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Dragan Stevic of Serbia is the new Egyptian hero who killed a large shark which had previously terrorized numerous tourists (injured 4 and killed 1) at the famous Egyptian resort Sarm El Sheikh.
The Serbian hero was too drunk to remember what had happened, though one of his friends who witnessed the incident explained it all for the Belgrade based media.
Dragan Stevic was dubbed by the Egyptian media as "Shark El Sheikh" and thanked him for saving their tourist season.
Milovan Ubirapa, one of Stevic’s friend who witnessed the incident explained that Dragan had decided to go to the beach for a swim after a long night of drinking. As Dragan and his friends approached the beach, he saw a fairly high positioned jumping board utilized earlier in the day by divers.
“Dragan climbed on the jumping board, told me to hold his beer and simply ran to jump. There was no time for me to react or to try to stop him, he just went for it” says Milovan.
“Dragan jumped high and plunged down to the sea, but didn’t make as much splash as we thought he would”, explained Milovan.
The reason could be because Dragan Stevic ended up jumping straight on the shark which was lurking near the beach, probably looking for its next victim. Dragan had nailed it right in the head, killing it instantly. The Egyptian police found the shark washed out on the beach that morning.
Dragan was able to swim to the shore and told his friends he had twisted his ankle, telling them the water was not that soft.
The water is soft buddy, you just landed on a shark. At the moment, the fearless hero is in a hospital recovering from alcohol poisoning. After Dragan gets well, he will get a chance to have some more drinks as the resort had awarded the Serb tourist with a free vacation for his heroic deed. // Pero Stamatovski ||||| In what I can only describe as a Kafkian nightmare, a Latvian man was recently attacked by a beaver in the middle of the night … and couldn’t get help because both police and a friend believed he was prank calling them.
Inna Plavoka, editor at the local Seychas daily newspaper, told Latvian Radio 4 that the man, who was referred to only as Sergei, was walking outside late at night when a beaver ran up out of the bushes and bit him in the leg. Knocked to the ground, he tried to get up and run away, only to be bitten again.
The beaver then stood guard, refusing to let him get up. In the words of the Latvian Public Broadcasting report: “The beaver was in effect holding Sergei hostage.”
This is nightmarish enough, but what happens next is what makes the whole thing even more ridiculous and horrifying.
Sergei attempted to call police for help, but was hung up on because they believed he was making a prank call. So he then tried a friend, who also believed him to be joking, until Sergei finally convinced him he was in peril.
From there, it gets crazier.
From the report:
However, en route to the scene, the friend was pulled over for speeding. Police were unconvinced by the friend’s explanation that he was rushing to the aid of a stricken friend being held hostage by a single beaver – not even a gang of them. After subjecting the Good Samaritan to a breathalyzer test, the police reluctantly accompanied the friend to the scene of the crime. There, it is reported, police found the man still at the mercy of the toothsome terrorist, who made clear his hostility to law enforcement and all the norms of civilized behavior.
The police then called animal welfare experts to come take the beaver in.
If all this reads like it’s too good to be true, trust me, I thought the same thing. I’ve read over this website, looked at this story 10 times, and it appears to be on the level. If they duped me and this is some sort of weird Latvian prank, good on you, Latvia. You got me.
Forget Sharknado as the next Sci Fi animal movie. I demand Beaver Hostage Crisis and I demand it now. | – A Serbian man is being hailed as a hero after killing—accidentally—a shark that had been terrorizing an Egyptian resort town. Dragan Stevic was black-out drunk when he vanquished the predator that has killed one beachgoer and injured four. He went with friends to the beach after a long night of drinking, announced that he would take a jump off a diving board, and the rest is history, the Macedonian International News Agency reports. "Dragan climbed on the jumping board, told me to hold his beer, and simply ran to jump. There was no time for me to react or to try to stop him, he just went for it," a friend who was there explained. As luck would have it, Stevic landed right on the shark's head—it had likely been lurking in the shallow waters waiting for a new victim—killing it instantly. When he returned to his friends, he complained that he had twisted his ankle because the water "wasn't soft." The kicker: Stevic is currently in the hospital ... for alcohol poisoning. (Update: Apparently you can make up stories about drunken Serbs fatally whacking tourist-eating sharks: This story originated on a site described as the “Serbian Onion,” and it turns out the Macedonian International News Agency has had some factual issues in the past. But we wish it was true.) |
Image copyright Twitter
Billionaire Donald Trump has said he "may sue" a Twitter user who tricked him into retweeting an image of British serial killers Fred and Rose West.
Mr Trump shared the spoof message that claimed the pair looked at him as a "big inspiration" and asked him to "RT for their memory".
Later he tweeted: "I guess this teaches you not to be nice or trusting."
Fred West was charged with a dozen murders in Gloucester but killed himself before the trial in 1995.
Rose West was convicted of 10 murders - many at the couple's home in Gloucester - and jailed for life. She was told when she was sentenced in 1995 that she should never be released.
Mr Trump was contacted by the Twitter user early on Monday, urging him to retweet the image of the Wests.
The tycoon, who features on the US version of reality TV show The Apprentice, later deleted the message after it was widely shared on the social media site.
Image copyright Twitter
Addressing the incident, Mr Trump later tweeted: "Some jerk fraudulently tweeted that his parents said I was a big inspiration to them + pls RT-out of kindness I retweeted. Maybe I'll sue.
"I thought I was being nice to somebody re their parents. I guess this teaches you not to be nice or trusting. Sad!"
Mr Trump has yet to respond to requests for a comment from the BBC. ||||| But his latest mistake is perhaps his most laughable to date – in the very poorest of tastes.
The business magnate accidentally retweeted a message from a follower asking Trump to share an image purportedly of his recently deceased parents in loving tribute to their memory.
“My parents who passed away always said you were big inspiration,” the post from @Feckhead read.
“Can you pls RT for their memory?”
Unbeknownst to Trump, however, @Feckhead is “failed comedian” Phil Bradbury, and the image he posted was actually one of convicted serial killers Fred and Rosemary West.
The response from followers was thus:
@realDonaldTrump @feckhead They seem like lovely, kind caring parents, don't you think Donald? Dom Joly (@domjoly) September 29, 2014
.@realDonaldTrump Congratulations to @feckhead you win the internet today. Veridis Quo (@METAKNlGHT) September 29, 2014
And our personal favourite...
Please retweet for my brother who has a disfiguring skin condition @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/gBQPLARgqh Beaker Police (@OffencePolice) September 29, 2014
The notorious married murderers were found guilty of torturing and raping scores of young girls, and killing 11 of them, between the years 1973 and 1979. Their victims included Fred’s stepdaughter, who Rosemary murdered while Fred was in prison for theft.
The pair were finally charged in 1994. Fred took his own life before the case when to trial. Rosemary was found guilty of 10 counts of murder in November 1995 and is currently serving a life sentence.
The scene of many of their most heinous acts, their Gloucester residence 25 Cromwell Street, was demolished in 1996 and converted into a landscaped footpath.
Last month, Trump caused mild outrage by deliberately tweeting the following about ebola doctors.
Read More: Trump Walks Out Of BBC Interview After Qs About Mafia | – "I guess this teaches you not to be nice or trusting," Donald Trump complained yesterday after he was fooled into retweeting a picture of notorious British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West. The tycoon says he may sue the "jerk" who told him his "parents who passed away always said you were big inspiration" and asked him to retweet the photo in their memory, reports the BBC. Trump quickly deleted the picture of the Wests—who murdered at least 11 young women in the 1970s—but not before the mistake had been widely shared, reports the Independent, which rounds up some of its favorite responses, including a picture of Freddy Krueger with the caption "Please retweet for my brother who has a disfiguring skin condition." (Also getting Trump's goat: Critics who say putting his name in 20-foot-tall illuminated letters on a Chicago skyscraper is a little tacky.) |
Most people dislike sitting in a room with nothing to do but think for several minutes. Most men, and a quarter of women, even chose to shock themselves with a mild electric jolt than spend time alone doing nothing. (Courtesy of Science/AAAS)
People, and especially men, hate being alone with their thoughts so much that they'd rather be in pain. In a study published in Science Thursday on the ability of people to let their minds “wander” — that is, for them to sit and do nothing but think — researchers found that about a quarter of women and two-thirds of men chose electric shocks over their own company.
“We went into this thinking that mind wandering wouldn’t be that hard,” said Timothy Wilson, University of Virginia professor of psychology and lead author of the study. “People usually think of mind wandering as being a bad thing, because it interrupts when you’re trying to pay attention. But we wanted to see what happens when mind wandering is the goal.”
Wilson didn’t think his subjects would struggle with the task. “We have this big brain full of pleasant memories, and we’re able to tell ourselves stories and make up fantasies. But despite that, we kept finding that people didn’t like it much and found it hard.”
The researchers tried everything they could think of to make the task of being task-less easier. “We tried to give them time to prepare,” he said, “so they could think about what they were going to spend their time thinking about.”
But even going into the exercise with a plan — an upcoming vacation to plot, for example, or a particularly dreamy celebrity to daydream about — didn’t seem to help participants enjoy their time alone. Those who completed the study at home often admitted to cheating by picking up their phones or a book, and many reported that the six to 15 minutes spent thinking had been unpleasant.
When it became clear that people were desperate for distractions, the researchers decided to give them one. “It dawned on us: If people find this so difficult,” Wilson said, “would they prefer negative stimulations to boredom?” He gave them access to a device that would provide a small electrical shock by pressing a button. It wasn't a very strong shock, as the device was built around a 9 volt battery. “But we weren’t even sure it was worth doing,” he said. “I mean, no one was going to shock themselves by choice.”
But they did. The researchers removed the curiosity factor by giving subjects a sample shock beforehand. They even asked them how much they would pay, given a $5 allowance, to prevent another shock. Most offered up a hypothetical dollar or two. But when left alone in the room for a 15-minute thinking session, the participants exhibited some shocking behavior. One man (whose data was left out of the study) shocked himself 190 times. “I have no idea what was going on there,” Wilson said. “But for most people, it was more like seven times.”
And while only 6 of the 24 women shocked themselves, 12 of the 18 men did so. This, the authors wrote in the study, could be attributed to the fact that men tend to be more "sensation seeking" than women. In other words, most men are more interested in seeking variety and stimulation than women are, even if that means getting 190 electric shocks in 15 minutes.
Jonathan Smallwood, a professor of psychology at the University of York who wasn’t involved in the study said that being able to disengage mentally is an important attribute. “It allows us to think about information that is not in the environment,” Smallwood said. It's hypothesized that this allows us to act in ways that aren't directly influenced by our environmental stimuli. "So that is probably the way," he said, "that the human mind escapes from simple reflexive behavior.”
The ability to let the mind wander has been linked to greater working memory and increased creativity, he said. But the study’s findings don’t surprise him. In a world where we have a hundred distractions—social media and smartphones, for example—the subjects probably found being alone with their thoughts to be strange, Smallwood said. Although Wilson's studies were small, with a series of 11 experiments using between 40 and 100 people each, both researchers said that the field is ripe for further exploration.
Don’t disable your Facebook just yet: It’s possible that modern distractions aren’t totally to blame. In fact, study participants who used social media less frequently weren’t better daydreamers. “I suppose it’s kind of circular,” Wilson said. “We wouldn’t crave these things if we weren’t in need of distractions. But having so many available keeps us from learning how to disengage.” ||||| Photo: Photo: Darren Modricker/Corbis
Most people don’t think it’s fun to sit alone with nothing to do but think — it’s part of the reason for obsessive phone-checking during idle moments. A new study in Science highlights just how unenjoyable this experience is: in short, very. To the point that some people will choose to shock themselves rather than sit alone with nothing to do for a little while.
The researchers conducted 11 experiments in a variety of settings and among a variety of age groups. In most of them, subjects were asked to simply chill out and think for 6 to 15 minutes — no phone, no book, no nothing — and then rate the experience. The participants found it very hard to do so, with rather high percentages saying it was unenjoyable and that they found their minds wandering in a distracting way. And when one group in one experiment was offered entertainment like listening to music or surfing the web, they reported that that was much more enjoyable than being alone with their thoughts.
Maybe not too, too surprising. But one of the experiments really upped the ante in a — sorry — shocking way.
In that one, participants were asked to rate the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a number of stimuli, including an electric shock, and then asked how much of $5 they’d pay to experience or not experience each of them again. Then, they were asked to sit alone with their thoughts, but told that if they wanted to, they could shock themselves by pressing a button (because why not?).
Among the participants who said they’d pay to avoid being shocked again (meaning those who found it particularly unpleasant), 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women nonetheless shocked themselves rather than face, without distraction, what is apparently a terrifying hellscape inside their heads. The researchers suggest the gender difference could come down to men having greater sensation-seeking tendencies than women — that is, they get bored more easily.
These studies, the researchers write, can help explain why some people seek out mindfulness training — simply to make idle moments, which are inevitable, less difficult, and less likely to lead to unpleasant ruminating or self-criticism.
“Without such training,” they write, “people prefer doing to thinking, even if what they are doing is so unpleasant that they would normally pay to avoid it. The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself.” Amen. | – For a surprising number of people, 15 minutes alone with their thoughts appears to be a psychological ordeal so grueling they would rather give themselves an electric shock. In one of a series of experiments involving leaving people with nothing to do but think, a quarter of women and two-thirds of men left alone for a 15-minute thinking session with no phones or other distractions ended up giving themselves a small shock with a device built around a 9-volt battery, the Washington Post finds. One man—whose data was left out of the study—shocked himself 190 times. "I have no idea what was going on there," the lead researcher says. "For most people, it was more like seven times." The researchers believe men could be more prone to shock themselves because they are more "sensation-seeking." People were given plenty of time to prepare for the thinking session, says the lead researcher, who included the shock device when he realized some people left alone without phones were desperate for distraction. "We weren’t even sure it was worth doing," he says. "I mean, no one was going to shock themselves by choice." The researchers say their work explains why many people seek out mindfulness training, New York notes. "Without such training people prefer doing to thinking, even if what they are doing is so unpleasant that they would normally pay to avoid it," they say. "The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself." |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 65 people were found shot dead with their hands bound in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday in a "new massacre" in the near two-year revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.
Opposition campaigners blamed the government but it was impossible to confirm who was responsible. Assad's forces and rebels have been battling in Syria's commercial hub since July and both have been accused of carrying out summary executions.
U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi told the U.N. Security Council "unprecedented levels of horror" had been reached in Syria, and that both the government and rebels had committed atrocious crimes, diplomats said.
He appealed to the 15-nation council to overcome its deadlock and take action to help end the civil war in which Syria is "breaking up before everyone's eyes".
More than 60,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the war, the longest and deadliest of the revolts that began throughout the Arab world two years ago.
The U.N. refugee agency said the fighting had forced more than 700,000 people to flee. World powers fear the conflict could envelop Syria's neighbors including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, further destabilizing an already explosive region.
Opposition activists posted a video of at least 51 muddied male bodies alongside what they said was the Queiq River in Aleppo's rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood.
The bodies had what looked like bullet wounds in their heads and some of the victims appeared to be young, possibly teenagers, dressed in jeans, shirts and trainers.
Aleppo-based opposition activists who asked not to be named for security reasons blamed pro-Assad militia fighters.
They said the men had been executed and dumped in the river before floating downstream into the rebel area. State media did not mention the incident.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which says it provides objective information about casualties on both sides of Syria's war from a network of monitors, said the footage was evidence of a new massacre and the death toll could rise as high as 80.
"They were killed only because they are Muslims," said a bearded man in another video said to have been filmed in central Bustan al-Qasr after the bodies were removed from the river. A pickup truck with a pile of corpses was parked behind him.
STALEMATE
It is hard for Reuters to verify such reports from inside Syria because of restrictions on independent media.
Rebels are stuck in a stalemate with government forces in Aleppo - Syria's most populous city which is divided roughly in half between the two sides.
The revolt started as a peaceful protest movement against more than four decades of rule by Assad and his family, but turned into an armed rebellion after a government crackdown.
About 712,000 Syrian refugees have registered in other countries in the region or are awaiting processing as of Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency said.
"We have seen an unrelenting flow of refugees across all borders. We are running double shifts to register people," Sybella Wilkes, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters in Geneva.
The United Nations said it had received aid promises ahead of a donor conference in Kuwait on Wednesday where it is seeking $1.5 billion for refugees and people inside Syria. Washington announced an additional $155 million that its said brought the total U.S. humanitarian aid to the crisis to some $365 million.
Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said the bulk of the current aid was going to government-controlled areas in Syria and called on donors to make sure they were even-handed.
MISSILES
In the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, insurgents including al Qaeda-linked Islamists captured a security agency after days of heavy fighting, according to an activist.
Some of the fighters were shown carrying a black flag with the Islamic declaration of faith and the name of the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al Qaeda in neighboring Iraq.
The war has become heavily sectarian, with rebels who mostly come from the Sunni Muslim majority fighting an army whose top generals are mostly from Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Assad has framed the revolt as a foreign-backed conspiracy and blames the West and Sunni Gulf states.
Fighting also took place in the northern town of Ras al-Ain, on the border with Turkey, between rebels and Kurdish militants, the Observatory said.
In Turkey, a second pair of Patriot missile batteries being sent by NATO countries are now operational, a German security official said.
The United States, Germany and the Netherlands each committed to sending two batteries and up to 400 soldiers to operate them after Ankara asked for help to bolster its air defenses against possible missile attack from Syria.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall in Kuwait, Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Robin Pomeroy) ||||| Photo
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The leader of the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, on Tuesday proposed an initiative aimed at halting the worst infighting yet between the armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the conflict nearly three years ago.
Deadly battles have raged in recent days across northern Syria between rebel forces and another Qaeda affiliate, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, that also wants to depose Mr. Assad’s government but aims to replace it with a monolithic Sunni extremist government that rules both countries.
Angered by what they call the tendency of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to commandeer resources, impose strict social codes, and kidnap and kill opponents, rebel groups have been attacking its bases and trying to drive out its fighters from towns and villages where they once held sway.
More than 270 people had been killed in four days of fighting as of Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria. The dead include 46 civilians, 129 rebel fighters and 99 fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Both sides have also executed prisoners, the Syrian Observatory said.
In an audio recording released online on Tuesday, the head of the Nusra Front, known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the infighting resulted from the “incorrect policies” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He called for a cease-fire and the establishment of an Islamic court to handle disputes, saying the violence could give Mr. Assad’s forces the opportunity to regain territory.
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“The whole battlefield, including the foreign and local fighters, will pay the price of losing a great jihad because the regime will rebound when it was so close to vanishing,” he said.
While rebel forces have in the past established Islamic courts to administer individual towns and villages, the movement has never had a unified leadership that could impose discipline.
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The authenticity of the Nusra Front leader’s statement could not be immediately confirmed.
The Syrian Observatory has reported that more than 130,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011. But the United Nations, which has been saying for months that the death toll has exceeded 100,000, announced on Tuesday that it had decided to stop updating its own tally, at least for the foreseeable future, because of the problems in verifying information.
“It was always very close to the edge in terms of how much we could guarantee the source material was accurate,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, told reporters in Geneva. He partly attributed the decision to the extremely limited ability of the United Nations to independently conduct fact-finding in Syria, making it “increasingly difficult for us to source and analyze the casualty figures in order to update them.”
Suspension of a United Nations update on casualties “will be a loss — we will now have only disparate sources of information,” said Hamit Dardagan, an author of a report on Syrian casualties by the Oxford Research Group, a London-based organization that put the toll at 113,700 as of November.
Mr. Dardagan, a founder of Iraq Body Count, a project begun in 2003 to record civilian casualties from the war in Iraq, also said the sectarian nature of the Syrian crisis would further complicate any data collection. “As any conflict intensifies and you have more refugee flows and more people displaced, that becomes more difficult,” he said in an interview.
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The number of nongovernmental organizations able to work in Syria has been reduced by the increasing violence. Civilian groups that report events considered unfavorable to any of the warring parties have been targeted; most recently, Razan Zeitouneh, a rights activist who ran the Violations Documentation Center, and her colleagues were abducted from their office in a Damascus suburb. Parties on both sides also actively filter information they provide to the outside world to help their cause, and government restrictions and the threat of kidnapping and death have severely limited access for journalists.
United Nations agencies that do have some access have also described problems in verifying data. Officials with the World Food Program and the World Health Organization in Damascus said recently that because their officials could not reach many areas in Syria, they had set up local contacts to relay information to them, but that verification was difficult. Government ministries provide some data, but they are out of touch with branches in some rebel-held areas.
The United Nations reported some progress on Tuesday in the international effort to purge Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. In a statement issued with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, it said the first batch of the most dangerous materials in the stockpile had been exported from the country, loaded onto a Danish commercial vessel in the Syrian port of Latakia.
The statement said the Danish vessel would remain at sea until the second cargo of chemicals reached Latakia, when it would return to load them. The vessel was escorted by Danish and Norwegian naval vessels, the statement said, and China and Russia were providing further maritime security for the operation.
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“This movement initiates the process of transfer of chemical materials from the Syrian Arab Republic to locations outside its territory for destruction,” said the statement by Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations official responsible for coordinating the effort.
The export and destruction of the most dangerous substances in the Syrian arsenal, which the statement called “priority chemical materials,” has long been considered the trickiest and most hazardous part of the operation, which Syria agreed to carry out as part of its pledge more than three months ago to renounce chemical weapons and join the treaty that bans them.
Under a Security Council resolution approved Sept. 27, all of Syria’s chemical weapons must be destroyed by the middle of 2014. The most dangerous chemicals were supposed to have been exported from the country by Dec. 31, but that stage of the operation was delayed because the war had made their overland transport to Latakia too dangerous to complete. | – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is reporting what it calls a "new massacre" near Aleppo. At least 65 people have been found dead, all apparently shot in the head, and all with their arms tied behind their backs, Reuters reports. The death toll could rise as high as 80, the rights group said. It's unclear which faction in the country's ongoing civil war killed them. The incident comes as Syrian rebels scored a major victory today, taking a government intelligence compound in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor after five days of fighting, and freeing at least 11 prisoners held within, the AP reports. The government responded with a series of airstrikes in an attempt to drive the rebels out. According to Reuters, the rebels included fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda. |
William & Kate: New Dog in the Family?
Is there a new addition to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge 's household?That appears to be the case, as the couple take a romantic stroll in North Wales just a few days after Kate turned 30 At their countryside surroundings, the two snuggled as they walked along the edge of the sea with a new, four-legged friend trotting with them along the damp sand.There had been reports that William planned to give his bride a puppy for Christmas, and the couple welcomed the New Year playing with some dogs at Kate's family home in Bucklebury, Berkshire.Growing up, William had a black Labrador – named Widgeon – and the devoted pal was regularly seen by his side at shoots and polo matches.While the royals are always big fans – and owners – of black Labradors, the dog by William and Kate's side is most likely a black cocker spaniel."It'll be a spaniel," a friend suggests. "The Middletons have always had spaniels. Perhaps Mike and Carole have given them one or it could be one of the family's dogs."And as speculation rose about whether it was a birthday present for Kate, it emerged that the Duchess's first as a royal was a quiet affair, likely celebrated with William, 29, and her family.Beforehand, palace sources had said it would be "low-key and private" – and it certainly didn't involve a wide group of friends. "It sends a good signal that not everything has to be a party the whole time," a pal says.The palace will not comment on the couple's dog. ||||| Prince William is believed to have bought his wife a puppy for her 30th birthday last week.
The Duchess of Cambridge has been spotted out and about with a black Labrador near the Anglesey cottage she shares with the RAF rescue pilot.
“The dog is ever so cute,” said a source. “The Duke and Duchess have been seen with it several times and he runs along at their heels.
“They are constantly in fits of laughter as it tries to catch them up.”
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
It is thought that the puppy will travel with them between their homes in North Wales and London.
Both the Duke and Duchess are well known lovers of animals. Prince William had a black Labrador called Widgeon when he was a youngster.
A spokesman for the Duke and Duchess declined to comment yesterday.
Earlier this week. an official list of gifts given the royal couple on their first foreign trip to Canada and the US last summer was released.
A sleeping bag, snow goggles, a papier-mâché doll and a jar of Vegemite were just some of the unusual gifts given to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last year.
The newlyweds also returned home with mosquito traps, cowboy hats, hockey jerseys, stuffed toys, wine coasters and bread board among the hoard of gifts.
Kate seemed to win in the popularity stakes, receiving more gifts from members of the public than her husband. | – The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge reportedly have a new bundle of joy, but it's a bit more furry than the one diehard royal watchers were hoping for. Prince William has given Kate Middleton a Labrador retriever puppy, reports the Mirror, likely for her 30th birthday. “The dog is ever so cute,” a "source" tells the tabloid. “The Duke and Duchess have been seen with it several times and he runs along at their heels. They are constantly in fits of laughter as it tries to catch them up.” The trio has been spotted walking along the beach near their home in Wales, and People has the photographic evidence here. But wait! People thinks the royal canine is no black Lab at all, despite William's having owned one, dubbed Widgeon, while he was growing up. "It'll be a spaniel," a friend says. "The Middletons have always had spaniels. Perhaps Mike and Carole have given them one or it could be one of the family's dogs." |
An artist's illustration of the "Halloween Asteroid" 2015 TB145, which looks much like a skull from certain angles. The asteroid flew harmlessly by Earth on Oct. 31, 2015 and will return in November 2018.
Astronomers will soon get another look at the big, ghoulishly weird space rock that buzzed Earth on Halloween three years ago.
The roughly 2,100-foot-wide (640 meters) Halloween asteroid 2015 TB145 gave Earth a close shave on Oct. 31, 2015, coming within just 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of our planet. (For perspective, the moon orbits at an average distance of about 239,000 miles, or 384,600 km.)
A Halloween flyby was quite appropriate, it turned out: Observations made at the time by a variety of instruments revealed that 2015 TB145 looks like an enormous skull, at least from some angles. [These Scary Things In Space Will Haunt Your Dreams (Photos)]
Astronomers also determined that the asteroid likely completes one rotation every 2.94 hours and that it reflects just 5 or 6 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
This image of asteroid 2015 TB145 was generated using radar data collected by the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF
"This means that it is very dark, only slightly more reflective than charcoal," Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain, said in a statement today (Dec. 20). He co-authored a study about 2015 TB145's characteristics that was published in February 2017 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The asteroid may actually be an extinct comet that has lost its water and other volatile materials after many laps around the sun, researchers have said. Each of those laps takes 3.04 Earth years — which means 2015 TB145 will make another swing by our planet in mid-November 2018.
This next flyby won't be nearly as dramatic as the last one; the asteroid will zoom past at about 105 Earth-moon distances. But Santos-Sanz and other researchers are still looking forward to it.
"Although this approach shall not be so favorable, we will be able to obtain new data which could help improve our knowledge of this mass and other similar masses that come close to our planet," Santos-Sanz said in the statement.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. ||||| The large space rock that will zip past Earth this Halloween is most likely a dead comet that, fittingly, bears an eerie resemblance to a skull.
Scientists observing asteroid 2015 TB145 with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have determined that the celestial object is more than likely a dead comet that has shed its volatiles after numerous passes around the sun.
The belated comet has also been observed by optical and radar observatories around the world, providing even more data, including our first close-up views of its surface. Asteroid 2015 TB145 will safely fly by our planet at just under 1.3 lunar distances, or about 302,000 miles (486,000 kilometers), on Halloween (Oct. 31) at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT, 17:00 UTC).
The first radar images of the dead comet were generated by the National Science Foundation's 305-meter (1,000-foot) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The radar images from Arecibo indicate the object is spherical in shape and approximately 2,000 feet (600 meters) in diameter and completes a rotation about once every five hours.
"The IRTF data may indicate that the object might be a dead comet, but in the Arecibo images it appears to have donned a skull costume for its Halloween flyby," said Kelly Fast, IRTF program scientist at NASA Headquarters and acting program manager for NASA's NEO Observations Program.
Managed by the University of Hawaii for NASA, the IRTF's 3-meter (10 foot) telescope collected infrared data on the object. The data may finally put to rest the debate over whether 2015 TB145, with its unusual orbit, is an asteroid or is of cometary origin.
"We found that the object reflects about six percent of the light it receives from the sun," said Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona. "That is similar to fresh asphalt, and while here on Earth we think that is pretty dark, it is brighter than a typical comet which reflects only 3 to 5 percent of the light. That suggests it could be cometary in origin -- but as there is no coma evident, the conclusion is it is a dead comet."
Radar images generated by the Arecibo team are available at:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/national-astronomy-and-ionosphere-center-arecibo-observatory/near-earth-asteroid-2015-tb145-passes-by-without-a-fright/1082765941733673
Asteroid 2015 TB145 was discovered on Oct. 10, 2015, by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS-1 (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) on Haleakala, Maui, part of the NASA-funded Near-Earth Object Observations (NEOO) Program. The next time the asteroid will be in Earth's neighborhood will be in September 2018, when it will make a distant pass at about 24 million miles (38 million kilometers), or about a quarter the distance between Earth and the sun.
Radar is a powerful technique for studying an asteroid's size, shape, rotation, surface features and surface roughness, and for improving the calculation of asteroid orbits. Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than would be possible otherwise.
NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting our home planet from them. In fact, the U.S. has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects (NEOs). To date, U.S.-funded assets have discovered over 98 percent of the known NEOs.
In addition to the resources NASA puts into understanding asteroids, it also partners with other U.S. government agencies, university-based astronomers, and space science institutes across the country, often with grants, interagency transfers and other contracts from NASA, and also with international space agencies and institutions that are working to track and better understand these objects. In addition, NASA values the work of numerous highly skilled amateur astronomers, whose accurate observational data helps improve asteroid orbits after they are found.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program within the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at these websites:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch
News Media Contact
DC AgleJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-393-9011agle@jpl.nasa.gov2015-338 | – The "Halloween asteroid" set to make its closest approach to Earth today has turned out to be something spookier: a dead comet. Scientist say object 2015 TB145 looked like an asteroid when it was first spotted a few weeks ago. but closer inspection suggests that it is a comet that has passed the sun so many times that it has lost the layers of ice that would produce a tail, reports the Washington Post, which calls the visitor a "zombie comet." Radar images from the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico are also a little unsettling: The data "may indicate that the object might be a dead comet, but in the Arecibo images it appears to have donned a skull costume for its Halloween flyby," a NASA scientist says. |
According to the Washington Post, the late Justice Antonin Scalia spent his final day on this earth surrounded by members of a secretive, centuries-old, all-male society of wealthy sportsmen called the International Order of St. Hubertus.
John Poindexter, the man who owns Cibolo Creek Ranch, and C. Allen Foster, the Washington attorney with whom Scalia traveled to the ranch, hold leadership positions within the Order, the Post reports. It remains unclear whether Scalia himself had any official affiliation with the group, however.
Named for the patron saint of hunters, the Order was founded in 1695, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, by Count Franz Anton von Sporck—it came to the United States in 1966, via San Francisco. Its motto is “Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes,” which means “Honoring God by honoring His creatures.” (Honoring how? And which creatures?)
Poindexter told the sheriff that in the evening after Scalia and Foster’s arrival in Texas, they “had supper and talked for a while” before Scalia “said that he was tired and was going to his room for the night.” His body was found the next morning.
After the justice’s death, Poindexter told reporters that he met Scalia at a “sports group” gathering in Washington, where the Order’s U.S. chapter is ostensibly headquartered, and the Presidio County Sheriff’s report names Foster as Scalia’s close friend. At least two other men present are affiliated with the Order as well. From the Post:
Planes owned by Wallace “Happy” Rogers III and the company of A.J. Lewis III left from San Antonio and arrived at the ranch just after noon Feb. 12. The planes departed the ranch about 30 minutes apart Feb. 14, according to flight records provided to The Post by FlightAware. Rogers owns the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum in San Antonio. He has donated $65,000 dollars to Republican candidates since 2008. Lewis is the owner of a restaurant supplier company, also based in San Antonio. He has given $3,500 to GOP candidates since 2007. Rogers and Lewis have both served as prior officers in the Texas chapter of the International Order of St. Hubertus, according to Texas business records. Rogers spoke to a Post reporter briefly on the phone and confirmed that he was at the ranch the weekend of Scalia’s death, He declined to comment further. Lewis did not respond to several attempts for comment.
Members of the Order have gathered at Poindexter’s ranch at least twice before, and in 2011 new members from Houston were inducted in a ceremony held in Washington, D.C.
“There is nothing I can add to your observation that among my many guests at Cibolo Creek Ranch over the years some members of the International Order of St. Hubertus have been numbered,” Poindexter told the Post in an email. “I am aware of no connection between that organization and Justice Scalia.” ||||| High-ranking members of the elite hunting society, St. Hubertus, were staying at Cibolo Creek Ranch at the same time as Justice Scalia in the days leading up to his death. Here's what you need to know about the group. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
High-ranking members of the elite hunting society, St. Hubertus, were staying at Cibolo Creek Ranch at the same time as Justice Scalia in the days leading up to his death. Here's what you need to know about the group. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 12 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.
After Scalia’s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia’s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.
Members of the worldwide, male-only society wear dark-green robes emblazoned with a large cross and the motto “Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes,” which means “Honoring God by honoring His creatures,” according to the group’s website. Some hold titles, such as Grand Master, Prior and Knight Grand Officer. The Order’s name is in honor of Hubert, the patron saint of hunters and fishermen.
[Texas sheriff’s report reveals more details on Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s death]
Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John Poindexter and C. Allen Foster, a prominent Washington lawyer who traveled to the ranch with Scalia by private plane, hold leadership positions within the Order. It is unclear what, if any, official association Scalia had with the group.
1 of 8 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Inside the ranch where Justice Scalia died View Photos The Texas resort ranch spanned 30,000 acres. Caption The Texas resort spans 30,000 acres. Feb. 14, 2016 One of the ponds outside the suite where Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at Cibolo Creek Ranch, the West Texas resort that stretches over 30,000 acres. Matthew Busch/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“There is nothing I can add to your observation that among my many guests at Cibolo Creek Ranch over the years some members of the International Order of St. Hubertus have been numbered,” Poindexter said in an email. “I am aware of no connection between that organization and Justice Scalia.”
An attorney for the Scalia family did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Two other private planes that landed at the ranch for the weekend are linked to two men who have held leadership positions with the Texas chapter of the Order, according to a review of state business filings and flight records from the airport.
After Scalia’s death, Poindexter told reporters that he met Scalia at a “sports group” gathering in Washington. The U.S. chapter of the International Order of St. Hubertus lists a suite on M Street NW in the District as its headquarters, although the address is only a mailbox in a United Parcel Service store.
[How St. Hubert’s encounter with a deer inspired the society]
The International Order of St. Hubertus, according to its website, is a “true knightly order in the historical tradition.” In 1695, Count Franz Anton von Sporck founded the society in Bohemia, which is in modern-day Czech Republic.
The group’s Grand Master is “His Imperial Highness Istvan von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduke of Austria,” according to the Order’s website. The next gathering for “Ordensbrothers” and guests is an “investiture” March 10 in Charleston, S.C.
1 of 20 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The life of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia View Photos Antonin Scalia, the influential and most provocative member of the Supreme Court, has died. He was 79. Caption Antonin Scalia, the influential and most provocative member of the Supreme Court, has died. He was 79. Oct. 8, 2010 Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court. Larry Downing/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
The society’s U.S. chapter launched in 1966 at the famous Bohemian Club in San Francisco, which is associated with the all-male Bohemian Grove — one of the most well-known secret societies in the country.
In 2010, Poindexter hosted a group of 53 members of the Houston chapter of the International Order of St. Hubertus at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, according to a Houston society publication. A number of members from Mexico were also part of the ranch festivities that included “three days of organized shoots and ‘gala’ lunches and dinners.”
Poindexter told CultureMap Houston that some of the guests dressed in “traditional European shooting attire for the boxed bird shoot competition” and for the shooting of pheasants and chukar, a type of partridge.
For the hunting weekend earlier this month, Poindexter told The Washington Post that Scalia traveled to Houston with his friend and U.S. marshals, who provide security for Supreme Court justices. The Post obtained a Presidio County Sheriff’s Office report that named Foster as Scalia’s close friend on the trip.
Sheriff Danny Dominguez confirmed that a photograph of Washington lawyer C. Allen Foster is the same man he interviewed at the ranch the day of Scalia’s death.
[Did sleep apnea contribute to Scalia’s death? A breathing machine was near his bed.]
From Houston, Scalia and Foster chartered a plane without the marshals to the Cibolo Creek Ranch airstrip. In a statement after Scalia died, the U.S. Marshals Service said that Scalia had declined a security detail while at the ranch.
The friend, Louisiana-born Foster, is a lawyer with the Washington firm Whiteford, Taylor & Preston. He is also known for his passion for hunting and is a former spokesman for the hunting group Safari Club.
In 2006, Foster was featured in The Post when he celebrated his 65th birthday with a six-day celebration in the Czech Republic. He flew his family and 40 Washington friends there to stay in Moravia’s Zidlochovice, a baroque castle and hunting park. The birthday bash included “tours of the Czech countryside, wine tasting, wild boar and mouflon (wild sheep) hunts, classic dance instruction and a masked costume ball.”
A secretary at Foster’s law firm said he is traveling in Argentina. The firm’s director of marketing, Mindee L. Mosher, said Foster was traveling and she would try to contact him. A woman answering a phone associated with Foster hung up when asked for comment.
Planes owned by Wallace “Happy” Rogers III and the company of A.J. Lewis III left from San Antonio and arrived at the ranch just after noon Feb. 12. The planes departed the ranch about 30 minutes apart Feb. 14, according to flight records provided to The Post by FlightAware.
Rogers owns the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum in San Antonio. He has donated $65,000 to Republican candidates since 2008. Lewis is the owner of a restaurant supplier company, also based in San Antonio. He has given $3,500 to GOP candidates since 2007.
Rogers and Lewis have both served as prior officers in the Texas chapter of the International Order of St. Hubertus, according to Texas business records. Rogers spoke to a Post reporter briefly on the phone and confirmed that he was at the ranch the weekend of Scalia’s death. He declined to comment further.
Lewis did not respond to several attempts for comment.
The Presidio County Sheriff’s Office released an incident report to The Post on Tuesday that revealed Foster’s name as Scalia’s traveling companion and provided details about the discovery of his body.
Poindexter and Foster told the sheriff that Scalia had traveled to Texas the day before to go hunting. Poindexter told the sheriff that they “had supper and talked for a while” that evening.
Scalia “said that he was tired and was going to his room for the night,” the sheriff wrote in his report.
When Scalia didn’t show up for breakfast that morning, Poindexter knocked on his door and eventually went in and found the Justice dead in his bed, Poindexter said.
Law enforcement officials told The Post that they had no knowledge of the International Order of St. Hubertus or its connection to Poindexter and ranch guests. The officials said the FBI had declined to investigate Scalia’s death when they were told by the marshals that he died from natural causes.
Alice Crites in Washington and Eva Ruth Moravec in San Antonio contributed to this report. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story
HOUSTON — When Justice Antonin Scalia did not respond to a knock at the door of his suite at the Cibolo Creek Ranch at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, John B. Poindexter, the property’s owner, was not alarmed.
Perhaps the 79-year-old justice was attending to Supreme Court business, Mr. Poindexter thought, or simply did not wish to be disturbed on his first morning at the remote ranch in West Texas. It was less than three hours later, when Mr. Poindexter tried again, that he found Justice Scalia’s body.
Justice Scalia had no pulse and was clearly dead, Mr. Poindexter recalled in an interview on Sunday.
“His hands were sort of almost folded on top of the sheets,” said Mr. Poindexter, a manufacturing executive from Houston.
He added: “It was just like he was taking a nap. He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
Justice Scalia had arrived at the 30,000-acre ranch on Friday to participate in one of the weekend gatherings that Mr. Poindexter, who has owned the Cibolo Creek property since 1990 and restored its three historic forts into a secluded retreat, hosts a few times each year. Justice Scalia and Mr. Poindexter had met just once, in Washington, and the justice had traveled to Texas after a friend of Mr. Poindexter’s suggested inviting him, the ranch owner said.
Continue reading the main story OKLA. N.M. Dallas TEXAS Marfa Houston PRESIDIO San Antonio Cibolo Creek Ranch Gulf of Mexico MEXICO 200 miles
In the day leading up to his death, Justice Scalia was “very congenial, very convivial,” Mr. Poindexter said, as the party roamed the property, and some hunted for quail. Justice Scalia did not participate in the hunt, but he did observe.
“I don’t think you’ll find another place like this in Texas that has such quiet, such fantastic star shows at night and simple luxuries,” said Shelby Hodge, a former society columnist with The Houston Chronicle who is now editor at large at CultureMap.
Many of those at the ranch during the weekend, Ms. Hodge said, were from Washington, but others were from San Antonio, Houston and Kerrville.
Around 9 p.m., after a cocktail reception and dinner, Justice Scalia, who had flown to Texas early Friday, told Mr. Poindexter that he was going to turn in for the night, and went to the property’s presidential suite.
The next morning, Justice Scalia did not appear for breakfast, and Mr. Poindexter went to look for him.
“I knocked on the door loudly,” said Mr. Poindexter, who said Justice Scalia and the other guests had been staying at the ranch free for the weekend. “I had him in a very large room — a suite — and I thought he might be in the bathroom.”
Just after 11 a.m., Mr. Poindexter and a friend of Justice Scalia’s tried the door again, again to no answer. They entered the room, and it took no medical training, Mr. Poindexter said, to recognize that Justice Scalia was dead.
Mr. Poindexter called a hospital and, without identifying Justice Scalia, reported what had happened. A hospital official, Mr. Poindexter said, assessed that it would be impossible to resuscitate Justice Scalia, and ranch officials contacted the United States Marshals Service.
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That call set into motion hours of intense discussions about how to navigate the protocols associated with the death of a Supreme Court justice outside the Washington area.
“No identity or clue was given that this was not another body found by hunters in the desert,” David Beebe, a justice of the peace, wrote in an email Saturday night.
Judge Beebe said County Judge Cinderela Guevera had ultimately pronounced Justice Scalia dead by telephone and “ruled it natural causes based on credible information.” She did not respond to messages on Sunday.
As the authorities grappled with the death, the Rev. Mike Alcuino of the Santa Teresa de Jesús Church in Presidio was summoned to administer the last rites to Justice Scalia, a Catholic.
“It was just proper to call in a Catholic priest for the last rites,” Father Alcuino said on Sunday. Around midnight Sunday, a hearse carrying Justice Scalia’s body left the ranch property, bound for Sunset Funeral Homes in El Paso, more than 200 miles away. ||||| When Texas millionaire John Poindexter invited Justice Antonin Scalia to his remote ranch near the Mexican border, it was for a private party with about 35 other guests, a weekend of hunting and sightseeing on his painstakingly restored and cultivated 30,000-acre spread.
But when Scalia, 79, failed to appear for a morning excursion at 8 a.m. Saturday, Poindexter became concerned and went to his room, which has its own outdoor fire pit and a wall of windows overlooking the 22-room adobe ranch hotel, a lake and surrounding peaks of the Chinati Mountains.
“I had not seen him, and everyone else was up. I knocked loudly," Poindexter said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. But Scalia was in a large room, the "El Presidente" suite, and the owner figured that perhaps the justice couldn’t hear him.
Poindexter had just met Scalia, and although he found him “congenial” and they got on well at dinner the night before, his first thought was: “He’s a Supreme Court justice, and if he doesn’t want to be bothered.”
Eventually, Poindexter entered the silent room, apprehensive.
“I was worried I was going to find something very tragic,” he said.
He spotted Scalia, still in his pajamas.
“He was in perfect repose in his bed as if he was taking a nap. His face wasn’t contorted or anything,” Poindexter said. “I went over and felt his hand and it was very cold, no pulse. You could see he was not alive.”
It was Scalia’s first visit to the storied ranch, and his death is already becoming part of the lore at Cibolo Creek, a site steeped in Southwest history and frequented by what Poindexter’s consultant George Van Etten called “a lot of Hollywood people and captains of industry.”
FULL COVERAGE: Supreme Court Justice Scalia dies at 79>>
George Van Etten at Cibolo Creek Ranch Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times George Van Etten, a property manager at the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Texas, shows reporters around the resort. George Van Etten, a property manager at the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Texas, shows reporters around the resort. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times) (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)
The ranch, established in 1857, sits in the middle of remote desert, 15 miles north of the border and 150 miles southeast of El Paso, the last several miles on a dirt road.
On-site bird hunts include pheasant, chukar, white-winged dove and blue quail. The area is home to more than 500 species of birds, as well as 18 species of bats.
“Tread lightly and you’re likely to see more than a few species of wildlife, including the American buffalo, Carmen mountains white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, aoudad, coyotes, black bears, javelinas, mountain lions and bobcats/ringtail cats, along with domestic livestock grazing in our pastures,” the ranch web site says. Cibolo is a Native American word for buffalo.
Several iconic films were shot here: “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood” and, 60 years ago in nearby Marfa, the Texas epic “Giant.” Guests have included Mick Jagger, Julia Roberts and Tommy Lee Jones.
Poindexter recalled how, after Scalia — a Trenton, N.J., native who spent his career on the East Coast — arrived at about noon on Friday, he joined the other guests on a successful quail hunt.
“He did not hunt. He was out on the property, looking at it,” Poindexter said. “It’s a reasonably attractive place. He seemed to enjoy himself. He got off the truck once and seemed to enjoy himself.”
Antonin Scalia found dead in Texas Antonin Scalia was found dead at Cibolo Creek Ranch. Antonin Scalia was found dead at Cibolo Creek Ranch. See more videos
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Most of the other guests had been to the ranch before and were friends or longtime acquaintances of Poindexter, who has a home on the ranch and has been hosting winter weekend gatherings for 20 years.
Poindexter said he had met Scalia once before, briefly in Washington, when he was there with a sports group and the justice agreed to meet them. He said he invited Scalia to the ranch on the suggestion of a mutual friend, a lawyer, who came with Scalia.
He declined to identify the lawyer or any of the other guests, except to say that they were "very substantial business people," but not big names in politics.
"There is no political angle here," he said. "It was strictly a group of friends sympathetic to the justice's views."
Scalia engendered criticism in the past over his choice of partners on hunting trips. In 2001, he went on a pheasant hunting trip with the dean of a Kansas law school who was the lead attorney in two cases that were about to come before the Supreme Court. And in 2004, he went duck hunting with then-Vice President Dick Cheney — flying with him on a plane that served as Air Force 2 — while the high court was considering a case that challenged the secrecy of an energy task force led by Cheney.
At the ranch, Poindexter said, Scalia “was very congenial. He spoke to anyone who would address him.” He sat next to Scalia at a dinner of “typical ranch fare.” He didn’t recall what the justice ate, except that it wasn’t steak.
“I spent quite a bit of time talking to him — about nothing official, just pleasantries: Texas scenery, outdoors, what life is like in Washington,” Poindexter said. “He didn’t come to have a long conversation about jurisprudence.”
By dinner’s end at about 9 p.m., Poindexter said, “he seemed in good spirits.”
“He stood up and said he was tired, he had had a long week and he would see us in the morning,” he said.
I went over and felt his hand and it was very cold, no pulse. You could see he was not alive. - John Poindexter, owner of the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Texas
After Scalia’s body was discovered, the ranch alerted the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for protecting the justices when they travel outside Washington, although Van Etten had not noticed them around Scalia at the ranch.
“He was very unassuming. He didn’t want his entourage of marshals to stay here with him,” Van Etten said.
He said they also later alerted a Catholic priest, Father Mike Alcuino from nearby Presidio, who arrived Saturday afternoon to administer last rites to the justice, a devout Catholic.
The other guests, who had decided to stay but canceled their scheduled blue quail and box bird hunt, kept their distance.
“It was a sober mood, of course,” Van Etten said as he headed to the presidential suite during a tour of the ranch Sunday. “We stayed away, directed the father over there. We lost a great jurist and a great American.”
Poindexter had originally invited Scalia to bring his son, and when he couldn’t come at the last minute, the justice brought the attorney friend instead, who alerted the family to his death, Van Etten said. | – A new detail has emerged in the death of Antonin Scalia: The US Supreme Court justice spent his last hours with members of the International Order of St. Hubertus, a "secretive society of elite hunters," the Washington Post reports. Public records reviewed by the Post revealed that some of the men staying at the Cibolo Creek Ranch when Scalia died there on Feb. 13 are members of the order founded some three centuries ago. Ranch owner John Poindexter, along with Scalia's traveling partner, C. Allen Foster, both hold leadership positions within the order. Scalia's association with the group is unclear. In an email, Poindexter acknowledged that group members have been guests of the ranch, adding, "I am aware of no connection between that organization and Justice Scalia." Private planes connected to two other men who have held leadership positions in the order's Texas chapter landed at the ranch for Valentine's Day weekend, records show. As for Scalia's death, Poindexter told the sheriff that after dinner and a chat, the justice retired for the evening. Poindexter knocked on his door when he didn't show for breakfast; it was then they found Scalia dead in bed. Founded in 1695 in the modern Czech Republic, the International Order of Saint Hubertus (the patron saint of hunters) was a "knightly order," according to its website. Among the group's tenets is promoting "the concept of hunting and fishing as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity." And its motto is "Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes" or "Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures." (Honoring how? And which creatures? Gawker inquires.) Members drape themselves in green robes and have titles like "grand master" and "protector of the order." Read the whole story here. |
Vladimir Putin has promised to help the city's residents vote on a name change after being asked by second world war veteran
For more than 300 years, the Russian city of Volgograd was known as Tsaritsyn. It was dubbed Stalingrad in honour of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for a mere 26 years, but then his successor Nikita Khrushchev dropped that name as part of his campaign to dismantle the personality cult of the former dictator.
Now the city may become Stalingrad once again after president Vladimir Putin proposed holding a referendum to change the name amid a wave of second world war patriotism over eastern Ukraine. When asked by a Soviet veteran during D-day commemorations in Normandy on Friday, Putin promised to help the city's residents vote on bringing back the Stalingrad name. "It wasn't me who canceled that," Putin told the veterans.
On Sunday, Russian Orthodox church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin also spoke out in favour of a referendum. "The word Stalingrad already has a life of its own, independent of the name Stalin. It's associated with the victory in a famous battle, with a certain part of our history," Chaplin said, news agency Interfax reported.
Several other prominent politicians, including deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin and Communist party leader and MP Gennady Zyuganov, were quick to put their weight behind the possible name change. But Putin's support is what is likely to move the initiative forward in Volgograd, which is one of Russia's largest cities with more than 1 million people.
Last year, several politicians called for a referendum on the name Stalingrad on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the battle there, which stopped the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union and stands as one of the bloodiest battles of all time, with an estimated 2 million total casualties. The Russian Citizens' Union turned in more than 50,000 signatures in favour of renaming the city, but local politicians and Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov both turned down the idea.
However, the Volgograd city council voted to use the name Stalingrad on nine annual holidays connected with the second world war.
But outside veterans and pensioners, few seem to support bringing back the war-era name. A poll by the independent Levada Centre in 2012 found that 18% of respondents were for renaming the city Stalingrad, but 60% were against the switch. Volgograd city council deputy Alexei Volotskov said three out of four residents asked in a local poll were against returning the name.
Over 20 million Soviet citizens are said to have died in the second world war, and the conflict has played a huge role in the national consciousness. But patriotism and reverence for the great victory has risen to new heights in recent years with the support of Putin and other politicians. Earlier this year, the liberal television station Dozhd was dropped by most major carriers under political pressure after it conducted a controversial on-air poll asking if the Soviets should have surrendered the besieged city of Leningrad to save lives.
Russian state television coverage of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels have been fighting for control with Kiev's forces, has portrayed the conflict as a struggle against fascism, dubiously comparing the new government in Kiev and Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazi invasion. Several rebel leaders have also portrayed their campaign as a continuation of the second world war. ||||| Russian Human Rights ombudsman Ella Pamfilova is suggesting the renaming of Volgograd to Stalingrad, which is favored by veterans who met President Putin in Normandy, should be decided by the whole Russian people.
The issue was brought up by a group of Russian WWII veterans who met with President Vladimir Putin in Deauville, France, as part of the international D-Day celebrations. One of the elderly veterans asked if it was possible to rename the city of Volgograd back to Stalingrad.
Putin replied that the law says such questions need to be decided at the regional and municipal level. “In this case the city residents must hold a referendum and make a joint decision. We will do what the people say,” the Russian leader said.
The veterans are eager to go to Volgograd and as part of the campaign. The president also said that a square in Paris is named after Stalingrad.
On Monday Russian Human Rights ombudsman Ella Pamfilova commented that because of the nationwide importance of the Battle of Stalingrad, the issue of Volgograd's renaming should also be put to a nationwide referendum. She said it could be held on the all-Russia election day in September. In late 2012 a nationwide poll on the subject showed that about 60 percent of Russians oppose the return of Stalin’s name on maps.
Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov also commented on Monday saying that Putin’s words should not be interpreted as supporting the renaming. “When he was answering the veterans’ question in Normandy Putin said that changing names of cities it was not within his powers. As he continued to answer the insistent veteran’s question, the President answered that he could not make such a decision himself and that there was a procedure – the question can be solved through a referendum.” The ITAR-TASS news agency quoted the Kremlin official as saying.
The head of the Russian Communists, Gennady Zyuganov, told reporters that he supported the idea of a referendum and immediately suggested to move further and hold a referendum on returning the name Leningrad to St. Petersburg.
The Issue of Volgograd returning to the name of Stalingrad is raised in Russian society on a regular basis – mostly by fringe left-wing politicians, veterans’ organizations and military history clubs. The discussion has become especially strong as the country readies to mark the 70th anniversary of victory in WWII.
In 2013 the Volgograd city legislature decided to use the name Stalingrad during the ceremonies dedicated to the anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad – the event that is believed to have turned the course of the war and led to the defeat of the Nazis.
However, most leading government officials and political party leaders have been cautious, saying the decision must be made by Volgograd residents in the course of a referendum. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in 2013 that the Kremlin administration was not supporting the renaming as it caused additional unnecessary expense and could start a chain of similar events that were not needed.
Founded in 1589 and originally named Tsaritsyn, Volgograd was renamed after Joseph Stalin in 1925. Its name was changed back in 1961 as part of the campaign against Stalin’s personality cult. ||||| Kremlin.ru Following Putin's announcement, Russian political and spiritual leaders expressed support for a potential name change of the city of Volgograd.
If the people of Volgograd want to change their city's name to Stalingrad, Russia will respect their choice, President Vladimir Putin said when a war veteran asked about the issue during a D-Day memorial in Normandy.
"We will do as the residents [of Volgograd] say," Putin told a crowd of veterans on Friday, Itar-Tass reported.
Volgograd authorities announced on Saturday that the city council had not yet received any proposals for a name change referendum. Last year, municipal authorities voted for the city to adopt its former name for six days each year for commemorative purposes.
Volgograd was the site of the momentous Battle of Stalingrad, which took place between 1942 and 1943, and is widely viewed as one of World War II's most decisive battles.
The city adopted the name of Stalingrad in 1925 to honor Soviet leader Josef Stalin. In 1961, Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushschev, changed the city's name to Volgograd in connection with the de-Stalinization process.
Following Putin's announcement, Russian political and spiritual leaders expressed support for a potential name change.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted on Friday that he "never doubted the necessity of a return to great Stalingrad's name" but insisted it would be done "not for the sake of Stalin but for that of Stalingraders."
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin of the Moscow Patriarchate said on Sunday he would not object to a referendum on the city's name change, although he noted a preference for the name "Tsaryn," the city's appellation prior to 1925.
"The word 'Stalingrad' already lives independently of the word 'Stalin.' It is associated with a victory in a famous battle, with a part of our history," Chaplin said, Interfax reported.
Stalin's legacy, which encompasses both mass political repression and the defeat of Nazi Germany, remains a contentious issue in Russia to this day. | – The city today called Volgograd, which with 1 million people is one of Russia's largest, has gone through several name changes in its recent past. For more than 300 years it carried on with the name Tsaritsyn, but after it became home to one of history's deadliest battles—2 million lives were lost when the Nazis tried to advance into the Soviet Union during World War II—then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decided to name it after himself. That lasted 26 years, at which point Stalin's successor, Nikita Khruschev, renamed the city Volgograd in an attempt to diminish the former dictator's posthumous reach. As if the saga wasn't confusing enough, as of last year the city began changing its name to Stalingrad some six times a year, the Moscow Times points out. Now, a 365-day change could be in reach. In response to an inquiry from a WWII vet on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested a referendum be held over the question of the city's name. The Guardian reports he promised to help the city see such a referendum take place, but RT notes that his press secretary today insisted that Putin wasn't coming out in support of the former name, but establishing that there's a "procedure" for arriving at such a decision. Only problem is, the locals don't appear to want the name change, at least according to a poll cited by the Guardian that found roughly 75% against it. (A town in Spain recently voted to change its offensive name.) |
As so many great entrepreneurial success stories do, the tale of Mike Lindell begins in a crack house. It was the fall of 2008, and the then 47-year-old divorced father of four from the Minneapolis suburbs had run out of crack, again. He had been up for either 14 or 19 days—he swears it was 19 but says 14 because “19 just sounds like I’ve embellished”—trying to save his struggling startup and making regular trips into the city to visit his dealer, Ty. This time, Lindell arrived at Ty’s apartment expecting the typical A-plus service and received a shock instead: The dealer refused his business. Ty wasn’t going to sell him any more crack until he ended his binge. He’d also called the two other dealers Lindell used and ordered them to do the same. “I don’t want any of your people selling him anything until he goes to bed,” Ty told the dealers. When Lindell protested, he cut him off: “Go to bed, Mike.”
Many people would be ashamed by this story. Lindell tells it all the time. “I was like, ‘Wow, drug dealers care!’ ” he says. “That’s what it felt like, this incredible intervention.” The moment wasn’t the end of his drug abuse, which started in his 20s when he owned bars and stretched through the early years of MyPillow, the Chaska, Minn., company he founded in 2005 to fulfill his dream of making “the world’s best pillow.” It was, however, his low point. It was when he realized that abusing crack and running a business weren’t compatible in the long term and vowed to get better.
He smiles wide, white teeth emerging from under the push-broom mustache familiar to anyone who watches cable TV, and takes out his phone to show me a picture: It’s him, looking wired and wan, like a man who’d been bingeing on drugs for days. Ty took it that night, he says.
The story is impossible to confirm; Ty isn’t reachable for comment. But it’s become part of Lindell’s legend, and it will be a pivotal moment in the autobiography he’ll self-publish later this year. He and a friend, actor Stephen Baldwin, plan to turn the book into a movie as part of their new venture, producing inspirational Christian films “that aren’t cheesy,” Lindell says.
He says Ty took the photo not just to show him what he looked like—a crazy person spiraling toward death—but also as a memento. “Because he knew my big plans for the future,” he says. “I would always tell these guys that someday I was going to quit crack.”
“I was like, ‘Wow, drug dealers care!’ ”
Eight-plus years later, Lindell is sober and phenomenally successful. He quit everything—alcohol, powdered cocaine, and crack—after one final party on Jan. 16, 2009, and presides over an empire that’s still growing precipitously. Last year he opened a second factory, saw sales rise from $115 million to $280 million, and almost tripled his workforce, to 1,500. To date he’s sold more than 26 million pillows at $45 and up, a huge number of them directly to consumers who call and order by phone after seeing or hearing one of his inescapable TV and radio ads.
On this day in early November, he’s just back from a week in New York, spent celebrating the election of Donald Trump, whom he met at a Minneapolis campaign stop and decided to support, whole hog. He’s spent the morning catching up on business with various employees who cycle in and out.
People don’t seem to make appointments. They just know the boss is around and stop by the conference room he uses as an office, hoping to get his attention.
“This is my head of IT, Jennifer Pauly,” Lindell says, as a young woman pops in. “She’s a good example of me taking my employees and knowing their skills. I have a house painter in charge of all my maintenance at the factory. Jennifer is self-taught. Did you ever go to school for IT?”
“I took some Microsoft classes, but that’s basically it,” she says. “I knew how to run a spreadsheet, and that’s why he trusted me with data.”
Lindell laughs loudly. He wears two discreet hearing aids, but everyone says he’s been boisterous forever. “God’s given me a gift to be able to put people in the right position, where their strengths are!” he says.
Next, Bob Sohns, his purchasing manager, arrives to ask if Lindell will meet a guy who flew in from Italy to sell him an automated pillow filler.
“I’ve known Bob since 1990, but he came on in 2012,” Lindell says. “He was working for NBC Shopping Network, and then he goes, ‘Mike, I think I should come work for The Pillow.’ I said, ‘Sure, what do you want to be?’ ”
“That’s very close to the truth,” Sohns says.
“What do you do again? Buy stuff? OK. Keep on buying.” (Lindell later met the Italian and ordered his $162,000 pillow stuffer on the spot.)
Next, Heather Lueth, Lindell’s oldest daughter, the company’s graphic designer, comes in to talk about the latest e-mail campaigns. MyPillow is, someone at the company told me, more a family forest than a family tree. Lindell’s brother Corey, who invested at one of MyPillow’s lowest points, is now the second-largest shareholder. His job: doing essentially whatever. Today he’s fixing a grandfather clock. Earlier, he hung a flatscreen TV in the lobby shop. Lindell’s niece, Sarah Cronin, is his executive assistant. His brother-in-law, Brian Schmieg, has no title, but is responsible for gathering “concerns” from the factories to present to the boss in regular meetings.
Larry Kating, director of manufacturing, calls from the new factory in nearby Shakopee to discuss whether or not to make 30,000 pillows for Costco that the store hasn’t asked for yet.
Lindell’s vote: Go for it! “You’re always juggling stuff like that,” he says. He’s an unusual manager, governing largely on instinct and by making seemingly wild gambles that he swears are divinely inspired. “We don’t use PowerPoints,” he says. “I end up getting stuff in prayer.”
A worker tags pillows in the new factory in Shakopee. Photographer: Matthew Hintz for Bloomberg Businessweek
Lindell radiates energy, as if he did cocaine for so long that his body is forever trapped in a manic state. He’s friendly, animated, and unselfconscious, with the kind of laugh you’d assign to a cartoon woodsman from Minnesota. He’ll fiddle with whatever’s in front of him, which right now is a framed picture of himself with Mike Pence and Trump at the election night victory party. Pence is stone-faced—he could be his own wax dummy. Trump is being Trump, flashing a thumbs-up and smiling like a guy who practices in the mirror. And Lindell—he looks like someone who can’t believe his luck.
The autobiography was supposed to be finished last spring, but Lindell can’t decide where to end it, so he’s extending the narrative at least up through the election. “When you read it, you’re going to go, ‘OK, this isn’t real,’ and then you find out it is real,” he says. “This was before even the Trump thing. All my life it’s been like that. The last thing I expected in the world was to end up being involved in a presidential campaign. I’m an ex-crack addict, come on! My book writer just had a pretty great line: ‘From the crack house to the White House!’ ”
The pillow came to him in a dream. This was 2003. Lindell owned a pair of successful bars in Carver County, outside Minneapolis, and enjoyed the lifestyle a bit too much. He was, he says, a “very functional drug user” with four kids and a nice house. He helped with homework, took the family on vacation, and was a decent father and husband, other than the fact that he used cocaine.
Throughout his life he’d sought the perfect pillow. He never slept well, and things kept happening to worsen the problem. He got sciatica. He was in a bad car accident. He nearly died while skydiving, after nearly dying while motorcycling on his way to skydiving. (He quit both activities the next day.) He got addicted to cocaine.
When he did sleep, it was fitful. “That’s one of the problems with cocaine,” he says, seemingly without irony. One morning, after he woke—or maybe he was still up, he can’t recall—he sat at the kitchen table and wrote “MyPillow” over and over until he’d sketched the rough logo for a product that didn’t exist. When his daughter Lizzie came through to get some water and saw him maniacally scribbling the same words over and over like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, she asked what he was doing.
“I’m going to invent the best pillow the world has ever seen!” he exclaimed. “It’s going to be called MyPillow!”
“Dad, that’s really random,” she said, and went to her room.
The only way Lindell was ever happy with a pillow was when he found a way to, in his words, “micro-adjust” an existing one. It would typically be foam; he’d yank and pull the filling apart to break up the inside, then arrange and pile up the torn foam like a mouse building a nest, until it was the right height for his neck. Then he’d sleep. By morning, it would be all messed up again.
When Lindell imagined his perfect pillow, it was micro-adjustable but would keep its shape all night. He bought every variety of foam and then asked his two sons to sit on the deck of the house with him and tear the foam into different-size pieces that they’d stuff into prototypes for testing. Day after day they did this, until Lindell settled on a mix of three sizes of foam—a pebble, a dime, and a quarter, roughly. When he stuffed just the right amount of that mixture into a case and shmushed it around to the shape he wanted, it held that shape. It was perfect.
Sitting on the deck with his sons and ripping the foam by hand wasn’t a scalable model. He needed a machine to do the tearing. He tried everything, including a wood chipper.
Workers sewing up pillows at the factory. Photographer: Matthew Hintz for Bloomberg Businessweek
A friend who grew up on a farm suggested a hammermill, an old-timey machine that’s used to grind corn into feed. Lindell couldn’t find one anywhere. Word got around, and an old cribbage buddy called to say he’d spotted a rusty hammermill sitting in a field about a mile from Lindell’s house. Lindell picked it up, rebuilt it as best he could, and sure enough, it worked.
Lindell believed this pillow “would change lives.” He made 300 and went in search of buyers, stopping at every big-box retailer in the area. “I said, ‘I have the best pillow ever made. How many would you like?’ ” You can imagine how that went.
When someone suggested he try a mall kiosk, Lindell borrowed $12,000 to rent one at Eden Prairie Center for six weeks, starting in the middle of November 2004. He sold his first pillow the first day and it was, he says, “the most amazing feeling.” But he’d priced the product too low. His cost was more than the retail price. Plus, his pillow was too big for standard pillowcases.
The kiosk failed. He borrowed more money against the house, and also from friends who weren’t sick of him yet. When desperate, he counted cards at the blackjack table to pay for materials. He was good at it. Eventually, all the casinos within a day’s drive banned him.
His focus on the pillow project was the one thing that could override his drug cravings, but only for short periods. And every time something went wrong, he lapsed.
Today, Lindell is a devout Christian and prays constantly. He wears a large silver cross around his neck, and his office is filled with Christian iconography, as well as Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band tour posters. Back then he was an opportunist, praying to God only when things were dire: “I said, ‘God, what do I do here?’ ” The day after he closed the kiosk, he got a call from one of the few customers, who declared, “This pillow changed my life!”
This enthusiastic buyer ran the Minneapolis Home + Garden Show, one of the largest for home products in the country. He wanted Lindell to have a booth.
Lindell took 300 pillows (this time they were a standard size) and sold them all. He also got himself invited to take a spot at the Minnesota State Fair and sold well. This was a revelation. There were dozens of home and garden shows around the country and countless more fairs. “Those are your testing grounds,” he says. A product that works at the fair works, period.
For the next few years, this is basically how the company operated. Lindell and a few key salespeople drove around in trucks stuffed full of pillows to sell at fairs. They were all effective, but no one’s pitch—sermon was more like it—moved the merch like Lindell’s.
He didn’t give up the drugs. His habit continued, his 20-year marriage broke up, and he lost his house, because he was constantly borrowing money to pay his suppliers. He was barreling toward that moment with Ty, the dealer. Finally, he had one last blowout and quit cold turkey. “I knew if I waited one more day, it would be over,” he says. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the best comeback in the history of the U.S.”
Days after getting clean, Lindell borrowed $30,000 from the owners of a mulching company and used that to repair relationships with his foam supplier and sewing company. Then he set out to reestablish his primacy on the show circuit, where competitors had been selling MyPillow knockoffs.
The big break was an interview in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that ran in the business section in early January 2011. The morning the story hit, MyPillow’s web traffic went crazy. In a single day, the company made more sales than it had in the previous six months. The surge lasted three months.
He’d never considered that a newspaper could have such impact. He began designing and placing ads that looked like shorter versions of that original story, right down to the goofy picture of him hugging a pillow. They worked. His story of insomnia, of being unable to find a pillow that fit him specifically, seemed to resonate.
Lindell had another hunch: He knew the best way to sell his pillow was to present his story live, as he’d been doing at shows since 2005. He decided to make an infomercial. His friends thought he was nuts.
In August 2011 he booked a space in downtown St. Paul with a studio audience. His producer wrote a script, and at the read-through they all agreed it was bad. He sounded stiff. Instead, the producer suggested, he should just talk to the hired host as if they were having a conversation—sell her the pillow the way he sold it at fairs.
The spot opened with Lindell, in a satiny blue button-down that’s now his trademark garment, saying, “Don’t change that channel, because the next half-hour is going to change your life.” He just ad-libbed, saying, for instance, that down pillows were “the worst thing that ever happened to America” and that MyPillow was so malleable that “you can fold it up into little balloon animals.”
It was unconventional and a little unpolished, but everyone loved it. Lindell was sure it would be a hit, and he flew to New York to persuade his fabric supplier to front him millions of dollars’ worth to prepare for the deluge. “I said, ‘I’m going to go to $100 million!’ ”
“He had no credit and wanted $1 million in goods,” recalls the supplier, Leon Brocas. He’s still not sure why, but Lindell was so passionate that “we decided to give him a shot,” Brocas says.
Lindell walks through the factory. Photographer: Matthew Hintz for Bloomberg Businessweek
Lindell worked similar magic at Federal Foam Technologies, his longtime supplier. He asked two friends to put on suits and travel with him to the Wisconsin headquarters to take his first-ever meeting with Wyman Smith, the company’s president. Prior to that point, Smith says, Lindell was just “a small-potato account.” This time he wanted a lot of foam, on credit. “He made this pitch to me about how he was going to be the biggest pillow maker in the world,” Smith recalls. “He had quite a story, and the other guys never said a word. I found out later he brought them as a prop.”
The half-hour infomercial aired for the first time on Oct. 7, 2011, at 3 a.m. on the East Coast. The business “went straight up,” Lindell says. He hired everyone he could find—literally off bar stools sometimes—and put them to work answering phones or sewing on machines that he stuffed into every corner of a local bus garage lent to him by a friend. And he kept spending. He bought every long-form infomercial spot he could find and actually ran out of available slots before running out of money to pay for them. In six months, he grew from 50 to 500 employees and sold almost $100 million in pillows.
But Lindell never bothered to figure out his indirect costs. He didn’t really even know what those were. Checks were flying off his desk, more and more of them to pay for the infomercial spots, with no way to know which ones were working and which were just wasted money. But at this point he wasn’t sure who his customers were, so it was hard to know which spots to cut.
Federal Foam was concerned enough that Smith dispatched his chief financial officer to see what was going on at Lindell’s bus garage. It took him almost no time to see that, despite propulsive growth, MyPillow’s costs were out of control. Lindell was losing $250,000 a week.
What saved the entrepreneur was FedEx. It hadn’t occurred to him to negotiate shipping rates; he just paid retail with a bunch of different shippers. A company rep came in, asked about his costs, and offered him a rate so low he couldn’t believe it. “Wow,” Lindell said. “You can do this?” Overnight, a red number turned black. Around the same time, Telebrands, largest of the “as seen on TV” product distributors, offered to sell MyPillow after meeting Lindell when he threatened to sue the company over its sale of a knockoff. When he lamented to Bala Iyer, Telebrands’ executive vice president and chief operating officer, about how much money he’d wasted on media, Iyer stopped him. “That wasn’t wasted,” he said. “You branded yourself faster than probably any brand in history.”
Iyer told Lindell that 80 percent of consumers want to touch and feel a product, even if they’re intrigued by a commercial. “That segment will look for the product at retail,” he said, and he told Lindell he could get MyPillow into Bed Bath & Beyond and Walmart. But Lindell didn’t want to go into Walmart. He had loyal salespeople out working shows. The minute Walmart sells a cheaper version, he said, the original business dies. Not, said Iyer, if you go into Walmart at $59.99. Consider what that would mean to the people selling your pillows for $50 at the county fair. Now they can say, “This costs $60 at Walmart!”
Iyer was right: MyPillows sold well from the minute they hit Walmart. In short order, Home Shopping Channel, QVC, and Bed Bath bought into it, too. Today, MyPillow is one of the top five products in the vast Telebrands portfolio and can even be bought at Home Depot and farm and feed stores. (There are also 17 MyPillow retail stores.) “Because of the power of the infomercial,” Lindell says, “all that money was not spent on nothing.”
He’d had another dream: MyPillow would be a $1 billion company
On a day in November 2014, right before the midterm elections, Lindell was shivering on a tree stand while deer hunting. He was a little down—he’d just gone through a second divorce, and, because he’d taken his eye off the ball, the company was in a sales slump. Suddenly, the phone app that provides real-time sales graphs spiked. He phoned his call center to see what happened. It was a short ad that had just begun to air on Fox News.
He shot a deer, then ran to his car and called his media buyer to ask how much Fox he could buy through the end of the year. The answer was $2.1 million. Buy it all, Lindell said. The ads coincided perfectly with the Republican takeover of Congress, branded as a retaking of America. And here was Mike Lindell, a humble American success story, making pillows in American factories. By 2015, MyPillow was growing faster than ever.
In January 2016, Lindell announced to his board that he’d had another dream: MyPillow was going to become a billion-dollar company. “I didn’t know the date then,” he says, stepping out of his blue Dodge Ram pickup with green accent stripes outside the loading dock of his new 100,000-square-foot factory. After his nocturnal vision, he’d instructed his manufacturing team to find this location and begin building it out in anticipation of tripling sales. It opened in May.
Workers stuff pillows by hand. Photographer: Matthew Hintz for Bloomberg Businessweek
Inside, two lines make pillows at a rate of 12 per minute (37,000 per day). They start with a modern version of that original hacked-together hammermill and end with several brand-new machines to automate functions that were, just a few months ago, done by hand. For instance, one assembles boxes; another stuffs two pillows into a plastic bag and seals it (two-for-one being MyPillow’s typical sale). “These are all machines Darren ordered,” Lindell says, striding through the factory. Darren is his son—he helped his dad tear up foam out on the deck. Now he runs this facility.
Walking through the factory, Lindell shows off his newest products: a dog bed and a mattress topper. Then he points out a section of the building where returns are handled. Fewer than 3 percent of MyPillow buyers return products, he says, and “less than 1/20th of 1 percent of those return a product twice.” Lindell obsesses over customer satisfaction. If a customer is on hold for more than a few minutes, he gets an alert on his phone. He expects customer e-mails to be answered within minutes, and if a queue builds up, he gets an alert about that, too. He often handles hundreds of minutes of calls per month himself.
For years, MyPillow was advertised as the cure for almost every sleep problem as well as many health ailments. Ads boasted that using one could alleviate fibromyalgia, joint pain, and restless leg syndrome, as well as promote delta sleep, the most restorative phase of the sleep cycle. Early last fall, Lindell settled with 10 California district attorneys who sued MyPillow for false advertising, arguing that these claims had no scientific backing. The company denied any wrongdoing but agreed to pay $1 million to settle and to remove those claims from any advertising in California. Lindell actually pulled the claims from all advertising to avoid future suits.
The California suit was briefly embarrassing but seems to have had no lingering effects. It certainly hasn’t hurt sales or Lindell’s enthusiasm. He just taped a series of commercial spots to replace one that, he says, “totally flopped” because “I just didn’t have it”—it being the passion necessary to persuade watchers to pay 90-some dollars for two pillows. (There’s a class-action suit pending about MyPillow’s Buy One Get One Free sales tactic—basically, people would like to be able to buy a single pillow for half the price. Lindell has kept the promotion going for so long that earlier this month MyPillow got downgraded overnight from an A to an F by the Better Business Bureau.)
The new factory could run faster and soon will, Lindell says. MyPillow could push production up to more than 85,000 pillows a day. To get there, he says, all he needs to do is buy more media. He says that what he calls the “tsunami”—the next boom in sales, the one that will lead to $1 billion—started last fall. The election was just another harbinger.
Two women who did merchandising for the Trump campaign have stopped by for a tour and have been tailing our group. They seem in awe of the scale and efficiency here, from an essentially flat and somewhat chaotic-seeming organization ruled by a single outlandish man.
What’s the largest sales month you’ve ever had? one asks.
“MyPillow is always the biggest we’ve ever been on the day you’re standing here,” Lindell replies. ||||| Photo by Brett Gundlock / Reuters
As you no doubt remember, an editor from Gawker and two reporters from the Toronto Star went public last week with the news that they'd seen cellphone footage of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what appears by all accounts to be crack cocaine. Publications around the Internet have been following the story in our own particular ways. The Star has stayed on the case, trying to get comment from Ford and keeping tabs on the comings and goings in his office. Slate has argued that Ford, while a buffoon and possibly a crack user, is actually a pretty good mayor (#slatepitch!). Gawker, meanwhile, is trying to raise the $200,000 it says it will take to buy the tape from the drug dealers who have it.
Josh Voorhees Josh Voorhees is a Slate senior writer. He lives in Iowa City.
At last count, Gawker appears mighty close to hitting its goal. As of 11 this morning—and with more than three days remaining until the deadline—readers had pledged more than $160,000 to the "Crackstarter" campaign on Indiegogo. The way the fundraising site works, those people who promise cash only have to pony it up if the target is reached. If not, everyone's free to go about their business as though nothing happened. But what's interesting about the Gawker fundraiser (you know, in addition to the whole paying-drug-dealers thing) is that the site has become increasingly pessimistic about whether its reporter will be able to make the handoff in the event it does raise the cash. Here's John Cook explaining the problem in a post last night:
As we mentioned when we launched the campaign, folks who are involved in the crack trade tend not to be the most reliable people in the world. This has proven to be the case when it comes to the owner of the video of Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. We were initially made aware of the video by a tipster, who connected us with the owner of the video after we traveled to Toronto. We've been in relatively constant communication with the tipster since then. But he has told us that hasn't been able to make contact with the owner of the video in recent days. ... At this point, we have no idea why he is out of touch, or if he even knows about the Crackstarter campaign. He may have decided against selling the video. He may be waiting until the campaign hits its $200,000 mark before coming out of hiding. We simply don't know.
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In Gawker's defense, they made it clear this was a possibility when they began crowdsourcing this particular checkbook-journalism project. Their buyer-beware fall-back plan—in the event they reach the $200,000 target but aren't able to make the purchase—is to donate the cash to a TBD Canadian nonprofit that addresses substance abuse issues. I'd be tempted to say it'll be difficult to get too worked up about some extra cash going to a worthy charity, but I've spent more time than I should reading Gawker comment threads, so I know better.
Update Friday, 4:08 p.m.: With the fate of the video now in question, Ford has finally come forward to deny the allegations he smokes crack. "As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have not seen, or does not exist," he said at a short, afternoon press conference.
***Follow @JoshVoorhees and the rest of the @slatest team on Twitter.*** | – You may have seen one of the ubiquitous ads: Mike Lindell makes his personal appeal for you to buy the pillow he literally dreamed up because he could never find one he liked. As Bloomberg reports, plenty of people have done just that, making his MyPillow company wildly successful. Consider that he opened a second factory last year and saw sales jump from $115 million to $280 million. He now employs 1,500 people and has sold more than 26 million pillows, which he insists, to anyone who will listen, are the best ever made. But what makes Lindell's success story so compelling is what the Bloomberg piece calls the "preposterous" nature of it: Lindell, for instance, is a former drug addict who loves to tell the story of how his crack dealer probably saved his life in 2008 by cutting him off after a 19-day binge and ordering him to go to bed. For years, Lindell owned bars and maintained a steady cocaine habit, and the idea to begin making pillows came to him as a kind of vision that found him sketching the company logo over and over before the company even existed. He experimented with various types of foam and ways to manipulate it, and saw his first success hawking pillows at a home and garden show in Minneapolis. Since then, it's been nothing but strong growth over the last decade or so, despite, or because of, a management style that involves "governing largely on instinct and by making seemingly wild gambles that he swears are divinely inspired," writes Josh Dean. “We don’t use PowerPoints,” says Lindell. “I end up getting stuff in prayer.” Click for the full story, which notes that he and pal Stephen Baldwin plan to turn his story into a movie. |
Image copyright PA Image caption Theresa May signs the letter to the EU confirming the UK's departure
Theresa May has signed the letter that will formally begin the UK's departure from the European Union.
Giving official notice under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, it will be delivered to European Council president Donald Tusk later.
In a statement in the Commons, the prime minister will then tell MPs this marks "the moment for the country to come together".
It follows June's referendum which resulted in a vote to leave the EU.
Mrs May's letter will be delivered at 12:20 BST on Wednesday by the British ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Sir Tim arrived in Brussels earlier clutching a briefcase containing the Article 50 letter
The prime minister, who chaired an hour long cabinet meeting earlier, has left Downing Street to make a statement to MPs confirming the countdown to the UK's departure from the EU is under way.
She will promise to "represent every person in the whole United Kingdom" during the negotiations - including EU nationals, whose status after Brexit has yet to be settled.
"It is my fierce determination to get the right deal for every single person in this country," she will say.
"For, as we face the opportunities ahead of us on this momentous journey, our shared values, interests and ambitions can - and must - bring us together."
Attempting to move on from the divisions of June's referendum, Mrs May will add: "We are one great union of people and nations with a proud history and a bright future.
"And, now that the decision has been made to leave the EU, it is time to come together."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party respected the decision to leave the EU and would hold the government to account "every step of the way".
He said: "Britain is going to change as a result. The question is how."
Mr Corbyn warned it would be "a national failure of historic proportions" if Mrs May does not secure protection for workers' rights.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said the triggering of Article 50 was "a pivotal moment for Britain" and insisted the government "will get a deal".
But he suggested on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that ministers would be prepared to compromise during the process, adding: "Everybody in the EU and the UK is going to go into this negotiation looking to protect their own interests...
"We understand that we can't cherry-pick, we can't have our cake and eat it - that by deciding to leave the EU and negotiate a future relationship with the EU as an independent nation, there will be certain consequences of that and we accept those."
He said EU citizens could still move to the UK and have their full rights while the UK remains "full members of the EU for the next two years".
But crossbench peer Lord Gus O'Donnell, formerly Britain's top civil servant, likened the triggering of Article 50 to being "in a plane being flown by members of the EU and we're about to jump out and we have got a parachute designed by the people flying the plane - and they have designed it in a way to deter anyone else jumping out".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Brexit divorce: 'Conscious uncoupling' or bitter breakup?
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Seven decades of the UK in Europe
The PM will be outlining the next steps during a special half hour BBC One interview on Wednesday with Andrew Neil at 19:00 BST on "Britain after Brexit", to mark the triggering of Article 50.
On Tuesday night, Mrs May spoke by telephone to Mr Tusk, EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Article 50 gives both sides two years to reach agreement, so unless both sides agree to extend the deadline for talks, the UK will leave on 29 March 2019.
Negotiations are expected to begin in mid-May. The UK government says it wants to carry out both separation and trade talks at the same time, but EU chiefs say the two issues must be handled separately.
The UK has said it wants an "early agreement" to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and those of British nationals living abroad.
Other issues which are likely to be discussed are things like cross-border security arrangements, the European Arrest Warrant, moving EU agencies which have their headquarters in the UK and the UK's contribution to pensions of EU civil servants - part of a wider "divorce bill" which some reports have suggested could run to £50bn.
Up for discussion
Trade: The UK will withdraw from the single market and seek a new customs arrangement and a free trade agreement with the EU
The UK will withdraw from the single market and seek a new customs arrangement and a free trade agreement with the EU Expats: The government wants to secure an agreement with European countries "at the earliest opportunity" on the rights of EU nationals in the UK and Britons living in Europe
The government wants to secure an agreement with European countries "at the earliest opportunity" on the rights of EU nationals in the UK and Britons living in Europe Brexit bill: The UK government has promised to honour its obligations as it leaves, but has brushed off claims these could run to £50bn
The UK government has promised to honour its obligations as it leaves, but has brushed off claims these could run to £50bn Northern Ireland border: Aiming for "as seamless and frictionless a border as possible between Northern Ireland and Ireland"
Aiming for "as seamless and frictionless a border as possible between Northern Ireland and Ireland" Sovereignty: Britain will leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice but seek to set up separate resolution mechanisms for things like trade disputes
Britain will leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice but seek to set up separate resolution mechanisms for things like trade disputes Security: The UK government has said it wants to continue to cooperate on security and intelligence-sharing
The UK government has said it wants to continue to cooperate on security and intelligence-sharing Transitional deal: An interim arrangement may be needed before the final arrangements come into force
The Lib Dems claimed Mrs May was "pulling the trigger that will set in motion a chain of events which will change this country forever, and doing so without a proper plan", but the Leave Means Leave campaign congratulated her on sticking to her timetable of invoking Article 50 before the end of March.
"Unpatriotic, pro-EU fanatics will continue to try to derail or, at the very least, delay Brexit," the group's co-chairman, Richard Tice, warned.
The PM was forced to consult Parliament before invoking Article 50 after it lost a legal challenge in the Supreme Court, but it secured the backing of most MPs earlier this month.
On Thursday the government is expected to publish details of its "Great Repeal Bill", which aims to convert EU law into domestic legislation and repeal the European Communities Act, which says EU law is supreme to the UK's.
Get news from the BBC in your inbox, each weekday morning ||||| Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, sitting below a painting of Britain's first Prime Minister Robert Walpole, signs the official letter to European Council President Donald Tusk, in 10 Downing Street,... (Associated Press)
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, sitting below a painting of Britain's first Prime Minister Robert Walpole, signs the official letter to European Council President Donald Tusk, in 10 Downing Street, London, Tuesday March 28, 2017, invoking Article 50 of the bloc's key treaty, the formal start of... (Associated Press)
LONDON (AP) — Britain is set to formally file for divorce from the European Union Wednesday, walking out on a 44-year relationship, enacting the decision made by U.K. voters in a referendum nine months ago and launching both Britain and the bloc into uncharted territory.
Prime Minister Theresa May is due to tell House of Commons at lunchtime that she has invoked Article 50 of the EU's key treaty, the trigger for a two-year countdown to Britain's exit.
Just before May's statement, scheduled for 1130 GMT (7:30 a.m. EDT), Britain's EU envoy, Tim Barrow, will hand-deliver a letter from May to EU Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels.
Photos were released of May signing the letter late Tuesday in the Cabinet room at 10 Downing St., under a portrait of Britain's first prime minister, Robert Walpole.
The letter, which is several pages long, was whisked to Brussels aboard a Eurostar train, British media reported. Barrow arrived at European Council headquarters carrying a briefcase Wednesday morning, before his appointment with Tusk.
May's office said she will tell lawmakers that the U.K. is embarking on a "momentous journey" and should unite to forge a "global Britain."
"It is my fierce determination to get the right deal for every single person in this country," she will say.
Britain's Treasury chief, Philip Hammond, said that triggering Brexit was "a pivotal moment for Britain," but denied the country was taking a leap in the dark.
"We all have the same agenda. We are all seeking to get the best possible deal for Britain," he told the BBC.
Hammond said he was optimistic of forging "a relationship that will strengthen the U.K. and will strengthen the European Union as well."
Gus O'Donnell, the U.K.'s former top civil servant, was less certain.
"We are in a plane being flown by members of the EU and we're about to jump out and we've got a parachute that was designed by the people flying the plane and they designed it in a way to deter anybody else jumping out," he said.
Britain and the EU have two years to unpick a tapestry of rules, regulations and agreements stitched over more than four decades since Britain joined what was then the European Economic Community in 1973.
EU officials are due to circulate draft negotiating guidelines within days, and bloc leaders — minus May — will meet April 29 to adopt a common position.
Britain says it's not turning its back on its neighbors and wants to remain friends. May has said that the U.K. will become "stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking" and will seek "a new, deep and special partnership with the European Union."
But many British businesses fear the impact of leaving the EU's vast single market of some 500 million people. Senior British officials say they are confident of striking a close new free-trade relationship with the bloc — but a successful outcome to the complex and emotionally fraught negotiations is far from certain.
Brexit has profound implications for Britain's economy, society and even unity. The divisive decision to leave the EU has given new impetus to the drive for Scottish independence, and undermined the foundations of Northern Ireland's peace settlement.
It's also a major blow to the EU, after decades of expansion, to lose one of its largest members. Anti-EU populists including French far-right leader Marine Le Pen hope the impulses that drove Britain to turn its back on the EU will be repeated across the continent.
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Associated Press writer Danica Kirka contributed to this story. | – The UK is preparing to say adios, au revoir, and auf wiedersehen to the European Union after 44 years of membership. Prime Minister Theresa May signed a letter Tuesday night invoking Article 50, and the EU received it Wednesday, formally triggering two years of negotiations leading up to Britain's departure from the bloc, the BBC reports. May was expected to address British lawmakers, calling the historic moment a "time for the country to come together" and promising to fight for "the right deal for every person in this country." Pro-Brexit British newspapers including the Sun, which beamed the message "Dover and Out" onto the famous white cliffs, are rejoicing, though others have sounded notes of caution, the AP reports. "We are in a plane being flown by members of the EU and we're about to jump out and we've got a parachute that was designed by the people flying the plane and they designed it in a way to deter anybody else jumping out," says former top civil servant Gus O'Donnell. EU budget commissioner Guenther Oettinger described the letter as "a negative message for Europe as a whole, for the UK especially" and predicted months of difficult negotiations ahead. |
WASHINGTON (AP) — On the eve of a critical Senate vote and under court order, the Obama administration signaled it will publicly reveal a secret memo describing its legal justification for using drones to kill U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism overseas.
Two administration officials told The Associated Press that the Justice Department has decided not to appeal a Court of Appeals ruling requiring disclosure of a redacted version of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The decision to release the documents comes as the Senate is to vote Wednesday on advancing President Barack Obama's nomination of the memo's author, Harvard professor and former Justice Department official David Barron, to sit on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., had vowed to fight Barron's confirmation, and some Democratic senators were calling for the memo's public release before a final vote.
Wednesday's expected procedural vote would allow the Senate to move ahead with a final vote on Barron on Thursday. "I think we'll be OK," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said earlier Tuesday.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida leader born in the United States, was killed after being targeted by a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Some legal scholars and human rights activists complained that it was illegal for the U.S. to kill American citizens away from the battlefield without a trial.
Some senators, including those in Obama's own party, have called for the public release of the memo before the final confirmation vote. The White House agreed under the pressure to show senators unredacted copies of all written legal advice written by Barron regarding the potential use of lethal force against U.S. citizens in counterterrorism operations.
Until now, the administration has fought in court to keep the writings from public view. But administration officials said that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. decided this week not appeal an April 21 ruling requiring disclosure by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and that Attorney General Eric Holder concurred with his opinion.
The release could take some time, since the redactions are subject to court approval. And the administration also is insisting that a classified ruling on the case also be redacted to protect information classified for national security, but not the legal reasoning, one of the officials said.
The drone strike that killed al-Awlaki also killed another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, an al-Qaida propagandist. Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed the following month in another drone attack.
The American Civil Liberties Union and two reporters for The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, filed a FOIA suit. In January 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that she had no authority to order the documents disclosed, although she chided the Obama administration for refusing to release them.
But a three-judge appeals court panel noted that after McMahon ruled, senior government officials spoke about the subject. The panel rejected the government's claim that the court could not consider official disclosures made after McMahon's ruling, including a 16-page Justice Department white paper on the subject and public comments by Obama in May in which he acknowledged his role in the al-Awlaki killing, saying he had "authorized the strike that took him out."
The ACLU urged senators in a letter Tuesday not to move forward on the confirmation vote until they have a chance to see any Barron memos on the administration's drone program, not just those involving U.S. citizens.
Paul issued a statement Tuesday saying he still opposes Barron's nomination. "I rise today to say that there is no legal precedent for killing American citizens not directly involved in combat and that any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being placed one step away from the Supreme Court," Paul said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor Wednesday provided by his office.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been pushing for public disclosure of Barron's writings and was one of several Democrats who had been refusing to say whether he'd vote for confirmation without it. "That's certainly very constructive," Wyden said when told of the decision not to appeal.
The administration's decision won over at least one senator, Mark Udall, D-Colo., who had been opposed to Barron because of the memo's secrecy. "This is a welcome development for government transparency and affirms that although the government does have the right to keep national security secrets, it does not get to have secret law," Udall said.
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Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler
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Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report. ||||| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled Tuesday that a controversial judicial nominee from the Obama administration is likely to win eventual confirmation from the Senate.
The nominee, David Barron, has drawn some criticism and scrutiny for his role in drafting a legal memo as a Justice Department official on the 2011 drone strike that killed Anwar al Awlaki. But Reid said Tuesday that “I think we’ll be OK” on the vote to break a filibuster on the Barron nomination, slated for Wednesday.
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“There were just some misunderstandings,” Reid said Tuesday. “Once everything was explained, I think — I don’t know if everybody — but certainly most everyone on our caucus is satisfied.”
Senate Democrats concerned about the Barron nomination were briefed by White House officials during a classified session last week at the Capitol. But the most vocal criticism has come from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who announced last week that he would filibuster the nomination after reading the classified memos written by Barron.
Those documents, Paul argued, gave no legal rationale for the strikes that killed al Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, without trial or legal representation. The potential 2016 Republican presidential contender added: “There is no valid legal precedent to justify the killing of an American citizen not engaged in combat.”
With the Senate rules changes last year, however, a filibuster threat such as Paul’s has significantly less impact. Democrats need just a simple majority — rather than 60 votes — to break a filibuster, and they control 55 votes.
It is unclear whether Paul will mount a talking filibuster or force the Senate to use all of the debate time on Barron’s nomination. Paul, who spoke for 12 hours during a debate on CIA Director John Brennan’s nomination in 2013, plans to take to the floor Wednesday to speak against Barron’s nomination.
In excerpts of his prepared floor remarks released Tuesday, Paul plans to say the legal memos written by Barron “disrespect the Bill of Rights” and he could not support the nomination of any official who “argues that the president has the power to kill Americans not involved in combat.”
“I rise today to say that there is no legal precedent for killing American citizens not directly involved in combat and that any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being placed one step away from the Supreme Court,” Paul will say on Wednesday.
Barron, now a Harvard Law School professor, is nominated for a seat on the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals.
On another controversial judicial nominee — Michael Boggs in Georgia — Reid reiterated Tuesday that he is still opposed to the pick.
“My position hasn’t changed; I do not support him,” Reid said. ||||| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he has the votes to confirm David Barron, the author of memos justifying drone strikes against American citizens, to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
Reid said most of the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus were satisfied with the defense of Barron provided by White House lawyers at a private briefing last week.
“We’ll vote on the Barron filibuster, stopping that tomorrow. I think we’ll be OK,” Reid said at a Tuesday press conference.
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Reid needs a simple majority to quash a GOP filibuster of Barron that threatened to attract Democratic support.
Some Democrats had balked at Barron’s nomination because the Justice Department had refused to make public memos he had authored justifying the lethal drone strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen living in Yemen who was suspected of terrorist ties.
The drone strike against al-Awlaki also killed Samir Khan, another American citizen, who published an online magazine promoting jihad.
The American Civil Liberties Union has weighed in strongly against Barron’s nomination and urged senators not to vote on him until it has researched his writings.
The White House has allowed senators to privately view his legal rationale for drone strikes against American citizens, but critics question whether lawmakers have been privy to all his relevant work.
Reid downplayed opposition to Barron within his own caucus as a “misunderstanding.”
“It was just some misunderstanding. Once everything was explained ... most everyone in our caucus was satisfied,” Reid told reporters.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), two critics of President Obama’s drone program, declined to say Tuesday whether they would vote for Barron.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an outspoken critic of the nation’s drone policy, has led Senate opposition to the judicial nominee.
Democratic senators discussed Barron with White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler and Neil Eggleston, her successor, Thursday afternoon in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility located in the Capitol Visitor Center. | – The Obama administration has decided to release a secret memo explaining its justification for killing American citizens in drone strikes overseas, sources tell the AP. The decision comes as the Senate prepares to vote on the nomination of the memo's author, David Barron, to the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals. GOP Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to filibuster the nomination of the Harvard professor and former Justice Department official, and some Democratic senators have also called for the public release of the document. Paul plans to argue that Barron's memos "disrespect the Bill of Rights" and any official that "argues that the president has the power to kill Americans not involved in combat" is "not worthy of being placed one step away from the Supreme Court," according to prepared remarks released yesterday, Politico reports. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he definitely has enough votes to confirm Barron, reports the Hill, which notes that Reid only needs a simple majority to quash Paul's filibuster. Democratic opposition to Barron "was just some misunderstanding," Reid told reporters. "Once everything was explained ... most everyone in our caucus was satisfied." |
Joe Belfiore, Steve Ballmer and Jessica Alba at the Windows Phone 8 launch in San Francisco (Credit: James Martin/CNET)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Windows Phone 8, the second pillar in Microsoft's rebirthing of Windows, finally reached escape velocity. A wide variety of Windows smartphones will be shipping soon, entering a market totally dominated by Apple (iOS) and Google (Android).
Steve Ballmer gave assurances at the launch event at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium, named after rock music impresario Bill Graham, that after four years the company finally got Windows Phone right. "People all over the world are about to fall in love with Windows Phone," the Microsoft CEO said. "If you're one of the hundreds of millions of people who will use Windows 8, there is no better phone for you." Actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba was on stage to endorse Windows Phone 8 and its new Kids Corner feature. It was like watching a few minutes of the QVC shopping channel.
Hands on: Windows Phone 8 comes of age at last
Read: Microsoft dishes more Windows Phone 8 goods
Full coverage: Meet Windows 8
It was left to Joe Belfiore, manager of Microsoft's Windows Phone team, to articulate how Windows Phone 8 could leapfrog the well-endowed competition. His answer: "Windows Phone 8 "reinvents the smartphone around 'you,' and makes it the most "personal" phone available.
Live Tiles vs. Icons
The "you" and "personal' in Windows Phone 8 are most visibly expressed in how Live Tiles, which live on the phone's start screen and can contain real-time information. Users can "pin" Live Tiles of people (their tweets, photos, etc.), song, websites, photos, email, notifications, Facebook and other items to the screen. "You can actually maintain a better relationship with people, because you get a sense of what they're up to at that moment," Belfiore said.
Windows 8 phones with Live Tiles ready to sell in November (Credit: James Martin/CNET)
Belfiore also took a few shots at the competition in explaining Microsoft's design differentiation:
"It's the only phone that has live tiles, for the people you care about and the apps that you use all the time. It's a different story than iOS and Android.," he said. "The iOS 6 home screen is really just a sea of static icons. It's not people; it's not live data.
"Of course, after five years, they have added one more row of icons. Android home screens typically present a complex maze of icons, widgets, and settings. But, they look a lot like iPhones, too. If you put a bunch of them on a table, it'd be hard to tell your own from the crowd. We felt there was a better way. Windows Phone 8 -- it looks different because we didn't make it for all of us, we made it for each of us."
But Microsoft is swimming against the tide in requiring users to learn a new way of interacting with their devices. The iPhone and Android devices are icon-driven, but they also have notification services that can provide real-time snapshots. And, it wouldn't be surprising to see "live icons" emanating soon from the Apple and Android camps.
Belfiore's response: Icon-based interfaces are a "tired, old metaphor," and unable to give users an at-a-glance view of what is happening via their smartphone. "We do it more readily, conveniently and richly," he said.
With Windows Phone 8 devices getting into customers hands, Microsoft will see how well its Live Tiles fare against the smartphone icons. ||||| Jessica Alba at today's Microsoft event (Credit: CNET)
She's been a presence at tech conferences of late, and today Microsoft brought out actor-turned-entrepreneur Jessica Alba to talk up the virtues of Windows Phone 8, which the company is launching at an event in San Francisco.
Alba was on stage to tout Kid's Corner, Microsoft's new user account of sorts for kids. Kid's Corner, which acts as a second lock screen for kids, lets an adult choose which apps the kids see, which music they can listen to, and which games they can play. Kids can choose their own theme colors, but they can't pin apps to Kid's Corner themselves. If your phone is locked, you just swipe right from the Start screens to get into the Kid's Corner.
"I think it's awesome," Alba gushed about Kid's Corner. "I love that I can curate the space. It's a very clutch feature. Also I don't need to worry about my kid going into my social-media networks, or e-mailing my partners or anything like that."
So there you have it: A celebrity mom endorsement for Windows Phone. Alba also spent some time talking about switching to a Windows Phone from the iPhone. Naturally, she then plugged her startup, The Honest Company, which sells baby products such as diapers and wipes, before making her way off stage.
"This is the best tech crowd I've ever been in front of," she said on her way out. ||||| Summary: Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia is aimed at building a devices and services strategy, but the joint company won't take the same form as Apple.
Microsoft has been working on its evolution into a devices and services company, away from the services business it has traditionally been, for several years now with limited success.
Its acquisition of most of Nokia is the latest acceleration of that strategy — to move further away from the moribund world of the beige desktop and towards the sunlit world of smartphones and tablets.
Owning the desktop (via Windows) and building additional services on top, like Office or search, has been vital for Microsoft's strategy until now, so as our interest shifts from the desktop to the tablet or smartphone it's essential to Microsoft's broader business (even Azure) that it can retain that connection in some form. To be a winner in the business market it also has to be a winner in the consumer market, something that wasn't the case a decade ago.
As Microsoft's own presentation about the deal, announced on Monday, notes: "With the consumerisation of IT user matter at both home and work... We cannot risk having Apple or Google foreclose app innovation, integration, distribution or economics."
Nokia lashed itself to Microsoft's mast after losing out to iOS and Android in the smartphone market share stakes and with the limited success of the Lumia range so far enough to keep interest in Windows Phone alive, most analysts are seeing a certain amount of inevitability to the acquisition, even if they are split on what its biggest implications are.
Forrester mobile analyst Charles Golvin said the steadily diminishing investments by other Windows Phone licensees has left Microsoft with just Nokia as its standard bearer and added Microsoft now appears "poised to adopt a vertically integrated strategy more akin to Apple's".
But he said Microsoft's challenge remains how to unite the myriad services and brands — Windows, Nokia, Live, Surface, Xbox, Bing and more — into a cohesive experience that will command and cement customer loyalty.
"That's a tall order and one that should weigh strongly on the board's choice of a new CEO," he said.
Richard Holway, chairman of analyst TechMarketView, said given that Microsoft paid $8.5bn for Skype in 2011, the price it is paying for Nokia "seems extremely reasonable".
However, he added: "Our only 'surprise' now is the timing of the announcement. For such a big deal to come just days after Ballmer stood down seems mighty strange."
For Holway, there is also an opportunity for the enlarged Microsoft to step up its business mobility efforts: "There is undoubtedly a market opportunity for the creation of a provider of mobile solutions for the enterprise. Taking Office onto various mobile platforms. Providing secure emailing in a sector once occupied by BlackBerry."
But such a move carries its own risks — Microsoft's success has been build on being hardware agnostic and persuading device manufacturers to support it. Already its move into the tablet market with Surface will have unsettled its manufacturers which have struggled to come up with convincing form factors to tackle the decline of the PC. If Nokia's rumoured tablet appears too, this will further complicate Microsoft's relations with these partners who are essential for the success of Windows 8 (as well as Office and other products).
But, as Holway points out, "on balance, Microsoft needed to make a bold move into mobile. Not doing so would mean certain terminal decline. This way at least holds out some chance of survival."
Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at analyst Gartner, said by buying rather than just partnering with Nokia, Microsoft gets deeper integration, the benefit of its patents and removes any risk of Nokia either going Android or being acquired by someone else.
But success against iOS and Android will depend on how the companies integrate.
"Nokia benefits from higher R&D spend as well as more marketing budget. Microsoft benefits from a good relationship with carriers, good direct channel presence in emerging markets, the potential of going after more aggressively to the business market," she told ZDNet.
But for Milanesi, business is a secondary concern, even if it is an attractive target where Microsoft, and to a less extent Nokia, have experience: "First and foremost it needs to be about consumers. Enterprise are certainly a target especially considering the state BlackBerry is in but consumers make or break a phone vendor today."
From Milanesi's point of view, emerging markets need to be a longer term target for Microsoft — but the battle needs to be won in the mature markets first.
For Forrester principal analyst Thomas Husson, Nokia adds to Microsoft's developing market strategy. It's looking increasingly likely that the US and western European smartphone market is reaching saturation, so that most growth will come from emerging markets. Here Nokia's Asha devices could play a neat role as an 'on-ramp' for consumers buying their first smartphone. Tied in with a revamped tablet strategy this could open up a new front against Android in particular.
But Husson cautioned: "This is going to be a long journey. In some countries, Windows Phone 8 market share is now above five percent and close to 10 percent. It thus still offers a limited reach for developers and marketers.
"Nokia is indeed still massivley popular in some emerging countries but competition is very high with Far East manufacturers and low-cost Android devices. I think it will depend on Microsoft's new strategy for emerging markets beyond just mobile phones."
All of this shows the number of competing — and occasionally contradictory — demands upon Microsoft's management.
As the incumbent player in a fading market, Microsoft has a take into account those differing requirements as it tries to build for the future. For example, balancing Microsoft's business customers against the need to get into consumer tech, the need to build its own hardware business against the need to keep manufacturers onside, and building up a mobile business while protecting its PC heritage.
It's easy to look at Apple's integrated hardware and software model and the rich ecosystem that sits around it, but it's much harder to emulate.
Global coverage: Nokia Interim CEO: Microsoft deal makes us stronger | Even with Nokia devices, Microsoft wants to license Windows Phone to other makers | Does its Nokia buy thwart or fuel a possible Microsoft break-up? | Microsoft shows how to flush decades of Nokia goodwill away | Microsoft gets less than $10 per Windows Phone unit | Microsoft-Nokia deal: Reaction from the Twitter trenches | Elop drops Nokia CEO role to lead devices team under Microsoft deal
Further reading | – Microsoft officially unveiled Windows Phone 8 yesterday, and it did so with a special celebrity guest: Jessica Alba. Microsoft invited the actress to tout the phone's "Kid's Corner" feature, which allows parents to control what apps kids have access to, touting her as a "great example of the kind of people who we think Windows Phone will appeal to," as a mom and entrepreneur. "This is the best tech crowd I've ever been in front of," Alba said, according to CNET. Alba's presence went along with the overall feel Microsoft was going for, Janet Tu at the Seattle Times observes, namely "fun and cool." "Clearly Microsoft—long associated with work, productivity, and your company's IT department—was trying to reach younger, hip consumers." To that end, here are some of the features the company touted: Steve Ballmer touted it as "the most personal smartphone out there," saying that it "reinvents the smartphone around you." The most notable way it does this: The live tiles that cover the display. Live tiles that don't just open apps, they display realtime data. You can "pin" a live tile of a friend, for instance and see their Facebook or Twitter activity, CNET reports. "The iOS6 home screen is really just a sea of static icons," Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore said. "It's not people; it's not live data." Microsoft also boasted about its growing apps catalog, which it says now contains 120,000 programs, the Wall Street Journal reports—while noting that it's a far cry from the 700,000 or so Android and iOS apps. They also touted the tight integration between Windows Phone and Microsoft's other products. "If you're one of the hundreds of millions of people who will use Windows 8, there is no better phone for you," Steve Ballmer said. Initial phones will include the HTC Windows Phone 8X, and the Nokia Lumia. Versions of both will be available from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, for prices ranging from $99.99 to $199.99. |
Volvo has made a shocking pledge: By 2020, no one will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car or SUV.
Seriously.
"If you meet Swedish engineers, they're pretty genuine," said Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Cars North America. "They don't say things when they don't believe in it."
There is one big caveat. If someone really wants to hurt themselves, or is just really, really stupid... well, Volvo can't do anything about that. But, assuming you're not a suicidal maniac or a total idiot, in four years, you'll be safer driving a new Volvo than you are climbing a ladder to screw in a light bulb.
Fatality-free vehicles are not unprecedented. In fact, there already are some, and they're not just Volvos. According to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there are nine vehicle models -- including the Volvo XC90 -- in which no one in the United States died in the four years from 2009 to 2012, the most recent period for which data is available.
Volvo, still based in Sweden but now owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (GELYY), wants to make this the case for its entire vehicle line up throughout the world. The automaker already tracks how many people die in its vehicles in order to monitor safety. That way, engineers can tell how much safer their vehicles become each time they roll out a new crash-prevention technology. That also helps Volvo predict how much safer its vehicles will be with each new advancement.
Ultimately, all these new technologies will be tied to together to create a car that can, literally, drive itself. In fact, a number of automakers, not not just Volvo, have promised to sell autonomous cars by 2020.
"With the development of full autonomy we are going to push the limits of automotive safety," said Volvo safety engineer Erik Coelingh, "because if you make a fully autonomous vehicle you have to think through everything that potentially can happen with a car."
That doesn't mean that drivers will necessarily have to use the car's autonomous driving mode in order to be safe, though. Even when the driver is in full control of the car, these systems will still run in the background, ready to take over the instant there's danger.
Most of the technology that's required for autonomous driving is already available from Volvo and other carmakers. Here's a look at the features that, when combined all together in one vehicle, will essentially make it crashproof.
Adaptive Cruise Control: Adaptive cruise control, which is already available on many new cars, uses radar and sometimes other sensors to detect vehicles on the road ahead. You set a maximum speed and then your car maintains a safe following distance on its own, operating the gas and the brakes for you. Some systems like this only work at highway cruising speeds, but many can work even in stop-and-go traffic.
Auto lane keeping assist: Cameras detect lane lines and road edges, and the car steers itself to stay in its lane.
Collision avoidance: Radar, cameras or other sensors detect obstacles ahead and warn the driver. If the driver still doesn't react, the car can apply the brakes automatically to avoid, or at least reduce, the impact of a crash. In the United States, auto safety regulators have found this technology particularly effective in reducing crashes.
Pedestrian detection: Cameras, including ones that can see in the dark, are programmed to detect human forms that might wander into the path of the car. Drivers can be alerted and again, the car can brake automatically.
Large animal detection: Hitting a moose, deer or elk is definitely bad for the animal but it's also very bad for a car's passengers. Volvo has created a system that can detect when a big animal is walking in front of your car, saving both you and the absent-minded animal.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the time period during which nine vehicles, including the Volvo XC90, had no crash-related fatalities. ||||| Swedish automaker Volvo has long kept track of how many people are seriously injured or killed while driving its vehicles. It uses this data to see how much safer it can make its vehicles in the event of a crash. Now, the company has made a bold promise — by 2020 there will be no serious injuries or fatalities in a Volvo car or SUV.
Cars are getting smarter with the addition of autonomous technologies, and this is how Volvo hopes to reach its goal of zero deaths in its cars. This does not, of course, preclude someone from driving recklessly and getting themselves killed. However, conventional driving should be made much safer with the inclusion of a number of technologies. It starts with making the interior of the car safer with improved airbags and restraints. Then things get more futuristic.
Volvo already has various smart features in its cars, but by combining them all, it becomes much harder to end up in a serious accident. Adaptive cruise control for example, is already available on many cars. It allows you to set a maximum speed, but uses radar to maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you. It can even apply the brakes if need be. This can be taken a step further with full collision avoidance. When a crash is likely, the driver will be warned. If action isn’t taken, the car can begin braking to avoid, or at least minimize the impact.
A relatively new technology that Volvo plans to make extensive use of is lane assistance. Cars will use cameras to detect lanes and alert the driver if they begin to drift. This has been found to dramatically reduce crashes from dozing off at the wheel and distracted driving. Road signs can be identified by cameras as well to help alert drivers to posted speed limits and upcoming hazards.
Cameras will also be used to watch for pedestrians in the vicinity of the vehicle. This is similar to the technology that is used in self-driving cars to identify potential obstacles on the road. The driver can be alerted if a person is in the car’s path and the brake can be automatically applied. In addition to people, cameras can be used to spot large animals in the roadway. For example, moose are common in Volvo’s home territory, and they’ll really mess your car up. Volvo has created a system that can act to avoid colliding with such a critter, saving both you and it.
Automakers like Ford and Tesla are moving quickly toward fully autonomous vehicles. Then there’s Google’s self-driving car program. Volvo too is in the early stages of driverless tech, and handing control over to a computer when it’s clear something is wrong could be a step in that direction. Proving that vehicles can prevent deaths with automated technologies could go a long way toward convincing the public and regulators that self-driving cars are the best option. Volvo thinks these self-driving cars will be the safest of all.
Still, claiming something to be death-proof seems risky. They said the Titanic was unsinkable, after all. ||||| Volvo has always taken safety seriously. They invented the three-point seat belt in 1959 and then opened up the patent so that any car manufacturer could use it. Now they’re giving away a product to take Volvo safety beyond its cars.
Volvo introduces Life Paint.
LifePaint is a unique reflective safety spray aimed at increasing the visibility and safety of cyclists, and other vulnerable road users. Invisible by daylight, it glows brightly in the glare of car headlights, making the invisible, visible at night.
Though designed for safer cycling, LifePaint can be applied to any fabric — clothes, shoes, pushchairs, children’s backpacks — even dog leads and collars. It is transparent, washes off and will not affect the colour or surface of your chosen material, lasting for approximately one week after application.
Available from today, LifePaint will be trialed in six London and Kent-based cycle shops, including Peloton in Spitalfields, where cyclists can get one of 2000 cans being given away. This is the first phase. If LifePaint proves popular, the project will expand nationally and internationally.
The best way to survive a crash, is not to crash.
The LifePaint concept was developed by creative agency Grey London, in collaboration with Swedish startup Albedo100 and is one of a series of projects to highlight the key product innovations of the all-new Volvo XC90.
“Our job isn't just to advertise our clients,” said Nils Leonard, chairman and CCO of Grey London, “it’s to help them make a positive impact on culture. With the creation of LifePaint, we've turned Volvo safety inside out, giving it away to the most vulnerable road users. What more positive action can a brand take than to try to save lives?”
The initiative marks another step by Volvo to promote safety for those both inside and outside its cars. It builds on the development of Intellisafe, a state-of-the-art Volvo safety system which integrates some of the most cutting-edge safety technologies to Volvo cars.
The technology uses a combination of radar sensors and cameras to identify other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists and automatically brake if the driver fails to take the necessary action. This works in conjunction with Volvo’s Active Bending Headlights, which adjust left to right according to the steering input to help see round corners better.
Intellisafe’s unique pedestrian and cyclist detection system, enhanced to work in darkness on the all-new Volvo XC90 to be introduced to the UK in June this year, was the inspiration for the LifePaint project. Together, these innovations contribute towards Volvo’s Vision 2020 — the concept that that no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020. LifePaint is the physical embodiment of Intellisafe.
Design a remarkable product and then launch it with the same level of craft
To promote the product and showcase its properties, Grey London has created an online film featuring interviews with a wide range of cyclists, from commuters, to couriers to accident survivors. Introducing LifePaint with a dramatic demonstration of the product in action, the agency spent three nights shooting in London, testing the spray and working out how to rig lights to mirror the effects of headlights.
The agency also built a site volvolifepaint.com to house the project and direct people to retail outlets, stream Instagram images from the first customers via #volvolifepaint, and link to the advanced safety technology on Volvo.com.
Grey London has also been testing new print technology, using LifePaint to create ‘invisible’ black posters that only reveal themselves in the flash of a smartphone.
Grey London Creative Director, Hollie Newton said: “This is the sort of work we want to be making. Properly integrated innovation. Design a valuable, remarkable product for a brand, and then launch it with the same level of craft.”
Adrian Walsh, Director of RoadSafe, a leading forum for promoting and devising solutions to road safety problems, said: “Driving a car is a complex and demanding task. In poor light conditions it becomes even harder, especially in towns and cities where the road is often shared with cyclists and pedestrians. This innovative technology will certainly help to make it a safer place and it is really encouraging to see a manufacturer reaching out to make pedestrians and cyclists less vulnerable.”
Nick Connor, Managing Director at Volvo Car UK, said: “Every year more than 19,000 cyclists are injured on the UK’s roads. At Volvo, we believe that the best way to survive a crash is not to crash, and are committed to making the roads a safer place by reducing the number of accidents.
