Pressure mounts on Anthony Weiner to quit NYC mayoral race after sexting scandal

Anthony Weiner resisted calls to withdraw from the new York City mayoral race Tuesday after finding himself caught in another sexting scandal similar to the one that ended his congressional career two years ago.
Weiner admitted sending a woman sexually explicit photos and messages and acknowledged the activity took place as recently as last summer, more than a year after he resigned from the House in June 2011 for the same sort of behavior with at least a half-dozen women.
With his wife, Huma Abedin, standing an arm's length away from him, Weiner told a hastily called news conference he would stay in the race despite the new onslaught of negative publicity.
"I want to bring my vision to the people of the city of New York. I hope they are willing to still continue to give me a second chance," Weiner said.
In an editorial posted online Tuesday, the New York Times urged Weiner to drop out of the race, saying Weiner "should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City."
Three of his rivals for mayor — Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former City Councilman Sal Albanese, both Democrats, and billionaire John Catsimatidis, a Republican — also called on Weiner to quit the race.
"Enough is enough," de Blasio said. "The sideshows of this election have gotten in the way of the debate we should be having about the future of this city."
Another mayoral hopeful, city Comptroller John Liu, stopped short of calling for Weiner to bow out, but suggested his "propensity for pornographic selfies is a valid issue for voters."
The other leading Democratic candidates, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, did not immediately comment.
The congressman fessed up to the naughty texts after sexually explicit photos and online chats between "Carlos Danger," allegedly the pseudonym for the city hall hopeful, and an unidentified woman surfaced on the blog, TheDirty.com.
The reports claim that that the conversation between the pol and an unidentified 23-year-old woman took place on the social media website Formspring in August 2012, a year after he resigned from his post in Congress after being caught the first time — and nearly seven months after his first child with wife Abedin was born.
The woman claims on the blog that she first started talking online with Weiner in July 2012 and it became intense by August 2012, when he offered to find a Chicago condo where they could meet up.
She also alleges that they had phone sex and that they exchanged nude photos of each other. She claims she received photos from Weiner of his penis sent from a Yahoo email account under the “Carlos Danger” name. The purported image was subsequently posted on TheDirty.com.
Buzzfeed.com later reported that a source close to the matter said Weiner exchanged the explicit messages and photos with a woman named Sydney Elaine Leathers in late July of last year. The website characterized Leathers as a "progressive activist" from Indiana.
Weiner released a written statement on Tuesday afternoon, which he read again at the press conference, admitting to additional raunchy conversations.
"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” he said in the statement, referring to comments he made two months ago during the start of his mayoral campaign.
“As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.”
Weiner did not elaborate on which of the new reports are true or false and whether or not it took place last summer.
It's unclear how the lewd news will impact Weiner's campaign. Some New Yorkers have shown a willingness to forgive his past indiscretions since he announced his mayoral campaign via YouTube in May.
He has since shot to the lead in the polls, with a Quinnipiac University survey last week showing he held 25 percent of the vote.
Officials from Anthony Weiner’s mayoral campaign did not respond to requests for additional comment from FoxNews.com.
FoxNews.com's Perry Chiaramonte and The Associated Press contributed to this repor

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Incredible Cloud Formation Over Michigan What caused the stunning phenomenon?

Residents of Iron Mountain, Mich., were treated to an extraordinary display of bulbous-looking clouds on Monday night. The phenomenon was captured by Joe Nottage, who posted the image on Facebook and asked, "Can anyone explain this?" Meteorologist Jeff Last tweeted the photo and wrote, "Mammatus in Iron Mt, Mich this evening. Taken by Joe Nottage. #miwx pic.twitter.com/83lsFPlBtw."

What caused the formation of the ball-like clouds? As Last noted in his tweet, these are actually mammatus clouds, a pattern of pouches bubbling beneath the base of a larger cloud. Mammatus clouds may look ominous, and sometimes they foreshadow trouble. In fact, mammatus clouds can indicate severe thunderstorms are imminent. The clouds form following sharp gradients in temperature, moisture and wind shear, and can extend for hundreds of miles.

LIVE Updates: Everything You Need to Know About the Birth of the Royal Baby

Click through to see the baby's first moments in public with the Duke and Duchess, and read below for everything you need to know about the birth of Britain's newest royal heir, updated LIVE:

7/23/2013
4:55 pm EST: A very popular baby! Peter Hunt of the BBC reports a staggering number of people who were talking about the Prince of Cambridge when Kate and William presented him to the public:

