Hasta La Gadget!

July 13 marks the one year anniversary of “Glee” star Cory Monteith’s death, and the actor’s father recently spoke about the loss of his son.

On Entertainment Tonight Canada, Joe Montetih opened up about his son’s death. “I still miss him very much,” he said. “I still have the empty feeling inside.” Monteith also said that what’s making his mourning so tough is that he wasn’t invited to his son’s funeral ceremony by his ex-wife, Cory’s mother. “I didn’t get to go to his viewing, which would have meant a lot,” he said. Cory was estranged from his father for much of his life and the two only started to reconnect a few years before his death. His father still remembers his son as a likeable young man though, saying, “If he was in the room, you’d be smiling.”

[h/t People]

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.N. urged Iraq’s leaders Saturday to overcome their deep divisions and move quickly to form a new government that can unite the country and confront a surging militant threat, warning that failure to do so “risks plunging the country into chaos.”

The Sunni insurgent blitz over the past month has driven Iraq into its deepest crisis since the last American troops left in 2011, pushing bloodshed to levels unseen since the height of the Iraq war, sending Sunni-Shiite tensions soaring and raising the specter of a nation cleaved in three along ethnic and sectarian lines. Iraq’s new parliament is scheduled on Sunday to hold its second session amid hopes that lawmakers can quickly decide on a new prime minister, president and speaker of parliament — the first steps toward forming a new government. It failed to make any progress in its first session, and postponed its second session until Sunday.

U.N special envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, called on lawmakers to attend the meeting and forge an agreement on new leaders. He warned of dire consequences if the current political deadlock drags on.

“It will only serve the interests of those who seek to divide the people of Iraq and destroy their chances for peace and prosperity,” he said in a statement. “Iraq needs a team that can bring people together. Now is not the time for mutual accusations, now is the time for moving forward and compromising in the interest of the Iraqi people.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has ruled the country since 2006, is under pressure to step aside. His government’s inability to prevent the attack, let alone roll back the militant advance, has sapped public — and international — confidence in his ability to hold Iraq together and lift it out of the crisis.

Al-Maliki’s opponents, and even many of his former allies, accuse him of trying to monopolize power and alienating the Sunni community, and are pushing him to not seek a third consecutive term. Al-Maliki has so far refused to withdraw his candidacy, and points to his State of Law bloc’s capturing the most seats in April elections to claim he has a mandate.

Even though parliament delayed its second session by five days, lawmakers appear unlikely to achieve a major breakthrough Sunday on choosing new leadership, setting the stage for further political wrangling in the days and weeks ahead.

The militants, who have tapped into the deep disaffection among Iraq’s minority Sunnis with al-Maliki, have swept through most of the country’s predominantly Sunni areas in the north and west. The front lines have largely stabilized since their offensive encountered greater resistance in majority Shiite areas, although heavy fighting rages on.

On Saturday, Iraqi troops supported by Shiite militiamen battled Sunni militants who had seized at least partial control of a military base outside the town of Muqdadiyah, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad. The troops and pro-government fighters succeeded in pushing insurgents out of the nearby hamlet of Nofal, but the base remained split between the warring sides, police officials said.

Police and hospital officials said the bodies of 16 pro-government fighters — a mix of soldiers and militiamen — killed in the fighting were taken to the morgue in Muqdadiyah, and another 15 were taken to the provincial capital of Baqouba. They said a family of five, including three children, was killed in government airstrikes on Nofal.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

To the west of Baghdad, the government airlifted some 4,000 volunteers to Ramadi to boost their forces trying to defend the city from militant attack, said Gen. Rasheed Flayeh, the commander of operations in Anbar province. The operation began Friday and finished Saturday.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, an overwhelmingly Sunni province and one of the most active battle fronts in Iraq. The Islamic State extremist group and other Sunni militants seized control of the Anbar city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January. The government has since reasserted its control of Ramadi, but Fallujah remains in insurgent hands.

The vast majority of volunteer fighters are Shiites who have answered a call from the country’s top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to defend Iraq from the Sunni militants led by the Islamic State group, which has unilaterally declared the establishment of an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law in the territory it controls straddling the Iraq-Syria border.

The government’s reliance on Shiite militias — who have deployed in sizeable numbers to several cities across the country — to help counter the militant threat has ramped up sectarian tensions, fueling fears that Iraq could return to the wholesale sectarian bloodletting that engulfed the country in 2006 and 2007.

In Baghdad, gunmen in four-wheel drive vehicles raided two buildings in a housing complex in the Zayounah neighborhood late Saturday, killing at least 33 people, including 29 women, police said. They say at least 18 people were wounded.

An Interior Ministry official and hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures.

