Obama Highlights Family Background on Campaign Trail in Ohio

PARMA, Ohio — President Obama is highlighting his modest family background as he travels throughout Northern Ohio, sharing personal stories in an effort to better relate to the voters of this battleground state.

The president told supporters in the small town of Parma tonight that he promised in his last election to “try to make sure that every single one of you had the same chances as my family had, because I saw myself in you.”

“I saw my hopes and dreams in you. And when I see your kids, I see my kids. And when I see your grandparents, I see my grandparents. And I have kept that promise,” he said to cheers from the crowd at the James Day Park.

Although his family is not with him on the trail, the president is discussing everyone from his grandfather, who “fought in Patton’s army” and was able to “study on the GI Bill,” to his grandmother, who helped raise him, to his wife’s father, “a blue-collar worker,” and her stay at home mother.

The president said he was inspired to get into politics because of his own family’s story. “My whole life and Michelle’s whole life was an example of this American Dream,” he said.

“Our family story was all about this basic idea in America that if you work hard, you can make it if you try here in this country,” he told supporters in Sandusky this afternoon. “That basic bargain is what brought me to politics.”

Obama explained how he met the first lady, a “beautiful woman, who just because I was persistent, finally gave up and gave in and decided to marry me.”

He told how his wife’s father worked in a pumping station and her mother was a secretary and yet “somehow she and her brother were able to get a great education.”

The president, who fiercely protects his children’s privacy, talked freely about his daughter’s Fourth of July birthday, explaining why his wife isn’t with him on the bus tour.

“Malia was having a sleepover with some of her friends, and Michelle thought, you can’t just have a house full of girls and no parental supervision….But she says hi, the girls say hi, and Bo says hi.”

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Vatican Threatens to Excommunicate Chinese Priest Backed By Beijing

The Vatican has threatened a Chinese priest with excommunication if China moves ahead with his government-backed bishop ordination, which has not been approved by the Holy See.

The Chinese government-backed appointment of the Rev. Yue Fusheng in northern Chinese city of Harbin on Friday is aggravating already-tense relations between the Vatican and the Chinese government.

In its statement on Wednesday Vatican asserted that the Rev. Yue Fusheng is aware that his ordination was not approved by the pope and thus “unlawful” and “illegitimate.” The punishment for unlawful ordination is excommunication, according to the Vatican’s Code of Cannon Law.

The statement also warned that the Chinese government-backed appointment was an infringement on religious freedom and would “create confusion and divisions among the Catholic community in China.”

A spokesperson for the State Administration for Religious Affairs in China responded that the Vatican’s public threats and accusations were “outrageous and shocking,” restrictive of freedom, and detrimental to the development of the Chinese and universal Catholic Church.

Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com

Since its formation over 60 years ago the Communist Party of China has mandated that religions only operate under government control, subsequently cutting ties with the Vatican, expelling foreign clergy, and creating the state-funded Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPA). The refusal of the CPA and the Holy See to recognize each other’s authority has created points of contention between the two, particularly over the installation of bishops without papal approval as well as the issues of abortion and contraception.

While the CPA is the only legal Catholic organization in China, millions of Chinese Vatican loyalists continue to worship in “underground” churches.

Catholicism has existed in China for over eight centuries. While the Chinese government reports that the country has 5.7 million Catholics, unofficial estimates range from 12 million to over 60 million.

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Fla. Contractor That Fired Lifeguard For Saving Man Outside Zone Backs Down

The Hallandale Beach, Fla., lifeguard who got fired after saving a man outside his coverage zone was offered his job back, said the private contractor that employed him.

Jeff Ellis, the president of Jeff Ellis Management, told ABC News he had offered Tomas Lopez, 21, his job back today, but he declined.

Ellis was able to confirm that Lopez's post was not left unattended when he ran out to help save a swimmer in an unprotected area of the beach, and so he should not have been let go.

Lopez told ABC News earlier this morning that he would not go back to work.

"Now that [the firing] is public, they want to fix it. That's shady to me," Lopez said. "If I never said anything, they never would have acted."

Lopez said he had only been working as a lifeguard for four months at Hallandale Beach prior to being fired. He drove about 24 miles from his home in Davie, Fla., to Hallandale Beach, and worked nearly five days a week almost every week since he was hired, he said.

