Article:

It came as no surprise when mainstream companies such as Gillette and Accenture distanced themselves from Tiger Woods in recent weeks, but now the somewhat insular golf community has stepped back too.Golf Digest announced Wednesday that it would suspend monthly articles that appear under Woods' name, at least until he returns to the PGA Tour."We respect Tiger's decision to take a break from professional golf and focus on his family," said Bret Hopman, a publicist for the magazine. "Tiger's bylined instruction articles will not be published in Golf Digest during his time away from the game."The news was unexpected, if only because athletes facing controversy usually fare better within the confines of their sport."On the surface, it is kind of surprising," David Carter, executive director of USC's Sports Business Institute, said. "However, they also have to sell advertising and be mindful of what their business partners expect."I think it is a function of how widespread Woods' marketing problems have become," he said.This month, the superstar golfer announced that he was taking an "indefinite" leave from the tour. Woods has weathered a media storm since an early-morning car accident in November and subsequent reports from multiple women alleging to have had sexual liaisons with him.The fallout has significantly damaged his status as a sports celebrity who earns an estimated $110 million annually in endorsements, according to Forbes magazine.Accenture, a global consulting firm, recently walked away from Woods, and Gatorade carried through with an earlier decision to stop making his sports drink. Gillette has discontinued advertisements featuring Woods, and AT&T; has said it is reevaluating their business relationship.As for Golf Digest, the magazine had come under fire for its latest cover -- which went to press before the scandal broke -- showing a photo illustration of Woods caddying for President Obama with the headline: "10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger."Woods' exclusive agreement with the magazine reportedly pays $3 million annually."We're not going to comment on the compensation," Hopman said.However, the magazine is keeping Woods on the masthead and Hopman said: "Golf Digest has had a long-standing relationship with Tiger Woods . . . we do not have any plans to change that."The golfer got another show of support this week from Tag Heuer. The Swiss watchmaker displayed a black-and-white photograph of Woods on its website, a watch draped over his left hand, with the words: "Tag Heuer stands with Tiger Woods." ||||| One of Tiger Woods’ major sponsors publicly backed the shamed star yesterday – amid claims they were on the verge of ditching him.

 Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer axed pictures of Woods from its website as details of his alleged affairs emerged.

 But the firm yesterday re-posted the images under the headline: TAG Heuer stands with Tiger Woods.

 The company claimed its decision to remove the photos was a “supportive move”.

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 The site also explained that Woods had been TAG Heuer brand ambassador since 2002 and insisted the relationship was “strictly professional”.

 Woods has admitted cheating on wife Elin, with at least 14 women coming forward to claim they had affairs with him.

 Consulting firm Accenture dropped him as its representative earlier this month.

 Gillette also said it would stop broadcasting his advertisements for its razors for the foreseeable future.

 Win two tickets to see Peter Kay live with Mirror.co.uk |||||
What is a summary?

– Golf Digest has distanced itself—temporarily, the magazine says—from Tiger Woods, in a sign that his escapades have seriously damaged the golfer’s cachet. Woods’ name will remain on the masthead, but his instructional columns will be on hiatus as long as he is. The move is shocking because a beleaguered athlete’s own sports community is usually a main source of support, the Los Angeles Times observes. A contributing factor may have been the magazine’s latest cover, printed before the scandal broke, which features “10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger.” Meanwhile, after TAG Heuer appeared to be preparing to drop the golfer, the watchmaker posted a note on its website reading, “TAG Heuer stands with Tiger Woods,” the Daily Mirror reports.


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– Lawmakers from both parties have been criticizing the Justice Department's tough new policy that requires immigrant children to be separated from their parents at the border. On Friday, President Trump joined the critics, with a familiar caveat. "I hate it," he said. "I hate to see separation of parents and children." But he suggested the administration had no choice, asserting that "the Democrats forced that law upon our nation." A host of outlets, including BuzzFeed, CNN, and the Washington Post say Trump is incorrect about that. Under the administration's new zero-tolerance policy, every adult caught crossing the border illegally is being prosecuted, and the children are being separated while their parents await their legal cases to play out. Related coverage: Compromise in peril: House Republicans were poised to float two immigration plans, the more moderate of which would hit many of Trump's wishes (including $25 billion for border security) while ending the separation policy, reports the Hill. (See below for more on the latter.) However, Trump may have torpedoed its chances Friday when he told Fox that he wouldn't sign it, reports the AP, which now sees "eleventh-hour confusion" on the issue.

"I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law."

 Evan Vucci / AP

 President Donald Trump said Friday morning that his administration was separating immigrant children from their parents at the border because it's "the law" and a law created by Democrats — which is not true. "I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law," Trump said during an impromptu press conference outside the White House on Friday morning.

 Fox News

 There is no law that determines children must be taken away from their parents when they cross the border. Crossing the border illegally is a federal misdemeanor, and recrossing illegally is a felony, but there is no law mandating the separation of families that cross the border illegally. Instead, the increase in family separation, which has seen hundreds of immigrant children detained and kept apart from their parents, comes from a zero-tolerance policy introduced by the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

 Trump instead blamed Democrats. "The children can be taken care of quickly, beautifully, and immediately. The Democrats forced that law upon our nation. I hate it. I hate to see separation of parents and children," Trump inaccurately said. Previously, the policy of the Homeland Security Department was that children would be removed from parents if the parents were referred for criminal prosecution. The new zero-tolerance policy means everyone crossing the border illegally is being prosecuted.

 But with Trump hoping that Democrats will agree to an immigration bill that would include funding to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, he continued to blame Democrats publicly. "That is a Democrat bill. That is Democrats wanting to do this," said Trump. On Thursday, other Trump administration officials also repeatedly declared the administration policy "the law," including Sessions and White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a heated argument with reporters. The president crossed the White House lawn on Friday morning for a surprise TV appearance on Fox and Friends.

 Donald Trump walking down the White House lawn so he can make a surprise live appearance on his favorite TV show is just completely bonkers https://t.co/3VzN44TlKQ ||||| (CNN) President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the separation of families at the US border Friday, a response he's repeatedly made to criticism his administration has faced since it adopted a policy that results in far more children being separated from their parents.

 "The Democrats forced that law upon our nation," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I hate it. I hate to see separation of parents and children. The Democrats can come to us as they actually are in all fairness, we are talking to them, and they can change the whole border security. We need a wall. We need border security. We've got to get rid of catch and release."

 The President's comments are significant given how his administration is operating and what Congress is trying to do to address a variety of immigration and border security issues. Just 24 hours ago, House Republicans unveiled legislation aimed at both addressing Trump's priorities on immigration as well as possibly make changes to protocol to address family separation (more on that below).

 To add some clarity here given this morning's (and the last few weeks) comments, here's where things stand:

 On the 'compromise' GOP legislation, and the 'fix' on separation

 Yes, a compromise bill worked out by House GOP leaders, moderates and conservatives addresses the issue of separating parents from their children, through overturning a settlement that stipulates children cannot be detained more than three weeks so that families are kept together but doing so would allow entire families to be detained indefinitely. House Speaker Paul Ryan cited that settlement on Thursday as the reason this was happening in the first place.

 But -- and this is a key: the bill does nothing to prohibit the criminal prosecution of parents who cross the border illegally, i.e. the current Trump Administration policy that is driving the separation (children can't be brought into the criminal justice system).

 In other words: It does nothing to stop the current policy. It just requires the government to keep them together when in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security.

 So here's the bottom line: the bill touches on the issue, but it's hardly a fix.

 As one Democratic staffer told CNN: "The answer to separating families is not to put them behind bars."

 Where are Democrats on the separation policy and new legislation?

 Democrats want the administration to reverse the policy.

 House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday she sees "no prospects" for a legislative fix. Democrats aren't even talking to Republicans about a legislative fix -- neither in the broader immigration bills to be considered next week or in a more targeted manner.

 They are going to the border to highlight the issue. They have marched to highlight the issue. This is a very motivating issue for them. But they see the mechanism for addressing it sitting purely with the executive branch.

 Is this the fault of Democrats, as Trump has continued to claim falsely for weeks?

 No. This was a deliberate policy shift by the Trump administration. They have the power to unilaterally reverse it. It's legal, no question, but it's purely the administration's decision.

 The more nuanced point from the administration is that this is something that can and should be addressed by broader immigration legislative efforts, and that Democrats are blocking those efforts. It's correct that Democrats aren't in the room on the current House effort. But this is far more a Republican issue than Democrat one. Here's why:

 1. The President's immigration bill got all of 39 votes in the Senate (the bipartisan effort also fell short of the 60 votes needed to move forward, but received more support.)

 2. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has explicitly said the Senate won't take up any immigration legislation again unless the House passes it and the President is explicit he will sign it (more on that below).

 3. The House Republican effort has been a purely partisan one -- Democrats aren't in negotiations, being consulted, or expected to provide any "yes" votes given the conservative turn even the compromise bill has taken

 4. Even the GOP-only effort in the House, which is scheduled to be considered next week, is a long way away from having enough to pass at this point.

