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Missouri tornado death toll could rise as severe weather continues

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A massive tornado that tore a 6-mile path across southwestern Missouri killed at least 89 people as it slammed into the city of Joplin, ripping into a hospital, crushing cars like soda cans and leaving a forest of splintered tree trunks behind where entire neighborhoods once stood. Authorities warned that the death toll could climb as search and rescue workers continued their efforts. Their task was made more miserable as a new thunderstorm with strong winds, heavy rain pelted part of the city with quarter-sized hail. City manager Mark Rohr announced the number of known dead at a pre-dawn news conference outside the wreckage of a hospital that took a direct hit from…

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Frank Bailey Speaks Out On Tell-All Book About Sarah Palin

(AP) JUNEAU, Alaska — A former member of Sarah Palin’s inner circle has written a scathing tell-all, saying Palin was ready to quit as governor months before she actually resigned and was eager to leave office when more lucrative opportunities came around. “In 2009 I had the sense if she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself,” Frank Bailey told The Associated Press. Palin’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years” is due out Tuesday and based on tens of thousands of emails that Bailey said he kept during his time with Palin. It began with working on her 2006 gubernatorial campaign and continued through her failed run for vice president in 2008 and her brief stint as governor. The Alaska attorney general’s office has said it’s investigating Bailey’s use of the emails. Executive ethics laws bar former public officials from using information acquired during their work for personal gain if the information hasn’t been publicly disseminated. The state has yet to release thousands of emails that Palin sent and received during her 2 1/2 years as governor. Bailey’s attorney has said Bailey took “great care” to ensure his writings were consistent with legal requirements. AP Exclusive: Former Palin Aide Pens Tell-All Billed as the first Palin book by a former aide, “Blind Allegiance” bolsters the perception of Palin as self-serving, while casting Bailey as her enforcer – willing to do the dirty work, no questions asked. Bailey became a footnote in Alaska political history by getting embroiled in an investigation of Palin’s firing of her police commissioner over allegations the commissioner wouldn’t fire trooper Mike Wooten, who’d had a bitter divorce with Palin’s sister. Bailey was caught on tape questioning a state trooper official about why Wooten was still employed. Bailey, who was Palin’s director of boards and commissions, was put on leave after news of the recording broke, though he claims his actions were with the prodding of Palin’s husband, Todd. In spite of this, and what he describes as campaigns by Sarah Palin over the years to tear down others who have crossed or confronted her, he stuck around. To speak up when he saw things he didn’t agree with “went against all that investment of time and energy that I put into her,” said Bailey. He said he “shed his family,” his wife and two kids, to singularly focus on Palin during her rise to the governor’s office and beyond. When Palin burst onto the statewide political scene, she was seen as a “breath of fresh air” amid the corruption that had seeped into Alaska politics. “We looked at her as … that queen on a horse that could come in and save the state,” he said. “As we started to see that that was not the case, I kept silent and I just kept on working.” Among the claims made in the book: that Palin’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign coordinated with the Republican Governors Association, or RGA, in violation of campaign rules. The book describes cameras rolling as Palin strode through the door at an Anchorage hotel “over and over and over,” for an RGA ad. At that time, there was a one-year statute of limitations on complaints, and the Alaska Public Offices Commission did not receive any complaints related to Palin and the association during that period. However, the RGA was fined – unrelated to Palin – for late reporting, according to the commission’s executive director, Paul Dauphinais. Bailey said the final straw for him came in the summer of 2009, when Palin didn’t attend a rally he believed she’d repeatedly agreed to attend, for supporters of a voter initiative to require minors get parental consent for an abortion. This came after a string of cancellations, including one before a Republican women’s group at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. Her aides claimed no one had committed to this well-publicized event.. “Getting Sarah to meetings and events was like nailing Jell-O to a tree,” Bailey wrote. On the campaign trail and as governor, Sarah went through at least ten schedulers, with few lasting more than months. Nobody wanted the job because Sarah might fail to honor, at the last minute, the smallest commitments, and making excuses for her became a painful burden.” By the time she cancelled on the parental notification event in Anchorage, Palin had resigned as Alaska’s governor and embarked on a new path, one in which she’d become a best-selling author, highly sought-after speaker, political phenom and prospective presidential candidate. Bailey claims her heart wasn’t in governing after she returned to Alaska from her failed run for vice president. At home, she faced a barrage of ethics complaints – nearly all of which were ultimately dismissed – and Bailey said she told him as early as February 2009 that if she could find the right message to tell Alaskans, she’d “quit tomorrow.” She resigned in July 2009. Bailey confesses to “a ton of mistakes” and speaks of a return to God; he said his church has become a sanctuary and that he’s reconnected with his family. He said writing the book — which itself has generated controversy — was cathartic. In February, the book project also made headlines when a draft manuscript was leaked. An attorney for Bailey and his co-writers accused author Joe McGinniss, who has his own Palin book coming out this year. McGinniss’ attorney acknowledged McGinniss selectively shared the manuscript, but said the manuscript included no request for confidentiality. Bailey dismisses any suggestion he’s disgruntled or bitter; he said he got a front-row seat to state and national politics and was able to recommend judges and set up “hundreds” of board positions. “Yeah, there were some tough, tough times but hopefully I’ve learned from some of that,” he said. “Time will tell.” He said he has no ill feelings toward Palin, with whom he says he hasn’t spoken since the fall of 2009. If anything, he said, he feels sad for her. “I’m sad at a lot of wasted potential,” said Bailey, who believed she could accomplish more than she did as governor. “I certainly don’t hate her but I look at a lot of wasted opportunities on her part.”

