Bill Clinton Would Be 'In Charge of Revitalizing the Economy,' Hillary Clinton says

Hillary Clinton has always made known that she wants Bill Clinton to have some kind of role in the White House should she become president, but over the past few weeks she's begun to reveal more about what exactly that would be.

During a campaign event in Fort Mitchell today, the Democratic presidential candidate was more blunt than ever about what her husband's role could be in a future Clinton administration — saying she plans to to put the former president "in charge of economic revitalization."

"My husband, who I'm going to put in charge of revitalizing the economy, cause you know he knows how to do it," Clinton told the crowd at an outdoor organizing rally. "And especially in places like coal country and inner cities and other parts of our country that have really been left out."

Clinton made similar remarks earlier this month during her first visit to Kentucky, a state where Bill Clinton remains popular among the largely white, working class voters.

"I've told my husband he's got to come out of retirement and be in charge of this because you know he’s got more ideas a minute than anybody I know," she said, while talking about manufacturing and jobs.

Over the course of the campaign, Clinton has repeatedly said she would seek her husband's advice if she takes office.

Last month on ABC's "The View," she had this to say when asked about how she sees his role: "I think he'll, I hope he'll have a lot of involvement in starting the economy to really take off."

And last year, in an interview on MSNBC, she said this: "He's a great adviser and he knows as much about the economy and job creation as anyone I could talk to."

Man Receives First Penis Transplant in the United States

A man whose penis was removed because of cancer has
received the first penis transplant in the United States, at
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Thomas Manning, 64, a bank courier from Halifax, Mass.,
underwent the 15-hour transplant operation on May 8 and
9. The organ came from a deceased donor.

“I want to go back to being who I was,” Mr. Manning said
on Friday in an interview in his hospital room. Sitting up in
a chair, happy to be out of bed for the first time since the
operation, he said he felt well and had experienced hardly
any pain.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Dr. Curtis L. Cetrulo, a
plastic and reconstructive surgeon and a leader of the
surgical team. “It’s uncharted waters for us.”

The surgery is experimental, part of a research program
with the ultimate goal of helping combat veterans with
severe pelvic injuries, as well as cancer patients and
accident victims.

If all goes as planned, normal urination should be possible
for Mr. Manning within a few weeks, and sexual function in
weeks to months, Dr. Cetrulo said.

Mr. Manning welcomed questions and said he wanted to
speak out publicly to help dispel the shame and stigma
associated with genital cancers and injuries, and to let other
men know there was hope of having normal anatomy
restored.

“Don’t hide behind a rock,” he said.
He said he was not quite ready to take a close look at his
transplant.
Another patient, his penis destroyed by burns in a car
accident, will receive a transplant as soon as a matching
donor becomes available, Dr. Cetrulo said.

Surgeons at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
are also planning to perform penis transplants, and have
had a combat veteran, injured in Afghanistan, on the
waiting list for several months.

Dr. Cetrulo estimated the cost at $50,000 to $75,000. Both
hospitals are paying for the procedures, and the doctors are
donating their time.

Worldwide, only two other penis transplants have been
reported: a failed one in China in 2006 and a successful one
in South Africa in 2014, in which the recipient later
fathered a child.

Veterans are a major focus of transplant programs in the
United States because suicide rates are exceptionally high in
soldiers with severe damage to the genitals and urinary
tract, Dr. Cetrulo said. “They’re 18- to 20-year-old guys, and
they feel they have no hope of intimacy or a sexual life,” he
said. “They can’t even go to the bathroom standing up.”
Given the psychological toll, he said, a penis transplant can
be lifesaving.

Dr. Cetrulo said the team would most likely perfect its
techniques on civilian patients and then move on to injured
veterans. It will also train military surgeons to perform the
transplants. The Department of Defense, he said in an email,
“does not like to have wounded warriors undergo unproven
techniques — i.e., they do not want them to be ‘guinea pigs,’
as they have already sacrificed so much.”

His team is working on ways to minimize or even eliminate
the need for anti-rejection medicines, which transplant
patients typically have to take. That research is especially
important for veterans, he said, because many are young
and will risk serious adverse effects, like cancer and kidney
damage , if they have to take the drugs for decades.

