Holocaust survivors, veterans gather at DC museum

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Elderly survivors of the Holocaust and the veterans who helped liberate them gathered for what could be their last big reunion Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

One thousand survivors and World War II vets joined with former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust activist Elie Wiesel to mark the museum's 20th anniversary. Organizers chose not to wait for the 25th milestone because many survivors and vets may not be alive in another five or 10 years.

"We felt it was important, while that generation is still with us in fairly substantial numbers, to bring them together," said Museum Director Sara Bloomfield.

Washington has many monuments and memorials that offer something special for visitors from around the world, "but the Holocaust memorial will be our conscience," Clinton said.

Since the museum opened 20 years ago, the world has made huge scientific discoveries, including the sequencing of the human genome, which proved humans are 99.5 percent genetically the same, Clinton said.

"Every non age-related difference ... is contained in one half of 1 percent of our genetic makeup, but every one of us spends too much time on that half a percent," Clinton said. "That makes us vulnerable to the fever, the sickness that the Nazis gave to the Germans. That sickness is very alive across the world today."

The occasion marked a reunion of sorts for Clinton and Wiesel as well: Both were on hand to dedicate the museum at its opening in 1993. On Sunday night, the museum presented its highest honor to World War II veterans who helped end the Holocaust. Susan Eisenhower accepted the award on behalf of her grandfather, U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and all veterans of the era.

The museum also launched a campaign to raise $540 million by 2018 to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to combat anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and contemporary genocide. It has already secured gifts totaling $258.7 million. The campaign aims to double the size of the museum's endowment by its 25th anniversary. Also, a $15 million gift from Holocaust survivors David and Fela Shapell will help build a new collections and conservation center.

Bloomfield said organizers wanted to show Holocaust survivors, veterans and rescuers that the effort will continue to honor the memory of 6 million murdered Jews, in part by working to prevent genocide in the future.

Vera Greenwood, who was born in Berlin and remembers as a girl seeing Hitler with Nazis marching in the street, said her father knew they had to leave when he was forced out of his job as a lawyer. She remembers Nazi officers coming to their house and taking her father's books.

"Though I was very young, I knew something was very wrong," said Greenwood, now 84. "I still feel we were very lucky to survive."

Her family moved to Palestine with a British visa and ended up fighting for Israel's independence. Greenwood lived in Israel for 30 years before immigrating to the U.S. and completing a doctorate at Arizona State University.

She and her husband, Fred, who survived the Holocaust in Holland as a child by being hidden and passed from house to house, wanted to be part of the last large reunion of survivors.

"In 10 more years, most of us will be gone," Greenwood said.

The museum continues collecting objects, photographs and other evidence of the Holocaust from survivors, veterans and archives located as far away as China and Argentina. Curators expect the collection to double in size over the next decade.

This week, the museum is opening a special, long-term exhibit titled "Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity During the Holocaust." It includes interviews with perpetrators that have never been shown before, as well as details of mass killings in the former Soviet Union that were only uncovered in more recent years.

Curator Susan Bachrach said the exhibit and its research challenge the idea that the Holocaust was primarily about Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Surveys at the museum show that's what most visitors believe.

"That's very comforting to people, because it puts distance between the visitors and who was involved," Bachrach said.

So, the museum set out to look at ordinary people who looked on and were complicit in the killing and persecution of millions of Jews through greed, a desire for career advancement, peer pressure or other factors. It examines influences "beyond hatred and anti-Semitism," Bachrach said.

Focusing only on fanatical Nazis would be a serious misunderstanding of the Holocaust, Bloomfield added.

"The Holocaust wouldn't have been possible, first of all, without enormous indifference throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe, but also thousands of people who were, say, just doing their jobs," she said, such as a tax official who collected special taxes levied against Jews.

In an opening film, some survivors recall being turned over to Nazi authorities in front of witnesses who did nothing. "The whole town was assembled ... looking at the Jews leaving," one survivor recalls.

Steven Fenves was a boy at the time. He recalled how in 1944, the government of Hungary, allied with Nazi Germany, forced his family out of its apartment. The family was deported to Auschwitz, where Fenves' mother was gassed.

"One of the nastiest memories I have is going on that journey and people were lined up, up the stairs, up to the door of the apartment, waiting to ransack whatever we left behind, cursing at us, yelling at us, spitting at us as we left," he said in an interview with the museum.

The museum located images of bystanders looking on as Jews were detained, humiliated and taken away.

