Joan Rivers' daughter: I'm keeping fingers crossed

Joan Rivers' daughter: I'm keeping fingers crossed 

FILE - In this Jan. 19, 2012, file photo, Joan Rivers attends a screening of the Season 2 premiere of WE TV's "Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?" in New York. Two police officials say Rivers has been rushed in cardiac arrest from a doctor’s office to a New York City hospital, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014.

  

NEW YORK (AP) -- Joan Rivers' loved ones said Sunday that they remain hopeful about her recovery three days after she went into cardiac arrest at a doctor's office.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed," her daughter, Melissa Rivers, said in a statement, thanking people who have expressed support for the 81-year-old comedian. Rivers on Friday described her mother's condition as serious.

Joan Rivers was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital on Thursday, a day after she spoke at an employee event at Time Inc. in New York. Spectators there said she had appeared to be well.

Rivers is the host of "Fashion Police" on E! and presides over an online talk show, "In Bed With Joan." She also co-stars with her daughter on the WEtv reality show "Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?"

Two of her "Fashion Police" co-stars tweeted their well-wishes to Joan Rivers and her family Saturday.

"Praying for Joan Rivers and Mel Rivers," Giuliana Rancic tweeted. "Even though Joan's the strongest woman I know, every single prayer counts. I love you, Joan."

"4 the first time in years I got down on my knees & prayed tonight!" Kelly Osbourne wrote. "I encourage U 2 do the same 4 Joan Rivers my grandma!"

Mourners urge black Americans to take action

Mourners urge black Americans to take action 

Pictures of Michael Brown flank his casket during his funeral, Monday, Aug. 25, 2014, at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. Hundreds of people gathered to say goodbye to Brown, who was shot and killed by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer on Aug. 9. The more than two weeks since Brown's death have been marked by nightly protests, some violent and chaotic, although tensions have eased in recent days.

 

 ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The mourners filled an enormous church to remember Michael Brown - recalling him as a "gentle giant," aspiring rapper and recent high school graduate on his way to a technical college.

But the funeral that unfolded Monday was about much more than the black 18-year-old who lay in the closed casket after being shot to death by a white police officer. The emotional service sought to consecrate Brown's death as another in the long history of the civil rights movement and implored black Americans to change their protest chants into legislation and law.

"Show up at the voting booths. Let your voices be heard, and let everyone know that we have had enough of all of this," said Eric Davis, one of Brown's cousins.

The Rev. Al Sharpton called for a movement to clean up police forces and the communities they serve.

"We're not anti-police. We respect police. But those police that are wrong need to be dealt with just like those in our community that are wrong need to be dealt with," Sharpton said.

Two uncles remembered how Brown had once predicted that someday the whole world would know his name.

"He did not know he was offering up a divine prophecy," Bernard Ewing said.

More than 4,500 mourners filled Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis for the service, which at times seemed like a cross between a gospel revival and a rock concert. It began with upbeat music punctuated by clapping. Some people danced in place.

The crowd included the parents of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old African-American fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, along with a cousin of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old murdered by several white men while visiting Mississippi in 1955. Till's killing galvanized the civil rights movement.

Also in attendance were several White House aides, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, moviemaker Spike Lee, entertainer Sean Combs and some children of the Rev. Martin Luther King.

The Rev. Charles Ewing, the uncle who delivered the eulogy, said Brown "prophetically spoke his demise." And now his blood is "crying from the ground. Crying for vengeance. Crying for justice."

Poster-size photos of Brown, wearing headphones, were on each side of the casket, which had a St. Louis Cardinals ball cap atop it. Large projection screens showed a photo of him clutching his high school diploma while wearing a cap and gown. Two days after his death, he had been scheduled to start training to become a heating and air-conditioning technician.

Brown, who was to be buried in a St. Louis cemetery, was unarmed when he was killed. A grand jury is considering evidence in the case, and a federal investigation is also underway.