The motive behind the killings was not immediately clear, but police said there are suspicions that the buildings were being used as a brothel.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

One horse owner faced a tragic loss after a horse died in a freak accident on a highway in Hawaii.

The trailer, which was carrying a total of five horses, was trying to merge onto Interstate H-1 westbound on the island of Oahu when the bottom of the trailer broke and one of the horses fell through it, according to KHON2. It became wedged underneath the 40-foot-long trailer, where it died.

Emergency responders and the horse’s owner did what they could to help the horse, but it was too late. The four remaining horses were unhurt and the horses’ owner eventually continued west down the freeway.

“I’m surprised it happened, but I’m heartbroken for the horse as well for the owner,” Diane Cornish with Equine 808 Horse Rescue told KHON2. She reminded local reporters that trailers made to handle livestock should be regularly maintained and inspected more than once a year.

[h/t KHON2]

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pennsylvania’s former health secretary says the state has failed to seriously study the potential health impacts of one of the nation’s biggest natural gas drilling booms.

Dr. Eli Avila also says the state’s current strategy is a disservice to people and even to the industry itself because health officials need to be proactive in protecting the public. “The lack of any action speaks volumes,” said Dr. Eli Avila, who is now the public health commissioner for Orange County, New York. “Don’t BS the public. Their health comes first.”

Avila told The Associated Press that he believes senior political advisers did a “disservice” to Republican Gov. Tom Corbett by putting a study of health effects on the back burner three years ago. That has led to a cycle of public fear and confusion, he said.

“What are you so afraid that we’re going to uncover?” Avila said of industry leaders, adding that it would be better to clearly tell people what is or isn’t a problem. “It’s not that I’m against fracking. I’m sure it’s helping many individuals financially.”

The gas drilling industry has said hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is safe and there’s no evidence of serious health problems from it.

In 2011 an advisory commission recommended the state create a public health registry to track drilling-related complaints and address concerns. The state House approved $2 million for it, but Senate GOP leaders and the governor’s office cut the funding at the last minute.

The Marcellus Shale drilling boom that began in Pennsylvania around 2008 has generated tens of thousands of direct jobs and more than a billion dollars in royalties to landowners but also complaints about air and water pollution and the industrialization of nearby communities.

Some people have complained that nearby drilling led to headaches, nosebleeds and other problems, and there are long-term concerns about the toxic chemicals used in the fracking process that breaks the rock to free gas. But without coordinated statewide research, it’s impossible to know how widespread or dangerous the problems are or even if drilling is responsible.

Avila spoke after media outlet State Impact reported that two former Health Department employees said they had been told to forward certain environmental health complaints — including drilling — to the Bureau of Epidemiology and to not discuss the issues with callers. The memo included other subjects beyond drilling, such as Superfund sites, garbage dumps and mining.

Health Department spokeswoman Aimee Tysarczyk said in an email, “There was not and is not an effort to keep employees from taking Marcellus Shale-related health complaints or from following up on complaints.”

All such complaints, she said, “are immediately reported to the Bureau of Epidemiology for review and follow-up.”

Tysarczyk said the department has responded to all 51 Marcellus Shale health-related complaints it has received, and “any complaint or investigation is shared directly with the individual involved and his or her physician if the individual has seen a physician.”

The database of the complaints contains personal health information and can’t be made public because of medical privacy laws.

State Impact reports that Pennsylvania, Colorado and North Dakota log drilling-related complaints in databases, but Health Departments in Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming and West Virginia don’t keep track of them at all.

Avila said he thinks Corbett is a “good man” who’s being hurt politically by top advisers who don’t let the governor hear directly from qualified health experts. Avila resigned from the post in 2012 after serving two years.

The AP asked Corbett on Friday if he supported creating a health registry for drilling complaints. Corbett said he doesn’t know where the Department of Health stands on the issue now.

“I’d have to know what they’ve been talking about before I can answer that,” he said.

Another public health expert said the bigger point isn’t how the phone calls to the Health Department were handled; rather, the issue should be the ongoing lack of a rigorous program to study and respond to drilling-related health complaints.

Pennsylvania is “simply not doing” serious studies into possible health impacts of drilling, said Dr. Bernard Goldstein, who has five decades of public health experience at hospitals and universities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Goldstein said questions about drilling and public health are not going away, and he suggested that Pennsylvania “do what their advisory commission told them to do,” since it’s not too late to start a health registry for drilling complaints.

Avila noted that “fracking’s not going anywhere. So what you really need to do is assure the public that you’re going to protect them.”

That hasn’t happened, he said.

“How can you keep the public safe if you’re not collecting data?” on drilling-related complaints, he asked.

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