Non-Jews were also punished for violating German policies against the mixing of ethnic groups. For the first time, the museum is showing striking, rare footage of a ritualistic shaming of a Polish girl and a German boy for having a relationship. They are marched through the streets of a town in Poland, where the film was located in an attic. Dozens of people look on as Nazi officers cut the hair of the two teenagers. They are forced to look at their nearly bald heads in a mirror before their hair is burned.

The federally funded museum's theme for its 20th anniversary is "Never Again: What You Do Matters." The museum devotes part of its work and research to preventing future genocides. A study released by the museum last month found that the longer the current conflict in Syria continues, the greater the danger that mass sectarian violence results in genocide.

Much more is still being learned about the Holocaust, as well, Bloomfield said. The museum is compiling an encyclopedia of all incarceration sites throughout Europe. When the project began, scholars expected to list 10,000 such sites. Now the number stands at 42,000.

Since opening, the museum has had more than 35 million visitors.

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U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org

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Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/holocaust-survivors-veterans-gather-dc-museum-095000298.html

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White House commends Jason Collins on coming out

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The White House is commending NBA veteran Jason Collins for becoming the first active male player in the four major American professional sports to come out as gay.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called that decision courageous and says the White House supports Collins. He says he hopes the 34-year-old center's team will also offer support.

Carney says the White House views Collins' decision as another example of progress and evolution in the U.S. as Americans grow more accepting of gay rights and same-sex marriage. Last year, during his re-election campaign, Obama announced his support for gay marriage.

Collins disclosed he was gay Monday in a first-person account posted on Sports Illustrated's website. He has played for six teams in 12 seasons, including this past season with the Washington Wizards.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-29-Jason%20Collins-Obama/id-d4afabd2ea94487b834b25c7cfce5a02

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One year on, France's Hollande says will weather poll slump

By Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) - France's Francois Hollande said he was undeterred by a first year in power marked by economic slowdown and a record slump in his personal popularity, arguing his 5-year presidency would achieve results over time.

In comments to correspondents from Reuters and Agence France Presse a week before the anniversary of his May 2012 election win over Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande shrugged off polls showing his popularity rating around 25 percent, after the sharpest fall for any president in over half a century.

"I'm aware how serious the situation is. It's a president's duty to stay the course and to look beyond today's squalls. It's called perseverance," Hollande said.

"People can criticize my decisions, think I am on the wrong track or have not taken the right route, but if there is one thing I am sure of it's that I have taken major decisions for France - many more in 10 months than were taken in 10 years."

Hollande, France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand, is squeezed between a business sector clamoring for lower taxes and labor costs, euro zone partners pressing for budget cuts and households hostile to austerity measures.

He said he would persevere with measures to restore growth like corporate tax credits aimed at easing headcount costs and a labor reform set to become law in May.

"It's the president who is held to account, and that's quite legitimate. It's up to me to weigh up what I need to do for the country today. To remain in control by being sure of my ideas."

RALLY THE NATION

After his campaign pledges to revive the flagging industrial sector, end a relentless rise in unemployment and meet deficit-cutting targets, Hollande has had to row back on almost all his economic targets, as factory layoffs continue apace.

While he stands by a goal to turn around unemployment by year-end, few believe he can achieve that. Jobless claims rose for the 23rd straight month in March to an all-time high.

Treading a delicate line as he attempts step-by-step reforms that were not part of his election campaign, Hollande said the country should have faith in him.

"The only thing that counts is the results. I have made promises and I will be judged on them," he said. "My hope is to rally the nation and restore confidence. That will take time, but it's my sole objective."

His economic woes aside, Hollande is also suffering from a perception that since he took power France is losing its voice on European policy. His prime minister said this month that France was losing its leadership role.

Foreign investors are watching closely since the government admitted it would need an extra year to reach a European Union budget deficit ceiling of 3 percent of output.

Inside France, where a scandal over an ex-budget minister's secret Swiss bank account has not helped, polls show a slim majority of people would prefer Sarkozy to be president today.

"I realized a long time ago that I would not go far if I let the commentary get to me," Hollande said. "According to what was said about me as a candidate, I had no chance of becoming president."

(Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/one-frances-hollande-says-weather-poll-slump-081408823.html

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Ashton Kutcher?s Violent Fight At Stagecoach Festival

Ashton Kutcher’s violent fight at Stagecoach Music Festival is making headlines today after he got into a serious altercation with a security guard. However was it really his fault or was he actually defending himself and a fan? The Stagecoach Music Festival took place this weekend in Indio, California. It is the festival dedicated to Country Music, brining some of the genre’s biggest stars as well as up and comers. TMZ was first to break the story that Kutcher, dressed the part of a country fan in a cowboy hat and white t-shirt, got into a serious fight with a security guard at the event. According to the website the actor was watching Nick 13 and Dwight Yoakam, in the VIP area of course, when a female fan approached. The story goes that when he turned to greet the fan, a couple of security guards intervened and shoved the two of them. This clearly did not go over well with Ashton and it became mass mayhem. Allegedly the That 70′s Show alum and the security got into a very violent shoving match, that was only resolved when Kutcher’s friends restrained him. Despite the security guard demanding that Ashton be kicked [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RightCelebrity/~3/vaJbvTZ4zlI/

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Biden: Economy kept McCain from victory over Obama

SEDONA, Ariz. (AP) ? Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that Arizona Sen. John McCain probably would have beat his boss in the 2008 presidential election had the economy not collapsed.

Biden's comment about McCain and President Barack Obama came during the opening dinner of an annual forum among the Red Rocks of Sedona in northern Arizona. He and McCain, a Republican, touched on the gun control debate following the Newtown shootings and the bombings in Boston, but made no mention of Syria. Just as the night came to a close, Biden turned to the grueling nature of presidential campaigns.

"The truth of the matter is, Barack knows it, I know, had the economy not collapsed around your ears, John, in the middle of literally ? as things were moving ? I think you probably would have won," Biden said. "But it would have been incredibly, incredibly, incredibly close. You inherited a really difficult time."

The forum is part of the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a program formed by McCain as a way to debate foreign affairs. This year's theme for the Sedona Forum is "How can we promote freedom and democracy effectively?"

Rather than a discussion between McCain and Biden, the two sat on stage together with McCain posing questions to his former Democratic adversary on gun control and whether background checks are necessary, human rights abuses at the hands of the United States and the recent bombings at the Boston marathon.

McCain and Biden both said that despite their disagreements, they've never lost respect for one another.

On gun control, Biden said it's never been a simple issue, but that Congress has miscalculated how deeply the public feels about it and has failed to stand up to groups like the National Rifle Association, particularly after the shootings in Newtown. He said the public is looking to Congress to be mature enough to figure out a way to diminish the chance it will happen again.

"For the first time ever, you have people who are for gun safety, for increasing background checks," Biden said. "Two out of three of them say it will be a major determining factor in how I vote. That's the political dynamic that has changed. So I think we're going to get this anyway. I think this will pass before the year is out, within this Congress."

In responding to a question about the vulnerabilities of the United States when it comes to terrorist attacks, Biden said that the radical, lone wolves have been the most difficult to catch. But he said America shouldn't change its values, how it treats people abroad or people coming into the United States. Nor should America adopt policies that keep people from freely walking down the street without being frisked by police or carrying identification cards, he said.

"The moment we change any of those things, that's when they win," Biden said. "Because they don't see how you can have a society that is not ordered and regimented and wedded to an orthodoxy that is theirs. That's the point that bothers them most about us."

McCain followed up by saying that those who tortured U.S. prisoners, in violation of the Geneva convention, should be exposed and be held responsible to prevent repeated abuses.

Biden agreed with the man once held as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He said the internal debate in Congress and at the White House is how things got to that point, but it's not yet resolved.

"I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge what happened, straightforward," Biden said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/biden-economy-kept-mccain-victory-over-obama-050052639.html

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Have a Seat: This Chair Was Made From Compost (VIDEO)

In this era of recycle, reuse, reduce, the trend in personal goods has been to prevent as much of it as possible from ending up in a landfill.? What was once garbage is now the source material for electric appliances, bicycles and even play structures.

And while that concept isn?t new, using actual dirt and molding it into the shape of furniture is certainly new. Or, it?s so old it?s new to us.

Terra is a company that uses compost, made up of 100 percent organic materials like soil, manure and plant matter, and using ancient techniques, fashions it into cool modern furniture.

Israeli designer, Adital Ela is a self-described ?designer-gatherer? and the creator of Terra?s biomaterial furniture line. After a lengthy research project, Ela blended ancient practices from places like Palestine and Iraq with a few modern production techniques, to come up with her unique mixing formula?some of which does involve foot-stomping.