Police have said a scuffle broke out Aug. 9 after officer Darren Wilson told Brown and a friend to move out of the street and onto a sidewalk in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Police said Wilson was pushed into his squad car and physically assaulted. Some witnesses have reported seeing Brown's arms in the air in an act of surrender. An autopsy found he was shot at least six times.

Relatives denounced a video released by police, who say it shows Brown snatching cigars from a convenience store just before he was killed. In the video, the person said to be Brown grabs a clerk by the shirt and forcefully pushes him into a display rack.

Sharpton also took the black community to task, saying it should be as upset about black-on-black crime as it is about police violence: "We have to be outraged by our disrespect for each other."

"Blackness," he added, "has never been about being a gangster or a thug."

Money and possessions mean little, he said, "if we can't protect a child walking down the street in Ferguson" and bring justice.

Brown's death fueled nearly two weeks of sometimes-violent street protests in Ferguson. His father, Michael Brown Sr., asked protesters to observe a "day of silence" Monday to let the family grieve.

The request appeared to be honored. At the Ferguson Police Department, where a small but steady group of protesters have stood vigil, a handmade sign announced a "break for funeral." On Monday afternoon, the West Florissant Avenue commercial corridor was also devoid of protesters, whose ranks have typically swelled as days turned to nights.

After the service, Corey Thomas, a 34-year-old St. Louis man, said the large crowd at the church reflected "that people are tired of being treated like dogs. They're tired of being taken advantage of."

The mourners came to show their support because "it could be any one of us," Thomas said.

Angela Pierre, a machine operator who once lived in Ferguson, said she hopes the funeral helps turn a page and eases tensions. Most important, she hopes it provides healing for Brown's family.

"I really wanted to just be here today to pray for the family and pray for peace," said Pierre, 48, who is black. "When all of this dies down, there's still a mother, father and a family who's lost someone. Sometimes a lot of the unrest takes away from that."

Monday also marked the first day back at school for students in the Ferguson-Florissant School District. Classes had been scheduled to begin Aug. 14 but were postponed because of safety concerns.

"We're ready to move forward," said Marcus Baker, a junior at McCluer South-Berkeley High School. "But we're still going to remember him."

 

Beheading spurs new attacks on Islamic militants

Beheading spurs new attacks on Islamic militants

FILE - This file photo posted on the website freejamesfoley.org shows journalist James Foley in Aleppo, Syria, in July, 2012.In a horrifying act of revenge for U.S. airstrikes in northern Iraq, militants with the Islamic State extremist group have beheaded Foley — and are threatening to kill another hostage, U.S. officials say.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States launched a new barrage of airstrikes Wednesday against the Islamic State extremist group that beheaded American journalist James Foley and that has seized a swath of territory across Iraq and Syria. President Barack Obama vowed relentless pursuit of the terrorists and the White House revealed that the U.S. had launched a secret rescue mission inside Syria earlier this summer that failed to rescue Foley and other Americans still being held hostage.

In brief but forceful remarks, Obama said the U.S. would "do what we must to protect our people," but he stopped short of promising to follow the Islamic State in its safe haven within Syria, where officials said Foley had been killed. Later, though, the administration revealed that several dozen special operations troops had been on the ground in Syria briefly in an effort to rescue the hostages, but did not find them.

And looking forward, the State Department refused to rule out future U.S. military operations in Syria, where Obama has long resisted intervening in a three-year civil war.

Western nations agreed to speed help to combat the militants - most notably Germany, which bucked public opposition by announcing it would arm Iraqi Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he was outraged by the beheading, deeming it evidence of a "caliphate of barbarism." Italy's defense minister said the country hopes to contribute machine guns, ammunition and anti-tank rockets.

The Islamic State called Foley's death a revenge killing for U.S. airstrikes against militants in Iraq, and said other hostages would be slain if the attacks continued. Undeterred, the U.S. conducted 14 additional strikes after a video of the beheading surfaced, bringing to 84 the number of airstrikes since they began on Aug. 8.

