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Pages from the German newspaper Der Spiegel were leaked early, before a mass publication of thousands of secret cables by the whiste-blowing website.

 The documents also say that North Korean leader Kim Jong -il suffers from epilepsy, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi's full-time nurse is a "hot blond".

 The German Chancellor is referred to as Angela "Teflon" Merkel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is "driven by paranoia", the documents claim.

 US officials referred to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an "Alpha Male," while President Dmitry Medvedev is "afraid, hesitant."

 Der Spiegel also quoted the State Department as saying that President Barack Obama "prefers to look East rather than West," and "has no feelings for Europe".

 The leak came minutes after Wikileaks claimed that it was under cyber attack on Sunday ahead of the expected release of thousands of secret documents.

 On its Twitter feed Wikileaks said: "We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack."

 Wikileaks added that several newspapers would go ahead and publish secret United States documents even if the website crashed.

 The latest leak is expected to publish US embassy reports on other countries and the website said it would be bigger than recent leaks on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 The US state department has claimed that the release would put lives at risk but Mr Assange said America was afraid of being held to account.

 Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Speigel, The Guardian. and the New York Times are set to publish the material.

 Details of the documents were first released on Twitter after a member of the public in Germany purchases a copy of Der Spiegel which had been put on the news-stand too early.

 The Foreign Office condemned the leak of the State Department cables but insisted that it would not damage British-US relations.

 "We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK," a spokesman said.

 "They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the US have said, may put lives at risk.

 "We have a very strong relationship with the US Government. That will continue."

 British officials fear that the confidential cables will reveal details of a secret operation to disrupt Iranian smuggling of nuclear materials through the Gulf and Turkey.

 Officials involved in overseeing British policy in the region say that diplomatic materials compiled between 2008 and 2010 on Iran contained sensational information that could jeopardise efforts to disrupt the nuclear programme if unveiled on WikiLeaks.

 The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's "close relationship" with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, is also said to be among WikiLeaks documents due to be released.

 Mr Berlusconi has been friends with former KGB agent Mr Putin, for more than five years and the two have held numerous bilateral meetings as well as entertained each other on holiday.

 Of concern to Washington was said to be the deal between Italian energy firm ENI and Russian gas giant Gazprom, over the South Stream pipeline as well as the "very cordial relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Berlusconi". ||||| The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:

 ¶ A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

 ¶ Thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would “help salve” China’s “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” that is in a “benign alliance” with the United States.

 ¶ Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”

 ¶ Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When one of Afghanistan’s two vice presidents visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money “a significant amount” that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, “was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.” (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)

 ¶ A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.

 ¶ Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the “worst in the region” in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar’s security service was “hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals,” the cable said.

 ¶ An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including “lavish gifts,” lucrative energy contracts and a “shadowy” Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi “appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin” in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoyed supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he was undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignored his edicts.

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 ¶ Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States’ failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send “new” arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.

 ¶ Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”

 The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked “top secret,” the government’s most secure communications status. But some 11,000 are classified “secret,” 9,000 are labeled “noforn,” shorthand for material considered too delicate to be shared with any foreign government, and 4,000 are designated both secret and noforn.

 Many more cables name diplomats’ confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: “Please protect” or “Strictly protect.”

 The Times, after consultations with the State Department, has withheld from articles and removed from documents it is posting online the names of some people who spoke privately to diplomats and might be at risk if they were publicly identified. The Times is also withholding some passages or entire cables whose disclosure could compromise American intelligence efforts. While the White House said it anticipated WikiLeaks would make public “several hundred thousand” cables Sunday night, the organization posted only 220 released and redacted by The Times and several European publications.

 The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States’ relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.

 They show officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon — and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.

 Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details.

 For instance, it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government has sought to cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. But a cable’s fly-on-the-wall account of a January meeting between the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, is breathtaking.

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 “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting one of Yemen’s deputy prime ministers to “joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament” that Yemen had carried out the strikes.

 Mr. Saleh, who at other times resisted American counterterrorism requests, was in a lighthearted mood. The authoritarian ruler of a conservative Muslim country, Mr. Saleh complains of smuggling from nearby Djibouti, but tells General Petraeus that his concerns are drugs and weapons, not whiskey, “provided it’s good whiskey.”

 Likewise, press reports detailed the unhappiness of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he was not permitted to set up his tent in Manhattan or to visit ground zero during a United Nations session last year.

 But the cables add a touch of scandal and alarm to the tale. They describe the volatile Libyan leader as rarely without the companionship of “his senior Ukrainian nurse,” described as “a voluptuous blonde.” They reveal that Colonel Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he balked at carrying out a promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia. The American ambassador to Libya told Colonel Qaddafi’s son “that the Libyan government had chosen a very dangerous venue to express its pique,” a cable reported to Washington.

 The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.

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 Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.” The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body.”

 The American ambassador to Eritrea reported last year that “Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying” in denying that they were supporting the Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia. The cable then mused about which seemed more likely.

 As he left Zimbabwe in 2007 after three years as ambassador, Christopher W. Dell wrote a sardonic account of Robert Mugabe, that country’s aging and erratic leader. The cable called him “a brilliant tactician” but mocked “his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics).”

 The possibility that a large number of diplomatic cables might become public has been discussed in government and media circles since May. That was when, in an online chat, an Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, described having downloaded from a military computer system many classified documents, including “260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world.” In an online discussion with Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, Private Manning said he had delivered the cables and other documents to WikiLeaks.

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 Mr. Lamo reported Private Manning’s disclosures to federal authorities, and Private Manning was arrested. He has been charged with illegally leaking classified information and faces a possible court-martial and, if convicted, a lengthy prison term.

 In July and October, The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel published articles based on documents about Afghanistan and Iraq. Those collections were placed online by WikiLeaks, with selective redactions of the Afghan documents and much heavier redactions of the Iraq reports.

 Fodder for Historians

 Traditionally, most diplomatic cables remain secret for decades, providing fodder for historians only when the participants are long retired or dead. The State Department’s unclassified history series, titled “Foreign Relations of the United States,” has reached only 1976.

 While an overwhelming majority of the quarter-million cables provided to The Times are from the post-9/11 era, several hundred date from 1966 to the 1990s. Some show diplomats struggling to make sense of major events whose future course they could not guess.

 In a 1979 cable to Washington, Bruce Laingen, an American diplomat in Tehran, mused with a knowing tone about the Iranian revolution that had just occurred: “Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism,” Mr. Laingen wrote, offering tips on exploiting this psyche in negotiations with the new government. Less than three months later, Mr. Laingen and his colleagues would be taken hostage by radical Iranian students, hurling the Carter administration into crisis and, perhaps, demonstrating the hazards of diplomatic hubris.

 In 1989, an American diplomat in Panama City mulled over the options open to Gen. Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader, who was facing narcotics charges in the United States and intense domestic and international political pressure to step down. The cable called General Noriega “a master of survival”; its author appeared to have no inkling that one week later, the United States would invade Panama to unseat General Noriega and arrest him.

 In 1990, an American diplomat sent an excited dispatch from Cape Town: he had just learned from a lawyer for Nelson Mandela that Mr. Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment was to end. The cable conveys the momentous changes about to begin for South Africa, even as it discusses preparations for an impending visit from the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.

 The voluminous traffic of more recent years — well over half of the quarter-million cables date from 2007 or later — show American officials struggling with events whose outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world.

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 In an era of satellites and fiber-optic links, the cable retains the archaic name of an earlier technological era. It has long been the tool for the secretary of state to send orders to the field and for ambassadors and political officers to send their analyses to Washington.

 The cables have their own lexicon: “codel,” for a Congressional delegation; “visas viper,” for a report on a person considered dangerous; “démarche,” an official message to a foreign government, often a protest or warning.

 But the drama in the cables often comes from diplomats’ narratives of meetings with foreign figures, games of diplomatic poker in which each side is sizing up the other and neither is showing all its cards.

 Among the most fascinating examples recount American officials’ meetings in September 2009 and February 2010 with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan president and a power broker in the Taliban’s home turf of Kandahar.

 They describe Mr. Karzai, “dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez,” the traditional dress of loose tunic and trousers, appearing “nervous, though eager to express his views on the international presence in Kandahar,” and trying to win over the Americans with nostalgic tales about his years running a Chicago restaurant near Wrigley Field.

 But in midnarrative there is a stark alert for anyone reading the cable in Washington: “Note: While we must deal with AWK as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker.” (Mr. Karzai has denied such charges.) And the cables note statements by Mr. Karzai that the Americans, informed by a steady flow of eavesdropping and agents’ reports, believe to be false.

 A cable written after the February meeting coolly took note of the deceit on both sides.