 5. The President, in Friday's Fox News interview, said he's opposed to the GOP moderate-negotiated House bill. This is a kill shot to the entire House exercise, whether they manage the scrounge together the votes or not.

 Bottom line: The Trump administration implemented the current separation policy.

 While it's designed, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions describes it, to have a deterrent effect, it's also a negotiating play to try and force Democrats to the table on immigration legislation the President favors.

 But Democrats aren't in the room on those legislative efforts and the President just nuked the lone House GOP effort that had a shot at passage. And the Senate wants no part of this.

 So its prospects -- and any effort in the near future to prevent families from being separated at the border -- aren't looking good. ||||| “We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law. It’s a horrible thing where you have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law and they don’t want to do anything about it.”

 — President Trump, in a round table on sanctuary cities in California, May 16, 2018

 “Yet this administration is separating kids from their parents and unable to account for 1,500 lost children! Shame.”

 — Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), on Twitter, May 27, 2018

 Trump blames Democrats for a law that separates undocumented immigrant children from their families. Some Democrats blame Trump’s administration for losing track of nearly 1,500 immigrant kids.

 None of this is accurate.

 We’ve fact-checked many claims about the border, and it’s clear that the latest spin from both sides deserves a turn under the microscope. However, since this is a roundup of multiple claims, we won’t be giving Pinocchio ratings.

 Let’s dig in.

 The Facts

 These claims mostly revolve around “catch and release,” the practice by U.S. authorities of releasing children and asylum seekers into the community while they await immigration hearings. Many fail to show up for their hearings and remain in the country without legal authorization.

 The Trump administration says these legal “loopholes” abet the trafficking of children while allowing smugglers and bad actors to profit. Immigration and civil rights groups say that it’s misleading to portray the asylum process as a loophole and that, in recent years, thousands of people legitimately have sought refuge in the United States from the violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

 ‘We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law.’

 Trump says his administration’s policy of separating children from their families can be traced back to a Democratic immigration law. But as we’ve reported, catch and release is not a single law so much as a collection of policies and court rulings spanning Democratic and Republican administrations. We gave the president Three Pinocchios in April when he tweeted that catch and release was a “liberal” and “Democrat” law.

 In a briefing with reporters on May 29, Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump, explained the president’s rationale for pinning these policies on Democrats. The gist of it is that these laws may or may not be Democratic creations, but Democrats own them because they don’t support Trump’s more-restrictive immigration agenda.

 Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

 “It’s a pretty straightforward issue,” Miller said. “Near-unanimous Republican agreement about the need to change law and policy in order to close those loopholes, and the Democrats are opposing them.”

 It’s quite a stretch to say there’s “near-unanimous Republican agreement” on this agenda or unified opposition by Democrats. The Secure and Succeed Act, sponsored by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), failed 39 to 60 in the Senate in February. The White House backed this proposal, which got 36 of 51 GOP votes and three Democratic votes, far short of passage. Three other immigration proposals, backed by broader mixes of Republicans and Democrats, each got more than 50 votes — enough to pass if there had not been a procedural vote requiring 60 votes.

 Miller mentioned the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, a law signed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. The TVPRA is meant to give safe harbor to victims of human trafficking and says unaccompanied children “are exempt from prompt return to their home country,” unless they come from Canada or Mexico, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are covered by this law.

 Miller also mentioned the “Flores settlement” from 1997. This legal agreement struck by President Bill Clinton’s administration requires the federal government to release rather than detain undocumented immigrant children, first to their parents if possible, to other adult relatives if not, and to licensed programs willing to accept custody if no relatives are available. As a last resort, U.S. officials may place children in the “least restrictive” setting available.

 A federal judge in California ruled in 2015 that the Flores settlement covered all children in immigration officials’ custody, regardless of whether they were apprehended at the border alone or with family members. The judge’s ruling also covered any accompanying parents. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed the latter part of the ruling and said the Flores settlement required only that children, not parents, be released. Therefore, the government is required to keep immigrant children and their parents together only for a limited time.

 But none of these legal developments requires the Trump administration to separate children from their families. Instead, separations are rising in large part because of a “zero tolerance” policy implemented by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In April, Sessions directed prosecutors to charge as many illegal entry offenses as possible.

 Devin O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman, said in the May 29 briefing that people charged with these offenses often are sentenced to time served and transferred to the Department of Homeland Security for deportation.

 So, on one hand, the Flores settlement and the TVPRA require that children be released. On the other, Sessions’s zero-tolerance policy subjects any accompanying parents to criminal prosecution and eventual deportation.

 Laying this on Democrats does not track with reality. The TVPRA was signed by Bush, and the Flores settlement is a court-approved agreement, not a law. Nothing required the Trump administration to separate children from their families until Sessions’s zero-tolerance policy made it a practical necessity.

 Miller also mentioned a Supreme Court ruling from 2001, Zadvydas v. Davis. The court ruled that immigrants who were under deportation orders — but whom no other country would accept — generally could not be detained by U.S. officials for more than six months.

 Congress cannot pass a law that overturns this court ruling. It would require a constitutional amendment or a new Supreme Court ruling overturning Zadvydas.

 Republican senators introduced legislation to narrow the scope of the ruling in 2014, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to retain custody of some individuals past the six-month deadline in special circumstances, including when the individual was deemed a threat to national security or had a highly contagious disease. Parts of this bill were folded into the Secure and Succeed Act.

 The president asked Congress to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “to retain custody of illegal aliens whose home countries will not accept their repatriation,” so long as it is “consistent with the Constitution,” according to a statement of principles and policies he sent to Congress in October 2017.

 “The administration has repeatedly advocated for the closure to federal immigration loopholes that would allow for the swift, safe, and expeditious return of illegal alien minors, adults, and families at the southern border,” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said. “However, the Democratic Party has repeatedly opposed these loophole closures in favor of preserving ‘catch-and-release’ policies that make a mockery of national sovereignty.”

 A White House official said that “from October 2017 to this February, DHS saw a staggering 315 percent increase in illegal aliens using children to pose as family units to gain entry into the country, compared to the same time frame the previous year.”

 The official also pointed to a column in the National Review by Rich Lowry.

 “Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings,” Lowry wrote. “It’s the last that is operative here. The past practice had been to give a free pass to an adult who is part of a family unit. The new Trump policy is to prosecute all adults.”

 ‘This administration is separating kids from their parents and unable to account for 1,500 lost children!’

 This startling claim has spread like wildfire online; Kaine is not alone in tweeting it. Did the government suddenly lose track of 1,500 children?

 In a word, no.

 The Department of Health and Human Services resettled 7,635 children in the United States from October 2017 through December 2017, most of whom were fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

 As I worshipped in Hampton Roads this morning, I couldn’t help but consider how Scripture commands compassionate treatment of migrants and refugees. Yet this administration is separating kids from their parents and unable to account for 1,500 lost children! Shame. https://t.co/oSyMYcS3y3 — Tim Kaine (@timkaine) May 27, 2018

 As we noted, the Flores settlement requires that these children be placed with parents if they’re available, with other relatives if not, then in licensed programs or “least restrictive” settings if all else fails.

 The HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement will place these children even with family members who themselves may be undocumented. “We’re not able to deny placement just because parents or family members are in the country illegally,” Steven Wagner, the acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families at HHS, told reporters in the May 29 briefing.

 All 7,635 children were resettled by HHS. After 30 days, the department called the parents or guardians to check up on things. But these calls were not required by law, and in 1,475 cases, the parents or guardians did not respond, perhaps because they feared being targeted for deportation, Wagner said.

 Wagner testified in April to a Senate subcommittee that, of the 7,635 children, 6,075 remained where they were placed, 52 had moved, 28 had run away and five were deported. That left 1,475 migrant children. Just because their parents or guardians did not return HHS’s phone calls after 30 days does not mean the children are missing, he said.

 “We are not in custody of the children at that point,” Wagner said. “If you call a friend and they don’t answer the phone, you don’t assume that they’ve been kidnapped.”

 Kaine’s tweet suggests the 1,500 children were separated from their families and then lost. That’s not what happened, since all 7,635 children were unaccompanied minors when they crossed the border and were resettled.

 “Senator Kaine has serious concerns about the Trump administration’s policies that threaten to put kids in harm’s way, including the separation of parents and children at the border, the widely reported failure to account for nearly 1,500 children who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, and the lack of protections for kids in the U.S. whose parents are arrested or detained by immigration authorities,” a Kaine representative said, adding later, “He was clearly listing facts about two separate Trump administration policies in his tweet, not conflating the two.”

 It’s not the first time the government lost track of children in these situations. According to Wagner, in the past fiscal year, covering the tail end of Obama’s term and most of Trump’s first year, 14 percent of HHS calls were not returned.

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 Share the Facts 2018-05-30 12:06:22 UTC Washington Post -1 -1 -1 Washington Post Rating: False Washington Post Rating: “We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law. It’s a horrible thing where you have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law and they don’t want to do anything about it.” Donald Trump President https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-roundtable-sanctuary-california-may-16-2018 in a round table in California Wednesday, May 16, 2018 2018-05-16 Read More info ||||| The “compromise” immigration bill released Thursday night by Republicans in the House of Representatives is set to come to the House floor next week, alongside a more conservative alternative. It’s a sweeping plan that covers everything from border security (including a promise of $25 billion for Trump’s border wall); to a way for immigrants who are facing the loss of their protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to apply for legal status and ultimately (possibly) green cards and citizenship; to cuts to legal family-based immigration that are partially offset by expanding permanent employer-based immigration.