Two U.S. officials said additional American troops - probably less than 300 - could be headed to Iraq to provide extra security around Baghdad, where the U.S. Embassy is located. That would bring the total number of American forces in Iraq to well over 1,000, although officials said no final decision had been made. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter by name.

Foley's mother said she is praying for other hostages being held by the Sunni-dominated terror group, and described her son's slaying as "just evil."

Obama agreed.

"No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day," the president said. The Islamic State militants have promised to eliminate all people they consider heretics in their quest to create an extremist state across much of Iraq and Syria.

"We will be vigilant and we will be relentless," Obama said, urging unity among Mideast governments in order to eviscerate the extremist group's growing power. He spoke from Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, where his family is vacationing.

In capitals across the Middle East, news of Foley's death was met largely with silence, even in Syria and Iraq - the two countries where the Islamic State is strongest. On social media, people in the region condemned Foley's killing, but stressed that the Islamic State has been committing atrocities against Iraqis and Syrians for years.

For much of the past year, and until this summer, the Obama administration was deeply divided on how much of a threat the Islamic State posed to Americans or even other nations beyond Iraq and Syria. But since the militants' march across northern Iraq in June, and as its ranks swelled almost threefold to an estimated 

15,000 fighters, Obama has acknowledged that the Islamic State could become a direct threat to Americans.

The secret mission to rescue the U.S. hostages involved several dozen special operations forces dropped by aircraft into Syria. The hostages weren't found, but special forces engaged in a firefight with Islamic State militants before departing, according to administration officials. Several militants were killed, and one American sustained minor injuries.

"The U.S. government had what we believed was sufficient intelligence, and when the opportunity presented itself, the president authorized the Department of Defense to move aggressively to recover our citizens," Lisa Monaco, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, that mission was ultimately not successful because the hostages were not present."

Foley's death proved to the West what many people in Syria and Iraq already knew: The Islamic State "has declared war on the civilized world," said Dr. Najib Ghadibian, the Syrian National Coalition's special representative to the U.S. The group's sweep also has served as a wake-up call to other Mideast governments, said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.

"The Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Emiratis, and even the Qataris, are getting the message now," Gerges said. "I think in the last few weeks we have seen a kind of new awareness on the part of regional powers that the Islamic State does present a threat to the very social fabric and the foundation of the state system."

He said Foley's death could help intensify efforts on the part of Washington's regional allies to make a more concerted effort to address the threat.

Jordan and Saudi Arabia, both of whom share a border with Iraq, have dispatched troops to the frontier in a bid to prevent any attempt by the extremists to attack. Iran, an ally of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, has sent military advisers to help organize Shiite militias in Iraq and defend holy sites.

Authorities from the Gulf to Egypt, as well as their peoples, have looked on with growing concern as the Islamic State group has brutally expanded the territory under its control, punctuating its rise by declaring a caliphate in lands straddling the Syria-Iraq border.

Foley, a 40-year-old journalist from Rochester, New Hampshire, was no stranger to war zone reporting. He went missing in northern Syria in November 2012 while freelancing for Agence France-Presse and the Boston-based news organization GlobalPost. The car he was riding in was stopped by four militants in a contested battle zone that both Sunni rebel fighters and government forces were trying to control. He had not been heard from since.

He was one of at least four Americans still being held in Syria - three of whom officials said were kidnapped by the Islamic State. The fourth, freelance journalist Austin Tice, disappeared in Syria in August 2012 and is believed to be in the custody of government forces in Syria.

