Source: David Davis (author of Marathon Crasher), Sports Reference, International Weightlifting Federation, Adrian Bejan and Jordan Charles, United States Olympic Committee, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Richard Steckel, Robert Margo, Anu Dudhia
Images: Courtesy of Merry Lepper, Courtesy of Ernestine Bayer, Jr and RowingHistory.net , Detroit Historical Society, Getty Images
Credit: Adam Cole, Nelson Hsu, Stephanie d'Otreppe
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's contentious plan to double the sales tax cleared the final hurdle in a parliamentary vote on Friday after Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda promised to bring forward an election likely to end his party's three-year rule.
The passage of the plan in the opposition-controlled upper house is a result of a rare political compromise and a breakthrough for Japan trapped for years in a cycle of revolving-door governments and policy paralysis.
"Politicians tend to delay or avoid policies that increase the burden on the public, but we have to do this to ensure that there is a sustainable source of funds for our welfare system," Noda told reporters.
"Europe's debt crisis shows the dramatic damage that a country can suffer once confidence is lost in public finances."
Noda was speaking as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside his office for a weekly protest against his drive to restart reactors shut down after Fukushima disaster.
"Each party involved was determined to send a message to the world that Japan's politics is functioning, and that an effort is being made to steer clear of Japan's fiscal collapse," said Natsuo Yamaguchi who represented small opposition party New Komeito in 11th hour talks to save the tax plan.
But as the focus now shifts to the elections, analysts expect horse-trading over the exact timing of the polls to stall any further significant policy initiatives.
The plan to bring the tax to 10 percent by 2015 has been billed as a test of Japan's ability and resolve to tackle its snowballing debt that already tops two years' worth of its economic output, a record among industrialized nations.
It is also a victory for Noda, though a bittersweet one.
The former finance minister and the ruling Democrats' third leader in as many years made the tax plan his top goal and has worked relentlessly to achieve it, saying he was ready to sacrifice his political career if necessary.
With his offer to call an election "soon" he may have just done that given the Democrats' likely drubbing at the polls.
In its 2009 landslide victory the party rode a wave of public disillusionment with half a century of nearly non-stop rule by the rival Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Now it faces a similar backlash over broken promises, the government's confused response to last year's tsunami and nuclear crisis and Noda's embrace of unpopular causes such as the tax hike or restarts of nuclear reactors.
A poll early this week showed only 13 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the Democrats. But with support for their main rivals at 23 percent and nearly half of voters undecided some form of a wobbly coalition and more muddling through on policies and reforms is a likely outcome.
Keen to seize the momentum, the opposition is threatening no-confidence and censure motions if Noda drags his feet on the elections while trying to pass more bills, including one needed to sell new bonds to finance the budget deficit.
On Thursday, most opposition lawmakers skipped a vote on a no-confidence motion against Noda's cabinet filed by several fringe parties, allowing the Democrats to defeat it comfortably.
The lower house term runs through to August 2013 and some commentators said Noda might want to delay the polls until next year after he drafts the next budget.
That, however, may be impossible because of the opposition pressure.
"The prime minister should seek a mandate from the people as soon as possible ... 'Soon' can in no way be interpreted as 'sometime after the new year'," New Komeito's leader Yamaguchi told Reuters.
Since no party has majority in the upper house, a certain level of cross-party cooperation will be necessary regardless of the result of the lower house poll, although a grand coalition of major parties is unlikely, Yamaguchi said.
(Writing by Tetsushi Kajimoto and Tomasz Janowski, Editing by; Jonathan Thatcher)
Except for an occasional penny-ante poker game with friends, I?m not much of a gambling woman so I would never gamble on the success and direction of my business.? Just as I wouldn?t bet on a sports team that didn?t have a game plan, didn?t practice, didn?t analyze their competitors, and didn?t test out new plays, I wouldn?t bet on a company that didn?t have and follow a marketing plan.
