But by pursuing their own path distinct from both the opposition and the regime, they are also colliding with Sunni rebels, who have increasingly clashed with Kurdish militiamen. Rebels have besieged a pocket of Kurdish towns and villages in the mainly Sunni Arab corner of northwest Syria for weeks, leading to reports of shortages of food and medicine.

The fighting threatens to expand into an ethnic war between Kurds and Arabs, adding another layer to the potent mix of fighters and conflicts in a brutal civil war that, according to the United Nations, has already killed 93,000 people. The ethnic tensions come on top of virulent sectarian hatreds between pro-rebel Sunnis and pro-regime Alawites and Shiites that have spiraled amid the fight for power.

Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria, making up more than 10 percent of the country's 23 million people. They are centered in the poor northeastern regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged between the borders of Turkey and Iraq. The capital Damascus and Syria's largest city, Aleppo, also have several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods.

Long put down by President Bashar Assad's regime, the Kurds are now exulting in the new, de facto autonomy that they seized. As the fighting intensified last summer, particularly in the northern province of Aleppo, Assad's forces were stretched thin and pulled back from mainly Kurdish towns and villages near the Turkish border, ceding de facto control to armed Kurdish fighters.

Over the past year, some Kurds began openly calling for an officially autonomous region in Syria similar to that of northern Iraq.

Vehicles sporting license plates reading "Rojava Kurdistan," or "western Kurdistan," have become more common. Kurdish red, green and white flags with a sun in the middle the same flag flown in Iraqi Kurdistan fly over homes and public offices. A local police force known "Asayish," whose members include women, have taken over security in the areas abandoned last year by Assad's forces.

Kurds now study their own language and cultural heritage in schools. Under Assad, Kurds have not been allowed to openly teach their language or celebrate their New Year, or Nowruz, and Kurdish activists were routinely jailed.

"There was a political vacuum and it was filled," said Mustafa Osso, secretary general of the Azadi Kurdish Party in Syria and a senior member with the National Kurdish Council, an umbrella to 15 groups.

"A future Syria should be democratic, pluralist and cannot be ruled by a central government any more. We want to propose a political program that Syria be a federal state like Iraq," he told The Associated Press.

But Kurdish gunmen and rebels have fought several pitched battles over the past months.

Since late last month, rebels have laid siege to a predominantly Kurdish pocket around the town of Afrin, northwest of the city of Aleppo.

In a statement Monday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights warned of shortages of food, milk and medicine in the Afrin area. It said hospitals in the area are concerned about the spread of tuberculosis because of a lack of medicines. The Afrin region, halfway between Aleppo and the Turkish border, has a population of more than half a million, along with more than 200,000 Syrians who fled there from fighting elsewhere, said the Observatory, an anti-regime group that has a network of activists on the ground.

The Afrin assault began when rebels wanted to pass through it to attack the predominantly Shiite villages of Nubul and Zahra, controlled by Assad loyalists, the head of the Observatory, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said. After Kurdish groups refused, rebels attacked Kurdish checkpoints and laid siege, beginning May 25.

Dozens have been killed on both sides in the clashes since, he said. Kurdish groups in the area are mostly secular, while the rebels in the northern regions are made up of Muslim extremists, including al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra.

"There is no trust between the two sides," Abdul-Rahman told The Associated Press. "There are efforts taking place to prevent a bigger war that could burn the region."

The fighting reflects in part the Kurds' complicated response to Assad and the uprising against him. When the revolt began in March 2011, some Kurds joined in the peaceful protests against his rule.

Assad also tried to keep the community on his side by ceding ground on a major Kurdish demand, granting citizenship to some 200,000 Kurds who were registered as aliens before. The Kurds long complained of discrimination, and many of them were denied citizenship, making it difficult for them to find work or enroll in the state-run education system.

Kurds' suspicion of the opposition increasingly dominated by Islamist fighters kept many on the fence, much like members of other minorities like Christians. Fearing the future if Assad's secular regime collapses, Kurds have not thrown themselves into the armed uprising beyond carving out their own interests.

The Kurds are also hampered by their own divisions among multiple factions, one of which is accused of openly siding with Assad's regime. Some Kurds say that the pro-government militia of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, is indirectly enforcing Assad's rule in several Kurdish areas it took over last year.

