Boston bombing suspect's family struggles to find burial site

BOSTON (Reuters) - The body of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev remained in limbo on Monday as his family searched for a cemetery that would accept the remains.

Several Massachusetts cemeteries have refused to bury Tsarnaev, and protesters have staked out the Worcester funeral home holding the body. Despite a plea from the funeral home director, Governor Deval Patrick said on Monday he would not get involved.

The controversy marked a rare period of discord in a state that was largely united after the attacks on one of its marquee events.

Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police on April 19, four days after bombs he is believed to have set with his younger brother Dzhokhar killed three people and injured another 264 near the finish line of the world-famous marathon.

Relatives have said they want him buried nearby. Under Islamic law, the body cannot be cremated, a procedure used for criminals including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"The whole situation is unprecedented," said David Walkinshaw, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association. The state of Massachusetts does not own its own cemeteries, he said, and the federal government has only cemeteries for war veterans.

"The challenge here is that there's no way to demand a cemetery allow for a burial to take place," Walkinshaw said.

Some Massachusetts residents want the body sent back to Tsarnaev's native Russia. William Breault of Worcester told reporters on Monday he had set up a bank account to raise funds to ship the remains.

"I not only don't want to see him buried in Worcester, Massachusetts. ... I don't think he should be buried in the state," Breault told CNN.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said he was not aware that anyone from Russia or Massachusetts had contacted the department about it. "We're unaware of any efforts to coordinate sending his remains to Russia," he said.

Gabriel Gomez, a Massachusetts Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, suggested disposing of Tsarnaev's body in the ocean as was done after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

"Bureaucrats worried about where to bury Boston Marathon terrorist #1. To me, it's simple: he should be buried at sea with Bin Laden," he wrote on his official Twitter account.

UNWILLING TO ACCEPT BODY

Tsarnaev's body was taken to Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester last week after spending more than a week at a medical examiner's office in Boston. Several cemeteries have said they would not accept Tsarnaev's body for burial.

Graham Putnam funeral home owner Peter Stefan, chairman of a board that oversees funeral services and embalming in Massachusetts, said he has an obligation to accept the remains.

Stefan has said he would seek help from state officials if he could not find a resting place soon. His work has drawn support from other funeral directors, including Morgan Mitchell, another member of the state board.

"There are funeral directors in Massachusetts who have buried people who have been murderers or child molesters. As professionals, we need to put these things to one side," Mitchell said.

Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said on Sunday that his nephew should be buried in Massachusetts, where he lived. Tsarnaev's parents, ethnic Chechens who returned to southern Russia several years ago, have suggested in various interviews and reports that their son should be buried in Cambridge or returned to Russia.

The Massachusetts governor declined on Monday to get involved.

"This is a family issue ... and the family needs to make some decisions. I understand they have some options. They need to exercise one soon," Patrick told reporters.

Cambridge officials urged the Tsarnaevs to look elsewhere.

"The difficult and stressful efforts of the citizens of the City of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests and widespread media presence at such an interment," said Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy in a statement Sunday.

"The families of loved ones interred in the Cambridge Cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace."

By Ross Kerber and Aaron Pressman (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Doina Chiacu and Philip Barbara)

Via Yahoo News!

Population experts demand funding for international family planning (OneWorld.net)

LONDON, May 30 (OneWorld.net) - A high-level population conference has appealed to international donors to step up financial support for family planning and reproductive health services in developing countries.

This call comes at a time when foreign aid for international family planning is one of the most divisive topics for US Congress to resolve in its FY2012 budget considerations. The US is the key global donor in this field.

Described by its organizers at University College London as the largest conference on population issues to be held this year, Population Footprints examined the capacity of the planet to sustain a human presence which is due to reach seven billion in October.

The six billion threshold was passed just 12 years ago. Earlier this month, the UN published an upward revision of its long term projections of global population.

Academics, campaigners and politicians attending the conference from around the world discussed what strategies might encourage a lower population trajectory. They addressed the troubling contexts of food security, climate change, migration and a skewed demographic profile in which richer countries have too few people of working age whilst the poorer countries have too many.

The debates were marked by disagreements between the participants, a point acknowledged in the closing summary by Professor Anthony Costello, Co-Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health.

"That doesn't matter," he said, "because what unites us is much greater. What unites all of us is that funding for women's health, maternal health, child health, fertility reduction, family planning - all the drivers for moving towards a stable population - is desperately needed."

Describing current global funding as "derisory", Professor Costello deplored that "the World Health Organization has seen its budget halved for reproductive health and family planning."

A downward trend in this area of funding was indeed a feature of the April compromise which saw Congress approve the US budget for FY2011. International aid for family planning and reproductive health was cut by 5% to $615 million.

The battle now turns to FY2012. President Obama's original request for $769 million will be subject to forces pulling strongly in both directions.

The objective to provide universal global access to reproductive health services by 2015 is included in the Millennium Development Goals, a set of commitments agreed by world governments.

There are 215 million women in developing countries with an unmet need for contraception. The cost of fulfilling this area of reproductive health alone is estimated at $3.6 billion.

Campaigners say that it is impossible to achieve the MDG target without significant new donor funding. They advocate that US support should rise towards $1 billion per annum.

However, many Republican members of Congress considered the FY2011 compromise to be too generous. They will press for further cuts for FY2012.

The UN Population Fund is a favored target. Its US support for FY2011 was slashed from $55 million to $40 million. Republicans are under lobby pressure to revert to the days of the Bush Administration when UNFPA was denied funding altogether.