 But House Speaker Paul Ryan and others are emphasizing a different aspect of the bill. They claim it would prevent the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border — a practice the administration made widespread in early May and that has resulted in the separation of hundreds of families a week.

 They’re lying.

 The Republican bill doesn’t outlaw family separation. It doesn’t stop the Trump administration from choosing to prosecute asylum seekers who enter the US between ports of entry (official border crossings) for illegal entry, which results in parents being sent into criminal custody without their children. And it doesn’t even force the government not to separate parents who do present themselves legally for asylum from their children — something that has also been happening, though isn’t as widespread.

 What the House bill does is get rid of the extra legal protections that children and families have in immigration detention: a requirement that children be kept in the “least restrictive” conditions possible, and that they not be detained any longer than necessary. This means that if the family is kept together, their parents must be released with them. The Trump administration calls those protections “loopholes,” and blames them for “forcing” the administration to keep asylum-seekers in custody by separating families.

 If the House bill passed, the Trump administration probably would stop separating families. Instead, it would be able to keep children and parents in ICE detention until their cases were resolved — that is, they could be in held in detention indefinitely.

 The House bill allows kids and families to be detained by ICE indefinitely — which is what Trump has wanted all along

 The Republican summary of the new bill (as reported by Leigh Ann Caldwell of NBC) claims that it ends family separation: “Accompanied alien minors apprehended at the border must not be separated from their parent or legal guardian while in DHS custody.”

 There is no language like that in the bill.

 What exists, however, in a section called “Clarification of Standards for Family Detention,” is a provision allowing ICE to detain immigrant children who come to the US with their parents or guardians in the same way it would detain adults:

 There exists no presumption that an alien child who is not an unaccompanied alien child should not be detained, and all such determinations shall be in the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security.

 That sentence would overrule a court agreement that’s been in place for the past 20 years, called the Flores agreement, that puts strict limitations on when the government can keep children in immigration detention. The Flores agreement requires that kids be released “without unnecessary delay,” and that they are kept in the meantime in the “least restrictive” conditions possible.

 Courts have interpreted that agreement to mean that ICE can’t detain families for more than 20 days in most cases.

 The Flores agreement doesn’t require the government to separate families. It just requires the government not to indefinitely detain children. But the Trump administration has decided to maximize the detention of asylum seekers, including parents, to prevent people from disappearing into the US as unauthorized immigrants after they’re released. (This is the so-called “catch and release” policy Trump has railed against.)

 Rather than release parents with their children, therefore, the administration is separating families so the parents can be detained while the children (sent to the custody of HHS as “unaccompanied alien children”) are ultimately placed with sponsors.

 The House bill allows the administration to keep families in immigration detention indefinitely. It doesn’t even specify that there are any additional conditions on how children can be detained — there’s nothing preventing the Trump administration from simply putting children in existing ICE detention centers for adults, rather than expanding detention centers designed for families.

 Nothing in the bill requires ICE to keep parents and children together in detention. In fact, the mechanism that the Trump administration has generally been using to separate families — referring parents into the custody of the Department of Justice for prosecution — isn’t even addressed in the bill.

 The only reason the House bill could possibly end the separation of families would be if the Trump administration decided that because they now didn’t have to release children from detention, they would stop prosecuting parents, and they would make an effort to keep families together in ICE detention.

 But even then, that just means that children would be held in facilities that are essentially jails with their parents for months, or even years, until they ultimately received legal status — or, more likely, until they were finally deported. ||||| President Trump Donald John TrumpJimmy Fallon responds to Trump: I'll donate to pro-immigrant nonprofit in his name South Carolina GOP candidate expected to make full recovery after car accident Official: US to present North Korea with timeline, 'specific asks' MORE on Friday again blamed Democrats for his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border.

 In an impromptu interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump said he “hates” the policy, and claimed the Democrats could change the “law” if they voted with Republicans on immigration reform.

 “Democrats forced that law on the nation,” he said.

 ADVERTISEMENT

 Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsMigrants told they’ll be reunited with children if they sign voluntary deportation order: report Christie: Trump 'enormously ill-served' by DOJ on 'zero tolerance' policy 'Occupy ICE' protests emerge across the country MORE, enacted a “zero tolerance” policy at the border last month, mandating that everyone apprehended illegally entering the U.S. will face criminal charges.

 The policy is resulting in parents being separated from their children while facing legal prosecution.

 Sessions says the measure is necessary to increase border security. Trump has blamed Democrats in the past for the policy, citing inaction on immigration reform.

 The policy has drawn significant criticism from lawmakers and immigration advocates, who have raised concerns about the treatment of migrant children in custody. The White House has repeatedly defended the policy.

 Trump said on Friday during the same interview that he would refuse to sign the more “moderate” of two immigration bills proposed by the House GOP.

 Republican leaders agreed to hold two votes next week on a compromise immigration bill that included a measure that would end the separation of migrant children and parents at the border, and on a more hard-line immigration measure. |||||


Here is a news article: CLOSE SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was carrying the National Reconnaissance Office's NROL-76 mission. USA TODAY

 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., at 7:15 a.m. ET Monday, May 1, 2017. The rocket is carrying a classified National Reconnaissance Office mission. (Photo: Craig Bailey, Florida Today)

 CAPE CANAVERAL — SpaceX sent a classified U.S. spy agency mission on its way to orbit Monday morning, then brought the rocket’s first stage home for a landing, possibly to fly again.

 A 230-foot Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 7:15 a.m. ET, thundering northeast over the Atlantic Ocean with a U.S. National Reconnaissance Office mission labeled NROL-76.

 The flight appeared to be off to a good start, but SpaceX cut off its launch broadcast a few minutes into the flight to help preserve its secrecy, as is standard practice during NRO missions.

 Related: Sensor issue forces scrub of SpaceX Falcon 9 NRO intelligence launch

 SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that the mission launched successfully after nearly being scrubbed by strong high-altitude winds.

 “Launch and landing of the NRO spy satellite was good,” he said about 20 minutes after liftoff. “Tough call, as high altitude wind shear was at 98.6% of the theoretical load limit.”

 While coverage of the mission’s climb to space ended early, cameras showed spectacular footage of the 15-story Falcon booster flipping around and firing several engines to fly back to a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, several miles south of the launch site.

 Dropping from more than 80 miles up, where camera views showed the blackness of space curvature of Earth, the stage deployed stabilizing fins and fired several engines again to slow its descent.

 Falcon 9 first stage has landed at LZ-1 https://t.co/gtC39uBC7zpic.twitter.com/766RxdZ99X — SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 1, 2017

 Four legs snapped out from the base of the rocket, which completed a final single-engine burn before a touchdown at “Landing Zone 1” announced with a flurry of sonic booms that rippled across the region.

 SpaceX has now reached double-digits in rocket landings that started in late 2015, recovering the first stage of a Falcon for the 10th time — four on land and six on a barge at sea.

 Related: SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, lands in historic first

 In March, SpaceX successfully re-launched a used booster — or “flight proven,” in SpaceX terminology — for the first time for a commercial satellite mission. More reflights are possible this year, and SpaceX has leased a Port Canaveral facility to accommodate what Musk has said is a growing "forest of rocket boosters."

 Musk believes reusable rockets are the key to drastically cutting launch costs, eventually making it possible to fulfill his vision of colonizing Mars.

 Monday’s launch, after a sensor problem scrubbed a first try Sunday, was SpaceX’s first dedicated mission for the NRO, the intelligence agency responsible for satellites.

 The NRO confirmed the mission was ordered as part of a satellite deal with Colorado-based Ball Aerospace, according to SpaceflightNow.com.

 That information, combined with knowledge of the Falcon 9 rocket’s performance and trajectory, prompted amateur satellite observers experienced in tracking NRO missions to speculate that the mission might be an imaging satellite, bound for a low-Earth orbit inclined 50 to 60 degrees relative to the equator.

 The mission patch, according to the National Reconnaissance Office, depicted Lewis and Clark peering through a spyglass and holding a musket, "heading into the great unknown to discover and explore the newly purchased Louisiana Territory."

 Stuck the landing! Great job team! pic.twitter.com/mS09TvJsv9 — 45th Space Wing (@45thSpaceWing) May 1, 2017

 If the speculation is correct, the satellite could be a replacement or successor to one launched in 2006 that failed immediately after reaching orbit.

 That mission became a controversial one when the government chose to shoot down the satellite with a Navy missile in 2008, saying it posed a risk of releasing a large amount of highly toxic fuel during an uncontrolled re-entry.

 The launch was SpaceX’s fifth this year, continuing its rebound from a launch pad rocket explosion last summer that grounded the company for the last four months of 2016.