PYD, Syria's most powerful Kurdish group, is affiliated with the PKK, rebels who were fighting for autonomy in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey.

The clashes between the two sides have involved PYD militiamen and extremist rebels, and the exiled opposition accuses the regime of stoking the tensions.

"The regime wants a sectarian war between Alawites and Sunnis and an ethnic war between Arabs and Kurds so that it appears to be everyone's protector and to say that the substitute (to the regime) would be chaos and infighting," said Abdelbaset Sieda, a senior Kurdish member of the main Western-backed opposition Syrian National Coalition.

"We are in contact with all parties to calm the situation and to consolidate all efforts against the regime," Sieda said.

The tension first began last summer when rebels captured several neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo. When the rebels reached the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Achrafieh, PYD members controlling the district told them not to enter.

Some rebels accused the PYD of being collaborators with the regime. The Kurds accused the Arab rebels of wanting to dominate their neighborhood.

The friction in Achrafieh was followed by clashes in Afrin, Tel Abyad, Hassakeh, Qamishli, Ras al-Ayn and Tel Tamr near the border with Turkey. The two sides clashed in Ras al-Ayn for three months until a cease-fire was reached in February.

Kaniwar Ayani, 28, an activist in Ras al-Ayn, said hard-line Islamist rebel factions are seeking to dominate the Kurds. When rebels entered the town, they prevented residents from raising any flag other than the militants' black banner with Islamic slogans, he said. When they went on mosque loudspeakers to demand Kurdish fighters surrender, the Kurds decided to stand up against them.

"The Islamic groups entered Ras al-Ayn to liberate it but they stayed to impose their will," Ayani said.

Many in the opposition react to Kurdish demands much like the Assad regime always has. They see the demands for autonomy or even for greater rights as an attempt to split the country. One point of friction is also control of oil fields in Hassakeh, especially the Rumailan field, currently held by Kurdish gunmen.

Kurdish autonomy in post-Assad Syria, similar to the Iraqi model, could strengthen long-standing demands for an independent homeland for the more than 25 million Kurds in parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

"As Kurds, we have a right that we have been deprived from for decades. I frankly dream of a Kurdish state," said university student Shayar Aziz, 24, from the Kurdish town of Amouda.

___

A Syrian journalist in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, contributed reporting.

UT San Diego cites (http://bit.ly/11oH5BJ) a preliminary investigation report that finds a group of skydivers were trying a multiple person maneuver over Riverside County on Saturday when one of them became entangled in a parachute.

The man was unable to free himself and fell to the ground.

Police found him in the backyard of a Lake Elsinore home. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The man was identified as Ken Oka of Mira Loma.

The newspaper says police and the Federal Aviation Administration are conducting independent investigations.

___

Information from: U-T San Diego, http://www.utsandiego.com

Everyone needs a little personal space in the office.

At least, workers at a warehouse leased by the Environmental Protection Agency, in Landover, Md., seem to think so. EPA's inspectors found secret rooms at the facility filled with exercise equipment, televisions, refrigerators, microwaves and couches. The "man caves" also boasted photos, pin ups, calendars, clothing, books, magazines and videos, according to adated May 31.

To hide the rooms from security cameras, the employees-who worked for Apex Logistics, LLC, and not directly for the EPA-piled up screens, partitions and boxes in front of them.

According to the report, first made public in , the 70,000 square foot warehouse, which is owned by theand leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year, is filled with everything from computers and other electronic equipment to letterhead paper and office furniture.

There was also "corrosion, vermin feces, mold and other problems" along with "unsecured racks (shelves) and poorly balanced inventory items that hung over the upper edges of the racks."

Additionally, there were potential fire hazards from propane stored in trucks and other vehicles, parked inside the building.

EPA spokesperson Alisha Johnson told ABC News that as soon as the organization discovered the areas, they "took immediate action to secure the warehouse and its contents, and issued a stop work order to the contractor." The EPA also investigated other warehouses and storage spaces, but did not find other problems.

EPA is also in the process of developing a security plan and new operating procedures for management of the warehouse, she said.

Apex did not return calls for comment.

Republicans were so concerned about the party's dismal courtship of Latino voters in the 2012 election — Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Latino vote — that theya need to do better in the future, or face irrelevance.