A marketing plan (in direct support of the overall business plan) is vital to the success of any business?large or small.? To keep the sports metaphor going: a business plan gets you in the game; a marketing plan helps you win the game.
The most strategic of marketing plans begins with some level of research, whether it?s primary or secondary. You and your team need to understand not only your strengths and weaknesses, but your opposing team?s strength and weaknesses and how best to exploit your strengths and their weaknesses.
My favorite sport to play is tennis.? When I reached a point where I was no longer just playing for fun and instead was playing to win, I realized that I couldn?t win a match without a game plan.? If I wanted to be a successful tennis player, I needed to understand different tennis strategies and to be able to adapt to my opponent. My initial strategy was to pay attention to my opponent when we were warming up so that I would know?before the game?what my opponent?s weaknesses and strengths were.? During a warm up, I would mix up my shots and observe how my opponent handled slices, drop shots and how their net play was.? Were they intimidated by net play or was I going to keep them away from the net? ?By analyzing my opponent, I was able to change my style of play as many times as was necessary to win the match.
Many professional services companies I speak with today have been able to grow their business in the past often simply by word of mouth or local community involvement.? While these still are tremendous ways to develop new client relationships, times have obviously changed and current and prospective customers are now savvy online users from around the globe.
Having a marketing plan acts as a roadmap by laying out a clear direction for your business marketing goals.? The bottom line is if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.? Pretty simple to me, and yet, so many companies don?t approach marketing in this manner.
A marketing plan helps you laser in on:
Who you are
Who your competitors are
Who your ideal client is
What is their problem
How can you solve it
How can your audience find you
How they come to know you
How they can trust you to the point of doing business with you
How many times have you seen a professional sports team just show up and win without having some type of plan to win against their opponent?? Probably never!
Fortunately, with today?s marketing analytics and metrics, you can also keep score on how your marketing plan is working.? If you?re not winning the game, then a marketing plan allows you to see where the plan is not quite right so you can take steps to correct it.? Just as I needed to be flexible about adjusting my tennis game based on my opponent, a marketing plan needs to be flexible in order to adapt to an ever-changing world of business.
To quote the legendary football coach Lou Holtz, ?Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.?? Your marketing plan is your preparation for meeting opportunities in your marketplace.
If you?re ready to prepare and roll-out your own marketing plan, give us a call today or leave a comment below to discuss how Right Source Marketing can help.
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About the Author:Barbara Van Gorder is Account Director at Right Source Marketing. Let her know your thoughts on this post in the comments, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Throughout the 1990s, there was a broad consensus in the United States that paternity was in ?crisis.? Numerous social organisations motivating fatherhood in their titles or mission statements, were either founded during that decade, such as Promise Keepers, or scaled new heights of popularity, like the Reverend Wildmon?s militant American Family Association with its off-shoot campaign website One Million Dads. Unlike the British organisation Families Need Fathers, which is dedicated to maintaining a child?s relationship with both parents during and after family breakdown, the American organisations are either religiously motivated or social protest groups whose link with families is purely rhetorical. Promise Keepers, for example, describe themselves on their website as ?a Christ-centered organisation dedicated to motivating men to influence their world through a relationship with Jesus Christ? and ?keep their promises in the context of their family, church and community.? The group?s complete lack of programmatic support for families, in the sense of women and children, is explained in its ?vision statement?: ?When we reach men, we reach families.? The optimistically entitled One Million Dads?its membership, as of August 2011, stood at 552, so perhaps one-thousand dads, as one anonymous blogger quipped, would be a more realistic goal ?is dedicated to protecting the dads? children not from poverty, drugs or violence, but from what the organisation considers ?dirty? TV programming. Any TV programme or advertisement that depicts gay men or emancipated women in a positive light, pokes fun at religion, or features either rough language or scantily clad women, are eligible targets.A list of these targets, proudly displayed on the organisations ?victories? website, sports Coca Cola, Domino?s Pizza, Burger King, McDonald?s, Wal-Mart, every single major American TV network, and dozens of TV shows and commercials that were either taken off the air or had their sponsorship withdrawn. Both the parent organisation for One Million Dads, the Reverend Wildmon?s American Family Association, and its umbrella headquarter organisation, the National Federation for Decency, engage primarily in boycotts, buycotts, lobbying, and action alerts, not tangible support, financial or otherwise, for real-life families. Like Promise Keepers, they are militant in outlook, only very tangentially concerned with families, and led and staffed virtually exclusively by men.
