RFK Jr.’s estranged wife, Mary, found dead in NY

FILE – This Sept. 18, 2008 file photo shows Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in New York. An attorney on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 said Mary Kennedy has been found dead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s property in Bedford, N.Y. (AP Photo/Andy Kropa, File)

FILE – This Sept. 18, 2008 file photo shows Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in New York. An attorney on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 said Mary Kennedy has been found dead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s property in Bedford, N.Y. (AP Photo/Andy Kropa, File)

FILE – This Sept. 18, 2008 file photo shows Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in New York. An attorney on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 said Mary Kennedy has been found dead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s property in Bedford, N.Y. (AP Photo/Andy Kropa, File)

FILE – In this Aug. 29, 2009 file photo, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Mary arrive during funeral services for U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. An attorney on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 said Mary Kennedy has been found dead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s property in Bedford, N.Y. (AP Photo/Brian Snyder, Pool, File)

FILE – In this Feb. 3, 2009 file photo, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, and wife Mary Richardson Kennedy arrive at the premiere of “The Pink Panther 2″ at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. An attorney on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 said Mary Kennedy has been found dead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s property in Bedford, N.Y. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, File)

FILE – In this May 6, 2004 file photo, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, and his wife Mary Richardson Kennedy arrive at the Natural Resources Defense Council, or N.R.D.C., fundraiser in Los Angeles. An attorney on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 said Mary Kennedy has been found dead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s property in Bedford, N.Y. (AP Photo/Chris Urso, File)

(AP) ? Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s estranged wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, who had fought drug and alcohol problems, was found dead at the family property Wednesday.

An autopsy for the 52-year-old was scheduled for Thursday, and no cause of death had been released.

In a statement issued by Robert Kennedy Jr.’s chief of staff, the family said Mary Kennedy, an architect, “inspired our family with her kindness, her love, her gentle soul and generous spirit.”

“Mary was a genius at friendship, a tremendously gifted architect and a pioneer and relentless advocate of green design who enhanced her cutting edge, energy efficient creations with exquisite taste and style,” the family said.

The former Mary Richardson, a longtime connection of the Kennedy clan, married Robert Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmental lawyer and the son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, in 1994. The couple had four children, the youngest born in July 2001. Robert Kennedy Jr. also has two children from a previous marriage.

Mary Kennedy also was a designer and had overseen the renovation of the couple’s home into an environmentally advanced showpiece. Her family cited her devotion to her children in remembering her.

“We deeply regret the death of our beloved sister Mary, whose radiant and creative spirit will be sorely missed by those who loved her,” the family said in a statement issued by attorney Kerry Lawrence, who had represented her in a drunken-driving case. “Our heart goes out to her children who she loved without reservation.”

Neighbor Leslie Lampert, who owns the Cafe of Love restaurant a short drive from the Kennedy home, said Mary Kennedy was “at all times just a lovely individual.”

“She was community oriented,” Lampert said. “She was always kind in our presence.”

Another neighbor, Kim Fraioli, a trauma therapist who lives a few houses down from the Kennedys, said the family was private.

“We left them alone,” Fraioli. “We didn’t have any interaction. I think it’s a tragedy. It’s very sad for their family and the surviving children. My heart goes out to the family.”

At the home on Wednesday, a red brick mansion with a columned porch entrance set in a heavily wooded acreage, police kept media away.

Mary Richardson had known the Kennedys for years, through her friendship with Robert Kennedy Jr.’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, whom she met at boarding school. She had been Kerry Kennedy’s maid of honor at her wedding in 1990.

She had had trouble with drugs and alcohol and had two high-profile arrests around the time her husband filed for divorce in 2010.

Kennedy was first arrested May 15 of that year on a charge of driving while intoxicated after a police officer reported seeing her drive her car over a curb near the family’s Bedford home. Her only passenger was a dog, and police said she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 percent; the legal limit is 0.08 percent. Her license was suspended.

At the time of her sentencing, famous family and friends spoke out in support of her.

Her mother-in-law, Ethel Kennedy, wrote in a letter that she “is a caring, nourishing mother who has nursed her four children through lifelong bouts of debilitating allergies,” according to an account in Westchester’s The Journal News at the time.

