She was the angry, androgynous runaway who got chatted up by Allen Ginsberg and had a grand affair with Robert Mapplethorpe. And at 66 Patti Smith shows no sign of mellowing. We spend a gothic afternoon at home with the punk legend

Ping! The sweetest email arrives in my inbox from Patti Smith's assistant, Andi. "Patti will do interview at Simon's convenience since he is the traveller." Ping! Another message arrives. "Just call us when you get in. She has put the whole day aside." This is getting better by the email. I'm already picturing my day in New York with America's punk poet queen: we'll take afternoon tea at the Chelsea hotel, where she lived with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and hung out with writer William Burroughs; we'll visit the site of CBGB where the Patti Smith Group gigged and she spat her songs into life; we'll stroll in George Washington park and chat about her collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on Because The Night, the day Allen Ginsberg chatted her up because he thought she was a boy, the night she lay on her bed with then lover Sam Shepard and he taught her how to write a play. Everything.

"Hi, I'm here!" I shout enthusiastically down the phone to Andi.

"Great!" she says. "When d'ya wanna come over?"

"How about now?" I'm raring to go.

I hear a voice drawling in the background. "Not now."

"It's a little early," Andi says pleasantly.

"OK, how about in an hour?"

The same voice drawls in the background. "No, not then." Followed by a brief negotiation.

"Two pm," Andi says. "Two pm would be great. She gives me the address of a restaurant in SoHo. I don't eat, because I don't want to spoil my appetite.

I stand outside the restaurant, and after a few minutes the unmistakable Patti Smith walks up. Drainpipe-skinny, hair long and straggly, familiar jeans, boots and jacket. No makeup, face noble and weathered, features strong and angular.

She tells me she has just returned from Mexico and has an upset stomach, so it's best if we do the interview at her house. I prepare for a walk. She crosses the road, puts a key in the door and we're home. The house looks as if it's been squatted by a class of particularly manky art students. It's dark and dingy and stinks of cat. The ground floor is full of instruments and amps and recording equipment. We continue up the stairs. The second floor is Smith's office, dedicated to the visual arts. Silk screens, drawings, books, a 19th-century medicine chest that contains her Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters presented by the French government, an antique microscope, camera and typewriter, Mapplethorpe's ink pot and old pencils (his ashes are upstairs in her bedroom), hanging black webs. Everything is covered in plastic. The room could have been designed by Tim Burton.

"Sorry about the smell of cat piss. That's why we have to cover everything in plastic." She lives here, sometimes with her grown-up daughter, Jesse, and always with their cats.

A bright voice emerges out of the gloom. "Hi! How was your journey? D'you find us OK?" It's Andi, who is every bit as enthusiastic in person.

"You need some water? Tea?" she asks with a smile.

Tea would be great.

"Let's get him a glass of water now," Smith says. "We'll make him some tea in a little while. Or we'll go out and get some tea."

"I have tea and hot water in my…" Andi says.

Smith cuts her off. "Well, let's just wait, so we can get under way… OK."

"D'you want some light?" asks Andi, who has receded into the dark.

Smith doesn't answer.

"Do you need light or anything?" she repeats.

"Yeah, you can put a light on, and then let's try to keep it quiet."

"OK, you don't want the windows open?"

Smith is beginning to sound impatient. "No, just… just put the light on and that's about it."

"Which ones?" Andi asks.

"Yes, yes, that's good. OK, all right."

Patti Smith is a remarkable figure in pop history. She should be a footnote, really. She had one hit single the best part of 40 years ago (the rousing hymn to love and lust, Because The Night) and one successful album, and that was about it. She never even meant to be a rock star. And yet somehow Smith became a figurehead of American punk, and remains so – still one of the few women to give her name to an otherwise all-male group, memorable for those images on the cover of her first album Horses of her swinging a jacket over her white shirt with boyish insouciance, or her breast-clutching, armpit hair-flaunting poses on the shoot for Easter.

Then there was the way she announced her presence in the first line of the first song on Horses: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." She was such an iconoclast that she didn't even obey the newly formed rules of punk – rather than two-minute revolts against all that had gone before, Horses climaxed with a 10-minute, stream-of-consciousness tribute to the protagonist of a William Burroughs novel. She happily talked of herself in the same breath as Rimbaud, Whitman and Dylan.