 Another Falcon 9 is being prepared to launch a commercial satellite from Kennedy Space Center as soon as May 15.

 Follow James Dean on Twitter: @flatoday_jdean

 Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/05/01/spacex-falcon-9-launch/308176001/ ||||| High-altitude winds nearly halted SpaceX’s first flight for a government agency Monday.

 But CEO Elon Musk’s launch company went through with the Falcon 9 rocket launch at Launch Complex 39A, sending a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast.

 “Launch and landing of the NRO spy satellite was good. Tough call, as high altitude wind shear was at 98.6% of the theoretical load limit,” Musk posted on Twitter just after liftoff.

 Wind shear is the variation in wind speeds or direction at different altitudes. A large difference can harm rockets heading into space, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University meteorology professor Thomas Guinn said.

 “If the wind shear were outside the range of pre-calculated, safe limits … the rocket wouldn’t be able to stay on trajectory,” he said. “Or worse, could potentially over stress the rocket, causing catastrophic failure.”

 Just before the launch, Musk posted on Twitter, saying, “Winds aloft are unusually high (still within structural safety bounds). Worrying, but not a showstopper.”

 About nine minutes after the rocket sent the satellite into space Monday, the first-stage booster made its acrobatic return to a soft landing at Launch Complex 39A on the coast.

 It was the fourth time the company has recovered a rocket on land as it continues its effort to make reusable rockets routine. In late March, the company relaunched a rocket for the first time.

 Musk has said that reusability is a key component of potentially sending a manned mission to Mars. On Monday, the Falcon 9 rocket took off at 7:15 a.m. — right on time — from the historic complex, which SpaceX leases from NASA.

 The satellite launch had been scheduled for Sunday morning.

 But a problem with one of the rocket’s hundreds of sensors resulted in a halt to the countdown about 52 seconds before scheduled launch time.

 That meant a one-day delay.

 “While this particular sensor did have a redundancy, readings were out of tolerance, so out of an abundance of caution, we opted to hold launch,” John Federspiel, a lead mechanical design engineer at SpaceX, said during a pre-launch broadcast Monday.

 Monday’s launch represented the first time SpaceX has delivered a satellite into space for NRO. The company has been primarily focused on launching commercial satellites into space, along with cargo missions to the International Space Station.

 The NRO launch had been highly anticipated because it marks the start of what some consider a new era of rocket launches, one characterized by competition between SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for government contracts.

 For the last six years, at least, only United Launch Alliance has delivered government payloads into space.

 Got a news tip? msantana@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5256; Twitter, @marcosantana

 SpaceX launched the Department of Defense satellite NROL-76 on May 1, 2017 from Kennedy Space Center aboard its Falcon 9 rocket. |||||
A summary of this is?

– SpaceX had a big morning: It successfully launched its first government satellite and got its rocket to return safely to Earth to boot. The company sent up the spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:15am from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, reports USA Today. Nine minutes later, the rocket returned to Cape Canaveral. Details of the spy satellite's mission are classified, reports Space.com, which adds that about the only thing known is that it will be in a low-Earth orbit. The Orlando Sentinel sees Monday's launch as a milestone because SpaceX has previously focused on cargo missions to the International Space Station or commercial telecom satellites. The launch of a government payload, then, marks the start of a new era of competition between SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, which had cornered the market on government launches in recent years.


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– It seems clear now that Nidal Hasan's decision to act as his own attorney in the Fort Hood shooting trial was really a decision to not act as an attorney of any kind. A day after he rested his case without calling a single witness, Hasan skipped his closing argument, reports the AP. After prosecutors laid out in detail Hasan's role in the 2009 rampage that killed 13 people, the judge told Hasan he could go. "The defense chooses not to make a closing statement," he said. Hasan's decisions over the last two days seem to support the claim made by his defense team earlier in the military trial that he hopes to get the death penalty, notes CNN. He admitted in his opening statement that he was, in fact, the shooter. The jury of 13 officers will now begin deliberations. If they reach a unanimous guilty verdict, the death penalty is possible.

The soldier on trial for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood didn't give a closing argument on Thursday even after prosecutors laid out a detailed roadmap of their case and asked jurors for a verdict that would allow the death penalty.

 U.S. Army Col. Steve Henricks, a member of the prosecution, has his vehicle inspected upon arriving at the Lawrence H. Williams Judicial Center as proceedings in the court martial of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal... (Associated Press)

 A U.S. Army military police officer patrols in front of the Lawrence H. Williams Judicial Center as proceedings in the court martial of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan continue, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013,... (Associated Press)

 A U.S. Army military police officer watches as members of media are escorted into the Lawrence H. Williams Judicial Center as proceedings in the court martial of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan continue,... (Associated Press)

 Lead prosecutor, U.S. Army Col. Michael Mulligan, arrives at the Lawrence H. Williams Judicial Center as proceedings in the court martial of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan continue, Thursday, Aug. 22,... (Associated Press)

 A Fort Hood police officer walks in front of the heavily fortified Lawrence H. Williams Judicial Center as proceedings in the court martial of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan begin, Thursday, Aug. 22,... (Associated Press)

 Maj. Nidal Hasan is acting as his own attorney but declined to address jurors after prosecutors wrapped up their closing argument. When the judge told Hasan he could begin, he said: "The defense chooses not to make a closing statement."

 Prosecutors said there was "no doubt" that Hasan had planned and carried out the deadliest mass shooting ever on a U.S. military base.

 Hasan is facing numerous counts of premeditated murder for the attack that killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others at the Army post in central Texas. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

 The Army psychiatrist told jurors during a brief opening statement nearly two weeks ago that evidence would "clearly show" he was the shooter, and he described himself as a soldier who had "switched sides." But since then, he has sat mostly silent.

 Hasan has raised few objections during the 13-day trial, and he questioned only three of the nearly 90 witnesses called by prosecutors. He also presented only a single piece of evidence: an evaluation from his boss that called him a good soldier.

 On Thursday, military prosecutors asked jurors for a unanimous conviction on the premeditated murder charges, which would allow them to seek the death penalty _ the government's priority in the case.

 The prosecutor, Col. Steve Henricks, repeatedly emphasized the word "premeditation," trying to dissuade the jury _ 13 high-ranking military officers _ of even considering a conviction on a lesser charge that would take the death penalty off the table.

 "There's no doubt the evidence you heard in this case shows he committed the offense," Henricks said.

 Henricks said Hasan asked for the highest-tech weapon available when he went to a gun store a few months before the Nov. 5, 2009 attack, and he soon began practicing at a gun range. Hasan also used laser sights, which Henricks said "established intent to kill."

 The prosecutor noted that the shootings, which started inside a medical building crowded with soldiers preparing to deploy, came the same day Hasan's unit was at that building. Hasan was assigned to soon join the unit in Afghanistan on a six-month tour.

 The last witness to testify for prosecutors had said Hasan told her shortly before the shooting, without prompting, that the Army would "pay" if he were ever ordered deployed overseas.

 "Some things speak for themselves. It doesn't require any evidence _ because it's no coincidence _ that the accused did his crime on Five November," Henricks told jurors.

 Henricks also noted that Hasan targeted soldiers, leaving most civilians unscathed. After Hasan fled the medical building, and civilians outside asked him what was going on, "he tells them it's a paintball gun. It's a training exercise. He's keeping his wits about him even after what happened," Henricks said.

 Hasan, an American-born Muslim, has been unapologetic about saying the rampage was necessary to protect Muslim insurgents abroad from American soldiers preparing for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. But most of his arguments have played out through leaks to the media or directly to the judge, so they couldn't be considered by the jury.

 ___

 Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report from Fort Hood.

 ___

 Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber ||||| Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) -- Deliberations were suspended for the night Thursday in the court-martial of the Army psychiatrist charged with massacring soldiers at Fort Hood.

 The jury will continue weighing the fate Friday morning of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is charged with 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in the November 5, 2009, shooting rampage.

 The only real question likely facing the jury is Hasan's degree of guilt, given that he told the court during opening arguments that the evidence would clearly show he was the shooter.

 Court reconvened briefly Thursday evening after the jury said it had two questions. Jurors asked to have police officer Mark Todd's testimony read back to them and asked to see a map of buildings at Fort Hood.

 The jury of 13 military officers began deliberations after Hasan declined to make a statement during closing arguments. The prosecution urged the jury to convict, saying the evidence showed he believed he had a jihad duty to kill as many soldiers as possible.

 "The defense chooses not to make a closing statement," Hasan told the court, refusing to challenge any of the evidence presented during 13 days of testimony in the court-martial.

 If the jury of 13 senior officers unanimously convicts Hasan of two or more counts of premeditated murder, he faces a possible death sentence in the penalty phase.

 "There is no doubt, as I said in the beginning, the accused is the shooter," the prosecutor, Col. Steven Henricks, told the jury.

 "The only question for you is ...is this a premeditated design to kill?"

 For more than 90 minutes, the prosecutor took the jury methodically through the evidence in the case, meticulously piecing together how they say Hasan prepared and planned for an attack at a deployment processing center for soldiers deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq.