Katherine Jackson: Michael Jackson Didn't Cause Own Deat

LOS ANGELES — The promoters of Michael Jackson's ill-fated comeback concerts watched the singer waste away and should have reached out to his family for help, the superstar's mother tearfully told a jury on Monday.
Clutching a tissue and hanging her head at times, Katherine Jackson said she didn't know the extent of her son's weakness until after the start of her trial against AEG Live LLC.
"They watched him waste away," she said after her attorney cited several emails from top workers preparing for the "This Is It" shows. The messages described her son's condition as deteriorating and cited his inability to rehearse.
"They could have called me," Katherine Jackson, 83, said. "He was asking me for his father. My grandson told me that his daddy was nervous and scared."
Her comments came under questioning from her attorney, Brian Panish.
Moments earlier, an attorney for AEG Live had questioned why the Jackson family matriarch _if her purpose for filing the lawsuit was to find out the truth about her son's death, as she had testified – hadn't read through thousands of pages of deposition testimony, or asked her grandchildren about what happened in her son's rented mansion before his June 2009 death.
She later said that while she could have asked her grandchildren about some issues, she didn't want to bring it up with them.
She also said that she didn't see a photograph of her son shot six days before her his death until after the trial started.
Katherine Jackson at first didn't seem to want to look at the photo, which has been repeatedly displayed during the trial and shows her son wearing a T-shirt, his arms thin and bones visible in his upper chest.
Katherine Jackson claims AEG Live failed to properly investigate Dr. Conrad Murray, who was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter for giving the singer an overdose of the anesthetic propofol.
AEG defense attorney Marvin S. Putnam told jurors during opening statements in the negligence lawsuit in April that the case centered on personal responsibility – specifically Michael Jackson's decision to ask Murray to administer propofol as a sleep aid while he prepared for his shows.
AEG Live denies it hired the doctor or bears any responsibility for Jackson's death.
Katherine Jackson said she believes AEG Live hired Murray, not her son. She said she never heard of the cardiologist until her son died, and indicated that she felt Murray bore responsibility for her son's death.
"Even though he asked for it, he could have said no," she said of Murray.
Putnam also asked Katherine Jackson about her son's payments to her over the years. She said he directly paid many of the expenses on her home and would occasionally give her cash as a gift.
Saying she didn't keep track of the payments, Katherine Jackson appeared to being annoyed at the questions.
"What does this have to do with the death of my son," she asked Putnam.
The attorney also asked her about conversations she had with her son about prescription drug use.
She said she asked him about it when he lived in Las Vegas and he denied he was abusing prescription medications.
"I'm a mother, quite naturally he denied it," she said. "He wouldn't want me to think that."
She said she wasn't surprised by his denial and likened the situation to a child who'd disobeyed his mother while playing outdoors.
Putnam said Jackson was a 50-year-old man at the time of his death. "He's still my child," Katherine Jackson said. "He'd still want me to hold his respect."
She said she was aware her son took medications for pain in his back and scalp after he sustained injuries over his career. She said she never saw signs that her son was abusing medications, including when she and several of her children went to the singer's Neverland Ranch in 2002 for an intervention.
Her son was fine but upset that they thought he had a problem, she said.
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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Jay Z, Kanye, Madonna Join Stevie Wonder's Florida Boycott In Wake Of Zimmerman Verdict

A number of top-level celebrities are reportedly following in Stevie Wonder's footsteps and plan to boycott Florida in protest of the state's "Stand your Ground" laws. The list, which was first reported by AURN's April Ryan and credited a "a source close to Wonder," includes the likes of Madonna, Usher, Kanye West, Jay Z, Rihanna and Rod Stewart.
Wonder announced his intention to boycott any state with "Stand Your Ground" laws after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the 2012 killing of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman did not invoke the "Stand Your Ground" defense in the trial, though it did figure into the police's decision not to not arrest Zimmerman for weeks after the incident. Additionally, the "Stand Your Ground" defense appeared in instructions to jurors, and a juror cited the law in explaining the not-guilty verdict.
"I decided today that until the 'Stand your Ground' law is abolished in Florida, I will never perform there again," Wonder said at a concert in Quebec City. "As a matter of fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state or in that part of the world. The truth is that -- for those of you who’ve lost in the battle for justice, wherever that fits in any part of the world -- we can’t bring them back. What we can do is we can let our voices be heard. And we can vote in our various countries throughout the world for change and equality for everybody. That’s what I know we can do."
Florida is not the only state with "Stand Your Ground" laws on its books -- at least 23 other states have similar provisions providing varying degrees of legal protection to those who use force in perceived self-defense.
The Huffington Post is reaching out to representatives for a number of artists on this list and will update this post should more information be made available.
UPDATE: A local news outlet in Florida cites "an executive affiliated with the 'Legends of the Summer' tour" who says the Justin Timberlake and Jay Z concert planned for August 16 at Sun Life stadium will go on. As stated earlier, HuffPost has reached out to Timberlake and Jay Z's reps for comment on the reported boycott.
UPDATE 2: A source with knowledge of the matter has denied to HuffPost that Rihanna is joining the boycott. We'll continue to update as more information becomes available.
The original article continues below.