“Volvo is a world-leader in safety technology, and we are proud to be extending our reach beyond just those driving our cars. By making cyclists increasingly visible as well as increasing the safety capabilities of our cars, we are doing our utmost to protect everyone on the road.”
CREDITS:
Creative Agency: Grey London
Chief Creative Officer: Nils Leonard
Creative Director: Hollie Newton
Creative Team: Jonas Roth, Rasmus Smith Bech
Account Team: Cristyn Bevan, Sophie Critchley, Alex Nixon
Planning: Wiktor Skoog
Head of Film: Glenn Paton
Integrated Producer: Francesca Mair
Assistant Producer: Talia Shear
Designer/ Typographer: Chris Chapman
Creative Producers: Helen Llewelyn, Glen McLeod
LifePaint Collaborators: Albedo100
Production Company: Caviar
Director: Andrew Telling
DOP: Jeremy Valender
Executive Producer: Louise Gagen
Producer: Adam Smith
Editor: Matt Newman at GreyWorks
Colourist: Julien Biard at Finish
Post Production: Gramercy Park Studios
Sound Design: Munzie Thind at Grand Central Studios
Music Composition: Adam Halogen through Wake The Town
Microsite: Paul Cackett, Piers Cleveland-Copeman and Johan Runge-Goransson @ clear.as ||||| I don’t often get the chance to drive large-capacity sport-utility vehicles as they’re meant to be, but this last holiday was (sort of) an exception. I drove a 2016 Volvo XC90 AWD Inscription to metro Milwaukee and back and brought along my family. Here’s where the “sort of” comes into play; my wife and I have no kids, but our three collies rode along behind the front seats. A borrowed rooftop carrier handled most of our luggage. (Note to Volvo Car USA: The Green Bay Packers “sticker” is a magnet.)
all-new Volvo XC90 in more than a dozen years as the future of luxury transportation. Even loaded to the gills and topped with that rooftop carrier, it managed about 20 mostly freeway mpg, enough to match its city EPA number. I had already come to regard the firstin more than a dozen years as the future of luxury transportation. Even loaded to the gills and topped with that rooftop carrier, it managed about 20 mostly freeway mpg, enough to match its city EPA number.
the S90 sedan, will ever have. The only upgrade will be the plug-in hybrid T8 powertrain that bumps the T6 turbo-/supercharged four from 316 horsepower to a cool 400. Actually, my first impression from a shorter drive earlier last year was that the XC90 is the future of high-capacity transportation. It’s a seven-passenger, three-row model that gets plenty of power from a turbocharged and supercharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder gas, direct-injection engine powering all four wheels. It’s the largest engine that any new Volvo coming in the future, including, will ever have. The only upgrade will bethat bumps the T6 turbo-/supercharged four from 316 horsepower to a cool 400.
Big as the XC90 is, it feels light on its feet. It’s 194.8 inches long, on a 117.5-inch wheelbase. At 69.9 inches high, it doesn’t feel that tall when stepping in and out. Volvo has not joined the ranks of BMW competitors that are trying to beat BMW dynamics -- at least, what BMW’s dynamics used to be. This is an SUV you’re supposed to forget you are driving (while still paying close attention to traffic around you). Nothing about the steering, handling, or acceleration makes you want to find a twisty mountain road. Nothing about all that makes you wish you were driving a Bimmer either; the handling is sufficiently crisp, and the steering provides decent feedback.
Volvo XC90 has adjustable dynamics. I have a tough time caring about, and trying out, these systems. (BMW used to be able to find the right chassis balance without making its drivers do the fine-tuning.) The Dynamic mode lowers the XC90 by 0.8 inch when above 84 mph. It also adapts four-corner active dampers on the air suspension (which was an $1,800 option on my $66,855 loaner) and shifts the eight-speed automatic at higher revs. I tried it just long enough to learn that I didn’t need this mode for this drive. You -- and Volvo -- don’t want to see what happens when collies get carsick. Like BMW and all the competitors that want to be BMW, thehas adjustable dynamics. I have a tough time caring about, and trying out, these systems. (BMW used to be able to find the right chassis balance without making its drivers do the fine-tuning.) The Dynamic mode lowers the XC90 by 0.8 inch when above 84 mph. It also adapts four-corner active dampers on the air suspension (which was an $1,800 option on my $66,855 loaner) and shifts the eight-speed automatic at higher revs. I tried it just long enough to learn that I didn’t need this mode for this drive. You -- and Volvo -- don’t want to see what happens when collies get carsick.
I did click on the Eco mode somewhere near Ann Arbor during the return drive, to avoid having to stop for gas within 10 miles from home. In this mode, it goes into "Eco-coast" when you lift off the throttle above 40 mph, thus cutting power and saving gas. I made it. Guess Eco works.
The new Pilot Assist II, to launch on the 2017 Volvo S90, does not require following another car, and it allows autonomous steering up to 80 mph. This would make the agonizing, stop-and-go drive through Chicago perhaps as easy as the rest of the trip … especially when the express lanes are open in my direction. I also tried the adaptive cruise control with Pilot Assist, but only briefly. Fact is, there isn’t much to do with this system because it works only up to 30 mph, and you rely on the car in front of you, which almost always will accelerate past 30 on most any street or road., does not require following another car, and it allows autonomous steering up to 80 mph. This would make the agonizing, stop-and-go drive through Chicago perhaps as easy as the rest of the trip … especially when the express lanes are open in my direction.
Super Cruise highway semi-autonomy until next year, Mercedes-Benz introduced its next step in the new E-Class that made its debut at the North American International Auto Show last week. Mercedes, which is Volvo’s chief rival in such advances, says if you signal for it, the new E-Class will change lanes autonomously while on a highway or freeway. The future of autonomous driving has come into focus just in the first few weeks of this new year. While Cadillac has delayed introduction of itsuntil next year, Mercedes-Benz introduced its next step inlast week. Mercedes, which is Volvo’s chief rival in such advances, says if you signal for it, the new E-Class will change lanes autonomously while on a highway or freeway.
operator rules for autonomous vehicles that require human drivers to always be in control. But then last week, ahead of the president’s appearance at the Detroit show, the Obama administration announced a $4 billion pilot program to study the technology, thus taking the leadership away from California. Volvo plans its test of Level 4 autonomy on about 31 miles of highway in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2017 and wants to next test somewhere in the U.S. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles put the kibosh on that late last year when it issuedthat require human drivers to always be in control. But then last week, ahead of the president’s appearance at the Detroit show, the Obama administration announced a $4 billion pilot program to study the technology, thus taking the leadership away from California.
Though I will be among the last drivers to give up a manual-equipped car -- which can’t be made autonomous -- I’m growing more comfortable with the fiercely growing trajectory of autonomous driving. For a seven-hour drive on tedious interstate in a big, luxurious SUV with your family, a bit of extra comfort (and, therefore, safety) is a welcomed thing. | – Volvo has just come out with a gutsy move, making what CNN Money is calling a "shocking pledge"—that not a single person will be killed or even seriously injured in a new Volvo car or SUV by 2020. (Not including a driver who does something "really, really stupid," as CNN puts it.) Engineers already have some ground to stand on, given that not a single person has died in the Volvo XC90 over the past four years. And while it's in an elite squad, that model isn't alone—eight others claim the distinction. To reach its goal, Volvo (and other car makers working on similar safety features, including Ford and Tesla) is leaning heavily on autonomous technologies, reports Extreme Tech. Some of the features are run-of-the-mill—think better air bags and restraints—while others are more advanced, including adaptive cruise control, pedestrian and large animal detection, sign reading, and an assist to keep the vehicle between lane lines. "Still, claiming something to be death-proof seems risky," notes the Extreme Tech post. "They said the Titanic was unsinkable, after all." Meanwhile, a review in Automobile Magazine calls the XC90 the "future of luxury transportation" with "crisp" handling and steering that provides "decent feedback." It also notes that Volvo is planning to test its latest autonomy technology on 30 miles of highway in Sweden next year, while the Obama administration recently announced a $4 billion pilot program to study the tech further. (Check out why GM and Lyft are partnering up.) |
The hospital has threatened to perform cesarean surgery on Jennifer Goodall "with or without [her] consent." (Hospital via Shutterstock)
In an action that appears to be increasingly commonplace, a Florida hospital has threatened to force a pregnant patient to undergo cesarean surgery against her will, or to report her to child welfare authorities for attempting to exercise her right to make the medical decisions she deems best for herself and her family.
Jennifer Goodall of Coral Gables was informed in a July 10 letter from the chief financial officer of Bayfront Health Port Charlotte that because she decided to attempt vaginal delivery before agreeing to cesarean surgery in her fourth pregnancy, her prenatal care providers intended to report her to the Department of Children and Family Services, seek a court order to perform surgery, and perform cesarean surgery on her “with or without [her] consent” if she came to the hospital.
A complaint on behalf of Goodall was filed in federal court last week by National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and Florida attorney Patricia E. Kahn, seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the hospital from carrying out its threats. Federal District Judge John E. Steele denied the request, stating in part that Goodall has no “right to compel a physician or medical facility to perform a medical procedure in the manner she wishes against their best medical judgment.”
Goodall is now 41 weeks pregnant and has told her lawyers she is terrified to enter a hospital. Given this and the weight of medical evidence in Goodall’s favor regarding the safety of the delivery she wanted to have, it is unclear whether the hospital or the courts are considering “best medical judgment” and in whose interest they are acting.
Goodall delivered her three other children via c-section and now desires to undergo what is commonly known as vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). In decades past, VBAC was a common choice for women who had previously had c-sections, rising from roughly 5 percent of all deliveries after a cesarean in 1985 to roughly 28 percent by 1996. The rate of VBAC deliveries started to fall in the late ’90s, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, reaching 8.5 percent in 2006 due in part to “restrictions that some hospitals and insurers placed” on the procedure. In tandem with what some have noted as pressure on women to undergo cesareans, the rate of cesarean delivery overall in the United States simultaneously increased dramatically over the past four decades, from 5 percent to over 31 percent in 2007.
Medical and public health bodies have long criticized the high rate of cesarean sections in the United States. The World Health Organization points out that at the current rate of 30 percent of all deliveries, cesarean sections in the United States far exceed what should normally be between 5 to 10 percent of all deliveries. ACOG agrees. “The current cesarean rate is undeniably high and absolutely concerns us as ob-gyns,” ACOG President Richard N. Waldman said in a statement. “[ACOG’s] VBAC guidelines emphasize the need for thorough counseling of benefits and risks, shared patient-doctor decision making, and the importance of patient autonomy. Moving forward, we need to work collaboratively with our patients and our colleagues, hospitals, and insurers to swing the pendulum back to fewer cesareans and a more reasonable VBAC rate.”
“The risks associated with a vaginal delivery are lower than the risks associated with a C-section overall, as long as you can deliver the baby at a facility equipped to handle a C-section in case of emergency,” Roger W. Harms, an obstetrician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and medical editor-in-chief of MayoClinic.com, said in a statement. And the recovery time is faster. Undergoing a cesarean surgery for the fourth time carries a 1 in 8 chance of major complications. In short, VBAC deliveries are safer for both the pregnant person and the fetus and lead to fewer complications.
These facts did not escape Goodall, who said in a statement released by NAPW:
My decision to allow labor to proceed before consenting to a surgical intervention is based on years of research, careful consideration of the risks to me and my baby, and my family’s needs. All I want is to be able to go to the hospital when I’m in labor and have my medical decisions respected – and my decision is to proceed with a trial of labor and not have cesarean surgery unless some medical complication arises that makes cesarean surgery necessary for my or my baby’s health. Instead of respecting my wishes like they would for any other patient, my health care providers have made me fear for my safety and custody of my children. The people who are supposed to be caring for me and my baby have put me into an even more dangerous situation. I know I’m not the only one to go through this; I’m speaking out because pregnant women deserve better.
“I would definitely consent to surgery if there were any indication during labor that it is necessary,” Goodall added. “I am trying to make the decision that will be safest for both me and my baby, and give me the greatest chance at being able to heal quickly after my child is born so I can care for my newborn and my three other children.”
NAPW staff attorney Farah Diaz-Tello expressed disappointment in Judge Steele’s ruling. “The process of labor and delivery isn’t a procedure; our client is the one trying to avoid a compelled medical procedure. Deciding whether and when to consent to surgery is a constitutionally protected right,” she said in a statement. Diaz-Tello explained that every appellate court to rule on this issue on a full record has held that pregnant women retain their constitutional rights, including rights to medical decision-making and bodily integrity. “No woman should fear that because she’s pregnant, she can be threatened, coerced, or deprived of her constitutional rights,” she said.
But this is exactly what happened to Rinat Dray in Staten Island and to at least six other women in Florida, according to NAPW. “Florida is particularly bad for people giving birth,” Diaz-Tello told RH Reality Check in an email. “We know of at least a half dozen other women who have had court orders or threats of legal action this against them, but the certainty with which hospitals have made these threats makes us think there are more we don’t know of.”
According to declarations of medical experts filed with the lawsuit, the hospital’s actions violate medical ethics. In a statement to NAPW, Mary Faith Marshall, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics & Humanities at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, called the hospital’s actions “troubling.”
“Given the clear statements from ACOG’s Committee on Ethics and other professional groups that coerced or court-ordered medical procedures are not ethically justified, it is stunning that a hospital would threaten such an action,” she said.
Diaz-Tello acknowledged the hospital’s concerns about malpractice liability, but noted that there is no legal or ethical authority that supports managing liability concerns by forcibly performing unwanted surgery. “The Florida Supreme Court has said health care providers are protected from liability when they respect and follow the decisions of a competent and informed patient to delay or refuse a proposed treatment, even when there are risks involved,” she said in the NAPW statement. “Ms. Goodall has explicitly and carefully documented her informed decision to proceed with a trial of labor; there is no justification for forcing her, or any person, to have unwanted surgery to protect a hospital’s bottom line.” ||||| Answering a Facebook campaign to show support, dozens swarmed the sidewalks in front of a Port Charlotte Hospital Sunday picketing against the hospital's insistence for a Cape Coral's mother to have a birth by C-section.
"Jennifer is not alone, she's not the only one," said one of the supporters.
We first told you about Jennifer Goodall's family when the hospital threatened legal action against her if she didn't comply with birth by cesarean. Goodall gave birth Friday and did have C-section birth.
Shouts of "Enough is enough" and "Honk if you hate forced surgery" came from the protesters toward anyone who drove by the Bayfront Health Port Charlotte Hospital.
Joining the moms were many youngsters standing along side their peers.
"Vaginal birth is not a procedure it's a normal outcome of pregnancy," said a protester.
They argue the decision of which way to go isn't left up to them.
"Every woman deserves the right to make choices about their birth and every woman deserves the right to say no if she doesn't want to consent to surgery," said Shannon Mitchell who is a mother of four. "I know what it feels like to just be in that position."
Mitchell claims she faced the same threats the Goodalls did with her own pregnancies.
"Florida's patient bill of right says we can refuse any procedure we want. And refusing cesarean is a procedure," argued Mitchell.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women admit there is a higher risk of complication during a natural birth if the mother has had a prior C-section.
Goodall had three C-sections before this latest birth.
"Forced surgery is not an appropriate response to physicians fears about liability," said a protester. "We're tired of forced surgeries."
"Women are just asking for the chance to try and do what their bodies are designed to do," said Megan Nickel-Martin with ICAN.
Despite their presence Sunday, Bayfront Health refused to respond to the protesters but instead preferred to stand by their statement issued Saturday:
"Patient privacy laws prevent us from discussing any individual’s care and treatment, but we’d like to share some insight into our general practices. Every year, women and families throughout Charlotte County and surrounding areas trust our hospital care team to welcome their new babies into the world. We provided care for more than 1200 new babies and their mothers last year. We are honored to play a role in the lives of these families and take our responsibility to new and expectant mothers very, very seriously. We have equal responsibility for the health and well being of the babies born at our hospital. Our hospital is very respectful of a patient’s right to informed consent and we eagerly encourage patient involvement in decisions regarding their care, particularly in respect to a mother’s birth plan. We also rely on physicians to use their clinical judgment based on their training and experience to deliver the standard of medical care that preserves human life and results in the best possible outcomes." | – Two weeks before she gave birth to her fourth child, a Florida hospital threatened to force a C-section on 29-year-old mom Jennifer Goodall "with or without [her] consent," Jezebel reports. Goodall wanted to try delivering vaginally before agreeing to what would be her fourth cesarean—if it was necessary. But Bayfront Health Port Charlotte also threatened to call the state Department of Children and Families because, the hospital said in a letter to Goodall, a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) could lead to “death or serious injury” to the baby, reports the News Press. "My health care providers have made me fear for my safety and custody of my children. I know I'm not the only one to go through this; I'm speaking out because pregnant women deserve better," Goodall says in a statement. She delivered Friday … by C-section, NBC News reports. The courts didn’t back her up. A federal judge earlier this month sided with the hospital, saying the mom-to-be had no "right to compel a physician or medical facility to perform a medical procedure in the manner she wishes against their best medical judgment.” Though VBACs carry some risk, as many as 80% of women go through them safely; the World Health Organization has criticized the US for its high rate of C-sections. And like any other surgery, opting in or out is a "constitutionally protected right" held up by other courts, a National Advocates for Pregnant Women attorney tells RH Reality Check. “No woman should fear that because she’s pregnant, she can be threatened, coerced, or deprived of her constitutional rights,” she says. (A happier pregnancy story: A woman missing part of her heart managed to defy the odds.) |
Despite reports that Lindsay Lohan will be the target of lesbian prison gangs at the female-only Lynwood Correctional facility during her expected stay there for violating the terms of her DUI probation, experts familiar with the facility say the actress' safety will be of paramount concern for authorities.
“There is a prison mentality where inmates earn some stature if they assault somebody famous, [and] somebody would take a lot of pride in saying they beat up Lindsay Lohan,” explained Santa Monica based Criminal Defense Attorney, Steve Cron. “But in a high profile case like hers, the sheriffs will be taking extra precautions and will bend over backwards security-wise. They won’t tolerate it if a guard is negligent or turns a blind eye to Lindsay getting harmed. Paris [Hilton] made it, and while jail is a degrading place, Lindsay will too.”
Another source close to the L.A County Sheriff’s department agreed that officials certainly would not want to attract any negative press, thus necessary precautions have been put into place to ensure she is physically safe from other inmates.
However, Andrea Neiers, the mother of inmate and E!’s “Gone Wild” starlet Alexis Neiers (who is serving a six month sentence at Lynwood as a result of being implicated for breaking into Orlando Bloom’s home) recently tweeted in distress that the water in the facility was making her daughter ill, and that she wasn’t receiving items ordered from the commissary. Nonetheless, Neiers’s attorney Jeffrey Rubenstein told us that in actuality the reality starlet is coping well.
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“She is fine. Andrea is not a reliable source; it's not accurate because she is so emotional. I visit Alexis and she is fine and being treated well. It is jail and it's not supposed to be pleasant,” Rubenstein said. “She is in good spirits but she doesn't eat Spam and mayonnaise, so she's eating apples and ramen soup. So her caloric intake is down because the food is not good.”
Rubenstein predicts that Lohan too will encounter similar, perhaps even slightly special treatment, while behind bars.
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“The first 24-48 hours is the worst. But if something bad happens in LA county jail, it makes the papers. This is a relatively safe, well-run place. The jail wants to make sure there are no problems because it doesn't reflect well on them. They're looking out for the girls' safety and if they're safe, the sheriffs are happy as well,” Rubenstein continued. “I think Lindsay will be treated well. Alexis has her own cell so she is probably being treated as well, and maybe better, than other inmates. In that world, having your own cell is quite a privilege. She is getting special attention because of her status, so they keep everyone away from her.”
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And given LiLo’s passion for perennial partying, perhaps she won’t be too perturbed by the sleepless nights.
“You're woken up a lot, they check your arm bracelet at midnight and then all the cell doors open at 3 o'clock, and they wake them up really early, and there is always bright light, so it's hard to have a good night's sleep,” Rubenstein added.
But despite feeling a little “nervous”, a source close to Lohan told Tarts that the actress didn’t spend her last “free” weekend before the big surrender dwelling – she instead spent it with her friends and her sister Ali playing video games.
“Lindsay just wanted to do something to take her mind off everything, so that’s pretty much all she did,” said our insider. “She is doing pretty well; she is planning to do lots of art and drawing to pass the time in jail.”
Much to the dismay of her pals, we’re also told that Lohan spent time this weekend with her former flame, Samantha Ronson.
“She has a really dark energy and Lindsay is all different when Sam is around,” explained the source.
- Deidre Behar contributed to this report. ||||| Inmates 'pissy' over Lindsay Lohan's 'special' jail perks like a TV and dresser in her private cell
Seib-Pool/Getty Inmates who have recently left jail have heard Lindsay Lohan is receiving special treatment behind bars.
It looks like Lindsay Lohan's jailhouse honeymoon is over.
A day after inmates cheered her arrival, some prisoners are already grousing about the "Mean Girls" actress.
Even though officials have insisted Lohan is treated like everyone else - beyond getting her own cell - rumors flew that the star is enjoying perks.
"She's getting special treatment. Some inmates were getting pissy over it," Debra Sickels, 30, said as she was released after doing 19 days for shoplifting.
Sickels said that during her stint, she was in the infirmary every day for medical treatment, "and the girls said they cleaned a special room for Lindsay. It had a regular hospital bed, a TV and a dresser for her new clothes and socks."
Other just-sprung inmates said they heard Lohan was paying for special food and new clothes and had a female guard at her disposal and access to a private phone.
"She's being treated like any other inmate in her classification. There's no special treatment at all," said Los Angeles sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.
The "Freaky Friday" star was jailed Tuesday to serve a 90-day sentence for violating her probation by missing a string of alcohol education classes this year.
When she arrived in handcuffs and tears, prisoners yelled out her name and shouted, "God bless you!"
Lohan is expected to serve as little as two weeks because of good behavior and jail overcrowding.
On LiLo's second day behind bars, defense lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley stopped by for an hour-long visit, but didn't answer questions. Later in the day, Lohan's mom, Dina, and kid sister Ali showed up.
An exiting inmate said the jail was put on an hour lockdown for the visit.
"I sat there for four hours waiting to get released because of her," said Sharell Gaines, 30, a Watts resident who spent a week in jail for traffic tickets. "They put us on lockdown and told us not to look. It's discrimination. She's a criminal, just like me."
TMZ.com claimed that LiLo was given permission to take some prescription drugs while behind bars: the stimulant Adderall to treat attention deficit disorder and the sleeping pill Ambien.
Like all other inmates, she can spend up to $135 a week in the commissary for munchies like Spicy Velveeta Refried Beans, Spam, Kit Kat candy bars and Country Time Raspberry Lemonade, TMZ.com said.
sgoldsmith@nydailynews.com ||||| Inmate: Lindsay Lohan Was Crying When She Was Brought In
Email This Alexis Neiers, star of E! Online's reality show 'Wild Things,' was just recently released from Century Regional Correctional Facility--and her jailhouse next-door neighbor was none other than Lindsay Lohan. And in an interview with
"I wish her the best, honestly, but you know, it's all up to your mindset, and I don't know what her mindset is in there," says Neiers, who was there doing jail time for robbing Orlando Bloom's house.
More excerpts of the interview after the jump. Alexis Neiers, star of E! Online's reality show 'Wild Things,' was just recently released from Century Regional Correctional Facility--and her jailhouse next-door neighbor was none other than Lindsay Lohan. And in an interview with E! News , Neiers, 19, discusses Lindsay's first day in the slammer, what the actress was wearing and what jail is really like."I wish her the best, honestly, but you know, it's all up to your mindset, and I don't know what her mindset is in there," says Neiers, who was there doing jail time for robbing Orlando Bloom's house.More excerpts of the interview
http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=758652&pid=758651&uts=1273239157 http://www.popeater.com/mm_track/popeater/music/?s_channel=us.musicpop&s_account=aolpopeater,aolsvc&omni=1&ke=1 http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf Celebrity Mug Shots Lawrence Taylor was charged May 6 with raping a 16-year-old runaway who police said was forced into prostitution by a man who had beaten her up. He was arrest at a Holiday Inn in Montebello, NY and is also charged with solicitation. Ramapo Police Department / AP Ramapo Police Department / AP Celebrity Mug Shots
"She was crying. She was talking to deputies and, you know, just trying to--I couldn't really like make it out, but from what I saw the first day, I mean, she was lying in there and just trying to like calm down.""She had her head down when she walked by and she was in oranges, just like us. I mean, she got to keep her extensions in and everything, which most people don't, and the girls were like, 'Ah, they had to take my weave out and cut it all out and,' you know, stuff like that.""You feel violated and just uncomfortable... it's scary," says the reality starlet. "I mean, you're going to jail and the girls in there aren't, you know, I mean, some of them were kind and some of them really weren't." ||||| What Lindsay Lohan Can Learn From Lil Wayne in Prison
Email This As anyone who even casually follows celebrity crime knows, there can be a Grand Canyon-sized disparity between the sentence a star receives and the actual time served. Perennial court-attender and 'Herbie Fully Loaded' actress Lindsay Lohan was recently As anyone who even casually follows celebrity crime knows, there can be a Grand Canyon-sized disparity between the sentence a star receives and the actual time served. Perennial court-attender and 'Herbie Fully Loaded' actress Lindsay Lohan was recently sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating her probation in a DUI case. Rob Shuter already discussed Lohan's plan to avoid prison , but if she does actually serve part of her sentence, she's going to need help. Put down the 'Just My Luck' Blu-Ray and watch 'The Wire,' Lindsay. Prison ain't easy. The parallels between Lohan and Lil Wayne , who is currently serving a one-year sentence for felony gun possession, may not be immediately apparent, but here are a few tips the actress can learn from the superstar rapper.
Record a Song Behind Bars
Smuggle Contraband to Listen to The Classics
Get Diesel
Charge Guards to Watch Her
Receive Celebrity Visitors
Get a Cushy Job
Write to Your Fans
-- One day after Drake released 'Light Up,' his collaboration with Jay-Z, the rapper's team had Wayne record a new verse from his current home at Riker's Island. While the verse was middling in both audio and lyrical quality, it was still light years ahead of previous rappers' attempts to keep their careers going from behind bars. Lohan is no stranger to music; her 2004 debut album, 'Speak,' and its follow-up, 2005's 'A Little More Personal,' cumulatively sold over 1.5 million albums. Surely, prison will give her new lyrical inspiration to augment future classics like 'Confessions of a Broken Heart' and 'Bossy.'-- In May, Weezy was caught was with an unauthorized MP3 player and headphones smuggled in the cell of a fellow inmate. In certain jails, prisoners are allowed to purchase radio and MP3 players with headphones, but only those that have been approved and sanctioned by the jail. You have to assume, though, that there's at least one guard whose daughter is a 'Freaky Friday' fanatic that's going to bend the rules a bit so Lohan can study 'Paris' a few more times for inspiration.-- In April, popular hip-hop site Rap Radar posted an interview with rapper/Cash Money CEO Bryan "Birdman" Williams from DJ Scoob Doo's 'Godfather' DVD, in which the emcee discussed Wayne's (presumably exaggerated) workout schedule: 15,000 sit-ups and 20,000 push-ups a week. If Lohan were to miraculously serve her entire sentence, that's 180,000 sit-ups and 240,000 push-ups -- AKA enough to take care of even the burliest of post-prison paparazzi.-- A female former guard at Riker's Island was fired earlier this year for allegedly entering the men's ward for a quick peek at Lil Wayne. While the guard contends she was there to see a colleague, it didn't stop the Department of Corrections from showing her the cell, er, door. Regardless of whether the guard was an overambitious fan or victim of a cover-up, this should inspire Lohan to make the easiest cash possible in prison: charge guards to enter the female ward to watch her.-- When Fat Joe and Diddy made separate visits to the rapper in prison, music mags and sites everywhere salivated at the thought of secret discussions and the sharing of info and advice. In the pop culture world, nothing is more interesting to celebrity tabloid fans than when one tabloid regular visits another in prison. I have visions of a delusional Paris Hilton telling Lohan, "It's not so bad. They bring in a wardrobe for you to pick from, your meals are cooked by executive chefs and 8PM every night is champagne time."-- Anyone who has followed Wayne's career knows that the rapper is a workaholic, frequently entering his mobile studio at all hours of the night to record more verses. At Riker's, Wayne is a Suicide Prevention Aide , socializing with troubled and at-risk inmates for 50 cents an hour. Lohan should consider taking up employment pronto. May we suggest teaching acting classes to young inmates? You think 'I Know Who Killed Me' earned a whopping 8% on Rotten Tomatoes because of Julia Ormond?-- While Twittering from jail is still verboten, the rapper recently launched Weezythanxyou.com , a new website where the rapper, through letters written to his record label, can thank his fans, discuss sports and chronicle his everyday life. The site also features a countdown of Wayne's expected release date (113 days and counting). Lindsay needs to jack this idea pronto. With all the constant chatter about her, why not have one spot where she can shun the hyper-stylized, glossed-up rhetoric of publicists, lawyers and agents and actually write what prison is like and how she feels? At this point, humanization may be the quickest route to salvation. Either that, or someone just smuggle 'Da Drought 3' into her cell. ||||| Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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Lindsay Lohan sobbed when mom Dina and little sister Ali visited her behind bars for the first time since her incarceration, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.
PHOTO: See Lindsay’s New Mug Shot
“Tears were shed,” revealed a source, with knowledge of the family visit, as RadarOnline.com revealed.
Lindsay is scheduled to be released from the jail around August 1st, potentially spending only 14 days of her 90-day sentence behind bars.
See Exclusive Video of Dina and Ali Visiting Lindsay In Jail
“The visit was very emotional, but Lindsay’s spirits were lifted when she saw her mom and sister,” a source said about their first trip to the Lynwood jail.
“Dina seemed relieved to see Lindsay and that she was staying strong.”
PHOTOS: Celebrity Mug Shots
The visit will raise questions about special treatment, given Lindsay wasn’t supposedly allowed to receive visitors until the weekend.
However, RadarOnline.com has learned, jail officials have the discretion to approve visitors for inmates ahead of their first allotted appointment.
Law enforcement officials told RadarOnline.com: “Lindsay might get visitors after the official visiting hours are over for the other inmates for security reasons. It’s for the safety of everyone.”
PHOTOS: Lindsay Lohan Arrives At Lynwood Correctional Facility
Lindsay also got a visit from her powerhouse attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, on Wednesday.
Lindsay gave jail officials a list of people that are permitted to see her, that list includes Samantha Ronson. The list doesn’t include her estranged father, Michael. ||||| Lindsay Lohan Fine Dining Behind Bars
It may not be Katsuya , but Lindsay Lohan has a delicious dinner in store on her first night in jail.Our jailhouse mole tells TMZ Turkey Tetrazzini is on the menu tonight. Actually, it's the only option. For those who aren't familiar, it's a turkey casserole with noodles, mushrooms and cream sauce.And there are sides -- Applesauce, broccoli coleslaw and wheat bread. And there's also milk to wash it all down. ||||| Jail Source: The Inmates Are Sick of Lindsay Lohan
or leave a comment of your own See what other readers have to say about this story –
As far as reports go, Lindsay Lohan is eating the same meals as regular inmates at the Century Regional Detention Facility . But that doesn't mean she's being entirely treated like the others "She's not treated like if it was anyone else going to jail," Maria Medina, a relative of an inmate at Lohan's jail tells PEOPLE. "Like, if they even want to bring her new clothes or bring her anything, they put the whole facility on lockdown. It happens all the time."Medina, 40, says residents at the jail, based in Lynwood, Calif., find it unfair that someone they're not even allowed to see is exerting so much control over their stay."All the inmates are sick of Lindsay," Medina says. "It's almost like Lindsay Lohan's here, but she's not. Like if she even moves, they put the whole facility on lockdown. It happens all the time. For example, just yesterday [Friday], Lindsay had to go to the mini-clinic, and the whole place was on lockdown again."Los Angeles Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore denied Medina's claim. "It's business as usual. Lindsay's getting no special treatment," he told PEOPLE on Saturday. He also said there is no such thing as "lockdowns."As far as Lohan is concerned, she's now apparently in a much better state of mind than earlier this week."[Lindsay's] doing well, she's doing fine," Lohan's lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley tells PEOPLE. "Her outlook is definitely more positive."Despite speculation that Lohan was given exemptions when it came to visitation limits , Holley told reporters her client is playing by the rules, saying,"[Her family's] not allowed any more visits this week."Whitmore earlier this week told PEOPLE that Lohan received her visits during the week to avoid disrupting other families visiting on the weekend with ensuing TV crews and photographers. | – Lindsay Lohan, meet your prison neighbor: Alexis Neiers, a member of the “Bling Ring” jailed for burglarizing celebrity homes…including LiLo’s. If that’s not awkward enough, more details from LiLo’s new life behind bars: Despite her celebrity status, she was probably subjected to a strip search as soon as she arrived—former inmate Piper Kerman calls it "the squat and cough" in a Daily Beast column on what LiLo can expect. Upon entering the Lynwood jail, Lindsay would have received a baggie of “generic and cheap quality” toiletries, a former inmate tells People. But anything she had on her when she arrived was taken away—including her copy of The Old Man and the Sea. A source tells Radar her family will order her a replacement copy—inmates can receive books if they come directly from an online retailer. While she waits, she can watch TV shows like I Love Lucy and Wheel of Fortune through the window on her cell door, the former inmate says. She can also take her prescription drugs, including Adderoll and Ambien—sources tell TMZ her prescriptions were being processed yesterday. Her dinner last night was turkey tetrazzini, applesauce, broccoli coleslaw, wheat bread, and milk, TMZ reports. Her first visitor was attorney Shawn Chapman Holley, who tells People Lindsay is “having a difficult time adjusting” and “there were some tears.” Click here for more on what awaits her on the other side...in a mere two weeks. |
Sarah and Mark Hall* spent hours giving depositions in the elegant conference room of their obstetrician’s lawyers. Again and again, their doctor’s lawyers asked them the same question while court stenographer sat ready to record their responses. The Halls knew what they had to say—there was no other way their lawsuit could proceed. Yes, they each said, swallowing their repugnance. Had I known that our daughter had a genetic disorder, I would have chosen abortion.
In 2010, while Sarah was pregnant with their daughter Ellie*, the couple was in the midst of a tumultuous time. Mark’s mother died suddenly. Compounding the couple’s grief, Mark’s mother’s death left the couple financially and legally responsible for his older sister Jennifer, who, due to an extremely rare configuration of her genome, has special needs.
Jennifer lives independently. While she has held jobs for short amounts of time, she has performed unevenly and now collects disability benefits. According to Sarah and Mark, she is 40 and has a developmental age of about 14. Jennifer has intense emotional fluctuations and her behavior can be very challenging. In 2008, Mark, who is non-disabled, discovered through genetic testing that he is a carrier of Jennifer’s syndrome. This means that any children he has might have a typical genome, or they might, like him, be symptom-free carriers. They also, however, might have either Jennifer’s syndrome or Syndrome Z. (This latter syndrome is rare enough to be identifying, so its name has been changed).
Mark was told by his geneticist that, given her genomic configuration, Jennifer was unusually verbal, mobile, and independent. If his child were to have Jennifer’s syndrome or Syndrome Z, the child likely would be significantly more cognitively and/or physically disabled. The geneticist also told them there would be a risk to Sarah in carrying a child with either syndrome. (With the caveat that I am not a geneticist, I have searched for data to suggest that Sarah herself would have been at greater risk, and have been unable to find any.)
So when Sarah was 16 weeks pregnant, she got an amniocentesis. The geneticist’s report was sent to their obstetrician’s office. Someone from their obstetrician’s office informed the Halls of the results over the phone. Ellie was “just like you,” Mark was told. That is, Ellie was a carrier, but would not be symptomatic. At a time when the rest of their lives were in no small upheaval, this result was a reassurance.
After she was born, Ellie developed typically for about six months. She smiled adorably and rolled over on cue. Then her development seemed to slow. She did not sit up, crawl, or walk. Her pediatrician became concerned about the size of Ellie’s head, and told the Halls that it didn’t seem as if Ellie’s brain was growing. The couple brought Ellie to specialist after specialist. Since all her doctors believed the amniocentesis demonstrated Ellie had a typical genome, however, no one suggested the Halls consult a geneticist.
The Halls describe that time of doctors, tests, and uncertainty as absolutely harrowing. “I couldn’t think of anything else but what was going on with my daughter,” Mark said. When Ellie was 18 months old, their pediatrician, now at a loss for other explanation, suggested they return to a geneticist. They all received further testing, and the Halls asked the obstetrician’s office for the geneticist’s report on Ellie’s amniocentesis. When Sarah received it, she was floored.
“I am not an expert in this. This isn’t my job. But I had read enough about genetics to know what it said,” said Sarah. The results, one simple line in karyotype notation , were clear. Ellie had Syndrome Z. The person who had phoned the Halls had, quite simply, misread the results. Their obstetrician’s office admitted the mistake, and a settlement is being negotiated.
Suppose, in the course of caring for you, your doctor makes a mistake. This alone is not enough to sue her. If you sue a healthcare provider for negligence or malpractice, you are required to demonstrate that the mistake the provider made actually caused harm. This is the problem facing the Halls and anyone else who receives a falsely reassuring result on a prenatal test. It’s not like the person who misread the amnio results caused Ellie to have Syndrome Z, nor did she exacerbate Ellie’s symptoms. So, then, what harm is really done?
In such cases, it is an established legal precedent in the U.S. that the only harm that can come of a falsely reassuring prenatal test is if the mother would have gotten an abortion had she known. Cindy Shapiro, a medical malpractice defense attorney in California who has no connection to the Hall’s case, said that the only way parents can win a lawsuit for a falsely reassuring prenatal test is to say that they would have had an abortion had they known. “The plaintiffs have to prove the causation aspect,” Shapiro told The Daily Beast. In at least one case , parents had to present a Do Not Resuscitate order they had signed for their son to prove that they really would have terminated the pregnancy.
It is a cruel quandary for parents and children alike—even crueler if their child’s disabilities are such that the child can understand what her parents have said about her when she’s older.
In the case of a falsely reassuring prenatal test, there are two possibilities for a lawsuit against a health practitioner. The first is what’s known as “wrongful birth” lawsuit. The parents are the plaintiffs in a wrongful birth suit, and they sue for the harm that their child’s existence with disability has caused them. Another kind of suit is called “wrongful life.” That is a suit brought on the behalf of the child, rather than the parents. These suits assert, basically, that the child herself was harmed by the very fact of her own birth.
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In one of the first cases to assert wrongful life, 1967’s Gleitman v. Cosgrove in New Jersey, the child plaintiff was intellectually disabled. The mother had had rubella during pregnancy, and was falsely reassured by her doctor that the virus could not result in disability to her fetus. The judge dismissed the child’s suit due to the difficulty, if not incoherence, in determining “the difference between his life with defects against the utter void of nonexistence.” Due to this difficulty, wrongful life suits are only permitted in three states. About half the states in the U.S. permit wrongful birth suits.
Opposition to both wrongful birth suits and wrongful life suits comes from an unusually wide array of the political spectrum. Pro-lifers unite with disability advocates in rejecting what wrongful birth and wrongful life suits communicate about people with disabilities: that their lives are not worth living. And worse, that their very existence is actually harmful to themselves or someone else.
Parents who bring such suits are routinely vilified. Shapiro told The Daily Beast that wrongful birth and wrongful life cases are incredibly difficult to win for precisely this reason. Her law firm represents health care providers, and has never lost either a wrongful birth or wrongful life suit when a provider has given a falsely reassuring result on a prenatal test. (California is one of the three states that permit wrongful life suits.) Shapiro has discussed cases with juries after trials, and they routinely express their disapproval of the parents for saying such a thing about their own child.
What the vilifiers may not realize is just how much the parents do not want to bring such a suit. The Halls sued for wrongful birth, which in their state is the only suit they could bring. They could not sue for emotional distress, damages for which can only be won in a wrongful life suit. It is indeed the case that they would have terminated the pregnancy. Now, however, they adore their daughter. Ellie is a captivating, laughing child with twinkling eyes. She looks uncannily like Mark, with a crop of soft dark curls. She is now three-and-a-half. She walks, albeit a little uneasily, and speaks in two-word sentences. By the standards of Syndrome Z, her developmental progress is remarkable.
I too have a child with a genetic syndrome and am all too familiar with the feelings that the Halls have, and that so many of us who are parents of kids with disabilities have. I wouldn’t have asked for this, and goodness knows it’s really rough sometimes. But now that my child is here, I wouldn’t give her up for anything. Isn’t this true not only about children with disabilities, but so many aspects of our lives? Some of what we value the most arises from moments of pain. A Wrongful birth suit is far too blunt a tool to acknowledge such complexities of life.
The Halls hate that they said what they did about their daughter. “That’s a shitty thing to say about a person—basically that you don’t deserve to live and breathe on this earth,” Mark explained. Sarah added, “Who wants to say ‘I wish this child wasn’t here’? What kind of mother is going to feel okay saying that?”
Of course, many will argue that they had a choice not to sue at all. However, telling them they could have shut up and put up is patently unfair. They are “not litigious people,” as Sarah said, but they felt they had a right to sue. The office should not be able to treat a matter of such importance with such negligence without any redress.
Parents who bring wrongful birth suits seem to face a burden faced by no other plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases. Shapiro agreed that, at least in California, if a healthcare provider misses a tumor in an MRI, then the plaintiff does not have to prove that he would have followed a given course of treatment. We are always, of course, free to refuse medical advice, and people regularly refuse treatment for various reasons. But the brain tumor plaintiff does not have to say what he would have done. Shapiro told The Daily Beast that most other cases do not determine what the actual plaintiff would have done, but rather what a “reasonable person” would have done. The burden on plaintiffs in wrongful birth cases “is unique, and is inconsistent with other types of malpractice cases,” she said. The plaintiff in the brain tumor case just has to prove that he would have had a greater than 50 percent chance of survival had the doctor diagnosed it at that MRI, and as a result now has a less than 50 percent chance of survival.
The Halls would far rather have sued for emotional distress. The original reasoning behind the inability for parents to sue for emotional distress seems to be that parents of children with disabilities often end up loving their kids anyhow. Of course this is true, but it hardly changes the fact that it can be extremely emotionally distressing to have a child diagnosed with severe disabilities, as those of us who adore our kids with disabilities will recognize all too well.
Sarah and Mark certainly have experienced emotional distress. Both of the Halls were working on their dissertations, but neither has finished. Therapies for Ellie take up far too much of their day. They stated repeatedly how lucky they are, and that things are not nearly as bad for them as for so many other people. The intensity of caregiving for Ellie, however, has put a strain on their friendships, professional lives, and marriage. Sarah said with a rueful wittiness, “I now say that I’m broken. Mark comes home and I say, ‘I’m broken right now, and Ellie broke earlier this afternoon. How are you?”
Parents of children with disabilities should not face a unique burden to redress their wrongs. Of course, negligence always requires proof of harm caused. Shapiro suggested that the “reasonable person” standard be used in such cases, although then the problem remains that the law still seems to state that someone’s very existence is harmful.
The harm should not be the child’s existence, but the parents’ emotional distress or lack of informed consent. No matter which way is chosen, it seems clear that not only do wrongful life and wrongful birth suits communicate a horrible and grossly false message about people with disabilities, they also put a patently unfair burden on parents.
*Names have been changed. ||||| DEARBORN, Mich. (WXYZ) - In a case of so-called "wrongful conception," an Oakland County woman is suing her doctor for the stress caused by an unplanned pregnancy.
Lori Cichewicz said her doctor was unable to perform a permanent birth control procedure on her in 2008 because he found her fallopian tubes were already blocked. She said he assured her she could not get pregnant, and told her she didn't need to take contraceptives.
Cichewicz gave birth to a child with Down Syndrome in April 2011.
"She’s full of life, loving, kind, sweet, everything you could ever imagine," Cichewicz described her daughter, Reagan, now five-years-old.
Cichewicz said Reagan is adored by her big brother and her father, Cichewicz's boyfriend.
But she said she is seeking damages for the emotional distress caused by the unplanned pregnancy. The 50-year-old mother said the thought of raising a child with special needs at her age, the added financial burden, and her doctor's broken promise all took an emotional toll.
“I’m older, I don’t know, will I see her graduate college? Will I see her go to college? Will I see her get married? Will I see her graduate high school? All this is going through my mind," Cichewicz said.
Tim Takala, Cichewicz's attorney, said the lawsuit seeks to keep Cichewicz's doctor accountable for his alleged misguidance that Cichewicz could not get pregnant and did not need to take contraceptives.
“That’s advice that misled Lori and caused her to go down and make a decision that she never should have had to make," Takala said.
Cichewicz said there was never any question whether she would have Reagan.
"I mean, I can’t imagine life without her now. When they say having a child with special needs is a gift, it’s a gift," she said.
When the case goes to trial sometime within the next few months, the jury will be able to consider the fact Cichewicz knew she would have a child with Down Syndrome.
Calls to Cichewicz' doctor and his attorney weren't returned Thursday. | – Sarah and Mark Hall (names changed) love their 3-year-old daughter, Ellie. Yet they recently sued for "wrongful birth," testifying that they would have aborted the pregnancy had they known Ellie would be born with a rare genetic disorder. People who file such lawsuits are often vilified, Elizabeth Picciuto explains in the Daily Beast, but they may have no other choice. In the Halls' case, they knew their daughter was at risk for one of two rare disorders, so Sarah had an amniocentesis at 16 weeks. Someone from the obstetrician's office misread the results, and told the Halls that Ellie would be a carrier, but not symptomatic. Instead, she was born with a rare disorder Picciuto will only refer to as "Syndrome Z." In cases like this, couples are left with few options—and in the Halls' case, their only option was to sue for wrongful birth. The healthcare worker didn't cause Ellie's disorder, so in order to win a lawsuit against the provider, the Halls had to prove the error caused harm—that is, they would not have proceeded with the pregnancy had they known the truth, and their lives have been adversely affected since they did proceed. As one expert notes, plaintiffs in other medical malpractice cases don't face quite the same burden; in most cases, all that matters is what a "reasonable person" would have done had they received the correct diagnosis, not what the specific plaintiff would have done. Because of the controversy surrounding wrongful birth lawsuits, they're difficult to win, one medical malpractice defense attorney says, adding that juries frequently say they disapproved of the parents in such cases—perhaps not understanding that the parents had no other path to compensation. "Who wants to say 'I wish this child wasn’t here'?" muses Sarah. In their case, the obstetrician's office admitted the mistake and will settle. Another couple recently filed a wrongful birth lawsuit in Chicago, the Sun-Times reports, claiming they were told their son's ultrasound showed no "fetal abnormalities," but he was born with dwarfism. (Click to read about another couple who was awarded $2.9 million in a wrongful birth suit.) |
The Queen’s neighbour at Balmoral had to flee his home as the raging River Dee swept away trees and a huge chunk of land at the rear of his ancient Abergeldie Castle.
When John Gordon looked out of his back door he saw just 5ft of dry land between him and the fearsome flood – where before there has been 60ft of ground stretching out to the to the river bank.
And like hundreds in nearby Ballater, devastated by last week’s flood, the 76-year-old Laird of Abergeldie had to leave in a hurry.
Mr Gordon, who is a friend of the Queen and rents out a portion of his sporting estate to the royal family for shooting and fishing, took refuge with a neighbour Gordon Fraser.
The 21st laird, Baron of Abergeldie, has now moved into a house on his estate.
But one neighbour said: “When the waters came up he had to get out quickly. The castle is teetering on the brink. God knows what will happen if the Dee rises any further.
“The castle is in imminent danger and John is at his wits’ end. It’s not only a home. It’s the heritage, the history.
“It’s an A-listed building so losing it would be a national tragedy.
“Nothing can be done while the river is in spate like it is. It’s just thundering down.
“It swept away and smashed the mature trees at the back of the house like match sticks. It also took 250ft of the bank away and all the ground at the back.
“The river is right at the back door. I’m sure the Queen will be in touch with her condolences. Prince Charles, who is at nearby Birkhall, will also pass on his sympathy no doubt.”
John Gordon’s family have had a close relationship with the royal family and the royals rented the four-floor tower house from 1848 until 1970.
Abergeldie Castle dates from the mid-16th century and was built by Sir Alexander Gordon of Midmar.
Meanwhile, the River Muick, which flows close to Prince Charles’s Birkhall Highland home before joining the Dee at Ballater, was in full spate.
It burst its banks close to the 18th century manor and the waters flooded a field beside the house, rising right up to the beech hedges which surround the property. ||||| The restoration of an ancient Spanish castle has been mocked by locals - as conservationists declared the work a "heritage massacre".
El Castillo de Matrera was built in the ninth century on a hill top in Cadiz, and has been a National Monument since 1949.
After it was badly damaged by rainfall three years ago, architects set about the job of renovating the historic structure.
But Spaniards vented their frustration after photographs of the restored building were released, which showed new materials had been used to stabilise what remained of the original building.
One man told Spain's La Sexta news channel: “They’ve got builders in rather than restorers and, as we say round here, they’ve cocked it up.”
The project has prompted comparisons with the attempt to restore a 19th century Ecce Homo fresco of Jesus Christ by an elderly Christian woman in 2012.
The new castle is being compared to this attempt at restoration by an elderly woman
Hispania Nostra, a Spanish cultural heritage organisation, described the results of the work on the castle as “absolutely terrible”.
A statement on the group's website said: “Foreigners have written to us saying they can’t understand why these follies – better described as heritage massacres – still go on.”
Architect Carlos Quevedo, who oversaw the restoration, defended his project - saying it met the goals that were set ahead of the project.
He also said it was against the law to "imitate" the castle, which explains the stark contrast between the original structure and the newly restored one.
“There were three basic aims,” he told the Guardian.
“To structurally consolidate those elements that were at risk; to differentiate new additions from the original structure – thus avoiding imitative reconstructions that are prohibited by the law; and to recover the volume, texture and tonality that the tower would originally have had." | – After more than 450 years overlooking Scotland's River Dee, Abergeldie Castle is on the verge of being washed away by it. Floodwaters have eaten away the riverbank in recent days and the 16th-century castle is now teetering on the edge, Discovery reports. John Gordon, the Baron of Abergeldie, was forced to flee his ancestral home over the weekend after the river burst its banks and took with it nearly 60 feet of land, leaving the castle just a few feet from the new riverbank, reports the Telegraph. The castle was built around 1550 in Aberdeenshire (per local lore, its dungeon was once occupied by an accused witch) and neighbors the Queen's Balmoral residence. Floods caused by severe weather took many people in the region—including the 76-year-old baron—by surprise. "When the waters came up he had to get out quickly," a neighbor tells the Press and Journal. "The castle is teetering on the brink. God knows what will happen if the Dee rises any further," the neighbor says. "The castle is in imminent danger and John is at his wits' end. It’s not only a home. It’s the heritage, the history." The baron has moved to another house on his estate while he waits to see what happens to the castle, which was left "overhanging a 12-foot drop" as the riverbank continued to erode on Monday, reports the Telegraph. (This potato billionaire's hilltop mansion will soon be gone.) |
(CNN) Jennifer Aniston is headed to the White House in an upcoming Netflix comedy film, and she's bringing her wife with her.
The streaming network on Friday announced Aniston and comedian Tig Notaro will team up for a comedy called "First Ladies." Aniston will play the first female President of the United States and Notaro will play the First Lady.
The description provided by Netflix says their characters, named Beverly and Kasey Nicholson, will "prove that behind every great woman... is another great woman."
Notaro and Stephanie Allynne ("One Mississippi") will write the script and produce.
Aniston is also a producer on the project, as is Will Ferrell.
Read More ||||| Jennifer Aniston and Tig Notaro will play the first same-sex couple to occupy the White House in the Netflix TV movie 'First Ladies.' (Photo: Getty Image)
Goodbye, House of Cards. Hello, First Ladies.
Netflix's first White House series is getting ready to retire its first couple (the sixth and final season premieres later this year, without Kevin Spacey). But the streaming network will inaugurate a new power political couple in First Ladies, an original movie to star Jennifer Aniston as the first female president and comedian Tig Notaro (One Mississippi) as her wife.
Notaro will also write the series along with Stephanie Allyne, her co-star and writing partner from One Mississippi, which was canceled by Amazon earlier this year. Aniston is a producer, as are Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.
No premiere date has been announced.
First Ladies is Aniston's second new TV project: She and Reese Witherspoon, who played her sister on Friends, are teaming for an Apple TV comedy that takes place behind the scenes of a morning news show. It's due later this year.
Notaro's latest stand-up comedy special debuts on Netflix May 22.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2GvW2Zf | – Jennifer Aniston and Tig Notaro are both headed for the White House in First Ladies, a new Netflix comedy film, reports USA Today. Aniston will play the president and Notaro will play the first lady. The characters, Beverly and Kasey Nicholson, will "prove that behind every great woman... is another great woman," says Netflix. Aniston, Will Ferrell, and Adam McKay have been attached to the project as producers. Notaro will co-write the script with Stephanie Allynne, from One Mississippi, reports CNN. Both stars are busy. Aniston is also working on a TV project with Reese Witherspoon that’s set behind the scenes of a morning news show. Notaro is appearing in a Netflix comedy special that airs May 22. |
Former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles led a mass resignation this week from the advisory board of the National Park System. He’s served on the board since 2010.
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As first reported by The Washington Post, Knowles submitted a resignation letter Monday to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. It’s also signed by eight others on the 12-member board. Knowles says he’s concerned the Department of Interior is undoing much of the progress made in recent years, without even listening to the merits.
“The department showed no interest in learning about or continuing to use the forward-thinking agenda of science, the effect of climate change, protections of the ecosystems, education,” Knowles said in a phone interview. “And it has rescinded NPS regulations of resource stewardship concerning those very things: biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change.”
Zinke issued an order last year freezing work on all advisory committees so the administration would review what they were doing. Knowles says the National Parks System Advisory Board is different because it was chartered by Congress. His term was due to end in May, along with most of the board members. Knowles says they requested meetings with the new team at Interior but were ignored for a year.
“If they don’t want to meet with us, fine. That’s their prerogative,” he said. “But we wanted to make a statement as a board as we left what our concerns are, because we don’t think they (the new policies) reflect the vast number of public that support the national park system.”
The press office of the Interior Department did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. ||||| CLOSE Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke joined California Gov. Jerry Brown on a visit to Paradise on Wednesday, saying it was the worst fire devastation he had ever seen. (Nov. 15) AP
Top Democrat on House Natural Resources Committee: Zinke is embroiled in ethics scandals and management failures. The least he can do is step down.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke at a committee hearing, Washington, D.C., May 10, 2018. (Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, AP)
Ryan Zinke needs to resign immediately as Secretary of the Interior.
I take no pleasure in calling for this step, and I have resisted it even as questions have grown about Mr. Zinke’s ethical and managerial failings. Unfortunately, his conduct in office and President Donald Trump’s neglect in setting ethical standards for his own Cabinet have made it unavoidable.
While the secretary continues to project confidence, questions have grown since the election about his future plans, and the White House fears that he would be unable to withstand scrutiny on Capitol Hill, according to The Washington Post.
Those fears are justified. Mr. Zinke has never even tried to offer an explanation for the sheer scope of his well-documented scandals.
This silence is insulting to the American people, and given the Nov. 6 election results it is unsustainable. Continuing in office as though nothing has changed only shows how little Mr. Zinke has learned over the past year-and-a-half. He holds his job as a public trust, not as a stepping stone to his further personal ambitions. He has abused that trust and damaged the Interior Department in the process. The least he can do is step down and give his successor a chance to begin reversing that damage.
Zinke is embroiled in scandals and nepotism
It’s worth recounting how far that abuse went on Republicans’ watch. As has been widely reported, an Interior Department inspector general investigation of Mr. Zinke — one of at least 17 publicly known formal probes of either him or his department since he took office — was recently referred to the Justice Department.
The referral centers on a land development project called 95 Karrow in Mr. Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana, involving David Lesar, the chairman of oil contractor Halliburton; his son John; and a Montana property developer named Casey Malmquist. The proposal would increase the value of land controlled by Mr. Zinke’s family.
I am the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Interior Department, and earlier this year I asked my staff to look into this relationship. They discovered that Mr. Zinke met with all three men on Aug. 3, 2017, in his office, then led them on a private tour of the Lincoln Memorial. Mr. Zinke's public calendar does not include the attendees of the meeting or of the Lincoln tour — we know about this only because Mr. Zinke’s scheduler mentioned it to him in a personal email.
When three of us on the committee publicized that finding in our call for an investigation of 95 Karrow, we had no idea where the facts would lead. The important thing to us was that Mr. Zinke not be allowed to treat his office as a source of personal enrichment. The fact that the Justice Department was alerted is Mr. Zinke’s fault, not the fault of the news media or anyone else whom his office has chosen to blame.
While a referral to Justice should not be taken lightly, the case against Mr. Zinke ultimately rests on much more fundamental grounds. Beyond his personal foibles, he has overseen the degradation of his department’s senior workforce in the name of enforcing loyalty to himself and the Trump administration; announced his intention to cut thousands of permanent positions; prompted mass resignations from a nonpartisan National Park Service advisory board by refusing to meet with members; and tied his own employees and aides in knots to make himself and his wife more financially comfortable.
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These are not the hallmarks of an effective leader. We would hardly look the other way at the mayor of a small town, let alone a Cabinet secretary, who faced unending ethical questions, formal investigations and substantiated claims of attempted nepotism.
His policy direction at Interior is equally unfortunate. He has overseen the dumbing down of science, often with a partisan edge. On his watch, rather than advancing their agencies’ multiple-use mission for public lands, many on staff spend their days relaxing environmental and permitting standards for fossil fuel companies. They are forced to remove mentions of humans’ climate change impacts from official reports.
They are instructed, above all, to make President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda the sole guiding principle of environmental policy, regardless of the consequences. That's even though the giveaways it entails are so extreme that the president of the pro-industry Western Energy Alliance once said that they exceeded even her funders’ wildest expectations.
Zinke scrutiny will only intensify if I'm chairman
As ranking member, I have sent dozens of unanswered letters seeking information about Interior Department policies and Mr. Zinke’s conduct. Should I chair the committee in January, as I hope to do, those questions will only intensify as part of my and my colleagues’ legitimate oversight duties. If Mr. Zinke stays, stonewalling in the belief that a Cabinet secretary answers only to the president will be a mistake.
Such scrutiny will extend to his successor, who should not be encouraged by Mr. Zinke’s example. Doing whatever you like and then leaving office a half-step ahead of a formal investigation is not public service, especially if you end up working for an industry you formerly regulated. The election results were about clean government as much as any particular policy choice, and the next Interior secretary will be watched as closely as the one before.
The American people need an Interior Department focused on addressing climate change, enhancing public recreation, protecting endangered species, and upholding the sovereign rights of Native American communities. These are not matters of personal preference — they are enshrined in law and supported by voters. The department needs someone accountable at the helm who believes in this mission.
Mr. Zinke is not that person. Federal agencies cannot function without credible leadership, and he offers none. He needs to resign.
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., is ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources. Follow him on Twitter: @RepRaulGrijalva
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/11/30/interior-secretary-ryan-zinke-must-resign-top-democrat-column/2139238002/ | – "I wish the National Park System and Service well." It's a goodbye, but not just any goodbye: They're parting words from the chair of the National Park System Advisory Board, who was one of nine members to suddenly resign in protest on Monday. The federally chartered board, which had numbered 12, is tasked with advising the secretary of the interior—Ryan Zinke, currently—on matters such as the designation of national historic and natural landmarks. But the Washington Post reports Zinke has declined to meet with them following a May decision to put committees on ice as his team reviews their function. "We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored," says chair Tony Knowles. Alaska Public Radio reports Knowles saw his board as somewhat singular, however, as it was chartered by Congress in 1935. The Post details other advisory bodies that remain at a standstill, among them two tied to the Bureau of Land Management. A member of one of those bodies, which focuses on the Rocky Mountain region, details some of the topics that are languishing: how to enact a fee bump in the area, and what to do about homelessness on federal lands. The terms of many of the exiting NPS board members were up in May, and Knowles says the desire was to "make a statement as a board as we left what our concerns are." Knowles outlines those concerns to the New York Times: that Zinke "appears to have no interest in continuing the agenda of science, the effect of climate change, pursuing the protection of the ecosystem.”" |
Meghan Markle may be the Duchess of Sussex, but she’s hardly a typical princess.
While arriving at the Royal Academy of Art in London to view the art exhibit “Oceania” on Tuesday in her first-ever solo outing, Meghan broke protocol in a subtle way.
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After shaking hands with one of her hosts for the evening, Meghan casually shut the car door and headed inside.
“First time I’ve seen an on-duty princess shut her own car door…” wrote one Twitter user.
The Sun‘s royal correspondent Emily Andrews added, “A princess who still takes the time to shut her car door. Well done Meghan!”
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Watch: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has arrived @royalacademy for her first solo royal outing — the opening of the Oceania exhibition #royal #meghanmarkle pic.twitter.com/HWSVbuy7RJ — Simon Perry (@SPerryPeoplemag) September 25, 2018
Meghan Markle Samir Hussein/WireImage
The move isn’t new for Meghan. In fact, she closed her own car door as a man held the door open for her mother, Doria Ragland, while arriving at Kensington Palace just last week for her first official palace luncheon in celebration of Together: Our Community Cookbook.
Watch: Meghan arriving at her lunch to launch the ‘Together’ cookbook — with mother Doria Ragland and Prince Harry 🎥 @Hannah_Furness pic.twitter.com/tdqk7sta8i — Simon Perry (@SPerryPeoplemag) September 20, 2018
Meghan, 37, proved she doesn’t mind helping out on her wedding day, when she pulled a romantic gesture as she and Prince Harry hopped in a Jaguar convertible to head to their evening reception. After Harry, 33, opened the door and helped his bride into the passenger seat, Meghan reached over to make sure his door was unlocked.
Markle, who identifies herself as a feminist on the Kensington Palace website, has long been a proponent of gender equality. The Suits actress worked with UN Women and advocated for girls around the world through her contributions to World Vision Canada.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle STEVE PARSONS/AFP/Getty Images
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry STEVE PARSONS/AFP/Getty
RELATED: The Special Meaning Behind Meghan Markle’s Black Dress for Her First Solo Appearance as a Royal
During the evening visit to the Royal Academy, Meghan toured artwork from New Zealand, Fiji, the Kingdom of Tonga and Australia — all of which she and Harry will visit next month — and met the exhibition’s curators and artists, as well as descendants linked to the works displayed. | – All eyes have been on Meghan Markle since her much-hyped nuptials to Prince Harry, with people commenting on what she wears, how they think she feels, and now—how she exits a car. The BBC and People report that the newest member of the royal family arrived Tuesday at London's Royal Academy of Arts to attend an art exhibit and, as is standard, someone opened the car door for her. What's not standard, apparently: that Markle then pushed the door shut behind herself. And the internet reacted, with responses ranging from laudatory—"Well done Meghan!" tweeted Sun columnist Emily Andrews—to sarcastic. "Because I was so inspired by Meghan Markle, as I left the house this morning I shut my own front door," one commenter snarked. An etiquette ace tells the BBC the royals typically have doors opened and shut for them not for "airs and graces," but for security reasons; it seems the person who opened the door in this case then stepped out of Markle's way so she could greet her host, and the duchess decided to just shut the door herself. It seems to not be the first time Markle's auto egress has raised eyebrows: She's believed to have also shut her own car door last week at the launch for a charity cookbook. |
North Korea’s foreign minister has said Donald Trump’s latest comments about the country amount to a declaration of war – as the war of words over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions continues to escalate.
“The whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country,” foreign minister Ri Yong-ho said from New York.
He added: “In light of the declaration of war by Trump, all options will be on the operations table of the supreme leadership of the [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea].”
The White House called the Foreign Minister's comments "absurd".
"We've not declared war on North Korea. Frankly, the suggestion of that is absurd," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.
Mr Trump appeared to threaten regime change in the country over the weekend, tweeting that Mr Ri “won’t be around much longer” if he continued to echo the thoughts of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Mr Ri told the UN General Assembly on Saturday that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable after “Mr Evil President” Trump called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission in his own UN address.
Responding to that, Mr Trump tweeted: “Just heard foreign minister of North Korea speak at UN If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”
North Korea releases animation which appears to show an attack on a US bomber
Leaving the UN on Monday, Mr Ri said that following the latest tweet his country now had “every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country”.
The day before, the US flew fighter jets close to North Korea’s east coast – the farthest north any US fighter plane has flown over the demilitarised zone this century, according to the Pentagon. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the flyover was intended as a message to North Korea that Mr Trump had many military options at his disposal.
“We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies,” said spokeswoman Dana White.
The Pentagon followed that up – in the wake of Mr Ri’s latest remarks – by saying that it would provide President Trump with options to deal with North Korea if its provocation continue. “If North Korea does not stop their provocative actions, you know, we will make sure that we provide options to the President to deal with North Korea,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning said.
Mr Ri’s comments echoed those of many in the Trump administration regarding North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear programme.
Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017
North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test earlier this month, and has reportedly developed missiles capable of reaching the US mainland. The country has repeatedly threatened to use its nuclear weapons on the US if provoked and has said it is preparing rockets to fire at the territory of Guam.
Mr Trump has responded to the situation by threatening to send “fire and fury” to North Korea if the threats did not cease. In his speech to the United Nations last week, Mr Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the country, and referred to Mr Kim as “Rocket Man”.
Mr Ri responded by saying that it was now “inevitable” that North Korea would target the US mainland with its rockets. The Foreign Minister has also called Mr Trump “a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency” who was trying to turn the UN into a “gangsters’ nest.”
Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb
6 show all Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb
1/6 Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images
2/6 North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty
3/6 A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images
4/6 North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images
5/6 A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters
6/6 A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters
Mr Kim took the highly unusual step of responding to Mr Trump’s UN speech himself, rather than releasing a statement from the regime through state-owned news channels. In his speech, Mr Kim said he would “surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire”.
North Korea recently launched two separate missiles over Japan, demonstrating their growing military capability. The UN has implemented increasingly stringent sanctions on the country, capping their oil imports, banning textile exports, and barring countries from giving work visas to North Korean citizens.
“Enough is enough,” US ambassador Nikki Haley told the UN Security Council earlier this month. “War is never something the United States wants. We don’t want it now. But our country’s patience is not unlimited.”
While China – North Korea’s largest trading partner – and Russia have both voted for the sanctions as part of the UN Security Council, both nations have called for a non-military solution. Mr Trump has repeatedly called on China to do more to rein in the regime in Pyongyang, while Beijing and Moscow have put forward a proposal that North Korea halt its nuclear programme in return for the US and South Korea stopping military drills that Pyongyang sees as a provocation.
Asked how concerned China was the war of words between Mr Trump and North Korea could get out of control, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang described the situation as highly complex and sensitive.
It was vitally important everyone strictly, fully and correctly implemented all North Korea related UN resolutions, Mr Lu said, resolutions which call for both tighter sanctions and efforts to resume dialogue.
All sides should “not further irritate each other and add oil to the flames of the tense situation on the peninsula at present”, Mr Lu told a daily news briefing.
Speaking to Theresa May by telephone, Chinese President Xi Jinping repeated Beijing’s position that the North Korean issue should be resolved peacefully via talks, state media said.
China hoped Britain can play a constructive role in easing the situation and pushing for a resumption in talks, Xi said. Ms May, like some other US allies, has pushed for China to do more on North Korea.
But it is clear that the international community at large is wary of the duelling statements being issued by both Pyongyang and Washington and the potential for a costly mistake.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned following Mr Ri’s remarks that a rise in rhetoric between North Korea and the United States increases the risk of miscalculations.
“Fiery talk can lead to fatal misunderstandings,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said. “The only solution for this is a political solution,” he added. ||||| News of the US president’s possible stop off at the DMZ comes as two B-1B bombers flew over the Korean peninsula in a show of US military might
Donald Trump could soon find himself confronting North Korean soldiers on the world’s most heavily armed border, amid reports that the president is considering a visit to the demilitarised zone (DMZ) during his forthcoming trip to South Korea.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the DMZ, which has separated the two Koreas since the end of their 1950-53 war, was among the candidate sites for Trump’s tour of Asia. He will also visit Japan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
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The report coincided with another US show of aerial strength in the region.
Two supersonic B-1B bombers flew over the Korean peninsula on Wednesday night, according to the US military. Two South Korean F-15K fighters, along with Japanese fighters, joined the drill after the bombers took off from Andersen airbase in Guam, the statement said. It was the first time Japan and South Korea had both joined US bombers on a nighttime combined exercise, it added.
The bombers carried out air-to-ground missile drills in waters off the east coast of South Korea, then repeated the drill over waters separating the South and China, the South Korean joint chiefs of staff said.
South Korea’s military described the exercise as a regular drill to bolster the country’s defences and demonstrate the strength of Seoul’s security alliance with Washington in the face of North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear tests.
US Air Force Major Patrick Applegate said: “Flying and training at night with our allies in a safe, effective manner is an important capability shared between the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea, and hones the tactical prowess of each nation’s aviators.
“This is a clear demonstration of our ability to conduct seamless operations with all of our allies anytime, anywhere.”
North Korea, however, views the drills as highly provocative, partly due to bitter memories of US bombing raids during the Korean war.
The White House sent a team of working-level officials to South Korea late last month to view possible sites for inclusion in Trump’s itinerary, Yonhap said, citing an unnamed South Korean defence source.
Trump was expected to send a strong message to North Korea, either verbally or “kinetically”, during his first trip to the peninsula as president, the source was quoted as saying. “[He] will likely do something like that and his aides are making the relevant preparations.”
If the visit goes ahead, Trump would probably spend time at the Panmunjom truce village and an observation post inside the DMZ, the source said. The White House has not commented on the reports.
The president would be following in the footsteps of Barack Obama, who peered at North Korea through binoculars during a visit to “freedom’s frontier” in 2012, and Bill Clinton, who described the 2.5-mile wide, 155-mile-long strip of land as the “scariest place on earth” when he visited in 1993.
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In April the US vice-president, Mike Pence, used an unannounced trip to the DMZ to declare that the “era of strategic patience with North Korea is over” as a North Korean soldier took his photograph from the other side of the demarcation line.
The DMZ
The land and maritime borders separating North and South Korea have been occasional flashpoints since the peninsula was split in two more than 60 years ago.
In 1976 two US army officers were hacked to death with their own axes during a confrontation with North Korean soldiers in the neutral joint security area. The area is strewn with landmines and guarded by heavily armed troops, although decades of human inactivity in the area have turned it into a notable nature reserve.
In March 2010 a North Korean torpedo sank the South Korean corvette Cheonan as it was sailing off the coast of Baengnyeong, an island just a few miles south of the border, killing 46 sailors. In November that year North Korea shelled the South Korean frontline island of Yeonpyeong, killing two soldiers and injuring civilians.
While the DMZ is a popular tourist attraction, Trump’s presence could be seen as particularly provocative by Pyongyang.
His itinerary would be likely to include a visit to the cluster of blue huts that stand directly on the military demarcation line, and where officials from North Korea and the US-led UN command have traditionally met for negotiations.
Given that the Korean war ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty, the North Korean guards and their South Korean counterparts – who are selected for their height and ability to carry off a particularly menacing taekwondo pose – are technically still at war.
Tourists are allowed to take photos of the soldiers on the other side but are instructed not to attempt to talk to them or gesture towards them.
The UN huts are unlikely to be used again anytime soon. In recent weeks Trump has dismissed the prospect of talks with North Korea.
On Monday he again tweeted his opposition to any form of engagement: “Our country has been unsuccessfully dealing with North Korea for 25 years, giving billions of dollars and getting nothing. Policy didn’t work!” | – In a move unprecedented in recent years, US Air Force bombers and fighter jets flew into international airspace east of North Korea on Saturday, Reuters reports. The Pentagon says it was the farthest north of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea the US has flown in the 21st century. “This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat,” Pentagon spokesperson Dana White says. The mission was revealed just before North Korea's Ri Yong Ho addressed the UN. The foreign minister told the UN that North Korea has successfully tested nuclear bombs that can be mounted to ICBMs and that Trump, who he called "president evil," is making a North Korean attack on the US "inevitable," CBS News reports. |
New recommendations for sugar, coffee and cholesterol consumption have been made in dietary guidelines released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with good news for coffee drinkers.
It's the first government update to the dietary guidelines in five years and has new guidelines for people who enjoy a daily cup of coffee, added sugar and cholesterol-laden foods.
"Protecting the health of the American public includes empowering them with the tools they need to make healthy choices in their daily lives," Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a statement today. "By focusing on small shifts in what we eat and drink, eating healthy becomes more manageable. The Dietary Guidelines provide science-based recommendations on food and nutrition so people can make decisions that may help keep their weight under control, and prevent chronic conditions, like Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease."
For the first time, the government gives a limit to the amount of added sugar that people should consume on a daily basis. The new guidelines recommend people make sure added sugars make up less than 10 percent of their daily calories. Previously, the government just recommended people "reduce the intake" of added sugars.
Coffee-lovers rejoice! The new guidelines mention coffee for the first time and advise that "moderate coffee consumption" can be part of a healthy diet.
But the guidelines say those who consume both caffeine and alcohol should avoid the substances at the same time. The caffeine may lead people to consume "more alcohol and become more intoxicated than they realize, increasing the risk of alcohol-related adverse events."
One of the biggest changes is the removal of a daily recommended limit for cholesterol. Previously, people were advised to consume less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol in their diet per day.
But the removal of a daily limit does not mean to go nuts with a cholesterol-heavy foods. The guidelines recommend people "eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible" while building a healthy diet.
While there was speculation that recommendations for maximum-advised sodium consumption would change, the dietary guidelines on that remain the same, with the recommendation that people 14 and older eat no more than 2,300 milligrams per day.
The five overarching guidelines will not be a surprise, with a focus on eating healthy by avoiding saturated fats, sodium and added sugars in favor of nutrient-dense foods. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
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Americans are killing themselves with very bad food choices, a panel of experts said Thursday.
New dietary guidelines for Americans should aim to get people to eat more vegetables, less fat and salt and to exercise more, the panel says. And they said people shouldn’t worry about cholesterol itself, which means an occasional egg should be all right.
The U.S. government issues new dietary guidelines every five years and enlists an independent panel of experts to advise on what they should be. The public gets 45 days to weigh in and then Health and Human Services Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture use the report as the basis for new guidelines to be issued by the end of the year.
For the most part, the new recommendations “reaffirm” the 2010 guidelines, the committee says in its 570-plus page report. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the U.S. diet. Some key differences are easing up the restrictions on cholesterol-rich foods and, for the first time, advising children and adolescents to avoid consumption of high-caffeine energy drinks.
The panel also urges the federal government to do more to get Americans to actually follow the recommendations.
“On average, the U.S. diet is low in vegetables, fruit and whole grains and too high in calories, saturated fat, sodium, refined grains and added sugars."
“On average, the U.S. diet is low in vegetables, fruit and whole grains and too high in calories, saturated fat, sodium, refined grains and added sugars,” the report reads.
Americans eat too little vitamin D, calcium, potassium and fiber and eat way too much fat and salt.
And these bad eating habits are making us sick.
“About half of all Americans—117 million individuals — have one or more preventable chronic diseases that relate to poor dietary patterns and physical inactivity, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and diet-related cancers,” the report says.
“More than two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children and youth are overweight or obese.”
None of this should come as news, but despite sustained and dedicated education campaigns, Americans still eat too much white flour and sugar, drink too many sugary soft drinks and eat too much animal fat.
“These devastating health problems have persisted for decades, strained U.S. health care costs, and focused the attention of our health care system on disease treatment rather than prevention. They call for bold action and sound, innovative solutions,” the report reads.
The panel doesn't say what those solutions should be. It'll take some research to figure out how to get through to Americans, says Dr. Alice Lichtenstein of Tufts University, one of the panel members. In past years it's clear people misread the messages, she told NBC News.
"We somehow got the word across better about what you should be eating more of instead of what you should be eating less of," Lichtenstein said. So many Americans ate less fat but stoked up on processed carbohydrates instead.
"We need to understand more about why people make food choices so we can move people more towards these guidelines that are evidence based," she said.
The report does suggest cutting back red and processed meat, something welcomed by the American Institute for Cancer Research. "There is convincing evidence that if Americans moderate their intake of red meat, processed meat and added sugar today, it will lead to fewer cancers tomorrow," said AICR's Susan Higginbotham.
The most widely leaked part of the report concerns cholesterol. As a specific nutrient, past guidelines have mistakenly focused too closely on cholesterol, the experts suggest.
“Previously, the dietary guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg a day,” the report says. The new report is dropping that recommendation. “Available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol,” it says.
And most Americans eat less than that already, Lichtenstein said.
But this is a tricky issue. Cholesterol itself is not found in very many foods -- mostly egg yolks, liver, and crustaceans such as shrimp and crab.
And it doesn't mean you can eat all the bacon and eggs you want. "No," said Lichtenstein. "Especially not the bacon."
“Water is the preferred beverage choice.”
Many foods can and do raise cholesterol and they should be limited. They include saturated fat, including the fat found in meat and dairy products as well as palm oil.
“Partially hydrogenated oils containing trans fat should be avoided,” the report says. And people should not replace fats with processed carbs.
Other recommendations:
The dangers of mercury and other heavy metals do not outweigh the benefits of eating fish
A little alcohol is OK but no one should start drinking alcohol if they don’t already
Up to 400 mg of caffeine —3 to 5 cups of coffee—are all right. Moderate coffee consumption may offer some protection against type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's, the panel suggests
Kids should avoid energy drinks
Eat less salt. Americans get an average of 3,478 milligrams a day, far above recommendations
“Water is the preferred beverage choice.”
Kids should exercise an hour a day and adults should exercise at least an hour and a half a week
The panel looked closely at caffeine, particularly with recent concerns about energy drinks and questions about coffee. “There doesn’t seem to be anything with coffee that causes concern," Lichtenstein said. "For decades we have been looking for something that is bad about it, but we haven’t really found that,” she says.
Unlike energy drinks, coffee contains phytochemicals -- natural plant products that have been increasingly shown to benefit health.
The report also talks about sustainable diets that make sure there is plenty of food for everyone now and in the future.
“A diet higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds and lower in calories and animal-based foods is more health-promoting and is associated with less environmental impact than is the current U.S. diet,” the report says. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Jan. 7, 2016, 11:58 AM GMT / Updated Jan. 7, 2016, 1:56 PM GMT By Maggie Fox
The federal government’s new dietary guidelines come out Thursday, after a year of arguments, lobbying and directives from Congress.
For the first time, the guidelines recommend limiting added sugar to 10 percent or less of calories.
They also recommend that people eat more fruit, vegetables and whole wheat and point out most Americans do not eat a healthy diet, are overweight and risk getting heart disease and other illnesses as a result.
The guidelines suggest cutting salt and saturated fat but stop short of telling people to eat less red or processed meat despite the strong evidence that both can cause cancer.
Not everyone will be happy with the final guidelines, which get rewritten every five years, but they are based on sound science, said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
“We want to make things easier and simpler for consumers,” Burwell told NBC News. “One of the things we are steering people to is small changes.”
Congress directed HHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stick to recommendations that are strongly supported by science. There’s overwhelming evidence that too much sugar causes diabetes, heart disease and weight gain, Burwell said.
“There’s a lot of added sugars in beverages,” Burwell said.
“The things that you need to be careful about are sodium, that added sugar and saturated fat”
Despite heavy lobbying by the food industry, the guidelines — which set the standard for federal food programs such as school lunches and food stamps — also recommend that most people get 2,300 mg of salt a day or less. The average American gets 3,400 mg a day, Burwell said — and that can lead to high blood pressure.
More than 90 percent of children and 89 percent of adults aged 19 and older eat too much sodium, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released coincide with the new guidelines.
“More than three quarters of sodium in the American diet is estimated to come from processed and restaurant food, which gives consumers little choice when it comes to lowering daily intake,” the CDC said. “A key strategy for lowering population-wide sodium intake is gradually reducing sodium in the food supply.”
Most people are not going to even be able to get down to consuming just 10 percent of calories from sugar or fat, the report says — not if they are going to fit in enough fruits, vegetables and whole grains, too.
In a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet, that means 200 calories from sugar. But a 12-ounce canned soft drink alone has 120-150 calories, all of them from sugar — and most food labels even don't tell people how many calories come from sugar.
"How do you convert grams of sugar to teaspoons?" asked NBC News Health and Nutrition editor Madelyn Fernstrom. "It’s not user-friendly at all."
Most Americans get enough protein now, the report says, and males usually get more than they need. What people need more of are vegetables, fruits and whole grains.
“The things that you need to be careful about are sodium, that added sugar and saturated fat," Burwell said.
And the report says consumers, policymakers, the food industry and others need to work together to help Americans eat healthier diets.
Burwell says new food labels coming out this year will help. The Food and Drug Administration plans to require sugar details on labels.
Congress delayed rules to force restaurants to list calorie counts on menus. Some local governments have their own rules; New York city now makes many restaurants list salt content on menus.
HHS and USDA walked a fine line in issuing the guidelines. They considered advice from nutrition and public health experts, food industry experts, farmers and politicians. HHS also considered 29,000 comments submitted by the public.
There are some changes from the recommendations made by a panel of experts almost a year ago. While the new guidelines mention that cholesterol in food isn’t necessarily harmful – it doesn’t directly raise blood cholesterol – they say people should eat as little cholesterol as possible.
“Often saturated fat and cholesterol do come together,” Burwell said. So if people cut saturated fat and sugar, their cholesterol should go down, studies have shown.
The new guidelines also say that caffeine and alcohol appear to be safe in limited amounts, but say no one should start drinking either if they do not do so already.
The report makes clear that Americans will have to change the way they eat to meet the guidelines.
“Today, about half of all American adults—117 million people—have one or more preventable, chronic diseases, many of which are related to poor quality eating patterns and physical inactivity,” Burwell and Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack say in an introduction to the report.
“Rates of these chronic, diet-related diseases continue to rise, and they come not only with increased health risks, but also at high cost.”
The guidelines also give three diet types to choose from: a typical American diet, a Mediterranean-style diet and a vegetarian diet.
They say a healthy eating pattern includes: ||||| New Dietary Guidelines Crack Down On Sugar. But Red Meat Gets A Pass
Enlarge this image toggle caption Morgan McCloy/NPR Morgan McCloy/NPR
With January comes lots of diet advice.
And today comes the official advice from the U.S. government: The Obama administration has released its much-anticipated update to the Dietary Guidelines.
The guidelines, which are revised every five years, are based on evolving nutrition science and serve as the government's official advice on what to eat.
One concrete change: Americans are being told to limit sugar to no more than 10 percent of daily calories.
As we've reported, lots of Americans consume up to 22 teaspoons a day. To meet the new 10 percent target, they'd need to cut their sugar intake by nearly half — to no more than 12 teaspoons a day on a 2,000-calorie daily diet.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Morgan McCloy/NPR Morgan McCloy/NPR
Over the past five years, a growing body of evidence has linked high levels of sugar consumption to an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, even among Americans who are not overweight or obese.
Much of the dietary advice included in the new guidelines will sound very familiar and remains unchanged from 2010. For instance, there's a focus on consuming more fruits and vegetables, more fiber and whole grains, and less salt.
Top administration officials within the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, who were tasked with writing the guidelines, decided not to include some of the recommendations made by a Dietary Guidelines advisory panel that reviewed the latest nutrition science.
For instance, the advisory committee had recommended including sustainability as a factor in making food choices. But administration officials nixed that idea.
The committee had also advised telling Americans to cut back on red and processed meats. But that recommendation sparked a vigorous challenge from the meat industry, and the final dietary guidelines do not include any specific advice to cut back on these sources of protein.
The recommendation "was certainly controversial," says Tom Brenna, a nutrition professor at Cornell University and member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
"The red and processed meat recommendation, I think, has morphed a bit into a different kind of message," Brenna tells us. "A little bit like turning a coin over, in a sense, where if you eat less red meat, one is eating more of other protein foods."
Instead, the guidelines emphasize a "shift towards other protein foods" — including more nuts and seeds and about 8 ounces of seafood per week, based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.
Teen Boys And Adult Men Are Eating Too Much Meat Consumption of meats, poultry and eggs in the United States, by gender and age
The suggestion to limit meat intake comes in more subtle form. For instance, the guidelines point out that many teen boys and adult men consume more than the recommended 26 ounces a week of protein from animal sources, so they should "reduce overall intake of protein foods by decreasing intakes of meat, poultry, and eggs."
There's also an overall recommendation — unchanged from 2010 — to reduce saturated fat intake to less than 10 percent of daily diet, a shift that could, in practice, require limiting intake of red meat.
"The message to eat more seafood, legumes and other protein foods really does mean substitute those for red meat," Brenna says. "So I think the message is more or less there, it's just not as clear."
That message to cut the red meat should have been stated more directly, says Barry Popkin, a nutrition researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "I am disappointed that the USDA once again is cutting out recommendations to truly limit red meat intake," he tells us in an email.
The other major change to the government's nutrition advice: dietary cholesterol. The new guidelines drop a longstanding recommendation to limit cholesterol from foods to 300 milligrams a day.
As Alice Lichtenstein, vice chairwoman of the the expert panel that advised the government on the guidelines, told us last February, there isn't strong evidence that limiting cholesterol-rich foods lowers the amount of artery-clogging LDL cholesterol that ends up in the blood.
The guidelines also call on Americans to cut sodium to no more than 2,300 milligrams per day. Most of us consume far more — about 3,440 milligrams daily on average — much of it in the form of foods like pizzas, soups, breads and cured meats.
The Dietary Guidelines have clear implications for federal nutrition policy, influencing everything from the national school lunch program to the advice you get at the doctor's office. But they are written for nutrition professionals, not the general public.
Indeed, one has to wonder whether most Americans are even listening. As the Dietary Guidelines report points out, three-fourths of Americans don't eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. In some age groups (think teens), the percentage of people following the guidelines is in the single digits. | – You can relax your grip on that cup of java: "Moderate coffee consumption" can be part of a healthy diet, according to new federal dietary guidelines released Thursday. In fact, three to five cups is apparently just fine, notes the Los Angeles Times. The guidelines emphasize veggies, fruits, and whole grains, include the first daily limit for added sugars, and remove a daily limit on cholesterol, reports ABC News. Some highlights: To cut your risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, limit added sugars to less than 10% of your daily calories. That's no more than 12 teaspoons with a 2,000-calorie diet, per NPR. Previous guidelines recommended people consume less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day. That recommendation is now gone, with researchers less worried about the effects of eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods. Still, the guidelines suggest we "eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible." The recommendation on sodium stays the same. Those 14 and older should eat no more than 2,300 milligrams per day. Most people consume far more. Don't mix caffeine and alcohol. The combination may make people drink "more alcohol and become more intoxicated than they realize, increasing the risk of alcohol-related adverse events." Though an advisory panel suggested Americans should limit red and processed meats, the guidelines don't go that far. But they do say people should eat more lean meats, eggs, nuts, seeds, and seafood for protein, per NBC News. "Essentially, the new guidelines nudge US nutritional policy toward a traditional Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes consumption of fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes drenched in such fat sources as olive, nut, canola and soybean oils," writes Melissa Healy of the Times. |
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau walk to Rideau Hall for swearing-in last Nov. 4. ( Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
It may well have been politically unwise for Sophie Grégoire Trudeau to publicly raise her need for more staff to help organize her public engagements in an interview with a Quebec City newspaper this past week. A high-profile woman seen to be asking for more help clearly leaves herself open to criticism. But the instant, often spiteful reaction from both social media and other politicians who should know better smacks of ignorance about the requirements of the role the prime minister’s wife has taken on. This should not be a debate about Grégoire Trudeau’s privileged position. Comparing her problems to those of day-to-day working women amounts to a kind of faux populism that ducks the real questions. Instead, the focus should be on what we expect of the spouse of our prime minister, and the opportunities her role affords to represent Canada and promote important causes. Seen like that, the answer is clear: she should have the help she needs to carry out the work that Canadians want her to do. If that means an extra staff member to organize her appearances and correspondence, then she should have it.
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It should come as no surprise that the demands on her are greater than those on previous PMs’ wives. Justin Trudeau is riding a wave of popularity that extends to his entire family, especially his wife. The Prime Minister’s Office says she’s been deluged with requests to appear at events and lend her support to all kinds of causes. That’s why she made the plea for extra help, in addition to the single assistant the PMO now employs on her behalf. “I’d like to be everywhere but I can’t,” she told Le Soleil. “I have three children and a husband who is Prime Minister. I need help.” The Conservatives say she should just suck it up, and asking for help amounts to wanting to do more “self-promotion” at taxpayers’ expense. That kind of rhetoric may play well with people who just don’t like the Trudeaus, but the opposition parties are taking the low road when they make the role of the prime minister’s wife a partisan issue.
It should be noted that Grégoire Trudeau is not asking for another employee to lessen her workload, but to increase it. She lamented that because she doesn’t have enough staff she is forced to make difficult choices about who she can help. In other words, she wants to do more in a role that is, after all, unpaid. There are many precedents for this. PM’s wives have taken on various roles, depending on their personalities and popularity. All had at least one assistant to help with public duties. Mila Mulroney had three staffers and an office in the Langevin Block across from Parliament Hill. Is it any surprise that someone in as much demand as Grégoire Trudeau should find that one aide is not enough? She has taken on a high-profile role, partly because she wants to and partly because Canadians want her to. She draws attention and donations when she speaks on behalf of aboriginal and girls education, and to raise awareness about bulimia and anorexia. Her work raises the profile of Canadian arts and fashion around the world. Nor is Grégoire Trudeau taking on all this simply to polish her husband’s reputation. Even in 2005, when she joined the entertainment program eTalk as a Quebec correspondent, she said she was looking forward to “reporting on Canada’s French and English stars who support social causes and bring about positive change.” Now that she’s in a high-profile position herself, she’s making it her work to bring about change. It’s quite true that the prime minister’s wife does not have a formal role, as the First Lady does in the United States. But the reality is that Canadians increasingly expect the PM’s spouse to play a significant public role. Ignoring that would be disrespectful to those seeking her help, and would squander an opportunity to do good work. Opposition politicians should watch to make sure all this doesn’t get out of control. But they should stop playing politics with this issue and support Grégoire Trudeau’s modest request for more help to do a job on behalf of all Canadians.
Read more about: ||||| A common theme in all the carping and snarking about Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is that she has NO official role, and NO official duties — that she's a "stay-at-home mom," and therefore she should pay for her help the way everybody else has to.
Well, first of all, she hasn't asked for any more help to take care of her kids.
As for her not having any official duties, yes, that's technically true; there is actually only one government spouse in Ottawa with official duties, and that's the Governor General's wife, who gets to call herself Her Excellency, and act as consort to the representative of Canada's head of state, cutting ribbons and greeting important guests and so forth.
Now, quick: Name the Governor General's wife.
The reason you probably can't is that Sharon Johnston, while no doubt a lovely, public-spirited woman, is not a tall poppy.
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is. And a lot of Canadians just can't stand a tall poppy.
Sophie Trudeau has NO official duties. She's a stay-at-home Mom with a driver, chef, two nannies and cleaning staff. https://t.co/ajwK749nQL — @Banks_Todd
If Sophie Trudeau wants a larger staff to help w/her responsibilities, kids & job, other working moms shouldn't have to pay for it. #cdnpoli — @paigemacp
Tall poppies stick out because they're really smart, or really rich, or talented and famous, or, as Derek Zoolander would put it, "really really really good looking."
In the United States, people love tall poppies. The average American looks at a tall poppy and says: "I want to be like that."
In Canada, we look at tall poppies and cluck and disapprove and fervently hope somebody takes them down a peg or two. Who do they think they are, anyway?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau were featured in the January issue of Vogue. (Norman Jean Roy/Vogue)
After Grégoire Trudeau told a Quebec newspaper she needs more than the one staffer she has to cope with her new workload, Conservative MP Candice Bergen called it "hypocrisy," and managed to blame the prime minister.
The NDP called it a "troubling pattern" of using the public dime for support ordinary Canadians aren't provided.
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, sniffed her critics, is just out of touch with the common Canadian.
Well, please.
I don't pay much attention to Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, but I know she's amazingly popular, and I understand why.
She puts her hand over her heart, and she empathizes, and she's very pretty, and open about her own shortcomings, and seems determined to help young girls navigate a fragile time of life and grow into mature, accomplished women.
Her cause is women's empowerment, with a corollary of bulimia and eating disorders, something she herself once overcame.
She talks about her personal problems, and she breaks into song in public, and appears in Vogue doing that forehead-touching thing with her husband.
This drives conservatives nuts, but it made her a sensation in America. First lady Michelle Obama pronounced her a "soulmate." (Being a sensation in America is also frowned on by a segment of Canadians.)
Michelle Obama called Sophie Grégoire Trudeau a 'soulmate.' (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
It's also made her a super-hot ticket for charities here at home.
The Prime Minister's Office says she gets 50 to 60 requests a week to appear at some worthy event or other: speak at our commencement, act as our patron, speak at our fundraiser, use your blazing fame to help us….please.
And she does. She tries to answer all the invitations with a yes or a no, because it is simply not possible to accept them all.
She tries to make speeches that don't mail it in, and if you've ever made a speech, you know the time and effort that takes.
Her work requires flying around, which can be exhausting, and staying in hotels, which gets old really fast.
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau sings a song she wrote at a City of Ottawa event to mark Martin Luther King Day. (CBC)
But here's the thing: She does it for free. She could just as easily say, "Yeah, OK, listen, no. I'm off to teach a yoga class and play with my kids."
She could, as Aline Chrétien did and Olive Diefenbaker before that, remain quietly in the background. It'd sure be a lot less work.
But she doesn't, and all she's asking is for an extra staffer or two to cope with the sheer volume of supplicants – who, let's not forget, are Canadian taxpayers with expectations.
The last prime ministerial spouse as famous and as in-demand as Sophie Grégoire Trudeau was Mila Mulroney, who put her brains, beauty and glamour to much the same use. Her cause was cystic fibrosis, particularly in children.
Her husband gave her an office, and three staff, which also caused a big uproar (except from Conservatives, who seemed to think it was a good idea).
Mila Mulroney put her brains, beauty and glamour to much the same use as Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. Her cause was cystic fibrosis, particularly in children. (Ron Poling/Canadian Press)
"It was almost like being in a cabinet minister's office, in terms of workload and requests from the public," says Bonnie Brownlee, who for years was Mila Mulroney's majordomo and now works for the CBC.
"I can't think of an ethnic festival we didn't attend. Graduating classes, lots of medical stuff, 4-H clubs, women's associations, just everything you can imagine. The amount of correspondence alone was incredible."
And, like Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, Mila Mulroney never made a cent from it: "It's kind of a public mission," says Brownlee, who, incidentally, thinks Grégoire Trudeau is doing a crackerjack job and wishes her well.
Brownlee thinks Grégoire Trudeau has a remarkable opportunity to make a difference: "It's contribution to public service. It's volunteerism."
And she's doing it. Good for her. If she needs a few more staff, fine. It's at least as good a use for public money as, say, the business of the Senate. ||||| © Joshua Roberts/REUTERS Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau, wife of Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, sits during a State Dinner at the White House in Washington March 10, 2016.
The wife of Canada’s prime minister has sparked a fierce national debate after saying she needs more help to expand her official role and take on more public duties.
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau last week told a French-language newspaper that she wanted to do more, but struggled with just one staff member.
Grégoire Trudeau, a former TV presenter married to Justin Trudeau, has no office and reportedly answers official correspondence from her dining table.
“I’d love to be everywhere but I can’t,” she told Le Soleil. “I have three children and a husband who is prime minister. I need help. I need a team to help me serve the people.”
Grégoire Trudeau said she received regular requests from charities to promote their causes, but she could not respond to them all without an extra hand.
“It’s hard to choose, because it’s touching when people ask for your help. People really lay out their suffering in some of the letters I receive.”
The statement prompted howls of outrage from opposition politicians, who accused her of being out of touch and noted that the previous first lady coped with just one aide.
“Hearing statements like that certainly does not speak to the reality that Canadian women face and the kind of struggles that, you know, that they’re undertaking day in, day out,” opposition MP Niki Ashton said.
“Certainly the kind of statements we heard from the prime minister’s wife, you know, speak to that disconnect with the reality that Canadian women face.”
The prime minister’s office said it was looking in to hiring a second staffer for the first lady.
Meanwhile, Twitter users likened Grégoire Trudeau to Kim Kardashian and started the hashtag #prayforSophie.
Yes, you've reached the office of Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. To which assistant may I direct your call? #PrayForSophie pic.twitter.com/bi5xPWkyQt — Cat Cdn Poli (@CatCDNPoli) May 14, 2016
I don't have enough hired help to get through my day either. I sympathize with you, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. #JeSuisSophie — Andrew Lawton (@AndrewLawton) May 12, 2016
We should have a telethon to raise money to get Sophie Trudeau the help she needs. #PrayForSophie #SophieStrong pic.twitter.com/IyUJDDwUs9 — Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) May 12, 2016
The role of “first lady” has no real formal status in the Canadian system, but the prime minister’s wife traditionally gets support in performing official activities, a point that was made by supporters of Gregoire Trudeau.
The Toronto Star newspaper ran an editorial on Sunday titled: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau should have all the help she needs to fulfill her role.
“The instant, often spiteful reaction from both social media and other politicians who should know better smacks of ignorance about the requirements of the role the prime minister’s wife has taken on,” it said.
CBC News suggested the first lady was targeted because she was a “tall poppy”, something Canadians abhor.
Grégoire Trudeau herself has not commented on the furore.
But some on Twitter suggested the hounding of Gregoire Trudeau was not just about politics, but sexism, while an open letter to the first lady of Facebook noted “society seems to have a problem when women ask for help”. ||||| Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is coming under fire for publicly requesting additional staff to fulfill her public duties as the Prime Minister’s wife, even as millions of Canadian women struggle to balance their professional and personal lives.
“Statements like that really speak to a disconnect,” said NDP MP Niki Ashton. “The focus should be on what Canadian women face on a daily basis and how the federal government can support Canadian women.”
Ms. Ashton added that the Trudeau family has access to taxpayer-funded help at home, including two nannies, while millions of Canadians struggle with daycare costs.
Ms. Grégoire Trudeau has one assistant who helps her with her public duties, including co-ordinating her public appearances and going through the correspondence that she receives. Still, she said earlier this week that she can’t cope with the current demands on her time.
“I’d like to be everywhere, but I can’t,” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau said in an interview with Quebec City daily newspaper Le Soleil. “I have three children at home and a husband who is Prime Minister. I need help. I need a team to help me serve people.”
The Conservatives said it’s up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to explain any additional resources that would be provided to his wife, while adding that Laureen Harper fulfilled her duties with only one assistant.
“It is really the hypocrisy of Mr. Trudeau at this point, always wanting more to do self-promotion, to do vanity trips,” said Conservative MP Candice Bergen. “That is where a lot of Canadians would question more [staff].”
Ms. Bergen said Ms. Harper was well known for doing “more with less,” and said the Liberals should try to do the same.
The Prime Minister’s Office said it is aware of the growing needs of Ms. Grégoire Trudeau and is looking at ways to assist her and her sole staffer, Natalie St-Denis. PMO officials currently provide additional assistance, such as accompanying Ms. Grégoire Trudeau to events when Ms. St-Denis can’t attend.
However, there is a growing sense the current system cannot be sustained, given the personal popularity of Ms. Grégoire Trudeau, who has garnered international attention alongside Mr. Trudeau.
“Madame Grégoire Trudeau continues to receive an extraordinarily high volume of correspondence and invitations. We are continuing to look at new ways to make sure she is supported at official events she is attending and to make sure correspondence from Canadians across the country and invitations are triaged and answered in a timely manner,” said PMO spokesman Olivier Duchesneau.
A precedent was set by Mila Mulroney, who had an office at the Langevin Block, in front of the Parliament Buildings, and at least three staff working with her at one point.
Ms. Grégoire Trudeau has promoted Canadian designers with her fashion choices at public events, but she is also the voice for a number of causes, including promoting the health and self-esteem of young women.
“It’s hard to choose, because it’s touching when people ask for your help. People really lay out their suffering in some of the letters that I receive. I tell myself: ‘I’ll try to send a message that will reach as many people as possible,’” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau told Le Soleil.
The Conservatives rejected the assertion by Liberals that Ms. Grégoire Trudeau has to deal with more correspondence and public events than Ms. Harper.
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POLITICS BRIEFING
By Chris Hannay (@channay)
Few political issues in recent weeks seem to have resonated in non-political circles as much as the issue of Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s assistants. Ms. Grégoire Trudeau said last week that the mountain of correspondence she receives and her work promoting various causes and speaking to charitable organizations is becoming too demanding for her and her assistant, and so the Prime Minister’s Office was looking at ways to get her additional help. Opposition MPs, of course, said this was evidence of a “disconnect” between the Trudeaus and average Canadians (a theme espoused by the National Post’s Robyn Urback, who said it was “off-message” for a party concerning itself with the middle class.) Others have said, because Canada hasn’t historically had a “first lady,” it doesn’t need one now.
The Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick made the case that this is debate is really about what people think about Ms. Grégoire Trudeau, and not about the staffing itself.
But for an outside perspective – and one that many Canadian parents may be sympathetic to – it’s worth considering the view of Chatelaine editor Christina Vardanis. “By speaking openly about the challenges she faces as a working mother of three, she spurs a necessary conversation about the enormous strain on working families, lets other women know it’s okay to speak up when they need help and could even inspire demand for better resources and infrastructure. Just because she has financial resources doesn’t mean she’s immune to the intense stress a job or family circumstances can bring.”
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW IN OTTAWA
> The Liberals will introduce legislation this week to extend protections to transgender Canadians. Justin Trudeau is set to make the announcement later today.
> Finance Minister Bill Morneau meets with his team of economic advisers in Chelsea, Que., today.
> The Liberals are also looking at giving new powers to the information commissioner – and giving cabinet the power to block release of those documents if it wishes.
> Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose spent the weekend in the Maritimes to try to “earn back” the trust of Atlantic Canadians, after the Liberals swept the region last October.
> Maxime Bernier and Michael Chong became the second and third candidates, respectively, for the leadership of the Conservative party, after Kellie Leitch. Mr. Chong says he is putting a strong emphasis on reforming our democratic institutions, while Mr. Bernier says he’s learned his lessons from his short time as foreign affairs minister. “What I learned is very simple,” he said. “Being more cautious with confidential documents.”
> In other leadership news, the New Democrats will elect a replacement for Tom Mulcair in the fall of 2017.
> Senator Patrick Brazeau opened up to the Ottawa Citizen about his darkest hour, when he tried to take his own life earlier this year.
> Lifeline Syria, one of the most prominent groups resettling Syrian refugees in Toronto, has had its executive director and half of its board quit.
> And from pieces of mannequins to Harry Potter gear, all the odd items for sale on the Canadian government’s version of eBay.
REGIONAL ROUNDUP
> Ontario: The province will spend $7-billion over four years on a massive climate plan that will touch on all aspects of residents’ lives. The plan is so sweeping, some sources say it’s causing tensions between Environment Minister Glen Murray and his cabinet colleagues.
> Manitoba: The legislature kicks off its first session since the election with a Speech from the Throne this afternoon.
> Nova Scotia: The four Atlantic premiers are set to meet in Annapolis Royal today to talk about how to get more funding from the federal government for health care in the region.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Campbell Clark (Globe and Mail): “You have to think there’s a better way [to craft the assisted-dying legislation]. This is literally a matter of life and death, a change to criminal law to deal with the difficult issues of grievous suffering and end of life. But collectively, parliamentarians have shown they tend to dodge these uncomfortable, divisive issues.” (for subscribers)
David McLaughlin (Globe and Mail): “Considering how to change voting systems isn’t new in Canada. But five provinces that did this each took about two years to do it, not six months. Each proposed a two – or three-step process involving the legislature, independent commissions or citizen assemblies and in four cases, a referendum. The Liberal majoritarian plan is a marked departure.”
Barrie McKenna (Globe and Mail): “The Liberals are absolutely right to stop tilting the balance even further in favour of [small business]. It’s bad tax policy that’s expensive and sends all the wrong signals to business owners. The government would be wise to go a step further and end the preference altogether.” (for subscribers)
Toronto Star editorial board: “After six months as Canada’s top diplomat, [Stéphane] Dion is starting to give the impression that his pragmatism knows no bounds. There’s reason to worry he’s erring in the opposite direction: too much responsible, not enough conviction.”
Dan Leger (Halifax Chronicle Herald): “Referendum or no referendum, the Liberals should not be able to set the rules and then capitalize on their current popularity to dominate the process to their own narrow partisan advantage.”
Welcome to the Globe Politics newsletter! Let us know what you think.
Report Typo/Error ||||| The Prime Minister’s Office is exploring various options – including hiring a second staffer – after Sophie Grégoire Trudeau publicly complained she is struggling to deal with the workload that comes with her duties, federal officials told The Globe and Mail.
Speaking in Quebec City earlier this week, Ms. Grégoire Trudeau bluntly said she and her current assistant can’t manage the number of demands that come from being a high-profile, bilingual and much sought-after speaker. Various groups and charitable organizations regularly invite Ms. Grégoire Trudeau to promote their causes, but the constant requests are proving impossible to address under current circumstances, she said.
“I’d like to be everywhere, but I can’t,” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau said in an interview with daily newspaper Le Soleil. “I have three children at home and a husband who is Prime Minister. I need help. I need a team to help me serve people.”
She added that with one staffer, she cannot respond to everyone who contacts her. “We want to modernize the system that allows us to serve the people, because people want us to modernize it.”
The PMO told The Globe and Mail that it is aware of the growing needs of Ms. Grégoire Trudeau and is looking at ways to assist her and her sole staffer, Natalie St-Denis.
To this point, PMO officials informally provide additional assistance, such as accompanying Ms. Grégoire Trudeau to events when Ms. St-Denis can’t attend.
However, there is a growing sense the current system cannot be sustained, given the personal popularity of Ms. Grégoire Trudeau, who has garnered international attention alongside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Madame Grégoire Trudeau continues to receive an extraordinarily high volume of correspondence and invitations. We are continuing to look at new ways to make sure she is supported at official events she is attending and to make sure correspondence from Canadians across the country and invitations are triaged and answered in a timely manner,” said PMO spokesman Olivier Duchesneau.
Still, the Liberals are not looking at replicating the American model, where the White House includes a formal Office of the First Lady, Mr. Duchesneau said.
Mr. Trudeau’s office is treading carefully, given questions about the cost of the services offered to the Trudeau household, including two nannies who sometimes travel with the couple’s children.
The PMO has said Mr. Trudeau is using the same budget for household help as his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper. However, Liberal officials said Ms. Grégoire Trudeau receives much more correspondence than Laureen Harper, which explains the potential need for additional administrative help.
A precedent was set by Mila Mulroney, who had an office at the Langevin Block, in front of the Parliament Buildings, and at least three staff working with her at one point.
Ms. Grégoire Trudeau has promoted Canadian designers with her fashion choices at public events, but she is also the voice for a number of causes, including promoting the health and self-esteem of young women.
“It’s hard to choose, because it’s touching when people ask for your help. People really lay out their suffering in some of the letters that I receive. I tell myself: ‘I’ll try to send a message that will reach as many people as possible,’” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau told Le Soleil.
She said she is also fighting against the fact that people often tend to see her solely as Mr. Trudeau’s wife, arguing society needs to evolve and respect the decisions that professional women make for their families. Ms. Grégoire Trudeau is a former television journalist.
Ms. Grégoire Trudeau said her mother, who stopped working as a nurse after she was born, didn’t become less intelligent or interesting because she decided to stay at home.
“There is always a price to pay, but the price shouldn’t be as high,” Ms. Grégoire Trudeau said of finding a balance between work and family.
Ms. Grégoire Trudeau was not available to comment on staffing issues to The Globe on Wednesday.
Report Typo/Error ||||| Candian prime minister draws ridicule for being too politically correct, though it may have been lighthearted sarcasm
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has come under fire for “mansplaining” and being too politically correct after he interrupted a woman and lightheartedly corrected her for saying “mankind” not “peoplekind” at a town hall event in Canada on Friday.
His correction came at the conclusion of a longwinded question from anaudience member that, over the course of three minutes, included a discussion of her church and the special power of “maternal love”.
Justin Trudeau tells Davos: tackle inequality or risk failure Read more
The questioner ended by asking Trudeau to look at laws surrounding the charitable status of religious organisations, saying , “maternal love is the love that’s going to change the future of mankind”. To which Trudeau said: “We like to say ‘peoplekind’, not necessarily ‘mankind’, because it’s more inclusive.”
His comments have drawn ridicule from conservative media who have seized on them to accuse him of “virtue signalling”, being too politically correct and for “mansplaining”, a term coined by a feminist author and popularised by feminist discourse.
The Australian conservative commentator Rita Panahi said Trudeau’s use of “peoplekind” was an attempt to “appease those desperate to find offence where none exists”.
Fox News dedicated a segment to the controversy, enlisting the help of Jordan Peterson, a Canadian professor who has found fame after arguing against “political correctness”, especially the use of preferred pronouns.
However, some have suggested that the rightwing furore surrounding his comments has been manufactured in bad faith.
Daniel Dale, Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, said that the “pile-on” was misleading as Trudeau was “lightly ribbing a woman who was rambling about the power of women” and accused it of omitting important context.
Daniel Dale (@ddale8) The US-right-wing pile-on re Trudeau's "peoplekind" is pretty misleading.
He was lightly ribbing a woman who was rambling about the power of women, "God the Mother," and how the world needs womanly love. Fox excluded her response to him: "There you go, exactly. Yes. Thank you." pic.twitter.com/Wl4QIumWrA
The woman did indeed thank the prime minister for his correction and Trudeau allowed her a considerable time to speak.
The prime minister has made comments in the past that have come under fire for their seeming facetiousness. ||||| President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be having a bromance, but now their spouses are "soulmates."
First lady Michelle Obama and Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau held an event together on Thursday morning to promote girls' education around the world.
And it seems they are more than getting along.
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Ms. Obama introduced Ms. Grégoire-Trudeau as "my soulmate right now."
"We've already gotten into trouble," she joked.
The first lady praised the Prime Minister's wife as a funny, beautiful role model who is a wonderful mother of three kids, including one "delicious" one, referring to youngest son Hadrien's curly hair.
"Sophie's a very passionate advocate for women and girls," Ms. Obama said, as Ms. Grégoire-Trudeau looked on.
While their husbands were in the Oval Office, their spouses attended the Let Girls Learn event at the United States Institute for Peace, before meeting up for a luncheon at the State Department hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry.
The Let Girls Learn program seeks to empower girls around the world, funding projects that help young women get an education. Ms. Obama said 62 million girls around the world are not in school.
"Canada truly understands that gender equality and gender empowerment is a priority," Ms. Grégoire-Trudeau told the crowd, made up of special visitors, Girl Scouts and members of Girls Inc., a non-profit organization.
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She told the audience that they are the leaders not of tomorrow – but of today.
"You be fearless, because you already are fearless," she said.
The two women were greeted by students in the French-immersion program at Virginia's Kent Gardens Elementary School, who serenaded them with French songs before the event.
"It almost feels like home," Ms. Grégoire-Trudeau said.
Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes, who was in the crowd, said it's important for Ms. Grégoire-Trudeau to play an active role in the public eye.
"She has a role to play in our democracy, and I'm very glad that she's out there and she's being more present, and more accessible," Ms. Caesar-Chavannes said.
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"I think that when young girls see that, and young women see that, they are inspired to do bigger and better and dream beyond what they possibly could dream about."
The Prime Minister's Office also revealed the gifts the Trudeaus gave to the Obamas: a sculpture for the President from Cree artist Leo Arcand, from Alexander First Nation in Northern Alberta, and an aboriginal beaded cape from Tammy Beauvais, a fourth-generation artist from Kahnawake, Que., for Ms. Obama.
Obama daughters Malia and Sasha received scarves from Ottawa designer Krista Norris, and "first dogs" Bo and Sunny got Muttluks, dog boots from a Canadian company. | – Political gloves are off in Canada after the prime minister's wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, said she needs "a team" to help her "serve the people," reports MSN.com. In a French-language interview, the 41-year-old described her difficulty answering charity requests from her dining-room table while juggling family life with her husband, Justin Trudeau, and three children. "I’d love to be everywhere but I can't," she says. "I need help. ... People really lay out their suffering in some of the letters I receive." But in Canada, where there's no official "First Lady" position, some are accusing Grégoire Trudeau of abusing her role while others say critics are insensitive to working mothers or simply don't like the Trudeaus, the Globe & Mail reports. Among the reactions: "It is really the hypocrisy of Mr. Trudeau at this point, always wanting more to do self-promotion, to do vanity trips," a Conservative MP tells the Globe & Mail. "That is where a lot of Canadians would question more [staff]." A lawmaker with the left-wing NDP was no kinder, saying the interview "really speak[s] to a disconnect" about "what Canadian women face on a daily basis." But the Toronto Star notes that past PM's wives have had at least one assistant—as Grégoire Trudeau does—and one, Mila Mulroney, had three. Neil Macdonald argues at the CBC that Canadians just can't stand having a "tall poppy" around. "In Canada, we look at tall poppies and cluck and disapprove and fervently hope somebody takes them down a peg or two," he writes. "Who do they think they are, anyway?" An open letter on Facebook sees pure sexism: "We're supposed to be perfect mothers, wives, friends, employees and citizens, and we're not supposed to admit that we can't do it without a little help," writes Amanda Brennan. On a more practical note, the Prime Minister's office tells the Globe & Mail that it's considering giving Grégoire Trudeau a second assistant. |
Tulsa, Oklahoma (CNN) Amid growing scrutiny over whether a 73-year-old volunteer deputy who killed a suspect during a sting operation was qualified to be policing the streets, a new report raises a troubling allegation.
Some supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office were told to forge Reserve Deputy Robert Bates' training records, and three who refused were reassigned to less desirable duties, the Tulsa World newspaper reported.
Claims that the volunteer deputy's records had been falsified emerged "almost immediately" from multiple sources after Bates killed Eric Harris on April 2 , reporter Dylan Goforth said. Bates claims he meant to use his Taser but accidentally fired his handgun at Harris instead.
The newspaper's story does not say who allegedly asked the supervisors to falsify the training records or why. But the orders apparently started years ago, before Harris' death, "back when (Bates) was trying to get on as a deputy," reporter Ziva Branstetter told CNN's "New Day."
The Sheriff's Office denied the allegations in the Tulsa World's report. It also declined a CNN interview to respond to the claims.
In an email to CNN, the department's Maj. Shannon Clark said the lack of named sources in the newspaper's report leaves him dubious.
"Just keep in mind that the Tulsa World reporter cannot validate her sources and claims anonymity, which leaves us skeptical that her claims are unsubstantiated and deceptive," Clark wrote.
Clark Brewster, an attorney who represents Bates, said the accusations are based on an affidavit from a former Sheriff's Office employee who's now facing a first-degree murder charge.
"I don't put a lot of stock in that report or the credibility of who would further that report," Brewster said.
In a later interview with CNN affiliate KOKI , Clark cast further doubt on the document, which has the name of the accuser blacked out.
"If you're telling us we did something, then why can't you tell us who the person is on that affidavit so we can go back and confirm that information?" Clark said.
Department declines request for details
Sheriff Stanley Glanz and other sheriff's officials have repeatedly insisted Bates was properly trained.
The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has released a summary of Bates' training courses only over the past seven years.
The office rejected CNN's request for the full training records because Bates' case is under investigation.
Branstetter said she's run into similar obstacles when asking for the names of supervisors who'd signed off on Bates' training records.
"You would think the Sheriff's Office, if in fact there has been no pressure applied, no falsification of records, that they would be forthcoming with these documents," she told CNN's "New Day."
"We've asked for them. They've said they don't believe they're public records."
