Red Cross: Kenya church attacks kill 17 near Somali border

Explosions targeting two churches in Kenya near the Somali border killed at least 17 people, the Red Cross said, in the latest spate of attacks on the East African nation.

The blasts injured at least 40 others, the Red Cross said, though regional deputy police chief Philip Ndolo put the figure at 25.

A Catholic church and the African Inland Church were both attacked by people wearing balaclavas and bearing guns and grenades, Ndolo said. The attacks took place about 10 a.m. local time.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the incidents in the town of Garissa. Most of the dead were from the African Inland Church, Ndolo said, including two police officers who were standing guard.

The injured were taken to the Garissa Provincial General Hospital, about a kilometer away, he said.

"We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms," Ndolo said. "The Kenyan police call for members of the public to come forward with information that will lead to the arrest of the responsible persons."

Witnesses have told authorities they saw two attackers at the Catholic church and four at the African Inland Church, he said.

Violence have escalated since Kenyan forces invaded neighboring Somalia last year to battle Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, which it blamed for kidnappings of foreigners in the nation.

When Kenya pursued the militants, the terror group threatened retaliatory attacks, saying it considers the incursion an affront to Somalia's sovereignty.

Since the invasion in October, Kenya has been hit by a series of grenade attacks blamed on al-Shabaab or its supporters.

The grenade attacks have mostly targeted the capital of Nairobi, the port city of Mombasa and northeastern towns and refugee camps near the border with Somalia.

Garissa is close to the Somali border and the Dadaab refugee camp, where gunmen kidnapped four aid workers and killed a driver last week.

Al-Shabaab is linked to al Qaeda and has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

U.S. officials have issued warnings of potential attacks in the country since the incursion.

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Activists: Over 14,000 killed in Syrian uprising; more than half in last 4 months

More than half of the over 14,000 people killed since the Syrian crisis began 16 months ago were slaughtered in the past four months, according to tallies from opposition activists.

June was a particularly gruesome month, with 2,386 people killed compared to 1,196 in May, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria said.

The bloodshed continued Sunday, with at least 20 people killed, according to the LCC. The dead include several people who died from injuries sustained in a blast at a funeral procession in Zamalka on Saturday, the group said.

"Doctor Jamal Tabarneen was martyred by the regime's army gunfire while he was helping in resuscitating the injured in Zamalka's explosion," the LCC said.

A day after world diplomats agreed on a new plan to help end the violence, the LCC slammed the efforts and dismissed them as superficial.

"The new agreement provides vague language which is open to interpretation," the opposition network said in a statement Sunday. "This provides yet another opportunity for the regime's thugs to play their favorite game in utilizing time in order to stop the popular Syrian Revolution and extinguish it with violence and massacres across Syria."

U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan invited diplomats from the U.N. Security Council and envoys from Turkey, the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab League to the global meeting in Geneva on Saturday.

Those at the meeting agreed that the first step should be a renewed commitment to a cease-fire by both the regime and opposition fighters, as well as the implementation of Annan's six-point peace plan without waiting for the actions of others, Annan said.

Read the final communiqué from world diplomats (pdf)

But a key to the process will be a transitional government, which Annan said could include members of the current Syrian regime. That makes it possible for President Bashar al-Assad to be a part of the transition, but Annan pointed out it is the Syrians who will decide the make-up.

"I think people who have blood on their hands are hopefully not the only people in Syria," Annan said. "I think the government will have to be formed through discussion, negotiations, and by mutual consent. And I will doubt that the Syrians -- who have fought so hard for their independence, to be able to say how they're governed and who governs them -- will select people with blood on their hands to lead them."

But the LCC said it was "gravely concerned" by what could happen in a transitional period with President Bashar al-Assad's military and security forces.

There are "core conflicts between the Revolutionaries and Bashar al-Assad's pillars and symbols, whose hands are stained with blood and must be excluded from the transitional phase," the opposition group said. "No Syrian will accept a regime waiver of responsibility over crimes and violations against human rights."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the plan makes clear the Syrian president cannot stay in power.

"Assad will still have to go. He will never pass the mutual consent test, given the blood on his hands," she said.

The agreement in Geneva also calls on the Syrian government to release detainees and allow journalists access to the country. The right to peaceful demonstrations must be respected, Annan said.

Clinton said the U.N. Security Council should endorse the plan, thus allowing the possibility of sanctions against Syria if the requirements aren't met.

