Write an article based on this summary:

– New emails are out in the Solyndra mess, and it's probably not a great day to be a guy named Steve Spinner. He is an Obama-fundraiser-turned-Energy-Department-official who pushed hard for the loan even though he promised to recuse himself—because his wife worked as an attorney for the firm representing Solyndra. The major news services are highlighting his role in making sure the loan happened, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Politico. (He has left his post and now works for a Democratic think tank.) The other main point to emerge: A Treasury official raised a red flag about the loan restructuring that went ignored. Mary Miller advised the Energy Department to get the Justice Department to sign off on the deal because it allowed private investors to be repaid before taxpayers if the company went bust. "To our knowledge, that never happened," Miller wrote. Email snippets from Spinner: “As agreed, I will recuse myself from any active participation in any of these applications.” "Any word from OMB? I have the OVP and WH breathing down my neck on this ...," he wrote to an Energy Department staffer (referring to the Office of Management and Budget, the vice president's office and the White House). "How (expletive) hard is this? What is he waiting for?” Spinner wrote, complaining about an OMB official's apparent reluctance to approve the deal. “Will we have it by end of day? If any risk of not, let me know..."

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 The Treasury Department warned this year that the restructuring of a government loan to solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC might be illegal, newly released email excerpts show.

 Those excerpts and other emails released Friday offer a new picture of how the Obama administration may have brushed aside warnings and, in one instance, a possible conflict of interest as officials pushed to support the solar-panel maker.

 Solyndra received a $535 million Department of Energy loan guarantee in September 2009, and the loan itself came from a part of the Treasury Department. Early this year, with the company's finances growing shakier, private investors ... ||||| WASHINGTON — A senior Energy Department official pushed hard for the government’s $535 million loan to the now-bankrupt California solar energy company Solyndra even after he had disclosed that his wife’s law firm represented the company and he had promised to recuse himself from matters related to the loan application, according to e-mails provided to Congressional investigators by the administration.

 The official, Steven J. Spinner, then a senior member of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee oversight office and a 2008 Obama fund-raiser, inquired frequently about the progress of the Solyndra loan, urging the White House budget office to move more quickly on approving it.

 He also communicated directly with Solyndra officials who were anxiously awaiting word from Washington that their loan would be approved.

 “Any word on O.M.B.?” he asked another Energy Department loan officer. “I have the O.V.P. and W.H. breathing down my neck on this,” referring to the office of the vice president and the White House.

 The new e-mails provide further evidence of high-level cheerleading on behalf of Solyndra, a maker of innovative tubular rooftop solar panels that declared bankruptcy last month and laid off 1,100 workers.

 But even as Solyndra was being promoted as a model of new technology, administration officials were raising concerns about its viability, the legality of a later restructuring and whether the government was sufficiently protected should the business fail.

 The company was the first recipient of a federally guaranteed loan for alternative energy projects, but now is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether it provided misleading financial information to federal authorities. Congressional investigators are also looking at whether the Obama administration adequately oversaw the granting of the loan.

 The latest e-mails also show that senior White House and Treasury Department officials voiced concerns at several stages of the ill-fated loan guarantee. At one point, they show that the White House considered making a bigger public event than previously known of the formal approval of the company’s financing package.

 Top officials, including Rahm Emanuel, then the White House chief of staff, weighed whether President Obama would visit the company to formally announce the loan guarantee, which occurred in September 2009. Ultimately, Mr. Obama did not participate in the event. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did by video teleconference and Energy Secretary Steven Chu attended. Earlier, Carol Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, met with an investor in the company.

 Still, the e-mails reveal that some White House officials were concerned about the company’s health and the haste with which the loan guarantees were moving, while others were eager to hurry it along to make a public relations splash.

 They also show that days before the Obama administration gave conditional approval to the loan guarantee, a major investor behind the deal met with Ms. Browner. The investor, David J. Prend, a co-founder of Rockport Capital, a high-technology venture capital firm, met with Ms. Browner in late February 2009 and brought up Solyndra, whose application was then pending.

 Solyndra’s chief executive at the time, Chris Gronet, then wrote to the White House on March 6 to describe the company’s plans, after being contacted by Mr. Prend and told to follow up with the White House. “We just need to complete the D.O.E. process and raise the equity portion of the project!” Mr. Gronet wrote, referring to the Department of Energy. “The company is ramping up production to meet a very strong demand.”

 Greg Nelson, a midlevel White House staff member, wrote back to Mr. Gronet on March 8, 2009: “It looks like a great product, and the plans for Fab 2 are inspiring,” referring to the manufacturing plant that the federal government would finance. Within days, the Energy Department’s credit committee voted to approve the conditional $535 million loan. It was publicly announced on March 21.

 Energy Department documents indicate that Mr. Spinner was a senior member of the team involved in vetting the loans and was instrumental in the Solyndra package. His wife, Allison B. Spinner, is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, Calif., law firm that represents dozens of Silicon Valley technology firms.

 Through her office, Ms. Spinner declined to comment. Mr. Spinner, who has since left the government, did not respond to a message left at his wife’s office.

 An Energy Department spokesman, Damien LaVera, said the initial terms of the Solyndra loan guarantee were issued before Mr. Spinner joined the staff. Mr. LaVera added that because Ms. Spinner agreed not to participate in or receive any financial compensation from her law firm for work concerning Solyndra, Mr. Spinner was allowed by government ethics officials to oversee the company’s applications. He did not make decisions on the Solyndra transaction.

 “As agreed, I will recuse myself from any active participation in any of these applications,” Mr. Spinner wrote in September 2009, after sending dozens of e-mails in August to the head of the Energy Department loan program and other energy and Obama administration officials asking about the Solyndra project.

 At that time, officials from the White House budget office were complaining of being rushed to approve a deal about which they had significant concerns.

 Administration officials said Friday that while Mr. Spinner was involved in helping coordinate the final steps necessary to clear up disputes so that the administration could commit the money to Solyndra, it does not mean he violated his agreement not to play a role in formally evaluating the loan application.

 Despite the eagerness of Mr. Spinner and other Energy Department officials to see the loan approved, other administration officials continued to raise flags about the company’s viability and the completeness of the loan application package.

 A Treasury Department official objected to the decision by the Energy Department that allowed company investors to get first in line among creditors, instead of the federal government, for part of their investment.

 “Our legal counsel believes that the statute and the D.O.E. regulations both require that the guaranteed loan should not be subordinate to any loan or other debt obligation,” said an Aug. 17, 2011, e-mail from a Treasury official to Jeffrey D. Zients, a top official at the White House budget office.

 An administration official said Friday that the Energy Department disagreed and believed that it did have the legal authority to give priority to private investors, to secure additional financing. ||||| Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration.

 The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted. The e-mails, which were reviewed by The Washington Post, show for the first time concerns within the administration about the legality of the Energy Department’s extraordinary efforts to help Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt Aug. 31.

 The FBI raided Solyndra last month, shortly after it closed its doors.

 The records provided Friday by a government source also show that an Energy Department stimulus adviser, Steve Spinner, pushed for Solyndra’s loan despite having recused himself because his wife’s law firm did work for the company. Spinner, who left the agency in September 2010, did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

 The documents offer new evidence of wide disagreement between officials at the Energy Department and officials at the Treasury Department and Office of Management and Budget, where questions were raised about the carefulness of the loan vetting process used to select Solyndra and the special help it was given as its finances deteriorated. Energy Department officials continued to make loan payments to the company even after it had defaulted on the terms of its loan.

 The Solyndra controversy has escalated with each new release of documents to a Republican-led House energy subcommittee investigating the matter. President Obama defended the Energy Department in a news conference Thursday, saying its decisions were made by career professionals. Also Thursday, the head of the embattled loan program announced that he would step down, although Energy Department officials said he was not doing so because of the Solyndra matter.

 As Republican committee leaders moved to get more information about warnings from Treasury and the OMB, an Energy spokesman, Damien LaVera, said agency officials had listened to Treasury’s advice to consult the Justice Department on the loan restructuring but felt it was appropriate to move forward.

 “Ultimately, DOE’s determination that the restructuring was legal was made by career lawyers in the loan program based on a careful analysis of the statute,” he said.

 The e-mails show that Mary Miller, an assistant Treasury secretary, wrote to Jeffrey D. Zients, deputy OMB director, expressing concern. She said that the deal could violate federal law because it put investors’ interests ahead of taxpayers’ and that she had advised that it should be reviewed by the Justice Department.

 “To our knowledge that never happened,” Miller wrote in a Aug. 17, 2011, memo to the OMB.

