Authorities hold a news conference on the latest in the kidnapping case involving three women held captive in a Cleveland home.
Watch the video, broadcast by NBC News and scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern.
Watch Amanda Berry, special report broadcast by NBC News.
Major General Gary Patton, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, briefs the press on the annual sexual assaults in the military report.
Watch live, broadcast via NBC News.
A key committee of EU experts was meeting on Monday to mull a two-year ban on pesticides blamed for a sharp and worrying decline in bee populations.
European Union sources have told AFP that a decision to suspend the use of certain pesticides is likely following the closed-door talks between experts from the 27 member nations that kicked off at 0800 GMT.
In the countdown to Monday's decision, battle-lines have sharpened between environmentalists defending the bees, and farmers and pharmaceutical firms opposed to the ban on three pesticides from the so-called "neonicotonoid" family.
Internet-based global campaigner Avaaz, which has gathered 2.5 million signatures to save the insect, plans to float a giant plastic honey bee over EU headquarters to hammer home its message.
Pesticide producers Bayer of Germany and Switzerland's Sygenta, the top player on the global agrichemical market, reject claims that their products are at fault in the fall of bee numbers and say studies behind the suggested ban are based on flawed science.
Copa Cogeca, which represents European farmers and European agri-cooperatives, last week urged any decision delayed until next year, saying that even a temporary ban would cause 2.8 billion euros of losses to farmers and a further 2.0 billion to the EU economy due to a fall in seed production and rising feed costs due to a need to increase imports.
A longterm suspension, Copa Cogeca said, would cost 50,000 jobs and 17 billion euros.
In February, a study published in the Journal of Science showed that falling numbers of wild bees and other pollinating insects are hurting global agriculture.
Bees account for 80 percent of plant pollination by insects. Without them, many crops would be unable to bear fruit or would have to be pollinated by hand.
The gathering of Monday's "appeals committee" was called after an EU vote earlier this year failed to produce a large enough majority in favour of a proposal by the European Commission -- the EU executive -- for a two-year moratorium on the allegedly deadly pesticides.
Under EU procedure, if Monday's vote also fails to produce a clear qualified majority vote, the Commission has the authority to proceed on its own with the ban.
"The most likely outcome will be the same as last time ... and in that case, the Commission will decide to put the ban into operation," an EU source said.
The Commission wants the insecticides banned for use on four major crops -- maize (corn), rape seed, sunflowers and cotton -- in a bid to protect the bee population.
Experts isolated three compounds causing concern -- clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, known as neonicotinoids -- which the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said earlier this year posed "disturbing" risks to bees and other pollinating insects vital for human food production.
Avaaz campaigners are concerned however that a proposal by Hungary, a major honey producer, may water down the European Commission proposal.
"Hungary, backed by the UK, is trying to insert a lethal loophole into the EU ban on bee-killing pesticides," which would allow countries to continue using neonicotinoids "in circumstances deemed to have no adverse effect on bees", said Iain Keith of Avaaz.
In the March vote, 13 nations voted in favour of the ban -- Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
Nine nations voted against -- Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia -- and five abstained -- Britain, Bulgaria, Finland, Estonia Germany.
The surviving Boston marathon bombing suspect has been transferred from a hospital to a prison medical facility, the US Marshals Service was quoted as saying Friday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was sent to the Federal Medical Center Devens, near Boston, spokesman Drew Wade told CNN.
The facility is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the Boston-area hospital where Tsarnaev had been convalescing since he was found critically wounded in a boat in a massive police manhunt, days after the bombing which killed three and wounded 264.
His elder brother Tamerlan died in a wild shootout with police that same night as they tried to flee Boston in a hijacked car.
The US Marshals Service and the prison medical facility could not immediately be reached to confirm the report.
The reported transfer came a day after officials said the brothers had planned to detonate more explosives in Times Square in New York as they were being hunted by police.
New York police chief Ray Kelly said the pair intended to use a pressure-cooker bomb -- similar to the two that erupted at the marathon -- as well as five pipe bombs and improvised grenades they still had on hand as they drove around in a hijacked black Mercedes.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev confessed the plan to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in his hospital bed, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, calling it a "horrific reminder that we remain targets for terrorists."
