Dennis Rodman Wants a Nobel Peace Prize For His NBA Diplomacy (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Jessica Chasmar. Dennis Rodman sat down with Sports Illustrated’s Franz Lidz to talk about his controversial trip to North Korea, saying that his efforts in world diplomacy should be enough to earn him a Nobel Peace Prize.

“My mission is to break the ice between hostile countries,” he said. “Why it’s been left to me to smooth things over, I don’t know. Dennis Rodman, of all people. Keeping us safe is really not my job; it’s the black guy’s [Obama’s] job. But I’ll tell you this: If I don’t finish in the top three for the next Nobel Peace Prize, something’s seriously wrong.”

The former NBA player recently traveled to Pyongyang with a few members of the Harlem Globetrotters and a crew from HBO’s television series “Vice,” Sports Illustrated reported.

Mr. Rodman said he knew very little of North Korea or Kim Jong-un before the trip. Read more from this story HERE.

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Dennis Rodman says he should be considered for Nobel Peace Prize

By Cindy Boren. It’s been a busy year for Dennis Rodman, the former NBA bad-boy-turned-diplomat.

He’s traveled to North Korea. He’s talked with Kim Jong Un and pronounced him a “friend for life.” He’s gone to Vatican City and kindly offered to assist with the selection of a new pope. All of which leads him to one conclusion: He should win the Nobel Peace Prize, like some sort of blond, pierced, tattoed version of, oh, Jimmy Carter or Al Gore.

“My mission is to break the ice between hostile countries,” Rodman told Sports Illustrated in an interview for its annual “Where are they now?” issue. “Why it’s been left to me to smooth things over, I don’t know. Dennis Rodman, of all people. Keeping us safe is really not my job; it’s the black guy’s [that would be President Obama] job. But I’ll tell you this: If I don’t finish in the top three for the next Nobel Peace Prize, something’s seriously wrong.”

Rodman, who said in March that “I want to be anywhere in the world that I’m needed,” plans to return to North Korea next month.

“I’m just gonna chill, play some basketball and maybe go on vacation with Kim and his family,” Rodman said. “I’ve called on the Supreme Leader to do me a solid by releasing Kenneth Bae.” Read more from this story HERE.

Bolivian President’s Plane Diverted Due to Suspicion of Snowden on Board, Reportedly Endangers Passengers (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Fox News. As an international round of asylum rejections piled up Tuesday for Edward Snowden, a plane carrying Bolivia’s president home from Russia was diverted to Vienna because of suspicions the NSA leaker might be onboard.

Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said that Snowden was not on the plane, which had to land in Vienna after Bolivian officials said France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace.

“We don’t know who invented this lie,” a furious Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said. “We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales.”

He said the decision by France and Portugal “put at risk the life of the president.”

Morales had said in an interview with Russia Today television that Bolivia would be willing to consider granting asylum to Snowden. He was reported meeting there Tuesday night with the plane’s crew to reprogram his return to Bolivia. Read more from this story HERE.

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Snowden Affair Diverts Bolivian President’s Plane in Europe

By Thomson/Reuters. The diversion of Morale’s plane on Tuesday was another strange turn in the 30-year-old American’s cat-and-mouse game with the United States. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca blamed it on “unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane.”

“We don’t know who invented this lie,” Choquehuanca said. “We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president’s life at risk.”

Bolivia is among more than a dozen countries where Snowden has sought asylum and Morales, who was attending an energy conference in Russia this week, has said he would consider granting the American refuge if requested.

Bolivian Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra said the State Department may have been behind the decisions to not allow Morales’ plane to land in Portugal or fly over French air space…

Snowden’s options seem only to have narrowed since he arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23 with no valid travel documents, after the United States revoked his passport. Read more from this story HERE.

