Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/300553900?client_source=feed&format=rss
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LOS ANGELES (AP) ? NBC's sitcom "The New Normal," FX's thriller "American Horror Story: Asylum" and NBC's daytime drama "Days of Our Lives" took home top TV honors at the 24th annual GLAAD Media Awards held Saturday night in Los Angeles.
The GLAAD awards pay tribute to "inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives."
The event, hosted by actress-producer-director Drew Barrymore, boasted such Hollywood heavyweights as presenters Jennifer Morrison, Charlize Theron, Betty White and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Other winners included "Perks of Being a Wallflower," which was named outstanding film: wide release, and former President Bill Clinton was given the first advocate for change award.
On the arrivals line, longtime Clinton friend, Oscar-winner Mary Steenburgen, defended the former president's controversial honor. Under Clinton's administration came the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage, as well as the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy.
"Actually, ("don't ask, don't tell") was a sorrow for him," Steenburgen said. "So, I think he's spent a large part of his life making up for that. But I tell you this: He's never not had his heart in the right place, in terms of the gay community."
Many who walked the press gauntlet shared personal stories. Actor Justin Bartha said a brother's coming out moved him both personally and professionally.
"It was an inspiring moment ? I'm sure for him and definitely me and my whole family," Bartha noted. "So, it was at the forefront of my mind when looking at (the role of half of a gay couple in "The New Normal")."
"Kyle XY" actor Matt Dallas discussed his decision to come out publicly earlier this year. MSNBC news anchor Thomas Roberts talked about the recent marriage to his male partner of 12 years. Entertainment blogger Perez Hilton detailed the challenges of being the single gay parent of newly adopted child.
And transgendered Chaz Bono expressed hopes for the gay lesbian bisexual transgender community's future.
"I mean, I think the goal always has to be equality in all aspects under the law," he said. "You're never going to eradicate discrimination. We see that with other minorities. Racism is still, unfortunately, alive and well. But equal protection under the law makes a huge difference. So, I think, for me, that is the goal, that is the thing to strive for."
Additional 2013 GLAAD Media Awards were presented in New York on March 16. The final awards will be presented in San Francisco May 11.
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On the web:
www.glaad.org
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BEIRUT (AP) ? Six days of fighting near Damascus has killed at least 100 people and possibly many more, activists said Monday, in what both sides say may be a dramatic spike in the Syria's civil war death toll.
The reports came as President Bashar Assad's forces pressed an offensive against rebels closing in on parts of the Syrian capital, and government troops moved to encircle the contested town of Qusair near the Lebanese border.
The exact number dead in the Jdaidet Artouz and Jdaidet al-Fadel districts could not be confirmed. The two adjacent neighborhoods are about 15 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Damascus.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll, mostly from shelling, could be as high as 250. Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the group has documented 101 names of those killed, including three children, 10 women and 88 men, but he thought the toll would be much higher. The dead included 24 rebels, he said.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, put the death toll at 483. It said most of the victims were killed in Jdaidet Artouz.
Both activist groups, the Observatory and the LCC, rely on a network of activists on the ground in different parts of Syria.
State-run news agency SANA said Syrian troops "inflicted heavy losses" on the rebels in the suburbs.
A government official in Damascus told The Associated Press that rebels were behind the "massacre" in Jdaidet al-Fadel, saying they sought to blame government forces who entered the area after the killings.
"The army discovered the massacre after entering the area," the official said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The corpses were already decomposed, he said.
Jdaidet al-Fadel is inhabited mostly by Syrians who fled the Golan Heights after the area was captured by Israel in 1967. Jdaidet Artouz has a large Christian and Druse population ? two minority communities that have generally stood by Assad or on the sidelines.
The killings appeared reminiscent of violence in the Damascus suburb of Daraya in August. At the time activists said days of shelling and a killing spree by government troops left 300 to 600 dead.
Mohammed Saeed, an activist based near Damascus, said rebels withdrew as soon as the government offensive began last week. After that, he said via Skype, troops and pro-government gunmen stormed the area and over several days killed about 250 people.
"The situation is very tense," Saeed said, noting that the area has no electricity, water, or mobile phone service. "There is widespread destruction in Jdaidet al-Fadel, including its only bakery."