"Last night, we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets," Bloomberg told reporters Thursday.
The pair -- accused of carrying out the attacks near the Boston Marathon finish line -- aimed to use their remaining explosives in Times Square, he added.
They made a "spontaneous" decision to go to New York as they raced around the Boston suburbs in a car with at least six bombs, according to Kelly.
The night finished with a policeman killed and another gravely wounded, besides one of the suspects dead and the other wounded.
But the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee disputed that claim, saying it was more likely the Tsarnaev brothers were planning another attack in Boston instead.
"It's not clear to me that they were actually going to set those devices off, even though they had them with them," Representative Mike Rogers told CNN.
"It's more plausible to me (that) they were going to do another event in the Boston area, and they were hiding out in New York City, (that) was their plan."
Rogers said that ever since the younger Tsarnaev, who is recovering from a bullet wound to his throat, was read his Miranda rights to consult a lawyer and to remain silent, he "has not continued to cooperate with the authorities."
And there are still other "persons of interest" who have yet to be interrogated in the case, Rogers added.
Kelly revealed on Wednesday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had told investigators that the pair planned to go to New York "to party."
However, "a subsequent questioning of Dzhokhar revealed that he and his brother decided spontaneously on Times Square as a target," Kelly said at the joint news conference with Bloomberg.
New York police have bolstered security in Times Square since a foiled 2010 plot to set off a car bomb.
The brothers' plan "fell apart when they realized that the vehicle that they hijacked was low on gas and ordered the driver to stop at a nearby gas station. The driver used the opportunity to escape and call the police," Kelly said.
The call unleashed a manhunt involving thousands of police.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and could face the death penalty if convicted in US federal court.
There have been mounting questions in the United States about whether the US authorities missed crucial signals, about Tamerlan in particular, that should have raised suspicions about the brothers before the bombings.
Senators Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., hold a news conference to discuss their agreement on background checks relating to guns.
Watch live, broadcast on NBC News on April 10.
NASA officials unveil the first results of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment. AMS is cosmic-ray detector designed to seek out signs of antimatter and elusive dark matter from its perch on the International Space Station.
Watch live, broadcast via NBC News on April 3.
[Photo ofMark Kelly, who commanded the mission to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier to the International Space Station, via Flickr user Ben_Cooper, used under a creative commons license]
Australia opened a national probe into child sex abuse on Wednesday, with premier Julia Gillard warning of "uncomfortable truths" as institutions including schools and churches come under scrutiny.
Gillard ordered the inquiry in November after a decade of growing pressure to investigate widespread allegations of paedophilia, two months after the Catholic Church in Victoria revealed hundreds of children had been abused.
"This is an important moral moment for our nation," Gillard told ABC radio as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began at the Victorian County Court in Melbourne.
"When I established this royal commission I understood that it was going to require our whole country to stare some very uncomfortable truths in the face," the prime minister said.
Chairman Justice Peter McClellan announced at the opening that the inquiry would hear "serious and shocking allegations".
At least 5,000 people would want to tell their stories, although "the number could be much higher", he said. Public hearings are not likely to start for several months.
"Part of the task given to us... is to bear witness, on behalf of the nation, to the abuse and consequential trauma inflicted on many people who have suffered sexual abuse as children," he said.
"For the individuals who have been traumatised, giving an account of their experiences and telling their story can be an important part of the recovery process."
An interim report is due by June 2014 but McClellan admitted it was unlikely the commission could complete its work within the timeframe for the delivery of a final report in June 2015. Findings and recommendations will be made public.
Gillard outlined two goals for the inquiry.
"For the survivors of child sexual abuse, I want this to be a moment of healing, for us to say to them as a nation 'we hear you, you're valued and you're believed' because for too long, so many of these survivors have just run into closed doors and closed minds."
"And second, I want the royal commission to provide for us recommendations about the future.
"We've let children down in the past as a country. We need to learn what we can do as a nation to better protect our children in the future."
Counsel Gail Furness told the inquiry that orphanages, schools, churches, parishes, groups such as the scouts, organised sports, childcare centres, detention centres and the defence forces would all come under scrutiny.
But she added: "The royal commission is not a court and does not decide criminal cases."
The inquiry would be conducted to understand the response of an institution to an allegation of abuse.
Australia's most senior Catholic cleric apologised at Christmas to those who "suffered at the hands" of priests and religious teachers.
Sydney Archbishop George Pell said he was ashamed following a series of paedophile allegations against priests and claims they were hushed up.
The government in Victoria state is running its own investigation into sex abuse, with the Church telling a state parliamentary hearing in September that about 620 children had been abused since the 1930s.
There is also a special commission of inquiry in neighbouring New South Wales into similar allegations raised in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney.
Child sex abuse allegations have rattled the Catholic Church across the world, particularly in Ireland but also in the United States, Germany and Belgium.
Former U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson announces recommendations arising from the NRA’s National School Shield Program, an initiative aimed at providing schools with armed guards.
Watch live, broadcast via NBC News on April 2.
President Barack Obama announces funding for a new research effort centered around enhanced understanding of the human mind.
Watch live, broadcast by NBC News on April 2.
The White House Easter Egg Roll takes place with people joining the first family on the South Lawn.
Watch live, broadcast via NBC News on April 1.
Watch the White House live stream, broadcast on April 1.
The former head of the Steubenville chapter of the NAACP is under fire on Thursday after he reportedly told a conservative publication that a 16-year-old rape survivor was "drunk" and willing to have sex.
In an interview with International Business Times, Royal Mayo, who the NAACP lists as the former leader of the Steubenville chapter in Ohio, defended the actions of former football players Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond after they were convicted of raping the 16-year-old girl.
Calling the girl an "alleged victim," Mayo suggested that the sex may have been consensual.
"She said her mother brought her to the party, at 3 o'clock, with a bottle of vodka," he explained. “Where did you get it, young lady? You brought it from home? Where’d you get it? You came to the party with your mother.”
“They’re alleging she got raped; she’s acknowledging that she wanted to leave with Trent. Her friends say she pushed them away as she went and got into the car, twice telling them, ‘I know what I’m doing; I’m going with Trent.’”
Mayo admitted that he had personally known Richmond, who was sentenced to at least one year in a juvenile correctional facility.
"Back in August, when the rumors first started going around, I talked to Ma’lik, and he said, ‘No, Mr. Mayo, we didn’t do anything to that girl. I don’t know what these rumors are; I don’t understand it,’” Mayo recalled.
A spokesperson for the NAACP on Thursday said that the organization was working to release a statement in response to Mayo's comments.
WTOV reported in 2009 that a domestic charge against Mayo was dropped after his girlfriend accused him of beating her.
Update (1:30 p.m. ET): In a statement provided to Raw Story, the NAACP said that it "abhors the remarks attributed to Royal Mayo regarding the rape victim in the Steubenville [case]."
"The remarks are Mayo’s own, and do not reflect the position of the NAACP and its membership," the statement said. "Mr. Mayo is not the president of the Steubenville NAACP and is not a spokesman for the NAACP. The article attributing him as such has been corrected by the International Business Times."
"Rape is a despicable crime of violence. The NAACP understands that comments that blame victims for the actions of their attackers contribute to and perpetuate a culture of acquiescence to rape."
[Photo: Facebook/Royal Mayo]
[Ed note: The original version of this story incorrectly identified Mayo as the current head, based on the IBT's reporting and a look at the NAACP's website. IBT has since corrected it after clarification from the NAACP as have we, and we regret the error.]
President Obama hosts an event at the White House urging Congress to take action to reduce gun violence.
Watch live, broadcast via NBC News on March 28.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Watch live, broadcast via NBC News on March 27.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Copyright © 2025 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 |
Masthead
|
Privacy Policy
|
Manage Preferences
|
Debug Logs
For corrections contact
corrections@rawstory.com
, for support contact
support@rawstory.com
.