JUST WATCHED Report: Bates donated cops cars to sheriff's office Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Report: Bates donated cops cars to sheriff's office 01:06
Missing gun certification records
Bates was classified as an advanced reserve deputy for the Sheriff's Office. That means he would have had to complete 480 hours of the field training officer program to maintain that classification, the paper said.
Bates would also have needed firearms certification training.
But the sheriff himself has acknowledged there is a problem with Bates' gun certification records -- his office can't find them.
"Bob went out and qualified with three different weapons with an instructor," Glanz told KFAQ radio this week.
He said Bates "qualified with a young lady that was a firearms instructor." But she is no longer there.
"She has left the Sheriff's Office and is now a Secret Service agent," Glanz told KFAQ. "And we're trying to get a hold of her and talk to her about ... we can't find the records that she supposedly turned in. So we're going to talk to her and find out if for sure he did qualify with those."
Inconsistent statements
Even before the Tulsa World story, inconsistencies were apparent in Bates' history with the Sheriff's Office.
In his statement to investigators, Bates said he "became an advanced TCSO Reserve Deputy in 2007."
But the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has said Bates had been a reserve deputy since 2008
It also said Bates had undergone 300 hours of training. That would be less than the 480 hours of field training that the Tulsa World said is required to be an "advanced" reserve deputy, which Bates claimed to be.
In a statement he made to investigators after the shooting, Bates said the gun he used was his personal weapon, adding that he last qualified at the range in autumn.
He also said he'd attended "numerous schools and seminars related to drug investigations and the tactical operations associated with the apprehension of suspects involved in drug trafficking," a five-day homicide investigation school in Dallas and training from Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on responding to active shooters.
But an Arizona official told CNN Bates never trained with the agency.
"He didn't come to Arizona," the official from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said, "and he certainly didn't train with us."
Brewster said that line in Bates' statement was referring to a lecture given at a seminar in Washington by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The seminar was part of extensive training Bates received at classes across the country and through work in the field, he said.
"He met every training regimen," Brewster said. "He met every requirement, and all he did was give of himself."
Who's investigating?
Bates is now charged with second-degree manslaughter for Harris' death. He turned himself in to authorities Tuesday and immediately posted bail of $25,000. His attorney has said he's not guilty, calling the death an "excusable homicide."
The lawyer for Harris' family claims Bates wasn't qualified to be on the force, but received preferential treatment because he'd made donations to the agency and was a friend of the sheriff -- an accusation officials deny, saying they stand by his training record.
Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark, who has been brought in to review the case, has said Bates fell "victim" to something called "slip and capture," a term to describe a high-stress situation in which a person intends to do one thing and instead does something else.
It's a controversial claim that hasn't convinced critics of the department, and calls for an independent investigation into the Sheriff's Office and the case are growing. Earlier this week, the office spokesman rejected any idea of outside investigators into the shooting.
"We're not scared to prosecute our own. ... There's nobody in this culture that can be tougher on cops than their own," Clark said. "You know that analogy that you'll eat your young? You know, that's the same thing in law enforcement. If we have a dirty cop in our ranks, we will disclose them much quicker than the media."
A spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said his office is concerned about allegations reported in the media about the case "and will continue to monitor and assess what appropriate measures, if any, are warranted."
Glanz has stated publicly that he's reached out to the regional office of the FBI to look into the shooting.
Special Agent Terry B. Weber told CNN there's no open FBI investigation into the case. ||||| So how did the 73-year-old insurance company CEO end up joining a sting operation this month that ended when he pulled out his handgun and killed suspect Eric Harris instead of stunning him with a Taser?
A lawyer representing the Harris family says the answer is simple.
Bates paid big money to play a cop in his spare time, attorney Daniel Smolen says, but he didn't have the training to handle the job.
It's a claim that Bates' attorney and the sheriff's office deny, arguing that he was experienced and qualified for the role. His donations of equipment to the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office and his friendship with Sheriff Stanley Glanz, they say, have nothing to do with the April 2 shooting.
But as Bates faces a second-degree manslaughter charge , analysts say the case raises serious questions about who's policing America's streets, how and why.
How much training did he have?
Investigators have said Bates meant to pull out his Taser but accidentally used his handgun during the undercover weapons sting.
In a video of the shooting, he's heard announcing that he's going to deploy his stun gun, and then apologizing, saying, "I shot him. I'm sorry."
Critics call it a clear case of police brutality and question whether Bates had the know-how to be a deputy.
"It's absolutely mind-boggling that you have a wealthy businessman who's been essentially deputized to go play like he's some outlaw, like he's just cleaning up the streets," Smolen said.
Scott Wood, an attorney who represents Bates, said his client -- who had donated cars and video equipment to the Sheriff's Office -- had undergone all the required training and had participated in more than 100 operations with the office's violent crimes task force.
He'd never been the main deputy in charge of arresting a suspect, Wood said, but was thrust into the situation because Harris ran from deputies, who were trying to arrest him after he sold a gun to an undercover investigator.
Bates worked for the Tulsa Police Department for a year in the 1960s. He'd been a reserve deputy since 2008, with 300 hours of training and 1,100 hours of community policing experience, according to the Sheriff's Office.
He was also a frequent contributor to the Sheriff's Office, including $2,500 to Glanz's re-election.
Tulsa County sheriff's Maj. Shannon Clark denied accusations that Bates had paid to play a cop, describing him as one of many volunteers in the community who have contributed to the agency.
"No matter how you cut it up, Deputy Bates met all the criteria on the Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training to be in the role that he was in," Clark said.
Clark said the agency is now looking into its reserve program but notes that the 130 volunteer deputies have played a crucial role policing fairs, helping out after tornadoes and rescuing people from burning homes.
Allegations of falsified records
New evidence about the training Bates received was revealed this week, when a lawyer for the Harris family released a copy of an internal inquiry by the sheriff's office in 2009.
The memo did not explicitly say that Bates paid his way into the sheriff's ranks, but the investigation did conclude that he received special treatment
The document outlines interviews with several deputies who allege they were pressured by supervisors to falsify training records or provide exceptions to Bates regarding his duties.
According to the document, one deputy said she was told by the chief deputy to certify that Bates had completed the driving requirements, even though she believed Bates had not done the training.
Another deputy, who was charged with Bates' field training, said that he was pressured into certifying the reserve deputy even though he lacked the required training hours.
The memo also mentions instances where Bates was performing actions -- such as traffic stops on his own -- that he was not allowed to do given his status. When other deputies complained about Bates flouting the rules, the top brass at the department responded by asking that Bates be left alone to do what he wanted.
Deputy: I thought he had a gun
Bates' attorney describes the shooting as an "excusable homicide," arguing his client is not guilty of second-degree manslaughter.
"We believe the video itself proves that it was an accident of misfortune that occurred while Deputy Bates was fulfilling his duties as a reserve deputy," Wood said.
In a statement he made to investigators after the shooting, Bates said he'd attended "numerous schools and seminars related to drug investigations and the tactical operations associated with the apprehension of suspects involved in drug trafficking." He also said he'd attended a five-day homicide investigation school in Dallas and had training from Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on responding to active shooters.
The gun he used was his personal weapon, he said, adding that he qualified at the range last fall.
In the report, he describes how, from his position on the perimeter, he saw Harris running from officers.
"I noticed that Harris was running in an unusual way because as he ran he repeatedly touched his right hand to his waistband," he wrote. "Based on my past experience, primarily with the task force, and my past training, I believed that Harris might be carrying a gun."
It was the fear that Harris could have a gun, he says later in the report, that made him rush to use his Taser as he saw Harris on the pavement, struggling with deputies as they tried to arrest him.
"My training on ground fighting, even going back to when I was on the Tulsa Police Department, has been that it is one of the most dangerous situations an officer can experience," he wrote.
'Recipe for disaster'
While many departments have volunteer police programs, such positions are generally used for crowd control or less volatile situations, experts said.
The Oklahoma case raises a troubling question, CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin said.
"Do we want really what are ordinary citizens, with enough money to play to be police officers, policing our streets? This is a very, very dangerous precedent," she said. "And I think it's now time for either the Justice Department, perhaps, or every single police department to review this, the deputy status, because we're going to see more and more of this kind of thing, if it isn't happening more than we even know."
Daniel Bongino, a former Secret Service Agent, said the New York Police Department's auxiliary department is a good example of a program that works.
"You go through a police academy, and you're primarily used in traffic situations, busy shopping areas. They're not armed, they're usually with an armed regular police officer. I think it's a far better model," he told CNN's "AC360." "I think you were almost setting yourself up for failure in this situation in Tulsa, having a 73-year-old man, however good or bad intentioned, in that kind of situation, with a potential gun crime. That was a recipe for disaster."
Look no further than the recent movie "Foxcatcher" for an example of how donations to law enforcement in order to play the role of a deputy are "very concerning," said Phil Stinson, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.
John du Pont, the killer depicted in the film , made significant donations to police, Stinson told "AC360."
"He had given a great deal of money, he'd given cars, given use of a helicopter, actually set up a firing range for a township police department outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania," he said.
"So we've actually seen this before, and if you think about the troubles police departments have had with budgets in recent years, it's rather tempting if you're the head of that type of agency to take someone up on this, and give them the action experiences that they're looking for. It's really pay for play." | – Questions have arisen about how qualified reserve deputy Robert Bates was for the job after he shot and killed Eric Harris in Tulsa, Okla., on April 2, claiming he mistook his firearm for his Taser. Bates' attorney has said his client, charged with second-degree manslaughter in Harris' death, had undergone all required training, CNN reports. Now, however, "multiple" anonymous sources tell the Tulsa World that at least three supervisors were told to falsify the 73-year-old's field training and firearms certification records—and when they refused to do so, they were transferred to other departments. Other discrepancies have also popped up. Bates would have needed 480 hours of field training to qualify as the "advanced reserve" officer he was classified as, but the Tulsa sheriff's office has said he completed just 300 hours, per CNN. Then there's Bates' tenure as a reserve officer: The department says he started in 2008, but Bates has said he started in 2007, CNN notes. And although the Tulsa sheriff told local radio this week that Bates was certified for three weapons, that paperwork has vanished, as has the person who signed off on it, per the World. Regarding the falsification allegations, the department's undersheriff tells the World, "I have absolutely no knowledge of what you are talking about. There aren't any secrets in law enforcement. Zero." The department also sent an email to CNN stating, "Just keep in mind that the Tulsa World reporter cannot validate her sources and claims anonymity which leaves us skeptical that her claims are unsubstantiated and deceptive." Says a Harris family lawyer, per Business Insider: "An officer who is trained would never get these two weapons confused." |
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/ Updated By Tom Costello and Phil Helsel
Undercover tests have found Transportation Security Administration screeners failed to detect test weapons at a high rate, according to sources, findings that one Congressional committee chairman called "disturbing."
Members of the House Committee on Homeland Security were given details about security vulnerabilities by Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the TSA administrator in a classified briefing on Wednesday.
"Quite frankly, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we found that briefing disturbing," Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said at a hearing following the briefing.
The rate of failure was not disclosed at the public meeting, but congressional and government sources with knowledge of the report said it was high.
"We take the OIG's findings very seriously and are implementing measures that will improve screening effectiveness at checkpoints," TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement.
"We are focused on staying ahead of a dynamic threat to aviation with continued investment in the workforce, enhanced procedures, and new technologies," Pekoske, who was just sworn in this August, said in the statement.
The TSA said in the statement that the classified briefing was “to discuss the results of the most recent OIG covert testing at airport security checkpoints."
In 2015, the then-acting head of the TSA, Melvin Carraway, was reassigned after an internal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security found sceening failures at dozens of the nation's busiest airports.
Screeners did not detect 95 percent of test items in that investigation. The breaches allowed undercover investigators to smuggle weapons, fake explosives and other contraband through numerous checkpoints.
The briefing and committee hearing on Wednesday came nine days after a terrorist attack in New York City involving a truck left eight people dead. The suspect allegedly told investigators he was motivated by videos from the terror group Islamic State.
McCaul called America’s aviation sector the "crown jewel of terrorist targets" and said, "America’s enemies only have to be right once, while we have to be right 100 percent."
Pekoske told Congressional members that the agency is prototyping two CT scan systems at checkpoints right now — the devices are already used for checked bags — that could give screeners greater ability to identify suspicious substances. He said the devices would be a "significant enhancement" over devices currently used at checkpoints.
Passengers load their items into bins to be scanned as they pass through security at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on December 18, 2015 in Fort Lauderdale. File Wilfredo Lee / AP
The devices have been used for checked bags but not checkpoints because they were too large and heavy for checkpoints until recently, Pekoske said. The prototype systems are in Phoenix and Boston, he said.
Pekoske said that "to invest in the CT technology requires funding above what TSA currently has," but the agency wasn't on the path to CT development at checkpoints when the budget was developed, so the program wasn't reviewed for investment.
Committee member Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., noted that $1.28 billion, being charged to the public through surcharges, is being taken away for deficit reduction.
"Certainly, additional investment would make travelers, whether they’re Americans or people visiting our country, safer," Pekoske said.
Pekoske also acknowledged that poor morale at the TSA continues to be a challenge. Ranking committee member Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said at the hearing that it "has consistently struggled with low morale across the workforce, ranking 303 out of 305 government agencies in 2016." ||||| In recent undercover tests of multiple airport security checkpoints by the Department of Homeland Security, inspectors said screeners, their equipment or their procedures failed more than half the time, according to a source familiar with the classified report.
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When ABC News asked the source if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, "You are in the ballpark."
In a public hearing after a private classified briefing to the House Committee on Homeland Security, members of Congress called the failures by the Transportation Security Administration disturbing.
Rep. Mike Rogers went as far as to tell TSA Administrator David Pekoske, "This agency that you run is broken badly, and it needs your attention."
Pekoske was confirmed by the Senate this summer.
Inspectors "identified vulnerabilities with TSA's screener performance, screening equipment and associated procedures," according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
The statement added that the findings remain classified but that eight recommendations have been made to the TSA to improve checkpoint security. It is not clear what those recommendations are.
The news of the failure comes two years after ABC News reported that secret teams from the DHS found that the TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening.
That report led to major changes ordered at the TSA by then–Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. The agency opened a training academy for transportation security officers and changed procedures to reduce long lines.
Although lawmakers described the TSA's performance in this round of testing as poor, it was an improvement from two years ago, according to the source familiar with the report.
In the public hearing today on Capitol Hill, members pushed for the full implementation of a program using new scanning equipment that creates a 3-D image of bags, giving screeners better ability to spot possibly dangerous items.
The equipment is being tested in TSA checkpoints in at least two airports, but software and installation challenges have slowed wider implementation.
Rep. Bill Keating suggested that money is being diverted from the agency to build President Trump's promised border wall.
"We have the technology and resources to do it, but we're not doing it because ... we're paying for a wall," Keating said.
He also noted that Viper teams, specially trained Homeland Security units that use canines to secure transportation facilities, are being cut from 31 to eight.
It is not clear when the report will be released publicly.
The TSA said in a statement that it "concurs with the DHS OIG [Office of Inspector General] findings and is committed to aggressively implementing the recommendations."
"We take the OIG's findings very seriously and are implementing measures that will improve screening effectiveness at checkpoints," Pekoske said. "We are focused on staying ahead of a dynamic threat to aviation with continued investment in the workforce, enhanced procedures and new technologies." ||||| An undercover operation has revealed that Transportation Security Administration screenings at airports fail for the most part.
Homeland Security investigators found that, more than 70 percent of the time, undercover officers were able to get through TSA checkpoints with mock knives, guns and explosives, the House Homeland Security Committee was told Wednesday. Just two years ago, testing found a 95 percent failure rate, reports CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave.
"We found that briefing disturbing," said Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
The DHS Office of Inspector General made eight classified recommendations based on the undercover operation. In a statement, the TSA said it took the "OIG findings very seriously and are implementing measures that will improve screening effectiveness at checkpoints."
Both members of Congress and the TSA support replacing old check point scanners with new CT scanners like the ones we were first to show you back in March.
"In this system, we use high power algorithms to detect explosives," said Mark Laustra of Analogic, a company developing the technology.
TSA administrator David Pekoske told Congress the CT technology is the most effective way to keep passengers safe, but the cost is a major hurdle.
"To invest in the CT technology requires funding above what TSA currently has," Pekoske said.
Frank Cilluffo, a former director of the Homeland Security advisory council, said as long as terrorists target airports, the TSA cannot be complacent.
"They're looking for vulnerabilities that can be exploited, and we need to make sure that we can push that as far as we can to minimize the risk," Cilluffo said.
The TSA launched a pilot program this summer with those CT scanners, a year behind schedule, announcing last week an additional $4 million investment in the technology. American Airlines even bought some of the machines to speed up their limited deployment. | – An alarming new report weeks before the busiest air travel days of the year finds that TSA agents at airport checkpoints miss test weapons, explosives, and other contraband items most of the time. During an undercover operation, Department of Homeland Security inspectors "identified vulnerabilities with TSA's screener performance, screening equipment, and associated procedures," DHS says in a statement. While the specific findings are classified, CBS News reports the failure rate is more than 70%, while a source tells ABC News that 80% is "in the ballpark." That means the TSA has only improved slightly from its 95% failure rate in 2015, which led to a host of changes at the agency, including a new training academy for agents. "America's enemies only have to be right once, while we have to be right 100%," said Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, after he was briefed on the "disturbing" report Wednesday, per NBC News. After vowing to adopt eight undisclosed recommendations laid out in the report, TSA administrator David Pekoske responded that CT scan systems used for checked bags would provide a "significant enhancement" at checkpoints. He added, however, that the funding isn't there. "We have the technology and resources to do it but we're not doing it because ... we're paying for a wall," countered Rep. William Keating, a Democrat, who says that $1.28 billion in ticket surcharges is being diverted away from the TSA to pay the national debt. |
The Senate is beginning a potentially decisive week in the GOP’s long-running and arduous attempt to roll back the Affordable Care Act. McConnell and other GOP leaders have thus far rejected pleas from several Republican senators for more time to consider and revise the bill released last Thursday; they are determined to finish the bill before Congress breaks for a July 4 recess and are gambling that wavering Republicans will ultimately fall back in line rather than torpedo the party’s top legislative priority in a climactic vote.
“I am closing the door,” Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican, tweeted on Monday morning after earlier suggesting a vote could wait until July. “We need to do it this week before double digit premium increases are announced for next year.”
In perhaps the most damaging finding for Republicans, the CBO projected that the number of uninsured people would spike by 15 million in a single year if the Senate bill, titled the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, became law. That number would grow to 22 million by 2026. Average premiums would also go up initially before dropping over time. They would be 30 percent lower in 2020 than under current law, the CBO found, and 20 percent lower in 2026.
Republicans can point to more favorable findings from the CBO in other areas. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $321 billion over a decade, as the steep cuts in government spending outweigh the elimination of taxes in Obamacare. That could give GOP leaders breathing room to add money sought by moderates, either to reduce the cuts to Medicaid or to bolster support for states combatting the opioid epidemic. Under Senate budget rules, the legislation cannot add to the deficit over a 10-year window.
As to the broader stability of the insurance market, the CBO saw the Senate bill as having less of an impact than either its critics or defenders have claimed. The budget office wrote that despite rising premiums and GOP assertion’s that Obamacare is “collapsing,” the individual insurance market remains stable in most part of the country. And the Senate bill would do little to change that. But it did warn that after 2019, “a small fraction of the population” would reside in areas where “no insurers would participate in the nongroup market or insurance would be offered only with very high premiums.” The CBO also found that even though average premiums would drop, out-of-pocket costs would rise for many people because plans would cover fewer services and have higher deductibles. “As a result, despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan,” the report predicted.
By comparison, the House’s American Health Care Act would have resulted in 23 million fewer people having insurance after a decade, the CBO estimated last month, with a large chunk of those losses resulting from a $834 billion cut to Medicaid. That finding—along with polls showing the bill to be deeply unpopular—prompted Republicans in the Senate to start over and write their own bill to partially repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. But the CBO on Monday confirmed that the proposal Senate leaders came up with was broadly similar to the House bill. ||||| The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Thursday released a new score for a revised plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare that Republican leaders are struggling to pass in the House.
The CBO found that this version of the healthcare plan contains significantly less deficit reduction than the original but would lead to essentially the same levels of coverage losses and premium increases.
The legislation would reduce the deficit by $150 billion over 10 years, down from $337 billion in the original legislation, the report said. The plan would still result in 24 million more people being uninsured in 2026, a finding that has been a rallying cry for Democrats.
Premiums would still initially rise by 15 percent to 20 percent before eventually becoming 10 percent lower, the CBO said.
GOP leaders had pledged that they would wait for the CBO's new score before holding a floor vote on the legislation. That vote could happen as early as Friday.
The CBO's score, however, does not reflect last-minute changes that could be made to win over conservatives, including repeal of ObamaCare's minimum coverage requirements. That change would be significant, but it is possible House Republicans could bring up the vote without that revised score.
The revised analysis takes into account a range of changes Republicans made to the bill. The main reason the deficit reduction is now lower is that Republicans moved up repeal of ObamaCare's taxes by one year, something conservatives had requested.
The revised bill also turns Medicaid funding into block grants for states and gives states the option of creating work requirements for Medicaid recipients. Another change slightly increases a cap on Medicaid spending.
GOP leaders are scrambling to shore up the 215 votes likely needed to pass the ObamaCare repeal bill. A vote on the bill for Thursday was postponed after efforts to strike a deal with conservatives came up empty.
Democrats are fighting to protect ObamaCare and rooting for Republicans to fail. They seized on the new CBO analysis.
"The CBO has reconfirmed tonight that the Republican plan will cause millions of Americans to lose their coverage and out-of-pocket costs to skyrocket, while subjecting middle-aged Americans to an age tax. They do all this to give $1 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, but they may not stop there," said Rep. John Yarmuth John Allen YarmuthKentucky candidate takes heat for tweeting he'd like to use congressman for target practice Republican health policy is destroying rural health care McConnell, Schumer tap colleagues to explore budget reform MORE (Ky.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
"It is astounding and appalling that Republicans in Congress are negotiating with the health and well-being of American families. They have no moral compass."
Updated at 5:42 p.m. ||||| Pushing toward a Sunday vote that could transform the nation's health-insurance system, House leaders announced a $940 billion compromise Thursday that would extend coverage to the vast majority of Americans, cut billions of dollars from Medicare, and impose new taxes on the wealthy and the well-insured.
The proposal, a rewrite of a slightly narrower health-care bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve, would also significantly expand the federal student loan program, offering President Obama the prospect of victory on two of his most important domestic initiatives after a year of legislative stalemate. The stakes are so high and the outcome so uncertain that Obama canceled a trip to Indonesia and Australia to continue lobbying undecided lawmakers with phone calls and invitations to White House meetings.
"Our international alliances are critical to America's security and economic progress," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "But passage of health-insurance reform is of paramount importance, and the president is determined to see this battle through."
House Democratic leaders hope to approve the Senate bill along with a separate 153-page package of revisions to that bill that House members are demanding. The compromise would extend coverage to an additional 32 million Americans over the next decade by expanding Medicaid eligibility and creating state-run insurance exchanges and federal subsidies for lower-income families who lack access to employer-provided coverage.
All Americans would be required for the first time to obtain insurance or face an annual penalty of $695; employers could face penalties of $2,000 per worker for not offering affordable coverage. In exchange for the new business, private insurers would be subject to an array of rules, including a ban on the practice of denying coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions and a requirement that adult children be permitted to stay on their parents' policies until age 26.
Compared with the Senate bill, the compromise would offer more generous tax credits to people who may otherwise be unable to afford insurance and would fully close the "doughnut hole" -- a gap in the Medicare prescription drug program that is costly for many seniors -- beginning with a $250 rebate for those affected this year.
It would eliminate the most politically contentious of several deals cut to win the votes of recalcitrant lawmakers by extending to all states a promise of Medicaid funding that had originally been offered only to Nebraska. And it would delay until 2018 the implementation of a 40 percent tax on high-cost insurance policies.
To cover the cost of those changes, the compromise would impose a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on investment income for wealthy taxpayers, a levy that would come in addition to a Senate-proposed increase in the regular payroll tax for those families. And it would slice an additional $60 billion from Medicare, with the privately run program known as Medicare Advantage targeted for particularly deep cuts, bringing the total reduction in projected spending on the program to more than $500 billion over the next decade.
Republicans remained unified in their opposition to the legislation, vowing to block a bill they condemn as a dangerous and budget-busting intrusion into the private health-care system. As House Republicans angled to prevent passage in the anticipated Sunday vote, Senate Republicans laid procedural traps for the package of revisions. If it survives, that measure would go to the Senate for approval next week under special rules that protect it from a GOP filibuster.
"The American people are saying 'Stop!' and they're screaming at the top of their lungs," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio). Republicans will "do everything that we can do to make sure that this bill never, ever, ever passes."
If Democrats prevail in the House, Obama is expected to sign the Senate version of the legislation soon after Sunday's vote, enacting the most far-reaching expansion of the nation's health-care system since Medicare was created in 1965 even if the Senate cannot pass the revision package the following week. While the major pieces of the coverage expansion would not be implemented until 2014, consumers would quickly see a variety of benefits, including a ban on insurance industry practices such as dropping people from coverage when they get sick or limiting lifetime benefits. Private insurers would also be required to fully cover preventive care without deductibles or co-payments.
House Democrats defended the new package, which received a major boost Thursday when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would reduce deficits by about $138 billion over the next 10 years and by about $1.2 trillion in the decade thereafter. Republicans quickly noted that those numbers represent a tiny fraction of the huge deficits projected for that period. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was jubilant, calling the bill "a triumph for the American people in terms of deficit-reduction." | – The last piece of the puzzle is in place for this weekend's vote on health care reform: The House Rules Committee has posted the reconciliation bill online. Politico has the pdf here. The House is on track for a final vote sometime Sunday afternoon, with Democrats "giddy" over today's CBO analysis saying it would cut budget deficits by $138 billion over 10 years, notes the New York Times. Politico rounds up some changes from the Senate bill: Raises tax credits for middle-income families who buy insurance. Cuts the penalty for not buying insurance from $750 to $695. "Closes the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage by 2011 and gives seniors who fall into the gap this year a $250 rebate." Covers increased Medicaid costs of all states until 2016. |
Watching a mama bear save her cub from a B.C. highway is one claws encounter Ricky Forbes won’t soon forget.
Forbes was driving through Kootenay National Park on Saturday afternoon when he saw a young black bear trapped on the road.
“We pulled over the car and we could see the cub on the side of the highway. It was screaming,” said Forbes, a driver for TornadoHunter.com.
Forbes started filming the cub, which was stuck behind an im-paws-ibly tall concerete barrier.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the mama bear to poke her head over and rescue her young – after taking the necessary precautions, of course.
“It looked like the bear looked both ways first,” said Forbes.
In the footage, the mama bear can be seen dipping down and grabbing the cub by its scruff then yanking it over the barrier as another cub pops its head up to peek at the action.
The incredible moment has already been picked up by media across North America and even in the U.K. | – A tornado hunter driving through British Columbia's Kootenay National Park stopped to film a bear cub by the side of a highway—and captured the moment its mother hauled it to safety. Ricky Forbes says the bear cub was trapped on the wrong side of a concrete barrier and was screaming as cars went by, CTV reports. The mother bear can be seen looking both ways before pulling the cub up by its neck as another curious cub looks on. "It was a very amazing sight to see," he tells the Telegraph. (In Alaska, another mother bear was apparently trying to protect her cubs when she mauled a jogger, who then walked two miles for help.) |
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The head of an Indian hospital where dozens of children died in recent days has been suspended, as officials traded blame over cash shortfalls that led to supplies of medical oxygen being cut.
The government of Uttar Pradesh state, run by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), suspended the head of the state-run BRD Medical College, Rajeev Misra, late on Saturday and ordered an investigation.
Indian media have said the deaths of 60 children, 34 infants among them, were caused in part by oxygen shortages after a private supplier cut the supply over unpaid bills.
Hospital officials deny lack of oxygen caused the deaths, saying alternative supplies were found, and blamed many of the deaths instead on encephalitis and unspecified issues related to delivery of the infants.
On Sunday, J.P. Nadda, health minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet, visited the hospital in the town of Gorakhpur, 800 km (507 miles) east of New Delhi, accompanied by the state's chief minister, Yogi Adityanath.
After the visit, the chief minister urged patience until the investigation was complete.
"We will know - whether it was because of an oxygen shortage or due to a lack of proper treatment," Adityanath told reporters. "Those found guilty will not be spared."
Nadda said a team of doctors from New Delhi was working with the local authorities and the federal government was ready to send more assistance. He said Modi was also monitoring the developments.
The issue of the unpaid bills for oxygen supply has become a flashpoint in relations between the hospital and the state government, after the suspended hospital chief on Saturday accused state officials of not answering his requests for money.
"I wrote at least three letters," Misra told television reporters on Saturday, adding that he had flagged the issue in video conference discussions.
A child is seen in the Intensive care unit in the Baba Raghav Das hospital in Gorakhpur district, India August 13, 2017. Cathal McNaughton
Reuters was unable to immediately contact Misra for comment.
Adityanath, who had visited the hospital on Aug. 9, said no issue of unpaid bills was brought to his attention and all requests for funds were met promptly.
Pressure on Bjp
Slideshow (6 Images)
Opposition parties have stepped up the pressure on the state government, demanding the resignations of Adityanath and the state health minister.
"This government is a murderer," said Raj Babbar, head of the opposition Congress party in Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous and politically-prized state, where the BJP's thumping victory has strengthened Modi's claim to a second term in 2019.
Gorakhpur, a down-at-heel town near the border with Nepal, is Adityanath's political base, which elected him to parliament five times before Modi asked him to lead Uttar Pradesh, after a landslide BJP election victory in March.
A study of government data by nonprofit body Brookings India showing the district has a 26 percent shortage of primary health centres.
Encephalitis outbreaks kill hundreds in India every year, especially during the monsoon season.
India's expenditure on public health is about one percent of GDP, among the world's lowest. In recent years, Modi's government has increased health spending and vowed to make healthcare more affordable. ||||| One by one, the infants and children slipped away on Thursday night, their parents watching helplessly as oxygen supplies at the government hospital ran dangerously low.
At least 30 children died on Thursday and into Friday at a hospital in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after its supply of liquid oxygen was disrupted over an unpaid bill, officials said. A home ministry spokesman told the Press Trust of India, citing police reports, that 21 of the deaths were directly linked to a shortage of oxygen.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene between 11pm and 2am as medical practitioners and relatives - the tanks running dry - handed out manual resuscitator bags to families in a desperate attempt to save the young patients.
"We saw children dying around us," said the father of one victim, who gave his name only as Vijay. "Obviously, it's the hospital's fault. So many children have died because of them. My son was fine until nighttime, then something wrong happened."
Two more children died Saturday at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College hospital in Gorakhpur, an impoverished area in the eastern part of the state, as authorities scrambled to firm up supplementary supplies and investigate the tragedy. The government suspended the medical college principal on Saturday.
The state's Health Minister and hospital officials have denied charges that the deaths were caused by the oxygen bill dispute. An estimated 60 children have died at the hospital since 7 August from a variety of causes, officials said.
In a news conference on Saturday, the state's Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, called the tragedy despicable and said the state had set up a committee to investigate the role of the oxygen vendor.
"The guilty will not be spared," Adityanath said.
Parents of the victims described feelings of anger and bewilderment over the incident, saying they were struggling with guilt over not being able to save their children.
"The idea is devastating - that she had to suffer while trying to breathe," said Manger Rajbhar, the father of a five-day-old girl who died in the chaos.
The deaths provoked widespread outrage and condemnation across the political spectrum and on social media, where a political cartoon spread that showed the babies as little angels hovering in the sky as an Indian government official tries to reach them.
"30 kids died in hospital without oxygen. This is not a tragedy. It's a massacre," Indian Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, a child advocate, said in a tweet. "Is this what 70 years of freedom means for our children?" (The country is set to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its independence from Britain on Tuesday.)
30 kids died in hospital without oxygen. This is not a tragedy. It's a massacre. Is this what 70 years of freedom means for our children? — Kailash Satyarthi (@k_satyarthi) August 11, 2017
The hospital owed $89,750 to a Lucknow-based medical supply company called Pushpa Sales Private Limited, documents obtained by The Washington Post show, and the firm had written letters to the hospital and district magistrate for the past six months demanding payment. The company asserted that the hospital was violating the terms of its contract by running a balance of more than $15,625. The agreement expired on 31 July, and Pushpa discontinued the oxygen supply on 4 August.
On Thursday, employees who handled the storage plant that pipes the oxygen wrote to the hospital's chief medical officer to warn him that supplies were low and would last only until Thursday evening, according to a letter obtained by the news channel NDTV. The oxygen supply then dipped to a critical level, the channel said.
State officials claimed they had obtained sufficient backup supplies from nearby nursing homes.
The hospital is in Adityanath's parliamentary constituency. The controversial monk, who was tapped by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party to head Uttar Pradesh earlier this year, is the longtime head of a large temple there.
Adityanath had visited the hospital this week to inaugurate a new critical-care unit. Many of the young patients were suffering from encephalitis, a potentially deadly illness that causes acute swelling of the brain. The disease is often spread by mosquitoes, and infections rise during the monsoon season.
World news in pictures
50 show all World news in pictures
1/50 26 April 2018 Women hold portraits of their relatives, who are victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, during a commemoration ceremony in Kiev, Ukraine. Reuters
2/50 25 April 2018 Rohingya refugees gather in the "no man's land" behind Myanmar's boder lined with barb wire fences in Maungdaw district, Rakhine state bounded by Bangladesh. Myanmar government said on April 15, it repatriated on April 14 the first family of Rohingya out of some 700,000 refugees who have fled a brutal military campaign, a move slammed by a rights group as a PR stunt ignoring UN warnings that a safe return is not yet possible. AFP/Getty
3/50 24 April 2018 President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, first lady Melania Trump and Brigitte Macron hold hands on the White House balcony during a State Arrival Ceremony in Washington. AP
4/50 23 April 2018 A boy walks on a pile of garbage covering a drain in New Delhi. Reuters
5/50 22 April 2018 Newly ordained priests lie on the floor as Pope Francis leads a mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. REUTERS
6/50 21 April 2018 South Koreans cheer during the welcoming event for the inter-Korean summit between South Korea and North Korea in Seoul. The inter-Korean summit is scheduled on April 27, 2018 at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom, agreed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un. Getty
7/50 20 April 2018 A Palestinian slings a shot by burning tires on the Israel-Gaza border, following a demonstration calling for the right to return. Palestinian refugees either fled or were expelled from what is now the state of Israel during the 1948 war. AFP/Getty
8/50 19 April 2018 Outgoing Cuban President Raul Castro raising the arm of Cuba's new President Miguel Diaz-Canel after he was formally named by the National Assembly, in Havana. A historic handover ending six decades of rule by the Castro brothers. The 57-year-old Diaz-Canel, who was the only candidate for the presidency, was elected to a five-year term with 603 out of 604 possible votes in the National Assembly. AFP/Getty/www.cubadebate.cu
9/50 18 April 2018 Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announces early presidential and parliamentary elections for June 24, 2018, at the Presidential Palace, in Ankara. Erdogan announced the snap elections, originally scheduled for November 2019, in a move that will usher in a new political system increasing the powers of the president. He said the new system needed to be implemented quickly in order to deal with a slew of challenges ahead, including Turkey's fight against Kurdish insurgents in Syria and Iraq. AP
10/50 17 April 2018 European lawmakers raise placards reading "Stop the War in Syria" in protest against airstrikes launched by the US, Britain and France in Syria last week criticizing the legitimacy of the operation, as French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone and will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. AP
11/50 16 April 2018 People participate in a protest against the rape of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua near Jammu, and a teenager in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh state, in Bangalore, India Reuters
12/50 15 April 2018 Fireworks are set off as the final performance takes place during the Closing Ceremony for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. PA
13/50 14 April 2018 The wreckage of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus, after the United States, UK and France launched strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime early on April 14 in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack after mulling military action for nearly a week. Syrian state news agency SANA reported several missiles hit a research centre in Barzeh, north of Damascus, "destroying a building that included scientific labs and a training centre" AFP/Getty
14/50 13 April 2018 Indian activists gather to show support for the chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women Swati Maliwal, who is on a hunger strike against the alleged rapes in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, in New Delhi, India. According to news reports Maliwal is sitting on hunger strike demanding that authorities take strict actions against the alleged rapists. EPA
15/50 12 April 2018 Shi'ite pilgrims carry a symbolic casket outside Imam Moussa al-Kadhim's shrine to mark the anniversary of his death in Baghdad, Iraq Reuters
16/50 11 April 2018 Seasonal winds washed tons of debris ashore at Matahari Terbit beach, near Sanur, Bali, Indonesia. Reuters
17/50 10 April 2018 Syrian onlookers gather around rescue teams clearing the rubble at the site of an explosion of unknown origin which wrecked a multi-storey building the previous night in the war-battered country's northwestern city of Idlib. The cause of the explosion in the jihadist-held city, which killed more than a ten people and wounded 80, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, was not immediately clear. AFP/Getty
18/50 9 April 2018 Protesters try to block French gendarmes during an evacuation operation in the zoned ZAD (Deferred Development Zone) in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes, France. Reuters
19/50 8 April 2018 Competitors cross the start line at the annual Pyongyang Marathon. AFP/Getty
20/50 7 April 2018 The body of journalist Yasser Murtaja, 31, is carried during his funeral in Gaza city. He was shot by Israeli troops while reporting on Palestinian protests on the Gaza-Israel border. Reuters
21/50 6 April 2018 Supporters of the former South African president Jacob Zuma rally prior to his appearance in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court on corruption charges in Durban. Zuma, 75, arrived to face corruption charges linked to a multi-billion dollar 1990s arms deal. The graft case against him was postponed until June 8 after a brief 15-minute hearing. AFP/Getty
22/50 5 April 2018 Palestinian protesters run during clashes with Israeli troops at Israel-Gaza border. Reuters
23/50 4 April 2018 Presidents Hassan Rouhani of Iran, Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia pose before their meeting in Ankara. Reuters
24/50 3 April 2018 South African school children pause next to a portrait of the late South African anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, wife of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at her house in Soweto. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa paid tribute to Winnie, who died on April 2, saying that Nelson Mandela's former wife was a "voice of defiance" against white-minority rule. AFP/Getty
25/50 2 April 2018 Jewish priests and civilians take part in the Cohanim prayer during the Passover holiday at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. AFP/Getty
26/50 1 April 2018 Pope Francis greets the crowd at St Peter's square after the Easter Sunday Mass in the Vatican. Christians around the world are marking the Holy Week, commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, leading up to his resurrection on Easter. AFP/Getty
27/50 31 March 2018 Mourners hold back a relative of Palestinian Hamdan Abu Amshah, who was killed along the Israel border with Gaza, during his funeral in Beit Hanoun town. Reuters
28/50 30 March 2018 Israeli soldiers shot tear gas grenades towards the Palestinian tent city protest commemorating Land Day. The day marks the killing of six Arab Israelis during 1976 demonstrations against Israeli confiscations of Arab land. AFP/Getty
29/50 29 March 2018 An emotional Steve Smith is comforted by his father Peter as he fronts the media at Sydney International Airport. Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were flown back to Australia following investigations into alleged ball tampering in South Africa. Getty
30/50 28 March 2018 French gendarmes escort the coffin of the late Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame transported by car during a funeral procession leaving the Pantheon as part of a national tribute in Paris. The French President will lead a national commemoration to hostage-swap policeman Arnaud Beltrame killed in jihadist attack. AFP/Getty
31/50 27 March 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin visits a memorial made for the victims of a fire in a multi-story shopping center in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. Officials say that the fire escapes were blocked and a PA system was turned off during the fire that killed over 50 people. Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
32/50 26 March 2018 At least 64 shoppers have been killed in fire at a shopping centre in Russia. A further 16 people were still missing after flames broke out at the four-storey Winter Cherry mall in the city of Kemerovo in Siberia, according to Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov. The fire was extinguished in the morning after burning through the night. Parts of the building were still smouldering and the floors of the cinema hall had caved in in places, another emergency official said. Russian Emergencies Ministry via Reuters
33/50 25 March 2018 Syrian civilians gathering for their evacuation from the town of Arbin in the Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, following a deal with the regime. The deal is expected to see some 7,000 people bussed from Arbin and Zamalka towns and the district of Jobar to a rebel-dominated part of northern Syria. AFP/Getty
34/50 24 March 2018 Students attend the ‘March For Our Lives’ in Washington. In the wake of the Florida attack, there has been a widespread effort to ban assault rifle. Getty
35/50 23 March 2018 Police at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes. An armed man took hostages in a supermarket in southern France, killing three and injuring about a dozen others, police said. A French minister confirmed the gunman had been shot dead by police. Reuters
36/50 22 March 2018 A boy rows his boat in the polluted waters of the Brahmaputra river on World Water Day in Guwahati, India. Reuters
37/50 21 March 2018 Kosovo's opposition lawmakers release a teargas canister inside the country's parliament in before a vote for an agreement to ratify or not a border demarcation deal signed in 2015 with Montenegro. AFP/Getty
38/50 20 March 2018 People carrying luggage leave the Russian Embassy in London and board a van bearing diplomatic plates. Dozens of people including adults with children arrived at the Russian embassy in the morning and then left carrying luggage in vehicles bearing diplomatic registration plates. Britain last week announced the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats over the spy poisoning row, prompting a tit-for-tat response from Moscow. AFP/Getty
39/50 19 March 2018 The Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft is mounted on the launch pad at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan AFP/Getty
40/50 18 March 2018 President Vladimir Putin walks out of a voting booth at a polling station during Russia's presidential election in Moscow. AFP/Getty
41/50 17 March 2018 People take part in a pensioners protest to demand decent pensions in Barcelona. Thousands of people across the country took part in mass demonstrations called by main Spanish workers unions demanding rises of state pensions in accordance with the consumer price index AFP/Getty
42/50 16 March 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the Almazov National Medical Research Centre in Saint Petersburg. AFP/Getty
43/50 15 March 2018 Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council in Moscow. Reuters
44/50 14 March 2018 German Chancellor Angela Merkel is sworn in by the President of the German lower house during the government's swearing-in ceremony at the Bundestag in Berlin. Merkel, head of the Christian Democratic Party CDU, starts her fourth term as German chancellor, capping months of political uncertainty as she bartered with her rivals of the SPD to help govern Europe's top economy in a "grand coalition". AFP/Getty
45/50 13 March 2018 Nepali students of University of Dhaka light candles in memory of the victims of the US-Bangla aircraft crash in Nepal, Bangladesh. Reuters
46/50 12 March 2018 Rescuers work to save passengers from a plane crash at Kathmandu airport in Nepal. AP
47/50 11 March 2018 French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron pose for photographs as they visit the Taj Mahal. AFP/Getty
48/50 10 March 2018 France’s far-right party Front National (FN) president Marine Le Pen applauds former US President advisor Steve Bannon after his speech during the Front National party annual congress, in Lille, northern France. AFP/Getty
49/50 9 March 2018 A television screen showing pictures of US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un at a railway station in Seoul. AFP
50/50 8 March 2018 Protesters form triangles with their hands during a demonstration for women’s rights in Bilbao, Spain. Reuters
Zahid Ali, the father of a five-year-old girl suffering from encephalitis, said he and other family members were still in shock after the death of his daughter Khushi on Friday night.
Ali said Khushi, who was running a high fever, had been admitted to the hospital's encephalitis ward Thursday. She was responding to treatment while on oxygen, he said, but her condition deteriorated as the cylinders ran dry that night.
Hospital staff gave the parents a manual resuscitator and asked them to pump it themselves, he said, and he watched in horror as his daughter first became breathless, then turned "stiff and cold."
"At that time, I understood that my daughter was gone, but doctors kept on telling me that she is still alive," he said. She was pronounced dead several hours later.
(C) The Washington Post ||||| A hospital in India has been accused of failing to provide enough oxygen after 60 children died on its wards in five days.
Baba Raghav Das Medical College said 34 babies died at the hospital's neo-natal intensive care unit, 12 died because of encephalitis, and the rest died of other unspecified causes.
Local media have claimed that some of the deaths were due to a shortage of oxygen which occurred after a supplier withdrew equipment as a result of unpaid bills.
Parents of at least 35 of the youngsters said that the oxygen supply to the children's ward ran out on Thursday night.
They said patients' families were given self-inflating bags to help the children breathe.
Mritunjaya Singh, whose seven-month-old son was at the hospital but was not among the dead, said: "That's the time when the death of the children peaked."
Image: Medical staff tending to children at the hospital
Parmatma Gautam, whose one-month-old nephew, Roshan, died, said the hospital and authorities were trying to cover up their failure to pay their bills on time.
"We saw our baby struggling to breathe and we couldn't do anything," Mr Gautam said.
District Magistrate Rajiv Rautela said on Saturday that the deaths of the children in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh state, were due to natural causes.
He denied that insufficient oxygen led to their deaths.
Kafeel Khan, a hospital doctor, also said the cause of death was not lack of oxygen.
Uttar Pradesh's government has ordered an investigation and a team of federal health ministry specialists has been sent to the hospital to verify what caused the deaths.
Prashant Trivedi, the state's top health official, admitted there has been a problem in the pipeline which supplied oxygen.
Image: A hospital doctor said the cause of death was not lack of oxygen
But he said it did not cause the children's deaths as there was a sufficient number of oxygen cylinders to ensure all the youngsters could be treated.
A team of specialists from the federal health ministry was sent to the hospital on Saturday to verify what caused the deaths.
Opposition leaders blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules the state, accusing it of neglect and indifference.
The opposition Congress Party's Rahul Gandhi said on Twitter: "Deeply pained. My thoughts are with the families of the victims. BJP govt. is responsible & should punish the negligent who caused this tragedy."
Encephalitis is common in India, especially during the monsoon season, and outbreaks often claim hundreds of lives.
India spends about 1% of GDP on public health, among the lowest in the world, and successive governments have faced criticism for not reforming the health system. | – In a five-day span at a single hospital in India, 60 children have died, 34 of them infants. The rash of deaths, which the Independent reports began last Monday, has led to the suspension of the head of the hospital in Uttar Pradesh state, and it's also spurred a string of questions and finger-pointing. Reuters cites Indian media's take: that some of the deaths were due to a lack of liquid oxygen, with the hospital's supply having been cut off due to unpaid bills. Rajeev Misra oversaw the state-run Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital in Gorakhpur before his suspension, and he backs up that assertion, telling the media on Saturday that "I wrote at least three letters" to the government requesting money. A Home Ministry rep was quoted as saying 21 of the deaths were the result of the oxygen shortfall, reports the Washington Post. But other officials and a hospital doctor cited by Sky News say the oxygen supply wasn't a factor. They claim mosquito-borne encephalitis was the cause of 35% of the infant deaths, with the rest being due to unspecified causes. State officials say they were able to bolster the oxygen supply after reaching out to area nursing homes. But parents tell Sky the oxygen supply dried up Thursday night and that parents were offered manual resuscitator bags. The Post obtained documents showing the hospital had been receiving letters regarding unpaid bills for six months, and that nearly $90,000 was owed to a medical supply company. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has pledged to get to the bottom of the situation: "We will know whether it was because of an oxygen shortage or due to a lack of proper treatment. Those found guilty will not be spared." |
BRUSSELS/BEIRUT NATO on Tuesday rejected Moscow's explanation that its warplanes had violated alliance member Turkey's air space by mistake and said Russia was sending more ground troops to Syria and building up its naval presence.
With Russia extending its air strikes to include the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was losing patience with Russian violations of his country's air space.
"An attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO," Erdogan warned at a Brussels news conference.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had reports of a substantial Russian military build-up in Syria, including ground troops and ships in the eastern Mediterranean.
"I will not speculate on the motives ... but this does not look like an accident and we have seen two of them," Stoltenberg said of the air incursions over Turkey's border with Syria at the weekend. He noted that they "lasted for a long time".
The incidents, which NATO has described as "extremely dangerous" and "unacceptable", underscore the risks of a further escalation of the Syrian civil war, as Russian and U.S. warplanes fly combat missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two.
The Russian Defence Ministry had said that an SU-30 warplane had entered Turkish air space along the border with Syria "for a few seconds" on Saturday, a mistake caused by bad weather. NATO says a plane also entered Turkish air space on Sunday, an incident Russia says it is looking into.
A U.S. official told Reuters the incursions had lasted more than a few seconds and described Moscow's assertion that they were an accident as "far-fetched".
The Turkish military said a further incident took place on Monday when a MIG-29 fighter and Syria-based missile systems "interfered" with eight Turkish F-16 jets patrolling along the Syrian border.
The MIG-29 locked its radar onto the Turkish patrol for 4 minutes 30 seconds, and a Syria-based missile system locked onto them for 4 minutes 15 seconds, the Turkish military said. Russia flies MIG-29s, as does Syria's own air force.
Stoltenberg said the U.S.-led alliance had not received "any real explanation" from Russia about the incursions.
AIR SPACE VIOLATIONS
Disagreement over the air space violations comes as Russia and the west dispute the aims of Moscow's air campaign. Moscow says it is attacking Islamic State, but most of its air strikes have hit territory held by other rebel groups fighting against its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad.
Western countries, Arab states and Turkey, who are waging their own bombing campaign against Islamic State but also want Assad to leave power, say Moscow is using Islamic State as a pretext to target Assad's other foes. Russia says the Assad government should be the centerpiece of international efforts to combat extremism.
With Russian and NATO planes now flying combat missions in the same air space, a danger is that the Cold War enemies could fire on each other.
The skies in the area have seen incidents in the past. A Turkish jet was shot down by the Syrian air force in 2012 over the Mediterranean and earlier this year Turkey shot down a Syrian helicopter that Ankara said violated its airspace.
Russia's NATO envoy said the alliance was using the accidental incursion into Turkish air space for propaganda.
"The impression is that the incident in Turkish air space was used to plug NATO as an organization into the information campaign waged by the West to distort the aims of the operations carried out by the Russian air force in Syria," Alexander Grushko was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying in Brussels.
Russia's defense ministry said it agreed in principle with U.S. proposals on coordinating military flights in Syria. The ministry said it was ready to hold talks with Turkey to avoid "misunderstandings" and invited foreign military officers to Moscow for talks on how best to fight Islamic State.
President Vladimir Putin has said he will not put Russian ground forces in Syria, where the civil war has killed 250,000 people. However, Stoltenberg said there was a growing presence of Russian forces in Syria.
"I can confirm that we have seen a substantial build-up of Russian forces in Syria - air forces, air defenses, but also ground troops in connection with the air base they have, and we also see an increased naval presence," Stoltenberg said.
RUSSIAN TANKS
Several senior officials in the Middle East told Reuters the Russian air campaign was part of plan that will also involve a ground offensive by Iranian troops, Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and Syrian government forces against Assad's foes.
The ground campaign is being led by Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial special forces arm of the Revolutionary Guards who reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the officials said.
They said Soleimani traveled to Moscow in July to help plan the joint action after senior Russian officials met Khamenei and senior Iranians met Putin to agree it.
U.S. officials have previously said Russia has sent seven T-90 tanks, some artillery, and about 200 marines. It has also deployed temporary housing units, a portable air traffic control station and components for an air defense system.
Russian defense ministry sources have been quoted in Russian media as saying about 1,500 Russian servicemen are involved in supporting the air strikes and advising Syria's army.
The Russian Defence Ministry says it has more than 50 warplanes and helicopters in Syria. Russia's Tartous naval facility there is a logistics base and has been overhauled in recent years. It is being used to unload equipment, some of which is also being flown in.
In the latest strikes, Russian jets hit Islamic State targets in Palmyra and struck the northern province of Aleppo, Syrian state television said.
Islamic State forces captured Palmyra in May, an advance that brought them closer to the core of government-held territory in western Syria. It also put the city's Roman-era ruins under the militants' control.
Russia denied hitting civilian targets inside Palmyra or conducting strikes that might harm the ruins.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group tracking Syria's civil war, said the Palmyra strikes killed 15 Islamic State fighters.
"It was the heaviest Russian attack on Palmyra," Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said. Across Syria, Russian jets carried out at least 34 air strikes in the last 24 hours, the Observatory said.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Madrid, Andrew Osborn and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow; Writing by Giles Elgood and Peter Graff; Editing by Tom Heneghan) ||||| ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — In a signal of new tensions raised by Moscow's airstrikes in Syria, NATO denounced Russia on Monday for "irresponsible behavior" after its warplanes violated Turkish airspace, and Turkey warned that any future aerial intruder would be treated like an enemy.
In this photo taken on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, Russian military support crew attach a satellite guided bomb to SU-34 jet fighter at Hmeimim airbase in Syria. Russia has insisted that the airstrikes... (Associated Press)
In this photo taken on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, Russian SU-24M jet fighter armed with laser guided bombs takes off from a runaway at Hmeimim airbase in Syria. Russia has insisted that the airstrikes... (Associated Press)
In this photo taken on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, Russian army pilot poses at a cockpit of SU-25M jet fighter at Hmeimim airbase in Syria. Russia has insisted that the airstrikes that began Wednesday are... (Associated Press)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan waits for the arrival of European Council President Donald Tusk prior to a meeting at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Oct. 5, 2015. Erdogan is on... (Associated Press)
Turkey, a NATO member, mentioned only one Russian intrusion over the weekend, but the military alliance said a second Russian jet also violated Turkish airspace Sunday.
The intrusions, which come amid deep suspicions and mutual distrust between Moscow and the West over Russia's military action in Syria, highlight the potential for clashes between Russian and allied forces in the increasingly crowded skies over Syria.
Russia sought to play down the incident. Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the jet accidentally entered Turkish airspace for "several seconds" Saturday while returning to its base about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the border with Turkey. He said the violation happened due to poor weather in the area, which forced the pilot to approach the base from the north.
Russia has taken measures "to prevent any such incidents in the future," he added. The ministry said Russia had nothing to do with the second alleged incursion Sunday.
NATO called Russia's actions "irresponsible behavior," and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Washington is conferring with Turkish leaders about the airspace violation.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. was "quite concerned" by Russia's action, describing it as a provocation.
"Given the stakes and sensitivity around the Russian military action in that region of the world, I think our concerns are well-founded," Earnest said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also expressed concern, telling reporters during a trip to Chile that the incident could have led to Turkey shooting down the Russian plane, and that Russia has a responsibility to act within international standards.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russian warplanes had committed "unacceptable violations of Turkish airspace."
"Russia's actions are not contributing to the security and stability of the region. I call on Russia to fully respect NATO airspace and to avoid escalating tensions with the alliance," he said.
The Kremlin voiced hope that the incident wouldn't damage its friendly ties with Ankara.
"Bilateral relations with Turkey are quite comprehensive, and they are solidly based on mutual benefits," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Moscow was looking into the incursion.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Russia had said the plane intruded "by mistake."
"They said they are respectful of Turkey's borders and that it would not happen again," he told Haber Turk television.
But Davutoglu warned that Turkey would enforce its rules of engagement in case of intrusions, which call for treating anyone approaching its border from Syria as an enemy.
"The Turkish armed forces have their orders," he said, saying it will take the necessary steps "even if it's a bird that violates Turkey's border. ... Our rules of engagement are clear."
A security meeting was called for Monday evening in Ankara, with Davutoglu chairing it.
Following urgent consultations Monday, NATO strongly protested the Russian intrusions and noted "the extreme danger of such irresponsible behavior."
"The security of the alliance is indivisible, and allies stand in strong solidarity with Turkey," the NATO statement said.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the Russian jet intruded Saturday near the town of Yayladagi, in Hatay province. Two F-16 jets intercepted the aircraft and forced it to return to Syrian airspace.
The Turkish military said a MiG-29 fighter of unknown origin had threatened two Turkish planes Sunday by locking its radar on them for 5 minutes and 40 seconds. The military said the incident occurred while 10 F-16s were patrolling the Turkish-Syrian border.
Konashenkov said the Russian air force doesn't operate any MiG-29s in Syria. The Syrian air force reportedly has some MiG-29s.
NATO said Russian Su-30 and Su-24 aircraft violated Turkish airspace Saturday and Sunday in the Hatay region.
"The aircraft in question entered Turkish airspace despite Turkish authorities' clear, timely and repeated warnings," it said. "In accordance with NATO practice, Turkish fighter aircraft responded to these incursions by closing to identify the intruder, after which the Russian planes departed Turkish airspace."
NATO also strongly criticized the Russian air campaign in Syria that began Wednesday.
Russia says its airstrikes are directed against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, as well as al-Qaida's Syrian affiliates. The U.S. and France say at least some of the strikes appear to have hit Western-backed rebel factions fighting government troops, with the real goal of protecting Syrian President Bashar Assad.
NATO said the alliance was calling on Russia "to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians, to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL, and to promote a solution to the conflict through a political transition."
Russia's Defense Ministry said its jets Monday flew 15 sorties and struck 10 targets, including militants' field headquarters in Aleppo province and militants' headquarters in Damascus province. It said they also destroyed about 20 tanks in the province of Homs and 30 other combat vehicles in Idlib province.
The Russian strikes in Syria have largely focused on the northwestern and central provinces — gateways to the heartland of Assad's power in the capital and on the Mediterranean coast. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in Tunisia that most of the Russian airstrikes "do not target the Islamic State."
Turkey, which has strongly demanded that Assad step down since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011, has voiced dismay about the Russian military action. On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Russian airstrikes were unacceptable and a grave mistake that could alienate Moscow in the region.
In Moscow, the head of defense affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament said Monday that some volunteers from Russia may join Assad's army.
"I'm sure a unit made up of Russian war veterans will emerge as part of the Syrian army," said retired Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov in remarks carried by Russian news agencies. "What could attract them there other than ideology? Money, of course."
It wasn't immediately clear if Komoyedov was expressing his personal views or putting forth an official view. Putin has firmly ruled out any involvement by Russian ground troops in Syria.
Unlike airstrikes, ground combat would be certain to involve casualties and threaten Putin's popularity by raising memories of the thousands of Soviet deaths in Afghanistan in the decade that followed its intervention there in 1979.
Le Drian reaffirmed that a political settlement of the Syrian crisis can't be achieved with Assad remaining in power, since he was responsible for the conflict.
"We're favorable to a political solution that would integrate the regime's elements that would also integrate the Syrian opposition" who hit by Russian airstrikes, he said.
The United States is leading a coalition that is carrying out airstrikes in Syria, as well as Iraq, against Islamic State militants. Russia maintains that its air campaign came at the request of the Damascus government, unlike the coalition's military action.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said the various air campaigns in Syria create "a situation that is fraught with danger and very delicate, as we'd seen in the issue of the violation of the airspace with Turkey."
"This should really refocus people's attention on finding a political solution," he said.
___
Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Lolita C. Baldor in Madrid, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Josh Lederman in Washington, Benjamin Wiacek in Tunis, Tunisia, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report. ||||| Turkey has again summoned the Russian ambassador after a second violation of its airspace by a Russian warplane operating in Syria in two days.
It did the same after the first violation on Saturday, after which two Turkish F-16 jets were scrambled.
Turkey said the second violation occurred on Sunday.
Nato has urged Russia to end air strikes "on the Syrian opposition and civilians". Russia says it is targeting Islamic State and other Islamists.
Russia said Saturday's violation was for just a few seconds and due to poor weather. It has not officially reacted to Sunday's incident.
Saturday's interception took place near Yayladagi in the southern Hatay region, Turkey says.
A statement by Nato's 28 members, which include Turkey, warned of "the extreme danger of such irresponsible behaviour" and urged Russia "to cease and desist".
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Turkey would have been within its rights to shoot the jets down.
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"The Turkish Armed Forces are clearly instructed," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish TV. "Even if it is a flying bird, it will be intercepted."
But he played down the possibility of a "Turkey-Russia crisis", saying that channels between the two countries remained open.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed concern at the dangers of having "a lot of different countries and different coalitions" carrying out air campaigns in Syria, saying the situation was "fraught with danger". He urged a renewed focus on a political solution to the conflict.
The Russian air campaign began on Wednesday, with Moscow saying it was targeting IS positions and those of other Islamist groups. Syria said on Monday that the air strikes had been planned for months.
The country's defence ministry said 10 targets had been hit during the course of 15 strikes on Monday. Among the targets Russia said it destroyed were:
20 tanks that had been seized from the Syrian army by militants
two IS command centres, one near Damascus and one in Aleppo
two ammunition dumps in Homs province
Mr Putin has denied that civilians have been killed in the past week, but evidence on the ground has indicated otherwise.
Turkey and other members of the US-led coalition in Syria say the principal target is in fact the Syrian opposition groups fighting President Assad.
Nato said Russian air strikes did not target IS positions, but said it should "focus its efforts" on doing so.
Earlier on Monday, Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the Russian government's defence committee, said Russia had not ruled out attacking rebel positions using warships.
Analysis - Jonathan Marcus, BBC Defence & Diplomatic Correspondent
The Russian incursion into Turkish air space has set alarm bells ringing in Nato with Alliance ambassadors describing it as "irresponsible behaviour".
The US Secretary of State John Kerry has also expressed his concern, noting that this is "precisely the kind of thing" Washington warned about in pressing Russia for talks to avoid mid-air incidents.
Turkish jets shot down a Syrian Mig-fighter in March of last year. Another Syrian aircraft, possibly a helicopter, was shot down last May.
Nato has called on Russia to "take all necessary measures" to ensure that such violations do not take place in the future. American sources claim that, far from being an accident, the Russian pilots knew exactly what they were doing.
As the Russian air campaign moves into a higher gear, this episode illustrates some of the wider dangers involved. | – Russia is rapidly stepping up its involvement in Syria, and NATO is worried—especially by Russian violation of Turkish airspace. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Tuesday that he doesn't believe Moscow's claim that the incursions on a NATO member's airspace were a mistake, reports Reuters. "Intelligence that we have received provides me with reason to say it doesn't look like an accident," Stoltenberg said, per CNN, adding the violation is "more dangerous" in the context of a Russian buildup of forces in Syria involving planes, ground troops, and "a large number of naval assets." The Turkish military says that in addition to incursions over the weekend, an MiG-29 fighter jet that was either Russian or Syrian interfered with eight Turkish jets along the Turkey-Syria border on Monday, placing them under radar lock for several minutes, CNN reports. In Syria, American and Russian planes are now flying combat missions in the same country for the first time since World War II, raising fears that they could end up firing on each other, Reuters notes. On the ground, meanwhile, Syrian government forces backed by Russian planes have launched their first major offensive since Russian airstrikes began last week, the AP reports. Activists say that the "most intense fighting in months" is taking place in the northwestern provinces of Idlib and Hama, where the AP reports there is no ISIS presence, although the al-Qaeda-backed Nusra Front is active, along with US-backed rebel groups. (A top official in Moscow says Russian "volunteers" could appear in the Syrian army.) |
Story highlights Pope Francis will deliver his first Angelus blessing on Sunday
Francis tells journalists he chose his name as pope to reflect a concern for the poor
He will meet with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in a week, the Vatican says
Since his election, he has faced questions over his past in Argentina
The new pope gave an insight into his choice of the name Francis in an audience with journalists Saturday -- and said how he wished for a church that was both poor and "for the poor."
His words came in his first meeting with the media since he became the only Jesuit and first Latin American to be chosen as leader of the Roman Catholic Church three days ago.
Francis, who before he became pope was known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio , said a fellow cardinal from Brazil had told him "don't forget the poor" as the votes stacked up in his favor.
This thought stuck in his mind, Francis said, as it became clear that he had won the two-thirds majority that meant he was the new pontiff.
"Right away, with regard to the poor, I thought of St. Francis of Assisi , then I thought of war," he told the assembled journalists. "Francis loved peace and that is how the name came to me."
He had also thought of St. Francis of Assisi's concern for the natural environment, he said, and how he was a "poor man, a simple man, as we would like a poor church, for the poor."
St. Francis of Assisi, who gave up his own wealth and prestige, is revered among Catholics for his work with the poor.
The journalists included Vatican communications staff and several Latin American reporters, mostly from Argentina.
Francis began by thanking them all for their efforts to share with the world the momentous events for the church in the days since Benedict announced his unexpected resignation.
Blessing for all
He drew a parallel between the work of the media and that of the church, saying both worked to communicate "truth, beauty and goodness."
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The media also had an important role to play in explaining the way the church works, he said, which is made more complicated by the role played by faith rather than more worldly or political concerns.
The new pope concluded the audience -- which did not include questions -- with a blessing for all the journalists present and their families.
He acknowledged that not all those present were Catholic, saying he gave them his blessing "knowing that you are of different religions, because all of you are children of God."
As a cardinal in Buenos Aires, Francis developed close relations with Argentina's Jewish community.
He wrote to the chief rabbi in Rome this week, saying he strongly hoped to "contribute to the progress of the relations that have existed between Jews and Catholics" since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which redrew the church's relations with the modern world, "in a spirit of renewed collaboration."
On Sunday, Francis will celebrate Mass in Vatican City and for the first time deliver the Angelus, or noon blessing, from his papal apartment window to the crowds gathered below in St. Peter's Square.
The official Mass to inaugurate Francis as the bishop of Rome -- and leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics -- takes place Tuesday.
Reforms to come?
Francis has already struck observers with his simple and humble style since being elected to the papacy -- and prompted speculation that he may bring in wider changes.
The Vatican said Saturday that he's decided that the heads of the various Vatican offices will keep their jobs for now, but he's not making any definitive appointments.
"It's customary for new popes to swiftly reconfirm the department heads who lose their positions when the previous pontificate ends, and then take his time about bringing in his team," said Allen.
"The fact that Francis has not followed that path may suggest that significant personnel moves will come sooner rather than later."
Francis wants "a certain period for reflection, prayer and dialogue before [making] any definitive nomination or confirmation," the Vatican statement said.
Military dictatorship
The pope's media audience came only a day after the Vatican sought to damp down reports over his conduct during Argentina's so-called Dirty War, amid accusations that he could have done more to protect two Jesuit priests who were kidnapped.
The Vatican rejected the allegations as defamatory and untrue in a news conference Friday.
"This was never a concrete or credible accusation in his regard. He was questioned by an Argentinian court as someone aware of the situation but never as a defendant. He has, in documented form, denied any accusations," said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman.
"Instead, there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time of the military dictatorship," he said.
Francis will meet with his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in a week, the Vatican said Saturday.
The March 23 meeting will take place at the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, where Benedict has been staying since his historic resignation.
It comes amid concern in some quarters that the presence of a living former pope might lead to a conflict of interests or influence.
The Vatican has said that Benedict will not seek to interfere in the running of the church, but will focus on study and prayer. ||||| VATICAN CITY—It took Jorge Mario Bergoglio four minutes to convince fellow cardinals he was their leader.
Enlarge Image Close Associated Press Cardinal Bergoglio, right, with Canada's Cardinal Ouellet on March 6.
Speaking in the Paul VI grand hall of the Vatican, the Argentine cardinal warned the Catholic Church against focusing too much on matters close to home—advice that came against the backdrop of a papacy that had been consumed by infighting among Vatican officials, a dwindling flock in Europe and secular trends in the West.
The 76-year-old Father Jorge, as he is known back home, said Roman Catholicism needed to shift its focus outward, to the world beyond Rome—rather than being "self-referential," he said. Its core mission was humility, dignity and justice. It should help the poor.
It was a week before the secret conclave to elect the new pontiff would begin. But the speech sowed the seeds of one of Catholicism's boldest moves—the election of a pope from the New World, a man likely to steer the church's focus toward social justice and the problems of the world's periphery, rather than on the intrigue and controversy of its central administration.
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This account, based on interviews with four cardinals, lifts the curtain on the dynamic that led the church's highest officials to shun the European basin from which Catholicism has drawn most of its leaders. Just before his speech, at a dinner of English-speaking cardinals, the future pope's name had come up over a meal of soup and wine but hadn't generated a buzz. "The speech was decisive," said one voting European cardinal.
"He spoke of the need for catechesis and the need to address the poor…the question of justice and the dignity of the human person," said a voting U.S. cardinal.
The call to project the church outward, not inward, propelled the Argentine prelate into contention in the first round of voting with two of Catholicism's most prominent cardinals.
Enlarge Image Close Reuters A puff of smoke announced the Argentinian's selection as pope.
The other two—Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan and Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican's office for appointing bishops—were longtime acolytes of Benedict XVI, giving them what many cardinals thought was an inside track to the papacy. By the fifth and decisive round, Cardinal Bergoglio had surpassed both.
The election of Cardinal Bergoglio, known now as Pope Francis, doesn't mean the church will change its doctrine. Pope Francis is expected to uphold church teachings, ranging from its opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage to its requirement of priestly celibacy. But he is likely to create a new narrative for the church, one less focused on the inner workings of the Vatican and more on social justice.
"Sometimes when you're dealing with a crisis, you kick the ball in a different direction. And that's what this pope has done. It's to say: What I stand for is a particular gospel way of life and witness," British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster, said in an interview.
Benedict's resignation on Feb. 28 opened the door to a flurry of unusually frank discussions among cardinals in the week that followed. Unlike the conclave that followed Pope John Paul II's death in 2005, cardinals didn't spend time in mourning. Instead, their deliberations could turn immediately to the biggest challenges facing the church—the rise of secular trends, management of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank and the need to address a shift Catholicism's demographics toward the southern hemisphere.
After hours, the cardinals met in private to home in on candidates. On March 5, after they had spent the day in the talks known as the General Congregation, a group of them from around the English-speaking world gathered inside North American College, a school nestled on a hill above the Vatican, where U.S. bishops send seminarians to train for the priesthood. A banquet table was set up beneath a chandelier inside the Red Room, which is trimmed with red marble pilasters and oil canvases depicting cardinals.
Sitting down to saucers of soup, the cardinals discussed "five or six" names of papal candidates, said one U.S. cardinal. That roster included two of the names that were most frequently being mentioned by the media: Cardinal Ouellet, a former Archbishop of Quebec, and Cardinal Scola of Milan. The future pope's name was also dropped into the conversation, the U.S. cardinal said.
A spokesman for Cardinal Scola declined to comment. Reached by phone Friday evening, Cardinal Ouellet said, "I have nothing to say about the conclave. I have a very serious oath about what was going on inside." A Vatican spokesman declined to comment on conclave proceedings.
Cardinal O'Connor, who was among the invitees of the dinner, declined to say who first mentioned Cardinal Bergoglio as a papal candidate. But he added: "His name began to be thrown into the ring: Maybe this is the man?"
Many cardinals initially believed Cardinal Bergoglio, 76, was probably too old to become pope, especially coming in the wake of Benedict XVI, who cited his age and frailty as reasons for his resignation. "We came into this whole process thinking: The next pope has to be vigorous and therefore probably younger. So there you have a man who isn't young. He's 76 years old. The question is does he still have vigor?" said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
American cardinals are heavily courted for support in papal elections. As a potential bloc of votes inside the conclave, the Americans are "very powerful" because they are outnumbered only by cardinals from Italy, Cardinal O'Connor said.
American cardinals also run archdioceses that are among the biggest donors to the Catholic church and to the papacy. Another asset that would have worked in the U.S. cardinals' favor is a lack of unity among Italians that has manifested itself in past conclaves, said the U.S. cardinal.
But as evening wore on, and glasses of red and white wine began to flow, it became clear that this time, the Americans, too, fostered diverging views. "I thought the American cardinals were quite divided about where to go," said Cardinal O'Connor, who didn't enter the conclave because he is above the voting-age limit of 80 years.
"Americans are particularly rugged individualists. We get along, but we all have our own point of view," the U.S. cardinal said.
Cardinal George of Chicago said he couldn't remember the evening but said it was "entirely possible" that Cardinal Bergoglio came up in conversations over a meal at the college. "Every night it's something different. So there are different conversations going on," the cardinal said in an interview in the Red Room on Friday. He declined to discuss the conclave.
Later that week, it was Cardinal Bergoglio's time to address his peers. Unlike the speeches before him, the Argentine kept his address short—less than four minutes, several cardinals said. That got him noticed.
It hadn't been the first time that Cardinal Bergoglio had mentioned the inward-looking nature of the church.
"We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of self-referential church," the cardinal said in an interview to an Italian journalist last year. "It's true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that's sick because it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former."
"He speaks in a very straightforward way. And so perhaps—more than the content—it was simply a reminder that here is someone who has authenticity in such a way that he's a wonderful witness to the discipleship," said Cardinal George about the speech.
On March 12, the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel and cut themselves from outside communication. In the first ballot that night, the cardinals who garnered significant votes were Cardinals Bergoglio, Scola and Ouellet. Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston also drew votes. Black smoke rose from the chapel's smokestack, signifying no choice had been made, and the cardinals adjourned for the day.
On Wednesday, Cardinal Scola's support began to erode. Though Italian, the Milan cardinal was struggling to draw support from his countrymen, one European cardinal said. That left Italian cardinals divided among a range of candidates, with some starting to coalesce around Cardinal Bergoglio.
Members of another potential voting bloc—"Ratzingerian" cardinals who are close to Benedict XVI—were also divided between cardinals Scola and Ouellet, both of whom have deep ties with the former pope and are considered theological and intellectual admirers of his.
By the final round of voting, the opposition blocs had dissolved, with many of its voters joining into to push Cardinal Bergoglio past the 77-vote threshold needed to become pope.
Corrections & Amplifications
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as Cormack Murphy O'Connor.
Write to Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared March 16, 2013, on page A6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: With a Speech, Cardinal Set Path to Papacy. | – Pope Francis met with the international media today and shed more light on why he picked the name Francis. As the votes were being counted and it became clear that Jorge Bergoglio would be the next pope, a fellow cardinal from Brazil turned to him and said, "Don't forget the poor," he recalled. "Right away, with regard to the poor, I thought of St. Francis of Assisi, then I thought of war," he said, reports CNN. "Francis loved peace and that is how the name came to me." St. Francis, he added, was a "poor man, a simple man," and the new pope said he wanted a church "for the poor." The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, speaks to four cardinals who say a four-minute speech by Bergoglio in the runup to voting lifted him from a so-so candidate into front-runner status. "He spoke of the need for catechesis and the need to address the poor," says one, along with "the question of justice and the dignity of the human person." Bergoglio told his fellow cardinals that the church needed to stop navel-gazing at the Vatican and start focusing on social justice in the world outside Rome. Click for more on how his election came to be. |
In her television show tonight, Sarah Palin casts herself as a can-do superwoman of the natural world. She fishes, hikes across glaciers and preaches "respect for the elements" from a speedboat while clad in a yellow cagoule. But the programme has already plunged the Mama Grizzly-in-chief into controversy after a leading conservationist in her adopted home of Alaska accused her of flagrant irresponsibility by fishing too close to protected brown bears.
John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, said scenes in an online trailer for the programme appeared to show the former Republican vice-presidential candidate breaking the rules of Wolverine Creek, a famous spot where bears – and humans – come to fish. "It's clear from the video that she violated the guidelines," he said, calling her actions "a travesty".
In a preview of Sarah Palin's Alaska, a part nature documentary, part candid camera of the daily life of one of America's most controversial political families, the former state governor is seen fishing for salmon with husband Todd and family members. She can be seen apparently holding her rod towards brown bears on the river bank, while the party's boat appears to be closer to the bears than guidelines advise. The Alaska department of fish and game says people in a boat must not fish within 30ft of a bear. "It's clearly irresponsible," said Toppenberg. "She is encouraging the violation of important guidelines. Humans can get too close to the bears."
The irony of a right-wing conservative, who boasts of hunting moose and shooting wolves while campaigning for more oil drilling in Alaska, transforming herself into a nature fan for primetime has not been lost on environmentalists.
Large brown bears gather in Wolverine Creek because the fishing is so easy and the animals have, in the process, become a tourist spectacle. But Toppenberg warned that by behaving in an apparently irreverent manner, Palin was doing nothing to foster responsibility among visitors. "She is encouraging the violation of important guidelines that allows tourism to flourish in Alaska. She is inviting future problems with the tourism industry and, in particular, the bear-viewing industry," he said.
More than two years after she was plucked by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to be his running mate in the 2008 election, Palin, 46, claims she will run for president in 2012 if "there's no one else". Meanwhile she has decided to put her family and her home state on show for the nation in Sarah Palin's Alaska. But even a soft-focus programme becomes controversial when Palin is attached to it.
Joe Meehan, of the wildlife conservation division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that it appeared that the Palins' boat got within 30ft of the bears but not while they were actually feeding. "Some people may say you shouldn't even try to fish when a bear is in the area and I wouldn't argue with that," he added.
Meehan, who supervises Alaska's wildlife refuge programme, which includes Wolverine Creek, said that while he did not believe Palin had necessarily breached the guidelines, he had concerns over the signal she was sending. "Fishing in close proximity to bears may, in general, not send an appropriate message to large numbers of people that are not experienced at fishing in bear country," he said.
The preview clip also shows a bear jumping into the river near the Palins. Palin recalls dramatically to camera later: "So I'm thinking we are going to get stuck there, the anchor is dropped and there is a bear coming towards us."
But this enraged Toppenberg. "She implies that she is somehow in danger or being brave. That's complete nonsense," he said. "Wolverine Creek is the one place in Alaska where the bears are tolerant and completely habituated to the presence of people and boats. But the guidelines are there for a reason." ||||| The former Republican vice-presidential contender was sharing a boat with her husband, Todd, their nine-year-old daughter, Piper, and friends in Wolverine Creek when the bears emerged from the trees.
The two mothers exchanged glances and then the brown bear, which had paused on a rock, wandered off with her cubs leaving the Palins looking stunned.
With a photographer conveniently to hand, the encounter may not have been quite the surprise that it would appear.
Mrs Palin recently released a political video titled Mama Grizzlies, and Wolverine Creek is a popular destination for bear watchers where the curious animals often come within a few feet of anglers' boats.
The former Alaska governor is a keen hunter and angler who keeps a grizzly bear hide, shot by her father, draped over her sofa in her office.
Her latest campaign-style video, released earlier this month on the internet, warned Washington to watch out for angry "mama grizzlies" who are ready to "get our country back on the right track".
Speaking in the video, Mrs Palin said: "There in Alaska, I always think about the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody's coming to attack our cubs you thought pit bulls were tough, well, you don't want to mess with the mama grizzlies". | – A leading Alaska conservationist calls Sarah Palin's Alaska "a travesty"—and not because it's, well, a reality show starring Sarah Palin. He claims the former guv got too close to protected brown bears in last night's premiere, and says she was "clearly irresponsible." A clip from the premiere shows Palin and hubby Todd having an up-close-and-personal moment with some bears (including, yes, mama bears) while fishing. "It's clear from the video that she violated the guidelines" of Wolverine Creek, says the director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance. The state's department of fish and game requires people in boats to stay at least 30 feet away from bears. He argues that the clip shows the Palins getting closer than that, thereby "encouraging the violation of important guidelines." A rep from the fish and game department, however, is not convinced they actually violated any guidelines, the Guardian reports, since they did not approach the bears as they were feeding. However, he notes, "Some people may say you shouldn't even try to fish when a bear is in the area and I wouldn't argue with that." Click here to find out how many people tuned in to her show's premiere. |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Daniel Sandford described a scene of "serious devastation" in Kiev
Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to negotiate with pro-EU protesters and opposition leaders after violent clashes in the capital Kiev.
He said a cross-party commission would be set up on Monday to try to resolve the deepening crisis. Opposition leaders confirmed this.
Earlier, a group of protesters - trying to reach parliament - clashed with police. Dozens of people were injured.
The US and EU called for an end to the violence and urgent political talks.
The violence broke out as many thousands of protesters held a rally in Kiev's Independence Square, outraged by new laws which they said restricted basic freedoms.
The ruling party of Mr Yanukovych denies this, saying the legislature is in line with European standards.
However, Western countries have expressed deep concern at the new laws.
The anti-government movement began in protest at Mr Yanukovych's decision in late November to pull out of a landmark treaty with the EU, but has expanded to demand his resignation.
'Civil war' warning
Late on Sunday, President Yanukovych's press office said a "working group" headed by National Security and Defence Secretary Andriy Kluyev would be set up.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Some in the crowd of protesters attacked a bus being used by the police as a cordon
Image copyright Reuters Image caption It was set alight after petrol bombs were thrown
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko (centre), who called for calm, was sprayed with a powder fire extinguisher
It said the group - made of members of government and the presidential administration - would meet opposition representatives on Monday to try resolve the crisis.
Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko confirmed this after meeting President Yanukovych at his residence outside Kiev.
"We must use every opportunity to resolve the crisis peacefully," the former world heavyweight boxing champion, who leads the Udar party, told Ukraine's Hromadske TV.
He warned against a "scenario of force", adding that he "didn't rule out the possibility of a civil war".
Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader, said Mr Yanukovych personally called him to say that he was ready for talks.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Daniel Sandford in Kiev said there were 'waves' of attacks
However, the opposition warned that the talks must produce real results and not be an opportunity for the president to play for time. The opposition is demanding the resignation of the government and snap presidential elections.
But opposition leaders are under huge pressure to come up with an action plan, amid criticism from many activists that their campaign has been too passive.
'Provocateurs and extremists'
Sunday's rally in Kiev, attended by many thousands, began with calls from opposition politicians to disregard the new laws curbing protests that pro-EU demonstrators have been staging for the past two months.
But clashes erupted as a group of demonstrators - reportedly far-right activists - headed away from the main square towards parliament to express their outrage.
They ran into police and interior troops cordons near the Dynamo football stadium, some 300 metres from Independence Square.
The demonstrators pelted police with flares, thunder flashes and petrol bombs, the BBC's Daniel Sandford in Kiev reports.
They overturned a bus used by police and set it alight. Other vehicles were also set on fire.
Police - who were sheltering behind buses under their riot shields - threw their own thunder flashes and gas canisters to try to force the crowd back.
Hours after darkness fell, the stand-off was continuing on Hrushevskyy Street, some 100 metres from Independence Square.
Police also used water cannon to try to disperse the demonstrators.
Interior ministry spokesman Serhiy Burlakov blamed "provocateurs and extremists" for the confrontations and urged people not to follow their lead.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Some protesters broke up paving stones to use as missiles
Police were filming everything and had opened criminal proceedings under Article 294 (organisation of mass riots), the interior ministry said.
The opposition leaders said they were committed to a peaceful resolution of the crisis, denouncing those activists who took part in clashes.
'Enslaving' laws
During the day, the rally on the main square heard a call from a former Ukrainian navy chief for members of the armed forces to defy "illegal" orders from those in power, Unian news agency reported.
"Tomorrow the regime will enslave you too. Therefore we are calling on you to fulfil your military oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian people and not to the authorities who have gone off the rails," said Rear Admiral Ihor Tenyukh, who was sacked by Mr Yanukovych in 2010.
The new curbs on protests, which have been signed into law by the president, include:
A ban on the unauthorised installation of tents, stages or amplifiers in public places
Provision to arrest protesters wearing masks or helmets
A ban on protests involving more than five vehicles in convoy
Hefty fines or jail for breaches of law
The protesters have been camping out behind extensive barricades on the Euromaidan, as Independence Square has been dubbed. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Steve Rosenberg reports from the protest camps
Ukrainian police have begun moving against protesters in central Kiev, with some protest camps in front of government buildings dismantled.
An opposition party said security forces had raided its headquarters.
Officials gave protesters until Tuesday to leave. No clashes were reported.
Opposition leaders urged supporters to defend Independence Square, the main protest site. The stand-off follows weeks of unrest after a U-turn on a free-trade deal with the EU.
The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Kiev says there are far more police in the city centre than on Sunday, when hundreds of thousands of people came out onto the streets.
US Vice President Joe Biden spoke over the phone to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych earlier, expressing "deep concern" about the situation in Kiev and urged dialogue with the opposition.
"[Mr Biden] noted that violence has no place in a democratic society and is incompatible with our strategic relationship," the White House said in a statement.
Warning to protesters
Police were seen forcing protesters out of two streets where, according to the Interior Ministry, they were blocking access to administrative buildings.
Some barricades and tents were also removed at at least two sites.
Prosecutor-General Viktor Pshonka warned protesters to stop causing "anarchy and lawlessness" by blocking the buildings.
The ministry said no action was being taken on Independence Square itself.
Image caption Riot police have lined up outside government buildings to force away demonstrators
Image caption The protesters have vowed to defend Independence Square, the focal point of the demonstrations
Image caption Police have begun dismantling some of the barricades near government buildings
Image caption Makeshift kitchens have been helping to feed the protesters
Demonstrators are now putting up additional barricades on the square.
"We call on people to stand their ground, and peacefully, without using force or aggression, to defend their right to live in a free country," said heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, who has emerged as one of the leaders of the protests, quoted by Reuters news agency.
"We are expecting the break-up by police of peaceful demonstrators. If blood is spilled during this dispersing, this blood will be on the hands of the person who ordered it: ...[President Viktor] Yanukovych."
Talks proposed
Timeline of events 21 Nov: Government suspends preparations for signing of EU association agreement, triggering first protests
Government suspends preparations for signing of EU association agreement, triggering first protests 28-29 Nov: EU summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, goes ahead without Ukraine initialling the deal
EU summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, goes ahead without Ukraine initialling the deal 30 Nov: Police violence leads to bigger protests in Kiev, with hundreds of thousands on streets at subsequent two weekends
Police violence leads to bigger protests in Kiev, with hundreds of thousands on streets at subsequent two weekends 8 Dec: Biggest protest so far culminates with toppling of Lenin statue Q&A: EU-Russia battleground
Meanwhile, spokespeople for the opposition Fatherland Party said security forces were occupying its headquarters and "breaking down doors".
They left after the party's computer servers were seized. The party's website is currently inaccessible.
A police spokeswoman said neither the regular Kiev police nor Berkut riot police had conducted any operations at the address.
Local media said the troops were from the SBU state security service, but the service made no comment on the reports.
Fatherland is the party led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was jailed in 2011 over a controversial gas contract with Russia.
Protesters are demanding her release.
President Yanukovych has said he will discuss the crisis with three former presidents on Tuesday to try to find a compromise.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The moment anti-government protesters toppled Lenin statue
The protesters have given Mr Yanukovych 48 hours to dismiss the government and are demanding new elections for the presidency and government.
They are blockading government buildings with cars, barricades and tents.
The demonstrators have condemned Mr Yanukovych for refusing to sign an association agreement with the EU last month. He said he shelved it because it would put trade with Russia at risk.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will be in Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday "to support a way out of the political crisis".
Baroness Ashton will hold talks with government officials, opposition activists and civil society groups.
The Commission says the EU's offer of an association agreement with Ukraine remains on the table, provided Ukraine meets the conditions - and they cannot be renegotiated.
Sunday's demonstration was the biggest so far in nearly three weeks, and the biggest in Ukraine since the 2004 Orange Revolution, which swept pro-Western leaders to power.
During the evening, a group of protesters smashed the city's statue of the Russian revolutionary leader Lenin, and brought its dismembered parts as trophies to Independence Square.
Many of the protesters suspect Russia's President Vladimir Putin of trying to model a new Russian-led customs union on the Soviet Union. So far, only Belarus and Kazakhstan have joined it. ||||| KIEV Ukrainian riot police charged protesters occupying a central Kiev square early on Wednesday after the bloodiest day since the former Soviet republic, caught in a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West, won its independence more than 22 years ago.
At least 18 people, including seven policemen, died on Tuesday during hours of violence between security forces and civilians who have staged protests against President Viktor Yanukovich since last November.
Many were killed by gunshot and hundreds more were injured, with dozens of them in a serious condition, police and opposition representatives said.
Despite Western demands for restraint and dialogue, the state security service first set a deadline for the demonstrators to end disorder or face "tough measures", and then the police advanced into Independence Square, the center of the protest campaign.
Protesters responded with petrol bombs, fireworks and stones. Live television footage showed police throwing stun grenades at the protesters separated from them by a line of burning tents, tyres and wood.
Police steadily gained ground but thousands of protesters held on to the center of the square, a Reuters cameraman said.
Earlier, one of the opposition's leaders, Vitaly Klitschko, reacted defiantly, telling supporters on the square: "We will not leave here. This is an island of freedom. We will defend it."
The world champion boxer-turned politician later arrived at Yanukovich's office for late night talks, Klitschko's spokeswoman said, but he and another opposition leader, former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, were still waiting to see the president an hour later.
Earlier the State Security Service (SBU), in a joint statement with the interior ministry, signalled the government's intentions. "If by 6 p.m. the disturbances have not ended, we will be obliged to restore order by all means envisaged by law," they said.
The riot police moved in hours after Moscow gave Ukraine $2 billion in aid for its crippled economy which it had been holding back to demand decisive action to crush the protests.
Nationwide demonstrations erupted after Yanukovich bowed to Russian pressure and pulled out of a planned far-reaching trade agreement with the European Union, deciding instead to accept a Kremlin bailout for the heavily indebted economy.
Western powers warned Yanukovich against trying to smash the pro-European demonstrations, urging him to turn back to Europe and the prospect of an IMF-supported economic recovery, while Russia accused them of meddling.
PRAYING FOR UKRAINE
EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele said he had spoken to Ukraine's acting prime minister, who had given assurances that the authorities would try to avoid using live firearms.
"For the sake of the Ukrainians and for the sake of the future of that country, I will pray that he is right," Fuele told a public event in Brussels.
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the United States was appalled by the violence and urged Yanukovich to restart a dialogue with opposition leaders. "Force will not resolve the crisis," Carney told a briefing.
Earlier on Tuesday, clashes raged for several hours outside the parliament building. A police spokeswoman gave a variety of reasons for the deaths including gunshot wounds, a traffic accident and heart attacks. One protester died in a fire.
Right Sector, a militant far-right group, added to tensions by calling on people holding weapons to go to Independence Square - also known as Maidan - to protect it from security forces.
As protesters and police battled on the streets of Kiev, Russia called the escalation a "direct result of connivance by Western politicians and European structures that have shut their eyes ... to the aggressive actions of radical forces".
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who has tried to broker a power-sharing transition, urge Ukraine's leadership "to address the root causes of the crisis".
Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, telephoned his Ukrainian counterpart to warn against sliding back into violence and to urge the government to keep working for a political solution.
"News of a fresh escalation of violence is alarming. We are shocked to hear of the dead and injured today," Steinmeier said in a statement, raising the possibility of EU sanctions against Ukrainian leaders.
"Those responsible for taking any decisions that lead to the further spilling of blood must know that the reserve Europe has shown in terms of personal sanctions will be reconsidered," he added.
Monday's $2 billion cash injection, a resumption of a $15 billion aid package, was seen as a signal that Russia believed Yanukovich had a plan to end the protests and had dropped any idea of bringing opposition leaders into government.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have won the battle for influence in Ukraine for now, protesters who have occupied the center of the capital are not going quietly.
(additional reporting by Marcin Goettig in Kiev, Alexandra Hudson in Berlin, Eric Beech in Washington, Elizabeth Piper in Moscow, Adrian Croft in Brussels and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw; writing by Richard Balmforth, Paul Taylor and David Stamp; editing by Robin Pomeroy) | – Dozens of protesters and police were injured in Kiev clashes yesterday that came on the heels of new anti-protest laws, the AP reports; a Russian news site puts the number of wounded police at 70. The fighting continued into the night. Protesters used sticks and pipes, hurling large rocks, fireworks, and apparently firebombs at police, the New York Times reports. Police fired back with tear gas and water cannon. Though opposition leaders condemned the violence, they couldn't stop it, the Times notes. Following the clashes, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich agreed to negotiations with opposition leaders and protesters, the BBC reports. Today, he said, a government "working group" would meet with opposition leaders and restore peace to the streets. Opposition head Vitali Klitschko, who met with the president, confirmed the plans. "We must use every opportunity to resolve the crisis peacefully," he said, noting the dangers of using force and saying he "didn't rule out the possibility of a civil war." Meanwhile, the unrest continues. Protesters have installed barricades against vehicles set alight, the AP reports, noting audible stun grenades. |
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UPDATE 12:13 p.m.: No prior record for 15-year-old accused of killing spree
It was a “horrific” crime scene that confronted deputies Saturday night: Pastor Greg Griego, his wife, Sarah, and their three youngest children lay dead — fatally shot multiple times with an assault rifle and other weapons — at their South Valley home.
The suspect in custody is the couple’s 15-year-old son, Nehemiah Griego, who authorities believe shot and killed his mother, young brother and two young sisters about 1 a.m. Saturday, and then lay in wait for five hours before ambushing his father when he came home.
The Journal also has learned that authorities believe Nehemiah then put several loaded weapons, including the assault rifle, in the family van with the plan to drive to the nearest Walmart, gun down more people and eventually die in a shootout with police.
But Nehemiah called a friend first, who talked him into meeting at Calvary church, where Nehemiah’s father had been a pastor. It was apparently a Calvary church security officer who contacted 911 about the slayings at the Griego home late Saturday.
Nehemiah Griego is now in the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center, charged with two open counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death.
The couple had 10 children, but only the three youngest and Nehemiah were at home during the shootings.
The sheriff’s office has identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, a former pastor at Calvary Chapel, as well as at the Metropolitan Detention Center; his wife, Sarah Griego, 40, a stay-at-home mom who home schooled their children; Zephania Griego, 9; Jael Griego, 5; and Angelina Griego, 2.
“I’ve never seen a scene quite like this,” Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston told reporters at a news conference Sunday morning.
(Story continues below video)
Shot in their beds
Throughout Sunday, the sheriff’s office released few details.
But the Journal has learned that sheriff’s investigators found multiple weapons at the Griegos’ home, including an AR-15 semiautomatic assault-style rifle and a .22 caliber pistol. It appears Nehemiah used both weapons in the slayings, although it was not immediately clear which guns he allegedly used to kill which of his family members.
The Journal also has learned more details about what detectives believe unfolded at the Griegos’ home in the small hours of Saturday morning. They include:
Nehemiah had a minor disagreement with his mother on Friday night. He waited for her to go to sleep in her bedroom. About 1 a.m. Saturday, he went into his mother’s room and shot her multiple times.
His 9-year-old brother was sleeping in the bed, too, and as he woke up, Nehemiah told the youngster he had just killed their mother. He then shot his brother multiple times.
In a nearby room, Nehemiah’s young sisters began to scream and cry. He walked across the hall and into their room, then opened fire, shooting them both multiple times.
Nehemiah next went downstairs and waited several hours for his father to come home. His father arrived about 6 a.m., and Nehemiah shot him multiple times.
After the killings, Nehemiah put the AR-15 rifle and a shotgun, both of which were loaded, into the family’s van and drove away.
His plan was to head for the nearest Walmart. Once there, he planned to kill several people and wait for police to arrive. Ultimately, he planned to spark a gunfight with law enforcement and die in a hail of bullets.
But first he called a friend who convinced him to meet at Calvary Chapel.
Law enforcement are still trying to piece together what happened over the next 12 hours. But it appears that Nehemiah spent much of that time at the mega church on Osuna.
Eventually Nehemiah told a church security guard, who was a retired police officer, that someone had killed his family at their South Valley home.
The security guard and Nehemiah drove to the home. The guard looked inside, saw Greg Griego dead on the floor and called 911. It was about 9 p.m.
Authorities believe Nehemiah’s parents owned the guns. The weapons had been stored in a closet, not in a gun safe.
They also believe Nehemiah may have had violent fantasies including killing and murder-suicide scenarios for much of his life.
Nehemiah Griego was not well-known among those living within a block or so of the family’s home.
However, neighbor Peter Gomez said he saw the boy walk with siblings and his parents through the neighborhood regularly, and he “wore nothing but camouflage stuff.”
Another neighbor said Nehemiah wanted to be a soldier. Although he always wore Army clothing and camouflage, Nehemiah wasn’t allowed to play violent video games, the neighbor said, since the boy’s parents didn’t allow anything “dirty or violent” and limited TV watching.
Journal photographer Adolphe Pierre-Louis contributed to this story.
More on this story: Father Was Gang Member Turned Pastor
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal ||||| A 15-year-old boy remained in custody Sunday night as detectives tried to piece together what led to the shooting of his parents and three of their children who were found dead in a New Mexico home.
A Bernalillo County sheriff's deputy blocks the dirt road that leads to a home where detectives on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013, were investigating the deaths of five people who were shot to death south of Albuquerque,... (Associated Press)
A Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department crime lab is stationed outside a home south in Albuquerque, N.M., on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013, where two adults and three children were found shot to death. Authorities... (Associated Press)
Bernalillo County authorities are stationed outside a home south of Albuquerque, N.M., on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013, where two adults and three children were found shot to death. Authorities say a teenager... (Associated Press)
The teenager was arrested on murder and other charges in connection with the shootings, which happened Saturday night at the home in a rural area southwest of downtown Albuquerque, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department said.
Authorities identified the victims late Sunday as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sara Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. The suspect was identified as Nehemiah Griego.
Word of the shootings traveled quickly through the law enforcement community, and officials began offering their condolences for Greg Griego, a spiritual leader known for his work with firefighters and the 13 years he spent as a volunteer chaplain at the county jail.
"Chaplin Griego was a dedicated professional that passionately served his fellow man and the firefighters of this community," Fire Chief James Breen said in a statement. "His calming spirit and gentle nature will be greatly missed."
Jail Chief Ramon Rustin said Griego was instrumental in the creation of the Metropolitan Detention Center's chaplain program and worked to get inmates integrated back into the community.
Griego also was a former member of the pastoral staff at Calvary, a Christian church in Albuquerque. As part of his work there, he oversaw the Straight Street program for jail inmates.
Authorities said each victim suffered more than one gunshot wound, and several guns were found at the home, one of which was a semi-automatic military-style rifle. Investigators were trying to determine who owned the guns.
"Right now we're to the meticulous points of processing the scene and collecting physical evidence, and this is a vast scene with a lot of physical evidence," sheriff's department spokesman Lt. Sid Covington said.
Authorities declined to release details of any conversation that the 15-year-old had with investigators, but they said he was the Griegos' son. The sheriff's office said he is charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death.
The sheriff's office said it wouldn't release any further information about the case until Sheriff Dan Houston holds a news conference Tuesday morning.
On Sunday, a police roadblock cut off public access to the narrow dirt road that leads to the home, which is surrounded by trees and an agricultural field on one side.
Neighbors said they saw the first police cars and ambulances arrive at the home Saturday night. The road was blocked and word of the shootings began to make its way through the neighborhood.
Peter Gomez, a 54-year-old carpenter who lives about 200 yards from the home, said he had seen the family _ a husband and wife and their four children _ pass by many times but didn't know them personally.
"It's a horrible thing," Gomez said. "You see all this stuff that happens all over the country, the shootings in the schools and theaters, and then it happens right here. It's sad."
___
Associated Press writer Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this report. | – The two adults and three children allegedly shot dead by a 15-year-old boy in New Mexico were the teenager's own family, police say. The victims have been identified as respected local pastor, Greg Griego, his wife Sarah, and their children Zephania, 9; Jael, 5; and Angelina, 2, KOB reports. The couple's son, Nehemiah, has been charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death. Police believe the teenager used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Griego was well known in the Albuquerque area for his work with firefighters and for his years as a chaplain at the county jail, the AP reports. "Chaplain Griego was a dedicated professional that passionately served his fellow man and the firefighters of this community," the local fire chief said in a statement. "His calming spirit and gentle nature will be greatly missed." |
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Today marks the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Party of Five, and as you can clearly see from the amazing behind-the-scenes video above: The roller-brush hair dryer has been around longer!
How else would you explain Scott Wolf and Matthew Fox's magnificently and perfectly curled-under bangs?
You guys. Why do I not remember this being a thing?! Hot guys with Dorothy Hamill hair? And we all SWOONED!
FOX
Anyway, to celebrate the 20th birthday of the beloved Salinger clan, we dug up our behind-the-scenes footage of E!'s very first set visit to Party of Five in 1994, and it is exquisite. For starters, everyone should know that Matthew Fox, Scott Wolf and Neve Campbell have not really aged in two decades, and clearly must have some sort of pact with the devil. And the hair. It's awesome.
For you who don't remember (and aren't ancient like moi), Party of Five aired on Fox from 1994 – 2000 and launched the careers of Matthew, Scott, Neve and also Jennifer Love Hewitt and Lacey Chabert.
But it was really all about: THE TEARS. Every single damn episode, we fans would cry our ever-living guts out because, not only were these five kids trying just trying to move on after the tragic passing of their parents in a car crash (they were the original Elena and Jeremy Gilbert—mmmkay?), but Charlie (Matthew Fox) batted cancer, Bailey (Scott Wolf) battled alcoholism, Julia (Neve Campbell) dealt with domestic violence and our hearts were never the same.
FOX
Party of Five was never a huge ratings hit, but it had a hardcore fan following, and was the surprise winner in 1996 for the Golden Globe for Best Drama, making it one of the lowest-rated shows ever to win the award.
So, a tip of the hat to the good ol' Salinger clan. And a tip of our curling iron to Scott and Matthew, who never looked more ridiculous/adorable.
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Click/tap elsewhere to exit, or press ESC. ||||| Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Twenty years ago this week, Friends premiered. The show about six pals who hang out all the time debuted to middling reviews and OK ratings before becoming a gargantuan hit and phenomenon. Friends was a top-10 series for its entire run, and a top-five series if you discount the first season. It always averaged more than 20 million viewers and had 25 million as late as its eighth season. It spawned a haircut fad and dozens of mostly mediocre copycats. Between TBS and Nick at Nite, it is currently rerun eight times a day. The anniversary of its premiere has been greeted with untempered enthusiasm, even for this era of rampant Internet-based nostalgia. (There’s been little celebration for ER, which premiered the same week, and was a bigger hit, if for a few years too long.) Jimmy Kimmel is staging mini-reunions, websites are dueling to create the definitive best-episode list, and residents of New York City can now head down to SoHo and get coffee—and Friends merch—at a Central Perk pop-up shop, where poor Gunther will be making appearances and maybe pouring out lattes, like some sitcom Sisyphus.
The almost entirely positive nostalgia trip surrounding Friends is a little curious— and I say that as a devoted Friends partisan. The show ended just a decade ago, and when it did it was a kind of shorthand for that which is popular, likeable, and unchallenging: pure TV pop. It was a show about white people living in oversized apartments they definitely couldn’t afford in a New York City populated by so few people of color that all the ones with speaking parts could be easily assembled in a single, rhyming YouTube video. Compared with punchier, sourer, more cynical sitcoms—from All in the Family to Seinfeld to The Office—that found humor in humanity’s bad behavior, Friends was smiley and conflict-averse to the point of being featherweight.
Willa Paskin Willa Paskin is Slate’s television critic.
The show’s Thursday night partner, Seinfeld, was famously about “nothing,” a claim that, especially in the context of Norman Lear’s morally instructive, socially aware series, was a kind of nihilist cri de coeur, a pledge with philosophical as well as comedic heft. Friends took Seinfeld’s nothing and its ancillary “no learning, no hugging” rule to heart—and then put the hugging back in. It did more than any show to excise the teachable moment from sitcoms for grown-ups: Friends occasionally ran up against “issues,” including lesbian mothers and weddings, but always treated such matters in a casual, offhand manner. It was a show without take-home lessons that was as cute and sweet as any show with them.
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When it ended, critics, even those who liked it, struggled to find the words to celebrate it. Heather Havrilesky, writing in Salon, channeled the sort of “yes, but” spirit of loving Friends: “Yes, Friends was silly and sentimental and self-important and fluffy at times. But isn’t that an indelible part of what we liked about it?” Time’s James Poniewozik wrote that unlike most other great sitcoms, Friends “is simply about being a pleasant sitcom.”
The pure pleasure-giving sitcom has never been a rarer thing.
But in the decade since Friends ended, it has become clear just how hard it is to make a straightforwardly pleasant sitcom, one that 20 million people want to watch and discuss. What Friends did so effortlessly has become, noticeably, very difficult. (Parks and Recreation, a sweet and funny show starring a very talented cast, can’t reliably attract 4 million viewers.) Nostalgia demands that we see the past through rose-colored glasses: The aggravating and the annoying, the painful and the piercing, these things fade away, leaving us with a soothing memory of a more carefree time. But Friends really did begin in a more carefree time. It was the quintessential Clinton-era comedy, existing in the historical period between the end of the Cold War and 9/11—even though the show went on for three more years, into 2004—and in a TV era when the networks could still reliably mint mass-appeal sitcoms. No concern—sandwiches, pet chickens, naked neighbors—was too small when times were so good.
The tug of nostalgia is strong, but Friends, which was “nothing more” than a very funny, anxiety-free sitcom starring a supremely talented cast, almost doesn’t require nostalgia to be glowingly appreciated from this particular vantage point: The pure pleasure-giving sitcom has never been a rarer thing. (Nostalgia, or memory loss, is required to forgive the dreaded Rachel-Joey romance.)
* * *
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The pilot of Friends was not particularly well-reviewed, but it plays well in hindsight. It begins with the gang, sans Rachel, hanging out at Central Perk, endlessly chatting, one conversation fading out and another fading in. The group talks about Chandler’s dreams and Ross’s divorce with a chatty, wannabe art-house cinema vibe. This discursiveness wouldn’t last, but most of the characterizations would: The sarcastic, neurotic Chandler, too-reasonable Monica, space-cadet Phoebe, and lovelorn Ross are all here, more or less fully formed. Only Joey, more of a meathead in the early going, would really transform, into someone more sweetly stupid.
And then into Central Perk walks Rachel, in a wedding dress, demanding and spoiled, incapable of making a cup of coffee or living without her father’s credit card. As the show went on, the characters leaned into their quirks, or grew new ones—Ross developed his paranoid-frantic physical-comedy side, Monica’s OCD got shrill—except Rachel, who grew out of hers. Aniston has spent the last decade being a celebrity and the star of mostly middling movies, but her Rachel is a towering comedic performance. She took a cliché—a ditzy JAP with a nose job and no sense of responsibility—and exploded it, keeping Rachel funny while turning her into an everywoman, the only character not reducible to a tagline.
Unlike with so much contemporary TV, there is no barrier to entry with Friends. Do you like to watch attractive people being funny while doing amusing and sometimes romantic things? Do you want to hang out with people who feel like your own friends? Think about the current comedy universe—which Friends, with its eight episodes a day and with Aniston, especially, still all over the tabloids, arguably inhabits. Some critically acclaimed comedies (Louie, Girls) are barely concerned with laughter, and can cut more painfully than the most poignant dramas. And series that center on a group of friends are often alienating in their generational exactitude. The characters on New Girl are older than those of Friends were, but they’re even more childlike. The best Friends copycat of all, ABC’s canceled Happy Endings, played like a feverish generational in-joke.
These shows have absolutely no truck with broad—specificity is what they are all about. This, especially in the case of Girls and Louie, is an artistic choice, but it also reflects the larger TV landscape: Regular viewers may not care very much about the general collapse in TV ratings, but the kind of shows that get made now—series aiming at ever smaller, hopefully passionate demographics—reflect the drying up of a large general-audience pool. This has given us lots of great, edgy comedies, but it has also given new network comedies a light sheen of anxiety—they have to do everything they can, right away, to find an audience—and a tough choice: Should they be unbearably broad, in the hopes of attracting everyone, or self-defeatingly narrow, in the hopes of inspiring the passion of the cool kids? In comparison, Friends is wonderfully relaxed, casually assuming it has a claim on your attention even when it has made an entire episode about Ross’s misguided leather pants or the time the gang was going to be late.
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Friends has an inviting, welcoming air. The only thing it is really specific about—the only thing it needs to be really specific about—is the friends themselves. The best episodes exist entirely within the fictitious world the show created—episodes set entirely in Monica and Rachel’s apartment, for instance, or with video flashbacks to their lives in the ’80s or trivia contests featuring questions only about each other. This is the reason it has aged so well: Not only is it relatively timeless for a sitcom, watching Friends turns you into a friend, initiated into the ins and outs of their relationships and personalities, their inside jokes, the PG way to flip somebody off. | – As if news that Party of Five debuted 20 years ago this month doesn't make you feel old enough, Friends is this week hitting the same milestone. And as Willa Paskin writes for Slate, the anniversary is being "greeted with untempered enthusiasm, even for this era of rampant Internet-based nostalgia." That has Paskin asking—and answering—the question of why. As she writes, "it did more than any show to excise the teachable moment from sitcoms for grown-ups." It was sweet, it was fluffy, and it was ... a rare thing. In the 10 years since Rachel, Chandler, et al have left us, it's become apparent that making a "straightforwardly pleasant sitcom, one that 20 million people want to watch and discuss," is actually incredibly difficult. Today's comedies take one of two routes: They make specificity king (Paskin cites Girls and Louie) in the hope of reeling in a small but fervent audience or they go "unbearably broad" in a bid to reel in, well, everyone. But the attempts to do the latter are largely tainted by a "light sheen of anxiety," writes Paskin. "They have to do everything they can, right away, to find an audience." Friends, in contrast, "casually [assumes] it has a claim on your attention even when it has made an entire episode about Ross’s misguided leather pants." At the end of the day, we watch TV for pleasure, and 20 years on, Friends does that "reliably, effortlessly." Click for Paskin's full column. |
This page is a historical archive and is no longer maintained. For current information, please visit http://www.cdc.gov/media/
Press Release
Embargoed until: Thursday, December 5, 2013 at 12:00 noon ET
Contact: Media Relations
(404) 639-3286
Measles Still Threatens Health Security
On 50th Anniversary of Measles Vaccine, Spike in Imported Measles Cases
Fifty years after the approval of an extremely effective vaccine against measles, one of the world’s most contagious diseases, the virus still poses a threat to domestic and global health security.
On an average day, 430 children – 18 every hour – die of measles worldwide. In 2011, there were an estimated 158,000 measles deaths.
In an article published on December 5 by JAMA Pediatrics, CDC’s Mark J. Papania, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues report that United States measles elimination, announced in 2000, has been sustained through 2011. Elimination is defined as absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months. Dr. Papania and colleagues warn, however, that international importation continues, and that American doctors should suspect measles in children with high fever and rash, “especially when associated with international travel or international visitors,” and should report suspected cases to the local health department. Before the U.S. vaccination program started in 1963, measles was a year-round threat in this country. Nearly every child became infected; each year 450 to 500 people died each year, 48,000 were hospitalized, 7,000 had seizures, and about 1,000 suffered permanent brain damage or deafness.
People infected abroad continue to spark outbreaks among pockets of unvaccinated people, including infants and young children. It is still a serious illness: 1 in 5 children with measles is hospitalized. Usually there are about 60 cases per year, but 2013 saw a spike in American communities – some 175 cases and counting – virtually all linked to people who brought the infection home after foreign travel.
“A measles outbreak anywhere is a risk everywhere,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “The steady arrival of measles in the United States is a constant reminder that deadly diseases are testing our health security every day. Someday, it won’t be only measles at the international arrival gate; so, detecting diseases before they arrive is a wise investment in U.S. health security.
Eliminating measles worldwide has benefits beyond the lives saved each year. Actions taken to stop measles can also help us stop other diseases in their tracks. CDC and its partners are building a global health security infrastructure that can be scaled up to deal with multiple emerging health threats.
Currently, only 1 in 5 countries can rapidly detect, respond to, or prevent global health threats caused by emerging infections. Improvements overseas, such as strengthening surveillance and lab systems, training disease detectives, and building facilities to investigate disease outbreaks make the world -- and the United States -- more secure.
“There may be a misconception that infectious diseases are over in the industrialized world. But in fact, infectious diseases continue to be, and will always be, with us. Global health and protecting our country go hand in hand,” Dr. Frieden said.
Today’s health security threats come from at least five sources:
The emergence and spread of new microbes
The globalization of travel and food supply
The rise of drug-resistant pathogens
The acceleration of biological science capabilities and the risk that these capabilities may cause the inadvertent or intentional release of pathogens
Continued concerns about terrorist acquisition, development, and use of biological agents.
“With patterns of global travel and trade, disease can spread nearly anywhere within 24 hours,” Dr. Frieden said. “That’s why the ability to detect, fight, and prevent these diseases must be developed and strengthened overseas, and not just here in the United States.”
The threat from measles would be far greater were it not for the vaccine and the man who played a major role in creating it, Samuel L. Katz, M.D., emeritus professor of medicine at Duke University. Today, CDC is honoring Dr. Katz 50 years after his historic achievement. During the ceremony, global leaders in public health are highlighting the domestic importance of global health security, how far we have come in reducing the burden of measles, and the prospects for eliminating the disease worldwide.
Measles, like smallpox, can be eliminated. However, measles is so contagious that the vast majority of a population must be vaccinated to prevent sustained outbreaks. Major strides already have been made. Since 2001, a global partnership that includes the CDC has vaccinated 1.1 billion children. Over the last decade, these vaccinations averted 10 million deaths – one fifth of all deaths prevented by modern medicine.
“The challenge is not whether we shall see a world without measles, but when,” Dr. Katz said.
“No vaccine is the work of a single person, but no single person had more to do with the creation of the measles vaccine than Dr. Katz,” said Alan Hinman, M.D., M.P.H., Director for Programs, Center for Vaccine Equity, Task Force for Global Health. “Although the measles virus had been isolated by others, it was Dr. Katz’s painstaking work passing the virus from one culture to another that finally resulted in a safe form of the virus that could be used as a vaccine.”
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ||||| Story highlights 159 cases of measles in the United States from January 1 through August 24
Last highest year was 2011, when there were 222 cases
Nearly two-thirds of cases happened in communities where many people don't vaccinate
Nearly 40% of children under the age of five who get measles have to be hospitalized
This year is on track to be the worst for measles in more than a decade, according to new numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And people who refuse to vaccinate their children are behind the increasing number of outbreaks, health officials say.
There were 159 cases of measles in the United States from January 1 through August 24, according to the CDC. If that trend continues, there will be more cases in 2013 than in any year since 1996, when some 500 cases were reported. The number would also surpass that of 2011, when there were 222 cases
Measles cases in the United States numbered in the hundreds of thousands before the advent of vaccination, and dropped dramatically throughout the 1960s. The disease was thought to have been eradicated in 2000, but the numbers have recently crept back up, largely because of visitors from countries where measles is common and because of vaccine objectors within the United States. Nearly two-thirds of the reported cases happened in three outbreaks in communities where many people don't vaccinate their children for religious or philosophical reasons.
"This is very bad. This is horrible," said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who was on a telephone briefing with the CDC Thursday morning. "The complications of measles are not to be toyed with, and they're not altogether rare."
According to the CDC, one to three out of every 1,000 children in the United States who get measles will die from the disease, even with the best of care. Even if complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis aren't deadly, they can make children very sick; in 2011, nearly 40% of children under the age of 5 who got measles had to be treated in the hospital.
Measles usually starts with a fever, which can get very high, followed by a cough, runny nose and red eyes. Soon a rash of tiny, red spots will start at the head and spread to the rest of the body. The rash can last a week and coughing can last for up to 10 days.
Creech said he's concerned younger physicians might not be quick to recognize the signs of measles, since there have been only pockets of the disease since 2000.
JUST WATCHED Measles outbreak at faith-healing church Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Measles outbreak at faith-healing church 03:04
"Many young pediatricians might not know what measles looks like," he said.
Among those who have been stricken with measles this year, 92% were not vaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. The largest outbreak was in New York, where 58 people contracted measles in a community where many refuse to be vaccinated for religious reasons.
Those who choose not to vaccinate put other people's babies at risk, since babies cannot be vaccinated until their first birthday, and are therefore vulnerable to the disease.
"I hope that those who are vaccine hesitant or vaccine avoidant realize there are consequences to their actions," Creech said. "None of us lives in isolation." ||||| The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning about a rise in the number of measles cases in the USA.
There have been 175 confirmed cases of measles this year, and 98% have been in unvaccinated patients. (Photo: Joe Raedle, Getty Images) Story Highlights More than 98% of measles patients unvaccinated, CDC says
Doctors recommend first measles shot at age 1, a second at 4 to 6
There were nearly 21,000 measles cases in Europe in the first six months of the year
The USA is experiencing a spike in measles, with 175 confirmed cases and 20 hospitalizations so far this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That's about three times the usual number of cases of measles, CDC Director Thomas Frieden said Thursday. The USA has seen nine outbreaks this year, with the largest in New York, North Carolina and Texas.