 Prosecutors have maintained the American-born Muslim underwent a progressive radicalization that led to the massacre at the sprawling central Texas base.

 "He did not want to deploy, and he came to believe he had a jihad duty to kill as many soldiers as possible," Henricks told the jury.

 Hasan picked the day -- November 5, 2009 -- because it was when the units he was scheduled to deploy with to Afghanistan were scheduled to go through the processing center, he said.

 Hasan, who has been acting as his own attorney, rested his case without calling a single witness or taking the stand to testify on his own behalf.

 His decision not to offer a defense was an anticlimactic end to the trial in which prosecution witnesses, primarily survivors, painted a horrific picture of what unfolded inside a processing center during the attack.

 During closing arguments, prosecutors showed a graphic FBI video of the crime scene hours after the rampage, where bodies, blood and bullets still covered the floor.

 As the video was shown to the jury, some of the family members of those killed fought back tears.

 One woman laid her head on her husband's shoulder, tears pouring down her cheeks, while another woman -- a wife of a victim -- left the courtroom.

 For his part, Hasan watched the video, appearing to pay close attention.

 Hasan, who has insisted that the jury not be allowed to consider lesser charges against him, said his attack on soldiers at Fort Hood was not an act of "sudden passion."

 There was "adequate provocation" for the attack because the soldiers were going to participate in "an illegal war" in Afghanistan, Hasan told the military judge Wednesday, arguing against the jury being allowed to consider voluntary manslaughter or unpremeditated murder.

 Prosecutors argued against the inclusion of lesser charges, saying the attack wasn't carried out in "the heat of sudden passion," and Hasan said he agreed.

 Hasan rests case, calls no witnesses

 Much has been made of Hasan's defense or, as his stand-by attorneys have said, the lack of it. Judge Tara Osborn declined a request by Hasan's attorneys to drop out of the case. The attorneys argued that Hasan was helping the prosecution put him to death.

 There may be something to that claim.

 Hasan took credit for the shooting rampage at the outset of the trial, telling the jury during opening statements that the evidence will show "I was the shooter."

 The judge barred Hasan from pleading guilty at the start of the court-martial. Under military law, defendants cannot enter guilty pleas in capital punishment cases.

 Osborn has refused to allow Hasan to argue "defense of others," a claim that he carried out the shootings to protect the Afghan Taliban and its leaders from U.S. soldiers.

 Hasan challenges witness account of shooting

 Perhaps as a way around that ruling, Hasan in recent days has leaked documents through his civilian attorney to The New York Times and Fox News that offer a glimpse of his justification for carrying out the attack. Among the documents was a mental health evaluation conducted by a military panel to determine whether Hasan was fit to stand trial.

 "I don't think what I did was wrong because it was for the greater cause of helping my Muslim brothers," he told the panel, according to pages of the report published by The New York Times.

 He also said, according to the documents: "I'm paraplegic and could be in jail for the rest of my life. However, if I died by lethal injection, I would still be a martyr."

 Military prosecutors called 89 witnesses and submitted more than 700 pieces of evidence before resting their case, hoping to show that the American-born Muslim had undergone what they described as a progressive radicalization.

 They have argued to the jury that Hasan, who was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, did not want to fight other Muslims and believed he had a jihad duty to kill as many soldiers as possible.

 The judge excluded much of the evidence that the prosecution contends goes to the heart of the motive for the attack, including e-mail communications between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric who officials say became a key member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

 She also declined to allow prosecutors to use materials they maintain showed Hasan's interest in the actions of Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, the American soldier sentenced to death for killing two soldiers and wounding more than a dozen others at the start of the Iraq war, an attack he said he carried out to stop soldiers from killing Muslims.

 Along with the e-mails and the material related to Akbar, Osborn also declined to allow the use of Hasan's academic presentation on suicide bombings, saying "motive is not an element of the crime."

 The final witness called by the prosecution, Dr. Tonya Kozminski, testified Tuesday about what Hasan told her would happen to the Army if he were deployed.

 "The last thing he said ... 'They will pay,' " Kozminski said.

 Hasan's defense strategy martyrdom?

 CNN's Ed Lavandera and Jason Morris contributed to this report. |||||


Summarize this article:

Press Release Sanders: Michigan Governor Must Resign over Flint Lead-Poisoning Crisis January 16, 2016 Twitter

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 BURLINGTON, Vt. – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday called on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to resign for his administration’s failure to deal with a lead-poisoning crisis that has sickened thousands of children in Flint, Michigan.

 “There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint’s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign,” Sanders said.

 Problems with Flint’s public water system date to a decision nearly two years ago by a receiver, appointed by the governor, who decided to cut costs by drawing the city’s drinking water from the polluted Flint River instead of from Lake Huron.

 The governor and other state officials knew – but did not acknowledge until last fall – that the river water was corroding pipes and causing lead to leach into the drinking water. The decision not to add chemicals to prevent corrosion of the pipes was made at the direction of the governor’s Department of Environmental Quality. The state health department in Michigan apparently knew about elevated lead levels in the blood of children but did not warn the public.

 “Because of the conduct by Gov. Snyder’s administration and his refusal to take responsibility, families will suffer from lead poisoning for the rest of their lives. Children in Flint will be plagued with brain damage and other health problems. The people of Flint deserve more than an apology,” Sanders said. ||||| A look at some of the key events in the development of the Flint water crisis:

 ___

 APRIL 2014: In an effort to save money, Flint begins drawing its water from the Flint River instead of relying on water from Detroit. The move is considered temporary while the city waits to connect to a new regional water system. Residents immediately complain about the smell, taste and appearance of the water. They also raise health concerns, reporting rashes, hair loss and other problems.

 SUMMER 2014: Three boil-water advisories are issued in 22 days after positive tests for coliform bacteria.

 OCTOBER 2014: A General Motors engine plant stops using Flint water, saying it rusts parts.

 JANUARY 2015: Flint seeks an evaluation of its efforts to improve the water amid concerns that it contains potentially harmful levels of a disinfection byproduct. Detroit offers to reconnect Flint to its water system. Flint insists its water is safe.

 JAN. 28: Flint residents snap up 200 cases of bottled water in 30 minutes in a giveaway program. More giveaways will follow in ensuing months.

 FEB. 3: State officials pledge $2 million for Flint's troubled water system.

 FEBRUARY: A 40-member advisory committee is formed to address concerns over Flint's water. Mayor Dayne Walling says the committee will ensure the community is involved in the issue.

 MARCH 19: Flint promises to spend $2.24 million on immediate improvements to its water supply.

 MARCH 27: Flint officials say the quality of its water has improved and that testing finds the water meets all state and federal standards for safety.

 SEPT. 24: A group of doctors led by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Hurley Medical Center urges Flint to stop using the Flint River for water after finding high levels of lead in the blood of children. State regulators insist the water is safe.

 SEPT. 29: Gov. Rick Snyder pledges to take action in response to the lead levels. It's the first acknowledgment by the state that lead is a problem.

 OCT. 2: Snyder announces that the state will spend $1 million to buy water filters and test water in Flint public schools.

 OCT. 8: Snyder calls for Flint to go back to using water from Detroit's system again.

 OCT. 15: The Michigan Legislature and Snyder approve nearly $9.4 million in aid to Flint, including $6 million to help switch its drinking water back to Detroit. The legislation also includes money for water filters, inspections and lab testing.

 NOV. 3: Voters elect newcomer Karen Weaver over incumbent Mayor Dayne Walling amid fallout over the drinking water.

 DEC. 29: Snyder accepts the resignation of Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant and apologizes for what occurred in Flint.

 JAN. 5: Snyder declares a state of emergency in Flint, the same day federal officials confirm that they are investigating.

 JAN. 12: Snyder activates the Michigan National Guard to help distribute bottled water and filters in Flint and asks the federal government for help.

 JAN. 13: Michigan health officials report an increase in Legionnaires' disease cases during periods over the past two years in the county that includes Flint.

 JAN. 14: Snyder asks the Obama administration for major disaster declaration and more federal aid. ||||| In a photo from Jan. 2, 2016, Sherri Miller and her son, Jameer, 7, a first-grader, are seen at Freeman Elementary School in Flint, Mich., where Jameer was getting his finger-prick blood sample tested... (Associated Press)

 FLINT, Mich. (AP) — The longest line at Freeman Elementary School's Family Fun Night was not for face painting or food. It was for lead testing.

 For three months, families in the former auto manufacturing hub of Flint have taken their children for blood tests and lived on bottled water after doctors found high levels of lead in the bodies of the community's youngest people.

 "It really is a scary situation to know that we can't get clean drinking water," said Sherri Miller, who brought her first-grade son, Jameer, to have a finger-prick blood sample tested. "It really is scary to think someone knew about this" and did nothing.

 Nearly two years have passed since safe drinking water flowed from Flint faucets. The financially troubled city began drawing its water from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. Officials failed to treat the corrosive water properly to prevent metal leaching from old pipes. Worse, residents didn't learn they were drinking tainted water until the state issued warnings a year and a half after the switch was made.

 For the city's 100,000 residents, daily life is now all about lead.