 In February, the restructuring was approved by Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

 Company executives said they needed a quick cash infusion to save the company, and private investors agreed to contribute $75 million if loan repayment terms were modified.

 Solyndra ran out of money anyway and sought bankruptcy court protection, leaving 1,100 employees out of work. The loan refinancing now makes it likely that taxpayers will have to make up most of the loss, the e-mails show. The Treasury Department’s general counsel had concluded that the renegotiated loan violated the law because it allowed private investors to be first in line for repayment in case of a default.

 Those private investors include investment funds linked to George Kaiser, a Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser. Kaiser has said he had no involvement in the loan.

 The correspondence also suggests that, at the most senior levels at the White House and down through its ranks, the Obama administration wanted to use the Solyndra loan to highlight progress under the stimulus act.

 Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been investigating the loan, issued a statement Friday saying the correspondence showed a “disturbingly close relationship between President Obama’s West Wing inner circle, campaign donors, and wealthy investors.”

 “After 8 months of stonewalling by this Administration, today we finally learn one of the reasons why they fought our investigation every step of the way,” the statement said.

 One participant in the Solyndra effort, according to the e-mails, was Spinner. He pressed for OMB officials to speed up review of the Solyndra loan, writing at one point: “Any word from OMB? I have the OVP [Office of the Vice President] and WH [White House] breathing down my neck on this.”

 Spinner came from Silicon Valley to serve as a senior adviser on the loan program, and his wife was a lawyer with Wilson Sonsini, the law firm representing Solyndra in its application. Despite an ethics agreement under which he said he would recuse himself from Solyndra’s loan application, correspondence shows that Spinner defended the company, worked to get the president or vice president to visit its factory, and pushed for a final decision on approving the company’s loan.

 “How [expletive] hard is this?” Spinner wrote to a career staffer on Aug. 28, 2009, asking for answers about final approval from an OMB official. “What is he waiting for? Will we have it by the end of the day?”

 In an Aug. 19, 2009, e-mail, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asked Spinner if he could discuss any concerns among the investment community about Solyndra.

 Spinner dismissed the idea that Solyndra had financial problems.

 “I haven’t heard anything negative on my side,” he said.

 A day after a discussion about possible problems at Solyndra, Spinner forwarded to the chief of staff’s aide a list of Solyndra’s main investors and attached a published profile of Kaiser.

 Spinner is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank.

 A senior administration official declined to comment Friday when asked if Spinner violated his recusal agreement.

 LaVera, the Energy Department spokesman, said Spinner “was authorized to oversee and monitor the progress of applications, ensure that the program met its deadlines and milestones, and coordinate possible public announcements,” because his wife gave up payments related to loan project clients. “He was not allowed to make decisions on the terms or conditions of any particular loan guarantee or decide whether or not a particular transaction was approved,” LaVera said. “This arrangement was reviewed and approved by the department’s career ethics officer.”

 The e-mails also added more evidence that venture capitalists had access to senior White House decision makers.

 David Prend, whose firm Rockport Capital was also a Solyndra investor, wrote a March 2009 e-mail to the White House two weeks before Solyndra won conditional commitment on its loan. Prend thanked Greg Nelson, a White House clean-technology aide, for meeting with him.

 “It was great to meet you with [then-White House climate czar] Carol Browner last week,” he wrote. “I look forward to working with you to get the message out and to effect real change in the Energy Industry. I will follow up shortly on 2 of the companies we discussed,” mentioning Solyndra as one.

 Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report. |||||


Article:

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Ray Tamarra/Getty Images; JB Lacroix/WireImage Charlie Sheen hasn't yet issued a statement about the death of his former assistant, Rick Calamaro (l.).

 Rick Calamaro, Charlie Sheen’s former longtime personal assistant and close friend, was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment Sunday.

 The 46-year-old club promoter had reportedly been dead for a few days when police found him, according to TMZ.

 "Numerous pain medications and an open bottle of alcohol" were littered in his apartment, the site reports.

 Calamaro was considered one of Sheen’s closest friends and was reportedly present during Sheen’s infamous 36-hour drug binge in October 2010.

 Since then, many have speculated that Calamaro was a bad influence on the troubled actor, and may have even supplied Sheen with drugs over the years.

 Calamaro's cause of death has not yet been determined, and the “Anger Management” star has not yet released a statement. |||||
What is a summary?

– Charlie Sheen's former assistant Rick Calamaro has been found the way some people feared Sheen himself might end up during his meltdown last year—dead and surrounded by drugs and alcohol. The 46-year-old club promoter had been dead for a few days when police found him in his Los Angeles apartment, close to "numerous pain medications and an open bottle of alcohol," sources tell TMZ. Calamaro, one of Sheen's closest friends, was his personal assistant from the summer of 2010 until November 2011, and is believed to have been present during the actor's notorious drug-fueled hotel-trashing rampage in 2010. Some insiders blamed Calamaro for Sheen's wild behavior, and suspected that he had been supplying the actor with drugs, notes the New York Daily News. Sheen, whose new comedy Anger Management set a cable ratings record with its debut Sunday night, has yet to comment on the death.


Article:
Security was tight at the opera house, with many uniformed police in sight and all bags checked. Mr. Gelb, the Met’s general manager, addressed the performers and musicians at Friday’s final dress rehearsal to tell them about enhanced security measures. The large rally across from Lincoln Center drew some Jewish leaders, and current and former elected officials like former Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, and Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat, and Peter T. King, a Republican.

 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended the opera, Met officials said.

 Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, who was the rally’s master of ceremonies, said he did not expect protesters to react inappropriately. “But you can’t be responsible when the Metropolitan Opera advocates terrorism and incites violence — you can’t know what will happen,” he said. “And anything that happens, that has besmirched this Metropolitan Opera, and besmirched Lincoln Center, is to be laid at the foot of Peter Gelb.”

 One protester at the rally, Hilary Barr, 55, a pediatric nurse from Westchester County, said she believed the opera made excuses for terrorism. “By putting this on a stage in the middle of Manhattan, the message is, ‘Go out, murder someone, be a terrorist and we’ll write a play about you,’ ” she said.

 Some people held a counterdemonstration. James Saslow, 66, a professor of theater history at Queens College, had a sign: “A work of art about a subject is not a work in favor of that subject.”

 The opera, and the Met, were also defended by some artistic figures.

 “It is not only permissible for the Met to do this piece — it’s required for the Met to do the piece,” Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, said in an interview. “It is a powerful and important opera.”

 The protests were initially led by several smaller Jewish groups and conservative religious organizations. The larger Anti-Defamation League brokered a compromise with the Met, which pleased few on either side, in which plans to show the opera to a wider audience in movie theaters were dropped, but the New York production would otherwise go on. Leaders in the more liberal Reform Judaism movement have condemned the opera, but did not call for its cancellation. ||||| Since its premiere in 1991, The Death of Klinghoffer has been decried as anti-Semitic and as Zionist propaganda. That makes sense—the opera, created by composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, is based on the 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship by the Palestinian Liberation Front and subsequent murder of 69-year-old wheelchair-bound American Jew Leon Klinghoffer. Tonight, New York City's Metropolitan Opera will mount a production that's already mired in controversy. "The really ironic and sad fact," Adams has said, "is that the content of this opera is more relevant in 2014 than it was even in 1991."

 October 7, 1985 –Four men from the Palestinian Liberation Front hijack the MS Achille Lauro, an Italian liner, as it departs Egypt for Israel. They round up the passengers and crew and demand that the ship sail to Syria, ordering the release of 50 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. When denied, they kill retired, wheelchair-bound American Jew Leon Klinghoffer, 69, with shots to the chest and head. The ship's barber and waiter are made to throw him overboard.

 April 29, 1990 –The three-hour made-for-TV movie Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair premieres, starring Burt Lancaster as Leon Klinghoffer. The previous year, Karl Malden played the same role in another TV movie, The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro. Both films were supervised by Klinghoffer's daughters and made little news.

 March 19, 1991 –The Death of Klinghoffer premieres in Brussels. Originally scheduled for January, the Belgian interior minister asked that it be rescheduled until the end of the Gulf War. The opera garnered lots of attention prior to its debut, but ultimately reviews were lukewarm and focused more on problematic staging and diction than any incendiary messages. "People come expecting machine-gun fire and bodies being thrown overboard," said director Peter Sellars, "and what they get is a bunch of art."