More than 98% of measles patients were unvaccinated, Frieden said.
"This isn't the failure of a vaccine; it's the failure to vaccinate," Frieden said.
The USA's overall measles vaccination rate remains high.
In fact, measles has been officially eliminated throughout the Western Hemisphere. That means that measles, unlike the flu, no longer circulates among the general population.
The USA has still had about 60 "imported" measles cases a year, however, largely diagnosed in travelers who come from abroad. Those cases mostly haven't spread beyond a couple of people, however, because nearly everyone those travelers encountered was vaccinated.
The country's safety net has become more porous in recent years, as like-minded parents who refuse vaccines have clustered in the same communities.
In August, for example, a visitor who had traveled abroad infected 15 people at a Texas megachurch. One of those infected was a 4-month-old baby, too young to have received a first measles shot.
Doctors recommend that children receive their first measles shot at age 1, followed by a second between 4 to 6 years old.
Babies traveling abroad, however, can receive a first measles shot at 6 months, Frieden said.
Many travelers are surprised to learn that some of the most popular destinations have the highest rates of measles, said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.
There were nearly 21,000 cases of measles in Europe in just the first six months of the year, according to the World Health Organization. Measles continues to circulate in Europe, Schaffner said, because countries there have much weaker school vaccination requirements than in the USA.
"This is an eminently controllable, eminently eliminatable childhood viral infection," said Schaffner, who notes that up to 500 Americans a year died of measles before a vaccine was introduced 50 years ago. The fact that measles continues to spread "is an ongoing tragedy."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1d1M1hX ||||| Measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, but anti-vaccination beliefs may be playing a role in bringing the disease back, a new government report suggests.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated more than a decade's worth of data on measles cases (including 2013 cases through the end of August) and found that most patients had not been vaccinated.
Measles is a respiratory disease caused by a virus, that spreads through breathing, coughing and sneezing and causes a serious rash and fever. While measles is harder to come by in the United States, the CDC notes it's still a worldwide public health problem that can be brought over to the country and spread to Americans.
Measles can also result in serious complications including ear infections, pneumonia, and brain swelling -- or encephalitis, which occurs in about one out of every 1,000 cases and may lead to death, Dr. Roya Samuels, a pediatrician at Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York in New Hyde Park, N.Y., told CBSNews.com in an email.
One CDC expert pointed out that a measles infection can linger for four hours even after the infected person is no longer in the vicinity.
Measles: 7 things parents must know
"Clusters of people with like-minded beliefs leading them to forgo vaccines can leave them susceptible to outbreaks when measles is imported from elsewhere," Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Thursday during a teleconference. "This is an extraordinarily contagious virus."
Such clusters included people with similar religions, those with extended large extended families or even certain school districts where vaccine rates are low.
So far this year, 159 cases of measles were reported in 16 states, with three outbreaks accounting for most of cases: outbreaks in New York City (58 cases), North Carolina (23 cases) and Texas (21 cases). That's on track for the most cases since measles was considered eliminated.
Fortunately, said Schuchat, nobody has died.
Eighty-two percent of cases were in unvaccinated persons, and 9 percent were in people who weren't sure if they'd been vaccinated. Seventy-nine percent of those the unvaccinated cited philosophical differences with the measles mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
The CDC said recent misinformation about the measles vaccine -- including a since-disputed link to developing autism from vaccines -- may still be influencing some families. Schuchat called on pediatricians and doctors who have close relationships with these families to convince them otherwise.
In recent years, some pediatricians have even fired patients if parents won't get their kids vaccinated, citing risks of infecting other kidsin their practices.
The new measles report coincides with a CDC release of a national report card of vaccines in infants aged 19 to 35 months. This year marks the 20th anniversary of legislation that created the Vaccines For Children Program, a federally-funded effort to provide no-cost vaccines to kids whose families can't pay.
The program was first launched to combat a national measles crisis in the late 1980s, Schuchat explained, when a vaccination gap was evident in preschoolers who would get turned away from pediatricians because parents could not afford shots, only to be referred to a community health clinic where the families might not show up.
For the report card, almost 17,000 families were surveyed by random phone calls, then the CDC checked back with the children's' doctors to confirm whether they indeed had been vaccinated.
Overall, U.S. vaccine rates remain high outside of these pocketed clusters. About 90 percent of those surveyed got the recommended vaccines such as the measles (MMR), polio, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B and varicella, or chicken pox shots.
Two infants dead in Texas whooping cough epidemic
Texas is currently battling a whooping cough epidemic, with two deaths reported in infants too young to be vaccinated.
There were differences among states: Fifteen states had vaccine estimates below the 90 percent coverage suggested as part of the government's Healthy People 2020 goal to increase coverage by the end of the decade.
Schuchat emphasized infants too young to be vaccinated may be vulnerable in these areas if someone comes over from another country infected with measles. Eleven thousand babies are born each day in the U.S., she noted, and the only way they are protected is if adults and children around them are vaccinated.
Interestingly, she said, about half of imported measles cases the CDC found came from Europe.
"They're literally a plane ride away," she warned.
Both CDC reports, on measles and vaccine rates, were published Sept. 12 in the agency's journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. | – Measles was indeed "eliminated" in the US from 2000 through 2011, per a review of data through that year published in JAMA Pediatrics yesterday. But there's a "but": As CBS News reports, America isn't actually measles-free. Elimination is defined as the "absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months" (USA Today translates: That means it's not circulating among the general population), but the US still sees about 60 cases a year. This year, however, we've logged at least 175, reports the CDC, and they're almost all tied to people who picked up the infection abroad and brought it home. And according to CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, all but about 2% of the patients were unvaccinated, reports USA Today. "This isn't the failure of a vaccine; it's the failure to vaccinate," he says. This could end up being the worst year for measles since 1996. |
148 days ago
(CNN) – Friday's jobs report indicating only 96,000 jobs were created in August brought a quick end to any lingering Democratic euphoria from this week's party convention, bringing into sharp reality the challenges President Barack Obama will face in the two months until Election Day.
The monthly report, one of the few remaining before voters head to the polls November 6, showed the unemployment rate falling to 8.1% as more workers withdrew from the labor market. The 96,000 jobs created were also not enough to keep up with the population entering the workforce.
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Republicans, eager to portray Obama as weak on economic policy and jobs creation, quickly latched onto Friday's report as another indication that his time in office has been a failure, saying Obama's policies were hurting struggling Americans – and that the time had come for a change.
"After the party last night, the hangover's today," Mitt Romney, Obama's Republican challenger, told reporters ahead of a campaign stop in New Hampshire. "The jobs numbers were disappointing, for almost every new job created, approximately four people dropped out of the workforce. Seeing that kind of report is obviously disheartening to American people that need work and are having a hard time finding work."
"There's almost nothing the president has done in the last three and half four years that give the people confidence that the president knows what he's doing when it comes to jobs and the economy," Romney continued. "And there's certainly nothing he said last night that give the American people confidence that he knows what he would do to create jobs or build a stronger economy."
Obama himself told a crowd in New Hampshire the numbers were "not good enough."
"We need to create more jobs faster," Obama said. "We need to fill the hole left by this recession faster. We need to come out of this crisis stronger than when we went in."
Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, said on CNBC the numbers were "not even close to what a recovery looks like."
"This is not what President Obama promised," Ryan said.
While jobs numbers aren't the only important economic figures, they are the most highly scrutinized. No sitting president facing an unemployment rate higher than 8% has won another term since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Even a confident Wall Street will do little to pad the blow to Obama following Friday's report. On Thursday the Dow Jones industrial average surged 245 points, or 1.9%, and closed at the highest level since December 2007. The S&P 500 climbed 2% to its highest level since January 2008 while the Nasdaq shot up 2.2% to its highest level since November 2000.
"These numbers really reinforce my sense of where the race stands after both conventions," CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein said after Friday's numbers were released. "To me, it felt like neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama really demonstrated a second gear that would really expand their coalition beyond what they came in with. And thus the race seems poised for just trench warfare with each side fighting to move very small margins among their various constituencies."
"This is not catastrophic enough to drop the bottom out from President Obama, but no tailwind behind him at all. And just setting us up for grinding trench warfare," he continued.
David Frum, another CNN contributor and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said the numbers meant more people were giving up hope – and that was bad for Obama.
"For the president's point of view and the president's party, when people give up on looking for work, they also give up on trying to vote," Frum said. "They become detached from society. And those are the people he needs to motivate. They have to at least have hope. And here they are demonstrating when they quick looking for work they are giving up on hope."
In a statement released by the White House, Alan Krueger, the chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote that the report did indicate the economy was recovering.
"While there is more work that remains to be done, today's employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression," Krueger wrote. "It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007."
As reflected in Democrats' struggles over answering the question "are you better off today than you were four years ago," the president's team must maintain a balance between touting the ways the economy has improved, while still recognizing the dire circumstances facing millions of Americans.
Former President Bill Clinton, speaking to delegates Wednesday, summed up the Democrats' challenge this way: "Many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. Though employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many people don't feel it."
If Obama is re-elected, Clinton said, "You will feel it."
The president himself made a similar pitch Thursday, saying "change will not happen" if voters turn him away in November.
"The truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades," Obama added. ||||| The economy gained just 69,000 jobs in May, way down from economists’ expectations of 150,000 or more, ticking the unemployment rate up to 8.2 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday. Adding insult to injury, already sluggish jobs numbers from March and April were revised downward by 49,000. The year’s early gains are starting to look more like an outlier than a recovery building real momentum.
There’s no sugar-coating Friday’s report: It’s bad. That makes President Obama’s job that much harder as he tries to gain the upper hand against Mitt Romney on the economy.
“Today’s weak jobs report is devastating news for American workers and American families,” Mitt Romney said in a statement. “This week has seen a cascade of one bad piece of economic news after another. Slowing GDP growth, plunging consumer confidence, an increase in unemployment claims, and now another dismal jobs report all stand as a harsh indictment of the President’s handling of the economy. It is now clear to everyone that President Obama’s policies have failed to achieve their goals and that the Obama economy is crushing America’s middle class. The president’s re-election slogan may be ‘forward,’ but it seems like we’ve been moving backward. We can do so much better in America. That’s why I’m running for president.”
The White House pointed to an increase in labor participation as a bright spot, but officials urged Congress to respond with new measures to prevent public-sector job losses and investment in stimulative infrastructure projects.
“In the American Jobs Act and in the State of the Union Address, the president put forward a number of proposals to create jobs and strengthen the economy, including proposals that would put teachers back in the classroom and cops on the beat, and put our nation’s construction workers back on the job rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure,” Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.
The numbers come as Obama and Romney are competing to sell their agendas as the fix for the nation’s job woes — and tear down the other guy’s qualifications.
In Obama’s case, he’s been on the road touting 27 months of private-sector job growth, pointing to successes like the auto rescue in Detroit and trying to remind Americans of the catastrophic 2008 financial collapse he inherited and the Republican administration that presided over it. On offense, his campaign embarked on a lengthy and often tumultuous effort to introduce general election voters to Romney’s history at Bain Capital, highlighting cases where companies taken over by the firm suffered through layoffs and bankruptcy while investors profited handsomely. More recently they’ve tried to undermine Romney through his jobs record as governor, with Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod in Boston Thursday to make the case that Romney sold the state’s voters the same bill of goods about being a “job creator” in 2002 only to see job growth at the 47th worst rate in the nation.
For Romney, who was thrown off message this week by supporter Donald Trump’s return to the birther cause, the jobs report is a welcome chance to highlight his own economic message. On Thursday, he held an oddly secretive press event outside of a Solyndra building in California, arguing that the solar company’s bankruptcy despite receiving federal loan guarantees was emblematic of the White House’s broader failure to jumpstart the economy with stimulus spending. His latest ad is a feel-good spot pledging that if elected, “President Romney’s leadership puts jobs first.”
Obama is buoyed by disproportionately stronger growth in key swing states, particularly Ohio and Virginia, but it’s an open question how much of a cushion that will give him if the national recovery continues to slow down. Economists fear that the worst may be yet to come: Europe is still dealing with a debt crisis and another collapse there could spill over into the American economy.
Benjy Sarlin Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun. | – Teams Obama and Romney will likely be biting their nails come 8:29am tomorrow, as the first of the three remaining pre-election jobs reports are issued. With less than 24 hours to go, some hints of what may come: In what the AP calls an "encouraging sign," a private survey out today shows businesses ramped up hiring in August. Though private-sector jobs were predicted to jump 145,000 last month, the ADP survey noted an increase of 201,000 jobs. But don't get too excited. The Wall Street Journal offers a sobering reminder that ADP has had some huge swings-and-misses lately. It estimated a 176,000-job jump in June; the actual private-sector gain was just 84,000. As such, the Journal doubts projections will change. And what are those projections? An unemployment rate still stuck at 8.3%, and the addition of 125,000 new jobs, per economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires. (The AP puts the forecast at 135,000 jobs, same rate.) In other jobless numbers, 12,000 fewer Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, a possible indication of a job market on the upswing. The four-week average stands at 371,250; a number consistently below 375,000 suggests hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate, explains the AP, though it predicts this most recent data won't affect the August report. Click for one take on why tomorrow's numbers have an unmatched political significance. |
Stock markets across the globe suffered fresh falls on Friday as global investors scrambled to understand the implications of Dubai World’s restructuring and unexpected debt standstill.
The lack of information about Dubai’s flagship government-owned holding company, made worse by a religious holiday in the Middle East, prompted indiscriminate selling of stocks linked to the region. The cost of insuring against default in emerging markets around the world also leapt.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 lost 3.2 per cent to close at 9,081.52, its biggest one-day decline in almost eight months. In Seoul, the Kospi fell 4.7 per cent to 1,524.50, a four-month low. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 2.9 per cent to 4,572.10, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 4.8 per cent to 21,134..50.
The selling spread to Europe, where the FTSE 100 at one point slumped 1.8 per cent but regained ground to trade down 0.4 per cent at 5,175.3. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 fell 0.5 per cent to 983.2. US futures pared losses but still point to the S&P 500 opening down 2 per cent from the new high for the year it achieved ahead of Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday, when US markets remained closed.
Audio: Simeon Kerr on investor reactions ‘People are in the dark .... There’s been something of an information vacuum out of the government on the events’
Investors said that the lack of information about the debt standstill, announced on Wednesday, had been the key factor sparking the wider market turmoil. Investors generally moved into safer assets, pushing up prices of traditional havens such as government bonds.
“In the absence of definitive information it’s hard to see the market treating this as an isolated one-off,” said one trader.
After markets in Europe closed Dubai issued a statement on Thursday defending its move as a “sensible business decision”.
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, chairman of the Supreme Fiscal Committee, said: “While the government understands the concerns of the market and the creditors, it had to intervene because of the need to take decisive action to address its particular debt burden.”
He said the government had acted in full knowledge of how markets would react. “We want to ensure resources are deployed ... to enhance the businesses of Dubai World Group, build on the restructuring ... and ensure long-term commercial success.” He said that further information would be given early next week.
A conference call on Thursday for bondholders of Nakheel, the Dubai-owned property company at the centre of the storm, collapsed after phone lines were swamped with callers.
Nakheel, wholly owned by Dubai World, is due to redeem a $3.5bn bond next month. The bonds were trading on Friday at 40 cents on the dollar, almost 70 below their 109 redemption price as investors lowered their expectations that payments would be made following Dubai World’s call for a six-month standstill.
The conference call was organised by QVT, a New York hedge fund. A fund executive confirmed that it was reorganising the call with a greater phone capacity but declined to comment further.
“People are panicking: This whole process counters everything that the rulers have been saying and the way it has been communicated before the holidays so no one can get any information is confusing,” said one hedge fund manager.
The cost of insuring Dubai’s debt against default jumped more than 100 basis points on Friday to 670, meaning that it now costs $670,000 annually for every $10m of debt covered for five years.
Other Gulf states and emerging markets with perceived problems were also under pressure. Hungary, which has had problems refinancing debt, and Greece, with one of the highest debt burdens in Europe, saw their insurance costs jump.
However, Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, said he and top regulator Mario Draghi were confident that the Dubai problem was containable and localised.
”I’ve talked to the chairman of the Financial Stability Board, Mario Draghi, in my capacity as president of the G20,” he said in Trinidad and Tobago, where he is attending a Commonwealth summit.
”I believe that we are satisfied that [with] the arrangements in place, the mechanisms that we’ve got in place to monitor what’s happening, we can be sure that this is something that is both containable and is localised.”
Additional reporting by Reuters ||||| Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com
DUBAI—Investors sold banking stocks across Europe and Asia and jacked up the price of insuring against Dubai defaults, a day after the government said it would take charge of restructuring its corporate flagship, Dubai World, and asked creditors to accept delayed payments.
A Wednesday announcement of a six-month standstill in debt payments took investors and analysts by surprise. It followed months of positive moves and comments from government officials suggesting Dubai and the federal government of the United Arab Emirates were willing to step in to plug financing holes.
"The most negative effect of [the] announcement is a major shock ... | – A move today by the government of Dubai to take over its flagship company, Dubai World, caused ripples of panic throughout the region, and translated into a selloff in bank stocks in Europe and Asia. The government also aims to delay payments on $60 billion in debt, a request that caused the price of insuring debt in emerging economies to soar, the Wall Street Journal reports. The opaque nature of the both Dubai World and the emirate’s government itself didn’t help matters, traders tell the Financial Times—which could mean long-term trouble ahead. “In the absence of definitive information it’s hard to see the market treating this as an isolated one-off,” one notes. Nonetheless, a Dubai official called the move a “sensible business decision … (to) ensure long-term commercial success,” and promised more information next week. |
This investigative report reveals that:
Doug Ford, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s brother, sold hashish for several years in the 1980s.
Another brother, Randy, was also involved in the drug trade and was once charged in relation to a drug-related kidnapping.
Their sister, Kathy, has been the victim of drug-related gun violence.
In the 1980s, anyone wanting to buy hashish had to know where to go. And in central Etobicoke, the wealthy Toronto suburb where Mayor Rob Ford grew up, one of those places was James Gardens. In the evening, the sports cars often wound along Edenbridge Drive, past the gated homes and the lawn-bowling pitches, until they reached the U-shaped parking lot. By nightfall, the public park was a hash drive-thru. One former street dealer, whom we will call "Justin," described the scene as "an assembly line."
There were usually a number of dealers to choose from, some of them supplied by a mainstay at James Gardens – a young man with the hulk-like frame and mop of bright blond hair: Doug Ford. "Most people didn't approach Doug looking for product. You went to the guys that he supplied. Because if Doug didn't know you and trust you, he wouldn't even roll down his window," Justin said.
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Today, Mr. Ford is a member of Toronto's city council – and no ordinary councillor. First elected in 2010 as his brother was swept into the mayor's office, he has emerged as a truly powerful figure at City Hall –– trying to overhaul plans for Toronto's waterfront less than a year after arriving. He also has higher aspirations, and has said he wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, Doug Ford Sr., by running in the next provincial election as a Conservative.
Meanwhile, he serves as his brother's de facto spokesman. As Toronto is gripped by allegations that its mayor was captured on a homemade video smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and his office descends into disarray – his chief of staff was fired on Thursday – Doug Ford has been the only person to mount a spirited public defence of his largely silent sibling. On Friday, after the Mayor finally made a statement about the accusation, he was the one who fielded questions from the press.
Well before the events of the past week, The Globe and Mail began to research the Ford brothers in an effort to chronicle their lives before rising to prominence in Canada's largest city. Over the past 18 months, it has sought out and interviewed dozens of people who knew them in their formative years.
What has emerged is a portrait of a family once deeply immersed in the illegal drug scene. All three of the mayor's older siblings – brother Randy, 51, and sister Kathy, 52, as well as Doug, 48 – have had ties to drug traffickers.
Ten people who grew up with Doug Ford – a group that includes two former hashish suppliers, three street-level drug dealers and a number of casual users of hash – have described in a series of interviews how for several years Mr. Ford was a go-to dealer of hash. These sources had varying degrees of knowledge of his activities: Some said they purchased hash directly from him, some said they supplied him, while others said they observed him handling large quantities of the drug.
The events they described took place years ago, but as mayor, Rob Ford has surrounded himself with people from his past. Most recently he hired someone for his office whose long history with the Fords, the sources said, includes selling hashish with the mayor's brother.
The Globe wrote to Doug Ford outlining what the sources said about him, and received a response from Gavin Tighe, his lawyer, who said the allegations were false. "Your references to unnamed alleged sources of information represent the height of irresponsible and unprofessional journalism given the gravely serious and specious allegations of substantial criminal conduct."
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There's nothing on the public record that The Globe has accessed that shows Doug Ford has ever been criminally charged for illegal drug possession or trafficking. But some of the sources said that, in the affluent pocket of Etobicoke where the Fords grew up, he was someone who sold not only to users and street-level dealers, but to dealers one rung higher than those on the street. His tenure as a dealer, many of the sources say, lasted about seven years until 1986, the year he turned 22. "That was his heyday," said "Robert," one of the former drug dealers who agreed to an interview on the condition he not be identified by name.
Upon being approached, the sources declined to speak if identified, saying they feared the consequences of outing themselves as former users and sellers of illegal drugs.
The Globe also tried to contact retired police officers who investigated drugs in the area at the time. One said he had no recollection of encountering the Fords.
Another, whose name appeared on court documents in relation to allegations of assault and forcible confinement committed by Randy Ford, said he could not recall the incident. Several did not respond.
Since entering public life, both Fords have been ardent supporters of Toronto police and have campaigned, over the years, on increasing the police presence on Etobicoke's streets. In December, 2011, Doug Ford showed up, unannounced, at a police press conference to trumpet the force's crackdown on a network of drug dealers who were selling, among other things, marijuana.
Doug, like Rob, frequently promotes the Ford family as a type of brand – one that started with their late father's four-year tenure as an MPP in the government of former Ontario premier Mike Harris. Doug Ford is fond of invoking his family's contributions to the community. Through his involvement with the Rotary Club of Etobicoke, he has helped to organize events like the Etobicoke Fall Fair. He frequently mentions the many sports teams that the Ford family business, Deco Labels and Tags, has sponsored over the years. He also cites the many football teams his younger brother has coached, and the hordes of people – he puts the figure at 25,000 – the Fords have entertained at their annual backyard barbecue.
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But long before he took over the family business and pursued public office, Doug Ford's circle of friends was a group of young people who called themselves the RY Drifters, after the Royal York Plaza, a strip mall many of them frequented.
The Fords' neighbourhood was paradoxical in some respects. It teemed with wealth; families who settled there after the Second World War, such as the Fidanis and the Brattys, would become known as the biggest players in Toronto-area land development. As his sticker and label business flourished, Doug Ford Sr. was featured in the society pages of The Globe, rubbing elbows with cabinet ministers, senators and members of the Eaton family.
But the prosperity disguised a disturbing trend among many of the area's young adults – an attraction to crime that went beyond typical teenage rebellion. Former Ford associates interviewed for this story identified at least 10 RY Drifters who became heroin addicts, some of whom turned to break-ins and robberies to support their habits.
In recent years, the Ford family home has become known for the annual barbecue, attended by hundreds of neighbours and a Who's Who of Conservative luminaries – including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. But in the 1980s, the finished basement at 15 Weston Wood Rd. was one of the many places Doug Ford did business, the sources said.
"Justin" recalled descending to the basement on one occasion to buy hash from Mr. Ford, and on numerous other occasions watching as it was sold.
He said he couldn't recall exactly how much hash he purchased that day, but that it was enough to require a triple-beam balance scale – the kind used in most high-school science classes. Normally, street-level dealers in that era relied on Pesola scales, the compact tubes often used by fishermen to weigh their catch. "If you went over [a quarter-pound], you had to go up to the three beamers – because you could get up to a few pounds on it," he explained.
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As a dealer, Doug Ford was not highly visible. Another source, "Tom," who also supplied street-level dealers and has a long criminal record, said his girlfriend at the time would complain, whenever he was arrested, that he needed to be more calculating "like Doug." Mr. Ford's approach, sources said, was to supply a select group that in turn distributed smaller amounts across Etobicoke.
As well as James Gardens, a popular place to buy hash was the Royal York Plaza, also known as The Drift, because it offered a clear line of sight down Royal York Road and fair warning of any approaching police cruisers.
The mall is located steps from the Fords' childhood home. "If [Doug] wasn't going out, someone would go down to the house and pick it up and bring it down to the Royal York Plaza," said "Sheila," adding that she was an RY Drifter who bought small quantities of hash from Mr. Ford, and knew him to supply street-level dealers. "If Doug wasn't around, people … would sell it for him. It was an operation." The quantities that Mr. Ford handled were, at times, substantial. "Michael" said he remembered buying hash from Doug Ford at least half a dozen times – before he found a cheaper source – and that each time he bought between one-quarter and one-half of a pound. He said that a quarter-pound sold for between $400 and $425.
Like many of the street-level dealers interviewed, he said he sold hash in order to support his own smoking habits. When asked where Mr. Ford fit in the hierarchy of dealers in their neighbourhood, he replied: "He'd be at the top."
Turf wars were rare. Relations between dealers were so good, in fact, that in times of short supply, competitors turned to each other for help. "Robert," a former high-volume seller of hash, said he had an arrangement with Mr. Ford. "He would buy off me, sometimes I would buy off him."
"Tom," the high-volume hash dealer who admired Mr. Ford's ability to avoid scrutiny, also said he and Doug helped each other out during shortages. "We had all figured out that that kept the cops away. 'Let's keep things low-profile. Why start fights? There's enough money in it for everybody.' And most people agreed with that. Once the fights start and the guns come out, then the cops will be in and it will ruin it for everybody."
But the shunning of strong-arm tactics was not universal.
Marco Orlando had thick, curly black hair and round cheeks. He and his parents, Italian immigrants, lived in a bungalow on a quiet cul-de-sac a short walk from the Ford family home.
He was also supplied a lot of drugs on credit but was notoriously unreliable when it came to paying for them. Among his suppliers, the suspicion was that Marco was sharing his illicit proceeds with his parents and feigning poverty. So two weeks before Christmas, they hatched a plan, said "Tom," a drug dealer who said he was involved in the scheme.
On a Tuesday night, with the usual throng of young adults outside the Bank of Montreal at the Royal York Plaza, Marco was jumped, beaten and thrown into a car. He was driven more than 30 kilometres to a basement in Bolton, where someone called his parents, demanding they hand over the money. For 10 hours, Mr. Orlando was captive, but his parents didn't panic. Instead, they called the police. Within three days, all three men allegedly involved in the plot were under arrest. ("The powers-that-be blow things all out of proportion, and I guess technically it is kidnapping, but in our world, he owed us $5,000," said Tom.)
One of those arrested was Randy Ford, who was 24 at the time. Court records retrieved from the Archives of Ontario show that he was charged with assault causing bodily harm and the forcible confinement of Mr. Orlando. The records do not disclose how the case was resolved. Randy Ford's lawyer at the time, Dennis Morris – currently representing Rob Ford in the controversy over the alleged crack-cocaine video – said he did not recall the incident. He questioned the allegations surrounding the Ford family's past: "What's the point, other than a smear campaign?"
Since his brothers became leaders of Canada's largest city, Randy has largely remained in the background. Like them, he has blond hair and a wide frame; he also drives a Cadillac Escalade. One of the few times he has been photographed by the media was for a Toronto Star article during the 2010 election campaign. He posed with his brothers in front of a portrait of their father at the family business, where Randy oversees manufacturing. During the election-night speeches at the Toronto Congress Centre, he stood silently behind Doug, wearing a dark cowboy hat.
But in the past, he was much less low-key. Whether on his motorcycle or at the helm heel of the family sailboat – The Raymoni – he always went full throttle. When he fought, which was often, it was usually a one-sided affair.
"He was a terror," said Leo, another former associate of Doug Ford.
Numerous sources identified Randy Ford as former drug dealer, including one who identified himself as former partner, but he and Doug maintained distinctly separate operations. "Doug, being savvy as he was and as business-minded as he was, knew his brother was just too volatile," said "Justin," the street-level dealer who said he was supplied by Doug Ford.
The eldest Ford sibling, Kathy, has been subjected to media scrutiny over the years, primarily because she has been linked to a number of bizarre, violent and sensational incidents.
Most recently, in January, 2012, her long-time boyfriend, a convicted cocaine and hash dealer named Scott MacIntyre, was charged with threatening to murder the mayor at his Etobicoke home. He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser offence and was given credit for time served.
(In a brief interview with CBC after the alleged death threat, Doug Ford said: "To be honest with you, I really don't know Scott MacIntyre." Photographs and video taken on the night of the 2010 election show that Mr. MacIntyre was part of the small group of family members celebrating with the new mayor, his wife, Renata, and Doug.)
Ms. Ford's relationship with Mr. MacIntyre is even more perplexing because of an earlier incident: In 2005, he and another man were accused of shooting her in the face during an altercation in her parents' basement. She survived the blast and was rushed to hospital, while Mr. MacIntyre fled in her mother's Jaguar. Crown prosecutors later dropped numerous charges against him, while his co-accused, Michael Patania, pleaded guilty to one count of possession of a handgun.
But even before that, there was gunplay – and it was fatal. Seven years earlier, Ms. Ford's lover was fatally shot by her ex-husband, a drug addict named Ennio Stirpe. At his trial, Mr. Stirpe testified that his victim, Michael Kiklas, was a martial artist, which forced him to bring along the shotgun as "an equalizer."
Not mentioned in the press at the time was the fact that Mr. Kiklas was a white supremacist – a group with which Ms. Ford associated in the 1980s.
Her friends included Gary MacFarlane, a founding member of the short-lived Canadian chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the late Wolfgang Droege, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist in Canadian history, a former Klansman told The Globe in an interview. Two other former associates of Ms. Ford confirmed her association with known white supremacists.
Among Mr. Droege's numerous criminal endeavours, he also sold cocaine and marijuana, which led to his death in 2005 when he was killed by a customer. Mr. Droege was incarcerated for much of the 1980s in U.S. prisons – both for drug trafficking and for his role in a bizarre plot to overthrow the government of Dominica in the Caribbean.
The former Klansman, who agreed to answer questions by e-mail on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Kathy Ford was close to the movement, but he said he couldn't recall meeting any of the Ford brothers. He described hanging out in the Fords' basement and being snubbed by Doug Sr. when Ms. Ford invited him to a party on the family boat. Her father, the former Klansman said, clearly did not approve of his beliefs, while she was engaging and fun but hardly a committed soldier in the race war.
"Some people are real 'believers' and know all the history, dates, facts etc… Others just join to piss off their parents, or carry out some other act of personal rebellion," he wrote. "Clearly [Kathy] was the latter camp."
It remains unclear how much Mayor Ford was exposed to his siblings' escapades and their issues with illegal drugs. He is considerably younger – Doug, the closest, is five years older. But at least one of Doug's closest and oldest friends has become an official adviser to the mayor's office. Several sources have identified David Price as a former participant in Doug Ford's hashish enterprise.
The morning after the Toronto Star and the U.S. gossip website Gawker alleged that journalists with both organizations had viewed a homemade video of the mayor smoking crack, a throng of reporters waited outside his home. Mr. Ford walked past them, uttered only four words – "these allegations are ridiculous" – and hopped into his SUV.
After driving only a few feet, he pulled to the side of the road and rolled down his window to chat with a man in a sunglasses and a blue shirt, Mr. Price. Moments later, Mr. Price appeared again, this time standing between videographers and Mr. Ford as they tried to film the mayor at the gas station at the end of his street.
Since he arrived at City Hall, the mayor's office has said almost nothing about what Mr. Price, called director of logistics and operations, is there to do. Concerning the hiring of Mr. Price, Doug Ford told Globe and Mail city hall reporter Elizabeth Church that "you can't teach loyalty."
Mr. Price first appeared in the office mere days after The Toronto Star revealed that the mayor had been asked to leave a military benefit gala by Councillor Paul Ainslie allegedly because he appeared intoxicated.
A few months before Mr. Price became a public official, he was approached by a Star reporter covering a football game being played by the high-school team coached by Mr. Ford. The reporter quoted Mr. Price as saying that he had coached the mayor in high school, and ever since he has been described in media reports as Rob Ford's former football coach turned aide.
However, four former dealers who spoke with The Globe described Mr. Price as a participant in Doug Ford's hash business in the 1980s.
Both men attended Scarlett Heights Collegiate Institute, where they played football and hockey. "Michael," a former street-level dealer, said he recalls being approached by a young David Price, who told him that Doug Ford had come into a large supply of hash. "I remember buying a quarter-pound," he said.
"Robert," once a large-scale supplier, called Mr. Price "Dougie's close ally" and described their hash business as "a partnership."
"Justin," a former street dealer, said: "They were two peas in a pod. They were both big, tough boys. It just became a natural thing."
He added: "Doug brought the supply, and Dave brought the demand."
According to Mr. Price's LinkedIn page, which has been taken down since he joined the mayor's office, he was Doug Ford's campaign manager in 2010, and graduated from York University in 1987 with a degree in economics and international relations.
Following that, he worked for decades at State Street Canada, a financial services company that provides investment management for institutional investors, such as pension and mutual funds. One former colleague described him as hard-working, very oriented toward customer service, and extremely opinionated when it came to politics. He left the company in 2011.
Mr. Price did not respond to several requests for comment.
Rob Ford was not a player in the Etobicoke drug trade. Several sources said they saw him around his brothers as they were doing business, but they said he didn't seem to be involved in a significant way.
It is difficult to determine what it was like for him growing up in this environment. His spokesman did not respond to requests for interviews. His closest friends from high school declined interview requests. Generally, it was only people who were on his periphery who agreed to speak.
As a teenager, the future mayor committed to football like it was a religion. He co-captained his junior team at Scarlett Heights Collegiate, which went a dismal 1-5 in the regular season one year, but shocked the league in the playoffs by making it to the championship and upsetting undefeated Etobicoke Collegiate. A yearbook photograph shows that "Robbie" – as he was known then – wore his leather championship jacket for at least three years after that victory.
He once played on Etobicoke's all-star team, a mixed bag of players from different high schools that was assembled in the summer to face off against all-star teams from Toronto's other boroughs.
It was a short and intense two weeks of back-to-back practices, which was necessary to inject cohesion into a mixed bag of young men who didn't know each other. Before each practice, they were told to run a mile. If they completed the run in under six minutes, they didn't have to complete it again for the rest of training camp. But if they failed, they had to keep running it at the start of every practice until they came in under the mark.
After a few days, there was only one person left chugging around the track.
"I remember Rob, who was about the same size as he is now, running this thing every day for like two weeks until he was the only guy running – but still giving it 100 per cent at the beginning of every practice until he finally made it," said Mike Lawler, a former Scarlett Heights coach.
"I just thought it took a lot for a kid to do that and not say 'to hell with it.' "
Another former Scarlett Heights football coach, Art Robinson, described young Rob as a leader, who was regularly the foreman in his shop class. There were even a few occasions, Mr. Robinson said, that Rob alerted him to students smoking pot on school grounds.
He went on to attend Carleton University. where he played football but never left the bench, one former teammate said. He dropped out in 1990, the end of his first year, he has told the online news service Openfile.
After that, he joined the family business, but unlike Doug, who ambitiously worked to grow the company, helping it expand to Chicago, his heart was not in it, several former employees said.
"Robbie just did not have the passion for labels," one long-time employee said. "He did what he had to do because it was the family business, but he did not show true passion until he got into politics."
His first run for public office came when he was 27, a council election that he lost. Undeterred, he became involved in several civic-minded campaigns – including one that targeted drug dealers and buyers.
In 1998, he teamed with his father and Toronto police for an unorthodox project, he later told The Etobicoke Guardian. In what would be the start of his unwavering tough-on-crime platform, he – at the time, 29 and unelected – and Doug Sr. – a backbencher at Queen's Park – travelled to Scarlettwood Courts, an Etobicoke public-housing complex, to rid it of illegal drugs.
"When people would drive through to buy drugs, we'd send the owner of the car a letter. It would tell them not come back to the area," Mr. Ford told the Guardian after he was elected to City Council in 2000. He said his crime-fighting campaign had helped him win the election and promised to take the battle to other low-income neighbourhoods.
But his personal war on drugs was short-lived. The year after their letter-writing campaign, he was arrested in Florida after being pulled over for impaired driving. Police also found a joint in his pocket – an offence not revealed until his 2010 mayoral campaign.
Throughout the reporting of this story, Doug Ford made several phone calls to Globe managers and reporters to complain about the questions being asked.
In November, 2011, he called a reporter in the evening to complain about the newspaper's "yellow" and "gutter" journalism.
"I'm getting calls from people I haven't talked to in 20 years," he said. When asked why he was so upset, he responded that he objected to "the type of questions" being asked.
"This is going to get ugly," he said, explaining that he was too "hot" at that moment to consider setting up a formal sit-down interview.
His call appeared to have been prompted by a brief interview The Globe had conducted that day, when a reporter asked a former associate about the RY Drifters – a group that he said never existed.
"It's like a folk tale," he said.
Greg McArthur is an investigative reporter with The Globe and Mail. Shannon Kari is a freelance journalist in Toronto. They were assisted by staff researcher Stephanie Chambers ||||| A second video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what has been described as crack cocaine by a self-professed drug dealer was secretly filmed in his sister's basement early Saturday morning.
The clip, which was viewed by two Globe and Mail reporters, shows Mr. Ford taking a drag from a long copper-coloured pipe, exhaling a cloud of smoke and then frantically shaking his right hand. The footage is part of a package of three videos that the drug dealer says he surreptitiously shot around 1:15 a.m., and which he says he is now selling for "at least six figures."
See photos from the recent videos of Rob Ford appearing to smoke crack. And our continuing live coverage.
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The footage comes to light weeks after Mr. Ford embarked on a re-election campaign styled on the importance of second chances and forgiving mistakes. Nearly a year ago, the mayor thrust himself into worldwide infamy when another drug dealer, Mohamed Siad, tried to sell another video of the mayor allegedly smoking crack to media outlets in Canada and the United States. At the time, the mayor denied using the drug, only to later admit that he had smoked crack cocaine in a "drunken stupor" and said that he was not an addict.
Since then Mr. Ford has been filmed numerous times in public appearing erratic and acting impaired. In each instance, the mayor has admitted to drinking, but never to using drugs. A few weeks ago when asked directly if he was continuing to use drugs, Mr. Ford said: "You guys ask stupid questions."
Approached at City Hall Wednesday evening, Mr. Ford declined to respond to questions about the video. Shortly after The Globe confronted Mr. Ford, he issued a statement. "I have decided to take a leave from campaigning and from my duties as Mayor to seek immediate help," he said.
In one of the clips shown to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, the mayor rapidly shifts his weight back and forth on the spot, talking into his cellphone and his right arm swinging at his side. When the camera pans around the room, a man that looks like Alessandro "Sandro" Lisi, the mayor's former driver who has been charged with drug dealing and extortion, can be seen in the background. Mr. Ford's sister, Kathy, who has admitted in media interviews to being a drug addict, is sitting in front of her brother. In the last of three clips, Mr. Ford is holding the pipe and speaking to his sister.
A man who answered Mr. Lisi's cellphone told The Globe not to call back. Mr. Lisi's lawyer, Seth Weinstein, said: "I think the only thing I can tell you now is that, until such time the video's contents are authenticated, it would be inappropriate to comment any further." A reporter attempted to contact Ms. Ford at her home, but there was no answer.
In all three clips, the mayor is wearing a white shirt and a dark-coloured tie with a pattern of thin white marks. This is the same shirt-and-tie combination he was wearing Friday afternoon at a press conference where he was critical of the dismissal of Gene Jones, who was appointed by the mayor to run the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and was removed after a damning ombudsman investigation. The drug dealer who showed The Globe the videos said that the mayor was also ranting about Mr. Jones's ouster in his sister's basement. In one of the video clips, the camera pans onto a second cellphone, which is flipped open and shows the time and date.
Unlike the first notorious video that captured the mayor apparently smoking crack cocaine, the mayor is not smoking from a glass pipe, rather a metal one. Scott MacIntyre, the former common-law spouse of Kathy Ford who is now suing the mayor, said in an interview that the mayor's sister smokes crack from metal pipes that can also be used to smoke marijuana. When shown a photo of the mayor holding the pipe, Mr. MacIntyre said it is similar to the crack pipes that the mayor's sister has used. "She uses those brass elbows," he said, referring to plumbing that can be converted into a pipe.
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All three clips were shot in a cluttered, dimly lit room with a white tile ceiling. The drug dealer selling the video identified it as the basement of Ms. Ford's home. When asked what the ceiling of Ms. Ford's basement looks like, Mr. MacIntyre said it has white perforated tiles.
The drug dealer who approached The Globe said that the audio on the three clips was not available because the speaker on his phone was broken when he recorded the footage. The dealer said he supplied the crack that was smoked that night and that he had decided to sell the footage to "make money." He supplied an alias to The Globe and urged the paper to publish his nickname because: "I want someone to come to me." The Globe is not publishing that nickname because of concerns about the drug dealer's intentions.
The Globe cannot confirm the substance inside the pipe.
Reached late last night, Mr. Ford's long-time criminal lawyer Dennis Morris questioned the authenticity of the video. "If these guys are drug dealers and there's money involved, they can say whatever they want to get more money, to extract more money from the people who are paying."
It's difficult for anyone to prove what the mayor is smoking in the video, Mr. Morris said. "So say for example it was marijuana," he said. "Would [you] pay more for a video if I told you it was marijuana or crack cocaine?"
The Globe did not purchase the video but it did buy a series of screen grabs from the three clips.
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The Globe reporters met the dealer and one of his associates, who said he was not in Ms. Ford's basement but also identified himself as a drug dealer, at a strip-mall parking lot west of Toronto. The drug dealer selling the video said that he sold drugs to the mayor several times over the past year.
Since the first crack video emerged, his brother and campaign manager, Councillor Doug Ford, has repeatedly said that voters aren't concerned with the mayor's drug use.
"You're out of touch with what the people care about. People don't care about that," he said in January.
With reports from Ann Hui, Renata D'Aliesio, Elizabeth Church and Patrick White ||||| This weekend, The Globe and Mail is publishing an extensive examination of the Toronto Ford family’s decades-old connection to illicit drugs. We are doing so with utmost caution, journalistic rigour and legal scrutiny – ultimately believing that Torontonians and, more broadly, Canadians need to understand the background of the most politically powerful family in the country’s biggest city.
An 18-month investigation by reporters Greg McArthur and Shannon Kari reveals that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s brother Doug sold hashish for several years in the 1980s, in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. Another brother, Randy, was also involved in the drug trade, and charged in relation to a drug-related kidnapping. Their sister, Kathy, has been the victim of drug-related gun violence.
Mr. McArthur, one of the country’s most respected investigative reporters, began work on this project in late 2011, in an attempt to detail the history of the Fords. Although Rob Ford had been well-documented as a councillor and mayor, little existed on the public record about his older brother Doug, who has emerged as a force in the mayor’s office and across the city.
We have approached Rob and Doug Ford several times to speak to the allegations. A senior Globe editor visited Doug Ford, privately, to explain the purpose of our research. Doug Ford rebuffed our entreaties, and aggressively threatened legal action.
As we approached publication, we returned to three fundamental questions that readers should rightly ask of us:
How reliable is our information?
We located and interviewed 10 people who claimed to have contact with Doug Ford over illicit drugs. Each individual said they were afraid to attach their name to the story, citing the Ford family’s power in Toronto.
They did, however, speak at length, and in detail. Throughout we consulted with our legal counsel.
Is this information of public interest?
Rob and Doug Ford hold sway over much of the city’s business and have influence on a range of public affairs, including policing. They have campaigned on anti-drug platforms, as outlined in the story, and spoken in recent years of the need to do more to stop drug-related crime, without ever acknowledging the family’s own struggles. The rest of city council, and citizens at large, deserve to understand the moral record of their leaders. In most matters, public or private, character matters.
Why now?
Our investigation has been ongoing since late 2011. The reporters were sent back multiple times to find more witnesses, corroborate details and further authenticate information provided in previous interviews. We decided to publish their work this week, given the intense public interest around the Ford family and alleged substance abuse. After Rob Ford spoke to the media on Friday afternoon, carefully saying he does not use crack cocaine and is not addicted to crack cocaine, a group of senior editors met again, reviewed the story, and concluded again that it is in the public interest to publish. Indeed, we felt it would be irresponsible not to share this information with the public at this time.
Kofi Annan’s patience for peace
Kofi Annan has had a front-row seat to world events for nearly 20 years and has a simple message for anyone concerned about sectarian violence almost anywhere: be patient and keep talking.
I interviewed Mr. Annan in Ottawa Thursday night at an event hosted by the Global Centre for Pluralism, which is located in a stunningly designed structure on Sussex Drive built by the Aga Khan and the Canadian Ismaili community. Mr. Annan spoke about his challenges in defusing the Syrian crisis, his success averting a sectarian war in Kenya a few years ago, and his dealings with Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
You can watch video highlights of our discussion here:
Over dinner afterward, he spoke frankly about the need for patience. Egypt, he said, could take 15 years to stabilize. Syria is a decade-long project, with or without Bashar al-Assad in power. He encouraged even middle powers such as Canada to play a role in getting the many sides in a conflict to talk. Sometimes they need to talk for years. But he recounted his visit to Baghdad in 1998 to convince Saddam Hussein to open his palaces to inspections – and felt he was succeeding as long as Saddam was willing to talk.
It’s the sort of appeasement that many conservatives feel plays right into the hands of dictators and war-mongerers. Mr. Annan says a greater challenge is the big powers who “talk over one another.” Case in point: Russia and the United States, which he feels undermined a peace agreement for Syria last year because they weren’t listening to one another. He thinks John Kerry is changing that and winning confidence with Moscow.
Any further failure, he warns, will lead to an explosion of conflict in and around Syria. Message to Canada: help keep parties to the conflict talking.
Enjoy the weekend,
Report Typo/Error | – If yesterday's carefully worded I-am-not-a-crack-addict news conference made for a bleak day for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, today isn't much better. The respected Globe and Mail is out with an investigative piece on the mayor's family, including brother Doug, a city councilor. It includes paragraphs like this: "What has emerged is a portrait of a family once deeply immersed in the illegal drug scene. All three of the mayor’s older siblings—brother Randy, 51, and sister Kathy, 52, as well as Doug, 48—have had ties to drug traffickers." Doug, in particular, is portrayed as the go-to guy for hash in the city back in the 1980s. One of his associates reportedly was David Price, who now works in the mayor's office under the vague title of "director of logistics and operations." Kathy Ford, meanwhile, was associated with white supremacists in the 1980s and is linked to a slew of headline-making incidents of the wrong kind. In one, her longtime boyfriend, a convicted drug dealer, was charged with threatening to murder the mayor; he also was once accused, along with another man, of shooting Kathy Ford in the face. While many of the events took place years ago, "as mayor, Rob Ford has surrounded himself with people from his past," says the story. The Globe began working on the piece in 2011—well before the recent allegations emerged about the mayor smoking crack on video. In a letter to readers, the paper's editor writes that it would have been "irresponsible" not to publish the story, given the Ford family's huge sway over the city. "Character matters," writes John Stackhouse. Click for the full piece. |
Barbara Bush, in what her spokesman called “failing health,” had traded further medical treatments for comfort care at home —that included the “alert” 92-year-old former first lady enjoying phone calls, conversation and bourbon.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Office of George H. W. Bush confirmed her death, saying in a statement, “A former First Lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the age of 92.”
Hours before her death, the Bushes’ longtime friend Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel to Barbara’s husband of 73 years, former president George H.W. Bush, told PEOPLE: “Some of the recent emails indicate she is not quite ready to sign off. She’s answering all of her phone calls herself.”
And a source close to the Bush family told CBS News reporter Jenna Gibson on Tuesday that, while Barbara’s chronic pulmonary disease (COPD) made breathing difficult, “she is alert and was having conversations last night. She was also having a bourbon.”
A source close to the Bush family tells CBS News' Jenna Gibson that, while Mrs. Bush's COPD makes it difficult for her to breathe, she is alert and was having conversations last night. She was also having a bourbon. — Katie Watson (@kathrynw5) April 17, 2018
On Sunday, a family spokesman announced that Bush decided not to seek additional medical treatment despite her “failing health.”
RELATED: Former First Lady Barbara Bush Dies at 92: ‘A Woman Unlike Any Other’
The former first lady had a lung disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure, according to numerous reports.
RELATED VIDEO: Former First Lady Barbara Bush Isn’t Seeking Medical Treatment Despite ‘Failing Health’
Bush was long been known for her strength, and her family called her “The Enforcer.”
In a statement Sunday from the office of the former president, spokesman Jim McGrath said that Bush was not thinking of herself but others: “It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself — thanks to her abiding faith — but for others. She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving.” | – Barbara Bush is in failing health and won't be seeking further treatment for her illness, said a statement released Sunday. Per the AP, family spokesman Jim McGrath issued the news release saying that following a recent series of hospitalizations and after consulting with her family and doctors, the 92-year-old former first lady has decided not to seek additional medical treatment and will instead focus on comfort care. The release did not elaborate on the nature of Bush's health problems. However, CNN reports that Bush has been hospitalized multiple times in the last year in her battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and congestive heart failure. McGrath says Bush appreciates the many kind messages and prayers she's been receiving. "It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself—thanks to her abiding faith—but for others. She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving," the statement read. Barbara Bush has been married to George HW Bush for 73 years. In recent years, it has been her husband's health, not hers, that has made headlines. The 93-year-old 41st president was hospitalized in 2015 following a fall in the family home. In 2017, Bush was hospitalized twice for a recurring case of pneumonia, the first of which kept him away from home over two weeks. |
CANNON BALL, N.D. (Reuters) - North Dakota’s governor ordered the expulsion of thousands of Native American and environmental activists camped on federal property near an oil pipeline project they are trying to halt, citing hazards posed by harsh weather as a blizzard bore down on the area.
Women hold a prayer ceremony on Backwater Bridge during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S. November 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
The “emergency evacuation” order from Governor Jack Dalrymple came days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the site, set a Dec. 5 deadline for the demonstrators to vacate their encampment, about 45 miles (72 km) south of Bismarck, the state capital.
The Army Corps has insisted, however, that it has no plans to forcibly remove protesters, many of them members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The agency instead urged a “peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location.”
Late Monday, Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II denounced Dalrymple’s order as a “menacing action meant to cause fear,” and accused the Republican governor of trying to “usurp and circumvent federal authority.”
A woman washes dishes in the Oceti Sakowin camp in a snow storm during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S. November 28, 2016. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
Archambault noted that the evacuation order, which the governor said he issued for the campers’ well-being in the face of dangerous winter weather, came a week after police turned water hoses on protesters in sub-freezing temperatures.
Activists have spent months protesting against plans to route the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, saying the project poses a threat to water resources and sacred Native American sites.
The governor did not specify how he intended to enforce his order other than by directing state and local agencies to refuse emergency assistance and other services to anyone who remained at the site. He said the order was effective immediately and would stay in force “until rescinded.”
But Standing Rock Sioux spokeswoman Phyllis Young told a news conference Monday night the tribe would stand its ground.
“We have lived for generations in this setting. That is our camp. We will continue to provide for our people there,” she said. “This is Lakota territory. This is treaty territory, and no one else has jurisdiction there.”
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Protest leaders suggested a forced evacuation could prove more dangerous to the activists than staying put.
“We’re in the heart of winter now. To even think of a forced removal is terrifying,” said Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with Indigenous Environmental Network, who estimated there were about 5,000 people in the camp.
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier added to the pressure by issuing a video statement urging protesters to avoid subjecting themselves to “life-threatening conditions” by remaining exposed to the elements with little shelter.
The National Weather Service has posted a storm warning for most of western and central North Dakota, forecasting the possibility of heavy snow through Wednesday.
The 1,172-mile (1,885-km) pipeline project is mostly complete except for a segment that is supposed to run under Lake Oahe, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Missouri River.
The Obama administration in September postponed final approval of an Army Corps permit required to allow tunneling beneath the lake, a move intended to give federal officials more time to consult tribal leaders. The delay also led to escalating tension over the project.
The companies say the pipeline would carry Bakken shale oil more cheaply and safely from North Dakota to Illinois en route to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries than it could be shipped by railroad or tanker trucks. ||||| Protesters against the North Dakota Access oil pipeline said Saturday they will not move from the site of a months-long encampment, even after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a letter announcing its plan to close the land.
The protesters, or “water protectors,” were notified that land north of the Cannonball River will be closed on Dec. 5, according to Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
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The Oceti Sakowin camp, which rests on the banks of the river, contains a loose collective of tribal nations and out-of-state supporters opposing the 1,172-mile pipeline. The camp is about 45 minutes south of Bismarck, the state capital.
Archambault said he was “deeply disappointed” by the Army Corps’ decision, “but our resolve to protect our water is stronger than ever.”
“It is both unfortunate and disrespectful that this announcement comes the day after this country celebrates Thanksgiving — a historic exchange of goodwill between Native Americans and the first immigrants from Europe,” Archambault wrote. “Although the news is saddening, it is not at all surprising given the last 500 years of the mistreatment of our people.”
The Army Corps did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its supporters have said the $3.7-billion pipeline threatens the reservation’s main water supply and cultural artifacts, all claims the company behind the project, Energy Transfer Partners, has denied.
Archambault said the Army Corps closed public access to the land over “safety concerns,” adding that the agency plans to allow a “free-speech zone” south of the Cannonball River.
Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, posted what appeared to be the Army Corps’ statement on Facebook.
The decision comes days after law enforcement deployed water hoses, rubber bullets and tear gas against hundreds of unarmed Standing Rock protesters. Camp organizers said more than 300 protesters were injured in Sunday’s standoff, and 26 were hospitalized.
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement’s response in the encounter, saying it was a “catastrophe with serious human rights implications.”
The sheriff’s department defended the decision to douse protesters in freezing temperatures, saying that protesters were “very aggressive.” An initial statement from the department said it was an “ongoing riot.”
Energy Transfer CEO Kelcy Warren told the NewsHour that the pipeline was built “to have minimal impact to all people concerned,” adding that “we’re building the pipeline.”
READ MORE: For Native �?water protectors,’ Standing Rock protest has become fight for religious freedom, human rights
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker on Friday called on Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Department of Justice to investigate tactics that police are using against protesters at Standing Rock.
“I call on the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to promptly and thoroughly investigate all credible reports of inappropriate police tactics and, if DOJ has not already done so, to send federal monitors to Standing Rock to ensure that protesters can peacefully assemble and exercise their First Amendment rights,” he wrote. | – The US Army Corps of Engineers says it isn't going to force more than 5,000 pipeline protesters off land where they've been camping since August— despite having told them that they need to leave. "The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location," the agency said in a statement, per Reuters. "This will reduce the risk of harm to people in the encampments caused [by] the harsh North Dakota winter conditions." The agency says it has no plans for "forcible removal" of the protesters when it shuts off access to the area north of North Dakota's Cannonball River on Dec. 5, though Dakota Access Pipeline protesters who remain could be prosecuted for trespassing. Protesters, many of them from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, say they're going to stay put after the deadline expires. But local Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, whose officers used a water cannon on protesters amid freezing temperatures last week, tells the AP that he won't tolerate people breaking the law. "It's just not going to happen," he says. Gov. Jack Dalrymple says the federal government should take the lead in evicting protesters, though Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II tells the Bismarck Tribune that he believes the feds want to "reduce their liability" and will not act aggressively. (Donald Trump holds stock in the company building the $3.8 billion project.) |
The first thing you see is a black and white montage accompanied by an infectious heavy metal soundtrack. A button is pushed, a lever pulled, a needle jumps within a pressure gauge. Then comes a male voice, thick with a Finnish accent: “Welcome to the Hydraulic Press Channel.”
Since the beginning of October 2015, Lauri Vuohensilta has been crushing random objects to smithereens, just for the sheer pleasure of it. He’s pulverized a rubber duck, a jawbreaker, various kinds of fruit, a hockey puck, a Barbie, Lego cars and a cable box, among other assorted and strange items. Crushing stuff is all that Vuohensilta does for his YouTube channel, which has gained almost 700,000 subscribers and nearly 51 million total views in just seven months.
“It’s been quite a surprise that it’s gotten so big so fast,” he said in a Skype interview with The Washington Post, through a gap-toothed grin. “I thought it would take three years or something like that to get this big.”
(Courtesy of Lauri Vuohensilta)
Curiously, the video that shot the Hydraulic Press Channel to viral status was not a spectacular crush like a bowling ball, or crushing a hydraulic press with a hydraulic press (appropriately titled “Pressception”). Instead, Vuohensilta’s first viral video proves an age-old myth in a rather startling fashion — paper really can’t be folded in half more than seven times.
After folding a normal piece of paper in half five times, Vuohensilta enlists the help of his 100 ton hydraulic press to make the creases a little sharper. He grunts as he bends the little white square a seventh time and pushes it under the press, applying 300 bars of pressure.
What happens next is unexpected — the piece of paper shatters.
Vuohensilta is just as surprised as we are, exclaiming “what the f–k?” before gently extracting the remnants of the printer paper from beneath the press. It crumbles in his hand, like limestone.
About a month ago, “Can you fold paper more than 7 times with hydraulic press,” made its way to the front page of Reddit. Within a day, the video got two million views, and Vuohensilta’s aptly named Hydraulic Press Channel took off.
Now, his videos typically gain over a million views within a matter of days, and that paper folding video? Nearly 10 million hits. In his most recent upload, “Crushing deep freezed stuff with hydraulic press,” Vuohensilta incorporates the use of liquid nitrogen to give his crushes a little extra flair and pizzazz. As a rubber-band ball and a remote control turn to dust, Vuohensilta and his wife laugh hysterically in the background.
So what is it about this hydraulic press and its crushing power that Vuohensilta and his viewers love so much?
Born and raised in Tampere, Finland, Vuohensilta was just like any normal kid — he loved to destroy things.
“We would crush smaller rocks with bigger ones and then we would crush toy cars with big rocks and stuff like that,” he said. “I think that most children love to break stuff. I think it’s built inside every person — the need to destroy something.”
Jennifer Walker, a psychotherapist and adjunct professor at University of Maine Graduate School of Social Work, had some thoughts on the matter.
“Perhaps there’s some sort of adrenaline rush or cathartic release that happens by watching something get destroyed. It makes me think of toddlers who discover they can both build things and knock them down. It’s a very powerful feeling.”
Despite the relatability of his videos, Vuohensilta doesn’t seem to have as much of a following in his home country as he does abroad.
“I have done 20 interviews for other countries, and just one small local newspaper, nothing at all besides that. So there is absolutely zero media interest right now in Finland for me, I’m not sure how it’s possible.”
For example, 17 year old Micaela Peltoniemi from Mäntsälä, Finland, had never heard of the Hydraulic Press Channel until recently.
“I asked my friends if they had heard about the channel or if I am just an uncultured swine. Seems like most of the channel’s popularity here in Finland is based on its Finnishness — yes, Finns love when foreigners know anything from their country. For some, including me, the way the guy speaks is the most interesting part. He has unusually strong accent and I find it very cute.”
Indeed, Vuohensilta also attributes much of his success to his Finnish brogue.
“We [he and his wife] also talked about my accent and how it was going to be very funny thing on top of the press thing,” he said. “There is this channel and they just shoot different guns, and the guy talks in a Russian accent and it’s a very popular gun channel.They have like 5 million subscribers, so I think that the accent is a good bonus for this channel.”
Vuohensilta owns a factory that produces building supplies, allowing him to experiment with heavy, destruction worthy machinery and dream about purchasing a brand new hydraulic press.
“I am planning to make a 1,000 ton press, where the cylinder diameter would be half a meter. So I am trying to find some sponsors to make it happen because there are quite expensive parts when you are building something like this.”
For the “hydraulic press guy,” along with other aspiring YouTube entrepreneurs, support and sponsorship is crucial, and has already yielded some great things. Recognizing his following on YouTube, he said a 3D printer company struck a deal with him and sent him his very own 3D printer. Right now, Vuohensilta wants to use the printer to make more sophisticated safety equipment, but in the future, he wants to use the printer to grow his channel in a unique way.
“I am also planning to let people send me earmarks of stuff that they want to be crushed, and then I can just print them out here and crush them and make the video.”
While he seems excited to develop an interactive relationship with his viewers, and cater to their crushing needs, Vuohensilta has dream crushes of his own.
“I think something really dangerous and explosive,” he said. “I am waiting to crush a very big lithium battery. I am planning to do this for as long as people want to watch these videos. I hope that is very long.”
Kate Sensenig, a student at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy, is a freelance writer. ||||| Published on Apr 8, 2016
YouTube's newest superstar is a Finnish powerlifter who uses an industrial press to flatten household objects. If you're not already obsessed with him, you're about to be.
Watch more of Lauri's videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcMD...
And read more about him here: http://qz.com/657279/ | – Lauri Vuohensilta is a competitive Finnish powerlifter and factory owner, but the world will probably remember him for something else entirely: His love of crushing things. That's because the 29-year-old has been filming himself crushing assorted everyday objects in a hydraulic press on his Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube since October 2015, and since one involving paper made it to the front page of Reddit, he's become a viral sensation with more than 660,000 followers, reports the Washington Post. "Perhaps there’s some sort of adrenaline rush or cathartic release that happens by watching something get destroyed," one psychotherapist muses. "It makes me think of toddlers who discover they can both build things and knock them down. It’s a very powerful feeling." Vuohensilta is a man of few words, and those he speaks are in a thick accent—something he says could well be part of his success. He's barely known in Finland, where his accent is, of course, not a novelty, but he's already done 20 interviews for media outlets in other countries. Quartz, which compiled its own best-hits video that includes the crushing of a cell phone, Barbie doll, pineapple, and more, notes that his proudest achievement so far is that he is the "eighth largest YouTube channel in Finland." He tells Vice that he takes requests for which objects to crush, and otherwise uses whatever is "laying around." But when asked why he likes to crush things, he replies it's "just for fun" and "I am also quite curious to see what happens to different things under the press." (If you want something more relaxing, Snoop Dogg has a nature show.) |
It makes sense to sell this old place now, but he can’t bring himself to leave her ashes.
Barry Gibbs lives alone in a single-story home among the loblollies of Hyde County in eastern North Carolina. The army veteran collects a small disability check after he tore tendons in his shoulder during a fall at his maintenance job at the local school. He winces every time he stands up. He’s 64 years old and the closest hospital is more than an hour away, a distance he came to understand too damn well on the day she needed help.
Their wedding portrait still hangs on the living room wall. It’s one of those 1980s shots with the laser beam backgrounds, her hair big and his mustache combed, his hand on her shoulder. The interior of the house is almost as she left it four years ago: white oak floors, paintings of black bears, family Christmas photos on end tables.
Outside along the driveway, a line of cypress trees shades a headstone that marks where Barry cut a ditch and spread Portia’s ashes, right where she asked to be.
Everybody called her Po. She was picking up sticks from the yard on 7 July 2014, five days shy of her 49th birthday, when she felt a sharp pain in her chest.
Six days earlier, their community hospital had closed. Pungo district hospital was 47 miles west of their house, in Belhaven, and had served the county since 1949, back when crab-picking plants and lumber mills kept these small waterfront communities working.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A picture of Barry Gibbs and his wife Portia. Photograph: Justin Cook for the Guardian
If you’re an accountant, hospitals are only as good as the number of paying patients. Belhaven’s population is about half what it was then. And Hyde county is now the fifth-sparsest county on the east coast, with nine people per square mile.
This spongy stretch of North Carolina’s inner banks represents the suffering side of a modern migration pattern in which southern cities are flourishing, but rural areas are shrinking and losing healthcare options. Since 2010, 53 rural hospitals have closed in 11 southern states, compared with 30 in the other 39 states. About half of those southern closures occurred in counties where non-whites make up a larger percentage of the population than they do the rest of the country. All but two happened in counties with poverty rates above the national average.
In Humphreys county, Mississippi, for instance, three-quarters of residents are black and nearly 40% live in poverty. The hospital there closed in 2012. In Barnwell county, South Carolina, which lost about 6% of its population from 2010 to 2017, residents learned on Facebook in January 2016 that their hospital would shutter the following day.
Many people in these areas piece together incomes with contract jobs that don’t offer insurance. Hospitals are often left to pay the bills for the poorest and sickest, and the math worsened as legislatures in the region rejected Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. The non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation acknowledged in March that Medicaid is having a “disproportionately positive impact in rural areas in expansion states”. The forces combine to create an unequal healthcare landscape, with urban hospitals producing an average 6% profit each year, while rural hospitals are at 2%.
In June, the hospital in Jacksonville, Alabama, will be the first rural hospital to close in 2018. While the deceleration of closures should be an encouraging development, rural health champions wonder if it will make lawmakers less likely to help the areas left behind.
For people in those areas, the questions are more personal: when does a financial decision outweigh a moral obligation? How far out is too far out for you to care about us?
Standing on the porch with Po that torpid July day, Barry had two options: he could go 60 miles east to a hospital in Nags Head and lurch along in the Outer Banks summer congestion, or drive 70 miles west, past Belhaven to a hospital in the town of Washington, where he knew the roads and their doctors had moved.
It wasn’t even a question.
Barry helped Po to their white Buick, backed out of the driveway, turned west toward Washington, and slammed the gas pedal.
‘I’d rather die en route to my doctors’
When Vidant Health, a $1.6bn non-profit medical consortium which owns all of the other hospitals in this region, purchased Pungo district hospital in 2011 and determined that it was losing money, few here were surprised. But when Vidant announced Pungo’s closure in 2013, it started a bitter four-year conflict that spurred protests, marches to the nation’s capital, NAACP intervention and lawsuit upon lawsuit.
“It’s worse than murder,” Adam O’Neal says, standing over his kitchen sink deveining shrimp. “Everybody who needs emergency care and is dying is being murdered by Vidant.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The former mayor of Belhaven, Adam O’Neal, stands at the empty lot where Pungo district hospital once stood. Photograph: Justin Cook for the Guardian
O’Neal served as Belhaven’s mayor for 12 years before deciding not to run in 2017.
Two weeks after the hospital closed in 2014 – one week after Po died – O’Neal staged a 273-mile walk from Belhaven to Washington. He did it again the next year, and was joined by medical professionals from rural hospitals across the south, as well as activists, including Freedom Rider Bob Zellner.
He’s a white Republican who won six terms as mayor in a town that’s nearly 60% black and stood alongside the Rev William Barber, a prominent civil rights activist who spoke at the 2016 Democratic national convention.
The protests created a small pool of enemies at home for O’Neal. Opponents worried his red-hot style would lead Vidant to back out of an agreement to build a modest multispecialty clinic in the hospital’s absence. (In my weeklong trip to the area in March, people called O’Neal a “bully”, a “dictator” and an op-ed in the local paper last year called derided him as “the town crier”.)
As he flops the shrimp around in a plate of flour, O’Neal fires off on those who didn’t support the campaign – everyone from the former Republican governor to small business owners in town. He refers to studies like one the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last year, which showed that rural white populations have better access to care than rural minority populations.
“By me treating the blacks just like I did the whites, that makes people furious,” he says. “When you treat everybody the same, you better get ready, because people will come at you.”
On Christmas Eve 2016, in a final effort to save the building, Barber wrote a column for the website Red Letter Christians titled, A Christmas Carol in Rural America. He prayed for an injunction and wrote: “No matter how long we’ve ignored our poor and sick neighbors, we can learn to do right.”
Five days later, Vidant demolished the hospital.
It’s been more than a year, and quiet fills spaces where conversations used to happen. Lifelong friendships are wrecked in a town where it’s hard to avoid each other. Neighbors who used to dance and bid on East Carolina University-themed crab pots together at hospital fundraisers now turn their backs toward each other at the downtown diner.
If you drive east, Belhaven is the last town of more than 1,500 people until you reach the coast. One-hundred and twenty-five miles of winding pavement separates the beach hospital in Dare county and the one in Washington. Eastern Hyde county, where Barry lives, is right in the middle. Paramedics there are directed to take patients to Dare county, because it’s technically a shorter trip. But Hyde county natives are programmed from birth to avoid beach traffic, so they keep most of their regular doctors in Washington or even farther west.
Barbara Gibbs, Barry’s third cousin, is a 73-year-old former social worker. When she learned that calls to 911 would result in her being sent to Dare county, she told her husband that if she has an emergency he shouldn’t pick up the phone – he should drive her to Washington.
“I’d rather die en route to my doctors than go to Dare county,” she says.
‘Everything is about distance’
Seven miles into the frantic drive with Po, Barry came to an intersection with NC Highway 94, the only road that crosses the 40,000-acre Lake Mattamuskeet.
Po rolled down the window and threw up. Barry knew she wouldn’t make it to Washington. He called the EMT station on the other side of the lake and said he was on his way.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lake Matamuskeet in Hyde county, North Carolina. Photograph: Justin Cook for the Guardian
It’s a straight shot across, six miles. As a teenager, Barry drag raced friends on the road at 140 miles per hour. Now he was in his 60s, flooring it again, zooming past people fishing for crappie and perch under the July sun. Only this time, his wife was next to him having a heart attack.
They’d met at the Sound Side Dance Hall in the early 1980s. He was in his late 20s and had served seven years as a US army infantryman, been married and divorced. She was just 18 but had her share of life experiences, too. She was born to parents in northern Virginia who named her Laura Sue Norris then gave her up for adoption. Her adoptive parents changed her name to Patricia Swindell, and her nickname evolved into Portia, then Po.
She tried to find her birth parents several times. She discovered her original birth certificate and paperwork that listed their likes and dislikes, but never uncovered a name or number. “She always wanted to know,” Barry recalls.
Barry and Po married on New Year’s Eve in 1987 and had a son three years later. Six years after that, a daughter. Po was never in great health. She was a diabetic from childhood. She had begun to show signs of multiple sclerosis. Sometimes Barry found her lying in the yard with no way of explaining how she got there.
They’d made it through each episode, though, so as he sped across the lake Barry never considered that she might not make it home.
They were 34 miles from where Pungo hospital had been open just a week earlier, and 60 from Washington, when he pulled into the parking lot of Mattamuskeet school, which housed an EMT station.
They put Po into an ambulance and shut the doors. Barry waited behind the vehicle for “over an hour, hour and a half” before an EMT popped out and said they were moving her across the lot to meet a helicopter from Greenville. Barry followed the ambulance and looked up.
Just as the chopper was landing, the EMTs told Barry that Po was gone.
‘We’re a real town because we have a hospital’
On a recent spring afternoon along a creek that leads to the Pamlico Sound, local shrimpers were readying their boats for the season. Terrell Mackey was helping friends on the Capt Dell.
Mackey is a 37-year-old black man who was born in Pungo district hospital. He served in the army after high school, and now raises two young sons on the northern edge of Belhaven. He’s an auto mechanic who delivers seafood on the side.
“Pretty bad,” he shot back when I asked him how things are after the hospital closed. “They took away something that was helping locals. Around here, everything is about distance.”
In June 2016, Vidant opened $5.9m multispecialty clinic with 19 exam rooms in Belhaven. It has eight full-time providers for primary care, physical therapy, lab tests and other appointment services. It’s open 24 hours a day but doesn’t have an emergency room. The overnight staff often consists of one physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner. There’s a helipad outside, and local EMS is directed to take people there in an emergency.
Vidant’s mission is “to become the national model for rural health and wellness”. Around the country, rural systems are trying to customize care for specific communities. One area may need just an emergency room, for instance, but another may need more outpatient services. You wouldn’t build a shopping mall for a town that can support only one department store, after all.
Ricky Credle, an independent who was elected Belhaven’s new mayor in November, says the clinic works for now. It had nearly 29,000 visits from patients last year, and a recent third-party survey showed that 85% rated their experience highly.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of rural areas in North Carolina and all across America that would be glad to have a clinic like that,” says Credle, a black man who runs an auto detail business. Credle says his goal is to bring in businesses and jobs to attract new residents. Maybe then, he says, Vidant will open an emergency room.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Entering Hyde county, North Carolina. Photograph: Justin Cook for the Guardian
Dan Drake, Vidant’s senior vice-president of operations, says the group is expanding the emergency department in Washington, but has no plans to reintroduce one in Belhaven. “We know that we are seeing an increase in patients that are using this clinic,” Drake says. “The people who live there and work there and serve those people are proud of what they’re doing.”
Still, the most consistent feelings I gathered in conversations with more than 40 people around the region were apprehension and skepticism. Several, such as Barbara Gibbs, said they were desperate for an emergency room.
Mackey, on the docks, lives less than a mile from the clinic and went there with pain in his knee recently. “Basically, they gave me an Ace bandage, but when that bill came, it was $900,” he says. “If you don’t have a fancy insurance policy or a crisp $100 bill in your pocket, you’re going to get treated different.”
On Father’s Day last year, a two-year-old boy with a mop of black hair was playing in his yard in Hyde county when a copperhead snake slithered out from under a toy car and bit him. His mom, Hannah Berry, sped 20 miles to the clinic. Staff there told her to drive to Washington, and staff there ordered an airlift to Greenville. Finally, after two car rides and a flight, the boy received anti-venom. It was at least two hours after he started screaming, Hannah recalls.
Last July, Latoya Chase took her elderly mother to the clinic with chest pains. When Chase went inside for help, “they told me that I needed to call 911,” she says. She called, and they waited in the parking lot for paramedics. Chase’s mother survived – doctors found blood clots, not a heart attack – but Chase remains furious. “Going there is a waste of time,” she says of the clinic.
Sally Holton, an 89-year-old retired schoolteacher, went to the clinic with breathing problems in 2016 and says doctors called hospitals in Washington and Greenville. Neither had room. They sent her farther west, to a Vidant-owned hospital about 75 miles west of Belhaven.
“I have been in a mess without the hospital,” Holton says. “I’ve just been handicapped.”
Dr Mark Holmes, a professor at UNC, is director of the North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center. A challenge with studying the effects of a rural hospital closure, he says, is that deaths are the only health statistic that’s easy to track.
His team can study economics – there’s a 4% drop in per-capita income and an increase in unemployment by 1.6% after one closes – but there’s no way to count the people who stay home sick when they should see a doctor, or how many visits a family would make if a patient was closer to home. The toll on relationships is impossible to quantify.
“Imagine Green Bay without the Packers,” Holmes says. “It’s a similar type of thing: We’re a real town because we have a hospital. We’re a real city because we have a professional athletic team. Those things give social fabric, which we know is important to a healthy community.”
‘Guess what? We’re still here’
Forty-seven miles west of Barry and Po’s yard, seagulls caw and circle the property that was once Pungo district hospital. Had Po complained of chest pains one week earlier, this would have been Barry’s destination. He doesn’t know if the hospital would have saved her but says: “There’s always that glimmer of hope.”
The building’s outline remains. The weather-worn asphalt in the parking lot cuts and juts around grass: a horseshoe where an entrance once welcomed visitors, a sidewalk to the emergency room, all paths to nowhere now.
The non-profit group that controls the property is selling it to a developer for $525,000. There’s potential. Belhaven’s waterfront sparkles. A block away are a couple of rows of big homes with front porches, and handful of restaurants that serve local seafood. Boaters passing through along the Intracoastal Waterway will stop in and eat this summer.
The newest business in town is an ice cream shop started by Credle and his daughter, Shaiana. Sweet Tooth opened on 30 March, and Shaiana smiled as she sold two scoops of salted caramel to the first customers.
“It’s not the end of the world,” the new mayor says of losing the hospital. “When the schools left, they said that’s the end of Belhaven. Guess what? We’re still here. When the crab industry left, people said Belhaven is dying. Guess what? We’re still here. Well, the hospital closed and guess what? We’re still here.”
That general status report is something most people can agree on, even Barry Gibbs, as he winces and picks up sticks around Po’s headstone, counting the reasons to move.
For better or worse, he’s still here.
Michael Graff is a writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
/ Updated By Maggie Fox
One woman died after she was left on the floor of her hospital room, overdosed by poorly trained staff.
Others died in ambulances on long journeys to emergency rooms because local facilities were closed for being such a mess.
Witness after witness at a Senate hearing Wednesday begged the federal government to properly fund the neglected Indian Health Service, and even government officials in charge of the service said they were struggling to get the resources they need.
"What we’ve found is simply horrifying and unacceptable. In my view, the information provided to this committee and witness first hand can be summed up in one word: malpractice," Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, who chairs the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
“The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — another agency within the Department of Health and Human Services — has confirmed not only that these same problems continue to fester, but that they pose immediate risk to patient safety,” Barrasso added.
“In fact, they have led to multiple patient deaths.”
One of those deaths was Debra Free, who died in the Winnebago Hospital in northeastern Nebraska in 2011.
“Since at least 2007, this IHS facility has been operating with demonstrated deficiencies which should not exist at any hospital in the United States,” Free’s niece, Victoria Kitcheyan, told the committee.
“I am talking about a facility which employs emergency room nurses who do not know how to administer such basic drugs as dopamine; employees who did not know how to call a Code Blue."
“I am not talking about unpainted walls or equipment that is outdated,” Kitcheyan, who is treasurer of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, said.
“I am talking about a facility which employs emergency room nurses who do not know how to administer such basic drugs as dopamine; employees who did not know how to call a Code Blue; an emergency room where defibrillators could not be found or utilized when a human life was at stake; and a facility which has a track record of sending patients home with aspirin and other over-the-counter drugs, only to have them airlifted out from our Reservation in a life threatening state.”
Free died at age 45 after suffering a heart attack, her obituary noted.
“According to what our family learned, Debra [Free] was overmedicated and left unsupervised, even though the nursing staff at the Hospital knew that she was dizzy and hallucinating from the drugs and should be watched closely,” Kitcheyan testified.
“After her death, a nurse at the hospital told my family that Debra had fallen during the night. She said that that nurses from the emergency room had to be called to the inpatient ward to get Debra back into bed because there was inadequate staff and inadequate equipment on the inpatient floor to address that emergency,” she added.
“While the hospital insisted that they did everything possible to revive her and save her life, we question just how long she remained on the floor and what actually happened. My Aunt Debra Free left behind a nine-year-old daughter and a loving family. She should not have been allowed to die like this.”
The U.S. has an agreement dating back to 1787 that requires the federal government to provide American Indians with free health care on reservations.
But the Indian Health Service only has about half of the money it needs, and poor tribes in some of the most remote areas have underfunded facilities and substandard care, critics say.
“The administration is responsible for providing and delivering health services to American Indians and Alaska Natives across the country. Their federal obligation mandates that they promote health and safe Indian communities while honoring tribal governance. This is not happening,” Barrasso said.
Some rich tribes that run casinos supplement their medical care, but tribes in the upper Plains states are in remote areas with little opportunity to generate extra income.
William Bear Shield, a representative of the Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, said they have organized numerous meetings with the Indian Health Service to try to improve matters.
"This, to me, is a rationing of health care — care that is guaranteed by treaty."
“We have been voicing our concerns and demanding to be involved. We have been saying that the current situation was going to occur and wanted to prevent it. We went unheard.” Shield told the hearing. He said the IHS closed a local emergency room because it was run so badly, but did not provide an alternative, and at least one tribe member died of a heart attack in an ambulance en route to a facility 70 miles away.
“The IHS is severely underfunded compared to other federal agencies,” said former Senator Byron Dorgan, chairman of The Center for Native American Youth at The Aspen Institute.
“You may have heard the phrase ‘Do not get sick after June,’ because if you do, you will not be able to get care. This, to me, is a rationing of health care — care that is guaranteed by treaty. If we start funding IHS at levels commensurate with need, I believe we will solve a lot of the issues revealed in the 2010 report and the ones occurring elsewhere in this country,” Dorgan added.
Robert McSwain, principal deputy director for the HIS, says the agency is working to solve the problems but said it’s hard to provide services in rural, isolated communities. It’s also hard to recruit and keep staff to work in these communities. “HIS is addressing issues such as recruitment and retention in innovative ways, such as utilizing tele-medicine, including tele-radiology and tele-behavioral health,” he said.
Mary Wakefield, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, admitted the service was struggling.
“We know that more needs to be done to ensure quality health care is provided by IHS,” Wakefield testified.
She said Mary Smith, who is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, was now deputy director of the HIS and Dorothy Dupree, a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine Sioux Tribes, was named deputy director for quality health care. | – When Barry Gibbs' wife had a heart attack two years ago, the North Carolina man couldn't take her to the hospital in nearby Belhaven—because it had closed. Should he drive her 60 miles east to one town or 70 miles west to another? Neither seemed close enough. But his dilemma isn't unique in a country where 83 rural hospitals have shuttered since 2010 in an ongoing financial crisis, the Guardian reports. The problem: Many rural people have contract jobs without insurance, so hospitals often pay for the neediest, especially in states that rejected the Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare. Now urban hospitals are averaging 6% annual profit and rural hospitals only 2%. And as the former mayor of Belhaven learned, the politics of it can get ugly. Adam O'Neal, who served as mayor for 12 years, staged protest walks when the medical consortium Vidant Health prepared to close the hospital for losing money. "It’s worse than murder," says O’Neal. "Everybody who needs emergency care and is dying is being murdered by Vidant." The consortium did build a $5.9 million multispecialty clinic after closing the hospital, but that left Belmont without all-important emergency care. On the federal level, Sen. Chuck Grassley has introduced a bill to let small, rural hospitals save money by offering only emergency care and transferring other patients, so that's in the pipeline, per UPI. But it's too late for Barry Gibbs, whose wife Portia died on the way to the hospital. He sprinkled her ashes outside his home. |
Stephanie Fragoso was pulled over for illegal use of Chapstick. (Courtesy of KLAS)
Distracted driving is bad news — and really, no one should do it.
But did you know that applying lip balm while you’re behind the wheel can result in a $200 ticket and points on your driving record? We didn’t either.
One Las Vegas woman learned the hard way that when the Nevada Highway Patrol says it has zero tolerance for distracted driving, it really means ZERO.
Stephanie Fragoso, 37, thought it was just another day at the wheel. She was driving to take care of something at the Department of Motor Vehicles, of all places, when she pulled away from an intersection, and the officer who had stopped at the red light next to her pulled her over.
He told Fragoso that she was getting a ticket because she was putting on makeup.
“I said no, I was putting on Chapstick,” Fragoso told The Washington Post.
Plus, she was stopped at a red light. A red light!
“He was very sorry; he did not want to give it to me,” Fragoso said of the ticket, which was first reported by CBS affiliate KLAS.
But Fragoso had violated a little-known local ordinance that can land drivers with expensive tickets for doing a host of things that might distract them from the road.
[Those other idiots are the distracted drivers you fear]
The incident happened on April 1, and we don’t really blame Fragoso for thinking it was just an elaborate, terrible April Fools’ Day joke. After all, dealing with pesky chapped lips at a red light seems harmless enough.
Not so.
Laws banning texting or using a cellphone while driving have become ubiquitous. But the one that snared Fragoso goes even further. And this week, police in Las Vegas were cracking down: Fragaso said the officer told her that drivers caught with their hands anywhere but on the wheel were liable to be ticketed.
“[The ordinance] states that when a person is operating a vehicle they must provide full attention to the driving so that it won’t render that action to be unsafe,” Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Loy Hixson told KLAS.
Admittedly, some of the examples Hixson cited are pretty bizarre, if not terrifying.
“They may be eating,” he said. “We’ve seen women putting on makeup. I have seen men shaving with their electric razors. One time, when I was driving down U.S. 95, I saw a lady watching a movie on her iPad and the iPad was attached to her steering wheel with Velcro.”
Okay, so don’t do that.
But watch yourselves, Vegas; your seemingly innocent self-grooming habits have no place on the road.
“It’s really crazy, but the drivers in the city are so bad, I kind of feel better knowing that [police] are doing it,” Fragoso said. “I’m just kind of sad I was the example of that.”
MORE READING: Voice-controlled apps still distract drivers, report says
Distracted behind the wheel? These teens are developing an app for that
Finally, the life-sized Cumberbatch chocolate statue we have been waiting for ||||| LAS VEGAS -- The Nevada Highway Patrol has a campaign to crackdown on distracted drivers, but how far is too far when it comes to cracking the whip? 8 News NOW decided to examine that question after a Las Vegas woman said she received a ticket from a Boulder City police officer for putting on lip balm at a red light.
Stephanie Fragoso said she was cited Wednesday during the statewide crackdown. She said she was at a red light at I-15 and Blue Diamond when it happened.
Fragoso said when she asked the officer why he pulled her over, he told her it was for putting on makeup.
"I told him it was Chapstick,” Fragoso said.
Initially, Fragoso thought the entire thing was a joke, especially since it was April Fools Day, but when she received the citation, she quickly realized that wasn't the case.
“He said 'it could have been anything; you could have been drinking water, shaving your legs',” said Fragoso.
Law enforcement officers say drivers can be ticketed for any distraction that takes their focus away from the road and their hands off the wheel. Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Loy Hixson said this is a city and county ordinance most people don't know about.
“It states that when a person is operating a vehicle they must provide full attention to the driving so that it won't render that action to be unsafe,” Hixson said.
When it comes to distracted drivers, Hixson said he has seen it all.
“They may be eating; we've seen women putting on makeup. I have seen men shaving with their electric razors," Hixson said. "One time, when I was driving down U.S. 95, I saw a lady watching a movie on her iPad and the iPad was attached to her steering wheel with Velcro."
Hixson says each ticket is issued on a case by case basis. For example, some drivers that may be an exception to the rule are people with medical conditions. Take a person who may have an episode; those drivers most likely will not receive a citation, according to Hixson.
However, that wasn't the case for Fragoso. The valley woman said she learned a tough lesson that day. Fragoso says she plans to be more conscious.
Along, with the fine, Fragoso's ticket caused her to receive points against her driving record. Her primary offense was Full Time Attention, but she says after the officer pulled her over she was also cited for Expired Registration and No Proof of Insurance. | – Las Vegas resident Stephanie Fragoso swears she's happy that troopers in Nevada are getting tough on distracted drivers, she's just surprised to find herself at the wrong end of a ticket. The 37-year-old tells CBS affiliate KLAS that she got a $200 citation Wednesday for the high crime of applying lip balm at a red light. The trooper who pulled her over as she was leaving the intersection explained that he did so because she was putting on makeup. "I said it was Chapstick,” she recalls, but she still got the ticket. “He was very sorry; he did not want to give it to me,” Fragoso tells the Washington Post. Another trooper tells the TV station that the State Patrol is in the midst of a statewide crackdown: Drivers who don't keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel risk a ticket, period. He cites some extreme examples, including one driver seen watching a movie on an iPad strapped to the steering wheel. In comparison, "dealing with pesky chapped lips at a red light seems harmless enough," writes Abby Phillip at the Post. "Not so." (In Virginia, a fifth-grader made headlines for fighting for her right to use Chapstick at school.) |
Veteran Henry Cobbs promises to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court if needed.
A Vietnam veteran and career educator at an elite military training school now finds himself resorting to a Reagan-era executive order in hopes of clearing his name. Henry Cobbs’ crime? Vaping a non-psychoactive form of cannabis to treat his prostate cancer.
Cobbs, 77, was forced out of his job last month as dean of academics for the Air Force Special Operations School (AFSOS) at Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach, a position he had retained since 2009.
A 22-year military veteran with two master's degrees and a doctorate in administration of higher education, the retired Air Force captain was issued a “Notice of Removal” in May for his “use of cannabidiol (CBD), a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance,” by Lt. Col. Michael S. Lowe, citing a witness who saw Cobbs “smoke your ‘medicine.’” On Aug. 13, Col. Robert A. Masaitis, commander of the 492nd Special Operations Training Group, rejected Cobb’s appeal, informing him: “This action will become a permanent part of your Official Personnel Folder.”
Hours before his scheduled termination, Cobbs filed for retirement in order to retain his benefits. But he says money isn’t the issue.
“My life has been sort of a storybook, to tell you the truth. I’ve been blessed,” said Cobbs, who also worked as executive assistant superintendent for computer technology services in the Atlanta public school system, as well as director for management information systems at Alabama State University. “But to end it on a note like this is reprehensible. What I’m trying to do is protect my legacy.”
Prescribed by a doctor
Although CBD lacks the tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC component that evokes euphoria, the federal government maintains that CBD has no medicinal value, despite numerous studies to the contrary, and is thus illegal. But Cobbs says he has a 32-year-old federal directive on his side, called the Drug-Free Workplace. “What they’re doing,” he said, “is conveniently cherry-picking their policies.”
In Executive Order 12564 Sec. 7(c), signed by President Reagan in 1986, the “definitions” section defines “illegal drugs” as controlled substances “included in Schedule I or II.” But it adds, “The term ‘illegal drugs’ does not mean the use of a controlled substance pursuant to a valid prescription or other uses authorized by law.”
By that standard, says Cobbs, he is guaranteed legal access to CBD, even as a federal employee. Although he says he doesn’t own a medical marijuana card, he submitted in his defense what he describes as a doctor’s prescription for CBD oil.
Noting Cobbs’ prostate cancer and inflammation, the physician, Dr. Ryan McWhorter of Montgomery, Alabama, indicated in a letter to Masaitis that his office “prescribed CBD oil” for Cobbs, who “purchases this medication from our office only.”
McWhorter did not respond to the Herald-Tribune’s request for additional information. A public information officer with AFSOC’s 492nd Special Operations Wing said she could not comment on individual personnel matters.
“The current state of federal law is that medicinal use of marijuana and marijuana derivatives is not legal,” spokeswoman Ciara Travis said. “We will continue to follow the law and expect our employees to do the same. We are committed to providing a drug-free workplace for our employees.”
Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says doctors are prohibited from writing prescriptions for marijuana — they can only make recommendations — because a Schedule 1 drug by definition has zero medicinal value.
The Food and Drug Administration is the arbiter of which products have legitimate medical uses. In June, the FDA ended its longstanding embargo on marijuana by giving its first-ever approval to a CBD product. The solution is called Epidiolex, and is recommended for two rare forms of childhood epilepsy. On Thursday, in an equally unprecedented move, the Drug Enforcement Agency assigned Epidiolex to its lowest-risk Schedule 5 category, alongside the likes of Lomotil, Lyrica and Robitussin.
But that probably won’t do Cobbs much good, says NORML’s Armentano.
“I do agree the language of the executive order doesn’t seem to make much sense; it seems to contradict itself,” he said. “I think it’s also interesting that it says at the end ‘does not mean the use of a controlled substance pursuant to a valid prescription or other uses authorized by law.’ I can’t for the life of me imagine what those ‘other uses authorized by law’ could possibly be.
“I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a judge, but certainly I could see how a layperson would look at that language and think there’s wiggle room here — it’s written as if to imply there is. Unfortunately, the issue here is, it doesn’t appear as if (Cobbs) has a valid prescription. And in most states, even if those states authorize medical marijuana, even the use of CBD, the entity that’s writing the prescription cannot be the entity that’s also filling it. That’s a total no-no.”
Among the many congressional bills being touted to mitigate marijuana’s erroneously imposed 48-year-old Schedule 1 quarantine, the “Fairness in Federal Drug Testing Under State Laws Act” — introduced in August by U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist — would most benefit Americans like Henry Cobbs.
As the Herald-Tribune reported last month in its “Warriors Rise Up” project, veteran suicide rates are soaring, claiming more than 75,000 lives from 2005-2015, and many survivors have pleaded in vain for access to medical marijuana. Passage of H.R. 6589 would allow more than 2 million U.S. civil servants and another 1.4 million military personnel to legally use marijuana for pain relief.
Linguist, intelligence officer
Cobbs, now paying the price for crossing the Schedule 1 line, enjoyed a distinguished career in the military. Trained as a Chinese Mandarin linguist eavesdropping on enemy chatter in Southeast Asia, he was also an air intelligence officer with the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing in Okinawa, as well an air targets intelligence officer and sensor operations detachment commander in Thailand.
After leaving the military in 1982, Cobbs pursued an educational track in the civilian sector. One of those jobs was a five-year stint in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he was an information and instructional systems adviser for the Saudi Royal Air Force.
Nine years ago, Cobbs was hired by AFSOS, which was formed in 1967 in response to unconventional warfare unfolding in Vietnam. “As USAFSOS expands to meet an increasing demand for the ‘thinking warrior,’ the number of off-station courses (both formal courses and courses tailored to unit needs) has increased,” states the school’s website. “The use of distance-learning technologies is growing to expand course availability. Video tele-instruction and web-based courses are becoming increasingly important in reaching USAFSOS’ students.” Supervising the conversion of those courses to digital formatting was Cobbs’ job.
In 2016, the Kentucky native was diagnosed for prostate cancer. Cobbs was preparing to endure radiation and chemotherapy when a doctor suggested alternative treatment. It involved dietary supplements incorporating citrus ingredients, non-psychoactive mushrooms and CBD. Cobbs’ cancer is now in remission.
This year, Cobbs, who brought a vape pen to work as part of his continuing daily regimen, tried reassuring a professional colleague who had received a prostate cancer verdict by sharing his own success with CBD therapy. A concerned coworker overheard the conversation and reported Cobbs’ use of marijuana to management. However, at least two other colleagues support Cobb’s position on CBD, but declined to go on record for fear of retaliation.
The next step for Cobbs is an appeal for a hearing before the Merit Systems Protection Board, which considers grievances lodged by federal employees for unfair termination. If they uphold AFSOS’ punishment, he vows to press his attack on Schedule 1.
“The simple plain and bottom line is, if the POTUS was unaware (as evidenced by the language in para(graph) C of the EO that you ‘cannot’ have a prescription for Schedule 1 drugs, how reasonable is it to expect me to know?” Cobbs states in an email. “The very presence of the language in the para says someone thought a prescription was possible. Otherwise, why add confusion to the policy?
“I’ll go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if I have to,” Cobbs adds. “I was only concerned with getting rid of my cancer, and the CBD worked. So to hell with the law.” ||||| HURLBURT FIELD — The former academic dean at the Air Force Special Operations School is appealing his recent dismissal for using prescribed cannabidiol, a non-pyschoactive marijuana derivative, to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
Henry Cobbs, a 22-year Air Force veteran who retired in 1982 and who holds a doctoral degree in educational technology, has been at the Special Operations School since 2009. Two years ago he was diagnosed with intraductal carcinoma of the prostate, a rare form of prostate cancer, and opted for wide-ranging treatment.
"I availed myself of everything I could find," Cobbs said.
One of the things he found through a Montgomery, Alabama, physician was CBD oil, another name for cannabidiol. After being prescribed the oil in October 2017, Cobbs applied the dosage on his tongue. But after reading that using the oil in an electronic cigarette and inhaling the vapor delivered the drug in a higher concentration, he opted for that method.
Cobbs subsequently told a couple of co-workers — one diagnosed with prostate cancer, and another with indications of the disease — about using CBD oil. And according to a termination letter from Special Operations School commander Lt. Col. Michael Lowe, Cobbs was also seen "vaping" the medication.
Cobbs' termination became effective the afternoon Aug. 15, but he retired on the morning of that day, a move designed to preserve his retirement benefits. Retirement doesn't jeopardize his appeal, Cobbs said.
At issue in Cobbs' termination is a 1986 executive order by President Ronald Reagan aimed to make federal workplaces drug-free. The order defines "illegal drugs" to include federal Schedule I drugs, which include CBD oil. But the order also notes "the term 'illegal drugs' does not mean the use of a controlled substance pursuant to a valid prescription or other uses authorized by law."
Cobbs has contacted with the office of U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz regarding his appeal.
Retired Air Force Capt. Nate Nelson, director of military affairs in Gaetz's office, said Thursday that federal law, which governs how the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) must handle Cobbs' situation, lists CBD oil as a Schedule I drug, with the exception of a particular type used for epilepsy.
Nelson said Gaetz's office is working with Cobbs in an advisory capacity, but added that "the military has to uphold the federal stance."
"We completely understand AFSOC's stance," Nelson said.
Nelson pointed out that, while they might not necessarily help Cobbs, a couple of pieces of legislation now in Congress could affect similar cases.
The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States Act would, among other things, exclude CBD oil from the definition of marijuana. Gaetz is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Also, Nelson said, House Resolution 6043, which would change how the Controlled Substances Act is applied to marijuana, has been introduced with Gaetz as a co-sponsor.
Cobbs' most recent examination showed his cancer had been contained. But as his appeal proceeds, Cobbs says he's left with one question.
"You're going to make me choose between a job and cancer?" he asked. ||||| The 12-year-old student that provided the THC-infused gummy candy that sent six students to the hospital faces seven felony charges and one misdemeanor charge.
MULBERRY — Six Mulberry Middle School students were taken to the hospital after ingesting most of a 100-milligram block of THC-infused gummy candies Thursday morning.
According to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, Leviticus Jones, 12, somehow came into possession of the Green Hornet-brand gummies which, if taken as directed, would represent 10 individual doses. THC is the primary psychoactive chemical compound in cannabis.
Detectives are investigating how Jones acquired the gummy candies, as recreational use and possession of THC without a state-issued medical card is illegal in Florida. Edible products, such as the candy, are not currently available from dispensaries under state medical marijuana rules.
“I warned us that all of this was coming,” Judd said in a press conference across from the school Thursday afternoon. Judd had been a staunch opponent of 2016's Amendment 2, the state constitutional amendment that made medical marijuana legal under state law, and earlier attempts by proponents for medical use.
Jones' parents are cooperating with investigators, Judd said, and understand the gravity of the situation.
Judd said that Jones shared the gummies with some friends during gym class.
A total of six children in seventh grade partook, Judd said — two boys and four girls.
Five were taken to the hospital via ambulance and one was transported by his or her parents.
Jones faces seven felony charges — six counts of distribution within 1,000 feet of a school and one on possession of cannabis resin — and a misdemeanor charge of possession of paraphernalia.
Judd said all the children are going to make a “great recovery,” but added “obviously we are concerned how a 12-year-old could come into possession of this drug, this illegal drug in the state of Florida. And two, why did he offer it to these six kids, which quite frankly, with the exception of one little quarter left, have apparently devoured this bar during gym class?”
Polk County Schools Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd said she applauds the staff for their quick response.
“When they heard something had happened with the students, they responded immediately,” she said.
Byrd said they went by classroom to check the children, contacted emergency medical services, and their parents.
“But you know, the sad part of this is, again, we could have been here with a different outcome,” she said.
“They followed through with the procedures and protocols we have in place in making sure that we keep our children safe. What I want to say to parents is everyone at school today is still safe, they will be safe again tomorrow, they are going to be safe throughout because we do have procedures in place to keep children safe,” Byrd added.
Byrd urged parents to monitor their children's online activity to see what they may be purchasing.
“The sheriff and I have a partnership and we have a commitment to keeping our campuses and our children safe,” Byrd said.
The children suffered stomachaches, dizziness, and one of them had almost passed out, Judd said.
Kathy Leigh Berkowitz can be reached at 863-802-7558 or kberkowitz@theledger.com. Follow her on Twitter @kberkowitzthel1. | – Henry Cobbs, 77, is a 22-year military veteran who served in Vietnam and retired as an Air Force captain; he has two master's degrees and a doctorate; he's worked extensively in education and and had served as the dean of academics for the Air Force Special Operations School (AFSOS) at Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach, Fla., since 2009. But he was forced out of his job at the elite military training school last month—because he vaped cannabis as part of his treatment for prostate cancer. Cobbs' doctor prescribed cannabidiol (CBD) oil, and Cobbs purchased it from his doctor's office. CBD oil does not contain tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of cannabis. In May, Cobbs received a "Notice of Removal" citing his use of a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance; it said that a witness saw Cobbs "smoke your 'medicine.'" He appealed, but the appeal was rejected in August, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. Now Cobbs, whose cancer is in remission, says he will take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if he has to. "You’re going to make me choose between a job and cancer?" he tells the Northwest Florida Daily News. Despite studies showing CBD has medicinal value, the federal government says it does not, and is therefore illegal. But President Reagan signed the Drug-Free Workplace executive order in 1986, and it states that "the term 'illegal drugs' does not mean the use of a controlled substance pursuant to a valid prescription or other uses authorized by law." But Cobbs does not have a medical marijuana card, and experts question whether doctors can legally prescribe something defined as a Schedule 1 drug. As for the Air Force, a public information officer would only say, "The current state of Federal law is that medicinal use of marijuana and marijuana derivatives is not legal. We will continue to follow the law and expect our employees to do the same. We are committed to providing a drug-free workplace for our employees." |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Olympics in Rio are due to start on 5 August
The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has declared a financial emergency less than 50 days before the Olympics.
Interim Governor Francisco Dornelles says the "serious economic crisis" threatens to stop the state from honouring commitments for the Games.
Most public funding for the Olympics has come from Rio's city government, but the state is responsible for areas such as transport and policing.
Interim President Michel Temer has promised significant financial help.
The governor has blamed the crisis on a tax shortfall, especially from the oil industry, while Brazil overall has faced a deep recession.
The measure could accelerate the release of federal emergency funds.
Rio state employees and pensioners are owed wages in arrears. Hospitals and police stations have been severely affected.
What has gone wrong in Brazil?
Image copyright AFP Image caption Rio state is responsible for the expansion of the metro for the Olympics
In a decree, Mr Dornelles said the state faced "public calamity" that could lead to a "total collapse" in public services, such as security, health and education.
He authorised "exceptional measures" to be taken ahead of the Games that could impact "all essential public services", but no details were given.
The state has projected a budget deficit of $5.5bn (£3.9bn) for this year.
Rio's mayor Eduardo Paes said on Twitter the state's decision "in no way delays the delivery of Olympic projects and the promises assumed by the city of Rio".
There are also concerns over an outbreak of the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects, and the impact it could have on the city's tourism.
Rio expects about 500,000 foreign visitors during the Olympics. ||||| A journalist walks in front of a screen with olympics logos during the medal launching ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Rio de Janeiro's governor declared a state of financial emergency Friday and requested federal funds to help fulfill obligations for public services during the Olympics that start Aug. 5.
Emergency measures are needed to avoid "a total collapse in public security, health, education, transport and environmental management," a decree in the state's Official Gazette said.
The state's revenue, largely tied to the petroleum industry, slumped in the last two years as global oil prices collapsed.
The announcement followed this week's visit to Rio by Brazil's Interim President Michel Temer, who said the federal government would ensure all obligations are met for a successful Games.
Rio is expecting about 500,000 foreign visitors during the Olympics, which has coincided with Brazil's worst recession since the 1930s and a political crisis that last month led to the suspension of President Dilma Rousseff.
"The state's financial emergency in no way delays the delivery of Olympic projects and the promises assumed by the city of Rio," Mayor Eduardo Paes said on Twitter.
He also underscored that legacy construction projects, with the exception of an 8.79 billion-real expansion of Rio's metro that is expected to be finished just days before the Games open, are the responsibility of the city and that most have been completed.
The local organizing committee for the Games said the state's fiscal situation did not impact its actual running of the Olympics, which relies entirely on private funds.
While the majority of Olympic infrastructure costs have been spread across city, state and federal budgets, with some financing from private companies, the state is responsible for most day-to-day security and health services in Rio.
The financial pinch resulted in a 30-percent cut in the state's security budget - just as Rio has seen a jump in homicides and assaults in recent months, raising concerns about safety ahead of the Olympics.
The state of Rio expects a budget deficit of over 19 billion reais ($5.56 billion) this year as spending planned before oil prices fell outstrips revenue that is tumbling during Brazil's recession.
Rio state's debt has been downgraded several times.
On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings downgraded Rio's debt rating to 'B-' from 'B+', saying the state was suffering "a fast-deteriorating liquidity position."
Since late last year, the state has been forced to delay pension and salary payments and shutter some schools and hospitals, where crucial supplies, including medicines and syringes, are lacking.
Brazil is also facing an outbreak of the Zika virus, which has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly in which babies are born with abnormally small heads frequently associated with developmental issues.
(Reporting by Paulo Prada, Stephen Eisenhammer and Brad Brooks; editing by Richard Chang and Andrew Hay) ||||| (CNN) With just 36 days to go before the Rio Olympics kick off, the situation in the host city just went from bad to worse.
A beach goer Wednesday discovered human body parts that had washed up on the shore, right in front of the Olympic Beach Volleyball Arena on Rio's famed Copacabana beach.
A dismembered foot and another body part still unidentified was found, according to Andre Luiz, an officer of the Military Police. Police believe the victim was a woman or young adult.
Although the circumstances surrounding the person's death are unknown, it is another embarrassing blow to the host country -- already reeling from financial problems, a mishap-prone Olympic torch and an outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
A runner passes by the body parts that were found near the Olympics beach volleyball stadium, visible in the background.
Rio de Janeiro is broke
Two days before the gruesome body parts discovery, the acting governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro warned that the Games could be a "big failure" because the state is out of money.
"I am optimistic about the games, but I have to show the reality. We can make a great Olympics, but if some steps are not taken, it can be a big failure," Francisco Dornelles told Brazilian newspaper O Globo.
Some of the Olympic Games costs are funded by the city of Rio de Janeiro, but the burden also falls on the Rio de Janeiro state government, and it is in bad shape.
The state declared an official emergency and requested a federal bailout earlier this month but it hasn't received the money. Dornelles warned of a breakdown in essential public services and said without the emergency funds, the police force could only cover its costs to the end of the week.
'Welcome to hell'
Police demonstrate against the government for arrears in their salary payments on June 27, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The frustration over unpaid wages for members of law enforcement boiled over in several protests. That same day, several people held up a banner at the airport that said: "Welcome to hell. Police and firefighters don't get paid, whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe."
Similar messages have popped up over the city, such as one graffiti on a flyover that warned about the lack of functioning hospitals.
Welcome, we don't have hospitals! - "Aviso" na estrada do Galeão. (Foto: Tiago Bla) pic.twitter.com/NfnrEukkuT — Cecília Olliveira (@Cecillia) June 26, 2016
If that refrain sounds familiar, that's because one of Brazil's most successful soccer players Rivaldo Ferreira also warned people earlier to stay away
Water thrown at Olympics torch
The day prior, a man tried to snuff out the Olympic torch by throwing a bucket of water at it
Marcelino Mateus Silva Proença, 27, missed the torch altogether hitting only the torch bearer and the security guards around it.
He was arrested, and released, and since then, has been posting about the incident on Facebook which he said was a dare from his friends.
"I have the torch, but don't have education, health, security, quality of life..." he said on Monday.
Jaguar killed
JUST WATCHED Jaguar killed during Olympic event Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Jaguar killed during Olympic event 00:49
An even bigger fuss was created over another Olympic torch incident, when a jaguar called Juma that was being exhibited with the torch relay escaped from her handlers and was shot by a soldier.
Rio 2016's organizing committee quickly proffered up an apology, saying they had "made a mistake" putting a wild animal near the torch and guaranteed no more situations like this will occur during the Games.
Can they pull it off?
That's all in a week's work for Rio's Olympics organizers.
There are other issues of concern of course, like the untreated sewage in the waters which athletes complained have made them break out in disease. The U.S. Olympic rowing team is taking extra precautions and will be wearing seamless antimicrobial unisuits to compete, while the German sailing team has been practicing trying to sail in trash-coated waters
Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Milos Raonic is the first leading tennis player to pull out of the Rio 2016 Olympics because of "uncertainty" over the Zika virus. The world No. 7 withdrew from Canada's team on July 15. Hide Caption 1 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Young golf star Jordan Spieth has pulled out of contention to take part at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The American cited fears about the Zika virus, according to the International Golf Federation, which released a list of eligible players on July 11. Hide Caption 2 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? The U.S. golf team will also be without world No. 2 Dustin Johnson, who won the U.S. Open in June. Johnson pulled out on July 8, saying "my concerns about the Zika virus cannot be ignored." He already has a baby boy with fiancee Paulina Gretzky. Hide Caption 3 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? South African golfer Lee-Anne Pace, who ranks No. 21 in the LPGA, said she does not want to be considered to represent her country in Rio this summer because of Zika. Noting that the decision is personal, she said, "Playing in the Rio 2016 Olympics is an incredible honor for any athlete, and we are excited for golf's return to the Games. We also realize that the Zika virus is a concern for many, particularly for women with plans for a family in the near-term." Hide Caption 4 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Australian Jason Day, ranked No. 1 in the world of golf, says he will not compete in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio due to concerns over the Zika virus. "The reason for my decision is my concern about the possible Zika virus and the potential risks that it may present to my wife's future pregnancies and to the future members of our family," Day said in announcing his decision. Hide Caption 5 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Golf's world No. 4, Rory McIIroy, announced in June that he wouldn't be competing in the Rio Olympics amid fears surrounding the Zika virus. "After speaking with those closest to me, I've come to realize that my health and my family's health comes before anything else," McIIroy said in a statement. Hide Caption 6 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? On June 28, Irish golfer Shane Lowry announced he is withdrawing from the 2016 Olympics games being held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August. In a statement Lowry said, "While I am bitterly disappointed to be missing out on that experience and the opportunity to win an Olympic medal for Ireland, on this occasion I have to put my family's welfare first." Hide Caption 7 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Australian golfer Marc Leishman pulled out of the Olympic Games amid concerns over the Zika virus' impact on his wife's compromised immune system. "We have consulted with Audrey's physician and, due to her ongoing recovery and potential risks associated with the transmission of the Zika virus, it was a difficult yet easy decision not to participate," he said in June. Hide Caption 8 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? Fiji's Vijay Singh has chosen not to participate in the Olympics, which includes golf for the first time in 112 years. Singh, a three-time major winner, was one of the first notable athletes to drop out of the games because of the Zika virus. He announced his decision in mid-April. Hide Caption 9 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? American cyclist Tejay van Garderen will be skipping the Olympics. "If my wife wasn't pregnant right now, I'd be going to Rio," he told CNN. "My biggest concern is for the baby on the way. I would never tell any athlete who's worked their butt off for four years not to go to the games." Hide Caption 10 of 11 Photos: Zika worries: Who's skipping the Olympics? "Today" anchor Savannah Guthrie announced in June that she is expecting her second child and will not be heading to Brazil to cover the Olympic Games because of concerns about the Zika virus. "I'm not going to be able to go to Rio," she told co-anchor Matt Lauer. "The doctors say we shouldn't because of the Zika virus." Hide Caption 11 of 11 | – With less than 50 days before the Olympics, the state of Rio de Janeiro officially declared financial emergency while warning of a "serious economic crisis" and looming "public calamity," the BBC reports. According to Reuters, Gov. Francisco Dornelles declared the state of financial emergency Friday, requesting federal funds to keep public services going during the Olympics and to avoid a “total collapse in public security, health, education, transport, and environmental management." Rio is expecting half-a-million visitors when the Olympics start Aug. 5. During the games, the state, which is facing a $5.6 billion budget deficit this year, will be in charge of transportation, policing, and health. And things don't look good on that front. Homicides and assaults are increasing in Rio at the same time the state's security budget was cut by 30%. Rio is already delaying pension and salary payments while closing schools and hospitals. Slate reports teachers have been striking for months, and hospitals are running out of syringes. Plus there's the whole Zika thing. Brazil, as a whole, is in its worst recession in 80 years thanks to low oil prices. And the state chief of staff says Rio is "nearing a social collapse." But despite all that, the Olympics will likely go off without too many hitches. Much of the funding for the games is coming from the Rio de Janeiro city government. “Once the games are over? That’s when the real crisis will set in," according to Slate. |
The two suspects in last week's Boston Marathon bombing weren't licensed to have guns, the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department confirmed Sunday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was captured after a gun battle with police Friday, wasn't old enough to be licensed to own a gun in Massachusetts. The minimum legal age is 21.
His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was fatally wounded hours earlier, never had a license to own or carry a gun in Cambridge, where the pair shared an apartment, Cambridge Police spokesman Dan Riviello told the Los Angeles Times. It's unclear whether he ever applied for a license.
The pair's deadly, chaotic showdown with police that began Thursday night continued to come into focus Sunday as investigators plied through the brothers' lives before the bombing and their actions afterward.
FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack
About five hours after federal investigators published photos of the the two suspects taken at the Boston Marathon, police say, they killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Thursday night and carjacked a Mercedes SUV nearby.
Cambridge Police told The Times that the Mercedes driver escaped when the brothers went inside a Shell gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge to buy snacks.
The unidentified driver fled to another gas station to call police.
Sometime later, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CNN, a police officer began following the Mercedes with the emergency lights off to wait for backup when the brothers stopped their car.
"They aggressively alighted from the car," Davis said. "They stopped their vehicle, they just stopped when they saw the car and attempted to get the officer.”
A hectic gun battle ensued, with the brothers and the responding officers trading more than 200 shots, Davis said. The brothers had three guns, police said. Further details about those guns have not been released.
PHOTOS: Manhunt in Boston
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his wounded older brother when police were about to arrest him, Davis said, though it has not yet been determined what caused Tamerlan's death. He was had gunshot and blast wounds.
An officer was critically wounded in the showdown.
The city of Boston was locked down Friday while officers searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. By early evening, police lifted the lockdown, and a Watertown resident noticed that the cover was loose on the boat he stores in his backyard. As he tried to put it back on he noticed the cover was ripped and had blood on it. He lifted the cover and saw what he thought was a bloody body, Davis told CNN.
“All of a sudden, the body moved,” Davis said, and the resident alerted authorities.
A federal official said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been shot in the neck, complicating authorities' efforts to speak to him in the hospital.
PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remained hospitalized Sunday with a team of FBI interrogators standing by to interview him, Davis said.
He wouldn't confirm whether the brothers had outside help, but he said he believed they were the primary suspects in the bombing, which killed three people and left more than 170 injured.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Boston and Richard A. Serrano in Washington contributed to this report.
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Blast site in heart of Boston getting back to normal
Video said to show suspect setting backpack down
Boston plays, prays and remembers on Sunday of renewal ||||| Residents who fled the area where Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev is believed to be in hiding were comforted.
WATERTOWN — Four days after two deadly explosions turned the finish line of the Boston Marathon into a scene of bloody chaos, the 19-year-old college student believed to be responsible for placing the bombs was taken into custody tonight, bringing a sense of relief and justice to a shaken region.
Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev of Cambridge was pulled from his hiding place in a boat parked behind a house on Franklin Street shortly before 8:45 p.m. in this community just outside Boston.
“We are eternally grateful for the outcome here tonight. We have a suspect in custody,” said Colonel Timothy Alben, commander of the State Police. “We’re so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case.”
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“It’s a night where I think we’re all going to rest easy,” Governor Deval Patrick said at a news conference in Watertown.
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With the second suspect in the case, Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, fatally shot in a gun battle with police early this morning, Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said, citizens “can be confident that the threat has been removed.”
President Obama, speaking at the White House tonight, said, “We’ve closed an important chapter in this tragedy.” But he also said there were “still many unanswered questions” and said the FBI would thoroughly investigate.
Dzohkhar Tsarnaev, who exchanged gunfire with police from the boat, was rushed to a local hospital, where he was in serious condition, Davis said.
Police had approached him cautiously, worried that he might be wearing a suicide bomb vest.
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“We got him,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino tweeted immediately afterwards. He took to the police radio to thank officers personally, telling them, “Good job, guys!”
The apprehension of Tsarnaev was the latest stunning development in a day of mayhem that had shocked the city, even as it was still reeling from Monday’s Marathon attacks. An MIT police officer was killed, “assassinated,” Thursday night in Cambridge. Then a carjacking was reported. Officers pursued the car, which turned out to contain the two Tsarnaevs, who threw explosives at them.
The elder brother was shot by police early Friday in a gun battle in Watertown, in which fficials said they wielded improvised explosive devices and homemade grenades. Dzhokhan Tsarnaev was so desperate to escape he ran over his brother as he lay wounded. He later abandoned the car in Watertown and fled on foot, disappearing from sight.
Law enforcement mobilized, sending legions of heavily-armed police officers to search a 20-block area of the community. At the same time, Governor Deval Patrick took an unprecedented security step, asking people in Boston, Watertown, and several other nearby communities — totaling a million people — to “shelter in place” — stay at home behind locked doors and open up only to police officers with proper identification.
Government and business offices closed as police cars zoomed on mysterious errands on deserted streets. The Red Sox and Bruins games were canceled, as well as the Big Apple Circus. Amtrak was shut down from Boston to Providence, as well as the MBTA, the Boston area’s public transit system. The region came to a standstill.
