they found a woman lying on the blood-splattered floor, later identified as 29-year-old Seneng Mujiasih. During a search of the apartment, officers uncovered another body hidden in a suitcase on the balcony. It's alleged 25-year-old Sumarti Ningsih was killed on October 27, five days before her body was found. Sumarti Ningsih was from Cilacap, in Central Java, and was the mother of a five-year-old girl. In a statement, her cousin, Jumiati, described her as "just an ordinary woman from Indonesia" who, like many others, was "forced to work abroad to feed her poor family and make her dream comes (sic) true." "She wanted to work as professional so she can earn money and dignity for her family," Jumiati wrote. "She is good girl and did not deserve this treatment." According to the Asian Migrant Coordinating Body, Ningsih was visiting Hong Kong as a tourist and had been due to fly back to Jakarta the day after her body was found. Last year, her grieving father, Ahmad Khaliman, told Agence France-Presse that his daughter had worked in Hong Kong as a domestic helper between 2011 and 2013. She'd since returned on two occasions, Khaliman said. He said the family had been shocked by her murder, and called for the perpetrator to be executed. "If not, I cannot accept it. He has already taken my daughter's life, so he has to pay with his life," he told CNN affiliate Trans7. Seneng Mujiasih had more recently worked as a domestic worker in Hong Kong but had overstayed her visa, according to the Asian Migrant Co-ordinating Body. Also known as Jesse Lorena, Mujiasih was from the city of Muna in Sulawesi province, in southeast Indonesia. Other than that, few details are known about her life and why she stayed on in Hong Kong. After news of their death spread, fellow domestic workers held a vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park. Around 200 people gathered to sing and pray, and lay flowers besides photos of the two women. The victims' bodies were buried after being repatriated to Indonesia in November. Before being taken into custody, Rurik Jutting lived in the upmarket J Residence in Wan Chai. He was detained at the scene, where police found the bodies of two women and seized a knife during a search of the premises. It's unclear when Jutting left his job as a trader at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch; a BoA spokesman would only confirm that a man of the same name had worked there in the past. Jutting's profile on LinkedIn said he haad been employed at the bank's structured equity finance and trading division in Hong Kong since July 2013. Before that, he worked in the same unit in London for three years. According to the profile, Jutting previously worked in capital markets for the British bank Barclays and studied history and law at the prestigious University of Cambridge, between 2004 and 2008. As part of the trial process, tests were conducted to determined if Jutting was psychologically fit to enter a plea. He was. The case was then adjourned to allow for more than 200 pieces of forensic and DNA evidence to be analyzed.
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john helinski was homeless and nameless for three years.
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(CNN)No identification, no Social Security card and only a box to live on. John Helinski was homeless and nameless for three years. Suddenly, he's set to buy his own place and collect a nice pension. Helinski hit it big thanks to the Social Security Administration, and a big-hearted cop and a case worker determined to untangle major bureaucracy. Charles Inman could not bear to see his 62-year-old ward land back on the street, he told CNN affiliate WFTS. The shelter where the case worker works set Helinski up with a bunk and a locker. But getting him into the system was hard, because Helinski's ID and Social Security cards had been stolen. "He needed to have an identification, but we couldn't get an identification without a birth certificate," Inman said. A hassle all by itself, except that Helinski was foreign born -- in Poland, as an American citizen. "We first had to figure out that we needed a consular record of foreign birth or something like that," said Tampa police Officer Dan McDonald, who pitched in to help Helinski. With those papers squared away, he and Inman got Helinski a driver's license and a Social Security card. Then, Helinski remembered that he used to have an account with a certain Landmark Bank. "Then it became Bank of America," he said. The account was still there, and the Social Security Administration hadn't forgotten about him. It had kept paying Helinski benefits for years, and they had stacked up high. Now Helinski is thinking of buying his own four walls. And he'll have monthly benefits to live on. "I guess I'm exhilarated, excited, you know," he said. McDonald said he and Inman were stunned. "We weren't quite sure what to say."
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the rev. robert h. schuller, california televangelist and founder of the television ministry "hour of power" died thursday.