Perhaps even more astonishing than the success was the way she turned her back on it. A year after the release of her most successful album, 1978's Easter, she married Fred "Sonic" Smith, guitarist with the radical band MC5, laid down her electric guitar and moved with him to Detroit to become a housewife. She brought up their two children, and didn't make another record for nine years.

Now, at 66, and having outlived many of those she was closest to, she is more prolific than ever. In 2010, she won America's National Book Award for Just Kids, a touching memoir of her life with Mapplethorpe, and last year she made Banga, her finest album in decades. Then there's the photography, the drawings, the poetry, the political activism, the touring. Next month she plays a couple of nights at Shepherd's Bush in London, followed by an evening of song and poetry at Yoko Ono's Meltdown music festival.

Smith grew up in Pennsylvania, then New Jersey, in the 1940s and 1950s. Her father was a factory worker who read everything he could get hold of, her mother a Jehovah's Witness waitress. She was a frail child, desperately ill with TB, hepatitis and scarlet fever. She read the scriptures as her mother told her to and learned to challenge received wisdoms as her father did. By 12 she had lost faith in God – if it was really easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, how come the Vatican was so loaded? She decided that was hypocritical. She read even more voraciously than her father – and fell in love with any number of romantic heroes who lived fast and died young. At 19, she slept with a boy and became pregnant. She gave away her baby daughter, vowed to make something of her life and headed for New York to become a poet.

Before long she came across Mapplethorpe. She was working on a jewellery counter when he walked in and bought her favourite necklace. She made him promise he would give it to no other girl than her. A few days later, she was on a bad date when she bumped into him on the street. "Will you pretend to be my boyfriend?" she asked. They moved in with each other that night.

Mapplethorpe shaped much of Smith's life. He was her muse, she was his. They lived together in squalid conditions, in rooms that smelled of piss – often there would be no toilet, so they kept plastic cups handy. They made installations together, drew and photographed each other. They made money however they could – she working in a bookshop, he occasionally selling himself for sex to men on the street. Mapplethorpe told her they were special, that "nobody sees like we do".

Did she believe him? "Well, I've always felt outside of things, I've always felt different. I don't know if that always translated into special. Robert more than I felt we were both really special. His belief in us was unshakable." Smith has a strange way of looking to the side of you through narrowed eyes, as if squinting into a nonexistent sun.

They moved into the Chelsea hotel and surrounded themselves with junkie artists and authors. Everybody assumed Smith was as reckless as those she befriended. The director of a play she acted in was appalled to find out she was neither a heroin addict nor a lesbian. "Well, what do you do?" he demanded.

"I have never been addicted to anything except maybe my husband, maybe a boyfriend, maybe an idea," she says. "I have such a needle phobia. I could never be addicted to any substance because I've had too many illnesses that preclude me doing that. I'd die if I did that stuff. If Robert was here, he'd be the first to explain that to people."

Was her straightness part of what attracted him to her? "Yes. He liked that I was responsible."

Eventually Mapplethorpe told her he was gay, she was devastated and they separated. He went on to document the gay sex scene in an extraordinarily explicit way. They remained close friends; he told Smith that one day she should write their story.

Smith was almost 30 when she released her first album and became an accidental rock star. "When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist. I got sidetracked, almost as a mission, to give something to the canon of rock'n'roll in the manner in which people I admired had. In other words, forming a cultural voice through rock'n'roll that incorporated sex and art and poetry and performance and revolution."

She can be fabulously grand. "In 1974, when I started working with the material that became Horses, a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. There were so many losses so quickly. These people who were building a political and cultural voice. And it seemed that rock'n'roll was heading towards something different – something consumer-oriented and stadium-oriented. I felt new generations had to come and break everything apart. As Jim Morrison says, 'Break on through to the other side.' And I felt in the centre, not quite the old generation, not quite the new generation. I felt like the human bridge, and I just thought, you have to wake up. Wake them up."

Did she feel confident she would wake everybody up? "Yes. And then I felt I'd go back to my poetry or whatever I was going to do." She sees herself as a visionary, a seer.

Smith has always been a great live performer – frothing, raging and caressing by turns, and utterly fearless on stage. By 1978, she was heading towards mainstream stardom: Because The Night reached the top five in the UK and her Easter album the top 20. Then she gave it all up. Why?