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Then, at 6 p.m., officials held another news conference to say that despite the massive manhunt, they had come up empty. The suspect had slipped outside their perimeter. Officials said they remained determined to find him, however, and that they believed he was somewhere still in Massachusetts. Patrick dropped his request for people to shelter in place and ordered the MBTA to resume service.
The dramatic finale came less than an hour after the news conference was over. A resident of Watertown came out of his house and noticed blood on his boat and that the tarp covering it was ripped. He lifted the tarp and saw a bloody form. He called police, who raced to the scene and exchanged gunfire with Tsarnaev, said Davis, the Boston commissioner
Police surrounded the boat and there was a standoff for about an hour and a half. A State Police helicopter peeked at him from above, using a special infrared camera. Police deployed “flash bang” grenades to stun and distract him, Davis said. Police were cautious in their approach, concerned that Tsarnaev could be wearing a suicide bomb vest.
A Globe photographer at the scene could hear police calling, “We know you’re in there. Come out on your own terms. Come out with your hands up.”
An FBI hostage rescue team was eventually able to pull him out.
In yet another twist in the story, New Bedford police said this evening that three people had been taken into custody in their city as part of the bombing investigation.
New Bedford Police Lieutenant Robert Richard said his department assisted federal investigators in executing a search warrant at a home on Carriage Drive, about 10 minutes from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev was a student.
MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, 26, of Somerville, who was fatally shot while sitting in his cruiser near Main and Vassar streets in Cambridge, in what Davis called an “assassination,” was remembered as a brave and devoted officer.
MBTA Transit Police Officer Richard H. Donahue Jr., 33, who was shot as officers pursued the Tsarnaevs into Watertown, was in critical but stable condition at Mt. Auburn Hospital.
Scott Helman, Marcella Bombardieri, Brian MacQuarrie, Martine Powers, and Maria Sacchetti of the Globe staff and Globe correspondents Todd Feathers, Lauren Dezenski, Jeremy C. Fox, Haven Orecchio-Egresitz, Jaclyn Reiss, and Gal Tziperman Lotan contributed to this report. ||||| Brian Snyder / Reuters Police officers take position during a search for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects in Watertown, Massachusetts April 19, 2013. Police on Friday killed one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing during a shootout and mounted a house-to-house search for a second man in the suburb of Watertown after a bloody night of shooting and explosions in the city's streets. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES - Tags: CRIME LAW)
Boston and its suburbs, universities and transit system were on total lockdown Friday as police hunted door to door for marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- on the loose after his accomplice brother was killed in a stunning chain of events that left one cop dead and another injured, officials said.
During a desperate effort to flee after their photos were released by the FBI, the brothers carjacked a Mercedes SUV and told the driver they were the men behind Monday's double-blast attack at the race and had just killed a campus security officer, a source told NBC News. The driver was released unhurt.
The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed after a wild chase and firefight, but Dzhokhar was still at large in a densely populated area, and an associate was being sought. Adding to the nightmare, an explosive was found in Boston Friday morning and disabled, an official said.
The suspects' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, called them "losers" and urged Dzhokhar, a naturalized American citizen of Chechen origin, to turn himself in.
"We're ashamed," he thundered outside his Maryland home.
Three dozen FBI agents were surrounding the Cambridge, Mass., home where the brothers grew up after moving to the U.S. a decade ago, seeking asylum. They feared it could be booby-trapped and planned to conduct a controlled explosion before a full search, state police said.
NBC's Lester Holt reports from Watertown, Mass., where Boston and state police, SWAT teams and a helicopter are engaged in a tense search for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing who is still at large.
Across the area, as police cars screamed down streets and helicopters hovered overhead, authorities urged the public to stay inside and keep their doors locked to anyone but law-enforcement officers.
"There is a massive manhunt under way," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said. "We are asking people to shelter in place."
Subways and buses were shut down, and Amtrak service to Boston was cut. Harvard University, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Emerson University were closed. The University of Massachusetts' Dartmouth campus was being evacuated because someone wanted in the case is registered at the school.
The lockdown initially affected more than 300,000 people in Cambridge, Watertown, Newton, Brighton, Allston and Belmont, but by 8 a.m., the entire city of Boston was paralyzed, officials said.
Watertown, where the second suspect was last seen, was the epicenter of a sprawling search. By 12:30 p.m., police estimated, 60 percent of the homes had been searched. Frightened residents were trapped inside as convoys of heavily armed officers and troops arrived by the hour.
The overnight violence began at MIT about five hours after the FBI released surveillance photos of two "extremely dangerous" men suspected of planting two bombs near the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding 176.
Read more: Who are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing?
Tips about the identity of the suspects were still pouring in when the Tsarnaev brothers fatally shot MIT patrol officer Sean Collier, 26, in his vehicle at 10:20 p.m., law enforcement officials said.
Uncredited / AP FBI photos of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, brothers from the Chechen Republic. The man on the left is dead. The man on the right, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is still at large.
The brothers then carjacked a Mercedes SUV, holding the driver captive for a half-hour while they tried to use his cash card to get money from three ATM's, a source said. At the first, they put in the wrong number; at the second, they took out $800 and at the third, they were told they had exceeded the withdrawal limit, the source said.
The man was released unharmed at a gas station in Cambridge, sources said. As they sped toward Watertown, a police chase ensued and the suspects tossed explosive devices out the window, officials said.
There was a long exchange of gunfire, according to Andrew Kitzenberg of Watertown, who took photos of the clash from his window and spread them on social media.
“They were also utilizing bombs, which sounded and looked like grenades, while engaging in the gunfight,” he told NBC News in an interview. “They also had what looked like a pressure-cooker bomb.
“I saw them light this bomb. They threw it towards the officers,” he said. “There was smoke that covered our entire street.”
A transit officer, identified as Richard H. Donahue, 33, was seriously injured during the pursuit. Authorities said he was in surgery at Mount Auburn Hospital.
Kitzenberg said he saw the firefight end when Tamerlan Tsarnaev ran toward the officers and ultimately fell to the ground.
Tamerlan -- the man in the black hat from FBI photos released six hours earlier -- had an improvised explosive device strapped to his chest, law enforcement officials said.
Dzhokhar -- who was wearing a white hat in the surveillance photos from the marathon -- drove the SUV through a line of police officers at the end of the street, Kitzenberg said.
Police said Dzhokhar has a Massachusetts driver's license and lives in Cambridge. He was described as light-skinned and with brown, curly hair, and wearing a gray hoodie. The FBI released more photos of him, including a surveillance camera photo from a 7-Eleven.
His father, in Russia, told the Associated Press he was "a true angel" and described him as a medical student who was expected to visit for the holidays.
Authorities painted a starkly different picture.
"We believe this man to be a terrorist," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. "We believe this to be a man who's come here to kill people."
Armored humvees and busloads of law-enforcement could be seen rolling into Watertown in the hours after the gunfight.
"We've got every asset we could possibly muster on the ground right now," Patrick said.
Later Friday morning, attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller headed to the White House to brief President Obama on the developments.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who is from Massachusetts, praised law enforcement for their work during "a pretty direct confrontation with evil."
"In the past few days we have seen the best and we've seen the worst of human behavior, and it's the best that all of us really want to focus on," he said.
Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told NBC News it's clear the marathon bombing was "a terrorist attack."
"It's also clear, you know, that you know you don't have to be a card-carrying member of any terrorist group to commit a terrorist attack," she said.
NBC News' Jonathan Dienst and Kasie Hunt contributed to this story
Slideshow: Search for suspects in Boston Marathon bombings / A tense night of police activity that left a university officer dead on campus just days after the Boston Marathon bombings and amid a hunt for two suspects caused officers to converge on a neighborhood outside Boston, where residents heard gunfire and explosions. Launch slideshow
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An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston
What we know: Timeline of terror hunt
‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT
Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon
Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening
Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt
Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect
This story was originally published on ||||| BOSTON -- The suspected Boston Marathon bomber has begun responding to investigators in writing, a source familiar with the case said Sunday evening.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was in serious but stable condition at a Boston hospital, according to the FBI. He had been unable to speak due to a neck and throat injury, the source said. He was also intubated and breathing with the help of a respirator and earlier, officials had said he was not in any condition to be questioned.
It was not clear, however, whether what Tsarnaev was writing was of any value.
Authorities believe Tsarnaev may have tried to shoot himself before he was taken into custody Friday night because of the trajectory and location of the bullet wound in his neck, a source familiar with the investigation said Sunday.
The shot was fired at close range, the source said, suggesting the wound was self-inflicted. He was found hidden in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, Mass., bloody and injured. He was able to step out of the boat before being taken into custody after a brief exchange of gunfire with police and then negotiation with FBI agents, said Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis.
As he lay on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance on the way to hospital, the suspect was mouthing curse words, either to himself or to the armed authorities standing watch in the ambulance as paramedics treated him, the source said.
Prosecutors in the case said Tsarnaev was not charged Sunday.
Asked by reporters whether charges would be filed against Tsarnaev Sunday, authorities released a statement saying, "There will be no press conference or further statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office this evening regarding the Boston Marathon attacks."
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Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said at the news conference that authorities are now convinced Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police Friday morning, acted on their own in the bombing.
Davis said investigators also have found a circuit board with a wire slotted through it at the bombing scene on Boylston Street and the area had been swept clean of explosives. Menino said that area is still under the control of the FBI, but will be released to the city soon and a five-phase restoration is planned.
A source involved in the investigation said late Sunday the motorist carjacked by the two brothers as their rampage began last week said the young men stated they planned to drive to New York. The source called such a trip "extremely unlikely" given the extent of the manhunt for the suspects. That assessment was proved correct by the events that followed Friday. However, that tip prompted authorities in Connecticut to be on the lookout for the brothers.
Hundreds of FBI agents and other investigators have interviewed more than 100 people who knew the brothers, the source said. They are looking for any possible links to foreign extremists and seeking to understand how the plot developed and if anyone helped them, the source said.
He confirmed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had video of a known jihadist on his YouTube channel, footage the source had viewed and characterized as "extremely inflammatory."
Menino had said earlier it has become clear that the older brother, Tamerlan, was the more influential, describing him as the "leader" and Dzhokhar as a "follower."
"His [older] brother read those magazines that are published on how to create bombs," Menino said.
Investigators are also tracking the brothers' online activities, phone calls and text messages, examining hundreds of pieces of evidence -- including bomb components, unexploded devices as well as the brothers' vehicles, guns, and financial records seized from various sites across Boston and surrounding suburbs, authorities said.
The blasts set off near the finish line of the marathon killed three people and injured more than 180.
Sunday morning, Davis said on the CBS News show, "Face the Nation" that the crime scene from the early Friday morning firefight in Watertown, Mass., that killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev was "littered" with unexploded improvised explosive devices.
Davis said it's his belief that the brothers were "going to attack other individuals" -- and Davis said that's based on the evidence at the scene and the firepower that the brothers had.
Two men with connections to the brothers were taken into custody Saturday in New Bedford, Mass., and eventually arrested and detained on immigration violations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that agency announced.
The source said those arrests were made in an abundance of caution because the men were friends and former roommates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and had regular contact with him. Officials want to question them at greater length about whether they knew anything about the brothers' plans or provided any help to them.
Sunday morning, Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley implored hundreds of parishioners at a Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross to forgive the suspected Boston Marathon bombers and seize on the goodwill born of the tragedy.
"We must be people of reconciliation -- not revenge," he told about 800 parishioners during a service that honored four killed in last week's marathon bombings and their aftermath. Candles lighted an altar with photos of the dead victims, including the three killed Monday in the bombing, and a police officer killed Friday in a shootout.
Speaking to reporters after the Mass, O'Malley reiterated the church's opposition to the death penalty. "Forgiveness does not mean that we do not realize the heinousness of the crime. But in our hearts, when we are unable to forgive, we make ourselves a victim of our hatred. Forgiveness is part of our obligation of disciples of the Lord."
Also Sunday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that video footage clearly shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placing a backpack near the marathon finish line.
"It does seem to be pretty clear that this suspect took the backpack off, put it down, did not react when the first explosion went off and then moved away from the backpack in time for the second explosion," Patrick said. "It's pretty clear about his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly."
Patrick said it's hard to imagine why someone would deliberately harm "innocent men, women and children in the way that these two fellows did."
The FBI had disclosed this week that it had questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 regarding possible terrorist connections, but found nothing and took no action against him.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday he understood that the FBI didn't find any troubling evidence during its initial contact with the suspect in 2011 -- prompted by concerns passed along by Russian authorities -- but he noted that was before Tamerlan Tsarnaev made a suspicious overseas trip.
"Then he went to Russia and he came back and almost immediately put very radical things on his website," Schumer said of the elder Boston bombing suspect. "Why didn't the FBI, having known that he was someone a foreign government at least thought might be dangerous, go interview him again?"
Schumer, speaking during an unrelated news conference, said that the federal death penalty law he helped co-author in the 1990s would be "appropriate" in the case of surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
On Saturday, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) had also questioned the FBI's actions.
Meanwhile, rebels in Russia's North Caucasus region denied any link to the April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon in a statement posted on the vdagestan.com website.
"The Caucasian Mujahedeen are not fighting with the United States of America," according to the statement, which was attributed to unidentified Mujahedeen commanders in Dagestan. "We are at war with Russia, which is responsible not only for the occupation of the Caucasus, but also for heinous crimes against Muslims."
An FBI-led probe is looking into a six-month trip suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an immigrant of Chechen descent, took around two years ago to Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan, both regions of Russia that have been embroiled in Islamist separatist movements.
In Medford, Mass., relatives and friends were expected to attend a viewing Sunday for marathon bombing victim Krystle Campbell, 29, at the Dello Russo Funeral Home, 306 Main St. from 3 to 7 p.m. On Monday at 10 a.m., there will be a procession from the funeral home to St. Joseph Church for a Mass of Christian Burial at 11 a.m. Services will conclude with burial at Oak Grove Cemetery.
The Associated Press reported that doctors said the Boston transit police officer wounded in a shootout with the bombing suspects had lost nearly all his blood and his heart had stopped from a single gunshot wound that severed three major blood vessels in his right thigh.
Surgeons at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge say Richard Donohue, 33, is in stable but critical condition. He is sedated and on a breathing machine but opened his eyes, moved his hands and feet, and squeezed his wife's hand Sunday.
Emergency workers started CPR on the scene to restart his heart. Doctors say he is expected to make a full recovery and that nerves and muscles in his leg are intact.
Transit officials say Donohue had gotten out of his cruiser and was shooting at the suspects when he was hit late Thursday night in a gun battle in Cambridge.
"He went in there and engaged people who were shooting at his fellow officers," Donohue's brother, Edward, said at a news conference Sunday at the hospital. "I cannot describe the pride I have," said the younger Donohue, who is a patrolman for the Winchester Police Department.
The fellow officers included a friend, MIT police officer Sean Collier, who authorities say was shot to death at the beginning of the brothers' rampage earlier in the night.
Richard Donohue has been a transit officer for three years, said Paul MacMillan, chief of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
The University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student, reopened Sunday at noon, university officials announced on the school's website.
With Nicole Fuller,
Paul LaRocco and
The Associated Press | – Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has regained consciousness and has been giving investigators written answers to questions, law enforcement sources tell ABC, though it's unclear if he's actually saying anything useful yet. Sources tell Fox News that he will not be formally charged today. The Boston bombing suspect is listed as in serious but stable condition at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, with neck and throat injuries that prevent him from talking. The shot that injured his throat was fired at close range, sources tell Newsday, and that, combined with the bullet's apparent trajectory, leads investigators to believe that the 19-year-old shot himself in a failed suicide attempt after police discovered his hiding place. The source says Tsarnaev was mouthing curse words as an ambulance rushed him to the hospital, though it's unclear if they were aimed at his doctors, his captors, or himself. Investigators now believe Dzhokhar may have dealt the killing blow to his brother, Tamerlan, the Boston Globe reports. The 26-year-old had apparently run out of bullets and was struggling with police officers trying to handcuff him when his younger brother sped toward them in a stolen SUV, causing officers to scatter and running over the elder brother, who was briefly dragged by the vehicle, Watertown's chief of police says. |
Tokyo police investigating the death of an Irish exchange student have arrested two American men, the Japan Times reported.
Nicola Furlong, 21, was found unconscious in an upscale Tokyo hotel room early Thursday morning after attending a Nicki Minaj concert with a 21-year-old female friend. Furlong was later pronounced dead, and an autopsy indicated she may have been strangled, according to the Japan Times.
Police said the women were invited out for drinks and then back to the Keio Plaza Hotel by two American men, a 23-year-old dancer and a 19-year-old musician. The 19-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was in the room when hotel staff found Furlong unconscious on the floor beside the bed after responding to noise complaints around 3:20 a.m., Japan's Mainichi reported.
Neither man has been charged in Furlong's death. Rather, both were charged with indecent assault on Furlong's friend, whose name has not been released, during the taxi ride to the hotel. Police said the friend, also an Irish exchange student, was unable to resist their advances because "she was in a comatose state from a highly alcoholic beverage," the Irish Independent reported.
Furlong's friend was in a separate room with the 23-year-old man, identified by the Associated Press as James Jamari Blackston, when Furlong was found unconscious. Blackston, a dancer, has reportedly performed with several high-profile acts, including the Black Eyed Peas and Jennifer Lopez, according to newspaper accounts.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State confirmed the arrests but said she could not provide further details, including the men's names, because of privacy considerations.
Furlong was studying at the Takasaki City University of Economics, about 60 miles northwest of Tokyo, as part of a one-year exchange program through Dublin City University. She had intended to return home this summer, the Independent reported.
Furlong's family described her as a "warm, generous, stunning person who always had time for her family and other people."
"We are devastated by the loss of our beautiful daughter [and] sister Nicola in such tragic circumstances," they said in a statement obtained by the Independent. "Nicola will always be at the center of our lives. She stood for everything that is good in life." ||||| Two Americans have been arrested in connection the death of a female Irish exchange student in Japan, police in Tokyo were reported as saying on Sunday.
Nicola Furlong, 21, from County Wexford, Ireland, was found unconscious in a hotel room early on Thursday, hours after attending a concert by the rapper Nicki Minaj, the Irish Times said.
She was later confirmed dead at a hospital, where an autopsy indicated she may have been strangled.
The Irish Times said Furlong is believed to have gone to Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, a business and shopping hub in central Tokyo, after midnight with her female friend after the two met the American pair.
The Daily Yomiuri in Japan said police arrested two American men - a musician, 19, and a dancer, 23 - on suspicion of sexually assaulting Furlong's friend and fellow student, 21, in a taxi on the way to the hotel.
It said police suspect the men know how Furlong subsequently died.
The Japan Times said the 19-year-old suspect was alone in a room with Furlong when hotel staff went up to probe a complaint about loud noise.
None of the reports could be confirmed by msnbc.com.
Furling was attending Takasaki City University of Economics in Gunma Prefecture.
More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world | – One of two American men being held after the suspected homicide of an Irish exchange student in Tokyo has reportedly worked as a dancer for the Black Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, and Jennifer Lopez. James Jamari Blackston, 23, and a 19-year-old musician pal were busted after Nicola Furlong, 21, was found dying in a hotel room. She and a female friend had been invited by the men for drinks to the upscale Keio Plaza Hotel after attending a Nicki Minaj concert, reports ABC News. The men are currently charged with indecent assault on Furlong's friend, who was attacked in a taxi on the way to the hotel while she was in a near-comatose state, officials tell the Japan Times. Investigators believe Furlong was strangled, likely during a sexual assault, Japanese media is reporting. Investigators believe the men either plied the women with alcohol or spiked their drinks before taking them to the hotel, reports the Irish Independent. Furlong was a student at Takasaki City University on a year-long exchange program from Dublin, and was scheduled to return home in a matter of weeks. "We are devastated by the loss of our beautiful daughter," said a statement from her parents. “Nicola was a warm, generous, stunning person who always had time for her family and other people." |
Published: Friday, 6/26/2015 - Updated: 6 months ago
White lion, 14, on loan from Siegfried & Roy dies at Toledo Zoo
TOLEDO ZOO/ANDI NORMAN Enlarge Legend, a 14-year old white lion on loan from Siegfried & Roy, died today at the Toledo Zoo following a diagnostic procedure.
Legend, a 14-year old white lion on loan from Siegfried & Roy, died today at the Toledo Zoo following a diagnostic procedure.
Zoo keepers had recently noticed Legend showing signs of front left leg lameness, according to a statement from the Toledo Zoo. The lion was immobilized today to allow veterinary staff find the source of the discomfort.
Legend was put under anesthesia for about one hour. During that time, vets treated three over-grown toenails and an inflamed nail bed. The Toledo Zoo reports that the lion was stable throughout the procedure, including during an ultrasound of the heart which indicated no obvious issues.
The white lion was removed from anesthesia when the procedure was concluded. While still on oxygen, he went into cardiac and respiratory arrest. Veterinary staff worked to revive Legend, but were unsuccessful in their attempts.
“Animal deaths are always difficult, but Legend’s is even more so because of its sudden and unexpected nature,” said Dr. Ric Berlinski, Zoo chief veterinarian.
The Toledo Zoo cannot speculate on a cause of death, but will perform a gross necropsy, an autopsy for animals, and histopathology tests in order to investigate further.
“Because of the amount of time our dedicated animal care staff spends caring for the animals they become like family. This is a very sad loss for our entire Toledo Zoo family,” said Ron Fricke, deputy director of the Zoo.
Courage, Legend’s 14-year old brother, will continue to reside in the Toledo Zoo’s Tembo Trail.
Contact Christina Payne at: cpayne@theblade.com or 419-724-6050. ||||| TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — A white lion on loan from the Siegfried & Roy animal and magic act has died after undergoing a medical procedure at the Toledo Zoo.
Zoo officials announced Friday that 14-year-old Legend died after being immobilized for an hour to allow veterinarians to treat problems with one of its paws. Legend went into cardiac and respiratory arrest after being removed from anesthesia.
A zoo veterinarian says in a statement that while there are risks whenever anesthesia is administered, the procedure was necessary for Legend's quality of life. A necropsy will be performed to determine a cause of death.
The zoo has one other white lion, Legend's 14-year-old brother Courage. The pair came to the zoo in 2003. A white lion named Wisdom died during surgery at the zoo in 2013. | – A mesmerizing male white lion belonging to Siegfried & Roy died yesterday while undergoing a minor procedure at the Toledo Zoo, where he was on loan, reports the Toledo Blade. Fourteen-year-old Legend was being operated on after displaying signs of lameness in his front left foot; he was stable as vets treated three toenails and an infected nailbed, but went into cardiac and respiratory arrest as he was taken off anesthesia. "Animal deaths are always difficult, but Legend’s is even more so because of its sudden and unexpected nature," says the zoo's chief vet. A necropsy is planned. It's not the first white lion death in recent memory: The AP notes that Wisdom, another male, also died during surgery in 2013. The zoo's remaining white lion is Legend's 14-year-old brother, Courage. |
Caroline Kennedy, the new U.S. ambassador to Japan and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, leaves for Japan on Thursday to begin her work to strengthen the critical bond between the U.S. and the Asian nation.
Japanese Ambassador to the United States Kenichiro Sasae, left, gestures while he and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy participate in during Japanese Ambassador's residence in Washington, Tuesday,... (Associated Press)
Japanese Ambassador to the United States His Excellency Kenichiro Sasae, left, watches as U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy drinks a cup of tea during a traditional tea ceremony at the Japanese... (Associated Press)
Japanese Ambassador to the United States Kenichiro Sasae, left, and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy talk during a tea during a traditional tea ceremony at the Japanese Ambassador's residence... (Associated Press)
Kennedy, who was confirmed by the Senate last month, was nominated for the ambassador's job by President Barack Obama after playing a role in his re-election campaign. Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a swearing-in ceremony for Kennedy on Tuesday afternoon at the State Department.
"We just had a tea ceremony which was a wonderful introduction to the Japanese culture," Kennedy said at a reception later at the Japanese ambassador's residence.
"My husband and I and my children are so excited to be going to Japan," she said in brief remarks to reporters. "We look forward to meeting as many people as we can, to making new friends, visiting and studying the history and culture of this beautiful country that is such a strong partner to the United States in so many important efforts."
At the reception, Kerry noted that Kennedy's father battled Japanese forces as a Navy officer in World War II.
"The daughter of a heroic lieutenant in World War II will be the first woman, in the next generation after the war, to represent our country in a relationship that symbolizes so much more than just a normal diplomatic relationship," Kerry said. "This is a symbol of reconciliation, symbol of possibilities, a symbol of people who know how to move past ... look to the future and build a future together."
He said he reminded Kennedy earlier in the day that the first time he met her was when she was a child in the 1960s, getting ready to ride her pony named Macaroni, and he backed into her and stepped on her foot. He said she broke into tears.
"So I am really excited, as the president is, that Caroline is going to be heading over there to represent this relationship at a critical time _ with the rebalance to Asia, global marketplace and competition therein, the efforts to deal with North Korea ... challenges of the South China Sea, challenges of climate change."
Kennedy, 55, an attorney and best-selling book editor, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a September confirmation hearing that she would work to strengthen the crucial bond between the United States and its Asian ally on trade, the military and student exchanges.
Japan is the United States' fourth-largest trading partner and home to the Navy's 7th Fleet and 50,000 American troops.
Her predecessors include the late Sen. Mike Mansfield, former Sens. Walter Mondale and Howard Baker and the late House Speaker Tom Foley. She replaced John Roos, a wealthy former Silicon Valley lawyer and top Obama campaign fundraiser.
Kennedy's confirmation to the post brought a third generation of her family into the U.S. diplomatic corps. Her grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambassador to Britain and her aunt Jean Kennedy Smith was ambassador to Ireland under President Bill Clinton.
Kennedy was five days shy of her sixth birthday when her father was assassinated, and she lived most of the rest of her life in New York City. She earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard University, got a law degree from Columbia University, married exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg and had three children. ||||| 2 days ago
Updated 5:14 p.m. ET on 7/24
(CNN) – Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy and a prominent Democratic backer, was nominated by President Barack Obama Wednesday to serve as U.S. ambassador to Japan.
She would become the first woman to hold the post if she's confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A top supporter of Obama's, she served as the co-chair of his vice presidential search committee in 2008.
CNN first reported in April that Kennedy had been asked to serve as ambassador and was being vetted for the role.
She's the only surviving member of JFK's immediate family and has largely shunned the limelight and scrutiny associated with her famous last name. After publicly expressing interest in running for the U.S. Senate seat in New York vacated when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, she ultimately decided against making a bid, citing "personal reasons."
She made speeches at the 2008 and 2012 Democratic National Conventions, both times recalling her famous relatives – in 2008, her speech served as a tribute to her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and in 2012 she noted that "like my father's election in 1960, this is one of those elections where the future of our country is at stake."
After receiving degrees at Harvard and Columbia, Kennedy served in a variety of roles at New York non-profits, including the John F. Kennedy Library and the American Ballet Theatre.
The current U.S. ambassador to Japan is John Roos, who assumed the role in 2009. He was the first American ambassador to attend commemoration ceremonies for the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also led America's embassy through the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the ensuing nuclear aftermath.
The United States is Japan's largest economic partner as well as a military ally. The U.S. military presence on Japan's Okinawa Island has remained a point of diplomatic tension between the two nations. Some of the island's residents have complained about noise from the base, in an urban area. Many others were incensed by the misconduct of U.S. troops stationed there, including the 1995 rape of 12-year-old Japanese girl by three U.S. military personnel.
Opposition to the presence of U.S. troops in Okinawa runs so deep that it contributed to the resignation of former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in 2010. He had promised to move the base but later announced that the base would stay, a decision he called "heartbreaking." ||||| Author and attorney Caroline Kennedy attends the signing of her book 'She Walks In Beauty' at Barnes and Noble Union Square on April 5, 2011, in New York City. Kennedy has written several books about law and poetry. (Photo: Mike Coppola, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Obama intends to nominate Caroline Kennedy, a close political ally and the daughter of slain president John F. Kennedy, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, the White House announced Wednesday.
Kennedy brings star power to the post as the most famous living member of America's best-known Democratic political dynasty.
The nomination rewards Kennedy for providing crucial early support to Obama. She endorsed him in January 2008 over his better-known rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Kennedy went on to campaign for his election and to co-chair the vice presidential search committee that selected Joe Biden as his running mate.
By giving Kennedy the nod, Obama continues a tradition of sending a high-profile envoy to Japan. Previous ambassadors have included former vice president Walter Mondale and two former Senate majority leaders, Mike Mansfield and Howard Baker.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would be the first female ambassador to represent the United States in Japan.
Kennedy, 55, would fulfill another family legacy: Her grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940. Her aunt, Jean Smith, was ambassador to Ireland.
The White House made the announcement with little fanfare, announcing Kennedy's nomination Wednesday afternoon alongside three nominees for domestic posts. In a statement, Obama said all the individuals bring a "depth of experience and tremendous dedication to their new roles."
The post would place Kennedy at the center of the U.S. relationship with one of the world's largest economies. She would replace John Roos, a Silicon Valley lawyer and Obama fundraiser, who had no previous diplomatic experience but won praise for his work helping to coordinate the U.S. relief effort after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan in March 2011.
Kennedy's nomination comes after months of tension in the region. Japan is engaged in territorial disputes with both China and South Korea. Internally, the Japanese government is working to revive the economy and grapple with a rapidly aging population and enormous public debt.
Kennedy, whose nomination has long been expected, has neither extensive government nor business experience.
"Japan is in real crisis right now. This is a moment for some real creative thinking on the part of the United States," said Clyde Prestowitz, an expert on Japan and president of the Economic Strategic Institute. He objects to Kennedy's nomination.
"The only thing Caroline Kennedy has going for her is the Kennedy name," he said. "We keep handicapping ourselves in our global diplomacy by putting people into positions who don't know anything about what they are doing."
The ambassadorship would mark the highest profile role undertaken by Kennedy. She has authored 10 books and serves as president of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. She spent much of her adult life avoiding the family business of politics until she sought appointment in late 2008 to Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat from New York.
Kennedy withdrew from consideration weeks later after a rocky public rollout and persistent questions about her lack of political experience.
In a statement, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it understands that Kennedy has Obama's "deep confidence" and "highly appreciates her nomination as reflecting the great importance the Obama administration attaches to the Japan-U.S. alliance."
Her supporters note that few U.S. ambassadors could claim closer ties to both Obama and to Secretary of State John Kerry, who served alongside her uncle, Edward Kennedy, for more than two decades in the U.S. Senate.
John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, said Kennedy "brings tremendous assets to the post, the most important of which is the trust of and direct pipeline to the president and the secretary."
David Lewis, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University who studies presidential appointments, called the nomination the "latest in a string of political appointments" Obama has made in his second term. Political allies and fundraisers have been nominated to top diplomatic jobs in South Africa, Denmark, England, the Netherlands and the Dominican Republic in recent weeks.
"From the Japanese perspective, what Kennedy lacks in foreign policy experience in the region, she more than makes up for in access to the White House," Lewis said.
Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and has a law degree from Columbia University. She and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, have three children.
Contributing: David Jackson | – Caroline Kennedy is the US ambassador to Japan following a swearing-in ceremony at the State department yesterday. After John Kerry administered the oath, the new ambassador, the secretary of state, and others headed to the Japanese ambassador's residence for a reception, the Washington Post reports. "My husband and I and my children are so excited to be going to Japan," Kennedy told reporters, per the AP. "We look forward to meeting as many people as we can, to making new friends, visiting, and studying the history and culture of this beautiful country that is such a strong partner to the United States," she said. Making new friends shouldn't be difficult, the Los Angeles Times points out: Kennedy's father remains popular in the country. The JFK Club Japan meets twice a year, and it's not the only Kennedy fan club. Caroline Kennedy heads to Japan tomorrow, the AP notes. |
Jon Stewart is back on “The Daily Show” — for one night only.
Four months after his high profile retirement, the longtime host returned as a guest on what is now Trevor Noah’s Comedy Central show Monday to call for action on the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.
Supporters hope Congress will vote to extend the program’s health component to help 9/11 first responders, which expired on Oct. 1.
Also Read: Jon Stewart, HBO Sign Production Deal
Despite the serious topic, Stewart began his welcome return on a funny note by creeping up behind new host Noah, who politely asked him: “I am sorry, Sir, are you lost?
“F–k, are you here to take the show back?” the South African comedian continued. “I heard about this in American TV.”
Stewart assured him “1,000 times no” and then went on to reveal his real motive. “I actually have this issue and I want to get some attention paid to it … and I realized that I don’t have a show, and nobody gives a f–k anymore.”
“My show is your show,” his replacement told him.
The political satirist went on to explain the issue for Noah, stating that from his experiences, “the only conclusions that I can draw is the people from Congress are not as good a people as the people who are first responders.”
Also Read: How Trevor Noah's 'Daily Show' Is Beating Jon Stewart's
Stewart joined a group of 9/11 responders last Thursday to tour the halls of the U.S. Capitol and visited the offices of senators in hopes of spurring them to pass a permanent Act.
Ailments stemming from the tragedy include respiratory and digestive disorders, cancer and mental health conditions. Stewart first took up the cause of the rescuers in 2010, by devoting an entire show to the issue and inviting survivors on to share their stories.
Also Read: Jon Stewart Warns 9/11 First Responders of 'Toxic Levels of Bulls-t' on Capitol Hill
While the bill seems like a no-brainer, Stewart said it was being held up because of “no brains” and welcomed back first responder Kenny Specht, who told him that 75 percent of the panel who appeared on the show five-and-a-half years ago are “no longer here.”
“With all this talk about terrorism, from the World Trade Center to San Bernardino, the one common link to all of this is the first people on the scene were first responders,” Stewart reminded viewers. “This is the legacy.”
Stewart retired as host of “The Daily Show” on Aug. 6 after 16 years.
Tonight! A young man returns to call for congressional action on a 9/11 bill. #SeniorJonStewartCorrespondent pic.twitter.com/GuEYnyrIf3 — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 8, 2015 ||||| Monday night marked the first ever The Daily Show with Trevor Noah with Jon Stewart.
It was what host Noah admitted as a monumental moment, but Stewart did not find himself back at the iconic desk for just any reason — he was there to show his support for the Zadroga Act, which provides compensation and medical funds to 9/11 first responders.
Though it has technically expired, Stewart and activist groups hope to get the bill renewed before Congress goes out of session later this week in order to secure funds. They are working against the clock.
It's a cause Stewart has been passionate about for years. In fact, back in 2010, Stewart gathered a panel of first responders to talk about their experiences in hopes of drumming up for support for the act.
President Obama signed the act into law in early 2011.
As part of his return, Stewart staged a reunion of that panel of four first responders. Only one man was present.
#DailyShow "reunion" of first responder panel that 1st appeared 5.5 years ago with #JonStewart. Powerful image. pic.twitter.com/sGDtBuzrNp — Sandra Gonzalez (@TheSandraG) December 8, 2015
Kenny Specht, the founder of the New York City Firefighter Brotherhood Foundation, who was on that original panel, explained that two of the empty chairs belonged to people with illnesses, whose conditions he could not legally comment on. The other belonged to John Devlin, who has since died.
"When we did the show five-and-a-half years ago, four men sat here. [Now] it's just you and I," Specht said to Stewart.
The stark moment came after a video package in which Stewart stepped into correspondent shoes and took his efforts straight to the Capitol, where he attempted to meet with senators whose support was needed. Or, in his words, "shame" them.
His attempt to get meetings resulted in mostly the receipt of press managers' business cards.
He did, however, get time with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). As reported last week, hours after their meeting Portman became the 67th senator to back the bill.
"What message does it send to our first responders if once we're done as a nation with them helping us that we forget about them? That's unacceptable," Stewart said.
Stewart asked viewers to mobilize and tweet with #WorstResponders to show their support for the bill. (His first suggestion was #endthefuckery, but on Noah's prompting for a hashtag "people can actually use," he changed it.)
Video of the segments will be posted when it becomes available. ||||| Courtesy of Thomas Dunne Books
The big bombshell from the new biography of “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart seems to be that the Comedy Central funnyman has a big old mean streak.
But beyond the yelling-at-staff revelations in “Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart,” which debuted last week, author Lisa Rogak also offers a little behind-the-scenes dish on some of Stewart’s political tangles.
Since it’s always got to be about us (hey, Washington is like that) here are a few D.C.-centric takeaways:
— Stewart seemed to blind-side the hosts of CNN’s “Crossfire” when he appeared on the show in 2004 and famously drubbed them for “hurting America.” But the hosts and producers should have seen it coming, Rogak reveals. Co-host Paul Begala was “the first person to have a clue” that Stewart was in attack mode, she writes. When Begala met the comedian in the green room, “he thought Stewart’s demeanor seemed off in some regard.”
And she claims the producers themselves had warning signs that should have alerted them that their guest wasn’t going to do the funny banter they hoped. “In the weeks leading up to his Crossfire appearance, Stewart had appeared on several shows — including NPR’s Fresh Air—touting these same ideas as a warm-up.”
—While Stewart might not be the cuddliest of bosses, he does allow employees one adorable perk: they’re encouraged to bring their dogs to work. The pups help guests “feel more at ease before they head out in front of the camera for a segment with Jon. When Senator Barack Obama made his first appearance on the show, he immediately sprawled on the floor to commune with the dogs.” Aww.
— In 2004, then-presidential candidates John Kerry and Howard Dean tried to duck out of scheduled appearances on the show. When the campaigns agreed to the appearances, Dean was ahead of Kerry. But by the time the shoot date arrived, Kerry had pulled ahead. “When Colbert showed up… Kerry was nowhere in sight. He’s suddenly shot ahead of Dean in the polls by eight points, and instead of the campaign bus crammed full of reporters and staffers, Kerry started to travel by helicopter and forgot about the interview. ‘The Dean people are in full panic mode and don’t want to talk to anybody,’ said Colbert.”
Read more Reliable Source: | – Comedian Jon Stewart has returned to the Daily Show, where he made a push to renew a law that provides health benefits for first responders who became ill after the 9/11 attacks. On the Daily Show With Trevor Noah Monday night, Stewart, as a field correspondent for a segment, urged, badgered, and exhorted Congress, especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to pass the Zadroga Act. The law expired Oct. 1 but has enough funding to last another year. Proponents of the law are seeking its permanent extension, but some Republicans have opposed that, saying they want a chance to periodically review it and make sure it's operating soundly. Stewart told Noah that he wasn't there to take his show back, but Stewart told him he was back because he had an issue he wanted people to pay attention to and that he "realized he didn't have a show anymore," the Wrap reports. Stewart, who devoted a show to the issue in 2010, said that from his experiences, "the only [conclusion] that I can draw is the people from Congress are not as good a people as the people who are first responders." He had a panel of four first responders on the 2010 show and welcomed one of them, firefighter Kenny Specht, back to the show Monday night, Mashable reports. Three chairs were left empty because two members of the 2010 panel are now too ill to appear and one has died. (Stewart will be returning to TV longer-term under a production deal with HBO.) |
Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption There are about 1,100 baboons at the research facility
Officials at Texas research centre have made changes to the enclosures after four baboons leapt to freedom.
The primates propped up barrels against the walls of their yard at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute and used them to jump over the fence.
Three baboons then escaped the centre perimeter, while the fourth returned to its pen on its own.
All three of the escapees were captured within half an hour. There are about 1,100 baboons in the facility.
The San Antonio institute issued a press release detailing the escape and the animals' recapture.
According to the statement, the baboons rolled a 55-gallon barrel up against the wall of their open-air yard to escape.
The enclosure at the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) - part of the research institute - has been in use for 35 years.
Researchers gave the baboons the barrels as an "enrichment tool", to help them mimic foraging as they would in the wild.
Staff immediately removed the barrels once they realised the primates had used them to jump the walls.
Dr John Bernal, a vet at the SNPRC, said one of the baboons made it onto a road. The priority for the staff was "was ensuring the baboon was not hurt by traffic".
Lisa Cruz, assistant vice president for communications, called it a "truly unique incident".
"We have nearly 1,100 baboons on the property that date back eight generations. Baboons, as with all our animals, are critical to biomedical research."
The statement explains these baboons were not part of an active study or part of infectious disease research, and so were not infected.
You may also be interested in: ||||| Though four baboons did escape, officials said everything is under control and nobody has anything to worry about. (Source: Dorian Reyna)
SAN ANTONIO, TX (KSAT/CNN) - Four baboons were on the run in Texas and the challenge of getting them back to a research facility they escaped from was caught on camera.
"I see four guys clapping at the bushes and I didn't really give it a second thought," said Jannelle Bouton, who witnessed the escape. "I just went about driving and then all of a sudden, this brown, big mass pops out of the bushes. I'm like 'okay, that's a big dog.’"
But it wasn’t a dog. It was a baboon.
"And he was furry and he was brown and he was pretty big," she explained.
But the baboon Bouton saw on her way to the store is only one of four that escaped the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, a facility that conducts research on chronic and infectious diseases.
"And the baboon stopped and one point and was just looking and then darted into the bushes. And these guys are frazzled. They are freaking out," Bouton recalled.
Though four baboons did escape, officials said everything is under control and nobody has anything to worry about.
Even though the public had nothing to worry about, Bouton said the workers charged with capturing the animals did.
"And you could tell that they were. They were panicking because they didn't want them to get hurt and they were trying their best to quarantine him. But being that kind of animal, he wasn't having it,” she said."
Bouton said she's not too worried about the monkeys getting out, but she is a little concerned.
"The fact that they had a medical mask on and it's a wild animal, it's a monkey, let alone. You just want to know what they're doing is safe," she stressed.
The institute said its primary focus was the safety of the animals, their staff and people in the community.
They said the baboons, critical in research for heart disease, diabetes and obesity, were seen by care staff and are doing well.
Copyright 2018 KSAT via CNN. All rights reserved. ||||| In four adjacent enclosures transplantation researcher Bruno Reichart kept four happy baboons. “They can hop around, eat, drink and they are enjoying life,” he says. “They watch TV—their favorite is the cartoon with the chipmunk.” Most importantly, he says, they were healthy and normal—which is astonishing, given the fact that the hearts beating life in their chests were anything but normal for a baboon.
All four of the baboons that lived in Reichart’s lab at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich had their original hearts surgically replaced with ones from genetically engineered pigs. Two of the baboons were euthanized after they lived 90 days—the survival period for any nonhuman primate set by the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation as a benchmark to indicate xenotransplantation might be safe enough to try in humans. The other two kept going for twice as long before Reichart’s team euthanized them, too. That survival period, says Muhammad Mohiuddin, a surgeon and director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland who was not involved with this work, “is an extraordinary achievement. You cannot stress this more. The next step from here is clinical transplantation [in people].”
Despite the fact monkeys are our evolutionary cousins and can stand in for us fairly well in experiments, nonhuman primates make for poor organ donors. There are concerns a monkey organ could pass on infectious diseases to the human recipient, and the primates are not easily farmed. But there is one animal that is already bred and raised en masse, is easy to genetically edit and has organs eerily similar to an adult human’s: the domestic pig. Researchers have long been eyeing porcine hearts as a potential solution to the ongoing donor shortage.
But even though humans can give their hearts to compatible persons with little more than a side of immunosuppressants, cross-species transplantation is not so straightforward. More than 60 percent of previous attempts to replace a baboon’s heart with that of a pig ended in the recipients dying within two days, Reichart says. “For 20 years one thought that this would be almost impossible to do, the results were so bad.”
Two important developments pumped hope into the field over the past few years: First, researchers such as geneticist Luhan Yang, co-founder of life sciences company eGenesis, began using the gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 to remove parts of the pig genome that might harm humans or provoke an immune response. “We were able to genetically modify the pig to make it more like humans,” Mohiuddin says. That significantly reduced the potential for cross-species organ rejection.
Then in 2016 Mohiuddin’s lab took this further by showing baboons could survive with a genetically engineered pig heart implanted into their abdomens for nearly 1,000 days—if the baboon was on a certain cocktail of immunosuppressants. “The original [baboon] heart was still intact and performing the main work,” Mohiuddin says. “This was to test those different drugs and genetics, and show that we can successfully prevent rejection.”
For the new workReichart first wanted to see if the same genetically engineered pig hearts—combined with the immunosuppressant regimen Mohiuddin used—could support the life of a baboon. But the first five animals in the new study did not live long. Three died of heart failure almost immediately, Reichart says. “It turns out porcine hearts are more vulnerable compared to human hearts,” he says. During the period between removal from a pig and implantation into a baboon—what surgeons call “ischemic time”—the heart will sustain damage similar to that caused by a heart attack. Human hearts can often recover from this damage, he adds, but the pig hearts could not.
So Reichart tried something new with another group of baboons. This time he repeatedly immersed the pig hearts in an experimental nutrient solution, developed at Lund University in Sweden, for a couple of hours. Researchers think this formulation, originally designed to help transport human hearts long distances, might have helped keep the pig hearts from deteriorating too much. “That may have even helped to preserve the hearts much better than transplanting them right away,” Mohiuddin says.
These baboons hung on for about a month before dying—this time because the pig hearts began swelling inside the monkeys’ chests, eventually squeezing against the rib cages and failing. “A pig grows to maturity within four months or so, but a baboon takes about 10 years to grow,” Reichart says. “So the pig heart was growing in the primate as if it was still in a pig. We were just astonished. Nobody had experienced this before—the heart grew like a tumor.”
In Reichart’s third group he added an immunosuppressant drug called temsirolimus, which could also stop the pig hearts’ unwanted growth. With the exception of one baboon that died of mechanical heart failure 51 days after surgery, the transplant recipients in this group survived in good health until the researchers euthanized them at 90 or 180 days (an action required under the study protocol approved by officials). The team published their results Wednesday in Nature.
The study is invigorating xenotransplantation researchers who, after decades of sometimes dismal attempts, say human trials are finally in sight. “Now we are really excited,” says Burcin Ekser, a transplant surgeon and director of the Xenotransplantation Research Laboratory at Indiana University who did not work on the new study. “Finally, in the U.S., we are starting to talk about when we can start human trials—probably first in some [pig] organs like kidneys or pancreas cells to cure diabetes,” he says. Kidney or pancreas failure would not definitively result in death, unlike an unsuccessful heart transplantation.
Much work still needs to be done before human xenotransplantation trials can actually start, says Allan Kirk, a surgeon at Duke University and the editor for the American Journal of Transplantation who did not participate in the work. Notably, special immunosuppressant drugs that are necessary for successful cross-species organ transplantation are not yet available for humans—and they may have intolerable side effects. An older version of a key drug used in Reichart and Mohiuddin’s studies was shown to cause strokes in people. The newer, although similar, drug Reichart used still needs to be tested in humans. “All this stuff will take a long time,” Kirk says.
Other xenotransplantation researchers agree, but this has not dampened their enthusiasm for Reichart’s work with baboons. “It’s not only emotional to see this but also very hard to imagine,” Mohiuddin says. “We just had this baboon, and it has a pig heart—and it’s living. This is not science fiction, this is really for real now.” | – Animal researchers saw the 55-pound barrel as an "enrichment tool." Baboons, to whom it was given, apparently saw only a means for escape. Indeed, four baboons briefly escaped the Texas Biomedical Research Institute Saturday after propping a barrel against a wall of their open-air enclosure and using it to hop to the other side, per the San Antonio Express-News. "One of the baboons said, 'I am going to try to make this leap,' and jumped on top of the wall and out," the Washington Post quotes an official as saying. In what he calls "typical monkey see, monkey do" behavior, three other baboons followed suit. The animals didn't have long to enjoy their freedom, though: One returned to the enclosure on its own, while the others were tracked down within 30 minutes. Two were captured near a tree line, but one reached a nearby road. A video shared by ABC News shows researchers chasing a baboon as cars whiz by. A passerby tells KSAT she saw "four guys clapping at the bushes. I just went about driving and then all of a sudden this brown big mass pops out." Luckily the escaped baboons are doing well, and they weren't involved in any infectious disease research at the institute, where new vaccines and medicines are developed. But the barrels, which were to help the baboons mimic foraging behavior, will be removed to prevent future escapes. Noting the facility has housed baboons for more than 50 years—it currently has 1,100—a rep says "this was truly a unique incident," per the BBC. |
James Knowles III, the mayor of Ferguson, said last week that he did not know what the Justice Department had found or would conclude. But he criticized Mr. Holder for saying recently that wholesale change was needed in Ferguson’s police department.
“How come they haven’t told us there is something that needs to be changed as they found it?” Mr. Knowles asked. “Why have they allowed whatever they think is happening to continue to happen for six months if that’s the case?”
Mr. Holder has stood by his remarks, saying they were based on his deep understanding of the case. “The reality is, I’ve been briefed all along on this matter,” he said at a news conference recently.
The Ferguson case will be the last in a long string of civil rights investigations into police departments that Mr. Holder has directed during his tenure. Since he became attorney general in 2009, the Justice Department has opened more than 20 such investigations and issued strong rebukes of departments in Cleveland and Albuquerque, accusing them of excessive force and unwarranted shootings.
The Ferguson report, however, is expected to more closely resemble last summer’s report into police activities in Newark. There, as in Ferguson, the police stopped black people at a significantly higher rate than whites. “This disparity is stark and unremitting,” the Justice Department wrote in that report, which concluded that African-Americans “bear the brunt” of the city’s unconstitutional police practices.
In some cities investigated by the Justice Department, such as Albuquerque and Portland, Ore., city officials have said they are open to making changes and quickly reaching an agreement with the department to fix problems. Others have taken a more confrontational approach, did not settle and faced a federal civil rights lawsuit. The Justice Department has four such lawsuits open, including one against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., and another against Sheriff Terry S. Johnson of Alamance County, N.C. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department won't prosecute former a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year-old, but in a scathing report released Wednesday faulted the city and its law enforcement for racial bias.
FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2014, file photo, nembers of Missouri National Guard stand outside of the Ferguson Police Department and the Municipal Court in Ferguson, Mo. A Justice Department investigation... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Nov. 25, 2014 file photo, police officers watch protesters as smoke fills the streets in Ferguson, Mo. after a grand jury's decision in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. A Justice Department... (Associated Press)
Federal officials concluded there was no evidence to disprove former officer Darren Wilson's testimony that he feared for his safety, nor was there reliable evidence that Michael Brown had his hands up when he was shot.
The decision in the August 9 shooting had been expected, in part because of the high legal standard needed for a federal civil rights prosecution. Wilson, who has said Brown struck him in the face and reached for his gun during a tussle, also had been cleared by a Missouri grand jury in November and later resigned from the department.
The report said blacks in Ferguson are disproportionately subject to excessive police force, baseless traffic stops and citations for infractions as petty as walking down the middle of the street.
Attention now turns to Ferguson as the city confronts how to fix racial biases that the federal government says are deeply rooted in the police department, court and jail.
Similar federal investigations of troubled police departments have led to the appointment of independent monitors and mandated overhauls in the most fundamental of police practices. The Justice Department maintains the right to sue a police department if officials balk at making changes, though many investigations resolve the issue with both sides negotiating a blueprint for change known as a consent decree.
"It's quite evident that change is coming down the pike. This is encouraging," said John Gaskin III, a St. Louis community activist. "It's so unfortunate that Michael Brown had to be killed. But in spite of that, I feel justice is coming."
Others said the federal government's findings confirmed what they had long known and should lead to change in the police department leadership.
Brown's killing set off weeks of protests and initiated a national dialogue about police use of force and their relations with minority communities. A separate report being issued soon is expected to clear the officer, Darren Wilson, of federal civil rights charges. A state grand jury already declined to indict Wilson, who has since resigned.
The findings of the investigation, which began weeks after Brown's killing last August, were released as Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to leave his job following a six-year tenure that focused largely on civil rights. The report is based on interviews with police leaders and residents, a review of more than 35,000 pages of police records and analysis of data on stops, searches and arrests. | – Black drivers in Ferguson, Mo., are pulled over much more for traffic stops than white drivers—and this imbalance is the crux of a forthcoming and damning Justice Department report, the New York Times reports. The nearly finished findings, according to law enforcement officials who say they've been briefed on it, are expected to show how systematic discriminatory actions helped stoke tensions in the period before Michael Brown's shooting death last summer by officer Darren Wilson. The report is also said to suggest that ticket fines are used to keep the city's budget in line, the Times notes. If those issued a ticket can't pay it, they can keep going to jail for the unpaid fees, which has proven lucrative for the city: "Fines and public safety" are Ferguson's second-largest revenue source (sales tax is the first), per the Times. Although blacks in Ferguson only make up 63% of the population, they were involved in 86% of the city's 2013 traffic stops, per Missouri AG info cited by the Times. And the search rate for blacks after a stop was twice that of whites during that time period, though whites were significantly more likely to have "contraband." Mayor James Knowles III has already taken umbrage with the alleged findings and for recent statements by AG Eric Holder, who said in October that "wholesale change" was needed in the Ferguson PD. "How come they haven't told us there is something that needs to be changed as they found it?" Knowles told the Times last week. "Why have they allowed whatever they think is happening to continue to happen for six months if that's the case?" Also said to be included in the report: a racist joke believed to have been emailed among city officials, law enforcement officials tell the Times. |
A Wikipedia user put together a list of the 50 highest grossing movies of the decade; only nine of them are not sequels or adaptations, The Wrap points out. And, at a generous estimate, only five are not terrible.
Frankly there is nothing I can say here, no series of bon mots, that will illuminate the horrors of modern Hollywood more than just running the list:
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (New Line; 2003) $1,119,110,941 2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Disney; 2006) $1,066,179,725 3. The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.; 2008) $1,001,921,825 4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Warner Bros.; 2001) $974,733,550 5. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Disney; 2007) $960,996,492 6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros.; 2007) $938,212,738 7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros.; 2009) $929,022,922 8. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (New Line; 2002) $925,282,504 9. Shrek 2 (DreamWorks; 2004) $919,838,758 10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros.; 2005) $895,921,036 11. Spider-Man 3 (Columbia; 2007) $890,871,626 12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Warner Bros.; 2002) $878,643,482 13. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (20th Century Fox; 2009) $878,615,229 14. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line; 2001) $870,761,744 15. Finding Nemo (Disney/Pixar; 2003) $864,625,978 16. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (20th Century Fox; 2005) $848,754,768 17. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount; 2009) $833,229,011 18. Spider-Man (Columbia; 2002) $821,708,551 19. Shrek the Third (DreamWorks; 2007) $798,958,162 20. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Warner Bros.; 2004) $795,634,069 21. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount; 2008) $786,636,033 22. Spider-Man 2 (Columbia; 2004) $783,766,341 23. The Da Vinci Code (Sony/Columbia; 2006) $758,239,851 24. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Disney; 2005) $745,011,272 25. The Matrix Reloaded (Warner Bros.; 2003) $742,128,461 26. Transformers *DreamWorks/Paramount; 2007) $709,709,780 27. Ice Age: The Meltdown (20th Century Fox; 2006) $655,388,158 28. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Disney; 2003) $654,264,015 29. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (20th Century Fox; 2002) $649,398,328 30. Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks; 2008) $631,736,484 31. The Incredibles (Disney/Pixar; 2004) $631,442,092 32. Hancock (Columbia; 2008) $624,386,746 33. Ratatouille (Disney/Pixar; 2007) $623,707,397 34. The Passion of the Christ (Newmarket; 2004) $611,899,420 35. Mamma Mia! (Universal; 2008) $609,841,637 36. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (DreamWorks; 2008) $603,900,344 37. Casino Royale (MGM/Columbia; 2006) $594,239,066 38. War of the Worlds (DreamWorks/Paramount; 2005) $591,745,540 39. Quantum of Solace (MGM/Columbia; 2008) $586,090,727 40. I Am Legend (Warner Bros.; 2007) $585,349,010 41. Iron Man (Paramount; 2008) $585,133,287 42. Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox; 2006) $574,480,450 43. King Kong (Universal; 2005) $550,517,357 44. Mission: Impossible II (Paramount; 2000) $546,388,105 45. The Day After Tomorrow (20th Century Fox; 2004) $544,272,402 46. Madagascar (DreamWorks; 2005) $532,680,671 47. The Simpsons Movie (20th Century Fox; 2007) $527,071,022 48. Monsters, Inc. (Disney/Pixar; 2001) $525,366,597 49. WALL-E (Disney/Pixar; 2008) $521,268,237 50. Meet the Fockers (Universal; 2004) $516,642,939
(Also this. I appreciate the ludicrous vanity but it has some bearing on the above.) ||||| It's all sequels, remakes and adaptations on Wikipedia's list of the decade's 50 top-grossing films.
So here we are - starting the second decade of the 21st century. Here at TheWrap, we're undercutting the anxiety of the age by curating the must-know and must-see for 2010. Mark those calendars: We've got the skinny on the most important stuff that's coming up this year.
Some enterprising Wikipedia contributor decided to pull together a list of the 50 films with the highest worldwide gross of this decade so far.
Here's the thing: One has to go all the way down to No. 15 on the list, Disney/Pixar's "Finding Nemo," before finding one created from original material -- in other words, not a sequel, remake or adaptation of existing material or characters (such as Batman or Harry Potter).
And then, to find another, you have to go all the way to No. 30, also animated: DreamWorks Animation's "Kung Fu Panda."
It just goes to prove that familiarity breeds ... success.
See for yourself. Here's the list, including studio, year of release and worldwide gross. Original film titles are in bold:
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (New Line; 2003) $1,119,110,941
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Disney; 2006) $1,066,179,725
3. The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.; 2008) $1,001,921,825
4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Warner Bros.; 2001) $974,733,550
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Disney; 2007) $960,996,492
6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros.; 2007) $938,212,738
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros.; 2009) $929,022,922
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (New Line; 2002) $925,282,504
9. Shrek 2 (DreamWorks; 2004) $919,838,758
10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros.; 2005) $895,921,036
11. Spider-Man 3 (Columbia; 2007) $890,871,626
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Warner Bros.; 2002) $878,643,482
13. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (20th Century Fox; 2009) $878,615,229
14. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line; 2001) $870,761,744
15. Finding Nemo (Disney/Pixar; 2003) $864,625,978
16. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (20th Century Fox; 2005) $848,754,768
17. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount; 2009) $833,229,011
18. Spider-Man (Columbia; 2002) $821,708,551
19. Shrek the Third (DreamWorks; 2007) $798,958,162
20. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Warner Bros.; 2004) $795,634,069
21. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount; 2008) $786,636,033
22. Spider-Man 2 (Columbia; 2004) $783,766,341
23. The Da Vinci Code (Sony/Columbia; 2006) $758,239,851
24. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Disney; 2005) $745,011,272
25. The Matrix Reloaded (Warner Bros.; 2003) $742,128,461
26. Transformers *DreamWorks/Paramount; 2007) $709,709,780
27. Ice Age: The Meltdown (20th Century Fox; 2006) $655,388,158
28. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Disney; 2003) $654,264,015
29. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (20th Century Fox; 2002) $649,398,328
30. Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks; 2008) $631,736,484
31. The Incredibles (Disney/Pixar; 2004) $631,442,092
32. Hancock (Columbia; 2008) $624,386,746
33. Ratatouille (Disney/Pixar; 2007) $623,707,397
34. The Passion of the Christ (Newmarket; 2004) $611,899,420
35. Mamma Mia! (Universal; 2008) $609,841,637
36. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (DreamWorks; 2008) $603,900,344
37. Casino Royale (MGM/Columbia; 2006) $594,239,066
38. War of the Worlds (DreamWorks/Paramount; 2005) $591,745,540
39. Quantum of Solace (MGM/Columbia; 2008) $586,090,727
40. I Am Legend (Warner Bros.; 2007) $585,349,010
41. Iron Man (Paramount; 2008) $585,133,287
42. Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox; 2006) $574,480,450
43. ||||| Weekend Box Office: 'Fantastic Beasts' No. 1 With $75M, Makes Rivals Disappear
Ang Lee's 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' and the Miles Teller boxing biopic 'Bleed for This' were both KO'd, while edgy, R-rated teen drama 'The Edge of Seventeen' fared only slightly better; overseas, 'Fantastic Beasts' debuted to $143.3 million for a $218.3 million global launch.
Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling can still cast a magic spell at the box office — although not as powerful sans the Boy Who Lived, at least in North America.
Warner Bros.' Harry Potter spinoff and prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, from a script by Rowling, topped the weekend domestic box office with $75 million from 4,144 theaters, behind the openings of all eight Harry Potter movies but in line with other high-profile spinoffs, such as the Hobbit trilogy.
Overseas was a different matter, at least in numerous territories. Fantastic Beasts bowed to $143.3 million offshore for a global debut of $218.3 million, and it has yet to open in China and Japan. In South Korea ($14.3 million) and Russia ($9.8 million), it came in ahead of every Harry Potter film, while in the U.K., it earned $18.3 million, behind only the two final installments.
Fantastic Beasts, which grabbed an A CinemaScore from U.S. audiences, is a crucial test for Warners and Rowling as they look to further expand the Harry Potter Wizarding World with five new films set decades before the events in Harry Potter and featuring a magical new world populated by adults. Eddie Redmayne stars as Newt Scamander, a collector of magical creatures who travels to 1920s New York, where several of his creatures get out. (He's the author of a textbook later used by Harry Potter and other Hogwarts students.)
"This was a magical weekend that's the result of inspired storytelling by J.K. and kicks off five new movies," said Warner Bros. domestic distribution president Jeff Goldstein. "The Harry Potter films were all based on Rowling's books. Here, J.K. taught herself how to write an original screenplay, and she inspired all those many fans around the world and to take this ride with her."
In the U.S., Fantastic Beasts — rated PG-13 — played notably older than the final two Harry Potter movies, with 65 percent of the audience over the age of 25, compared to 56 percent and 55 percent for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1 and Part 2, respectively. At the same time, there was a large concentration of moviegoers in the 25-35 age range, with 55 percent of Friday's audience under the age of 35. (Females made up 55 percent of ticket buyers overall.)
Disney and Marvel's Doctor Strange continued to wow as it crossed the $570 million mark globally, and will soon overtake fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe title Iron Man ($585 million) after already topping several other MCU installments.
However, the post-presidential election bump the box office enjoyed last weekend didn't last, as holdovers saw their usual drops. Doctor Strange, for example, fell 59 percent domestically to $17.7 million to place No. 2. Overseas, the pic took in another sturdy $26 million for a foreign total of $390 million and a global haul of $571.5 million. That includes $103 million in China, where Doctor Strange has exceeded the lifetime totals of superhero titles including Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
In North America, Fox and DreamWorks Animation's Trolls followed with $17.5 million to pass the $100 million mark domestically and finish Sunday with a $116.2 million cume in North America and $261.3 million worldwide. Paramount release Arrival placed No. 4 with $11.8 million for a domestic total of $43.4 million. And Universal's Almost Christmas rounded out the top five with $7 million for a domestic tally of $25.4 million.
After Fantastic Beasts, the three other new films opening nationwide this weekend fared poorly.
STX's edgy, R-rated coming-of-age drama The Edge of Seventeen debuted to $4.8 million for a seventh-place finish. The film, which cost $9 million to make, had hoped to launch in the $10 million range. "We were disappointed but we were very financially responsible, so we were able to take a creative risk," said Adam Fogelson, president of STX's Motion Picture Group.
Bestowed with glowing reviews and an A- CinemaScore, Edge of Seventeen stars Hailee Steinfeld as an awkward teen dealing with her friend falling for her brother, and was helmed by Kelly Fremon Craig in her directorial debut. It also stars Blake Jenner and Woody Harrelson.
Open Road's boxing biopic Bleed for This fared even worse with $2.5 million from 1,459 theaters. The film stars Miles Teller as Vinny Pazienza, a boxer who attempts to make a comeback after a terrible car accident.
Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is the biggest bomb, earning an estimated $1 million from 1,176 theaters for Sony/TriStar after opening last weekend in New York and Los Angeles. That's even worse than last year's The Walk, which opened to $1.5 million from 448 theaters. Sony studio chief Tom Rothman made both titles when running TriStar and before being named chairman of Sony's Motion Picture Group.
Lee's modern-day war drama, which cost a net $40 million to produce, was shot with groundbreaking technology that virtually no theater can project without new equipment, so it is playing in a digital format everywhere save for a select few theaters. Billy Lynn grossed $350,000 on Friday.
With Hollywood entering the heart of awards season, several high-profile releases debuted in select theaters at the specialty box office this weekend, including Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, from Focus Features, and Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, from Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.
Manchester, which launched in four cinemas in New York and Los Angeles, grossed $241,230 for a location average of $60,308, one of the best showings of the year and best ever for Roadside.
Nocturnal Animals opted for a larger footprint, opening to $494,000 from 37 locations for a location average of $13,351. Both films hope to serve as strong counterprogramming over Thanksgiving weekend.
Nov. 20, 1 p.m. Updated with foreign numbers. | – Thanks to a Wikipedia contributor who put together a list of the 50 highest-grossing films of the decade, it’s easy to see Hollywood’s—and, apparently, America’s—obsession with rehashing old material. As The Wrap points out, only nine aren't sequels or adaptations, and you have to reach No. 15 before finding an original. Gawker says "only five are not terrible." The first 15: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: $1.12 billion Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: $1.07 billion The Dark Knight: $1 billion Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: $974.7 million Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: $960.9 million Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: $938.2 million Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $929 million The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: $925.3 million Shrek 2: $919.9 million Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: $895.9 million Spider-Man 3: $890.9 million Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: $878.6 million Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $878.6 million The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: $870.8 million Finding Nemo: $864.6 million For the complete list, click the link at right. |
Angry demonstrations against an anti-Islam film made in the US have spread to several countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
Clashes between police and demonstrators near the US embassy in Sanaa on Thursday killed four people, a security official said.
"Four people were killed and 34 others were wounded in the clashes that lasted from morning until late in the evening" in the area around the US embassy in Sanaa, the official said.
Earlier on Thursday, a security official said that Yemeni police shot dead a protester in confrontations outside the embassy, shortly after ejecting crowds that briefly stormed the mission's compound.
The protesters removed the embassy's sign on the outer wall and brought down the US flag and burned it, according to witnesses.
A number of diplomatic vehicles were torched as security forces used water cannons and warning shots in a bid to drive them out.
In Egypt, 224 people were injured in protests, eight of whom needed to be transfered to hospital, the health ministry said.
In Libya, where the US ambassador and three embassy staff were killed during protests in Benghazi on Tuesday, officials said they had made "four arrests" over the attack.
In the Iranian capital, Tehran, up to 500 people protested over the issue chanting "Death to America!" and death to the movie's director, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
The rally, near the Swiss embassy that handles US interests in the absence of US-Iran diplomatic ties, ended peacefully two hours later.
US flags burned
Meanwhile, Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi has condemned the film that has sparked an outcry in his country.
"We Egyptians reject any kind of assault or insult against our prophet. I condemn and oppose all who... insult our prophet," Morsi, on an official visit to Brussels, said in remarks broadcast by Egyptian state television.
President Morsi appealed for calm, saying Egyptians "reject any kind of assault" against Prophet Muhammad
"[But] it is our duty to protect our guests and visitors from abroad... I call on everyone to take that into consideration, to not violate Egyptian law... to not assault embassies," he added.
Egyptians have clashed with police outside US embassy in the capital, Cairo, for the third day.
About 30 people have been injured, including more than 10 riot police in the overnight clashes, as the fallout from a film ridiculing Islam's prophet continued to rage on Thursday.
Police have used tear gas to disperse the crowd, as interior ministry said at least 12 people have been arrested.
American flags were also burned in Tunisia, outside the US embassy in the capital, Tunis.
Police fired tear gas at demonstrators who shouted their opposition to the film, and chanted slogans against the US.
A small crowd also burned an American flag in Gaza City where Hamas, the elected government there, has condemned the film.
Despite the Egyptian government's call for calm, protesters chanted in the streets and fires burned.
Innocence of Muslims, the film that mocked Prophet Muhammad, was allegedly produced in the US by a filmmaker with ties to Coptic Christian groups, and excerpted on YouTube with dubbing in Arabic.
On Wednesday, about 200 demonstrators took part in protests in the Egyptian capital.
They rallied into the night chanting "leave Egypt" but there was however no repeat of the previous day's events when angry crowds climbed the walls of the complex and tore down an American flag, which they replaced briefly with a black, Islamist flag.
YouTube block
Meanwhile, YouTube, the video website owned by Google Inc, has said it will not remove the film clip, but it has blocked access to it in those countries.
Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan reports on US-Middle East relations following protests
The Afghan government has ordered an indefinite ban on YouTube to prevent access to the film deemed offensive to Muslims, officials said on Thursday.
The US prosecutor-general said on Wednesday that four people were being questioned after Tuesday's events.
Nine Coptic Egyptian-Americans were also put on an airport watch list. They are believed to have contributed to the production of the anti-Islam film that led to the embassy protest.
The man behind the protests told Al Jazeera he just wanted to combat insults against Islam through legal and peaceful means. Wesam Abdel Wareth, the protest organiser, said his group was not happy that young people who joined their protest brought down the US flag.
He also said there was no co-ordination with protesters in Libya, and he condemned the violence there.
On Tuesday, Egypt's prestigious Al-Azhar mosque condemned a symbolic "trial" of the Prophet organised by a US group, including Terry Jones, a Christian pastor who triggered riots in Afghanistan in 2010 by threatening to burn the Quran.
But it was not immediately clear whether the event sponsored by Jones also prompted the embassy events.
Egypt 'neither enemy, nor ally'
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has called the leaders of Egypt and Libya to discuss security co-operation following the violence in Cairo and Benghazi, the White House has said.
Iraqi supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burn Israeli and US flags in the Iraqi city of Kut [AFP]
Obama urged Egypt to uphold its commitments to defend US diplomatic facilities and personnel and called on Libya to work with US authorities to bring those behind the deadly attack on the US consulate to justice.
Morsi promised Egypt "would honour its obligation to ensure the safety of American personnel", the White House said.
Obama told Morsi that while "he rejects efforts to denigrate Islam ... there is never any justification for violence against innocents".
Whatever the cause, the events appeared to underscore how much the ground in the Middle East has shifted for Washington, which for decades had close ties with Arab dictators who could be counted on to crush dissent.
Obama's administration in recent weeks had appeared to overcome some of its initial caution after the election of Morsi, offering his government desperately needed debt relief and backing for international loans.
Egypt is neither an ally nor an enemy of the United States, Obama said on Wednesday.
"I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy," Obama said in excerpts of an interview with Telemundo aired by MSNBC. ||||| SANAA/CAIRO (Reuters) - Demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassies in Yemen and Egypt on Thursday in protest at a film they consider blasphemous to Islam, and American warships headed towards Libya after the U.S. ambassador there was killed in related violence this week.
In Libya, authorities said they had made four arrests in the investigation into the attack that killed ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americas in Benghazi on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama has vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the Benghazi attack, which U.S. officials said may have been planned in advance, possibly by an al Qaeda-linked group.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had nothing to do with the crudely made film posted on the Internet, which she called “disgusting and reprehensible.”
The amateurish production, entitled the “Innocence of Muslims,” and originating in the United States, portrays Mohammad as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterizations have in the past provoked violent protests across the Muslim world.
Demonstrations spread further on Thursday, with U.S. embassies again the targets of popular anger among Muslims questioning why the United States has failed to take action against the makers of the film.
Hundreds of Yemenis broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified U.S. embassy compound in the capital Sanaa, shouting “We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God.” They smashed windows of security offices outside the embassy and burned cars.
A security source said at least 15 people were wounded, some by gunfire, before the government ringed the area with troops.
In Egypt, protesters hurled stones at a police cordon around the U.S. embassy in central Cairo after climbing into the embassy compound and tearing down the American flag. The state news agency said 13 people were hurt in violence which erupted late on Wednesday, following initial protests on Tuesday.
Around 200 demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Kuwait shouting slogans such as “God is great.” They hoisted banners, one of which bread in English: “USA stop the bullshit. Respect us.”
Kuwaiti riot police encircled the crowd of men protesting peacefully in their traditional Kuwaiti dress.
On Thursday, the U.S. consulate in Berlin was partially evacuated after an employee fell ill on opening a suspicious envelope. Bangladeshi Islamists tried to march on the U.S. embassy in Dhaka and Iranian students protested in Tehran.
Earlier in the week, there were protests outside U.S. missions in Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed during a protest against the film on Tuesday at the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi when Islamists armed with guns, mortars and grenades staged military-style assaults on the mission and a safe house refuge.
A Libyan doctor at a Benghazi hospital said Stevens died of smoke inhalation. U.S. information technology specialist Sean Smith also died at the consulate, while two other Americans were killed when a squad of U.S. troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack.
FIRST U.S. AMBASSADOR KILLED SINCE 1979
Stevens, 52, had spent a career operating in perilous places, mostly in the Arab world, and became the first American ambassador killed in an attack since Adolph Dubs, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, died in a 1979 kidnapping attempt.
Tuesday’s incident, on what was the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, has created an unwanted foreign policy crisis for Obama ahead of his bid for reelection in November.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Colorado on Thursday, Obama said he had ordered his administration to do whatever was necessary to protect Americans abroad and that aides had been in contact with other governments “to let them know they’ve got a responsibility to protect our citizens.”
The U.S. military dispatched two destroyers toward the Libyan coast, in what an official said was a move to give the administration flexibility for any future action. The first ship, the USS Laboon, was already in position and the other destroyer, the USS McFaul, was at least a day away, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We don’t know if they are affiliated with a particular group or not, there are a lot of suspicions but the we have to go through with the investigation and find out who these people are and if they belong to a particular group, then we have to deal with that group.”
The U.S. military also dispatched a Marine Corps anti-terrorist team to boost security in Libya, whose leader Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in a U.S.-backed uprising last year.
Republican Mitt Romney, Obama’s challenger, criticized the government’s response to the crisis earlier this week, saying it was disgraceful to be seen to be apologizing for American values of free speech.
Obama’s campaign accused Romney of trying to score political points at a time of national tragedy and the challenger also provoked some criticism from within his own party.
Campaigning on Thursday, Romney stopped short of repeating the charge but said that under Obama the United States seemed to be at the mercy of world events rather than shaping them, and argued for a stronger military, at a time when U.S. armed forces are facing an unprecedented budget squeeze.
Obama’s administration again sought to calm Muslim tensions on Thursday.
Clinton said Washington rejected the film’s message absolutely, and added: “It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and provoke rage.”
At the same time, Clinton noted the history of religious tolerance in the United States and its commitment to freedom of speech and said there was no justification for people to respond with violence.
“I know it is hard for some people to understand why the United States cannot or does not just prevent these kinds of reprehensible videos from ever seeing the light of day,” she said. “I would note that in today’s world, with today’s technologies, that is virtually impossible.
“But even if it were possible our country does have a long tradition of free expression which is enshrined in our constitution and our law. And we do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views no matter how distasteful they may be,” she added.
Protesters break the windows of the U.S. embassy in Sanaa September 13, 2012. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
AL QAEDA LINK SEEN
Among the assailants in Benghazi, Libyans identified units of a heavily armed local Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia, which sympathizes with al Qaeda and derides Libya’s U.S.-backed bid for democracy.
Former Libya militant commander Noman Benotman, now president of Britain’s Quilliam think tank, said Western officials were investigating a possible link with a paramilitary training camp about 100 miles south of the eastern Libyan town of Derna, near the Egyptian border.
U.S. officials said there were suggestions members of al Qaeda’s North Africa-based affiliate may have been involved.
Libya’s new Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagour confirmed arrests had been made in the investigation into the attack and more could be expected.
“We don’t know if they are affiliated with a particular group or not, there are a lot of suspicions but ... we have to go through with the investigation and find out who these people are and if they belong to a particular group, then we have to deal with that group.”
“We ... assure the people that we are going after them, that we are going to bring them to justice and they have to be punished for their act. This is not acceptable.
A spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia denied it had played a role in the attack on the U.S. consulate and blamed the violence on firing on the protesters by consulate staff.
“It was a peaceful protest, and the firing on the protesters inflamed the situation and gave it a different course,” Hani Mansouri told a news conference in Benghazi.
At the same time, Mansouri said the United States should have had the wisdom to evacuate its ambassador on the September 11 anniversary as a precaution.
Yemen, a key U.S. ally, is home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), viewed by Washington as the most dangerous branch of the militant network established by Osama bin Laden.
Clashes near the U.S. embassy there flared up on and off but died down as night fell. Residents living nearby said they feared more violent protests after Friday prayers.
“It is a dangerous situation,” one resident told Reuters. “I cannot wait until the morning to move my family to another neighborhood until the situation is totally calm.”
In Nigeria, the government put police on high alert and stepped up security around all foreign missions, also fearing an Islamist backlash, possibly after Friday prayers.
An actress in the California production that has provoked the unrest said the video as it appeared bore no resemblance to the original filming. She said she had not been aware it was about the Prophet Mohammad.
Many Muslim states focused their condemnation on the film and will be concerned about preventing a repeat of the fallout seen after publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. This touched off riots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2006 in which at least 50 people were killed.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called the making of the movie a “devilish act” but said he was certain those involved in its production were a very small minority.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul has appealed to Afghan leaders for help in “maintaining calm” and Afghanistan ordered the YouTube site shut down so Afghans would not be able to see the film. YouTube, owned by Google Inc, said it would not remove the clip but had blocked access in Egypt and Libya.
Slideshow (17 Images)
Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief and Yemeni President Mansour Hadi both apologized to the United States over the attacks and Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Mursi condemned them on television while also rejecting any “insult to the Prophet”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a sharp critic of last year’s Western military intervention in Libya and of Western backing for Syria’s rebels, called Stevens’ death a tragedy and said he believed Western support for rebels in Arab countries was causing chaos. | – Violent protests continued across the Arab world today and claimed at least seven lives, three of them near the US embassy in Sudan's capital city, NBC News reports. Security officers in Khartoum fired tear gas at about 5,000 angry demonstrators, who were also protesting at nearby British and German embassies. In other developments: Two demonstrators were killed and at least 29 injured outside the US embassy in Tunisia, where angry crowds gathered after setting fire to the American School. At least one person died and 25 others were hurt in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, where protesters torched and ransacked a KFC and a Hardee's restaurant, NBC News reports. Demonstrations there were timed to concur with a 3-day visit by Pope Benedict XVI, according to Lebanese officials. A protester died of birdshot wounds during a battle with police near Cairo's US embassy. He was the first Egyptian fatality during the riots. A large demonstration is underway outside the BMCI bank in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, Huffington Post reports. The White House has asked YouTube to review—but not remove—the anti-Muslim video that apparently sparked the rioting, the Washington Post reports. Administration officials asked "them to review whether it violates their terms of use," said a National Security Council spokesman. (YouTube has already removed the video in protesting countries.) See our earlier roundups on the protests, including a no-fly zone in Benghazi and Marines arriving in Yemen. |
An artificial pancreas developed by Boston researchers shows considerable promise to dramatically change the treatment of type 1 diabetes, potentially enabling 2 million Americans to eat what they want without counting carbohydrates or calculating insulin injections, researchers announced Sunday.
Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University developed the experimental device, which consists of an automated pump that releases the hormones insulin and glucagon and a glucose monitoring system controlled by an iPhone app.
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“We encouraged them to eat whatever they wanted while they wore the bionic pancreas,” said Dr. Steven Russell, an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who led the study. “They went on a diabetes vacation, eating ice cream, candy bars, and other things they normally wouldn’t eat — like taking out a new sports car and seeing what it can do.”
In a new study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers found that 52 adults and teens who used the mobile system for five days had healthier blood sugar levels compared to when they used standard treatments that required them to check their own blood sugar levels and determine how much insulin to inject via a pump device.
“This is not a cure,” said study coauthor Edward Damiano, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University who holds a patent on the software that makes the automatic dosing decisions. “It’s taking diabetes management to its ultimate potential and unburdens people with type 1 diabetes from thinking about all the things that go into managing diabetes every day of their lives.”
Damiano, whose 15-year-old son developed type 1 diabetes during his first year of life, said he wakes up two to three times a night to check his son’s blood sugar to prevent it from falling to a dangerously low level, called hypoglycemia, which can cause seizures, a coma, and sometimes even death. Having an automated device, which is expected to become available by 2017 after more testing and upgrades, would save Damiano and other parents from having to wake up in the middle of the night to avoid medical emergencies, he said.
Children with type 1 diabetes are eight times more likely to die from severe hypoglycemia at night — called dead in bed syndrome — than in a car accident.
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Diabetes experts who were not involved in the study cautioned that automated devices need far more rigorous testing to determine if they’ll be safe enough to become widespread.
“Quite a few things need to be addressed,” added Dr. David Harlan, chief of the diabetes division at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. “The chances of the pump failing with two difference hormone infusions are great and it doesn’t remove constant diligence from lives of people with diabetes.”
The rate of type 1 diabetes — in which the body’s immune cells attack and destroy a healthy insulin-producing pancreas — has, for unknown reasons, been surging over the past few decades, with nearly 16,000 children under age 18 now diagnosed with the condition every year. (Type 2 diabetes, by comparison, is a more common condition, and tends to occur well into adulthood and has far more explainable causes, such as genetics, obesity, and a lack of exercise.)
In the new study, all of the study participants were closely monitored — adults were accompanied by nurses round-the-clock and the teens were in a summer camp for those with type 1 diabetes — to ensure that their blood sugar levels wouldn’t rise too high or fall too low, which could cause seizures or other complications.
The research found that adult patients with type 1 diabetes who used the experimental device had lower blood sugar levels overall than the control group while also spending 67 percent less time in a state of hypoglycemia.
Children who used the device experienced a 50 percent reduction in carbohydrate use to treat hypoglycemia, though they did not experience a significant difference in their blood sugar measurements. That’s likely because children who participated in the study were closely monitored even when they used their usual treatments, said Russell.
He and his colleagues presented their results Sunday evening at the American Diabetes Association meeting in San Francisco.
“The initial proof of concept is very strong,” said Dr. Guillermo Arreaza-Rubin, a director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases which funded the trial. “Parents of children with type 1 live in permanent fear and maybe this device can free them from that burden and increase the quality of life of those with this disease.”
A few other groups of researchers presented findings on similar automated devices at the diabetes conference, he said, which, like the device developed in Boston, are also about three or four years away from widespread use.
Christopher Herndon, 13, a study participant who tried the bionic pancreas last summer while at Camp Joslin in Charlton, said for the first time in his life he “felt steady the whole day” rather than shaky when his blood sugar levels dropped too low and “really talkative” when it was too high.
Despite using an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring device, which many diabetes experts consider to be gold standard therapies, the Newburyport teen said he has never been able to achieve the kind of blood sugar control that he had while using the bionic pancreas.
While his mother, Christina, often wakes him at 2 a.m. to have some juice if his blood sugar drops too low, he was never woken by his counselors at the camp during the five days he used the device.
Mark Lorenz for The Globe Christopher Herndon said he has never been able to achieve the kind of blood sugar control that he had while using the bionic pancreas.
Colby Clarizia, another study participant, said he consumed three blueberry muffins for breakfast while wearing the artificial pancreas and was surprised to see how well the device worked. The 21-year-old from Amesbury also found it easy to use.
“Instead of measuring every carb in a glass of milk or serving of rice, I just had to input whether I was going to eat a large meal or small one,” he said.
Such a device, he added, would make it far easier for him to eat in restaurants where carbohydrate counts aren’t posted on menus.
The bionic pancreas automatically monitors blood sugar using a wireless glucose monitoring system that sends a signal every five minutes to an iPhone adapted with software. The iPhone app determines how much insulin to dispense — to make high blood sugar levels decrease — and how much of the hormone glucagon to dispense to make blood sugar levels rise; it also learns over time how to adjust the release of the two hormones based on input from the monitoring system.
Harlan plans to test the device in conjunction with Russell’s team in a large multicenter study launching this week that will have less rigorous monitoring. Participants will need to stay within an hour’s drive of the study site but won’t need to be accompanied by a health professional wherever they go.
“I think it’s an important step forward, but it’s going to be quite challenging to see whether this device can function safely and effectively without close supervision,” said Dr. Howard Wolpert, director of the institute for technology translation at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who reviewed the paper before publication. “An analogy I would present is that they climbed a flight of stairs but now the next stage will be like climbing a hill or even a mountain.” ||||| A portable artificial pancreas built with a modified iPhone successfully regulated blood sugar levels in a trial with people who have Type 1 diabetes, researchers reported Sunday.
Type 1 diabetes, which usually starts in childhood or young adulthood, is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin, the hormone that lowers blood sugar levels. Insulin works in conjunction with glucagon, a hormone that raises blood sugar. Together, they keep blood sugar in a healthy range.
Currently about one-third of people with Type 1 diabetes rely on insulin pumps to regulate blood sugar. They eliminate the need for injections and can be programmed to mimic the natural release of insulin by dispensing small doses regularly.
But these pumps do not automatically adjust to the patient’s variable insulin needs, and they do not dispense glucagon. The new device, described in a report in The New England Journal of Medicine, dispenses both hormones, and it does so with little intervention from the patient.
“The data address some of the most difficult problems in diabetes management,” said Dr. Kevan Herold, director of the Yale Diabetes Center, who was not involved in the study. “I’d say that the effects are quite significant and noteworthy.”
Dr. Fredric E. Wondisford, director of the diabetes institute at Johns Hopkins, also found the results encouraging. “To me, it’s a clear advance,” he said. But he cautioned that the effectiveness and practicality of the device had still not been tested in large numbers of patients over long periods of time. He also raised the issue of cost and insurance coverage.
Treatment of Type 1 diabetes is complicated. Patients not using pumps need two or more insulin injections a day, and all have to monitor blood sugar several times a day by pricking their skin and testing their blood.
Maintaining safe blood sugar levels requires precise adjustments, especially to prevent hypoglycemia, or extremely low blood sugar. Hypoglycemia can occur quickly, without the patient’s awareness, and can be a life-threatening emergency.
For patients with adequate treatment, elevated blood sugar is usually not an emergency, but can cause vascular damage over time that can lead to eye problems and amputations.
The artificial pancreas is the latest version of a device that researchers have been refining for several years. The system consists of an iPhone 4S with an attached glucose monitoring device, two pumps, and reservoirs for insulin and glucagon.
A sensor implanted under the skin on one side of the patient’s abdomen measures the glucose in the fluid between the cells, which corresponds closely to blood glucose levels. The sensor delivers the reading to the smartphone, and the phone’s software calculates a dose of insulin and glucagon every five minutes.
The medicine is then pumped through thin tubes to two tiny infusion points embedded just under the skin on the other side of the patient’s abdomen.
The phone also has an app with which a patient can enter information immediately before eating, indicating whether the meal is breakfast, lunch or dinner, and whether the carbohydrate content will be small, large or typical. The device then calculates and dispenses the proper dosages.
The device still requires a finger stick twice a day to get an accurate blood reading, which the patient enters into the phone.
The developers tested the device over five days in two groups of patients, 20 adults and 32 adolescents, comparing the results with readings obtained with conventional insulin pumps that the participants were using.
The adults in the trial each had the constant attention of a nurse, and they lived in a hotel for the five-day study. Most of the time they were free to travel around and pursue normal activities.
The adolescents, 16 boys and 16 girls, lived under supervision in a summer camp for youths with diabetes.
“We need to do a true home-use study, give people the device and send them home,” said the lead author, Dr. Steven J. Russell, an assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Let them do whatever it is they’re going to do without supervision.”
Several authors of the new report have received payments from medical device companies and hold patents on blood sugar monitoring technology.
The artificial pancreas performed better than the conventional pump on several measures. Among the adolescents, the average number of interventions for hypoglycemia was 0.8 a day with the experimental pump, compared with 1.6 a day with the insulin pumps. Among adults, the device significantly reduced the amount of time that glucose levels fell too low.
And the artificial pancreas worked well at calculating mealtime doses without the patient having to use (often inaccurate) estimates and correct a too high or too low reading after eating.
Much more work needs to be done before the device can be marketed, Dr. Russell said. The senior author, Edward R. Damiano, an associate professor of biomechanical engineering at Boston University, has a 15-year-old son with Type 1 diabetes. He said he was determined to get the new device working and approved in time for his son to go off to college carrying one. ||||| People with type 1 diabetes who used a bionic pancreas instead of manually monitoring glucose using fingerstick tests and delivering insulin using a pump were more likely to have blood glucose levels consistently within the normal range, with fewer dangerous lows or highs. The full report of the findings, funded by the National Institutes of Health, can be found online June 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers - at Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital - say the process of blood glucose control could improve dramatically with the bionic pancreas. Currently, people with type 1 diabetes walk an endless tightrope. Because their pancreas doesn't make the hormone insulin, their blood glucose levels can veer dangerously high and low. Several times a day they must use fingerstick tests to monitor their blood glucose levels and manually take insulin by injection or from a pump.
In two scenarios, the researchers tested a bihormonal bionic pancreas, which uses a removable tiny sensor located in a thin needle inserted under the skin that automatically monitors real time glucose levels in tissue fluid and provides insulin and its counteracting hormone, glucagon, via two automatic pumps. In one scenario, 20 adults wore this device combination and carried a cell phone-sized wireless monitor around Boston for five days, unrestricted in their activities. In the other, 32 youth wore the device combination for five days at a camp for children with type 1 diabetes. Both groups were also monitored for five days wearing their own conventional pumps that deliver insulin.
"The bionic pancreas system reduced the average blood glucose to levels that have been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of diabetic complications," said co-first author Steven Russell, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. "This is tremendously difficult with currently available technology, and so most people with diabetes are unable to achieve these levels."
The researchers found about 37 percent fewer interventions for low blood glucose (hypoglycemia) and a more than twofold reduction in the time in hypoglycemia in adults using the bionic pancreas than with the manual pump. For adolescents using the bionic pancreas, results showed more than a twofold reduction in the need for interventions for hypoglycemia. As well, both groups had significant improvements in glucose levels with the bionic pancreas, particularly during the night.
"The performance of our system in both adults and adolescents exceeded our expectations under very challenging real-world conditions," said Ed Damiano, Ph.D., the paper's senior author, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University and the parent of a son with type 1 diabetes.
"A cure is always the end goal," he said. "As that goal remains elusive, a truly automated technology, which can consistently and relentlessly keep people healthy and safe from harm of hypoglycemia, would lift an enormous emotional and practical burden from the shoulders of people with type 1 diabetes, including my child and so many others."
Just as a thermostat helps control a home's temperature, the normal pancreas senses blood glucose levels and adjusts the hormones that control it. People with type 1 diabetes, whose pancreas produces little or no insulin, have been using the equivalent of a manual thermostat, needing constant checking and adjustment. A bionic pancreas - like the one used in these studies - would function more like an automated thermostat, automatically monitoring blood glucose and delivering insulin or glucagon when needed to keep glucose within the normal range. As well, these bionic pancreas devices could be monitored remotely by the patient's medical provider or parent.
"With promising results such as these, we plan to support larger multicenter trials of the artificial pancreas in the near future," said Guillermo Arreaza-Rubín, M.D., the project officer for artificial pancreas studies funded by the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). "Within the next few years, we hope these technologies will go beyond experimental trials and be available to benefit more people with type 1 diabetes."
"The landmark Diabetes Control and Complications study - also funded by NIDDK - has long shown that maintaining as normal a blood glucose level as possible early on can stave off complications, including heart, kidney and eye diseases, decades later," said NIDDK Director Griffin P. Rodgers, M.D. "By funding research on the artificial pancreas, we aim to help people with type 1 diabetes maintain healthy blood glucose levels, prevent painful and costly complications, and lead freer, healthier lives."
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Among other funding sources, this research was supported by NIDDK grants R01DK085633 and R01DK097657, and was made possible by the Special Statutory Funding Program for Type 1 Diabetes Research. The program was established by Congress for research to prevent and cure type 1 diabetes.
The NIDDK, part of the NIH, conducts and supports basic and clinical research and research training on some of the most common, severe and disabling conditions affecting Americans. The Institute's research interests include: diabetes and other endocrine and metabolic diseases; digestive diseases, nutrition, and obesity; and kidney, urologic and hematologic diseases. For more information, visit http://www. niddk. nih. gov/ .
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www. nih. gov .
NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health | – While you were using your iPhone to browse Facebook and read Newser, a group of researchers was modifying an iPhone 4S to be used as a portable artificial pancreas—and in a recent trial, the device successfully regulated the blood sugar levels of people with Type 1 diabetes. About a third of people with Type 1 diabetes, which is typically diagnosed in childhood, use an insulin pump to regulate their blood sugar rather than giving themselves insulin injections. But unlike those pumps, the bionic pancreas adjusts both insulin and glucagon, a hormone that works with insulin to regulate blood sugar, automatically, the New York Times reports. It performed better than a regular pump for both adults and adolescents, according to the press release. The device is comprised of more than just the iPhone: The patient has a sensor implanted under the skin near the abdomen, which sends readings of blood glucose levels to the attached phone. The phone then calculates and sends the correct dosage of insulin and glucagon through attached pumps and tubes every five minutes. Patients can also enter information about meals before they eat, and the phone will calculate and deliver the correct dose. Twice-daily finger pricks are still required, with the blood sugar readings entered into the phone. Adult participants had about 37% fewer incidents during which low blood glucose levels required intervention—incidents that can be dangerous in the moment as well as cause health complications down the line—and the device could even allow patients to eat what they want, the Boston Globe notes. (During the trial, participants "went on a diabetes vacation, eating ice cream, candy bars, and other things they normally wouldn’t eat," explains the lead researcher.) It could be available by 2017, but larger trials are the next step. |
Investigators probing the Paris attacks have found video footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official, a prosecutor has said.
The Belgian prosecutor confirmed the existence of “images mentioned by the press this morning regarding a person linked to the nuclear industry” in reference to a report in the daily La Derniere Heure.
The footage was discovered “as part of seizures made following the Paris attacks”, the prosecutor added, refusing to divulge the individual’s identity “for obvious security reasons”.
France has been under a state of emergency since jihadist gunmen attacked several sites in Paris on 13 November, killing 130 people and leaving 350 wounded.
Since mid-November 11 people have been arrested and charged in Belgium in connection with the killings. Key suspect Salah Abdeslam and his associate Mohamed Abrini, both from the Molenbeek area of Brussels, are still at large.
Belgian officials did not wish to give any details about how the video footage of the nuclear official had come to light.
According to the Derniere Heure, the 10 hours of footage showed the front door of a home in the Flanders region.
Belgium’s federal agency for nuclear control said it was aware of the interest in the story but stressed the importance of not revealing the name of the person or the property involved so as “not to endanger the enquiry or nuclear security” or the person involved and their family.
The images were captured by a camera hidden in nearby bushes and recovered by two suspects who left the area in a vehicle with the lights off, the newspaper report said.
It was discovered by investigators during one of the numerous searches carried out in Belgium since the Paris attacks.
The paper said it was not possible to date the seized video, and therefore to know whether it was taken before or after the November attacks.
Eight of the 11 suspects arrested in Belgium are still being held. ||||| PARIS — A suspect linked to the Nov. 13 Paris attackers was found with surveillance footage of a high-ranking Belgian nuclear official, the Belgian authorities acknowledged on Thursday, raising fears that the Islamic State is trying to obtain radioactive material for a terrorist attack.
The existence of the footage, which the police in Belgium seized on Nov. 30, was confirmed by Thierry Werts, a spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor, after being reported in the Belgian daily newspaper La Dernière Heure.
The news set off an immediate outcry among Belgian lawmakers, who charged that they and the country had been misled about the extent of the potential threats to the country’s nuclear facilities, as well as about the ambitions of the terrorist network linked to the Islamic State that used Belgium to plot the Paris attacks, which killed 130 people.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the State Department also confirmed on Thursday a report by Reuters that radioactive material had disappeared since November in Iraq, where the Islamic State controls broad areas of territory, adding to fears that the group may be able to acquire material for an attack with newly disconcerting dimensions. | – Footage found in the possession of a man arrested after the Paris terror attacks may point to a plot involving radioactive material. Authorities say a 10-hour surveillance video seized from Mohamed Bakkali on Nov. 30 shows the home of a senior Belgian nuclear official who has access to secure areas of the Belgian Nuclear Research Center in Mol, report the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. The purpose of the footage, whose existence was confirmed this week, isn't clear. A rep for Belgium's federal prosecutor says "there is no element that says that this was to perpetrate an attack." But some suggest it may have been groundwork for a plan to abduct the official to gain access to material needed to create a dirty bomb—basically a normal bomb but with "radiological material strapped to it," an expert tells the Times. Belgium's interior minister says government officials who watched the undated footage—apparently shot from a camera placed in nearby bushes, reports AFP—found there was a threat "to the person in question, but not the nuclear facilities." Sebastien Berg, a rep for Belgium's Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, however, says authorities had "concrete indications that showed that the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks had the intention to do something involving one of our four nuclear sites," the others being two power plants and a producer of medical isotopes. Berg says workers at the Mol facility had been advised to be extra watchful, but that no extra security staff was put in place. |
A single-page March 22, 1950, memo by Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, regarding UFOs is the most viewed document in the FBI Vault, an online repository of public records.
Credit: FBI View full size image
The FBI says its most viewed public record is a memo from 1950 recounting a strange story someone told an agent about three "flying saucers" that were allegedly recovered in New Mexico.
The so-called Hottel memo was first released in the late 1970s under the Freedom of Information Act, but it's been viewed nearly a million times since 2011, when the FBI launched an online database of public records called the Vault.
Dated March 22, 1950, the memo was addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and written by Guy Hottel, then head of the Bureau's field office in Washington, D.C. Hottel was reporting what an Air Force investigator said that someone else told him about the crashed saucers.
The following details of the report have perhaps fueled the hopes of those who want to believe: "They [the saucers] were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots."
For the record, FBI officials said in a statement on Monday (March 25) that the Hottel memo "does not prove the existence of UFOs; it is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated."
Bureau officials also say there is no reason to believe that the story has anything to do with the infamous 1947 Roswell crash in New Mexico. Hoover did actually order his agents to verify any UFO sightings after the Roswell incident and until July 1950. That the Hottel report was never investigated suggests "our Washington Field Office didn't think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it," the FBI statement says.
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UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo An FBI memo in 1950 regarding an unconfirmed account of “flying saucers” still stirs interest.
A single-page March 22, 1950 memo by Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, regarding UFOs is the most viewed document in the FBI Vault , our online repository of public records.
UFOs or No?
The Guy Hottel Memo 03/25/13
It’s the most popular file in the FBI Vault—our high-tech electronic reading room housing various Bureau records released under the Freedom of Information Act. Over the past two years, this file has been viewed nearly a million times. Yet, it is only a single page, relaying an unconfirmed report that the FBI never even followed up on. The file in question is a memo dated March 22, 1950—63 years ago last week. It was authored by Guy Hottel, then head of our field office in Washington, D.C. (see sidebar below for a brief biography). Like all memos to FBI Headquarters at that time, it was addressed to Director J. Edgar Hoover and recorded and indexed in FBI records. The subject of the memo was anything but ordinary. It related a story told to one of our agents by a third party who said an Air Force investigator had reported that three “flying saucers” were recovered in New Mexico. The memo provided the following detail: “They [the saucers] were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.”
After relaying an informant’s claim that the saucers had been found because the government’s “high-powered radar” in the area had interfered with “the controlling mechanism of the saucers,” the memo ends simply by saying that “[n]o further evaluation was attempted” concerning the matter by the FBI agent.
Guy Hottel Biography
Guy L. Hottel was born around 1902. He was a graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he was a star football player. He was later inducted into the university’s athletic hall of fame. He entered the FBI as a special agent in 1934. In December 1936, he was named acting head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; he was appointed special agent in charge the following May and served until March 1941. Hottel was re-appointed special agent in charge in February 1943 and served until 1951, when he took a position in the Identification Division. He retired in 1955. Hottel was married three times and had two sons. Following his FBI career, Hottel served as executive secretary of the Horseman’s Benevolent Association. He died in June 1990. That might have been the end of this particular story, just another informational dead end in the FBI files. But when we launched the Vault in April 2011, some media outlets noticed the Hottel memo and erroneously reported that the FBI had posted proof of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico and the recovery of wreckage and alien corpses. The resulting stories went viral, and traffic to the new Vault soared. So what’s the real story? A few facts to keep in mind: First, the Hottel memo isn’t new. It was first released publicly in the late 1970s and had been posted on the FBI website for several years prior to the launch of the Vault. Second, the Hottel memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947. There is no reason to believe the two are connected. The FBI file on Roswell (another popular page) is posted elsewhere on the Vault. Third, as noted in an earlier story, the FBI has only occasionally been involved in investigating reports of UFOs and extraterrestrials. For a few years after the Roswell incident, Director Hoover did order his agents—at the request of the Air Force—to verify any UFO sightings. That practice ended in July 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn’t think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it. Finally, the Hottel memo does not prove the existence of UFOs; it is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated. Some people believe the memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau’s files have no information to verify that theory. Sorry, no smoking gun on UFOs. The mystery remains… Resources:
- The Guy Hottel memo
- Records on other unexplained phenomenon
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Share ||||| Proponents of theories and ideologies are always looking for that knockout punch – the smoking-gun evidence that proves their beliefs in a single stroke. Most theories are too complex to be established by a single piece of evidence, and require multiple independent lines of evidence to establish them. But there are often cases in which a single solid piece of evidence can push a theory over the line to general acceptance.
For many pseudosciences the lack of such smoking-gun evidence calls the claims into serious question. There are no artifacts from Atlantis. There is no bigfoot corpse or live specimen. And there are no crashed alien spaceships or, you know – aliens. Incidentally this is not the case for truly paranormal claims, like ghosts, because by being “paranormal” they would require a large set of rigorous evidence to establish a new phenomenon. But one actual bigfoot would do it.
So it is no surprise that from time to time we hear claims that “final proof” has finally come to light of one pseudoscientific claim or another. Just such a claim is now circulating regarding an FBI document from 1950 – a report regarding the recovery of three “flying saucers” in New Mexico. Here is the full text of the document, dated March 22, 1950:
“The following information was furnished to SA (redacted) by (redacted).”An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots. “No further evaluation was attempted by SA (redacted) concerning the above.”
This is very provocative. To someone predisposed to believe in the Roswell incident and the whole government cover-up of recovered aliens, this might seem light smoking-gun evidence. But let’s break it down a bit.
The memo comes from the FBI vault (which seems legitimate, since only the government can have a .gov URL) and is made available through a freedom of information (FOI) request. Guy Hottel is described as in charge of the Washington field office. The memo seems like the routine reporting up the chain of information coming into the office. I searched on “Guy Hottel” on the vault site, but no other relevant documents came up.
The date of the memo places it three years after the Roswell incident in 1947. The Daily Mail reproduced the document claiming it as “proof” of aliens at Roswell (although Roswell is not mentioned by name in the memo). They also reproduced another document from the FBI, this one from 1947 which does reference Roswell, claiming that the sighting of a:
“disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by cable.”
The memo author concluded that the object was a high altitude weather balloon, which fits with the current explanation that the crash at Roswell was in fact a spy balloon from Project Mogul.
The new memo, from three years later, must therefore refer to a separate incident. If the report can be believed, there were then three separate crashes of flying saucers all in the New Mexico area. Maybe the aliens were having problems with drunk flyers at the time. These alleged three further crashes did not appear to be witnessed, and once again there is no physical evidence to back up these claims.
Let’s also be clear about what the memo is – it’s hearsay. It is not a report from the investigator himself, and it contains scant details. It is little more than a rumor. The name of the informant was redacted, but it does not sound like the informant is the investigator himself. This memo seems like nothing more than the background noise of reports that any intelligence agency receives.
The body of the report is also very telling. The flying saucers are described as looking exactly like flying saucers looked from 1950s science fiction. This is the ship from Forbidden Planet. The aliens themselves are clothed in shimmering metallic fabric – again, right out of contemporary science fiction. This is three years after Roswell, and clearly the mythology had already evolved a bit. There was a rash of “flying saucer” reports at that time, and it’s no surprise that intelligence agencies were paying attention (especially in light of the growing cold war with the Soviet Union).
The final line of the report is also very telling – the SA did not feel that any further investigation was required. It certainly seems as if they did not take the report very seriously. This is the kind of report that we would expect to emerge from the pop culture of flying saucer fascination in 1950. It’s not the kind of report we would expect if there were a serious investigation into real alien encounters and cover-ups by the government. One might argue that the FBI were out of the loop (at least at the level of the Washington Field office), but that also would mean that this memo does not emerge from any privileged information or access and again is just rumor.
No matter how you slice it, this memo is nothing but rumor being passed routinely up the chain, without any indication that it was taken seriously. It reflects the popular culture of the time, and provides no real evidence or insight. This is not the smoking-gun that UFO enthusiasts have been hoping for. | – Of the 6,700 documents that the FBI has posted publicly at its Vault since 2011, the most popular of them all is ... a 1950 memo on UFOs, reports Live Science. In the so-called Hottel memo, an agent recounts that someone reported seeing three "flying saucers" that crashed in New Mexico, with three apparent dead aliens in each. The agent didn't seem to take it very seriously, concluding that "no further evaluation was attempted." The memo has been publicly available since the 1970s, but with the launch of the Vault, the one-page memo went viral and has since then received nearly 1 million hits. The FBI again takes pains to point out "the Hottel memo does not prove the existence of UFOs," in its own writeup on the popularity of the document. "It is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated," possibly the result of a tall tale floating around at the time. "Sorry, no smoking gun on UFOs." |
UPDATE:
12:00 P.M. — A week after a man began his alleged killing spree, investigators say they have one message for him and his accomplice: “Surrender or end up in a cemetery.”
Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson makes the statement from a Tuesday morning press conference to update the public on the search for suspected murderer Billy Boyette Jr. and the woman traveling with him Mary Rice.
Investigators now say Rice has a capital murder warrant for her arrest after being named as a suspect Monday. Police originally feared she was Boyette’s hostage. Evidence collected since the first sighting of the two together makes it more likely she is an accomplice.
A new picture of Rice was also released at the press briefing. Sheriff Johnson says it was taken at a Walmart two days after Boyette and Rice allegedly killed 30-year-old Alicia Greer and 49-year-old Jacqueline Moore at a hotel in Milton, but before allegedly killing 52-year-old Peggy Broz at her home in Lillian, Alabama.
Police have said they believe Boyette may have shaved his head and goatee to avoid recognition and Rice likely dyed her hair orange.
“His [Boyette’s] best choice of action if he wants to survive is to surrender, give yourself up we’ll treat you fairly and you will not be harmed, other than that it’s game on, our officers are not going to take a shot from this guy,” says Johnson.
Boyette and Rice have been able to avoid detection by authorities for several days, essentially hiding out in the woods of northwest Florida.
———————
(ORIGINAL STORY)
BALDWIN COUNTY, AL (WKRG) — The urgent search continues for a man suspected in three women’s murders – two in Florida and one in Alabama.
Investigators tell WRBL sister station WKRG the fugitive Billy Boyette Jr. also shot a fourth woman during a home invasion early Monday morning. Injured 28-year-old homeowner Kayla Crocker, whose 2-year-old son was home at the time but did not witness the shooting, was rushed to the hospital and is expected to survive.
Police say Crocker was likely not connected to Boyette, but he shot her to use her car in his getaway.
The 2006 white Chevy Cobalt, with a skull and crossbones sticker, damaged right rear passenger door, and Florida license plate 9613BJ, is believed to be carrying Boyette and his accomplice Mary Rice.
Rice was identified as a suspect at a 4:00 press conference by Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan, who says enough evidence has been compiled against Rice to name her as a suspect.
In a 1:30pm update from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, new images show Boyette and possible accomplice Mary Rice walking in the woods. Boyette appears to be armed with a handgun in the images.
The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office will only say the images were taken “recently,” as in, since the pair have been wanted by authorities. Deputies will not say where the images came from or where they were taken.
The 2006 Chevy Cobalt was rumored to have been seen on I-10 westbound in Baldwin County, though the exact location of the sighting is unknown. The vehicle could be in Baldwin County, Escambia County or even Mobile County if it continued traveling west.
CRIME TIMELINE
TUESDAY JAN. 31 — Boyette allegedly kills Alicia Greer, 30, and Jacqueline Moore, 49, at the Emerald Sands Inn in Milton, Florida
FRIDAY FEB. 3 — Boyette allegedly kills Peggy Broz, 52, at her home in Lillian, Alabama
MONDAY FEB. 6 — Boyette shoots Kayla Crocker, 28, in a home invasion in Beulah, Florida (Crocker expected to survive) and steals her car
Boyette is believed to have changed his appearance by shaving his head and his goatee. His companion, Mary Rice, is also believed to have dyed her hair orange to prevent being identified. The two were spotted at a Hardee’s at a gas station early this morning, shortly after the alleged home invasion.
Boyette is accused of three murders — two in Milton, Florida and one in Lillian, Alabama. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous. If you recognize him, do not approach — call police immediately. ||||| CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share A pair of suspected killers are on the run after being accused of killing three women. Nathan Rousseau Smith (@fantasticmrnate) has the story. Buzz60
The tipster who notified law enforcement about Boyette and Rice has been awarded $10,000. (Photo: Escambia County Sheriff's Office)
PENSACOLA, Fla. — The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office has doubled the number of deputies on the street as the department continues searching for suspected murderers William Boyette and Mary Craig Rice, who authorities say are on a multi-state killing spree.
An attempted murder Monday morning marked the third attack over the last week in a spree that has crossed state lines and left three women dead and one critically injured.
ECSO deputies responded to a Pensacola address around 6:30 a.m. CT Monday to reports of a home invasion and vehicle theft. The mother of Kayla Crocker went to Crocker's house to check on her after the young mother didn't show up for work and found Crocker with a gunshot wound. Her 2-year-old son was reportedly unharmed.
Crocker, 28, was taken to the hospital in critical condition, and her vehicle, a white Chevrolet Cobalt, was stolen from the residence. Authorities confirmed via video surveillance that Boyette and Rice took the stolen vehicle to a Shell gas station only minutes later and ate at a nearby Hardee’s.
Rice had previously been considered a person of interest in the attacks, but was upgraded to an official suspect Monday afternoon. Authorities believe Rice had multiple opportunities to flee or ask for help, and was seen entering stores on her own.
The small communities along the Florida Panhandle have been on high alert for a week, when the pair’s alleged crime spree began. Two bodies were found at the Emerald Sands Inn in Milton on Jan. 31. One of the victims, 30-year-old Alicia Greer, was in a relationship with Boyette, but police have said all consequent victims have no known connection to the suspect. The second victim in that attack was identified as Jacqueline Jeanette Moore, 39.
The pair then allegedly went to Lillian, Ala., where authorities say they killed Peggy Broz and stole her vehicle Friday morning. The pair is believed to have then returned to the Pensacola area.
Monday’s shooting marked the third attack and law enforcement authorities don't believe it will be the last.
William Boyette and Mary Rice wanted poster (Photo: Special to the News Journal)
“What we are experiencing is a running nightmare, quite honestly,” ECSO Chief Deputy Chip Simmons said during a press conference Monday.
Simmons said all minor property investigations have been put on hold to free up deputies to search for Boyette, 44, and Rice, 38.
“In short we have a killer, he is in our midst … everyone, and I mean everyone, should be aware of this, should be aware of what they look like.”
Boyette has a drug trafficking history, according to Morgan, including heavy use of the drug Spice. Users have been known to stay awake for several days at a time, Morgan said.
Boyette, 44, had a lengthy history of violent crimes leading up to the homicides over the past week. A familiar thread is woven through each. Arrest records show a consistent violent pattern in which Boyette is accused of attacking girlfriends, threatening to kill them and on numerous occasions allegedly beating or stabbing them until they called for help.
Boyette was accused in 2014 in Santa Rosa County of beating a girlfriend because she came home late from work and smelled of alcohol. He told her that if she reported his abuse he would "drag (a trial) out and make her life miserable," according to the arrest report.
The Escambia County Sheriff's Office is investigating a home invasion and shooting on Beulah Road. The Monday morning incident is being linking to suspect fugitive William Boyette. (Photo: Tony Giberson/tgiberson@pnj.com)
The victim was so in fear for her life that she initially lied to police, telling them Boyette hadn’t touched her despite the redness and swelling on her face. Eventually she told police Boyette had threatened to kill her a number of times, according to the arrest report, and that he was the offender in another violent case where she had told police she was attacked by a stranger. Charges in the case were dropped when the victim recanted once again.
A Pensacola woman called 911 in June 2015 and whispered to dispatchers that her boyfriend was trying to kill her. She said he had stabbed her multiple times in the arms and legs. He had tried to strangle her and taken away her phone in an attempt to keep her from seeking help, she said. When Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived on scene, the victim was bleeding and crying as she directed police to a bedroom where her attacker had passed out with a large kitchen knife in his hand.
In the bedroom, deputies found William Boyette.
Boyette was booked into Escambia County Jail on a $260,000 bond facing charges of kidnapping, battery, aggravated assault, aggravated battery and obstructing justice. He spent less than a year in custody before he was released June 17, 2016, when prosecutors were forced to drop the charges against him because his victim couldn't be found. She was wanted on her own criminal charges.
Within 14 hours of his release, the U.S. Marshals arrested Boyette in Santa Rosa County on a probation violation. He served only three months in jail.
It's a story that has played out over and over throughout Boyette's life.
He was arrested at least three other times in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in as many years on battery, assault, kidnapping and weapons charges, but never served more than a year in jail for the offenses. Boyette's troubles go as far back as 2002 in Santa Rosa County, where he has faced charges of grand theft, drug trafficking, felony battery, possession of a firearm, armed robbery with a firearm, aggravated assault by threat, and resisting arrest. In many cases, charges were eventually dropped.
Boyette had been out of local law enforcement custody only four months before he allegedly killed he first of the three recent victims.
The same caliber of weapon has been used in each murder, but authorities haven't released any further details on the weapon.
Deputies have been searching a wooded area near Nine Mile Road after footage showed Boyette and Rice in the area Monday. Morgan said police are searching for possible encampments, and dogs have been used to search those areas.
“He has made this statement to many, many people that he will not be taken alive,” Morgan said.
“So again, in law enforcement we take those threats and those admonitions very seriously.”
Follow Emma Kennedy on Twitter: @Em_Ken_
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2kGALFe ||||| CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share Police believe William Boyette took his own life during a standoff at a Georgia motel. His alleged accomplice, Mary Craig Rice, surrendered to authorities. USA TODAY NETWORK
William Boyette (Photo: Special to the News Journal)
WEST POINT, Ga. — Authorities say one of two people wanted in the deaths of four women has killed himself, ending a Tuesday standoff at a west Georgia motel and a multi-state crime spree.
Escambia (Fla.) County Sheriff David Morgan said William Boyette died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and that another suspect, Mary Rice, surrendered and is in custody. The pair is charged with killings that sparked a manhunt throughout southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, where the crimes occurred.
Deputies in Florida responded to a citizen tip Tuesday afternoon and found Boyette and Rice holed up at the West Point Motel in West Point, Ga., along with a car that was stolen Monday morning from Kayla Crocker's home in Pensacola, Fla. Crocker, 28, was shot and died Tuesday afternoon at an area hospital.
According to Sgt. Smith with Troup County Sheriff's Office, police made multiple attempts to contact Boyette and Rice inside the hotel with no luck.
Rice came out of the motel room where she was holed up with Boyette shortly after the Georgia SWAT team arrived. Within minutes of Rice being put in handcuffs and led away from the motel, police heard a single gunshot from inside the motel room, according to Troup County Georgia Sheriff James Woodruff.
Officers entered the room and found Boyette dead, Woodruff said.
The tip was received at about 2:30 p.m. today from a citizen who spotted the car that was being discussed in the media and on social media, Woodruff said. An officer was dispatched to the motel and confirmed it was the car stolen from Crocker.
A clerk at the motel told deputies that Rice checked into the motel Monday night under her own name. Deputies confirmed there were people inside the room because Boyette and Rice opened the curtains periodically and waved at law enforcement.
Deputies set up a perimeter around the hotel and just as SWAT was preparing to enter, Rice came outside, Woodruff said.