• Mary Mary
• Eddie Levert
• Rod Stewart
• Madonna
• Usher
• Pattie Labelle
• Kanye West
• Mary J
• Trey Songz
• Jay Z
• Rolling Stones
• Justin Timberlake
• R. Kelly
• Rihanna
• Alicia Keys
• Joe
• Will I AM
• Keyshia Cole
• Young Jeezy
• Erykah Badu
• Wale
• Frankie Beverly
• Parliament

Japanese Train Passengers Push 32-Ton Train Car To Free Woman Stuck In Gap

TOKYO -- Dozens of Japanese train passengers pushed a 32-ton train carriage away from the platform to free a woman who had fallen into the 20-centimeter (eight-inch) gap between the train and platform during the busy morning rush hour Monday.
The act of heroism was captured by a newspaper photographer, whose photo of the rescue ran in the Yomiuri daily's evening edition.
A public announcement that a passenger was trapped prompted about 40 people to join train officials to push the carriage, whose suspension system allows it to lean to either side, according to the Yomiuri newspaper, Japan's largest daily.
The unnamed woman in her 30s was then pulled out uninjured to applause from onlookers at JR Minami-Urawa station, just north of Tokyo.
After just an eight-minute delay, the train went on its way.

Michael Madison To Be Charged In Discovery Of Bodies In Trash Bags: Cops

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A suspicious odor unearthed one body in a trash bag in a rundown neighborhood here, and then two more were found over the weekend, and police expected Monday to charge a man who indicated he might have been influenced by a serial killer whose home was found littered with bodies a few years ago.
Police and volunteers scoured about 40 empty homes Sunday until their search was suspended, with no immediate plans to resume, said East Cleveland Police Chief Ralph Spotts.
He identified the suspect as 35-year-old Michael Madison and said Madison was to be charged Monday but did not elaborate.
An odor led to the discovery Friday of one body in a garage. Two others were found Saturday – one in a backyard and the other in the basement of a vacant house. The victims were found about 100 to 200 yards apart, and authorities believed they were killed in the past six to 10 days.
The bodies of the three women were all wrapped in plastic bags in fetal positions. "It didn't look like a person could actually fit in the bag," Spotts told residents and activists who gathered Sunday to search.
They're part of the latest in a series of high-profile cases involving the disappearance of women from the Cleveland area.
In 2009, the mostly nude bodies of 11 women were found in garbage bags and plastic sheets throughout the Cleveland home of Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 of murdering the women and sentenced to death. In May, three women who vanished separately about a decade ago were found captive in a rundown house. The owner of the house, a former school bus driver, has pleaded not guilty to kidnap, rape and other crimes.
Madison threatened about a month ago to attack women in the same fashion as Sowell, said Eric Wilson, a neighbor who saw Madison frequently. Mayor Gary Norton said Madison gave similar indications to authorities.
"He said some things that led us to believe that in some way, shape, or form, Sowell might be an influence," Norton told The Associated Press.
Madison was arrested Friday after a police standoff. A woman at a small white house at an address for Madison said the family was shocked by the allegations. She identified herself as a family member and answered a few questions through the blinds of a window Sunday but refused to come out or give her name. It wasn't clear whether Madison has an attorney.
Madison was classified as a sex offender in 2002 when he was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted rape, according to court records. He had previous convictions in 2000 and 2001 for drug-related charges.
Wilson and others said Madison was a neighborhood fixture, constantly walking up and down streets and seen everywhere. Teenager Daniqwa Martin said Madison had offered her a ride in the past but she always declined.
One neighbor, Nathenia Crosby, said she was familiar with Madison and had seen him walking through the neighborhood. She said she had told him to stop chatting with her daughter and warned him after seeing him talk to her cousin.
"It's very scary, especially when he used to be talking to my daughter," said Crosby, 48. "But I told him he was too old to be talking to my daughter because she was only 19. When I found out how old he was, I said, `You need to move on, she's too young.' "
Detectives continued to interview Madison, Norton said. He said authorities have "lots of reasons" to suspect there are more victims, but he refused to say why.
Spotts indicated that Madison's comments haven't provided clarity on whether more bodies might be found.
"He really hasn't stated that there's any more, but he hasn't said anything that would make us think that there's not," Spotts said.
All three bodies were found in the fetal position, wrapped in several layers of trash bags, Norton said. The bodies were in advanced stages of decomposition and it would take several days to identify them and how they died, Cuyahoga County medical examiner Dr. Thomas P. Gilson said Sunday.
Martin, 16, said she smelled the odor Tuesday but ignored it, thinking it was a dead animal.
About three dozen volunteers, including community anti-crime activists, fanned out Sunday morning across yards, through vacant houses and along a railroad to help police search. The chief advised them to watch for missing floor boards as they looked inside houses. One young searcher crawled under a board screwed across a door to go inside a house.
Barbara Stirtmire, part of a local motorcycle club whose members were pitching in to search Sunday, said she came to help because she knows so many people in the area and herself has a teenage daughter.
"It doesn't make the city look good, I know that," said Stirtmire, 31, who works at a nearby auto parts store. "But as far as everybody coming together, it's beautiful."
The neighborhood in East Cleveland, which has some 17,000 residents, has many abandoned houses and authorities want to be thorough, the mayor said.
"Hopefully, we pray to God, this is it," he said.
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Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at . Associated Press writers Kantele Franko in Columbus, Dan Sewell in Cincinnati and Peggy Harris in Philadelphia contributed to this report. https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus