John Kerry breaks leg in cycling accident in Alps

United States Secretary of State John Kerry broke his right leg in an accident while cycling in the Alps near Scionzier, France, on Sunday and returned to the US, his spokesman said. He has cancelled visits to Madrid and Paris.

Kerry broke his right femur but the injury is not life-threatening and he is expected to make a full recovery, the spokesman said. He was taken to a Geneva hospital after being injured and was in stable condition.

The accident occurred while Kerry was out cycling the day after meetings with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Geneva to try to overcome obstacles in negotiations on curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme.

He was flown by medical helicopter from the scene of the accident to Geneva’s main public hospital, spokesman John Kirby said.
“The secretary is stable and never lost consciousness. His injury is not life-threatening and he is expected to make a full recovery,” Kirby said and added that Kerry was “in good spirits.”
Later on it was reported that the top American diplomat was being transported, aboard government aircraft, to Boston to be admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital under the care of the physician who performed the hip surgery.

According to a report in The Washington Post, Kerry was attended by a physician at the scene, in the town of Scionzier, France, just over the Swiss border about 30 miles from Geneva.

The Post also reported that Kerry had brought his personal bike along for a ride planned well in advance. “An avid cyclist, he wanted to ride a small part of the Tour de France and was accompanied by local government officials,” according to French media reports.

He had been due to travel to Madrid, Spain, later on Sunday before heading to Paris for a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi and members of a US-supported coalition fighting the militant group Islamic State.
“The secretary very much regrets not being able to visit Spain to meet with one of our closest allies for discussions on a range of issues,” Kirby said. Kerry will also miss the counter-ISIL coalition ministerial meeting on Tuesday in Paris in person but would participate “remotely.”

The 71-year-old secretary of state is an avid cyclist and often takes his own bike on official trips abroad. A senior State Department official said it appeared Kerry hit a curb and there was no vehicle involved in the accident.

Senate takes up House bill but fails to avoid spying lapse

WASHINGTON: Eight days after blocking it, Senate Republicans have agreed to begin debate on a House bill that would overhaul the National Security Agency's handling of American calling records while preserving other domestic surveillance provisions.
But that remarkable turnabout didn't happen soon enough to prevent the laws governing the programs from expiring at midnight Sunday as Republican Sen. Rand Paul, a presidential contender, stood in the way of extending the program, angering his GOP colleagues and frustrating intelligence and law enforcement officials.

Now, the question is whether the Senate will pass a bill the House can live with. If so, the surveillance programs will resume, with some significant changes in how the phone records are handled. If not, they will remain dormant.
The Senate vote on the measure known as the USA Freedom Act can come no earlier than 1 a.m., Tuesday. Senate Republican aides said they expected some amendments, but no major revisions to the bill.

"Having gone past the brink, the Senate must now embrace the necessity of acting responsibly," said Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, in a statement after Sunday's Senate vote.

Google Calendar won't send you text alerts after June 27th

We hope you didn't lean too heavily on Google Calendar's text message alerts in order to keep your life organized.

Google is warning that Calendar's SMS notifications will vanish for regular users (education, government and work are safe) after June 27th.

The search firm argues that they're no longer needed in an era when smartphones give you a "richer, more reliable" heads-up. 

It's true that modern mobile devices render SMS a bit redundant. With that in mind, this isn't good news if you can't justify a smartphone on your budget, or prefer to keep most notifications off you may remain blissfully unaware of an event change until you reach a computer.

Weeks before pushing her dead son on a swing, she told court she was fine

She insisted she was fine — that her breakdown was behind her and that she was taking good care of her 3-year-old son. 

Just weeks before sheriff’s deputies found Romechia Simms pushing her dead preschooler on a park swing in Southern Maryland, she argued in D.C. Superior Court documents obtained by The Washington Post that she was a better, more capable parent than her former boyfriend, James “Donnell” Lee, who’d filed for full custody of Ji’Aire.

Lee, 29, told the court he was concerned about Simms’s mental stability after episodes of erratic behavior, including jumping from a moving cab, led to her hospitalization.

“I do not believe she can safely care for our son,” he wrote in his March custody petition. “I am concerned about my child’s safety and well being. 

