Savannah wants name of governor off bridge

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Former Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge unflinchingly defended segregation in the 1930s and ‘40s, and infamously proclaimed a black man’s place was “at the back door with his hat in his hand.”

Now the mayor of Savannah and its city council say the towering suspension bridge that fills the city’s riverside skyline is the wrong place to display Talmadge’s name. A resolution approved unanimously on Thursday calls for renaming the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge, as the span crossing the Savannah River has been known for six decades.

Mayor Eddie DeLoach called for stripping Talmadge’s name from the local landmark soon after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists rallying in support of Confederate statues clashed with counter-protesters.

While other cities moved to take down monuments to Civil War figures, Savannah took aim at the honor bestowed on a racist, Jim Crow-era governor in a city where 54 percent of residents are black and tourism is a $2.8 billion industry. Now the question is whether state lawmakers will honor the request to change the name to The Savannah Bridge. each year on the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic year, to mourn the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

At Saturday’s rally in Islamabad thousands of Shiite Muslims were seen beating their chests with their hands and flagellating themselves with knives attached to chains.

Authorities have stepped up security across the country following intelligence reports that militants could target Shiites this week.

Shiites are a minority in predominant Sunni Muslim Pakistan, where Sunni militants view them as apostates deserving of death.

Islamic State group in eastern Syria have killed and wounded dozens a day after an attack by the extremists killed more than 120 pro-government fighters and briefly cut off the highway linking the capital Damascus with eastern Syria, opposition activists said Saturday.

It was not immediately clear if the airstrikes on areas including Mayadeen, Boukamal, Bouleil, Bouomar and Mushassan were carried out by the Russians or the U.S.-led coalition. Syrian troops have been advancing in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour against IS under the cover of Russian airstrikes while the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are marching against the extremists under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The airstrikes came after two days of clashes between Syrian government forces and their allies against IS fighters in central and eastern Syria that left nearly 200 dead on both sides. Syrian troops and their allies have regained most of the areas they had lost earlier.