PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Democratic candidate who reluctantly made public his homosexuality last year found himself serving as the grand marshal of Maine's biggest gay pride parade and festival Saturday and urged activists to continue fighting to eliminate discrimination and promote equality.

Mike Michaud, who would become the nation's first openly gay person to be elected governor if he unseats Republican Paul LePage in November, said it would be powerful for the gay community to have a seat at the table in discussions with governors across the country on equality issues.

"Maine has come a long ways and our nation has come a long ways, but there's still a long way to go," he said in an interview before he marched alongside a white convertible down the roughly milelong route in downtown Portland.

Gay rights activists say the six-term congressman's victory would be a key milestone in their movement toward equality, inspire other gay leaders to pursue public office and send a positive message to the community's youth.

When Michaud came out publicly last year, he said he didn't want to focus on his personal life in the three-person race with independent Eliot Cutler.

But his potentially historic candidacy has caught the eye of national groups like the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which has bundled $30,000 to $50,000 for his campaign.

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U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, a Democratic candidate for governor marches in the Portland Pride Parade, Sa …

During the parade, which drew thousands, Michaud shook hands and took pictures with supporters who chanted "We like Mike" as he walked in front of the "Loud and Proud" marching band.

He followed motorcyclists wearing rainbow wigs and feather boas and the parade's two other grand marshals — the coordinator at the University of Southern Maine's Center for Sexualities and Gender Diversity and a transgender student who won a discrimination lawsuit after her school refused to let her use the girls' bathroom.

Aside from fundraising, observers say Michaud's sexual orientation will likely have other political importance in one of the first states to approve same-sex marriage at the ballot box in 2012.

It could turn away some deeply conservative and religious voters, but they likely wouldn't have supported the Democrat anyway, said Michael Cuzzi, a former Democratic campaign strategist.

Michaud has come under fire from his political foes for voting against anti-discrimination laws for gays and other pro-equality measures while in the state Legislature. His campaign said his position on the issues has evolved over the years and he's now strongly pro-equality.

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U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, a Democratic candidate for governor, speaks at a rally after the Portland Pr …

That turnaround and his decision to come out could attract progressives who were not fans of his in earlier elections, said Sandy Maisel, political science professor at Colby College.

Michaud is headlining a group of several openly gay candidates around the country this year, including Heather Mizeur, who's seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Maryland. Meanwhile, three candidates are trying to become the first openly gay Republicans to be elected to Congress: Dan Innis in New Hampshire, Richard Tisei in Massachusetts and Carl DeMaio in California.

If elected, Michaud wouldn't be the first gay governor. New Jersey's Jim McGreevey had already been voted into office when he announced in 2004 that he was gay and admitted to an extramarital affair with a male staffer. He subsequently resigned.

Twenty-nine year-old Amber Hodgkins, who was watching the parade with her dog, said a victory for Michaud could improve Maine's image nationally as an inclusive community and provide a powerful example to young gay people across the country.

"You don't have to choose to be out or have a career," she said. "You can have it all."

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Follow Alanna Durkin on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkin

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's an International Space Station. But if Russia gets its way, it's going to be off-limits to the United States soon.

For weeks now, there have been rumblings about Russia wanting to ban the United States from using the ISS while the two countries wrangled over Ukraine. While that would probably violate international law, it may be feasible from a practical perspective. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin argued that "the Russian segment [of the ISS] can exist independently from the American one. The U.S. one cannot."

Since the United States terminated its space shuttle program, we've depended on Russian rockets to carry U.S. astronauts to the ISS. NASA has a contract to continue these flights through 2016 -- at $70 million a pop. After that, Russia would be within its rights to deny U.S. astronauts seats on Soyuz rockets. If America wants to send astronauts up after the contract expires, joked Rogozin: "I propose that the United States delivers its astronauts to the ISS with the help of a trampoline."

It never just rains, it pours (even in space)
An even more immediate problem facing America is Russia's threat to cut off access to the RD-180 rocket engines that the United Launch Alliance (the joint venture between Boeing(NYSE: BA ) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) ) uses in its Atlas V rockets. These are the big beasts that carry U.S. military satellites into space. They're critical to national security. But we've only got enough RD-180s stockpiled to keep ULA supplied for about another 22 months.