Reports of death tolls in Syria's civil war often conflict, especially in areas that are difficult to access because of the fighting. The government also bars many foreign journalists from covering the conflict.
The main opposition group, the Cairo-based Syrian National Coalition, described the killings as "the latest heinous crime committed by the Assad regime." It complained in a statement that "the deafening silence of the international community over these crimes against humanity is shameful."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the reports of the massacre underline the urgent need to bring Syria's war to an end.
"I am appalled by the reports of the killing by Syrian Government forces of dozens of people, including women and children, in the town of Jdaidet Al-Fadel, a suburb of Damascus," Hague said in a statement. "This is yet another reminder of the callous brutality of the Assad regime and the terrible climate of impunity inside Syria."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday he shared with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry "a disposition to seek a political outcome as soon as possible and look for ways to transfer this situation into a channel of negotiations between the government and the opposition" in Syria. The two spoke Saturday.
Lavrov said he and Kerry would discuss what the U.S. and Russia could do to "induce those who are currently resisting the peace process to change their position" at the NATO-Russia summit in Brussels on Tuesday.
Lifting the European Union embargo on supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition would violate legal obligations not to arm non-state actors, said Lavrov, whose country is among Assad's strongest supporters.
In Damascus, Assad discussed the crisis with Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Iran's parliamentary committee on national interest and foreign policy. State-run news agency SANA quoted Assad as saying during the meeting that the Middle East is being "subjected to plans that target its stability and unity of its territories."
Boroujerdi said later that the best solution to Syria's crisis is for Assad to stay in power until his term ends in the summer of 2014, "when there would be free elections and the Syrian people would say their word."
The Syrian opposition refuses to talk to government officials as long as Assad remains in power. Syrian officials have said Assad, who has been in power since 2000, will run for the post again in next year's elections.
Also Monday, two bombings targeted an army checkpoint and a military post in a third Damascus suburb, Mleiha, killing eight soldiers there, according to the Observatory.
SANA said a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in Mleiha, injuring several people, including students heading to schools and universities.
The army also pressed on with its offensive near the Lebanese border, where it has been pushing for two weeks to regain control along with the help of a Hezbollah-backed militia known as the Popular Committees. The region is strategic because it links Damascus with the Mediterranean coastal enclave that is the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
The fighting around Qusair also points to the sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict, which pits a government dominated by the president's Alawite minority against a primarily Sunni Muslim rebellion, and underscores widely held fears that the civil war could drag in neighboring states.
In Lebanon, there are deep divisions over the Syrian conflict, with Lebanese Sunnis mostly backing the opposition while Shiites support Assad. Lebanese fighters have also traveled to Syria to join either Sunni or Shiite groups, and several have been killed in clashes.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-activists-fear-heavy-toll-near-damascus-130104103.html
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By Olga Dzyubenko
TOKMOK, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) - One trail in the search for clues about why two ethnic Chechen brothers may have carried out the Boston Marathon bombings leads to a sleepy town in Kyrgyzstan where former neighbors recall a quiet family that was never in trouble.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are remembered as decent and obedient boys from their time in the 1990s in the small community of Chechens in Tokmok, a leafy town under the snow-capped Tien Shan mountains outside the capital Bishkek.
Tamerlan, the elder of the two, studied well. His father, Anzor, made a living selling used cars and was welcomed with open arms when he visited the town again two years ago, 10 years after the family left for Russia and then the United States.
The news that Tamerlan had been shot dead by police and Dzhokhar captured after a day-long manhunt on suspicion of carrying out Monday's bombing, in which three people were killed, was greeted with shock and disbelief.
"The Tsarnaevs were such a good family. They yearned to be well-educated. None of them were rowdy. It was a very cultured family," said former neighbor Raisa Kaayeva, a middle-aged housewife who is also an ethnic Chechen.
"I feel it with my heart - these boys were framed. Why did they go to this America? They should have stayed in Russia to lead a quiet life. Now they have been made scapegoats. I pity these boys. I was weeping when I saw it on TV - their lives were broken, as well as the lives of their mother and father."
