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White House News
Rare Collection Of Letters Written By President Obama’s Father Are Found In Harlem
President Obama is photographed as a young boy with his father, Barack Obama, Sr.
Oprah's For Hillary: 'I'm With Her'
HILLARY CLINTON
Oprah Winfrey on Entertain- ment Tonight Wednesday en- dorsed Hillary Clinton, calling the potential for the first female president in US history a "seminal moment for women."
"I'm with her," Oprah told ET.
"What this says is, there is no ceiling, that ceiling just went boom! It says anything is possi- ble when you can be leader of the free world."
Oprah's endorsement of Hillary is noteworthy, given that her endorsement of Obama in the 2008 contest was considered one of the turn- ing points for him in what was then an upstart challenge to Clinton.
Atty. General Loretta Lynch Declines To Say If FBI Will Make Arrest In Orlando Massacre
Attorney General Loretta Lynch on news broadcast on Sunday.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch declined Sunday to say whether the FBI will charge anybody in connection with the Florida nightclub massacre and expressed support for a pro- posal from a Republican sena- tor to tighten gun control.
Atty. Gen. Lynch, the coun- try’s top law enforcement offi- cial, said that federal investigators are “in the middle of a very aggressive investiga- tion” that includes “talking to family members.”
However, she declined to comment why the wife of shooter Omar Mateen has not been arrested, amid pur- ported evidence that she helped her husband plot the June 12 murders.
Atty. Gen. Lynch said the FBI on Monday willl release a partial transcript of Orlando police department hostage ne- gotiators talking to Mateen in- side the nightclub. However, much of his talk about al- legience to radical Islamic groups has been removed, she said.
Same Day As Women’s Summit White House Launches Equal Pay Initiative
How apropos for Father’s Day.
A rare collection of letters written by President Obama’s Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., have been discovered by an archivist in Harlem, N.Y., reports the New York Times.
The letters begin with a 22- year-old in Kenya, who could translate Swahili to English, asking for financial help to come study in the United States.
“It has been my long cher- ished ambition to further my studies in America,” the elder Obama wrote in a letter in 1958, seeking financial assis- tance to come to the states.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem now houses the nearly two dozen letters and docu-
ments, which date from 1958 to 1964.
“The papers are rich; they tell a fascinating, traditional, self-made man’s story,” said Khalil Gibran Muham- mad, the director of the Schomburg, who said he hoped President Obama would read them someday. “There’s a reason to bear wit- ness to the personal legacy that is here.”
The Times reports that as president, Obama has spoken openly about the void his fa- ther left in his life. Barack Obama Sr. went home to Kenya in 1964, when Obama was 3 years old, and returned to visit his son only once, for a month, when Obama was 10. President Obama chroni- cled his loss in his first book, Dreams of My Father.
The United State Of Women Summit, importantly, was not just about talk. It was about action. Last week, the White House announced $50 million worth of commitments to im- prove the lives of women and girls around the world, as well as a litany of initiatives that target key gender gaps in soci- ety.
One of the major initiatives is the new White House Equal Pay Pledge, through which companies promise to conduct an annual gender pay analysis and reassess their hiring and promoting processes to ensure equity. Already, tech giants in- cluding Airbnb, Amazon, Pin- terest, Salesforce, Slack, and Spotify have signed the pledge, which is key, given the drastic
gender gaps that exist within the tech industry.
The Department of Labor, meanwhile, is updating its sex discrimination guidelines for the first time since the 1970s. And companies including AOL and Oracle are joining in a $20 million investment in women’s education through the First Lady’s Let Girls Learn Initia- tive.
5,000 Attend United State Of Women Summit Organized By First Lady Michelle Obama
First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey served as panelists.
65,000 Protest That U.S. Military Leave Japan
65,000 Japanese show up for protest against U.S. military.
Five thousand women de- scended upon the Walter E. Washington Convention Cen- ter in Washington, D.C. last week to attend the first ever United State of Women Sum- mit.
The event served as a forum for speakers and attendees to discuss the progress made in regards to women’s causes in America, while also creating blueprints for social, political, and domestic development..
President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and actress/activist Kerry Washington were among those on the agenda. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and mogul Warren Buffett ad- dressed the audience, along with a host of business, politi-
cal, and community leaders. Telling the crowd "this is what a feminist looks like," the President spoke about chang- ing the cultural paradigm around gender, which he said "shines a particularly unforgiv- ing light on women and girls of color — about how they look, or how they feel or what they
should and should not do." The President said the na- tion must reject stereotypes about the abilities of women and girls, and he praised the historic presidential candidacy
President Obama spoke at the conference, calling himself a ‘feminist’.
of Hillary Clinton.
Sessions ran the gamut: Ed-
ucational Opportunity, Eco- nomic Empowerment, Violence Against Women, along with Entrepreneur- ship/Business Innovation, Leadership and Civic Engage- ment and Health/Wellness. Speakers such as Dr. Lori Wil- son, a surgical oncologist at Howard University Hospital and a breast cancer survivor, shared stories and expertise. "It's so essential that we ad- dress those issues that are bar- riers to women being equal."
Black Girls Rock founder Beverly Bond commended the First Lady for spearheading the event and bringing many“stakeholders and advo- cates for women together under one roof” to champion the causes of women.
About 65,000 people on Sun- day held a protest in Okinawa, Japan, to pressure U.S. military bases to leave the country after a former Marine was arrested in connection with the rape and killing of a local woman.
The protesters wore black to mourn the woman as they de- manded Japanese officials to review the U.S.-Japanese secu- rity agreement, which allows for the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Japan, the Associated Press reports.
The woman’s body was found last month. A U.S. contractor, who is a former Marine, was ar-
rested last month on suspicion of abandoning her body. How- ever, he has not yet been charged with killing her, ac- cording to the AP.
In 1995, three American ser- vicemen raped a girl, which also sparked outrage at the time. Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga referred to the tragedy when addressing the crowd at the protest on Sunday. “We had pledged never to repeat such an incident,” he said. “I couldn’t change the political system to prevent that. That is my utmost regret as a politician and as governor of Okinawa.”
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