From 2001 to 2013, 1,367 men in the military suffered so-
called genitourinary injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan,
according to the Department of Defense Trauma Registry.
Nearly all were under 35 and had been hurt by homemade
bombs, commonly called improvised explosive devices, or
I.E.D.s. Some lost part or all of their penises.

The Massachusetts General team spent three years preparing
for the penis transplants. The team did meticulous
dissections in a cadaver lab to map out anatomy, and
operated on five or six dead donors to practice removing the
tissue needed for the transplants. Mr. Manning’s operation
involved about a dozen surgeons and 30 other health care
workers.

Dr. Dicken Ko, a team leader and the director of the
hospital’s regional urology program, said the team had not
planned a set number of transplants. Instead, he said, the
hospital would evaluate candidates one at a time and decide
whether to allow surgery. For now, he said, the transplants
will be limited to cancer and trauma patients, and will not
be offered to transgender people.

An accident at work in 2012 brought Mr. Manning to the
hospital, and ultimately to the transplant team. Heavy
equipment had fallen on him, causing severe injuries. The
doctors treating him saw an abnormal growth on his penis
that he had not noticed.

Tests revealed an aggressive and potentially fatal cancer.
Penile cancer is rare, with about 2,030 new cases and 340
deaths expected in the United States this year.
If not for the accident, Mr. Manning said, “I would’ve been
in the ground two years ago.”

Doctors said that to save his life, they would have to remove
most of his penis, in an operation called a partial
penectomy. Mr. Manning’s urologic oncologist, Dr. Adam S.
Feldman, estimated that a few hundred men a year needed
full or partial penectomies because of cancer.

Mr. Manning was left with a stump about an inch long. He
had to sit to urinate. Intimacy was out of the picture. He
was single and was not involved with anyone when the
cancer was found. After the amputation, new relationships
were unthinkable. “I wouldn’t go near anybody,” he said.
He continued: “I couldn’t have a relationship with anybody.

You can’t tell a woman, ‘I had a penis amputation.’”
Some people close to him urged him to keep the operation a
secret, but he refused, saying that was like lying, and he had
nothing to be ashamed of.

“I didn’t advertise, but if people asked, I told them the
truth,” he said, adding that a few male friends made “guy
talk” jokes at his expense, but that it toughened him up.
“Men judge their masculinity with their bodies,” he said.
Before he had even left the hospital after the amputation, he
began asking Dr. Feldman about a transplant. No one at the
hospital was considering the idea yet, and Dr. Feldman
admits that he thought it was a bit outlandish.

But Mr. Manning never gave up hope. “I kept my eye on the
prize,” he said.
Soon Dr. Cetrulo and Dr. Ko began talking about
transplants. About three years later, Dr. Feldman called Mr.
Manning to ask if he still wanted the operation.
After a battery of medical tests, interviews and psychological
grilling — typical for transplant candidates, to make sure
they understand the risks and will take anti-rejection
medicine — Mr. Manning was on the waiting list. Two
weeks later, a donor with the right blood type and skin tone
became available.

Mr. Manning was stunned that it had happened so fast. Dr.
Cetrulo credits the New England Organ Bank, which asks
families of some dying patients to consider organ donation.
The organ bank said the donor’s family wished to remain
anonymous but had extended a message to Mr. Manning
saying they felt blessed and were delighted his recovery was
going well.

Organ banks do not assume that families who donate
internal organs like kidneys and livers will also be willing to
give visible, intimate parts like a face, hands or a penis.
Those requests are made separately. Several families have
agreed to allow the penis to be removed, and none have
declined, said Jill Stinebring, the organ bank’s regional
director of organ donation services.

So far, Mr. Manning has had one serious complication. The
day after his surgery, he began to hemorrhage and was
rushed back to the operating room.
Since then, his recovery has been smoother, he said. He
has no regrets. He looks forward to going back to work
and hopes to eventually have a love life again.
“If I’m lucky, I get 75 percent of what I used to be,” he said.
“Before the surgery I was 10 percent. But they made no
promises. That was part of the deal.”

Donald Trump's critical week closes with chaotic end

It was a chaotic end of the week for Donald Trump after what seemed like a promising start.