Yet a new Pew Researchsuggests the shifting electoral landscape may not be as perilous as previously thought. Though Latinos continued to increase their overall share of the electorate in 2012, they still lagged significantly behind other demographics in their rate of voter participation.

While a record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the 2012 presidential election, 12.1 million eligible Latino voters didn't bother to cast ballots, also a record-high.

While the number of eligible Latino voters grew 19 percent since 2008, from 19.5 million to 23.3 million, voter participation rose at a slower rate of 15 percent. In the end, less than half of all eligible Latino voters cast ballots — far less than the 66.6 percent and 64.1 percent turnout rates for black and white voters, respectively.

In fact, Latino voter participation actually decreased from the last presidential election.

To look at it another way, while Latinos made up 17.2 percent of the nation's population in 2012, they comprised just 8.4 percent of all voters.

"The Hispanic vote is like a raw prospect in the NBA Draft," . "The potential is quite clearly there but the record of accomplishment doesn’t come close to matching that potential."

As , an uptick in the Latino voting rate could have profoundly changed the 2012 election results. Given President Obama's huge edge with that demographic, a surge of Latino voters would have made battleground states into cakewalks, and possibly added more states to the president's win column.

If the percentage of Hispanics who cast ballots had grown to match the percentage of whites who voted, the presidential map would have changed dramatically. Those higher rates would have meant more than 1 million additional votes in California and Texas; Arizona, which voted for Romney by a 208,000-vote margin, would have added an additional 217,000 Hispanic voters. And in key battleground states such as Colorado and Nevada, close races could have turned into runaway wins for Obama. A greater emphasis on Hispanic turnout in Wisconsin, where just 44 percent of Hispanics voted and where Obama won by seven points, would have given the president a much more comfortable victory there. []

Back in November, Pew's Mark Lopezto one possible reason for the declining Latino voter rate, noting that nearly half of all Latino voters live in two states: California and Texas. Neither state, he explained, was at all competitive this year, especially given the lack of a Democratic primary to boost engagement.

However, a separate Pew report noted that Latinos are the nation's youngest ethnic group, and could therefore become far more of an active bloc down the road.

"Their median age is 27 years — and just 18 years among native-born Hispanics — compared with 42 years for that of white non-Hispanics," Lopez and his colleagues . "In the coming decades, their share of the age-eligible electorate will rise markedly through generational replacement alone."

Even if the Latino voter participation rate continues to lag, the Latino share of the overall electorate will likely keep rising. In that respect, Republicans may want to take another shot at their big rebranding effort, which hassome

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(Reuters) - A severe storm system sweeping the U.S. East Coast on Thursday delayed flights and threatened to snarl work commutes a day after causing several tornadoes, damaging hail and high winds across the upper Midwest.

Thunderstorms with winds strong enough to down trees and power lines were expected from the Mid-Atlantic south into Virginia and North Carolina, and more tornadoes and hail were possible, said meteorologist Roger Edwards of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

The weather service on Wednesday had described the storm system as "very dangerous" because of its potential to produce tornadoes and "derechos," storms where wind speeds increase as they move.

"Today's situation doesn't look quite as intense as yesterday's, but folks who live in the Mid-Atlantic definitely shouldn't let their guard down," Edwards said.

Thunderstorms were delaying flights headed to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, according to website FlightAware.

Federal employees in Washington could choose from taking unscheduled leave or working remotely. The U.S. Open golf tournament in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, was suspended after nearly two hours of action on Thursday.

Although the storm on Wednesday was not as intense as feared, it dumped 3 to 5 inches of rain in the Chicago area and caused traffic jams, train delays and flight cancellations in the third-largest U.S. city.

Edwards said it was too soon to say whether a derecho had formed in the Midwest. A swath of severe weather was reported from southern Minnesota to western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The weather service website showed more than a dozen reports of tornadoes, including in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio.

Four tornadoes were reported in Wright County, Iowa, where a couple of businesses and a home were destroyed, said Stefanie Bond, spokeswoman for the state's emergency management department. Another tornado was reported in Franklin County, she said.

No injuries or fatalities have been reported in the state, she said.