 Mr. Karzai “demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs,” the cable said. “He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities. We will need to monitor his activity closely, and deliver a recurring, transparent message to him” about the limits of American tolerance.

 Not All Business

 Even in places far from war zones and international crises, where the stakes for the United States are not as high, curious diplomats can turn out to be accomplished reporters, sending vivid dispatches to deepen the government’s understanding of exotic places.

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 In a 2006 account, a wide-eyed American diplomat describes the lavish wedding of a well-connected couple in Dagestan, in Russia’s Caucasus, where one guest is the strongman who runs the war-ravaged Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

 The diplomat tells of drunken guests throwing $100 bills at child dancers, and nighttime water-scooter jaunts on the Caspian Sea.

 “The dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones,” the diplomat wrote. The host later tells him that Ramzan Kadyrov “had brought the happy couple ‘a five-kilo lump of gold’ as his wedding present.”

 “After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya,” the diplomat reported to Washington. “We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, ‘Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.’ ” |||||

– The Obama administration’s last-ditch attempt to stop WikiLeaks from releasing its latest batch of documents didn’t work: More than a quarter-million American diplomatic cables will be made public beginning today, and the New York Times has already seen some of them. It offers a preview of what the cables reveal: A standoff between the US and Pakistan over nuclear fuel, dating back to 2007 when the US began attempting to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor since it could be used in a nuclear device. Discussions between America and South Korea over what would happen if North Korea implodes and the Koreas are unified. Suspicions of Afghan government corruption, based on the fact that Afghanistan’s VP was found with $52 million in cash on a visit to the United Arab Emirates last year, and was never required to disclose where he got it or what it was for. A coordinated campaign by the Chinese government and other experts to hack Google’s systems in that country. They have also broken into other systems including American government and business computers. A close relationship between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, including gifts exchanged and energy contracts. Berlusconi is once called “the mouthpiece of Putin” in Europe. Click here for the full article, which gives an extensive preview, or click here for more from the Telegraph, which discloses that the US once referred to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "Hitler."


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– Mitt Romney has been doing his opponent some serious favors during his trip to London. He's managed to offend the British public with remarks about Olympic preparedness, prompting a witty comeback from David Cameron. He let slip that he'd met with the boss of MI6. And he called the leader of the opposition Labor party "Mr. Leader," not the norm in the UK. It's "almost too embarrassing" to compare Candidate Obama's Europe trip with Romney's, writes Nicholas Watt in the Guardian. "Obama wooed a quarter of a million people in Berlin while Romney was mocked by the British prime minister," Watt notes. Here's a tip for the candidate: "Try not to offend your host, particularly when he is the leader of your closest sister party in a country that is meant to enjoy a 'special relationship' with the US." Another Romney gaffe, picked up by Gawker: He said he was looking "out of the backside of 10 Downing Street," which sounds even worse in Britain than it does in the States.

Americans have gone to England and been pancaked by London black cabs because they looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Americans have unluckily picked seven-day stretches of rain for their week's vacation in the sceptered isle. But Mitt Romney might be having the worst English vacation since Harald Hardråde's, and his is only two days old.

 Even if you feel neutrally about Romney, it's impossible to escape the sensation that he believes Basic Competence murdered his family and that he must have his revenge against it. Things are so bad that any second now Matt Drudge might run a link claiming that Romney's VP pick will actually be a fully Weekend at Bernies'd Ronald Reagan.

 That said, it's kind of nice to know that even when rich people go on vacation, it can still be a giant headache, like it is for the rest of us. Because that's what this is—a vacation.

 Though his campaign bills Romney's overseas trip as a foreign policy junket, it's far less than that. Romney has pledged to honor the American tradition that politics end at the nation's borders, so that eliminates a lot substantive commentary. He also has almost nothing to say about foreign policy even when he's off the leash.

 Mitt's policy is, "I'm different." He opposes Obama's withdrawal plan from Afghanistan, but he won't offer one of his own. His "alternate" plans for Libya and Syria are similar mysteries. He says he'd do "the opposite" of what Obama's done in Israel, but apart from some ineffectual shaming language about settlements, Obama's as much in the AIPAC tank as anyone else.

 Much of his policy can be inferred from his book title, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, which echoes his fabricated attack that Obama is ashamed of America and constantly seeks the world's pardon for it. Obama is a mewling Carterite; Romney fears nothing. He needs no excuse. Perhaps he might like one for this, which appeared in I Don't Care, Mom: You Can Make Me Say Sorry, But I Won't Mean It:

 England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions.

 Fortunately, as of Friday morning, the English press hadn't erupted in outrage over those comments. Unfortunately, all Romney could really accomplish on this trip was look informed and presidential, and he did neither. The English press had so much to roast him with that his trip looked more like a script for The Thick of It that Armando Iannucci wadded up and threw in the trash because it seemed "too fucktarded."

 It's not clear whether Romney's Baedeker is out of date or if his guide to England is The Lonely Planet: Kolob. But the highlights are hilarious. Click here to get in the right frame of mind, strap the dog to the roof, and let's hop in the Wagon Queen Family Truckster:

 In an interview with Brian Williams, Romney questioned Britons' enthusiasm for the Olympics, asking, ""Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? [That's] something which we only find out once the Games actually begin." This led London Mayor Boris "THE ROCK" Johnson to fire up a crowd by going for cheap pops. "I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready," he said. "Are we ready?" The crowd cheered wildly. Then Johnson asked if the crowd smelled what he was cooking and urged Romney to check out of the five-star hotel where he was staying and holding fundraisers with the LIBOR-fixers who defrauded the world and instead check di-rect-ly into the Smackdown Hotel (in Penge). He then spent the rest of the speech just calling Romney "that jabroni." Everything after "Are we ready?" might be made up, but that's the price you pay for watching THE MOST ELECTRIFYING MAYOR IN BRITS' ENTERTAINMENT.

 Romney described some of Britain's preparation as "disconcerting," citing rumors of a strike and "the private security firm not having enough people." This is the sort of gaffe that, if made by a Democrat, would see Republican pundits screaming DANGER! DANGER!, because suddenly a security shortfall was being broadcast to OUR ENEMIES, THE ISLAMOFASCIST OLYMPIC BOMB-SHOTPUTTING TEAM. Instead, British PM David Cameron explained some of the inevitable planning hitches while calling Romney out on his record of running the 2002 Winter Olympics in a metro area of 12 million fewer people, unencumbered by the traffic and historical development restrictions of a city roughly 2,000 years old. "We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world," Cameron said. "Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic games in the middle of nowhere." The zinger was almost savage, considering Cameron usually has the wit and agility of a haircut stapled to a pair of trousers.

 Romney talked about "[looking] out of the backside of 10 Downing Street." While "backside" has the same buttock connotation in the United States, in England the spacial/location aspect of the term would have taken a distant second place. Basically, the first assumption the natives would have had, upon hearing it, was to think Romney said he was staring out of Downing Street's asshole. Whether they interpreted that to refer to David Cameron depends on party affiliation.

 Lastly, Romney mentioned meeting with the head of MI6, whose schedule is very rarely reported. British overseas intelligence is far more opaque than America's, to the extent that the existence of MI6 wasn't even officially acknowledged by perfidious Albion until the 1990s. An American analogue might be Tony Blair coming to the states in 2002 and saying he had a lovely lunch with Dick Cheney at his undisclosed location. Anybody could then check Blair's schedule and see that from noon to 1:30 he was scheduled to "spend time walking around that abandoned North Dakota missile silo the Cigarette Smoking Man trapped Krycek and the black oil in."

 Romney even had time to send unfavorable signals back to the United States. In the same Brian Williams interview, Mitt said that he wouldn't watch the Olympic performance of his wife's six- or seven-figure dressage horse Rafalca (one whose future earnings could net the family $77,000 in tax breaks). Perhaps owning a horse whose purchase price might have been equivalent to the median price of roughly four new American homes defines "out of touch." But turning around and showing utter disinterest in the same fabulously expensive thing seems even worse. Sure, go ahead and own something whose cost is obscene, but at least appreciate it. If you're going to own a horse worth more than many of your fellow Americans, do them a solid and act like you fucking enjoy the experience. It's like Romney bought a vintage Ferrari, decided owning a million-dollar car looked bad and said, "I don't drive it. I gave it to my dumbfuck nephew." Then you Google the nephew's name, and he looks just like Matthew Lillard.

 Still, it wasn't all bad! Mitt and his bodyguard found Romney Road. One assumes it's a traffic-restricted private roadway zoned only for palanquins, but the picture is nice. And the good news for comedy fans is that Mitt could continue this Bataan Clown March so intensely that his first two days pale in comparison. Think of the possibilities (including his trips to Poland and Israel):

 Loudly complaining in the Olympic stadium that his chair is too low and he needs a Stone of Scone to sit on so he can see better.

