Visiting his father’s homeland, Obama says Kenya chose not to be defined by its past
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - President Barack Obama told Kenyans on Sunday that their country is at a crossroads and urged them to “choose the path to progress” by continuing to root out corruption, eliminate income inequality and be more inclusive of women and girls.
Closing out a historic visit to the land of his father’s birth, Obama said Kenya has come so far in just his lifetime, but can go even further.
“You can choose the path to progress, but it requires making some important choices,” Obama said in a speech to several thousand Kenyans packed into an indoor arena in Nairobi. Thousands more Kenyans lined Obama’s motorcade route to the arena and the speech was broadcast live on local TV.
Obama traced the history of Kenya’s evolution, from colonialism and isolation to independence and global engagement.
But Obama said challenges remained and he urged Kenyans, particularly its future leaders, to deal with corruption and tribal conflict, create opportunity for all, improve education and health care, treat women better and confront the threat of terrorism.
___
In his first speech in a year, Syria’s embattled president vows to win his nation’s civil war
BEIRUT (AP) - In his first public address in a year, embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed Sunday to win his country’s long-running civil war while acknowledging his troops had given up control of some territory.
Assad’s speech, while confident, comes as his battered country is host to the extremist Islamic State group, which is targeted in daily U.S.-led airstrikes. Turkey also has begun striking Islamic State fighters in Syria, as well as some Kurdish forces now leading a ground offensive against the extremists within the splintered country’s borders.
Assad’s televised speech Sunday morning, given to local dignitaries in the Syrian capital, Damascus, was his first public speech since he was sworn in for a third, seven-year in July last year. Assad has given interviews to several Arab and international media outlets in the meantime.
“We are not collapsing. We are steadfast and will achieve victory,” said Assad, who was interrupted several times by applause. “Defeat does not exist in the dictionary of the Syrian Arab army.”
In his speech, Assad tried to justify why the Syrian army has given up some areas of the country, including the northwestern city of Idlib. Assad-allied forces, including fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iranian advisers, control a little less than half of Syria’s 185,000 square kilometers (71,400 square miles).
___
Car bombing in southeast Turkey kills 2 soldiers, wounds 4; officials blame Kurdish rebels
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A car bomb struck a military vehicle in southeast Turkey, killing two soldiers and wounding four others in an attack blamed on Kurdish rebels, authorities said Sunday, a day after Turkey launched airstrikes against Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq.
The Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has said the airstrikes likely spelled the end of a cease-fire announced in 2013. Turkey has simultaneously bombed Islamic State positions near the Turkish border in Syria and carried out widespread police operations against suspected Kurdish and IS militants and other outlawed groups inside Turkey. Hundreds of people have been detained.
The car bomb exploded late Saturday on a road in the town of Lice as a vehicle carrying military police officers was traveling to intervene against Kurds who had blocked a main intersection, said the governor’s office in Diyarbakir, a mainly Kurdish province. It said the military had launched an operation to capture the attackers.
Assailants also attacked a police station in Diyarbakir, sparking a gunbattle, the state-run Anadolu agency reported. No one was injured in that attack.
On Saturday, Turkish fighter jets struck Kurdish rebel shelters and storage facilities across the border in northern Iraq, its first such strikes since the peace process with the Kurds was launched in 2012.
___
Activist known for calling corrupt Chinese officials ’pigs’ among dozens held in crackdown
BEIJING (AP) - Bearded, bald and burly ex-soldier Wu Gan calls himself The Ultra Vulgar Butcher. He poses for online portraits brandishing knives in both hands that he says he’ll use to “slaughter the pigs” among local officials who’ve done wrong.
Since 2009, he championed a confrontational approach to compel police, local officials or the courts to address alleged unfairness in China. He traveled to remote communities to shame local authorities into doing the right thing.
His stunts included putting the likeness of a local official’s face on a naked mannequin and threatening to hold a funeral service for a top judge. When authorities held a fellow activist at a hotel, Wu had an open invitation for like-minded people to visit the detainee, prompting his release by jittery officials wary of a crowd.