Three reasons, she says. In 1977, she fell off the stage, fractured her back in four places and broke her skull (she needed 42 stitches in her head). She was never as mobile again. Then she fell in love with Fred "Sonic" Smith and married him. Finally, she says, she found fame too corrosive. "I didn't have time to read, I wasn't studying, wasn't writing. I was basically promoting, going to radio stations, performing, battling bronchitis because there was so much smoke in venues. I thought, I see a lot of potential fame and fortune, but I don't see a lot of human evolution. Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune." How? "It doesn't do a whole lot for making you a better person. I found myself being more demanding, or spoilt." Was she horrible? She balks at the suggestion. "No, just impatient, agitated. The main thing was I didn't think I was producing anything of extraordinary worth."

As Smith talks, I notice she's eating a tub of something. It seems to have appeared out of nowhere. What is that, I ask. "Wakame. Basically seaweed and sesame oil." My stomach's rumbling. I could murder that cup of tea.

She's talking about their marriage. Fred was very private and a bit paranoid about the FBI files that he knew were kept on him (because of his political activism), but they were happy. Then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Smith's life was blighted by tragedy. Mapplethorpe died in 1989 aged 42, followed a year later by 37-year-old Richard Sohl, pianist with the Patti Smith Group. In 1994, Fred died at 45. Smith's younger brother Todd, who had been head of the band's crew, died a month later. When Fred died, their son Jackson was 12 and Jesse was six. (Both are now musicians, and Jackson is married to Meg White, formerly of the White Stripes.)

How did Smith cope? "I had my responsibilities to my children and to myself and to my work. You have to honour your responsibilities. Oh, believe me, the things that people cope with. I don't consider myself so special." She stops herself and says if she's making it sound easy, it wasn't – and still isn't. "Sometimes you're doing really well, then, after three or four years, everything inexplicably crashes like a house of cards and you have to rebuild it. It's not like you get to a point where you're all right for the rest of your life."

As a young artist, though, she seemed to be half in love with death. As well as referencing poets who died young (Rimbaud, Plath, Baudelaire), she would often write about death. Her first poem, written at 15, was an elegy for Charlie Parker. Even Banga, released last year, though quieter and more reflective than her early work, covers similar territory – love, death and art. There is a tribute to Amy Winehouse and a song about Maria Schneider, who starred in Last Tango In Paris and died in 2011, in which Smith sings: "We didn't know the precariousness of our young powers. All the emptiness."

Does she ever feel she romanticises death?

"No! No, no. I know what you mean, but I don't think that. I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it. I always thought if that happened, it would happen to me, not people around me. I was perfectly prepared… That's why I said on the back of Horses, 'Charm, sweet angels, you made me no longer afraid of death.' I felt I had done my record, I'd done something. If I didn't live, at least I'd done that. I didn't expect to live a long time, but I have. I've outlived my brother and my husband and so many beloved friends. So that's a surprise. But I don't court death. I don't have a romance about death."

And when she was young? "No. I was drawn to people who did great work, who didn't live long. I've loved the Brontës… I didn't love them because they died young; I loved their work."

She does admit to spending much of her spare time at graveyards. "In the last some months, I've visited the grave of Sylvia Plath, the grave of Anne Brontë, the resting place of the other Brontës, Trotsky's grave in Mexico City. I visited Elvis Presley's grave and William Burroughs' grave."

You're a grave stalker, I say. She smiles. "No, I'm not a grave stalker. If I'm in a city or town and there's somebody I like or an old friend, then I'll visit their grave. Sometimes I photograph it, sometimes I just sit and contemplate their work or bring flowers. It's proximity. It's nice to visit where people are." Just because all these people have died, she says, doesn't bring the relationships to an end: she's happy to surround herself with ghosts, asking Fred for advice, discussing the book with Robert, laughing away with Todd.

"D'you want to see a picture of him? My sister just sent me a nice picture of him." He has a kind face, and looks happy. In Dream Of Life, a film made about Smith, she says she inherited some of his positivity after he died. When I mention it, she corrects me. "It wasn't positivity. It was goodness. He was a good person. A person can be positive but self-serving. My brother was more of a serving person, a very compassionate man."

How did the inheritance express itself? "More love for your fellow man. I'm not a very social person. Sometimes, because I'm so wrapped up in my work, you could say I was self-oriented. It's not conceit, it's just… I'm in my own world quite a bit. My brother was the kind of person who listened more. He'd stop what he was doing to listen to the needs or concerns of somebody else."