This ULA Atlas V rocket is powerful -- but it won't travel far without an engine. Photo: NASA.

What's to be done?
Just two weeks ago, we told you about U.S. Air Force plans to set up a public-private partnership to develop a new rocket enginecapable of replacing the RD-180. In an uncharacteristic exhibition of rapid problem-tackling, ULA is already rushing to get the project under way.

On Monday, ULA confirmed that it has signed contracts with "multiple" American rocket companies to begin working up "next-generation liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon first stage propulsion concepts" that could replace the RD-180 (the RD-180 uses liquid oxygen and kerosene as its fuel sources).

Working at a breakneck pace, ULA said it expects to select a new design before the end of this year. Then, pushing the envelope on the usual five- to eight-year timeline usually needed to develop such engines, ULA said it will have a new rocket ready to fly by 2019. (In the meantime, ULA will try to string Russia's Energomash along, negotiating to keep the RD-180s coming until they're no longer needed.)

What does it mean to investors?
It's hard to overestimate how important this news is to investors. Development of a new rocket engine, and probably a new launch vehicle to carry it, could bring the ULA contract's winner billions of dollars in development work alone -- followed by more billions in revenue as dozens of the new engines are put to work in years to come.

While ULA has not yet revealed the names of the companies that it has signed contracts with, the likely contenders remain Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK ) and Orbital Sciences(NYSE: ORB ) -- soon to team up in a new entity to be known as Orbital ATK -- and alsoGenCorp (NYSE: GY ) , which is now home to the rocket science juggernaut Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Of the two, I believe GenCorp must be considered the front-runner. The company has already invested $300 million in developing a new liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engine called the AR-1, that when finished could lift rockets as big as what Russia's RD-180 lifts. What's more, GenCorp says it is only four years away from completing the engine -- giving it perhaps a one-year head start over its rivals, and raising the possibility that ULA could get this work done by 2018.

As an added bonus, GenCorp says that a pair of its AR-1 engines could cost as little as $25 million total -- or even as little as $20 million -- making them cheaper than the Russian rocket engine they'd replace.

Your Foolish takeaway
Cheaper rockets, delivered ahead of schedule, and not dependent on a hostile foreign government to supply them? That sounds like a winning combination for GenCorp.

AR-1 isn't the only iron GenCorp has in the fire. Check out this photo of its work on the new J-2X. Photo:Wikimedia Commons.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaida-inspired militants who have violently seized territory in Iraq could grow in power and destabilize other countries in the region, President Barack Obama said.

The Iraqi public will ultimately reject the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the extremist Sunni group threatening Iraq's government, but the group still represents a medium- and long-term threat to the United States, Obama said.

"We're going to have to be vigilant generally. Right now the problem with ISIS is the fact that they're destabilizing the country," Obama said, using a common acronym for the group. "That could spill over into some of our allies like Jordan."

The Sunni insurgency in Iraq and neighboring Syria is just one of an array of threats the U.S. must guard against, Obama said in an interview recorded Friday and airing Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

He pointed to the group Boko Haram in north Africa and al-Qaida groups in Yemen that he said also demand the attention of the U.S. and its partners.

"What we can't do is think that we're just going to play whack-a-mole and send U.S. troops occupying various countries wherever these organizations pop up," Obama said. "We're going to have to have a more focused, more targeted strategy and we're going to have to partner and train local law enforcement and military to do their jobs as well."

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A masked Sunni Muslim gunman takes position with his weapon during clashes with Iraqi security force …

Obama's comments came as U.S. lawmakers and officials within his own administration are grappling with the best way to address the growing insurgency in Iraq just years after American troops pulled out. As bloody sectarian violence breaks out once again in Iraq, a president who opposed the Iraq war and vowed to end it is finding the U.S. being lured back into the conflict by the deteriorating security situation.

Obama has announced plans to send 300 special operations forces into Iraq to train its military, but insists the U.S. military can't effectively quell the conflict unless Iraq's own Shiite-led government pursues a more inclusive approach that doesn't shun the Sunni minority.

