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Source: Miami Herald

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
A veterinary pathologist worked Monday to determine what killed a juvenile fin whale discovered on the bow of a cruise ship entering an Alaska port.

The cause of death was not immediately apparent for the endangered whale spotted just after 5 a.m. Sunday on the bulbous bow of the Zaandam, a Holland America Line cruise ship, as it prepared to dock in Seward.

The carcass was towed to a beach near Seward, a spokeswoman for the fisheries section of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Julie Speegle, said Monday.

The veterinary pathologist, Kathy Burek, began a necropsy Sunday night and planned to continue Monday, with armed NOAA Fisheries law enforcement officers standing guard against bears, Speegle said.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article80793612.html

Britain is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia.

Mr Saviano, who wrote the best-selling exposés Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero, made the comments at the Hay Literary Festival. The 36-year-old has been living under police protection since publishing revelations about members of the Camorra, a powerful Neapolitan branch of the mafia, in 2006.

He told an audience at Hay-on-Wye: “If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me well it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy and I will tell you it’s the UK.

“It’s not the bureaucracy, it’s not the police, it’s not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital. 90 per cent of the owners of capital in London have their headquarters offshore."

more

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/roberto-saviano-britain-corrupt-mafia-hay-festival-a7054851.html

For Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned expert in theoretical physics and cosmology, the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a mystery.

Hawking called Trump "a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” during an appearance on the United Kingdom’s ITV network.

In addition to his scientific work, Hawking, who has a slow-progressing form of ALS, is a vocal advocate for individuals with disabilities. Trump drew criticism late last year on the campaign trail when he appeared to mock a New York Times reporter with a disability at a rally in South Carolina. Trump later denied mocking the reporter and said he had never met him.

During the same television appearance, Hawking urged British voters to vote in favor of keeping the U.K. in the European Union. The much-discussed “Brexit” vote is scheduled for June 23 and a vote to leave the EU would cost Great Britain in terms of its economy, national security and scientific research.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/stephen-hawking-trump-223707

by
Seth Abramson

Sentence #1: If a Democratic primary candidate can win 59 percent of the Party’s “pledged” (primary- and caucus-won) delegates or more, the primary is decided by pledged delegates; if a Democratic primary candidate fails to meet that threshold, they are considered by DNC electoral processes to be a weak front-runner and the nomination is finally decided, instead, by “superdelegates” — who can express support for a candidate at any time, but cannot commit themselves to anyone (i.e., cast a binding vote for any candidate) until the Democratic National Convention in July; superdelegates are unlike pledged delegates in this regard because, while pledged delegates also do not vote until the Party’s convention, they cannot change their votes from what their state’s voting results pledged them to be — though it has been argued by some that in fact they can change their votes at the Convention, with this argument most recently having been advanced by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.

Sentence #2: Superdelegates were created in 1984 to enable elected Democratic Party officials and some others of high standing within the Party (including, remarkably, some lobbyists) to overturn the will of the voters if the Party deems it necessary for a November general election win; in both this election cycle and every other, superdelegates interviewed by the media have stated, en masse, that they are in no way bound to vote for the pledged delegate or popular-vote winner, but instead cast their July ballots on the basis of — depending upon which superdelegate you talk to — “the good of the Party” or “who can win in November” (the two usually being seen as synonymous).

Sentence #3: Hillary Clinton currently leads Bernie Sanders in pledged delegates, superdelegates, and the popular vote, and would continue to lead Sanders even were the pledged or superdelegate allotment rules to be changes in any one of a number of ways, but has nevertheless failed to receive 59 percent of the pledged delegates — despite having every possible advantage on her opponent American politics is able to bestow, both financially, in terms of Party support, and in terms of the logistics of individual state electoral processes — a fact for which she has only her own poor campaigning skills and inability to generate a 59-percent-plus level of enthusiasm from Democrats to blame; what this means is that her only hope for clinching the Democratic nomination, short of a Sanders concession that the Senator has assured the nation is not forthcoming, is to convince a large number of superdelegates to not just voice support but actually vote for her when they cast their ballots at the Democratic convention in July.

Sentence #4: Superdelegates, who have only been around for six contested Democratic primaries, have, depending upon the primary, not previously voted against the pledged-delegate or popular-vote leader for one of two reasons: either the candidate leading in pledged delegates and the popular vote has been a “strong front-runner” with more than 59 percent of the pledged delegates, making superdelegate votes immaterial, or else the candidate behind in pledged delegates and the popular vote has conceded prior to the Democratic National Convention, rendering superdelegate votes essentially meaningless; in the 2016 Democratic primary, it is presumed by the media and many political observers that superdelegates will not switch their endorsements from Hillary Clinton, not because she leads in pledged delegates and the popular vote, and not because the current hard data suggests she’s the strongest Democratic candidate for the fall, but rather because she and her husband built the modern neoliberal Democratic Party and therefore own more cultural capital within that context than any other husband and spouse, she and her husband have raised a lot of money for the Party, and she and her husband are believed to be such strong fundraisers that it is felt they will be able to spend their way to a low-turnout general-election victory against Donald Trump.


more

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/how-to-explain-the-sanders_b_10206250.html

One minority group that hasn’t received nearly as much attention — negative or otherwise — is Native Americans. But in California, Bernie Sanders is spotlighting indigenous peoples ahead of the Democratic presidential primary here on June 7.

Sanders has another good reason to focus on Native Americans. California is home to more of them — by far — than any other state. According to the 2010 census, 723,225 people claiming Native American heritage — 14 percent of the national total — live in California. One in 50 Californians is at least part Native American.

That’s still just a shard of the Golden State’s electorate, but Sanders needs every vote he can possibly get, as he tries to catch up to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who holds a commanding lead in the delegate race.

At a rally in Visalia on Sunday, Sanders revisited injustices from several hundred years ago.

“This campaign is listening to a people whose pain is rarely heard — that is the Native American people,” he said. “All of you know the Native American people were lied to. They were cheated. Treaties they negotiated were broken from before this country even became a country. And we owe the Native American people a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay.”

more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/30/as-trump-feuds-with-pocahontas-sanders-appeals-to-native-americans-in-california/

By James Hohmann May 29 at 6:40 PM
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Tim Canova was driving from a rally against money in politics to a protest against chemical giant Monsanto this month when his spokeswoman called to tell him that Sen. Bernie Sanders had just gone on CNN and endorsed his long-shot primary challenge against the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

It was a rather big moment for a little-known law professor with a shaved head who, in another year, might not have created so much as a ripple for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is seeking her seventh House term and has won all her previous elections in landslides.

A few hours later, Sanders called Canova for the first time — and the next day signed a fundraising email for him. Over the next 48 hours, Canova brought in about $300,000.

Canova, 56, finds himself in the right place at the right time. Wasserman Schultz, 49, has become increasingly unpopular within the liberal base of the party — and among Sanders’s supporters in particular. Though she claims to be neutral in the presidential nominating contest, many Berniecrats believe that she has tipped the scales in Hillary Clinton’s favor. They see her, as they see Clinton, as beholden to wealthy donors and focused on winning elections at the expense of advancing progressive principles.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sanders-breathes-life-into-a-florida-professors-unlikely-bid-to-oust-the-dnc-chair/2016/05/29/3c7b7a4c-2434-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html

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