“We are always glad when something this seriously is resolved and no one is injured and no one is killed,” Woodruff told media gathered outside the motel. “We knew going in, them having killed several people already, that this could end very badly.”
Dominic Guadagnoli of the U.S. Marshals Service said federal, state and local law enforcement officials were on the scene.
Santa Rosa County Sheriff, Bob Johnson, right, and State Attorney, Bill Eddins, center, and Santa Rosa Deputy Sgt. Rich Aloy, left, holds a press conference Tuesday morning Feb. 7, 2017, to update members of the media on the latest in the William Boyette case. Local law enforcement agencies are seeking Boyette for the alleged murders of three people. (Photo: Tony Giberson/tgiberson@pnj.com)
The shooting of Crocker Monday morning in her home was the most recent attack in the crime spree that began Jan. 31.
Two women, Alicia Greer and Jacqueline Moore, were killed at the Emerald Sands Inn in Milton, Fla., on Jan. 31. Boyette and Rice are are then thought to have killed Peggy Broz at her Lillian, Ala., home the morning of Feb. 3 in order to steal her vehicle.
Baldwin County (Ala.) Sheriff’s Office information officer Anthony Lowery confirmed that a warrant for capital murder had been issued for Boyette and Rice for the ambush and killing of Broz.
It’s alleged that Rice and Boyette followed Broz to her home early on the morning of Feb. 3, where they shot and killed Broz in her front yard. Lowery said BCSO has found no other connection between the suspects and the victim other than the fact she had a vehicle they wanted.
“We believe at this point that obviously they selected her to prey on, they don’t have any ties that tie them together at this point,” he said.
Mary Craig Rice (Photo: Special to the News Journal)
Broz worked at Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, but Lowery wasn’t able to confirm whether Boyette and Rice had followed Broz all the way from Pensacola to her home, or whether they were already located in Alabama when they found her.
In a press conference at the Santa Rosa county sheriff's office Tuesday morning, Sheriff Bob Johnson said a warrant for accessory after the fact to capital murder has been issued for Rice, who Johnson says is a "willing participant."
Records show that Boyette was a habitual violent offender, having been accused of beating and stabbing previous girlfriends in the years leading up to his killing spree and eventual death.
The prosecution was forced to drop a number of charges as the victims either couldn’t be located or recanted their statements on Boyette’s abuse, and as such he never served more than a year in jail for his domestic violence accusations.
Boyette had only been out of jail four months for a probation violation when he allegedly committed the Milton double homicide.
Aside from the known relationship between Boyette and Greer, police can’t point to any other connection between Boyette and Rice to the other three victims.
State Attorney Bill Eddins said Rice faces charges of accessory after the fact to capital murder in the Milton double homicide, and charges are still pending in the attack on Crocker.
Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Anthony Lowery said Rice is facing charges of capital murder in the Alabama jurisdiction for her involvement with Broz’s killing.
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The search for a gunman suspected of murdering four women in two different states ended Tuesday when he was found dead in a Georgia motel and his alleged female accomplice was taken into custody.
After several days of searching, police found William "Billy" Boyette, 44, and 37-year-old Mary Rice in the town of West Point, about 80 miles southwest of Atlanta, shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Peggy Broz. John Broz
While a SWAT team was preparing to storm the West Point Motel, Rice came out and surrendered, the Troup County Sheriff's Office said in a statement posted to Facebook.
Inside, the deputies found Boyette dead of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
Boyette was suspected of murdering Alicia Greer and Jacqueline Moore in Milton, Florida, and Peggy Broz, whose car Boyette is believed to have stolen, in Lillian, Alabama.
"There is nothing to make sense of this. He needed a car, and he did not care 'cause he's an evil person," Broz's father-in-law, John Broz, told NBC News. "He's a coward."
Mary Rice and William 'Billy' Boyette in sheriff's photos. Escambia County Sheriff's Office
The Escambia County, Florida, Sheriff's Office said Boyette was also suspected of shooting a woman, later identified as Kayla Crocker, during a home invasion in Pensacola. Crocker died Tuesday, the sheriff's office said.
Moore’s mother, Brenda Stockhill, said the victim's dad bought bus tickets so that the 39-year-old could relocate to Ohio days just before the shooting. She never showed up to the bus station.
"I didn't even find out that my daughter was murdered until Wednesday," Stockhill said.
She called the death of Boyette "some relief."
"He's off the streets," Stockhill said. "He's not going to hurt anybody else." | – A fugitive murder suspect who vowed he wouldn't be taken alive killed himself after being cornered at a Georgia motel Tuesday, police say. William "Billy" Boyette died of what police say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound moments after alleged accomplice Mary Rice surrendered at a motel in West Point, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Cops believe the pair murdered Alicia Greer and Jacqueline Moore at a motel in Milton, Fla., on Jan. 31 before killing Peggy Broz in Lillian, Ala., on Feb. 3 to steal her car. A fourth victim, Kayla Crocker, was shot in Pensacola, Fla., on Monday and died from her injuries on Tuesday, USA Today reports. Rice has been charged with robbery and first-degree murder. Police say they found the pair and that a standoff at the Motel West Point began after they received a tip from a citizen who spotted Crocker's car outside the motel at 2:30pm. The vehicle was stolen after a home invasion in which Crocker was fatally wounded but her 2-year-old son was left unharmed, AL.com reports. Boyette was confirmed dead and Rice was arrested at around 6:15pm. Boyette was in a relationship with Greer, but police say there was no known connection between him or Rice and any of the other three victims. "There is nothing to make sense of this. He needed a car, and he did not care 'cause he's an evil person," Broz's father-in-law tells NBC News. |
Michael Jackson's daughter collapsed in tears during chaotic resuscitation efforts: bodyguard
Al Seib/POOL, Joel Ryan/AP Michael Jackson's assistant, Michael Amir Williams (pictured Wednesday in court), said he concocted a lie to keep Dr. Conrad Murray out of the singer's mansion.
LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson's daughter collapsed in tears as she and her older brother caught glimpses of chaotic resuscitation efforts from just outside the singer's bedroom the day he died, a bodyguard testified Wednesday.
"Paris was on the ground balled up crying. And Prince, he was just, he was just standing there, he was just in shock, slowly crying," bodyguard Faheem Muhammad told jurors on the second day of Dr. Conrad Murray's involuntary manslaughter trial.
"They weren't quite inside the room," he said of daughter Paris, 13, and son Prince, 14.
Muhammad told jurors he ran inside Jackson's rented Bel-Air mansion on June 25, 2009 and saw a "sweating" and "very nervous" Murray performing CPR shortly after another bodyguard called 911.
Jackson's personal assistant Michael Amir Williams earlier told jurors that he received the doctor's first distress call, but that Murray only described a "bad reaction" and never asked him to call 911.
He also said Murray wanted a ride back to Jackson's mansion shortly after the pop icon's death to retrieve a mysterious cream.
Williams said he found the request "odd" and concocted a lie that police had confiscated his keys.
Prosecutors contend Murray, 58, wanted to cover his tracks.
Murray's defense lawyer tried to discredit Williams, saying it took him two months to relay the alleged cream conversation to police.
Lawyer Ed Chernoff also suggested Williams didn't react appropriately to Murray's first call for help.
"When I hear a 'bad reaction,' I don't think anything fatal, me personally. And I wasn't asked to call 911. I did what he instructed me to do. Get someone up there immediately," Williams responded.
Prosecutors say Murray injected Jackson with the hospital-strength anesthetic propofol, "abandoned" his bedside and then took more than 20 minutes to call 911.
Murray's camp contends Jackson self-administered enough extra propofol to create a "perfect storm" that killed him "so instantly he didn't even have time to close his eyes."
ndillon@nydailynews.com ||||| Michael Jackson’s doctor tried to revive him with a substandard version of CPR, performing chest compressions intermittently with one hand while the singer lay on a mattress, a security guard testified Thursday.
Alberto Alvarez, Jackson’s director of logistics, was the first staffer to enter the bedroom where Jackson lay lifeless on June 25, 2009.
He told jurors that Dr. Conrad Murray told him Jackson had “a bad reaction” and needed to get to a hospital, but then stopped CPR and directed him to gather up pill bottles.
Full coverage of Conrad Murray's trial
Alvarez said Murray grabbed a handful of vials and told him, “Here, put these in a bag.”
The doctor also asked him to remove an intravenous drip bag containing “a milky white substance” -- a description consistent with the surgical anesthetic propofol.
Only then did Murray request Alvarez call 911, the guard testified. ||||| 1 of 31. Deputy District Attorney David Walgren (R) holds a bottle of propofol introduced as evidence as he questions Alberto Alvarez (L), one of Michael Jackson's security guards, during Dr. Conrad Murray's trial in the death of pop star Michael Jackson in Los Angeles September 29, 2011.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson's doctor asked a bodyguard to grab vials of medicine and a saline bag from the singer's bedroom on the morning he died, a Los Angeles court heard on Thursday in the manslaughter trial of Dr. Conrad Murray.
Bodyguard Alberto Alvarez also said he saw a "milky white substance" in the saline bag that Murray asked him to stash into a bag moments before an ambulance was called to attend to the lifeless singer.
"While I was standing at the foot of the bed he (Murray) reached over and grabbed a handful of vials and then he said 'here put them in a bag'," Alvarez testified on the third day of Murray's trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter for being responsible for the "Thriller" singer's death.
Alvarez, testifying for the prosecution, said Murray then pointed toward an IV stand by Jackson's bed and told him to grab one of the saline bags hanging there and take it away.
The bag had "what appeared to me like a milky white substance. I recall seeing it at the bottom of the (saline) bag," Alvarez said.
Prosecutors say the milky substance was the surgical anesthetic propofol, which authorities have deemed to be the principal cause of Jackson's death on June 25, 2009.
Murray admits giving Jackson propofol as a sleep aid but denies involuntary manslaughter. He could face up to four years in prison if convicted.
PARIS SCREAMS FOR DADDY
Alvarez was one of the first members of Jackson's staff on the scene the day the 50-year-old pop star was discovered not breathing in his bedroom at his Los Angeles mansion.
"He was laying on his back, with his hands extended out ... his eyes were slightly open and his mouth was open," Alvarez said. As he followed Murray into the bedroom, two of the singer's children followed.
"Prince and Paris came behind me. Paris screamed out 'Daddy!'"
Alvarez said Murray told him Jackson had a "bad reaction" and that he saw the doctor giving the singer chest compressions on the bed with one hand.
Alvarez said he noticed an IV stand, oxygen tubing around Jackson's nose and a device attached to his penis that he later learned is used to collect urine while a person is sleeping. He saw no heart monitor, blood pressure monitor or other monitoring equipment.
It was only after the vials and the saline bag were placed in bags that Alvarez called for an ambulance, about one minute after first entering Jackson's bedroom.
Asked why he complied with Murray's request to remove the bag and vials of medicine, Alvarez told the court, "I believe that Dr. Murray had the best intentions for Mr. Jackson, so I didn't question his authority at the time. I thought we were packing to get him ready to go to the hospital."
Murray's defense team has argued that Jackson gave himself sedatives and extra propofol when the doctor was out of the room, and that additional dose was what killed him.
Prosecutors say Murray failed to monitor Jackson properly and tried to hide evidence before and after his death as he was in rehearsals for a series of London comeback concerts.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Xavier Briand) | – Today's testimony in the Conrad Murray trial doesn't exactly speak to his skills as a doctor. One of Michael Jackson's security guards said that when he entered the singer's room, he saw Murray performing a shoddy version of CPR—using only one hand, intermittently, reports the Los Angeles Times. Murray told him that Jackson was in bad shape and needed to get to a hospital, even as he temporarily halted CPR, grabbed a "handful" of vials, and said, "Here, put these in a bag.” The guard, Alberto Alvarez, said he was also asked to grab a saline bag containing "a milky white substance." It was only after Alvarez helped put away vials and bags that Murray told him to call 911, notes TMZ. At one point, Jackson children Paris and Prince entered the room and Paris screamed. "Don't let them see their dad that way," Murray told Alvarez, who ushered them from the room. Yesterday, another security guard said he entered the room about the same time, notes Reuters. "Paris was on the ground balled-up crying and Prince, he was just standing there, he had a real shocked—just slowly crying—look on his face," said Faheem Muhammad. He quoted Murray as saying, "Does anybody know CPR?" |
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced new steps to reverse the decline of the Monarch butterfly, including efforts to restore more than 200,000 acres of habitat along the Interstate 35 corridor from Texas to Minnesota. (Reuters)
Threatened animals like elephants, porpoises and lions grab all the headlines, but what’s happening to monarch butterflies is nothing short of a massacre. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service summed it up in just one grim statistic on Monday: Since 1990, about 970 million have vanished.
It happened as farmers and homeowners sprayed herbicides on milkweed plants, which serve as the butterflies’ nursery, food source and home. In an attempt to counter two decades of destruction, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched a partnership with two private conservation groups, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to basically grow milkweed like crazy in the hopes of saving the monarchs.
A monarch caterpillar rests on a leaf at the Northeast Regional Office in Massachusetts. (Maddie List/USFWS)
Monarch butterflies are a keystone species that once fluttered throughout the United States by the billions. They alighted from Mexico to Canada each spring on a trek that required six generations of the insect to complete. Afterward, young monarchs about the quarter of the weight of a dime, that know nothing about the flight pattern through the United States, not to mention Mexico, fly back, resting, birthing and dining on milkweed. Only about 30 million remain.
The extinction of certain butterfly species is not unheard of. The blueberry-colored Xerces blue disappeared from San Francisco years ago, and recently Fish and Wildlife announced that two subspecies — the rockland skipper and Zestos in South Florida — haven’t been seen since 2004 and are probably extinct. On top of that, pesticide use has also caused a collapse of other pollinators — wasps, beetles and especially honeybees.
Fish and Wildlife is reviewing a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to list monarch butterflies as an endangered species that requires special protection to survive. The agency is studying whether that’s necessary and also trying to do more to help restore the population.
The agency is providing $2 million for on the ground conservation projects. As part of an agreement, the federation will help raise awareness about the need for milkweed, provide seeds to anyone willing to plant it and to plant the seeds in open space — roadsides, parks, forests and patio flower boxes, to name a few places. Another $1.2 million will go to the foundation as seed money to generate a larger fundraising match from private organizations.
Yosemite National Park offers protection to the milkweed plant, which is important to the survival of the "charismatic" monarch butterfly. (National Park Service/Yosemite Conservancy via YouTube)
Fish and Wildlife will chip in to plant milkweed seeds in refuges and other areas it controls to create 200,000 acres of habitat along the Interstate 35 corridor from Texas to Minnesota, where 50 percent of monarchs migrate. Fish and Wildlife will encourage other federal and state agencies to do the same on public lands and is working with the governments of Mexico and Canada to help restore the iconic butterfly.
The monarch butterfly’s round trip to and from Mexico takes it past a killing field of agriculture. But farmers aren’t entirely to blame for the insect’s decline, said Dan Ashe, director of Fish and Wildlife. “We’ve all been responsible. We are the consumers of agricultural products. I eat corn. American farmers are not the enemy. Can they be part of the solution? Yes,” Ashe said.
“It’s not about this wonderful, mystical creature,” Ashe said. “It’s about us.”
A monarch perches on a sunflower in Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota. (Tom Koerner/USFWS)
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) underscored that point in her remarks during the announcement of the partnership at the National Press Club in Washington. Her mother, a second-grade teacher, was wild about monarch butterflies, Klobuchar said, so much so that she dressed as one each year to call attention to their return flight home. Her mother carried a sign, Klobuchar said, “Mexico or bust.”
“This is something that means a lot to my family,” the senator said. “My mother would want me to do this.” Klobuchar said her role is to help the foundation bring private partners to the effort and help the Fish and Wildlife Service however she can to persuade public entities to get involved. Minnesota, she said, has a monarch festival each year.
Collin O’Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation, said momentum is building. Charlotte and St. Louis, he said, are two cities that declared themselves as sanctuaries for monarchs.
A monarch drys its wings after hatching from its chrysalis. (Joanna Gilkeson/USFWS)
O’Mara said homeowners can do the same. The federation makes milkweed seeds available to people who want to plant them in gardens. O’Mara said there are milkweed plants at his home, and at his mother’s home, and they often see monarch butterflies climbing on them.
But if the new effort generates widespread interest, the federation might find it hard to keep up with demand. Not enough seeds are available, and not just any seed can survive anywhere. Milkweed seeds grow everywhere in the United States, but they grow better when adapted to local conditions, he said.
“I have a 3-year-old whose eyes pop wide open” when she sees monarchs crawling on leaves in their back yard, O’Mara said. “This is one of those keystone species. These are things that don’t make headlines, but they are indicators that something bigger is happening.”
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They thrived for millions of years. Now, there are only 1,100 ||||| A monarch butterfly rests on the ground at the Sierra Chincua butterfly sanctuary on a mountain in Angangeo, Michoacan November 24, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
MEXICO CITY More than 27 percent fewer monarch butterflies migrated to Mexican forests during the 2016/2017 season, a study showed on Thursday, fueling concerns the orange-and-black insect could face growing threats from weather and deforestation.
During the second half of December 2016, monarch butterflies covered 2.91 hectares (7.2 acres) of fir and pine forests in the central states of Michoacan and Mexico, compared with 4.01 hectares (9.9 acres) in the same period in the previous year, the study said.
Led by the World Wildlife Fund, Mexico's National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP), and others, the study cited fewer mating sites, extreme weather and deforestation as threats to the migration of the monarch butterfly.
Monarch density in Mexico reached a record low during the 2013/2014 season, when the butterfly occupied just 0.67 hectares (1.6 acres) of the forests, the study noted.
While their numbers have rebounded in recent years since, they are still well below what they were two decades ago.
The butterflies congregate in Mexico and then go through several generations as they fly north on their long migration to Canada.
Their plight has become an international issue in the past. In February 2014, the United States, Mexico and Canada agreed to set up a joint task force to protect the butterflies.
Monarchs lay eggs only on milkweed plants, which grow wild throughout the United States. But milkweed, on which butterfly larvae feed, can cause stomach problems for cattle that eat it, so ranchers and farmers destroy the plant, researchers say.
(Reporting by Natalie Schachar; Editing by Sandra Maler) | – Just two decades ago, there were about a billion monarch butterflies; today, there are only some 30 million of the creatures that Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota calls "the most iconic butterfly in North America." The trouble starts when the butterflies are caterpillars whose only food is milkweed, which has been decimated as people try to wipe out weeds, National Geographic reports. The good news for the creatures is that the US government is on their side: yesterday, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans to set aside $3.2 million to save them. Officials will work to bring back milkweed in breeding hotspots like Texas, Oklahoma, and the Midwest, including 200,000 acres stretching from Texas to Minnesota along Interstate 35; half of monarchs migrate through the area during an incredible trip from Mexico to Canada, the Washington Post reports. Another part of the effort requires kids' help: some 750 "schoolyard habitats and pollinator gardens" will be created, a press release reports. Meanwhile, FWS is considering a petition calling for the classification of the butterflies as endangered. "We can save the monarch butterfly in North America, but only if we act quickly and together," says Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe. (Scientists were recently amazed by the creatures' origins.) |
AP Photo/Ron Edmonds
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could end up being the worst American man-made environmental catastrophe of this generation. With the oil still spilling and investigations into the causes yet to come, it's too early to neatly assign blame to any one person. But for now, let's hold Dick Cheney personally responsible for the whole thing.
Here's the evidence: The Wall Street Journal reports that the oil well didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch. The reason it didn't have a thing that it seems every single offshore drilling rig should have? According to environmental lawyer Mike Papantonio, it's because Dick Cheney's energy task force decided that the $500,000 switches were too expensive, and they didn't want to make BP buy any.
Is that not enough reason to blame the former Dark Lord of the Naval Observatory? Guess what: Halliburton is involved, too! The Los Angeles Times reports that BP contracted Dick Cheney's old company to cement the deepwater drill hole. Cementing the hole was, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, "the single most-important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period." And Hallburton is already under investigation for faulty cementing in an Australian well last year.
The spill will very likely destroy the fragile economies of at least five states and it could even plunge the nation back into a recession. So thanks, Dick. Nice work. ||||| Oil giant BP PLC told congressional investigators that a decision to continue work on an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after a test warned that something was wrong may have been a "fundamental mistake," according to a memo released by two lawmakers Tuesday.
The document describes a wide array of mistakes in the fateful final hours aboard the Deepwater Horizon—but the main revelation is that BP now says there was a clear warning sign of a "very large abnormality" in the well, but work proceeded anyway.
The rig exploded about two hours later.
The congressional memo outlines what the lawmakers say was a briefing for congressional staff by BP officials early Tuesday. Company representatives provided a preliminary report on their internal investigation of the April 20 disaster, which killed 11 workers and continues to spill thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico.
The new developments come as President Barack Obama, working to tame a political storm over the spill, is expected to announce Thursday that the government will impose tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections on off-shore drilling operations.
According to the memo, BP identified several other mistakes aboard the rig, including possible contamination of the cement meant to seal off the well from volatile natural gas and the apparent failure to monitor the well closely for signs that gas was leaking in, the congressmen wrote in their post-meeting memo. An immense column of natural gas, erupting from the oil well, fueled the fireball that destroyed the rig.
A BP spokesman declined to comment on the memo's specific statements. He said the company had identified "what we believe to be a series of underlying failures" that caused the accident.
Although the memo identifies some of the problems that led to these mistakes, it doesn't identify who made the key decisions. Most of the work aboard the rig was performed by employees of Transocean Ltd., the rig's owner and operator, and other contractors, but BP had managers aboard the rig to supervise the work at the time of the accident.
Enlarge Image Close Associated Press A BP cleanup crew collects oil from a beach at Port Fourchon, La. Despite a massive containment effort, oil from the spill is now contaminating the state's coastal marshes
BP CEO Tony Hayward said he understands the anger directed at his company after oil from BP's ruptured undersea oil well began washing up along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Courtesy of Reuters.
A Transocean spokesman said in response to the memo: "A well is constructed and completed the same way a house is built—at the direction of the owner and the architect. And in this case, that's BP."
The memo sheds new light on a key test performed hours before the explosion that has been a focus of congressional investigations. BP previously told investigators that a "negative pressure" test, which checks for leaks in the well, was inconclusive at best and "not satisfactory" at worst.
But in the meeting Tuesday, BP went further, saying the results were an "indicator of a very large abnormality" but that workers—unnamed in the memo—decided by 7:55 p.m. that the test was successful after all. That may have been a "fundamental mistake," BP's investigator said in the meeting, according to the memo. Reps. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) wrote the memo, which was made public Tuesday.
After that, workers began to remove the heavy drilling fluid, called "mud" in the industry, that provides pressure to prevent any gas that seeps into the well from rising to the surface.
The memo also describes a breakdown in communication aboard the rig in the hours leading up to the explosion that made it tough for workers to monitor how much mud was coming out of the well—a key measure of whether gas is leaking in, according to the memo.
BP identified "several concerns" related to the cementing process used on the well, the memo indicated. The cement work that was supposed to hold back gas "failed," the memo said, allowing gas into the well.
Halliburton, Co., the cementing contractor on the rig, said it followed BP's instructions. "As a contractor, Halliburton made recommendations regarding the contract services provided," said Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Mann. "However, ultimately, the responsibility for what operations to conduct lies with the well owner, and Halliburton is obligated to act at the direction of the well owner."
The congressional inquiry by Mr. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Mr. Stupak, a senior member of the panel, has focused on the actions of the various companies and their workers on the day of the accident. Inquiries by other congressional panels have tended to focus more on the actions of regulators or the general policies of the companies.
Separately on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans jousted on Capitol Hill over how much money oil companies should have to pay for oil-spill damages, but agreed that the current $75 million limit was too low.
BP, which is responsible for stopping and cleaning up the giant spill, has said it would pay "all legitimate claims" from the spill. Some Democrats fear that the company might find a way to avoid some liability.
Speaking to a Senate panel, Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli said the limit should be removed entirely for deepwater drilling, arguing that the government needs to "ensure that there is no arbitrary cap on corporate responsibility for a similar major oil spill."
The agency that oversees the offshore oil industry, the Minerals Management Service, again came in for criticism. On Tuesday the Interior Department's inspector general published a report saying employees at the Lake Charles, La., office of the MMS accepted sporting-event tickets, lunches and other gifts from oil and natural-gas companies. The report also said employees used government computers to view pornography.
It wasn't immediately clear how many MMS staffers were implicated in the inspector general's report, which said that "all of the conduct chronicled in this report occurred prior to 2007." In a written statement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that some employees cited in the report have resigned, been terminated or been referred for prosecution. He said that any remaining staffers accused of questionable behavior in the inspector general's report would be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of a personnel review.
On Wednesday, Secretary Salazar is to testify before the House Natural Resources Committee on his plan to overhaul the MMS.
—Ben Casselman, Russell Gold and Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com ||||| Although one-sided, the account of procedural and equipment failures offers one road map for federal investigators as they try to determine who is ultimately responsible for the accident. As part of the investigation, they are also looking at the role of regulatory agencies.
Some of those who survived the explosion, including managers from BP and Transocean, are expected to testify at hearings in Louisiana to be held by the Coast Guard and the federal Minerals Management Service, beginning Wednesday.
The testimony may help clear up some of the uncertainties about the day of the accident, including who was making the decisions. But the new information from BP — combined with past testimony by executives, analysis of documents by The New York Times and interviews with independent drilling experts — is beginning to paint a picture of a complex operation that went awry just as it was drawing to a close.
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Drilling logs from the Deepwater Horizon suggest that shortly after midnight on the morning of the explosion, attention had turned to temporarily plugging and capping the well so the rig could disconnect and move to another job. Halliburton, the contractor hired by BP to provide cementing services, had spent the past several weeks cementing each new segment of the well into place. Halliburton was also responsible for plugging it.
BP and Congressional investigators have raised questions about the cementing, suggesting that the seal might have been faulty and failed to keep gas from rising up in the well. According to BP, the cement work took longer than normal, and there were concerns that the quality of the cement might have been compromised by contamination with mud.
However, in testimony before Congressional hearings, Halliburton executives have said that the company adhered strictly to the specifications provided by BP for the cementing of the well.
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BP’s investigation, the memorandum said, also indicated that there might have been problems with the blowout preventer — the stack of valves and rams on the seafloor designed to seal off the well in the event of an emergency — at least five hours before the explosion. A sharp fall in fluid levels in the riser pipe that connects the well to the rig suggested that one of the seals in the preventer was leaking.
The memo from the House committee, which is led by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, also shed more light on a series of important tests conducted that day to determine whether the cement was holding. Four hours before the explosion, an early pressure test was performed incorrectly and produced unacceptable results. The test was repeated and there was an “indicator of a very large abnormality,” BP’s investigator told the committee, adding that workers might have made a “fundamental mistake” in ignoring it. Shortly before 8 p.m., two hours before the explosion, workers were “satisfied” that the test was successful, according to BP’s investigation.
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The decision was then made to begin withdrawing the drilling mud, a cocktail of clay, water and minerals used to keep downward pressure on the powerful fountain of oil and gas trying to push its way up out of the tapped reservoir.
Philip W. Johnson, an engineering professor at the University of Alabama and a specialist in petroleum engineering, said in an e-mail message that with normal pressure test readings indicating a good seal on the casing and the temporary cement plug, it is not unusual to displace the mud with seawater before the cement job is finished to get a cleaner surface for the cement to adhere to. “But without a good pressure test, it would be reckless to displace,” he said.
Congressional investigators and news accounts have suggested that the decision to begin removing drilling mud was a subject of intense discussion — and perhaps even disagreement — among engineers working on the rig that day.
Executives from both Transocean and BP have said in testimony before Congress that they were unfamiliar with the details of that debate. But the hearings this week in Louisiana — which will include testimony from the top managers on the rig from BP and Transocean — may provide a clearer picture of the day’s deliberations.
In the final hour before the explosion, after the crew had begun withdrawing the mud, there were more signs that the well was going out of control, the memo said. They included a sharp increase in fluid coming from the well, even when the pumps were shut down — an indication, drilling experts say, of a “kick,” a surge in pressure from oil and gas deep down in the well. If not controlled, such a kick can lead to a full-scale blowout, and that is exactly what happened at roughly 9:49 p.m. | – The scope of the Gulf oil spill is far from clear, but the finger-pointing is already under way, and a lot of fingers ought to be aiming at Dick Cheney, Alex Pareene blogs for Salon. Connecting the dots that begin with a Wall Street Journal exposé, we learn that Cheney's highly classified energy task force was responsible for the fact "that the oil well didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch," Pareene writes, "a thing that it seems every single offshore drilling rig should have." "The former Dark Lord of the Naval Observatory" is no rookie at covering his tracks, but the follow-up argument is a no-brainer: "Halliburton is involved, too! The Los Angeles Times reports that BP contracted Dick Cheney's old company to cement the deepwater drill hole." In short, Pareene writes, "Thanks, Dick. Nice work." |
SEOUL The world watched anxiously on Wednesday as North Korea staged a huge funeral in the capital, Pyongyang, for former leader Kim Jong-il, searching for signs of what to expect from the isolated nation that may be close to attaining nuclear weapons capacity.
Bleak pictures from state television showed a funeral cortege led by a limousine carrying a huge picture of the 69-year-old, who died on December 17, passing serried ranks of olive green-clad soldiers whose bare heads were bowed in homage in the main square of the snow-covered capital.
A hearse carrying the coffin was led by a weeping Kim Jong-un, the son and heir, accompanied by Jang Song-thaek, his uncle and a key power-broker in the transition, and Ri Yong-ho, the army chief of staff.
"Seeing this white snow fall has made me think of the general's efforts and this brings tears to my eyes," Seo Ju-rim, a red-cheeked, weeping female soldier, told North Korean television, referring to the late Kim.
One of the myths surrounding Kim Jong-il was that he could control the weather and state media has reported unusually cold and wild weather accompanying his death.
Video showed weeping civilians who swayed with grief and shouted "father, father" as black Lincoln and Mercedes limousines and army trucks streamed past the crowds. It was not clear whether the pictures were live or recorded, although a state television announcer said it had been carried live.
"I wished it was a dream, how can this be true," sobbed one middle-aged woman named Kim. "How can anything like this ever happen in the world?"
At one stage, weeping women were held back by men who linked arms to prevent them surging towards the cortege. The procession ended after about three hours with 21 guns fired in salute as the top leadership looked on from a podium.
Kim Jong-un will become the third member of the family to run the unpredictable North Asian country as it enters 2012, the year that was supposed to mark its self-proclaimed transformation into a "strong and prosperous" nation.
The North has conducted two nuclear tests and Larry Niksch, who has tracked North Korea for the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service for 43 years, believes it could take as little as one to two years to have a working nuclear missile once it produced enough highly enriched uranium for the warhead's core fuel.
The prospect of an untested leader, believed to be in his late 20s, having nuclear capacity has alarmed many.
"Yes, we are watching and will be analyzing how any changes can be reflected in our policy," a South Korean government official said. He was not authorized to speak to the media, so could not be identified.
UNCLE JANG, POWER BEHIND THE THRONE
State television showed Jang Song-thaek walking directly behind Kim Jong-un alongside the limousine carrying the coffin. Jang ranked a lowly 19th in the list of names on the state funeral committee but his public elevation confirmed that he will play a key role in shaping policies.
An ascetic-looking, bespectacled 65-year-old, Jang has overcome a purge, bitter palace intrigue and personal tragedy to become vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, the supreme leadership council which Kim Jong-il led as head of the military state.
"Kim Jong-un is clearly the head of the new leadership but, in terms of hierarchy and influence, Jang appears to have secured considerable position," said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at Korea University in the South.
Strong it may be -- North Korea is backed by neighboring China and has a 1.2 million-strong armed forces -- but prosperous it is not.
On average, the 25 million North Koreans have a life expectancy 3-1/2 years lower than they did when "Eternal President" Kim Il-sung, the new leader's grandfather, died in 1994, according to U.N. data.
The United Nations, in a country program for 2011-15, says North Korea's main challenge is to "restore the economy to the level attained before 1990" and to alleviate food shortages for a third of its people.
Indications from the transition suggest Kim Jong-il's "military first" policy will continue, meaning the military gets the lion's share of scare resources and further hardship for the majority in a country that endured starvation in the 1990s.
Pyongyang's affirmation of the "songun" (military first) policy is a strong indicator that North Korea's policies won't change under Jong-un," said analyst Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.
"As such, speculation that the new leader will be more amenable to reform and to a less belligerent foreign policy since he studied in Switzerland in his youth, will prove short-lived," he said after the funeral.
Leverage from outside, with the exception of China, is limited. All the United States, South Korea and Japan can do is hope that the regime does not collapse, nor flex its military muscle as it did in 2010, when it shelled a South Korean island.
North Korea was established in 1948 and under its founding father, Kim Il-sung, went to war to try to conquer the South. It failed and in 1953 a dividing line that would become the world's most militarized frontier was drawn across the peninsula.
PROSPECTS OF A PURGE
While Kim Il-sung was revered by his people for fighting Japanese colonial rule, the halo over his successors has steadily dimmed to such an extent that his grandson, the new ruler, will have to rely on people such as his uncle, Jang, to hold on to power, at least in the short term.
Official media in the North have built Kim Jong-un, a jowly and rotund man in his late 20s, into a leader worthy of inheriting the crown, naming him "respected general", "great successor", "outstanding leader" and "supreme commander".
This year, dissident groups based in South Korea, citing North Korean refugees and businessmen working in China, linked the youngest Kim to a crackdown on business activities and a tougher policy on people seeking to flee from North Korea.
Those reports could not be verified independently, but would again suggest that under the new man, further repression is more likely than an economic opening.
It also gives little hope for the 200,000 North Koreans who human rights group Amnesty international says are enslaved in labor camps, subjected to torture and hunger or execution.
"There is likely to be a politically motivated purge and imprisonment, and it could go on for a considerable period of time," said Pak Sang-hak, who heads a group in Seoul working to support defectors, and is himself a defector.
"That is especially because of the relative instability of Kim Jong-un's leadership. There might also be persecution as a way of intimidation and discipline."
(Additional reporting by Christine Kim and Iktae Park in SEOUL and Jim Wolf and Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner, Robert Birsel and Eric Beech) ||||| Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service/Associated Press Senior North Korean officials visit the Kumsusan Memorial Palace to pay their respects to Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang on Tuesday.
The funeral of a head of state in any country is a major logistical operation. The send off for Kim Jong Il next Wednesday provides its own unique challenges for North Korea’s administrators, not least sorting out who’ll be on the guest list from the dysfunctional Kim family.
According to Korean tradition, the eldest son is supposed to take charge of his father’s funeral. That’s not going to happen this time around, and it’s highly unlikely first son Kim Jong Nam will even be there. Jong Nam has been in effective exile from North Korea for several years, having apparently ruined his dictatorship credentials for good by attempting to enter Japan in 2001 on a fake passport so that he could have some fun at Tokyo Disneyland.
Associated Press Kim Jong Nam
The pudgy Jong Nam now spends most of his time in the glitzy casino city of Macau and is more fond of Armani shirts and jeans than his father’s dictator-style Mao jumpsuits. It may even be dangerous for him to try to attend the funeral, with Kim Jong Eun reportedly having targeted him as a threat to his ascension to power. In recent media interviews, Jong Nam has disavowed any interest in politics.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any sign of Kim Han Sol, Jong Nam’s son, at the funeral. He was the subject of a media frenzy in October when he was tracked down at a private school in Bosnia. Journalists who searched his online activity found messages supportive of the North Korean regime and references to trips he has made to Pyongyang in recent years.
Kim Jong Il’s second son, Kim Jong Chul, will probably be at the funeral. He isn’t seen as a threat to Jong Eun and appears to shun the spotlight. He made headlines in February this year when he popped up in Singapore on a trip to see Eric Clapton play. Mr. Clapton isn’t currently touring so there’s no clash of events to worry about.
Kim Jong Il’s half-brother, Kim Pyong Il, North Korea’s permanent ambassador to Poland, may be in attendance. A media report Thursday said he had left Warsaw.
Officially, North Korea has said it won’t accept any foreign delegations at the funeral, but there are likely to be two from South Korea. The government in Seoul has said it will allow Lee Hee-ho, the wife of the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, to attend the funeral after the North sent representation to the funeral of her husband in 2009.
Associated Press Princess Tenko
Also going with Seoul’s approval is Hyun Jeong-eun, the chairwoman of Hyundai Group, which has extensive business interests in the North. A twist to her visit is that North Korea earlier this year seized Hyundai assets at the Kumgang mountain resort so she may be looking to discuss business while she’s there.
Another mourner expected to travel from overseas is the Japanese female magician known as Princess Tenko. Media in Japan report that she has received emails and phone calls from Pyongyang inviting her to attend. Ms. Tenko has performed twice in Pyongyang at the invitation of Kim Jong Il and has enjoyed other invitations for dinner with the late Mr. Kim, according to the Yomirui Shimbun. ||||| As North Korea prepares for the funeral of Kim Jong-il, speculation over the guest list has reached Shakespearean levels of intrigue.
The few non-Koreans attending the funeral could include a Japanese celebrity magician. Tenko Hikita performed in Pyongyang at Kim Jong-il's invitation in 1998 and 2000, and is said to have had several private dinners with him.
The magician, known in Japan as Princess Tenko, has received phone calls and emails from one of Kim's relatives inviting her to the funeral, reports said, adding that she had yet to decide whether to accept.
One notable absence from the guest list is Kim Jong-nam, the deceased leader's eldest son who, according to Confucian tradition, could at one time have expected to take over from his father.
But the 40-year-old ruled himself out of succession plans when he was caught attempting to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. His detention, and immediate deportation, proved a huge embarrassment for the North Korean authorities.
Jong-nam failed where the leader-in-waiting, his youngest brother Kim Jong-un, had apparently succeeded. Jong-un made a visit to Tokyo Disneyland in 1991, when he was aged about eight, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. Accompanied by his elder brother, Jong-chul, he entered Japan on a fake Brazilian passport and stayed for 11 days. He had left by the time Japanese security agents began tracking his whereabouts, the newspaper said.
Jong-nam now lives in de facto exile in Macao, where he is said to be a regular visitor to the Chinese territory's casinos. He has not been seen in public since his father died, and his name is not on the list of 232 prominent North Koreans organising the state funeral.
Experts said Jong-nam would do well to stay away from the funeral in case his presence was interpreted as an attempt to undermine his youngest brother. "If I were Kim Jong-nam, I wouldn't come to the father's funeral; to Kim Jong-un, he is more a political enemy than a half-brother," Choi Jin-wook at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul told the New York Times.
Even if the middle brother, Kim Jong-chul, attends the funeral, he is not expected to appear in TV coverage. "This is a precarious time for his siblings," Choi said. "They must lie low. At a critical time like this, there are people too eager to prove their loyalty to the new 'king' by removing anyone seen as threatening."
According to the state media, the government has not invited any foreign dignitaries, but has encouraged South Koreans to pay their respects at the ceremony in Pyongyang next Wednesday.
The government in Seoul does not plan to send a delegation and has imposed a travel ban on ordinary citizens, but has authorised a select group of people to attend.
Among them is Lee Hee-ho, the wife of the former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung whose "sunshine policy" of engagement in the late 1990s has given way to frostier ties under the current president, Lee Myung-bak. The South says it will allow her to attend, given that the North sent representatives to her husband's funeral in 2009.
Accompanying her from Seoul will be Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of the Hyundai group, a major investor in the North. Some expect her to use the opportunity to discuss North Korea's seizure of Hyundai assets at Mount Kumgang, a North-South operated resort, earlier this year.
North Korea's government website, Uriminzokkiri, warned of "grave consequences" if the South turns down requests from citizens who wish to attend the funeral. "We are watching the attitude of the South Korean government," it said.
In Pyongyang, where mourning will continue until December 29, thousands of people continued to view Kim's body or bow before portraits erected throughout the city.
Mourning stations are reported to have opened in locations across the country. "Our sorrow at the loss of our leader is tremendous," Sok Kil-nam, a steel±worker in the city of Nampho, told Associated Press. "As long as we have our great comrade Kim Jong-un, the cause of the respected Kim Jong-il will go on, so we will continue working."
Tokyo Disneyland is not Kim Jong-un's only connection with Japan. His mother, Ko Young-hee, was born into an ethnic Korean family in the western port city of Osaka in 1953.
Ko, a professional dancer who became one of Kim Jong-il's consorts in the 1970s, went to live in North Korea in the 1960s under a repatriation programme organised by the country's ruling Workers' party. She died, reportedly from breast cancer, in 2004.
Japan is home to 600,000 ethnic Koreans – mostly the descendants of people forced to work in Japan during the war – about 150,000 of whom have ties to the North.
Japanese media reported on Friday that the government had warned several leading members of the general association of Korean residents in Japan – North Korea's de facto embassy – that they would not be permitted to re-enter after attending Kim's funeral.
The travel ban is part of a series of sanctions imposed after the North conducted missile and nuclear weapons tests in 2006.
The last Japanese prime minister to promote engagement with the North, Junichiro Koizumi, visited the association's Tokyo headquarters on Thursday to pay his respects to Kim Jong-il. Koizumi secured the release of five Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents during the cold war, following talks with Kim in Pyongyang in 2002.
Japan, the US and members of the European Union on Thursday boycotted a moment's silence for Kim held at the UN general assembly in New York. | – It's Korean tradition to mourn a parent's death for three years, and today North Korea reached a similar milestone marking the passing of Kim Jong Il in 2011, the Los Angeles Times reports. The country completed its mourning period with three minutes of silence—though it was also noted with the honking of car, ship, and train horns, the Telegraph reports. Meanwhile, residents placed flowers under statues of the former leader and his father, Kim Il Sung. "The end of the three-year mourning period can be used as a chance for Kim Jong Un to change the (governing) system and more thoroughly consolidate his power," says an expert in South Korea. Recent days have seen stories in state media celebrating the younger Kim's achievements thus far. As a leader, he has behaved more like his grandfather than his father, the Times notes: He's often seen in public with his wife, marking a contrast to his father's reclusive nature. It's even possible that he could travel abroad for the first time since becoming leader. He was recently invited to Russia for a celebration of the defeat of the Nazis next year, insiders tell Japan's Asahi Shimbun. Kim, however, would seemingly rather visit at a time when no other foreign leaders were in Moscow, the paper notes. |
A man was killed by a carnival ride at Naperville’s annual Ribfest in Knoch Park Thursday. NBC Chicago's Lauren Jiggetts reports. (Published Thursday, July 2, 2015)
A man died Thursday at Naperville’s annual Ribfest after deliberately diving under a moving carnival ride, authorities say.
Two festival-goers told NBC Chicago they saw the man throw himself under Pharaoh’s Fury, a large popular boat-shaped ride that was swings back and forth.
Naperville Police say the man was in his early 20s and had attended the festival by himself.
The ride was moving with approximately 25 people on board at the time. Witnesses said it looked as if he did it on purpose. The man was said to be struck while the boat swung back and forth multiple times before the operator could halt it.
Both witnesses said those in the area could see the man's body lying facedown after he was killed and the ride stopped, calling the scene "gruesome."
The incident happened less than three hours after the gates in Knoch Park opened at noon. Emergency crews and the DuPage County coroner's office were immediately called to the scene.
“I just saw everybody running over to the ride,” recalled festival attendee Rhonda Sandifer.
As of 6 p.m. a few rides were still closed, but the family event remained open.
His death was an intentional act, according to police, and there was no foul play or ride malfunction reported. ||||| Officials investigating death at Naperville's Ribfest
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Naperville Police are investigating an apparent suicide that happened at Naperville's Ribfest celebration Thursday afternoon.
Ride operators and witnesses, including Paige Shipley of Naperville, said they saw someone dive under the moving Pharaoh's Fury, a boat-shaped ride.
Shipley said the man was struck three times as the ride swung back and forth before the operator was able to stop it. People on the ride said they heard a thumping sound.
The DuPage County coroner's office was called to the scene in Knoch Park near downtown, where the man was found about 3 p.m. unresponsive and not breathing, Naperville police Sgt. Bill Davis said.
Naperville Deputy Chief Brian Cunningham said the ride was functioning properly at the time.
"It was not a ride malfunction and it doesn't look like it was accidental," Cunningham said. "It's a sad situation."
Part of the carnival, located at the south end of the festival grounds south of Martin Avenue, was closed. But Don Emery, Ribfest marketing chairman, said nearly all of the carnival rides continued to operate and the area was "essentially open."
Cunningham said police are continuing to investigate.
Doug T. Graham contributed to this report | – Horror at Ribfest: A man was killed by a carnival ride at the Naperville, Ill., festival yesterday and police say it looks like suicide, the Daily Herald reports. Witnesses tell NBC they saw the man in his 20s jump in front of the Pharaoh's Fury—a boat-shaped ride that had around 25 people on board—and he was hit several times as it swung back and forth, leaving a "gruesome" scene. "It was not a ride malfunction and it doesn't look like it was accidental," a police spokesman tells the Herald. "It's a sad situation." Officials say most of the carnival, and the rest of Ribfest, remained open as normal. (A bullet train passenger in Japan picked a horrific suicide method earlier this week.) |
JUNEAU, Alaska A man with a soft white beard who prides himself on being an advocate for young children has been elected as a city councilman in North Pole, Alaska.
The rosy-cheeked 68-year-old candidate, who happens to be named Santa Claus, won a three-year term in the community of about 2,200 residents southeast of Fairbanks, according to election results released on Tuesday.
"My thanks to everyone who voted for me ... and all who supported my campaign," Claus wrote on Facebook. "I'll do my best for all!"
Claus, who legally changed his name from Thomas Patrick O'Connor about a decade ago while living in Nevada, said he has been an advocate for legislation and services that benefit at-risk children.
He could be seen in recent days wearing his trademark red velvet outfit and holding a campaign sign in North Pole, the namesake of the home of the legendary Christmas gift-giver.
Claus was one of two write-in candidates for two vacant seats in the Oct. 6 election. He will take office on Oct. 26, North Pole City Clerk Kathy Weber said.
In an interview with Reuters, Claus said that calling state lawmakers and saying: "This is Santa Claus from North Pole," either got their attention or a quick, though temporary, rejection. "It's been a valuable tool for developing legislation to protect children."
(Reporting by Steve Quinn in Juneau; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Peter Cooney) ||||| Fox News
Earlier this week, I argued that our image of Santa Claus should no longer be a white man, but, instead, a penguin. I hoped the piece would come across as a little tongue-in-cheek, while at the same time expressing my real concern that America continues to promote the harmful idea of whiteness-as-default. Over the past couple of days, I’ve received a lot of responses. Some of them were positive—mostly because, as I said in the piece, people love penguins.
Aisha Harris Aisha Harris is a Slate culture writer and host of the Slate podcast Represent.
But many responses have (unsurprisingly) been negative. I’ve been labeled a “racist” more times than I can count, and more than one person has wondered whether or not I think snow should no longer be white. Some of it’s pretty amusing, actually.
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But the “controversy” reached its apex last night when Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, along with three (white) guests discussed the topic on her show, The Kelly File. Just before diving in, Kelly made sure to emphatically declare, “For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.” It doesn’t get much better from there:
Since Fox didn’t bother reaching out to me personally to debate the issue at hand, I’ll offer up my own response here. Kids, look away …
Santa isn’t real.
Sure, as Kelly File guest Monica Crowley notes, Santa is loosely based on Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century Greek bishop known for secret gift-giving. But while the names “St. Nicholas” and “Santa Claus” are often used interchangeably, modern-day Santa hardly resembles his supposed inspiration, who was depicted as tall and thin and, you know, Greek. He did not have a workshop in the North Pole nor eight faithful reindeer. Santa as we know him today is the result of wild imaginations and creative input from many people across centuries, including, as I noted in my piece, Washington Irving and Clement Clark Moore. He’s utterly divorced from his religious and historical roots.
And yet Kelly and her guests not only say repeatedly that Santa is real and definitely white, they also equate him with Jesus, who, historians generally agree, was a Jewish man who grew up in Galilee. Was he white? Probably not. But the truest answer is that we really don’t know. Also, whiteness is a historical construct. And, again, Santa isn’t real.
“You can’t take facts and then try to change them to fit some sort of a political agenda or sensitivity agenda,” Crowley says at one point. But what she and Kelly fail to realize is that changing “facts” when it comes to Santa is nothing new. And other countries have all sorts of Christmas gift-givers, including the yule goat of Scandinavia and the Three Kings (one each, traditionally, from Europe, Asia, and Africa) in Spain.
Finally, changing Santa does not mean we’re being “politically correct.” It means we’re expanding our perceptions of the “norm.” The argument that Santa must be white spills over into conversations about other, equally fictional characters. Can James Bond or Spider-Man be played by people of color? Why not? And yet some people will tell you—believe me—that they have to be white. Of course, some people also believe that characters who were written as people of color are not actually people of color. Which goes to show how deeply rooted the idea of “whiteness” as the default really is. And that presumption carries over into our everyday lives as well, sometimes with sad results. | – Santa Claus has been chosen to represent the people of North Pole. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that a man whose legal name is Santa Claus won a write-in campaign for an open City Council seat in the 2,200-person Alaska town. He began campaigning in his red velvet suit just two weeks before the election, in which he received 58 votes and a seat on the six-person council. No official candidates had filed for the two open council positions. Claus—who was living in Nevada when he changed his name from Thomas O'Connor a decade ago—tells Reuters that he's an advocate for programs that help at-risk children and that state lawmakers tend to pay attention when they get a call from "Santa Claus from North Pole." |
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A problem with one of the International Space Station's cooling systems may require a repair spacewalk, NASA told NBC News on Wednesday.
The situation doesn't represent a life-threatening emergency, but it has required a cutback in normal operations on the orbiting outpost, NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said.
"The crew was never in any danger," he said. "They're fine for the near future."
The problem is one of the "Big 14" maintenance issues that NASA and its partners expect to face on an occasional basis during space station operations. "This is the kind of thing that they expected to happen, at about the expected rate," NBC News space analyst James Oberg said.
Shutdown mode
One of the station's two external cooling loops, known as Loop-A, shut down when it reached a pre-set temperature limit on Wednesday, Byerly told NBC News. That forced NASA to reroute coolant into Loop-B. As a result, the station's six-person crew had to prioritize life support systems, electrical systems and science experiments — including the freezers that preserve scientific samples. Some non-critical systems were turned off in NASA's Harmony node, Japan's Kibo lab and Europe's Columbus lab.
The crew "worked to keep the freezers going, " Byerly said.
Engineers think the problem was caused by a malfunctioning flow control valve for the station's ammonia coolant. Mission managers are trying to determine whether a software fix can get the valve working again, or whether a spacewalk will be required. Sorting through all the issues might take a couple of days, or as much as a couple of weeks.
Routine maintenance
It generally takes two weeks to plan for a "Big 14" repair operation, but that depends on the resources at hand and the urgency of the problem. In May, NASA astronauts mounted a spacewalk to replace a leaky coolant pump control box after just two days of planning. Spacewalkers also dealt with coolant system maintenance issues in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2007.
U.S. spacewalks were temporarily suspended after Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's spacesuit filled with water during a July outing, but Russian spacewalks have proceeded without problems. And since July, NASA has made significant progress on resolving the spacesuit problem that Parmitano faced.
"We are cleared for a contingency spacewalk if we need to do one," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told NBC News.
Two Americans, three Russians and a Japanese astronaut are living on the space station, which has been continuously occupied since 2000 by spacefliers who spend tours of duty generally lasting four to six months. The current plan calls for the space station to be maintained through 2020, although the United States and the 14 other countries supporting the $100 billion-plus station project are already considering extending its operating life.
More about the space station:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding +Alan Boyle to your Google+ circles. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. ||||| A problem with the International Space Station's cooling system will require a series of spacewalks to fix, pushing the planned Thursday (Dec. 19) launch of a private cargo spacecraft into next month.
NASA has decided that three spacewalks — one each on Dec. 21, Dec. 23 and Dec. 25 — will be necessary to replace a faulty pump module on the orbiting lab. The holiday spacewalks will postpone the first contracted cargo mission of aerospace firm Orbital Sciences' unmanned Cygnus spacecraft until mid-January at the earliest, NASA officials announced today (Dec. 17).
Each of the three spacewalks is scheduled to begin at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT) and last 6 1/2 hours. You can watch coverage of the extravehicular activities here on SPACE.com beginning each day at 6:15 a.m. EST, courtesy of NASA TV. [How the Space Station's Cooling System Works (Infographic)]
"NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins will remove a pump module that has a failed valve. They will replace it with an existing spare that is stored on an external stowage platform," NASA officials wrote in a press release today. "The pump is associated with one of the station's two external cooling loops, which circulate ammonia outside the station to keep both internal and external equipment cool."
The valve malfunctioned on Dec. 11, requiring the shutdown of some of the space station's support systems. The issue — which NASA officials say does not endanger the lives of the six astronauts aboard the orbiting lab — initially pushed back the planned Cygnus launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia by 24 hours, to Thursday evening.
Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft is attached to its Antares rocket on Dec. 10, 2013 for a planned Dec. 19 launch to deliver cargo for the International Space Station. Credit: Orbital Sciences
But that delay now may be a month or more.
"The Antares rocket that is currently on the launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, will be returned to a horizontal position and transported back to the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF)," Orbital Sciences officials wrote in a press release today.
"At the HIF, the Antares payload fairing will be removed to allow the Cygnus team to open the payload module hatch and remove time-critical payloads for safekeeping until the next launch attempt, which will occur no earlier than January 13, 2014," they added.
Virginia-based Orbital Sciences holds a $1.9 billion NASA contract to make eight supply runs to the space station using Cygnus and Antares. Cygnus has visited the orbiting lab once, on a successful demonstration mission that blasted off in September.
Another company, California-based SpaceX, signed a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to make 12 cargo flights to the station using its robotic Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has completed two of these contracted supply runs already, and the third one is slated to lift off early next year.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com. | – Before they can tuck into their freeze-dried turkey dinners, two American astronauts are going to have to venture out on a spacewalk to fix a faulty pump that has shut down part of the International Space Station's cooling system. The Christmas Day spacewalk is one of three that NASA has scheduled over the next week to carry out the repairs, which have delayed the launch of a private cargo spacecraft, Space.com reports. The problem started last week, when the fault forced the station to close down one of its two ammonia cooling systems, reports Voice of America. The six-member station crew—the two Americans plus three Russians and a Japanese astronaut—is not in any danger; the shutdown has halted a lot of research and if a problem arises with the second cooling system before the first one is fixed, the crew could be forced to return to Earth early. |
The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland, and contended he has long confronted abuse cases with courage.
In separate interviews, both the Holy See's spokesman and its prosecutor for sex abuse of minors by clergy sought to defend the pope.
After decades of similar scandals in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere, the sex abuse scandal moved closer to Benedict in recent days.
After accusations of abuse connected to the Regensburg boys choir directed by the pope's elder brother for some 30 years, the Munich archdiocese acknowledged Friday that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there.
Criticism has also mounted over a 2001 church directive Benedict wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential.
"It's rather clear that in the last days, there have been those who have tried, with a certain aggressive persistence, in Regensburg and Munich, to look for elements to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
"For any objective observer, it's clear that these efforts have failed," Lombardi said, reiterating his statement a day earlier noting the Munich diocese has insisted that Benedict wasn't involved in the decision, while archbishop there, to transfer the suspected child abuser.
Lombardi cited an interview with the Italian bishops conference daily Avvenire Saturday, in which the Vatican's prosecutor for sex abuse cases, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, contended that the future pope dealt firmly with the abuse.
"To accuse the current pope of hiding (cases) is false and defamatory," Scicluna said.
As Vatican cardinal in charge of the policy on sex abuse, the future pope, "showed wisdom and firmness in handling these cases," said Scicluna, a Maltese prelate in an interview entitled "The Church is tough on pedophilia."
The Archdiocese of Munich and Freising announced late Friday it was setting up a new task force to focus on raising awareness about an preventing sexual abuse within the church and its institutions.
"There is no 100 percent protection against sexual abuse, because we can never rule out the failure or misdoing of individuals, but we want to apply ourselves 100 percent to prevent it from happening again," said the General Vicar of the archdiocese, Prelate Peter Beer.
The new task force will also collaborate with the workgroup tasked with working through allegations of past abuse. Beer said that group would be expanded to include an external, independent legal office. The archdiocese, where Pope Benedict XVI served as Archbishop from 1977 to 1982, set up the workgroup last month after allegations of abuse in a church-run school surfaced.
Thomas Mayer told Germany's Der Spiegel weekly that he had been sexually and physically abused while singing in the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir through 1992.
Mayer's abuse allegations, published Saturday, are the first that overlap with the tenure of the pontiff's brother Georg Ratzinger, who led group from 1964 to 1994. Previously reported cases of sexual abuse dates back to the late 1950s.
Mayer charged in Spiegel that he had been raped by older pupils. Spiegel quoted him as saying that pupils were forced to have anal sex with one another in the apartment of a prefect at the church-run boarding school attached to the choir. The Regensburg diocese has refused to comment on the report. ||||| VATICAN CITY — A top Vatican official issued a detailed defense of Pope Benedict XVI ’s handling of sexual abuse cases and extensively criticized The New York Times’s coverage, both in its news and editorial pages, as unfair to the pope and the church.
In a rare interview and a 2,400-word statement posted Wednesday on the Vatican Web site, the official, Cardinal William J. Levada, an American who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, praised Pope Benedict for vigorously investigating and prosecuting sexual abuse cases. He said The Times’s coverage had been “deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness.”
Cardinal Levada singled out several Times reporters and columnists for criticism, focusing particularly on an article describing failed efforts by Wisconsin church officials to persuade the Vatican to defrock a priest who had abused as many as 200 deaf boys from 1950 to 1974. The pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office when the case was referred there, in 1996.
He said the article wrongly “attributed the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of diocesan decisions at the time.” On Wednesday, the archbishop of Milwaukee said the pope should not be held responsible for mistakes that were made in Wisconsin, according to The Associated Press.
The Times article drew on documents obtained from lawyers suing the church that showed that Vatican officials had at first ordered a secret canonical trial, then asked the archdiocese to suspend it after the priest pleaded for leniency to Cardinal Ratzinger. Wisconsin church officials protested the suspension, but followed it. The priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, died a few months later.
News coverage of the abuse has clearly touched a nerve in the Vatican. As the church grapples with abuse cases that have come to light in several European countries, Benedict has come under scrutiny for how he and his subordinates handled sexual abuse allegations against priests while he served as an archbishop in Germany as well as when he was the Vatican’s top doctrinal enforcer.
In 1980, when the pope was archbishop of Munich and Freising, he approved the transfer of a priest who had abused boys to therapy and was copied in on a memo saying that the priest had been allowed to resume pastoral duties shortly after his therapy began. The priest was later convicted of molesting other boys.
“This is different, because it’s the pope and because it’s a pope who is most self evidently beyond accusation, particularly in this area,” said a senior Vatican official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.
Cardinal Levada said he believed that “the evidence is clear” that Father Murphy represented an “egregious case” and deserved to be defrocked.
But he also said he was not second-guessing the decision to suspend the trial. He said a canonical trial would be “useless if the priest were dying.” “Have you ever been to a trial? Do you know how long they take?” he said. “If the man had had a miraculous recovery and doctors said he’d live another 10 years, I’m sure a letter would say fine, ‘Start the trial.’ ”
Sitting in a receiving room at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with a view of Saint Peter’s out the window and an oil portrait of Cardinal Ratzinger on the wall, Cardinal Levada expressed pain at the case of Father Murphy.
“I think the evidence is clear from the documents that he was a serial abuser of children, helpless children often times, he had no respect for the sacrament of confession, even using that to accomplish his abuse,” he said. “It’s one of the saddest and the most egregious cases I’ve seen.”
At that point a canon lawyer who sat in on the interview but declined to speak on the record intervened about the nuances of the unfinished trial, effectively deflecting questions about why it had been suspended.
Cardinal Levada said that although Father Murphy never faced judgment in a criminal or canonical court, the priest had not evaded it altogether.
“As a believer,” he wrote in his statement, “I have no doubt that Murphy will face the One who judges both the living and the dead.”
Cardinal Levada said Benedict had played a “very significant role” as the “architect” of the Vatican’s 2001 norms that sent sexual abuse cases directly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and streamlined procedures for bishops to report sexual abuse cases. Those norms ushered in a flood of abuse trials, many of which are still unresolved.
Daniel J. Wakin contributed reporting. | – A day after high-level Catholic officials admitted that "serious mistakes" were made in handling a sex abuse case in the German diocese where Pope Benedict XVI was then archbishop, the Vatican came out swinging in defense of the embattled pontiff. Benedict, as the Vatican's cardinal in charge of sex-abuse policy, "showed wisdom and firmness in handling these cases," a spokesman tells the AP. Some "have tried to personally involve the Holy Father in the matter of abuses," said a Vatican spokesman. "For any objective observer, it's clear that these efforts have failed." But the New York Times notes that a storm is swirling: “The cases are growing every day,” says one German lawyer. And the outcome jeopardizes “Benedict’s central project for the ‘re-Christianization’ of Christendom,” says one biographer. “But if the root itself is seen as rotten, then his influence will be badly compromised.” |
UPDATE: Wahlberg has apologized for his 9/11 comment, releasing a statement that says: "To speculate about such a situation is ridiculous to begin with, and to suggest I would have done anything differently than the passengers on that plane was irresponsible. I deeply apologize to the families of the victims that my answer came off as insensitive, it was certainly not my intention."
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PREVIOUSLY: Mark Wahlberg is one of today's biggest action movie stars, but as he sees it, his heroism doesn't end at a film's credits. Instead, he fancies himself a real badass off screen, too.
In a new interview with Men's Journal, Wahlberg says that world history would have been different had he not made a fortuitous decision to fly to Toronto a week early and thus avoid boarding one of the planes out of Boston that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th.
"If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did," he tells the magazine. "There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.'"
Wahlberg has spoken before of the near-miss, and the action he would have taken had he been on the flight.
"We certainly would have tried to do something to fight," he said in 2006. "I've had probably over 50 dreams about it."
To his credit, Wahlberg is in impeccable shape. Part of what makes him stand out as an action star is his willingness to put himself on the line for a scene.
"[In 'Contraband'] I did all the stunts and then in 'The Fighter' obviously we did all the fighting and we fought and we made it real," he recently told GQ. "If it's necessary then we'll do it."
It worked out; "Contraband" won the box office with a $28.5 million take this past weekend.
Still, Wahlberg has a soft side. He recalls that he cried "about six or seven times" during "The Help," and, walked out of "Straw Dogs" because he did not like the rape scene.
Now a religious man, has markedly changed his sex life -- at least when it comes to his own personal intimacy.
"I don't get down with jerking off, dude. Look. I don't believe in everything that the church says. I try to do the right thing. I lead a clean and pure life. I'm a married guy. I have a beautiful wife. Sex is not the most important thing to me, being horny all the time, spanking the -- I mean, it's not against the law. You can do whatever you want. And it's not like, 'I shouldn't do it because of my faith. I'm just not really that into it that much anyway."
For more from Wahlberg, click over to Men's Journal. ||||| Widow of Flight 93 Hero: Wahlberg's 9/11 Comments Were VERY Disrespectful
Widow of Flight 93 Hero -- Wahlberg's 9/11 Comments Were ABSOLUTELY Disrespectful
's claim that he would've been able to single-handedly over-power theterrorists and prevent a plane from crashing is completely "disrespectful" ... so says the widow of one of the REAL heroic victims who RUSHED THE COCKPIT on that fateful day.TMZ spoke with-- whose husbandphoned her from that fateful flight saying, "I know we're going to die. There's three of us who are going to do something about it."Burnett-Bailey tells us, "Does Mark Wahlberg have a pilot's license? Then I think hindsight is 20/20 and it's insignificant to say what you would have done if you weren't there. "She adds, "The plan for Flight 93 was foiled by heroes. For him to speculate that his presence on board could have stopped everything is silly and disrespectful. Sounds like someone is grandstanding."We called Wahlberg for comment -- so far, no word back. ||||| NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Shane McMahon, the son of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Vince McMahon, was one of two people rescued Wednesday when their small helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in the water about half a mile off Gilgo Beach in Babylon.
The Robinson R44II-type helicopter, which is registered to a company in White Plains, was en route to Westhampton when it went down around 10:30 a.m. after taking off from Westchester County Airport.
The chopper issued a Mayday call prior to going down. A commercial flight headed to John F. Kennedy Airport heard the call and relayed it to controllers.
“Everything happened so quickly, you don’t have much time to react,” McMahon told 1010 WINS’ Al Jones. “It was very unnerving.”
McMahon said he heard a bang and then his pilot told him they were going to land in the water.
As CBS2’s Emily Smith reported, as the helicopter lost power, they inflated the pontoons and made a hard landing on the ocean.
“It is very unsettling when all of a sudden you have something happen. You hear a bang and saying you are going to do an emergency landing in the water, so yes very unnerving,” he said.
As CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan reported, McMahon congratulated the pilot he had hired to chopper him from Manhattan to Westhampton — for skill and calm under duress, calling a mayday above ocean waters off Gilgo beach as they lost power, before banking down into a hard landing.
“[He] was super calm, which made me super calm and we landed perfectly,” McMahon said.
The fortunate outcome was unexpected.
“We heard some noise, and it became very clear to me that I could no longer continue to fly the helicopter, so I decided to make an auto-rotational landing on the water,” Mario Regtien said.
The helicopter went down about 2,000 feet from a lifeguard stand, where two lifeguards jumped into kayaks to help before the U.S. Coast Guard arrived.
“We ran up and got kayaks and we paddled out, a short trip out there. Those guys actually handled it really well, the two gentlemen in the helicopter, actually really calm and collected,” lifeguard Zach Viverito told CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan. “We put them on the kayaks and just swam along with them until the Coast Guard met us about halfway in.”
“We were just getting to work and we saw a helicopter go down pretty hard, saw a big splash,” lifeguard Don Dobbi said. “We ran up and grabbed the kayaks and paddled out to see what was going on, we knew it was out of the ordinary.”
I'd like to thank the man upstairs for looking out this morning & thanks to pilot Mario, Suffolk Co. Marine Bureau & Fire Island Coast Guard — Shane McMahon (@shanemcmahon) July 19, 2017
McMahon gave a “big kudos” to the lifeguards.
“Everybody chipped in, it was great,” he said.
The helicopter could be seen floating on pontoons on the water following the emergency landing. Suffolk County police said the two men were wearing life jackets and were uninjured. They were then picked up and brought to shore by a police department Marine Bureau vessel.
When asked if they were the heroes of the day, Viverito said, “I don’t know about that.”
“That is what we are here for,” he said. “So just kind of training, get on the equipment and go right out there.”
The Coast Guard responded to remove the aircraft, police said.
Great Job by NYPD Aviation & SCUBA with assisting in the rescue of two people from a Helicopter accident in v/o Tobay Beach in Nassau County pic.twitter.com/nREf3mWz7p — NYPD Special Ops (@NYPDSpecialops) July 19, 2017
The NYPD also assisted in the rescue. | – Men's Journal has a profile of Mark Wahlberg in its February issue, and one quote in particular is generating some buzz: He says that if he were on one of the 9/11 planes that hit the World Trade Center, things would have been different: "If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.'" TMZ ran the quote by the widow of Flight 93 victim Thomas Burnett, who isn't happy about what she sees as "grandstanding": "I think hindsight is 20/20 and it's insignificant to say what you would have done if you weren't there," says Deena Burnett-Bailey. (For the record, Wahlberg apparently wasn't talking about the Pennsylvania flight, but one of the two out of Boston that hit the WTC. He's given the matter a lot of thought because he had been scheduled to fly from Boston to LA that week but changed his plans late, notes the Huffington Post.) Update: Wahlberg offered a mea culpa via TMZ for his "irresponsible" comments: "I deeply apologize to the families of the victims that my answer came off as insensitive," he said. "It was certainly not my intention." |
Mel Gibson has a new musical girlfriend.
Fairly fresh off of perhaps one of the most disturbing break-ups in celebrity history with the mther of his youngest daughter, Russian pianist Okasana Grigorieva, Gibson has been spotted squiring aspiring Italian singer-songwriter Nadia Lanfranconi about town.
Gibson, 56, has denied to the two are an item, but The Post reports the "Mad Max" star was spotted over the weekend seriously massaging her shoulders at a West Hollywood restaurant.
In addition to her musical pursuits, the attractive Lafranconi also models for magazines and the denim brand "F Me."
She also appeared on a 2008 cover of the magazine D.A.M. (we never heard of it either), and according to her MySpace page, plays regular gigs at various smaller venues.
Maybe Mel met he while sipping a decaf latte at his local Bohemian coffee house? (Advice to Lafranconi: keep Mel on the decaf.)
One other tidbit: Lanfranconi's website says she has an album coming out soon called "Bad Story."
Let's hope her new life does not imitate her art. ||||| Mel Gibson has new girlfriend, Greek-born gothic model Stella Mouzi
Weiss/Getty Mel Gibson has a new girlfriend, a gothic model named Stella Mouzi.
Mel Gibson has gone to the dark side.
The actor has debuted a new girlfriend: gothic model Stella Mouzi.
A Greek citizen, the pale, raven-haired beauty appears in a black corset and ruby lips in one modeling photograph and recently got frisky with a fellow model on the red carpet at the 2011 L.A. Fetish Film Awards.
Gibson, 55, and Mouzi have been spotted out on dates over L.A. the past month, including last week at Sky Bar on the Sunset Strip, reports TMZ.
Mouzi, who also attended a barbeque at Gibson's home recently, is in the U.S. on a visitor's visa, but wants to remain in the country longer, presumably to spend more quality time with her new flame.
Gibson must have a thing for foreign-born women.
His last girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, is from Russia. Last year, the musician alleged that Gibson, the father of her daughter Lucia, was abusive -- a claim that was bolstered by leaked audio tapes of him threatening her.
"It was one terribly, awful moment in time, said to one person, in the span of one day and doesn't represent what I truly believe or how I've treated people my entire life," Gibson later explained.
Model Stella Mouzi and Mel Gibson have been dating for about a month. | – Mel Gibson has been spotted around Hollywood with a young, attractive aspiring musician who's not from around here—no, not Oksana Grigorieva. New galpal Nadia Lanfranconi does resemble Oksana, though, the New York Post notes, but she's from Italy, not Russia. Gibson denies the two are romantically involved, but he was seen giving her a shoulder massage at a restaurant over the weekend. TMZ notes that Lanfranconi, who moved to the US in 2007, did a modeling campaign for "F Me" jeans last year. (The classily-named pants feature an extremely low waistline.) Fox News adds that Lanfranconi also models in magazines, plays small musical gigs, and is releasing an album. |
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (NWSA) is taking steps to start a national U.S. sports network on cable television aimed at challenging Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s ESPN, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
News Corp. is assembling the required rights from pay-TV carriers and sports organizations, said the people, who requested anonymity because talks are private. While a final decision to move forward hasn’t been made, the company is considering converting its Fuel action-sports network to the new channel, two of the people said.
With a national network, Fox would join Comcast Corp. (CMCSA)’s NBC Sports Network and CBS Corp. (CBS)’s CBS Sports Network in taking on the dominant ESPN. News Corp. last year secured rights to the Pac-12 Conference and Big-12 Conference games and owns 20 regional sports networks. The company in October won TV rights to soccer’s World Cup in 2018 and 2022.
“The success of all these networks will depend on the quality of their sports rights,” David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, said in an interview. “There’s been a lot of competition for those rights and that’s driven up costs.”
ESPN is well-positioned to withstand competition because of its rights for Monday Night Football and national baseball and basketball games, Joyce said.
A national sports channel can capture higher affiliate fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV, according to research firm SNL Kagan. ESPN will command $5.06 per subscriber per month this year, the most of any cable channel, SNL Kagan estimates.
Dodgers Sale
That would help pay for sports rights that are growing ever more expensive. Fox, for example, holds rights to broadcast Los Angeles Dodgers games through next year, and exclusive negotiating rights to renew through late this year. The price is likely to go up with the team’s planned sale, for a record $2 billion, to a group led by basketball hall of fame player Magic Johnson and Guggenheim Partners Chief Executive Officer Mark Walter.
Fuel, a 24-hour action-sports network that carries mixed- martial arts fights, is available in 36 million U.S. homes, according to Fox.
In addition to Fox Sports Net regional channels and Fuel, News Corp. owns motor-sport network Speed, available in 78 million homes, the Fox Soccer Channel, the Big Ten Network, a partnership with the college sports conference, and Fox College Sports, consisting of Pacific, Central and Atlantic regional networks. News Corp. also shows games on broadcast television through Fox Sports.
Leverage the Channel
To compete with ESPN and NBC Sports, Fox will need to make an attractive offer to sports organizations and teams, said Neal Pilson, president of Pilson Communications and former head of CBS Sports.
“The way you do that is you give a new sports property exposure on the Fox broadcast network and then you put other games on the new channel,” Pilson said. “You leverage the broadcast channel to get product on the cable channel.”
The new channel could begin service by the end of this year, one person said. The effort is being led by David Hill, the chairman of Fox Sports, one person said.
News Corp., based in New York, has clearance from some carriers, including DirecTV, the biggest U.S. satellite television provider, two people said.
Lou D’Ermilio, a spokesman for Fox Sports, declined to comment, as did Darris Gringeri, a spokesman for El Segundo, California-based DirecTV. (DTV)
News Corp. fell 2.5 percent to $19.74 and Disney dropped 1.5 percent to $43.51 at the close in New York. DirecTV added 1.3 percent to $48.83.
To contact the reporters on this story: Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles at afixmer@bloomberg.net; Alex Sherman in New York at asherman6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net ||||| The News Corp board is to meet Wednesday to consider spinning off the group’s tarnished UK newspapers and other publishing assets from its Fox, Sky and Star entertainment brands after Rupert Murdoch abandoned his long resistance to splitting his $50bn media empire.
Shares in the US group rose 8.3 per cent on Tuesday to $21.76, a five-year high and its best since its takeover of Dow Jones, after it said it was “considering a restructuring to separate its business into two distinct publicly traded companies”.
The board has yet to make a final decision, people briefed on the matter said, but News Corp has appointed bankers including Goldman Sachs to advise on a process expected to take eight to 12 months.
The split, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, would put newspapers including The Journal, The Sun and The Australian into a new company with book publisher HarperCollins, a magazine inserts business and an education unit.
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That would leave television and film assets including the Fox News Channel, Twentieth Century Fox film studio, the Fox broadcast network and investments in the Sky and Star pay-TV operations unburdened by less profitable publishing brands.
The Murdoch family would retain its near-40 per cent voting rights in each company. One option would see Mr Murdoch remain as executive chairman of both companies, but the split could in time offer a way back into the company for Lachlan, his eldest son.
It could also lead to prominent roles for trusted executives including Chase Carey, chief operating officer, Joel Klein, head of its education business, Tom Mockridge, chief executive of the News International UK newspapers and Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal.
News Corp is looking at ways to make provisions for any legal liability from the UK phone hacking scandal before splitting off the publishing business, which is grappling with print declines but building digital revenues.
News Corp’s entertainment group generated three times the revenue publishing contributed last year and almost 10 times the operating income. Michael Nathanson of Nomura estimated that the entertainment company could be worth $23.06 per share and valued publishing at $1.17 per share “at a minimum”.
Analysts were divided on whether the split would help News Corp revive its pursuit of British Sky Broadcasting, the UK satellite broadcaster.
“In the long term it is still clear that anything that News Corp does will be viewed with suspicion, but this step opens up the possibility” for a renewed approach, said Claudio Aspesi of Bernstein Research.
However, another media analyst said: “We think it is highly likely they will have to sell their BSkyB stake down. This issue has become so politically sensitive it is unlikely they will be able to come back for BSkyB for at least 24 months.”
News International, News Corp’s UK publishing arm, has been the focus of the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of its News of the World tabloid, senior executive resignations and serious reputational damage. ||||| Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is to sell control of its three Chinese television channels to a local state-controlled private equity fund in a recognition that its ambitious plan to build and control a broadcasting business in China has failed.
The sale is the most decisive step so far in what has been a gradual retreat by News Corp over the past four years from a media market where the government insists on maintaining tight controls.
China Media Capital, a fund backed by Shanghai Media Group and China Development Bank, both state-owned, has agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Xing Kong, Xing Kong International, Channel [V] Mainland China and its Fortune Start Chinese film library, News Corp and CMC said.
The sale comes a year after News Corp reorganised its pan-Asia Star TV business into separate Star India and Star Greater China units, and also ceded management of Star’s English-language content to Fox International Channels.
“They unemotionally realise that their media business there has the best opportunity to grow and profit in the control of local hands – from a regulatory and commercial perspective,” said Vivek Couto, executive director at Media Partners Asia.
An industry executive said: “James Murdoch [Mr Murdoch’s son] doesn’t believe that they can build a business in China – this is a clear sign that they aren’t interested in China any more, but they can’t say that.”
Analysts said CMC’s main interest was in gaining access to the overseas distribution channels that could help Chinese media groups internationalise.
Beijing is seeking to make its media industry more commercially viable while retaining political control by building select groups into companies that could project China’s voice outside of the country.
The deal with News Corp fits that policy, as it includes the Fortune library and its globally popular content, such as Jackie Chan movies and access to Xing Kong International which broadcasts in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The two companies did not announce financial details of the deal but executives said News Corp would hold on to close to 50 per cent of the assets.
The combined assets of the three channels and the film library are valued at $300m, making the deal worth about $160m, sources said. | – Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is looking at launching a national sports channel to rival ESPN, reports Bloomberg. It quotes one insider as saying the owner of Fox News could pull the trigger late this year. The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Murdoch, quotes an anonymous source (maybe one with an Australian accent?) as saying the company has been seriously kicking around the idea for several months. One difference with the Bloomberg report: The Journal says it would not launch this year. Both reports say News Corp would probably take an existing channel, such as the action-sports network Fuel TV, and convert it into the national channel. The company already has a major player in the field in Fox Sports, but the new channel would be considerably bigger in scope. At the Los Angeles Times, a skeptical Joe Flint says News Corp has been making noises about such a channel for more than a decade, and "there is no guarantee that such an effort will get off the ground." |
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A woman accused of illegally entering the Thousand Oaks home of a man she went on multiple dates with was arrested Sunday after firefighters used jackhammers to partially dismantle a brick chimney she had become trapped inside.
Deputies responded to a home in the 1900 block of Woodside Drive (map) at 5:45 a.m. after a caller reported that the woman had been stuck in the chimney, about 8 feet from the top, for two hours, said Capt. Renee Ferguson of the Ventura County Sheriff's Department.
The county Fire Department's urban search and rescue team was called to the scene. Photos posted on Twitter by the department showed firefighters on the roof of the house as they worked to reach the woman, who was conscious during the rescue.
The flue was lubricated with dish soap before she was lifted out of the chimney, placed in a Stokes basket and hoisted from the roof by a ladder truck, according to VCFD Capt. Mike Lindbery.
The woman, whose "intent was unclear," was known by the homeowner, the Sheriff's Department said.
She was extricated by 8:22 a.m. and transported to Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center for evaluation, according to the Fire Department. Her condition was not immediately known.
She was later identified as Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, a 30-year-old Thousand Oaks resident, and arrested for allegedly illegally entering a residence and providing false information to a peace officer, the VCSD stated in a news release.
The home's resident, who did not wish to be identified, said he had met Nunez-Figueroa online and they had gone on about six dates.
He cautioned other people about allowing acquaintances into their homes.
“Before you have somebody come in your house really check them out … really give it some time before you let somebody in, because they might want to stay,” he told KTLA.
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Please enable Javascript to watch this video ||||| THOUSAND OAKS (CBSLA.com) — Crews rescued a woman Sunday who was trapped in a chimney for several hours overnight.
According to the Ventury County Fire Department, firefighters had to slowly chip away at the bricks in order to remove the woman from a chimney located in the 1900 block of Woodside Drive.
Neighbors heard the woman screaming and called officials around 6:00 a.m.
She had reportedly been trapped since 3:00 a.m.
Firefighters told CBS2’s Laurie Perez they also used liquid dish soap to make it easier to remove the woman.
Family members of the trapped woman reported that she had dated the a man who owned the residence.
Crews pulled the woman out of the chimney around 8:13 a.m.
Perez reported that the woman has been arrested.
Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, 30, has been identified as the woman.
The homeowner’s chimney is now gone. The homeowner’s name is Lawrence and didn’t want his last name used.
Robert Fisher, a neighbor, took still photos of the woman as she was being rescued. He was one of the residents who called 911 after hearing the early-morning screams.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Fisher said.
“This woman was definitely in distress,” Fisher added. “But no one knew where the voice was coming from.”
Lawrence wasn’t home last night and confirmed to Perez that he knew the woman.
“It wasn’t Santa Claus, for sure,” Lawrence said.
“Having someone in your chimney is like kind of a weird thing you wouldn’t expect to come home to,” Lawrence said.
The stuck woman’s family says she is a good woman and have offered to pay for Lawrence’s chimney repair.
Perez asked Lawrence how he was feeling now that the ordeal seemed to be over.
“‘I’m feeling better, not so weirded out anymore that that person isn’t in my chimney anymore,” he said. “Trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my chimney since it’s in pieces but better my chimney than probably me.”
Lawrence also told Perez it wasn’t the woman’s first attempt to break into his home.
“It’s actually the second attempt for her trying to access the inside of my house,” Lawrence said, “from the roof.”
He also confirmed to Perez they met online.
“Which just goes to show you,” he said, “You have to be careful who you meet online.”
Nunez-Figueroa faces charges of illegal entry into a residence. ||||| A 28-year-old woman rescued from a chimney at a Thousand Oaks home was allegedly trying to break into the home of a man she had met online.Residents in the 1900 block of Woodside Drive reported hearing the sound of a woman crying in the area at about 5:45 a.m. Deputies found Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa trapped inside the chimney.Ventura County Fire Department and Urban Search and Rescue members had to dismantle the chimney in order to get Nunez-Figueroa out. She was lubricated with dish soap prior to being hoisted out, Ventura County Fire Capt. Mike Lindbery said via Twitter Nunez-Figueroa was conscious upon being extricated and was transported to a hospital for an evaluation, Lindbery said.The male resident of the home was not home during the incident. He said he had met Nunez-Figueroa online and went on a few dates with her, but had recently ended the relationship.This is the second time Nunez-Figueroa was found on his roof. Two weeks ago, he spotted her and called police, but she disappeared."I'm going to be a little more cautious of who I invite into my house now," said Lawrence, who did not want to reveal his last name.Nunez-Figueroa was later arrested for illegal entry and providing false information to a peace officer. | – Here's a tip for would-be home invaders: You might want to consider attempting to break in via a window or a door ... instead of, say, the chimney. Authorities say that's the route Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa decided to take early yesterday in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and things went very wrong, KTLA reports. Deputies responded to a 5:45am call reporting that the woman, variously reported as 28 or 30 years old, had been stuck in the chimney for two to three hours; neighbors called after hearing her screams, according to CBS LA. Firefighters used jackhammers to partially dismantle the chimney and lubricated the flue with dish soap before lifting Nunez-Figueroa out. What was she doing in there in the first place? Well, it's not clear, but she'd gone on six dates with the homeowner—who wasn't home at the time—after meeting him online, and he says he'd recently ended the relationship. The Sheriff's Department says her "intent was unclear." Whatever she was trying to do, this wasn't her first time: The homeowner also saw her on his roof two weeks ago and called the cops, but she fled, ABC30 reports. This time around, she was arrested after being removed from the chimney at 8:22am; she was also taken to a local hospital for evaluation. She had been stuck about 8 feet from the top and was conscious during the rescue. Her current condition isn't known, but she faces charges of illegally entering a residence and providing false information to a peace officer. The homeowner says he's learned a valuable lesson: "Before you have somebody come in your house, really check them out," he says. "Having someone in your chimney is like kind of a weird thing you wouldn't expect to come home to." (Another kind of weird thing you wouldn't expect to come home to: a box full of cocaine, heroin, and meth you didn't order.) |
In an uncharacteristic about-face, Apple Inc. loosened its control over software development for its iPhones and iPads as the company feels heat from a U.S. antitrust investigation and rising competition from mobile devices powered by Google Inc.'s Android software.
Apple said Thursday that it was relaxing restrictions on developers of applications for its iPhones and iPads. WSJ's Jen Valentino-DeVries and Lauren Goode discuss with Simon Constable what this means not only for app developers but how it impacts Apple's mobile iAd platform.
The move gives software developers more freedom to decide how to build their applications, or "apps." It will relax restrictions Apple introduced in the spring that had effectively blocked use of programming technology from Adobe Systems Inc. and potentially impeded Google's AdMob ad network from serving ads to Apple apps.
The concession comes after the Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry around June to determine whether Apple had violated antitrust laws with the earlier policy. It isn't clear if Apple's move Thursday was in response to the FTC's investigation, but it will likely be carefully scrutinized by the regulatory agency, said people familiar with the situation.
An Apple spokeswoman didn't respond to requests for comment about the FTC probe. The FTC declined to comment.
The change comes in the wake of a vicious public relations battle between Apple and Adobe, creator of a widely used technology called Flash that manages video and animations on many websites. Apple's revised policy will now allow apps to be written using a Flash-based tool, and also removes restrictions on what other programming languages developers may use.
But the revised policy still won't allow iPhone and iPad users to access Flash-based content on the Web. Those websites rely on running Adobe software code that doesn't reside on a user's device, which Apple's revised guidelines still prohibit. Still, Adobe investors embraced the news, driving shares up 12% to $32.86.
"We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices," Adobe said in a statement.
Google also welcomed the change. "Unlike the previous version, these new terms ensure that Apple's developers have the choice of a variety of advertising solutions (including Google and AdMob's) to earn money and fund their apps," Omar Hamoui, Google's vice president of product management, said in a statement.
For consumers, the implications may be less evident. Apple still plans to review every app submitted to its App Store, and Flash-based video still won't be viewable on its mobile devices. And some prior restrictions, such as the one that affected AdMob ads, weren't being enforced by Apple.
Yet the change means more apps—which range from videogames to news feeds to financial tools—may be available sooner on multiple devices. It may also bring in new developers to the iPhone and iPad, who have been reluctant to comply with Apple's restrictive policies in the past.
"They're opening up the platform to a much broader community of development," said Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of mobile ad company Mobclix Inc., which works closely with iPhone app developers. Mr. Subramanian added that it could particularly energize the mobile advertising market because ad developers are most familiar with Adobe's Flash programming software.
Apple on Thursday also published its app-review guidelines for the first time, addressing a longstanding complaint by developers about the lack of clarity in the process. The guidelines suggest, for example, that an app could be rejected if it isn't useful or doesn't provide lasting entertainment or other value.
The language in the guidelines seems to emulate the direct style of Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive. "We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don't need any more Fart apps," the document reads.
Another section says apps that look like they were "cobbled together in a few days" could be rejected. "We have lots of serious developers who don't want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour," it says.
Enlarge Image Close Associated Press Apple Computer Chief Executive Steve Jobs.
Some analysts said the changes show how threatened Apple is by the increasing momentum of Google's Android Market. App development for Android could heat up with the introduction in coming months of several Android tablet computers that will rival the iPad.
"They're trying to make sure they stay the most interesting and most important development platform," said Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst with technology firm Forrester Research.
Apple's App Store is still the biggest app marketplace with over 250,000 applications, but Google's Android Market—which doesn't vet apps—has increased its number to more than 80,000 from 30,000 just six months ago.
Smartphones that run on Google's Android operating system also are expected to outsell iPhones this year. IDC, another tech research firm, estimates that by 2014, Android devices will hold world-wide market share of 25% while the iPhone's share will drop to 11% from 15% this year.
A number of software developers still see Apple's App Store as the most important market and many are devoting the majority of their resources toward it, but they also have been unhappy with the company's seemingly arbitrary rejection of apps.
Joe Hewitt, a Facebook Inc. software engineer, caused a stir last November when he announced he would stop developing for the iPhone because of Apple's review process. He said in an email that Apple's policy change is "a wonderful improvement" that shows Apple has improved the tone of its relationship with app developers.
Mr. Hewitt, who developed Facebook's iPhone app, said he was working on other projects but would probably develop for Apple's App Store again "when I do have time someday."
Forrester's Mr. Hammond said some developers also are starting to develop apps for the Android Market first, so they can start making money immediately while they wait for the App Store version of the app to go through Apple's approval process.
"Customers are saying, 'You know what, I don't have to do the iPhone. I have a lot of other viable choices,'" said Dave Wolf, vice president of strategy at Cynergy Systems Inc., a Washington, D.C., software design firm that builds software using Flash and other programming languages. "I think Apple saw that writing on the wall."
The publication of the app review guidelines could also help get new apps into the marketplace sooner and minimize some of the clutter.The FTC is investigating complaints that Apple had unfairly blocked developers from using Adobe's tools, as well as whether Apple's restrictions on applications sending data to third parties unfairly disadvantaged AdMob and benefited Apple's own mobile ad network, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meantime, the Justice Department is looking at Apple's iTunes music store and new Bookstore to see if agreements Apple has reached with music and book publishers improperly limit competition, said people familiar with the matter.
Apple has attracted increasing scrutiny from antitrust enforcers in the U.S. and Europe as it expanded from its minority position in personal computers to a major force in markets for smartphones, music, movies, TV and publishing.
In the U.S. it controls around 70% of online music sales and has more of the overall music market than Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to market research firm NPD Group. It recently surpassed Microsoft Corp. in market value.
—Cari Tuna contributed to this article.
Write to Yukari Iwatani Kane at yukari.iwatani@wsj.com and Thomas Catan at thomas.catan@wsj.com ||||| Apple says that international customers waiting for the iPad will have to wait until the end of May because of strong U.S. demand for the iPad.
The company said Wednesday that with 500,000 Wi-Fi-only iPad units sold in the first week, demand is "far higher" than the company predicted. Demand will outstrip supply over the next few weeks.
Apple had originally planned on selling the iPad overseas in late April, when it was also planning on shipping 3G iPad units here in the United States. Now international customers can preorder their iPads online on May 10 for delivery in late May.
Flash fight: The feud between Apple and Adobe Systems could be headed to court.
There are rumblings that Adobe is preparing to sue Apple over Apple's denial of Flash on the iPhone platform. ITWorld is reporting that sources close to Adobe say a lawsuit is just a few weeks away.
Apple has shot down the use of Flash for Web applications and last week changed the rules of the iPhone developer agreement to prohibit the use of cross-platform development tools that would have allowed developers to reuse code and convert it for the iPhone operating system.
If a lawsuit is filed, it will not only ratchet up the animosity between Apple and Adobe, but it could also provide a good measure of how much power Apple has to protect its own platform.
Facebook safety: Facebook has overhauled its Safety Center with more information for its 400 million users, especially parents, educators and teenagers, to learn how to protect themselves while on the social network.
With the help of a board of Internet safety experts and organizations, the page provides information and resources on topics ranging from how to maintain a professional page to what to do about cyber abuse. It also includes links to online forms for reporting sex offenders or suspected terrorist activities.
The revamped page comes as Facebook has come under fire for making too much of member's private information public and faces legislative pressures to kick convicted sex offenders off the social network.
Tweet search: Google Inc. on Wednesday announced a new tool that it says will eventually allow comprehensive searching of Twitter updates for the first time.
Specifically, the new search feature will allow users to hop to any point on a visual timeline and replay what people were tweeting about given topics. The Mountain View company says this ability is increasingly important as tweets become an integral part of the public dialogue about breaking news and world events.
The service will be rolled out in the next few days. For now, the tool will dig through tweets going back to only Feb. 11, but down the road it will reach all the way back to the first tweet in March 2006.
Google introduced real-time search of live updates from Twitter and FriendFeed in December, allowing users to see what people were saying at that moment. Since then, the company has added content from MySpace, Facebook and its own Buzz product.
This article appeared on page D - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle | – Apple has done a U-turn and scrapped restrictions introduced earlier this year on what tools developers can use to build applications for the iPhone and iPad. Developers will now be allowed to use tools based on Adobe's Flash, and restrictions on other programming languages have been lifted, the Wall Street Journal reports. Shares in Adobe jumped after the news, though iPhone and iPad users still won't be able to access Flash-based content on the Internet. Apple also addressed concerns that the application approval process is too secretive by releasing, for the first time, a list of guidelines developers should follow to avoid rejection. Analysts say the company's new-found openness appears to be a move to avoid giving an edge to the competition. "Apple is concerned enough about the shifting tide toward Android that it feels it has to loosen restrictions to keep developers on its side,” an analyst at Forrester Research tells the New York Times. |
TBS has announced that it is canceling George Lopez's talk show "Lopez Tonight."
"TBS has reached the difficult decision not to order a third season of Lopez Tonight," the company said in a statement. TBS called Lopez "an immensely talented comedian and entertainer." The last episode of his program will air on Thursday.
Lopez was the only Latino to host a late night talk show. The premiere of "Lopez Tonight" in November 2009 also marked TBS' first attempt to break into the late night scene. The show struggled to gain viewers in a competitive landscape, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In November, Lopez was bumped back an hour to a midnight slot to accommodate Conan O'Brien's "Conan" after the comedian's exit from NBC. ||||| Megan Masters
TBS has pulled the plug on the ratings-challenged Lopez Tonight.
According to a network spokesman, the caber “has reached the difficult decision not to order a third season of Lopez Tonight. We are proud to have partnered with George Lopez, who is an immensely talented comedian and entertainer. TBS has valued its partnership with George and appreciates all of his work on behalf of the network, both on and off the air.”
This Thursday’s episode of Lopez Tonight will be its last.
Ready for more of today’s TV dish? Well…
• Bam! Top Chef is switching things up in Season 9: Food Network star Emeril Lagasse has joined Bravo’s reality staple as a new judge, along with lesser-known chef Hugh Acheson (who has been seen on Top Chef Masters). Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, and Gail Simmons will return as judges as well. Chef, which returns this fall, will no longer focus on just one location, opting instead to feature three cities in Texas.
• Sarah Paulson (Studio 60) will reprise her role as Lynette’s (onetime) loser sister during Desperate Housewives‘ final season, TV Guide Magazine reports.
• The Gilmore Girls brain trust is at it again: Amy Sherman-Palladino is teaming with Ryan Seacrest Productions and Weinstien Co. on a TV version of The Nanny Diaries for ABC, Deadline reports. Based on the 2002 novel, Diaries was previously developed into a 2007 feature film, starring Scarlett Johannson.
• The Young and the Restless‘ Michael Graziadei has landed a recurring role on Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX drama, American Horror Story. Per Deadline, the daytime star will play the much younger boyfriend of Jessica Lange’s nosy neighbor character.
• A Bewitched reboot is in the works, courtesy of CBS and Sony TV. The project is still in the very early stages of development, but per Variety, Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher — the couple behind the 2005 film version — are set to executive-produce.
• A Frankenstein series is also in the making over on NBC, per The Hollywood Reporter. House exec producers Russel Friend and Garret Lerner will pen the script for the modern-day take on the classic.
• Zachary Abel will appear in the third episode of The CW’s new supernatural drama The Secret Circle (which premieres Thursday, Sept. 15), EW.com reports. The Make It or Break It alum will play a hot jock vying for the affections of Britt Robertson’s witchy teen, Cassie.
• Lifetime has given an eight-episode order to America’s Supernanny, a U.S. version of ABC’s former Brit hit. The cabler is currently holding a casting call for the latest childcare miracle worker.
Which TVLine Items have you talking today?
Want Scoop and Spoilers Sent Directly to Your In-Box? Sign Up for the TVLine Newsletter Now! | – George Lopez is out of the talk-show business as of this week. TBS has abruptly canceled his Lopez Tonight, and the final show will air tomorrow night, reports TV Line. The decision not to order a third season comes after TBS moved the show to midnight last November to follow Conan O'Brien. Lopez Tonight continued to struggle in the ratings, however. Click for more. |
A 5-year-old boy attacked by a mountain lion outside his home in Colorado on Friday night is in fair condition, officials said.
The boy's mother told police he had been playing in the front yard with his older brother when she heard screaming and ran outside to find a mountain lion on him, the Pitkin Sheriff's Department said in a news release.
The mother told police she was able to pull the boy away from the animal.
The boy's father called 911 to tell dispatchers he was driving his injured son to the hospital just before 8 p.m. local time, authorities said.
Mountain lion numbers have risen recently, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Colorado Parks & Wildlife
The boy, whose name has not been released, sustained injuries to his face, head and neck, police said. He has been transferred in fair condition to a hospital in Denver, according to officials with Aspen Valley Hospital.
Pitkin County Undersheriff Ron Ryan told the Aspen Times that the boy was" conscious and alert."
His mother, who sustained minor injuries to her hand and legs, was "treated and released in good condition," according to Aspen Valley Hospital spokeswoman Jenny Dyche.
The attack occurred approximately 10 miles northwest of Aspen on Lower River Road in unincorporated Pitkin County.
Sheriff's deputies and a U.S. Forest Service officer located a mountain lion in the same area where the mother said the attack took place and put the animal down, the sheriff's department said.
Officials with Colorado Parks and Wildlife will examine the deceased lion and attempt to locate a second lion that was reported to be in the area earlier in the day, officials said. ||||| Story highlights Colorado 5-year-old attacked by mountain lion
The boy is reported in fair condition
(CNN) A 5-year-old boy is recovering in a Denver hospital after being attacked by a mountain lion, officials said.
The attack happened Friday night about 10 miles northwest of Aspen, Colorado, according to the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office.
A man called 911 dispatchers to report that his son had been attacked by a mountain lion and he was driving to the Aspen Valley Hospital, police said in a statement.
The boy's mother told police that the boy was playing outside with his older brother when she heard screams. The mother ran out and "physically removed her son from the mountain lion," according to the statement.
After initial treatment in Aspen, the boy was transferred to Children's Hospital in Denver. He's in fair condition with injuries to his face, head and neck. His mother was treated and released for minor injuries to her hand and legs.
Read More ||||| A young boy was attacked Friday night by a mountain lion in the yard of his home below Woody Creek, a law enforcement official said.
The boy’s condition was unknown, though Pitkin County Undersheriff Ron Ryan said that as of about 9:15 p.m., he remained at Aspen Valley Hospital with injuries to his head and neck.
Emergency dispatchers received a call at about 8 p.m. from the boy’s father, who said he was driving his son to the hospital after the attack, Ryan said. Deputies met the father at the hospital and briefly saw the boy, who is between 3 and 5 years old, before he was taken into the emergency room, he said.
Ryan did not know the extent of the injuries, though he said the boy was conscious and alert at the hospital.
Deputies then drove to the family’s residence on Lower River Road downvalley of Woody Creek and located the mountain lion under some trees in the yard, he said.
“Since it was still there, it was either injured or very ill, so they dispatched it,” Ryan said.
The animal was shot by deputies or a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer who also was at the scene, he said. Numerous toys and bikes were near the area where the mountain lion was killed, he said.
Further details of the attack were not available Friday night. | – A Colorado mom whose 5-year-old son was being attacked by a mountain lion leapt into action Friday, fighting off the animal and potentially saving the boy's life, NBC News reports. The boy was playing with his older brother in their yard about 10 miles outside of Aspen when his mother heard screaming. She ran outside to see a mountain lion attacking her young son. According to a police statement quoted by CNN, the boy's mom "physically removed her son from the mountain lion." The boy was rushed to the hospital, where he is in fair condition with injuries to his head, face, and neck. His mom suffered minor injuries to her hands and legs. Pitkin County sheriff's deputies and a US Forest Service officer found the mountain lion under some trees in the family's yard and killed it, the Aspen Times reports. “Since it was still there, it was either injured or very ill, so they dispatched it,” Undersheriff Ron Ryan says. They were also looking for a second mountain lion spotted in the area on Friday. Experts say it's rare to even see a mountain lion in Colorado, let alone be attacked by one. Not even a dozen people have been killed by mountain lions over the past 100 years in North America. |
The GOP is taking its most aggressive step yet to force Donald Trump's hand.
The Republican National Committee on Wednesday privately reached out to GOP presidential candidates to ask whether they’d be willing to sign a pledge stating they would not run as an independent candidate in the event they fail to win the Republican nomination in 2016.
Story Continued Below
The move is an implicit challenge to Trump, who pointedly refused to rule out a third-party run during the first GOP debate. He was the only candidate who declined.
The language of the draft pledge speaks directly to the issue vexing Republicans – the possibility that the billionaire could choose to wage a third party bid if he fails to win the GOP nomination, a prospect that could seriously damage the GOP’s prospects of reclaiming the White House. Tapping into deep anti-establishment animosity among the conservative grassroots, Trump has surged to the lead of the deepest presidential field in recent memory. If Trump were to pull just a fraction of the vote as an independent, write-in or third party candidate, it could be enough to sink the eventual Republican nominee.
“I [name] affirm that if I do not win the 2016 Republican nomination for president of the United States I will endorse the 2016 Republican presidential nominee regardless of who it is,” the pledge reads. “I further pledge that I will not seek to run as an independent or write-in candidate nor will I seek or accept the nomination for president of any other party.”
At least two campaigns reported Wednesday that they received a call from Katie Walsh, RNC chief of staff, asking if they would be willing to sign such a pledge.
An RNC spokeswoman, Allison Moore, declined to comment. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump and RNC chairman Reince Priebus are slated to meet in New York City on Thursday, a Trump spokeswoman confirmed. The two are also expected to appear at a press conference.
The relationship between the RNC and Trump has been fraught with tension since Trump joined the race this summer. Trump’s incendiary remarks about Mexicans and immigration have alarmed top Republicans who fear it will further alienate the fast-growing demographic and embarrass the party, leading Priebus to reach out to the billionaire in an attempt to convince him to tone down his rhetoric. But Trump turned the tables on Priebus and gave a contradictory account, insisting that the RNC chairman merely acknowledged that he had “hit a nerve” with the electorate.
Since then, with the billionaire mogul dominating the race for the party’s nomination, Republicans have taken a wary approach. Priebus virtually went dark on Trump following the real estate mogul’s pushback, declining to further fuel the discussion with public remarks. (Scheduled to make a post-debate appearance on CBS Face the Nation, Priebus abruptly pulled out after it became clear that the story of the weekend was Trump’s diatribe against Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.)
At first, the only candidates willing to confront Trump in a concerted fashion were those who did so out of a desperate need to remain relevant – the class of Trump antagonists largely consisted of the candidates struggling to make it into the Aug. 6 primetime debate. Since then, though, as rival campaigns became more convinced that Trump’s candidacy was more than a passing comet and destined to last through the early-voting states, more candidates have shown a willingness to criticize him.
In recent days, Jeb Bush has tangled frequently with Trump, responding to the businessman’s harsh attacks on him.
Other elements of the Republican Party have reckoned with Trump’s candidacy through ballot access requirements also designed to force Trump to play by party rules. GOP leaders in Virginia and North Carolina discussed implementing a new requirement for candidates to qualify for their primary ballots: that they pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee — and not run as a third-party candidate — in the general election.
Last week, the South Carolina Republican Party announced that candidates who want to qualify for the state’s primary ballot must sign a loyalty oath by Sept. 30. Candidates were asked to state that they “generally believe in and intend to support the nominees and platform of the Republican Party in the November 8, 2016 general election.”
Trump has said that he is still weighing whether to agree to the South Carolina pledge.
Ben Schreckinger contributed to this report. ||||| Momentum is building in the conservative movement for a third-party alternative to Donald Trump Donald John TrumpDHS requesting more troops at border: report House passes legislation to re-open government despite opposition from Trump Maxine Waters: Much of my work will be undoing Mulvaney's 'damage' to CFPB MORE and Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonDem introduces bills to eliminate electoral college, stop presidents from pardoning themselves Cracks beginning to show in GOP shutdown resolve Mitt Romney shows establishment still ignorant of wartime casualties MORE.
The effort got a big boost from Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanRomney writes new chapter in his like-hate relationship with Trump Romney warns Republicans about Trump Ocasio-Cortez, Khanna to oppose Pelosi-backed rules package MORE (R-Wis.) on Thursday when he said he wasn’t yet ready to back Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
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Ryan’s refusal to endorse Trump, at least for the time being, could provide tacit encouragement to the Republicans who are seeking to field another candidate.
Conservative activists led by Erick Erickson, a writer and radio host, and other well-connected strategists plan to hold at least two organizing conference calls before the weekend to figure out their strategy.
“A number of movement conservatives fiscal and social are actively now looking at third-party and independent options,” Erickson said Thursday. “We all find Trump unacceptable. We don’t think he can beat Hillary Clinton regardless of whether there’s a third party or not, so why not put an alternative out there.”
Time is of the essence.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse passes legislation to re-open government despite opposition from Trump Overnight Defense: Pompeo warns Iran against space launches | Top Army official makes surprise Afghanistan visit | Trump reportedly considering Jim Webb to replace Mattis Cracks beginning to show in GOP shutdown resolve MORE (R-Ky.) have both backed Trump as the nominee, touting him as the candidate who can keep Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, out of the White House. Other Republicans could soon follow suit.
But the coronation of Trump appears to have been halted by Ryan, who has a strong following among conservative lawmakers and activists and was Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012.
“To be perfectly candid with you … I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now,” Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper when asked about backing Trump.
“I hope to though, and I want to. But what is required is to unify this party. And the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.”
The clock is fast ticking down for a third-party run, at least when it comes to getting on the ballot in many states. Independent candidates running for president must file applications and petitions of support in Texas, which has 38 electoral votes, the second-most of any state, by May 9, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office.
“It’s an uphill climb, everybody recognizes that, regardless of the route we go, but there are a lot of Republican donors sitting on the sidelines who would rather fund a third party than fund Donald Trump,” said Erickson, who said campaign finance experts within the movement estimate it will cost a minimum of $250 million to fund a third-party bid.
But even if a third-party candidate failed to make the ballot in many states, the mere presence of a prominent alternative in the race could be enough to deny Trump the White House.
Conservatives have floated several names as a potential Trump spoiler.
They include former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (R), who is poised to become the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee; former Sen. Tom Coburn Thomas (Tom) Allen CoburnThe Hill's Morning Report — Presented by PhRMA — Worries grow about political violence as midterms approach President Trump’s war on federal waste American patients face too many hurdles in regard to health-care access MORE (R-Okla.), who was long an outspoken conservative voice in Congress; and freshman Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who early Thursday morning posted on Facebook an open letter calling for a third-party option to Trump and Clinton.
National Review, a leading conservative publication, published a piece Thursday afternoon making the case for Johnson, praising him as a self-made businessman and a fiscal conservative who favors free trade and gun rights.
“Everybody is looking at Gary Johnson right now to see where decides to settle on some of these issues,” Erickson said.
He added that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Pelosi to reclaim Speakership amid shutdown Romney writes new chapter in his like-hate relationship with Trump Comey defends Romney for ‘calling out’ Trump MORE (R), who dropped his bid for the GOP nomination earlier this year, “would be viable” as well.
Erickson said the key issue is abortion. Any candidate who will at least leave it to the states instead of the federal government to set abortion laws could draw strong support, he said.
The biggest task ahead is finding a candidate conservatives can rally behind and who has the stature needed to become a national candidate and take on Trump.
So far Coburn and Sasse have not yet indicated publicly they want the job. Both declined requests for comment on Thursday.
The upcoming filing deadlines to get on the ballot in all 50 states give the dissident conservatives strong incentive to get behind someone like Johnson, who would be guaranteed ballot spots because of his affiliation with an established party.
Erickson, however, said there’s a compelling legal case for pushing back the state ballot deadlines until the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions in late July.
The situation gives conservatives plenty to talk about in the next 24 hours.
“There will be two others before close of business on Friday,” Erickson said of the conference calls he and allies have had to plot strategy. | – If you're a conservative with political ambitions—and, ideally, with a few hundred million dollars burning a hole in your pocket—now is the time to get in touch with the #NeverTrump movement. Anti-Donald Trump conservative activists have stepped up their efforts to find a third-party alternative, but they'll have to file their paperwork in Texas by May 9 to get on the ballot, with deadlines in other states following soon, the Hill reports. Possibilities include former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party's 2012 nominee, and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who called for an alternative to Trump and Clinton in a Facebook post Thursday. Rick Perry had also been mentioned, but he earned the scorn of Trump foes on Thursday when he dismissed the idea as "quixotic," endorsed Trump, and said he would be open to becoming his running mate, reports USA Today. Conservative blogger Erick Erickson has taken a leading role in the search for a Trump alternative and plans to hold talks with like-minded conservatives in the days to come, CNN reports. "It's an uphill climb, everybody recognizes that, regardless of the route we go, but there are a lot of Republican donors sitting on the sidelines who would rather fund a third party than fund Donald Trump," he tells the Hill. He says campaign finance experts believe a third-party bid would cost at least $250 million. Trump meanwhile, has a different suggestion for a third-party candidate. "Bernie Sanders has been treated terribly by the Democrats—both with delegates & otherwise," he tweeted Thursday. "He should show them, & run as an Independent." (Paul Ryan says he's "just not ready" to support Trump.) |
The U.S. president remains popular with much of Germany, but there's no question the Obama euphoria that swept the country five years ago has faded.
President Obama stands next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in front of Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on June 19. (Photo: Michael Kappeler, AP) Story Highlights President Obama called for a reduction in nuclear stockpiles
Obama addressed a crowd of 6,000 invited guests at Brandenburg Gate
European attitudes toward Obama have shifted
BERLIN — With the iconic Brandenburg Gate at his back, President Obama urged Berliners in a speech Wednesday to embrace the common values that bind America and Germany, and to carry forth the spirit of freedom that defines the once-divided city.
"It is citizens who choose whether to be defined by a wall or whether to tear it down," Obama told cheering crowds before the 18th-century city entrance. "We can say here in Berlin, here in Europe, our values won."
Fifty years after President Kennedy delivered his legendary "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") speech in the former West Berlin, Obama said he was proud to stand on the eastern side of the wall.
Kennedy gave his famous speech when the Berlin Wall — erected by the Soviet Union to cut off communist East Germany from democratic West Germany — was still standing. With the wall gone since 1990 and Germany reunited, Obama urged Berliners to take an active role in helping to protect freedom and democracy around the world.
"We must acknowledge that there can at times be complacency among our Western democracies," he said, as many waved American and German flags and shouted in approval. "Complacency is not the character of great nations."
As he spoke, Obama's wife, Michelle, and daughters, Sasha and Malia, toured the famous front line of the Cold War at Checkpoint Charlie, the former guard station between East and West Germany, and visited the memorial of the Berlin Wall.
Joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, Obama addressed 6,000 invited guests and dignitaries on a hot day under a bright sky. When he talked specifics, Obama kept to issues on which the majority of the crowd appeared to agree.
Obama said he planned to slash America's nuclear weapons stockpile by up to a third and promised to seek negotiated cuts with Russia, too, saying "so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe."
The loudest cheers came when Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison, a move that many Europeans have been waiting for since Obama took office.
Supporters held up signs with the words "Yes we can" and "Welcome" and chanted Obama's name. At one point during his speech, two women holding a "No NATO War" sign shouted briefly from the crowd at Obama before they were questioned by security personnel.
It was a much smaller crowd than the estimated 200,000 people who greeted Obama five years ago, when he visited Berlin as a candidate for president. Back then, he captured the enthusiasm of Germans and won broad support across Europe.
He remains popular with much of Germany, where local news outlets followed the first family's every move in the capital and published detailed features on their Ritz-Carlton presidential suite. A recent survey indicated that 85% of Germans believe Obama is a good president.
But while his pronouncements appealed to the pacifist sentiments of many Germans, they did not go down well with critics in the United States.
The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon of California, lamented that Obama wanted to further reduce U.S. nuclear readiness against a Russian government that has failed to adhere to existing arms-reduction agreements.
"The president must make clear to (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin that the United States will not allow itself or its allies to be bullied by Russia or to allow that state to ignore its arms control obligations," McKeon said.
On Guantanamo, the president has declined to free the remaining prisoners at the facility and his Department of Justice has said the president has the authority to hold enemy terrorists without charge indefinitely.
There is no question that the Obama euphoria that swept the country five years ago has faded. The cover of the national newspaper Taz featured a full-page picture of Obama with the caption "Love Hurts," and the weekly magazine Der Spiegel featured a picture of Obama and Kennedy on its cover, with the title "The Lost Friend."
"His overall poll ratings in Germany are still for any American campaign manager dream-like, but at the same time, Germans have lowered their expectations," said Sudha David-Wilp, a senior program officer at the German Marshall Fund. "When he came here in 2008, he mentioned climate change, he mentioned a new way of doing business in the world, working with partners. Those things unfortunately haven't come to fruition."
Obama has been the subject of criticism in recent weeks over Washington's global surveillance program PRISM, which requests information legally from U.S.-based Internet companies on communications involving foreigners suspected of terrorist activity. Since Europeans communicate through such companies, it is possible German citizens have been spied on through the program.
Germany's history with fascism has planted a deep-rooted distrust of any sort of surveillance and the country has some of the strictest data privacy laws in the world.
"I think the spying is disgusting," said Richard Radtke, 52, a lawyer who navigated his way around police barricades on Wednesday to get to work. "If it's as nasty as it looks, then it will make a big difference in my opinion of the way Americans deal with the public interest and privacy."
Obama defended the program during a joint press conference with Chancellor Merkel earlier in the day, saying the initiative had saved lives.
"This is not a situation where we are rifling through ordinary e-mails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens," he asserted, adding that it was important to strike a balance between protecting citizens and intruding on their rights.
President Barack Obama is calling for a one-third reduction of the world's nuclear stockpiles. Speaking at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate, he says he intends to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond a Cold War nuclear posture. (June 19) AP
Before meeting with reporters, Obama and Merkel spoke at length about some of the progress made in Syria-related talks at the Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland earlier this week, and touched on Syria, Iran and the upcoming trans-Atlantic trade treaty as well.
"Europe is our partner in almost everything we do," Obama said. "Europe remains the cornerstone of our freedom and our security."
He also vowed to do more to change the climate, which he said is "the global threat of our time."
Though polls show may Europeans worry about global warming, some countries in Europe are scaling back government-subsidized renewable-energy plans in the face of rising electricity prices and cash-strapped government budgets.
While many in Europe believe measures to cut carbon emissions are crucial, skeptics point to recent scientific analyses that show that since 1998 global mean temperatures have remained unchanged.
Berliners said they are less excited about this visit and have been disappointed that Obama has not delivered on promises he made previously.
President Obama greets children at the Schloss Bellevue in Berlin on June 19. (Photo: Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty)
"It's easy to build up expectations of charismatic people but he's not a superhero," said Berliner Jannis Huelsen, 29.
Contributing: Ena Paponja and Catherine Featherston in Berlin
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/11YNjam ||||| BERLIN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama defended U.S. anti-terrorism tactics on a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, telling wary Germans Washington was not spying on the emails of ordinary citizens and promising to step up efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
On the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, Obama made his first presidential visit to the German capital, a favored destination of U.S. leaders during the Cold War.
He held talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel and gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in which he unveiled a proposal for new talks with Russia on slashing nuclear arms arsenals.
Obama, who attracted a crowd of 200,000 adoring fans when he last passed through in 2008 during his first campaign for the presidency, remains popular in Germany.
But revelations before the trip of a covert U.S. Internet surveillance program, code-named Prism, caused outrage in a country where memories of the eavesdropping East German Stasi secret police are still fresh.
Merkel said at a joint news conference that also touched on Afghanistan, Syria and the global economy, that the two leaders had held "long and intensive" talks on the spying issue, noting that some questions still needed to be cleared up.
Obama tried to reassure his host, who as a pastor's daughter growing up in the communist East experienced the Stasi first-hand.
"This is not a situation in which we are rifling through the ordinary emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anybody else," Obama said.
"This is not a situation where we simply go into the Internet and start searching any way we want. This is a circumscribed system directed at us being able to protect our people and all of it is done under the oversight of the courts."
In a message which seemed designed for her domestic audience, Merkel told Obama that balance was essential in government monitoring of Internet communications.
"I made clear that although we do see the need for gathering information, the topic of proportionality is always an important one and the free democratic order is based on people feeling safe," said the 58-year-old chancellor.