The new Executive Director of UNFPA, Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, was a leading participant in the Population Footprints conference. Whilst he maintained a diplomatic silence on his budgetary relationship with the US government, Dr Osotimehin was unambiguous in his views about priorities for population policies. "If we protect women's rights, their ability to make choices, we will see a lot of difference in population," he told the conference.

The Ugandan Minister of State for Finance and Planning, Professor Ephraim Kamuntu, presented the same opinion in language designed to appeal to politicians, hard-pressed on delivering budgetary value for money. "We have done a study in Uganda which shows for every $1 you invest in reproductive health it saves you $3 eventually in health costs that result from non-spacing of children and complications in giving birth," he said.

Africa's rate of population growth is the highest of the world's continents, its numbers projected to double to 2 billion by 2050. But attitudes are changing, according to Eliya Zulu, Director of the African Institute for Development Policy.

"Unlike 15-20 years ago, more African people now want to limit their family size but they are not doing that because they do not have access to family planning," he said in a BBC World Service interview at the conference.

Several speakers referred to the long term decline in foreign aid for family planning. This trend was evidenced in a scrupulously factual presentation by Hania Zlotnik, Director of the UN Population Division. She demonstrated that, since 1996, donor assistance for family planning programmes has fallen by at least 50% in nearly all African countries.

"In most high fertility countries, contraceptive prevalence is increasing by less than 1% per year," she said. "At that rate it's going to take something like 30-40 years for them to meet the unmet need they already have."

Dr Mairo Mandara, a gynecologist from Nigeria, highlighted the extremes that exist in the poorest regions of the continent. In northern Nigeria, the average age at which girls are married is just 15. Only 3% have access to contraception. Nigeria's population of 158 million is the highest in Africa.

The Nigerian government has taken the initiative of embarking on its own programme of free family planning services. "Africa should fund family planning, not rely only on donors," Eliya Zulu told his followers on Twitter.

The share of funding between potential donors was not tackled in any detail but speakers were unwavering in their view of the priority for spending. Siri Tellier, former Director of UNFPA in Geneva, summed it up in population numbers: "the use of family planning will be the most important determinant in whether we go to 11 billion in 2050 or whether we go to 9 billion in 2050."

The Population Footprints conference was sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust and The Lancet medical journal.

* More Information:

Population Footprints - archived videos of the UCL conference

OneWorld Population Guide

OneWorld Gender and Development Guide

Yahoo! News

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Family dog kills Brooklyn child, police say

A 4-year-old boy was killed after being mauled by his family's dog, police sayJayelin Graham was bitten multiple times in the head, neck and torsoTwo other small children were in the home but were unharmed

New York (CNN) -- A 4-year-old boy was killed after being mauled by his family's dog inside their Brooklyn, New York, apartment, according to police spokesman Joseph Gallagher.

Jayelin Graham was bitten multiple times in the head, neck and torso by his family's Cane Corso Mastiff, a large muscular breed of canine commonly used as a guard dog or hunting companion.

The deadly attack Friday night sent the boy to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival, according to Brookdale Hospital spokesman Andrew Rubin.

Two other small children, a 2- and 5-year-old boy, were in the home at the time but were unharmed.

Police say they are continuing to investigate the incident and that New York's Animal Care and Control have removed the dog as well as another dog -- a German shepherd -- from inside the apartment.

CNN

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Real Housewives Of New Jersey A show to enjoy with family

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A show on its peak
Reality TV shows are always most favorite among common and general public. This is the reason why these days you will come across with many different and unique sorts of tv shows. The Real Housewives of New Jersey is one of those reality shows which are most popular and wanted program of the TV. This reality show is on aired through the bravo network which is initially on the women, five different women with different backgrounds in the northern part of New Jersey.   This is the fourth fixation of the program, before that it has The Real Housewives of Orange County, The Real Housewives of New York City and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. This show had the highest-rated episode constantly further than the complete authorization at its second season meeting show.Third Season and the new addition of the housewives
The third season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey was firstly showed on May 16, 2011, at 9pm on Bravo network, and this was a ninety minutes episode. Melissa Gorga and Kathy Wakile are the latest added housewives in this reality show History of Production This reality series’s first season firstly showed on May 12, 2009. And the very first five housewives on the show was Teresa Giudice, Jacqueline Laurita, Caroline Manzo, Dina Manzo, and Danielle Staub. In support of the first time in the contract, the series follows housewives who are connected to each other: like both the sisters Caroline and Dina are wedded to brothers Albert and Tommy Manzo, and Jacqueline Laurita is wedded to Caroline and Dina’s brother, Chris Laurita.

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Italian family Borgias

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Borgias are among the most notable and renowned families of Italy, that cam into the limelight after the renaissance. The family gained popularity due to participation in many arts and political.  Today, they are known as one of the most corrupt family involved in a wide range of crimes including adultery, theft, rape, bribery, and murder. The Borgias are infamous today and had the same reputation in their own time, and their evilness has inspired numerous writings and performances throughout the history. Many plays, operas and novels were performed or published owing to the lurid ways of this family. Many references to them in popular culture have been made including films like Los Borgia (2006), The Borgias (1981), BBC miniseries Contes immoraux, The Conclave, (2006), and Assassin’s Creed: Lineage (2009). Not only that, many video games have also been inspired by this family including the widely popular assasin creed series.

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