 Cheerfully greeting every woman named "Laurie" by asking how much junk she's hauling around behind her.

 Driving on the right side of the road and mowing down gruel-stained orphans one after another after another.

 Refusing to release the forms he filed to get his VAT back on exiting the country.

 Congratulating England on being a country where every fag "gets smoked."

 Screaming at some kids in an elevator that they should just lift themselves up by their bootstraps.

 Insisting on blasting "Ride of the Valkyries" out of his helicopter as it comes in to land in Tel Aviv.

 Moving his lips and making noise even when Sheldon Adelson is drinking a glass of water.

 Flipping a coin at Polish President Bronisław Komorowski and saying, "Your country's still a little bombed-out. How about you buy yourself some vowels and a clue?"

 This could be fun. There's no reason not to have these kinds of high aspirations for a man who inspired the normally loathsome John Podhoretz to tweet that he was "like Mr. Bean, only he's an American."

 And, look, maybe this seems a little mean-spirited, like piling on. Mitt has these periods of wealthy-guy boobery that make you want to feel sorry for him. Sometimes it seems like the poor twit can't help it. Then, sadly, there are all those times it's unmistakable that he can.

 Because it was one of Romney's advisors—someone for whom he is responsible, both as the leader of his campaign and the quadrennial high priest of the GOP Leadership Cult—who anonymously said that Obama did not appreciate the U.S. and Great Britain's shared Anglo-Saxon heritage.

 Maybe you want to streeeeeeeeetch and say that the advisor referred to the neocon dream of a global-security "anglosphere" community of nations. But the Romney campaign knows full well exactly how this kind of commentary resonates and with whom, and this is how Mitt Romney relentlessly drives away sympathy. He might be bumbling around Piccadilly Circus looking for the elephant show, but his campaign is efficiently casting Obama in the role of "the other." He can be the Kenyan anti-colonialist other (who did the Kenyans rebel against?—gasp—BRITAIN!), or he can just be un-American.

 Regardless, the president who doesn't share our Anglo-Saxon values also just happens to be the first black president. Sure, he's half-white, and his mother's maiden name is hardly uncommon in the land of Angles and Saxons, but whatever. Not appreciating "the shared history we have" excludes Obama beautifully. As one famous Englishman once said, "Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink."

 Say no more.

 [Image: Getty] ||||| If Barack Obama were dreaming up the ideal start to Mitt Romney's first overseas visit as the presumptive Republican nominee, the president might wonder whether his rival could offend the US's historic transatlantic ally.

 That would obviously be rejected as impossibly ambitious, so the president might then ask himself whether Romney would fail to remember the name of one of his hosts in London.

 Surely a successful businessman would never make such a basic error. So the president would wonder whether Romney would breach convention by saying in public that he met the head of MI6, Britain's overseas intelligence agency.

 To the undoubted joy of the White House, Romney stumbled on all those fronts in London on Thursday, the first day of his visit to three of the US's closest allies - Britain, Israel and Poland.

 Downing Street, which had gone to great lengths to give Romney the red carpet treatment without breaching strict protocol rules, was astonished when he questioned whether London was capable of running a successful Olympics. In an interview with NBC after his arrival in London, Romney said it was "disconcerting" that the Olympics organizers had encountered difficulties over security. One Whitehall source described Romney's remarks as a "total shocker" that had rendered officials "speechless".

 David Cameron wasted no time in delivering a carefully calibrated put down. During a visit to the Olympic Park, the prime minister said Britain was delivering the games in a bustling city. "Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere," the prime minister said in a none too subtle reference to the 2002 Salt Lake City games famously rescued by Romney.

 Cameron made clear his irritation when he met Romney later in the day for 45 minutes of talks at No 10. As he emerged from the famous front door – alone to avoid breaching protocol – Romney gave a clue as to why he had stumbled. He reeled off a list of countries he had discussed with Cameron but declined to spell out his thinking in foreign policy on the grounds that only a sitting President should pronounce on overseas soil.

 These remarks showed that Romney had absorbed lesson number one of overseas trips that has no doubt been drilled into him by his foreign policy advisers - do not criticize the president when you are out of the US. Sadly for Romney, he forgot an even more important lesson that is so obvious his advisers had probably not bothered to spell it out: try not to offend your host, particularly when he is the leader of your closest sister party in a country that is meant to enjoy a "special relationship" with the US.

 The comparisons with Romney's trip to Europe and Obama's visit at almost exactly the same stage in the electoral cycle four years ago are almost too embarrassing to mention. Obama wooed a quarter of a million people in Berlin while Romney was mocked by the British prime minister.

 Romney will no doubt be hoping that his faux pas will be remembered as an amusing blip in the Anglo-American special relationship which has undergone a turbulent decade as a left-of-center prime minister embraced a right wing president.

 It will not have escaped the attention of Romney that Ed Miliband, a relatively left wing leader of the Labour party, was the most relaxed person of the day when he was referred to as "Mr Leader". Aides said they forgave Romney because US politicians always refer to fellow leaders by their job title. |||||


SANTIAGO A 14-year old Chilean girl with cystic fibrosis has asked to be allowed to die in a film she made pleading with President Michelle Bachelet to authorize her euthanasia.

 In a video that news media said had been uploaded to her Facebook page on Sunday, Valentina Maureira said from her hospital bed: "I am asking to speak urgently to the president because I am tired of living with this sickness and she can authorize the injection to put me to sleep forever."

 Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition that affects the lungs and other organs.

 Maureira's brother had died of the disease, her father, Freddy Maureira, told local Radio Bio Bio.

 "She has already had five operations ... which have caused her a lot of suffering and pain," he said. "It was promised that things would get better, but for her it was worse."

 The video had surprised him, he added.

 A spokeswoman from the Universidad Catolica clinic in Santiago confirmed that Valentina Maureira was a patient at the hospital and said she was stable, with no immediately life-threatening conditions.

 Government spokesman Alvaro Elizalde said on Thursday that the health ministry was in contact with the family to ensure Maureira was receiving the psychological and medical treatment she needed, but ruled out euthanasia as an option.

 "We have to be completely clear, the current norm, the current law in Chile does not allow the government to agree to a request of this nature," he said.

 In Chile, as in many countries, euthanasia is against the law. The Catholic Church retains a strong influence on society, and the country is one of a handful to ban abortion under any circumstances.

 Center-left Bachelet, who is a year into her second term, has introduced reforms, including a bill being debated in Congress that would relax the abortion law. These have angered conservatives.

 Bachelet's agenda has not mentioned euthanasia.

 (Reporting by Rosalba O'Brien and Fabian Cambero; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Howard Goller) ||||| Story highlights 14-year-old Valentina Maureira suffers from cystic fibrosis

 In a video, she asks the President to allow her to have an assisted suicide

 (CNN) A Chilean girl's plea via social media for an assisted suicide caught the attention of the person the teen thinks could make it happen: President Michelle Bachelet.

 Bachelet visited 14-year-old Valentina Maureira on Saturday after the girl's video went viral and spurred debate in Chile about euthanasia.

 Valentina was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was 6. Her older brother died from the same disease.

 Cystic fibrosis is a life-threatening disease that damages the lungs and digestive system. Valentina's family has already witnessed how the disease can be terminal.

 Valentina's suffering includes vomiting and headaches that are constant, according to her father, Freddy Maureira.

 Read More |||||

Write a summary.

– Valentina Maureira's brother died from cystic fibrosis when he was 6. The 14-year-old has the same inherited disease and was told she has a life expectancy of 17, reports CNN. Except Valentina doesn't want to live that long. The Chilean teen posted a now-viral video to Facebook late last month, a plea to President Michelle Bachelet that she be allowed to end her life. "I am tired of living with this sickness," which causes damage to the lungs and digestive system, Valentina explains. "Please authorize an injection so I can sleep forever." But a rep for Bachelet on Thursday explained "it's impossible to grant her wish" due to Chilean law, which bars euthanasia and doesn't allow a government official to circumvent that. Still, the president herself, who is also a pediatrician, did visit Valentina for more than an hour last week; the two posed for a selfie. The president's rep explained "we will provide all the emotional and psychological support and medical treatment to improve her living conditions." As for her medical condition, the Universidad Catolica clinic in Santiago describes it as stable and notes she is not facing, as Reuters puts it, any "immediately life-threatening conditions." But her father described a painful existence: "She has already had five operations ... which have caused her a lot of suffering. It was promised that things would get better, but for her it was worse." She suffers from persistent headaches and vomiting as well. In an interview with the AP, he says he "cried through the night" after learning what Valentina wanted, "but I have to respect her decision because she's the one who's suffering this illness." (One country has made euthanasia legal for kids.)