 September 5, 1991 –The Death of Klinghoffer makes its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Klinghoffer's daughters attend and later say "the juxtaposition of the plight of the Palestinian people with the cold-blooded murder of an innocent, disabled American Jew is both historically naive and appalling." (Critics from the New York Times and Newsday have a similar take.) Following protests from Jewish organizations and the Los Angeles Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, two of five companies that co-commissioned the show, decide not to perform the work as scheduled.

 November 7, 1992 –Amid picketing by the Jewish Information League, the San Francisco opera runs six performances of Klinghoffer, the second-best-selling production of the season.

 April 1996 –PLF leader Muhammed Zaidan accepts responsibility for Klinghoffer's death. The following year, the Palestinian Liberation Organization reaches a financial settlement with the Klinghoffer family.

 November 4, 2001 –A month after the September 11 hijackings, the Boston Symphony Orchestra pulls performances of choruses from Klinghoffer. "It seems inappropriate to perform excerpts from an opera about a terrorist act right now," said conductor Robert Spano. One of the members of the BSO chorus had lost her husband on AA Flight 11, which crashed into the northern tower of the World Trade Center. Music professor Richard Taruskin applauds the decision in the New York Times, arguing that defeating terrorism means "no longer romanticizing terrorists as Robin Hoods."

 January 18, 2002 –England's BBC Barbican retrospective on the works on John Adams opens with a concert performance of Klinghoffer. In contrast to the Boston decisions, no one considers canceling the piece while planning for the festival. "If anything," Adams said, "people were more committed."

 May 13, 2003 –British filmmaker Penny Woolcock's film version of Klinghoffer premieres at Lincoln Center. It's later scheduled to be screened at the Ramallah International Film Festival but was banned because some members of the Palestinian Authority deemed it "too pro-Israeli."

 June 17, 2011 –The Opera Theatre of St. Louis mounts the first new U.S. production of Klinghoffer since its 1991 premiere. A month in advance, it hosts an interfaith dialogue among local Jewish, Christian, and Islamic leaders. The response to the opera is overwhelmingly positive.

 February 24, 2012 –In a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, the English National Opera performs a new production of Klinghoffer, under the direction of Tom Morris (Warhorse). After weeks of anticipated protests, only one picketer stands outside the theater.

 June 17, 2014 –Under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, Met general manager Peter Gelb decides to cancel HD and radio simulcasts of Klinghoffer, insisting that "the opera is not anti-Semitic," but that the broadcast "would be inappropriate at this time of rising anti-Semitism." Composer John Adams says the change "goes far beyond issues of "artistic freedom" and ends in promoting the same kind of intolerance that the opera's detractors claim to be preventing."

 • • •

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 A Sneak Peek at the First Major Biography of John Updike, the Man Who Made Rabbit Run ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani joined demonstrators outside the Metropolitan Opera on Monday for an emotional protest against a musical work about the death of a Jewish man they say glorifies his Palestinian killers.

 People, some in wheelchairs, gather at Lincoln Center as they protest "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer John Adams' opera has been a lightning rod since February,... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this Sept. 22, 2014, file photo, protestors attend the arrivals at the Metropolitan Opera 2014-15 Season Opening in New York to register their disapproval of the Met's decision to premiere... (Associated Press)

 A long line of people in wheelchairs gather at Lincoln Center as they protest "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer John Adams' opera has been a lightning rod since... (Associated Press)

 People, some in wheelchairs, gather at Lincoln Center, with the Metropolitan Opera House in the background, as they protest "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer... (Associated Press)

 A protest participant calls out near Lincoln Center as she and others protest the opera "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer John Adams' opera has been a lightning... (Associated Press)

 Beverly Wulliger, center, of New York, and her husband Rabbi Solomon Wulliger stand near Lincoln Center as they protest the opera "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer... (Associated Press)

 People, some in wheelchairs, gather at Lincoln Center, with the Metropolitan Opera House in the background, as they protest "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer... (Associated Press)

 People, some in wheelchairs, gather at Lincoln Center as they protest "Death of Klinghoffer" Monday, Oct 20, 2014, in New York. American composer John Adams' opera has been a lightning rod since February,... (Associated Press)

 About 400 people stood behind police barricades chanting "Shame on the Met!" and carrying signs saying "The Met glorifies terrorism" before the company's first performance of "The Death of Klinghoffer."

 The opera is based on the 1985 killing of passenger Leon Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship hijacked by four members of the Palestinian Liberation Front. The 69-year-old was shot in his wheelchair and pushed overboard.

 American composer John Adams' opera has been a lightning rod since February, when it was scheduled for this season. The first large demonstration came on the Met's Sept. 22 season opening night, featuring a Mozart work, when protesters jeered at arriving spectators.

 Standing across the street from Lincoln Center, Giuliani said he wanted to warn people that this opera "is a distorted work."

 "If you listen, you will see that the emotional context of the opera truly romanticizes the terrorists," he said.

 But opera expert Fred Plotkin said Adams depicts the Klinghoffers as his work's moral spine.

 "Does this opera present the killers in a favorable light? No," Plotkin said. "Are the Klinghoffers far and away the most sympathetic characters in the opera, the ones we care about most? I believe so."

 Monday's performance went on with a few orchestrated disruptions: Boos were shouted from scattered seats, and a voice kept yelling from a balcony, "The murder of Klinghoffer will never be forgotten!" The evening ended with a standing ovation that drowned out any heckling.

 Earlier in the day, a rabbi led Jewish teens in a prayer vigil. Youths sat at their makeshift prayer spot opposite the Met, discussing Hebrew scriptures.

 "We're here because the Met is glorifying the killing of a Jew, and we must speak out — we're the next generation," 15-year-old Shabbos Kestenbaum said.

 Rabbi Avi Weiss said the opera's music "extols" the terrorists, beginning with the "Chorus of Exiled Palestinians," while the Klinghoffers come off as shallow, frivolous characters who enter after the lyrics, "I've got no money left. I gave all my money for the taxi."

 "The language is explosive. It's radioactive. It's dangerous," the rabbi said. "It inspires violence."

 In fact, it is exiled Jews arriving in Palestine who've spent their last savings to reach their new home in the desert.

 The Met canceled the international movie theater and radio broadcasts in November amid pressure from Jewish groups, especially the New York-based Anti-Defamation League. Met general manager Peter Gelb, whose father was Jewish, said the decision was made "as a compromise gesture."

 The Met issued a statement this week saying "the fact that 'Klinghoffer' grapples with the complexities of an unconscionable real-life act of violence does not mean it should not be performed. ... 'Klinghoffer' is neither anti-Semitic nor does it glorify terrorism."

 The Klinghoffers' daughters, Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer, released comments through the ADL to be included in the Met program. They say they believe the arts "can play a critical role in examining and understanding significant world events. 'The Death of Klinghoffer' does no such thing. It presents false moral equivalencies without context, and offers no real insight into the historical reality and the senseless murder of an American Jew."

 Plotkin noted many "Klinghoffer" opponents, including Weiss, have never seen it performed live. Weiss said he has read the libretto.

 Advertising for the opera comes with the slogan: "See it. Then decide."

 "The Death of Klinghoffer" premiered in Brussels in 1991, with little controversy, then in various European cities and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it was greeted with praise and anger.

 Mayor Bill de Blasio, who hasn't seen the opera, said the rights of cultural institutions to put on works of art have to be respected.

 "We don't have to agree with what's in the exhibit, but we agree with the right of the artist and the cultural institution to put that forward to the public," he said.

 "The Death of Klinghoffer" runs through Nov. 15. ||||| Tags: music

 The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams’s 1991 opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, has achieved a rare distinction in contemporary classical music: it’s considered so dangerous by its critics that they’d like to have it banned. For its opponents – the Klinghoffer family, Daniel Pearl’s father, conservative Jewish organisations, and now the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former New York governor George Pataki, who took part in a noisy demonstration outside the Met last night – Klinghoffer is no less a sacrilege than The Satanic Verses was to Khomeini and his followers. They haven’t issued a fatwa, but they have done their best to sabotage the production ever since the Met announced it.

 Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, capitulated in the summer to pressure from the Anti-Defamation League (and, according to the New York Times, from ‘three or four’ major Jewish donors), cancelling a live broadcast to cinemas around the world. The rationale for the decision, made against the backdrop of the Gaza offensive, was that the opera might be exploited by anti-semites. How, they didn’t say. For some reason the opera’s enemies don’t seem concerned that its unflinching portrayal of the murder of an elderly Jew in a wheelchair might be ‘used’ to foment anti-Muslim sentiment.

 The notion that Adams and his librettist, Alice Goodman, are justifying terrorism is absurd. The hijacking is depicted in all its horror, chaos and fear. The scene that raised accusations of anti-semitism, a dinner table conversation among ‘the Rumors’, an American-Jewish family, was excised from the libretto long ago. The Klinghoffers come off as typical American tourists, and are drawn with wry affection. In a particularly tense scene, Leon Klinghoffer baits his attackers, reciting a litany of attacks by Palestinian commandos. His version of Middle Eastern history could have been lifted from Leon Uris’s Exodus, but in the circumstances it’s a nervy speech: from his wheelchair, he isn’t afraid to confront the men who end up killing him.

 Another complaint against Klinghoffer – one that Giuliani, the self-styled saviour of New York after 9/11, has predictably raised – is that it ‘humanises’ the hijackers. But the hijackers were human, and one of the opera’s chief strengths is its refusal to portray them as a collection of monsters. They are certainly not ‘glorified’ – another charge that’s been levelled at the opera. One is a brute who relishes the job, gleefully humiliating the passengers. But another takes pains to tell the ship’s captain about his family’s expulsion from Palestine. And then there is Omar, the reluctant hijacker who – as a British dancer on board describes in a hilarious aria – socialises with the passengers and always ‘kept us in ciggies’. Omar is given the task of killing Klinghoffer: part of the drama of the opera turns on his silent, anguished attempt to steel himself for this act. He dances, he writhes, he imagines himself lying in his mother’s arms, a Palestinian pietà, before finally pulling the trigger. In the words of the journalist Elizabeth Rubin, with whom I saw the dress rehearsal, he’s the Michael Corleone of the opera, who to prove himself in the eyes of tougher men has to transform himself into a ‘soldier’.

 Still, you could make the case that if The Death of Klinghoffer caricatures anyone, it’s Palestinians, not Jews. The ‘Chorus of Exiled Palestinians’ that opens the opera features a group in Afghan-style clothes, evoking the vanished paradise of pre-1948 Palestine and the Nakba that robbed them of their land and future. Dressed in black and virtually indistinguishable, they’re designated mourners of Palestine, an undifferentiated mass united in suffering and thirsty for revenge. The women are all covered in full abayas, which is unusual among Palestinian women today, and was even more unusual in 1985. The men wear Afghan-style beards that, outside the Gaza Strip, are rare in Palestine. They wave the green flag of Islam, not the Palestinian red green, white and black flag that even Hamas prefers. The effect of the set design is to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an episode in a larger clash of civilisations between Islam and the West. The libretto, too, accentuates the ‘civilisational’ dimensions of the conflict. With their incantatory talk about Islam and their love of martyrdom, the hijackers sound more like members of Hamas (which emerged only in 1988) than of Abu Abbas’s secular nationalist PLF.

 The ‘Chorus of Exiled Jews’ which follows is a much sweeter, more intimate piece of music. Their suffering has not been poisoned by anger, but is suffused with sorrow and the hope of renewal. The Jews wear different kinds of clothing; one lyric refers to Hassidim protesting against a cinema opening in Israel, a reminder that Jews aren’t a monolith. Perhaps Goodman’s implication is that after 1948 – when, for those who follow the Zionist narrative, their ‘exile’ ended – Jews could be individuals rather than history’s victims; Palestinians, still under occupation or in exile, have no such luxury. Still, the collective depiction of Palestinians in the opera looks like a failure of imagination.

 In 2001, Richard Taruskin accused The Death of Klinghoffer of ‘romantically idealising criminals’: the Palestinian hijackers, he said, are moved by higher ideals than their victims, ideas of collective struggle and sacrifice. It’s a fair description of the libretto, but it also misses the point: it’s precisely those noble ideals that lead the hijackers to murder an unarmed civilian. I suspect that what disturbs the opera’s critics is that Palestinian suffering is expressed with such eloquence and compassion, not only in the libretto but in the score. Taruskin and others have complained that some of the most stirring music occurs in the ‘Chorus of Exiled Palestinians’. It’s a telling criticism, an example of what Talking Heads called the ‘fear of music’: the anxiety that musical beauty might act on its listeners in transgressive ways, and lead to forbidden forms of pleasure or sympathy. What appears to trouble Klinghoffer’s enemies most is that, through the force of his music, Adams has put Western listeners in the shoes of Israel’s victims.

 Yet there’s also something unsettling about the chorus, something that causes us to stop short of identification. (The character it’s easiest to identify with is the reasonable and ineffectual ship’s captain, who is neither Jewish nor Palestinian.) The beauty of the Palestinian chorus is stark, brooding and threatening; in Klinghoffer, Palestinians appear condemned to inhabit a realm of perpetual struggle, where life is a battlefield and mundane pleasures are but a memory. And because life is a battlefield, the hijackers see themselves as ‘soldiers’, not terrorists, when they storm the ship – and when they execute Klinghoffer. The comparative superficiality of the passengers on the Achille Lauro – which, in the case of the Klinghoffers, has been misconstrued as anti-semitic caricature – is a mark of their innocence, their freedom and their privilege. Oblivious to the history that connects them to their tormentors, they naturally see the attack by these ‘meshugganah’ (as Marilyn Klinghoffer calls them) as an inexplicable accident: their reaction makes them more recognisable, and more believable. The contrast is perhaps too neatly drawn, but it captures a clash in perception that is arguably a strong feature of the encounter between kidnapper and captive.

 Those who are afraid of The Death of Klinghoffer because Palestinians have been awarded some of its most beautiful music haven’t listened very carefully – or haven’t stayed in their seats until the end. The heartbreaking aria that closes the opera belongs to Marilyn Klinghoffer, mourning her husband with controlled anguish. The loss that The Death of Klinghoffer invites us to experience most acutely is personal, not political. |||||Summary:

– Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined hundreds of demonstrators last night to protest an opening-night opera performance at the Met, the New York Times reports. Protesters shouted "Shame on the Met!" and sported signs that read "The Met glorifies terrorism," and it's all thanks to The Death of Klinghoffer, the AP reports. The opera, penned by composer John Adams, focuses on the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jewish man in a wheelchair killed by the Palestine Liberation Front during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. Some believe the opera makes excuses for terrorism, is too sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, and "humanizes the hijackers," writes Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books. One man inside the theater yelled, "The murder of Klinghoffer will never be forgiven!" a few times before being removed, while a woman cursed loudly and walked out with an usher escort. Even NYC mayors past and present can't agree on whether the opera should be performed. Giuliani—known for previous attempts to shut down art installations he didn't like, according to the Times—told the paper that the opera gives "a distorted view of history," while current Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "I think the American way is to respect freedom of speech. Simple as that." One protester proclaimed, "Go out, murder someone, be a terrorist, and we'll write a play about you," while another person at a "counterdemonstration" held a sign that said, "A work of art about a subject is not a work in favor of that subject." Meanwhile, composer Adams says, "The really ironic and sad fact is that the content of this opera is more relevant in 2014 than it was even in 1991," per Details.


Article:
More than 6,000 tins of beans have been stolen from a parked-up lorry.

 Thieves cut a large hole in the curtain-sided lorry and took nearly two pallets of the tins of Heinz baked beans with sausages.

 The lorry had been parked in a lay-by on the A441, at Cookhill, near Redditch, Worcestershire, when the raiders struck.

 The driver had been asleep in the cab when the tins were taken during Monday night.

 "Police are appealing for information, especially about anyone trying to sell large quantities of Heinz baked beans in suspicious circumstances," a force spokesman said. ||||| Police are looking for information about anyone trying to sell large quantities of beans in suspicious circumstances

 Thousands of tins of baked beans have been stolen from a lorry while the driver was asleep in his cab.

 A total of 6,400 tins of Heinz baked beans with sausages were taken after thieves cut a large hole in the white Scania vehicle, West Mercia police said.

 The incident happened while the truck was parked in a layby on the A441 at Cookhill, near Redditch in Worcestershire.

 An entire pallet and part of a second pallet were stolen between 8.45pm on Monday and 5.30am on Tuesday.

 "Police are appealing for information, especially about anyone trying to sell large quantities of Heinz baked beans in suspicious circumstances," a force spokesman said. |||||Summary:

– While a truck driver slept in the cab of his parked vehicle, thieves were up to no good mere feet away. The BBC reports that they cut a hole in the side of the truck on Monday night and made off with some 6,400 cans of Heinz baked beans. Says a police rep in all seriousness: "Police are appealing for information, especially about anyone trying to sell large quantities of Heinz baked beans in suspicious circumstances." One additional identifying note: The variety stolen contained "sausages."


News article:

Buried thousands of feet under Summit, the highest point on Greenland's ice sheet, is a soil born before humans ever walked on Earth. The 2.7-million-year-old silt is a remnant of the verdant tundra that covered Greenland before it was entombed in ice, researchers report today (April 17) in the journal Science.

 Pollen and plant DNA buried in the seafloor offshore of Greenland also suggest the island once had tundra and patchy forest, similar to today's high Arctic. The new findings hint that at Summit, the tundra landscape was open to the sky for 200,000 years to 1 million years before ice covered it. [In Photos: See Greenland's Ancient Landscape]

 "There was a really stable landscape on Greenland before the ice sheet came," said lead study author Paul Bierman, a geomorphologist at the University of Vermont. "This landscape has been preserved from beyond the dawn of humankind."

 The new results also mean the Greenland Ice Sheet gets a nod for endurance. If the soil under Summit has been buried for 2.7 million years, then the discovery implies the ice sheet has never fully melted, even when the Earth went through an incredible natural warming swing 130,000 years ago — one as warm as this century's predicted climate change.

 "Now we know that it's unlikely the ice sheet has disappeared for significant periods of time in the last 3 million years, at least at this one pinprick on this big island," Bierman told Live Science. "Now human activity may spell the end of it."

 New look at old ice

 The ancient soil was pulled from beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet in 1993, during the GISP2 deep-drilling project to reach the bedrock beneath Summit. The 10,019-foot-long (3,052 meters) GISP2 ice core records more than 100,000 years of past climate history, but until now, no one had examined the dirt in the ice at the bottom of the drill hole. (The ice is archived at the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, Colo.)

 "I was asking a really different question than people who look at ice cores," Bierman said. "I was looking for a history of landscapes in ancient Greenland, and that mindset wasn't there 20 years ago. It's the evolution of science — you're always coming up with new hypotheses to test," he said.

 Piece of the GISP2 ice core showing silt and sand embedded in ice. Soon after this picture was taken, the ice was crushed in the University of Vermont clean lab and the sediment was isolated for analysis. Credit: Paul Bierman, University of Vermont

 Bierman and his co-authors teased out the sediment locked in the frozen ice, and deciphered its history with a well-established geochemical technique called beryllium-10 dating.

 Beryllium-10 is a radioactive isotope produced by cosmic rays (high-energy particles that rain down on Earth from space). The beryllium-10 isotopes help researchers gauge the age of landscapes, because the isotopes only form in rocks and soil exposed at the surface; cosmic rays can't penetrate thick ice or deeply buried rocks. Counting the number of beryllium-10 isotopes gives an estimate of how much time a rock or soil spent at the surface, bombarded by cosmic rays.

 Bierman said he was stunned by the sky-high levels of beryllium-10 in the soil from the GISP2 ice core.

 "Our eyes just lit up. It was completely unexpected and one of the few times I've been totally surprised in my career," Bierman said.

 The frozen soil contains millions of beryllium-10 atoms, at a level comparable to other long-lived Arctic landscapes, such as tundra soil in Alaska, the researchers said. Only the interiors of Africa and Australia contain older landscapes, having escaped the erosive power of the Earth's recent ice ages. Soils in these hot continental interiors are many millions of years old.

 Basal ice, part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Credit: Paul Bierman, University of Vermont

 Persistence of land

 Of course, that begs the question of why Greenland's glaciers didn't grind away the ancient soil. The answer: Mounting evidence suggests many ice sheets are frozen to their beds. The ice does flow, but it deforms like glass or warm plastic above a base that is stuck to the ground. In the GISP2 ice core, the bottom 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 m) is frozen to bedrock, and the ice above is a whirl of folded, deformed layers, Bierman said. These deforming ice sheets are called cold-based glaciers, while those that erode their rocky bottoms with water and ice are known as warm-based glaciers. [The Power of Ice: Photos of Glacier Erosion]

 Previous work by Bierman's students found that some Greenland glaciers protect the land like armor, preserving landscapes that were 800,000 years old.

 Bierman and his colleagues are now searching for ancient landscapes in Antarctica, though the researchers must reach back further in time because the continent froze earlier than Greenland.

 "The bottom of an ice sheet can preserve some really old landscapes," Bierman said.

 Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at Live Science's Our Amazing Planet. ||||| Soil frozen for 2.7 million years beneath the Greenland ice sheet has provided clues about its history.

 Frozen in time, the soil beneath an ancient tundra has been uncovered and tested, with scientists discovering that "Greenland really was green" at one point.

 The tundra was discovered in 2013 and has been explored by scientists from the University of Vermont, who believe that the ice sheet is much older than previously thought, having endured previous periods of global warming.

 Published in the journal Science, the researchers said they were surprised to find the landscape below preserved two miles of ice. "We found organic soil that has been frozen to the bottom of the ice sheet for 2.7 million years," research Paul Bierman said.

 Study co-author Dylan Rood, from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre and the University of California, Santa Barbara, added: "The ancient soil under the Greenland ice sheet helps to unravel an important mystery surrounding climate change. How did big ice sheets melt and grow in response to changes in temperature?"

 Findings suggest that even during the warmest periods of history, the ice sheet at the centre of Greenland remained frozen, meaning the land has stayed hidden and unchanged for millions of years.

 "[It's] a refrigerator that's preserved this antique landscape," Bierman said.

 Scientists take huge interest in the stability of the Greenland ice sheet as it will fundamentally influence sea level rises resulting from manmade climate change. Instead of eroding the land beneath, the sheet has been frozen to the ground, the authors said.

 The scientists tested 17 ice samples from the lowest 40ft of the ice core extracted from the glacier in 1993. From the sediment, the researchers extracted a rare form of the element beryllium.

 This element is formed by cosmic rays and falls from the sky and becomes stuck to soil and rock. The longer the soil is exposed, the more beryllium-10 it accumulates, meaning it acts as a geological clock.

 At first the team was only expecting to find eroded soil, they wrote: "We thought we were going looking for a needle in haystack. It turned out that we found an elephant in a haystack."

 The beryllium concentrations could only have been found in soils that have developed over hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions: "The soil had been stable and exposed at the surface for somewhere between 200,000 and one million years before being covered by ice," said Ben Crosby, a member of the research team from Idaho State University.

 Rood added: "Greenland really was green! However, it was millions of years ago. Greenland looked like the green Alaskan tundra, before it was covered by the second largest body of ice on Earth." |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The soil under the highest point of the Greenland Ice Sheet, scientists have learned, is 2.7 million years old, LiveScience reports. In other words, the silt buried under thousands of feet of ice "has been preserved from beyond the dawn of humankind," says Paul Bierman, who determined the soil's age through a geochemical dating process. The findings also suggest Greenland wasn't always as frosty as it is today: Instead, it was a tundra for between 200,000 and one million years before it was encased in ice. It was once home to bits of forest, the scientists found using offshore plant DNA. In other words, as the International Business Times has it, "Greenland really was green." The Greenland Ice Sheet that's there now, however, has been remarkably durable: The findings imply that it made it through a strong period of warming some 130,000 years ago. "It's unlikely the ice sheet has disappeared for significant periods of time in the last three million years, at least at this one pinprick on this big island," Bierman says. "Now human activity may spell the end of it." (What else lies under Greenland's ice? A canyon that dwarfs the Grand Canyon, an aquifer holding 100 billion tons of water, and two huge lakes.)


Article:
by: Nicole Carr Updated: Sep 5, 2016 - 8:59 AM

 ATLANTA - A father and his daughters are safe after someone carjacked him at the gas pump in northwest Atlanta.

 Lester Chaney says fear quickly set in when he was forced to watch someone driving off with his 1-year-old twin girls.

 "I ran to unlock the door, but the door was locked or whatever and the guy took off," Chaney said.

 The carjacking happened Saturday night at a Texaco gas station on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in southwest Atlanta.

 Chaney says the gas pump he tried to use wouldn't read his card.

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 "I started making my way up to the store," Chaney said.

 Chaney admits he left his car running.

 Surveillance video shows Chaney walking back to his car when someone takes off with his Toyota Camry.

 The car has Chaney's twin daughters, Nadia and McKenzie, in the backseat.

 "I was just hoping they were going to be alright," Chaney said.

 A short time later, police say, they found the girls a quarter of a mile away after the suspect ditched the car in the parking lot of an apartment complex.

 Police say when they arrived McKenzie was in her car seat in the back of the vehicle, and Nadia was removed from the car and dumped in a wooded area.

 Police said the girls slept through the entire incident.

 © 2016 Cox Media Group. ||||| A father of twin one-year-olds got the scare of his life this weekend after he stopped to fuel up at a gas station in northwest Atlanta.

 Lestor Chaney says fear quickly set in when he was forced to watch someone driving off with his one-year-old twin girls, reports WSB-TV, a local ABC affiliate.

 "I ran to unlock the door, but the door was locked or whatever and the guy took off," Chaney said.

 The carjacking took place Saturday night at a Texaco gas station after Chaney says his card wouldn't work at the gas pump and he went inside to pay.

 Chaney admits he left his car running, according to WSB-TV.

 Surveillance video shows a man running toward the car, quickly slipping inside and taking off in a hurry in Chaney's Toyota Camry.

 It wasn't clear if the man knew about Chaney's twin daughters, Nadia and McKenzie, who were sleeping in the backseat.

 "I was just hoping they were going to be alright," Chaney told WSB-TV.

 Police found the girls a quarter of a mile away after the suspect ditched the car in the parking lot of an apartment complex.

 McKenzie was in her car seat in the back of the vehicle, and Nadia was removed from the car and dropped in a wooded area, according to WSB-TV.

 Police said the girls slept through the entire incident. |||||Summary:

– As he came out of an Atlanta gas station Saturday night after paying for his fill-up, Lestor Chaney was overwhelmed with a feeling no parent ever wants to experience: complete fear, ABC News reports. Chaney tells WSB (which spells his first name "Lester") he went inside the Texaco to pay after his card wouldn't go through at the pump, and when he emerged, he saw a man hopping into his Toyota Camry and speeding off. But it wasn't just his car being stolen that stopped his heart—it was the fact that his twin 1-year-old girls, Nadia and McKenzie, were inside. "I ran to unlock the door, but the door was locked or whatever and the guy took off," he says (ABC News has the surveillance footage that shows that terrifying moment). It's not known if the carjacker was aware of the babies snuggled in their car seats in the back when he boosted the Camry, but it would appear not, as the car and the girls were found, uninjured, by cops about a quarter-mile away in the parking lot of an apartment complex. McKenzie was still dozing off in her car seat in the car, and Nadia, who had been taken out of the car and placed in a wooded area, was still snoozing as well. Chaney, who admits he left the car running when he went inside to pay, is now breathing a huge sigh of relief. "I was just hoping they were going to be alright," he says. (This mom made a literal leap of faith when her car was carjacked with her kids inside.)


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Discussion and action group to restore the Constitution and Liberty in this Union. The only moderation is your own Common Sense.

 This group was originally formed to be another avenue to discuss Liberty, Freedom and the Constitution in Kentucky as well as the United States, however this Meetup will also be a source of information and discussion about the Second Amendment and Open Carry Events in Kentucky. Can't have Liberty without the ability to ensure

 Open Carry http://www.opencarry.org/

 Note the picture for this group is the 2nd Amendment Dollar for more info on that go to http://www.budsgunshop.com

 DISCLAIMER: THIS GROUP IS IN NO WAY ENCOURAGING VIOLENCE, BUT PEACEFUL DISCUSSION AND DEMONSTRATION. ||||| x

 The Meetup Groups shown here are topically similar to The Lexington Rand/Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty Group.

 Groups are more likely to be displayed here if they: ||||| In shocking video that exemplifies how ugly some of the races have gotten in 2010, a woman in Kentucky is shown being pushed to the ground while a man puts his foot on her and then stomps her.

 The victim, Lauren Valle of MoveOn.org, approached Republican nominee for Senate Rand Paul in an attempt to pose for a photo with him holding up a faux award when she was thrown down to the ground by one Paul supporter and then stomped by another.

 The violence happened in Lexington before Paul debated his Democrat rival, Jack Conway, Monday night.

 One of the men in the video, Tim Profitt, admitted to the Associated Press on Tuesday that he stepped on Valle's head. Profitt was the Bourbon County coordinator for Paul.

 Lexington police said this afternoon that that Profitt was indeed their man. "Detectives identified the suspect involved in the assault as Tim Profitt. Mr. Profitt is currently being served with a criminal summons ordering him to appear before a Fayette County District Court judge," police said in a statement.

 Earlier the Paul people distanced themselves from the violence and the volunteer. "Whatever the perceived provocation, any level of aggression or violence is deplorable, and will not be tolerated by our campaign," Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton said through a statement released Tuesday afternoon. "The Paul campaign has disassociated itself from the volunteer who took part in this incident." |||||

– The tackler who wrestled down the Rand Paul protester for a head stompin' was not part of a campaign security detail. He was just an American voter who believes in open carry gun laws and, it seems, using force when ... necessary? Tea Partier Mike Pezzano, sporting a "Don't Tread on Me" pin, held Lauren Valle down on the sidewalk while comrade Tim Profitt stepped on her head Monday night. Pezzano was "outed" by an increasingly disenchanted Tea Party supporter and blogger, notes Gawker. "Rand Paul isn't going to do anything to me, but his supporters might. I'm afraid of them," said Lisa Grass on her website after she IDed Pezzano. Valle now tells the Washington Post that she suffered a concussion and trauma in the "premeditated" attack. Profitt has apologized, saying he's "sorry it came to that"—but that he was concerned about Paul's safety. Paul's campaign has since dumped Profitt, and he's facing charges. Newser readers, meanwhile, have erupted in a searing debate on whether Valle was stomped or merely restrained to protect the candidate.


COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The great-niece of the late singer Johnny Cash has been found stabbed to death and stuffed in a box in a house, authorities in Tennessee said Thursday.

 Putnam County Sheriff David Andrews said Courtney Cash's body was found Wednesday morning in a home near Cookeville, about 70 miles east of Nashville.

 Cash's body was found in a chest just inside the front door, Andrews said. A man identified as William Austin Johnson, Cash's boyfriend, was being treated for stab wounds at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Andrews said.

 Andrews said the pair had gone out with a friend before an altercation took place in the house where Johnson and Cash lived with their young child. The friend, identified as Wayne Gary Masciarella, has been charged with first-degree murder.

 Johnson escaped the attack and took the child with him before driving to the hospital, Andrews said. The scene inside the house was "somewhat bloody," Andrews told reporters at a news conference.

 "There was a struggle," the sheriff said.

 The suspect may have been trying to hide Cash's body, Andrews said. A motive was not released, but Andrews indicated the stabbings were likely connected to drugs.

 "This is a senseless, tragic death of a young lady whose life was probably taken as a direct or indirect result of drugs," Andrews said.

 Johnny Cash's brother, Tommy Cash, released a statement asking for prayers for the family after the loss of his granddaughter.

 "We are completely heartbroken," the statement said.

 Masciarella is being held without bond. He has a court date scheduled for April 21. Officials in Putnam County said they do not know if he has a lawyer. ||||| The victim found murdered in a Putnam County home has been identified as the great-niece of legendary performer Johnny Cash.

 Courtney Cash was found stabbed to death and stuffed inside a large wooden box in her home on Rice Road on Wednesday morning. Courtney Cash is the granddaughter of Tommy Cash, Johnny Cash's brother.

 The man who lived with her, identified as William Austin Johnson, was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center with multiple stab wounds. He remains in stable condition.

 Johnson is the father of Courtney Cash's young daughter, said Putnam County Sheriff David Andrews, and was able to take the 20-month-old girl from the home and drive himself to a hospital in White County. Information Johnson provided at the hospital led authorities to a suspect in the case.

 "That's a pretty strong man. He grabbed the baby and exited the house and got in the car and drove himself to the hospital," Andrews said.

 Tommy Cash issued a statement Thursday afternoon:

 "We ask for your prayers for the Cash family at this time. Courtney and her boyfriend are beloved members of my family and like you we have a lot of questions and emotions that we are beginning to sort through today. We ask for you to respect our privacy and appreciate all the support that the public and media has always offered my family, as we handle the loss of my grand-daughter, pray for the father of my great-grand child and journey through the search for justice on this violent act. We are completely heartbroken. It is a time like this that we are grateful for our faith and trusting the loving guidance of God."

 Wayne Gary Masciarella, 27, was taken into custody in Cookeville and charged with first-degree murder.

 Detectives say they think the two victims invited Masciarella, a friend of theirs, over to the home late Tuesday night, where an altercation ensued and the stabbing took place.

 The sheriff said a 911 call was placed about 10:40 a.m. Wednesday to dispatchers in White County. The ping location from the cell phone used in the 911 call took authorities about 1/4 mile down the road to the wrong address.

 Deputies began to leave the area when a second 911 call was placed about 20 minutes after the first call. That second call led the officers to the home on Rice Road, where they found Courtney Cash's body just inside the front door.