The U.S. tornado season was relatively quiet until May 20, when a monster EF5 storm, the highest rating, hit the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and flattening whole sections of the town. Another wave of storms hit Oklahoma on May 31, killing about 20 people.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global stock markets fell for a third straight day on Thursday and the U.S. dollar hit a 10-week low against the yen as investors extended selling on worries about an end to central bank stimulus measures that have buoyed many asset markets.

But Wall Street rebounded and oil prices recovered after the United States reported stronger-than-expected retail sales and jobless claims, which suggested signs of resilience in the economy.

Investors are trying to gauge when central banks around the world, particularly the Federal Reserve, which meets next Tuesday and Wednesday, will pull back on their accommodative monetary policies.

Japan's Nikkeifell 6.4 percent - its second-biggest daily drop in more than two years.

Concern about a sooner-than-expected winding down of central bank liquidity mounted after recent comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and a decision by the Bank of Japan to hold off on easing further. It has fueled a selloff in global equities, emerging markets, risky bonds and commodities, while driving the safe-haven yen sharply higher.

"The easy money helped us on the way up. The concern is mounting it's going to end," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York.

"The action has been choppy and erratic," he said. "It's a case of investors looking to limit exposure ahead of next week's Fed meeting."

The MSCI All-Country World Indexfell 0.2 percent to 360.89, moving further away from a five-year peak set last month.

Emerging equitieshit 11-month lows. Most emerging currencies remained under heavy pressure, with the Indian rupee falling to a record low.

The Dow Jones industrial averagegained 53.26 points, or 0.36 percent, at 15,048.49. The Standard & Poor's 500 Indexwas up 6.88 points, or 0.43 percent, at 1,619.40. The Nasdaq Composite

European sharesfell more than 1 percent before recovering to end little changed as bargain-hunters picked up hammered mining and banking stocks.

"If you look at it historically, there has never been a period when the Fed has started to take back stimulus that has left the markets untouched," said Hans Peterson, global head of investment strategy at Swedish bank SEB.

"And this time it is a bigger exercise. We have moved markets from 2009 to 2013 on stimulus and now we are trying to take a step into a world which is more driven by natural growth. That transition will not be easy."

YEN REBOUND

Tokyo's stocks slide rattled markets and left Asian shares at their lowest level of the year.

The dollar lost 1.6 percent against the yen as investors spooked by the dive in Japanese equities unwound bets the yen would weaken. It fell as low as 93.78 yen, its lowest since April 4, giving back almost all the gains made since the Bank of Japan's aggressive monetary easing was announced on that day.

The euro lost 1.7 percent 125.80 yen, while against the dollar, it fell 0.1 percent to $1.3281.

"This week's BOJ meeting, which offered no new policy initiatives or stimulus programs, was the catalyst for the rapid change in sentiment in the foreign exchange market," said Boris Schlossberg, managing director of foreign exchange strategy at BK Asset Management in New York.

Brent crude rose 45 cents to $103.94 a barrel, having traded as low as $102.75 on reports indicating weak demand, including a cut in the outlook for global economic growth by the World Bank.

U.S. crude rose 5 cents to $95.93 a barrel.

Spot gold fell 0.7 percent to $1,379.16 an ounce.

Investors headed for traditional safe-haven government debt. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was up 12/32, the yield at 2.1848 percent. German government bonds had their biggest gains in a week.

The recent selling of euro zone periphery debt also resumed, and Italy's borrowing costs rose at an auction of three-year debt, although yields at a parallel 15-year sale were little changed.

(Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr and Julie Haviv; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Hollins' contract was scheduled to expire on June 30, but his departure from the organization was effective immediately, the team said in a statement.

Hollins had been coach of the franchise at various times over the past seven seasons, serving as interim coach for 60 games in 1999-2000 when the club were in Vancouver, and had a four-game stint during the 2004-05 season in Memphis.

He became the head coach during the 2008-09 season and has been in Memphis since.

Hollins had a 214-201 record, including a franchise best 56-26 this past season.

Speculation about Hollins' job swirled after the Grizzlies were swept in four games by the San Antonio Spurs for the Western Conference championship.

After finishing second to San Antonio in the Southwest Division, the Grizzlies had beaten the higher seeded Los Angeles Clippers in six games and shocked the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in five to reach the conference finals.