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All of Terra?s pieces are made using zero energy and can be replicated anywhere organic waste is available. They?re also fully renewable and biodegradable: The stools, cups and the rest of the line's pieces can all be smashed and returned to the Earth once they?ve outlived their use.

As she explains in her TED talk, Ela first became enamored with the idea in India, when she was served a cup of chai in a sun-dried, clay mug. ?I was absolutely fascinated by the way the locals gulped down this delicious boiling drink, tossing the cups into the ground?The cups, made of clay, dried by the sun, touched the Earth, and blended with it and within minutes, they disappeared,? she said. ?Seeing this?I started asking myself, 'How can products, like people, come from dust, and to dust return?'?

But Terra is only one in a portfolio of Ela?s many sustainable green designs. She?s the founder and director of S-Sense, an Israeli firm that?s also created artful residential rainwater collectors, wind-powered garden lights, and colorful textiles made from secondhand clothes.

While the furniture might be looked upon by some as more of a novelty, Ela's entire body of work is the sign of a person dedicated to using her business in a way that positively impacts the world around her.

Would you buy stools made from compost? Let us know what you think of Terra in the Comments.

Related Stories on TakePart:

? This Little Teapot Was Made From Garbage

? Op-Ed: The Dawn of a Sub-Saharan Solar Revolution

? Hawaii?s Solar Market Is Booming; Why This Is a Very Bad Thing

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.??In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for?TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets?| TakePart.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/seat-chair-made-compost-video-003833869.html

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Six months after Sandy, thousands homeless in N.Y., N.J.

MANTOLOKING, N.J. (AP) ? The 9-year-old girl who got New Jersey's tough-guy governor to shed a tear as he comforted her after her home was destroyed is bummed because she now lives far from her best friend and has nowhere to hang her One Direction posters.

A New Jersey woman whose home was overtaken by mold still cries when she drives through the area. A New York City man whose home burned can't wait to build a new one.

Six months after Superstorm Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England, the region is dealing with a slow and frustrating, yet often hopeful, recovery. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection all remain major issues with the summer vacation ? and hurricane ? seasons almost here again.

"Some families and some lives have come back together quickly and well, and some people are up and running almost as if nothing ever happened, and for them it's been fine," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference Thursday. "Some people are still very much in the midst of recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms, you still have people doubled up, you still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it's been terrible and horrendous."

Lynda Fricchione's flood-damaged home in the Ortley Beach section of Toms River, N.J., is gutted; the roof was fixed just last week. The family is still largely living out of cardboard boxes in an apartment. But waiting for a final decision from federal and state authorities over new flood maps that govern the price of flood insurance is tormenting her and many others.

"The largest problem is, nobody really knows how high we're going to have to elevate the house," she said. "At town hall they told us 5 feet, but then they said it might go down to 3 feet in the summer. Most of us are waiting until the final maps come out. It's wait-and-see."

But more than anything, Fricchione is optimistic, buoyed by a recent trip to New Orleans with her daughter during which they met a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward who was one of the first to move back in after Hurricane Katrina inundated the neighborhood that has become a symbol of flood damage ? and resilience.

"Talking to that man was wonderful!" Fricchione said. "He said it takes time and you just have to have hope and know it will all work out eventually."

By many measures, the recovery from Superstorm Sandy, which struck Oct. 29, has been slow. From Maryland to New Hampshire, the National Hurricane Center attributes 72 deaths directly to Sandy and 87 others indirectly from causes such as hypothermia due to power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning and accidents during cleanup efforts, for a total of 159.

The roller coaster that plunged off a pier in Seaside Heights, N.J., is still in the ocean, although demolition plans are finally moving forward. Scores of homes that were destroyed in nearby Mantoloking still look as they did the day after the storm ? piles of rubble and kindling, with the occasional bathroom fixture or personal possession visible among the detritus.

Throughout the region, many businesses are still shuttered, and an already-tight rental market has become even more so because of the destruction of thousands of units and the crush of displaced storm victims looking to rent the ones that survived.

Homeowners are tortured by uncertainty over ever-changing rules on how high they'll need to rebuild their homes to protect against the next storm; insurance companies have not paid out all that many homeowners expected; and municipalities are borrowing tens of millions of dollars to keep the lights on, the fire trucks running and the police stations staffed, waiting for reimbursement from the federal government for storm expenditures they had to fund out of pocket.