Write an article based on this summary:

– Violence comes naturally to humans, but we are far less murderous than we used to be, a new study shows. Scientists in Spain who examined the tendency among more than 1,000 mammal species to kill their own found that humans have been "particularly violent" throughout our history, reports the AP. Early humans killed each other at a rate of about 20 in 1,000, but got more violent during the Middle Ages when the rate shot up to 120 in 1,000. After studying 600 human populations from the Stone Age to the present day, the researchers concluded that "lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history but not carved in stone in ‘our genes,’” lead author Jose Maria Gomez tells the Guardian. Levels of violence are influenced by societal pressures and have "decreased significantly in the contemporary age," says Gomez. Still, the study published in the journal Nature found modern humans to be pretty dangerous, killing each other at a rate of about 13 in 1,000. At least we're not the worst. That title goes to, surprise, the meerkat. "Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their peers," Ed Yong writes in the Atlantic. The meerkats were followed by two types of monkeys and assorted lemurs. The New Zealand sea lion, long-tailed marmot, lion, branded mongoose, and grey wolf round out the top 11. Not surprisingly, violence was more common among mammals who share territory than among loners like bats and whales. "Our study suggests that the level of lethal violence is reversible and can increase or decrease as a consequence of some ecological, social, or cultural factors," says Gomez. (A study found early humans may have killed off real-life hobbits.)

Although it’s unclear whether genetics or other factors are responsible, new study suggests that lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history

 Humans are predisposed to murder each other, new research suggests, although it remains unclear if it’s down to genetics or other factors.

 Researchers from Spain have found that a tendency to bump off members of the same species is particularly common among primates, and have estimated that around 2% of human deaths at the origin of our species were down to such lethal spats.

 “What it is saying, in the broadest terms, is that humans have evolved strategies for solving problems with violence,” said Mark Pagel, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the research.

 But, the authors add, the impact of society can greatly modify how aggressive humans are, with the proportion of human deaths due to people fighting between themselves fluctuating over mankind’s history.

 “Lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history but not carved in stone in ‘our genes’,” said José María Gómez, first author of the study from the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (EEZA) in Spain. “At least to some extent, the way humans organise in societies influences our levels of lethal violence.”

 The question of human violence has puzzled thinkers for centuries, from Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, to contemporary psychologists such as Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker, the Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature.

 Pinker has previously argued that humans engage in lethal violence as a “natural condition,” but that deaths from such violence have decreased with the rise of modern societies with sophisticated institutions and laws. But the idea has proved controversial.

 The new research is likely to add further fuel to the debate.

 Writing in the journal Nature, the team of researchers from four Spanish institutions sought to unpick the evolutionary contribution to lethal human violence by looking at how commonly a range of different mammals kill members of the same species.

 To do so, they examined the evolutionary family tree of mammals, looking at data from more than 1,020 species, as well as 600 human populations stretching as far back in time as the Stone Age, drawing on evidence from human remains found in archaeological excavations.

 For each species of mammal, the team looked at the proportion of deaths that were down to violence between members of the same species. The findings showed that such lethal violence is more common in some mammals, such as primates, than in others, such as bats or whales, and is more common among mammals that exhibit social and territorial behaviour that those that go it alone.

 Using statistical models, the researchers then estimated the likely levels of such lethal violence for evolutionary ancestors at various points in the family tree of mammals.

 The results revealed that for the ancestor of all mammals, around 1 in every 300 deaths was down to lethal violence between members of the same species. But, the authors note, for evolutionary ancestors of the primates and apes, the figures were higher.

 Around 1.8% of deaths are thought to have been down to lethal violence for the ancestor of the great apes, and around 2% for the first humans - a figure more than six times higher than at the origin of mammals.

 “We cannot tell that 2% of violence is due to genetic factors,” said Gómez. “Not only genes are inherited from ancestors, also environmental conditions and ecological constraints. Those are also probably influencing the human lethal violence in our evolutionary past.”

 But Pagel believes it is important to emphasise that genetic adaptations could be at play. “Humans emerged from a very long lineage of species - great apes and before them the primates - that all expressed relatively high levels of lethal violence,” he said. “When you immerse an animal in a particular environment, it evolves genetic-based strategies for dealing with that environment. There is good reason to believe this reflects a real genetic or innate tendency to solve problems with violence.”

 The research also shows that, according to observed evidence, levels of lethal violence among humans have fluctuated over time. While the figure was around 2% for prehistoric man, matching the expected level from the calculations, the proportion of deaths down to such violence rose during other eras such as the iron age and the post-classic period (around 800-500 years ago), falling in contemporary times to below 2%.

 “From the empirical figure of 2% of deaths by lethal violence in primitive hunter-gatherers, different historical times have had different levels of lethal violence,” said Gómez.

 Pinker told the Guardian the new research is impressive and supports his views that humans have a natural tendency to engage in lethal violence, that rates of such violence were high in prehistoric societies and are higher in tribes and chiefdoms than hunter-gatherer bands, and that such impulses are dampened in modern societies. “Though I made all these points in The Better Angels of Our Nature in 2011, [the authors] have demonstrated them with much greater precision, rigour, and depth,” he said.

 But Douglas Fry of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US, disagreed, saying that: “Gómez and colleagues demonstrate that recent assertions by Steven Pinker and others that violent death in the Paleolithic was shockingly high are greatly exaggerated. To the contrary, the findings show that social organization is critically important in affecting human violence.”

 Gómez says the research highlights the control humans have over their situation in life and death. “The main message of our study is that no matter how violent or pacific we were in the origin, we can modulate the level of interpersonal violence by changing our social environment,”he said. “We can build a more pacific society if we wish.” ||||| FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2016 file photo, the sister, nieces and nephews of slain Rev. Jose Alfredo Suarez de la Cruz grieve as they watch his casket lower into the floor inside Our Lady of Asuncion Church... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2016 file photo, the sister, nieces and nephews of slain Rev. Jose Alfredo Suarez de la Cruz grieve as they watch his casket lower into the floor inside Our Lady of Asuncion Church in Paso Blanco, Veracruz state, Mexico. Mourners packed the church for the funeral Mass in memory... (Associated Press)

 WASHINGTON (AP) — Evolution and genetics seem to have baked a certain amount of murder into humans as a species, but civilization has tamed some of the savage beast in us, according to a new study.

 Scientists calculated the rate at which more than 1,000 mammal species kill their own kind, and noticed how closely related species have similar rates of lethal violence. They essentially found that where a species is on evolutionary tree of life tells a lot about how violent the species is to its own kind. And we're in a rough neighborhood.

 Humans are "in a position within a particularly violent mammalian clade, in which violence seems to have been ancestrally present," the study in the journal Nature says. That means that based on other rather murderous species closely related to us, humans have "inherited their propensity for violence."

 As a group, mammals average a lethal violence rate against their own of about three killings of their own species in 1,000 deaths. The "root" violence rate of early humans and many of our closer primate cousins is about 20 in 1,000, said study lead author Jose Maria Gomez at the University of Granada in Spain. But in the medieval period, between 700 and 1500 A.D., that deadly rate shot up to about 120 per 1000.

 But we've gotten less murderous.

 On average, modern humans now kill each on a rate of 13 in 1000, Gomez said, basing his calculations on World Health Organization data. But he says the exact numbers are rough and depend on many technical variables, so what is more accurate is to say "violence has decreased significantly in the contemporary age."

 "It seems that we are in the present time less violent than we were in the past," Gomez said in an email interview.

 While humans are killing each other less than we once did, we are not nearly as peaceful as the killer whale — which despite the name, has a rate of interpersonal violence of pretty much zero (though Gomez notes that only a small sample of killer whales was examined). Many whale species, bats and anteaters are particularly peaceful to their own kind, the study finds.

 But humans are far less violent than the cougar, certain baboons, lemurs and chinchillas that have murder rates of well over 100 per 1,000.

 The study looks at violence through the lens of phylogenetics — the study of evolutionary relationships, or how closely related species seem to share common traits.

 "We found that closely related mammal species tend to have similar levels of violence," Gomez said. The more closely related species are, the more similar are their violence levels.

 Gomez and colleagues used 1,044 studies that looked at 1,024 different mammal species, with the causes of death determined for more than 4 million individual mammals. Then for each species, the researchers counted the number of deaths due to a member of the species killing another. They didn't use studies where they couldn't find causes of death. And because of the study's historical nature, Gomez could only examine killings, not wounding.