“I don’t want to see policies being dictated by hooligans who will do harm to the nation. And so we go out there to help people, with the simple hope that our action will make this country a better place to live,” he said in a 2012 video he made for supporters in the event that he should ever disappear or be arrested.
That day has come. Wu was formally arrested this month, as part of a recent crackdown on a loosely allied group of more than 200 “rights-defender lawyers” and the activists associated with them. He is among dozens who remain detained and may eventually stand trial.
___
Paris police open fire on car trying to crash through Tour de France barricades
PARIS (AP) - Paris police officers opened fire on a car that tried to crash through barricades about eight hours before the final arrival of the Tour de France cycling race on Sunday, a police official said.
The car escaped with its two occupants apparently unharmed after coming under fire around 11 a.m. (0900 GMT; 5 a.m. EDT) in the Place de la Concorde, where the cyclists make their final triumphant rounds to conclude the race, said Luc Poignant, a spokesman with the SGP police union. Police are hunting for the people in the car.
Tour de France race director Thierry Gouvenou said that he didn’t have much information about the incident, but he didn’t foresee any impact on the race.
The final stage of the Tour de France is due to begin at 4:35 p.m. (1435 GMT; 10:35 a.m. EDT), leaving from Sevres, a town southwest of Paris. The riders are then due to arrive in the French capital at around 5:30 p.m. (1530 GMT; 11:30 a.m. EDT) and do 10 laps around the Champs-Elysees before finishing at Place de la Concorde at about 7 p.m. (1700 GMT; 1 p.m. EDT).
Hundreds of thousands of people gather in the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees for the race’s final leg.
___
Clinton maintains she never knowingly dealt with classified information on private server
WINTERSET, Iowa (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said she never knowingly sent or received classified information using her private email server and did not know what messages were being cited by intelligence investigators as examples of emails containing classified information.
Clinton spoke briefly Saturday about the email matter after a Democratic gathering at the Madison County Historical Complex in which she stressed her commitment to a variety of issues, including her support for pre-kindergarten education and abortion access. Reporters raised the topic of the email during a brief news conference.
“I am confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received. What I think you’re seeing here is a very typical kind of discussion, to some extent disagreement among various parts of the government, over what should or should not be publicly released,” she said.
The front-runner for her party’s nomination said she wanted the information in question to be made public as soon as possible and suggested there was confusion over the issue.
“I think there’s so much confusion around this that I understand why reporters and the public are asking questions, but the facts are pretty clear. I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time,” she said.
___
Michelle Obama opens Special Olympics at star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michelle Obama welcomed thousands of athletes with intellectual disabilities to the Special Olympic World Games on Saturday during a festive opening ceremony filled with cheers, songs and praise for their courage and determination.
“My husband and I, we are so proud of you, so incredibly proud of you, and we love you all from the bottom of our hearts,” the first lady said. She said the athletes were an example to the millions of people watching the event on television.
She was introduced by Special Olympian Tim Harris, who owns a restaurant in New Mexico that he said serves “breakfast, lunch and hugs!”
Mrs. Obama “knows the power of a hug,” he said, and shared one with the first lady.
Earlier, President Barack Obama welcomed the athletes by video.
___
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.”
___
Phillies ace Hamels throws 1st no-hitter vs Cubs in 50 years, wins 5-0 as trade deadline nears
CHICAGO (AP) - The scouts packed the seats behind home plate, and Cole Hamels put on quite a show. The lanky left-hander was dominant on a picturesque afternoon at Wrigley Field.
Quite the timing, too.
Hamels struck out 13 in baseball’s third no-hitter of the season, leading Philadelphia to a 5-0 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Saturday in what might be his final start for the Phillies. The 2008 World Series MVP has been mentioned prominently in trade talks as the July 31 deadline approaches.
“It’s something where you just go out there and enjoy the moment,” Hamels said. “What I want is to be successful at it. I enjoyed the moment and this happened.”
Hamels (6-7) was in control right from the start against the contending Cubs, and then got some help from rookie center fielder Odubel Herrera in the final two innings. It was the fourth no-hitter for catcher Carlos Ruiz, including the playoffs, according to STATS - tops in NL history and tied with Jason Varitek for the major league record.
___
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.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.