A police officer reacts to news of the arrest of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Friday, April 19, 2013, in Boston. Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in ... more? A police officer reacts to news of the arrest of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Friday, April 19, 2013, in Boston. Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown, Mass. The 19-year-old college student wanted in the bombings was taken into custody Friday evening after a manhunt that left the city virtually paralyzed and his older brother and accomplice dead. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) less? ?Badrudi Tsokayev, a friend of the father, waved his hands repeatedly as he described his shock at hearing the news. Like others who recalled the family, he saw no signs of radicalism.
"I wouldn't imagine seeing this even in a nightmare," Tsokayev, 60, said on a quiet street in Tokmok, 60 km (38 miles) from Bishkek. "As a child, Tamerlan was such a quiet boy. Today everyone is calling me with just one question - is this true?"
He said Anzor Tsarnaev had been fiercely proud of Tamerlan's prowess in the boxing ring and said his son had been looking forward to going to the Russian city of Sochi to watch the 2014 Winter Olympics next February.
CHECHEN DIASPORA
It is in this town of 53,000 that the boys would have become aware of their Chechen roots. Dzhokhar, now 19, years later posted links to Islamic websites and others calling for Chechen independence on what appears to be his page on a Russian language social networking site.
They would have learnt about the difficult fate suffered by their predecessors in Soviet times that has fostered a sense of injustice among some Chechens and helped fuel an independence drive in the Chechnya region of Russia's North Caucasus that led to two wars with Moscow in the 1990s.
Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Muslim nation of 5.5 million which hosts U.S. and Russian military air bases, had a huge influx of ethnic Chechens in 1944.
Hundreds of thousands of Chechens and ethnically close Ingush were evicted from their homes in the North Caucasus and moved to Central Asia in cattle wagons after being accused by dictator Josef Stalin of collaborating with Nazi Germany.
About 99,000 of the Chechens and Ingush ended up in what was then the Kyrgyz Soviet republic.
In Tokmok, the Tsarnaev clan alone inhabited a whole street before most of them moved back to their native village of Chiri-Yurt in Chechnya in the 1960s, residents said. About 20 Chechen families still live in a district popularly known as the Glass Factory, after the building that dominates it.
SCHOOL REGISTRY
The brothers would have become more familiar with Islamist militancy when they moved in 2001 to Dagestan, the southern Russian province which lies at the heart of an Islamist insurgency and sees daily violence, and where their parents still live.
In Tokmok, they lived in a modest brick house before moving to a more spacious, two-storey house opposite School No. 1 in the town center, where Tamerlan and his two sisters studied.
A school register shows Tamerlan's date of birth - October 21, 1986 - and the date when he entered the fifth grade, January 18, 1999. He studied here for a year.
Dzhokhar, born in 1993, was too young to go to school at the time.
"Yes, the Tsarnaevs studied here. I wouldn't say they were anti-social or anything like that. No, I can't say so," said school headmistress Lyubov Shulzhenko.
"The Chechen community here is so closely-knit and decent. We have never had problems with their children," said Natalia Ryabovol, a physics teacher.
In the Soviet era, Tokmok hosted a busy base which trained military pilots for pro-Soviet countries stretching from eastern Europe to Africa. A Soviet-made jet fighter is perched on a pedestal at the town's entrance.
Many of the townspeople today make a living by growing fruit and vegetables and tending cattle. The attack in Boston seems part of another world.
Kyrgyzstan, which borders China, is politically fragile after the toppling of two presidents since 2005. It says it cannot be held responsible for the brothers' actions.
"Taking into account the fact that the suspects left the republic when they were eight and 15 years old, the State Committee for National Security considers it inappropriate to link them to Kyrgyzstan," the Kyrgyz security service said.
(Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Sonya Hepinstall)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-accusations-shock-brothers-former-kyrgyz-hometown-134357623.html
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Sunday, April 21st, 2013
12:30 AM to 3:30 PM
Why not give lawn bowling a try this year - come to our Open House and give it a try. Meet new people, get exercise and keep active. Whether you like the oudoors or prefer the indoors we have it all for you. Free to try - so come come on out and see what lawn bowling is all about.