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Pakistani troops have defeated a team of Taliban gunmen who raided a naval aviation base in Karachi, killing at least 12 soldiers in a 16-hour battle, reports Reuters . The raid began last night, when militants invaded the compound and used rocket-propelled grenades to destroy warplanes worth millions. They then opened…

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Another Monarch Off the Market: Bhutan’s King to Wed a Commoner

King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of the small South Asian state of Bhutan has embraced the royal fad and found himself a commoner. The beloved 31-year-old, Oxford-educated monarch announced his engagement to Jetsun Pema, 21 and a student at Regents College in London, during the opening session of parliament on Friday in the capital Thimphu.

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Surrey businesswoman wins £6m payout over botched facelift

Penny Johnson sued Dr Le Roux Fourie after cosmetic procedures caused nerve damage and left her unable to work A businesswoman has been awarded nearly £6.2m in damages over a botched facelift after suing a plastic surgeon who she said had decided to “play God” with her life by carrying out experimental surgery. Penny Johnson, 49, took legal action against Dr Le Roux Fourie after a procedure in 2003 left her with nerve damage and what she described as a “monster eye” following the operation at Bupa Methley Park hospital in Leeds. Johnson, an IT and financial consultant from Godstone, Surrey, said she was unable to work and lost about £54m when her business went bankrupt. At the high court in February, Johnson asked Mr Justice Owen to award her a proportion of the £54m which she said was her potential loss, as a 50% shareholder, when Bishop Cavanagh failed in 2009. The judge gave his ruling in the case, in which Fourie admitted liability, and awarded her £6,190,884.92 for lost earnings. During the hearing Johnson said: “My face is constantly contracting, I don’t sleep and I have a permanent buzzing around my eye which can be so intense that I can’t think about anything.” Alain Choo Choy QC, for Fourie, who put the potential business loss at only £9m, did not accept the surgery was experimental. He said the claim that Johnson’s company lost out on a series of lucrative contracts was unrealistic and deluded. It was accepted that her injuries restricted her ability to work to some extent but the business had failed for unrelated commercial and economic reasons. During her absence, the company was managed by her husband, Peter, a businessman with whom she now owns another business, BC Direct, and other senior colleagues. The bulk of the award related to lost earnings, both past and future. In his ruling, the judge said that Johnson had been a confident, happy and outstandingly successful woman with a full and rewarding family and social life but the negligent surgery had had serious consequences – both physical and psychological – and resulted in a prolonged adjustment disorder with features of anxiety and depression. As he observed during the trial, the facial twitching she suffered was “virtually constant”. It was also clear that the injuries from the facelift and from the replacement of pre-existing breast implants, which was carried out at the same time, imposed very considerable stress upon her relationship with her husband. “Their marriage has survived; but the claimant said in evidence that she is no longer a wife to her husband. “He says that she is now a completely different person and that their marriage is not what it used to be. “They no longer go out together as they used regularly to do, and have become detached from the close knit group of friends whose company they used to enjoy.” He awarded a total of £80,000 damages for the facial disfigurement, the asymmetry and pain caused by the breast surgery and the psychological consequences of the injuries. Assessing Johnson’s claim for loss of earnings, the judge said that her projections were the product of her intense disappointment at the “devastating” consequences so far as the business of Bishop Cavanagh was concerned. “She has understandably become preoccupied by what might have been, which has affected her judgment as to what could and would in reality have been achieved.” It was clear to him that she had persuaded herself that its prospects were far better than could realistically be justified. As to residual earning capacity, it was clear that Johnson functioned intellectually at a very high level and continued to have the potential to deploy her outstanding abilities in the business context. But account had to be taken of the uncertain prognosis for her psychiatric symptoms. “Unless she makes a full recovery, and unless she recovers some vestige of her former self confidence, the prospect of engagement in business activities that involve face-to-face contact with others is limited.” Crime Plastic surgery Health & wellbeing Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk

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Raw Video: Killer Tornado Rakes Joplin, Mo.

A massive tornado that tore a 6-mile path across southwestern Missouri killed at least 89 people as it slammed into the city of Joplin, ripping into a hospital, crushing cars like soda cans and leaving a forest of splintered tree trunks. (May 23)

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Raw Video: Obama’s Limo Get’s Stuck

President Barack Obama’s limo got stuck exiting the US Embassy in Ireland on his way to a speech in Dublin. Secret Service agents hid the car from public view while they freed the car’s tires. (May 23)

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Let’s pick up where we left on Friday. Judgment Day is coming for the Senate Republicans this week, and man, they are squirming. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on “Fox News Sunday” over the weekend and once again could not muster up the courage to fully embrace Paul Ryan’s disastrous budget plan . McConnell was so scared of supporting the Ryan plan to gut Medicare that he could not even say whether he supported all of the provisions of this budget plan. Meanwhile Senator Scott Brown has completed his flippity flop – known in the press world as “ a walk back ” – by now coming out against the Ryan plan. Uh, whatever you say Senator. As the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee noted, “Barn Coat” Brown is a “little light on straight talk” (via email): “Scott Brown has lost his barn coat sheen. He talks like a D.C. politician who is trying to have it both ways and hide his own extreme positions,” said Matt Canter, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Brown’s op-ed today was certainly a tantalizing read, but there is still so much that Brown is refusing to tell his constituents about where he stands when it comes to Medicare and protecting seniors.” So the Republicans are clearly scared . Their anxiety is only going to intensify if they manage to choke away what should have been an easy win an upcoming special election tomorrow in New York’s 26th District. Any loss there for the Republican candidate would be nothing short of an epic disaster and could become foreshadowing of how House Republicans will remain haunted by their vote to end Medicare as we know it. I mean even the Politico – the inside-the-Beltway house organ for the GOP – is now calling the Ryan’s budget plan to gut Medicare a “political time bomb” for the Republican party (HT Benen ): “It might be a political time bomb — that’s what GOP pollsters warned as House Republicans prepared for the April 15 vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, with its plan to dramatically remake Medicare. No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch — casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors — the Ryan budget’s approval rating barely budged above the high-30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation. The poll numbers on the plan were so toxic — nearly as bad as those of President Barack Obama’s health reform bill at the nadir of its unpopularity — that staffers with the National Republican Congressional Committee warned leadership, “You might not want to go there” in a series of tense pre-vote meetings. Ouch. No wonder Senator McConnell went to Fox to desperately try out lines like this : “Let’s just stipulate that nobody is trying to throw Grandma off the cliff,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.” It’s not that easy, Senator McConnell. If you and your colleagues in the Republican conference do not want to throw Grandma off the cliff , then you will need to come out and vote against the Ryan budget plan. We know, it’s a lose-lose proposition for the Republican Senators who are now part of a party dominated by extreme, nutty ideologues. That is their problem though. They either have to take a stand against the Ryan plan or show their support for it. They cannot have it both ways, just like “Barn Coat” Brown.

