As heard on the Tour Daily podcast, José Been is taking us off the race route for some local historical and cultural context for each stage, from Denmark all the way to Paris.

A time trial on the penultimate day of the men’s Tour de France. Don’t worry. I will continue Hors Course for the Tour de France Femmes as well, but first: the final cheese segment for this week.

The time trial finishes in Rocamadour. The name is synonymous to many things including the cheese bearing its name. It’s a goat’s cheese made with raw milk. The history of the Rocamadour goes back a long way; the cheese is already mentioned in stories from the 15th century. Because Rocamadour is located on the old pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, the cheese has become more famous through the pilgrims than the region itself.

The area where the goats are kept is characterized by poor, dry soil. As a result, the vegetation is sparse and dries out strongly in the summer. At least 80% of the goats’ food must come from the region, fermented food is prohibited. The limestone soil ensures that the Rocamadour has a mineral-like taste.

The Rocamadour can be eaten after two weeks, then it is mild in taste. After four weeks it starts to get really creamy and has a stronger taste. In the sixth week it will dry up and taste even stronger. In June there is the annual cheese festival celebrating all the cheeses from the region. Count me in!


Yum.
There is much more than just cheese in beautiful Rocamadour. Legend has it that it was home to a hermit, Zaccheus of Jericho, who is said to have personally spoken to Jesus. He died in 70AD and was buried at Rocamadour.

At first, the Virgin Mary was worshipped in Rocamadour, but in 1166 a perfectly preserved body was found. It was said by some to be that of Zaccheus or of Saint Amadour, another hermit and the name giver of the town, or of a complete unknown man. No one knows.

After discovery, the bones of Saint Amadour were moved to the church. They survived a fire as they were held in a small reliquary in the chapel. The chapel is very simple in style with a single nave. Hanging from its ceiling is one of the oldest known clocks which dates to the 8th century. The Saint-Amadour crypt is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and part of the pilgrim’s route to Santiago de Compostela.

Whether the body was that of Zaccheus or Amadour, or whether they were actually the same person doesn’t really matter. The discovery itself caused the pilgrims to come flocking because the body was found with a black wooden statue, the Black Madonna, which has since been linked to many miracles. According to one source I found there are 170 miracles attributed to Rocamadour while Amsterdam has just one. Rocamadour thus became a major pilgrim destination with famous names like Louis XI of France and King Henry II of England.

In the fourteenth century, the century of the Hundred Years War, Rocamadour reached its peak. According to the sources, the town received as many as 30,000 pilgrims a day. That is a lot of people when you consider that Paris had roughly 100,000 inhabitants at the time. All the pilgrims all thought they were entitled to a full indulgence or direct access to heaven without being asked about your sins. This was an attractive price of course. Anyway, it was already busy here then.

But you didn’t just get it, you had to do something for it. After the pilgrim had first attended mass at a departure point, he left for Rocamadour in special clothes. Once they arrived in the town, the pilgrims stripped off their clothes, bare knees and climbed the 223-step staircase to the church with the shrines. To make it even more difficult, the pilgrim was given heavy iron chains.

I don’t know if today’s time trial will be equally challenging but let’s see. The sights of today’s broadcast will be amazing, I promise.

The sleek, speedy cheetah is rapidly heading towards extinction according to a new study into declining numbers.
The report estimates that there are just 7,100 of the world's fastest mammals now left in the wild.
Cheetahs are in trouble because they range far beyond protected areas and are coming increasingly into conflict with humans.
The authors are calling for an urgent re-categorisation of the species from vulnerable to endangered.
Wiped out
According to the study, more than half the world's surviving cheetahs live in one population that ranges across six countries in southern Africa.
Cheetahs in Asia have been essentially wiped out. A group estimated to number fewer than 50 individuals clings on in Iran.
Because the cheetah is one of the widest-ranging carnivores, it roams across lands far outside protected areas. Some 77% of their habitat falls outside these parks and reserves.
As a result, the animal struggles because these lands are increasingly being developed by farmers and the cheetah's prey is declining because of bushmeat hunting.
In Zimbabwe, the cheetah population has fallen from around 1,200 to just 170 animals in 16 years, with the main cause being major changes in land tenure.