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Venezuela’s President Maduro defends Edward Snowden: ‘He did not kill anyone’

By Valerie Richardson. Mr. Snowden’s increasingly desperate bids for asylum to escape prosecution on espionage charges could lead him back to America — specifically, South America.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro defended the accused leaker to Russian reporters Tuesday during a visit to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“He did not kill anyone and did not plant a bomb,” said Mr. Maduro, according to the Interfax news agency. “What he did was tell a great truth in an effort to prevent wars. He deserves protection under international and humanitarian law.”

Mr. Maduro avoided saying whether he would admit the accused leaker, but Bolivian President Evo Morales said in an interview with Russian Today television that his country would be willing to consider granting asylum to Mr. Snowden.

“If there were a request, of course we would be willing to debate and consider the idea,” Mr. Morales said on RT Actualidad, a Spanish-language broadcast, adding that in the past, “Bolivia was there to shield the denounced.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Michelle Obama: Being First Lady is Like Living in a ‘Really Nice Prison’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday described living in the White House as like being in a “really nice prison.”

Obama’s comment came during her discussion with former First Lady Laura Bush at the African First Ladies Summit in Tanzania during an interview moderated by journalist Cokie Roberts…

Obama said she loved her job and found it liberating in some respects, but confining in others.

“There are some prison elements to it,” she joked. “But it’s a really nice prison.”

Read more from this story HERE.

University Tells Student to Remove Cross Necklace Because it Might Be “Offensive” to Other Students

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A Sonoma State University student was ordered to remove a cross necklace by a supervisor who thought other students might find it offensive, in a case that prompted even one campus official to speculate that “political correctness got out of hand.”

Audrey Jarvis, 19, a liberal arts major at the northern California university, said she had no choice but to seek a “religious accommodation” in order to wear the cross. Her lawyer said she deserves an apology, and the school seems ready to oblige.

“It’s amazing in this day of diversity and tolerance on university campuses that a university official would engage in this type of obvious religious discrimination,” said Hiram Sasser, an attorney with Liberty Institute, which is representing Jarvis.

Jarvis was working for the university’s Associated Students Productions at a June 27 student orientation fair for incoming freshmen when her supervisor told her to remove the two-inch-long cross necklace, according to Sasser.

Sasser said the supervisor told her that the chancellor had a policy against wearing religious items and further explained “that she could not wear her cross necklace because it might offend others, it might make incoming students feel unwelcome, or it might cause incoming students to feel that ASP was not an organization they should join.”

Read more from this story HERE.

State Department Bureau Spent $630,000 on Facebook ‘Likes’

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock Image

Photo Credit: Thinkstock Image

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook “likes,” prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was “buying fans” in social media, the agency’s inspector general says.

The department’s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its “likes” count between 2011 and March 2013.

“Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ‘buying fans’ who may have once clicked on an ad or ‘liked’ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,” the inspector general reported.

The spending increased the bureau’s English-language Facebook page likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.

Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach the bureau’s target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.

Read more from this story HERE.

National Intelligence Director Clapper Apologizes for Lying, Now Suggests He Was Confused

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologized for telling Congress the National Security Agency doesn’t gather data on millions of Americans.

The apology comes after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden gave top-secret information to newspapers that last month published stories about the federal government collecting the data from phone calls and such Internet communications as emails.

Clapper apologized in a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that was posted Tuesday on the website of Clapper’s office.

Clapper said in the June 21 letter that his answer was “clearly erroneous”…

Clapper said in the letter to Feinstein that when answering he was confounded by the word dossier and challenged by trying to protect classified information. He also said that when answering Wyden, he was focused on whether the U.S. collected the content of phone and email conversations, and not so-called metadata, which essentially is phone numbers, email addresses, dates and times. He wrote that he “simply didn’t think of” the pertinent section of the Patriot Act under which that information can be collected.

Read more from this story HERE.

Governor of Last State Without Concealed Carry Vetoes Bill

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn triggered a backlash from his own party as well as the NRA on Tuesday after he unilaterally changed legislation meant to allow the carrying of concealed weapons.

