Shootings leave 1 dead, 3 hurt

Three shootings in the city since Friday night have left a 21-year-old man dead and three people hurt, Chicago police said.

The fatal shooting happened about 8:30 p.m., Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines said.

Officers found the man in a hallway of a three-story apartment building in the 3900 block of North Central Avenue, in the Northwest Side's Portage Park neighborhood.

He was taken to Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 8:58 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The medical examiner's office identified the man as Manuel Hernandez and listed his address as where the shooting happened.

A woman entering the building found Hernandez on the floor of the vestibule, according to a police report.

When she tried to push the door open, the victim, whose back was up against the entry door, fell over and she asked him if he was OK, according to the report.

She called 911 and responding police officers looking around the building found a bullet hole in the front door of his home, the report said. A relative told police she’d last spoken with Hernandez at 5:05 p.m. and he’d told the relative he was on his way home, the report said.

Other officers searching the building spoke with at least two people, one of whom said they heard three or four shots, and another person who’d heard two gunshots. The victim’s bicycle was found on the north side of the building, according to the report.

Later, as snow coated Central Avenue and several squad cars parked near the scene, police searched for evidence and photographed a bike lying by an entrance on the building's north side.

It appeared the man had collapsed shortly after being shot near where the bike was found, police said.

Police have launched a homicide investigation in the shooting.

In a separate shooting, a 19-year-old and a 20-year-old were wounded about 11:30 p.m. in an alley west of the 5200 block of South Fairfield Avenue.

Someone opened fire from inside an SUV as the two walked home from a party, striking the 19-year-old man twice in the back and the 20-year-old man in the stomach and arm, police said.

The 19-year-old was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, and the 20-year-old was taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County. Police said their conditions had stabilized.

The shooting happened in the Gage Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

A female was also shot in the foot just before 5 a.m. near the intersection of West 16th Street and South Kedvale Avenue in the Lawndale neighborhood, police said.

She appeared to be in her early 20s, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Robert Perez said.

Further information about her condition was not immediately available.

asege@tribune.com

Twitter: @AdamSege

Read More..

Turkish leftist group claims U.S. embassy bombing: website

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish leftist group claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy and accused Washington of using Turkey as its "slave", according to a statement posted on the internet.

The Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C) said it carried out Friday's attack, in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body at the embassy in Ankara, killing himself and a Turkish security guard.

In a statement on "The People's Cry" website, the DHKP-C, which is listed as terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, warned Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan he too was a target.

"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement said, next to a picture of the bomber, named as Alisan Sanli, wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.

Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met with his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the attacker had served time in jail on domestic terrorism charges in Turkey in the past, re-entered the country using false documents and was wanted by the authorities.

"(The bomber) was demanding to pass through the guest and staff gate of the U.S. embassy using a fake ID when he detonated the explosives," the provincial governor's office in Ankara said in a statement.

It said he had also detonated a hand grenade.

The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act.

U.S. officials said the DHKP-C were the main suspects in Friday's bombing but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

U.S. PATRIOT MISSILES

The DHKP-C, formed in 1978, is virulently anti-American.

It called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil. The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard NATO-member Turkey against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.

"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syria.

It was the second attack on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War and launched rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square, and has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Read More..

Nasdaq rises one percent, Wall Street extends rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks hit five-year highs with each of the three major indexes up at least 1 percent on Friday, after jobs and manufacturing data showed the economy's sluggish recovery is still on track.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 139.22 points, or 1.00 percent, to 13,999.80. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 15.04 points, or 1.00 percent, to 1,513.15. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 35.47 points, or 1.13 percent, to 3,177.60.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

NBA union head Hunter placed on indefinite leave

NEW YORK (AP) — Billy Hunter is being placed on an indefinite leave of absence as executive director of the NBA players' association, following a report that was critical of his leadership and decision making.

The union is forming an interim executive committee and advisory committee, president Derek Fisher says in a statement released Friday.

Fisher pushed for the outside review of Hunter and the union, which found no illegal use of funds but cited Hunter for a number of poor choices and urged players to consider whether he should remain in charge during their All-Star weekend meetings.

Fisher says "immediate change is necessary."

Union attorney Ron Klempner was appointed acting executive director.

Read More..

US says warming climate threatens survival of snow-loving wolverine

BILLINGS, Mont. – The tenacious wolverine, a snow-loving carnivore sometimes called the “mountain devil,” is being added to the list of species threatened by climate change — a dubious distinction that puts it in the ranks of the polar bear and several other animals that could see their habitats shrink drastically due to warming temperatures.

