News 
- Created on 23 May 2013
Time Publishes Obama's Prom Photos
Tucked away in someone else’s shoe box of adolescent artifacts, there might be a picture of you in garish clothes and with an outdated ‘do, your arm around a high school squeeze. The President of the United States is no different. These previously unpublished photos, obtained exclusively by TIME from Obama’s schoolmate Kelli Allman (née McCormack), show a 17-year-old Barack Obama on the night of his senior prom.
Barry spent his days at the Punahou School in Hawaii studying, shooting hoops and goofing off with his friends. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obama’s constant companion. “They were like brothers,” says Allman. On prom night, the pair double-dated. Obama and his date Megan Hughes, a student at the Hawaii School for Girls at La Pietra, joined Orme at Allman’s house, where the two couples sipped champagne before going to the dance and then an after-party. “It was a really fun, happy time. We were all cracking up, and everyone was smiling,” says Allman. “It was pretty typical from there out as far as what happens at prom: the dinner and the dancing and the photos.”
Read more at Time.
(Photo: From left: Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, Barack Obama and Megan Hughes at Allman’s parents’ house in Honolulu/Kelli Allman Contact Press Images.)
- Created on 23 May 2013
US Unemployment Aid Applications Fall Slightly
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell by 23,000 last week, further evidence that the job market is slowly returning to health.
Applications for unemployment aid declined to a seasonally adjusted 340,000 in the week ending May 18, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's down from 363,000 the previous week and a level consistent with solid job gains.
The less volatile four-week average ticked down just 500 to 339,500. That's close to the five-year low of 338,000 reached during the first week of May. The four-week average is 9 percent lower than in November.
"The underlying story in jobless claims continues to be one of gradual improvement," Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas, wrote in a research report.
Unemployment claims are a proxy for layoffs. The decline in claims has coincided with steady job growth over the past six months. Since November, employers have added an average 208,000 jobs a month. That's up from just 138,000 jobs a month during the previous six months.
Still, much of the improvement has come from fewer layoffs, not robust hiring. Employers laid off just 1.7 million workers in March, only slightly above the 12-year low reached in January. Overall hiring, however, remains far below pre-recession levels.
More than 4.7 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits the week that ended May 4, down 23 percent from nearly 6.2 million a year earlier.
The United States still has 2.6 million fewer jobs than it did when the recession began in December 2007. The unemployment has fallen to a four-year low of 7.5 percent, down from 10 percent in October 2009. Some of the decrease is because many people have given up looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they are actively searching for a job.
- Created on 22 May 2013
Bill Clinton Voices Support for Gay Marriage in Illinois
Former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday threw his weight behind legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois, calling on the state House to approve the stalled bill.
Pointing to "the days of Abraham Lincoln" for inspiration, Clinton in a statement asks legislators to stand up for the "proposition that all citizens should be treated equally under the law" as they have in the past.
“Illinois has stood for the proposition that all citizens should be treated equally under the law,” Clinton said. “Lincoln himself came to Springfield in search of opportunity, and he dedicated his life to securing equal opportunity for all citizens. I believe that for Illinois and for our nation as a whole, in the 21st century that must include marriage equality.”
Clinton joins a chorus of voices, including Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, who publicly backed the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act. The legislation passed the Illinois Senate on Valentine's Day, but a lack of votes kept it stalled in the House.
Gov. Pat Quinn said as recently as Monday that he will sign the bill and thinks there are enough votes to get the bill onto his desk. (Photo: Associated Press)
Read more at NBCChicago.
(Photo: Associated Press)
- Created on 22 May 2013
4 Americans Killed Since 2009 In US Drone Strikes
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen since 2009. The disclosure to Congress comes on the eve of a major national security speech by President Barack Obama in which he plans to pledge more transparency to Congress in his counterterrorism policy.
It was already known that three Americans had been killed in U.S. drones strikes in counterterrorism operations overseas, but Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed details that had remained secret and also that a fourth American had been killed.
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Holder said that the government targeted and killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and that the U.S. “is aware” of the killing of three others who were not targets of counterterror operations.
Al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. The other two known cases are Samir Khan, who was killed in the same drone strike as al-Awlaki and al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, a Denver native, who also was killed in Yemen.
