NRA’s LaPierre fends off backlash, wins re-election as CEO
INDIANAPOLIS — Wayne LaPierre, the fiery public face of the National Rifle Association for decades, fended off a backlash inside the organization over its finances and direction, winning re-election Monday as the gun lobby’s CEO.
The move, announced on the NRA magazine’s American Rifleman website, came during a closed-door meeting of the group’s board of directors.
It was unclear if the debate that has roiled the 5-million-member organization in recent weeks would still lead to significant changes in its operations. Board members did not immediately return messages for comment; their phones had been confiscated before entering the meeting room.
The board also elected a slate of leaders, including Carolyn Meadows as president. She bypassed the person who traditionally would have been next in line to become president.
For the past two decades, the NRA has faced criticism from among its ranks that its leaders had become corrupted by the millions of dollars flowing into its coffers. The criticism has included allegations of self-dealing and excessive personal spending. Now the pressure has increased, with New York’s attorney general opening an investigation that could threaten the group’s tax-exempt status.
Far-right in Spain sweeps town with anti-migrant message
EL EJIDO, Spain — Surrounded by miles of greenhouses where migrant workers grow fruit and vegetables for the rest of Europe, this sleepy town on the sunbaked Mediterranean coast has become a beachhead for the arrival of the far-right in Spain, the latest country to be hit by the wave of nationalist populism sweeping the continent.
El Ejido was where the upstart far-right Vox party made its most impressive gains during Sunday’s national elections, with its promises to defend Spain’s unity and quash the separatist push in northeastern Catalonia, while also railing against the women’s movement and animal-rights activists who want to ban traditional Spanish bull-fighting.
That message helped power Vox to 10% of the vote nationwide, giving Spain’s parliament its first lawmakers from the extreme right since the 1980s.
But it was in El Ejido, a town of some 85,000 residents with a large number of overseas workers key to its agriculture industry, that Vox struck its biggest victory with another of its banner causes: halting illegal immigration. In El Ejido 30 percent of the vote went to Vox, making the party the biggest victor in town.
The day after the election there were no Spanish flags hanging from the balconies of the town’s white-and-pastel-colored buildings, and no gatherings in its public squares. There was no sign of campaigning anywhere as residents of European and African descent strolled along its clean, tree-lined streets.
No arrests day after chaotic shooting attack in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — Baltimore police detectives are trying to figure out whether a chaotic shooting attack on a crowd enjoying a weekend cookout might be competition between underworld groups, a triggerman seeking vengeance or another kind of senseless strike.
But one thing’s for certain: In a city accustomed to gun violence, the Sunday afternoon shooting that killed one and wounded seven others in a gritty West Baltimore neighborhood barely stands out in a sea of similar shootings.
“I think this weekend’s shooting unfortunately exemplifies the kind of standard violence, quote-unquote, we’re seeing in Baltimore,” said Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University.
And with no arrests a day after the bloodshed at the crowded cookouts, police investigators might again be struggling to overcome Baltimore’s strong anti-informant culture that chronically makes eyewitnesses to shootings and other crimes too afraid or simply unwilling to come forward.
“It is only with community help that we will be able to identify who did this and hold them accountable,” said Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, who said the shooting appeared to be “extremely targeted.”
John Singleton, maker of ‘Boyz N the Hood,’ dies at 51
NEW YORK — Director John Singleton, who made one of Hollywood’s most memorable debuts with the Oscar-nominated “Boyz N the Hood” and continued over the following decades to probe the lives of black communities in his native Los Angeles and beyond, has died. He was 51.
Singleton’s family said Monday that he died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, after being taken off life support. Earlier this month, the director suffered a major stroke.
Singleton was in his early 20s, just out of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, when he wrote, directed and produced “Boyz N the Hood.” Based on Singleton’s upbringing and shot in his old neighborhood, the low-budget production starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube and centered on three friends in South Central Los Angeles, where college aspirations competed with the pressures of gang life. “Boyz N the Hood” was a critical and commercial hit, given a 20-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and praised as a groundbreaking extension of rap to the big screen, a realistic and compassionate take on race, class, peer pressure and family. Singleton would later call it a “rap album on film.”
For many, the 1991 release captured the explosive mood in Los Angeles in the months following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King. “Boyz N the Hood” also came out at a time when, thanks to the efforts to Spike Lee and others, black films were starting to get made by Hollywood after a long absence.
Singleton became the first black director to receive an Academy Award nomination, an honor he would say was compensation for the academy’s snubbing Lee and “Do the Right Thing” two years earlier, and was nominated for best screenplay. (“Thelma & Louise” won instead.) At 24, he was also the youngest director nominee in Oscar history.
Beluga whale with Russian harness raises alarm in Norway
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A beluga whale found with a tight harness that appeared to be Russian made has raised the alarm of Norwegian officials and prompted speculation that the animal may have come from a Russian military facility.
Joergen Ree Wiig of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries says “Equipment St. Petersburg” is written on the harness strap, which features a mount for an action camera.
He said Monday fishermen in Arctic Norway last week reported the tame white cetacean with a tight harness swimming around. On Friday, fisherman Joar Hesten, aided by the Ree Wiig, jumped into the frigid water to remove the harness.
Ree Wiig said “people in Norway’s military have shown great interest” in the harness.
Audun Rikardsen, a professor at the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsoe, northern Norway, believes “it is most likely that Russian Navy in Murmansk” is involved. Russia has major military facilities in and around Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, in the far northwest of Russia.
