MARLBOROUGH, Mass. – A Massachusetts father came home to a sparkling clean house — but he has no idea who tidied it.

Nate Roman told The Boston Globe he knew something was wrong when he and his son returned to their Marlborough home on May 15th and the 5-year-old noticed the back door was ajar.

The 44-year-old said he was worried someone was still inside, but instead of an intruder he found the smell of cleaning supplies still in the air, and every room except the kitchen immaculately clean.

Roman said his son’s room, which had been a mess that morning, was spotless – complete with a “very neatly folded rose” folded origami-style on his toilet paper.

Unsure of who had been in the house, Roman called the police. Marlborough police officials didn’t immediately return a call for comment, but told NBC News that they had no leads or suspects in the case.

Roman called the experience “creepy,” but thinks it may have been a housecleaning service with the wrong address. The Massachusetts dad said he likely left the back door unlocked, something he doesn’t plan on doing in the future.

https://fox4kc.com/2019/05/23/man-says-intruder-broke-into-his-home-cleaned-it-immaculately-and-then-left/

The child was skipping rocks at the zoo. Now a flamingo is dead.

A child struck a flamingo with a rock at an Illinois zoo, injuring it severely enough that staff determined the bird should be euthanized.

The child was skipping rocks into the bird’s habitat on Monday when one struck the animal, Jay Tetzloff, the director at the Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, Ill., said in an email.

“Unfortunately, staff determined the best course of action given the animal’s injuries was to euthanize the bird,” he said. “This was a truly unfortunate accident, and we are working with the juvenile’s family to move forward.”


He declined to provide the age of the child when asked.

The story was first reported by the Pantagraph, which said that the bird’s leg was broken.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/05/22/child-was-just-skipping-rocks-zoo-now-flamingo-is-dead/?utm_term=.a14632751f0f

Saudi Arabia will execute three prominent scholars who are being held on multiple charges of "terrorism" shortly after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

One of the men was arrested in September last year shortly after he tweeted a prayer for reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar amid the neighbours' diplomatic crisis.


All three scholars - cleric Sheikh Salman al-Odah, author Awad al-Qarni and broadcaster Ali al-Omari - have a massive presence online, with al-Odah's Twitter account having more than 13million followers.

Saudi Arabia, Britain's ally in the Middle East, is one of the world's most prolific executioners behind only China and Iran, according to Amnesty International.



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The timing has been dictated by escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia's ally US and its rival Iran.

The first source said: "They (Saudi Arabia) are encouraged to do it, especially with the tension in the Gulf at the moment.

"Washington wants to please the Saudis at the moment.

"The (Saudi) government calculates that this enables them to get away with this."


Saudi critic Ali al-Ahmad, head of the US-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, said the executions would be a "crime to terrorise the Saudi citizens into submission".

He told Al-Jazeera: "The Saudi court system is more or less a kangaroo court system."

A Mississippi lawmaker was arrested this weekend after police say he drunkenly punched his wife in the face because she didn’t undress quickly enough when he wanted to have sex.

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Police responded to a domestic violence call on Saturday night at the home of state Rep. Doug McLeod (R), the Biloxi Sun Herald reported Monday. When deputies arrived, they say the 58-year-old representative for Lucedale was intoxicated, slurring his speech and stumbling around the house. Police found McLeod’s wife and another unidentified woman on the second floor of the house, frightened and shaking, according to the report.

McLeod’s wife said he “just snapped” and struck her in the face after she didn’t get her clothes off quickly enough to have sex, the police report says. The punch bloodied her nose and left blood on the couple’s bed and floor.

McLeod’s wife ran to the other woman’s room for safety and the two locked themselves inside, police say. The other woman said McLeod began banging on the locked door and threatened to kill her dog if she didn’t let him in.

The state’s House speaker has already called for Rep. Douglas McLeod (R) to resign after he was arrested on a charge of drunkenly hitting his wife.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mississippi-lawmaker-punched-wife-in-face-for-not-undressing-quickly-enough-for-sex_n_5ce53e05e4b0547bd130004a

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/22/us/dog-buried-with-owner-trnd/index.html



Emma, a healthy Shih Tzu mix, was euthanized to fulfill her late owner's dying wish that the dog be put down -- and then laid to rest with her.

The dog arrived at the Chesterfield County Animal Shelter in Chesterfield, Virginia, on March 8 after her owner's death, where she stayed for two weeks. During that time, the shelter was in contact with the executor of the dead woman's estate trying to keep the dog alive.

"We did suggest they could sign the dog over on numerous occasions, because it's a dog we could easily find a home for and re-home," said Carrie Jones, manager of Chesterfield Animal Services told CNN affiliate WWBT.

On March 22, the executor of the owner's estate came to the shelter to get the dog, a spokeswoman for the Chesterfield County Police told CNN. The shelter again offered to have the dog signed over and be adopted out, but the executor declined.

