Following the mass shootings first in Aurora, Colorado and then at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the shooting outside the Empire State Building in New York marks the third mass shooting this summer in the United States. The incident occurred at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, near New York’s most famous skyscraper.

Just after 9AM, local time, a gunman opened fire in the street near the Empire State Building. According to the New York Post, two men who were coworkers started arguing in the street during the morning rush. They began fighting on the pavement when one of them drew a gun and shot the other fatally in the head, after striking him three times. The shooter then put his gun in his black bag and walked away from the scene.

A local construction worker, Chris Ogden, saw the gunman opening fire and then informed officers near the Empire State Building. New York Police Department arrived at the scene within a few minutes after receiving the emergency call. The New York Police Department officers, who were on foot, confronted the gunman who turned to his gun and fired at them. One of the officers killed the gunman in the confrontation. Police later confirmed that the gunman had indeed been shot dead.

Counting the shooter, there were a total of two deaths at the scene and nine more people were injured — four women and five men. Some of them may have been shot accidentally by officers, but they have all been taken to a number of hospitals in the city and fortunately none of them were seriously wounded. They are all expected to recover quickly.

The FBI has confirmed that the shooting was not terrorist-related. The incident was nothing more than a workplace dispute, but still caused a sense of panic in the city of New York, whose inhabiters have lived through all too familiar scenes in the past.

Police commissioner Ray Kelly identified the shooter as Jeffrey Johnson, aged 53. Johnson shot his 41-year-old former manager using a 45 caliber semiautomatic handgun. The shooter was a Hazan Imports employee for the last six years, designing women’s accessories and clothes and he had been fired from his job about a year ago as part of downsizing in the company. While the incident took place near the the Empire State Building, the landmark was not otherwise connected to the shooting.

New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, one of America’s biggest gun law reform advocates, said that “soothing words are nice, but maybe it is time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” expressing his discontent for both President Obama and his republican rival Mitt Romney.

Image Courtesy of   chrisinphilly5448

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Denver’s downtown has a lot to offer both for business and for fun. Between an amazing interactive art museum to numerous diverse coffee shops, there is a lot to experience, but the places discussed in this article are close in distance to each other, if not right next door.

The Denver Art Museum is located on West 14^th Street and consists of two buildings. The museum features very diverse art, such as photography, textiles, modern and contemporary art, and art from different nationalities. It is the perfect place to see and admire art, as well as creating your own. As a visitor, you are able to try out the art you see, and you can make your own fashion designs. The museum welcomes all ages.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, located on 13^th Street, is within walking distance from the previously mentioned museum. It is a gorgeous creative center that would be a wonderful place to end the day. You can see the longest running show in Denver here entitled, “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” which is a humorous musical that consists of four characters and a small stage. Be ready for a lot of laughing and excitement throughout the two-hour show! In addition to this show, there are a lot of other popular shows playing there every night of the week.

As for great food and coffee, downtown Denver has a lot to offer, but the following are the top choices all located on 13^th Street:

Oh City, Oh City: This vegan restaurant with free Wi-fi and music is open from 7 a.m. -2 a.m. every day. The atmosphere is energetic and one-of-a-kind. Everyday meals, baked goods, and even a variety of drinks are served here.

Subculture: This is a fantastic sub restaurant that has a wide range of sub sandwiches with a great amount of amazing art work on the walls. The restaurant has both indoor and outdoor dining and is open all day, which makes it perfect for any meal.

The Desk: This is a new coffee shop that has a very unique concept. At The Desk, you can enjoy free Wi-fi and a large coffee selection. You can also take it a step further by paying more and reserving different work spaces. You can choose a small, quiet, isolated room or a large conference room. It is a place to create.

Eating places located off of 13^th Street include the following:

Steuben’s: This is a great place where you can order anything from fried corn on the cob to sweet potato fries. They have won awards over the years due to their great food and service. The restaurant is located on East 17^th Street, while the truck is available for catering for all types of celebrations.

Pinkberry: There are different types of frozen yogurt restaurants, but this place holds its own. Pinkberry has many fruity flavors to choose from, and you can add extra fruit as well as regular candy toppings to your dessert. The difference here is that you are charged based on the size of the container rather than the weight. Pinkberry is located on Glenarm Place 130, right by the 16^th Street Mall.

Overall, downtown Denver includes a great amount of variety and diversity that is reflected throughout. This article covers a lot of territory, yet all places are equally as wonderful and easily accessible.