Just days after a positive meeting with GOP leaders, there is now a series of new concerns over his taxes, his honesty, even his former butler.

On Saturday morning, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a new ad attacking Trump for his refusal to release his income tax returns, citing that every major presidential nominee has done so for the past 40 years.

CBS News correspondent Julianna Goldman reports it was a critical week for Trump. He emerged from his meetings in Washington with some establishment Republicans warming up to him, and he's also nearing a deal to harness the Republican National Committee's vast fundraising infrastructure, but now he's trying to bat away a number of distractions that underscore the unpredictability of the presumptive GOP nominee.

Under fire for not releasing his tax returns, Trump refused to disclose his effective tax rate and rejected the idea that voters have a right to see his returns.

Women voters split on Trump, Clinton and the issues
"I don't think they do," he told ABC News. "When the audit ends, I'm going to present them. That should be before the election. I hope it's before the election."

Trump has maintained that he can't follow tradition and release his tax returns like all nominees have done since 1976 because the most recent years are under IRS audit.

The presumptive Republican nominee boasted that he pays the lowest rate possible and that voters wouldn't learn anything. But the documents would spell out how much he pays in taxes and shine a light on the billionaire businessman's wealth, charitable giving and companies.

"If he doesn't release his tax returns, I don't know if anyone cares," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News.

While Priebus is rushing to Trump's defense, others - from former Republican nominee Mitt Romney to Clinton - have asked what he's hiding.

Donald Trump denies posing as his own spokesperson
Meanwhile, Trump is also fighting back against a report that he posed as his own publicist under the pseudonyms John Barron or John Miller, like in a 1991 audio recording obtained by The Washington Post when his love life made for tabloid headlines.

"Actresses, people that you write about just call to see if they can go out with him and things," the man who identified himself as Miller in the recording said about Trump.

The Washington Post said that Trump had admitted he was Miller and called it a "joke gone awry," but pressed on Friday he adamantly denied it.

"I don't know anything about it," he told ABC. "You're telling me about it for the first time, and it doesn't sound like my voice at all. I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice."

On Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters were 44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump to talk about his finances, and they asked him a question about Miller. They said, "Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?"

The phone went silent, then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump's secretary, she said, "I heard you got disconnected. He can't take the call now. I don't know what happened."

Trump's ex-butler calls for Obama to be killed
Also, Trump's former butler is under investigation by the Secret Service.

Anthony Senecal, who worked at Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Florida, is coming under scrutiny for several violent and racist postings he made on his Facebook page.

They suggest President Obama should be hanged for treason. The Trump campaign is condemning what it calls "horrible remarks" and said the 74-year-old Senecal has not worked for Trump in seven years.

When Muslims ruled the civilised world

Beyond the paradox of celebrating a bygone Islamic civilization at the height of Islamophobia in the United States.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has just opened a magnificent exhibition of Islamic art of the Seljuqid period. That sentence would or should probably cause a double-take for right at the artistic and intellectual heartland of this beleaguered empire, Americans are celebrating one of the highest summits of Islamic civilization at a time when US Muslims are subject to one of the ugliest phases of Islamophobia in their recent history. 

Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs (April 27 to July 24, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Iris and B Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall) is curated with admirable care, competence, and grace. Along with the exhibition, scholars affiliated with the Met have published a beautifully edited volume under the same title, with insightful essays by the leading social and art historians. 

"Approximately 270 objects," as the curators of this rare exhibition explain, "including ceramics, glass, stucco, works on paper, woodwork, textiles, and metalwork - from American, European, and Middle Eastern public and private collections are shown."

Both Disliked, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Accentuate the Negatives

Voters weary of the taunts and insults of the 2016 primary season may pine for a White House campaign about issues. But the Hillary Clinton vs. Donald J. Trump showdown is almost sure to disappoint them. It has quickly deteriorated into a scorched-earth contest about personality and temperament, with each side exploiting voters’ strong dislike of the other candidate.

“We have an explosive environment with two extremely negative candidates,” said Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster. “This is going to be a race to the bottom. It’s who can drive up the negatives the most.”