The issue has divided Congress, with some lawmakers criticizing Obama for doing too little and others warning the return of armed troops to Iraq could be the first step toward pulling the U.S. back into the conflict.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul said the unwillingness of Iraq's military to defend the city of Mosul begs the question of why the United State should.

"I'm not willing to send my son to defend that mess," Paul said Sunday on CNN.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she believes the U.S. needs to be talking to Iran because it can play a major role in helping to prevent a major war between Sunnis and Shiites. She also voiced concerns about the need to build up intelligence to help track recruits from Europe and the United States who have gone to the Middle East to participate in the wars there.

"There will be plots to kill Americans," she told CNN.

Baghdad (AFP) - In the two weeks since it was seized by Sunni militants, some residents of the northern Iraq city of Mosul feel the clock has been turned back hundreds of years.

The militants, led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group, have begun imposing an extreme interpretation of Islamic law in the days since they took the city, residents reached by telephone told AFP.

"These militants will return us and our country hundreds of years backwards, and their laws are the opposite of the laws of human rights and international laws," said Umm Mohammed, a 35-year-old teacher.

"We live in continuous fear of being subjected to new pressures," she said. "We are afraid of being prevented from working and contributing to building the community."

The city, known before 2003 for its historic sites and parks and in later years as a hub for deadly violence, fell on June 10 to the militants, who subsequently overran surrounding Nineveh province and swathes of other territory.

Security forces in Mosul, a city of some two million people before the offensive, wilted in the face of the onslaught, in some cases abandoning uniforms and even vehicles in their haste to flee.

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Iraqi families fleeing violence in the northern Nineveh province gather at a Kurdish checkpoint in A …

After seizing control, gunmen declared Nineveh a part of their Islamic state and issued a document outlining new rules.

The 16-point document announced the prohibition of the selling and consumption of alcohol and drugs as well as smoking, and forbade gatherings and carrying weapons.

Women are to wear non-revealing clothes and keep to their homes, while "shrines" are to be destroyed.

- Statues of poets removed -

All depictions of people are considered idolatrous under the militants' extreme interpretation of Islam, and gunmen have removed various statues from the city in recent days, including some depicting famous poets.

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Iraqi military kit litters the ground close to the Kukjali Iraqi Army checkpoint, some 10km of east …

Abu Ramzi, one of Mosul's Christians who did not flee the city, said militants destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary in front of a church.

"We have not received any threat from any side yet," Abu Ramzi said. "We will not leave our houses and city even if they slaughter us."

The militants also distributed a document to mosques in the city ordering that they not make or publish any statement not approved by ISIL, and designated a specific mosque for the acceptance of the "repentance of apostates".

ISIL has also appointed representatives for different areas of the city who are to conduct a survey of its residents.

One resident who fled said a neighbour told him that gunmen came to check empty houses in the area and find out who owns them.

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Iraqi families fleeing violence in the northern Nineveh province gather at a Kurdish checkpoint in A …

"They asked about my house, my (religious) sect and my phone number," he said.

The gunmen left a message that he had two days to return and renounce his Shiite faith, or the house would be burned.

Militants are deployed in most areas of Mosul, some on foot and others moving either in civilian vehicles or those captured from security forces when they withdrew, one resident said.

Some wear civilian clothes, while others dress in military uniforms or black.

The militants, some of whom mask their faces, are armed with a variety of weapons, including Kalashnikov assault rifles and pistols.

- Major electricity shortage -

There is a major electricity shortage in the city, and fuel is also in short supply, with hundreds of people waiting for hours at petrol stations to fuel their cars and trucks.

But not all residents of Mosul view the militants in a negative light.

"The gunmen in Mosul are decent people, they are treating the residents well," said Umm Abdullah, a woman who was among half a million people who fled the city in the wake of the militant takeover.

"We're not leaving because of them, we're leaving because the government is bombing and has cut the electricity and water in Mosul," she said.

"To be honest, I'm happy they took control of Mosul. I see them as rebels, not gunmen, and I think they will make the city better."