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Christian Bale, the star of the latest box office hit ‘Dark Knight Rises,’ visited Aurora, Colorado on July 25 to visit the victims of the “Batman Shooting.”

Early the morning of Friday, July 20, twenty-four year old James Holmes entered theater 9 in the Aurora Cineplex and started shooting. He killed twelve people and injured another 58 at the premiere of the final film in the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. Holmes was arrested the same night and will face the death penalty if he is found guilty of all of the charges. Recently the judge ordered that film crews be banned from the courts during the hearing.

Christian Bale originally just released a written statement about the tragedy stating: “Words cannot express the horror that I feel. I cannot begin to truly understand the pain and grief of the victims and their loved ones, but my heart goes out to them.”

On July 25 Bale paid a special visit to Aurora with his wife, Sibi Blazic. The couple put flowers on the memorial to the shooting victims that is nearby the theater. According to Access Hollywood most people left him alone either because they did not recognize him or wanted to leave him in peace.

Bale also visited the hospital and thanked the medical staff and the police. He was able to visit five victims in Aurora’s local hospital and also met with two others who were bused over from the Swedish Medical Center in ambulances. He spent about fifteen minutes with each person and stayed about a total of two hours, flanked by security and police.

According to hospital personnel Bale wanted to keep his visit out of the press and to not turn the visit into a publicity ploy. A Warner Bros. spokeswoman reported that Bale was not representing the studio, just himself.

Janie Bowman-Hayes, assistant vice president of surgical services at Swedish Medical Center said, “he just said he wanted to come to thank all of us because he has been thinking about this. He knows the whole world has been thinking about this. He took it upon himself to come and thank us.”

Bowman-Hayes added, “He did this out of his heart, and you could really tell. It was so sincere. It was just, ‘thank you’.”

Bale visit may have been influenced by an online campaign in which people encouraged the star to go and visit the victims. Other visitors to the hospital have included members of the Denver Broncos and President Barrack Obama.

Image Courtesy of cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com

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Hundreds of residents were forced to evacuate their homes as the wildfire in Colorado spread.

The High Park Fire in Larimer County, Colorado has burned almost 37,000 acres and is still growing with zero percent of the fire being contained while 400 firefighters are on the job battling the flames.

The fire is burning 15 miles west of Fort Collins and a Larimer County Sheriff Office spokeman, Executive Officer Nick Christensen has said,  ”it is a very aggressive fire, fuel driven, wind driven, and the winds have not been favorable.”

According to 9 News, a local Colorado news station, the fire is growing at 20 to 40 feet per minute.

Firefighters are receiving help by additional air resources in attempt to get the blaze under control according to Timescall.com, including at least five helicopters with more on order.

New evacuation orders were sent out this morning to the area south of Larimer County Road 38E, fire officials warn that the flames are moving rapidly in the direction of the latest evacuation ordered area.

At least 18 structures have been destroyed and many others are under threat, “That number is going to go significantly higher,” said Christensen. One person is confirmed missing from a home damaged in the fire.

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Fort Reno, U.S.A. - On June 1st, 2012, eight riders and a host of supporters are scheduled to set out from Fort Reno on a 1,391 mile journey in remembrance of the 1878 Cheyenne exodus.

The Ride Home was set in motion by Margaret Behan of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and Cheyenne Elders Council who will be joining the riders for prayers and healing ceremonies at key locations along the journey which spans seven states.

From Oklahoma through Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming, the ride culminates in Lame Deer, Montana on July 28, 2012 at the 11th gathering of the Grandmothers Council. 

At sacrifice sites along the route, Earth skill educators will share the lost wisdom of caring for the earth through storytelling, land stewardship and wilderness survival training for families.  They will offer hands-on teachings of traditional skills such as fire making, shelter building, animal tracking, flint knapping, and more.

Inspired by Cherokee rider Noqah Elisi who first envisioned the ride after receiving a message in a vision quest instructing her to follow in the footsteps of her grandmothers, Margaret asked Juan Villarreal to organize the ride.  Juan, a member of the Texas Lipan Apache and The Apache Language Preservation Committee, board member of the Tribal Native American Church and founder of Sacred Wind Earth Teachings, had never ridden a horse.

Juan immediately contacted Suzi Landolphi from Red Horse Nation, a Native American Horse program of Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue to begin his horse training.  Lifesaver is supplying all of the horses for the ride and is also the fiscal sponsor.

“My prayer is to bring spirit back to my people.  So much has been lost.  We need to bring our Cheyenne identity and pride back to the young people, teach them the traditional ceremonies and language,” says Grandmother Margaret Behan.

