Thursday, June 3, 2010

McCartney turns 'Michelle' into ode to first lady


WASHINGTON – Paul McCartney had been itching to perform a certain song at the White House, and he seized the moment when it arrived.

The former Beatle brought down the house at an East Room concert Wednesday night by belting out "Michelle," aiming its romantic lyrics straight at a first lady named Michelle.

After serenading the first lady with the words, "I love you, I love you, I love you," McCartney joked that he just might be the "first guy ever to be punched out by a president."

The president didn't seem to mind though: He was swaying along to the beat while his wife mouthed the words along with McCartney.

The 90-minute concert was built around Obama's presentation to McCartney of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, awarded by the Library of Congress. The president said McCartney had "helped to lay the soundtrack for an entire generation."
McCartney, 67, said it was a moment like no other.

"I don't think there could be anything more special than to play here," the Englishman said.

And then he volunteered to make it a regular gig.

"Lunchtimes, we could come around," he offered. "We're cheap."

The concert featured an all-star lineup of top performers doing their own interpretations of some of McCartney's greatest hits. McCartney said it was inspiring to see what other people did with his music.

Among those performing were Stevie Wonder, the Jonas Brothers, Faith Hill, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Herbie Hancock, White Stripes singer and guitarist Jack White, pianist Lang Lang and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.

The Gershwin prize is named for the songwriting brothers George and Ira Gershwin. Previous recipients are Wonder and Paul Simon.

Those not lucky enough to snag tickets to the East Room gig can catch the concert July 28, when it's televised on PBS' "In Performance at the White House."
___
Associated Press writer Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

UK taxi driver kills 12, wounds 25 in rampage

SEASCALE, England – A taxi driver drove his vehicle on a shootingspree across a tranquil stretch of northwest England on Wednesday, methodically killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before turning the gun on himself, officials said. The rampage in the county of Cumbria was Britain's deadliest mass shooting since 1996 and it jolted a country where handguns are banned and multiple shootings rare.

The body of the suspected gunman, 52-year-old Derrick Bird, was found in woods near Boot, a hamlet popular with hikers and vacationers in England's hilly, scenic Lake District. Police said two weapons were recovered from the scene.

Eight of the wounded were in the hospital, with three of them in critical condition. In a sign of the scale of the tragedy, Queen Elizabeth II issued a message saying she was "deeply shocked" and shared in "the grief and horror of the whole country." She passed on her sympathy to the families of the victims.

The shootings had "shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core," Police Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said.

Police said it was too early to say what the killer's motive was, or whether the shootings had been random. Some reports said Bird had quarreled with fellow cab drivers the night before the killings.

Peter Leder, a taxi driver who knew Bird, said he had seen the gunman Tuesday and didn't notice anything that was obviously amiss. But he was struck by Bird's departing words.

"When he left he said, 'See you Peter, but I won't see you again,'" Leder told Channel 4 News.

The first shootings were reported in the coastal town of Whitehaven, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London. Witnesses said the dead there included two of Bird's fellow cabbies.

Police warned residents to stay indoors as they tracked the gunman's progress across the county. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting from the window of his car.

Victims died in Seascale and Egremont, near Whitehaven, and in Gosforth, where a farmer's son was shot dead in a field. Workers at the nearby Sellafield nuclear processing plant were ordered to stay inside while the gunman was on the loose.

Hyde said there were 30 separate crime scenes. Many bodies remained on the ground late Wednesday, covered with sheets, awaiting the region's small and overstretched force of forensic officers.

Police would not discuss the identity of those killed, but local reports said Bird killed a 66-year-old woman near her home and a retired man who was out cycling.

A spokesman for the local health authority denied reports that Bird had tried to seek medical assistance Tuesday and said he was not known to their mental health services.

Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shotin the face, apparently with a shotgun.

Lyn Edwards, 59, a youth worker in Seascale, said she saw a man who had been shot in his car.

"I could see a man screaming and I could see blood and there were two ladies helping him at the time," she said.

Deadly shootings are rare in Britain, where gun ownership is tightly restricted. In recent years, there have been fewer than 100 gun murders annually across the country.

Rules on gun ownership were tightened after two massacres in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people in the English town of Hungerford. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland.

About 600,000 people in Britain legally own a shotgun, most of them farmers and hunters in rural areas. Witnesses described Bird as using a shotgun or a rifle.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the government would do everything it could to help the affected region.

"When lives and communities are suddenly shattered in this way, our thoughts should be with all those caught up in these tragic events, especially the families and friends of those killed or injured," he told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Local lawmaker Jamie Reed said people in the quiet area were in shock.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen in our part of the world," he told the BBC. "We have got one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country."