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(CNN)The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, California televangelist and founder of the television ministry "Hour of Power," died Thursday, according to his family. He was 88 years old. Schuller, also the founder of Crystal Cathedral megachurch, had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer in August 2013, a release from "Hour of Power" said. "My father-in-law passed away peacefully early this morning. He was a great Dad and a great man of God," said Schuller's daughter-in-law, Donna Schuller, in a Twitter message. Schuller's life followed an almost Shakespearean arc. He was born in a Iowa farmhouse without running water and longed to preach from his earliest days. In his autobiography, "Prayer: My Soul's Adventure with God," he described standing alone by a river and picturing himself delivering sermons to a rapt congregation. After attending a Hope College and Western Theological Seminary in Michigan, he met his wife of more than 60 years, Arvella, while preaching at her church (she was the organist). With their young family in tow, the Schullers caravanned west to California, where he rented a drive-in theater and preached from the roof of the snack bar. It was beneath the dignity of Christian ministry, some local pastors huffed. The "passion pits" where teenagers necked was no place for the gospel. Schuller was undeterred, and he quickly outgrew the drive-in. He called the explosive growth of his tiny congregation a "miracle," though his many mainstream critics had other names for it. His confident, breezy version of Christianity -- too breezy, by some estimations -- drew hordes of seekers and lapsed Christians who were put off by the hellfire fulminations of many post-War American preachers. Schuller sold a softer, gentler message, which borrowed heavily, he acknowledged, from the father of the feel-good gospel, Norman Vincent Peale. He preached not to convert or condemn people, but to encourage them, a sentiment he called "possibility thinking." People loved it. "Evangelicalism at its best wants to be innovative and reach people," said Timothy Larsen, a professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College in Illinois. "And Schuller was a master at that." "What he got right is that the gospel is good news," Larsen continued. "And he preached an uplifting message about personal transformation and uplift and hope." Some of Schuller's favored phrases, though, struck others as cornpone Christianity. "Turn your hurt into a halo?" said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Dartmouth College, citing one such phrase. "That's pretty weak tea." Still, Balmer gives Schuller some credit. "It may be bad theology, but it's brilliant marketing." In 1970, Schuller began broadcasting "Hour of Power," believed to be one of the first, if not the very first, Sunday service to be shown regularly on television. With his genial smile, priestly robes and gray hair, he looked and talked like a guy who wanted nothing more than to see his flock succeed. The show, which ran for decades, reached millions, making Schuller a televangelist before the term became tarnished by the sins of his many successors. Schuller's crowning achievement, at least architecturally, still stands in Orange County, California, though it is now owned by the Roman Catholic Church. The Crystal Cathedral, a great gleaming edifice with 10,000 glass panels, gave worshipers a look at the clouds that house the heavens, while Schuller preached in the pulpit below. The message was clear to many: The road to the former ran through the latter. During the 1980s and 1990s, Schuller's star continued to rise, with presidents stopping by the Crystal Cathedral -- often during campaigns, it should be said -- and future megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels seeking his advice. As Schuller aged, though, his family was beset by a succession scandal straight from the pages of "King Lear." He tried to install his only son, Bobby Jr., as pastor of Crystal Cathedral. But the preaching styles of father and son were too different for the congregation -- measured at times at 10,000 strong -- to countenance. Bobby Schuller Jr. left "Hour of Power" and the pulpit at Crystal Cathedral after a short time. As the family searched for a new successor and tussled over finances, viewers and donations to the church and its television show dropped precipitously. Crystal Cathedral Ministries filed for bankruptcy in 2010, citing debts of more than $43 million, according to The Associated Press. Schuller's empire, which once soared as high as his glassy cathedral, had fallen to dust. Eventually, Schuller's grandson, also named Bobby, took over "Hour of Power," though at a different church. In a statement on Thursday, the younger Schuller recalled standing atop Crystal Cathedral's 12-story Tower of Hope with his grandfather as they surveyed the surrounding landscape. "You could see the whole world from there," he said. People we've lost in 2015 CNN's Stella Chan reported from Los Angeles.
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after problems that delayed the restart in march, scientists at the european organization for nuclear research (cern) completed final tests, enabling the first beams to start circulating inside the lhc's 17 mile (27 km) ring.
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(CNN)The world's biggest and most powerful physics experiment is taking place as you read this. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator and the largest machine in the world, is ready for action following a two-year shutdown. After problems that delayed the restart in March, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) completed final tests, enabling the first beams to start circulating Sunday inside the LHC's 17 mile (27 km) ring. "Operating accelerators for the benefit of the physics community is what CERN's here for," CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer said on the organization's website. "Today, CERN's heart beats once more to the rhythm of the LHC." The LHC generates up to 600 million particles per second, with a beam circulating for 10 hours, traveling more than 6 billion miles (more than 10 billion kilometers) -- the distance from Earth to Neptune and back again. At near light-speed, a proton in the LHC makes 11,245 circuits per second. It took thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians decades to devise and build the particle accelerator, housed in a tunnel between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range. The purpose of the lengthy project is to recreate the conditions that existed moments after the "Big Bang" -- the scientific theory said to explain the creation of the universe. By replicating the energy density and temperature, scientists hope to uncover how the universe evolved. Our current, limited, knowledge is based on what's called The Standard Model of particle physics. "But we know that this model is not complete," Dr. Mike Lamont, operations group leader at the LHC, told CNN in March. The burning questions that remain include the origin of mass and why some particles are very heavy, while others have no mass at all; a unified description of all the fundamental forces such as gravity; and uncovering dark matter and dark energy, since visible matter accounts for only 4 percent of the universe. The LHC could also question the idea that the universe is only made of matter, despite the theory that antimatter must have been produced in the same amounts at the time of the Big Bang. CERN says the energies achievable by the LHC have only ever been found in nature. The machine alone costs approximately three billion euros (about $3.3 billion), paid for by member countries of CERN and contributions by non-member nations. The organization also asserts that its guidelines for the protection of the environment and personnel comply with standards set by Swiss and French laws and a European Council Directive. Scientists and physics enthusiasts will be waiting with bated breath as the LHC ventures into the great unknown. "After two years of effort, the LHC is in great shape," said CERN Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry. "But the most important step is still to come when we increase the energy of the beams to new record levels." Peter Shadbolt contributed to this report.