Obama countered that the U.S. had thwarted at least 50 threats because of its monitoring program, including planned attacks in Germany.
"So lives have been saved and the encroachment on privacy has been strictly limited," he said.
A poll last week showed 82 percent of Germans approve of Obama, but the magic of 2008, when he was feted like a rock star, has faded amid concerns about his anti-terrorist tactics.
COMMON VALUES
In his speech to 4,000 invited guests at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama harked back to Kennedy by stressing what he called common values of openness and tolerance.
"We can be a little more informal among friends," he joked as he took off his jacket in the sweltering sun on the Pariser Platz square, just east of the Gate that once stood alongside the Berlin Wall dividing the communist East from the capitalist West of the city.
Earlier, at the news conference, he touched on tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over U.S. plans to begin talks with the Taliban to try to seek a negotiated peace after 12 years of war, acknowledging "huge mistrust" between the Western-backed government in Kabul and its arch-foes.
"We do think that ultimately we're going to need to see Afghans talking to Afghans about how they can move forward and end the cycle of violence there so they can start actually building their country," Obama said.
On Syria, Obama said reports that the United States was ready to "go all in" to war in the country were exaggerated. He reiterated his view that President Bashar al-Assad's government had used chemical weapons, while acknowledging that Russia was skeptical on this point.
Obama declined to give specifics on new military aid Washington plans to provide to Syrian rebels.
Obama arrived in Germany after a two-day summit with Group of Eight leaders in Northern Ireland where he and other leaders clashed with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Syria.
Despite these divisions, he said he would engage with Moscow on reducing deployed nuclear weapons by up to a third from previously agreed levels.
"I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures," Obama said.
In 2008, Merkel refused to allow Obama, then a senator from Illinois, to speak at the Brandenburg Gate because he was not yet president.
Despite this awkward start, the Democrat has forged a pragmatic relationship with the conservative Merkel, who may be hoping for a political boost out of the visit months before a German election.
DRONES
In a nod to criticism, Obama defended his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay prison on Cuba that his predecessor George W. Bush opened after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
He also reassured Germans that the U.S. military was not using German bases to launch unmanned drone attacks.
For Obama, who grew up in Hawaii and spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, Europe has sometimes seemed an after-thought. The signature foreign policy initiative of his first term was his "pivot" to Asia.
But analysts say plans to create a free-trade zone between the United States and European Union are a sign that he is focusing more on Europe.
"The Obama administration has found it harder than expected to work with emerging powers and has fallen back to a more traditional reliance on European allies," said Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.
"Washington doesn't have better options. And when it comes to who to engage in Europe, Germany grows stronger and stronger."
(Additional reporting by Stephen Brown, Roberta Rampton, Annika Breidthardt, Alexandra Hudson, Michelle Martin; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Ralph Boulton) ||||| President Barack Obama called Wednesday for “peace with justice” as he proposed reducing U.S. nuclear arsenals by as much as one-third in a wide-ranging call for action delivered on the eastern side of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
“Our work is not yet done. For we are not only citizens of America or Germany, we are citizens of the world,” Obama said, drawing on John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech on the west side of the the city, in which he called on Berliners to look ahead to “the day of peace with justice” and to the rest of mankind. “We may not live in fear of nuclear annihilation — but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”
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He said the United States is now looking to do more to reduce that threat. “After a comprehensive review, I have determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies and maintain a strong and credibility strategic deterrent while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third,” he said. “I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures” and to work with NATO allies for “bold reductions in Europe.”
“We can forge a new international framework for peaceful nuclear power, reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking,” he added.
Obama has directed the Defense Department to strengthen its non-nuclear capabilities, to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks, and to reduce the role of nuclear launches in contingency planning.
New START calls for the United States and Russia to cut their arsenals to 1,550 nuclear warheads by 2018. Obama’s proposal, which would bring that number down to about 1,000, comes as tensions between the United States and Russia over Syria have been on stark display — most recently on Monday, as Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a cold joint statement at the G8 summit, and appeared to make little progress on the issue.
In another big speech in a major European city, in Prague during the spring of 2009, Obama set an even more ambitious long-term goal: “a world without nuclear weapons.” It’s a hope he’s reiterated since, including at last year’s Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, and one in which he’s said he still believes.
Obama spent much of his speech Wednesday leaning on Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech given 50 years ago next week, as he laid out a vision in which the United States and Germany “pursue peace and justice not only for our countries, but for all mankind.”
While remaining “vigilant” about terror threats, “we must move beyond the mindset of perpetual war,” Obama said, echoing the philosophy he laid out last month in his speech on counterterrorism in the post-post-9/11 era. In the United States, “that means redoubling our efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo,” he said to cheers. | – Five years after he addressed a huge crowd in Berlin as a presidential candidate—and 50 years after John F. Kennedy proclaimed "Ich bin ein Berliner"—President Obama gave an address at the iconic Brandenburg Gate today, calling for a major reduction in nuclear warheads. "We may not live in fear of nuclear annihilation—but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe," Obama declared, according to Politico. He said the US could still defend itself with one third fewer nuclear weapons, and said he intended to negotiate a cut to that level with Russia. That would mean taking the arsenals down to about 1,000 warheads each. Officials tell the Wall Street Journal that the cuts may take place under a new treaty, to follow 2010's New START pact, but the White House will also consider reciprocal reductions without a treaty. Obama also spent plenty of time in the speech endearing himself to the crowd before him (which USA Today notes was limited to 6,000 invited guests), with frequent jokes and stirring references to the city's history. "I am proud to stand here and pay tribute to the past from the East side of the Brandenburg," he said. Of course, hanging over everything was the NSA spying issue. At a joint press conference earlier, Merkel said she and Obama had held "long and intensive" talks about it, while Obama offered assurances that the US wasn't "rifling through the ordinary emails of German citizens ... or anybody else." |
CTV Barrie
A Barrie man is facing criminal charges after crashing his car near a school parking lot.
Police say the 46-year-old man was driving at a high rate of speed on Little Avenue in Barrie just after 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
They said when the 2016 Telsa crossed the steep incline leading up to the railway tracks just north of Huronia Road it became airborne and crashed 100 feet away onto the street.
The impact caused the Tesla to skid across the road, shedding parts along the way, and landed on school grounds.
Police say the 4-door Tesla was "demolished".
The driver and passenger were taken to hospital with minor injuries.
The accused is scheduled to appear in a Barrie court in October. ||||| A man from Barrie has been charged after a single-vehicle collision in the city’s south end.
According to Barrie police, on Tuesday, just after 8 p.m., officers received a report of a single-vehicle collision in the Little Avenue and Garden Drive area of Barrie.
Police say a four-door Tesla was found demolished.
READ MORE: Toronto man charged in sexual assaults dating back 40 years: OPP
Officers say the vehicle had been driven quickly northbound on Little Avenue before the crash. When the car approached the incline before the railway tracks just north of Huronia Road, the vehicle became airborne and crashed over 100 feet into the oncoming lane.
Police say the impact of the crash forced the vehicle to skid across the roadway and hit a tree in a nearby school parking lot.
According to police, the driver and passenger were taken to a local hospital to be treated for minor injuries.
Police say the driver, a 46-year-old man from Barrie has been charged with dangerous driving. He is scheduled to appear in the Barrie Court of Justice on Oct. 1. ||||| - A driver of a Tesla Model S drove into a pond and his body ended up being recovered early Monday morning in a fatal accident that closed a portion of Crow Canyon Road in Castro Valley, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. Ray Kelly identified the driver as Keith Leung, 34, of Danville. It is unknown at this time if the Tesla was in autopilot mode or not.
A property owner found what appeared to be damage from the crash on Crow Canyon Road just before 8 p.m. on Sunday, according to CHP Officer Daniel Jacowitz. He called 911 and when he came outside he saw damage to his fence and tire tracks leading up to the pond.
Nine members of the Alameda County Sheriff’s rescue team went into the pond about 10 p.m. and found the driver, still sitting upright in the driver's seat, Jacowitz said. He was pulled out and declared dead at the scene about 5:30 a.m.
"It's really tragic," Jacowitz said.
Tesla did not immediately respond for comment on Monday.
However, CHP officers did acknowledge that this stretch of road is a problem area and they conduct enforcement there on a regular basis. The speed limit ranges from 35 mph to 55 mph and officers say they have cited people for going as fast as 75 mph.
Neighbors have regularly complained that they can’t get out of their drive ways because vehicle are driving so fast.
Jacowitz added that Leung would have had to have been driving more than posted speed limit of 35 mph to have gone airborne and fly the distance it did.
One man is dead after he crashes his Tesla Model S through a fence off Crow Canyon Road and it submerged in a pond. No other vehicles suspected as being involved. - CHP Castro Valley. .@KTVU pic.twitter.com/udpgBio3D4 — Leigh Martinez (@LeighMartinezTV) May 21, 2018
“The vehicle was submerged...trees in the water made it difficult to tow it out,” said CHP Sgt. Michael Novosel. | – A Canadian man discovered his Tesla could fly, the downside being that it's now "demolished." With a security camera observing, the scene unfolded shortly after 8:30pm Tuesday in Barrie, 70 miles north of Toronto, reports CTV News. Police say a 46-year-old man driving a 2016 four-door Tesla sped over an incline approaching railway tracks and went airborne before crashing 100 feet away in the opposite lane. Per Global News, the car then skidded into a school parking lot, where it hit a tree. The driver, charged with dangerous driving, was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, along with a passenger. "It may look 'cool' and like something from out of the movies, but in reality the action of this driver put many lives at risk, including his own," reads a tweet from Barrie Police. The video shared Wednesday has more than 650,000 views. |
Support for the death penalty in the United States has fallen to a 39-year low, a Gallup poll shows.
The survey found that 61 percent of Americans back the death penalty, down from 64 percent last year, the lowest since 1972 when the Supreme Court ruled on Furman v. Georgia, which lead to a moratorium on capital punishment for several years.
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Of those polled, 40 percent said the death penalty is not imposed “often enough,” the lowest level since Gallup first asked the question in May 2001. Meanwhile, 25 percent said the death penalty is used “too often,” and 27 percent said it is used “about the right amount.”
The survey also indicates that Americans feel less confident that the death penalty is applied fairly than they have in recent years, with 52 percent saying they think the punishment is used fairly, down from 58 percent last year.
Republicans and independents who lean Republican are far more likely to approve of the death penalty — 73 percent of them said they approve, compared with 46 percent of Democrats and independents who lean Democrat. More men also expressed stronger support for capital punishment, with 64 percent of men saying they approve of the method while 57 of females said the same.
Support for the death penalty was highest in the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, with an all-time high of 80 percent expressing support for it in 1994.
The poll was conducted from Oct. 6-9 among 1,005 adults via telephone interviews. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. ||||| Fifty-two percent say the death penalty is applied fairly
PRINCETON, NJ -- Sixty-one percent of Americans approve of using the death penalty for persons convicted of murder, down from 64% last year. This is the lowest level of support since 1972, the year the Supreme Court voided all existing state death penalty laws in Furman v. Georgia.
Gallup first asked about use of the death penalty in murder cases in 1936. At that time, 59% of Americans supported it and 38% opposed it. Americans' views on the death penalty have varied significantly over the 75 years since, including a period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s when less than a majority of Americans favored it. Support climbed to its highest levels from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, including the all-time high of 80% who favored the death penalty in 1994. Since then, support has gradually declined; this year's measure of 61% marks a 19-percentage-point drop over the past 17 years, and a 3-point drop from last year's measure.
The Oct. 6-9 poll was conducted shortly after the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, which generated widespread protests and extensive news coverage. This could help explain the slight drop in support for the death penalty this year. However, there have been high-profile executions in the news in previous years without concomitant drops in death penalty support, making it less clear that such events have a direct impact on attitudes.
Less Than Half Say Death Penalty Not Imposed Often Enough
This year, 40% of Americans say the death penalty is not imposed often enough, the lowest such percentage since May 2001, when Gallup first asked this question. Twenty-five percent say the death penalty is used too often, the highest such percentage yet that Gallup has measured. The rest (27%) say the death penalty is imposed about the right amount.
Similarly, attitudes about how fairly the death penalty is applied in the U.S. have become less positive this year. Fifty-two percent of Americans say the death penalty is applied fairly in this country, down from 58% last year, but similar to the 51% who felt this way in June 2000.
Republicans, Those in Midwest and South Most Likely to Express Support for Death Penalty
Support for the death penalty is highly partisan in nature. Almost three-quarters of Republicans and independents who lean Republican approve, compared with 46% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic. Additionally, men, whites, and those living in the South and Midwest are among those most likely to support the death penalty. Americans younger than age 30 are less likely to support the death penalty than are those who are 30 and older.
Bottom Line
Support for the death penalty in cases of murder has varied substantially over the past 75 years. A majority of Americans supported the death penalty when Gallup first asked about it in 1936, and less than a majority supported it in various Gallup polls between 1957 and 1971, but support has returned to a majority level since. Support peaked in the 1990s as concerns about crime rose, but since that point it has declined, although a clear majority of Americans still favor its use in cases of murder.
Recent years have seen renewed controversy over the death penalty's use, including the 2010 execution of Teresa Lewis in Virginia, the first woman to be executed in that state in almost 100 years, and the execution of Davis in September of this year. It is not clear whether the death penalty will be an issue in next year's presidential race, although Texas Gov. Rick Perry was asked in a recent Republican debate about his state's status as the most frequent in carrying out the death penalty.
A separate Gallup trend question, not asked this year, explicitly offers respondents the opportunity to choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, and last year's update found about half of Americans preferring the latter option. On the other hand, Gallup has found support for the use of the death penalty rising when Americans are asked about specific cases involving high-profile mass killings, such as the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. | – A full 61% of Americans back the death penalty, but even so, support is at a 39-year low. A new Gallup poll finds that support is down from 64% last year, and is at its lowest level since a brief moratorium on capital punishment began in 1972 with the Supreme Court ruling on Furman v. Georgia. The news comes on the heels of an exoneration last night, when DNA evidence freed a Texas man. The poll also found that 52% think the death penalty is applied fairly, down from last year’s 58%. One-quarter of those polled said the death penalty is imposed “too often,” while 27% believe it is used “about the right amount” and 40% said it should be imposed more often. That 40% also represents the lowest level since Gallup began asking the question in 2001. Men, Republicans, and right-leaning independents were all more likely to support the death penalty. Support for capital punishment hit an all-time high of 80% in 1994, Politico notes. In other death penalty news, find out which state wants to bring back firing squads. |
Surabaya. Only two days after a wildebeest was found dead in its cage, an African lion was also found dead at the Surabaya Zoo, which has been globally slammed on for its poor treatment for the animals in its care.
The 18-month-old male African Lion named Michael was found dead after its head got stuck between steel cables in his cage.
“Michael was found dead on Tuesday morning when the zoo keeper was checking his cage,” Surabaya Zoo spokesman Agus Supangkat said.
Each of the zoo’s lions spends its days in two different cages. Every morning the lions would be taken to a display cage where zoo visitors could watch them, then in the afternoon they would be moved to another cage where they slept, Agus explained.
He said the zoo used steel cables to secure the cage so zookeepers did not have to manually open or close the cage door with their hands — a safety precaution, which prevents them from being attacked by the animals.
“We are still investigating how the steel cables could entrap the African lion’s head,” Agus said.
He declined to confirm that Michael’s needless death was caused by zookeepers’ negligence.
“Michael was relatively young, he was only one-and-half-years old; it could be that he was playing around and somehow his head got stuck,” he said.
With Michael’s death there are only four African lions left at the zoo. The young lion had been rescued by East Java Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) before he was sent to the Surabaya zoo in March last year.
Surabaya Police have meanwhile started an investigation into the lion’s death.
Surabaya Police detectives chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Farman said a team has visited the zoo to gather evidence but the lion’s corpse had been removed.
Farhan would not say whether police believe the zoo was trying to hamper the investigation by getting rid of the lion’s remains.
“We are going to wait for the autopsy results, then we can further examine the case,” he said.
On Sunday evening a wildebeest was found dead in its cage.
Agus said signs of the wildebeest’s deteriorating health had been noticed several days prior to its death. The animal’s assigned keeper had reported its illness to the zoo’s medical team, which then moved it to conduct tests and a medical evaluation. Despite this, the wildebeest’s health worsened.
According to Agus, an autopsy showed an intestinal complication as the cause of death.
The issue raised speculation that poor maintenance and upkeep of the animals had contributed to Sunday’s death. But Agus denied allegations that officials had not been feeding the animal appropriately, citing the medical team’s autopsy results, which showed the wildebeest still had food in his stomach at the time of death.
He added that poor weather conditions may have been a contributing factor.
It was not the first time Surabaya Zoo officials blamed the weather as a cause of death of animals in its care. In October, an orangutan named Betty was found dead after suffering from pneumonia, an illness zoo officials blamed on the city’s heat.
Saturday’s death reduces the zoo’s wildebeest population to only one, a female.
The Taman Safari II zoo in Prigen, Pasuruan, East Java, donated the wildebeest to the Surabaya Zoo in April.
The death follows a string of animal deaths within the confines of the Surabaya Zoo, with 43 having died between July and September last year.
The zoo has been in the media spotlight since the mysterious deaths of a lion and a kangaroo a few years ago.
Surabaya Zoo has also been condemned for the death of a giraffe — found to have had 20 kilograms of plastic in its stomach — and for the death of a Sumatran tiger, which was found with a rotten digestive tract after being regularly fed meat laced with formaldehyde.
Many other animals at the zoo have also perished, allegedly from neglect, starvation, maltreatment and unnatural causes in recent years, while others are reportedly seen living in dirty, cramped cages suffering from illnesses.
This earned the zoo the nickname “zoo of death” in international media.
Animal rights activists have called for the zoo’s closure, but later reneged on the suggestion over concerns that the estimated 3,000 remaining animals would struggle to find new homes. ||||| Lion found hanging in cage at notorious Indonesian ‘death zoo’
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, January 9, 2014 7:43 EST
A young African lion has died after getting its head caught in cables in its cage at an Indonesian zoo notorious for hundreds of animal deaths in recent years, it was announced Thursday.
The 18-month-old lion named Michael was found early Tuesday at the zoo in Surabaya, in the east of the main island of Java, said zoo spokesman Agus Supangkat.
“The lion was found hanging from the roof of his cage. He was very young and got his head stuck in cables that keepers use to open and close the cage,” Supangkat told AFP.
Supangkat insisted that the death was an accident and not due to negligence. Police were investigating its death, he added.
The incident came just two days after a wildebeest was found dead in its cage at the zoo, which has been dubbed the “death zoo” because so many animals have died there prematurely in recent years due to neglect.
Among them have been endangered orangutans, a tiger whose food was laced with formaldehyde and a giraffe found dead with a beachball-sized lump of plastic in its stomach, after eating food wrappers thrown into its pen over the years.
The wildebeest died on Sunday evening of intestinal complications.
Supangkat insisted the wildebeest had been properly fed and said it became sick after days of intense rain and humidity.
The management of the zoo — Indonesia’s biggest — has been taken over by the Surabaya city administration, but the deaths have not stopped and animal welfare groups continue to call for its closure.
African lions are found in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies them as vulnerable. ||||| | 23
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Physically and emotionally demanding. That’s how Philipp Henschel, Lion Program Survey Coordinator for the big-cat conservation organization Panthera, describes the six years he and other researchers spent combing the wilds of 17 nations looking for the elusive and rarely studied West African lion. The results of their quest were disheartening to say the least. Back in 2005, before the survey began, West African lions were believed to live in 21 different protected areas. But now a paper about the survey, published today in PLoS One, confirms that lions actually exist in just four of those sites. Worse still, the researchers estimate that the total population for West African lions is only about 400 animals, including fewer than 250 mature individuals of breeding age.
West African lions—historically referred to as the subspecies Panthera leo senegalensis, although that taxonomic designation is not currently in use—are smaller than and genetically distinct from their southern and eastern African relatives, which are also in decline and currently number about 35,000 big cats. Recent genetic tests link them more closely to the extinct Barbary lion of northern Africa and the critically endangered Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) in India, which also has a population of about 450 animals.
Although shocking, the news of the lions’ near extinction should probably not come as a surprise given the context of the region. The populations of other large mammal species declined an average of 85 percent in West Africa between 1970 and 2005, mostly to feed the voracious demand of the bushmeat trade. The 11 nations of West Africa are among the poorest on earth and include six of the world’s least developed countries. The countries in the region have no money for conservation, and the study found that most of the protected areas that were expected to contain lions had little to no enforcement, security patrols or management. National parks are frequently overrun by tens of thousands of domesticated cattle. Henschel describes many of the so-called protected areas as “paper parks”—conservation sites in name only.
Devastating Realization
The research team conducted in-person surveys in 13 of the 21 protected areas—each of which was larger than 500 square kilometers—and relied on field reports from scientists studying other species in the eight smaller sites. Although some of the work could be done from vehicles, that wasn’t an option in many sites. “Due to the complete lack of roads in some protected areas, we had to conduct all survey work on foot in those areas, hiking up to 600 kilometers through rough terrain during individual surveys,” Henschel says. The research was also sometimes quite dangerous. “Encounters with aggressive poachers, and, in some countries, rebel groups, were frequent.”
The human encounters also illustrated some of the dangers the lions face (the cats are often killed as pests). “In many of the protected areas we surveyed, we also conducted interviews with various groups about the potential presence of lions,” Henschel says. “One group we targeted for interviews were herders of the Fulani ethnic group, which is the largest migratory pastoralist group in Africa, and extends across all of West Africa. We often encountered Fulani herders and their cattle deep inside protected areas, and individuals interviewed almost uniformly admitted to carrying poison to kill any lions that attacked their herds.”
Even harder than the travel was the fact that the researchers rarely saw evidence of any lions. “It was devastating to realize that despite all this physical effort, despite weeks spent searching for spoor, no lion sign could be found in so many areas,” he says.
But their work was not completely in vain. They did find spoors, tracks and other evidence of lions in the four sites and ever-so-rarely laid eyes on an actual lion. Henschel says the most rewarding encounter occurred in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park. They had been searching the area for more than a month under extreme heat—”over 95 degrees Fahrenheit even at night”— when they finally spotted a big cat. “What says it all, concerning the rarity of the lion in the park, is that not one of my four survey team members, all long-serving national park service staff, had ever seen a lion in their lives. It was extremely rewarding to see how excited they all were to finally have seen the animal that is also a symbol of national pride in Senegal.”
The Counts
The researchers found the most West African lions in W-Arly-Pendjari, a complex of parks that crosses the borders of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger, which they estimate to hold about 350 big cats. The three other sites in Senegal and Nigeria are each estimated to have fewer than 50 lions. None of the sites are anywhere near each other, as you can see in the map below:
(The map also shows the sites of two possible but unconfirmed lion sites in Guinea. No lions have been seen there in more than 10 years, but the authors write in their paper that “credible reports of vocalizations suggest they may still be present.”)
In addition to their low numbers, the lions also live at a very low density of about 1 lion per 100 square kilometers. Lions in East Africa live in populations fifteen times denser. Despite this stretched out distribution, Henschel reports the good news that cubs were observed, both in person and via their spoor, meaning the cats are finding each other well enough to mate. “Lions at all four sites where the species was confirmed present are still reproducing successfully,” he says.
What Comes Next?
“Now that this massive survey effort has been concluded,” Henschel says, “we finally know where lions remain and where we need to invest our efforts to save them. This was a vital first step, but the real work of saving them is only just beginning. Even the protected areas that retain lions are understaffed and underequipped. We intend to assist lion range countries in improving management effectiveness of the areas containing lions by helping them to increase the numbers, expertise, and operating budgets of enforcement personnel in protected areas with lions.” He says that will help to “curb the killing of lion prey and illegal incursions into protected areas by pastoralists.”
Beyond that, the genetic material collected from lion droppings during the surveys will be assessed to determine the animals’ genetic diversity and health. Along those same lines, the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group, which determines the conservation status of wild cats around the world, is also tackling the thorny issue of lion taxonomy, which may result in new classification for the West African lion. The IUCN currently lists the West African lion as a population, not a separate subspecies, and considers it to be endangered. “If West African lions were indeed classified as a separate subspecies by IUCN/SSC, we would recommend listing them as Critically Endangered,” Henschel says.
Panthera president Luke Hunter, who co-authored the new study, also hopes that the world will take notice of these lions, which have been ignored until now. “Lions have undergone a catastrophic collapse in West Africa,” he said in a press release. “The countries that have managed to retain them are struggling with pervasive poverty and very little funding for conservation. To save the lion—and many other critically endangered mammals including unique populations of cheetahs, African wild dogs and elephants—will require a massive commitment of resources from the international community.” Whether that aid and assistance will materialize in one of the poorest and least supported regions on earth remains to be seen.
Previously in Extinction Countdown:
Photo: A male lion in photographed in 2012 in Pendjari National Park during Panthera’s survey of the W-Arly-Pendjari complex. © Philip Henschel/Panthera. Used with permission ||||| LIMA, Peru — After the shocking death of Cecil the lion this summer, here’s a rare piece of good news for Africa’s biggest cat. A total of 33 lions rescued from miserable lives in circuses in South America are heading home next month, back to Africa, in what’s being billed as the largest ever airlift of its kind.
Many of the felines spent years in Peru and Colombia being mistreated, underfed and forced to perform tricks for the public.
Working with local authorities, British group Animal Defenders International (ADI) has rescued the animals over the last couple of years, and is now organizing a charter Boeing 747 flight to South Africa.
There the animals will start a new life of relative freedom, in pristine African bush at the 12,000-acre Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary in Limpopo province.
Let’s bring them home! The 33 lions rescued by ADI from circuses in Peru and Colombia during the Operation Spirit of... Posted by Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary on Tuesday, September 1, 2015
That’s the best possible outcome for the lions given that they would be unable to survive in the wild. Many were born in captivity and have never learned basic survival skills, including hunting.
But that may be the least of it. Almost all the lions had their claws removed in captivity and many have broken teeth. One is almost blind.
Emoya is a private reserve, off limits to the public. It also operates a no-breeding policy, putting it at odds with South Africa’s booming big game hunting sector.
That industry makes huge profits by rearing thousands of animals every year for wealthy tourists to shoot — the fate that befell Cecil in neighboring Zimbabwe.
A rescued lioness at the Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary.
In a statement, ADI President Jan Creamer said she was “delighted” the lions are returning to Africa, where they belong.
“The climate and environment are perfect for them,” she added. “When we visited Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary we knew this is a dream come true for ADI and, more importantly, the lions.”
The sanctuary is owned and run by the Heuser family with financial backing from the public.
Creamer also praised the commitment of officials in Colombia and Peru to enforce new laws, brought in following ADI’s campaigning, that ban circus acts with animals.
Peru actually outlawed the practice in 2011. But many circuses refused to stop, and the animal rights group’s experts, accompanied by government officials and police, braved several violent confrontations with circus performers to rescue lions.
To avoid the crackdown one Peruvian circus even escaped to Ecuador, where it continues to perform.
In total, 24 lions were rescued in Peru and nine from Colombia. Roughly another 60 animals, including mountain lions and monkeys, were also saved.
The lions are currently recovering from their ordeal at a special reserve near the Peruvian capital Lima. With many of them malnourished and having spent their entire lives in tiny cages, vets are working to improve the animals’ muscle tone and overall health.
Originally, ADI planned to take them to a private reserve in Colorado. But when the opportunity at Emoya came, the group couldn’t pass it up.
Another rescued lion at Emoya.
More from GlobalPost: These Peruvian circus lions could be headed to a new life in Colorado
The airlift is schedule for late October. ADI is still raising money for it — priced around $600,000 — but said it’s confident it will reach its goal.
“It is more expensive to relocate these animals to Africa, but who can put a price on taking them home to where they belong?” Creamer said. “It also sends such a clear and important message about protecting wildlife in their natural habitats and ranges.”
Emoya founder Savannah Heuser added: “Their lives were forcibly wasted away in horrific tiny cages, the doing of mindless circus acts.”
“They have a lot of lost time to make up for. They will live out the rest of their lives in a natural habitat, the closest they can ever come to freedom.” | – Lions are on the verge of extinction in West Africa, a stunning new survey has concluded, after years of harrowing treks in search of them. When researchers started their search in 2005, the lions, a distinct species from their east and south African brethren, were believed to inhabit 21 protected areas. But as the team searched those areas, they encountered "aggressive poachers, and, in some countries, rebel groups"—but almost no signs of lions, Scientific American reports. In the end, they concluded that lions still live in just four of the protected zones, and that there were likely only around 400 of them left, including just 250 adults. These lions are desperately spread out as well, with roughly one per 1,000 square kilometers, but there is evidence of successful breeding in all four areas. "We finally know where lions remain," the program's coordinator said, "and where we need to invest our efforts to save them." In other depressing big cat news: An 18-month-old lion was found hanging dead from the roof of his cage at the Surabaya City Zoo in Indonesia, officials announced today. The lion, named Michael, had gotten his head stuck in the steel cables used to open and close the cage, the AFP reports via Raw Story. The Surabaya zoo is notorious for its frequent animal deaths; the lion is the second in the past three days, the Jakarta Globe reports. Police stopped two men loading what they assumed was a human corpse into an SUV in Wenzhou, China yesterday, only to discover that the tarp-wrapped corpse actually belonged to a Siberian tiger, one of the most endangered species on Earth, the New York Times reports. The two men fled, but another man who was still inside the SUV was apprehended. |
Senator Elizabeth Warren embraced the Black Lives Matter protest movement in a forceful speech in Boston on Sunday, calling on police departments to train their officers in the de-escalation of violence and to outfit them with body cameras.
Warren, speaking at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, emphasized that most police officers serve honorably. But she did not mince words in describing the police brutality that has become a national topic of conversation.
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“We have seen sickening videos of unarmed, black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air — their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them,” she said. “Peaceful, unarmed protesters have been beaten. Journalists have been jailed. And, in some cities, white vigilantes with weapons freely walk the streets.”
The speech, a high-profile endorsement of the anti-police-brutality movement by one of the nation’s most prominent politicians, combined Warren’s signature concern with economic inequality with a treatise on the damaging effects of racism.
The senator spoke of a history of subpar wages for black people and redlining in the housing market.
“Economic justice has not ever been sufficient to ensure racial justice,” she said. “Owning a home won’t stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to school won’t prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside.” But Martin Luther King Jr., she noted, once wrote that he’d learned “the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.”
Warren spoke of a growing wealth gap between white and black families and a complaint filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance against real estate agents in Mississippi, alleging they consistently steered white families away from interracial neighborhoods and black families away from well-to-do areas.
Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School who has written about Black Lives Matter, said he is not surprised Warren embraced the movement. But he said her rhetoric stands out. “Politicians have shied away from acknowledging the Black Lives Matter movement,” he said, noting that the same was true of the civil rights movement.
Warren, in her speech, positioned the protest as an heir to the civil rights movement.
Black Lives Matter, which grew out of protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the police shooting of Michael Brown, has become part of the presidential campaign, disrupting speeches by Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. Hillary Clinton had a backstage encounter with activists that got national attention.
Warren said Sunday “pervasive and persistent distrust” of police in black communities “is not based on myths.” It is “grounded in the reality of unjustified violence,” she said.
“Listen to the brave, powerful voices of today’s new generation of civil rights leaders. Incredible voices,” she said. “Watch them when they march through the streets, ‘hands up don’t shoot’ — not to incite a riot, but to fight for their lives. To fight for their lives.
“This is the reality that all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and as ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us once again to affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter.” ||||| Speaking in Boston, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says black Americans still face violence, economic injustice and restrictions to voting rights. She highlights the efforts of activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. (Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate)
In a Sunday speech on racial inequality, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for broad policing reform — including de-escalation training and body cameras for all police officers — and likened the current Black Lives Matter movement to the civil rights movement that won black Americans the right to vote in the 1960s.
"None of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets." Warren said. "This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter."
In the address, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post prior to her delivery, Warren draws direct parallels between the civil rights movement and the current anti-police-brutality movement, and it sought to link issues on economic inequality with systemic racism. She traces racial economic inequality, citing inequities in the housing system, as well as decrying restrictions to voting rights.
"Economic justice is not — and has never been — sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won’t stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won’t prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside," Warren declared. "The tools of oppression were woven together, and the civil rights struggle was fought against that oppression wherever it was found — against violence, against the denial of voting rights and against economic injustice."
[WATCH: Elizabeth Warren's full speech on racial inequality]
Warren's address, delivered at the Edward Kennedy Institute in Boston, was perhaps the most full-throated endorsement to date by a federal lawmaker for the ongoing protest movement, and it drew immediate praise from some of the most visible activists.
"Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism has played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights," said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent activist who said he hopes to meet with Warren to further discuss racial injustice. "And Warren, better than any political leader I've yet heard, understands the protests as a matter of life or death — that the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence and that the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma."
[Black Lives Matter movement finds influencing 2016 contest a challenge]
Born out of the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., after the police shooting of Michael Brown last summer, the current protest movement has upended the efforts of Democratic presidential candidates to reach out to black voters. The three candidates have faced protests and interruptions at some of their campaign events. Both former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have met with some of the most visible activists, and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mckesson have agreed to meet soon.
The activists have called for a host of police reform measures, including body cameras, de-escalation training, special prosecutors in cases of police killings and a review of police union contracts.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) speaks about raising wages during the forum AFL-CIO National Summit (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
"It is a tragedy when any American cannot trust those who have sworn to protect and serve," Warren said. "This pervasive and persistent distrust isn’t based on myths. It is grounded in the reality of unjustified violence."
But the topics of police violence and reform have yet to gain significant traction in the Republican primary. In a three-hour debate held earlier this month, the topics weren't brought up once — by either the moderators or candidates.
[Why Hillary Clinton and her rivals are struggling to grasp Black Lives Matter]
At times, Warren's speech read as if it could have been authored by the activists themselves — unyielding in its criticism of police violence and even invoking the phrase "hands up, don't shoot," a Ferguson rallying cry that conservatives have attacked as a lie because the Justice Department concluded that Michael Brown's hands were most likely not up in the air when he was shot and killed by Darren Wilson.
"We’ve seen sickening videos of unarmed, black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air — their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them. Peaceful, unarmed protesters have been beaten. Journalists have been jailed. And, in some cities, white vigilantes with weapons freely walk the streets," Warren said. "And it’s not just about law enforcement either. Just look to the terrorism this summer at Emanuel AME Church [in Charleston, S.C.]. We must be honest: 50 years after John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out, violence against African Americans has not disappeared." ||||| Liberal champion Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Sunday delivered a stirring defense of Black Lives Matter, characterizing it as a modern and necessary civil rights movement.
The full-throated defense of the movement contrasted with comments from other national politicians, whose remarks on Black Lives Matter have ranged from cautious to missing the point — like when Martin O'Malley said that "all lives matter."
One of the most powerful moments in the speech came when Warren criticized opponents of Black Lives Matter, who say the movement to end racial disparities in the criminal justice system is inciting violence. "Watch them when they march through the streets — 'hands up, don't shoot' — not to incite a riot, but to fight for their lives," she said at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute. "To fight for their lives."
Warren: It goes even deeper than criminal justice disparities
Warren's remarks went further than the disparities in the criminal justice system, speaking to voting rights, economic inequality, housing discrimination, and predatory banking practices:
Fifty years after John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, violence against African Americans has not disappeared. And what about voting rights? Two years ago, five conservative justices on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates ever wider for measures designed to suppress minority voting. Today, the specific tools of oppression have changed — voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, and mass disfranchisement through a criminal justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black citizens. The tools have changed, but black voters are still deliberately cut out of the political process. … Today, 90 percent of Americans see no real wage growth. For African-Americans, who were so far behind earlier in the 20th century, this means that since the 1980s they have been hit particularly hard. In January of this year, African-American unemployment was 10.3 percent — more than twice the rate of white unemployment. And, after beginning to make progress during the civil rights era to close the wealth gap between black and white families, in the 1980s the wealth gap exploded, so that from 1984 to 2009, the wealth gap between black and white families tripled.
Ultimately, Warren called for various policies to help bring down these disparities — from police-worn body cameras that would help hold officers accountable to steps that would make voting simpler and easier, such as automatic voter registration and making Election Day a holiday.
Warren on why "it is important to cause necessary trouble"
Warren finished her speech with a powerful anecdote, characterizing Black Lives Matter as a continuation of the civil rights struggles of more than 50 years ago:
Back in March, I met an elderly man at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. We were having coffee and doughnuts in the church basement before the service started. He told me that more than 50 years earlier — in May of 1961 — he had spent 11 hours in that same basement, along with hundreds of people, while a mob outside threatened to burn down the church because it was a sanctuary for civil rights workers. Dr. King called Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, desperately asking for help. The attorney general promised to send the Army, but the closest military base was several hours away. So the members of the church and the civil rights workers waited in the sweltering basement, crowded together, listening to the mob outside and hoping the US Army would arrive in time. After the church service, I asked Congressman John Lewis about that night. He had been right there in that church back in 1961 while the mob gathered outside. He had been in the room during the calls to the attorney general. I asked if he had been afraid that the Army wouldn't make it in time. He said that he was "never, ever afraid. You come to that point where you lose all sense of fear." And then he said something I'll never forget. He said that his parents didn't want him to get involved in civil rights. They didn't want him to "cause trouble." But he had done it anyway. He told me, "Sometimes it is important to cause necessary trouble."
Read the full speech
Thank you. I'm grateful to be here at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. This place is a fitting tribute to our champion, Ted Kennedy. A man of courage, compassion, and commitment, who taught us what public service is all about. Not a day goes by that we don't miss his passion, his enthusiasm, and — most of all — his dedication to all of our working families.
As the senior senator from Massachusetts, I have the great honor of sitting at Sen. Kennedy's desk — right over there. The original, back in Washington, is a little more dented and scratched, but it has something very special in the drawer. Ted Kennedy carved his name in it. When I sit at my desk, sometimes when I'm waiting to speak or to vote, I open the drawer and run my thumb across his name. It reminds me of the high expectations of the people of Massachusetts, and I try, every day, to live up to the legacy he left behind.
Sen. Kennedy took office just over 50 years ago, in the midst of one of the great moral and political debates in American history — the debate over the Civil Rights Act. In his first speech on the floor of the Senate, just four months after his brother's assassination, he stood up to support equal rights for all Americans. He ended that speech with a powerful personal message about what the civil rights struggle meant to the late President Kennedy:
His heart and soul are in this bill. If his life and death had a meaning, it was that we should not hate but love one another; we should use our powers not to create conditions of oppression that lead to violence, but conditions of freedom that lead to peace.
"We should use our powers not to create conditions of oppression that lead to violence, but conditions of freedom that lead to peace." That's what I'd like to talk about today.
A half-century ago, when Sen. Kennedy spoke of the Civil Rights Act, entrenched, racist power did everything it could to sustain oppression of African Americans, and violence was its first tool. Lynchings, terrorism, intimidation. The 16th Street Baptist Church. Medgar Evers. Emmett Till. When Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood before the nation and declared during his 1963 inaugural address that he would defend "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," he made clear that the state would stand with those who used violence.
But violence was not the only tool. African Americans were effectively stripped of citizenship when they were denied the right to vote. The tools varied — literacy tests, poll taxes, moral character tests, grandfather clauses — but the results were the same. They were denied basic rights of citizenship and the chance to participate in self-government.
The third tool of oppression was to deliberately deny millions of African Americans economic opportunities solely because of the color of their skin.
I have often spoken about how America built a great middle class. Coming out of the Great Depression, from the 1930s to the late 1970s, as GDP went up, wages went up for most Americans. But there's a dark underbelly to that story. While median family income in America was growing — for both white and African-American families — African-American incomes were only a fraction of white incomes. In the mid-1950s, the median income for African-American families was just a little more than half the income of white families.
And the problem went beyond just income. Look at housing: For most middle class families in America, buying a home is the number one way to build wealth. It's a retirement plan — pay off the house and live on Social Security. An investment option — mortgage the house to start a business. It's a way to help the kids get through college, a safety net if someone gets really sick, and, if all goes well and Grandma and Grandpa can hang on to the house until they die, it's a way to give the next generation a boost — extra money to move the family up the ladder.
For much of the 20th century, that's how it worked for generation after generation of white Americans — but not black Americans. Entire legal structures were created to prevent African Americans from building economic security through home ownership. Legally-enforced segregation. Restrictive deeds. Redlining. Land contracts. Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it.
State-sanctioned discrimination wasn't limited to home ownership. The government enforced discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination in schools, discrimination in credit — it was a long and spiteful list.
Economic justice is not — and has never been — sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won't stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won't prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside. But when Dr. King led hundreds of thousands of people to march on Washington, he talked about an end to violence, access to voting AND economic opportunity. As Dr. King once wrote, "the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice."
The tools of oppression were woven together, and the civil rights struggle was fought against that oppression wherever it was found — against violence, against the denial of voting rights, and against economic injustice.
The battles were bitter and sometimes deadly. Fire hoses turned on peaceful protestors. Police officers setting their dogs to attack black students. Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But the civil rights movement pushed this country in a new direction. The federal government cracked down on state-sponsored violence. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson all called out the National Guard, and, in doing so, declared that everyone had a right to equal protection under the law, guaranteed by the Constitution. Congress protected the rights of all citizens to vote with the Voting Rights Act.
And economic opportunities opened up when Congress passed civil rights laws that protected equal access to employment, public accommodations, and housing.
In the same way that the tools of oppression were woven together, a package of civil rights laws came together to protect black people from violence, to ensure access to the ballot box, and to build economic opportunity. Or to say it another way, these laws made three powerful declarations: Black lives matter. Black citizens matter. Black families matter.
Fifty years later, we have made real progress toward creating the conditions of freedom — but we have not made enough progress.
Fifty years later, violence against African Americans has not disappeared. Consider law enforcement. The vast majority of police officers sign up so they can protect their communities. They are part of an honorable profession that takes risks every day to keep us safe. We know that. But we also know — and say — the names of those whose lives have been treated with callous indifference. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray. Michael Brown. We've seen sickening videos of unarmed black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air — their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them. Peaceful, unarmed protestors have been beaten. Journalists have been jailed. And, in some cities, white vigilantes with weapons freely walk the streets. And it's not just about law enforcement either. Just look to the terrorism this summer at Emanuel AME Church. We must be honest: Fifty years after John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out, violence against African Americans has not disappeared. And what about voting rights? Two years ago, five conservative justices on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates ever wider for measures designed to suppress minority voting. Today, the specific tools of oppression have changed — voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, and mass disfranchisement through a criminal justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black citizens. The tools have changed, but black voters are still deliberately cut out of the political process.
Violence. Voting. And what about economic injustice? Research shows that the legal changes in the civil rights era created new employment and housing opportunities. In the 1960s and the 1970s, African-American men and women began to close the wage gap with white workers, giving millions of black families hope that they might build real wealth. But then, Republicans' trickle-down economic theory arrived. Just as this country was taking the first steps toward economic justice, the Republicans pushed a theory that meant helping the richest people and the most powerful corporations get richer and more powerful. I'll just do one statistic on this: From 1980 to 2012, GDP continued to rise, but how much of the income growth went to the 90 percent of America — everyone outside the top 10 percent — black, white, Latino? None. Zero. Nothing. 100 percent of all the new income produced in this country over the past 30 years has gone to the top 10 percent.
Today, 90 percent of Americans see no real wage growth. For African-Americans, who were so far behind earlier in the 20th century, this means that since the 1980s they have been hit particularly hard. In January of this year, African-American unemployment was 10.3 percent — more than twice the rate of white unemployment. And after beginning to make progress during the civil rights era to close the wealth gap between black and white families, in the 1980s the wealth gap exploded, so that from 1984 to 2009 the wealth gap between black and white families tripled.
The 2008 housing collapse destroyed trillions in family wealth across the country, but the crash hit African Americans like a punch in the gut. Because middle-class black families' wealth was disproportionately tied up in home ownership and not other forms of savings, these families were hit harder by the housing collapse. But they also got hit harder because of discriminatory lending practices — yes, discriminatory lending practices in the 21st century. Recently several big banks and other mortgage lenders paid hundreds of millions in fines, admitting that they illegally steered black and Latino borrowers into more expensive mortgages than white borrowers who had similar credit. Tom Perez, who at the time was the assistant attorney general for civil rights, called it a "racial surtax." And it's still happening — earlier this month, the National Fair Housing Alliance filed a discrimination complaint against real estate agents in Mississippi after an investigation showed those agents consistently steering white buyers away from interracial neighborhoods and black buyers away from affluent ones. Another investigation showed similar results across our nation's cities. Housing discrimination alive and well in 2015. Violence, voting, economic justice.
We have made important strides forward. But we are not done yet. And now, it is our time. I speak today with the full knowledge that I have not personally experienced and can never truly understand the fear, the oppression, and the pain that confronts African Americans every day. But none of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets.
Listen to the brave, powerful voices of today's new generation of civil rights leaders. Incredible voices. Listen to them say: "If I die in police custody, know that I did not commit suicide." Watch them when they march through the streets — "hands up, don't shoot" — not to incite a riot, but to fight for their lives. To fight for their lives.
This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter.
Once again, the task begins with safeguarding our communities from violence. We have made progress, but it is a tragedy when any American cannot trust those who have sworn to protect and serve. This pervasive and persistent distrust isn't based on myths. It is grounded in the reality of unjustified violence.
Policing must become a truly community endeavor — not in just a few cities, but everywhere. Police forces should look like, and come from, the neighborhoods they serve. They should reach out to support and defend the community — working with people in neighborhoods before problems arise. All police forces — not just some — must be trained to deescalate and to avoid the likelihood of violence. Body cameras can help us know what happens when someone is hurt. We honor the bravery and sacrifice that our law enforcement officers show every day on the job — and the noble intentions of the vast majority of those who take up the difficult job of keeping us safe. But police are not occupying armies. This is America, not a war zone — and policing practices in all cities — not just some — need to reflect that.
Next, voting.
It's time to call out the recent flurry of new state law restrictions for what they are: an all-out campaign by Republicans to take away the right to vote from poor and black and Latino American citizens who probably won't vote for them. The push to restrict voting is nothing more than a naked grab to win elections that they can't win if every citizen votes. Two years ago the Supreme Court eviscerated critical parts of the Voting Rights Act. Congress could easily fix this, and Democrats in the Senate have called for restoration of voting rights. Now it is time for Republicans to step up to support a restoration of the Voting Rights Act — or to stand before the American people and explain why they have abandoned America's most cherished liberty, the right to vote.
And while we're at it, we need to update the rules around voting. Voting should be simple. Voter registration should be automatic. Get a driver's license, get registered automatically. Nonviolent, law-abiding citizens should not lose the right to vote because of a prior conviction. Election Day should be a holiday, so no one has to choose between a paycheck and a vote. Early voting and vote by mail would give fast food and retail workers who don't get holidays day off a chance to proudly cast their votes. The hidden discrimination that comes with purging voter rolls and short-staffing polling places must stop. The right to vote remains essential to protect all other rights, and no candidate for president or for any other elected office — Republican or Democrat — should be elected if they will not pledge to support full, meaningful voting rights.
Finally, economic justice. Our task will not be complete until we ensure that every family — regardless of race — has a fighting chance to build an economic future for themselves and their families. We need less talk and more action about reducing unemployment, ending wage stagnation, and closing the income gap between white and nonwhite workers.
And one more issue, dear to my heart: It's time to come down hard on predatory practices that allow financial institutions to systematically strip wealth out of communities of color. One of the ugly consequences of bank deregulation was that there was no cop on the beat when too many financial institutions figured out that they could make great money by tricking, trapping, and defrauding targeted families. Now we have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and we need to make sure it stays strong and independent so that it can do its job and make credit markets work for black families, Latino families, white families — all families.
Yes, there's work to do.
Back in March, I met an elderly man at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. We were having coffee and doughnuts in the church basement before the service started. He told me that more than 50 years earlier — in May of 1961 — he had spent 11 hours in that same basement, along with hundreds of people, while a mob outside threatened to burn down the church because it was a sanctuary for civil rights workers. Dr. King called Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, desperately asking for help. The attorney general promised to send the Army, but the closest military base was several hours away. So the members of the church and the civil rights workers waited in the sweltering basement, crowded together, listening to the mob outside and hoping the US Army would arrive in time.
After the church service, I asked Congressman John Lewis about that night. He had been right there in that church back in 1961 while the mob gathered outside. He had been in the room during the calls to the attorney general. I asked if he had been afraid that the Army wouldn't make it in time. He said that he was "never, ever afraid. You come to that point where you lose all sense of fear." And then he said something I'll never forget. He said that his parents didn't want him to get involved in civil rights. They didn't want him to "cause trouble." But he had done it anyway. He told me, "Sometimes it is important to cause necessary trouble."
The first civil rights battles were hard fought. But they established that black lives matter. That black citizens matter. That black families matter. Half a century later, we have made real progress, but we have not made enough progress. As Sen. Kennedy said in his first floor speech, "This is not a political issue. It is a moral issue, to be resolved through political means." So it comes to us to continue the fight, to make, as John Lewis said, the "necessary trouble" until we can truly say that in America, every citizen enjoys the conditions of freedom. Thank you. | – On Sunday, Elizabeth Warren gave what the Washington Post is calling "the speech that Black Lives Matter activists have been waiting for." Speaking at the Edward Kennedy Institute in Boston, Warren compared the Black Lives Matter movement to the 1960s civil rights movement and called for all police officers to wear body cameras and be trained on how to de-escalate potentially violent situations, the Boston Globe reports. "It is a tragedy when any American cannot trust those who have sworn to protect and serve," she said. "This pervasive and persistent distrust isn’t based on myths. It is grounded in the reality of unjustified violence." Vox calls the speech a "full-throated defense of the movement," one that stands in contrast to how other candidates have handled the issue. "We’ve seen sickening videos of unarmed, black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air—their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them," said Warren. "Peaceful, unarmed protesters have been beaten. Journalists have been jailed. And, in some cities, white vigilantes with weapons freely walk the streets." She also discussed economic inequality as it relates to racism, pointing out the widening wealth gap between black and white families. Activists praised the speech: "Warren, better than any political leader I've yet heard, understands the protests as a matter of life or death—that the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence and that the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma," says one. (Will this fire up those Biden-Warren rumors?) |
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testifies about his FY2015 budget request at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington April 3, 2014.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department will widen the criteria it uses to decide which drug offenders to recommend to the president for clemency, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Monday.
The department expects thousands of drug offenders currently serving time to be eligible for reduced sentences under the new clemency guidelines and it will prepare to review an influx of applications, Holder said in a video address.
Under U.S. law, the president can reduce sentences or pardon Americans serving sentences for federal crimes. The Justice Department will now recommend more candidates for the president's consideration.
Details of the new criteria will be announced later this week by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
Holder hinted the guidelines may include applying a 2010 law that reduced sentences for crack cocaine offenders to those sentenced before the law was enacted.
"There are still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime," Holder said in his address.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a press briefing on Monday that President Barack Obama asked the Department of Justice to widen the clemency guidelines.
"The president wants to make sure that everyone has a fair shot into the clemency system, and he has asked the Department of Justice to set up a process aimed at ensuring that anyone who has a good case for commutation has their application seen and evaluated thoroughly," Carney said.
Granting clemency to nonviolent drug offenders is part of the Obama administration's strategy to reduce spending on federal prisons by reducing the number of inmates serving time for nonviolent drug crimes.
Last year, Holder launched the "Smart on Crime" initiative to review the criminal justice system and look for ways to make spending on prisons more efficient by focusing on violent offenders.
Some Republicans in Congress say more lenient sentences would reverse a drop in crime seen in recent decades.
In 2010, nearly half of 216,000 federal inmates were serving time for drug-related crimes, according to Department of Justice data.
(Reporting By Julia Edwards, additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Paul Simao) ||||| Attorney General Eric Holder announced new clemency guidelines. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Thousands of federal offenders could become eligible for clemency consideration by President Obama under new guidelines set to be released later this week by the Justice Department.
Attorney General Eric Holder, in a video message posted Monday on the Justice website, said the expanded program will allow the president to consider clemency requests from "a larger field of eligible individuals.''
The Justice Department's action comes less than a week after the White House asked the department to revamp the rules for the solicitation of additional commutation and pardon requests.
"Once these reforms go into effect, we expect to receive thousands of additional applications for clemency,'' Holder said, adding that "potentially dozens of (department) lawyers'' would be assigned to review the anticipated wave of requests.
The effort is part of a larger strategy to reduce the bloated federal prison population and reverse past sentencing policies that doomed many offenders, including thousands of non-violent drug offenders, to disproportionately long terms.
In January, Deputy Attorney General James Cole appealed to state bar associations to help identify low-level, non-violent drug offenders who could be candidates for grants of clemency.
"As a society, we pay much too high a price whenever our system fails to deliver the just outcomes necessary to deter and punish crime, to keep us safe, and to ensure that those who have paid their debts have a chance to become productive citizens,'' Holder said.
Advocates for sentencing policy changes involving drug offenders expressed support for Holder's proposal.
"This would be a positive step toward righting the wrongs of our broken criminal justice system,'' Drug Policy Alliance spokesman Anthony Papa said. "With half a million people still behind bars on non-violent drug charges, clearly thousands are deserving of a second chance. Congress should act immediately to reduce the draconian federal mandatory minimum sentences that condemn thousands to decades behind bars for non-violent drug offenses.''
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said he was "encouraged'' by the proposed expansion of clemency consideration.
"After years of advocating on behalf of Americans who are unfairly incarcerated, the policies that I've encouraged the president and the attorney general to adopt are now being implemented,'' Cohen said. "I am very encouraged by the prospect that these new clemency criteria will give deserving non-violent drug offenders a second chance at freedom, improve our justice system and save taxpayers money.''
The National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, which represents more than 5,000 federal prosecutors, has announced its opposition to scaling back mandatory minimum sentencing policy. But the group has not expressed opposition to the administration's clemency proposals.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the number of commutations granted "will depend entirely on the number of worthy candidates.''
"And in terms of how many deserving candidates are out there, I couldn't begin to speculate,'' he said. "But there's a process in place that reflects the president's belief that everyone should have a fair shot under the system for consideration.''
Contributing: David Jackson
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1iDjSTy | – Thousands of nonviolent drug offenders now serving long sentences in federal prisons could receive clemency from President Obama under a major Department of Justice overhaul. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that "a larger field of eligible individuals" will be eligible for clemency under new guidelines and the administration is preparing for a flood of requests, reports USA Today, which notes that the move is part of a broader effort to reduce the federal prison population and correct past sentencing disparities. Holder said the White House is seeking "justice, fairness, and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety." Holder hinted that those eligible will include inmates sentenced for crack cocaine offenses before a 2010 law reduced what was called a racist disparity, reports Reuters. "There are still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime," he said. White House spokesman Jay Carney said he didn't want to speculate on how many inmates will qualify for clemency, but there is a "process in place that reflects the president's belief that everyone should have a fair shot under the system for consideration.'' |
Aaron Hernandez Attacks Inmate At Bristol County Jail
Aaron Hernandez -- ATTACKS INMATE at Bristol County Jail
EXCLUSIVE
ATTACKED another inmate at Bristol County Jail earlier today ... and we're told he beat the guy up pretty good ... sources tellSources tell us the former New England Patriots tight end -- who is usually segregated from the general population -- was allowed to take a walk in an isolated hallway ... but somehow came into contact with another inmate.We're told Hernandez recognized the other inmate and launched into an attack -- beating the other man up pretty badly.Sources tell us ... Hernandez and the other man had been beefing all day long. One source says the other guy had been harassing Aaron nonstop. Clearly, Hernandez was pissed.The 24-year-old has been locked up since June 26th -- he's facing murder charges stemming from the 2013 shooting death of semi-pro football playerOfficials had placed Hernandez in solitary confinement out of concern he would be a target behind bars due to his celebrity status.We reached out to the jail for comment -- so far, no word back. ||||| Aaron Hernandez was involved in a scrum with a fellow prison inmate at Tuesday, according to Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson.
Hodgson said that an investigation is underway at Bristol County House of Corrections to suss out what happened involving the Pro Bowler-turned-accused murderer, and if he or the other inmate involved should face charges in connection with it. Sheriff’s spokesman Bernie Sullivan said neither man was seriously hurt in the skirmish.
According to online reports, the other inmate had been relentlessly bullying Hernandez (who is usually kept in solitary confinement) since the football star arrived at the facility last June. When the mercurial pass-catcher caught his tormenter in a hallway, he let loose on him, and got the better end of the brawl.
PHOTOS: Inside The Aaron Hernandez Crime Scene
As we previously reported, the former New England Patriots tight end is charged with first degree murder in the Jun. 18, 2013 execution-style killing of Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-pro football player. Lloyd, who played semi-pro football for the Boston Bandits, was associated with Hernandez through his girlfriend, whose sister is Hernandez’s baby mama.
Hernandez, an All-American at the University of Florida, was inked to a $40 million, five-year deal by the Pats last year. He was unceremoniously cut by the New England Patriots two hours after his arrest earlier this summer.
GALLERY: Read Murder Suspect Aaron Hernandez’s Jailhouse Letter Here
If convicted of murder, the 24-year-old, who has pleaded not guilty to the accusations, could get life in prison with no chance of parole. | – Apparently "behind bars" does not translate to "staying out of trouble" when one is Aaron Hernandez: Sources tell TMZ the former New England Patriot beat up a fellow inmate at Bristol County Jail yesterday. The sources say the two had been at odds all day (according to Radar, the other man had been "bullying" Hernandez since he was imprisoned on murder charges in June) and that Hernandez—who is typically kept separated out of concern that other inmates might target him—was for some reason allowed to walk down a hallway, where he caught sight of the other inmate and allegedly attacked him. The sheriff confirms there was a fight, but says neither inmate was seriously injured. The incident is under investigation. |
Story highlights One gust from Hurricane Iselle was measured at 65 mph on the Big Island
Hurricanes and other tropical cyclones rarely make landfall in Hawaii
Julio is tracking north and may just brush the Hawaiian islands
Schools in Hawaii and Maui counties were closed Thursday
Rain began falling on the Big Island Thursday afternoon and the winds began to pick up as Hurricane Iselle zeroed in on Hawaii.
The outer bands of the storm reached the eastern part of the island, bringing wind gusts as fast as 65 mph.
By Thursday, the shelves of many supermarkets were swept bare. Schools and government offices closed. Sandbags were being filled and placed around homes and hotels. Ports were told to close.
In Hawaii County, where there is a hurricane warning, 630 people have gone to shelters, Mayor Billy Kenoi told CNN affiliate KHON.
Gwendolyn Hill, who operates a bicycle tour on the island, said she normally goes to the store at 5:30 a.m. and is usually the only one there.
Not this time.
"People were buying water, rice, toilet paper and Spam," she said. "I don't eat Spam but a lot of people here do and it was going fast."
She said she thought her family was prepared for the storm. They got out the camping gear and had food and water for a week in case the power went out.
"The power goes out fairly often here on the Big Island, so losing power is not really a big deal," she said.
Track the storm
The shoppers were preparing for a potentially devastating one-two tropical cyclone punch, starting with Hurricane Iselle, with winds of 75 mph, and Hurricane Julio, a Category 3 storm, about 900 miles behind it.
Iselle could bring up to 12 inches of rain, life-threatening storm surges, flash floods and mudslides, forecasters said. They predicted Iselle will weaken somewhat and potentially make landfall late Thursday as a strong tropical storm.
Hurricane Julio, churning behind Iselle, could affect the islands two days later, though forecasters expect it to brush the state only with its southern outer bands as it passes to the north as a weakened tropical storm.
Customers picked through stores for groceries and other supplies Wednesday night and Thursday morning. At many locations, such as KTA in Waimea, bottled water was sold out, leaving the seller scrambling to get more.
Hurricane Iselle, followed by Julio
Just Watched Two hurricanes spinning toward Hawaii replay More Videos ... Two hurricanes spinning toward Hawaii 02:02 PLAY VIDEO
Just Watched 2 rare tropical cyclones near Hawaii replay More Videos ... 2 rare tropical cyclones near Hawaii 02:36 PLAY VIDEO
"We've been on the phone from very early (Wednesday) morning, working with our vendors trying to get more water. It's been a very difficult situation because everybody is trying to get water," store manager Colin Miura told CNN affiliate KGMB.
Flash flooding on already saturated islands will be a main threat, along with mudslides from some of the mountainous terrain into populated areas.
"Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion," the Central Pacific Hurricane Center said in its public advisory on Iselle early Thursday.
A hurricane warning was in effect for the easternmost populated island, Hawaii, with some of the state's other islands -- Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe -- bracing for tropical storm conditions, with sustained winds of under 73 mph.
Even as the storms approached Hawaii, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday it is more confident that the other side of North America will see a below-average tropical cyclone year.
NOAA said that there is now a 70% chance that the number of named storms in the Atlantic this year will be at or below the 30-year average of 12. NOAA had put the chance at 50% on May 22.
"We are more confident that a below-normal season will occur because atmospheric and oceanic conditions that suppress cyclone formation have developed and will persist through the season," Gerry Bell, lead seasonal forecaster with the NOAA Climate Prediction Center, said.
Storm dangers
Iselle should bring heavy downpours of 4 to 8 inches over the Big Island; in isolated spots up to 12 inches, the hurricane center predicts.
That could cause rock and mudslides. And it would further saturate the ground in advance of Julio's arrival with more rain.
Also, the storm surge could come on top of high tide, pushing 1 to 2 feet of water onto land, and depending on overlap with tides, could hit isolated areas hard.
Ports are taking no chance, and Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard upped warning levels to signal the storm was nearing.
"All oceangoing commercial vessels and oceangoing barges greater than 200 gross tons are expected to make preparations to leave the ports," it said. Ships wishing to remain in port are required to file a safe mooring plan
A relatively rare event
Direct hits are rare for the state. Since the 1950s, only two hurricane eyes have hit Hawaii -- and both approached from the south, where water temperature generally is warm enough to sustain the storms' strength.
Iselle, however, approaches from the east, and it would be the first tropical cyclone from that direction to hit the state since the satellite era began in 1959, CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said.
That's not to say Hawaii hasn't had close calls. The central Pacific sees an average of about five tropical cyclones a year, and some have brushed the state in recent decades.
But Iselle is poised to overcome a number of factors that in recent decades conspired to keep the storms from hitting Hawaii directly or weaken them before they got there.
The cyclones generally approach from the east after forming in the eastern Pacific. But close to Hawaii, dry air, cooler water and wind shear combine to weaken approaching cyclones, dissipating them before they can become a significant threat, CNN meteorologist Indra Petersons said.
Now, however, the water off Hawaii is warmer than usual, and that could keep Iselle at hurricane strength if it hits Hawaii island as expected Thursday, Petersons said.
Hawaii's most damaging hurricane in recent decades -- Hurricane Iniki of 1992 -- came during an El Nino year, or a year of above-average sea surface temperatures. This year hasn't met the criteria for El Nino, but it could in the weeks ahead, Petersons said.
Iniki killed at least four people and caused about $2 billion in damage when it hit the western Hawaiian island of Kauai, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
School's out; elections still on
The schools on the Big Island and Maui will be closed Friday as residents assess Iselle's affect.
Some airlines are making concessions to customers ahead of the storms.
Hawaiian Airlines moved one flight, to Los Angeles, up by five hours to beat Iselle's arrival.
For people who had been scheduled to travel to or from Hawaii's airports on Thursday and Friday, United Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines say they won't charge fees to change reservations, and they'll waive differences in fares for those changes. United canceled flights to Hilo and Kona. American Airlines and US Airways also called off flights out of Kona on Thursday, but said it expected Friday's flight schedule to operate normally.
Island Air will do the same for passengers ticketed from Thursday though Tuesday. Delta said it would waive fees for reservation changes for Thursday and Friday, but fare increases could apply. It said two flights had been delayed in leaving the islands.
Hawaii's primary elections will go on as scheduled Saturday, despite the storms, KGMB reported. Local media reported that many turned up for early voting in expectation of severe weather on election day. Others are concerned that voter turnout could be affected.
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie has signed an emergency proclamation, his office said. It gives the government access to the state's disaster funds. ||||| HONOLULU (AP) — This is what Associated Press reporters on the scene are learning as the first tropical storm in 22 years hits Hawaii:
Cases of water are seen curbside at the Menehune Water Company, Aug. 7, 2014, in Aiea, Hawaii. Hawaii is bracing for two back to back hurricanes, Iselle and Julio, which are on course to hit the Islands.... (Associated Press)
Crowds line up outside the departures terminal at the Honolulu International Airport in Honolulu on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. With Iselle, Hawaii is expected to take its first direct hurricane hit in 22... (Associated Press)
Anne Kllingshirn of Kailua, Hawaii walks with her daughter Emma, 1, as storm clouds are are seen during the sunrise hours on Kailua Beach, in Kailua, Hawaii, Thursday morning Aug. 7, 2014 . Hurricane... (Associated Press)
Clouds hang over Honolulu, seen from the top of Tanalus Drive on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. With Iselle, Hawaii is expected to take its first direct hurricane hit in 22 years. Tracking close behind it is... (Associated Press)
People line up at the Menehune Water Company to purchase cases of water and fill up water jugs in Aiea, Hawaii on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. With Hurricanes Iselle and Julio approaching, bottles of water... (Associated Press)
People walk past a pallet of bottled water being delivered to a shop in Waikiki in Honolulu on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. With Iselle, Hawaii is expected to take its first direct hurricane hit in 22 years.... (Associated Press)
Crowds line up inside the departures terminal at the Honolulu International Airport in Honolulu on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. With Iselle, Hawaii is expected to take its first direct hurricane hit in 22... (Associated Press)
11:05 p.m. HST
National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Brenchley says Tropical Storm Iselle is about 30 miles from hitting Hawaii's Big Island, traveling about 10 mph. The storm's eye is expected to hit south of Hilo.
10:50 p.m. HST
The National Weather Service downgrades Iselle from a hurricane to a tropical storm, saying the system has sustained winds of 70 mph as its eye approaches the Big Island about 50 miles east of Hilo.
9:45 p.m. HST
National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Lau says Hurricane Iselle is about 55 miles southeast of Hilo, Hawaii, traveling toward the Big Island at 15 mph and slowing down.
9:15 p.m. HST
The Polynesian Cultural Center, a popular tourist attraction near Oahu's north shore, announces it will be closed Friday because of the storm.
9:05 p.m. HST
On Maui, power to a water treatment plant went out, prompting county officials to ask Kula residents in the middle of the island to conserve water.
8:20 p.m. HST
A geothermal plant on the Big Island released an unknown amount of steam containing hydrogen sulfide, a smelly, poisonous compound. Crews were working to control the release and monitor the emissions, while nearby residents were urged to evacuate if they experience discomfort, Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi's office said.
8:14 p.m. HST
Oahu plans to run shuttle service to evacuation centers from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m., Honolulu's Department of Emergency Management said.
6:49 p.m. HST
Gov. Neil Abercrombie says President Barack Obama has been briefed on Hurricane Iselle, according to Abercrombie's official Twitter account.
5:57 p.m. HST
Hurricane Julio has strengthened into a Category 3 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph. The National Hurricane Center said Thursday evening it expects the storm to slowly weaken by Friday night.
Julio is more than 1,000 miles behind Hurricane Iselle, which is expected to make landfall on the Big Island overnight.
5:17 p.m. HST
Hawaii County Civil Defense officials say power is out in two communities on the Big Island, including Waimea, a town of about 9,200 people near the island's north shore, and Puna, a district scattered with residents south of Hilo.
An evacuation shelter in Pahoa with at least 140 evacuees also lost power. Electrical crews are working to restore power, but there's no estimate of when it would come back online.
4:15 p.m. HST
Passengers at the Honolulu International Airport spilled out to the curb Thursday, and lines wrapped around the TSA screening area as people tried to leave before the storm hit.
After high winds hit Maui, California couple Rudy Cruz and Ashley Dochnahl left the island earlier than planned, getting to Oahu but failing to secure a flight back home.
"We were trying to beat it, but we now will have to ride it out," Cruz said.
4:15 p.m. HST
The Hawaii National Guard sent the bulk of its aircraft to bases on the West Coast on Thursday morning so they wouldn't be damaged by the storm. Lt. Col. Charles Anthony says tankers can bring back people and supplies to deal with damage if needed.
3:44 p.m. HST
In a live interview on KHON-TV, Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi says there are no major injuries or damage yet on the Big Island from the first bits of wind and rain from the outer edges of the storm.
3:44 p.m. HST
Asked at a news conference whether the state would be able to recover from Hurricane Iselle and respond to Hurricane Julio at the same time, Gov. Neil Abercrombie said: "We can walk and chew gum at the same time."
3:38 p.m. HST
American Red Cross Hawaii Chapter CEO Coralie Matayoshi says people are flowing into shelters on the Big Island.
The Hawaii County Civil Defense says one is already at capacity. Thirty-nine people are at the Hilo High School shelter, 135 at Keaau High School and 146 people at Pahoa High and Intermediate School.
3:35 p.m. HST
Denise Laitinen on the Big Island says she has boarded up her windows, stocked up on food and water, and is ready for the storms.
"It's getting more windy, and it's raining pretty good," she said. "I feel good about being prepared for anything these storms bring us."
3:30 p.m. HST
Nearly 30 flights from several airlines, including Delta, United, US Airways, American Air China and WestJet, were canceled Thursday, the Hawaii Tourism Authority said.
2:34 p.m. HST
The National Weather Service in Honolulu says Iselle is expected hit Big Island as high end tropical storm or low end hurricane. A hurricane has sustained winds of 74 mph or higher. Iselle is 150 miles east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii. It is moving to west-northwest at 17 mph.
2:20 p.m. HST
American Airlines and US Airways have canceled all flights leaving or going to the Big Island and Maui after 6 p.m. HST Thursday. They expect flights to resume at noon HST Friday.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority says United Airlines also canceled flights, but the carrier couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
2:04 p.m. HST
State courthouses and judiciary offices on Oahu and Kauai will be closed Friday. Big Island and Maui County courthouses closed today at noon and will remain closed Friday.
The U.S. District Court and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Hawaii will be closed on Friday. Depending on severity of storms, court calendars for Monday may change with little notice.
1:21 p.m. HST
Hawaiian Airlines says interisland flights are canceled for Thursday evening in Hilo, Kona and Maui. The airline moved its Maui-Los Angeles flight up by nearly five hours. Flight No. 56 originally scheduled to depart Kahului, Maui at 9:40 p.m. will now depart at 5 p.m. and connect in Honolulu before continuing on to Los Angeles at 9 p.m.
1:05 p.m. HST
A sports radio show from the Big Island that is broadcast statewide is spending most of its show on storm coverage, with its host saying sports can take a back seat "because, quite frankly, it's just not the most important thing."
12:32 p.m. HST
The U.S. Coast Guard is closing ports for Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and the Big Island. All cargo operations at the ports will be secured by 6 p.m. Thursday.
11:46 a.m. HST
About 40 to 50 people lined up outside Menehune Water Co. just outside Honolulu to buy bottled water. Stan Nuuhiwa, who lives near Waikiki, waited two-and-a-half hours because there's no water left to buy in town. He loaded about five cases of bottled water and a five-gallon barrel of water into his truck.
11:09 a.m. HST
Officials at various observatories are securing the 13 telescopes on Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea Observatories Support Services administrative manager Gwen Biggert says workers are removing hazards and securing loose items nearby. She says it's starting to get gusty on the summit.
10:47 a.m. HST
Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection director Bruce Kim is reminding retailers that price gouging is a violation of state law. He says the price of commodities was frozen when the governor declared a state of emergency. He says evidence of price gouging will be investigated and prosecuted.
10:33 a.m. HST
Former National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield says hurricanes in Hawaii are such a rare event it makes it a challenge for the people who live there and aren't used to it, sort of like the Northeast getting hit by Sandy in 2012. The good news, he said, is that the hurricanes are coming from the east where storms are weaker and the water cooler.
9:55 a.m. HST
Gov. Neil Abercrombie at a press conference Thursday stressed: "We are fully prepared today as it's possible for us to be, institutionally."
9:38 a.m. HST
State Attorney General David Louie said the primary elections on Saturday will go forward as planned. Early voting on the Big Island will end at 1 p.m. Thursday.
All state offices will be closed Friday. Public schools on Oahu and Kauai will be closed Friday. Officials have already announced that schools on the Big Island, Maui, Molokai and Lanai would be closed Thursday and Friday.
9:05 a.m. HST
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell has tweeted that the city is opening emergency shelters Thursday night and city bus service on Friday is canceled.
8:48 a.m. HST
The American Red Cross is pleading for the return of its only emergency truck on the Big Island. Hawaii chapter CEO Coralie Matayoshi says the white Ford F-150 truck bearing Red Cross markings was stolen in Hilo late Wednesday. The organization will have to borrow or rent a truck as Hurricane Iselle approaches the island.
8:05 a.m. HST
At the White House, President Barack Obama was briefed by his homeland security adviser on preparations for the storms that are threatening his birthplace. Spokesman Josh Earnest said administration officials will remain in close contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies that are that are preparing to help with response and recovery efforts as the storms near.
7:20 a.m. HST
The U.S. Geological Survey reports a magnitude 4.5 earthquake has rattled Hawaii's Big Island. There were no immediate reports of damage. ||||| HONOLULU (AP) — Iselle was supposed to weaken as it slowly trudged west across the Pacific. It didn't — and now Hawaii is poised to take its first direct hurricane hit in 22 years.
Shoppers lift cases of bottled water in preparation for a hurricane and tropical storm heading toward Hawaii at the Iwilei Costco in Honolulu on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014. Two big storms so close together... (Associated Press)
People lounge on Waikiki's beaches in Honolulu on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. Hawaii residents prepared for what could be the first hurricane to hit the state in more than 20 years as weather officials said... (Associated Press)
Shonna Snodgrass of Stafford, Va., left and Gwen Johnson of Sacramento, Calif. show the "shaka" or hang-loose sign while enjoying the sun on Waikiki beach in Honolulu on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. Hawaii... (Associated Press)
This image provided by NOAA taken Wednesday Aug. 6, 2014 shows Hurricane Iselle, center, and tropical storm Julio, right. Though it's not clear how damaging the storms could be, many in Hawaii aren't... (Associated Press)
This image provided by NOAA taken Thursday Aug. 7, 2014 at 2 a.m. EDT shows Hurricane Iselle, left and Hurricane Julio. Iselle was supposed to weaken as it slowly trudged west across the Pacific. It didn't... (Associated Press)
Shoppers stock up on cases of bottled water and other supplies in preparation for a hurricane and tropical storm heading toward Hawaii at the Iwilei Costco in Honolulu on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014. Two big... (Associated Press)
Tracking close behind it was Hurricane Julio, which strengthened early Thursday into a Category 2 storm.
State officials are assuring the islands are ready and people should prepare but not panic. Tourists wonder whether their flights and activities would be disrupted and tried to get in some last-minute beach time before the surf's up, but ugly. And residents are making bottled water tougher to find than a cheap fruity cocktail.
"Everybody says this is the last day of good weather, so we came down to the beach," said Shonna Snodgrass, a tourist in Waikiki visiting from Stafford, Virginia.
Hurricane Iselle was expected to arrive on the Big Island on Thursday evening, bringing heavy rains, winds gusting up to 85 mph and flooding in some areas. Weather officials changed their outlook on the system Wednesday after seeing it get a little stronger, giving it enough oomph to stay a hurricane as it reaches landfall.
"What ended up happening is the storm has resurged just enough to keep its hurricane strength," said Mike Cantin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Cantin said that means stronger winds of 60 to 70 mph, though rainfall estimates of 5 inches to 8 inches in a short time frame remained unchanged.
"Not a major hurricane, but definitely enough to blow things around," he said.
Iselle loomed about 350 miles east of Hilo early Thursday, with sustained winds of 85 mph and traveling about 18 mph.
Cantin said the Big Island's size and terrain would help break up the hurricane, weakening it into a tropical storm as it passes Maui and Oahu late Thursday and early Friday.
"The volcanoes on the Big Island will do a number on the system," he said.
Hurricane Julio, meanwhile, swirled closely behind with maximum winds whipping at 100 mph. The National Hurricane Center said it expected the storm to strengthen even more Thursday before gradually weakening by Thursday night. That weakening is expected to continue into the weekend.
Hawaii has been directly hit by hurricanes only three times since 1950, though the region has had 147 tropical cyclones over that time. The last time Hawaii was hit with a tropical storm or hurricane was in 1992, when Hurricane Iniki killed six people and destroyed more than 1,400 homes in Kauai, said meteorologist Eric Lau.
The two hurricanes have disrupted tourism, prompted flash flood warnings and led to school closures. Gov. Neil Abercrombie, meanwhile, signed an emergency proclamation allowing officials to tap into a disaster fund set aside by the state Legislature.
"The sole purpose is to see to it the health and safety of the people of Hawaii is first and foremost," Abercrombie said at a news conference surrounded by his cabinet members.
For travelers, Hawaiian Airlines waived reservation change fees and fare differences for passengers who needed to alter travel plans Thursday and Friday because of the storms. Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman Ann Botticelli said hundreds of inquires poured in from customers seeking to change their flights.
Some travelers remained hopeful.
Boston resident Jonathan Yorke and his wife booked a Hawaii vacation with their two daughters last year. He has been watching the news to see how the storms could affect the two-week trip to Maui and the Big Island.
"We're all optimists, so we'll make the best of it," Yorke said.
Washington state couple Tracy Black and Chris Kreifels made plans to get married in an outdoor ceremony on the Big Island Saturday. They spent Wednesday getting a marriage license, adjusting plans and communicating with worried guests on the mainland.
"We see the rain as a blessing," Black said. "It will work out as it's supposed to."
In Waikiki, Gwen Johnson wondered if she would make her flight home Thursday.
"We're leaving tomorrow and I'm a little concerned if we'll be able to get out with the turbulence and stuff," she said.
It wasn't immediately clear what financial impact the storms would have on the state's tourism industry, a key economic driver.
Hawaii residents also have had to adjust. Stores have seen long lines this week as people brace themselves.
Some are voting early in primary elections that close Saturday. The elections include several marquee races, including congressional and gubernatorial races. Abercrombie —who is running for re-election in a tight Democratic primary — said the election is expected to move forward as planned as of Wednesday afternoon.
Also, education officials said public schools on the Big Island, Maui, Molokai and Lanai will be closed Thursday.
The storms are rare but not unexpected in years with a developing El Nino, a change in ocean temperature that affects weather around the world.
Ahead of this year's hurricane season, weather officials warned that the wide swath of the Pacific Ocean that includes Hawaii could see four to seven tropical cyclones this year.
___
Associated Press Writers Doug Esser in Seattle and Oskar Garcia in Honolulu contributed to this report. ||||| Hawaii braced for what could become the first hurricane to slam the state in nearly a quarter-century early Friday after islanders scrambled to stock up on supplies and take shelter. The outer edges of Hurricane Iselle, a Category 1 storm, brought rain and wind to the Big Island as it approached landfall. A second Category 3 storm, Julio, was close on Iselle's tail with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph. It was projected to barrel just north of the islands early Sunday morning.
8:30pm HT: Current infrared satellite imagery of #Iselle with #Hawaii sustained wind speeds and wind gusts. pic.twitter.com/6cNGaF7NfZ -Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) August 8, 2014
At a news conference Thursday, state officials told islanders to hunker down. Governor Neil Abercrombie said that emergency crews and response teams were “fully prepared” for heavy rains, fierce winds and flash floods. He said the National Guard was at the ready and shelters were open across the state. Transportation officials pleaded with drivers to stay off roads. Power was lost Thursday night in two communities on the Big Island: Waimea, a town of about 9,200 people near the island's north shore, and Puna, a district scattered with residents south of Hilo, Hawaii County Civil Defense officials said. American Airlines and US Airways canceled flights in and out of the Big Island and Maui after 6 p.m. Thursday through noon Friday. Iselle is poised to become the first hurricane to thump Hawaii since Hurricane Iniki made landfall in 1992. The state has been directly hit by hurricanes only three times since 1950.
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IN-DEPTH
— Daniel Arkin
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | – Tag-team hurricanes Iselle and Julio will thrash Hawaii in a one-two punch that starts tonight—the first time in 22 years the islands have been directly hit. Category 1 Iselle is expected to maintain 85 mph winds when it makes landfall on the Big Island tonight. It’s "not a major hurricane, but definitely enough to blow things around," a meteorologist tells the AP; up to 8 inches of rain is expected. Iselle should weaken as it passes through the island's volcanic terrain into tomorrow morning. Just behind Iselle, Julio is a bit fiercer Category 2, with winds estimated at 100 mph; it'll pick up speed before weakening tonight and hit Sunday as a tropical storm, reports NBC News. The last hurricane to hit Hawaii was Iniki in 1992, which killed six people. Vacations are being disrupted by the storms. Island Air has canceled flights to Maui and Lanai, the Washington Post reports. Hawaiian Airlines will decide today whether to follow suit, adds the Hawaii Tribune-Herald; on the ground, state parks are closed and beachgoers are enjoying the last shreds of nice weather. One Boston resident booked his two-week Maui and Big Island vacation last year and has been eagerly watching weather reports. "We're all optimists, so we'll make the best of it," he tells the AP. Weather officials had warned this season would be an active one in the region, with up to seven tropical storms—probably due in no small part to El Nino. |
CLOSE The Cubs pull off a thrilling win in 10 innings over the Indians to end their 108-year World Series title drought. USA TODAY Sports' Steve Gardner recaps how it all went down, and what Chicago and Cleveland can look forward to. USA TODAY Sports
Jason Heyward celebrates after the Cubs won the World Series, beating the Cleveland Indians in Game 7. (Photo: Ken Blaze, USA TODAY Sports)
CLEVELAND -- As the Chicago Cubs trudged out of the dugout and back toward the locker room to wait out the rain delay, Jason Heyward herded his teammates into a tiny weight room.
There were no coaches, no front-office types. Just the players, all 25 of them crammed into a tiny room with bright, white walls, low ceilings and row upon row of gleaming weights.
The Cubs had blown a three-run lead, and momentum would be squarely in the Cleveland Indians’ favor when they returned for the 10th inning tied at 6. The 103 games they’d won during the regular season, the 3-1 deficit they’d erased, the century of futility and despair they were about to put to rest – all of it was slipping away.
With his teammates surrounding him, Heyward began to speak. He’s a quiet man, Heyward, preferring to let the other veterans be the vocal leaders in the clubhouse. So when he does speak, his words have a gravity that commands full attention.
“I just wanted them to remember how good they were, how good we are,” Heyward said as his teammates sprayed champagne around him following Chicago’s historic 8-7 win Wednesday night. “Know how proud of them I was and that I loved them. That I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”
Looking around the room, Heyward said that every single one of them had played a part in bringing the Cubs to this point. Whether it was soon-to-be NL MVP Kris Bryant, rookie Albert Almora or veteran backup catcher Miguel Montero, Heyward reminded them, the Cubs had gotten this far as a team.
They had everything they needed to win, Heyward said, so long as they believed in each other and played for one another.
“He spoke up and said this is about your teammates,” David Ross said. “He just said, `We’re the best team in baseball for a reason. Continue to play our game, support one another. These are your brothers here, fight for your brothers, lift them up, continue to stay positive. We’ve been doing this all year so continue to be us.’
“It was a great message,” Ross said, “and well said.”
By the time Heyward was finished speaking, several of the Cubs were in tears. Addison Russell freely admitted he was one of them, feeling a weight lift as Heyward encouraged the Cubs to be the team they’ve been all season rather than trying too hard to something new in the last game of the season.
“We all vented. We all felt we had to say things that were on our mind, just get it off our chest,” Russell said. “We reached new levels. Grown men talking about that stuff, it doesn’t happen. The fact we did it here in the World Series, I really respect everyone for that.”
As Heyward looked around the room, he could see the mood shift and sense a new determination in his teammates.
They had won two games just to get to Game 7, Willson Contreras said. There had to have been a reason for that.
“Now we are here and we can do this,” Contreras said. “We’ve got this.”
The rain shower was brief, only causing a delay of 17 minutes. But it was long enough for the Cubs to get their minds right.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen but I knew we were ready to do what we did,” Heyward said.
Kyle Schwarber, who didn’t even know he’d be playing in the World Series two weeks ago after blowing out his knee in April, led off the 10th with a single. Almora was brought in to run, and he took second base on Kris Bryant's deep fly ball. Cleveland walked Anthony Rizzo, only to have Ben Zobrist make the Indians pay by doubling in the go-ahead run.
After Russell was walked intentionally, Montero gave the Cubs an insurance run with a single.
“It was,” Rizzo said, “the best rain delay of all time. It kind of settled us down, got us regrouped.”
The Cubs still had to close out the bottom of the 10th and Cleveland clawed back one of the runs. But this was Chicago’s game to win, and they knew it.
“We came back from 3-1 deficit against a really good pitching staff and a really good team,” ace Jon Lester said. “That’s a testament to these guys in this clubhouse.”
Players often say titles are won when no one is watching, through the work they put in off the field and in the weight room. Never has that been more true.
***
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour
GALLERY: Cubs celebrate World Series title ||||| CLOSE With the World Series tied at 1-1, USA TODAY Sports' Steve Gardner tells you how the Cubs got the victory in Game 2 over the Indians. USA TODAY Sports
Cubs player Kyle Schwarber hits an RBI single against the Indians in the fifth inning of Game 2. (Photo: Charles LeClaire, USA TODAY Sports)
CLEVELAND — It no longer defies imagination, but assaults the senses, wondering how sheer and utter fantasy could become reality.
How in the world could a baseball player spend six months just learning to walk again after a devastating knee injury, not playing in a single game, and lead the Chicago Cubs to their first World Series victory since 1945, with a 5-1 victory over the Cleveland Indians, evening the Series at 1-game apiece?
"It’s the 'Legend of Kyle Schwarber,' " catcher David Ross said.
And the way this narrative is playing out, Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant predicts, it will soon be coming to a movie theater near you.
"I can’t even describe what he’s doing right now," said left fielder Ben Zobrist, who’s hitting .625 this series and is like a back-drop to center stage. "No one’s ever seen anything like it."
There has never been a position player in baseball history whose first hit of the season was in the World Series until Schwarber came along. He doubled off Cleveland ace Corey Kluber in Game 1, and then went 2-for-4 with two RBI and a walk in Wednesday’s victory.
"He better not take one single swing in the offseason," first baseman Anthony Rizzo said.
Indeed, the dude is making a total mockery out of spring training, let alone rehab assignments.
This is a guy who had no hits in four at-bats in April before he blew out his left knee. He had one hit in eight at-bats in the Arizona Fall League. Now, on baseball’s greatest stage, he is hitting .429, reaching base five times in nine at-bats, with a double, two singles and two RBI.
If he keeps this up, and Schwarber leads the Cubs to their first World Series title since 1908, there will be generations of Schwarbers who will never have to pay for a drink or adult beverage in their lifetimes in the city of Chicago.
"If we win three more," Rizzo said, "he doesn’t have to take another swing in his life. Take your time, and enjoy your life."
Considering that Schwarber has all of four months of baseball experience on his bubble-gum card, and is baseball’s ultimate gym rat, there’s a better chance of him conducting hitting lessons when he’s 80 than ever giving up this gig.
"He’s just a dirt bag," Rizzo said. "He’s always around the field. He’s always watching baseball. Always watching film. Sometimes, too much.
"When he was on the DL, he’s there watching film, studying scouting reports, and I would yell at him, 'What are you doing? What are you doing?' "
Who realized all along that Schwarber was secretly plotting his comeback?
"Baseball’s a crazy game," Schwarber said. "It will do crazy things to you."
So crazy, that he went along with the Cubs’ narrative, that he would be out for the season. When you tear two knee ligaments, no one expects to see you until next season. If he had only sustained the injury earlier, maybe in spring training, he’d have a chance, but not during the season.
And even if he was physically able to return before the end of the season, there would be no time for a minor-league rehab assignment, no time to get down his timing, no time to see major-league pitching.
"That’s why we’re calling it 'The Legend of Kyle Schwarber,' " Ross said. "That’s who does this. It just blows my mind what he’s doing. He’s doing things that are unheard of."
Yet, on baseball’s biggest stage, in front of millions on national TV, Schwarber is turning the World Series into his own reality TV show.
Watch Schwarber become the Cubs’ first DH in World Series history. Watch Schwarber hit. Watch Schwarber run. Watch Schwarber drive in two runs.
Oh, and if you need to tug at the heartstrings too, watch Schwarber become emotional talking about his 10-year-old friend, Campbell Faulkner of Queen Creek, Ariz.
Faulkner, diagnosed with a rare form of mitochondrial disease, has a team of 13 doctors. He struggles to stand and walk for extended periods of time. He needs two feeding tubes in his stomach just to provide him with nutrition. He missed nearly 100 days of school last year because of his illness and doctor appointments.
Schwarber met him in spring training and saw him last weekend before meeting the Cubs in the World Series. Faulkner is his friend, and Schwarber wears a bright green wristband in his honor to make those aware of the disease.
"Really young, smart kid, and he’s just always got a big smile on his face," Schwarber said. "You know, that draws your attention to him. He’s living life to his fullest, even though he’s got something to overcome.
"He’s just a good kid. How could you not like him?"
It’s all part of the legend of Schwarber, the 23-year-old who became the Cubs’ all-time postseason home run leader last year by hitting five homers in just 27 at-bats, and now is doing what no one can possibly believe they’re seeing.
"For a guy to be able to do something like this," winning pitcher Jake Arrieta said. "is just ... I’m kind of speechless."
In the words of Cleveland manager Terry Francona, who suffered his first World Series loss a manager in 10 games: "I can see why Theo (Epstein) sent a plane for him. I would too. That’s a lot to ask, but special players can do special things."
Epstein, president of the Cubs, was stunned when the six-month medical reports last week revealed Schwarber was a month ahead of schedule. Schwarber was so excited, he asked for permission to go to the Arizona Fall League, to see how he looked. He played two games, did all the agility drills, ran the bases, slid, and with Epstein watching the video of him on his computer, took the gamble. He sent a private plane for him Monday, and on Tuesday, was in the starting lineup batting fifth.
Now, the question an inquiring, starving, championship-drought fan base wants to know: Could the Cubs dare put him in the field this weekend against the Indians? They are going back to National League rules. There will be no DH at Wrigley Field. Can he possibly play the field when he hasn’t played the outfield since tearing two knee ligaments on April 7?
"He may be catching for all we know," Rizzo said.
Well, it’s safe to say he won’t be catching until next spring, but considering the way he’s running the bases every time he’s aboard, there’s a certain manager who will be pushing for the cause.
"I'm waiting to hear from our guys from our medical side," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said, "because obviously he looks good. He looks good at the plate. Running the bases, he looks pretty good so far.
"There's nothing about watching him that tells me that he's inhibited right now.
"He’s a different cat, he absolutely is."
It’s one thing if there had been the scintilla of discussion that Schwarber could possibly be ready for the playoffs, even privately among the Cubs’ front office. Or even if Schwarber had told a few teammates that this was his secret plan all along. But nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Sure, there were times during the season when Schwarber would tease his teammates, saying he’d be back for that day-night doubleheader in August against the Milwaukee Brewers, and everyone would laugh. It was a running joke all season. The laughter stopped when Rizzo was having dinner with strength coach Tim Buss before Game 3 of the NLCS in Los Angeles.
"I said, 'What?' " Rizzo said. " 'Seriously? For real?' I couldn’t believe it."
The Cubs still can’t.
"I just took it day by day," Schwarber said. "There were days I just wasn’t feeling it. My teammates picked me up and I had some guys come over and say to me, 'World Series, you’re coming back.’ I’d just laugh it off.
"Then, when it came to reality, it was a shock."
Imagine how the rest of us feel.
"The Legend of Kyle Schwarber," Ross slowly said again.
Stay tuned. The sequel is Friday, the first World Series night game in Wrigley Field history.
"They are going to go nuts," Ross said.
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Gallery: Cubs, Indians clash in World Series ||||| Chicago Cubs players soaked each other with champagne as they celebrated their Nov. 2 World Series victory. (Reuters)
Chicago Cubs players soaked each other with champagne as they celebrated their Nov. 2 World Series victory. (Reuters)
Life changed in the early part of Thursday morning for so many of the good people of Chicago, for the North Side and all the way downstate, across huge swaths of the Midwest and even, judging by the din, from more than a few transplants and travelers right here. It took a rain delay, a stark reminder of just how disastrous baseball life has been there for so long, an impromptu and emotional meeting, and nothing short of one of the most thrilling baseball games ever played. But it changed.
Now, in the lives even of Chicago Cubs fans who are more than a century old, there is a clear and distinct dividing line. There are the days and years and decades before 12:47 a.m. Thursday. And there is the unfamiliar feeling — the absolutely delirious feeling — of whatever life is like now.
Take this in, Chicago. Read it twice if need be. Hold it, cradle it, caress it, cherish it. The Cubs won the World Series.
[Thomas Boswell: Finally, a time to rejoice for legions of sufferers]
They did it with a riveting, 8-7, 10-inning victory over the Cleveland Indians in the seventh and final game at Progressive Field, one that tore out the lining of Chicago’s roiling stomach before stitching it back together again. The simple part: Ben Zobrist’s double off Cleveland reliever Bryan Shaw pushed across the lead run, Miguel Montero followed with a run-scoring single, and Chicago . . . Chicago . . .
Hint: There were only 46 states. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
What to make of Chicago now?
“It’s 108 years, generations, some still here, some not,” said Theo Epstein, the Cubs president of baseball operations. “They were all here tonight.”
There is so much more to how the Cubs won their first World Series title since 1908, more than could be covered in the 17-minute rain delay that preceded just the 10th inning of — get this — just the fourth extra-inning Game 7 the World Series has ever known.
“This one about made me pass out,” Zobrist said.
How to distill it? Well, maybe with the most Cubs’ fact of all: They held a three-run lead in the bottom of the eighth, with four outs to go. They had their 100-mph closer on the mound to seal it up. And they couldn’t do it.
Suddenly, 2016 was going to fit right alongside 2003 and 1984 and all the rest. That backstory, and the fact that it was 68 years since the Indians’ last World Series title, colored this entire event.
“There’s been a burden placed,” Cubs Manager Joe Maddon said. “And I think, quite frankly, it’s misplaced. . . . I totally respect what’s happened in the past, and I totally respect our fan base. But if you just want to carry the burden with you all the time, tonight would never happen.”
1 of 26 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The Chicago Cubs win World Series View Photos The Chicago Cubs won their first title since 1908 with a riveting, 8-7, 10-inning victory over the Cleveland Indians in the seventh and final game at Progressive Field. Caption The team won its first title since 1908 with a riveting 8-7, 10-inning victory over the Cleveland Indians in the seventh and final game at Progressive Field. Nov. 2, 2016 The Cubs celebrate after winning the World Series. Matt Slocum/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
It did. So clear off the table. Spread out the evidence. Take a deep breath. Let’s sort this out.
The Cubs took what appeared to be control — a laughable notion in Wrigleyville, for sure — by going up 5-1 in the fifth, with all the runs coming off Cleveland ace Corey Kluber and impenetrable reliever Andrew Miller. And yet, when Maddon went to get starter Kyle Hendricks in the fifth, there were potential issues.
Asked before the game whether he would insert veteran left-handed starter Jon Lester into a situation with men on base, Maddon was clear. “I don’t think it would be appropriate,” he said. Lester has an awful time holding base runners on due to an absolute phobia of throwing a baseball — other than 60 feet, 6 inches. Yet he entered — along with David Ross, his personal catcher — with two outs and a man on first in the fifth.
For the first time, things went a bit haywire. Not in the Cubs’ history, of course. But for the first time Wednesday night. Jason Kipnis hit a spinner in front of the plate that Ross misfired to first for an error, and Lester uncorked a wild pitch that was so wild, it scored two runs. Progressive Field, filled with plenty of Cubs fans, shook with the glee from Cleveland’s own.
“You don’t think about storybooks and stuff like that,” Cleveland Manger Terry Francona said. “You’re trying to figure out a way to score one more run.”
When Lester departed with two outs in the eighth, he received and deserved congratulations. The last of his 55 pitches became an infield single to Jose Ramirez. But when Maddon turned to Aroldis Chapman, his closer, the situation was manageable: 6-3 lead, one on, one out to get in the eighth, then three more to get in the ninth.
“People are texting me congrats,” Epstein said. “I’m like, [expletive]. This is baseball. Anything can happen.”
So it did. Twice in this series, Chapman entered in the seventh. And as the Cubs crawled back from what had been a 3-1 deficit, he was asked to get the final eight outs of Game 5, then four more outs in Tuesday’s Game 6. The first hitter he faced was Brandon Guyer, and it was clear immediately that Chapman’s velocity — his defining quality — was down.
“I think if you’re being honest, I feel like the entirety of the playoffs probably did take its toll on him,” Cubs General Manager Jed Hoyer. “I think that he’s probably tired, as he should be.”
[ End of Cubs’ championship drought brings forth a mighty sound ]
Normally the hardest thrower in the game, with a fastball that averages more than 100 mph, Chapman settled in immediately at 97 mph. Hard to deal with, for sure. But not his overwhelming self. So Guyer cranked a double to right-center that scored a run. Cleveland all but shook as Rajai Davis came to the plate. Davis, in the lineup for his defense, had gained confidence against Chapman earlier in the series.
“I just felt like this was going to be a fight,” he said, “that I was going to win.”
Chapman fed Davis nothing but four-seam fastballs. He missed with two out of the zone, but there was a telling development: the four that were strikes, Davis didn’t swing and miss. He fouled them off.
“He was battling,” Montero said of Chapman.
With the count 2-2, Chapman came with his seventh straight fastball, this one at 97 mph. Davis jumped on it. It wasn’t majestic. Just historic. It went into the corner in left field, near the foul pole. When it cleared the wall, the Indians spilled out of their dugout like Little Leaguers. Tie game.
“Just ecstatic,” Shaw said.
And then at the end of the ninth, the skies opened up. The tarp came out.
“I really feel like in some ways that rain delay was kind of divine intervention,” Hoyer said. “The game was going really fast for us at that point.”
Epstein and Hoyer went under the stands to meet with officials from Major League Baseball about the plan and the weather. They then slipped into the Cubs clubhouse, where the hitters who were due up the next inning were meeting.
[‘Cubs had a great night. Bill Murray’s was better.]
“I got a little concerned,” Epstein said. He cracked open the door. Right fielder Jason Heyward — he of the $184 million contract and the .200 postseason batting average — had called the guys together.
“I’ve got something to say,” Zobrist recalled Heyward saying. And he talked about this epic game, and this epic team. He told them they would win.
“We just needed a brief moment to kind of collect ourselves and be reminded of who we are,” Heyward said.
And who they were about to become. In the 10th, Zobrist came up with two on and one out against Shaw. Maddon believes Zobrist consistently delivers the Cubs’ best at-bats. Here, he fouled off one 1-2 cutter from Shaw. He didn’t miss the next, sending it into left field, scoring Almora with the run that put them up 7-6. Turns out they needed Montero’s RBI single, too, because Davis somehow managed to push one across for the Indians in the bottom of the 10th.
“I died like six times,” Epstein said.
So start the conversation: Where does this Game 7 fit, all-time? Debate it Thursday, over the weekend, for 108 years. Epstein considered it after 2 a.m., standing on the mound at Progressive Field where he had just taken a picture with the front office he runs. Rain poured down, and he looked up into it.
“Everyone’s prone to hyperbole on nights like tonight,” he said. “But it is kind of epic, right?”
Routine, three-run victories don’t change life. There is now what we knew before 12:47 a.m. Thursday, and the unknown afterward. Welcome, Cubs fans, to the other side. | – It was, as Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post writes, "nothing short of one of the most thrilling baseball games ever played." And in the aftermath of the Cubs' World Series victory, players are talking about a late pep talk from quiet outfielder Jason Heyward. He called a players-only meeting during a rain delay after the ninth, when the Cubs were reeling after blowing a late three-run lead, reports CNN. "He spoke up and said, 'This is about your teammates,'" recalls catcher David Ross, per USA Today. "These are your brothers here, fight for your brothers, lift them up." Several players were moved to tears, including Game 6 star Addison Russell, notes a post at Knuckleball. Heyward himself explains that it was a "venting thing" for him. "I just had to let them know that I loved them. I had to let them know that we had 113 wins because we had overcome every bit of adversity that we've had thrown at us to this point. We needed 114 wins, and I told them everybody in this room could go out and get this 114th." They did, in the very next inning. Heyward has taken flak this year over the perception that he hasn't lived up to his $184 million contract on the field. In fact, he went just 3-for-15 during the World Series. But at a key moment, "Jason Heyward led the way," said teammate Kris Bryant. |
FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign... (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show political operative Roger Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart of then-candidate Donald Trump's run for president.
The emails, which were published Thursday by The New York Times, touch on a central question of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation: Did Stone have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked material damaging to Democrat Hillary Clinton?
Stone says no, and the emails do not provide a definitive answer to that question. But the correspondence suggests that Stone wanted Bannon to see him as plugged in to WikiLeaks as it was planning to publish documents that would upend the campaign.
American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian agents were the source of information released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. And Mueller, who is investigating potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, has focused on Stone recently.
Mueller's team questioned Bannon last month about his exchanges with Stone, according to a person familiar with the interview. Bannon's interview was with prosecutors, though other people close to Stone have been called before a grand jury to discuss his ties to WikiLeaks.
The person familiar with Bannon's interview said Bannon and other top campaign officials were skeptical of Stone and his claims about having insight into WikiLeaks' efforts. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the confidential interview.
Stone, who confirmed the authenticity of the emails, denies being a conduit to WikiLeaks.
"What I am guilty of is using publicly available information and a solid tip to bluff, posture, hype and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called 'politics.' It's not illegal," he said in an opinion piece published Thursday by The Daily Caller website.
He said he had based his comments on Assange's public statements and conversations with a New York radio host, Randy Credico, a vocal supporter of Assange who has also been interviewed by Mueller's grand jury.
In a telephone interview with the AP, Stone said: "I had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures."
In one email exchange from Oct. 4. 2016, Bannon asks Stone about an announcement that morning by Assange that puzzled some Trump supporters.
In the announcement, Assange said he would be posting a cache of documents weekly that would include some related to the 2016 election, among other topics, but he denied that WikiLeaks intended to harm Clinton, saying such suggestions were "false."
Many Trump supporters — egged on by Stone himself — had been expecting Assange to provide details on potentially damaging information about Clinton, possibly even posting it that day. Stone had built up suspense on Twitter, saying on Oct. 3, 2016, "I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp."
In the wake of the disappointing announcement, Bannon fires off an email asking Stone "What was that this morning???"
Stone writes back: "Fear. Serious security concern. He thinks they are going to kill him and the London police are standing done. However —a load every week going forward."
Days later, WikiLeaks released the first batch of material — emails stolen from the account of Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta. The Oct. 7, 2016, document dump came just hours after The Washington Post released audio from "Access Hollywood" in which Trump boasted of kissing and groping women without their permission.
WikiLeaks proceeded to dribble out the Podesta emails a thousand or so a day until Election Day.
___
Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report. ||||| Longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, whose possible ties to WikiLeaks while he communicated with President Trump's campaign have come under scrutiny in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, on Sunday vowed to never testify against the president.
His comments come days after ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen confessed in a surprise guilty plea that he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he pursued on Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Stone insisted it was "absolutely correct" that he had never spoken with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, contacted WikiLeaks in any way, or communicated about WikiLeaks-related matters with Trump.
"There's no circumstance under which I would testify against the president, because I'd have to bear false witness against him," Stone told ABC "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos. "I'd have to make things up, and I'm not going to do that."
He added: "I've never done anything in politics that was outside the norms of my colleagues. ... And I've always made it clear that so-called dirty tricks come up to, but do not cross, the line into illegality."
"Again, where is the crime? I engaged in politics." — Trump associate Roger Stone
Stone has said he believes Mueller is investigating whether he had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks releasing hacked emails of Democrats during the 2016 campaign.
MANAFORT, WIKILEAKS SUGGEST LEGAL ACTION AGAINST THE GUARDIAN AFTER UNVERIFIED REPORT OF SECRET CONSULATE MEETING
On July 25, 2016, just three days after WikiLeaks released thousands of stolen emails from the Democratic National Commitee, Stone says he received an email alerting him that WikiLeaks would release a similar email dump concerning Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.
In remarks August 8, Stone publicly told an audience in Florida that “I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be." He later claimed to be embellishing.
On Sunday, Stone clarified to Stephanopoulos: "I had no contact with Assange. Assange himself had said 'while Roger Stone is a brilliant spin master, we've had no communication with him.'"
On Aug. 21, Stone tweeted, "Trust me, it will soon [be] the Podesta’s time in the barrel,” apparently referring to John Podesta, then Clinton's campaign chairman and a longtime Clinton associate.
Stone told Stephanopoulos he has not been contacted by Mueller's team about the remarks or any other topic -- which Stephanopoulos said suggests Stone might be a target of the investigation, because federal investigators often talk to witnesses before targets.
But Stone was adamant that he has done nothing wrong.
"It suggests nothing at all. Again, where is the crime? I engaged in politics. ... My purpose was to take a tip which I thought to be solid, and then after that to follow the WikiLeaks Twitter feed and set a Google News alert for Julian Assange, and use Twitter to hype" the organization's disclosures when they were released.
TUCKER CARLSON: FOR THE CRIME OF FOREGETTING MINOR DETAILS, LONGTIME TRUMP ASSOCIATE IS FACING BANKRUPTCY AND JAIL TIME
In the plea on Thursday, Cohen said he lied to be consistent with Trump’s "political messaging." The agreement made clear that prosecutors believe Trump's former lawyer was continuing to pursue the Trump Tower Moscow project weeks after his boss had clinched the Republican nomination for president and well after the point that Cohen has publicly acknowledged.
Meanwhile, conservative author and Stone associate Jerome Corsi revealed last week he plans to reject a potential deal with Mueller to plead guilty to perjury. Corsi, who wrote the anti-President Obama book "The Obama Nation," recently announced that he expected to be indicted in Mueller’s probe.
"They can put me in prison the rest of my life," Corsi told CNN. "I am not going to sign a lie."
Stone told Fox News' "Hannity" last week that he believes it is "despicable" for Mueller to effectively pit Corsi and Stone against each other, charging that the effort is politically motivated.
And in another turn in the WikiLeaks saga, The Guardian published a report last week claiming that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had secretly met with Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy during the campaign.
Both WikiLeaks and Manafort have suggested they may sue the Guardian for the report, and the paper has since edited the language in the article to clearly attribute the claim to sources and to suggest that the meeting may not have occurred.
In a tweet highlighting the edits made by the Guardian, WikiLeaks suggested the paper's editor should resign.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is poised to become the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in January, said on "This Week" he did not find Stone's interview to be "at all" credible minutes after it aired.
"It also looks like Mr. Stone was attempting to enlist Mr. Corsi's help in covering for false testimony," Schiff said. "So I think the testimony alone is reason for great exposure for Mr. Stone." ||||| In two major developments this week, President Trump has been labeled in the parlance of criminal investigations as a major subject of interest, complete with an opaque legal code name: “Individual 1.”
New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.
Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.
On Thursday, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he insisted that Trump was not pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after January 2016, casting Trump’s repeated claims that he had no business interests in Russia in a new light. A draft special counsel document revealed Tuesday also indicates that prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump’s interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.
Legal experts said it’s still unclear how much peril the president might face as a result of the new evidence Mueller has gathered about the Moscow project and WikiLeaks, but his prominence in the prosecutors’ papers puts the president in an awkward starring role.
“It’s deeply troubling. It’s not a place that anybody wants to be, or where you would want your friends or family to be,” former federal prosecutor Glen Kopp said. “And it’s certainly not a place that you would want your president to be.”
Trump, identified as “Individual 1” in Cohen’s guilty plea, was said to have received direct updates from Cohen as he pursued a Moscow Trump Tower project with the Kremlin up until June 14, 2016. The president also appears in the draft charging document for Trump ally Jerome Corsi, who allegedly told Stone about WikiLeaks’ plans to release damaging Democratic emails in October of that year because he knew Stone was in “regular contact” with Trump. The Washington Post reported this week that Trump spoke with Stone the day after he got the alert from Corsi.
In the draft documents, prosecutors sought to have Corsi plead guilty to lying when he said he didn’t know about WikiLeaks’ plans and urging others to visit WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to obtain emails damaging to Democrats.
Trump has given slightly differing accounts of his Moscow business ties over time. In July 2016, he tweeted: “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” A day later he claimed, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”
In January 2017, he told a reporter: “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away.”
Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday that the president’s written answers to Mueller about the Moscow project, which he submitted just before Thanksgiving, conform with Cohen’s version of events. They discussed a project, starting in 2015, continuing into 2016, and it went nowhere, he said.
President Trump stops to talk with reporters Thursday about his former personal attorney Michael Cohen as he walks to Marine One from the White House to depart for the Group of 20 summit in Argentina. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“The president, as far as he knows, he remembers there was such a proposal for a hotel,” Giuliani said. “He talked it over with Cohen as Cohen said. There was a nonbinding letter of intent that was sent. As far as he knows it never came to fruition. That was kind of the end of it.”
Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and constitutional lawyer, said Cohen’s confessions don’t suggest Trump committed any crime but could suggest that Trump wasn’t telling the public the whole truth about the Moscow deal.
“This is politically damaging, but I’m not sure how legally damaging it is,” Dershowitz said. “This is all about questionable political behavior. It’s a good reason for people voting against Trump. But I don’t see a crime yet.”
But Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and frequent critic, said the developments pose significant new challenges for the president.
“This is part of the fact pattern that gets to the heart of whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the campaign,” O’Brien said. “I think the unforgiving grinding force of the U.S. justice system, which he has tried to undermine since he became president, is encircling him. I don’t think we know where he will land. But he is certainly mired in something that he is ill-equipped, legally and personally, to handle.”
Some legal experts argued Mueller appears to be drawing a picture of a candidate who was beholden to the Kremlin. Emails released in the Cohen plea show Trump seeking a financial endorsement from the Russian government on a private project while Russian President Vladimir Putin was offering to say flattering things about Trump.
“It creates the potential for Trump to feel an obligation to pay back President Putin, or Russia in general that . . . do not put the best interests of America forward,” Kopp said. “You are creating a potential vulnerability for a future leader of America.”
Trump privately stewed as he followed news coverage of Cohen’s plea early Thursday morning, a White House official said.
A Justice official called the White House Counsel’s Office on Wednesday evening to let personnel know that Cohen would be pleading guilty in a case the following day, according to one person with direct knowledge of the notice. They were not told the details, however, which they learned about shortly before Cohen’s plea Thursday morning.
Giuliani said the president believed the news development was a gratuitous slap from the Mueller team just as he was about to depart the White House for a trip to the Group of 20 summit in Argentina.
In public, Trump was defiant, telling reporters that Cohen was a liar and a “weak person” who would do anything to save himself from fraud charges he faces related to his taxi business. Speaking before he stepped onto the Marine One helicopter for his trip, he also denigrated Cohen’s intelligence, calling him “not very smart.”
“He was convicted of various things unrelated to us,” Trump said. “He’s a weak person, and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he’s lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean, we were very open with it.”
He questioned the scrutiny of the Moscow project.
“There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it,” Trump said. “When I’m running for president, that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to do business.”
Trump often grows aggrieved seeing Cohen on TV, aides say. Among White House advisers, Cohen is seen as an existential threat — as much or more so than the Mueller investigation itself because of his longtime role as Trump’s fixer. Trump’s legal team did not learn until Thursday that Cohen had sat for dozens of hours of interviews with Mueller’s office, according to a senior administration official.
Trump was infuriated earlier this year when Cohen released tapes of him, and asked his lawyers and advisers if anything could be done to stop him from releasing any more.
The Trump legal team cast Cohen as a flawed character whose word is meaningless, as it had when he pleaded guilty in August to eight felony counts, including paying women for their silence about alleged affairs with Trump.
Legal experts said prosecutors were not likely to build a guilty plea — a brick in the overall case — on the word of one person. The prosecutors’ filings show they have corroborated and buttressed Cohen’s account with contemporaneous emails, and people familiar with the probe say they have also obtained corroborating testimony from other witnesses.
“This is obviously a significant plea and statement. It means that when the president was representing during the campaign that he had no business interests in Russia, that that wasn’t true,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “If the president and his associates were being untruthful in real time as they were pursuing this deal, what does it mean now about how much we can rely on what the president is saying about any continuing Russian financial interest?”
Giuliani said the president and his business have not tried to hide his pursuit of a Moscow tower project, and voluntarily disclosed some of the documents Mueller’s team used in its probe of Cohen for lying to Congress. According to a person familiar with the investigation, Cohen and the Trump Organization could not produce some of the key records upon which Mueller relies. Other witnesses provided copies of those communications.
In the White House, two aides said Trump had complained more in recent days about Mueller’s prosecutors and has kept close tabs on the comments of Corsi and Stone. Trump has praised his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort extensively for fighting Mueller’s team, which accused Manafort this week of breaching a plea agreement by lying repeatedly to prosecutors as part of his pledged cooperation in the Russia probe. Cohen had not been on the front of Trump’s mind, both of these aides said.
Many in the White House try to avoid talking with the president about the Mueller probe, for fear they will be subpoenaed. And both of the aides said it was unclear why Trump was complaining more about the investigation recently. During the midterm campaign, the president occasionally told advisers that people had forgotten about the Mueller probe and remarked positively that it was no longer dominating TV headlines.
Alice Crites contributed to this report. | – Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show political operative Roger Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart of then-candidate Donald Trump's run for president. The emails, published Thursday by the New York Times, touch on a central question of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation: Did Stone have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked material damaging to Hillary Clinton? Stone says no, and the emails don't provide a definitive answer to that question. But the correspondence suggests Stone wanted Bannon to see him as plugged in to WikiLeaks as it was planning to publish documents that would upend the campaign. US intelligence agencies have concluded Russian agents were the source of info released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Mueller's team questioned Bannon last month about his exchanges with Stone, a source says. Bannon's interview was with prosecutors, though other people close to Stone have been called before a grand jury to discuss his ties to WikiLeaks. The source said Bannon and other top campaign officials were skeptical of Stone and his claims about having insight into WikiLeaks' efforts. Stone, who confirmed the emails' authenticity, denies being a conduit to WikiLeaks. "What I am guilty of is using publicly available information and a solid tip to bluff, posture, hype, and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called 'politics.' It's not illegal," he said Thursday in a Daily Caller op-ed. Stone tells the AP: "I had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures." (Stone thinks he knows who wrote the now infamous anonymous Times op-ed.) |
A United States official says the target of raid by Navy SEALs in Somalia over the weekend was a Kenyan man named Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir. A Kenyan government intelligence document names him as the coordinator of other planned attacks.
The man, also known as Ikrima, was a known operator for the Somali militant group al-Shabab.
The document says that foiled plots by Abdulkadir included plans to target Kenya's parliament building and the United Nations office in Nairobi, as well as an Ethiopian restaurant patronized by Somali government officials.
It does not appear that Saturday's raid resulted in the killing or capture of Abdulkadir. The U.S. official who confirmed the target of the SEAL raid insisted on anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter.
___
Burns reported from Washington. ||||| Story highlights Kenyan officials said Ikrima helped recruit Kenyans into Al-Shabaab
The raid was led by members of SEAL Team Six, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden
The SEALs withdrew because they came under fire, a U.S. official says
Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for last month's Kenya mall attack
A pre-dawn raid by elite U.S. forces in southern Somalia, in the heart of territory controlled by the al Qaeda subsidiary Al-Shabaab, targeted an Al-Shabaab commander connected to one of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, a senior Obama administration official said Sunday.
The suspected foreign fighter commander is named Ikrima, a Kenyan of Somali origin about whom little is known. The official said Ikrima is associated with two now-deceased al Qaeda operatives who played roles in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and the 2002 attacks on a hotel and airline in Mombasa, also in Kenya.