 Before the crisis, Flint, about an hour's drive north of Detroit, had become a symbol of the decline of the U.S. auto industry, having suffered waves of auto plant layoffs and the loss of half its population. Forty-one percent of the population falls below the poverty line.

 These days, it's a place where parents fear for the health of young children, who can develop learning disabilities and behavior problems from lead exposure.

 "It has such damning, lifelong and generational consequences," said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of pediatric residency at Hurley Children's Hospital, where more than 2,000 children have been tested. She is credited with bringing the problem to the public's attention after state agencies initially dismissed her concerns.

 "It was frustrating that it went on for so long," Hanna-Attisha said, complaining that even since the state began taking action, "everything has been slow."

 Gov. Rick Snyder finally acknowledged in late September that the water was unsafe, saying the consequences of switching to Flint River water were not "fully understood." The decision to use the river was made while a Snyder-appointed emergency manager was running city government.

 The city, which had been under state supervision since 2011, returned to local control last April.

 Flint went back to Detroit water in October, but some fear the old pipes were so damaged that they must be replaced, at costs estimated as high as $1.5 billion.

 On Monday, Snyder apologized to Flint and pledged that officials would contact every household to ensure families have bottled water and a filter and to check whether they want to be tested for lead exposure.

 He also promised to seek a long-term solution.

 "This is a crisis," the governor said. "So we're responding appropriately. There's more work to be done."

 Snyder's many critics got louder at midweek, when the governor announced that two spikes in Legionnaires' disease had occurred in the county that includes Flint during the time Flint River water was used. Ten people died. Michigan health officials said they cannot conclude that the outbreak stemmed from Flint's water, but others argued it probably had.

 Late Thursday, Snyder asked President Barack Obama to issue a federal disaster declaration in an effort to get federal aid, a move critics countered should have been taken sooner. The president signed an emergency declaration on Saturday and ordered federal aid for the city.

 After Snyder declared a state of emergency Jan. 5, residents could go to fire stations to pick up a daily ration of one case of bottled water per household and a water filter. But even that effort fell short.

 The following Monday, a pile of empty filter boxes was stacked against the wall at one station. One woman came back three times in the hope of getting one. Hours later, even the water was gone after volunteers had given out almost 900 cases. And the fire station had not received any of the lead test kits that had been promised.

 Volunteers also began going door-to-door to distribute water. Snyder called on the National Guard to help.

 For angry residents, it's still not enough.

 "The state was telling everybody, 'It's fine, relax. ... It's safe,'" even as people complained that the water looked cloudy and tasted bad, said community activist Melissa Mays. "They lied."

 Mays, her husband and three sons ages 11, 12 and 17 are taking medication to reduce high lead and other heavy metal levels in their blood.

 "Like everybody else, we drank and cooked with it because they told us it was safe," she said.

 Rabecka Cordell said she learned from her doctor that both she and her 5-year-old son, Dayne, have lead poisoning. She said she also has leukemia, and her son has learning and speech disabilities.

 She won't even bathe in the water and won't wash her son in it.

 "It's ridiculous," Cordell said.

 At the elementary school's lead testing on Tuesday, more than 50 kids lined up. One was fifth-grader Maleah Gill.

 "You wonder how long has it been in her system?" said her father, Matt Gill. "How much has she taken in? What's the effects?

 Hurley Children's Hospital is distributing 10,000 booklets on mitigating the effects of lead on children, including recipes high in iron, calcium and vitamin C. Adding to the challenge is that there are few grocers with fresh produce within Flint city limits. At a local farmers market, the hospital offers weekly recipe and cooking demonstrations with lead in mind. The first one was hearty egg burritos.

 Nutrition "has a huge mitigating role," Hanna-Attisha said.

 She urged parents to consult early and often with a pediatrician.

 In consultations, the doctor said, "we need to give families hope that with secondary prevention interventions, not every kid is going to have problems."

 ___

 Follow Roger Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rogschneider. ||||| Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked President Obama to declare both an emergency and an expedited major disaster in the county where the city of Flint has been dealing with the fallout from lead-contaminated drinking water. (Reuters)

 The city of Flint, Mich., is in the midst of a water crisis several years in the making. The city opted out of Detroit's water supply and began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014, part of a cost-saving move. Eighteen months later, in the fall of 2015, researchers discovered that the proportion of children with above-average lead levels in their blood had doubled.

 The city reconnected to Detroit's water system in October, but the damage was done. Water from the Flint River was found to be highly corrosive to the lead pipes still used in some parts of the city. Even though Flint River water no longer flows through the city's pipes, it's unclear how long those pipes will continue to leach unsafe levels of lead into the tap water supply. Experts currently say the water is safe for bathing, but not drinking.

 A group of Virginia Tech researchers who sampled the water in 271 Flint homes last summer found some contained lead levels high enough to meet the EPA's definition of "toxic waste."

 The researchers posted their test results online, which I represent graphically below with other visuals to help understand just how high above normal Flint's lead levels really were.

 Lead in water is measured in terms of parts per billion (ppb). If a test comes back with lead levels higher than 15 ppb, the EPA recommends that homeowners and municipalities take steps to reduce that level, like updating pipes and putting anti-corrosive elements in the water when appropriate.

 But 15 ppb is a regulatory measure, not a public health one. Researchers stress that there is no 100 percent "safe" level of lead in drinking water, only acceptable levels. Even levels as low as 5 ppb can be a cause for concern, according to the group studying Flint's water.

 So let's start with Flint's neighboring cities. At the city level, public health officials are most concerned with the 90th percentile level of lead exposure in homes they test -- that is, 90 percent of homes will have a lead level below this threshold, while 10 percent will register above it.

 Forty-five minutes away from Flint in Troy, Mich., the 90th percentile level for lead in 2013 was 1.1 parts per billion. Not too shabby at all. In the graphics that follow, each splotch represents 1 part per billion. The splotches aren't proportionally scaled to the cups -- 1 part per billion is way too small to be visualized at this level. But all of the following graphics are scaled proportionally to each other, to give an impression of relative lead levels.

 In Detroit, the water supply Flint had previously been connected to, the 90th percentile reading was 2.3 parts per billion -- still highly acceptable.

 Here's an illustration of water at the 5 parts per billion level. This is below the borderline for EPA acceptability, but the team of researchers studying Flint's water say that levels this high can be a cause for concern, particularly for young children.

 Now things get interesting. Here's a glass illustrating the 90th percentile reading among the 271 Flint homes tested by researchers last summer:

 At 27 parts per billion, it's five times as high as the level of concern, and nearly twice as high as the EPA's already-generous guidelines. According to the researchers who ran these tests, the health effects of lead levels this high "can include high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, kidney damage and memory and neurological problems."

 Recall, though, that 10 percent of the homes in the sample had lead levels even higher than this. Here's the highest lead reading in that sample, from a home in the city's 8th Ward:

 That's more than 10 times the EPA limit. It's 30 times higher than the 5 ppb reading that can indicate unsafe lead amounts.

 But that 158 ppb reading is far from the worst one that turned up in Flint, unfortunately. In the spring of 2015, city officials tested water in the home of LeeAnne Walters, a stay-at-home mother of four and a Navy wife. They got a reading of 397 ppb, an alarmingly high number.

 But it was even worse than that. Virginia Tech's team went to Walters' house to verify those numbers later in the year. They were concerned that the city tested water in a way that was almost guaranteed to minimize lead readings: They flushed the water for several minutes before taking a sample, which often washes away a percentage of lead contaminants. They also made residents collect water at a very low flow rate, which they knew also tended to be associated with lower readings.

 So the Virginia Tech researchers took 30 different readings at various flow levels. What they found shocked them: The lowest reading they obtained was around 200 ppb, already ridiculously high. But more than half of the readings came in at more than 1,000 ppb. Some came in above 5,000 -- the level at which EPA considers the water to be "toxic waste."

 The highest reading registered at 13,000 ppb.

 The professor who conducted the sampling, Dr. Marc Edwards, was in "disbelief."

 "We had never seen such sustained high levels of lead in 25 years of work," he said.

 According to Edwards, the team retested the water with extra quality controls and assurance checks, and obtained the exact same results.

 You can check out their description of the testing at the website they set up for their water study. It includes unsettling photos of LeeAnne Walters' tap water containing rust and metal particles large enough to be seen with the naked eye.

 The Walters family had stopped drinking the water a long time ago, according to the Virginia Tech team. But still, the lead levels were too high. One of Walters' 4-year-old sons was diagnosed with lead poisoning.

 It appears that the city of Flint and state of Michigan have finally started to take the water problem seriously. Again, they reconnected the city to Detroit's supply back in October, but the water remains unsafe to drink.

 In recent days the National Guard was activated to help distribute drinking water to the city's residents. And in yet another unsettling wrinkle in Flint's saga, 87 cases of Legionnaire's Disease, 10 fatal, have been diagnosed in the city since June. It's not yet clear whether that outbreak is linked to the water. ||||| Buy Photo The federal agency FEMA has sent two officials to Michigan to monitor the Flint drinking water crisis. (Photo: Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo

 LANSING President Barack Obama on Saturday declared a federal emergency in Flint, freeing up to $5 million in federal aid to immediately assist with the public health crisis, but he denied Gov. Rick Snyder's request for a disaster declaration.