 "My personal theory is that he was going to hide it for as long as he could," Andrews said.

 Sheriff Andrews said he can't comment on the murder weapon or a possible motive in the case, but he said it could be drug-related.

 "This was a senseless, tragic death of a young lady whose life was probably taken as a direct or indirect result of drugs, and that's just the world we live in. It's just unfortunate that our people in our society lean so heavily on drugs to get through life," Andrews said.

 Masciarella is being held without bond, and he is due to appear in court on April 21.

 Copyright 2014 WSMV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.

  |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Police this week found the body of Johnny Cash's great-niece stabbed to death and stuffed in a cedar box in the Tennessee home where she lived with her boyfriend and their young daughter, the AP reports. Courtney Cash, 23, and boyfriend William Austin Johnson met up with a friend, Wayne Gary Masciarella, Tuesday night; an altercation reportedly took place in the house. Johnson fled with the 20-month-old baby girl, WSMV reports, and was hospitalized with stab wounds; police found Cash's body Wednesday morning. The scene was "somewhat bloody," the sheriff says. "There was a struggle." Cash's body was inside a chest just inside the front door, and the sheriff says the suspect may have been attempting to hide her body. Masciarella, 27, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder; no motive has been released, but the sheriff says the stabbings were likely "a direct or indirect result of drugs." Courtney Cash was the granddaughter of Johnny Cash's brother Tommy. Her baby was unhurt, the Tennessean reports.


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– After 27 years in prison, Krishna "Kris" Maharaj may finally get a chance to prove what he's been claiming for years: that he was framed for a pair of murders actually ordered by infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. CNN has a profile on Maharaj's case detailing how, in 1986, he was arrested for the Miami murders of his business partners Derrick and Duane Moo Young—even though he had an alibi. Police said the Moo Youngs had cheated the former millionaire out of $400,000. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. That sentence has since been reduced to life in prison, but in April a Florida judge scheduled a November hearing to determine if new evidence could undermine the verdict. Maharaj's lawyers have 53 witnesses and 498 documents on tap, according to the Guardian. "We've got several Colombian cartel people to say, 'We did the murders,'" one lawyer says. These cartel witnesses say that the Moo Youngs were money launderers for the cartel, and were killed because they lost some of the money. The lawyers also say they can prove that prosecutors hid evidence that would have proved Maharaj's innocence. But in court filings, prosecutors say the evidence is all "hearsay and inadmissible." (Click to read about how Escobar's hippos are causing problems in Colombia.)

Lawyers representing Krishna Maharaj, a British businessman who has spent the past 27 years in a Florida prison for a double murder that they say he did not commit, released on Friday details of the 53 witnesses and 498 documents they plan to call on in the hope of persuading a judge to order a retrial.

 Next Wednesday, the 11th judicial circuit court of Florida in Miami will set a date for a full evidentiary hearing into the Maharaj case. The hearing will constitute his greatest chance in almost three decades to prove his innocence for the murders of his business partner Derrick Moo Young and Young’s son Duane in the Dupont Plaza hotel in Miami on 16 October 1986.

 Maharaj, 75, was sentenced to death in 1987, and though he was taken off death row in 2002 he was resentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently held in a prison in south Florida.

 The newly released documents underline the massive case for exoneration that has been built up by Maharaj’s lawyers. One of them, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal support group Reprieve, who has written a book on the case, The Injustice System: A Murder in Miami and a Trial Gone Wrong, told the Guardian: “Kris Maharaj is so patently innocent that it is unimaginable to me that the state of Florida does not let him go. It is a very sad day when the government desperately wants to keep the wrong person in prison, such that they will not even investigate who the real killers are.”

 In his bid for a retrial, the Trinidad-born Maharaj asserts that he was framed as the murderer to help cover up the involvement of Colombian drug cartels in the killings. The prisoner will present the court with evidence that the victims had been laundering huge sums for the Medellin drug cartel.

 Among the witnesses to be called at the evidentiary hearing will be six people who can testify that Maharaj was 30 miles away from the Dupont Plaza hotel when the murders happened. Further testimony will be provided alleging that another named individual carried out the killings, and illuminating the motive for him doing so.

 Other witnesses will be called to support allegations of perjury by key state witnesses at Maharaj’s trial.

 The newly disclosed list of witnesses the lawyers intend to call at the full evidentiary hearing also includes several investigators and attorneys involved in the case, fingerprint experts and former Miami police officers. Among the pile of documents to be presented are some allegedly demonstrating drug dealing and money laundering by the Youngs and records from the hotel.

 The case is being considered by Judge William Thomas. Ordering a full evidentiary hearing on 24 April, he stated that Maharaj would be granted a new trial if he could persuade the court that the new evidence that will be presented at the full hearing was of “such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial”.

 Lawyers for the state have claimed much of the new material is hearsay and inadmissible in any new trial. The judge said he would take a view on admissibility at the evidentiary hearing. ||||| Story highlights After 27 years in prison, lawyers claim new evidence could free ex-millionaire

 Kris Maharaj's lawyers say he was framed for a drug-money hit ordered by Pablo Escobar

 Prosecutors say Maharaj shot and killed a father and son in a Miami hotel

 It sounds like an episode from a 1980s TV police drama: A wealthy businessman claims he was framed for two Miami murders allegedly ordered by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

 Nearly 30 years ago, international food importer and newspaper owner Krishna "Kris" Maharaj, a British citizen, was living the good life in South Florida. He had owned luxury cars and horses that raced against thoroughbreds held by Queen Elizabeth II.

 Then, in October 1986, police arrested Maharaj in the shooting deaths of his business partners Derrick Moo Young and his 23-year-old son Duane.

 Despite having an alibi, Maharaj was charged with murdering the Moo Youngs because they allegedly had cheated him out of more than $400,000. He was found guilty and sentenced to death -- a penalty that was later reduced to life in prison.

 And there Maharaj has remained for 27 years.

 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Former millionaire Kris Maharaj, 75, languishes in a Florida prison 27 years after being convicted of a double murder at a Miami hotel. Click through the gallery for details about this fascinating case, featured on "Death Row Stories," Sunday, July 13 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CNN. Hide Caption 1 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Starting with nothing, Maharaj built a successful food importing business in Britain. He mingled with royalty and owned 100 race horses. By the 1980s he had moved to Miami. Hide Caption 2 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Maharaj invested money with Duane Moo Young, shown here, and his father, Derrick. There was a disagreement over $441,000, which Maharaj said the Moo Youngs had embezzled. Hide Caption 3 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – On October 16, 1986 police found the Moo Youngs' bloody bodies in Room 1215 at Miami's Dupont Plaza Hotel. This police evidence photo shows one of the bodies in a doorway. Hide Caption 4 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Police found Maharaj's fingerprints in the room. Maharaj says he was there to meet the Moo Youngs, but he departed before they arrived and were killed. Nineteen fingerprints found at the crime scene have never been identified, according to a defense motion. Hide Caption 5 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Defense attorneys say a "treasure trove of documents" was contained in a briefcase found at the crime scene. "We know from the documents in the Moo Young briefcase that they were peddling false letters of credit and skimming money" from Pablo Escobar's Medellin cocaine cartel, said a court motion filed by Maharaj's defense team. Hide Caption 6 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Shortly after the murders, Maharaj was arrested. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1987. Since the beginning, Maharaj has insisted he is innocent. Witnesses have supported Maharaj's alibi, saying he was somewhere else at the time of the murders. Defense attorneys accuse prosecutors of covering up evidence that could have proved his innocence.

 Hide Caption 7 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Throughout Maharaj's time behind bars, his wife, Marita, has been fighting to keep his spirits up. "He and his wife talk every day on the phone," defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith told CNN. "And she goes to see him every Sunday." Hide Caption 8 of 9 Photos: Death Row Stories: Kris Maharaj 'Death Row Stories': Kris Maharaj – Smith and the defense team successfully pressed Florida courts to reduce Maharaj's death sentence to life in prison in 2002. Smith says new witnesses have been found who will testify that the killings were hits ordered by Escobar and that Maharaj was framed. But Florida state attorneys say none of the witnesses has firsthand knowledge of the case or can provide admissible testimony or evidence. Hide Caption 9 of 9

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 Then, in April this year, a Florida judge granted Maharaj a chance that could open the door to freedom.

 Florida 11th Judicial Circuit Judge William Thomas held a hearing in November to determine if new evidence from Maharaj's lawyers "undermines confidence in the verdict," according to court documents. Defense attorneys also must establish that the new "evidence would probably produce an acquittal or less severe sentence on retrial."