The newly revealed case is that of Jude Kenan Mohammed, one of eight men indicted by federal authorities in 2009, accused of being part of a plot to attack the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va. Before he could be arrested, Mohammad fled the country to join jihadi fighters in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where he was among those killed by a U.S. drone.
“Since entering office, the president has made clear his commitment to providing Congress and the American people with as much information as possible about our sensitive counterterrorism operations,” Holder said in his letter to Leahy, D-Vt. “To this end, the president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified.”
“The administration is determined to continue these extensive outreach efforts to communicate with the American people,” Holder wrote.
A move to gradually shift responsibility for the bulk of U.S. drone strikes from the CIA to the military has already begun. And, according to an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, the move would largely divide the strikes on a geographical basis, with the CIA continuing to conduct operations in Pakistan, while the military takes on the operations in other parts of the world.
The White House said Obama’s national security speech Thursday coincides with the signing of new “presidential policy guidance” on when the U.S. can use drone strikes, though it was unclear what that guidance entailed and whether Obama would outline its specifics in his remarks.
Obama “believes that we need to be as transparent about a matter like this as we can, understanding that there are national security implications to this issue and to the broader issues involved in counterterrorism policy,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday.
“He thinks (this) is an absolutely valid and legitimate and important area of discussion and debate and conversation, and that it is his belief that there need to be structures in place that remain in place for successive administrations,” Carney said. “So that in the carrying out of counterterrorism policy, procedures are followed that allow it to be conducted in a way that ensures that we’re keeping with our traditions and our laws.”
Obama’s speech Thursday at the National Defense University is expected to reaffirm his national security priorities – from homegrown terrorists to killer drones to the enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay – but make no new sweeping policy pronouncements. The White House has offered few specifics on what the president will say to address long-standing questions that have dogged his administration for years and, critics say, given foreign allies mixed signals about U.S. intentions in some of the world’s most volatile areas.
Obama will try to refocus an increasingly apathetic and controversy-weary U.S. public on security issues. His message will also be carefully analyzed by an international audience that has had to adapt to what counterterror expert Peter Singer described as the administration’s “disjointed” and often “shortsighted” security policies.
Obama is also expected to say the U.S. will make a renewed effort to transfer detainees out of the Navy-run detention center for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to other countries. Obama recently restated his desire to close Guantanamo, a pledge he made shortly after his inauguration in January 2009.
That effort, however, has been stymied because many countries don’t want the detainees or are unwilling or unable to guarantee that once transferred detainees who may continue to be a threat will not be released.
There are currently about 166 prisoners at Guantanamo, and 86 have been approved for transfer as long as security restrictions are met.
Obama is also expected to make the case that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has decimated al-Qaida’s core, even as new threats emerge elsewhere.
Read more at News One.
(Photo: Facebook)
- Created on 22 May 2013
Chokwe Lumumba: Former Lawyer For Tupac Assata Shakur Wins Jackson, Miss. Mayoral Race
It’s been a long time coming, but change is coming to Mississippi.
Former Ward 2 Councilman and Chokwe Lumumba, 65, (pronounced SHOW-kway Lu-MOOM-bah) is the winner of the mayoral primary runoff election in Jackson, Miss., reports WAPT.com.
Lumumba defeated business Jonathan Lee, 35, 54 percent to 46 percent with 100 percent of the vote reporting.
“I think we just had a very difficult fight in order to win this office and we came out successful,” Lumumba said from his victory party at the Clarion Hotel. “I’m very proud of all of the people in my campaign who worked so diligently and I’m very proud of the people of Jackson because I think the people of Jackson have spoken and spoken very clearly.”
Lumumba served four years on the Jackson City Council before running for mayor. He spent part of the ’70s and ’80s as vice-president of the Republic of New Afrika, an organization which advocated for “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States and reparations for slavery.
“The provisional government of Republic of New Afrika was always a group that believed in human rights for human beings,” Lumumba told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “I think it has been miscast in many ways. It has never been any kind of racist group or ‘hate white’ group in any way…. It was a group which was fighting for human rights for black people in this country and at the same time supporting the human rights around the globe.”
Read more at News One.