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This is the second rescue Lopez performed as a lifeguard.

Ellis told ABC News he would be conducting a full investigation into the firing of Lopez, who attempted to save a drowning man who was 1,500 feet away from the area of the public beach that the contractor patrols. Lifeguards had strict instructions not to venture outside the patrol zone.

Six other Hallandale lifeguards also declined to return to work after they told supervisors who work for the contractor that they too would have rescued the man, Ellis said, but it was his intention to offer anyone their job back who would like it.

Ellis said the lifegaurds were contacted by the company's human resources department.

Lopez said earlier today that no one from Jeff Ellis Management has contacted him yet regarding the investigation.

"There was someone who was fired before me for saying he wouldn't obey the rule," said Lopez, of Jeff Ellis Management's policy of only patrolling zones it's paid to cover. "Now that they're in trouble, they want to fix it."

Ellis said he was made aware of the incident on Tuesday afternoon. He was not in the Fort Lauderdale area at the time.

Hallandale Beach spokesperson Peter Dobens said the city asked Jeff Ellis Management to conduct the investigation to get an account of what happened.

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Texas Town Bans Flags on Veterans' Graves

       

A Texas town is reconsidering a controversial ordinance that it approved earlier this month that would ban the displaying of flags at  gravesites.

The ordinance,  approved by the City Council of Mineral Wells, states that flags would be allowed on graves at the town’s Woodland Park Cemetery only one week before and after Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day. July 4 and Labor Day, other popular flag holidays, were not part of the approved time frame.

After citizens expressed outrage,  flooding  the city council office with calls Monday, the council  scheduled a public meeting for July 10 to reconsider the new flag policy.

Veteran Robert Veach, whose father is buried at  Woodland Park,  was one of the first to speak out against the ordinance, telling the Mineral Wells Index that  he believed he should be allowed to put a flag at his father’s grave 365 days a year.

The ordinance was adopted by the Woodland Park Cemetery Board, said Peggy Gustin, the administrative clerk for Mineral Wells, because the number of items placed at gravesites,  which included teddy bears, statues, bird baths and squirrel feeders, were becoming  a few too many.

“Excessive adornment at the cemetery was causing it to be unsightly, so the cemetery board came up with a solution that they thought would work for all,” Gustin told ABCNews.com.

After several public meetings were held over several months, the ordinance passed.  The last two meetings were held specifically for the public to voice opinions, according to a news release from the City Council. The final meeting was publicized on the front page of  the local newspaper. No one one showed up to voice objections, according to the news release.

But within days of the ordinance passing, the city received complaints from angry citizens, including  Veach.

“The city of Mineral Wells would like to clarify its position in that this action was not in any way taken with the intention of bringing any dishonor or disrespect to any of our Veterans, past or present,” a news release on the City Council’s website said.

The ordinance also  stated that flowers and decorations were  allowed  for  only 21 days after  a  funeral, and that the flowers must be in a nonglass vase and would  be removed once they became “unsightly.” But only the flag provsion of the ordinance is under reconsideration.

As for the July 4th  holiday,  flags will be allowed in the cemetery, Gustin said.

“People are welcome to do their flags on July 4,” Gustin said. “Nothing is going to be done considering the flags until after the meeting on July 10. They won’t be removed. People can place them.”

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Rare 'Derecho' Storm Ravaged Washington Area

The system of thunderstorms that ravaged the Washington, D.C., area over the weekend, leaving 1.2 million homes without power and killing at least five people, was not only destructive — it was also rare.

Known as a derecho, the string of storms combined intense lightning and rain with hurricane-force gusts as it swept from the Midwest into the mid-Atlantic Friday night. Meteorologists blamed the violent weather on the prolonged 100-plus temperatures that blanketed the eastern United States last week.

Derechos typically form when an atmospheric disturbance lifts the warm air in regions experiencing intense heat, causing thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds to develop, AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Edwards said. Traveling at an average speed of 60 miles per hour, Friday's storm took 12 hours to cover more than 700 miles before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.

By Monday, power had been restored in more than half of the homes affected by the storms in the Washington metropolitan area. But utilities predict that the roughly 660,000 homes still without power may remain so for the next several days as the heat wave continues unabated.