Source: http://www.harbourliving.ca/event/open-house-qblbc/2013-04-21/
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Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, left, shows U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the skyline of Istanbul before the start of a meeting on Sunday, April 21, 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey. Kerry is wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul with talks aimed at improving ties between Turkey and Israel and pushing ahead with Mideast peace efforts. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, left, shows U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the skyline of Istanbul before the start of a meeting on Sunday, April 21, 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey. Kerry is wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul with talks aimed at improving ties between Turkey and Israel and pushing ahead with Mideast peace efforts. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu point toward the Bosporus before a working lunch in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, April 21, 2013. Wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul, Kerry on Sunday sought to cement and speed up an improvement in relations between Turkey and Israel as well as explore new ways to relaunch Mideast peace efforts. President Barack Obama has made both issues foreign policy priorities for his second term and Kerry was pushing them in meetings with Abbas and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.(AP Photo/Hakan Goktepe, Pool)
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, third from left, meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, third from right, on Sunday, April 21, 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey. Kerry is wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul with talks aimed at improving ties between Turkey and Israel and pushing ahead with Mideast peace efforts. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas leaves a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, April 21, 2013. Wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul, Kerry on Sunday sought to cement and speed up an improvement in relations between Turkey and Israel as well as explore new ways to relaunch Mideast peace efforts. President Barack Obama has made both issues foreign policy priorities for his second term and Kerry was pushing them in meetings with Abbas and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.(AP Photo)
ISTANBUL (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday urged Turkey to speed up and cement an American-brokered rapprochement with Israel, and he explored with Palestinian officials new ways to relaunch Mideast peace efforts.
Kerry tried to advance those second-term foreign policy priorities for President Barack Obama in meetings with Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Kerry also said he had made it clear to the Turks that a planned trip to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his May 16 visit to the White House "would be better delayed and that it shouldn't take place at this point in time.
Both Israel and Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority is based in the West Bank, oppose the Gaza visit.
"We would like to see the parties begin with as little outside distraction as possible. So our sense is that it would be more helpful to wait for the right circumstances," said Kerry, who did not meet with Erdogan on this stop in Turkey.
On a trip to Israel last month, Obama secured a pledge from Turkish and Israeli leaders to normalize ties that broke down after a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American.
But the rapprochement has been slow, fueling concerns that Turkey may be backsliding on its commitment.
Israeli and Turkish negotiators plan to meet this coming week to discuss Turkey's demand for compensation for victims of the flotilla.
U.S. officials hope the discussions will jumpstart the process of restoring full diplomatic relations and exchanging ambassadors between two countries that Washington sees as vital strategic partners in the volatile Middle East.
The raid sparked throughout outrage in Muslim-majority Turkey, making it politically difficult for Erdogan to bend to persistent U.S. appeals to improve relations with Israel.
In March, Obama extracted an apology for the raid from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that broke the stalemate.
Kerry said he understood the anger and frustration of those Turks who lost friends and family in the raid. The former Massachusetts senator said last week's Boston Marathon bombings made him acutely aware of the emotions involved.
"It affects the community, it affects the country. But going forward, you know, we have to find the best way to bring people together and undo these tensions and undo these stereotypes and try to make peace," he said.
Kerry said he had a "prolonged and constructive" discussion with Davutoglu, about "the importance of completing the task with respect to the renewal of relations between Turkey and Israel."
Kerry added that he believed Erdogan and Davutoglu "are deeply committed to fulfilling all of the obligations of that understanding."
U.S. officials are keen to see substantive process by the time Erdogan comes to Washington.
"We would like to see us get to a point where we are moving on improving the situation in Gaza, which was part of the agreement ... and where we are also completing the tasks of moving to full diplomatic relations between the countries, which would be very beneficial to everyone," he said.
With Abbas, Kerry discussed ways to improve the Palestinians' living conditions as a confidence-building measure to improve the atmosphere for a resumption of peace talks with Israel.
Kerry has said he fears there is only a two- or three-year window of opportunity to reach a deal on a two-state solution that would end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wants to move as quickly as possible.
Kerry was in Istanbul primarily to attend an international conference on Syria that began on Saturday and stretched into early Sunday as participants debated how best to boost aid to rebels trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.
He announced that the Obama administration would double its nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition with an additional $123 million in supplies that could include for the first time armored vehicles, body armor, night vision goggles and other defensive military supplies.