 A disaster declaration would have made larger amounts of federal funding available more quickly to help Flint residents whose drinking water is contaminated with lead. But under federal law, only natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods are eligible for disaster declarations, federal and state officials said. The lead contamination of Flint's drinking water is a manmade catastrophe.

 The president's actions authorize the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate responses and cover 75% of the costs for much-needed water, filters, filter cartridges and other items for residents, capped initially at $5 million. The president also offered assistance in finding other available federal assistance, a news release Saturday from the White House said.

 Snyder, who on Thursday night asked Obama for federal financial aid in the crisis through declarations of both a federal emergency and a federal disaster, said in a news release Saturday he appreciates Obama granting the emergency request "and supporting Flint during this critical situation."

 "I have pledged to use all state resources possible to help heal Flint, and these additional resources will greatly assist in efforts under way to ensure every resident has access to clean water resources," he said.

 U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint, welcomed the emergency declaration and issued a statement:

 “I welcome the president’s quick action in support of the people of Flint after months of inaction by the governor," Kildee said. "The residents and children of Flint deserve every resource available to make sure that they have safe water and are able to recover from this terrible manmade disaster created by the state.”

 On Friday, Kildee led a bipartisan effort in support of the request for federal assistance. Kildee had long called for Snyder to request federal aid.

 Typically, federal aid for an emergency is capped at $5 million, though the president can commit more if he goes through Congress.

 Snyder's application said as much as $55 million is needed in the near term to repair damaged lead service lines and as much as $41 million to pay for several months of water distribution and providing residents with testing, water filters and cartridges.

 In what's become a huge government scandal, garnering headlines across the country and around the world, Flint's drinking water became contaminated with lead after the city temporarily switched its supply source in 2014 from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to more corrosive and polluted Flint River water, treated at the Flint water treatment plant.

 The switch was made as a cost-cutting move while the city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager. The state Department of Environmental Quality has acknowledged a mistake in failing to require the addition of needed corrosion-control chemicals to the water. That caused lead, which causes brain damage and other health problems in children, to leach into the water from pipes and fixtures.

 Resident complaints about the taste, odor and appearance of the water, which began immediately after the switch, were largely ignored by state officials. The state also dismissed reports of elevated lead levels in the blood of Flint children from pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha before for the first time publicly acknowledging a problem in October 2015.

 Snyder declared a state of emergency Jan. 5 and mobilized the National Guard Jan. 12 but has been widely and strongly criticized for not moving more quickly.

 State Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said federal assistance makes him "more confident ... Flint families will begin receiving the help they deserve."

 "We need to remain committed and ensure the state fully accepts responsibility in this crisis and does everything they can to correct the long-term impact on our community," Ananich said in a news release Saturday.

 U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, said in a news release Saturday she appreciates "the president's quick action in responding to the urgent needs of families in Flint."

 "I will continue to push for federal resources to address this crisis, and for a commitment of resources from the state to meet the immediate needs of the community and to set aside a future fund to address the long-term needs of children and families," Stabenow said.

 U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, also welcomed the announcement and said he will work to support further federal support for Flint residents. However, "the State of Michigan and Gov. Snyder must step up and provide the necessary resources to deal with the long-term effect of water contamination," Peters said in a statement.

 U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, praised Obama for moving "with unprecedented speed to respond, within 36 hours of receiving the request."

 Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.

 Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1RsCM1X ||||| CLOSE Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says help is being given to Flint residents affected by the city's water woes while officials work on a long-term solution. The governor made his remarks during a tour of the Detroit auto show. (Jan. 12) AP

 Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder activated the National Guard to help the American Red Cross distribute water to Flint residents to help them deal with the lead contamination that is in the City of Flint's water supply. (Photo: Getty Images)

 Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to clarify the health experts recommend that all of Flint’s children be treated as though they have been exposed to lead.

 FLINT, Mich. — In order to address the public health crisis in Flint, every Flint child under 6 years of age -- 8,657 children, based on an analysis of Census data -- should be considered exposed to lead.

 The direction came earlier this week from the doctor who forced the state to acknowledge Flint’s lead problem and the state itself.

 The exposure began in April 2014 after the city switched from using Detroit’s water system, which pumps water out of Lake Huron, to its own treatment plant, which drew water from the Flint River.

 In recommendations to the state on Monday, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha said all kids under the age of 6 should be treated with some kind of prevention actions.

 Eden Wells, the state's chief medical executive, reiterated in a news conference Monday the fact that all children who drank the city's water since April 2014 have been exposed to lead. "It is important when we think about a public health perspective that we consider the whole cohort ... exposed to the drinking water, especially 6 years and under since April 2014, as exposed, regardless of what their blood level is on Jan. 11."

 The state's most recent report, based on tests conducted between October and December 2015, shows that 43 people — only a small portion of the number exposed — had elevated blood lead levels. That's because these tests measure only the amount of lead in a person's blood, which decreases after about 30 days, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 That means testing done today does not represent past exposure. Once lead is present in the bloodstream, it is distributed throughout the body, primarily to bones, teeth and soft tissue. Lead accumulates in the body over time. Blood-lead tests used to identify recent or ongoing exposure to lead, do not measure the overall lead burden in the body.

 There is no safe level of lead in the body, but the impacts of lead are considered most severe on the developing brains and nervous systems of children and fetuses. And even the 8,657 Flint children younger than 6 exposed to lead may be a low estimate; It doesn't include unborn children whose mothers drank tainted water during their pregnancies, or children and pregnant women who reside outside Flint but were exposed while visiting relatives, childcare centers or hospitals inside city limits.

 See a map of the number of Flint children less than six years of age by block group.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1RrPONo ||||| The latest on the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan (all times local):

 3:10 p.m.

 President Barack Obama has signed an emergency declaration for Flint, Michigan, that clears the way for federal aid to the city undergoing a drinking water crisis.

 The White House issued a release Saturday calling for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate all disaster relief efforts to "alleviate the hardship and suffering" on residents.

 Flint's city switched water supplies in 2014 while a new pipeline was under construction and the corrosive water from the Flint River leached lead from old pipes.

 FEMA has been authorized to provide water, filters, cartridges and other items for 90 days. Direct federal funding also will be made available.

 Gov. Rick Snyder requested the federal declaration Friday, saying needs "far exceed the state's capability." He says emergency measures could cost $41 million. |||||

– Flint, Michigan's water woes are officially a federal emergency—nearly two years after the city took the money-saving move of switching from using Lake Huron water treated in Detroit to water from the Flint River. That water was found to be highly corrosive to lead pipes still in use in the city, causing lead to leach into residents' drinking water. On Saturday President Obama declared a federal emergency in the city of 100,000, thereby unleashing federal funding and authorizing FEMA to provide water, filters, cartridges, and other items for 90 days, per the AP and Detroit Free Press. Gov. Rich Snyder puts the cost of the aforementioned water distribution and filtering items at $41 million. More: Sanders vs. Snyder: Speaking of Snyder, Bernie Sanders called for his resignation Saturday. "The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint's water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned." Timeline: The AP has a timelines of the crisis, which dates to the April 2014 switch. Notable: In October 2014, a GM engine plant stopped using Flint's water, stating that it was rusting parts. Visualized: The Washington Post has a jarring and informative series of graphics that illustrate "how toxic Flint's water really is." One family's water tested at a level that the EPA considers to be "toxic waste." Every kid: The state's chief medical executive, along with the doctor who publicly called for Flint to stop its use of Flint River water, this week said all 8,657 kids under age 6 in Flint should be considered exposed to lead and treated as such, reports USA Today. The residents' ordeal: The AP speaks with some locals. Rabecka Cordell and her 5-year-old son have lead poisoning; she also has leukemia, he has learning and speech disabilities. She refuses to even use the water to bathe.


Article:
Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE New details emerged Thursday in the intense search for two Afghan student airmen missing from Moody Air Force Base. WXIA

 Authorities say Mirwais Kohistani and Shirzad Rohullah failed to show up for their training at the base on Monday. (Photo: NBC)

 MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. — New details emerged Thursday in the intense search for two Afghan student airmen missing from Moody Air Force Base, about 230 miles south of Atlanta, near Valdosta.

 Authorities say Mirwais Kohistani and Shirzad Rohullah failed to show up at the base for training Monday.

 “They’ve just gone missing. We’re not sure why,” said U.S. Air Force spokesman Ed Gulick.

 Gulick said by phone law enforcement officials are tracing the steps the two men took the last five days.

 Valdosta Regional Airport officials confirmed law enforcement seized hours of surveillance video in connection with the disappearance of the Afghan men. The base would not confirm reports the men rented a car there.

 “As you know, they’re from Afghanistan over there fighting for their country’s freedom. So, there are those that would want to harm them if they found out they were in the Afghanistan air force,” said Gulick.

 Gulick said the disappearance could even put the men's families at risk of being attacked. Gulick said he does not believe the men pose a threat to anyone in the United States. He said the pair were nominated by the Afghan air force, vetted first by the U.S. Naval Air Training Command, then by the Department of State before they were issued visas.