Conversely, social organisations that do deal with families involving actual women and children are, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely staffed and sometimes even run by women. These include Stay-at-home-Dads, the Jewish organisation Shalom Baby, the Black organisation Project Mecca, Project Fatherhood, the faith-based initiative Leading by Example; Great Beginnings, Golden Dads, First Things First, The Fathers Network,? FACT (Fathers and Children Together) an organisation for and by incarcerated fathers, DMAD (Dads make a difference), the Dads 101 Programand Boot Camp for New Dads. For a comprehensive list of Fatherhood organisations, see here. Some of these, like Boot Camp, are simply designed to enable new fathers to ?hit the ground crawling,? as the BCND?s mission statement puns; under the aegis of a female programme director, Susan Worsham, the organisation offers various programmes and activities run by veteran fathers to show the newbies the ropes of warming bottles and changing nappies. Other organisations directly address the potential of child abuse through the father. The Dads 101 programme, for example, identifies Shaken baby syndrome as the leading cause of death in abusive head trauma cases, and the majority of perpetrators in shaken baby cases as male, ?usually the victim?s biological father or the mother?s boyfriend.? Dads 101 responds to this not merely with a national awareness campaign, but with a concerted programme to ?teach men the skills they need to be nurturing fathers? that includes childbirth education and training for expectant fathers, instruction in caregiving skills, discussion of gender stereotypes in parenting, and concerted training in what the organisation assumes to be feminine characteristics, such as tenderness, gentleness and devotion. Numerous other organisations take a similar approach, which sometimes, as in the case of Dads make a Difference, involves the active participation of female group leaders in ?nurturing? classes.
As these few examples readily show, women are centrally involved in the fatherhood discourse, whether they are cast, as is the case in militant male organisations, as pushing men out of the job market or out of family life, or whether they are viewed, as in female-staffed organisations that hope to train bearable fathers, as embodying nurturing qualities that are both indispensable for children and transferable to men. This second trend has been enormously popularized in Hollywood movies of the 1990s, where the promotion of feminine or maternal qualities has not, however, lead to a new valuation of women or mothers. On the contrary, the co-optation of these qualities by fathers, exactly as advertised in Dads 101 and other social fatherhood organisations, usually results either in the sidelining or in the elimination of mothers from the film.
A pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Junior'The father?s co-optation of the mother?s role is not only expressed in the fact that in Hollywood movies (in stark contrast to social life) single parents are almost inevitably male. It finds its clearest articulation in films in which Father not only replaces Mother but becomes her through either cross-gendering or cross-dressing. In earlier films like Ridley Scott?s Alien (1979), with its all-powerful computer ?Mother? (MU/TH/UR 6000) deceiving the crew with its wily feminine voice,and its graphic depiction of rape and unwilling motherhood being forced onto a man (the character played by John Hurt), such role reversal spelt? unmitigated horror. But more recent films, such as Ivan Reitman?s Junior of 1994, have tried to see the funny side of pregnant men.