But another resident, Abu Ali, 40, said that the city has just moved from restrictions by Iraqi security forces to others by the militants, who are imposing "a new style of life on us".

By Kamal Namaa

ANBAR Iraq (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader accused the United States on Sunday of trying to retake control of Iraq by exploiting sectarian rivalries, as Sunni insurgents drove towards Baghdad from new strongholds along the Syrian border.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's condemnation of U.S. action came three days after President Barack Obama offered to send 300 military advisers to help the Iraqi government. Khamenei may want to block any U.S. choice of a new prime minister after grumbling in Washington about Shi'ite premier Nuri al-Maliki.

The supreme leader did not mention the Iranian president's recent suggestion of cooperation with Shi'ite Tehran's old U.S. adversary in defense of their mutual ally in Baghdad.

On Sunday, militants overran a second frontier post on the Syrian border, extending two weeks of swift territorial gains as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) pursues the goal of its own power base, a "caliphate" straddling both countries that has raised alarm across the Middle East and in the West.

"We are strongly opposed to U.S. and other intervention in Iraq," IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. "We don’t approve of it as we believe the Iraqi government, nation and religious authorities are capable of ending the sedition."

Some Iraqi analysts interpreted his remarks as a warning to the United States not to try to pick its own replacement for Maliki, whom many in the West and Iraq hold responsible for the crisis. In eight years in power, he has alienated many in the Sunni minority that dominated the country under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

Khamenei has not made clear how far Iran itself will back Maliki to hold on to his job once parliament reconvenes following an election in which Maliki's bloc won the most seats.

Speaking in Cairo, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States wanted Iraqis to find a leadership that would represent all the country's communities - though he echoed Obama in saying it would not pick or choose those leaders. "The United States would like the Iraqi people to find leadership that is prepared to represent all of the people of Iraq, that is prepared to be inclusive and share power," Kerry said. (Full Story)

The U.S. and Iranian governments had seemed open to collaboration against ISIL, which is also fighting the Iranian-backed president of Syria, whom Washington wants to see removed.

"American authorities are trying to portray this as a sectarian war, but what is happening in Iraq is not a war between Shi'ites and Sunnis," said Khamenei, who has the last word in the Islamic Republic's Shi'ite clerical administration. (Full Story)

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Members of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) take their positions during a patrol looking f …

Accusing Washington of using Sunni Islamists and loyalists of Saddam's Baath party, he added: "The U.S. is seeking an Iraq under its hegemony and ruled by its stooges." During Iran's long war with Saddam in the 1980s, Iraq enjoyed quiet U.S. support.

Tehran and Washington have been shocked by the lightning offensive, spearheaded by ISIL but also involving Sunni tribes and Saddam loyalists. It has seen swaths of northern and western Iraq fall, including the major city of Mosul on June 10.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani criticized oil-rich Sunni Gulf states that he said were funding "terrorists" - a reference to the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar which have backed Sunni rebels against Syria's Iranian-backed leader, Bashar al-Assad.

"We emphatically tell those Islamic states and all others funding terrorists with their petrodollars that these terrorist savages you have set on other people’s lives will come to haunt you,” IRNA quoted Rouhani as saying on Sunday.

WESTERN OFFENSIVE

ISIL thrust east from a newly captured Iraqi-Syrian border post on Sunday, taking three towns in Iraq's western Anbar province after seizing the frontier crossing near the town of Qaim on Saturday, witnesses and security sources said.

They seized a second border post, al-Waleed, on Sunday. (Full Story)

The gains have helped ISIL secure supply lines to Syria, where it has exploited the chaos of the uprising against Assad to seize territory. It is considered the most powerful force among armed groups who seized Falluja, just west of Baghdad, and took parts of Anbar's capital Ramadi at the start of the year.

The fall of Qaim represented another step towards the realization of ISIL's military goals - erasing a frontier drawn by colonial powers carving up the Ottoman empire a century ago.

ISIL's gains on Sunday included the towns of Rawa and Ana along the Euphrates river east of Qaim, as well as the town of Rutba further south on the main highway from Jordan to Baghdad. Jordan said traffic had stopped arriving from Iraq.