Smith is a strange mix. Caring and admirable in many ways, yet self-absorbed. I've rarely met anybody so unversed in the niceties of everyday life. For all her spikiness, though, there is a vulnerability. At times, she seems in awe of the talented men in her life – Mapplethorpe's art, her husband's music, Shepard's writing – and plagued by self-doubt. It took her 20 years to complete the book about her relationship with Mapplethorpe; she went through so many drafts, never feeling they were good enough. "I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it, except I promised him I would and I knew in my journey after death, if I bumped into him, which I know I would, he'd be so mad at me. You know, 'Patti, you didn't write our book. Why didn't you finish the book?' I could feel him scolding me, so I did finish it."

Smith and Mapplethorpe made a beautiful couple. Was she aware of how good they looked when they were together? She laughs a hollow laugh. "Believe me, I've been made fun of so much in my life. In the 50s and 60s, people preferred really buxom females. For my generation, tall, skinny, pimply was not a good look."

As an artist, she says, she always felt inferior to Mapplethorpe. "My problem was, is my work good enough? I was a late bloomer. He had specific gifts and talents. He was an excellent draftsman. I had an intense, creative imagination, but I'm bad at grammar, I was never good at school. I always wanted to leap to the creative thing, so my skills were not as strong as I wanted. I questioned myself. I still do. Is this work good enough?"

These days, she has as much time to dedicate to her work as she could wish – her children are grown up and she has no partner. Would she like a new Mr Patti Smith? She looks shocked. "I would never have a Mr Patti Smith. To me, I'm happy to have the man as king. I would never consider a man in that position."

Now it's my turn to be shocked. After all, this is Patti Smith, rocker extraordinaire and feminist icon. "I wouldn't care if he was a gardener or plumber or physicist, he wouldn't be in second place in our household." She'd happily be subservient? "I don't mind. I have no problem with a man being in first place. I know who I am. If a man would need to be in first place, what of it?"

Did Fred need to be in first place? "Well, he was. Yes, absolutely. He was a king." Explain? "I don't need to. Just trust me."

Andi pops out of the shadows and mutters to Smith. "We'll be done in a couple of minutes," Smith says. Again, I'm taken by surprise. There's been no hint of the interview coming to an end and she had said she'd set the day aside.

I haven't even asked you about politics yet, I say.

"Well, we've been almost two hours, and I don't have much to say," she answers brusquely. Then she softens. "If you want to ask me something direct, I'll be happy to try to answer it."

During the Iraq war, Smith became an impassioned activist, urging the American people to throw Bush out of the White House. Is she still as angry? "I feel it's no longer just about an administration, it's about mankind in general. I just can't comprehend that people can be so globally stupid." She talks about Guantánamo, Afghanistan, the exploitation of child workers and, more than anything, the environment.

Has capitalism failed? "I have no idea. Human nature has failed. It's all about common sense. You have a family that is dumping chemicals in the river, so the river gets polluted and your children get sick if they swim in it, or the fish are dying. It's common sense to do something. Everything since I was a child seems so obvious to me. When the cold war was escalating, and I was a child, I thought it was a totally stupid game. Then, when all that fell apart, we need a new enemy. Now we have terrorism. It's a state of mind, not a tangible enemy. It's just a game."

The more she talks, the angrier she gets, and the more apocalyptic her vision. "It's just like the pharaohs. To me the Bible gives the best example: they were the pharaohs, they were the high kings, they had all of the wealth and all of the power, but when the plague came, the plague knows not pharaohs. The sons and daughters of poor people died of the plague, and the sons and daughters of the pharaohs died of the plague. So when Mother Nature gets sick of us stuffing her with all our chemical excrement and starts erupting on us, she's not going to just destroy the poor people on the fringes: everyone will go."

As I rise to leave, she apologises. "I know I'm not a very good host, not offering you anything. Part of it is because I'm not feeling the greatest, but part of it is because I'm not the greatest host." She pauses. "Just a minute. I'll give you a bag."

She returns with a goodie bag – a book of her poems and a couple of CDs, including Banga. "Do you have this? It's a special edition."

"No, thank you, I only have it on download."

She gives me a withering look. "Well, that's not very inquisitive of you, but anyway… Have one of these."

"Sorry," I say. "It's not inquisitive of me not to have that version?"

"Well, you can get it. It has been out for a year."

I don't know how to respond, so I don't. She tells me she's just joking, but I don't see a smile.