Junior is a literal enactment of father co-opting mother. The egg implanted into the body of the male geneticist Alexander Hess (played by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger) is stolen from Diana, a competing female scientist played by Emma Thompson. During pregnancy, Alexander develops a new ?feminine? persona, expressed rather stereotypically in maternal protectiveness; a new-found taste for cooking, pink flowers and frilly curtains; uncontrollable appetites; a sudden and unpredictable emotionality; an ability to form friendships with women; even an angry response to the university?s attempts to appropriate his pregnancy for research purposes, which he counters with the feminist classic ?My body?my choice.? But this process of feminization (humanization?) is triggered merely through the artificial presence of female hormones. As long as these hormones rage inside Alexander?s body, they are presented as uncontrollable. But in a neat enactment of the superiority of (masculine) science over (feminine) nature, the situation is, in the end, controlled scientifically through the Caesarian birth of Alexander?s baby. Alexander, having thus ?experienced? motherhood, uses this experience to select an appropriate mother for his children (in the film?s straightforward logic, the same scientist whose egg he carried to term). This allows him to revert to a ?natural? fatherhood whose success is assured by his presumably better understanding of both women and children.
Much of the film?s comedy is of course based on the absurd contrast between Alexander?s new-found femininity and Schwarzenegger?s star image as the embodiment of machismo. But it is precisely this type of hyper-masculinity, specifically: its reinstatement at the end of the film, that signals the availability and acceptability of ?feminine? parenting qualities for men in general. The fact that Alexander is momentarily reduced to a blubbering bundle of sentimentality under the influence of raging hormones (?motherhood?) is ultimately less central to the film?s message than the fact that this does not, in the end, prevent him from reassuming his masculine authority (?fatherhood?).
Robin Williams as Mrs DoubtfireA brief look at a second example shows us what happens if the film withholds from the father figure this kind of ?natural? male authority. At the outset of Chris Columbus?s Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) has lost both his job and his family. Having failed as a father (as both breadwinner and understanding parent), he re-enters his own house in the guise of a lovable crotchety 60-year old Scottish housekeeper and nanny. Starkly contrasted with his architect/breadwinner wife Miranda (Sally Field), who moreover assumes power over him by becoming his employer, Daniel acquires ?feminine? qualities, from cooking to playfulness to emotive understanding, that Miranda herself does not seem to possess. In the end, Daniel?s fatherhood, initiated by this assumption of a ?feminine? persona, is paradoxically undermined by his lack of masculinity, his inability to pull off Alexander Hess?s feat of reverting to his true gender. Once unmasked he is unproblematically accepted by his children as their father, but he is not allowed to re-enter his house as a father, either by his wife (who merely grants him a subordinate role as babysitter) or by the judge, who upholds the initial decision to award custody of the children to Daniel?s wife. In other words, there is an implicit statement that successful fatherhood, even as it incorporates ?feminine? qualities, remains an essentially male affair.
Daniel ends the film as a profoundly ambivalent figure. His professional success is tied to his feminine persona (he runs a TV show as Mrs. Doubtfire). As himself, he is allowed to care for his children, but in a role that entails all the work and care of motherhood while being completely bereft of the authority of fatherhood. Rather than validating him as a father, the film seems to show the hopelessness of Daniel shaping up and taking responsibility for the whole fatherhood caper: fatherhood itself is presented as a joke. Daniel is hardly, as he has often been read, an ideal mix of father and mother; on the contrary: he is an amalgamation of mother and child.He plays games, throws riotous parties, dons costumes, provides the voice-over for cartoons, creates little domestic disasters, and is hardly fazed when one of his children walks in on ?Mrs. Doubtfire? urinating while standing up. The potential trauma of this scene?the child?s discovery of kindly nanny?s male member?is partly mitigated through the simultaneous discovery of Dad?s identity, but partly also through the childishness of the situation itself (catching a glimpse of another kid peeing).
Compared with the cool indifference of the film?s ?real man? Stu (Pierce Brosnan) towards Miranda?s children, Daniel?s childishness is positively portrayed, and it is of course expressive of the old adage that to understand children you have to become one yourself (it is worth remembering here that the childlike father is a role Williams has made a career of playing, for example in Hook, 1991, and Jumanji, 1994). But it is also, in the end, what disqualifies Daniel from fatherhood, because both woman and child, the roles he is able to play, fall woefully short of the masculine persona that is the real foundation of responsible fatherhood. Daniel?s acceptance of his subordinate role as babysitter, his willingness to settle for less than full-fledged fatherhood, endorses this rationale and makes it palatable to the viewer.