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Ken Barber, vice president for customer solutions at Dominion Virginia Power, told ABC's affiliate WJLA that the utility is facing the "biggest non-hurricane outage in our 100 year history."

Derechos are more common in the Midwest, but the mid-Atlantic gets one derecho about every four years. University of Iowa physicist Gustavus Hinrichs coined their name in 1888, borrowing the Spanish word for "straight" because of the linear path the storms generally follow.

Derechos are harder to predict than other severe weather events, Edwards said, because forecasting tools used by most meteorologists are often unable to identify where the precise combination of factors needed to trigger a derecho will emerge.

As global temperatures rise, derechos, which can occur anywhere in the world, may become more common, said Tom Kines, a senior AccuWeather meteorologist, though he added that evidence on changes in their frequency is not yet available.

The derecho's impact was concentrated in Washington's Virginia and Maryland suburbs, but the weekend's storms rampaged from Kentucky to New Jersey and wracked the Midwest as it accumulated energy on its journey eastward.

All told, about 3 million homes lost power, 12 people lost their lives, and another 20 people were injured. The governors of Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, and the mayor of Washington, D.C., declared states of emergency.

Popular Internet services such as Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram were also temporary casualties of the severe weather after power went out at an Amazon data server in Virginia. Outages idled trains and caused delays at airports, frustrating travelers and commuters. In some places, emergency response systems were not working properly.

Forecasts for Monday and Tuesday predicted cooler temperatures across the Eastern Seaboard, with highs in the upper 80s and low 90s.

 

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Petit Family Killer's Elaborate Oyster Suicide Plan

A Connecticut man on death row for the 2007 home invasion murders of a mother and her two daughters detailed an elaborate suicide plan involving oysters and lying about committing 17 other murders.

In October 2011, convicted murderer Steven Hayes wrote a series of letters bragging that he had killed 17 other women that included detailed and gruesome descriptions of the alleged murders. The letters were intercepted by the Connecticut Department of Corrections in early October and handed over to prosecutors.

The letters were written a year after he was sentenced to Connecticut's death row for his part in the gruesome 2007 murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her two daughters.

But in a recent interview with the Hartford Courant, Hayes admitted that he fabricated the stories of those murders as part of an elaborate ploy to commit suicide.

"I made it up," Hayes told the paper.

Hayes, 49, said that he hoped authorities would intercept his letters and inform police. Once authorities believed he was a serial killer, he would offer them information on the killings in exchange for pizza, soda and a dozen oysters with hot sauce, he told the paper.

Hayes is deathly allergic to oysters.

"I planned to eat them and have them find me dead in my cell the next morning," Hayes told the paper.

But police didn't buy the notorious manipulator's story and his plan failed.

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"It's kind of ironic that here we are trying to kill this guy and yet we go through extraordinary effort to keep him alive," Hayes' defense lawyer, New Haven Public Defender Thomas Ullmann, told ABCNews.com. "In some ways, I was rooting for him when he did that so that he could control his own destiny, as opposed to the state killing him."

Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her daughters 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela, were killed during a July 2007 home invasion carried out by Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky.

The mother was raped and strangled while the girls, tied to their beds, died when the house was set ablaze.

Husband and father William Petit was the only one to survive. Beaten with a baseball bat and left bound in the basement he managed to escape to a neighbor's house. Nearly five years after the killings, Petit is now engaged to photographer Christine Paluf.

In response to a request for comment, William Petit's lawyer and close friend Richard P. Healey said that the family had "no interest" in commenting on the story.

Petit sat in the front row throughout the separate murder and sentencing trials of Hayes and Komisarjevsky. Both men were convicted and sentenced to be executed and are currently on Connecticut's death row.

This was the most recent of Hayes' suicide attempts. Hayes has tried to commit suicide by had slitting his wrists, attempting to strangle himself and crashing a car into a rock. At the beginning of his murder trial, he was found unconscious in his jail cell after overdosing on prescription medication. Despite the lethal dose of medication he had taken, he survived after being rushed to the hospital.

But he will not give up his appeal.

When the Hartford Courant asked Hayes why he does not follow in the footsteps of serial killer Michael Ross and give up his appeal so that he can be executed, he said that he promised Ullmann he would not do that.

Ullmann said that Hayes knows he is "completely opposed" to the death penalty and does not want him to die that way, even if it means another 10-20 years in the appeals process.