 Moving up in evolutionary complexity often seems a walk on the wild side, especially in the branches of the tree of life where humans come from.

 If mammals have a three in 1,000 violence rate, a superorder of species called Euarchontogilires that includes our ancestors, hares, and rodents has a violence rate of about 11 in 1000. Further on, the large grouping called Euarchonta that includes us, other primates, tree shrews and flying lemurs has a rate of about 23 per 1,000. It drops to about 18 for great apes.

 It was hard to calculate lethal violence rates for early humans; Gomez examined several thousand prehistoric people's deaths across the globe in archaeological sites.

 Culture, government and other factors tamp down the inherited violence, Gomez and colleagues conclude.

 "Our study suggests that the level of lethal violence is reversible and can increase or decrease as a consequence of some ecological, social or cultural factors," Gomez said.

 These conclusions are similar to what Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker found in his book "The Better Angels of Our Nature." He charted long-term reductions in war, murder, rape and bigotry.

 Pinker praised the Gomez study as creative and thorough.

 "Based on three biological facts — we are apes, we are social and we are territorial — one would predict that humans should engage in lethal violence in our natural conditions," Pinker wrote in an email. "Modern societies have developed, especially the rule of law, that have reduced rates of lethal violence below what would expect for a mammal with our ancestry and ecology."

 Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who studies the roots of violence, praised the breadth Gomez study, but said there some issues remain. He's especially concerned about too closely linking primates killing their own, which is more the murdering of infants, to humans whose killing their own mostly involves adults.

 Few species beyond humans and some social territorial carnivores like wolves and lions are part of the "adult-killing club" of their own species, Wrangham said. "Humans really are exceptional."

 ___

 Online:

 Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

 ___

 Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears and his work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/seth-borenstein |||||


News article:

An apartment building is pictured where a 25-year old woman from Colorado, United States, has been found dead in Vienna, Austria,Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The woman's body was found in her apartment after... (Associated Press)

 VIENNA (AP) — Austrian police say an autopsy has not revealed the cause of death of a 25-year old woman from Colorado whose body was found in her Vienna apartment.

 Police spokesman Thomas Keiblinger said Thursday that investigators are now awaiting the results of toxicological tests over the next few days.

 U.S. authorities have identified her as Lauren Mann.

 Police and firefighters who forced open her door Tuesday evening found the half-naked body on a mattress in the bedroom. Mann had been working as an au pair, and police were alerted by Mann's employer after she did not show up for work.

 Mann graduated in 2012 from the University of Colorado-Boulder's College of Music. ||||| Police have concluded that a Colorado woman who was found dead in Vienna this week had died from suffocation.

 Lauren Mann, 25, had been living in the Austrian capital and was working as an au pair, or nanny, for a local family. She was found dead in a pool of blood on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in her apartment, according to Vienna police. Her body was half-undressed, according to Thomas Keiblinger, a Vienna police spokesperson.

 Today, the city's prosecutor Nina Bussek told ABC News that Mann had suffocated. Investigators have not yet determined if someone else was involved in her death.

 Keiblinger previously told ABC News that a preliminary autopsy showed Mann has not been stabbed or strangled and there were no external wounds on her body.

 There are no suspects or arrests at this time, according to police. Officers have been in contact with Mann's friends.

 Lauren Mann/Facebook

 The family for whom Mann worked said in an interview that Mann was "very reliable, trusted, caring and socially active." Family members became concerned when one of their children was not picked up from school on Monday.

 Mann's neighbor Peter Kratochwill told ABC News it was "extraordinary" for something like this to happen in "a neighborhood that is so quiet and safe."

 The U.S. Embassy in Vienna is providing consular assistance.

 ABC News' Louise Dewast contributed to this report. ||||| VIENNA -- Austrian police told CBS News on Thursday that a 25-year old Colorado woman whose half-naked body was found in her Vienna apartment was not strangled, shot or stabbed, but they could not yet rule out homicide.

 The autopsy, which allowed investigators to rule out those three potential methods of attack, was nonetheless "inconclusive,"officials said.

 Vienna police spokesman Thomas Keiblinger told CBS News the results of a toxicology report were not expected for at least a week, possibly two, and the cause of her death was still under investigation.

 Keiblinger said Wednesday the woman's body was found after she did not show up at the home where she worked as an au pair and her employer called police.

 The U.S. government has identified her as Lauren Mann.

 Speaking Wednesday on Austrian television, Keiblinger said "so far, this case must be treated as a murder because a third-party responsibility can't be excluded."

 Police and firefighters who forced open her door Tuesday evening found the half-naked body on a mattress in the bedroom.

 Mann graduated in 2012 from the University of Colorado-Boulder's College of Music. Spokesman Ryan Huff says the university was saddened by news of her death. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

 / Updated By Andy Eckardt and Cassandra Vinograd

 MAINZ, Germany - An American nanny whose half-naked body was found in her Vienna apartment died of "suffocation," police in Austria said Thursday.

 Lauren Mann, 25, was found at her home in the city Tuesday night.

 Police are still treating the case as homicide "because third party involvement cannot be excluded," a spokesman told NBC News.

 A "considerable" amount of blood was found at the scene though an initial autopsy failed to determine cause of death.

 A final autopsy showed that she died of "suffocation," police said Thursday, adding that the case has been handed to the Vienna prosecutor's office.

 A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office would only say that the "investigation is ongoing and we will need to wait for results."

 American authorities are assisting in the investigation, according to the U.S. State Department.

 Toxicology testing has been ordered, though final results "could take up to a couple of weeks," police spokesman Thomas Keiblinger told NBC News.

 He said "no specific suspect" was being investigated, adding that police have been speaking to Mann's neighbors and friends.

 She had been living in Vienna for several years, working as an au pair while studying.

 She grew up in the small Colorado town of Paonia and graduated from the University Of Colorado-Boulder in 2012, according to NBC station KKCO.

 Paonia resident Lisa Heinritz said Mann had taken dance lessons with her daughter as a child.

 "She always seemed like a really happy little girl and had a lot of friends," Heinritz told KKCO. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Officials have released a name in the case of the American nanny found dead in her Vienna, Austria, apartment on Tuesday night, but beyond that, much remains unclear. ABC News reports Lauren Mann, 25, died by suffocation, though it notes that Vienna police rep Thomas Keiblinger earlier referenced a preliminary autopsy that found no indications of strangulation. NBC News echoes the report of suffocation, but CBS News and the AP report the autopsy was inconclusive, and their reports don't mention suffocation. CBS cites officials who on Thursday confirmed Mann was not strangled, shot, or stabbed. The case is being treated as a homicide, and an official tells NBC News "third party involvement cannot be excluded"; police say there are no suspects at this time. Keiblinger says it'll take a week or two for the toxicology report to be completed, which has CBS saying her death "could be [a] mystery for weeks." ABC reports Mann failed to pick up one of her charges from school on Monday, but her half-dressed body wasn't found until 6pm the following day. The Colorado native was a graduate of the University of Colorado-Boulder's College of Music.


News article:

El Tiempo Cantina shuts down social media accounts amid backlash over Jeff Sessions photo

 A photo of AG Jeff Sessions at the restaurant was posted on the now deleted social accounts of El Tiempo Cantina Friday. The chain appears to have deleted their social media accounts Saturday amid growing backlash. less A photo of AG Jeff Sessions at the restaurant was posted on the now deleted social accounts of El Tiempo Cantina Friday. The chain appears to have deleted their social media accounts Saturday amid growing ... more Photo: El Tiempo Photo: El Tiempo Image 1 of / 32 Caption Close El Tiempo Cantina shuts down social media accounts amid backlash over Jeff Sessions photo 1 / 32 Back to Gallery

 Houston chain El Tiempo Cantina appears to have deleted its social media pages, a day after a photo of the restaurant's owner with Attorney General Jeff Sessions drew outrage and calls for a boycott.

 El Tiempo did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the chain's Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages were down Saturday afternoon.

 On Friday, owner Roland Laurenzo posted a photo with a caption saying it was an "honor" to serve Sessions, who was in town to discuss immigration enforcement with law enforcement officers. The post was quickly condemned by customers, some of whom called for a boycott.

 ON THE RECORD: Houston Latino Trump Coalition films campaign song at an El Tiempo restaurant with owner's endorsement

 Laurenzo soon after responded, writing that the photo "does not represent us supporting (Sessions') positions."

 "El Tiempo does not in anyway support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration," Laurenzo wrote, according to CultureMap. "The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions. The secret service contacted us that a government official was coming to dinner at our establishment and his identity was not know until he walked through the door."

 READ MORE: AG Jeff Sessions has breakfast at Houston mainstay La Mexicana before speech on immigration

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 "The man came to dinner and he was served without us even thinking about the political situations. We were preoccupied with the secret service and catering to their wants and needs. The only thing on our minds was serving great food and giving great customer service. It was posted without review or approval by ownership and this has lead to everyone jumping to conclusions that somehow we are involved in this political matter. We don't approve of anyone separating parents and children." ||||| UPDATE: Since the publication of the post, all El Tiempo social media accounts have been deactivated, according to CultureMap content partner ABC13.

 "People are insulting us in such a dramatic fashion, and we feel like we don't deserve it," El Tiempo Cantina owner Roland Laurenzo tells ABC13. "At least temporarily I had it taken down because I don't want to be insulted, my children to be insulted, my family to be insulted."

 ---

 Attorney General Jeff Sessions' visit to Houston has put one local restaurant in the crosshairs of the national debate about how restaurants should treat members of the Trump administration.

 Sessions, in town on Friday, August 10, to address a meeting of federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials about the need to crackdown on violent crime and illegal immigration, dined at an El Tiempo Cantina in the Inner Loop after his speech. In turn, the restaurant posted a photo on Facebook of Sessions standing with chef-owner Domenic Laurenzo and a caption that read as follows:

 "We had the honor to server [sic] Mr. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of the United States. Thank you for allowing us to serve you."

 Sessions' key role in the Trump administration's immigration policies, including increased deportation and the practice of separating parents and children who attempt to cross the border illegally, has made him a controversial figure.

 People immediately called for a boycott of any restaurant that considered serving him "an honor," and the original post was quickly deleted. In its place, the restaurant posted the following statement from owner Roland Laurenzo:

 El Tiempo does not in anyway support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration. The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions. The secret service contacted us that a government official was coming to dinner at our establishment and his identity was not know until he walked through the door. The man came to dinner and he was served without us even thinking about the political situations. We were preoccupied with the secret service and catering to their wants and needs. The only thing on our minds was serving great food and giving great customer service. It was posted without review or approval by ownership and this has lead to everyone jumping to conclusions that somehow we are involved in this political matter. We don’t approve of anyone separating parents and children.

 Of course, that did little to stem the criticism, except that it now included Trump administration supporters who disagreed with the restaurant's new statement and Trump administration opponents who asserted the damage had already been done. Others suggested that a restaurant should always feel honored to serve a senior government official regardless of whether the restaurant's staff agrees or disagrees with the person's policies and that El Tiempo had done nothing wrong by thanking the Attorney General for his visit.

 How restaurants should treat Trump administration officials has been a hot topic since June, when Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reported that she has been asked to leave The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia. Danny Meyer, the legendary New York restaurateur and founder of Shake Shack, told CBS This Morning that refusing service based on someone's beliefs constituted a slippery slope.

 "The minute you see me checking people's political registration at the door, that's a bad future, I think, for our business," Meyer said.

 Curiously, El Tiempo isn't the only Tex-Mex restaurant that Sessions dined at during his visit. He ate breakfast at La Mexicana, the popular Montrose Tex-Mex restaurant. Unlike El Tiempo, La Mexicana did not promote that Sessions had visited; rather, a reddit user spotted his security detail standing guard in front of the restaurant.

 Zulema Gonzales, La Mexicana's general manager, confirmed the visit to the Houston Chronicle. She said that Sessions seemed unsure about what to order and settled on huevos rancheros at the suggestion of Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who also attended the breakfast.

 "We treat everybody the same," Gonzales told the newspaper. ||||| HOUSTON — A Houston culinary dynasty has come under fire after a photo with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions began circulating online.

 Sessions is pictured with El Tiempo restaurant co-owner Dominic Laurenzo during a recent visit to Houston.

 Sessions' tough stance on immigration, coupled with the perceived endorsement by the Tex-Mex restaurant, has resulted in a hailstorm of complaints and even death threats.

 Laurenzo's Restaurants president Roland Laurenzo says in no way does the social media post equate to an endorsement of Sessions' politics. He says the company feels quite the opposite.

 Laurenzo says the photo was taken with his son Dominic at the El Tiempo restaurant on Navigation Boulevard after Sessions finished his dinner.

 He says they discussed fajitas and Sessions was treated like any other guest -- with kindness and hospitality.

 It wasn’t until later, when the photo was passed on to the company’s social media manager, that things took off.

 Laurenzo says she wrote the caption on the post.

 “In retrospect, it was a mistake because it angered so many people," Laurenzo said. "We have gotten so many complaints and comments. And threats, death threats. This has been extremely shocking to our family.”

 Laurenzo says his company is not in favor of separating families and do no agree with Sessions' views on gay rights.

 The post was pulled Saturday.

 Laurenzo says he's hopeful customers will see what the family has represented for Hispanic Houstonians for decades.

 © 2018 KHOU |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A longtime Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston has been caught up in the volatile politics of the day, with some calling for a boycott of El Tiempo Cantina. And it's all because Jeff Sessions came to dinner, explains CultureMap. After the attorney general ate there Friday, the owner posted a since-deleted photo online of his son posing with Sessions, saying it had been an "honor" to serve him. Those opposed to White House policies on immigration quickly pounced, with calls for a boycott and worse, reports KHOU. "Death threats," says owner Roland Laurenzo. The restaurant then posted an apology to those it offended and tried to distance itself from White House policies. "El Tiempo does not in [any way] support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration," Laurenzo wrote. "The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions." Of course, that prompted supporters of the White House to join the debate, and now El Tiempo is taking flak from both sides. Meanwhile, the restaurant's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages went dark over the weekend, notes the Houston Chronicle. (A restaurant in Virginia also entered the political fray.)


News article:

GREENVILLE, Del. (AP) — A Delaware man wounded in an attack at a New Year's Eve celebration in Istanbul says he survived by playing dead.

 William Jacob Raak told NBC News he stayed silent and motionless during the attack at a popular nightclub, even after being struck.

 "When he shot me I didn't move — I just let him shoot me," he told NBC (http://nbcnews.to/2i2wzem ). "I was shot when I was already on the ground. He was shooting people that he had already shot."

 Raak, 35, is a small-business owner from Greenville. The State Department said Monday that Raak was the only U.S. citizen injured in the attack in Turkey's largest city.

 Raak told NBC he was with a group of nine people, seven of whom were shot. Raak said he was struck in the hip and the bullet traveled to his knee.

 "I was probably the luckiest person in the whole thing," he said. "I do find myself very fortunate."

 Istanbul Gov. Vasip Sahin has said the attacker, armed with a long-barreled weapon, killed a policeman and a civilian outside the Reina club before entering and firing at people partying inside. At least 39 people, mostly foreigners, were killed. Dozens were injured.

 The Islamic State group on Monday claimed responsibility for the shooting. Turkish police, meanwhile, detained eight people in connection to the attack but were still hunting for the gunman, who disappeared amid the chaos.

 Raak's mother, Grace Raak, told The Associated Press on Monday her son was visiting Istanbul to celebrate his birthday, which was Wednesday.

 "We are praying for those that were injured, for their speedy recovery, and we're praying for the family and friends of those who lost loved ones," Grace Raak said.

 She said it was her understanding that her son was to arrive home Tuesday night.

 ___

 Associated Press journalist Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia contributed to this report. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

 / Updated By Richard Engel

 ISTANBUL — An American shot during the Istanbul nightclub rampage told NBC News he survived the ordeal by playing dead, remaining silent and motionless even after the gunman shot him.

 Jake Raak was one of about 60 people injured during a rampage in and around the Reina nightclub early New Year's Day. Thirty-nine people were killed — most of them foreigners.

 Authorities were engaged in an international manhunt Monday for the suspect, who fled the scene after the shooting. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş told reporters Monday that investigators had recovered his fingerprints and expected to be able to identify him soon.

 Kurtulmuş said eight people were already in custody as authorities pursued others connected to the gunman.

 Raak, 35, of Greenville, Delaware, recalled that as the gunman moved through the club spraying bullets, he targeted people who were lying on the floor.

 "When he shot me, I didn't move — I just let him shoot me," he said. "I was shot when I was already on the ground. He was shooting people that he had already shot."

 ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting Monday, identifying the attacker as "a heroic soldier of the caliphate." It said the attack had been carried out "in response to a call" from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, although it didn't say whether it directed or merely inspired the perpetrator.

 The gunman fired 120 rounds during his rampage in and around the nightclub about 1:30 a.m. Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET Saturday), police told NBC News. The incident lasted less than 10 minutes.

 Raak was shot in the hip, and the bullet traveled to his knee. He added that he didn't move or make a sound even after he was hit, fearful that the gunman might realize he was alive.