U.S. wildlife officials on Friday will propose Endangered Species Act protections for the wolverine in the contiguous 48 states, a step denied under the Bush administration.

The Associated Press obtained details of the government’s long-awaited ruling on the rare, elusive animal in advance of the announcement.

Wildlife advocates, who sued to force the government to act on the issue, said they hope the animal’s plight will be used by the Obama administration to leverage tighter restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. As with the polar bear, the government could sidestep that thorny proposition by not addressing threats outside the wolverine’s immediate range.

Only 250 to 300 wolverines roam the contiguous U.S., clustered into small, isolated groups primarily in the Northern Rockies of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington. Larger populations persist in Alaska and Canada.

Maxing out at 40 pounds (18 kilograms) and tough enough to stand up to grizzly bears, the animals will be no match for anticipated declines in deep mountain snows that female wolverines need to establish dens and raise their young, scientists said.

Yet because that habitat loss could take decades to unfold, wildlife officials said there’s still time to bolster the population, including by reintroducing them to the high mountains of Colorado.

A special rule proposed by the Fish and Wildlife Service would allow Colorado’s wildlife agency to reintroduce an experimental population of the animals that eventually could spill into neighbouring portions of New Mexico and Wyoming.

Federal officials also want to shut down wolverine trapping in Montana, the only one of the 48 affected states where the practice is still allowed.

Federal officials said other human activities — from snowmobiling and skiing to infrastructure development and transportation corridors — are not significant threats to wolverines and would not be curtailed under Friday’s proposal.

Once found throughout the Rocky Mountains and in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, wolverines were wiped out across the 48 states by the 1930s due to unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns, said Bob Inman, a wolverine researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

In the decades since, they’ve largely recovered in the Northern Rockies but not in other parts of their historical range, he said.

Weather News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: US says warming climate threatens survival of snow-loving wolverine
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/us-says-warming-climate-threatens-survival-of-snow-loving-wolverine/
Link To Post : US says warming climate threatens survival of snow-loving wolverine
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Hillary: Secretary of empowerment

Girls hug U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2010 tour of a shelter run for sex trafficking victims in Cambodia.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Donna Brazile: Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. Maybe she'll run for president


• She says as secretary she expanded foreign policy to include effect on regular people


• She says she was first secretary of state to focus on empowering women and girls


• Brazile: Clinton has fought for education and inclusion in politics for women and girls

Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee. She is a nationally syndicated columnist, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of "Cooking with Grease." She was manager for the Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign in 2000.

(CNN) -- As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton steps down from her job Friday, many are assuming she will run for president. And she may. In fact, five of the first eight presidents first served their predecessors as secretary of state.

It hasn't happened in more than a century, though that may change should Clinton decide to run. After all, she has been a game changer her entire life.

But before we look ahead, I think we should appreciate what she's done as secretary of state; it's a high profile, high pressure job. You have to deal with the routine as if it is critical and with crisis as if it's routine. You have to manage egos, protocols, customs and Congress. You have to be rhetorical and blunt, diplomatic and direct.

CNN Contributor Donna Brazile

As secretary of state you are dealing with heads of state and with we the people. And the president of the United States has to trust you -- implicitly.

On the road with Hillary Clinton

Of all Clinton's accomplishments -- and I will mention just a few -- this may be the most underappreciated. During the election, pundits were puzzled and amazed not only at how much energy former President Bill Clinton poured into Obama's campaign, but even more at how genuine and close the friendship was.

Obama was given a lot of well-deserved credit for reaching out to the Clintons by appointing then-Sen. Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state in the first place. But trust is a two-way street and has to be earned. We should not underestimate or forget how much Clinton did and how hard she worked. She deserved that trust, as she deserved to be in the war room when Osama bin Laden was killed.

By the way, is there any other leader in the last 50 years whom we routinely refer to by a first name, and do so more out of respect than familiarity? The last person I can think of was Ike -- the elder family member who we revere with affection. Hillary is Hillary.

It's not surprising that we feel we know her. She has been part of our public life for more than 20 years. She's been a model of dignity, diplomacy, empathy and toughness. She also has done something no other secretary of state has done -- including the two women who preceded her in the Cabinet post.