"I can't tell you how quickly it will change things on the ground," Kerry said Sunday. "I can promise you that as soon as I return to Washington, I am going to press as hard as I can" to get it to the opposition within a matter of weeks.
"This has to happen quickly, it has to have an impact," he added.
The additional aid, which brings total nonlethal U.S. assistance to the opposition to $250 million since the fighting began more than two years ago, "underscores the United States' firm support for a political solution to the crisis in Syria and for the opposition's advancement of an inclusive, tolerant vision for a post-Assad Syria," Kerry said.
The U.S. pledge was the only tangible, public offer of new international support at the meeting of the foreign ministers of the 11 main countries supporting the opposition and fell well short of what the opposition has been appealing for: weapons and direct military intervention to stop the violence that has killed more than 70,000 people.
The Syrian National Coalition is seeking drone strikes on sites from which the regime has fired missiles, the imposition of no-fly zones and protected humanitarian corridors to ensure the safety of civilians.
With the exception of the United States, none of the participants offered new assistance, although European nations are considering changes to an arms embargo that would allow weapons transfers to the Syrian opposition.
Kerry ended the day in Brussels, where he plans talks with European officials and was to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of a NATO-Russia Council meeting. He has said he has not given up on persuading Moscow to reverse its support for Assad.
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By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials said they had intercepted a letter sent to Senator Roger Wicker that tested positive on Tuesday for the deadly poison ricin, and that the Capitol police, FBI and other agencies had launched an investigation.
The letter was postmarked from Memphis, Tennessee, and had no return address, Terrance Gaines, the Senate sergeant at arms, said in a warning to members of the Senate.
"Senate employees should be vigilant in their mail handling processes for ALL mailings," Gaines said in a written statement.
Members of the Senate were briefed on the ricin incident by Gaines during a meeting with FBI Director Robert Mueller and Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security, on Tuesday on the bombings in Boston.
Several senators told reporters after the briefing that incident reminded them of the anthrax attacks in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
The positive ricin test came one day after the explosions at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured 176.
"I don't know if it's a coincidence. It's too early to tell. We don't know enough about Boston," said Senator Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had been told the letter was addressed to Wicker, a Republican senator from Mississippi.
All mail to the Senate had been stopped, and post offices at the Capitol had been closed as a precaution, the senators said. They were getting in touch with their state offices, where mail is not subject to the same extensive screening, to ensure that precautions were being put in place.
Many senators expressed concern about their staffs and the risks to postal workers.
They said they were aware of only one letter that had been intercepted that tested positive for ricin.
It was not immediately clear whether Wicker had attended the briefing by Mueller and Napolitano that was open to all senators from both parties.
Wicker issued a statement saying only that the matter was being investigated and expressing gratitude for thoughts and prayers on his behalf.
"This matter is part of an ongoing investigation by the United States Capitol Police and FBI. I want to thank our law enforcement officials for their hard work and diligence in keeping those of us who work in the Capitol complex safe," he said in the statement.
PREVENTION SYSTEM WORKED
Wicker, a former member of the House of Representatives, has been a member of the Senate since he was first appointed to a vacant seat in December 2007. He won a special election to serve the remainder of that term, and was re-elected in November 2012 to a full six-year term.
Several senators noted that the system of mail screening, begun after the anthrax attacks, had worked.
"The bottom line is the process we have in place worked," said Claire McCaskill, a Democratic senator from Missouri. She said a suspect had been identified, and said it was someone who wrote to senators often.
Other officials could not immediately confirm that report.
Ricin is a lethal poison found naturally in castor beans. It can cause death from exposure to as little as a pinhead amount. Most victims die between 36 hours and 72 hours after exposure.
There was another ricin scare at the U.S. Capitol in 2004, when tests identified a letter in a Senate mail room that served the office of Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who was then the Senate Majority Leader.
The most famous case of ricin poisoning was in 1978 when dissident Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was killed after a passerby in London jabbed him with an umbrella that injected a tiny ricin-filled pellet.
In 2001, the Capitol was one target in a series of anthrax attacks that killed at least five people on the East Coast, including two Washington postal workers.
Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to the Washington offices of two senators and to news media outlets in New York and Florida.
(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai, David Lawder and Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Philip Barbara)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/letter-sent-senator-tested-positive-ricin-000130117.html
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