In a challenge to gun-rights supporters, Quinn moved to cap the number of firearms and rounds that can be carried by Illinois residents and ban guns from any place that serves alcohol.

The move was a nod to the governor’s gun-control base as the state faces a court-ordered July 9 deadline to allow concealed-carry.

But, by using what is known as his “amendatory veto power,” Quinn could imperil the carefully crafted deal, which now heads back to the legislature.

Some lawmakers have already vowed to reject Quinn’s new provisions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Republican Senator Accuses Group of Bribing People To Block New Alaskan Mine’s Construction

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Photo Credit: Opposing Views

Photo Credit: Opposing Views

Republican Sen. David Vitter claimed an environmental group tried to skew survey results regarding the construction of a new Alaskan mine, which has recently put Republicans and the Environmental Protection Agency at odds.

Vitter accused the group, Trout Unlimited, of “bribing” people to comment on a study examining the environmental impact of the new mine by offering them a chance to win a free fishing trip, according to Fox News.

The study, which was conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, looked into the effects of the proposed copper and gold mine — named Pebble Mine — on its surrounding the Alaskan ecosystem, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

“This is a pretty low tactic to try and bribe support of their efforts to preemptively kill a job-creating project,” Vitter said. “Skewing the public’s response is really unhelpful in the process to get an unbiased review.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Same-Sex Couples Flood Immigration Offices For Visas

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Kori Kirkbride didn’t get that immediate feeling of joy and relief when she heard the Supreme Court had struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.

Instead, it hit after she talked to her attorney, and found out that the court’s decision will allow her Polish wife, Kasia Kurzatkowska, to apply for a green card, putting an end to a heart-wrenching seven years in which the two have been periodically separated by immigration laws.

“When we sat with our attorney, it became real,” said Kirkbride, 40, of Walnut Creek, Calif. “Waiting for this decision was like waiting to find out if you are pregnant – your whole life can change if you are. Now, we can have a future and buy a house, and have a child.”

Kirkbride and Kurzatkowska are among an estimated 26,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. with one partner who is not a U.S. citizen. Under the law, a subset of these couples – those who are married or considering marriage – had been prevented from applying for green cards for their spouses or fiances.

In the last decade, some of those non-citizens have been deported, even though they were legally married. Many others have been in a legal limbo, with one partner living undocumented in the United States. Some couples have left the country entirely to be somewhere they can both work and live legally.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rise in Gay Homeless People Threatens San Francisco’s Name as Gay-Friendly Mecca

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Photo Credit: independent.co.uk

Photo Credit: independent.co.uk

When “Strawberry” was ejected from his student digs in Denver, Colorado, following a rental dispute, he headed to San Francisco thinking it would provide a sanctuary for a young gay man.

Not so. After six months of living on the streets he had lost the shirt on his back – literally. Identified as an easy target he was chased, beaten and robbed of the backpack containing all his worldly goods. “He grabbed me by the hair, threw me to the ground and started dragging me,” he said of his attacker. “My shirt was ripped off and I got a black eye and a bloody nose,” he said. “San Francisco is not the gay-friendly mecca that they say it is.”

Thanks to the equality rights work of pioneers such as the politician and activist Harvey Milk, San Francisco has a reputation as the gay capital of the world. But as the city recovers from its 43rd gay Pride festival at the weekend, attended by more than 1.5 million people, it must confront an uncomfortable issue. The streets through which about 200 colourful parades – from drag queens to the motorcycle-riding Dykes on Bikes – travelled, are also home to increasing numbers of gay homeless people, many of whom are exceptionally vulnerable to prejudice and violence.

Research produced by the Human Services Agency of San Francisco (SF-HSA) has revealed that 29 per cent of the city’s homeless population are from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. “Strawberry” is now living in a shelter but says his sexuality places him at risk.

Read more from this story HERE.