Mr. Trump accused Mrs. Clinton over the weekend of abetting her husband’s infidelities by seeking to tarnish his accusers. He labeled her a “nasty, mean enabler.”

© Ty Wright for The New York Times Donald J. Trump in Charleston, W.Va., last week.

The Clinton campaign taunted Mr. Trump as “Dangerous Donald,” meant to raise fears of him gaining control of America’s nuclear arsenal, a charge soon to be echoed by more than $100 million in negative ads from a “super PAC” that successfully tarnished the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.

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The skirmishing threatens to mask the profound differences the candidates have on issues: whether America should welcome or exclude illegal immigrants, whether to secure peace by asserting power abroad or becoming a fortress at home, whether Washington mainly needs the kinks ironed out — or a dose of shock therapy.

Live coverage of primaries on BreakingNews.com

Mrs. Clinton has vowed to stick to issues. “I’m not going to run an ugly race,” she said over the weekend.

With polls showing that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Trump, the likely nominees, are more unpopular than the candidates in any of the past 10 White House matchups, their campaigns are exploiting their rivals’ perceived flaws to appeal to certain demographic groups to reshape the Electoral College map.

Clinton allies, for example, see an opportunity to win the battleground state of North Carolina because of Mr. Trump’s sharply unfavorable ratings with women.

The Trump campaign believes the number of white Democratic voters who find Mrs. Clinton untrustworthy could help tip Ohio and Pennsylvania into its column.

“This election is not going to be about issues; it’s going to be a race about character and temperament between two of the most unpopular political candidates in history,” said Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential race.

Even though Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump are among the best-known people in America, their unpopularity with the general electorate, as shown in polls, does not mean they can’t improve their images. Both President Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004 entered their re-election races with higher unfavorable ratings than their opponents but ultimately won.

The candidates’ selections of running mates, the national conventions and especially the three presidential debates in September and October will offer broad new canvases on which to create impressions.

Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said his approval ratings will improve as a wider universe of voters gets to know him.

“Look at the nationwide polls for Mr. Trump right now: His favorable/unfavorables have continuously improved,” he said. “The more people that see and meet Donald Trump, the better he’s going to do.”

Mr. Trump was viewed unfavorably by 57 percent of voters nationally in a CNN/ORC poll released this month, down from 67 percent in March, but he is still registering historic levels of unpopularity.

Mrs. Clinton was viewed unfavorably by 49 percent in the recent poll, an improvement from 56 percent in March.

“Democrats dislike Trump and Republicans dislike Hillary, but Hillary is better liked among the Democrats than Trump is among the Republicans,” said Mr. Goeas, who worked for an outside Republican group opposed to Mr. Trump but said he would now support him as the presumptive nominee.

“The first thing he needs to do is fix his problem with Republicans,” Mr. Goeas said. “The judgment on him has been passed on his personality, not his position on issues.”

Mr. Trump’s efforts to unify his party got off to a perilous start last week, with a former rival in the primary, Jeb Bush, saying he would not endorse him and the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, saying he was “just not ready” to back him.

The support of Republican leaders matters less to Mr. Trump than that of regular voters in a year in which he has channeled grass-roots fury at the establishment.

But his effort to broaden support will soon face a barrage of negative television and web ads from a super PAC backing Mrs. Clinton, which promises much tougher criticism than Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals delivered.

“It would be a huge mistake to think we’ve had a real-world litigation of any of these criticisms of Trump,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster for the group, Priorities USA Action.

The group plans $125 million worth of ads in the runup to Election Day. They will run in seven battleground states, emphasizing that Mr. Trump has “made his billions on the backs of others” and has a “temperament that’s ill suited to keep America safe,” said a spokesman, Justin Barasky.

“In some ways Hillary’s negatives are already baked in the cake, and that is simply not the case with Trump,” Mr. Garin said. “Virtually all of Trump’s negatives are the product of his bizarre conduct, as opposed to any specific set of facts people have at their command about his record or what the course of a Trump presidency is likely to be.”

Mr. Trump has been foreshadowing attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s temperament. He is highlighting what he claims is her lack of truthfulness about the attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, an issue reflected in the high number of voters who tell pollsters she is untrustworthy.

“When they called her on Benghazi, she was sleeping, folks,” Mr. Trump told voters in Indiana last week.