Russia, widely viewed as a key ally to the Syrian regime, said the agreement should not be interpreted as outside powers imposing a transitional government on the Syrians. That process must come from inside Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

As diplomats plotted their next strategy Saturday, a large funeral procession made its way through a Damascus suburb, clapping and chanting loud slogans against the government.

The man they were burying was wrapped in a Syrian revolutionary flag and had allegedly been killed by government forces. The crowd waved additional flags and shouted for freedom.

Then there was a deafening explosion.

In what opposition activists say was a government-organized car bombing, 85 people were killed and more than 300 people were wounded, most of them in critical condition.

Activists posted videos to YouTube purportedly showing the moment of the bombing in Zamalka and its aftermath.

After the loud crack and orange flash of the explosion come moaning and screams of "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") from every direction. As the brown dust clears, the carnage becomes visible: charred bodies, missing limbs and pools of blood.

The flag-wrapped body of the funeral victim was lying on the ground.

The security forces even fired on the crowd in the bombing's aftermath, killing a doctor who was trying to help the wounded, said an opposition activists named Bassem, who asked that his last name not be used.

The 85 slain in Zamalka were among 174 people killed across the country Saturday, the LCC said.

CNN cannot independently confirm the reports of casualties or violence because Syria restricts access by international journalists.

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Mexico set to pick new president

Mexicans headed to the polls to vote Sunday in what officials have called "the largest and most complex election day" in the country's history.

Four candidates are vying for the presidency. Voters will also cast ballots in congressional contests and, in six states, gubernatorial races.

"Never in Mexican democracy have so many posts been at play in the same popular election," Federal Election Institute President Leonardo Valdes said in a statement.

More than 2,100 federal, state and local offices will be decided by Sunday's vote, the institute said.

For the first time, more than 79 million people were registered to vote, according to the institute. Among them are 3.5 million young people who will vote for the first time, the institute said.

Nationwide, authorities said there would be more than 143,000 polling stations and more than 13,000 accredited observers.

Mexicans also cast ballots from beyond the country's borders. On Saturday, election officials they had received 40,737 absentee ballots from Mexicans living abroad.

Voters will elect new governors in the states of Chiapas, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos, Tabasco and Yucatan. In Mexico City, the nation's capital, residents will elect a new mayor.

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The Book "Valley of Dreams and Shadows" Reveals a Reality About Farmworkers Many Don't Accept