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sutton said investigators are looking into whether he is part of a white supremacist gang.
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(CNN)The killing of an employee at Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, North Carolina, may have been a hate crime, authorities said Tuesday. Investigators are looking into the possibility, said Goldsboro police Sgt. Jeremy Sutton. He did not explain what may have made it a hate crime. The victim -- Ron Lane, whom officials said was a longtime employee and the school's print shop operator -- was white, as is the suspect. Lane's relatives said he was gay, CNN affiliate WNCN reported. The suspect, Kenneth Morgan Stancil III, worked with Lane as part of a work-study program, but was let go from the program in early March due to poor attendance, college President Kay Albertson said Tuesday. On Monday, Stancil walked into the print shop on the third floor of a campus building, aimed a pistol-grip shotgun and fired once, killing Lane, according to Sutton. Stancil has tattoos on his face. Sutton said investigators are looking into whether he is part of a white supremacist gang. He has no previous criminal record, authorities said. Sutton said Stancil fled on a motorcycle after the shooting and ultimately abandoned it in a highway median. Then, Stancil continued on to Daytona, Florida, but authorities don't know how he traveled, Sutton said. He was arrested just after 1 a.m. Tuesday, after he was found sleeping on a beach, about 550 miles (885 kilometers) from Goldsboro. Volusia County Beach Patrol had approached him for violating the city's ordinance against sleeping on the beach. He had a knife, police said. He was taken into custody without incident. Authorities in North Carolina expect to bring him back to face charges. Wayne Community College, a two-year school, has a student population of 3,837, according 2013 figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. Slightly more than half the students are part-time. Crime statistics from the center's website show no killings, assaults, robberies or motor vehicle thefts between 2011 and 2013. There were three arrests for illegal weapons possession in 2012 and three in 2013.
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they had rented the villa from march 14 to march 22.
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(CNN)The presence of a harmful pesticide at a luxury villa in the U.S. Virgin Islands may have resulted in the illness of a Delaware family, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday. Paramedics were called last week to a rented villa at the Sirenusa resort in St. John after the family of four fell ill. They had rented the villa from March 14 to March 22, and were later hospitalized. The illness was reported to the EPA on March 20. "Our preliminary results do show that there was a presence of methyl bromide in the unit where the family was staying," said Elias Rodriguez, an EPA spokesman. Exposure to methyl bromide can result in serious health effects, including central nervous system and respiratory system damage, according to the EPA. The use of the pesticide is restricted in the United States because of its acute toxicity. It's not allowed to be used indoors. Only certified professionals are permitted to use it in certain agricultural settings. "It's an ongoing investigation; we're still on the island doing our assessment," Rodriguez said. "We have been doing different types of air sampling and wipe sampling." Final test results were expected next week. The EPA is working with local government agencies to investigate whether the family was made ill after a fumigation at the resort on March 18 and whether any environmental regulations or laws were violated. "Pesticides can be very toxic, and it is critically important that they be applied properly and used only as approved by EPA," said Judith A. Enck, a regional administrator for the EPA. "The EPA is actively working to determine how this happened and will make sure steps are taken to prevent this from happening to others at these vacation apartments or elsewhere." Depending on the season, the luxury villa where the family stayed rents between $550 and $1,200 per night. Sea Glass Vacations, which acts as a rental agent for several units at Sirenusa, said that the unit directly below the one where the family stayed was recently treated for pests, but that their unit was not treated. The company said it licensed an outside company, Terminix, for the pest control services. "Sea Glass Vacations does not treat the units it manages for pests but instead relies on licensed professionals for pest control services," the company said in a statement. The U.S. Department of Justice has initiated a criminal investigation into the matter, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing made Monday by ServiceMaster Global Holdings, the parent company of Terminix. In an email to CNN, a spokesman for Terminix wrote that the company is "committed to performing all work ... in a manner that is safe for our customers, employees, the public and the environment" and is "looking into this matter internally, and cooperating with authorities." "We're thinking about the family, and we join the community in wishing them a speedy recovery," Terminix wrote. James Maron, an attorney who has been a spokesman for the family, has not responded to requests for comment. The SEC filing described the injuries to the family members as "serious."
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davion navar henry only dressed up in a suit and borrowed a bible from the boys home.