The Trump campaign is well aware that it needs to work to close a steep deficit with women, and that for many independent women, national security is the top issue. “Women are looking for security in our country, and they know I’m going to do the best job,” Mr. Trump said in Indiana.

The Clinton campaign foreshadowed last week that it would direct withering fire at Mr. Trump’s personality. It released a pair of web ads, one using the words of his former Republican rivals against him (sample: “utterly amoral”), the other including a comment that he would be willing to use nuclear weapons against the Islamic State, even in Europe.

“You have to have people imagine Trump behind the desk in the Oval Office and have them be scared,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama.

The Electoral College map will dictate the terms of engagement. Mr. Trump is counting on his appeal to blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt. After he became virtually assured of the nomination last week, he spoke of the “carnage” that trade deals wrecked on American manufacturing. His campaign believes the issue will put the industrial states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin into play, where no Republican nominee has won since the 1980s.

“He has excited a base of people that have not been excited before,” Mr. Lewandowski said.

But Mr. Trump’s deep unpopularity with Hispanic voters, after labeling Mexican migrants criminals and calling for a “deportation force,” complicates his prospects in the swing states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and, especially, Florida.

A CBS News poll in April measured his unpopularity among Hispanics at 82 percent.

“Many Hispanic voters see this as a watershed election, where Donald Trump has put the good name of their community on the ballot,” Mr. Garin said.

Manchester United fans tell David De Gea and Anthony Martial to join Real Madrid after West Ham defeat

Manchester United fans began telling David De Ge and Anthony Martial to join Real Madrid after losing 3-2 to West Ham on Tuesday evening.

It was an emotional night at Upton Park and Winston Reid put the icing on the cake for the home side with an 80th minute winner in what was the Hammers’ final match at the Boleyn Ground.

The result leaves Louis van Gaal’s side with a small chance of finishing in the top-four and several supporters have now reached the end of their tether with the Dutch manager.

De Gea was tipped to complete a move to Madrid last summer and only an administrative error stopped the goalkeeper leaving Old Trafford.

With the side looking unlikely to qualify for next season’s Champions League, many supporters were saying they would understand if the shot-stopper, as well as Martial, moved to the Bernabeu this summer.

Here’s how United fans reacted to the defeat on Tuesday night…

For de Gea's sake I hope he leaves for Madrid asap. Martial too. There is nothing left here for anyone

— hussain bandukwala (@hussain468) May 10, 2016
Can't wait for Madrid to come in a sign Martial and De Gea

— Jake (@Streams94) May 10, 2016
Martial and de gea please go to Madrid/Barcelona u don't deserve to exist in a cancerous club we've become

— Will (@DxleyBlxnd) May 10, 2016
Madrid please come get martial and de gea

— Taj May 12 (@badboiitaj) May 10, 2016
Real Madrid should offer 100m and take De gea and Martial.

— Taiwoluwole (@OluwoleTaiwo) May 10, 2016
Martial, please go to Madrid with De Gea, we don't deserve you.

— Roberto (@EljovenRoberto) May 10, 2016

Odua Defenders dare Niger Delta militants over threats to attack Lagos

The Odua Defenders’ Union, ODU, has described as an insult to the Yoruba race the recent threat by a new militant group, the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, to attack Lagos within a matter of days.
In a statement signed by its President-General, Rabak Anthony, the group warned that any attempt to launch any attack on Lagos would spell doom for the Ijaw militants.

“This threat that was published in all the media, both electronic and print, cannot be taken for granted.

“Therefore, the Yoruba are ready to make the first move against the Ijaws in Lagos before their ‘brothers’ will storm Lagos.

“We fought the Ijaws here in Lagos before because of this their arrogance and they know we are ready for them. They came here about five years ago also to attack the Atlas Cove where Naval officers guarding tank farms were killed.

“So, we are not taking this threat without preparation. We are ready, let them make the move,” the statement warned.

The Odua Defenders’ Union leader said its members were across the whole South-West and could deal with the militants’ threat.

The group asked the security agents to go after the Niger Delta Avengers because the Yoruba youths were prepared to face them and other Ijaw militants in Lagos