And yet, by other measures, remarkable progress has been made. Boardwalks, the tourism lifeblood of the region, are springing back to life. A handful of homes are going up, and the whine of power saws and the thwack of hammers is everywhere in hard-hit beach towns as contractors fix what can be saved and bulldozers knock down what can't.

Volunteers in Highlands, N.J., are rebuilding the home of Bromlyn Link, the single mother of a 17-year-old boy, both of whom are members of the town's first aid squad and who spent 12 to 14 hours a day helping friends and neighbors forced to live in shelters for weeks after the storm.

Mantoloking, which was cut in half by the storm and saw all 521 of its homes damaged or destroyed, is creeping back to life. The post office recently, reopened, and the first of 50 demolitions will start next week, which is also when Mayor George Nebel will join the 40 other residents who have been able to move back home.

Beaches that were washed away are coming back, due both to nature and bulldozers, and real estate agents say demand for this strangest of upcoming summers appears good, particularly in the large portions of the Jersey shore that were relatively unscathed by Sandy. Beach badges, required for access to most of New Jersey's shoreline, are selling at a near-record pace in Belmar, N.J.

And while towns fortify beaches and dunes and put up sea walls, rock barriers or even sand-filled fabric tubes to guard against future storms, state governments are readying hundreds of millions of dollars to buy out homeowners in flood-prone areas who want to leave.

"We've made a lot of progress in six months; I know we still have a long way to go," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said at a recent town hall meeting. "By Memorial Day, every boardwalk that was destroyed at the Jersey shore will be rebuilt. Businesses are reopening. Rentals are picking up again, roads are back open."

Christie estimated 39,000 New Jersey families remain displaced, down from 161,000 the day after the storm. In New York, more than 250 families are still living in hotel rooms across New York paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, while others are still shacking up with relatives or living in temporary rentals.

Everyone simply wants to make their homes livable again, said Ray Marten, whose home in the Belle Harbor section of New York City's Queens borough burned down when a fire swept along his street during the storm, and whose family of six is renting a nearby house.

"If you go up my block now, all the houses have been demolished and removed," Marten said. "They're pretty much just holes in the ground. Sand pits."

Separation is the new reality for the Gatti family, a clan of several generations that shared the same three-story home near the ocean on Staten Island until Sandy destroyed it. The flood-soaked place was demolished months ago, and they're waiting for a government buyout. Now the family is scattered across New Jersey, New York and Texas.

"The whole family's separated," said Marge Gatti, the matriarch. "And it's terrible, you know?"

Her son, Anthony, recently drove a U-Haul packed with his meager belongings to Killeen, Texas, where he will start a new life as a car mechanic.

"Mentally, I'm not all that well in the head," said Anthony Gatti, who slept in a tent in front of the ruined home for weeks after the storm. "I know I've got to get some kind of help. I can't seem to shake it out of my life."

Ginjer Doherty was 9 years old when Sandy bubbled up through the floor of her Middletown, N.J., home and ripped the front wall off it. She and her parents went to a firehouse a few days later to see Christie talk about what was being done to recover.

The governor comforted Ginjer, telling her she would be all right, that the grown-ups were on top of things and would take care of her. Ginjer recently had an essay published in Time magazine recalling the encounter and describing her life after Sandy.

"My house was all messed up, and people told us we couldn't stay there anymore," she wrote. "The governor told me not to worry ? that my parents would take care of everything ? and he looked very serious and sad, and he cried.

"Things are going O.K. for my family," she wrote. "We want to go back home, but rebuilding is going to take a long time. But we have a place to live for now. I even rescued a cat that was homeless after Sandy; I wanted him to be safe and loved like I feel."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ginjer, now 10, said she is sad that her home won't be ready until October; her mom says it has been gutted and needs to be elevated.

Of the delay, Ginjer said simply, "It stinks."

Sandy also damaged interior areas, particularly those along rivers in northern New Jersey. Cities including Hoboken and Jersey City were inundated, and officials continue try seek exemptions for skyscrapers and large apartments from federal rules requiring flood-prone buildings to be elevated. George Stauble, whose Little Ferry house took in four feet of water, said FEMA payouts caused some rifts between neighbors.

"Everybody's house had pretty much the same amount of damage, but people are getting different amounts of money, and that's caused some problems," he said, adding some homeowners received as little as $8,000, while others received as much as $29,000.

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Meghan Barr and Deepti Hajela in New York and David Porter in Little Ferry, N.J.

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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/6-months-sandy-thousands-homeless-ny-nj-154507020.html

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