?Despite their ostentatious act of ?crossing? the line into the feminine realm, it is difficult to view the mother-impersonators of Junior and Mrs. Doubtfire as endorsing the feminization of men or sexual ambiguity of any kind. These only seemingly ?androgynous? characters do not, as Rebecca Bell-Metereau has optimistically read them in her book Hollywood Androgyny (1993), ?convey a sense of hidden possibilities, of the potential for change and renewal.? This potential, Bell-Metereau tells us, lies in a new-found sense of identification: ?when we find ourselves identifying with the other sex, we learn more of what it is simply to be human.? But neither Alexander nor Daniel come by this identification honestly; it is thrust upon them in pursuit of other goals (scientific insights in Alexander?s case, being near his children in Daniel?s). For the audience, moreover, the identification with femininity that both characters enact temporarily, as a means to a different end, is even less direct. Ultimately it is expunged completely, paradoxically by diametrically opposed solutions:Alexander?s reclamation of his masculinity in one film and Daniel?s failure to achieve his in the other.
By stealing the show of motherhood, both father figures indirectly and rather unsubtly proclaim the centrality of the father in the family. Daniel?s children are clearly less than happy in their single-parent mother-led family. Alexander as a father fulfills, in more ways than one, Diana?s fruitless pursuit of motherhood, which?otherwise why freeze an egg??is implicitly shown as on the verge of failure. That both mothers, Diana in Junior and Miranda in Mrs. Doubtfire, are highly accomplished professionals (one a scientist, the other an architect), is surely no coincidence. The idea that a woman might successfully combine motherhood and career is still (in the 1990s!) presented as more outlandish than the idea that men could become pregnant, or that their wives of fourteen years would fail to recognize them immediately simply because they have donned a skirt, wig and make-up.
From films that seem to deal so overtly in gender-bending, we might expect a certain measure of ambiguity. In the end, though, the family unit is saved not by virtue of ambiguity but promiscuity. Ambiguous films, as Philip Green has explained in Cracks in the Pedestal (1998), leave viewers in a state of doubt about what they are being shown, making it difficult for them to accept the film?s ready-made solution. Promiscuous films, on the other hand, try to offer something for everyone, contriving the story so no potential audience feels left out, finally enabling the audience to be cheerfully satisfied with either of the interpretations that is being made available. Both Junior and Mrs. Doubtfire can be accused of this kind of promiscuity. We are offered the chance to be cheerfully satisfied with the idea that fathers need a bit of character tinkering. But we do not, in exchange, have to let go of the traditional (breadwinner, masculine, authoritative) father, or of the idea, promoted in America?s most conservative ?family? organisations, that a family is only saved once Father is reinstated to his rightful place at the head of the household.
South Africa's Oscar Pistorius reacts after fellow team members crashed out of a men's 4x400-meter relay heat during the athletics in the Olympic Stadium at the 2012 Summer Olympics, London, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
South Africa's Oscar Pistorius reacts after fellow team members crashed out of a men's 4x400-meter relay heat during the athletics in the Olympic Stadium at the 2012 Summer Olympics, London, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
LONDON (AP) ? Oscar Pistorius and his South African teammates are moving on to the 4x400-meter relay final at the Olympics without even finishing the heats.
The double amputee will get a chance to run for an Olympic medal after track officials awarded an extra spot in the final following a successful protest by South Africa.
In the opening round Thursday, a Kenyan runner collided with South Africa's Ofentse Mogawane as he made his way around the final bend in the second leg of the race. Mogawane fell and clutched at his left shoulder as the baton rolled away.
Set to run next in the relay, Pistorius stared at the scene in disbelief. He put his hands on his head and began walking off the track, figuring his time in London was done.