Hayes told the Hartford Courant that he spend his days now thinking about his past and what he has done, too anxious to watch TV or read books.

"I think I've survived because I am meant to live with the thoughts of what I did to that family," Hayes said.

In April, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed the state's death penalty repeal bill into law, but the new law does not affect the 11 convicted killers already on death row including, Hayes and Komisarjevsky.

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Roberts' Switch on Health Care Signals a Leaky Supreme Court

In the third and least covered branch of government, secrecy is a hallmark. Supreme Court justices rarely explain how they arrive at their votes, and when they do, it's usually long after they've left the bench, or even in papers released after they've died.

In the case of the Roberts court, that precedent might be broken.

Not four days after the court handed down its decision upholdingPresident Obama's health care law — a case that falls into the "monumental" category even by Supreme Court standards — the decision-making process of John Roberts, the chief justice who cast the deciding vote, has spilled into the public arena.

Roberts, according to a CBS News report confirming scholars' suspicions, originally sided with the four justices who thought the individual mandate was unconstitutional, then changed his mind and wrote the majority opinion for the liberals who wanted the law to stand. And even as he signaled he was siding with the left side of the bench, the justice who was thought to be the swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, lobbied Roberts intensely but to no avail.

"This is extraordinary," said Vikram Amar, an associate dean at the University of California-Davis law school who was previously a clerk at the Supreme Court.

In 2004, a half-million papers from Justice Harry Blackmun were made public, detailing the judge's personal journey in the high court and particularly his role in writing the opinion in the landmark Roe v. Wade case that made abortion legal. Blackmun, who died in 1999, gave the documents to the Library of Congress after he retired in 1994, and asked that they not be released until five years after his death.

Their contents were remarkable. Perhaps the most revelatory letter also involves Kennedy, who wrote Blackmun previewing "welcome news" in 1992 as the court considered abortion again in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The news was that three justices appointed by Republicans had agreed to keep abortions legal; after Kennedy told Blackmun in person, the justice who had built his judicial legacy on the Roe v. Wade decision wrote on a memo pad, "Roe sound."

In 2011, another justice who had departed the Supreme Court offered a stunning regret about a vote on the death penalty. John Paul Stevens, who had retired the year before, told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that he wished he had voted differently in the 1976 case Jurek v. Texas that reinstated the death penalty in Texas.

"I think that I came out wrong on that," Stevens said of his vote, which he wrote about in a book published after he retired.

Candor and insight into a Supreme Court justice's thought process are priceless, but unfortunately for the public are too rare while the justices are serving. Roberts's change of heart is perhaps now known because of the importance of the health care ruling, and the fancy among Supreme Court clerks and others inside the building to leak the development.

Amar said he suspected a sieve in the court six weeks ago, when he heard third-hand that Kennedy had voted in a routine conference with the other justices to strike down the mandate. And some observers noticed a month ago that conservative writers like George Will had begun writing about Roberts and his potential role in casting a decisive vote.

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Israeli PM Dissolves Committee to Reform Draft Law

Israel's prime minister on Monday dissolved a high-profile committee assigned to reform the country's military draft law to spread the burden among more sectors of society, conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews and requiring Israeli Arabs to do civilian service.

The issue is one of the most charged in Israeli society. The country's secular majority considers the mass exemptions unjust, while the ultra-Orthodox claim they are serving the state by serving God.

Compulsory service for Israel's Arab minority is just as fraught.

More than 60,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews are exempt from the compulsory service to pursue religious studies. Israel's Supreme Court recently ruled that system illegal and ordered the government to come up with an alternative by July 31.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was committed to an "equal sharing of the burden," but he said the committee failed to reach a consensus and would not be able to draw up legislation that could win parliamentary approval.

The court-mandated aim was to end sweeping exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews, but Netanyahu has said national service is a burden that must be shared by all, including Israeli Arabs. The committee tackled that issue as well but failed to reach agreement.

Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's 8 million citizens. As ethnic Palestinians who enjoy equality with Israeli Jews on paper but have suffered from decades of discrimination and often feel like second-class citizens, most resent being told to serve.

Israeli men are required to serve three years in the military and Israeli women about two years.

In recent days, the committee began to unravel.

First, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's nationalist Israel Beiteinu Party and another smaller coalition faction quit because civilian service for Arabs would not be mandatory. Then the ultra-Orthodox parties' de facto representative dropped out because the pending recommendation would have penalized rabbinical students who refused to serve.

Kadima, the largest party in parliament, cited ensuring universal military service as its main justification for joining Netanyahu's coalition government in May and has hinted it would quit if the draft law is not overhauled.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 10 percent of the population.

"I prefer an agreed-upon and gradual solution, but if we cannot reach such a solution by August 1, the military will draft according to its needs," Netanyahu said in a statement, implying that all exemptions would technically expire because of the court order. "I believe that it will do so while taking into consideration the various publics so as to prevent a rift in the nation."

After the state was created in 1948, Israel's founders set a precedent to give military exemptions to 400 exemplary seminary students to help rebuild great schools of Jewish learning destroyed in the Holocaust of World War II, when 6 million Jews were killed and entire communities wiped out.

As ultra-Orthodox parties became political power brokers, the numbers of exemptions multiplied along with state support for their institutions. The number has ballooned from 400 to 60,000, and fewer than 1,300 were conscripted in the past year, according to military figures.

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Tiananmen Square Quietly Remembered 23 Years Later

BEIJING – Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but in China any mention of that day remains forbidden.

The Chinese government, which forbids any recognition of the massacre and the events leading up to it, has taken special measures in the last few days to further censor acknowledgement of the protests. Chinese micro-bloggers on the popular site Sina Weibo particularly felt the effects of censorship. Dissident posts were “harmonized” (removed) in minutes, profile pictures could not be changed, and the candle emoticon was removed.

The list of blocked words was extensive, including words, names and numbers that related to the incident from “never forget” to “tank” to “-ism.” On television, the BBC’s channel was blacked out during their segment on Tiananmen.

In the square on Sunday a small group of protesters were beaten and detained, Mao’s mausoleum was closed, and large groups of uniformed and plainclothes police monitored the area. Today, it was quiet save for slightly heightened police presence.

However, the government hasn’t been able to control all responses to the anniversary. The U.S. Department of State issued a statement acknowledging the loss of life in the massacre, and encouraging the Chinese government’s protection of human rights.

The Tiananmen Mothers group called for the end of communist rule, and micro-bloggers have encouraged sympathizers to wear all black and “stroll” in public places. In Hong Kong, a temporary Tiananmen Massacre museum is open for the week, and a book reexamining the events of the Tiananmen Square protests and based on interviews with then-Beijing mayor Chen Xitong is due to be published Friday. The author, Yao Jianfu, told Reuters that Chen Xitong told him that Tiananmen was “a tragedy that should have been averted, but wasn’t.” The book is banned in mainland China.

After the death of pro-reform Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, students from many Chinese universities gathered in the thousands in Tiananmen Square, calling for increased government transparency and personal freedoms.

After government negotiations failed to clear the square of protesters, who had been occupying Tiananmen for nearly two months, military forces from the People’s Liberation Army took drastic action on June 4, 1989, using tanks, tear gas, and gunfire. The PLA forces opened fire into the crowds, killing what human rights organizations have estimated to be hundreds to thousands of unarmed civilians. The Chinese government has never released official death toll figures.

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The Global Note: Global Ang$t…Qaeda Leader Killed…Four Decades Later, Letters From Vietnam

BIG PICTURE…As our Richard DAVIES puts it – “a miserable Monday morning for the global economy as gloom gathers over the prospects for growth…”  The latest catalyst – that surprisingly weak U.S. jobs report issued Friday – but the real problem remains the debt crisis in Europe and the absence of true bright spots on the global horizon. As Bianna GOLODRYGA reported for GMA, the trifecta of the U.S. slowdown, European crisis, and a drop in growth and demand from Asian powerhouses India and China are making for a perfect storm of unease.

-THE MARKETS…World markets have been taking a beating – for all the above-mentioned reasons. Wall Street futures are down and the European and Asian markets fell sharply. Japan’s Topix plunged to its lowest level since 1983, entering a bear market while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 2.3%, eliminating all its 2012 gains. The Dow Jones is now at an 8 month low. For financial markets, 2012 is showing many of the hallmarks of 2010 and 2011—healthy gains through April that collapsed into a long and harrowing summer.