Andi arrives back, just as I'm thanking Smith for my bits and pieces. "Bits and pieces," Andi starts singing. "That was a song by the Dave Clark Five. I'm in pieces, bits and pieces. Since you left me and you said goodbye."

I join her in the chorus.

Smith stands up and we shake hands. I think she's going to show me out, but she walks away.

"So when do they send you back – tomorrow?" Andi asks. "Did you walk down here? Which street did you take? You went along Eighth? I'll walk you down. I'll come back up, Patti. I'll just walk Simon to the door." And as she does so, she suggests I walk through George Washington park, take the scenic route

• Patti Smith and her band play the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London W12, on 18 and 19 June. An Evening Of Words And Music With Patti Smith is at the South Bank, London SE1, on 21 June as part of Yoko Ono's Meltdown.

TOKYO — A nuclear research lab in northern Japan has reported a radiation leak that may have affected 55 people, though none were hospitalized and no impact was expected outside the facility.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday that the accident occurred Thursday at a nuclear physics lab in Tokaimura, the site of at least two previous radiation accidents.

Four researchers were tested afterward, with the highest radiation dose found to be 2 millisieverts. Nuclear workers generally are limited to 100 millisieverts of exposure over five years.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia — A female suicide bomber identified as a widow of two killed Islamists blew herself up in the southern Russian region of Dagestan on Saturday injuring at least 12, including two children and five police officers, police said.

The bomber detonated an explosives-laden belt in the central square in the provincial capital, Makhachkala, Dagestan's police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said.

Anti-Muslim incidents, online and in person, increase from a handful to 150 since Wednesday as arrests are made across UK

Anti-Muslim attacks in Britain have soared since Wednesday's murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Faith Matters, an organisation that works to reduce extremism, said it had been told of about 150 incidents in the last few days, compared to between four to eight cases before Wednesday.

Fiyaz Mughal, the director of Faith Matters, said incidents were happening on the streets and online. "What's really concerning is the spread of these incidents. They're coming in from right across the country," he told the BBC.

"Secondly, some of them are quite aggressive; very focused, very aggressive attacks. And thirdly, there also seems to be significant online activity … suggesting co-ordination of incidents and attacks against institutions or places where Muslims congregate."

Police have reported several arrests since Wednesday. Benjamin Flatters, 22, from Lincoln, was arrested on Thursday after complaints were made to Lincolnshire police about comments made on Twitter that were allegedly of a racisut or anti-religious nature.

A second man was visited by officers and warned about his activity on social media, according to the police.

The charge comes after two men in Bristol were arrested and released on bail for making alleged offensive comments on Twitter about the murder. A 23-year-old and a 22-year-old, both from Bristol, were held under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred.

Detective Inspector Ed Yaxley of Avon and Somerset police said: "These comments were directed against a section of our community. Comments such as these are completely unacceptable and only cause more harm to our community in Bristol."

Two men will appear at Thames magistrates court on Saturday charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour over an incident in an east London fast food restaurant on Thursday.

Labourer Toni Latcal, 32, and plasterer Eugen-Aurelian Eugen-Beredei, 34, both from London, were arrested following the incident at 9.15pm on Thursday. Latcal was charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour and causing criminal damage, while Eugen-Beredei was charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour.

In Hastings, Adam Rogers, 28, of Kingsman Street, Woolwich, was arrested on Friday and will appear at Brighton magistrates court on Saturday accused of sending an "offensive, indecent or menacing message" online.

Associated Press

PARIS — Perhaps not surprisingly, the first three questions posed to Roger Federer at his pre-French Open news conference Friday concerned rival and nemesis Rafael Nadal.

The third was about the difficulties of making a successful return from injury, the way Nadal has, reaching the final at all eight tournaments he’s played in 2013 after going more than half a year between matches.

Federer shrugged and replied simply: “I don’t know. I have never been out for seven months.”

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Rakhine state officials say limit on children will help ease tensions with Buddhists, whose population is growing at slower rate

Muslims in a province of Burma have been ordered not to have more than two children in an attempt by the government to stop Buddhist attacks on Muslims.

State officials said the two-child limit in the state of Rakhine would ease tensions between Buddhists and their Muslim Rohingya neighbours.

Local officials said the new measure was part of a policy that will also ban polygamyin two Rakhine townships that border Bangladesh and have the highest Muslim populations. The townships, Buthidaung and Maundaw, are about 95% Muslim.