I want to make sure that our son is safe.”
In her response, Simms, 24, who was living with her homeless mother in a motel in LaPlata, Md., attributed her breakdown to “an extreme amount of stress weighing heavy on me,” but she said she’d recovered.

“I am now in a much better productive space,” she wrote in April. She also stated, “I have done everything in my power since moving from D.C. to ensure that my son has the best life that he can have.”
On May 22 — 11 days after Lee reluctantly agreed in court to limit his custody of his son to weekends — the chubby-cheeked boy nicknamed “Sumo” was found dead at Wills Memorial Park at 7 a.m. The Charles County Sheriff’s Office said his mother had been pushing him in a swing for hours, possibly since the previous afternoon. 

The temperature had fallen to about 51 degrees overnight, according to National Weather Service data.
Ji’Aire’s cause of death is unknown, but his body showed no signs of trauma, authorities said. No charges have been filed.

Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400

nationwide

In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyriding in a stolen car.

In the backwoods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wielding moonshiner. And in a high-rise apartment in Birmingham, Ala., police shot an elderly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.

The three are among at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.

“These shootings are grossly under­reported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities.

To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty.

The Post looked exclusively at shootings, not killings by other means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody.
Using interviews, police reports, local news accounts and other sources, The Post tracked more than a dozen details about each killing through Friday, including the victim’s race, whether the person was armed and the circumstances that led to the fatal encounter.

The result is an unprecedented examination of these shootings, many of which began as minor incidents and suddenly escalated into violence.

   'Lucy' may not be our mum, say scientists

In 1974, anthropologists in Ethiopia found the astonishing fossilised remains of a human-like creature who last walked the planet some 3.2 million years ago.

Was "Lucy," as the hominid was called, the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens? Was she "The Mother of Mankind," as some headlines claimed?

Over the years, the dramatic assertion has come under attack by doubters, who point to ancient yet inconclusive finds in Kenya and Chad.

But a new fossil, reported on Wednesday, may have dealt Lucy's claimed status an irreversible blow.
Another species of hominid lived at the same time and in the same Afar region of Ethiopia, according to the paper, published in the journal Nature.

Named Australopithecus deyiremeda, the hominid and Lucy are probably only part of a wider group of candidates for being our direct forerunners, the finders said.

"The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar," said Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

"Current fossil evidence... clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity." 

Former NY Governor Pataki launches 2016 Republican presidential bid

Former New York Governor George Pataki entered the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, joining a crowded field of candidates vying to retake the White House for their party.

"It is time to stand up, protect our freedom and take back this government," he said in an announcement video titled "Pataki for President" posted on his website, georgepataki.com.

Pataki, who served three terms as governor from 1995 to 2006, has flirted with running for U.S. Senate or the presidency in past years.

He could represent a fairly moderate voice in the 2016 Republican presidential field, which includes a pack of staunch conservatives. As governor, Pataki declared himself an abortion rights advocate and signed tough gun control legislation.

More recently, he has criticized "religious freedom" bills that conservative candidates backed and called it "inappropriate" when Republican lawmakers wrote to Iranian leaders in a move largely seen as undermining Democratic President Barack Obama.

 Islamic State "blind judge" shows up in  Ramadi as Iraqi forces make slow advance

BAGHDAD,- A senior Islamic State figure known as "the blind judge" has made an appearance in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, asserting the militant group's dominion over it as security forces and Shi'ite militias prepare a counter-attack.

Residents of Ramadi said a blind man with one hand and his head shrouded had delivered a speech in the Anbar provincial capital's main mosque after evening prayers on Wednesday.

They did not know who he was but recognised him to be a senior figure because he was flanked by a large number of guards and said his accent indicated he was Iraqi.

Iraqi security expert Hisham al-Hashimi, who closely tracks the hardline insurgents, identified the man as Ali Attiya al-Jubouri, also known as Abu Asim, or "the blind judge of the Islamic State".

"This cleric who appeared in Ramadi yesterday is very famous," Hashimi said. "He is the second highest religious authority after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the fifth man in the organization of Daesh."

Daesh is an Arabic name for Islamic State.