Kerry Kennedy, in her letter, said, “When I look at my three daughters, my wish for them is that they are as blessed as I have been to have a companion, a confidante, a friend, like Mary Richardson.”

Mary Kennedy was charged later that year with driving under the influence of drugs, but that charge was dismissed in July 2011 when a judge said the evidence showed she didn’t know the medications she had taken would impair her ability to drive.

There were indications her troubles started earlier. In 2007, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drove his wife to a hospital for treatment, but she resisted and ran from the car, according to the Journal News, which cited Mount Kisco police records.

“I remember she was acting kind of out of it, kind of crazy,” a witness, Rae Kesten, told The Journal News in 2007. “She was running into the street and flailing her arms around. He was trying to restrain her. I didn’t know if they were fighting or not, but I was concerned.”

The unexpected death of another person connected to the storied Kennedy clan brought to mind the other sorrows the famous family has suffered, including the assassinations of RFK and JFK in the 1960s.

Shopping in Bedford, Diane Glokler said, “I’ve always just thought that family is very tragic. They keep having tragic things happening to them. It’s heart-wrenching.”

___

Associated Press writer Verena Dobnik contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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A Penigma – a mystery, under a pseudonym

Where, oh where was Republican-Senator-from-Minnesota-Wannabe Dan ‘Doc’ Severson, explaining how ‘friendly’ voter ID is to the immigrants meeting this week at the Brooklyn Park City Hall?? The reality is, Voter ID is quite hostile to immigrant voters – LEGAL immigrant voters.? It is not too friendly to legal natural born voters either. ?Could it be he wasn’t there, because right wing sources like News Max lead with headlines like Voter ID Prevents Immigration Anarchy?? Immigrants terrify the right.
Ironically, the much vaunted claim that Voter ID laws would PROTECT the ‘purity’ (racial purity?) of elections from fraud by requiring ID, in states like Indiana did not do so.? Notably the Republican Indiana Secretary of State, Charlie White,?elected in the 2010 election cycle, was convicted in February of this year on six felony counts of voter fraud, theft, and perjury.?White used?his state-approved photo?ID, his driver’s license, to vote.?The Wikipedia entry on Charles ‘Charlie’ P. White noted:
Conviction of voter fraud

On February 4, 2012, a jury found White guilty of six of seven felony charges, including false registration, voting in another precinct, submitting a false ballot, theft, and two counts of perjury. He was acquitted on one fraud charge.[18]

Did Photo ID prevent voter fraud? No. Did Photo ID help detect or prosecute voter fraud? No; voter fraud was discovered because Democrats in Indiana protested the election and registration, along with protections in place prior to Voter ID.? Voter ID did NOTHING to make that election free of fraud.? Voter ID would not?prevent any other?problems with voter fraud?occurring, despite?the political right insisting that Democrats steal elections?through voter fraud – and unsubstantiated, unproven and totally specious claim.?We do not have a problem with voter fraud ‘stealing’ our elections; not by Democrats, not by illegal?immigrants, not by the elderly, not by former felons legally allowed to vote,?or any other group that would be affected by Voter ID.
What Voter ID does is to make it harder for certain targeted groups to vote or register to vote.? In Texas, an estimated 600,000 (later revised to more than 800,000) minorities, mostly people who were Hispanic, would have been disenfranchised.? Given the reluctance of the legislators passing that legislation to be transparent and open about their legislation, it was arguably their intent to do precisely that.? From the Houston Chronicle, April 11, 2012 (my emphasis added in bold- DG):

AUSTIN – The U.S. Justice Department says there is substantial evidence that Texas’ Voter ID law will discriminate against minorities.In court papers filed Wednesday, the department was explaining why Texas lawmakers should turn over their papers and communication regarding the law. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has argued that lawmakers should not have to reveal their internal deliberations.
But the Justice Department says no such privilege exists and that the evidence presented so far shows that 600,000 people will be unable to vote if the law is enforced. The department added that minorities would be impacted the most.
Currently Texas law requires that a voter present a registration card or a photo identification card to vote. The law would require everyone to present an official photo ID card.

I can’t come up with a single reason that ‘deliberations’ about voting should not be public.? If there is ANY topic about which ALL deliberations should be open and public, voting would be at the top of the list, because it is so fundamental, so essential to representative government.
We do not have a problem with illegal immigrants voting in our elections; not in Minnesota, not in the nation.? What we DO have is a problem with LEGAL communities, like Hispanic voters, being denied the vote by right wing efforts to suppress voting.? And we have resistance to any non-European originating participation in the control and operation of this nation on the part of conservatives, as evidenced by white supremacist anti-non-European descended white people?at conservative gatherings such as CPAC over a period of years, and behind legislation such as the anti-marriage equality amendment in North Carolina that just passed.? We have it in conservative movements such as the Full Quiver movement, where the term ‘Demographic Winter’ is used by the right wing extremists – the same people in many cases promoting Voter ID laws – ?to create fears of white people in the U.S. and Europe losing their majority status:
“Demographic Winter is an argument being advanced by right-wing ?pro-family? activists who claim that low fertility and falling birthrates in Europe auger a massive depopulation crisis that threatens the way of life of the white, Christian West. Particularly, they forecast a ?death of Europe,? wherein hedonistic, atheistic and gay- and abortion-rights-friendly Europeans will bring about their own extinction by failing to have enough children to keep Muslim and Global South immigration at bay. Though there have been drops in fertility in Europe in recent decades, and it is a topic that numerous other organizations and governments and scientists are examining, the labeling of the phenomenon as a ?Demographic Winter? apocalypse by the U.S.-based pro-family movement is a prelude to their offered solution: the revival of large, patriarchal families where the woman is a stay-at-home mother to a full quiver of children, and the father is a benevolent leader of his wife and children. In this way, coalitions like the World Congress of Families have neatly been able to co-opt a population trend, turn it into a crisis, amplify its threat and raise nationalistic support by drawing on centuries-old religious and racial conflicts, and provide the reactionary solution.”
This overlaps right wing ‘natavism’ which seeks to exclude immigrants, and to preserve the U.S. for the existing white majority by excluding immigrants in every way possible from participation.? Nativism is defined by wikipedia, here a handy, very simple explanation, as :

the political position of demanding a favored status for certain established inhabitants of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants.[1] Nativism typically means opposition to immigration and efforts to lower the political or legal status of specific ethnic or cultural groups because the groups are considered hostile or alien to the natural culture, and it is assumed that they cannot be assimilated.[2]

The Republican party, and those who are running for office, or who hope to run for office with the party endorsement are NOT friends of recent immigrants, particularly those who are people of color or non-European ethnic minorities.

From the Star Tribune:

  • Article by: ALLIE SHAH , Star Tribune
  • Updated: May 15, 2012 – 9:13 PM

Hoping to build opposition to the proposal to require Minnesota voters to show an approved photo ID, a group of African leaders in the Twin Cities northwest suburbs held the first in a series of meetings Tuesday night.

The forum, which drew about 50 people, was held at the Brooklyn Park City Hall and organized by the African Immigrant Services, Think Again Minnesota, the League of Women Voters, and TakeAction Minnesota.

“We want to provoke a conversation. We want to start here,” said Abdullah Kiatamba, executive director of African Immigrant Services.
He said Tuesday’s meeting will be followed soon by another meeting with local Latinos, Asians and other minority groups who could face barriers to voting should the ID proposal pass.
Last month, the Minnesota Legislature voted to approve a constitutional amendment proposal on this fall’s ballot that would require voters to show a photo ID, create a new system of “provisional balloting” and end election day “vouching” for voters without proof of residence.
The issue now is headed to voters to decide on Nov. 6 when general elections are held. Republican legislators in favor of requiring voters to show a photo ID have called it a common-sense measure to tighten up Minnesota’s voting system and verify voters’ identities. DFLers opposing the amendment have argued the requirement would do more harm than good. They say it wouldn’t prevent the small amount of election fraud, but it may prevent certain voters from exercising their right to vote.
Kiatamba says the goal is to build a coalition in the northwest suburbs to build momentum between now and November.
Mohammed Dukuly, a Liberian immigrant and an imam at Masjid An-Nur in Minneapolis, said he is concerned about the intentions behind the requirement. “Why was this legislation passed? That’s what we should be looking at,” he said.
The Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center area is home to a large concentration of immigrants from Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and several other African countries.

Someone can urinate on your leg, and try to tell you it’s raining, which is what the right is doing in how they characterize Voter ID, but it still is what it is.? From the Think Again Minnesota web site, which clearly connects the red?dots:
Who is behind voting restrictions?


A report by
TakeAction Minnesota, describes how Minnesota?s wealthiest financial institutions and their executives, lobbying groups, and PACs together with the Chamber of Commerce pooled funds and shared resources to enable a Republican takeover of the state legislature in 2010. The Chamber of Commerce, the Minnesota Business Partnership, and Minnesota Forward donated hundred of thousands of dollars to candidates who won seats in the MN House and Senate.

These Senators and Representatives are the ones that passed the referendum for a MN Constitutional Amendment that would prevent hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans from casting a vote. Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, called the Amendment to Restrict Voting ?An intentional effort to reduce the voting rolls in order to help corporate conservatives further expand their wealth and power.? 15 of the sponsors of the Amendment to Restrict Voting Rights are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of wealthy corporations and legislators that wrote model Voter Restriction legislation introduced in states throughout the nation. Read Brenton Mock’s article: “The Wealthy 1% that’s behind Minnesota’s Voter ID Push.”

You don’t have to be a genius to connect the dots; the right is anti immigrant.? Voter ID is anti immigrant.? Voter ID is a tactic to put conservatives in power and keep them there, even if it violates the most essential freedom of others, even if it violates the most fundamental, foundational basis of our nation.??It is transformational, but not in a good way.

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The Future of Digital Marketing in Retail | Business 2 Community

I wanted to give you a sneak peek into new research and a presentation I am giving at a couple of conferences in the next week. This information is based on the changes in retailing and the customer engagement strategy of old.

The ways in which email subscribers and social media fans interact with brands are evolving rapidly. Today?s struggles is not only to build this ?earned? audience but also to retain their attention in today?s noisy marketing landscape. Check out the insights and strategies obtained after analyzing the offline and online marketing behavior of NRF?s 100 fastest growing retailers.

The Future of Retail Marketing

View more presentations from Kyle Lacy

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Loader UPDATE: Tornado warning for northwestern Brevard and southeastern Volusia counties extended until 7:45 p.m.

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The Primary Guidelines When Purchasing For a Running and …

There could be greater curiosity to the features of a regular physical exercise routine for both grown-ups and also growing children. What happens to be lacking though is undoubtedly an awareness of the best running and also jogging footwear that could establish convenience to the person without resulting in harm from constant hitting on hard floors? The rules presented here are set up to enable you select the most effective footwear that will assist you run with excellent velocity and prevent you from gaining incidents.

What countless wannabe health and fitness lovers forget to understand is that all of us have different foot types. In addition, running and as well as gaits are simply as diverse and consequently many of us require a sneaker that is at least suitable to fix our special feet. It?s rather costly, not to mention uncomfortable, mistake to acquire a special offer just because it was endorsed by a celebrity sportsperson.

In order to get the best advice and also a selection of offers, it?s good to begin your pursuit in an unique sports sneaker store. Here you are almost certainly going to go for a sales rep that has the ability to examine your foot type and provide an effective recommendation.

Equilibrium when running and jogging is a vital factor and you have to look for the right promotions particularly if you possess a flat foot. Regarding the specifications of the shoes, you ought to look for such phrases as ?motion control? and ?stability? written on the shoe container. Flat footed sportsmen also need an over pronator to permit the feet move inwards when you sprint.

Balance when running and jogging is a fundamental consideration and you ought to search for the most suitable features especially if you have a flat foot. According to the descriptions of the footwear, you ought to look for such words as ?motion control? and ?stability? inscribed around the footwear package. Flat footed athletes also need an over pronator to enable the feet roll inwards when you jog.

Joggers with large arches are cautioned to constantly continue evaluating their feet. Regular workouts will lead to the arch inevitably reducing and this might mean the athlete requires a larger sneaker for this. Whatever the case though, athletes with high arches have feet that recede outwards when running and then the shoes will have to protect against injuries which can derive from such type of jogging.

Sportsmen with large arches ought to purchase bendable shoes that have a soft midsole to absorb shock of impacting a hard surface when at velocity. It means that when choosing; check out the shoe containers that comprise the inscriptions ?soft? or ?flexible?. These are the kinds with enough safeguard guarantees from accidental injuries that threaten athletes with high arched feet.

Regardless if you run like an expert or as a novice, you have to obtain the proper kind of sneakers. In this way, it will be possible to prevent yourself from the various accidents that affect people who take pleasure in running and jogging. The rules supplied here will allow you to pick just the right style of shoes that will be sufficient for your reasons.

The idealathletic apparel for running chicks can be located on the running chicks web site.

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Report: Thompson Out, Media Man Levinsohn In As Yahoo?s Interim CEO

YahoologoWe’re still confirming the news with Yahoo but AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher is reporting that as of tomorrow, Scott Thompson will be leaving his role as CEO of Yahoo, and getting replaced, on an interim basis, by Ross Levinsohn, currently the global media head. Thompson’s position has been mired in controversy since news broke the other week that he had lied about his qualifications — and that situation seemed to be going from bad to worse as the company failed to act on the news in any significant way — and Thompson remained in control. Some may even find the method in which he is finally going unsatisfactory: the company will apparently cite “personal reasons” for his departure, according to AllThingsD.

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How to integrate all your social networks into your your iPhone and iPad Contacts

I get to use most of the newest devices and test out all the platforms in my job. My “go-to” ?phone is the iPhone 4S, but there are features I see on other devices that I really wish were present in iOS. At the top of the list of wants is rich contact integration with my social networks.

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In First Report As A Public Company: Millennial Media?s Net Loss Widens To $4M, Revenues Up 53%

Screen Shot 2012-05-14 at 2.15.40 PMIn its first-ever earnings report as a publicly traded company, mobile advertising network Millennial Media said its net loss for the first quarter widened to $4 million?on increased costs. Revenues were up 53 percent year-over-year to $32.9 million. Millennial’s shares fell by 7.7 percent in after-hours trading, as the company’s annual forecast missed estimates.??For the year, Millennial is looking at $173 million and 176 million in?annual revenues, which would be up by?68 percent from the year before. But that’s actually lower than the?$202.8 million analysts were expecting on average, according to a Bloomberg survey.?When the company went public two months ago, its shares popped more than 100% on the first day and gave the company a nearly $2 billion valuation. Since then, they’ve settled and fallen by 67 percent, giving the company a market cap of $1.16 billion.

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Amazing photo shows ‘swarm’ of stars

Tens of thousands of stars can be seen clustered together in a new image.

A ball of some of the oldest stars in the universe looks like a swarm of bees in a new view from an observatory in Chile.?

Skip to next paragraph

The photo, released today (May 9), was taken by a European Southern Observatory telescope and shows 100,000 stars crowded together in Messier 55, a globular star cluster located roughly 17,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius (The Archer). It is one of about 160 globular clusters orbiting the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy.

Scientists suspect the stars in globular clusters formed from single clouds of gas that condensed to make stars around the same time, around 10 billion years ago. That makes these stars some of the most ancient known. As such, they provide valuable archaeological evidence about what the universe was like not long after the Big Bang is thought to have given rise to it.

“As this formative period was just a few billion years after the Big Bang, nearly all of the gas on hand was the simplest, lightest and most common in the cosmos: hydrogen, along with some helium and much smaller amounts of heavier chemical elements such as oxygen and nitrogen,” scientists with the European Southern Observatory wrote in a statement.

Astronomers estimate the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. In contrast, our own star, the sun, formed only 4.6 billion years ago, and is made of more complex, heavier elements that were around at this later epoch.

The new image was taken at the 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama desert.

The cluster Messier 55 (also known asNGC 6809) is easily visible through a small telescope, and stretches about two-thirds the width of the full moon across the sky. It was first observed in 1752 by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, and later added by another French astronomer, Charles Messier, into his famous catalog of bright objects.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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