Lawrence worker charged with making threats

Lawrence worker charged with making threats

A Lawrence city employee and supporter of Mayor William Lantigua is facing criminal charges after allegedly threatening to kill the man leading the effort to recall the mayor.

Antonio Bueno is scheduled to be arraigned next month on charges of assault and battery and threatening to kill the Rev. Edwin Rodriguez.

The charges were lodged last week after the 72-year-old Bueno and Rodriguez went before a clerk magistrate, who ruled there was enough evidence to move forward.

Rodriguez says Bueno bumped into him and threatened to “put a bullet in your head” last month when he took a picture of a city vehicle Bueno was in double-parked and idling outside a bank.

Rodriguez tells The Eagle-Tribune he’s glad the legal process is taking its course.

Bueno has previously apologized.

 Kerry: GOP  ‘ideologues’ to blame for FAA shutdown

The same day Congress reached a bipartisan compromise to reauthorize Federal Aviation Administration operations Sen. John Kerry blamed what he called a “small group of Republican ideologues” for the partial shutdown that has idled 74,000 transportation and construction workers.

Kerry told reporters last week before the deal was announced he’d vote to reauthorize the agency “instantaneously” if House Republicans didn’t add amendments overturning a rule that allows airline and railroad employees to form a union by a simple majority vote, or cut $16 million in service subsidies to rural communities.

Kerry called the proposed cuts “purely retribution” against lawmakers supporting workers’ rights.

The deal would allow the Senate to approve a House bill extending the FAA’s operating authority through mid-September. It includes the rural subsidy cuts but allows the Obama administration to waive them.

Mass. man among SEALs killed in Afghanistan

BARNSTABLE, Mass.  —  A Navy SEAL from Massachusetts who was among the 30 Americans who died in helicopter crash in Afghanistan is being remembered as a kind and gregarious man who lived his dream when he joined the elite force.

Kevin Houston was a 1994 graduate of Barnstable High School on Cape Cod, where he was captain of the football team his senior year.

He joined the Navy after graduation and became a SEAL in 1999.

Christopher Kelly became Houston’s mentor and father-figure. The Vietnam veteran says Houston used to make time to visit Cape Cod when he had leave even though his family was in Chesapeake, Va.

Houston’s mother, Jan Brown, told the Cape Cod Times that her son was born to be a SEAL.

The 36-year-old Houston leaves behind a wife and three children.

Gates explores black culture in Latin America

This spring, Henry Louis Gates Jr. produced a four-episode series for PBS tracing the legacy of the slave trade in six Caribbean and Latin American countries. “Black in Latin America” is the book companion to the television series of the same title.

The reason for Gates’ journey is a startling fact: Of the roughly 11 million Africans who survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade, just 450,000 made it to the United States. The rest were dispersed throughout the region and Gates, renowned for his African American studies, wanted to know how their descendants live now.

More than an outline of the research featured in the series, Gates’ book is a thoughtful travelogue through Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.

It explores black history in these six countries, which Gates visited in 2010, but it doesn’t linger in the past. Through music, cuisine, art, dance, politics, religion and language, Gates finds living links to Africa. He also finds the other legacy of the slave trade, a sometimes subtle but persistent racism despite pledges of multiculturalism.

Gates’ academic questions about race stem from conversations in cafés, hotels, museums, street parties, nightclubs, taxi cabs  —  the casual places where anyone goes on vacation.

“Black in Latin America” would be an interesting companion to any guidebook for the Caribbean and Latin America, as it reveals not just a hidden history but also an evolving sense of identity.

Associated Press