Glenda Pears, who runs L&G Taxis in Whitehaven, said one of the victims was another taxi driver who was a friend of Bird's.

"They used to stand together having a (laugh) on the rank," she said. "He was friends with everybody and used to stand and joke on Duke Street."

Sue Matthews, who works at A2B Taxis in Whitehaven, said Bird was self-employed, quiet and lived alone. Some reports said he was divorced and the father of two sons.

"I would say he was fairly popular. I would see him once a week out and about. He was known as 'Birdy,'" she said. "I can't believe he would do that — he was a quiet little fellow."

Emergency services were still working late Wednesday to identify all the dead and inform their families.

Rod Davies, landlord of Gosforth Hall Inn near one of the crime scenes, said residents were "used to 'neighbor's cat missing' stories making the news — not this sort of thing.

"There's a lot of fear. A lot of people are expecting to hear names of people they know."

___

Jill Lawless reported from London. Associated Press Writer Andrew Khouri also contributed to this report.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Israel to expel all activists by day's end

JERUSALEM – Israel's attorney general says all of the nearly 700 activists detained in a deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip will be deported by the end of the day.

Yehuda Weinstein says Israel has decided not to prosecute any of the activists. Officials had earlier said they were considering prosecuting about 50 people believed to be involved in violence.

But Weinstein wrote in his order Wednesday that "keeping them here would do more damage to the country's vital interests than good." Israeli soldiers killed nine activists in the raid Monday.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel on Wednesday began deporting the bulk of nearly 700 international activists detained during its deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for Palestinians in the blockaded, Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The raid that ended with Israeli soldiers killing nine activists has strained diplomatic ties, sending Israeli relations with Turkey, in particular, to a new low. At least four of the nine killed were Turkish and the ship Israel attacked was Turkish. Israel ordered families of its diplomats out of that country a day after Turkey branded the raid a "massacre."

Egypt eased its blockade of Gaza after the raid and at the newly opened crossing in the border town of Rafah, about 300 Palestinians entered through Gaza's main gateway to the outside world. A smaller number entered Gaza from Egypt and humanitarian aid also came in including blankets, tents and 13 power generators donated by Russia and Oman.

Magdi al-Titer, a 31-year-old Palestinian among those crossing into Egypt, said he lost his right leg during Israel's brief war with Gaza that ended in January 2009.
"I have come with a medical report to get fitted with an artificial leg in Egypt," he said.

Israel has come under harsh international condemnation after naval commandos stormed the flotilla in international waters on Monday, setting off the deadly clashes. Israel says its soldiers opened fire only after being attacked by angry activists, who said they were trying to breach the blockade of Gaza to bring in aid.

Gaza has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. Egypt's opening of the border was believed to be temporary, although the government did not say how long it would last.

A corrections official said Israel is aiming to deport all the foreign activists by the end of the day. But there is a possibility some could be held in custody on suspicion of violence against Israeli troops.

Some 400 activists, most of them Turkish citizens, were bused to Israel's international airport for flights home by midday Wednesday.

Corrections department spokesman Yaron Zamir said the Turkish activists would board planes Turkey had sent to pick them up. Greece also had an aircraft on standby there to pick up its activists.

An additional 124 activists from a dozen Muslim nations without diplomatic relations with Israel were deported to Jordan before sunrise. About 100 foreigners remained in a prison in southern Israel by midday, Zamir said.

Several of the activists deported to Jordan told The Associated Press that they were deprived of food, water, sleep and access to toilets in Israeli detention.

"The Israelis roughed up and humiliated all of us — women, men and children," said Kuwaiti lawmaker Walid al-Tabtabai, who was on board one of the ships with other activists from Muslim countries.

"They were brutal and arrogant, but our message reached every corner of the world that the blockade on Gaza is unfair and should be lifted immediately," he added. The lawmaker claimed there "was not a single weapon with the passengers aboard all the ships."

Israel claimed some of the passengers attacked commandos with knives, iron rods, sticks and with two pistols wrested from soldiers.

Video released by the Israeli military showed commandos attacked by angry activists with metal rods and firebombs during the raid. One soldier was thrown off one deck onto another below, and Israeli authorities said its troops were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from the two pistols wrested from soldiers.

Israeli defense officials have also said, without providing proof, that night vision goggles, gas masks, flak jackets and thousands of dollars were found on the ship, suggesting the possibility that some mercenaries were on board.

Israeli media reported Wednesday that the foreign ministry ordered the families of its diplomats in Turkey to leave that country because of the uproar there over the raid. The diplomatic mission itself would remain in Turkey, said Israel Radio and other stations and newspapers. The ministry would neither confirm nor deny the reports.

