World Nation Briefs June 2, 2013
Jean Stapleton, TV's Edith Bunker, dies at 90
NEW YORK - Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker's far better half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV's groundbreaking 1970s comedy "All in the Family," has died. She was 90.
Stapleton died Friday of natural causes at her New York City home surrounded by friends and family, her children said Saturday.
Little known to the public before "All In the Family," she co-starred with Carroll O'Connor in the top-rated CBS sitcom about an unrepentant bigot, the wife he churlishly but fondly called "Dingbat," their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and liberal son-in-law Mike, aka Meathead (Rob Reiner).
Stapleton received eight Emmy nominations and won three times during her eight-year tenure with "All in the Family." Produced by Norman Lear, the series broke through the timidity of U.S. TV with social and political jabs and ranked as the No. 1-rated program for an unprecedented five years in a row. Lear would go on to create a run of socially conscious sitcoms.
Thousands of protesters swarm Istanbul square
ISTANBUL - In a scene reminiscent of the Arab Spring, thousands of people on Saturday flooded Istanbul's main square after a crackdown on an anti-government protest turned city streets into a battlefield clouded by tear gas.
Though he offered some concessions to demonstrators, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan remained largely defiant in the face of the biggest popular challenge to his power in a decade in office, insisting the protests are undemocratic and illegitimate.
Public anger has flared among urban and secular Turks after police violently broke up an anti-development sit-in in the square, with protests spreading to other cities as demonstrators denounced what they see as Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian style.
As the furious protests entered its second day, police fired tear gas and turned on water cannons at angry demonstrators, some of whom threw rocks and bottles on their march toward the city's landmark Taksim Square.
Legislators block GOP governors over Obama plan
WASHINGTON - It's Republican versus Republican in the latest round of political battles over health care.
Conservative Republican legislators in major states are trying to block efforts by more pragmatic governors of their own party to accept health insurance for more low-income residents under President Barack Obama's health care law.
Unlike their congressional counterparts, who've misfired in repeated attempts to torpedo the law, state Republicans may well sink the expansion of Medicaid in populous states such as Florida and Michigan.
That would mean leaving billions of dollars in federal matching funds on the table and hundreds of thousands of the poor uninsured. Expansion opponents say it's an issue that goes to their core beliefs.
- The Associated Press