In the span of two hours, Pistorius went from crestfallen to celebration. On Twitter, he said, "IT'S ON!! We in the FINAL."
Following the race, Kenya was disqualified from the competition when the referee ruled that Vincent Mumo Kiilu cut across too soon and caused Mogawane to fall. Kiilu had a spike mark on the back of his right shoe and Mogawane dislocated his shoulder.
Track and field's governing body said Pistorius' team will run in an outside lane after the jury met and "agreed to advance the South African team, even though they did not finish the race, considering that they had been severely damaged in the incident with Kenya."
Originally, three teams from the two heats were supposed to advance automatically, along with the next two fastest times. The last lane was going to be empty. The Bahamas, the U.S., Britain and Trinidad and Tobago were among the other qualifiers.
Willem Coertzen was competing in the decathlon and glanced up after Mogawane hit the track, but wasn't aware of South Africa's inclusion in the relay final until after he'd finished pole vault.
"I'm ecstatic," said Coertzen, who is South African. "I haven't seen it happen before like that, could be something new, but I'm excited for them. After everything that (Pistorius) has been through, good luck to him."
This was quite a day for Pistorius.
Quite an Olympics, too.
After a long battle for inclusion in able-bodied competition in the individual events, Pistorius ran the 400 meters and advanced to the semifinals before finishing last in his heat.
Last week, the IAAF announced he could run any part of the 4x400 relay at the Olympics, not just the opening leg when runners have to remain in their assigned lanes for a lap.
"This whole experience was one of the highlights of my career," said Pistorius, the first amputee to compete in track at the Olympics. "I just had the most amazing experience representing my country. My experience here, everything has been superb. From the organization to the crowd to the fans and to friends. I couldn't have hoped for a better time.
"It's so hard. You have so much support from back home. We would have loved to have represented our country today and finished the race."
Now, as it turns out, Pistorius and his teammates will get that chance.
"Will be up on the 3rd leg tomorrow for the Final! Really can't wait!" he posted on Twitter, adding "Emotional roller coaster!"
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AP Sports Writer John Pye contributed to this report.
Super heavyweight Anthony Joshua became the fourth British boxer to reach the Olympic boxing semi-finals and said the hunger for medals in London is driving on the home team.
The 22-year-old Joshua, who only took up boxing four years ago, faces Kazakhstan's Ivan Dychko in Friday's semi-final as he joins middleweight Anthony Ogogo, bantamweight Luke Campbell and flyweight Nicola Adams in the last four.
Welterweight Fred Evans and flyweight Andrew Selby, who both have quarter-finals on Tuesday, plus lightwelter Tom Stalker who fights Wednesday, are also bidding to reach the semi-finals in their divisions.
"I don't want to get too head-over-heels until it's done, it's a tough game in there and anything can happen," said Joshua on Monday, after putting China's Zhang Zhilei on the canvas in the second during his 15-11 quarter-final win.
"Everyone is hungry, everyone wants to do well," said Joshua, who is already guaranteed a bronze medal. "I'll be out again to hopefully change that colour to hopefully get a gold medal."
Favourite Magomedrasul Medzhidov, who beat Joshua to the world title in Baku last year, has reached the other semi-final and the Azerbaijani will face Italy's Roberto Cammarelle.
Earlier, Ogogo, who beat world championIevgen Khytrov in the previous round, set up a middleweight semi-final against Brazil's Esquiva Falcao after his 15-10 last-eight win over Germany's Stefan Hartel.
In the other middleweight semi on Friday, Uzbekistan's Abbos Atoev faces Japan's Ryota Murata after Atoev's 17-13 victory over India's Vijender Singh, who failed in his bid to claim a second straight Olympic bronze.
Murata is aiming to end his country's 48-year wait for a gold in the ring having become the first Japanese boxer since the 1968 Mexico Olympics to win a medal with a 17-13 win over Turkey's Adem Kilicci.