The measure was enacted a week ago after a government-appointed commission investigating the violence issued proposals to ease tensions, which included family planning programs to stem population growth among minority Muslims, said Rakhine state spokesman Win Myaing. The commission also recommended doubling the number of security forces in the volatile region.

"The population growth of Rohingya Muslims is 10 times higher than that of the Rakhine (Buddhists)," Win Myaing said. "Overpopulation is one of the causes of tension."

Sectarian violence in Burma first flared nearly a year ago in Rakhine state between the region's Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya. Mobs of Buddhists armed with machetes razed thousands of Muslim homes, leaving hundreds of people dead and forcing 125,000 to flee, mostly Muslims.

Since the violence, religious unrest has developed into a campaign against the country's Muslim communities in other regions.

Containing the strife has posed a serious challenge to President Thein Sein's reformist government as it attempts to institute political and economic liberalisation after nearly half a century of harsh military rule. It has also tarnished the image of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been criticised for failing to speak out strongly in defence of the country's embattled Muslim community.

Win Myaing said authorities had not yet determined how the measures will be enforced, but the two-child policy will be mandatory in Buthidaung and Maundaw. The policy will not apply yet to other parts of Rakhine state, which have smaller Muslim populations.

"One factor that has fuelled tensions between the Rakhine public and [Rohingya] populations relates to the sense of insecurity among many Rakhines stemming from the rapid population growth of the [Rohingya], which they view as a serious threat," the government-appointed commission said in a report issued last month.

Predominantly Buddhist Burma does not include the Rohingya as one of its 135 recognised ethnicities. It considers them to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. Bangladesh says the Rohingya have been living in Myanmar for centuries and should be recognised as citizens. Muslims account for about 4% of Myanmar's roughly 60 million people.

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas — Heather Bowie Young made five straight birdies while jumping from one side of the golf course to the other. Silvia Cavalleri was hitting the ball so well Friday she was sorry the Bahamas Classic was held on only 12 holes.

The slogan for the LPGA Tour is, "See why it's different out here." Was it ever.

VIRGINIA WATER, England — Colin Montgomerie called the Sergio Garcia "fried chicken" controversy a "mountain out of a molehill."

The Scottish player spoke Friday about the controversy surrounding Garcia and George O'Grady, the European Tour CEO who used the term "colored" during a live television interview in which he was reacting to the spat between Garcia and Tiger Woods.

Soon there may be a ban imposed on all children and teens under the age of 18 from the use of tanning bans in Mashpee, Mass. According to Enterprise Cape News on Friday, May 24 the Mashpee Board of Health introduced a regulation for tanning businesses in order to prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from the use of tanning bans.

The board presented their findings, including support from two families that went through a melanoma episode. Melanoma, which is known as a skin cancer, is considered to have an increased risk potential in those who use tanning beds. Therefore, the thought behind the ban is to prevent those under 18 from being subjected to the melanoma disease.

Owners of several tanning salons were on-hand to state their case regarding the ban. However, most appeared to be in favor of the ban. One owner of several tanning salons in Mashpee claimed to have set her own requirements which included no services for anyone younger than 15 and anyone between 15 and 18 would need the permission of a parent.

“There were no regulations in town, but I did set my own, because I have morals,” Sunsational Tanning of Mashpee owner Amy Maio said.

Instead of voting on the proposal Wednesday, the board decided to meet again to decide whether they should change regulations or approve the ban entirely. Most tanning owners are in favor of the regulation and feel if necessary they can direct their clients to alternative products such as sunless tanning . "Ms. Maio said approximately 10 percent of her clientele is between 15 and 17, the ages for which she already requires parental permission. But she suggested she could work with the new regulation by steering those customers toward spray tanning products, which dermatologists believe are less harmful than ultraviolet tanning beds."

"According to information from the US Food and Drug Administration distributed by the board of health at the meeting, indoor tanners are 75 percent more likely to develop melanoma than those who have never tanned indoors. Cancer risks are particularly high for teenagers and young adults exposed to tanning machines, which can emit ultraviolet radiation levels up to 15 times higher than that of the midday sun."

For these reasons, it is recommended to use alternative methods to tanning beds such as sunless tanning.

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Jeddah: Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Premier and Minister of Defense, received a message from the Vice President of the Republic of India, Dr. Mohammed Hamed Ansari.
The...

A 2-year-old child who fell into an in-ground pool Tueday at an unlicensed day care on the Westside has died after being in critical condition at Wolfson Children’s Hospital.