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(CNN)The boy who asked a church to help him find a forever parent finally has one. Desperate for a home in 2013, Davion Navar Henry Only dressed up in a suit and borrowed a Bible from the boys home where he lived. Then he headed to a St. Petersburg, Florida, church to make a plea for his own adoption. Now 16 years old, he had lived his entire life in foster care, bouncing from one home to another. The older he got, the less likely it was that he would be adopted. But the Tampa Bay Times documented his journey, and a video of his plea went viral. Thousands of calls came into his agency, and a minster's family in Ohio asked him to come live with them. But he got into a fight with one of their sons, and they sent him back to Florida. Forever wasn't forever in that case. And to the people who asked what went wrong, his social worker had the answer. "That boy spent his whole life in the system, that's what went wrong," Connie Going told the Tampa Bay Times. Photo helps gets teen adopted For a year, he went through four more foster homes and wouldn't speak about what happened in Ohio. Finally, he reached out to Going, the woman who had been there for him since he was 7. Only had repeatedly asked her to adopt him, but she didn't think that she could be enough for him. She already had three children, ages 21, 17 and 14. But something changed in that latest call, and she knew she would finally say yes. So did her three children. Going rented a larger house, and Only moved into the home after his new mom passed the home study. His official adoption date is April 22. "I guess I always thought of you as my mom," Only told her before Christmas. "Only now I get to call you that for real, right?"
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the plant produces paraxylene, a reportedly carcinogenic chemical used in the production of polyester films and fabrics.
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Hong Kong (CNN)Six people were hurt after an explosion at a controversial chemical plant in China's southeastern Fujian province sparked a huge fire, provincial authorities told state media. The plant, located in Zhangzhou city, produces paraxylene (PX), a reportedly carcinogenic chemical used in the production of polyester films and fabrics. The blast occurred at an oil storage facility Monday night after an oil leak, though local media has not reported any toxic chemical spill. Five out of six people were injured by broken glass and have been sent to the hospital for treatment, Xinhua news agency reported. More than 600 firefighters were sent to battle the blaze and the fire is now under control, the Zhangzhou fire department wrote on their official microblogging account Tuesday morning. Residents living close to the plant had heard the explosion and took to Weibo to post photos of the fire. One user wrote that he heard a loud blast and felt slight tremors. The plant was hit by another explosion in July 2013, although there were no reports of casualties or toxic leaks at the time. Though demonstrations are illegal in China, the construction of PX plants has sparked protests, which have occasionally turned violent, in several cities in recent years. The Zhangzhou plant was slated for Xiamen -- a densely populated city in the southeast of the country. However, it provoked an angry backlash in 2007 due to pollution concerns and prompted the local government to relocate the factory to its current, more remote location.
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minatel, a forward from brazil, was traveling with his teammates from the ottawa fury football league.
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Atlanta (CNN)A passenger on an Atlanta-bound Air Canada flight told a CNN reporter on the plane Friday that a stranger sitting behind him tried to choke him. Oliver Minatel, 22, said he was sleeping on Air Canada Flight 8623 from Toronto when he felt something around his neck. "With a rope, something that he has, he just jumped on me. That's what happened," Minatel told CNN's Paula Newton moments after the incident. She was seated four rows behind Minatel, a professional soccer player traveling with his team. The incident occurred about a half-hour before the flight landed, after the pilots had begun their descent. "I forced it (the cord) down and then other people came to help, and then I got out and he started saying that we were here to kill him," Minatel said. The man was not restrained for the rest of the trip, but the flight crew told him to stay seated with his seat belt on. The man kept trying to get out of his seat but other passengers yelled at him whenever he tried to stand up. The two-hour flight landed at Atlanta's Hartsfield airport at about 4:30 p.m. where it was met by U.S. authorities. The suspect was escorted off the plane. An FBI spokesman confirmed the agency responded to the incident. "The passenger, however, was transported for medical/mental evaluation under the direction and coordination of the Atlanta Police Department," Special Agent Stephen Emmett said. "While there are currently no federal charges pending, the facts of the matter are being relayed to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta." Minatel, a forward from Brazil, was traveling with his teammates from the Ottawa Fury Football Club of the second-division North American Soccer League. They are scheduled to play the Atlanta Silverbacks on Saturday. "We're very thankful to everyone who came to the aid of Oliver and relieved that he's O.K. and ready to play in our game," Fury FC Head Coach Marc Dos Santos said in a statement posted on the team's website. Several witnesses said they saw the suspect try to choke Minatel with the cord of his headphones. Kevin Kerr says he was seated next to the suspect. "He was talking about how this soccer team was trying to kill him. I thought he was maybe a deranged fan," said Kerr. Kerr said he fell asleep and he awakened to see the suspect trying to choke Minatel. "I assisted to make sure that didn't happen," Kerr said. The Canadian businessman said he and members of the soccer team kept a close eye on the suspect as the plane landed to make sure he did not threaten other passengers.
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harris died at a hospital and his cause of death is under investigation.