Rothkopf: President Hillary Clinton? If she wants it

Hillary has transformed our understanding -- no, our definition -- of foreign affairs. Diplomacy is no longer just the skill of managing relations with other countries. The big issues -- war and peace, terror, economic stability, etc. -- remain, and she has handled them with firmness and authority, with poise and confidence, and with good will, when appropriate.

But it is not the praise of diplomats or dictators that will be her legacy. She dealt with plenipotentiaries, but her focus was on people. Foreign affairs isn't just about treaties, she taught us, it's about the suffering and aspirations of those affected by the treaties, made or unmade.

Most of all, diplomacy should refocus attention on the powerless.

Of course, Hillary wasn't the first secretary of state to advocate for human rights or use the post to raise awareness of abuses or negotiate humanitarian relief or pressure oppressors. But she was the first to focus on empowerment, particularly of women and girls.

She created the first Office of Global Women's Issues. That office fought to highlight the plight of women around the world. Rape of women has been a weapon of war for centuries. Though civilized countries condemn it, the fight against it has in a sense only really begun.

Ghitis: Hillary Clinton's global legacy on gay rights

The office has worked to hold governments accountable for the systematic oppression of girls and women and fought for their education in emerging countries. As Hillary said when the office was established: "When the Security Council passed Resolution 1325, we tried to make a very clear statement, that women are still largely shut out of the negotiations that seek to end conflicts, even though women and children are the primary victims of 21st century conflict."

Hillary also included the United States in the Trafficking in Person report. Human Trafficking, a form of modern, mainly sexual, slavery, victimizes mostly women and girls. The annual report reviews the state of global efforts to eliminate the practice. "We believe it is important to keep the spotlight on ourselves," she said. "Human trafficking is not someone else's problem. Involuntary servitude is not something we can ignore or hope doesn't exist in our own communities."

She also created the office of Global Partnerships. And there is much more.

She has held her own in palaces and held the hands of hungry children in mud-hut villages, pursuing an agenda that empowers women, children, the poor and helpless.

We shouldn't have been surprised. Her book "It Takes a Village" focused on the impact that those outside the family have, for better or worse, on a child's well-being.

As secretary of state, she did all she could to make sure our impact as a nation would be for the better.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Donna Brazile.

Read More..

Reward at $24K for info leading to arrest in shooting of teen

The best friend of Hadiya Pendleton talks about the moments before her friend was shot in Chicago on January 31, 2013. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune)

The sixth-grader can barely keep from smiling, self-conscious in front of the camera as she delivers a very serious message.

"Hi, my name is Hadiya. This commercial is informational for you and your future children," she begins. "So many children out there are in gangs and it's your job as students to say no to gangs and yes to a great future."

The video then shows shots of a boy slumped in a stairwell, another boy sprawled against a locker, a girl lying on the floor against a wall as a classmate next to Hadiya says, "So many children in the world have died from gang violence. More than 500 children have died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Four years after Hadiya Pendleton made that public service video at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School, police are saying the same thing about her.

Hadiya had just finished her final exams at King Prep High School, where she was a sophomore, and was hanging out with friends from the school's volleyball team when she was gunned down in a park in the 4400 block of South Oakenwald Avenue. Thursday afternoon, police announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting had increased to $24,000, up from $11,000 announced Wednesday.

Hadiya and the others had sought shelter from a rainstorm under a canopy at the park around 2:20 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman jumped a fence, ran toward them and opened fire, police said.

As the teens scattered, Hadiya and two teenage boys were shot. Hadiya was hit in the back and pronounced dead at Comer Children's Hospital less than an hour after the shooting. The wounds suffered by the boys were not life-threatening.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy stressed that neither Hadiya nor anyone in the group she was with were involved with gangs. But it appears the gunman mistook the students for members of a rival gang, he said. The shooter was last seen fleeing in a white Nissan.

“These were good kids by everything that I learned," McCarthy said at a Wednesday news conference, where a reward of $11,000 was announced. "Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Friday morning, that reward has been increased to $30,000, according to a statement from police News Affairs.

Pastor Courtney Maxwell, the family’s pastor, has offered $6,000, increasing the reward to $30,000, according to the statement, which said Maxwell has called a press conference at Harsh Park at 11:45 a.m. 

Hadiya was shot a little more than a week after performing with the King College Prep band in Washington during President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities. The shooting occurred in a park about a mile north of Obama's Kenwood home.

The shooting has drawn the attention of both the White House, which is pushing for national gun control, and City Hall as Chicago closes on a violent January. Hadiya was the 42nd homicide victim this year in the city, where killings last year climbed above 500.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, pleaded for someone to step forward and bring the 15-year-old's killer to justice.

"She was destined for great things," he said.

Hadiya was a majorette with the band at King, one of the city's elite selective-enrollment schools. She dreamed of going to Northwestern University and talked about becoming a pharmacist or a journalist, maybe a lawyer.

Police have reported no arrests.

Read More..

Suicide bomber kills guard at U.S. embassy in Turkey

ANKARA (Reuters) - A suicide bomber from a far-left group killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, blowing the door off a side entrance and sending smoke and debris flying into the street.

The attacker blew himself up inside U.S. property, Ankara Governor Alaaddin Yuksel said. The blast sent masonry spewing out of the wall and could be heard a mile away.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the bomber was a member of a far-left group. The U.S. State Department said it was working with Turkish police to investigate what it described as "a terrorist blast".

Islamist radicals, far-left groups, far-right groups and Kurdish separatist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. There was no claim of responsibility.

"The suicide bomber was ripped apart and one or two citizens from the special security team passed away," said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who was attending a ceremony in Istanbul when the blast happened.

"This event shows that we need to fight together everywhere in the world against these terrorist elements," he said.

Far-left groups in Turkey oppose what they see as U.S. influence over Turkish foreign policy.

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism, and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Around 400 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Turkey over the past few weeks to operate Patriot anti-missile batteries meant to defend against any spillover of Syria's civil war, part of a NATO deployment due to be fully operational in the coming days.

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the embassy, which is surrounded by high walls, shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.

"We are very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone said, thanking the Turkish authorities for a prompt response.

A Reuters witness saw one wounded person being lifted into an ambulance as police armed with assault rifles cordoned off the area.

"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.

OPPOSED TO U.S. INFLUENCE

State broadcaster TRT said the attacker was thought to be from The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), which wants a socialist state and is vehemently anti-American, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

The group, deemed a terrorist organization by both the United States and Turkey, was blamed for a suicide attack in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square.

Guler said the bomber could have been from the DHKP-C or a similar group.

The DHKP/C has in the past attacked Turkish official targets with bombs, but arrests of some of its members in recent years have weakened its capabilities, according to the NCTC.

The date of the DHKP-C's most recent attack, on an Istanbul police station, was September 11, 2012, seen as a symbolic strike to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

Despite some strains, Washington and Ankara have long had a strong strategic alliance. U.S. President Barack Obama chose Turkey as his first Muslim nation to visit after he took office five years ago.

Turkish support and bases have helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan, while Turkey hosts a NATO radar system, operated by U.S. forces, in its eastern province of Malatya to help defend against any regional threat from Iran.

More recently, it has led calls for international intervention in neighboring Syria and is hosting hundreds of NATO soldiers who are manning the Patriot missile defense system near the Syrian border, hundreds of kilometers from the capital.

The U.S. consulate in Istanbul warned its citizens to be vigilant and to avoid large gatherings, while the British mission in Istanbul called on British businesses to tighten security after what it called a "suspected terrorist attack".

The most serious bombings of this kind in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Authorities said the attack bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.

Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed a further 32 people a week later.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Read More..

Wall Street flat after mixed data; Qualcomm lifts Nasdaq

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Thursday as investors mulled a mixed bag of economic data, though earnings from Qualcomm helped lift the Nasdaq.

Data showed the labor market improved modestly; the number of Americans filing new claims last week for unemployment benefits rose, beating expectations and bouncing off five-year lows in the prior week.

That comes ahead of Friday's payrolls report, which is expected to show employers added 160,000 jobs in January after an increase of 155,000 in December.

A separate report showed incomes climbed in December by the most in eight years, in an encouraging sign that the economy may be propelled forward through consumer spending.

A gauge of business activity in the U.S. Midwest showed a pick up in January from a more than three-year low in December as new orders jumped. The report followed a disappointing survey from the mid-Atlantic and New York regions.

Qualcomm Inc gained 5.9 percent to $67.25 as the top boost to the Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> after the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones beat analysts' expectations for quarterly profit and revenue, and raised its targets for the year.