RELATED: Child, 2, in critical condition after falling in pool

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An unidentified motorcyclist is being treated at a local hospital following an accident Friday night with a police car and a minivan on westbound Baymeadows Road.

The police car was stopped in traffic for a red light near Interstate 95 at about 9:45 p.m. A minivan coming up from behind switched lanes, traffic homicide Det. J. C. Hurst said.

"Right after he switched lanes, the motorcycle came up from behind and struck the right rear corner of the police vehicle," Hurst said. "It then went over into the left front side of the minivan."

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LINCOLN, Neb. — Oklahoma City University won the NAIA women's golf championship Friday behind a 1-2 finish from Jessica Schiele and Elia Folch.

The Stars finished 12 shots ahead of defending champion British Columbia to win their sixth national title and first since a string of five straight 2005 to 2009.

Schiele finished the 72-hole event at Wilderness Ridge Golf Club at 7-over 295, five shots better than Folch. Schiele is the fourth Oklahoma City player to win the individual title.

LONDON — Counterterrorism police are questioning a friend of Michael Adebolajo, one of two men suspected of the savage killing of a British soldier.

Abu Nusaybah was arrested following a BBC interview in which he said Adebolajo had changed after returning from a visit to Kenya where he claimed he had been physically and sexually abused in detention.

The BBC said Nusaybah was arrested by police outside its studios Friday night immediately after recording the interview. Metropolitan Police confirmed that a 31-year-old man was arrested.

Hi folks, it's that time of the year again and I'm ready to go. Be sure to pass this information on to your friends online be they in or out of town. 240 jazz musicians performing 72 hours of jazz in the heart of the Pittsburgh Cultural District

Headliners include: Chaka Khan, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Marcus Miller, Pat Martino, Gregory Porter, Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra, Gerald Clayton, Ralph Peterson, Allison Miller, Orrin Evans, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Cecil Brooks III

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is proud to present the third annual JazzLive International Festival (PJLIF) on June 7-9, 2013. The Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival will consist of three days of free jazz and jazz-influenced musical performances on outdoor stages throughout downtown Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. Held in conjunction with the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, the Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival attracts over 20,000 attendees from around the country.

The Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival features local, emerging, and renowned national and international musicians in a variety of performance settings that include: ■Outdoor performance stages and indoor performance locations within local restaurants, coffee shops and galleries.

■A free Jazz Crawl in the Cultural District, featuring 150 local and regional musicians.

■Late night club performances.

■Showcase Noir Artist Showcase: An African American Designer Market that includes pottery, paintings, jewelry, fiber works, and sculptures available for sale by some of the region’s finest artists.

“The PJLIF has expanded greatly in the last 2 years,” says Janis Burley Wilson, Vice President and Director of Jazz Programs for The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. “The Trust will present over 240 artists in 72 hours. Our headlining performers are world-renowned mainstream and contemporary jazz, R&B and blues artists. Downbeat Magazine described PJLIF as “intimate, laid back and inviting”.

The JazzLive Jam Sessions after hours have become legendary amongst musicians. Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival has something for everyone that wants to celebrate America’s classical music – Jazz.”

Confirmed Headline Artists

Chaka Khan “Queen of Funk-Soul,”

Chaka Khan is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the front woman and focal point of the funk band Rufus. Her career has spanned over 4 decades. Over the years, she has collaborated with many legendary performers in the industry that include but are not limited to Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder and Prince. Some of her most popular hits include “Tell Me Something Good,” “Sweet Thing,” “Ain’t Nobody,” “I’m Every Woman,” “I Feel for You” and “Through the Fire.” In 1982, Khan recorded Echoes of an Era, a collection of jazz standards featuring performances from Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, and Lenny White. This project provided Chaka Khan with her first Grammy Nomination for Best Female Jazz Vocalist. Born Yvette Marie Stevens, in North Chicago Illinois, Chaka received an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music in 2004. She is also active in the autism community, having family members who have been diagnosed with the condition. Her Earth Song Entertainment and Chaka Khan Foundation operate from Beverly Hills, California to raise research money for a cure. She is also the recipient of the 2006 BET Lifetime Achievement Award and has received four American Music Award nominations.