 "You just have to stay as calm as you can," he said. "I took a bullet."

 Raak was with a group of nine people, he said, seven of whom were shot.

 Raak said he came within inches of the shooter, who walked along a bench that he was lying underneath.

 "I saw him coming, and he shot us all," he said. "Somebody said there were shots fired, and I initially did not believe it until I saw the gunman and he started shooting up the whole place."

 Raak said he felt utterly helpless as the gunman fired his rounds.

 The main suspect in the Istanbul nightclub attack in a video released by Turkish police and Dogan News Agency. Dogan News Agency via AFP - Getty Images

 "As you'd imagine, you're looking at a guy with a gun, and you do not have a gun," he said. "You're thinking of ways you can take him down in some way, but there's not much you can really do — it's a terrorist."

 Still, he said, "I was probably the luckiest person in the whole thing."

 Police in Istanbul released what they said was an image of the suspect taken from security video.

 Twenty-eight of the dead were foreigners, Turkish Health Ministry officials said. Canadian, Iraqi, Saudi, Indian, Lebanese, Tunisian, Kuwaiti and Syrian citizens are among the dead. ||||| ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Shot in the arm and slumped behind a table, Francois al-Asmar played dead as the gunman walked through the exclusive Istanbul nightclub shooting the wounded as they lay on the ground.

 An injured woman is carried to an ambulance from a nightclub where a gun attack took place during a New Year party in Istanbul, Turkey. Murat Ergin/Ihlas News Agency via REUTERS

 Like most of the 39 people killed at a New Year’s party in Reina, a hang-out for the Turkish jet set and moneyed foreigners, the Lebanese radio and TV graduate was a visitor to Istanbul, enjoying a city reputed in the Middle East for its diversity and tolerance.

 “He shot one shot, so we thought - I thought - it was some angry or drunk man ... But a few seconds later, we heard a machine gun,” Asmar told Reuters from his hospital bed.

 “I was hiding behind the table, sitting on the floor, but my shoulder must have been exposed. He was shooting us on the floor ... I acted dead so he didn’t keep shooting me,” he said.

 The lone gunman, still at large, shot dead a police officer and a civilian at the door before walking in and opening fire at random. Witnesses said he shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest). Islamic State claimed responsibility.

 “As soon as he entered the club he started firing and he didn’t stop. He fired non-stop for 20 minutes at least,” said Younis Turk, a French citizen of Turkish origin.

 “We thought that there were several of them because it just didn’t stop. And there was some kind of bombing as well, he threw some explosives,” he said.

 The club was a gathering point for many nationalities that night. Victims included an Indian Bollywood film producer, a Turkish waiter, a Lebanese fitness trainer and a Jordanian bar owner.

 According to a forensics report quoted by the Milliyet newspaper, some of the victims were shot at very close distance or even at point-blank range.

 Women who survived an attack by a gunman, react outisde the Reina nightclub by the Bosphorus, in Istanbul, Turkey, January 1, 2017. REUTERS/Huseyin Aldemir

 Mehmet Yilan, 36, a barman at Reina for 12 years, said the attacker deliberately targeted the most crowded areas of the club, which sits on the shore of the Bosphorus in Ortakoy, an Istanbul neighborhood packed with cafes and restaurants.

 “He stormed in and immediately headed for the people to the left, which is always more crowded ... I wonder if he came here before because he seemed to know where to go,” Yilan said, describing how his manager yelled at people to run.

 “He was shooting randomly but aiming for their upper bodies. He didn’t want to just injure them.”

 Yilan escaped into a back room with five customers and two other bar staff, then went downstairs to a terraced area on the edge of the water. Despite the icy, snowy weather, some people jumped into the water to escape the gunfire.

 “He kept shooting all throughout. I called for our boat which transfers our customers, but he kept firing toward the sea too. The boat couldn’t approach,” Yilan said.

 He spoke to Reuters at the funeral of his colleague, Fatih Cakmak, a security guard who worked at the club and had survived a suicide bombing targeting police at a soccer stadium a few kilometers away just three weeks earlier.

 “ISTANBUL’S BEST NIGHT CLUB”

 Lito German, 47, a Filipino living in Saudi Arabia who works in marketing, was in Istanbul for the first time with his wife and daughter and was approaching the club as the attack began.

 “We were about 100 metres away and started seeing people fleeing toward us. Most were very well dressed, though many were barefoot and looking shaken and scared,” he said.

 “We were actually meant to go to another club, but we didn’t want to be in a very big place due to security issues, and we found Reina by googling Istanbul’s best night club. We thought the most expensive club would have better security.”

 Men lay flowers outisde the Reina nightclub by the Bosphorus, which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey, January 1, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

 Armored police vehicles rushed to the scene as more and more people came running out, he said.

 Among the dead were Abis Rizvi, 49, a Bollywood producer who was in the midst of making his second film, and Khushi Shah, a fashion designer in her 20s, both from Mumbai. The Indian government said it was making arrangements to help the families as they come to Turkey to collect the bodies.

 Lebanon sent a plane to carry back the remains of three of its citizens who were among the dead.

 Elias Wardini, 26, a personal trainer, had posted a picture on Instagram a few hours before the attack, posing in the Istanbul snow with another Lebanese victim in her twenties, Rita Shami.

 The club’s owner, Mehmet Kocarslan, said police had taken extraordinary security measures in the run-up to the New Year in neighborhoods on the Bosphorus shore around Ortakoy.

 The U.S. embassy had warned of potential attacks on areas frequented by foreigners, but Kocarslan said there had been no specific threat against his club in particular and that many of the warnings had been country-wide.

 “I really don’t know how this demon, I can’t even call him a terrorist, was able to reach here despite all this intelligence and extraordinary security measures,” he said.

 The incident bore echoes of an attack by militant Islamists on Paris’s Bataclan music hall in November 2015 that, along with assaults on bars and restaurants, killed 130 people.

 “When they’re determined, they’re determined, and there’s nothing to do,” said Turk, who was visiting from France.

 “That doesn’t mean that I won’t be coming anymore. For me Turkey, Istanbul, is one of the nicest cities in the world and I will keep on coming again and again.” |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Jake Raak calls himself "probably the luckiest person in the whole thing"—the "whole thing" being the New Year's Day massacre at a Turkish nightclub. The Greenville, Delaware, resident tells NBC News the shooter walked within inches of the bench he was under, and that when he was shot in the hip, he made no sound or movement so as not to alert the gunman he was still alive. It may have been a life-saving choice: Reuters reports the gunman, who ultimately killed 39, specifically went after the wounded at the Reina club in Istanbul. Raak says that among his group of nine, all but two were shot. The State Department has confirmed he was the only American injured. The bullet that struck him ended up in his knee. His mother tells the AP that her 35-year-old son had traveled to Istanbul to celebrate his birthday, which was last Wednesday. ISIS on Monday claimed responsibility for the massacre. While eight people have been detained, the gunman remains at large.


Article:
Grooveshark co-founder Josh Greenberg, a pioneer in Gainesville's student startup movement, was found dead in his bed Sunday evening by his girlfriend in the house they shared. He was 28.

 Lori Greenberg, his mother, said Monday she was told by police who investigated Sunday night that there was no evidence of injuries or drugs.

 She told police he had never been sick a day in his life; and his girlfriend, Abby Mayer, said she had never known him to be sick and he was not prescribed any medication, according to a Gainesville Police Department report.

 Lori Greenberg, who lives in St. Petersburg, said the medical examiner's autopsy found no explanation for a cause of death, but toxicology results will take two or three months.

 “They are as baffled as I am,” she said.

 Mayer was away for the weekend and returned to find his body. According to the police report, she last spoke to him at 1:30 a.m. Sunday and called authorities around 7 p.m. after returning home with two friends.

 “It looked like he was sleeping,” Lori Greenberg said.

 She said her son was more relieved than depressed about the April 30 settlement that shut down Grooveshark since it ended the lawsuit that had been hanging over his head. Several record companies had sued the online music streaming service over copyright violations.

 “He was excited about potential new things that he was going to start,” she said.

 Greenberg and Sam Tarantino, both from the Tampa area, founded Grooveshark as 19-year-old freshmen at the University of Florida in March 2006.

 At its peak, the company had up to 40 million users a month and 145 employees, occupying most of the second floor of the Union Street Station in downtown Gainesville and a small office in New York City.

 Tarantino could not be reached for comment.

 Greenberg was widely regarded as a mentor to budding entrepreneurs and computer programmers, helping people get started in the tech industry through Grooveshark University classes, the Summer with the Sharks internship program and as a partner in the Founders Pad business incubator. He was a founding member of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce's Gainesville Technology Council.