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Mullah Omar Alive And In Afghanistan: Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan intelligence agency said Monday that the reclusive leader of the Taliban has disappeared from a suspected hideout in Pakistan and has been out of contact with his commanders for days – adding further questions about Mullah Mohammad Omar after a media report said he was killed. The Taliban denied the claim on the Afghan news channel Tolo that Omar was shot dead while being moved inside Pakistan with the help of a former Pakistani intelligence official. The Taliban spokesman countered that Omar was alive and was somewhere inside Afghanistan. The conflicting reports, however, underscore the complicated disputes and suspicions between Afghanistan and Pakistan as the U.S. intensifies pressure on both sides: urging Afghan forces to step up efforts against militants and pushing Pakistani authorities to help unravel the networks that aided Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s foreign minister, meanwhile, was in Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been increasingly outspoken in the need for Pakistan to take a stronger role in the fight against militant groups. There also has been much speculation that the U.S. might ramp up efforts to kill or capture the Taliban leader after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. U.S. President Barack Obama has said he would order another covert military raid if it was necessary to stop terrorist attacks. Afghan officials claim Omar has been sheltered in Quetta or Karachi, major cities in southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan says it has no credible evidence Omar is in the country. The spokesman for the Afghan National Directorate for Security, or NDS, said Omar and some Taliban commanders had not been spotted since late last week while moving from Quetta to North Waziristan – a tribal area in Pakistan that is used as a staging ground for attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The spokesman, Latifullah Mashal, suggested that “maybe an incident has happened along the way,” but emphasized that officials had no further information about the fate of the Taliban leader. “We can confirm he’s been disappeared from his hideout,” Mashal told reporters in Kabul. Mashal made the statement after the Tolo report, which cited an anonymous Afghan intelligence official as saying Omar had been shot dead in Pakistan en route to North Waziristan with the help of Gen. Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistani intelligence. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid declined to give details of Omar’s whereabouts, but said the insurgent leader was “busy directing military operations with his commanders.” A Pakistani intelligence official also said that there was no information to back up the report of Omar’s death. He spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject. Gul told The Associated Press that the story was false. “This is propaganda, sheer deception, disinformation,” Gul said. “I have never met him. I’ve never seen him. No contact whatsoever.” Mashal said that the NDS had shared information about Omar’s whereabouts “more than 30 times” with neighboring countries, especially Pakistan. “Most of the allies are honest, some are not,” the spokesman said in an apparent reference to Pakistan. Afghanistan’s leaders accuse Pakistan’s intelligence services of aiding the Taliban and other insurgents fighting international and Afghan troops. Meanwhile, Pakistan is under intense scrutiny from Washington for failing to locate bin Laden, who was found in a compound in a military town near the Pakistani capital. Attacks have increased in Afghanistan since bin Laden’s death and the start of the Taliban’s yearly spring offensive. On Monday, four NATO service members were killed in an explosion in the east, NATO said in a statement. Another soldier died in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, NATO said late Monday. The military alliance did not provide details on the attacks or the nationalities of the dead. In a separate attack, a suicide bomber attacked a gathering of tribal leaders in the eastern Laghman province, killing five people having lunch at a hotel, according to governor’s spokesman Faizanullah Patan and the provincial health department. Meanwhile, officials said they had arrested five suspects accused of aiding a suicide bombing Saturday at the nation’s main military hospital in Kabul that killed at least six Afghan medical students. One of those arrested was an Afghan soldier who allegedly allowed the suicide bomber, dressed in a military uniform, to enter the medical complex, Mashal said. Obama told the BBC in an interview broadcast Sunday that he could not allow “active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action,” and would send troops again if a senior Taliban leader was found in Pakistan. But there are also parallel efforts to get the Taliban leadership into negotiations with the Afghan government, making it unclear if such a strike would be in the interest of the American or Afghan governments. ___ Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Kabul and Nahal Toosi in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Too good to not share. Video available from Irish news agency RTE . Read more here .

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