Rudresh Mahanthappa

Few musicians share the ability of saxophonist/composer Rudresh Mahanthappa to embody the expansive possibilities of his music with his culture. Time and again, Mahanthappa has eloquently displayed the capacity to absorb numerous styles and genres of music, combine them with the language of modern jazz, and emerge with a new form still recognizably jazz. What has materialized is a sound that hybridizes progressive jazz and South Indian classical music in a fluid and forward-looking form that reflects Mahanthappa’s own experience growing up a second-generation Indian-American. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, Chamber Music America and the American Composers Forum. He has been named alto saxophonist of the year in Downbeat’s 2011 & 2012 International Critics Polls and for four years running by the Jazz Journalists’ Association (2009-2012). Rudresh has studied at Berklee College of Music and DePaul University. Marcus Miller Marcus Miller is a two-time Grammy-winner and the composer/producer of ten critically acclaimed and genre-defying albums. As a multi-instrumentalist, Marcus is highly proficient as a keyboardist, clarinetist/bass clarinetist and, primarily, as a world-renowned electric bassist, topping critics’ and readers’ polls for three decades. His résumé as an A-list player brims with over 500 recording credits as a sideman on albums across the spectrum of musical styles that include collaborations with Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Donald Fagen and Eric Clapton, David Sanborn, George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Sample, Wayne Shorter, Grover Washington, Jr., Roberta Flack, Paul Simon, Mariah Carey, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Chaka Khan, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Z.Z. Hill, Billy Idol, Al Jarreau, Dave Koz and opera sensation Kathleen Battle. As a film music pro, Miller rose from writing the go-go party classic “Da Butt” for Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” to becoming the go-to composer for over 20 films including the Eddie Murphy/Halle Berry classic “Boomerang.”

Pat Martino

Philadelphia native, Pat Martino, began playing professionally at age 15 after moving to New York City. Martino has been recognized as one of the most exciting and virtuosic guitarists in jazz. With a distinctive, fat sound and gut-wrenching performances, he represents the best not just in jazz, but also in music. He embodies thoughtful energy and soul and has performed with a wide variety of artists including Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Jimmy Smith, Chick Corea, Jack McDuff, and Stanley Clark. The Grammy nominated virtuoso has been selected as the Guitar Player of the Year, Downbeat Magazine’s 2004 Reader’s Poll and has taught at several prestigious universities including Duquesne, New York University, Pennsylvania University, Stanford University. He’s also been a recording artist for Blue Note, Prestige, Vanguard and Warner Brothers Records.

Returning to the Festival stage is Artist-in-Residence for the Sound and Spirit initiative, Sean Jones and the Sean Jones Quartet. Sean Jones is a trumpeter, composer and educator. He was formerly the lead trumpet player with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra directed by Wynton Marsalis. Jones is currently a professor of Jazz Studies at Duquesne University and has eight critically acclaimed jazz albums to his credit. The multi-Grammy Award nominee is particularly adept at plumbing complex emotional plateaus through his trumpet playing and composing. Most recently, he’s toured with Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller and Wayne Shorter in Europe with a project that celebrated the Miles Davis legacy. Jones’ heart stopping quartet consists of Philadelphia-based pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Luques Curtis, and Miami-born drummer Obed Calvaire. No matter what angle they take on the subject, Jones and company’s blazing interactions reveals what any jazz fan knows is the greatest love of all: that between an artist and his music. As Jones says, “I like to play from the heart and not the head.

Other outstanding artists participating in the Festival include Gregory Porter, Latin legend Eddie Palmieri and his Salsa Orchestra, the Orrin Evans Trio, young vocalist and composer of Haitian descent Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Ralph Peterson, Gerald Clayton, Roger Humphries, and Allison Miller, an up and coming New York folk jazz drummer.

Ancillary Events

■MACY’S In Store Pre-Festival Sessions Before the Crawl begins, MACY’S will celebrate the Festival with a series of in store events.

■Saturday, June 1, 2-4pm: South Hills Village Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra Junior Jam Session *This program is part of the PNC Grow Up Great initiative.

■Saturday, June 1, 2-4pm: Ross Park Mall Max Leake featuring Maureen Budway

■Saturday, June 1, 2-4pm: Mall at Robinson Thomas Wendt

■Saturday, June 1, 2-4pm: Monroeville Mall Dennis Garner Band

■Thursday, June 6, 5-7pm: Downtown Pittsburgh Official Kick-off Party Enjoy shopping, sales, giveaways and live entertainment. Featuring: Cecil Brooks III, David Budway and Dwayne Dolphin

For more information, tickets and to find out how to support the festival go to:

http://pittsburghjazzlive.com/

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