-IN EUROPE…We now have a pair of crises looming: as we mentioned here Friday, concerns that Greece may be forced to exit the eurozone (“Grexit”) have joined worries that Spain may collapse under the pressure of a high deficit and fragile banking system (“Spanic”.) Meanwhile, Portugal’s finance minister says today foreign bailout creditors are providing another batch of the country’s $96 billion rescue package – after concluding the government is abiding by the terms of the loan.   

-WHAT TO DO?…The Wall Street Journal reports pressure is growing on policy makers around the world to take steps to bolster their economies as the U.S. and China show fresh signs of slowing and the fallout from Europe’s debt crisis spreads.

-SILVER LININGS…Is there any good news out there? Yes – from Richard DAVIES again: Inflation is tame and interest rates are at record lows. And motorists are likely to see more price breaks at the pumps - the price of oil is down to 8-month lows. The belief among traders is that oil demand will grow less than expected this year. In the past month crude prices have fallen 23%. 

U.S. DRONE STRIKE KILLS 15 – INCLUDING LEADING AL QAEDA FIGURE

From Habibullah KHAN and Muhammad LILA: A strike by a US drone aircraft has killed 15 people near the Afghan border, including Al Qaeda leader Yahya al-Libbi. From a recent Washington Post piece: “Believed to be in his late 30s, Libi has emerged as a public face of for al-Qaeda, appearing in more than a dozen lengthy Internet videos since last year. His claim to fame is his successful escape from a high-security U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, in July 2005, along with three other al-Qaeda members. A year later, he appeared in a 54-minute videotape dedicated to his account of his capture by Pakistani forces in 2002, his subsequent time in U.S. custody and his prison breakout. Al-Qaeda has named Libi as a field commander in Afghanistan, though he styles himself as a theologian and has offered lengthy commentaries on a variety of political events, including the Prophet Muhammad cartoon controversy in Denmark and the criminal trials of Bulgarian nurses in Libya.” Pakistani officials say today’s missiles hit a militant compound in the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan tribal region. It is the third such attack in as many days in Pakistan’s frontier tribal region.

U.S. AND VIETNAMESE: MIA BREAKTHROUGH

Top U.S. and Vietnamese defense officials exchanged letters and diaries of fallen soldiers taken during the Vietnam war today, in the highest level exchange of artifacts since the normalization of relations 17 years ago. Vietnam’s Defense Minister also announced that Hanoi would open three additional sites to American teams hunting for the remains of service members still missing. The letters presented to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta were written by U.S. Army Sgt. Steve Flaherty, who was from Columbia, S.C. and with the 101st Airborne. Flaherty  was killed in South Vietnam in March 1969. According to defense officials, Vietnamese forces took Flaherty’s letters and used them in broadcasts during the war. Vietnamese Col. Nguyen Phu Dat kept the letters, but it was not until last August, when he mentioned them in an online publication, that they came to light. Robert Destatte, a retired Defense Department employee who had worked for the POW/MIA office, noticed the online publication, and the Pentagon began to work to get the letters back to Flaherty’s family. Among excerpts seen today: Letter to “Betty” – “I’m sorry for not writing so long but we have been in a fierce fight…We took in lots of casualties and death. It has been trying days for me and my men. We dragged more bodies of dead and wounded than I can ever want to forget.” Letter to “Mother” – “If Dad calls, tell him I got too close to being dead but I’m O.K. I was real lucky. I’ll write again soon.” The small diary belonged to Vu Dinh Doan, a Vietnamese soldier who was killed in a machine gun fight. Officials said a Marine, Robert “Ira” Frazure of Walla Walla, Wash., saw the diary — with a photo and some money inside — on the chest of the dead soldier and took it back to the U.S. The diary came to light earlier this year when the sister of a friend of Frazure’s was doing research for a book and Frazure asked her help in returning the diary. The sister, Marge Scooter, brought the diary to the PBS television program “History Detectives”. The show then asked the Defense and State departments to help return the diary.