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(CNN)A Tulsa County reserve deputy is on administrative leave after "inadvertently" shooting a suspect with his gun. Police say Robert (Bob) Bates, 73, thought he pulled out his Taser during an arrest, but instead shot the suspect, who later died at a local hospital. The shooting happened after an apparent drug and gun selling operation by the Tulsa Violent Crimes task force Thursday. Bates, a member of the task force, was part of a group of deputies trying to arrest Eric Courtney Harris, 44, in the parking lot of a Dollar General store. Police say Harris, a convicted felon, sold undercover officers a pistol. When confronted by an arrest team, he fled the scene on foot and police say they "observed him reaching for his waistband area ...causing concern for the deputies safety." After a brief pursuit, police say Harris was forced to the ground, where he continued to resist arrest and "refused to pull his left arm from underneath his body where his hand was near his waistband." It was during this portion of the arrest that police say "the reserve deputy was attempting to use less lethal force, believing he was utilizing a Taser, when he inadvertently discharged his service weapon, firing one round which struck Harris." Harris died at a local hospital and his cause of death is under investigation. Police say Harris admitted to medics at the scene that he may have been under the influence of Phencyclidine, a street drug commonly known as PCP. When asked if another gun was found on Harris, Shannon Clark of the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office says "The suspect was placed in the ambulance and transported so quickly. I have not been told there was a second weapon found on him yet." Deputy Robert Bates, who's been placed on administrative leave during the investigation, received his reserve status from the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office in 2008 and was assigned to the violent crime task force. He had also served as a Tulsa Police officer. When asked by CNN affiliate KTUL whether age may have played a factor in the "inadvertent" shooting, Clark says "did an accident happen? Sure. But is it accredited to his age? Or was it accredited to the rapidly evolving situation? I guess that will be determined in the investigation." CNN's AnneClaire Stapleton, Joe Sutton contributed to this report
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"grace of monaco," starring nicole kidman as star-turned-princess grace kelly, is heading straight to lifetime.
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(The Hollywood Reporter)"Grace of Monaco," starring Nicole Kidman as star-turned-princess Grace Kelly, is heading straight to Lifetime. The critically-panned film, which opened last year's Cannes Film Festival, will premiere on Lifetime on Memorial Day, May 25. After the movie performed poorly in its international engagements, The Weinstein Co., which first purchased U.S. distribution rights at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, decided to sell it directly to Lifetime rather than book it into U.S. theaters, a source confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. THR: Grace of Monaco' Cannes review The film, which was directed by Olivier Dahan and focuses on a period in the early '60s when Monaco was involved in a stand-off over taxes with France and Grace was contemplating a return to Hollywood, was originally scheduled for release in late 2013. Given the names involved, some handicappers had put it on their list of potential Oscar contenders. But when TWC pulled it out of awards contention and shifted its release to March 14, 2014, Dahan lashed out at TWC's Harvey Weinstein, over the movie's final cut, which the director was in the process of completing. "There are two versions of the film for now, mine and his," Dahan complained, continuing, "They want a commercial film smelling of daisies, taking out anything that exceeds that which is too abrupt, anything that makes it cinematic and breathe with life." That planned March release was then scrubbed, when Cannes expressed interest in debuting the director's version of the movie in May. Even before it screened, though, Grace's children blasted the picture as "needlessly glamorized and historically inaccurate" and boycotting the Cannes red carpet. THR: The Weinstein Co. nearing deal to keep 'Grace of Monaco' Weinstein didn't attend the movie's premiere either -- explaining that he had been visiting Syrian refugee camps in Jordan as part of a long-scheduled U.N.-sponsored trip. But TWC did strike a new distribution deal for the film in Cannes, agreeing to show Dahan's cut in the U.S., but acquiring rights for just $3 million upfront, a $2 million discount from its earlier contract. But TWC then did not slot "Grace of Monaco" into its fall, 2015 release schedule. Tim Roth costars as Kelly's husband Prince Rainier III, Frank Langella as Kelly's priest and confidante, Parker Posey as Grace's aid, and Paz Vega ("Spanglish," "Sex and Lucia") as opera singer Maria Callas. See the original story at The Hollywood Reporter. ©2015 The Hollywood Reporter. All rights reserved.
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both charges relate to the period between november 1 and march 31.
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London (CNN)A 19-year-old man was charged Wednesday with terror offenses after he was arrested as he returned to Britain from Turkey, London's Metropolitan Police said. Yahya Rashid, a UK national from northwest London, was detained at Luton airport on Tuesday after he arrived on a flight from Istanbul, police said. He's been charged with engaging in conduct in preparation of acts of terrorism, and with engaging in conduct with the intention of assisting others to commit acts of terrorism. Both charges relate to the period between November 1 and March 31. Rashid is due to appear in Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, police said. CNN's Lindsay Isaac contributed to this report.
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video game "space invaders" was developed in japan back in 1970.