Researchers involved with the study say that the threats facing the fabled predator have gone unnoticed for far too long.
"Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked," said Dr Sarah Durant, from the Zoological Society of London, UK, and the report's lead author.
"Our findings show that the large space requirements for the cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought."
Another of the big concerns about cheetahs has been the illegal trafficking of cubs, fuelled by demand from the Gulf states, as reported by the BBC earlier this year.
The young cats can fetch up to $10,000 on the black market. According to the Cheetah Conservation Fund, some 1,200 cheetah cubs are known to have been trafficked out of Africa over the past 10 years but around 85% of them died during the journey.
At the recent CITES conference in South Africa, governments agreed to put new measures in place to tackle this issue, clamping down on the use of social media to advertise cheetahs for sale.

However if the species is to survive long term then urgent efforts must be made to tackle the wider question of protected areas and ranges.
The new study argues for a "paradigm shift in conservation", moving away from the idea of just declaring an area to be protected and towards incorporating "incentive-based approaches". This, in essence, means paying local communities to protect a species that many see as a dangerous predator.
"The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough," said Dr Kim Young-Overton from Panthera, another author on the report.
"We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever."
To fully recognise the scale of the threat that the cheetah now faces, the report is calling on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to change the categorisation of the fastest animal on its Red List from vulnerable to endangered.
This would help focus international conservation support on a species that the authors fear is heading for extinction at an increasing pace.
The report has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A dispatcher for the Albuquerque Fire Department has been reassigned after a transcript from a 911 call showed him hanging up on a caller who was giving first aid to a 17-year-old shooting victim who later died.

Matthew Sanchez was reassigned out of the dispatch center and is currently performing administrative duties pending a probe of the June 26 incident in which he told the desperate caller, "I'm not going to deal with this, okay?" The teen, Jaydon Chavez-Silver, was shot while sitting on a kitchen counter inside an Albuquerque house in a drive-by attack carried out by unknown assailants.

"He was reassigned immediately after we learned of what happened," said Melissa Romero, spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Fire Department.

"Okay, do you know what ma'am? You can deal with yourself. I'm not going to deal with this, okay?"

- Albuquerque emergency dispatcher
Romero said Sanchez is a 10-year veteran of the department.

"Hopefully our internal investigation will be completed soon," said Romero of Sanchez's actions. Romero would not comment on why disciplinary action wasn't taken sooner.

After Chavez-Silver was shot, an unidentified woman began performing CPR on him while Sanchez was on the phone. The transcript of the 911 call captured the plaintive caller's urgency and frustration, as well as the shocking response of Sanchez.

Caller: (inaudible) I'm keeping him alive.

Sanchez: Is he not breathing?

Caller: Barely. (inaudible) Stay with me. Stay with me, okay? Good job, Jaydon.

Sanchez: Is he breathing?

Caller: He's barely breathing. How many times do I have to f---ing tell you?

Sanchez: Okay, do you know what ma'am? You can deal with it yourself. I'm not going to deal with this, okay?

Caller: No, he's going to die.

The call ends there.

Albuquerque Fire Chief David Downey released the following statement:

“After learning of the alleged misconduct, Matthew Sanchez was immediately removed from the dispatch center and placed on administrative assignment," said Albuquerque Fire Chief David Downey in a statement. "An internal investigation has been initiated. As the chief of the department, I am taking the allegation very seriously.”

Nicole Chavez, mother of the murdered teen, told local media she had heard about what Sanchez said and was shocked when she actually heard the recording.

"After hearing the call [Monday], it is heartbreaking to listen to," Chavez said. "Right now, we just want to find the people responsible for this violent, deadly crime."

Romero would not comment on whether Sanchez had any previous disciplinary actions taken against him.

A federal judge in California has ruled that hundreds of illegal immigrant women and children in U.S. holding facilities should be released, another apparent setback for President Obama’s immigration policy, according to The Los Angeles Times.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said Friday that the conditions in which the detainees are being held are “deplorable” and violate parts of an 18-year-old court settlement that put restrictions on the detention of migrant children.

