Escaped Mexican drug lord no saint, but lesser evil on home turf
BADIRAGUATO, Mexico (AP) - People living in the hometown of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman have heard stories of his benevolence: gifts of medicine for the poor, deliveries of drinking water to storm-stricken towns. But finding anyone who’s actually received or even seen such a gift is another matter.
In Badiraguato, the small mountain town that is part of Guzman’s rags-to-crime riches mythology, none of the two dozen people interviewed by The Associated Press could point out evidence of his legendary largesse.
“I don’t see a single building producing jobs, a single piece of public works, a soccer field, a sewer, a school, water systems, a clinic or hospital, not a single one that you can say was built by drug traffickers or their money,” Mayor Mario Valenzuela said.
If Guzman or his cartel had invested in their hometowns, he said, “they’d look different: They would have paved roads or drainage systems, but they don’t.”
Guzman’s escape on July 11 from a prison near Mexico City has focused attention again on Badiraguato, the county seat of a township that includes the hamlet of La Tuna, where El Chapo’s mother still lives.
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The Latest: Obama to “birthers”: Kenya trip is not to hunt down his birth certificate
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The latest on President Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya (all times local):
11:30 p.m.
The “birther” jokes won’t go away, partly because the target won’t stop telling them.
Obama says he suspects that some of his critics back home, particularly those who don’t believe he’s American, think he’s in Kenya “to look for my birth certificate.”
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Democrats woo activists in Des Moines neighborhood that organized for Obama
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Four years ago, the Beaverdale neighborhood in Des Moines organized big for President Barack Obama’s re-election, building an uber-volunteer group skilled at phone-banking, door-knocking and boosting caucus and general election participation. The volunteers dubbed their leafy neighborhood Obamadale.
Now the 2016 Democratic presidential hopefuls are visiting this liberal stronghold, trying to rename it once more.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley hung out at a local bar Friday night and Hillary Rodham Clinton was set to visit a house party Saturday afternoon. But they may have to keep wooing for a while. The neighbors are split among the candidates or undecided.
“I think Obamadale is still kind of an open target for candidates at this point,” said Brad Anderson, a resident who served as Obama’s state director in 2012.
Anderson said that in the last presidential election, the Obamadale group “over-performed by every metric that was set.” The group of about 20 core activists and dozens more participants got training from the campaign and put in long hours working the phones and going door to door. They turned out big numbers on caucus night and again in the November general election, when the incumbent Obama won the state. Their organizing methods were so successful that they were sent to other areas to boost participation.
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Background check didn’t stop gun purchase by movie theater shooter, despite mental problems
LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) - John Russell Houser was deeply troubled long before he shot 11 people in a movie theater in Louisiana, but decades of mental problems didn’t keep him from buying the handgun he used.
Despite obvious and public signs of mental illness - most importantly, a Georgia judge’s order committing him to mental health treatment against his will as a danger to himself and others in 2008 - Houser was able to walk into an Alabama pawn shop six years later and buy a .40-caliber handgun.
It was the same weapon Houser used to kill two people and wound nine others before killing himself at a Thursday showing of “Trainwreck.” Three people remained hospitalized Saturday.
Court records reviewed by The Associated Press strongly suggest Houser should have been reported to the state and federal databases used to keep people with serious mental illnesses from buying firearms, legal experts said.
“It sure does seem like something failed,” said Judge Susan Tate, who presides over a probate court in Athens, Georgia, and has studied issues relating to weapons and the mentally ill. “I have no idea how he was able to get a firearm.”
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In Kenya, Obama blends blunt messages on gay rights, corruption with warm family reflections
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - President Barack Obama mixed blunt messages to Kenya’s leaders on gay rights, corruption and counterterrorism Saturday with warm reflections on his family ties to a nation that considers him a local son.
He foreshadowed a focus on Kenya in his post-White House life, saying, “I’ll be back.”
Obama’s comments during a news conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta reflected the unusual nature of his long-awaited visit to this East African nation. His official agenda has been sprinkled with opportunities to reconnect with his late father’s sprawling Kenyan family, including some meeting the American president for the first time.
“There are cousins and uncles and aunties that show up that you didn’t know existed, but you’re always happy to meet,” Obama said. “There were lengthy explanations in some cases of the connections.”
Obama did little to paper over policy differences with Kenya’s government, most notably on gay rights. He drew on his own background as an African-American, noting the slavery and segregation of the U.S. past and saying he is “painfully aware of the history when people are treated differently under the law.”
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25 years after passage, Americans with Disabilities Act has improved the lives of millions
NEW YORK (AP) - Five days before he was to start college, Fred Maahs’ world turned upside down. Off the Delaware coast in 1980, on the last day of summer vacation, the 18-year-old took a dive from his family’s boat into an unseen sandbar barely a foot below the surface, sustaining injuries that paralyzed him from the chest down.
After months of medical care, he had to find a new college to attend - the one at which he enrolled said its campus was not accessible to wheelchairs. One of his first jobs was on the second floor of a building with no elevator; two friends carried him up and down the stairs.
“For those first couple of years, I was really dependent on family or friends,” said Maahs. “Back then, people with disabilities were primarily kept at home.”
Were that diving accident to happen now, the campus and workplace would be accessible - with ramps, curb cuts, elevators, designated parking spots. A blind or deaf person, or anyone with a host of other disabilities, also would find accommodations enhancing their independence and engagement - all of this the legacy of the sweeping Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law 25 years ago, on July 26, 1990.
“Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down,” declared President George H. W. Bush as he prepared to sign the legislation. Some 2,000 people with disabilities - elated after years of activism - gathered on the South Lawn of the White House for the ceremony.
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Embattled Kurds fight the IS group while dreaming of independence and enduring Turkish attacks
BAGHDAD (AP) - Turkish jets struck camps belonging to Kurdish militants in northern Iraq Friday and Saturday in what were the first strikes since a peace deal was announced in 2013.
The strikes in Iraq targeted the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, whose affiliates have been effective in battling the Islamic State group.
The Kurds of Syria and Iraq have become a major part of the war against the Islamic State group, with Kurdish populations in both countries threatened by the militants’ advance. Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds took part in cross-border operations to help rescue tens of thousands of displaced people from the minority Yazidi group from Iraq’s Sinjar Mountain in August last year and they continue to fight in cooperation with one another against the Islamic State group in areas along the Iraq-Syria border.
They have been somewhat effective in limiting the expansion of the Islamic State militants across northern Iraq but there are concerns that Turkish airstrikes on the PKK could jeopardize Kurdish positions.
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Turkey couples Islamic State bombing runs in Syria with striking Kurdish targets in Iraq
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey’s sudden willingness to join the fight against the Islamic State group is a sign that it’s afraid of losing clout with the U.S., but its second front against Kurdish rebels in Iraq on Saturday could complicate Washington’s war.
For months, Ankara had been reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition against IS despite gains made by the extremist group on Turkey’s doorstep.
Now, Turkish warplanes are directly targeting IS locations - the latest bombing run coming early Saturday for a second straight day. Turkey then opened a second front on Kurdish rebel sites.
The strikes against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, muddle the U.S.-led fight against IS. The United States has relied on Syrian Kurdish fighters affiliated with the PKK while making gains against IS.
U.S. officials declined to comment publicly on the Turkish strikes in northern Iraq.
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Hundreds say farewell to woman found dead in Texas jail, celebrate her as ’courageous voice’
LISLE, Ill. (AP) - Family and friends of an Illinois woman found dead in a Texas jail remembered her Saturday as a “courageous voice” for social justice and promised to keep fighting for clarity on the circumstances surrounding her death.
Hundreds of people attended Sandra Bland’s funeral near the Chicago suburb where she grew up. They celebrated her life with words and songs of praise, and her mother danced in the church aisle with her arms raised. She and other mourners, though, said they were still struggling to understand how a traffic stop for failing to use a turn signal escalated into a physical confrontation and landed her in the cell where authorities say she killed herself three days later.
The Harris County, Texas, medical examiner’s office determined through an autopsy that Bland hanged herself with a plastic bag. The 28-year-old woman’s family has questioned the finding, saying she was excited about starting a new job and wouldn’t have taken her own life.
“I’m going to find out what happened to my baby,” her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, said in remarks that brought mourners to their feet. “My baby has spoken. She’s still speaking and no, she didn’t kill herself.”
The traffic stop, which was captured on police dash cam video and on a bystander’s cellphone, and Bland’s death in custody have resonated on social media, with many grouping it with other prominent U.S. cases involving confrontations between the police and blacks over the past year.
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Man killed by shark while diving with daughter off Australian state of Tasmania
HOBART, Australia (AP) - A woman watched her father being mauled to death by a large shark on Saturday while the pair were diving off the Australian island state of Tasmania, police said.
The adult woman had returned to their boat with scallops that the pair had collected then became concerned that her father, in his late 40s, had not surfaced after her, Inspector David Wiss told reporters in the state capital of Hobart.
“His daughter became worried and went down and checked on her father,” Wiss said. “She saw a very large shark. She saw her father being attacked by the shark.”
The attack happened off the east coast near where a 4 1/2-meter-long (15-foot-long) great white shark was seen on Friday, government ranger Peter Lingard told The Examiner newspaper.
The last fatal shark attack off the Australian coast occurred in February, when Japanese tourist Tadashi Nakahara, 41, lost both his legs to a great white shark 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) long while surfing at Ballina, 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) north of the scene of Saturday’s attack.
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