FRESNO, California -- "One of the problems is that in some supermarkets they report where the peaches they sell are grown, but they say nothing about those who harvest them" explains Ken Light during the presentation of the book, Valley of Shadows and Dreams (Heyday, 2012) on Saturday, June 2nd, in Fresno. This is precisely the book's purpose: to show the lives of Valley agricultural laborers and their families.
The work is a photographic essay by Ken Light, professor of photojournalism at the University of California at Berkeley, with texts by his wife, writer Melanie Light and with a preface by Thomas Steinbeck, son of the famous author John Steinbeck (1902- 1968 ), author of the very famous book "The Grapes of Wrath", which narrates the miseries of immigrants from the Dustbowl, who came west to the Central Valley of California during the Great Depression of 1929-1930. The misery of the laborers has not changed since then, according to the authors of the book, although the laborers are not from Oklahoma anymore, as in Steinbeck's novel, but primarily from Mexico. And such misery has numbers: while a farm worker makes around $16,000 per year, his/her labor contributes to a wealthy industry of $13 billions in the Valley (in 2002, according to the American Farmland Trust.) "Americans have a tradition of being innovators. That's why it seems so amazing that in the Valley business continues as usual" said Melanie, referring to the labor situation and the lives of farm workers. Other photographs in the book show abandoned and empty housing developments, as if they are suspended in time, places that were about to become homes or neighborhoods. They were built hastily by developers during the height of the construction boom and abandoned during the economic crisis in 2007. These developments which encroached on the agricultural land, are now muted ghosts of an illusion of the consumption and "progress" that spectacularly collapsed, affecting the entire Valley and now the global community. The book, "Valley of Dreams and Shadows" has 154 pages and over 110 beautifully printed photos. It is not a collection of pictures accompanied by texts, but a careful and critical photographic and written narrative essay that took five years to complete. The authors also try to show the dreams of the inhabitants of the valley, and how things seem not to change. The forces that are opposed to social and political change didn't cahnge their point of view with the appearance of the book."Here comes another photographer from an enlightened metropolis to focus on the ills of the Valley. With sugarplum dreams of Dorothea Lange (1895-1965, famous photojournalist who made portraits of peasants, displaced and marginalized, including those in the Central Valley) and Grapes of Wrath importance dancing through his head, Ken Light is ready to tell the world about his ride on what a Fresno State photography professor calls the "poverty tourism circuit," ... documenting the usual suspects of awfulness: poverty, environmental degradation, vanishing cultures, home foreclosures, growing economic disparity...." wrote Donald Munro, Entertainment columnist from The Fresno Bee on May 29 (http:// fresnobeehive.com/2012/05/our_valley_thro.html) He admits not even having seen the book but does refer to the contents of the book ironically in his article titled Our Valley Through the Eyes of a Stranger on the Fresno Bee web site. Public comments to this column were more measured and dignified than the text of Munro. One commentator invited Munro to attend the book launch and talk with the authors. The invitation came from Myrna Martinez Nateras, of the Pan Valley Institute (www.afsc.org), an organization that co-sponsored the book authors' visit to Fresno. Munro did not attend, nor did the newspaper, The Fresno Bee, cover the event. This attitude did not surprise the audience of about 50 people who attended the release of "Valley of Dreams and Shadows" in the local Fresno Arte Americas. Hugo Morales, director of Radio Bilingue (www.radiobilingue.org), and who moderated the dialogue between authors and the public, recounted his experience when he met with a senior executive of an agricultural business in the valley asking for a donation to an education project for the field workers. "They said no, it did not seem right that workers become educated because then they would leave the field and companies like ours need workers," said Morales. "They do not want anything to change here." This attitude of not changing anything was evident in the 90's, when the University of California looked at the possibility of building its tenth campus in Fresno, in the heart of the Valley. A team of "notables" evaluated the proposal and rejected it! Finally, in 1995, a new campus began to be built in Merced, 60 miles north of Fresno. How is it possible to reject such an idea in an area with high unemployment and low education? Surely because of the fear that our Valley might be seen by many strange eyes, such as Munro wrote about? These trends are reflected in all its complexity in the powerful images of Ken Light, who is no stranger to the Valley. His interest in documenting the lives of farm workers started in 1970, when he settled in the Bay from the East. At that time the farmworkers movement led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta was still intense. "It was an incredible story that I felt had to be documented," explains Ken. Through the years, he produced several books devoted to farm workers and immigrants in general "With These Hands" (1986) and "To the Promised Land" (1988) "I was working with Ken a few years ago, in Sinaloa, Mexico," said Morales. "The intensity of his art is incredible." The work behind the project, mostly invisible to the reader, is also intense. Melanie made several trips to the Valley and discovered issues that would lead them to the development of the book. She recalled her experience of seeing the birth and death records in Visalia in the local public library, while researching for an article about the photographer Hansel Mieth (1009-1998) who worked photographing in the valley during the Depression. The records showed the amazing ethnic diversity that even then was part of the fabric of Valley communities. On her drive home she found that this visit had piqued her interest and literally opened her eyes, she was no longer just another Coastal California driving down Highway 99, but a Californian citizen seeing many issues of the Valley in a new way and wanting to tell others, and delve into the myriad of important social issues that she discovered like water, undocumented workers, industrial agriculture, pollution, governance, democracy and who's in charge, all of which are written about in the book. Melanie and Ken also traveled to Fresno's City Hall to begin the book project on May 1st, 2006, the day of the national Immigration march, to photograph and interview documented and undocumented workers. Some of those images are also in the book. Melanie learned about the struggles of farmworkers throughout California's history, some little known, even in the Valley. For example after the Great Depression of 1929- 39, the laborers were receiving less than half the salary before the 30's economic crisis. "In 1933 and 1934 there was protests and strikes which at the end of, workers were able to get paid a little more," said Melanie. Then Ken compared the agricultural work with that of the coal miners, who dig up coal from the earth, and how the profit and wealth this created was enjoyed by others, and then the profits leave the area; and the workers and land is left impoverished. Their impressions and their sensitivity, reflected in some remarkable photos and text, cannot be the work of a stranger to the Valley and those who live here. Not surprisingly, the authors dedicated the book "To those who still live in the shadows but dream of justice."