 Chamber board Chairman John Carlson and interim president and CEO Susan Davenport issued a statement expressing the organization's sorrow.

 “A true technology pioneer and visionary, Josh was co-founder of Grooveshark.com, which brought unprecedented tech opportunities to our region,” the statement read. “His contributions, which helped to lay our region's innovative technology foundation, will not be forgotten."

 Duncan Kabinu said Greenberg was working on another music-related mobile application and they spent Friday together working on the Gainesville Dev Academy, which launched this summer to offer training in computer programming. Kabinu said they wanted to expand on Greenberg's Grooveshark University by offering it to the community so people could improve their skills and lives.

 “I think it was just in him to be that guy to help people out,” Kabinu said. “He was always available, as busy as he was, to take the time to mentor people.”

 In a prior interview, Augi Lye, founder of the tech companies Trendy Entertainment and ToneRite, said Grooveshark's fame helped put Gainesville on the map.

 “I really don't know anyone who has had more influence than Josh, everything from being a visionary for the amazing technology coming out and training the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs,” he said.

 Greenberg started MaidSuite with Student Maid founder Kristen Hadeed to provide an online scheduling application for cleaning companies and other service providers.

 Hadeed said they made a pinky promise four years ago to do something together.

 “I'm just so glad we did because I learned so much from working with him as such a good friend and just so talented,” she said.

 “I think he's somebody that everybody looked up to. He inspired many people, even beyond his years. He will be missed beyond belief.”

 Besides his mother, Greenberg is survived by his younger brother, Jacob, and grandparents, Jerry and Sandy Greenberg. Lori Greenberg said Josh's friends would arrange a memorial service in Gainesville.

 She said her son had a keen intellect and a wonderful sense of humor. He was an animal lover who adored his three cats and was a vegetarian for ethical reasons.

 Kabinu described his friend as “a legend.”

 “It's weird to say that, but that's what I think of him because he embodied a lot of what Gainesville innovation and startups and entrepreneurship is for a lot of people,” Kabinu said.

 “As a community, we definitely rallied behind him and we want to continue his legacy, so to speak, by continuing to be like he was — contribute back, mentor back, provide back. That's the legacy we should all keep growing to remember him.” ||||| Josh Greenberg, co-founder and CTO of legally embattled music-streaming site Grooveshark, was found dead Sunday evening in his Gainesville, Fla., home, according to police. He was 28.

 Greenberg did not have any health problems and police said there was no evidence of foul play or drugs, his mother, Lori Greenberg, told the Gainesville Sun. In a tweet Monday, the Gainesville Police Dept. said there was “no evidence of foul play or suicide” in his death.

 Josh Greenberg formed Grooveshark in 2006 with Sam Tarantino when they were both 19-year-old students at U. of Florida. It shut down operations this April after the company lost a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by major record labels and reached a settlement with the industry.

 “Despite the best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes,” they said in a statement at the time. “We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.”

 Grooveshark’s parent company, Escape Media Group, agreed to pay $75 million to labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group if Grooveshark violated the terms of the settlement.

 Related Music Streaming Service Grooveshark To Call It Quits Venice Fest Player 'Still Life' Attracts Buyers

 According to Lori Greenberg, Josh was relieved rather than depressed about the settlement, per the Gainesville Sun. “He was excited about potential new things that he was going to start,” she said.

 Grooveshark’s service let users upload songs and made them available to other users to stream. The startup had deals with some record companies for rights to their music but was sued by the three major labels, which said Grooveshark’s founders had personally uploaded to the site almost 6,000 songs they didn’t have the rights to and urged employees to do so as well. In September 2014, a U.S. federal district court ruled against Grooveshark, which claimed to have more than 40 million users at the peak of its popularity.

 At the time of his death, Greenberg was listed as a co-founder and board member of TapShield, a Florida startup whose system lets users alert emergency responders about crimes or suspicious activity from their mobile phones. He studied business administration at U. of Florida’s Warrington College of Business Administration, according to his LinkedIn profile page. |||||Summary:

– The co-founder of an online music streaming service has mysteriously died just months after the company was forced to shut down, the Gainesville Sun reports. Josh Greenberg, who helped start Grooveshark in 2006 and inspired fellow startup pioneers, was found dead by his girlfriend last night in Gainesville, Fla. His mother, Lori Greenberg, told police the 28-year-old wasn't sick and says their initial investigation found no evidence of drugs. "It looked like he was sleeping," she says. Police added on Twitter, "No evidence of foul play or suicide." Lori says he wasn't even depressed after record companies sued Grooveshark, forcing it to shutter and settle on April 30. Josh "was excited about potential new things that he was going to start," Lori says. Variety notes that Escape Media Group, Grooveshark's parent company, agreed it would pay $75 million if Grooveshark violated the settlement. But Josh was known for more than Grooveshark, which had 145 workers and up to 40 million monthly users at its peak. He also mentored computer programmers and pioneers in Gainesville, offering guidance through programs like Grooveshark University and Summer with the Sharks internships. Now accolades are pouring in, including words from a colleague who describes Greenberg's death as "terrible news": "With Josh it always felt like sitting in the presence of a much deeper, loving intelligence," blogs Ben Erez at Viabilify. "It felt like witnessing true leadership." An autopsy today found no cause of death, Lori tells the Sun, and toxicology results should arrive within two to three months.


News article:

JUNEAU, Alaska Alaska's governor said on Thursday he would use his executive powers to expand the state's Medicaid health program for the poor, in a bid to sidestep political opponents and bring coverage to more than 20,000 uninsured residents the first year.

 Governor Bill Walker said Alaska would accept $146 million in federal funds made available under President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law, citing nearly 30 other states that have expanded Medicaid coverage.

 "(They) have already made the commonsense decision to accept Medicaid expansion. Why? Because it helps their residents, their economies and their budgets," Walker told reporters in Anchorage.

 Walker, an independent, has already had several expansion efforts blocked by the Republican-led state legislature since he took office after winning the November 2014 election. On Thursday, he said bypassing the legislature and accepting the funds was a final option.

 Obamacare envisions major expansions to the Medicaid program, though about 20 U.S. states, many Republican-controlled, have rejected that part of the law, according to Kaiser Family Foundation figures.

 Political divides have stalled the expansion of Medicaid coverage in states concentrated in the South and central West.

 In Alaska, the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee has the authority to review requests for federal funds when the legislature is not in session.

 The committee has until Sept. 1 to vote whether or not to support the state's request for money, or to recommend a special session of the legislature to review expansion options.

 After Walker's announcement, the committee's chairman, Representative Mike Hawker, said the panel’s role is a formality and simply influences how quickly the money is made available.

 In a letter to Hawker, Walker's budget director, Pat Pitney, cited as benefits an estimated $1 billion in new federal healthcare dollars for the next six years, $100 million in savings to the state treasury and 4,000 new jobs.

 Expansion opponents have said Alaska should not risk the possibility the federal government would pull the program and leave the state committed to something it cannot afford.

 "Today's spending will be paid for by tomorrow's taxpayers," said Republican state Senator John Coghill.

 (Reporting by Steve Quinn; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Eric Beech) ||||| Alaska’s Gov. Bill Walker will move on his own to expand Medicaid under the federal health law, a step that would bring the number of states opting into the law’s expansion close to 30 and make it more likely other states would follow.

 The independent governor on Thursday said he had sent a letter to state legislators saying he will apply directly to Washington to extend Medicaid coverage to most residents whose incomes are up to one-third above than the poverty line in his state, and that legislators would have to call a... |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Alaska's legislature didn't move to expand Medicaid, so Gov. Bill Walker is doing it on his own. Walker says he plans to accept $146 million in federal funds that his state has access to under the Affordable Care Act in order to cover some 42,000 residents who qualify under the program, Reuters and the New York Times report. Walker, who is just seven months into his term, had made expanding Medicaid a campaign priority. "This is the final option for me," he says. The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee will now have 45 days to act before Walker accepts the funds; he says he can proceed regardless of how the committee responds. The federal government will take on the full cost of the expansion at first, then shave its cut to 90% by 2020. Some 28 other states have expanded Medicaid under the law, but just Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio did so without legislative consent. Walker, who calls the move a "common-sense decision," says his bills seeking expansion approval were all blocked by Republicans worried about the tab Alaska would have to pick up in the future. "Regardless of federal funding, we cannot afford the Medicaid system we have now," says Republican state Sen. Pete Kelly. "Our current system is broken." Walker hopes to begin enrollment in September and have 20,000 signed up within one year. The Wall Street Journal observes that the move will "bring the number of states opting into the law's expansion close to 30 and make it more likely other states would follow."