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(CNN)The classic video game "Space Invaders" was developed in Japan back in the late 1970's -- and now their real-life counterparts are the topic of an earnest political discussion in Japan's corridors of power. Luckily, Japanese can sleep soundly in their beds tonight as the government's top military official earnestly revealed that the country's Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) had never encountered an extraterrestrial unidentified flying object. Responding to a query from flamboyant former wrestler-turned-lawmaker Antonio Inoki, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told the Diet, Japan's parliament, that his jets had, to date, never come across any UFOs from outer space. "When the Air Self Defense Force detects indications of an unidentified flying object that could violate our country's airspace, it scrambles fighter jets if necessary and makes visual observation," Nakatani said. He continued: "They sometimes find birds or flying objects other than aircraft but I don't know of a case of finding an unidentified flying object believed to have come over from anywhere other than Earth." Inoki has appeared in the U.S.-based WWE -- which describes him as "among the most respected men in sports-entertainment" -- and is the founder of the New Japan Pro Wrestling organization. He entered Japan's Upper House for a second stint in politics in 2013. He also famously fought Muhammad Ali in 1976, in one of the first-ever mixed-discipline matches, which would later pave the way for today's wildly popular Mixed Martial Arts contests. Before his return to politics he was a regular fixture on Japanese TV variety shows and has promoted a slew of products, from hot sauce to banks. The maverick politician also traveled to Iraq in 1990 to try to secure the release of Japanese hostages, and has more recently attempted to replicate former NBA star Dennis Rodman's "basketball diplomacy" by staging a wrestling tournament in North Korea. He reportedly converted to Islam in the 1990s, although he says he practices both Islam and Buddhism. The lawmaker, who is universally known in Japan for his colossal chin and once-ever-present red scarf -- these days often replaced with a red necktie -- as much as for his political achievements, had asked a Upper House Budget Committee meeting if aircraft were ever scrambled to meet extraterrestrial threats, and if research was being done into alien visitors, prompting Nakatani's response. Inoki also claims to have seen a UFO with his own eyes, but admitted that he didn't know personally if aliens existed. The exchange wasn't the first time Japanese politicians have discussed the implications of visitors from another planet. In 2007 then-Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba pondered the legal ramifications, under Japan's pacifist constitution, of a defense against an invasion from outer space. READ MORE: Japan unveils Izumo, its largest warship since World War II
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they are in a coma and their father still is unable to talk or move two weeks after they became sick.
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(CNN)Two Delaware boys are in a coma and their father still is unable to talk or move two weeks after they became sick -- perhaps from pesticide exposure, federal officials say -- during a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, their lawyer said Saturday. Steve Esmond, his teenage sons and the teens' mother fell ill more than two weeks ago in St. John, where they were renting a villa at the Sirenusa resort. The family was airlifted to hospitals in the United States. The boys, 16 and 14, were in critical condition at a Philadelphia hospital on Saturday, the family's lawyer, James Maron of Delaware, said. "The boys are in rough shape," Maron said. "The family are all fighters," he added. "They're fighting for everything right now. I understand it's a long recovery." Esmond, also being treated at a hospital, is conscious but cannot move, Maron said. The teens' mother, Theresa Devine, was treated at a hospital but released, and is now in occupational therapy, Maron said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that the presence of a pesticide at the rented villa in St. John may have caused the illnesses, which were reported to the EPA on March 20. Paramedics were called to the villa, which the family began had been renting since March 14. Esmond was found unconscious; the boys and their mother were having seizures, Maron said. The lawyer did not say who called the paramedics. Elias Rodriguez, an EPA spokesman, said the agency's preliminary test results "do show that there was a presence of methyl bromide in the unit where the family was staying." Exposure to methyl bromide can result in serious health effects, including central nervous system and respiratory system damage, according to the EPA. The use of the pesticide is restricted in the United States because of its acute toxicity. It's not allowed to be used indoors. Only certified professionals are permitted to use it in certain agricultural settings. "It's an ongoing investigation; we're still on the island doing our assessment," Rodriguez said. "We have been doing different types of air sampling and wipe sampling." Final test results were expected next week. The EPA said it is working with local government agencies to investigate whether the family was made ill after a fumigation at the resort on March 18 and whether any environmental regulations or laws were violated. Maron, the family's attorney, declined to comment on the investigation. Depending on the season, the luxury villa where the family stayed rents between $550 and $1,200 per night. Sea Glass Vacations, which acts as a rental agent for several units at Sirenusa, said the unit directly below the one where the family stayed was recently treated for pests, but their unit was not treated. The company said it licensed an outside company, Terminix, for the pest control services. "Sea Glass Vacations does not treat the units it manages for pests but instead relies on licensed professionals for pest control services," the company said in a statement. The U.S. Department of Justice has initiated a criminal investigation into the matter, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing made Monday by ServiceMaster Global Holdings, the parent company of Terminix. In an email to CNN, a spokesman for Terminix wrote that the company is "committed to performing all work ... in a manner that is safe for our customers, employees, the public and the environment" and is "looking into this matter internally, and cooperating with authorities." "We're thinking about the family, and we join the community in wishing them a speedy recovery," Terminix wrote. The SEC filing described the injuries to the family members as "serious."
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thousands of yazidis now call this corner of iraqi kurdistan home, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from one of the front lines with isis.