Emma was then taken to a local veterinarian, euthanized and taken to a pet cremation center in Richmond, Virginia, WWBT reported. Her ashes were placed in an urn and returned to the representative of the woman's estate.

Revealed: 21,000 US women order abortion pills online in past six months
Three-quarters of mail order requests came from states with strict anti-abortion laws

Thousands of American women have obtained abortion pills online in the past six months, according to figures that highlight the escalating difficulty in accessing safe abortions on the ground.

Data shared with the Guardian reveals that 21,000 women requested abortion medication between October 2018 and March this year from the charity Aid Access. Between a third and a half of the women who made the requests were then sent abortion pills in the mail. The majority of the recipients live in states with hostile abortion policies.

Women who obtained pills online described desperation at being unable to access affordable medical services locally, with some saying they had considered extreme measures to end their pregnancies.

“The reality on the ground is already so desperate,” said Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Aid Access, which provides online prescriptions for abortion pills that are dispatched to the US by mail. “If a woman cannot access a normal abortion in the US they will do anything to end their pregnancy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/revealed-21000-us-women-order-abortion-pills-in-six-months

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article230266884.html

Thuoy Phok expected his meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be brief — so brief that he hadn’t eaten breakfast. A plumber from Tacoma, Phok planned on returning to work later that day.

“I thought maybe it was good news,” Phok, 43, recalls of the Sept. 10, 2018, meeting in Tukwila, taking off his baseball cap and running a calloused hand over his balding head.

Phok, a Cambodian refugee whose family escaped genocide and arrived in the United States in 1980, had received a notice summoning him a few weeks earlier. He said the letter told him only that federal immigration officials — who he’d been checking in with regularly over the last 18 years — wanted to see him.

The meeting, it soon became clear, would be a one-sided affair. For Phok, the results would be life-changing.

It was brief, lasting 10 to 15 minutes. When it was over, Phok said he was taken to a holding cell. He’d remain detained in various immigration facilities, he told The News Tribune, for the next three months.

Phok said he learned federal immigration officials wanted to deport him to Cambodia, a country he’s never seen, because of a crime he committed more than two decades ago. The 1997 conviction resulted in an active immigration removal order against him.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/20/trump-talks-immigration-invites-man-wearing-border-wall-suit-stage/3749188002/




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https://www.newser.com/story/275452/movement-aims-to-kick-chicago-out-of-illinois.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

NEWSER) – Cook County, which includes Chicago, and the five urban counties surrounding it are largely Democratic. But though Illinois has a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in the state Senate and House, the rest of the state is increasingly Republican, a political professor emeritus says. That may explain why there's a growing movement to split Illinois into two states. Republican state lawmaker Brad Halbrook recently got big applause at an Effingham, Ill., rally when he talked about a bill he reintroduced in February to do just that, reports the Washington Post, which takes a look at the movement that includes grass-roots groups with names like Illinois Separation and New Illinois. Supporters say Chicago has too much influence in Illinois politics; Halbrook went on Fox & Friends Monday to make that argument and call for a "new Illinois."

Some supporters also insist it's not just about politics: While Chicago has a lot of economic power, "one in four jobs [in the state] is related to agriculture, so there is another economic driver," Halbrook says, noting that the rest of Illinois could hold its own economically. The co-founder of New Illinois adds that the issue isn't a "red, blue, Republican and Democrat thing. It’s an urban versus rural thing." The founder of the Illinois Separation blog is calling for counties to introduce nonbinding resolutions to their ballots in an effort to "show the legislature that this is truly what the people want"; one of the state's 102 counties has already decided to do so, and the blog founder says many others are considering it. Experts say the urban vs. rural divide has led to similar movements in California and New York. The Illinois bill has "a long way to go," per the Post; Fox goes further and says it has "virtually no chance of passing."

https://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/21/lawmakers-ok-abortion-decriminalization-bill/3757940002/

The Nevada Assembly has passed a wide-ranging bill to decriminalize abortion procedures, moving the measure one step closer to the governor's desk on a day of nationwide protests against a wave of abortion restrictions enacted in other states.

No Republicans joined the near-unanimous bloc of Assembly Democrats who supported Senate Bill 179, also known as the Trust Nevada Women Act. The measure passed to polite nods of approval from pro-choice advocates gathered for a Tuesday rally in Carson City. It now heads back to the state Senate, where lawmakers will have to concur on a minor amendment before sending the bill to Gov. Steve Sisolak.

SB 179 would repeal existing prohibitions on self-induced abortions and drugs that cause a miscarriage.

The bill also strikes a requirement that makes doctors explain “the physical and emotional implications” of an abortion. If passed, doctors would be allowed to simply “describe the nature and consequences of the procedure” in a patient-signed consent form. They would no longer have to record the age of the patient seeking the procedure.