The worst performer on the Nasdaq was Facebook Inc , which lost 5.9 percent to $29.39. The social network company said Wednesday it doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter; however, that growth trailed some of Wall Street's most aggressive estimates.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 22.88 points, or 0.16 percent, to 13,933.30. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 0.21 points, or 0.01 percent, to 1,502.17. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 8.43 points, or 0.27 percent, to 3,150.73.

The S&P 500 <.spx> has gained 5.3 percent in January, after legislators in Washington temporarily sidestepped a "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that could have derailed the economic recovery, and amid improving economic data and better-than-expected corporate earnings.

But the benchmark index has stalled recently and is virtually flat for the week, hovering near the 1,500 mark, as investors look for fresh trading incentives to justify further gains.

"Unfortunately it's still a mixed picture, it appears we are just getting a lot of conflicting data right now," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.

"There is certainly a lot of information coming out this week - a lot of economic data, a lot of earnings and of course we have the employment number looming Friday, so with 1,500 right here, my guess is there is just not enough conviction to push us substantially higher yet."

United Parcel Service Inc lost 1.6 percent to $79.95 after the world's largest parcel delivery reported fourth-quarter earnings below analysts' estimates on Thursday and forecast weaker-than-expected profit for 2013.

But the Dow Jones Transportation average <.djt> gained 0.5 percent as Kirby Corp added 7.6 percent to $71.57 and Ryder Systems Inc climbed 4.7 percent to $56.79 after posting quarterly results.

Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning shows that of the 231 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 69.3 percent have exceeded expectations, a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 3.7 percent. That's above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season, but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1, the data showed.

WMS Industries Inc surged 52.5 percent to $24.96 after the company agreed to be acquired by Scientific Games Corp for $26 per share in cash. Scientific Games jumped 19 percent to $10.63.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Read More..

49ers' Culliver apologizes for anti-gay remarks

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver apologized Thursday for anti-gay comments he made to a comedian during Super Bowl media day, saying "that's not what I feel in my heart."

"I'm sorry if I offended anyone. They were very ugly comments," Culliver said during an hour-long media session. "Hopefully I learn and grow from this experience and this situation."

He said he would welcome a gay teammate to the 49ers, a reversal of his remarks to Artie Lange two days earlier during an interview at the Superdome.

"I treat everyone equal," Culliver said. "That's not how I feel."

He added that he realized his comments were especially offensive to many people in San Francisco and the Bay Area, which is home to a large gay community.

"I love San Francisco," Culliver said.

During the interview with Lange, Culliver responded to questions by saying he wouldn't welcome a gay player in the locker room. He also said the 49ers didn't have any gay players, and if they did those players should leave.

San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh met privately with Culliver to discuss the remarks.

"I reject what he said," Harbaugh said. "That's not something that reflects the way the organization feels, the way the rest of the players feel."

The coach would not discuss if Culliver would face discipline from the team, such as a fine or loss of playing time.

"He pledged to grow from it," Harbaugh said.

The interview began with Lange asking Culliver about his sexual plans with women during Super Bowl week. Lange followed up with a question about whether Culliver would consider pursuing a gay man.

"I don't do the gay guys, man. I don't do that," Culliver said during the one-minute taped interview. "Ain't got no gay people on the team. They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can't be with that sweet stuff."

Lange asked Culliver to reiterate his thoughts, to which the player said, "It's true." He added he wouldn't welcome a gay teammate — no matter how talented.

"Nah. Can't be ... in the locker room, nah," he said. "You've gotta come out 10 years later after that."

The 24-year-old Culliver, a third-round draft pick in 2011 out of South Carolina, made 47 tackles with two interceptions and a forced fumble this season while starting six games for the NFC champion Niners (13-4-1).

He had his first career postseason interception in San Francisco's 28-24 win at Atlanta for the NFC title.

The 49ers participate in the NFL's "It Gets Better" anti-bullying campaign. Three organizations working for LGBT inclusion in sports — Athlete Ally, You Can Play, and GLAAD — reacted to Culliver's remarks and later acknowledged his apology.

"Chris Culliver's comments were disrespectful, discriminatory and dangerous, particularly for the young people who look up to him," said Athlete Ally Executive Director Hudson Taylor. "His words underscore the importance of the athlete ally movement and the key role that professional athletes play in shaping an athletic climate that affirms and includes gay and lesbian players."

Calling Lange's questions "real disrespectful," Culliver said he realized he was speaking to a comedian and not a journalist.

"That was pretty much in a joking manner," the player said. "It's nothing about how I feel."

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Read More..