In the lightweight category, world champion Vasyl Lomachenko, the Ukrainian featherweight gold medal winner at Beijing 2008, booked his semi-final berth with a 14-9 win over Puerto Rico's Felix Sanchez.
In Friday's other semi-final, Lomachenko will fight Cuba's Yasnier Toledo in a rematch of last year's world championships lightweight final after the Cuban's comfortable 19-11 win over Kazakhstan's Gani Zhailauov.
"He's a dangerous rival, with good speed. He's fiery, but I've studied him a lot and I know that I can win," said Toledo.
Rising 20-year-old Lithuanian star Evaldas Petrauskas pulled off the first upset of the night with a 16-14 lightweight win over 2009 world champion Domenico Valentino of Italy.
"My hero is Mike Tyson and I hope one day to be as powerful as he was," said Petrauskas, the 2010 Youth Olympic champion.
"Since I started boxing at seven this has been my dream and I am pretty sure the whole of Lithuania is cheering for me."
With Petrauskas is something of an unknown quantity, his semi-final opponent Han Soon-Chul of South Korea admitted he would have preferred to face Valentino after his 16-13 quarter-final win over Uzbekistan's Fazliddin Gaibnazarov.
Gunmen stormed an evangelical church in central Nigeria, cut the electricity and opened fire once the building was plunged into darkness, killing 19 people, including the pastor, officials said Tuesday.
Residents in the town of Okene in Kogi state, where the church was attacked late Monday, reported fresh gun battles on a main commercial street on Tuesday, but the circumstances were not immediately clear.
Officials said it was too early to say who carried out the church raids, but the radical Islamist groupBoko Haram has repeatedly targeted Christians during worship in a series of gun and suicide bomb attacks.
Kogi, southwest of the capital Abuja, has not been hit particularly hard by the Islamists, although members of the group are believed to have come from the ethnically diverse area.
In mid-July, a bomb went off near another church in Okene, but caused no casualties, while in April, the military said it had discovered a Boko Haram bomb making factory in Kogi, in the town of Ogaminana.
The Deeper Life Church in Okene was attacked by "unknown gunmen" at roughly 8:20 pm on Monday, said Lt. Col. Gabriel Olorunyomi, head of a military task force in Kogi.
Before firing on worshippers who had come for a regular Monday evening service, two of the three assailants knocked out the building's generator, state police spokesman Simon Ile told AFP.
When military personnel arrived at the scene, they "saw 15 people dead, including the pastor," said Olorunyomi, who added that four more people later died from their wounds. Several others were injured.
Ile told AFP there were no early indications regarding the culprits.
"They entered the church...they just opened fire and they went away. We don't know their motives yet," he said.
Okene residents said that heavily armed gunmen attacked a commercial street in the town on Tuesday, sparking a gunfight with troops.
"The soldiers succeeded in killing two of the gunmen and then the rest fled," said Abdul Omeiza, who lives near the street where several banks are located.
Ile told AFP that he had heard reports of "a confrontation that is happening right now," but insisted he had no details and the military was not available to comment. It was not clear if latest violence was linked to the church raid.
Boko Haram, which has said it wants to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has increasingly attacked Christians but Muslims have also often been among the group's victims.
The group has killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009 in a range of attacks, including the United Nations building in the capital Abuja.
President Goodluck Jonathan said in June that Boko Haram was seeking to incite a religious crisis by attacking churches in an attempt to destabilise the government.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer, is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.
In a video posted to YouTube on Saturday, the suspected leader of Boko Haram criticised Jonathan as well as US President Barack Obama over Washington's decision to label him a "global terrorist".
It was unclear when the video was made, but it marked the first time Abubakar Shekau publicly addressed the terrorist designation slapped on him by the United States in June.
In addition to Shekau, the US State Department also announced the designations for Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi. Kambar and Barnawi were said to be linked to Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al-Qaeda's north African branch.
Some US lawmakers and the leader of Nigeria's main Christian body have been pushing Obama's administration to label Boko Haram as a whole a terrorist organisation.