 Maharaj's lawyers said evidence suggests that the murders were committed by former members of Escobar's infamous drug cartel.

 In the late 1970s and early '80s, Escobar cashed in on the exploding popularity of cocaine in the United States, according to reporter Mark Bowden, author of "Killing Pablo." Leading the Medellin Cartel, Escobar was responsible at one point for almost 80% of Colombia's cocaine exports, making him the seventh richest man in the world, Bowden told CNN

 Escobar was killed in a rooftop shootout with authorities in 1993.

 According to a motion filed in January by Maharaj's attorneys, a "Colombian drug cartel member confirmed that the Moo Young murders were committed at the behest of Pablo Escobar."

 "The Moo Youngs were laundering money for the Colombian cartels," the defense motion said. "This is what precipitated their murders." An ex-cartel member confirmed that "Maharaj was not involved in the murders of the Moo Youngs, and that they had to be eliminated because they had lost Colombian drug money," according to the defense motion.

 Maharaj was sentenced to death in 1987. Before he could be executed, that sentence was reduced to life in prison.

 "We've got several Colombian cartel people to say, 'We did the murders,'" Maharaj defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith told CNN on the phone in June.

 The defense team also alleges Florida prosecutors covered up evidence in the 1987 trial that could have proved Maharaj's innocence.

 Although prosecutors said they stand by the decades-old case, in a June e-mail to CNN, a state attorney spokesman wrote, "Now that we are re-engaged in litigation on this matter, it would be inappropriate for us to be commenting at this time."

 Prior to the hearing, strongly worded arguments flew back and forth via filed court documents. In January Assistant State Attorneys Penny Brill and Sally Weintraub wrote that a defense motion for the new hearing was based on "hearsay and inadmissible evidence."

 "None of [the potential witnesses named in the defense motion] have any first hand knowledge, provide no admissible testimony or evidence and only attempt to further the nonsensical and wholly speculative theories of the defense," the prosecution document said.

 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed by Colombian special forces after being discovered hiding in a house in Medellin in 1993.

 "The only thing that is obvious to anyone who really looks at these fantastical allegations by the defendant is that they are empty and have no substance," wrote the prosecutors.

 Now aged 75, Maharaj has been in poor health, Smith said, although he seems to have improved.

 "When we got this hearing, and when we started learning about these Colombian witnesses who were corroborating his innocence, Kris really cheered up," said Smith. "I think he's now trying to walk more and not use his wheel chair and so forth."

 Defense attorney Ben Kuehne said the "circumstances of this crime were not as presented to the jury by the prosecution," reported Miami TV station WTVJ Prosecutor Brill reportedly countered , "I haven't heard one thing from the defense that indicates that this is admissible evidence."

 In the wake of the hearing, Judge Thomas is expected to set a court date when he could issue a ruling.

 But the odds are stacked against Maharaj. The burden of proof is high. Florida's Supreme Court has already upheld his conviction.

 Derrick Moo Young's daughter was asked in 2007 about continued efforts to exonerate Maharaj. "It's all been hashed out before," she told the Miami Herald . "It's a waste of tax dollars."

 Prosecutors' evidence against Maharaj is significant.

 Police found Maharaj's fingerprints in the guest room at Miami's Dupont Plaza hotel where the shootings occurred. Maharaj says he was there for a meeting, but he departed before the Moo Youngs were killed. Nineteen fingerprints found at the crime scene have never been identified, according to the defense motion.

 Maharaj told CNN's "Death Row Stories" that he left the hotel and drove 25 miles to Fort Lauderdale to have lunch with one of his newspaper employees. The employee signed an affidavit as an alibi witness. The restaurant manager, Ron Kisch, told "Death Row Stories," he remembered seeing Maharaj having lunch that day.

 "It doesn't seem like there's any way possible that he could have killed people at 12 o'clock and then been in for lunch sometime between 12 and 2," Kisch said. Five other witnesses came forward saying Maharaj was with them on the day of the murders, "Death Row Stories" reported.

 Across the hall from the murder scene at the time of the killings, said the defense team, was a Colombian hotel guest named Vallejo Mejia.

 Maharaj was convicted of killing Duane Moo Young, 23, and his father in a Miami hotel room.

 Police briefly questioned Mejia at the time, according to defense documents. He was a "longtime money launderer who was frequently in Miami," the documents said. More recently, defense lawyers said in the documents, they had been "able to establish that [Mejia] was a senior cartel operative."

 During his entire imprisonment, Maharaj's wife Marita has been working to keep her husband's confidence high, said Smith. It's important to her that Maharaj believes he will eventually be exonerated. "She is his rock," Smith said. "They talk every day on the phone ... and she goes to see him every Sunday."

 Earlier this year, Marita wrote in the New Statesman , "I pretend to myself that Kris is traveling. When I have five minutes on the phone with him in the evening, I pretend to myself that he is talking to me from a trip, not from a cell."

 Smith sees Maharaj quite often lately at a medium security correctional facility outside Miami. Authorities allow them to sit together at a table in a largely empty room with a guard watching nearby.

 "I don't think there's a case that's quite as absolute as Kris'," said Smith. "I mean we've got an alibi — we've got everything. It's just really shocking."

 Smith admits he's become "obsessed" with freeing his client -- partially because of guilt. "I've represented the guy for 20 years and I failed him. And it really makes you think, 'How on Earth could you lose a case like this?'"

 Virtually penniless, Maharaj faces financial challenges as well as health issues. "If he gets out, he'll probably go back to Britain and set up another business," said Smith. "Kris is fairly unstoppable." |||||


Article:

(CNN) Disney has announced the cast for the next chapter from the galaxy far, far away -- and it will include the late Carrie Fisher.

 Fisher will reprise her role as Princess Leia Organa, using "previously unreleased footage shot for 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens,'" director J.J. Abrams announced Friday.

 "We desperately loved Carrie Fisher. Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us," Abrams said in a statement. "We were never going to recast, or use a CG character."

 Abrams added that with "the support and blessing" from Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, the film found a way "to honor Carrie's legacy and role as Leia in 'Episode IX' by using unseen footage we shot together in Episode VII."

 Fisher died in 2016 after suffering a cardiac event on a flight from London to Los Angeles. She was 60. Following her death, Disney said that it had "no plans to digitally recreate Fisher's performance.

 Read More ||||| Carrie Fisher will appear from beyond the grave in the upcoming Star Wars film.

 On Friday, Disney and Lucasfilm revealed the official cast list for the ninth trip to a galaxy far, far away and it contained one major surprise: Fisher is back as Princess General Leia Organa, despite her shocking death in 2016.

 According to the studio’s online announcement, production on the newest Star Wars adventure is expected to commence next week, on Aug. 1, and Fisher is among the listed cast members returning for the film, thanks to some unused footage shot for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

 Returning director J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote the script for Episode IX alongside Chris Terrio, said in a statement, “We desperately loved Carrie Fisher. Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us. We were never going to recast, or use a CG character. With the support and blessing from her daughter, Billie, we have found a way to honor Carrie’s legacy and role as Leia in Episode IX by using unseen footage we shot together in Episode VII.”

 Fisher died December, 2016 at age 60 of a cardiac arrest.

 RELATED VIDEO: Carrie Fisher Remembered by her Star Wars Castmates

 Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy had previously indicated to Entertainment Weekly that Fisher’s death would halt her involvement with the picture, saying, “Obviously, with Carrie having passed away, it shook everybody. We pretty much started over.”

 Abrams, who takes over after Colin Trevorrow’s departure from the director’s chair, directed The Force Awakens.

 Carrie Fisher on the set of The Last Jedi Lucasfilm Ltd.

 Also returning to the franchise are Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Lourd, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, and Billy Dee Williams.

 As for the film’s fresh new faces, actors Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant will join the film in unspecified roles. Perhaps not surprisingly, John Williams will once again compose the film’s score, as he has done throughout the Star Wars saga.

 The film is expected to hit theaters on Dec. 20, 2019. |||||
What is a summary?

– Excellent news for fans of Princess Leia. Or in this case, General Leia. The late Carrie Fisher will appear in the upcoming Star Wars film thanks to unused footage, reports People. Director JJ Abrams announced the move Friday, and he said it had the blessing of Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd. Star Wars: Episode IX, which caps the latest trilogy in the series, is due in theaters late next year, reports CNN. "We desperately loved Carrie Fisher," said Abrams. "Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us," (and) "we were never going to recast, or use a CG character." Fisher died in 2016 at age 60 of cardiac arrest. (See more stories about Fisher here.)