The ruling also raises questions about what the administration will do with the estimated 1,700 parents and children at three detention facilities, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania.

Last year, tens of thousands of women and unaccompanied minors from Central America arrived at the Southwest border, with many believing a rumor that unaccompanied children and single parents with at least one child would be allowed to stay.

More than 68,000 of them were apprehended and detained while officials decided whether they had a right to stay.

Many were being released and told to appear at immigration offices until the administration eventually opened new detention centers.

Gee said in her ruling that children in the two Texas facilities had been held in substandard conditions and gave the administration until Aug. 3 to respond.

“We are disappointed with the court's decision and are reviewing it in consultation with the Department of Justice,” Marsha Catron, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a prepared statement given to The Times.

Many of the Central Americans who crossed the Southwest border illegally last summer said they were fleeing poverty and escalating gang violence.

The Texas facilities are run by private companies, while the one in Pennsylvania is run by a county government.

In February, a federal judge blocked Obama's 2012 executive action to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported.

And a federal appeals court in New Orleans refused three months later to allow the program to go forward, denying an administration request to lift the lower court decision.

Gee’s decision is also seen as a victory for the immigrant rights lawyers who brought the case.

The ruling upholds a tentative decision Gee made in April and comes a week after the two sides told her that they failed to reach a new settlement agreement as she had requested.

The 1997 settlement bars immigrant children from being held in unlicensed, secure facilities. Gee found that settlement covered all children in the custody of federal immigration officials, even those being held with a parent.

The Justice Department had argued it was necessary to modify the settlement and use detention to try to deter more immigrants from coming to the border after last year's surge. The department also said it was an important way to keep families together while their immigration cases were being reviewed, but the judge rejected that argument in her decision.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Hulk Hogan is speaking out after the WWE cut ties with the Hall of Fame wrestler following multiple reports that he allegedly used racial slurs in the past.

Shortly after audio surfaced from a 2012 radio interview where Hulk Hogan uses the n-word and reports that he also used similar language in a leaked sex tape from almost a decade ago, he addressed the situation today.

"Eight years ago I used offensive language during a conversation," he said in a statement to ABC News. "It was unacceptable for me to have used that offensive language; there is no excuse for it; and I apologize for having done it."

He continued, "I believe very strongly that every person in the world is important and should not be treated differently based on race, gender, orientation, religious beliefs or otherwise. I am disappointed with myself that I used language that is offensive and inconsistent with my own beliefs. It is not who I am. I continue to work every day to improve as a person, and this matter is an important learning experience for me in that regard. As a result I am resigning from my contractual relationship with the WWE.”

Read: Hulk Hogan Taking Gawker Media to Court Over Sex Tape
Hogan's response came after the WWE also released a statement, saying: "WWE terminated its contract with Terry Bollea (a.k.a. Hulk Hogan)," the network and organization told ABC News. "WWE is committed to embracing and celebrating individuals from all backgrounds as demonstrated by the diversity of our employees, performers and fans worldwide."

Along with the alleged comments, Hogan used other slurs on the DJ Whoo Kid radio show when asked by the DJ about his past use of the word "brother" for years while in the WWF, now known as WWE.

The conversation turned to other wrestlers like Booker T using the n-word at Hogan in the past on live TV. Hogan then repeated what he, and even rap artists like The Game and Lil Wayne would say to him, when he lived in Miami.

Hogan, 61, uses the n-word over and over on the surfaced audio. He admitted than he started saying it back to them, confused as to why he would get flack for saying it back if they were calling him that.

"I get heat when I say it, and they say, ‘Hogan, you can’t say that,’ so I say, ‘Why can they say it to me then?’” he says in the audio.

DJ Whoo Kid tweeted about the situation, writing "nothing racist about that @HulkHogan 2012 interview I did. He was just explaining the usage of the Nword amongst his rapper friends and WWF ... to me @HulkHogan is the coolest and will always be the reason why I watched professional wrestling #legend."