 Moody AFB (Photo: WXIA)

 “It’s not the first time it’s happened, so we just want to find them if we can,” said Gulick. “I think we just think we continue to look for them, and follow to try and find them."

 In September 2014, three senior Afghan military officers who failed to return to a Camp Edwards, a National Guard training facility at Joint Base Cape Cod, Mass., were taken into custody while trying to cross into Canada and subsequently sent back to Afghanistan.

 The three soldiers from the Afghan National Army had arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2014, to take part in a two-week training exercise.

 The officers, who were identified as Maj. Jan Mohammad Arash, Capt. Mohammad Nasir Askarzada and Capt. Noorullah Aminy, were among 200 soldiers from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia taking part in the tactical exercises at Camp Edwards. All three carried Afghan passports and valid U.S. visas, according to military officials.

 Contributing: Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY. Follow Dontaye Carter on Twitter: @DontayeCarter

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1QzmPVZ ||||| ATLANTA (AP) — Two Afghan men who were training with the U.S. military are missing from a base in south Georgia, but officials say that they were screened before entering the country and that there's no indication they pose a threat.

 FILE -In this Friday, Oct. 29, 1999 file photo, a mock F-16 fighter jet is silhouetted against the sky at sunrise as workers pass through security and make their way onto Moody Air Force Base, near Valdosta,... (Associated Press)

 "There's zero evidence that these guys are terrorists," said Brian Childress, police chief in Valdosta, which is near Moody Air Force Base.

 The men didn't report Monday to maintenance training with the 81st Fighter Squadron, base officials said in a statement Tuesday night.

 Federal, local and state agencies are working with the military to find the men, Childress said Wednesday. Moody officials informed him Tuesday morning the men were missing, he said. The men's names have not been released.

 Both men were being trained in aircraft maintenance and were scheduled to graduate from the program Dec. 18, said Lt. Col. Chris Karns, an Air Force spokesman. After graduation, they were to return to Afghanistan to begin working with A-29 Super Tucano airplanes in their home country, Karns said.

 The last contact the base had with the men was on Friday, Karns said. Trainees are allowed to go off base on the weekends, and they failed to report back to the program Monday, he said.

 The military has no reason to believe they present a threat to anyone, said Karns. They were screened by both the U.S. and the government of Afghanistan before their arrival in the United States more than a year ago, he said. Karns added that he has no reason to believe they're armed and there are no reports of missing weapons.

 The two had been at Moody since February 2015 as part of the training program aimed at improving the Afghanistan air force, according to the base's statement.

 The program's goal is to train a total of 30 Afghan pilots and 90 Afghan maintenance personnel during a four-year period, Moody Air Force Base said in an August 2014 release when the program was announced. It was not clear how many trainees from Afghanistan are currently at the base.

 Conducting such training at a U.S. base instead of Afghanistan is safer, Karns said.

 Base officials met with local law enforcement several months ago to plan for the possibility that some of the Afghanistan trainees could go absent without leave, Childress said.

 "Anytime you bring in foreign military to our country, you have to prepare for that kind of thing," Childress said.

 He said that on Tuesday, he began hearing from Valdosta residents concerned about the missing men "in light of what's happened out in San Bernardino," but he called this "a totally different circumstance."

 "You've got to remember these folks were cleared by the U.S. military and by the Department of Defense to come in and train," Childress said. "These guys have been here since February of 2015, and they have not caused a problem at all."

 _____

 Baldor reported from Washington, D.C. |||||Summary:

– Two Afghan airmen who didn't show up for training at a US Air Force base in Georgia on Monday are missing, and authorities suspect it's because they don't want to go home. An Air Force spokesman tells USA Today that law enforcement officials are searching for Mirwais Kohistani and Shirzad Rohullah, who were being trained in aircraft maintenance. The spokesman tells 11Alive that the men were nominated by the Afghan Air Force and heavily vetted by US authorities before being accepted for training at Moody Air Force Base, so they probably don't pose a threat to anybody in the US. "It's not the first time it's happened, so we just want to find them if we can," he says. Another Air Force spokesman tells the AP that the trainees, who were allowed off the base over the weekend and haven't been heard from since, were due to graduate from the training program next week and return to Afghanistan. The police chief in the nearby town of Valdosta tells the AP that there is "zero indication" that the men are terrorists. "You've got to remember these folks were cleared by the US military and by the Department of Defense to come in and train," he says. "These guys have been here since February of 2015, and they have not caused a problem at all." Three Afghan soldiers who vanished during a training exercise in Massachusetts last year were sent back to their homeland after being caught at the Canadian border.


Write an article based on this summary:

– When William McCormack went into a medical center in the Adirondacks last month with severe stomach pains, he ended up getting an emergency appendectomy ... which came as quite a surprise to him, considering he thought he'd already had his appendix removed in Bronxville, New York, last year. The 43-year-old is now suing Lawrence Hospital and Dr. Michael Kerin, the surgeon who claimed to have removed McCormack's appendix in January 2013, the Journal News reports. McCormack was on vacation near Lake Placid in early March when he had to undergo emergency surgery, during which surgeons "discovered that (McCormack's) appendix was never removed and was still inside him," according to his lawsuit. Also included in the suit: a copy of the post-op report from Lawrence Hospital, which is signed by Kerin and claims McCormack's appendix had indeed been removed. It's not clear how exactly the hospital failed to alert McCormack he was still in possession of the body part, as a report from the pathology department states, "there is no evidence of appendix" in the specimen marked "appendix." So what was removed from McCormack's body? A "yellowish mass," according to News 12.

What was supposed to be routine surgery became a little too routine for 43-year-old William McCormack, who is suing Lawrence Hospital Center, claiming that he had to have an appendectomy in the Adirondacks last month — a year after he supposedly had the same operation at the Bronxville medical facility.

 Buy Photo Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville (Photo: Ricky Flores/The Journal News)Buy Photo

 It's a gut-wrenching tale of surgical déjà vu.

 What was supposed to be routine surgery became a little too routine for 43-year-old William McCormack, who is suing Lawrence Hospital Center, claiming that he had to have an appendectomy in the Adirondacks last month — a year after he supposedly had the same operation at the Bronxville medical facility.

 McCormack, a Bronxville resident, is seeking unspecified damages from Lawrence Hospital and Dr. Michael Kerin, the Tuckahoe surgeon who said he removed McCormack's appendix on Jan. 27, 2013.

 According to a lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court, McCormack says that he experienced severe stomach pains during a visit to Lake Placid in early March. He went to Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake and underwent an emergency operation.

 During the second operation, "it was discovered that (McCormack's) appendix was never removed and was still inside him," court papers say.

 Kerin, who runs Michael Kerin MD, General Surgery & Med Spa in Tuckahoe, did not return calls seeking comment. His website lists Kerin as former director of surgery at Lawrence Hospital.

 The hospital told The Journal News in an email that it was investigating McCormack's claim and does not comment on pending litigation.

 Mitchell J. Baker, the White Plains lawyer representing McCormack, had no comment, saying only that the lawsuit "speaks for itself."

 Included in the lawsuit is a copy of a Jan. 27, 2013 Operative Report from Lawrence Hospital stating that McCormack's appendix had been removed. The report was electronically signed by Kerin.

 The suit says that after the Bronxville surgery, Kerin told McCormack "that his appendix was removed, and all was otherwise satisfactory."

 A report from Lawrence Hospital's Pathology Department, however, says that while the department received a specimen bearing McCormack's name and marked "appendix," the final pathologic diagnosis states that "there is no evidence of appendix."

 "Lawrence Hospital never notified Mr. McCormack that there was no evidence of an appendix in the specimen... despite its knowledge that the specimen marked 'appendix' was not an appendix and/or that something had gone amiss in the operation conducted by Dr. Kerin," the lawsuit says.

 Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/1gLWaPP ||||| Lawsuit: Lawrence Hospital failed to remove appendix of patient William McCormack, of Bronxville

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 BRONXVILLE - A Bronxville man is suing Lawrence Hospital because he had to have surgery twice to get his appendix removed.

 Investment banker William McCormack took an emergency trip to Lawrence Hospital back in 2013, when doctors diagnosed his extreme stomach pain as acute appendicitis. The now 43-year-old underwent surgery and was told his appendix was removed.

 About a year after his surgery, McCormack was in upstate New York when he started to feel those same stomach pains. When doctors examined him, they discovered that he still had his appendix.

 Read More: Westchester Top Stories

 McCormack is suing the hospital and the surgeon who claims he performed the appendectomy. The lawsuit claims what was actually removed from McCormack was a "yellowish mass," not his appendix.

 His attorney says documents show the hospital and the doctor, Michael Kerin, realized the mistake and carelessly ignored it. McCormack is asking to be compensated not just for the pain and suffering, but also for having to go under the knife twice.

 Attorney Mitchell Baker says the hospital and surgeon may have been faced with more than medical malpractice had McCormack’s appendix not been removed upstate.

 Calls for comment have not been returned by Lawrence Hospital. |||||