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Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan (CNN)The children laugh and shriek, as some of them seem to always have the capacity to do no matter how depressing the circumstances. Their bright clothes provide splashes of color against the otherwise drab monotone white of the endless rows of tents. A small group plays with rocks, replacements for the toys they left behind when they fled, while others clamber through a jagged tear in the wire fence surrounding the refugee camp. The Shariya refugee camp opened around six months ago, made up of some 4,000 tents and counting. Thousands of Yazidis now call this corner of Iraqi Kurdistan home, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from one of the front lines with ISIS, where one can hear the occasional reverberation in the distance of what we are told are airstrikes. The vast majority of the camp's occupants are from the town of Sinjar, which is near the border with Syrian Kurdistan, and fled the ISIS assault there back in August. But not everyone escaped. ISIS took thousands of Yazidis captive. The fighters separated the young women and girls, some as young as 8 years old, to be sold as slaves, for their "masters" to use as concubines. Men faced a choice: Convert to Islam or be shot. Mahmoud was out running errands when ISIS fighters arrived, taking his wife, Ahlam, their three children -- the youngest of which was just a month old -- and his elderly parents. "They took our phones, jewelry, money," Ahlam recalls. "They had guns. They forced us at gunpoint into big trailer trucks." They were taken to a school turned prison in Tal Afar. From there, the family was moved from village to village -- and at one stage taken to Mosul. "They wrote everyone's name down and they asked where we want to work, in the fields, as cleaners or as herders," she says. Ahlam and her family chose to herd goats. They were then taken to a Shia village whose residents had fled, where they were part of a group of around 40 living in one house. In the home, Ahlam found a cell phone left behind by its former occupants and called her husband. "I said we are alive but we are prisoners." Ahlam's husband, who up until that moment had lost the will to live, thinking his family was dead, says he cried out of happiness despite his pain. Ahlam would call when she could, briefly, after midnight, hiding under her bedcovers. If she was caught with a phone, she would be killed. The village itself was a massive prison, its entrances guarded by ISIS fighters. She recalls that two men, in their late 40s or 50s, tried to escape. When they were caught, their bones were broken, their bodies tied to the back of a truck and then driven through the streets. The Yazidi captives were forced to watch the gruesome spectacle. The men's corpses were then tossed into a ditch and an order given not to bury them. One night, some of the Yazidi men risked their lives to toss dirt onto the bodies, to give those slain what dignity they could. Ahlam tells us that about a week before we met, ISIS fighters came by and took away her in-laws and the other elderly people living in the house. "We didn't know where they were taking them, we thought we would be next," she remembers. So she and the rest of the group realized that they had to try to flee. "We decided that either we survive or we don't." They left at midnight. Ahlam cradled the baby, as her two other children, ages 3 and 4 years old, clutched at her clothes. She prayed the baby wouldn't cry, that the children could keep walking. They knew the general direction to take, but not the exact route, and they could only hope it was toward freedom. "When the sun started to come up, I thought that's it, we are going to get caught," Ahlam says. "And what am I going to do with the kids? I can't carry all three of them and run." Luckily, Ahlam never had to answer that impossible question. The group made it into Iraqi Kurdistan. The couple can't put into words their emotions when they were reunited. Mahmoud, gently caressing his daughter's palm, says he could hardly believe that the woman whose stunning eyes and gentle words he had fallen in love with, and their three children, were by his side again. It had been eight agonizing months. But their joy was tainted by fear for Mahmoud's parents. A few days after Mahmoud and Ahlam were reunited, ISIS released 217 captives. No one is disclosing exactly why. Among them were 60 children, a handful of men and women, and the rest were elderly -- including Mahmoud's parents. "We didn't know if they were going to slaughter us or what they were going to do with us," Mahmoud's father says. "They moved us around a lot, and at one stage we stayed in in one place for three days." But Ahlam's parents are still with ISIS. Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of Iraq's parliament, speculates that the Yazidis ISIS released are individuals they were struggling to care for. Dakhil is part of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's delegation to the United States this week. She will be addressing the United Nations -- pleading for more international support for Iraq and more airstrikes to help defeat ISIS -- and she will address the plight of the Yazidis. "We sometimes say that we wish we had been massacred. This would be better than being kidnapped and raped. We prefer death now over the fate of what is happening to these girls and women," Dakhil says. "It is now on the government and on the international community to focus on this. How to get these captives back. It's inconceivable that in the 21st century, something like this is happening as if we were living in the Stone Age." Ahlam says she was spared because she was breastfeeding and she had young children, which, we're told, makes her impure and therefore unable to be used as a sex slave. For Ahlam, what she went through was not the hardest part of her ordeal. It's the moment when the ISIS fighters began taking away the girls and young women. She's haunted by their screams, the image of them being dragged away sobbing and screaming.
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moments later, we see the impact: an endless stream of humanity, shell shocked, and exhausted.