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Latino Vote Coveted In 2012 Election

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In New Mexico, Tomasita Maestas says she will pick the presidential candidate who has the best plan to fix education and the economy.
In Arizona, Mexican immigrant Carlos Gomez backs Republican Mitt Romney because he's more conservative on social issues than his Democratic opponent.
In Miami, Colombia native Luna Lopez probably will vote for President Barack Obama now that he's decided to halt the deportation of many illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The reasons that Hispanics give for choosing between Obama and Romney are just as diverse as the countries that they or their ancestors once called home, suggesting there's no one-size-fits-all approach to courting the nation's fastest-growing minority group.
The Latino vote isn't monolithic or, really, a voting bloc. It includes a range of people with varying opinions. Among them are Republican-leaning Cubans in Florida, new Mexican immigrants and longtime descendants of Spanish settlers in the Southwest, and Democratic-tilting Puerto Ricans in the East.
Immigration policy would seem to be the natural top issue for these voters, except that nearly two-thirds of Hispanics are born in the U.S. Their priorities are the same as the general population – jobs, the economy, education and health care.
"We need to see more jobs here, that's my No. 1 priority and what I want to hear about," says Stefan Gonzalez, an almost 18-year-old from Denver, whose heritage includes Spanish, Mexican and Native American roots. Gonzalez, who works in a suburban Denver pawn shop, says he plans to vote for Obama this fall.
In Albuquerque, Ernest Gurule, an 84-year-old whose ancestors settled New Mexico in 1580, says his main issue is the federal health care plan upheld by the Supreme Court last week, and that he'll back Obama in part because of it. Also, the Democrat, adds: "It's too expensive to change horses midstream."
Democrats and Republicans are in a fierce race to figure out how to best reach Hispanics.

In the short term, these voters could decide the outcome in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere. The long-term stakes are even bigger because Hispanics are projected to account for roughly 30 percent of the population by 2050, doubling in size and, potentially changing the national political landscape.
Like most minorities, Hispanics traditionally have leaned Democratic. But a recent Pew Research poll indicates that Hispanics also are the fastest-growing group of independent voters, with 46 percent now shunning a party label compared with 31 percent six years ago. Such results only underscore how diverse Hispanics are and the challenges for the political parties.
"It is going to be a very hard fight to win," says Jennifer Korn, the executive director of the Republican-based Hispanic Leadership Network, which was established to help bring more Hispanic voters to the GOP. "The more they assimilate, the more sophisticated they become and that's when they start dividing between parties."
For now at least, Obama and his Democrats have an advantage, with the latest polls showing 65 percent of Hispanics back Obama and 25 percent back Romney.
The Democrats' campaign has worked to keep that edge, helped by Obama's new immigration policy and the Supreme Court's decision to side with the administration on most of an Arizona law that many immigrants viewed as overly harsh.
His campaign has spent the past year setting up offices with grassroots outreach to Hispanic communities in the Southwest, as well as in important states such as Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Mindful of the diversity among Hispanics, Obama has custom-tailored his outreach, including tweaking Spanish dialect for different regions.
For instance, in Florida the campaign has two distinct outreach plans. One focuses on Cuban-Americans in Miami who tend to lean Republican and are less concerned about immigration; the other speaks to traditionally Democratic Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens from birth, as well as new immigrants from Central America.
Obama also has promoted the new health law, which can resonate in states such as New Mexico, which has one of the highest rates of uninsured in the country.
Romney has plenty of ground to make up after a bruising primary season filled with tough rhetoric that even Republicans acknowledge turned off many Hispanics. He recently established a Hispanic advisory group that includes top elected Republican Hispanics.
During the primaries, the former Massachusetts governor pledged to veto legislation, known as the DREAM Act, that would give a path to citizenship to young immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children but have since attended school or served in the military. He has since toned down his anti-immigration stance, which included self-deportation, telling a Hispanic leadership gathering in Miami that he would address illegal immigration "in a civil but resolute manner."
Alexandra Franceschi, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee's Hispanic effort, made clear that the GOP outreach will focus broadly on the economy. "Hispanics are Americans and are facing the same issues as everyone else, chronically high unemployment, lower pay and rising health care costs," she said.
Republicans have noted that under Obama, the Hispanic unemployment rate is higher than the national average. And Hispanics' median household income fell 7 percent between 2000 and 2010, from $43,100 to $40,000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
What drives Hispanics to vote depends on who's asked.
Lopez, a 20-year-old new citizen and college student from Colombia, cites Obama's policy shift on deportation as reason she's likely to pick him when she casts her first vote in the country.
"The issue didn't directly affect me, but I have many family members and friends who it did," she said.
In Arizona, Gomez, a 43-year-old priest who immigrated to Phoenix 15 years ago, backed Obama's policy change. But Gomez says immigration isn't his priority because "immigrants will continue coming across the border no matter what we do." He says he's voting for Romney because, like him, the Republican opposes gay marriage and abortion rights.
In Albuquerque, Maestas, a 37-year-old mother and office manager, is focused intently on pocketbook issues. Immigration, she says, is only important to "a certain point" because "If you can't take care of your own, how are you going to take care of others?"

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