A film crew will be documenting the journey with acclaimed native filmmaker Chris Eyre acting as key advisor.  Colin and Livia Firth are also associated with the journey and film.

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Walmart’s 2012 Acres for America program is helping conserve more than 49,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat across the United States. Acres projects connect existing lands to protect migration routes, provide access for people to enjoy the outdoors and help ensure the future of rural economies that depend on forestry, tourism and recreation.

Acres for America is a 10-year, $35 million commitment that began in 2005 between Walmart and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to purchase and preserve one acre of wildlife habitat in the U.S. for every acre of land developed by the company through 2015.  To date, Acres for America has invested in projects in 24 states, protecting more than 687,000 acres.

“It is estimated that America loses nearly three million acres of open space each year,” said Jennifer May-Brust, Walmart vice president of realty supplier management and compliance. “Our strategic partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is helping save important wildlife habitats and fits perfectly with Walmart’s larger goal to bring sustainability into the communities we serve.”

In the summer of 2011, Walmart expanded its Acres investments to include urban conservation projects inChicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C.  The six awards announced today will support projects in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, North Carolina and Tennessee.

“With these new projects, Acres for America extends into five additional states to protect vital areas for wildlife and people,” said Jeff Trandahl, executive director and CEO of NFWF. “These investments will not only benefit endangered species like the Florida panther – they will also expand open space near urban areas and conserve forests and streams along the Appalachian Trail, one of our most treasured natural resources.”

The 2012 Acres for America projects:

Southern Sierra Partnership: Tehachapi Linkage, California

• While protecting more than 22,000 acres of rare blue oak habitat in the Sierra foothills, this project completes a key 50-mile ecological corridor linking the Sierra-Cascade ranges to the California Coast ranges and the lowlands of the Great Central Valley to the Mojave Desert.

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge Expansion: Colorado

• This project protects 1,334 acres of tallgrass prairie adjacent to the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge and connects to 70,000 acres of locally protected open space, greatly expanding recreation opportunities in metropolitan Denver.

Panther Crossing Protection Project: Florida

• This 1,530-acre property protects a key migratory corridor for the endangered Florida panther, of which less than 165 exist in the wild.  It connects existing panther habitat to the south with 1.5 million acres of new habitat in the Northern Everglades, and will also benefit the American black bear, red-cockaded woodpecker, swallow-tailed kite and snail kite.

Almo Tract: Fort Benning, Georgia

• This 7,550-acre tract in Georgia’s Fall Line Sandhills is the eastern anchor of a larger 30,000-acre conservation corridor adjacent to Fort Benning. The project protects longleaf pine forest and provides important habitat for the gopher tortoise and red-cockaded woodpecker, among other species.

The Palila Protection Project: Hawaii

• On the Big Island of Hawaii, two protected parcels (4,469 acres) provide critical habitat to the palila (Loxioides bailleui), one of the rarest birds in the world, and contribute significantly to its recovery.

Appalachian Trail Habitat Protection Project: North Carolina and Tennessee

Partners: The Conservation Fund, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Blue Ridge Forever and Conservation Trust for North Carolina

• This group of seven key parcels collectively protects nearly 13,000 acres of forest and 40 miles of freshwater streams along the Appalachian Trail Corridor, which are home to the imperiled southern Appalachian brook trout, 1,000 species of plants, at least 300 species of birds and 20 species of rare and declining salamanders.

For more information on Acres for America or to apply for a grant, visit www.nfwf.org or http://walmartstores.com/sustainability.

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The U.S. east coast has been hit by a strong earthquake this afternoon. The earth quake was centered in Charlottesville while another quake occurred in Colorado, with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 and centered about nine miles from the city of Trinidad  at 11:46 p.m. local time. The quake reached Greeley, and all the way into Kansas and New Mexico, said Julie Dutton, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.  There have been no reports of injuries or widespread damage.

Update at 1:57 p.m. ET: The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon is being evacuated.

An apparent earthquake rocks Washington, D.C. area.

Fox news reports that several public buildings, including the Capitol, have been evacuated.

Update at 2:18 p.m. ET: In “the East Coast you have this old hard, cold crust that does a lovely job of transmitting the waves,” says Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “This large of an earthquake …. could definitely have been felt hundreds of miles away.”

Update at 2:16 p.m. ET: Fox News reports that JFK airport has been shut down because of the quake.