"After a thorough internal process, which included conversations with Lionel and his representatives, we decided as an organization to move in a different direction," said Jason Levien, Grizzlies CEO & managing partner in a statement. (Reporting by Gene Cherry in Raleigh, North Carolina; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

(Reuters) - A retired Australian bishop urged Roman Catholics around the world on Tuesday to sign an online petition to Pope Francis to call a new global council to take effective measures to end the sexual abuse of children in the Church.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, a former auxiliary bishop of Sydney who coordinated the Australian church's response to the sexual abuse crisis, said only a council of the world's bishops would have the power to make the changes needed.

The meeting would be akin to the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, Robinson told a news conference in Sydney, referring to the historic body that transformed the Catholic Church with modernizing reforms.

But this council would focus only on solving the abuse issue, he added.

Robinson said Francis had "given out a lot of good signals" since his surprise election in March.

The Argentinian-born pontiff, 76, has raised hopes for change among Catholics worldwide by ignoring Vatican protocol and openly addressing controversial issues, but it was not clear how he would react to an innovation like an online petition.

"The petition is not to challenge him, it's to help him, to indicate that the people are with him in really looking at these factors and changing whatever needs to be changed," Robinson said at the conference broadcast by Australia's ABC television.

FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

The scandal of priests molesting minors has haunted the Catholic Church around the world for over two decades, sapping its moral authority, shaming bishops and priests involved in abuse or its cover-up and costing huge sums in damage payments.

It overshadowed the eight-year papacy of retired Pope Benedict, even though he publicly apologized for the abuse several times and met victims on many of his trips.

Robinson spoke at the launch of his new book "For Christ's Sake: End Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church ... for Good". His petition, which has been online for several weeks, reached 15,000 signatures on Monday.

Australia's senior Catholic prelate, Sydney Cardinal George Pell, apologized to abuse victims at a parliamentary hearing last week and promised to work with a major official inquiry due to look into child sex abuse in Australian institutions.

Robinson's petition, online at www.change.org/forchristssake, says signatories are "sickened by the continuing stories of sexual abuse within our Church and ... appalled by the accounts of an unchristian response to those who have suffered."

Lay Catholics should have a major voice at the Council, it said, and discuss problems such as Church teaching on sexual morality, the requirement of priestly celibacy, the lack of women's influence in Church decision-making, a culture of secrecy and a Vatican emphasis on protecting papal authority.

The Second Vatican Council launched modernizing reforms such as using local languages in the liturgy, opening relations with other faiths, especially Judaism, and promoting more dialogue between the Vatican and Catholic bishops around the world.

(Reporting By Tom Heneghan; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

(This story corrects "new organization" to "meeting" in third paragraph)

MIAMI (Reuters) - Miami's Mario Chalmers has never lacked for confidence, indeed some would say he possessed too much of it, but on Sunday, the guard showed he has the game to back up the swagger as the Heat hit back to tie the best-of-seven NBA Finals series at 1-1.

On a night when the San Antonio Spurs double-teamed LeBron James, limiting him to eight points in the opening three quarters, Chalmers made his mark with a game-high 19 points on 6-of-12 shooting as Miami romped to a 103-84 win.

"You can't teach that quality - the big game guts," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters after the Game Two triumph.

"Mario has got guts. Come on. He had that all the way in college. He's got incredible confidence in his game. He's shown that throughout the years, even when it is sometimes - I wouldn't say irrational," the coach added.

Playing alongside big names James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh was not for the weak-hearted, said Spoelstra.

"You have to have guts to play with our guys. If you don't, you get swallowed up. The good thing about it is that the other guys were fine with him making plays - that might be different in the next game. But him being aggressive helps us, no question," he added.

Chalmers also provided some vital work on defense for Miami, effectively guarding Tony Parker, who had been such a handful in Game One, and limiting him to 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting.

"He has to play a big role for us in multiple facets," James said.

"He is guarding arguably the best point guard in the league but I think he also has to make Tony work on the defensive end. He can't be passive.

"We ran a lot of pick and rolls between the two of us and I told him to keep attacking and let's try to push this lead up and go for the kill - and we were able to do that," the league MVP added.

Chalmers said Miami's second half 33-5 run did more than just win the game.

"We wanted to put them away and send them a message, and we did a good job, everybody, of stepping up."

(Editing by John O'Brien)