DIAMOND JUBILEE

With the festivities in full bloom – some London weather notwithstanding – the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee will be marked by a star-studded concert in front of Buckingham Palace today. Ten thousand ticketholders will watch live performances by artists including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Jessie J. Today’s concert will also feature Ska band Madness singing 1980s hit “Our House” from the roof of the 775-room palace. At the show’s end, the Queen will light one of the last of around 4,500 beacons across the globe – in celebration of her 60-year reign. In the afternoon, prior to the Jubilee concert, 10,000 ballot winners and VIPs will enjoy a picnic in the gardens of Buckingham Palace created by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal and royal chef Mark Flanagan. One of those jubilee beacons has been lit on HMS Daring, a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer east of Suez.

SYRIA

-CHINA WARNS WEST AGAINST USING FORCE…The Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper warned Monday against Western military intervention in Syria, in a strongly worded reminder that China, like Russia, is wary of forceful international action even as the civil conflict in Syria grows bloodier. “The Syrian question should be resolved by the Syrian people,” said a commentary in the China Daily. “Outside powers do not have the right to stick their hands in.”

-ASSAD SPEAKS…Assad’s first speech in five months yesterday laid down another hard-line marker. He told parliament that what happened “in Houla and elsewhere in Syria are brutal massacres even monsters would not have carried out.” As always, he blamed foreign-backed terrorists. 

LIBYA

Another messy Arab Spring headline – just in: Libyan armed brigade surrounds Tripoli airport; flights canceled, security official says. We’ll keep watching…

EGYPT: POST-MUBARAK UNREST

And – another – this from Alex MARQUARDT: Protesters remain on Tahrir Square, calling for a retrial for Mubarak, his former interior minister, six security officials and the two Mubarak sons. The public prosecutor says he will appeal the verdict. Both presidential candidates are trying to use the verdict to gain an upper hand for the next round. The other defendants aside, this is the best way the judge could have handled the Mubarak case; they were never going to put him to death and anything short of a life sentence and there would have been all-out chaos in the streets. A crying Mubarak reportedly refused for three hours to get off the helicopter once at the prison but state news agency MENA now reports that Mubarak is in Tora Prison, his mugshot has been taken, and the prisons authority has denied his request for his personal doctors to oversee his health. There are calls to postpone the next round of voting.

NIGERIA PLANE CRASH

Bazi KANANI reports three days of mourning have begun in Nigeria for more than 150 people killed when their plane crashed in the city of Lagos. The Boeing MD-83 plunged into a printing works and residential buildings before bursting into flames. Rescue officials said Monday they fear many people may have been killed on the ground as well. We are working to confirm CNN reports that the pilot of the doomed flight was American. 

THE KARZAI CLAN

The NYTimes has an interesting piece on the Karzai clan - seven brothers who’ve amassed a private fortune over the last ten years – while Hamid Karzai has been in power. Says the Times:  “The extended Karzai family has for years simmered with tensions, jealousies, business rivalries, blood feuds and even accusations of murder.” One brother is suspected of trafficking opium, while another allegedly imprisoned one brother’s aid to extract information about where he kept his savings.

CHINA BLOCKS TIANANMEN TALK ON 23RD ANNIVERSARY

From Gloria RIVIERA in Beijing: China’s censors blocked internet access to the terms “six four”, “23″, “candle” and “never forget” on Monday, broadening extensive efforts to silence talk about the 23rd anniversary of China’s bloody June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. For China’s ruling Communist Party, the 1989 demonstrations that clogged Tiananmen Square in Beijing and spread to other cities remains taboo, all the more so this year as the government prepares for a tricky leadership handover.

NORTH KOREA THREATENS SOUTH KOREAN MEDIA

Yonhap News Agency reports North Korea says it has aimed rockets at the specific coordinates of South Korean media groups. The General Staff of the Korean People’s Army warned Monday it will launch a “sacred war” against South Korean conservative President Lee Myung-bak and seven news agencies if Seoul doesn’t apologize. It says Seoul orchestrated a “vicious smear campaign” against ongoing children’s festivals in Pyongyang.

23 WEDDING GUESTS KILLED AFTER BUS BLUNGES INTO RAVINE

At least 23 wedding guests, including six children, were killed when a bus plunged into a ravine near Islamabad. Sixty people were injured when the driver lost control of the vehicle. The bus was carrying 97 people after a wedding. The bride and groom were travelling in a separate vehicle.