Update at 2:15 p.m. ET: “It scared the heck out of me, I’m still shaking,” said Joan Morris, spokewoman for the northern district of the Virginia Department of Transportation. A few minutes after the quake, there were no reports of damage to roads or bridges in the state, Morris said.

Update at 2:13 p.m. ET: The USGS now puts the magnitude of the quake at 5.9.

Update at 2:12 p.m. ET: The quake could be felt in McLean, Va., headquarters of USA TODAY. It caused the building to sway. Some items could be heard falling from shelves. A number of employees went left the building.

Update at 2:10 p.m. ET: NBC reports that the quake was centered nine miles from Mineral, Va., which is 100 miles south of Washington, D.C.

Says Doug Kammerer, meteorologist with the NBC affiliate in Washington, calls the tremor a “very big earthquake for our area.”

Updates by USA Today

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A new low has been reached for the Republicans in Congress. Before the last second debt ceiling deal, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) referred to President Obama as a “tar baby” prompting immediate backlash.

“Even if some people say, well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that, they will hold the President responsible,” said Lamborn said Friday during an interview on a Denver radio station. “Now I don’t want to even have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get, you get it, you know… you are stuck and you are part of the problem now and you can’t get away.”

“I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does or not, he’ll still get, properly so, the blame because his policies for four years will have failed the American people,” he added.

The term “tar baby” is a reference to 19th-century Uncle Remus stories about Br’er Rabbit but has taken on a negative connotation towards African-Americans. Lamborn spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said the comments were a misunderstanding and he apologizes. “Congressman Lamborn regrets any misunderstanding. He simply meant to refer to a sticky situation or quagmire,” she said.

The White House has not given any comment on Rep. Lamborn’s remarks. However, many others have expressed outrage over Lamborn’s comments. His voicemail quickly filled up to capacity as people around the United States called the congressman’s office over the offensive statement.

The congressman is not the first politician to be caught using the phrase. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., used the term on the campaign trail in 2007 and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney made the mistake in 2006 when referencing a troubled infrastructure project. Both presidential hopefuls apologized for their remarks.

Congressman Lamborn told a local Colorado station that he didn’t mean to offend anyone with his comment. He said that a letter has been sent to the President to offer an apology.

“When I said ‘tar baby’, I was talking economic quagmire that our country is finding ourselves in because of poor economic policy from the White House. I could have used a better term,” said Lamborn, from his D.C. office.

Kjersten Forseth, the Executive Director Of ProgressNow Colorado said she was surprised by the congressman’s comments.”You can use the term to refer to a sticky situation. Where I have concerns is that he’s specifically talking about the president.”

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The latest UFO sighting captured on camera is perhaps one of the more remarkable videos.  The mysterious lights appeared over Lafayette, Colorado last week.  The three red lights formed a triangular shape and was very slow moving according to witnesses.

Leroy van der Vegt was one of the dozens of witnesses that saw the event.  Van der Vegt and his son Nick were able to capture the sight on camera.  “It was completely quiet. No noise at all,” van der Vegt said.  The lights did not blink but remained in the triangle shape as they hovered in the sky.

Van der Vegt doesn’t know what it was but he is sure that what he saw was not a satellite, helicopter or airplane.   Eventually, the triangle headed northeast and the lights faded, van der Vegt said.

Lester Valdez and all of his neighbors saw the unidentified lights.   “I have never witnessed anything like that,” said Valdez.   He said they looked like tiny, bright alien ships from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“It was exactly something like that where you see an object and they all got into a pattern and they stood in a pattern, and they all moved in a direction and then they pretty much dropped and that was it,” Valdez said.

Grant Gazvoda said he saw the lights when he and some friends were out stargazing.  “When it flew over, there was a really weird energy. Almost like a hyper need to move. My mind started racing. My body started shaking,” Gazvoda said. “I freaked out at that point.” When asked what he thought the lights could be, Gazvoda said speculation is running rampant through town. “UFO, maybe government stuff. People are saying aliens,” he said.

One resident reported that his car shut itself off when the red lights passed over where he was.  He stated the car turned itself back on about 15 minutes later.  The witness also reported hearing the sound of “wind and gears turning” from a nearby wooded area.

Not all Lafayette residents are convinced though.  Katie and Kevin Caron say there must be a reasonable explanation for the lights that doesn’t involve little green men. “There’s a lot of things you can’t explain but the idea of it being an alien spacecraft is pretty wacky,” Kevin Caron said.

Federal Aviation Administration has not released any comment concerning the event.

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