The Islamic State video of Foley's beheading also showed another of the missing American journalists, Steven Sotloff, and warned he would be the next killed if U.S. airstrikes continued. U.S. officials believe the video was made days before its Tuesday release, perhaps last weekend, and have grown increasingly worried about Sotloff's fate.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says that more than 80 journalists have been abducted in Syria, and estimates that around 20 are currently missing there. It has not released their nationalities. In its annual report in November, the committee described the widespread seizure of journalists as unprecedented and largely unreported by news organizations in the hope that keeping the kidnappings out of public view may help in the captives' release.

Obama avoided specific mention of the other American hostages in Syria, and was vague on whether the U.S. would significantly ramp up its assault on the Islamic State beyond the airstrikes and small potential increase in troops in Iraq. A third senior U.S. official said the administration was well aware of the risks to the hostages once the strikes began, and would now consider as aggressive a policy as possible to obliterate the militants.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Marie Harf did not rule out military operations in Syria to bring those responsible to justice, saying the U.S. "reserves the right to hold people accountable when they harm Americans."

U.S. lawmakers, however, said they doubted the White House would expand its attacks to strike within Syria - something the Obama administration has long resisted.

"The mission already crept a bit," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and House Intelligence Committee member. "The administration would be wise to not get sucked in. That's going to be very hard."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., lamented that Obama has been "unwilling to do what is necessary to confront" the Islamic State.

Philadelphia Front Page News Special News Report: Jehovah’s Witnesses Religion Truth Be Told (2012 film) by Van Stone frontpagenews1@yahoo.com

Philadelphia Front Page News Special News Report: Jehovah’s Witnesses Religion Truth Be Told (2012 film) by Van Stone frontpagenews1@yahoo.com

 

The following news report is not a message for those who support speaking out about the Jehovah’s Witnessess religion or for those who support not speaking out about the Jehovah’s Witnessess religion.  However, it is a real and factual report. 

Truth Be Told is a 2012 documentary about growing up in the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion. The title refers to the Jehovah's Witnesses’ perception that their beliefs are 'the truth.'

Truth Be Told focuses on seven individuals raised in the Jehovah's Witnesses religion. In a series of informal interviews they reveal experiences including the effects of proselytizing door-to-door, shunning non-observant family and friends, suffering the discouragement of pursuing dreams like gaining a higher education and missing other societal holidays and customs. The film cuts between talking-head interviews and visual storytelling techniques including dramatic reenactments, motion graphic sequences and montages. Actors were filmed in front of a greenscreen and composited to create a virtual Kingdom Hall, the house of worship used by Jehovah's Witnesses.

The documentary features an interview with retired mixed martial arts fighter and television personality Nathan Quarry. Quarry grew up as a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses in a variously oppressive and controlling environment. After a period of self-discovery, Quarry rejected his Jehovah's Witnesses upbringing, which caused him to become alienated from his family and former friends.

In the Photo: Dark Church for Christian Jehovah’s Witnessess called the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnessess and  Nathan Quarry, former baptized Jah’s Witness, Disfellowshipped (meaning expulsion from the Jah’s Witness faith ) for declaring the religion and religion organization a cult.  

Truth Be Told is described as an exposé of the Jehovah's Witnesses religion that discloses a profit-driven, isolationist culture characterized by fear, totalitarian corporate leadership, intellectual & spiritual intimidation, suspension of critical thinking, failed prophecies, doctrinal inconsistency and improper handling of physical and sexual abuse allegations within the church.

The documentary is the first feature-film directed by Gregorio Smith. He describes his film as an honest glimpse into the culture of growing up in the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion that is at once immersive, informational, expository and controversial.

Truth Be Told is described as an exposé of the Jehovah's Witnesses religion that discloses a profit-driven, isolationist culture characterized by fear, totalitarian corporate leadership, intellectual & spiritual intimidation, suspension of critical thinking, failed prophecies, doctrinal inconsistency and improper handling of physical and sexual abuse allegations within the church.

The documentary is the first feature-film directed by Gregorio Smith. He describes his film as an honest glimpse into the culture of growing up in the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion that is at once immersive, informational, expository and controversial.