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West of Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)The call from Faleh Essawi, the deputy chief of the provincial council, who we were supposed to be meeting up with, came just as we were about to hit the bridge -- the only safe route from Baghdad to neighboring Anbar province. "ISIS has taken the east of the city, it's not accessible," he says, sounding frantic, rapidly rattling off the neighborhoods and areas ISIS fighters had just stormed into. Moments later, we see the impact: An endless stream of humanity, shell shocked, and exhausted. Parents cradle babies in blankets, some struggle under the weight of their belongings, some carry small plastic bags, while others nothing but the children clutching at their hands. Cars are not permitted to cross this bridge across the Euphrates. The government feels that restricting vehicles will decrease the likelihood of explosives making their way into Iraq's capital. Those too young or too tired to walk pile into metal carts pushed by boys or young men, normally used to carry produce to markets. An elderly woman sits in one, a child in her arms, a worn down plastic doll in her hand. Many don't want to talk, at least not for long. What they just went through is too raw, too painful. One man we encounter describes how ISIS fighters commandeered his house. "We heard clashes in the early morning, and we couldn't see the security forces anywhere," he recalls. "We saw the ISIS fighters, they just came into the house, they didn't say a word. They just sent a sniper to the roof. I grabbed my children and ran." His wife bursts into tears, prompting him to apologize for not being able to talk anymore -- they just want to keep going. Another older woman, sitting in one of the carts surrounded by her grandchildren, starts sobbing the moment we approach her. "They took our homes and kicked us out," she cries. Over the weekend ISIS moved into towns just to the north of Ramadi, which lies 68 miles (110km) west of Baghdad, sending thousands fleeing on foot into the city. ISIS had already blocked off access from the south months ago, and the west was contested territory. The east, until now, was not just a relatively safe zone but the only viable entrance and exit. At a hospital in Amriyat al-Falluja, about a 15-minute drive away, a wounded local fighter winces in pain. He was shot by a sniper in Ramadi that morning as ISIS fighters advanced -- the bullet barely missed his heart. "We had been warning we could see their movements," he tells us. "But we just didn't have the force to hold them off. We didn't leave a single person we didn't call and ask for back up." But none came. Hours after our morning conversation we speak to Essawi again by phone. "Security is collapsing in the city," he screams. "This is what we warned Baghdad would happen. Where is Baghdad? Where is al-Abadi? "Just God knows if we will survive this," he says and hangs up. Amriyat al-Falluja regularly comes under attack from rockets and mortars from ISIS positions nearby. The hospital's façade is scarred by shrapnel. The wards are full of people injured during these attacks. Fifteen-year-old Mustafa Ahmed has bandages on his neck, leg, and other parts of his body. "A mortar fell on our street, one of my neighbors was wounded," he explains. "We went out to help him and the second one fell on us." His friend died, he says. In the next room Amal Ahmed speaks softly. "I was in the garden and a rocket hit and the shrapnel sliced me open," she says, as tears roll down her face. "Something fell out of me and I grabbed it and I put it back in and I lay down." She starts to cry harder. Her husband was killed by U.S. forces in Fallujah -- another city in Anbar -- in 2003. Her children have all moved away except her youngest, who broke his arm in the same attack. "When I see the situation I don't have hope, it's just getting worse." A few moments later, we hear two massive explosions from another of the hospital's buildings. They think it's an ISIS rocket or mortar attack so we take cover along with the Iraqi forces we are with in the hallway, away from the windows. More explosions go off in the distance. Then another actually shakes our building. "Anyone want tea?" one of the policemen with us asks, laughing as he pours. "This happens all the time, we're used to it." The police chief, Major Aref al-Janabi, radios to his men to respond. Al-Janabi, like so many others, is frustrated with the lack of support from Baghdad. Earlier, he had taken us to the front lines, a long berm that stretches along the northern and western parts of the town that is dotted with fighting positions. He says he regularly provides the joint command center with coordinates for ISIS positions, but so far there have been no significant air strikes or reinforcements. More explosions follow in the distance. We're quickly moved out and leave the town, heading back towards the bridge and the long, snaking lines of refugees. An ambulance passes us, trying to force its way through the crowds. The swell of people fleeing has grown considerably in the last hours -- not surprising given Essawi's dire assessment and warning. "Ramadi is under siege from all sides," he'd told us earlier, anger mixed with an air of resignation. "I consider the city to have fallen." He claimed that 150,000 have fled, scoffing at statements from Iraqi officials in Baghdad that reinforcements have been sent to Ramadi. He has yet to see them.
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the movie, starring gal gadot in the amazon princess, is still set for release on june 23, 2017.
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(CNN)Wanted: film director, must be eager to shoot footage of golden lassos and invisible jets. CNN confirms that Michelle MacLaren is leaving the upcoming "Wonder Woman" movie (The Hollywood Reporter first broke the story). MacLaren was announced as director of the movie in November. CNN obtained a statement from Warner Bros. Pictures that says, "Given creative differences, Warner Bros. and Michelle MacLaren have decided not to move forward with plans to develop and direct 'Wonder Woman' together." (CNN and Warner Bros. Pictures are both owned by Time Warner.) The movie, starring Gal Gadot in the title role of the Amazon princess, is still set for release on June 23, 2017. It's the first theatrical movie centering around the most popular female superhero. Gadot will appear beforehand in "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice," due out March 25, 2016. In the meantime, Warner will need to find someone new for the director's chair.
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wahlberg's film, to be titled "patriots' day," is being produced by cbs films.
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(CNN)Boston native Mark Wahlberg will star in a film about the Boston Marathon bombing and the manhunt that followed, Deadline reported Wednesday. Wahlberg's film, to be titled "Patriots' Day," is being produced by CBS Films, which linked to the Deadline article from its website. According to Deadline, Wahlberg is hoping to play Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who retired after the attack in 2013. The film will be told from Davis' point of view. The film will feature material researched and shot by CBS Films' corporate sibling, the CBS News program "60 Minutes." Wahlberg is also a producer of the film. "Patriots' Day" is the second film related to the Boston bombing to be announced. Fox announced in November that it will be making a film called "Boston Strong" about the event.
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