The fallout also expanded far from the region's borders. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Nicaragua is suspending — though not severing — diplomatic ties with Israel over the raid.

While many Israelis were critical of the way the raid was executed, the overwhelming reaction backed the soldiers' response and supported the Gaza blockade. Israelis have little empathy for the plight of Palestinians in Gaza because militants used the territory to send thousands of rockets and mortars crashing into Israel for years.

The flotilla was meant to draw attention to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, imposed after Hamas militants violently seized power in June 2007. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent Hamas, which has fired thousands of rockets into the Jewish state, from building up its arsenal. Critics say the closure has failed to hurt Hamas but has damaged Gaza's already weak economy.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton supported a U.N. Security Council statement that condemned the "acts" that cost the lives of the pro-Palestinian activists off the Gaza coast. But U.S. officials did not say whether they blamed Israel or the activists for the bloodshed.

Israel has promised to halt a new attempt by pro-Palestinian groups to sail two more ships to Gaza's shores within the next few days.

Despite the widespread outcry over the violent sea raid, the Palestinians were resuming indirect peace talks with Israel later Wednesday, through U.S. envoy George Mitchell. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to meet Mitchell at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
___
Associated Press Writers Dale Gavlak at Allenby Bridge, Jordan, and Karin Laub in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

for further information klick http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100602/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians;_ylt=AkJLORq4yd1yBQ06FvE8xY.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFiZGczaHIyBHBvcwMzOARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3dvcmxkBHNsawNpc3JhZWx0b2V4cGU-

Oil nears Fla. beaches as BP tries risky cap move

PORT FOURCHON, La. – The BP oil slick drifted close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time as submersible robots a mile below the Gulf of Mexico made the latest risky attempt to control the seafloor gusher.

Even if it works, the current mission to cut a major pipe and cap it would only reduce the flow, not stop it. If it fails, it could make the largest oil spill in U.S. history even worse. The best hope for sealing the leak, until a permanent fix is possible in August, failed Saturday, when engineers were unable to plug it with heavy mud in a maneuver called a top kill.

Investors ran from BP's stock for a second day Wednesday, reacting to the top kill failure and the Justice Department's announcement that it was looking at criminal and civil probes into the spill, although the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

Shares in British-based BP PLC were down 3 percent Wednesday morning in London trading after a 13 percent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion in market value since the spill started with an April 20 oil rig explosion and analysts expect damage claims to total billions more.

In Florida, officials confirmed an oil sheen Tuesday about nine miles from Pensacola beach, where the summer tourism season was just getting started.
Winds were forecast to blow from the south and west, pushing the slick closer to western Panhandle beaches.

Emergency crews began scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom. County officials will use it to block oil from reaching inland waterways but plan to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to protect and easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

The oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf.

Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and it has polluted some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

More federal fishing waters were closed, too, another setback for one of the region's most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fisherman Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, had rebuilt his home and business after Hurricane Katrina wiped him out. Now he's facing a similar situation.
"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," Le, 53, said as he attended a meeting for fishermen hoping for help. "Everything is financed, how can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing breaks."

Le, like other of the fishermen, received $5,000 from BP PLC, but it was quickly gone.

"I call that 'Shut your mouth money," said Murray Volk, 46, of Empire, who's been fishing for nearly 30 years. "That won't pay the insurance on my boat and house. They say there'll be more later, but do you think the electric company will wait for that?"

BP may have bigger problems, though.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited the Gulf on Tuesday, would not say who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans. The federal government also ramped up its response to the spill with President Barack Obama ordering the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster, "to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor."

The president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change, too.

BP has tried and failed repeatedly to halt the flow of the oil, and the latest attempt like others has never been tried before a mile beneath the ocean. Experts warned it could be even riskier than the others because slicing open the 20-inch riser could unleash more oil if there was a kink in the pipe that restricted some of the flow.

"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing — they're using little robots to do this."

Engineers have put underwater robots and equipment in place this week after a bold attempt to plug the well by force-feeding it heavy mud and cement — called a "top kill" — was aborted over the weekend. Crews pumped thousands of gallons of the mud into the well but were unable to overcome the pressure of the oil.

The company said if the small dome is successful it could capture and siphon a majority of the gushing oil to the surface. But the cut and cap will not halt the oil flow, just capture some of it and funnel it to vessels waiting at the surface.
BP's best chance to permanently plug the leak rests with a pair of relief wells but those won't likely be completed until August.
___
Bluestein reported from Covington, La. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Pete Yost from Washington, Curt Anderson from Miami, Brian Skoloff from Port Fourchon, Mary Foster in Boothville, and Michael Kunzelman also contributed to this report.

from news.yahoo.com

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