Can Iran's World Status Change From Meddler To …Play Video

An Iraqi military intelligence official said Iraqi troops had withdrawn from Rawa and Ana after ISIL militants attacked the settlements late on Saturday. "Troops withdrew from Rawa, Ana and Rutba this morning and ISIL moved quickly to completely control these towns," the official said.

"They took Ana and Rawa this morning without a fight."

IRAQ SPLINTERS

Military spokesman Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi said the withdrawal from the towns was intended to ensure "command and control" and to allow troops to regroup and retake the areas.

The towns are on a supply route between ISIL's positions in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, where the group has taken a string of towns and strategic positions over the past few days from rival Sunni forces fighting Assad.

The last major Syrian town not in ISIL's hands in the region, the border town of Albukamal, is controlled by the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's branch in Syria which has clashed with ISIL.

A monitoring group said on Sunday that ISIL fighters in northern Syria had for the first time been seen using U.S.-made Humvee all-terrain vehicles seized from the Iraqi army. (Full Story)

Disowned by al Qaeda in February after defying the global leadership to pursue its own goals in Syria, ISIL has pushed south down the Tigris valley since capturing Mosul with barely a fight, occupying towns and taking large amounts of weaponry from the collapsing, U.S.-trained Iraqi army.

Sunni militants also seized Tal Afar, west of Mosul, an Iraqi government official said late on Sunday. Tal Afar has been contested for a week after the military initially lost the community of Sunni and Shi'ite Turkmens and then kicked off a counter-offensive. Iraqi officials have wanted to use Tal Afar as a launching pad for rallying Mosul's Sunni population to oust ISIL.

Overnight, ISIL fighters attacked the town of al-Alam, north of Tikrit, according to witnesses and police in the town. The attackers were repelled by security forces and tribal fighters, they said, adding that two ISIL fighters had been killed.

State television reported that "anti-terrorism forces" in coordination with the air force had killed 40 ISIL members and destroyed five vehicles in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.

There was a lull in fighting at Iraq's largest refinery, Baiji, near Tikrit, on Sunday. The site had been a battlefield since Wednesday as Sunni fighters launched an assault on the plant. Militants entered the large compound but were repelled by Iraqi military units. The fighters now surround the compound.

A black column of smoke rose from the site on Sunday. Refinery officials said it was caused by a controlled burning of waste.

At least 17 soldiers and volunteers were killed in overnight clashes with ISIL militants in the Saied Ghareeb area near Dujail, 50 km (30 miles) north of Baghdad, army and medical sources said. Near the city of Ramadi, west of the capital, a suicide bomber and a car bomb killed six people at a funeral for an army officer killed the previous day.

SUNNI CLASHES

Relations between diverse Sunni fighting groups have not been entirely smooth. On Sunday morning, clashes raged for a third day between ISIL and Sunni tribes backed by the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by former army officers and Baathists, around Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk, local security sources and tribal leaders said.

More than 10 people were killed in clashes, the sources said. On Friday, ISIL and Naqshbandi fighters began fighting each other in Hawija. Iraqi and Western officials have argued that ISIL and other Sunni factions may turn on each other after capturing territory.

The fighting has threatened to tear the country apart for good, reducing Iraq to separate Sunni, Shi'ite and ethnic Kurdish regions. It has highlighted divisions among regional powers, notably between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq's Kurds have meanwhile expanded their territory beyond their autonomous region in the northeast, notably taking over the long-prized oil city of Kirkuk. Two Kurdish militiamen were killed by a roadside bomb there on Sunday, a police source said.

The government has mobilized Shi'ite militias and other volunteers to fight on the frontlines and defend the capital - thousands of fighters in military fatigues marched in a Shi'ite slum of the capital Baghdad on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by a correspondent in Tikrit, Ahmed Rasheed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Mehrdad Balali in Dubai; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz and Ned Parker; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Iran 'strongly opposed' to U.S. intervention in Iraq

The nation’s supreme leader accuses Washington of retaking Iraq by exploiting sectarian rivalries.
Militants take more border towns