JAPAN: CULT MEMBER ENDS 16 YEARS ON THE RUN

From Akiko FUJITA in Tokyo: A member of the doomsday cult responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attacks in Tokyo was arrested over the weekend, ending 16 years on the run. Naoko Kikuchi was one of 2 remaining members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult at large – he’s accused of producing the gas that killed 13 people in 5 subway trains. Kyodo news reports the arrest, and new reveations from Kikuchi, could delay the executions of cult founder Shoko Asahara and his dozen followers who are currently on death row. Kikuchi’s arrest comes just 5 months after another cult member turned himself in.

SARKOZY ‘BORED’ – THREE WEEKS AFTER LEAVING OFFICE

The Telegraph reports Nicolas Sarkozy is said to be “bored” after spending a three-week post-election break with his wife and children in Morocco – during which he was constantly on the phone to politicians back in France, according to reports.

LE FOOD TRUCK

American food is becoming très hip in France - and is suddenly being seen as more than just ‘restauration rapide,’ writes the New York Times. Among young Parisians, there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than “très Brooklyn and the latest object of their affection: food trucks, including the “Cantine California” taco truck and “Le Camion Qui Fume,” The Smoking Truck, serving up California style burgers.

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Accused Killer Porn Star Captured in Berlin Internet Cafe

Canadian Luka Rocco Magnotta, who allegedly videotaped the murder of his lover and mailed his body parts, has been captured in a Berlin Internet cafe, according to the Berlin Police Department.

Magnotta, 29, is wanted by Canadian authorities for first-degree murder and other charges.

He has been the focus of an international manhunt for the murder of his Chinese boyfriend who he allegedly killed on videotape before posting the video online and mailing parts of Lin's body to Canadian government offices.

Kadir Anlyisli, a Turkish employee at Helin Internet Caffe in Berlin, told ABC News that a foreign looking man came into the cafe at around 12:30 p.m. Anlyisli gave the man, now identified as Magnotta, a username and password for a computer, but watched him carefully.

Anlyisli, 42, thought the man resembled the fugitive Magnotta, so as Magnotta perused YouTube, Anlyisli flipped through a newspaper to find a story and photo about the manhunt for Magnotta in order to confirm his suspicions.

When Anlyisli saw a police car passing by, he rushed to stop them and said, "I think there is a guy you are looking for inside the cafe."

Police entered and asked the man for his passport.

"At first, he tried to tell several different names, but at last he said, 'Okay, you got me,'" Berlin Police spokesman Thomas Neuendors told ABCNews.com.

Anlyisli recalled Magnotta saying, "I am the one" when he finally conceded his identity.

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Authorities had an arrest warrant for Magnotta and he was taken to prison at around 2 p.m. He is expected to make his first court appearance Tuesday, Neuendors said.

The Montreal Police Department said in a statement that they received confirmation via Interpol of Magnotta's arrest this afternoon.

Magnotta was the subject of an Interpol "red notice" and on Sunday Interpol posted three photos of a man passing through security at an unidentified airport. In the photos, a man who appeared to be Magnotta was circled in red. The photos were removed from the website later in the day without explanation.

The victim was Chinese student Jun Lin, 33, who has been studying in Montreal since last July. He was last seen on May 24 and was reported missing to the Chinese consulate on May 29, according to the Montreal Police Department.

On the same day, a human foot was discovered by a receptionist who received a blood-soaked package at the Ottawa headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada. A second package containing a hand was seized at a post office in Ottawa later in the day.

Meanwhile, a janitor in Montreal found a male torso in a suitcase behind a apartment building in the Cote-des-Neiges neighborhood. Magnotta was a resident of that building and Montreal police said that he was in a romantic relationship with Lin.

"We know that the suspect and the victim knew each other. It was not a random attack," Lafreniere said. "[Magnotta] knew the victim. They were having an affair."

Magnotta has no prior criminal history that police are aware of. Authorities have confirmed that the mailed body parts did indeed belong to the torso that was found and that the body parts mailed to Ottawa originated in Montreal.

"The state of the body is so bad. It was cut. It was dismembered," Lafreniere said. "This is a very hard case for us in terms of being extremely gross. We're still missing body parts."

Lafreniere said police do not currently believe that any of the missing body parts are in the mail, but said they are working with the postal service while they investigate.

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