A recent Kenyan intelligence report alleged that Ikrima was behind several foiled terror conspiracies against targets in Kenya between 2011 and 2013. The most recent was a plot to attack Mandera Airport in Kenya's North Eastern province in April.
Kenyan officials said last year that Ikrima had a significant role in recruiting and training Kenyans in Al-Shabaab. He is thought to have been a close associate of Saleh Ali Nabhan, a fellow Kenyan and senior al Qaeda operative in east Africa, who was killed by U.S. forces in 2009 in Somalia.
He is thought to have been a close associate of the Saleh Ali Nabhan, a fellow Kenyan and senior al Qaeda operative in east Africa, who was believed to have been connected to the embassy attacks. (Ali Nabhan was killed by U.S. forces in 2009 in Somalia.)
Ikrima also appears to be close to Al-Shabaab leader Mukhtar Abu Zubayr, who also goes by Ahmed Abdi Godane.
51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Relatives of Johnny Mutinda Musango, 48, weep after identifying his body at the city morgue in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday, September 24. Musango was one of the victims of the Westgate Mall hostage siege. Kenyan security forces were still combing the mall on the fourth day of the siege by al Qaeda-linked terrorists. Hide Caption 1 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Ann Gakii reacts at the Nairobi City Mortuary after identifying the body of her father, who was killed in the mall attack on Saturday. Hide Caption 2 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A Kenyan soldier runs through a corridor on an upper floor at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on September 24, shortly before an explosion was heard. Sounds of heavy gunfire erupted from the mall Tuesday, even as authorities said they had the building under their control. But four days after Al-Shabaab terrorists stormed the swanky mall, several gunmen -- including snipers -- were still inside, two senior officials said. Hide Caption 3 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Kenyan Defense Forces walk near the mall on Monday, September 23. Hide Caption 4 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Kenyan Defense Forces leave the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 5 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Stephen, center, is comforted by relatives as he waits for the post mortem exam of his father, who was killed in Saturday's attack at the mall. Hide Caption 6 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A Kenyan police officer guards the entrance of a building near the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 7 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A Kenyan security officer takes cover as gunfire and explosions are heard from the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 8 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Heavy smoke rises from the Westgate Shopping Mall on September 23. Hide Caption 9 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Medics take cover behind a tree as gunfire and explosions are heard from the Westgate Mall on September 23. Hide Caption 10 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A Kenyan police security officer runs for cover as heavy smoke rises from the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 11 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A paramedic runs for cover outside the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 12 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – People run for cover outside the mall after heavy shooting started on September 23. Hide Caption 13 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Kenyan security forces crouch behind a wall outside the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 14 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Soldiers take cover after gunfire near the mall on September 23. Hide Caption 15 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Kenyan paramilitary police officers patrol the area near the mall on Sunday, September 22. Hide Caption 16 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Soldiers from the Kenya Defense Forces arrive outside the Westgate Mall on September 22. Hide Caption 17 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A woman shields a baby as a soldier stands guard inside the Westgate Mall on Saturday, September 21. Hide Caption 18 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A rescue worker helps a child outside the mall. Hide Caption 19 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – People who had been hiding inside the mall during the gunfire flee the scene. Hide Caption 20 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – An armed official takes a shooting position inside the mall. Hide Caption 21 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – An armed official crouches on September 21. Hide Caption 22 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Hide Caption 23 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Bodies lie on the ground inside the mall. Hide Caption 24 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Men help a wounded woman outside the mall. Hide Caption 25 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Officials carry an injured man in the mall. Hide Caption 26 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Soldiers move up stairs inside the Westgate Mall. Hide Caption 27 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Armed police leave after entering the mall. At least one suspect has been killed, a government official said. Police have said another suspected gunman has been detained at a Nairobi hospital. Hide Caption 28 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Armed police take cover behind escalators as smoke fills the air. Witnesses say tear gas was thrown in the corridors. Hide Caption 29 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A woman who had been hiding during the attack runs for cover after armed police enter the mall. Hide Caption 30 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A body is seen on the floor inside the smoke-filled four-story mall. Hide Caption 31 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – An injured person is helped on arrival at the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi after the attack at the upscale mall. Hide Caption 32 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A soldier directs people up a stairway inside the Westgate on September 21. Hide Caption 33 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – An injured man is wheeled into the Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi. Hide Caption 34 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – People run from the Westgate Mall. Hide Caption 35 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A Kenyan woman is helped to safety after the masked gunmen stormed the upscale mall and sprayed gunfire on shoppers and staff. Hide Caption 36 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Crowds gather outside the upscale shopping mall. The interior ministry urges Kenyans to keep off the roads near the mall so police can ensure everyone inside has been evacuated to safety. Hide Caption 37 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A policeman carries a baby to safety. Authorities said multiple shooters were at the scene. Hide Caption 38 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Bodies lie outside the shopping mall. Hide Caption 39 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A security officer helps a wounded woman outside. Hide Caption 40 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Elaine Dang of San Diego is helped to safety after the attack. The military asked local media not to televise anything live because the gunmen are watching the screens in the mall. Hide Caption 41 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Paramedics treat an injured man outside the mall. Hide Caption 42 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Medical personnel carry a body away. Hide Caption 43 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A body lies outside the mall. Gunmen shot people outside the mall as they entered it Hide Caption 44 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A woman is pulled by a shopping cart to an ambulance. Hide Caption 45 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A wounded man is escorted outside the mall. Hide Caption 46 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A police officer carries a baby as people keep low and run to safety. Crowds dashed down the streets as soldiers in military fatigues, guns cocked, crawled under cars to get closer to the mall. Hide Caption 47 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – People run away from the scene. Hide Caption 48 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – Armed Kenyan forces take position to secure the area around the shopping mall as ambulances move in to carry the injured. Hide Caption 49 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A woman reacts after she is rescued from the mall. Hide Caption 50 of 51 51 photos: Photos: Kenya mall attack Kenya mall attack – A couple flee the area. As night fell, authorities said they had cornered the gunmen in the mall. Hide Caption 51 of 51
JUST WATCHED Navy SEALs raid Somali town Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Navy SEALs raid Somali town 01:09
JUST WATCHED Video shows gunmen inside Kenya mall Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Video shows gunmen inside Kenya mall 00:42
How the raid happened
U.S. Navy SEAL members traveled by sea to reach the coastal villa frequented by top Al-Shabaab commanders, storming the house early Saturday. Until Sunday, no U.S. official disclosed the target of the raid.
The SEALs' mission didn't go as planned, however. The U.S. commandos encountered heavy fire and had to withdraw, not knowing whether their target was dead or alive.
Al-Shabaab is the U.S.-designated terrorist group that claimed responsibility for last month's siege on a Kenyan shopping mall that killed 67 people.
Residents of the port city of Barawe said the home belonged to Al-Shabaab leader Mukhtar Abu Zubayr, also known as Ahmed Abdi Godane. An Al-Shabaab spokesman had said Godane was the target of the attack.
The group said one of its fighters was killed in the attack. No SEAL members were killed or hurt, a U.S. official said.
It was one of two raids carried out by elite U.S. forces in Africa on Saturday against targets connected to the 1998 embassy bombing in Nairobi. The other was an operation in Tripoli, Libya, by the U.S. Army Delta Force against Abu Anas al Libi, indicted in the United States for helping to plan the Nairobi embassy attack.
Delta Force members captured al Libi, who will eventually be taken to New York to face federal charges.
In the 2002 attacks, three suicide bombers detonated a car bomb outside the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, killing the bombers as well as 12 Kenyans and three Israelis. The same morning, a missile attack unsuccessfully targeted an Israeli airliner taking off from Mombasa's airport.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for both Mombasa attacks.
U.S. forces strike in Libya, Somalia, capture al Qaeda operative
'Most wanted terrorist' al Libi nabbed in native Libya
Witness accounts
Residents of the port city of Barawe said about a dozen "foreign forces" went from a nearby warship to a smaller, faster boat before jumping onto the Somali mainland. Before long, the sounds of heavy gunfire and several large explosions echoed across the city, locals said.
After coming under fire, the U.S. forces -- members of the Navy special forces unit known as SEAL Team Six, the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 -- made a "prudent decision" to pull back, a senior U.S. official said.
Barawe "is a main center, if not the center" for Al-Shabaab, said Matt Bryden, the former head of the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.
"It's a big source of revenue for them. It allows for trade," said Bryden, now the director of a Kenya-based think tank, Sahan Research. They "fully control the town" and hold large exercises on the beach, including target practice and even sack races.
Once a tourist destination, the city is now an important port for charcoal, a common fuel in Somalia, Bryden said. That makes it a revenue source for the jihadists, with the charcoal trade bringing in as much as $25 million a year to Al-Shabaab, the United Nations estimated in July.
Al-Shabaab's growing menace
Al-Shabaab, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has a relationship with al Qaeda that goes back several years. Last year, the two groups effectively merged, said CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.
Bergen: How Al-Shabaab picks its targets
Al-Shabaab hopes to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state but has launched attacks in other countries as well.
In 2010, Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings carried out in Kampala, Uganda, amid crowds of soccer fans watching televised screenings of the World Cup final. The bombings left 74 people dead.
The group said at the time the attacks were retaliation for Ugandan participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM. One AMISOM goal is to support Somali government forces in cracking down on Al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab has also mounted many smaller attacks against targets in Kenya, hurling hand grenades into nightclubs, restaurants and schools. The group has also kidnapped tourists and aid workers.
Its attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya on September 21 killed at least 67 people.
Al-Shabaab said the attack was retaliation for Kenya's involvement in the African Union effort against the group.
In recent months, Al-Shabaab's haven in south-central Somalia has been been increasingly squeezed as Kenyan forces fight the group from the south and African Union forces come down from Mogadishu, the Somali capital. | – In this weekend's raid in Somalia, Navy SEALs were after an al-Shabab leader named Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, who had plotted foiled attacks targeting Kenya's parliament and the UN office in Nairobi, according to a Kenyan intelligence document obtained by the AP. Abdulkadir, who is also known as Ikrima, is a Kenyan of Somali origin, CNN reports. He is also reportedly linked to a pair of al-Qaeda figures involved in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, as well as attacks four years later in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. Navy SEAL Team Six members arrived for Saturday's raid by sea, but when they ran into extensive gunfire, they made what one official calls a "prudent decision" to leave—though they didn't know whether Abdulkadir had survived. None of the SEALs were injured during the attack on the home of al-Shabab leader Mukhtar Abu Zubayr; al-Shabab says one of its fighters was killed in the raid, says a former UN official. |
Austrian mountain police officer Bernhard Magritzer said the man's father had alerted German police after his son had not returned from his climb last Saturday and he could not reach him on his mobile phone - which, the father said, was unusual.
The man has not been identified due to Austrian privacy laws.
Winter-like conditions and a danger of avalanches made the rescue attempt dangerous on the Dachstein, 90 kilometers (55 miles) south east of Salzburg. It is the second highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps.
Police found the alpinist's car near a lake below the mountain late on Wednesday night. The trapped man was able to make a call from his mobile phone but the signal broke off after a few seconds.
"My colleague heard someone breathing heavily and reacted in the right way," Magritzer said.
The rescue service switched communications to text messages and the man was able to explain his situation and give an exact location. "We would not have found him otherwise," Magritzer said. A three-hour search at 2,050 meters altitude in the middle of the night followed.
At about 4 a.m. the man was rescued from his 30-meter-deep hole and flown by emergency helicopter to the Wels clinic where he was reported to have only slight injuries to a shoulder and ankle.
The Dachstein's northern glaciers
Thirty years ago - same time, same place
Austrian television had on Wednesday evening shown a program about the 1985 rescue of a US soldier who was also found alive, also in November, but after 19 days on the Dachstein. He had broken his leg two days into his climb over a glacier.
Kenneth Cichowich from Buffalo NY, who was deputy chief of staff for logistics at the US Army European headquarters in Heidelberg, West Germany at the time, gave credit to his mountain survival training.
He spent six days eating snow before he was rescued by two men lowered from a helicopter who asked his name. "Then they said: 'You're the man we're looking for,'" Cichowich said at the time. "I was never so happy or so surprised."
jm/kms (AP, dpa) | – Austrian emergency teams have rescued a German mountaineer who spent five days in a deep glacier crevice after slipping. Officials say the man was found in the 100-foot-deep gap Thursday after he succeeded in making an emergency call from his cellphone following numerous failed attempts because of poor reception, the AP reports. The man had been reported missing by his father Saturday on the rugged Dachstein range southeast of the city of Salzburg. State broadcaster ORF cites an alpine rescue official as saying the man is only "relatively lightly hurt" considering the drop, with shoulder and foot injuries. Deutsche Welle, which notes the poor weather and risk of avalanches made rescuers' efforts more difficult, documents how police first found the man's car near a lake at the foot of the mountain Wednesday night. He'd been trying to make calls from his phone, and finally one call went through, though only for a few seconds. A quick-thinking member of the rescue team switched communications over to texting, at which point the man was able to relay to them where he was. "We would not have found him otherwise," another rescuer says. The man was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital after the early morning rescue. He's not being identified due to Austrian privacy laws. |
Deposed Southeast Flood Protection Authority East vice president John Barry on Tuesday announced the creation of Restore Louisiana Now, a nonprofit organization that will lobby on behalf of a controversial lawsuit filed by the authority in July against 97 oil, gas and pipeline companies that seeks to get them to repair damage to wetlands or compensate the authority for damage that can’t be repaired, with the money to be used for levee improvements.
“What it really comes down to is the most basic conservative American values, what parents are supposed to teach their kids,” Barry said of the organization's support for the lawsuit. He spoke at a news conference at the Blue Crab Restaurant on Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans. “It’s keep your word, obey the law and take responsibility for your actions.
“The oil, gas and pipeline industries -- those companies haven’t done any of those things,” Barry said.
He said the organization also will support 28 lawsuits filed against energy companies by Jefferson and Plaquemines parishes last week that also ask for repair of wetlands damage.
The organization will eventually broaden its focus to include issues such as the Bayou Corne sinkhole, Barry said. But other issues will take a back seat to supporting the levee authority lawsuit, he said. “We intend to fulfill the task of preserving the lawsuit and preventing opponents from getting the Legislature to intervene in what should be a court process,” Barry said.
The suit argues that the loss of wetlands outside east bank levees caused by the energy companies has reduced the effectiveness of the levees to protect interior areas from hurricane storm surges. It argues that the firms violated federal and state permits and state laws that required them to maintain and restore areas they damaged.
Gov. Bobby Jindal and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Garret Graves, Jindal's coastal adviser, attacked the suit as soon as it was filed in July, contending that it would disrupt the state’s plans to sue the federal government for wetlands damages caused by the Army Corps of Engineers’ management of the Mississippi River, and that it also would conflict with projects proposed as part of the state’s $50 billion, 50-year coastal restoration and protection Master Plan.
They argue that such suits also make it more difficult to work with oil and gas companies in repairing wetlands.
Jindal and Graves also objected to the fees that might be earned by the attorneys filing the suit on behalf of the authority and to a “poison pill” provision in the contract that would saddle the authority – and possibly the state – with any costs incurred in pressing the suit if the authority was forced to drop it.
Barry’s name was not submitted to Jindal for reappointment to the levee authority in October after Jindal made clear he would not be chosen because of his role in proposing the suit. Jindal also replaced two other board members, including one who also voted for the suit.
Jindal is unable to remove members of the authority whose terms have not expired under a provision that is aimed at removing the board from politics by assuring that no governor can replace all its members.
New Orleans lawyer Joe Hassinger, appointed to Barry's seat, will ask the authority on Thursday to vote to suspend action on the suit for 90 days and to ask the legislative auditor to investigate the issue.
Barry’s new organization, while nonprofit, will not be tax-exempt, which will allow it to lobby on behalf of issues before the Legislature and Congress. Joining him as members of its inaugural board of directors are Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal and Walter Williams, a New Orleans native who created the “Mr. Bill” video spots for the “Saturday Night Live” television program.
Rosenthal and her organization have been critics of the Corps of Engineers after the failure of levees and floodwalls, resulting in the flooding of most of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and has led a nationwide effort to educate the public about the risks of similar failures for other federally designed and built levees.
Williams used the character Mr. Bill in a series of spots for the America’s Wetland Foundation in the 2000s, but refused to allow the organization to continue using them in 2008 after learning it received support from several oil companies. He has produced several documentaries about coastal loss issues in Louisiana since then.
Also on the board, but not appearing at Wednesday’s news conference are retired New Orleans Criminal District Court Judge Calvin Johnson and Al Sunseri, whose family owns P&J Oyster Co., which was hard-hit by the BP oil spill. Sunseri is a member of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation.
During the news conference, Barry also released the results of a poll of residents of Louisiana’s coastal parishes, stretching from Lake Charles to Baton Rouge to New Orleans, that he said supported the lawsuit.
The poll of 1,000 residents was conducted between Oct. 24 and Nov. 5. The margin of error for the poll was 3 percentage points.
The poll conducted by Silas Lee & Associates of New Orleans found that by a margin of more than 3 to 1, respondents didn’t want the Legislature to intervene to stop the levee authority lawsuit, that nearly two-thirds had little or no confidence that the oil and gas companies would voluntarily restore wetlands to their original condition, and that by more than 25 to 1, residents expect oil and gas companies who dredged and drilled in wetlands to pay for their restoration.
The poll found that the top three issues of concern for coastal residents were education, 76 percent; protecting wetlands from coastal erosion, 75 percent; and improving flood protection in their parish, 63 percent.
Barry is a historian holding a research appointment at Tulane University and is best known for writing “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America.”
He said an irony of Jindal’s ousting him from the levee authority is that it provides him with the freedom to lobby on behalf of the lawsuit. Authority members are prohibited from lobbying on any issue. “On the flood protection authority board I was not allowed to be political,” he said. “I could not so much as ask a legislator for support. I assure you, I will be asking people for support now, both legislators and the public.”
Barry said he and others in the new organization are not opposed to the oil and gas industry operating in the state, but they want energy companies to pay for their damages. And he wants state legislators to recognize the industry’s liability.
“The industry has cooperated with parishes and levee districts to the tune of millions of dollars, (but) its liability statewide is in the tens of billions of dollars,” he said. “So what they have contributed so far is between 1/100th and 1/10th of a penny on the dollar for their liability.
“In return for that contribution, many politicians have been defending them,” Barry said. “I think that’s a pretty good deal for the industry. I think that’s a pretty terrible deal for the taxpayer. More importantly, I think it’s a pretty terrible deal for people living in the affected areas, people whose lives are threatened by land loss, whose risk increases every single day.” ||||| In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to the nation’s economy.
And it’s going to get worse, even quicker.
Scientists now say one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history is rushing toward a catastrophic conclusion over the next 50 years, so far unabated and largely unnoticed.
At the current rates that the sea is rising and land is sinking, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists say by 2100 the Gulf of Mexico could rise as much as 4.3 feet across this landscape, which has an average elevation of about 3 feet. If that happens, everything outside the protective levees — most of Southeast Louisiana — would be underwater.
The effects would be felt far beyond bayou country. The region best known for its self-proclaimed motto “laissez les bons temps rouler” — let the good times roll — is one of the nation’s economic linchpins.
This land being swallowed by the Gulf is home to half of the country’s oil refineries, a matrix of pipelines that serve 90 percent of the nation’s offshore energy production and 30 percent of its total oil and gas supply, a port vital to 31 states, and 2 million people who would need to find other places to live.
The landscape on which all that is built is washing away at a rate of a football field every hour, 16 square miles per year.
For years, most residents didn’t notice because they live inside the levees and seldom travel into the wetlands. But even those who work or play in the marshes were misled for decades by the gradual changes in the landscape. A point of land eroding here, a bayou widening there, a spoil levee sinking a foot over 10 years. In an ecosystem covering thousands of square miles, those losses seemed insignificant. There always seemed to be so much left.
Now locals are trying to deal with the shock of losing places they had known all their lives — fishing camps, cypress swamps, beachfronts, even cattle pastures and backyards — with more disappearing every day.
Fishing guide Ryan Lambert is one of them. When he started fishing the wetlands out of Buras 34 years ago, he had to travel through six miles of healthy marshes, swamps and small bays to reach the Gulf of Mexico.
“Now it’s all open water,” Lambert said. “You can stand on the dock and see the Gulf.”
Two years ago, NOAA removed 31 bays and other features from the Buras charts. Some had been named by French explorers in the 1700s.
The people who knew this land when it was rich with wildlife and dotted with Spanish- and French-speaking villages are getting old. They say their grandchildren don’t understand what has been lost.
“I see what was,” said Lloyd “Wimpy” Serigne, who grew up in the fishing and trapping village of Delacroix, 20 miles southeast of New Orleans. It was once home to 700 people; now there are fewer than 15 permanent residents. “People today — like my nephew, he's pretty young — he sees what is.”
If this trend is not reversed, a wetlands ecosystem that took nature 7,000 years to build will be destroyed in a human lifetime.
The story of how that happened is a tale of levees, oil wells and canals leading to destruction on a scale almost too big to comprehend — and perhaps too late to rebuild. It includes chapters on ignorance, unintended consequences and disregard for scientific warnings. It’s a story that is still unfolding.
Speck by speck, land built over centuries
The coastal landscape Europeans found when they arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi River 500 years ago was the Amazon of North America, a wetlands ecosystem of more than 6,000 square miles built by one of the largest rivers in the world.
For thousands of years, runoff from the vast stretch of the continent between the Rockies and the Appalachians had flowed into the Mississippi valley. Meltwater from retreating glaciers, seasonal snowfall and rain carried topsoil and sand from as far away as the Canadian prairies. The river swelled as it rushed southward on the continent’s downward slope, toward the depression in the planet that would become known as the Gulf of Mexico.
Down on the flat coastal plain, the giant river slowed. It lost the power to carry those countless tons of sediment, which drifted to the bottom. Over thousands of years, this rain of fine particles gradually built land that would rise above the Gulf.
It wasn’t just the main stem of the Mississippi doing this work. When the river reached the coastal plain, side channels — smaller rivers and bayous — peeled off. They were called “distributaries,” for the job they did spreading that land-building sediment ever farther afield.
The delta had two other means of staying above the Gulf. The plants and trees growing in its marshes and swamps shed tons of dead parts each year, adding to the soil base. Meanwhile, storms and high tides carried sediment that had been deposited offshore back into the wetlands.
As long as all this could continue unobstructed, the delta continued to expand. But with any interruption, such as a prolonged drought, the new land began to sink.
That’s because the sheer weight of hundreds of feet of moist soil is always pushing downward against the bedrock below. Like a sponge pressed against a countertop, the soil compresses as the moisture is squeezed out. Without new layers of sediment, the delta eventually sinks below sea level.
The best evidence of this dependable rhythm of land building and sinking over seven millennia is underground. Geologists estimate that the deposits were at least 400 feet deep at the mouth of the Mississippi when those first Europeans arrived.
By the time New Orleans was founded in 1718, the main channel of the river was the beating heart of a system pumping sediment and nutrients through a vast circulatory network that stretched from present-day Baton Rouge south to Grand Isle, west to Texas and east to Mississippi. As late as 1900, new land was pushing out into the Gulf of Mexico.
A scant 70 years later, that huge, vibrant wetlands ecosystem would be at death’s door. The exquisite natural plumbing that made it all possible had been dismantled, piece by piece, to protect coastal communities and extract oil and gas.
Engineering the river
For communities along its banks, the Mississippi River has always been an indispensable asset and their gravest threat. The river connected their economies to the rest of the world, but its spring floods periodically breached locally built levees, quickly washing away years of profits and scores of lives. Some towns were so dependent on the river, they simply got used to rebuilding.
That all changed with the Great Flood of 1927.
Swollen by months of record rainfall across the watershed, the Mississippi broke through levees in 145 places, flooding the midsection of the country from Illinois to New Orleans. Some 27,000 square miles went under as much as 30 feet of water, destroying 130,000 homes, leaving 600,000 people homeless and killing 500.
Stunned by what was then the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928, which ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent such a flood from ever happening again. By the mid-1930s, the corps had done its job, putting the river in a straitjacket of levees.
But the project that made the river safe for the communities along the river would eventually squeeze the life out of the delta. The mud walls along the river sealed it off from the landscape sustained by its sediment. Without it, the sinking of land that only occurred during dry cycles would start, and never stop.
If that were all we had done to the delta, scientists have said, the wetlands that existed in the 1930s could largely be intact today. The natural pace of sinking — scientists call it subsidence — would have been mere millimeters per year.
But we didn’t stop there. Just as those levees were built, a nascent oil and gas industry discovered plentiful reserves below the delta’s marshes, swamps and ridges.
At the time, wetlands were widely considered worthless — places that produced only mosquitoes, snakes and alligators. The marsh was a wilderness where few people could live, or even wanted to.
There were no laws protecting wetlands. Besides, more than 80 percent of this land was in the hands of private landowners who were happy to earn a fortune from worthless property.
Free to choose the cheapest, most direct way to reach drilling sites, oil companies dredged canals off natural waterways to transport rigs and work crews. The canals averaged 13 to 16 feet deep and 140 to 150 feet wide — far larger than natural, twisting waterways.
Effects of canals ripple across the wetlands
Eventually, some 50,000 wells were permitted in the coastal zone. The state estimates that roughly 10,000 miles of canals were dredged to service them, although that only accounts for those covered by permitting systems. The state began to require some permits in the 1950s, but rigorous accounting didn’t begin until the Clean Water Act brought federal agencies into play in 1972.
Researchers say the total number of miles dredged will never be known because many of those areas are now underwater. Gene Turner, a Louisiana State University professor who has spent years researching the impacts of the canals, said 10,000 miles “would be a conservative estimate.”
Companies drilled and dredged all over the coast, perhaps nowhere more quickly than the area near Lafitte, which became known as the Texaco Canals.
This fishing village 15 miles south of New Orleans had been named for the pirate who used these bayous to ferry contraband to the city. For years, the seafood, waterfowl and furbearers in the surrounding wetlands sustained the community. As New Orleans grew, Lafitte also became a favorite destination for weekend hunters and anglers.
Today those scenes are only a memory.
“Once the oil companies come in and started dredging all the canals, everything just started falling apart,” said Joseph Bourgeois, 84, who grew up and still lives in the area.
From 1930 to 1990, as much as 16 percent of the wetlands was turned to open water as those canals were dredged. But as the U.S. Department of the Interior and many others have reported, the indirect damages far exceeded that:
Saltwater creeped in
Canal systems leading to the Gulf allowed saltwater into the heart of freshwater marshes and swamps, killing plants and trees whose roots held the soils together. As a side effect, the annual supply of plant detritus — one way a delta disconnected from its river can maintain its elevation — was seriously reduced.
Shorelines crumbled
Without fresh sediment and dead plants, shorelines began to collapse, increasing the size of existing water bodies. Wind gained strength over ever-larger sections of open water, adding to land loss. Fishers and other boaters used canals as shortcuts across the wetlands; their wakes also sped shoreline erosion. In some areas, canals grew twice as wide within five years.
Spoil levees buried and trapped wetlands
When companies dredged canals, they dumped the soil they removed alongside, creating “spoil levees” that could rise higher than 10 feet and twice as wide. The weight of the spoil on the soft, moist delta caused the adjacent marshes to sink. In locations of intense dredging, spoil levees impounded acres of wetlands. The levees also impeded the flow of water — and sediments — over wetlands during storm tides. If there were 10,000 miles of canals, there were 20,000 miles of levees. Researchers estimate that canals and levees eliminated or covered 8 million acres of wetlands.
All this disrupted the delta’s natural hydrology — its circulatory system — and led to the drowning of vast areas. Researchers have shown that land has sunk and wetlands have disappeared the most in areas where canals were concentrated.
In the 1970s, up to 50 square miles of wetlands were disappearing each year in the areas with heaviest oil and gas drilling and dredging, bringing the Gulf within sight of many communities.
As the water expanded, people lived and worked on narrower and narrower slivers of land.
“There’s places where I had cattle pens, and built those pens … with a tractor that weighed 5,000 or 6,000 pounds,” said Earl Armstrong, a cattle rancher who grew on the river nine miles south of the nearest road. “Right now we run through there with airboats.”
There are other forces at work, including a series of geologic faults in the delta and the rock layers beneath, but a U.S. Department of Interior report says oil and gas canals are ultimately responsible for 30 to 59 percent of coastal land loss. In some areas of Barataria Bay, said Turner at LSU, it’s close to 90 percent.
Even more damage was to come as the oil and gas industry shifted offshore in the late 1930s, eventually planting about 7,000 wells in the Gulf. To carry that harvest to onshore refineries, companies needed more underwater pipelines. So they dug wider, deeper waterways to accommodate the large ships that served offshore platforms.
Congress authorized the Corps of Engineers to dredge about 550 miles of navigation channels through the wetlands. The Department of Interior has estimated that those canals, averaging 12 to 15 feet deep and 150 to 500 feet wide, resulted in the loss of an additional 369,000 acres of coastal land.
Researchers eventually would show that the damage wasn’t due to surface activities alone. When all that oil and gas was removed from below some areas, the layers of earth far below compacted and sank. Studies have shown that coastal subsidence has been highest in some areas with the highest rates of extraction.
Push to hold industry accountable
The oil and gas industry, one of the state’s most powerful political forces, has acknowledged some role in the damages, but so far has defeated efforts to force companies to pay for it.
The most aggressive effort to hold the industry accountable is now underway. In July 2013, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, which maintains levees around New Orleans, filed suit against more than 90 oil, gas and pipeline companies.
The lawsuit claims that the industry, by transforming so much of the wetlands to open water, has increased the size of storm surges. It argues this is making it harder to protect the New Orleans area against flooding and will force the levee authority to build bigger levees and floodwalls.
The lawsuit also claims that the companies did not return the work areas to their original condition, as required by state permits.
"The oil and gas industry has complied with each permit required by the State of Louisiana and the Corps of Engineers since the permits became law,” said Ragan Dickens, spokesman for the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.
State leaders immediately rose to the industry’s defense. Much of the public debate has not been about the merits of the suit; instead, opponents contested the authority’s legal right to file the suit and its contingency fee arrangement with a private law firm.
“We’re not going to allow a single levee board that has been hijacked by a group of trial lawyers to determine flood protection, coastal restoration and economic repercussions for the entire State of Louisiana,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal in a news release demanding that the levee authority withdraw its suit.
“A better approach,” he said in the statement, “to helping restore Louisiana’s coast includes holding the Army Corps of Engineers accountable, pushing for more offshore revenue sharing and holding BP accountable for the damage their spill is doing to our coast.”
The industry’s political clout reflects its outsized role in the economy of one of the nation's poorest states. The industry directly employs 63,000 people in the state, according to the federal Department of Labor.
Many of those employees live in the coastal parishes that have suffered most from oil and gas activities and face the most severe consequences from the resulting land loss.
Legislators in those areas helped Jindal pass a law that retroactively sought to remove the levee authority’s standing to file the suit. The constitutionality of that law is now before a federal judge.
Consequences now clear
Even as politicians fought the lawsuit, it was hard to deny what was happening on the ground.
By 2000, coastal roads that had flooded only during major hurricanes were going underwater when high tides coincided with strong southerly winds. Islands and beaches that had been landmarks for lifetimes were gone, lakes had turned into bays, and bays had eaten through their borders to join the Gulf.
“It happened so fast, I could actually see the difference day to day, month to month,” said Lambert, the fishing guide in Buras.
Today, in some basins around New Orleans, land is sinking an inch every 30 months. At this pace, by the end of the century this land will sink almost 3 feet in an area that’s barely above sea level today.
Meanwhile, global warming is causing seas to rise worldwide. Coastal landscapes everywhere are now facing a serious threat, but none more so than Southeast Louisiana.
The federal government projects that seas along the U.S. coastline will rise 1.5 to 4.5 feet by 2100. Southeast Louisiana would see “at least” 4 to 5 feet, said NOAA scientist Tim Osborn.
The difference: This sediment-starved delta is sinking at one of the fastest rates of any large coastal landscape on the planet at the same time the oceans are rising.
Maps used by researchers to illustrate what the state will look like in 2100 under current projections show the bottom of Louisiana’s “boot” outline largely gone, replaced by a coast running practically straight east to west, starting just south of Baton Rouge. The southeast corner of the state is represented only by two fingers of land – the areas along the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche that currently are protected by levees.
Finally, a plan to rebuild — but not enough money
Similar predictions had been made for years. But Hurricane Katrina finally galvanized the state Legislature, which pushed through a far-reaching coastal restoration plan in 2007.
The 50-year, $50 billion Master Plan for the Coast (in 2012 dollars) includes projects to build levees, pump sediment into sinking areas, and build massive diversions on the river to reconnect it with the dying delta.
The state’s computer projections show that by 2060 — if projects are completed on schedule — more land could be built annually than is lost to the Gulf.
But there are three large caveats.
The state is still searching for the full $50 billion. Congress so far has been unwilling to help.
If the plan is to work, sea-level rise can’t be as bad as the worst-case scenario.
Building controlled sediment diversions on the river, a key part of the land-building strategy, has never been done before. The predictions, then, are largely hypothetical, although advocates say the concept is being proven by an uncontrolled diversion at West Bay, near the mouth of the river.
Some of the money will come from an increased share of offshore oil and gas royalties, but many coastal advocates say the industry should pay a larger share.
In fact, leaders of the regional levee authority have said the purpose of the lawsuit was to make the industry pay for the rebuilding plan, suggesting that state could trade immunity from future suits for bankrolling it.
That idea is gaining momentum in official circles, despite the industry’s latest win in the state Legislature.
Kyle Graham, executive director of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said recently that the industry understands its liability for the crumbling coast and is discussing some kind of settlement. “It's very difficult to see a future in which that [such an agreement] isn't there,” he said he said.
Graham has said current funding sources could keep the restoration plan on schedule only through 2019. He was blunt when talking about what would happen if more money doesn’t come through: There will be a smaller coast.
“There are various sizes of a sustainable coastal Louisiana,” he said. “And that could depend on how much our people are willing to put up for that.”
A vanishing culture
Trying to keep pace with the vanishing pieces of southeast Louisiana today is like chasing the sunset; it’s a race that never ends.
Lambert said when he’s leading fishing trips, he finds himself explaining to visitors what he means when he says, “This used to be Bay Pomme d’Or” and the growing list of other spots now only on maps.
Signs of the impending death of this delta are there to see for any visitor.
Falling tides carry patches of marsh grass that have fallen from the ever-crumbling shorelines.
Pelicans circle in confusion over nesting islands that have washed away since last spring.
Pilings that held weekend camps surrounded by thick marshes a decade ago stand in open water, hundreds of yards from the nearest land — mute testimony to a vanishing culture.
Shrimpers push their wing nets in lagoons that were land five years ago.
The bare trunks of long-dead oaks rise from the marsh, tombstones marking the drowning of high ridges that were built back when the river pumped life-giving sediment through its delta.
“If you’re a young person you think this is what it’s supposed to look like,” Lambert said. “Then when you’re old enough to know, it’s too late.”
More:
Drowning New Orleans
Protecting New Orleans
From ProPublica.org (find the original story here); reprinted with permission. | – A Louisiana historian wants oil and gas companies to help restore state wetlands that are vanishing by the day—but politicians are fighting him tooth and nail, the New York Times Magazine reports. John Barry, a gritty ex-weightlifter who writes US history books, watches in horror as Louisiana wetlands recede (and the Gulf of Mexico advances) by about a football field per hour. Dams and levees are partly to blame, as are tens of thousands of wells carved by oil and gas companies. The industry even admits to causing 36% of southeastern Louisiana's wetlands loss. A plan supported by scientists and industry to repair the land would cost about $50 billion, $20 billion of which can be paid by BP Deepwater Horizon oil-spill lawsuits. Barry believes oil-and-gas should pay at least $18 billion of the rest—or 36% of the total. But oil-and-gas wants taxpayers to foot that bill, so Barry fought back. In an ambitious move, the regional levee board of which Barry was a member filed the biggest environmental lawsuit in US history against the oil and gas companies that affected the wetlands. "The reality is that our case is overwhelming," says Barry, adding that the companies "violated the terms of their contract. They broke the law!" Most of the companies had, in fact, used permits that demanded any environmental damage be repaired. But the state legislature—which critics say is deeply influenced by oil-and-gas—argued that no laws had been broken, and passed a bill that crippled or perhaps killed the lawsuit before it reached a courtroom. Gov. Bobby Jindal then signed the bill into law. Barry has started a nonprofit to keep the suit alive, and tells the Times-Picayune that "it really comes down to is the most basic conservative American values. It’s keep your word, obey the law, and take responsibility for your actions." |
'It’s hell. I can’t stand it!’ Carla Bruni reveals what Michelle Obama REALLY thinks of being First Lady
By Peter Allen
Last updated at 9:01 PM on 16th September 2010
New biography alleges rivalry between two women strained relations between the French and U.S. presidential couples
Michelle Obama thinks being America’s First Lady is ‘hell’, Carla Bruni reveals today in a wildly indiscreet book.
Miss Bruni divulges that Mrs Obama replied when asked about her position as the U.S. president’s wife: ‘Don’t ask! It’s hell. I can’t stand it!’
Details of the private conversation, which took place at the White House during an official visit by Nicolas Sarkozy last March, emerged in Carla And The Ambitious.
The book was written by journalists Michael Darmon and Yves Derai in what they claim is collaboration with Miss Bruni.
No secrets: Michelle Obama, left, and Carla Bruni last year. Miss Bruni made the revelations about the U.S. First Lady's feelings in a wildly indiscreet new book
Time for a little chat: Another biography about Carla refers to an alleged rivalry with Michelle and says it has strained relations between the French and U.S. presidential couples
Described by one of the French authors as 'Carla in her own words,' she portrays herself as demanding, spoilt, and selfish.
She also gives extraordinary insight into her life as the wife of a leader - and her relationship with some of the most prominent figures in the world, including the American president.
'On the advice of the Obamas,' she says, 'We don't read the papers in the morning any more.'
She does not speak to the American First Lady very often, she adds, but said that she likes her and 'could be her friend.'
Miss Bruni also tells how the U.S. President called her husband to congratulate him on becoming a grandfather after his son Jean had a baby boy Solal in January this year.
A wave for the cameras: The Obamas are greeted by the French president and his wife. Michelle is described in a biography of Carla as 'the only one in (Carla's) eyes able to challenge her for the title of the world's sexiest and most glamorous first lady'
Sarkozy pretended to be offended and said: 'You too, you will be a granddad one day'.
Mr Obama then teased him furhter by asking what Carla thought about being married to someone who was a grandfather.
In the book, Miss Bruni says one term as French president ‘will be enough’ for her husband and suggests he might take tips from his friend Tony Blair: ‘Why not start making money?’
According to a friend quoted in the book, the Sarkozys have been ‘impressed and inspired’ by Mr Blair’s fortune built up since he left Downing Street.
Miss Bruni also takes a thinly-veiled swipe at Princess Diana when talking about a visit to an African hospital full of Aids victims earlier this year.
She says she refused requests by French cameramen for a photograph of her carrying a baby in her arms ‘like Lady Di’, adding: ‘There’s something obscene in promoting yourself when you are giving of yourself.’
In the book, the Italian model, 42, accuses French government officials of trying to ‘kill’ her husband with too much work, and claims Mr Sarkozy lets himself be ‘bullied’ into complying.
Time limit: Carla with husband Nicolas Sarkozy. She claims one term as French president will be enough for him
Comparing herself to other leaders’ wives, Miss Bruni says: ‘I’m so different. I was a model. I sing, and I want to continue to sing. And on top of that you expect me to be subtle?’ And she admits: ‘I am a femme fatale, my dear.’
Tony Blair promoting his autobiography in New York. According to a friend quoted in Carla And The Ambitious, the Sarkozys have been 'impressed and inspired' by Mr Blair's fortune built up since he left Downing Street
She also recounts a telephone row with Mr Sarkozy’s ex-wife Cecilia, who warned her that Mr Sarkozy had ‘not yet turned a new page’ after their marriage.
Miss Bruni replied: ‘Not only has he turned a page but he’s changed books altogether. And you are the only person on earth not to have noticed it.’
The Elysee Palace has denied that the Miss Bruni co-operated with the biography.
Coincidentally, a second book - this one completely unauthorised - was published this week which also suggest a fractious relationship between Bruni and the First Lady.
Its author Besma Lahouri refers to an alleged rivalry with Michelle Obama and says it has strained relations between the French and U.S. presidential couples.
'[Michelle Obama] the only one in (Carla's) eyes able to challenge her for the title of the world's sexiest and most glamorous first lady'
Ms Lahouri says, Bruni-Sarkozy's obsessions have shifted away from rock stars to women she perceives as rivals.
One is Nicolas Sarkozy's second wife Cecilia, who was divorced from the French president months after he took office and the second is Michelle Obama.
She is described in the book as 'the only one in (Carla's) eyes able to challenge her for the title of the world's sexiest and most glamorous first lady'.
The book chronicles the minutia of the first ladies' various meetings, suggesting that Obama's alleged antipathy, or perhaps just indifference, to Bruni-Sarkozy has allegedly helped keep relations frosty between the French and U.S. presidential couples.
Ms Lahouri says Bruni-Sarkozy is 'a chameleon', someone who has 'trained herself to be a formidable actress'.
'She is a very foxy woman - I choose the word "foxy" over "clever". In fact, very foxy.'
The investigative reporter says Bruni's image of distant, well-heeled perfection has kept her at arm's length from the French people.
However, a spokesman at the French Embassy in Washington, Emmanuel Lenain, told CBS News that Bruni was not involved in writing the book. ||||| The White House is denying that first lady Michelle Obama ever described her White House life as "hell."
Mrs. Obama's spokeswoman, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, responded Thursday to a purported comment attributed to Mrs. Obama in a forthcoming book, "Carla and the Ambitious," about French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. The book says Bruni-Sarkozy recalled that during a recent White House visit with her husband, the French president, she asked Mrs. Obama about her new role. According to the book, Mrs. Obama replied: "It's hell. I can't stand it."
The French Embassy in Washington also released a statement denying that Mrs. Obama ever said those words. The Embassy says Bruni-Sarkozy "distances herself completely" from the book, which is due out Friday. | – Just in time for election season, a story Michelle Obama can't possibly be happy to see: In a new book, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy claims Obama told her that being first lady is "hell. I can't stand it!" (The White House and the French Embassy in Washington deny that Obama said any such thing, the AP reports.) Carla and the Ambitious, which was reportedly written in collaboration with the French first lady, is "wildly indiscreet," the Daily Mail reports; the French Embassy says Bruni-Sarkozy "distances herself completely" from the book, out tomorrow. Another book, an unauthorized biography of Bruni-Sarkozy, details the apparently chilly relationship between the first ladies, alleging Bruni-Sarkozy sees Obama as a rival. Michelle is "the only one in (Carla's) eyes able to challenge her for the title of the world's sexiest and most glamorous first lady," Besma Lahouri claims in Carla: A Secret Life. For more scandalous tell-all revelations about Bruni-Sarkozy, click here. |
Heart abnormalities linked to immersion pulmonary edema were present in a greater-than-expected proportion of triathletes who died during the competition's swim portion, according to a study led by researchers at Duke Health.
The findings, published Aug. 29 in the journal BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, are based on an analysis of autopsy reports of people who died in the United States and Canada between 2008 and 2015 while participating in triathlons. Triathlon competitions involve consecutive races of swimming, bicycling and running.
Study investigators identified 58 deaths during the time period, with 42 of those occurring during the swim. Researchers examined autopsy reports on 23 of the 42 deaths.
Richard Moon, M.D., the study's first author and a professor of anesthesiology and medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine, said he and co-investigators reviewed the autopsy reports to identify whether conditions were present that may have made the athletes susceptible to immersion pulmonary edema (IPE, in the study abbreviated as IPO based on the Greek spelling of oedema).
IPE, also known as swimming-induced pulmonary edema, occurs when the lungs suddenly fill with body fluids during activities in cold water, such as swimming and diving. IPE can lead to difficulty breathing, wheezing and confusion, which can be serious and even fatal.
While IPE can occur in healthy individuals, Moon said its onset is often seen in those with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), a condition where the heart muscle becomes thickened or heart mass increases. LVH typically occurs in people with high blood pressure and is a marker for susceptibility to IPE. A mildly enlarged heart -- commonly referred to as athlete's heart -- can also develop among endurance athletes, although athlete's heart is not believed to predispose to swimming-induced pulmonary edema.
Moon and co-researchers compared figures from the autopsy reports in the current study to data from previous studies, including one published in 1997 led by Pamela Douglas, M.D., professor of medicine at Duke. Douglas' investigation looked at the prevalence of LVH in 225 athletes who completed a triathlon in Hawaii from 1985-95.
"Among the autopsy reports of the deceased triathletes, we found a much higher prevalence of LVH than the healthy athletes in Dr. Douglas' study," Moon said. "The degree of enlargement was also much greater in the triathletes who died."
Specifically, the 16 triathletes who died from unclear causes had higher measures of heart wall thickness. The autopsy reports showed abnormal cardiac septal thickness in 67 percent of the deceased athletes and abnormal posterior wall thickness in 50 percent. In the Douglas study, it was one percent and one-half percent, respectively.
While it cannot be definitively concluded that IPE was the cause of the triathlete deaths during swimming, Moon said the autopsy reports demonstrate a plausible link. He recommended that potential triathletes and their health-care providers be aware of the known connection between LVH and the potential risk of immersion pulmonary edema.
"The message is that if people have untreated hypertension or they're known to have ventricular hypertrophy, they need to get evaluated and treated before they embark on this sport," Moon said.
###
In addition to Moon, study authors include Stefanie D. Martina and Drs. Dionne F. Peacher and William E. Kraus of Duke.
The study was funded by the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (N0463A-07-C-0002 and N61331-03-C-0015). The authors report no disclosures. ||||| The popularity of triathlons — races in which competitors run, bike and swim — has exploded over the past 15 years. According to USA Triathlon, the leading group that organizes races, the number of people with one-day memberships (indicating race participation) stood at more than 447,000 in 2014, compared with about 128,000 in 1999.
But a small yet persistent number of tragedies have marred the triathlon boom. Triathletes have a death rate of approximately 1.5 people per 100,000 participants, according to a 2010 article in the journal JAMA. That's not many, but it is two to three times higher than the rate seen in marathons.
Most of the deaths occur during the swim portion of the races, when participants are crowded together in the water. And when someone dies during a swim, it's tough to determine the cause. [The Odds of Dying: A Look At Your Chances of Death from Causes Both Common and Unusual]
Now, new research hints that a rush of fluid into the lungs may sometimes play a role.
In the new research, scientists looked at a condition called immersion pulmonary edema (IPO). When someone jumps into water — especially cold water — the body rapidly shunts blood away from the extremities and moves it toward the core. Sometimes, this can lead to a change in internal pressure that forces fluids from the blood into the lungs, leading to shortness of breath and blood-tinged mucus. If a swimmer can't get out of the water quickly, the fluid buildup (the edema) in their lungs may incapacitate them.
The researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the University of Iowa tracked triathlon deaths in the United States and Canada from October 2008 to November 2015. They found that 58 people died while training or during competitions, including 42 who died during the swim portion. Then, the researchers requested autopsy records from those swimming deaths. (They didn't compare the swimming deaths to the biking and running deaths because there were very few fatalities from those other portions of the race, and many of the deaths that did occur were the result of car collisions.)
Of the 23 records the researchers were able to secure, 19 belonged to men and four belonged to women. In some cases, there were obvious cardiac problems that could have contributed to the person's death. Four men had significant coronary artery disease, defined as blood vessels that were narrowed by more than 70 percent. Another man experienced a tear in his renal artery, causing him to hemorrhage; another died when his aortic artery tore open. A third man had heart stents, indicating existing cardiovascular disease. The researchers removed this group from their analysis, leaving 16 people without any obvious reason to have died in the water.
Of this remaining group, six people had excessively large hearts, the researchers found. In particular, the athletes showed evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy, meaning that the chamber of the heart that pumps blood to the body is larger than usual.
Elite athletes often have larger hearts than their sedentary counterparts because they work the muscle harder, but this so-called "athlete's heart" is usually not as pronounced as what was seen in the triathletes who died, the researchers reported Aug. 29 in the journal BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine.
The researchers also compared the results of the autopsies to a cohort of 225 healthy triathletes and found vast differences in the proportion of people with thickening of their heart walls. The septum, or middle wall, of the ventricles was thickened in 1 percent of the healthy athletes, compared with 67 percent of the deceased athletes. Likewise, the posterior wall of the ventricles was overly thick in 0.5 percent of the healthy triathletes, compared with 50 percent of the deceased triathletes. [10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart]
Previous studies had found left ventricular hypertrophy to be a risk factor for immersion pulmonary edema. The new findings don't prove that the triathletes died of IPO, the researchers warned, but they do suggest a possible explanation for some deaths.
"The message is that if people have untreated hypertension or they're known to have ventricular hypertrophy, they need to get evaluated and treated before they embark on this sport," study researcher Dr. Richard Moon, a professor of anesthesiology and medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine, said in a statement.
Other explanations for triathlete deaths have been suggested as well. A 2015 commentary in the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports pointed to some possible explanations, such as panic attacks caused by crowded race conditions and cold-water races when athletes are used to training in warm pools. Some triathlon organizations are working to make changes to events that may decrease the risk. Ironman, for example, altered its swims in 2013 so that participants start in a staggered fashion rather than entering the water all at once.
Original article on Live Science. ||||| Conclusions LVH—a marker of SIPO susceptibility—was present in a greater than the expected proportion of triathletes who died during the swim portion. We propose that IPO may be a significant aetiology of death during the swimming phase in triathletes. The importance of testing for LVH in triathletes as a predictor of adverse outcomes should be explored further.
Results We identified 58 deaths during the time period of the review, 42 (72.4%) of which occurred during a swim. Of these, 23 postmortem reports were obtained. Five individuals had significant (≥70%) coronary artery narrowing; one each had coronary stents; retroperitoneal haemorrhage; or aortic dissection. 9 of 20 (45%) with reported heart mass exceeded 95th centile values. LV free wall and septal thickness were reported in 14 and 9 cases, respectively; of these, 6 (42.9%) and 4 (44.4%) cases exceeded normal values. 6 of 15 individuals (40%) without an obvious cause of death had excessive heart mass. The proportion of individuals with LVH exceeded the prevalence in the general triathlete population.
Methods Deaths while training for or during triathlon events in the USA and Canada from October 2008 to November 2015 were identified, and postmortem reports requested. We assessed obvious causes of death; the prevalence of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH); comparison with healthy triathletes.
In a series of deaths occurring during the swim portion of triathlon events, a high proportion of autopsies demonstrated cardiac anomalies, in particular left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). LVH is a marker of immersion pulmonary oedema (IPO) susceptibility, and the authors propose that many of these deaths were due to swimming-induced pulmonary oedema (SIPO).
The results suggest that screening examinations for triathletes should search for conditions that predispose to SIPO, such as hypertension, LVH and obstructive sleep apnoea. A risk reduction strategy that may prevent some of these deaths should include optimisation of blood pressure and body weight, and treatment of sleep apnoea.
The current investigation was performed to test the hypothesis that, when compared with healthy triathletes and the general population, individuals who died during a triathlon or in training have a higher prevalence of cardiac anomalies that could predispose to IPO.
Immersion pulmonary oedema (IPO, also known as swimming-induced pulmonary oedema, SIPO) is one such potential cause. IPO presents as rapid onset of dyspnoea, wheezing, hypoxaemia and expectoration of blood-tinged sputum, which can incapacitate a swimmer. A recent comprehensive review of swimming-related death identified IPO as a possible cause. 11 Although IPO usually occurs in healthy individuals without an obvious predisposing factor, many victims have left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), hypertension and other cardiovascular comorbidities—potential markers of susceptibility. 12–15
Drowning, the process of experiencing respiratory impairment from submersion/immersion in liquid, 4 is often the official reported cause of swimming death; 1 however, drowning seems unlikely in experienced swimmers. Predictors of cardiac death—the overwhelming primary cause of sudden death in most other sports 2 , 5–8 —remain elusive in triathletes. Arrhythmic causes, including prolonged QTc and autonomic conflict (simultaneous activation of sympathetic and parasympathetic), 4 , 9 have been proposed in triathlete cardiac death. Other suggested causes include exertional heat stroke, myocardial infarction, head trauma, panic attack and arrhythmia. 10 Cause of death uncommonly can be attributed to an anatomic cardiac anomaly; 1 thus, in most cases, physiological causes must be sought.
The triathlon is a sequence of consecutive races consisting of a sequence of swim (750–3800 m), bicycle (13–112 km) and foot (5–42 km) races. As in all competitive sports, there is a modest sudden death rate, which has been estimated at 1.5 per 100 000 participants, 1 in sanctioned triathlon events, two to three times greater than the marathon rate. 2 , 3 As most deaths occur during the swim when the victim's plight is not readily distinguishable among the large number of swimmers, the proximate cause of sudden death in the swim portion of the triathlon remains elusive.
Each medical examiner report was examined to determine whether there were any abnormalities of coronary arteries, cardiac muscle or valves, or obvious cause of death other than coronary disease. Heart mass and myocardial thickness were recorded. Heart mass was classified relative to normal reference ranges: for men 233–383 g; 16 for women 148–296 g. 17 Heart mass and ventricular wall thickness were also compared with the 95th centile values of normal heart mass scaled to height and sex. 18 Values also were compared with echocardiographic data obtained from a population of triathletes. 19 Also recorded were age, sex, height, body mass, body mass index, event date, death date, autopsy results and any other available pertinent information. Significant coronary artery disease (CAD) was enumerated as ≥70%; ≥50% coronary narrowing was also recorded. 20 LV mass was conservatively estimated as 75% of total heart weight. 21
The study was approved by the Duke Medicine Institutional Review Board. Using the search phrase ‘triathlon death’, deaths during triathlon events or while in training for triathlons in the USA and Canada from October 2008 to November 2015 were identified using manual internet searches and Google Alerts. The phase of the event when death occurred was obtained from news sources such as newspaper articles or internet postings. Medical examiner reports for those participants who died during a swim were requested, and the phase of the race in which each acute event occurred was confirmed from the report.
Excluding those with an obvious possible cause of death (coronary disease ≥70% narrowing (n=4), presumed coronary disease due to history of stent placement (n=1), retroperitoneal haemorrhage (n=1), aortic dissection (n=1)), 16 individuals remained. Of these, 6 (37.5%) had excessive heart mass, one of whom also had acute myocarditis. In this group, there was a higher proportion of individuals with thickened LV compared with the general triathlete population (p<0.001, table 6 ).
Four individuals had significant (≥70%) CAD. A man aged 58 years died of a massive retroperitoneal haemorrhage due to renal artery dissection. Death was attributed to acute dissection of the descending aorta in a man aged 66 years. A man aged 46 years had a history of atrial fibrillation, and flecainide was detected in his urine. A man aged 68 years was known to have coronary stents; his death was presumed to have been due to coronary disease and a full autopsy was not performed. Post-resuscitation ECG revealed prolonged QTc interval in a man aged 44 years whose initial cardiac rhythm was ventricular fibrillation. A woman aged 38 years had acute myocarditis. All individuals had pulmonary oedema.
We identified 58 deaths during the time period of the review, of which 42 (72.4%) occurred during the swim ( tables 1 and 2 ). A total of 23 medical examiner reports were obtained and reviewed. There were 19 men and 4 women ( table 3 ). The age distribution of the population of individuals for whom medical examiner report was available did not differ from the total population of swimming deaths ( table 4 , χ 2 =1.274, p=0.74). Further details are provided in table 5 and the online supplementary file .
Discussion
Albeit the probability of death during a triathlon is low, when occurring in a highly publicised event it inevitably raises a great deal of public concern about the sport's safety. This impelled the largest North American triathlon organisation to initiate an inquiry into triathlon deaths.22 ,23 Unfortunately, good data are difficult to obtain and hence specific screening or aftercare recommendations could not be made. The current investigation was performed to test the hypothesis that, when compared with triathletes and the general population, individuals who died swimming during a triathlon or in training have a higher prevalence of cardiac anomalies that predispose to IPO.
IPO and its causes Water immersion causes blood redistribution from the periphery to the heart and pulmonary vessels, causing an increase in central blood volume and pulmonary vascular pressures.24 This can be extreme and precipitate pulmonary oedema in IPO-susceptible individuals, even in those without any obvious comorbidities.25 The effect is augmented—especially during exercise—in cold versus warm water.26 Those triathletes susceptible to IPO are therefore believed to have abnormal myocardial diastolic compliance (lusitropy)—or stiff hearts. Abnormal LV diastolic compliance is partly responsible for elevated LV end-diastolic pressure during exercise in patients suffering from heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).27 IPO seems to be a form of HFpEF precipitated by increased preload due to immersion with heavy exertion. In the initial publication of IPO, a number of individuals exhibited a hypertensive response to cold exposure; thus, it is plausible that they had LVH.12 In a recent review of published cases, nearly 50% of published civilian IPO cases had identifiable predisposing factors, and most were cardiac.15 The association of IPO susceptibility with LVH and risk factors for LVH12–15 strongly implicates abnormal LV diastolic compliance. Since most sudden deaths occur during the swim portion of the triathlon, it is certainly plausible that IPO is a cause. IPO tends to occur in susceptible individuals most frequently in cold water, and often during heavy exertion.12 ,28–30 Typical IPO symptoms—cough productive of pink frothy or blood-tinged secretions occurring during a swim—have been reported by 1.4% of triathletes,31 and in 1.8–60% during 2.4–3.6 km open sea swimming trials in young, fit naval recruits.29 ,32 The prevalence of LVH in the general population is estimated to be 12–21%.33 ,34 In well-trained triathletes, LV dimensions are usually within the normal range for the general population.19 ,35 ,36 In a group of 235 triathletes (168 men, 67 women) participating in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon from 1985 to 1995, the overall prevalence of LVH by echocardiography was 24% (LV mass >294 g in men, >198 g in women).19 Chronic, high-intensity exercise can also lead to LVH (athlete's heart); this was the most likely cause of the enlarged LV in most cases in the quoted series. Diastolic filling properties in athlete's heart under dry, resting conditions are normal;37 ,38 thus, it is unlikely that athlete's heart is a precipitating cause of IPO. LV thickness in athlete's heart very rarely exceeds 13 mm.39 ,40 In contrast, in the current series, a pathological cause of enlarged hearts was more prevalent, including extreme values of septal thickness and estimated LV mass (figure 1), significantly beyond the range expected from hypertrophy due to athlete's heart.36 ,39 ,41 Thus, diastolic filling properties were more likely to be abnormal. All autopsied cases in this series had pulmonary oedema, which is usually the end result from any attempt at cardiopulmonary resuscitation and water aspiration during terminal event. Thus, the existence of pulmonary oedema at autopsy provides little insight.
Possible causes of death in triathlons In some cases, cardiac anatomy at autopsy after a triathlon may occasionally provide clues to the cause of death.1 Of nine athletes autopsied after a triathlon-related death, only two had cardiac anomalies that could be construed as being a primary cause of death: one with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, the other with a congenital coronary artery anomaly. On the other hand, six had LVH.1 IPO is a plausible cause of triathlon death, particularly since it has been suggested as one possible mechanism in the pathophysiology of drowning.4 In contrast, due to the rarity of IPO-related deaths and lack of known history of IPO in any triathlon death, some have concluded that it is an unlikely cause of death in triathletes.10 ,22 ,23 Nevertheless, several IPO-related deaths have been reported in other settings.42–47 Fatal cases of IPO may be rare but probably under-recognised; unless an episode is witnessed and survival is sufficiently long enough to obtain adequate clinical information to make the diagnosis, attribution of an in-water death to IPO is exceedingly difficult.48 It is impossible to exclude primary arrhythmia as the cause of death in these individuals. Indeed, it has been proposed that cardiomegaly is an independent risk factor for cardiac arrhythmia.35 ,49–51 However, in a series of cardiac arrests during long-distance runs (where diagnostic facilities are more likely to be available and thus early detection of an arrhythmia more likely), primary arrhythmia was the purported cause in only a minority of instances. Non-ischaemic ventricular tachycardia was observed in only 7%, with ‘presumed arrhythmia’ the attributed cause in an additional 7%.3 One individual in our series had a history of atrial fibrillation and was taking an antiarrhythmic. It is not possible to know whether his propensity towards atrial arrhythmias contributed to his death; however, any rhythm other than sinus rhythm is likely to cause a rise in pulmonary artery and capillary pressures in the face of increased preload as occurs during immersion. In fact, atrial fibrillation has been proposed as a predisposing condition for IPO.52 In another case in the present series, prolonged QTc was noted after resuscitation. Swimming can be a trigger for arrhythmias in long QTc syndrome;53 however, prolonged QTc could also be secondary to antiarrhythmic drug administration after cardiopulmonary resuscitation or the cardiac injury itself. Information about genetic predisposition was unavailable. On the other hand, additional information from bystanders and others suggests that at least some of the deaths in the current series were not sudden and had features consistent with IPO (eg, cases 2, 10, 23 in the online supplementary material). It might also be argued that demand ischaemia might be more likely during swimming, even in those with minimal coronary narrowing, because of the central redistribution of blood and higher LV volume. For a given level of exercise, this might lead to greater myocardial wall tension and myocardial oxygen consumption compared to dry land. However, in patients with known CAD, a study of swimming in cold water versus cycling demonstrated that ST segment depression occurred at similar levels of exercise during both activities.54 The distribution of cardiac pathologies in this series is in marked contrast with other similar studies: in younger cohorts of sudden death cases, myocarditis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and coronary artery abnormalities are more common.55 In case series with age distribution similar to the current series, atherosclerotic disease predominates.56 ,57 Of those in our cohort in whom coronary arteries were mentioned in the medical examiner's report, only four individuals had ≥70% coronary narrowing; six individuals had ≥50% narrowing. One additional person who did not have an autopsy but had coronary artery stents was presumed to have ≥50% narrowing. Whereas HCM is a common cause of sudden cardiac death in most series of land-based athletic events, no mention of it was made in any of the medical examiner reports in this series. While it can be difficult to distinguish HCM from undifferentiated LVH at autopsy,58 the apparent lack of HCM in this series is consistent with the physiology of swimming: blood redistribution during immersion dilates the LV and thus reduces the likelihood of LV outflow obstruction even when present.
Limitations There are several limitations to our study showing that markers of IPO susceptibility are common among victims of sudden death during triathlons. It cannot be definitively concluded that the cause of death in individuals with LVH was IPO. IPO has been considered by some to be an unlikely cause of triathlon death due to lack of prior history among victims. However, instances of IPO are most likely under-reported. Most triathletes train for the swim portion in pools, which are generally warmer than open bodies of water where events are held, and during a pool swim mild IPO symptoms can be relieved at an early stage by exiting the water. Primary arrhythmias cannot be excluded; indeed, it has been suggested that arrhythmias are more common among individuals with LVH.34 Among those classified as having no obvious cause of death, one (woman aged 38 years, see online supplementary case 3) had histologic evidence for acute myocarditis. Two others (man aged 57 years, see online supplementary case 6 and man aged 48 years, see online supplementary case 18) had 50–60% coronary stenosis. Although this degree of stenosis is not conventionally considered to be critical, the true degree of narrowing could have been underestimated at autopsy. Another (man aged 46 years, see online supplementary case 10) had no CAD but did have areas of myocardial fibrosis and chronic inflammation suggesting remote infarction. Finally, one case (man aged 43 years, see online supplementary case 12) had scattered intramural adipose and focal loose interstitial fibrous tissue. Although not identified as such by the examining pathologist, this could be consistent with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia. We cannot exclude the possibility that these individuals might have died of an arrhythmia. While there could be inconsistencies in attempting to compare LVH using echocardiography with heart mass determined at autopsy (table 6), we feel that gross errors are unlikely as echo has been validated against postmortem measurements.59 Among 775 sports-related sudden death cases during moderate-to-vigorous exertion among men and women, fewer deaths occur during swimming than cycling or jogging.60 This could be a consequence, in individuals at risk for athletic sudden death, of fewer person-hours spent swimming. However, in triathlons, a specific swimming-related mechanism for death would be expected to predominate where swimming is the first of three events. Nevertheless, observations demonstrating that IPO is relatively common in competitive swimming such as military training and triathlons—and has been the cause of deaths42–47—implicate this condition as a likely cause of at least some deaths in triathlons. It would have been ideal to compare autopsies of triathletes dying during the bicycle or run portions; however, this was not possible due to fewer of those deaths, with a significant proportion due to motor vehicle trauma. Interestingly, scuba diving is another precipitating activity for IPO; indeed, LVH has been observed in a high percentage of scuba diving deaths.61 | – Researchers believe they may know why so many people die during triathlons compared to other races, such as marathons. Approximately 1.5 people die out of every 100,000 who participate in a triathlon—which includes running, biking, and swimming portions, LiveScience reports. That's two to three times the death rate for marathon participants. According to a study published Monday in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, more than 72% of triathlon deaths looked at by researchers happened in the water during the swimming portion of the race. And researchers believe the culprit is something called immersion pulmonary edema, or IPE. IPE occurs when a person quickly gets into water, especially cold water. That causes the body to take blood from the arms, legs, and other extremities and move it toward the core. This changes the body's internal pressure and may force fluids from the blood into the lungs. This can cause people to experience confusion and difficulty breathing, sometimes to the point of death, according to a press release. A number of triathletes who died for no discernible reason had significantly enlarged hearts, even to a greater degree than other athletes. Researchers say this condition—left ventricular hypertrophy—is a risk factor for IPE. Researchers conclude future triathletes should be checked for the condition before participating in or training for a race. (A boy with cerebral palsy inspires in triathlon finish.) |
WYOMING, Ohio (Reuters) - An American university student who was returned to the United States this week after being held in North Korea for 17 months has a severe brain injury and is in a state of “unresponsive wakefulness,” doctors said on Thursday.
Otto Warmbier, 22, who arrived in the United States on Tuesday, is stable but “shows no sign of understanding language, responding to verbal commands or awareness of his surrounding,” said Dr. Daniel Kanter, medical director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
“He has not spoken,” Kanter said at a news conference. “He has not engaged in any purposeful movements or behaviors.” He said Warmbier was breathing on his own.
Read the Reuters backstory
Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, has been in a coma since March 2016, shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea, his family said on Tuesday.
He was arrested for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan, North Korean media reported. He was visiting North Korea with a tour group.
On Thursday, North Korea said that it had released Warmbier “on humanitarian grounds.”
The University of Virginia student’s father, Fred Warmbier, said at an earlier news conference that his son had been “brutalized and terrorized” by the North Korean government.
Fred Warmbier said the family did not believe North Korea’s story that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.
Doctors said on Thursday that there was no sign of botulism in Otto Warmbier’s system.
Kanter said that Warmbier had suffered “extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of the brain,” but he declined to discuss Warmbier’s prognosis at the request of his family.
FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who has been detained in North Korea since early January, attends a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo February 29, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo
While doctors are uncertain as to what exactly caused the condition, cardiac arrest that stops the flow of blood to the brain is generally seen as resulting in the death of brain tissue.
Cardiac arrest in young, healthy people is rare and generally caused by either intoxication or traumatic injury, Dr. Jordan Bonomo, a specialist in neurosurgery and neurocritical care at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, said at the news conference.
Although doctors had no information about the type of medical treatment Warmbier received while in North Korea, they did receive MRI images from North Korea dated April 2016, Kanter said. Based on those images, doctors estimate the brain injury likely occurred in the preceding weeks, he said.
Doctors said there was no evidence that Warmbier suffered any broken bones.
On Thursday, the State Department said that its special envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, who negotiated Warmbier’s release during a visit to the country this week, had also met with three other U.S. citizens being held in North Korea.
Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests. Pyongyang has vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.
Fred Warmbier said he was stunned when told of his son’s condition one week ago.
“I don’t know what being in shock is, but I’m pretty sure I was,” he said.
“There is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition secret and denied him top-notch medical care for so long.”
He said his wife, Cindy, had not left their son’s side since his return to the United States and that he had spoken with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Thursday, “We’re glad he’s home.” He said officials would not comment on Warmbier’s health or how he came to be in his current condition.
Slideshow (5 Images)
Tillerson said on Wednesday that U.S. officials were considering some type of travel visa restriction to North Korea.
U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill last month that would ban U.S. citizens from traveling to North Korea as tourists and require them to obtain special permission for other types of visits, following the detention of at least 17 Americans there in the past decade.
In Wyoming, a northern Cincinnati suburb of about 8,000 people, Warmbier’s return to the United States was marked by blue and white ribbons, representing the colors of the local high school, tied around trees and telephone polls. ||||| The parents of a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea for nearly a year and a half, then died just days after he returned home in a coma, lashed out at Pyongyang in their first television interview since their son’s death and called on North Korea to be listed as a state sponsor of terror.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier appeared Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” saying they’d had time to do some healing in the three months since they buried their 22-year-old son, Otto.
“But now we see North Korea claiming to be a victim and that the world is picking on them, and we’re here to tell you: North Korea is not a victim,” Fred Warmbier said. “They’re terrorists. They kidnapped Otto. They tortured him. They intentionally injured him. They are not victims.”
Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to the isolated country. This past June, he was medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died.
“Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today,” the Warmbiers said in a written statement after his death.
North Korea denied that Warmbier had been tortured and tried to cast his death as a “mystery.”
[Otto Warmbier dies days after release from North Korean detention]
“The fact that Warmbier died suddenly in less than a week after his return to the U.S. in his normal state of health indicators is a mystery to us as well,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency in June. “To make it clear, we are the biggest victim of this incident.”
North Korea claimed Warmbier slipped into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill and that he was provided proper medical care.
On Tuesday, the Warmbiers vehemently pushed back against North Korea’s claims, sharing the utter shock and grief they felt meeting their comatose son at the airport.
“We walked over to the plane; the engines are still humming,” Fred Warmbier said. “When we got halfway up the steps, we heard this howling, involuntary, inhuman sound. We weren’t really certain what it was. … Otto was on the stretcher across in the plane, and he was jerking violently, making these inhuman sounds.”
Fred Warmbier on @foxandfriends: “North Korea is not a victim. They’re terrorist. They kidnapped Otto. They tortured him.” pic.twitter.com/NyzSMn0nIW — Fox News (@FoxNews) September 26, 2017
Fred Warmbier said his wife and daughter ran off the plane, while he and his other son walked over to the stretcher. Otto Warmbier now had a shaved head, a feeding tube emerging from his nose, and was blind and deaf.
“As we looked at him and tried to comfort him, it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth,” Fred Warmbier said.
“They destroyed him,” Cindy Warmbier added, shaking her head. Within two days, their son’s fever spiked to 104 degrees; there was a large scar on his right foot, they added.
“Our image of Otto, as you know, was of someone just wonderful, beautiful inside and out. And to see how he came home was too much for us,” Cindy Warmbier said, her voice breaking. “I almost passed out, but I got it together, and I rode in the ambulance with him, because I did not want him to be alone anymore.
“He’d been alone for way too long. And we stayed with him and loved him as best as we could.”
In late 2015, Warmbier traveled with a tour group to North Korea on his way to a study-abroad program in Hong Kong but was not allowed to leave the country. After a sham trial in 2016, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for what North Korea called “hostile acts against the state.”
Shortly after that, apparently, Warmbier was injured. He was denied consular visits, and his family had no word of him after March 2016, until they were told this June that he had been in a coma for more than a year. He was medically evacuated and arrived back in Cincinnati for treatment June 13.
Doctors said Warmbier had suffered extensive loss of brain tissue, consistent with cardiopulmonary arrest, and was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness. They were unsure what had caused the brain damage: He did not show any obvious indications of trauma, nor evidence of either acute or healing fractures. However, they also were not aware of anything from his previous medical history, before his time in North Korea, that might have caused cardiopulmonary arrest.
Warmbier died less than a week later, on June 19.
[What happened to Otto Warmbier? When the unthinkable is unknowable.]
“We weren’t prepared for what we had, and then when we saw Otto the way he was, we loved him, we’re proud of him — but no mother, no parent should ever have gone through what we went through,” Cindy Warmbier said Tuesday on Fox News. “And the fact that Otto was alone, all that time, with no one to comfort him, is inexcusable. Whatever happened — I mean, why would you do this?”
She added that she felt he had only been sent home because he was about to die.
Fred Warmbier reiterated that North Korea should be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.
“It was astounding to Cindy and I to discover that North Korea is not listed,” he said. “ … We owe it to the world to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terror.”
The State Department “strongly warns” U.S. citizens not to travel to North Korea, “due to the serious and mounting risk of arrest and long-term detention of U.S. citizens.”
A State Department official told The Washington Post the department holds North Korea accountable for Otto Warmbier’s “unjust imprisonment” and extended condolences to his family.
The review of intelligence from North Korea was an “ongoing process,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under State Department rules for briefing reporters.
“As a matter of law, in order for any country to be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, the Secretary of State must determine that the government of that country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. These designations are made after careful review of all available evidence to determine if a country meets the statutory criteria for designation,” the official said. “The Department of State will take immediate action if credible evidence supports North Korea’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism under the statutory criteria.”
North Korea used to be on the department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, placed there in 1988 for selling weapons to terrorist groups and its involvement in the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air flight over the Andaman Sea. But North Korea’s designation was removed in 2008 by President George W. Bush for meeting all the requirements for nuclear inspections. There have since been growing calls for the Trump administration to re-list it.
Shortly after the “Fox & Friends” interview aired, President Trump made it clear he had been watching by tweeting his approval of the segment.
Great interview on @foxandfriends with the parents of Otto Warmbier: 1994 - 2017. Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2017
Carol Morello contributed to this report.
Read more:
North Korea calls Otto Warmbier’s death a ‘mystery,’ casts itself as ‘biggest victim’
‘Let’s bring it in’: Otto Warmbier’s family and friends celebrate his life at memorial
Otto Warmbier’s North Korea roommate speaks out
Fred Hiatt: Why I can’t stop thinking about Otto Warmbier ||||| Otto Warmbier, whose father says was "brutalized and terrorized" while detained for 17 months in North Korea and had fallen into a coma during that time, has a "severe" neurological injury, a hospital official said on Thursday. (Reuters)
WYOMING, Ohio — Wearing the jacket his son Otto Warmbier wore at the sham trial that ended with his imprisonment in North Korea, Fred Warmbier denounced the “pariah” regime that had brutalized his son and fought back tears Thursday as he talked about kneeling to hug him when he was returned to the United States in a coma.
“The fact that he was taken and treated this way is horrible,” Fred Warmbier said. “They’re brutal and they’re terroristic. We see the results of their actions, with Otto.”
Otto Warmbier is in stable condition but has suffered a severe neurological injury, Kelly Martin of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center told reporters at the news conference Thursday.
[Otto Warmbier has extensive loss of brain tissue, no obvious signs of trauma, doctors say]
Warmbier, 22, a student at the University of Virginia, had been detained in North Korea for 17 months and had no contact with the outside world for much of that time. Earlier this month, U.S. officials learned that he had been in a coma for more than a year, news that triggered an onslaught of diplomatic pressure for his release. He was medically evacuated and reunited with his family Tuesday.
His ordeal could escalate tensions between the United States and North Korea. But on Thursday, Fred Warmbier told of the personal toll it has taken, and the profound sense of relief that he and his family feel at no longer having to think about potential reaction from North Korean officials to everything from their words to the blue and white ribbons his neighbors tied to trees in this small city near Cincinnati to show their support for the family.
He spoke at Wyoming High School, where Otto Warmbier was salutatorian in 2013.
Video shot by a family friend in 2013 shows Otto Warmbier giving a speech as salutatorian at his graduation from Wyoming High School, in Wyoming, Ohio. Warmbier died on June 19, days after being released from North Korean detainment. (Courtesy of Fred and Cindy Warmbier)
“This is a place where Otto experienced some of the best moments of his young life,” Fred Warmbier said, with two of his son’s former teachers at his side. His wife, Cindy Warmbier, was with their son at the hospital, he said, as she has been since he arrived home Tuesday night.
He thanked the people who supported the family through the 18-month ordeal with their thoughts and prayers, and those who helped get his son home, especially Trump administration officials.
About 10 p.m. Wednesday, President Trump called him, he said, asking how Otto was doing and urging him to take care of himself. “It was gracious,” he said. “It was nice.” He said the president told him that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others had worked hard to free his son, and that he was sorry about his condition.
Asked whether he felt that the Obama administration had not done enough to help, Fred Warmbier said, “I think the results speak for themselves.”
Warmbier said he wanted to highlight the bittersweet relief that his son is now home in the arms of those who love him — and anger that he was so brutally treated for so long.
The family went 15 months without a word from their son, he said, only to find out a week ago that he was in a coma all of that time. Even if people believe the North Koreans’ explanation — “and we don’t,” he said — “there is no excuse for any civilized nation” to have kept his condition a secret and denied him medical care for so long.
When news broke Tuesday morning that Otto Warmbier would be coming home, after a year and a half of detention in North Korea, blue and white ribbons began appearing on trees in his home town. By noon, the entire stretch of the main street, shaded by branches arching overhead, had ribbons on every tree and every utility pole, hundreds and hundreds of them.
After being detained for 17 months in North Korea, University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier arrived home in Cincinnati on June 13. He has been in a coma for more than a year. (Anna Fifield/The Washington Post)
Support rises quickly, organically and quietly in this close-knit suburb of Cincinnati, said Lynn Tetley, the city manager. People take care of one another. And at a time when people were torn between extremes of joy and sorrow — the eldest son of a longtime local family was free, but they had just learned he had been in a coma for more than a year — they wanted a way to show the Warmbiers that they are loved.
[Otto Warmbier, said to be in a coma, finally released from North Korea]
Caught in the middle of a story fraught with international animosity, at a time of intense national polarization, Wyoming is holding on to something simple: neighborliness.
1 of 16 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × U-Va. student Otto Warmbier released from North Korea View Photos The University of Virginia student had been held in North Korea for 17 months for trying to steal a propaganda poster while on a trip to the country. Caption The University of Virginia student had been held in North Korea for 17 months for trying to steal a propaganda poster while on a trip to the country. Feb. 29, 2016 University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier speaks as he is presented to reporters in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Feb. 29, 2016. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor. Kim Kwang Hyon/Associated Press Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Wyoming has a throwback feel, with big porches, rocking chairs and wicker sofas with plump pillows, hydrangeas bursting with blooms. There are Victorian houses with the trim picked out in bright colors, a stately brick middle school and dive-in movie nights at the city swimming pool. There are no crime alerts posted, but there is a curfew for teenagers and information about coyotes. The pastry shop has been there since 1934, the cashier at the meat market told a customer in scrubs, “Have a great trip, doc!” as she walked out, and the Independence Day parade has no politicians, just kids decorating their bikes, performing skits and building floats.
The 8,400 residents volunteer so many hours that the city literally has to turn people away, Tetley said, from civic boards and committees and events.
There are many families who have lived here for generations, as well as newcomers, doctors and professors and others often drawn by the reputation of the public schools. All the students at the small schools are Wyoming residents, kids who grow up together as neighbors and classmates.
So when one of their own experienced something unthinkable, Wyoming pulled in close.
“We’re all just focused now on providing privacy and any assistance we can to the family,” Tetley said. “We’re continuing to pray. Everyone wants so desperately for this situation to turn out well.”
[Amidst all the joy at the University of Virginia’s commencement, one person is missing: Otto Warmbier]
Otto Warmbier was homecoming king and captain of the soccer team at Wyoming High. At the University of Virginia, he had a prestigious scholarship designed for the most “intellectually curious” students, a phrase that his friends said described him well. He had a rare sense of discipline, with a clearly delineated path to a future career in finance complete with a summer at the London School of Economics under his belt, enough credits to graduate as a sophomore, and, as a junior, the summer internship he wanted locked in by the fall.
“If he had an assignment, he could sit down for 15 hours and focus on it and get it done,” his father said last month. “That was his gift.”
Once the work was done, friends said, he could be just as intensely fun, coming up with schemes, laughing loudly, surprising them with odd but strangely perfect gifts from thrift stores, making everyone feel just how delighted he was to see them.
Otto Warmbier, left, with friends Emmett Saulnier and Ned Ende in May 2015 at the University of Virginia. (Sanjana Sekhar)
He had their backs.
And he wanted to see the world.
Warmbier had planned to visit North Korea for five days on his way to Hong Kong for a study-abroad trip with U-Va.
Undated video shows American student Otto Warmbier throwing snowballs in North Korea before his arrest for "committing hostile acts" against North Korea. (Austin Warmbier)
This picture taken by and released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on March 16, 2016, shows a scene from the trial of Otto Warmbier, who was arrested for committing hostile acts against North Korea, at the supreme court in Pyongyang. (Agence France-Presse/KCNA)
He has received plenty of criticism from people who felt he should have had the common sense to stay away from a hostile country entirely. The actual repercussions were brutal: He was charged with “hostile acts against the state” and, in a semblance of a trial, sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
Fred Warmbier said North Korea lures American tourists to the country with tour groups that post slick ads online proclaiming it’s a safe place to visit, and then “they take them hostage.” That’s what happened to his son, he said.
Otto Warmbier’s last contact with the outside world was on March 2 of last year.
[Worried about North Korea? Spare a thought for Otto Warmbier’s family.]
It was soon after the sham trial, apparently, that the athletic young student lapsed into a coma.
U.S. officials were not told about his condition for more than a year. The news triggered a swift response. Joseph Yun, the State Department’s special representative for North Korea, helped secure his evacuation this week.
A Gulfstream jet thundered onto a tarmac in Cincinnati late Tuesday night, and his family went on board to see him before he was carried out and rushed to the hospital.
[State Department official met with the three Americans still being held in North Korea]
Medical personnel and visitors gather at the nose of a transport plane carrying Otto Warmbier before he is transferred to an ambulance. (AP)
On Wednesday, Wyoming waited.
Children still clambered into emergency vehicles, honked horns and got sprayed by a firetruck hose at the city recreation center at a truck-touch event. Men mowed lawns. People played tennis at the city courts, watered their petunias, walked their dogs and babies, swam at the city pool, brought their kids to the civic center for a toy-brick-building festival in the evening.
But a small sign outside the civic center expressed the undercurrent: “Wyoming’s thoughts and prayers are with the Warmbier family.”
Denise Koesterman, of Cincinnati, hangs ribbons Tuesday in honor of Otto Warmbier’s homecoming in Wyoming, Ohio. (Bryan Woolston/Reuters)
On Wednesday evening, a car slowed on a nearby block and the driver called out, “What are those for?” to people tying blue and white ribbons, the school colors, to trees.
“For Otto Warmbier!” a teenage boy answered.
“Thank you for doing that,” the man answered.
A woman with the group said they were showing support for the family; they didn’t want to intrude at such a difficult time, and certainly didn’t want to be quoted by name. They just wanted the Warmbiers to see how many prayers were rising in the community, as they wait for news of his health.
Around another bend, a little before 7 p.m. as the sun was lowering into Wyoming’s leafy canopy, a woman and three children parked a van and jumped out. Tree by tree, pole by pole, they looped and knotted, looped and knotted. Then on to the next street, blue and white ribbons in hand.
That night, city officials decided to open up the civic center to live-stream the news conference so people in Wyoming could hear Fred Warmbier speak. Through word of mouth and social media, more than 300 gathered there Thursday morning, listening as he choked up and spoke directly to his son: “I love you, and I’m so crazy about you. I’m so glad you’re home.”
Tetley drove the family home from the news conference. A crowd lined the main street through town, holding their hands up in the Wyoming “W” shape, a high school cheer meant to show their respect for the Warmbiers.
The family got out. Fred Warmbier hugged some people, and there were “tears by everybody here,” Tetley said. “The family is just an incredible, beloved family.” | – North Korea has issued its first official comment since releasing Otto Warmbier, but it's not one that clears up the biggest questions. "Warmbier, who had been in hard labor, was sent back home on June 13, 2017, on humanitarian grounds according to the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court" of North Korea, reads the entirety of the report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency, per the AP. Nothing further was said regarding how the release came to be negotiated or how Warmbier ended up in a coma. Pyongyang has claimed the 22-year-old contracted botulism and took a sleeping pill before falling into a coma immediately after his March 2016 trial, but at least one doctor disputes that. More: The Washington Post does have some further details regarding the release: It reports that after finally being informed of Warmbier's health, State Department Special Representative for North Korea Joseph Yun helped facilitate his removal from the country. The Post has more on the reaction to Warmbier's homecoming from those in his hometown of Wyoming, Ohio, population 8,400, and more about Warmbier himself: a salutatorian, homecoming king, and soccer team captain who was attending the University of Virginia on a "prestigious scholarship" awarded to "intellectually curious" students. As for what befell Warmbier, his parents may shine a light on that. Reuters reports Fred and Cindy Warmbier will "detail his mistreatment" during a Thursday morning press conference at their son's former high school. Fred Warmbier did speak with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, in an interview that will air Thursday at 8pm EDT on Fox News. We're "adjusting to a different reality," he says. "Otto is not in great shape right now ... [he] has been terrorized and brutalized for 18 months by a pariah regime in North Korea." As for what the brutality was, the New York Times cites an unnamed senior US official who says Warmbier was beaten. "The mystery is why," as the Times puts it. By its count, 16 Americans have been held by the country in the past 21 years, and they've typically been abused psychologically, not physically, though there have been exceptions (Robert Park, detained in 2009, says North Korean women used a club to beat his genitals). The feeling seems to be that North Korea is wary of further tarnishing the world's perception of its human rights record. |
President Obama greets people after picking up lunch at the Taylor Gourmet Deli, on Oct. 4, 2013 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images) Story Highlights Government shutdown is now in its fourth day
Budget stand-off entwined with Oct. 17 deadline to raise debt ceiling
Obama, Democrats opposed to mini-funding bills to reopen only parts of government
WASHINGTON — President Obama and House Republicans, battling over who was at fault for the four-day partial shutdown of the federal government, found one point they could agree on Friday:
Federal workers sent home during the shutdown should get back pay when the government reopens.
The Republican-controlled House is set to vote on the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act Saturday. The Obama Administration, which had opposed piecemeal bills to resolve the shutdown, said Friday it "strongly supports" the measure.
"The Administration appreciates that the Congress is acting promptly to move this bipartisan legislation and looks forward to the bill's swift passage," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. "This bill alone, however, will not address the serious consequences of the funding lapse, nor will a piecemeal approach to appropriations bills."
STORY: Obama backs plan to give furloughed workers backpay
That agreement leaves only the Senate to decide whether to approve back pay. "I don't know anything about what the House is planning to do," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., complaining about the flurry of Republican bills with different demands and piecemeal approaches. He said the Senate would be in session Saturday to deal with whatever the House sent over.
The agreement was a rare moment of accord in an otherwise intractable standoff over government spending, the Affordable Care Act and the debt limit. The two sides traded shots Friday over which side was responsible for the shutdown, which began Tuesday after Congress failed to pass a spending bill for the new fiscal year.
"This isn't some damn game," Speaker John Boehner said after a GOP conference meeting. He slammed down a copy of the Wall Street Journal, where an anonymous senior White House official was quoted as saying Obama was "winning" the shutdown.
"The American people don't want their government shut down and neither do I. All we're asking for is to sit down and have a discussion ... to reopen the government and bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare," Boehner said.
"There's no winning," Obama said on a lunchtime visit to a Pennsylvania Avenue sandwich shop with Vice President Biden. "No one is winning."
Obama said the shutdown "could be over today."
"I'm happy to have negotiations but we can't do it with a gun held to the head of the American people," he said. Obama and congressional Democrats say they will negotiate on a broad, long-term budget deal after Republicans agree to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.
STORY: Obama: 'No winning' in shutdown
The unnamed White House official quoted said essentially the same thing that Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was overheard telling his Kentucky colleague, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on a live microphone Thursday: "We're going to win this, I think."
As the shutdown ends its first work week, the impasse is beginning to do damage to the economy, economists said.
Moody's economist Mark Zandi said the first week of the shutdown has already shaved one or two decimal points off his estimate of 2.5% economic growth in the fourth quarter. A two-week shutdown would reduce growth to 2%, and a three-week shutdown would bring it to 1.6%
"If it goes on for a month, then growth will be closer to 1%, which I would characterize as pretty close to stall speed," Zandi said.
That assumes the debt limit is increased by Oct. 17 -- the date by which Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says the government will run out of borrowed money. If Congress doesn't raise the $16.7 trillion debt limit, the United States would face its first-ever default.
"Let me be clear: If we breached the debt limit -- I think the the right word would be 'catastrophic' -- for the economy," Zandi said.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said that doesn't have to happen. The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee said Treasury should prioritize payments on debt and Social Security, and accused Obama of trying to "spook the markets."
But in an interview taped Friday for C-SPAN's Newsmakers, he also emphatically denied market-calming reports that Boehner would seek Democratic votes to raise the debt limit.
The House voted Friday on bills that would provide short-term funding for disaster relief and a program that provides food aid to women and children. Democrats have consistently rejected a piecemeal approach, and tried a number of procedural ploys Friday to force a vote on a "clean": continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 15.
"It will take some coming together on the Republican side," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a CBS News interview. "It's very hard to negotiate with the Republicans when they can't negotiate with themselves."
While Obama supports retroactive pay, the White House said he would veto the short-term measures. "Consideration of appropriations bills in this fashion is not a serious or responsible way to run the United States government," the OMB policy statement said. "Instead of opening up a few government functions, the House of Representatives should reopen all of the government."
Republicans accused the president of having "interesting priorities."
"So, to recap, the President signed the troop funding bill, and does not oppose back-pay, but he has promised to veto bills helping veterans, cancer research, National Parks, the District of Columbia," said House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman Michael Steel.
But federal employees applauded the breakthrough, however minor, as giving employees "a little peace of mind."
"I would have to say it takes a big worry off my mind," said Cindy Blythe, a Coast Guard management analyst in Topeka, Kan. " It's an aggravation that we're furloughed because Cong couldn't get it together. They had an entire year to get this done. This is not something that came out of the blue."
Follow @gregorykorte and @ccamia on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1a6Bv7z ||||| As federal officials began formal preparations for a government shutdown, House and Senate leaders struggled Monday to reach agreement over tens of billions of dollars in spending cuts that would avert the federal work stoppage.
After weeks of negotiating over money, time is now also a major concern. There is general agreement that the two sides must work out a deal by Tuesday night if it is to work its way through both chambers and reach President Obama’s desk before the government runs out of money Friday.
Late Monday, a senior White House aide told top agency officials to begin preparations for how to handle a shutdown, a move that was echoed in a statement by Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to House leaders.
But Boehner also announced his intention to offer Obama and Senate Democrats another stopgap funding measure that would keep federal funding flowing for an additional week. That offer would come with conditions, however: According to the House Appropriations Committee, Democrats would have to agree to $12 billion in further spending cuts and to fund the Defense Department for the remainder of the year — thus removing the Pentagon from the possible budget disruptions still faced by other federal agencies.
Short of a broad deal for the entire federal government, approving another short-term measure may be the only route to keep Washington open while the two sides work out their differences.
Many Democrats and Republicans have said they would not approve what would be the seventh stopgap funding bill since October, but some key conservative lawmakers said Monday that they would support one week’s funding if the bill included the Pentagon’s yearly spending. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been pleading with Congress to exempt his department from the piecemeal plans for funding the government a few weeks at a time.
If lawmakers cannot reach an agreement, the first federal government shutdown since the mid-1990s would start Saturday and the full impact would be felt on Monday, when millions of federal employees across the country would typically report for work.
As the deadline neared, Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) exchanged insults, each side blaming the other for the stalemate.
Boehner continued to deny that he had agreed to a widely reported compromise with Democrats of $33 billion in spending reductions — even as one of his GOP chairmen worked with Democrats to hit that mark.
“Despite attempts by Democrats to lock in a number among themselves, I’ve made clear that their $33 billion is not enough, and many of the cuts that the White House and Senate Democrats are talking about are full of smoke and mirrors. That’s unacceptable,” Boehner said in a statement.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Reid insisted that “we agreed upon a number.” He accused Boehner of backing away from the compromise because of pressure from tea party activists who provided much of the energy in the GOP’s massive victory in the 2010 elections.
Many conservative Republicans in the House have said they would not vote for any budget deal unless it contained the full $61 billion in cuts GOP members approved earlier this year in a party-line vote. That measure was later rejected by the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.
“Republicans and the tea party continue to reject reality, and insist instead on ideology,” Reid said.
At issue, according to aides familiar with the talks, is the makeup of the spending cuts. Democrats want to reach the $33 billion through a combination of permanent cuts to a number of federal agencies and one-time reductions to other government programs, such as Pell grants and some agriculture subsidies.
Republicans are balking at many of the temporary cuts because they will not permanently reduce the size of government.
Even if the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees can agree on a package of cuts, and conservative House members decide to go along with the plan, there may not be enough time to approve it before the deadline.
According to a House rule Boehner put in place this year, no bill can come to a vote until members have had three days to read it — leaving almost no time for the Senate to act if the House could not approve its version until late Friday or over the weekend.
House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according to a GOP aide, gave the speaker an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. That process includes alerting lawmakers and senior staff about which employees would not report to work if no agreement is reached.
Boehner’s offer of another stopgap bill comes at a significantly higher cost than the $2 billion in cuts per week that accompanied the two most recent short-term funding plans. Also, Republicans are attaching some policy prescriptions to the one-week measure, including one that would prohibit federal funds going toward any abortion services in the District.
The issue will come to a head Tuesday at a White House gathering of Obama, Boehner, Reid, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.).
“The president has made clear that we all understand the need to cut spending, and significant progress has been made in agreeing that we can all work off the same number,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday.
Republicans and Democrats are eager to avoid a shutdown in part because neither side thinks it will be able to claim political advantage. In a new Washington Post poll, 37 percent say they would fault the Obama administration for a partial federal shutdown. The same number would blame the Republicans in Congress.
Those figures are nearly the same as in late February, despite five weeks of fierce negotiations and positioning on the issue.
This is a change from the government shutdowns in the mid-1990s. In late 1995, 46 percent of voters said they would blame then House speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), if the government shut down, and 27 percent would blame President Bill Clinton.
The new numbers also indicate growing disillusionment among Republicans. While 81 percent of Republicans say they think Obama is “just playing politics” with the budget (up from 70 percent five weeks ago), 40 percent of all Republicans see the GOP in Congress as posturing on the budget — a 13-point increase.
Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr., Felicia Sonmez and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
Read more on PostPolitics and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. | – The shutdown showdown is over, at least until the fall. The House and Senate today passed a measure to fund the government through September, the end of the 2011 fiscal year. The bill passed 260-167 in the House on a bipartisan vote, required because 59 Republicans broke ranks and voted against it, reports Politico. It then cleared the Senate, 81-19, and headed to President Obama's desk for his signature. As agreed upon in last week's down-to-the-wire negotiations, it calls for $38 billion in spending cuts, notes the New York Times. John Boehner: “Is it perfect? No. I’d be the first to admit it’s flawed. But welcome to divided government.” Democratic whip Steny Hoyer: “The priorities that we have agreed to in this resolution are not my priorities. But we have reached an agreement.” |
Among the findings of a sweeping federal government survey of American sexual behavior is one that may surprise those bewailing a permissive and eros-soaked popular culture: More than one-quarter of people interviewed in their late teens and early 20s had never had sex.
And the number was growing.
The latest round of the quaintly named National Survey of Family Growth found that among 15-to-24-year-olds, 29 percent of females and 27 percent of males reported no sexual contact with another person ever - up from the 22 percent of both sexes when the survey was last conducted in 2002.
"The public's general perception is that when it comes to young people and sex, the news is bad and likely to get worse," said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, an advocacy organization in Washington.
The seventh and latest round of the survey, first done in 1973, provides a corrective to that view.
"Many, many young people have been very receptive to the message of delaying sexual activity," Albert said. "There's no doubt about it." He added that the nearly 40 percent reduction in teen pregnancy since the 1990s - which experts attribute to both increased condom use and increased abstinence - represents "extraordinary progress on a social issue that many once considered intractable."
The uptick in abstinence is one of many revealing facts arising from structured interviews with a random sample of 13,495 Americans, ages 15 to 44, that were done from 2006 to 2008. The findings provide evidence for almost every theory and supposition about the nation's secret sex life.
The survey results, released Thursday, suggest that oral sex may be a gateway to vaginal sex but that for some teens it is a stopping point. Most adults are monogamous. About 4 in 10 adults have had anal sex. Women are more likely than men to have same-sex liaisons. Or at least are more comfortable talking about them.
Conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, the survey provides basic information for public health policymakers concerned with such issues as sexually transmitted disease. There is no single fact that it is trying to ferret out or message that its 49 pages of text and tables seek to deliver.
But Anjani Chandra, the demographer who is the lead author of the report, said that "for some people, it may be news that these behaviors exist at all in the general population."
When first run, the survey queried only married and formerly married women. Single women and then men were later included, as were more detailed questions about sexual practices.
Parts of the survey are now so explicit that even though the interviewer and subject are face to face, some questions are asked and answered using a computer screen so that the answers are completely private. ||||| An Oregon school district plans to offer condoms to middle schoolers and high schoolers who specifically ask for them during conversation with counselors and administrators.
The availability has stirred concern since the tiny Gervais School District approved the plan as part of an update to its human sexuality policy last month. The district has about 550 students in grade six or above, and officials have expressed concern about the steady number of teen pregnancies each year.
The vast majority of the nation's public schools don't make condoms available to students despite pleas from medical groups that such arrangements would reduce transmission of disease and not increase rates of sexual activity.
In Gervais, just north of the state capital of Salem in western Oregon, the high school and middle school are essentially treated as the same entity, sharing the same administration and adjacent buildings. That proximity led the district to make condoms available across the board. The district said some school board members voted against their religious beliefs to approve the policy.
"Although several options for condom access were recommended (dispensers in restrooms, a bowl of condoms in the counselor’s office), the board chose the most restrictive and most educationally sound manner of distribution," the district said on its website. "Students would be required to have a discussion with a designated and trained teacher, counselor, nurse or administrator before condoms are issued."
The new sexual health education policy came after a survey of students conducted by college students. The school board believed the results showed students weren't getting enough information about sex. With one market in town, students also didn't have easy access to condoms. Now, they'll have more access and more guidance, school officials said.
Supt. Rick Hensel told the Salem Statesman Journal that nine students became pregnant this school year. The survey last spring by Oregon Health Sciences University found 42% of students were sexually active and that 29 babies were born to girls older than 15 in the district.
Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2011 that 34% of high school students recently had sex and that 400,000 high school-age girls became pregnant in 2009.
Sex education at Gervais will still focus on abstinence, using a curriculum that focuses on the pressures faced by children who are Latino. About two-thirds of Gervais students are Latino and one-third are white, according to Oregon Department of Education data.
Antonia Villarruel, a University of Michigan health promotion professor who developed the instruction material, said the curriculum stays silent on the issue of condom distribution. But students are taught how to properly use one.
"When kids decide to have sex, they should be able to take the precautions," she said.
Among the curriculum guidance specific to Latino men is that it can be considered macho to use a condom.
"We define machismo as an important value; it means protecting your family and being responsible for your family," she said. "Using a condom is protecting your family, and the curriculum provides a reason to be proud of that beautiful culture, which can be used to make make healthy decisions." | – When it comes to teen sex, "we need to be paying attention to the Netherlands," writes Tracy Clark-Flory on Salon. Unlike American parents who typically demonize pre-marital sex, Dutch parents commonly allow their teenagers—male and female alike—to have sleepovers with significant others, a new study finds. Even so, when it comes to birth rates, American teens had eight times as many births as their Dutch counterparts in 2007—"and the Netherlands generally whoops on the states in terms of STD rates, too," Clark-Flory writes. "It's no coincidence that the country has also secured easy access (for both teens and adults) to contraceptives and other sexual health care," she continues. If American parents could be more accepting of their children's budding sexuality, perhaps fewer teens would "sneak out of the house to have sex in the backseat of a car." And Clark-Flory's admittedly atypical experience as an American teen was filled with many such sleepovers, allowing her to engage "in playful exploration in my childhood bedroom with my first love—and my parents were right across the hall the whole time. I had no sense that sex was a naughty or shameful act. And you know what? I consistently used condoms, I was on birth control pills and I insisted that both of us were tested for STDs." |
This ABC show now in its 13th season is the bane of my existence (because I hate it so much) and returns on Monday, September 19th, with a fall season lineup of spandex-sporting contestants that’s as bewildering as ever. The full roster is:
– Nancy “J’accuse” Grace, TV blonde who rants about white trash murders.
– David Arquette, better known as a Howard Stern guest than an actor.
– LA Laker Ron Artest changing his name to “Metta World Peace”.
– Chaz Bono, who’s obviously there for random curiosity.
– George Clooney’s dumped girlfriend Elizabetta Canalis.
– Kristin “Drama Drama Drama” Cavallari, the unlikeable Reality TV bimbo.
– The least interesting Kardashian (which is saying a lot): Rob.
– Carson “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” Kressley, who needs a new agent.
– Ricki Lake coming out of the Witness Protection Program.
– J.R. Martinez, a soap opera actor who helps fulfill ABC’s diversity quota.
– Singer Chynna Phillips married to the least interesting Baldwin brother.
– Soccer player Hope Solo promoting her nude spread in ESPN The Magazine.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here. ||||| Summoning the who's who of the backwaters of cable television, the "Dancing With The Stars" season 13 cast has officially been announced.
Leading the pack is David Arquette, who was linked with the show a few weeks back. He just got back from a trip to Africa to help raise awareness of malaria prevention, and perhaps his good karma will get him closer to the mirror ball trophy. Last season, Hines Ward took home the top prize; the season before that, Jennifer Grey was the winner.
Perhaps the most intriguing entrant is Elisabetta Canalis, the Italian model and ex-girlfriend of George Clooney. And by far most hilariously, Nancy Grace, the bombastic Headline News host, will also be competing for a shot at dance floor immortality.
Also, there will be a bit of a family rivalry, as Ron Artest, teammate of Khloe Kardashian's husband Lamar Odom, is squaring off against Rob Kardashian, her brother.
Here's the full list; in the comments, tell us what you think. The season starts September 19th.
Ricki Lake
Ron Artest
Kristin Cavallari
Chynna Phillips
David Arquette
Carson Kressley
Nancy Grace
J.R. Martinez
Hope Solo
Rob Kardashian
Elisabetta Canalis
Chaz Bono | – Someone other than the devil may be dancing tonight, and Nancy Grace might have to play nice with judges for a change now that she's signed on to Dancing With the Stars. She met with her partner in Atlanta this week for the first time, causing TMZ to speculate that "this could be another Kate Gosselin situation" where Grace practices in Atlanta to host her show and dances once a week in LA. The rest of the cast, per Deadline: David Arquette Ron Artest, Los Angeles Laker Chaz Bono Elisabetta Canalis, George Clooney ex Kristin Cavallari of The Hills Rob Kardashian Carson Kressley of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Ricki Lake JR Martinez, soap opera actor Chynna Phillips, former member of Wilson Phillips and Baldwin brother wife Hope Solo, soccer player |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jon Donnison: Footage showed people fleeing the building
A gunman is holding staff and customers hostage at a cafe in Sydney, Australia.
The Lindt cafe in the city centre is surrounded by armed police. Officers have made contact with the gunman.
Five people have been seen running from the building. It is not clear how many remain inside. A black Islamic flag has been displayed at the window.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was "profoundly shocking" that people were being "held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation".
He was speaking after chairing a meeting of the national security committee in Canberra.
Earlier Mr Abbott said: "Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society - nothing should ever change that and that's why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual."
Senior police officers say they are on a footing "consistent with a terrorist event".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The mother of one hostage said her son sent a text saying "I'm ok"
The incident began as people were arriving for work in Martin Place on Monday. Witnesses saw a man with a bag and gun walk into the Lindt chocolate shop and cafe.
Lindt said about 10 employees and 30 customers were thought to be inside at the time. Nearby offices were evacuated and police asked people to remain indoors and away from open windows.
The BBC's Jon Donnison in Sydney says an enormous police operation is in place, on a scale few Sydney residents will have seen.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption It is not clear whether the five who ran away from the cafe fled or were released
About six hours into the siege, three people were seen running from the building housing the cafe. Two more people followed about an hour later. It is not clear whether they escaped or were released.
New South Wales Police deputy commissioner Catherine Burn said: "Those people are now being assessed to make sure their health is okay and then police will talk to them."
"Our approach is to resolve this peacefully. It might take a bit of time but that is our priority," she added.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Eyewitness Andrea Proctor: "Many police officers started to come around us"
Police have identified the gunman and he is well known to them, Australian media report.
News organisations also say the suspect has contacted them to issue demands, which police have urged media not to report.
Channel 7, a broadcaster with offices facing the cafe, said lights inside the premises were turned out as night fell.
At the scene: Wendy Frew, BBC News, Sydney
The atmosphere in Martin Place itself was surreal. Office workers who had been evacuated from their buildings, construction workers from building sites and tourists packed the pedestrian plaza one block away from the Lindt coffee shop.
Rosemary D'Urso Healion had just come out of the Martin Place subway station and was walking to her office when she saw that it was blocked by police. Then she saw the police close down the subway station.
"I work in that building [where the siege is taking place] and I was just about to go in," she told the BBC, adding that she had been in contact with some of her colleagues who were in the building but not being held hostage.
She remained at Martin Place anxiously watching a police operation that appeared to be aimed at getting some of her colleagues out via a ladder erected on a window ledge on the first floor.
Uneasy crowds in Sydney
Eyewitnesses speak to the BBC
Image copyright AFP Image caption A man wearing a bandana and a backpack was seen inside the cafe
Image copyright AFP Image caption Hundreds of heavily armed police are surrounding the building
An armed man wearing a backpack and a bandana could be seeing walking around inside the cafe.
TV footage showed at least three people, thought to be employees and who were visibly distressed, holding up to the window a black flag bearing the declaration of Islamic faith, which reads: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."
The flag is similar to those used by jihadist groups, but is different from the one used by Islamic State militants in the Middle East.
Martin Place is home to the state premier's office and the headquarters of major banks.
In September Australia - which has sent fighter jets to join the US-led coalition conducting air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq - carried out a big anti-terror raid.
One man was charged with plotting to behead a member of the public in Martin Place.
In October, new anti-terrorism laws, including a provision designed to stop Australians fighting in overseas conflicts, were approved by the Australian parliament.
The black flag
Image copyright Reuters
A black flag bearing the white Arabic text of the "shahada", the basic statement of the Islamic faith, is used by jihadist groups worldwide
The statement says: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger"
A black flag was the battle flag of the Prophet Muhammad and was carried into battle by many of his companions
Today, it is used as a symbol of engagement in jihad, in the sense of holy war, by militant groups including al-Qaeda and Islamic State
Islamic State's banner - unlike the flag raised in the window of the coffee shop - bears the first part of the shahada and the seal of the Prophet below it.
Timeline: Australia's terror threat ||||| They ran with terror etched in their faces, fleeing from a gunman before collapsing, tearful, shocked and relieved into the safe arms of police. For two women who fled from the siege at the Lindt cafe in the heart of Sydney their ordeal was over - as it was for three men who made their own frantic escape an hour earlier.
But more people remain hostages of a shotgun-wielding man who barged into the Martin Place chocolate cafe on Monday morning, locked the doors and forced his victims to hold a black Islamic flag up to the window.
Hundreds of heavily armed police continue to hold an intense security cordon around the cafe on Monday evening and central Sydney remains in lockdown as negotiators try to secure the safe release of the hostages.
Nearly 12 hours into the siege, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said the 'best negotiators in the world' were working to secure the safe release and end the ordeal.
'Our only goal tonight and for as long as this takes is to get those people that are currently caught in that building out of there safely,' he said.
Police are keeping a tight lid on details of the situation and the gunman, who has forced hostages to contact media outlets and relay his demands.
Commissioner Scipione said police were in communication with the gunman but refused to reveal how.
'Suffice to say we have got contact with him,' he told media.
The commissioner also declined to confirm whether the five who had fled the cafe had escaped or been released.
Also unconfirmed is how many people are being held hostage and whether the gunman - seen through the cafe windows wearing a black headband inscribed with white lettering - is acting alone.
'We know it's at least one,' he said.
The shocking siege has turned Martin Place and surrounding streets - Sydney's government, legal and financial heart - into a ghost city with roads empty of pedestrians and travelled only by speeding police and emergency vehicles with lights flashing.
A huge, highly coordinated operation is under way and Commissioner Scipione said he would commit as many police to the operation as needed.
Office workers were evacuated from buildings during the day via ladders, out of windows and down fire escapes.
One of the hostages to flee the siege was Lindt cafe worker Elly Chen, whose escape, caught by cameras gathered at the distant barricades, evoked an outpouring of relief from friends on her Facebook page.
Another man who got out was taken to St Vincents Hospital to be treated for a pre-existing condition and was in a satisfactory condition.
Lights were turned off in the cafe on Monday night.
Social media has been employed by the gunman, with reports hostages have been directed to relay his demands via Facebook accounts and to contact media outlets, however police have urged the gunman to speak directly to negotiators.
The gunman, who calls himself 'the brother', had reportedly demanded a flag of terrorist organisation Islamic State, made bomb threats and wants to speak with Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
The siege has grabbed attention around the world with US President Barack Obama briefed and leaders from the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada expressing their concerns for the hostages.
In a statement, Mr Abbott said he had received messages of support from a number of international leaders.
'It is a day which has tested us but so far, like Australians in all sorts of situation, we have risen to the challenge,' he said.
Australia's national terror alert level was lifted to High in September just before two people were charged in raids in Sydney amid reports there was a plot to behead a member of the public in Martin Place.
Mr Abbott said at the time there was no specific information behind the decision.
Earlier
Read below how the siege unfolded in Sydney - all times are in AEDT. Sky News will provide updates online and on Foxtel Channel 601 if the situation changes overnight and throughout Tuesday.
9.55pm
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9.15pm
Here's the official map of the Martin Place exclusion zone, which will be in place tomorrow. Workers inside this area have been asked to work from home on Tuesday.
9pm
Australians are taking to Twitter to head off anti-Islamic sentiment and offering to escort Muslims on public transport. They're using the hashtag #illridewithyou, which is currently trending.
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8.45pm
The lights remain off inside the Lindt cafe, with police standing in darkness next to a fire door from which at least one hostage earlier escaped.
8.30pm
NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and NSW Premier Mike Baird have given an update in Sydney.
Mr Baird confirmed an exclusion zone will remain in place around Martin Place on Tuesday, and workers in that zone will be asked to work from home.
'I am proud of how we have responded as a city, state and nation – but my thoughts remain with those that are caught in this event,' he said.
The police commissioner reiterated that police would not be discussing tactics, how the five hostages escaped or how many remain inside the cafe.
'Our only goal tonight, for as long as it takes, is to get those people that are currently caught in that building out of there safely,' he said.
He said one escaped hostage had gone to hospital for a pre-existing condition, but otherwise no one had been injured.
On the location of the threat, he said police were only dealing with one location at this stage.
8.20pm
Australia's Muslim community has released a statement denouncing the day's events.
8.05pm
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7.45pm
Channel Seven's Chris Reason has a view into the cafe from Seven's Martin Place studio, and has been tweeting what he can see.
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7.30pm
The Police Commissioner and the Premier will give an update at 8.15pm AEDT.
7.10pm
A summary of the facts we have at the moment:
The siege began at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney's Martin Place at about 9.44am, when members of the public called police after seeing a man with a gun enter the cafe.
The siege has now been going for more than nine hours.
Five hostages have escaped, but police aren't saying how many remain inside the cafe. Seven News reporter Chris Reason claims there are about 15, a mix of men and women, but no children.
Hundreds of police are at the scene, with tactical officers watching the doors the hostages used to escape.
Police have confirmed they are in touch with the gunman, but they aren't revealing what he has told them or what his motivations may be.
A large exclusion zone remains in place in the Sydney CBD, and trains are not stopping at Martin Place station.
7pm
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn has updated the media on the siege, saying police are prepared to continue dealing with the situation into the night.
'Everything has to be about the safety of the people at the location.'
'The aim is a peaceful resolution.'
She said the public should remain aware and vigilant, but that police focus was on Martin Place tonight.
6.30pm
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has given a brief, pre-recorded statement describing the siege as 'very disturbing' and 'profoundly shocking'.
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6pm
Sky News correspondent Chris Kenny describes how he narrowly missed being caught up in the siege.
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5.55pm
The gunman has reportedly told hostages he has planted four bombs.
He said two bombs are in the cafe and the others are elsewhere in the CBD, Network Ten reports.
Network Ten says it has spoken with two hostages inside the cafe, who were hysterical as they relayed the man's demands.
5.30pm
Here's the situation as of 5.30pm AEDT:
Five hostages have escaped the central Sydney cafe where a gunman has been holding up to 30 hostages.
Two women raced to the safety of police officers at around 5pm after three men fled the scene just over an hour earlier.
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Police believe there is only one gunman conducting the Martin Place cafe siege which started at around 10am.
NSW deputy police commissioner Catherine Burn earlier said police were still trying to work out the gunman's motivation.
Ms Burn said the number of hostages in the Martin Place cafe was not clear but it was fewer than 30.
NSW deputy police commissioner Catherine Burn said police have established contact with the gunman.
'Police negotiators have had contact and they continue to have contact,' Ms Burn said.
A heavy security cordon remains in place over a large part of the Sydney CBD with roads closed and large numbers of uniformed police and heavily armed riot and tactical officers in place.
Authorities are on alert similar to a terrorist attack with an Islamic flag pressed to the window inside the Lindt chocolate cafe earlier on Monday.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has met with the national security committee of cabinet.
'We have to appreciate that even in a society such as ours, there are people who would wish to do us harm,' Mr Abbott said.
'I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.'
NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione wouldn't confirm if it was a terrorism-related event, although he said police have moved to a 'footing' similar to dealing with a terrorist attack.
Earlier on Monday, there were distressing images of cafe customers and employees with their arms in the air inside the cafe.
'We are continuing to secure and make sure we are doing all we can to bring this to a peaceful outcome,' Mr Scipione said.
The flag appears to be the Shahada flag which has on it in Arabic the Islamic testimony of faith affirming belief in the oneness of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as his messenger.
While it is a religiously significant flag respected by mainstream Muslims around the world, it has also been recently adopted by extremist groups such as the Al Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front which is active in Syria and Lebanon.
Security agencies believe there are Australians in Syria fighting for the terrorist group.
Martin Place, the heart of the Australian financial industry, has been shut down with workers stuck inside the police cordon and told not to go near the office windows.
Businesses have been cleared out with Reserve Bank of Australia employees only being let out five hours after the start of the siege.
Police are expected to give an update at 6.30pm AEDT.
5pm
Two women have just been seen running from the building, both wearing Lindt aprons. Five hostages in total have now escaped the siege.
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4.40pm
A hostage has been seen walking in front of the cafe's windows while displaying a flag with Arabic writing on it. A similar flag was held up against the cafe windows earlier in the day.
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4.05pm
Dep Commissioner Burn said police had made contact with the hostage taker, but could not say exactly how many hostages remained inside. She did say it was not as high as 30.
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'We clearly are dealing with a situation that is unfolding and it's happening as we speak and the most important thing is the safety of those hostages and I wouldn't want to do anything that may impact on the safety of those hostages.
3.55pm
Police have confirmed three people escaped the Lindt cafe a short time ago.
Deputy Police Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Catherine Burn said the first priority was the wellbeing of the people who escaped, after which police would question them to gain more information about the situation inside the cafe.
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Police do not know how the hostages escaped, and have not revealed any further details about the gunman.
A 'safety site' has been set up in Hyde Park to provide information to the public about the ongoing siege situation.
3.45pm
There are reports three people have been seen running from the Lindt cafe. Armed police can be seen next to an open fire door, with weapons pointed at the front door of the cafe.
3.30pm
A little more detail on that phone call from a hostage to 2GB personality Ray Hadley.
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Deputy Police Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Catherine Burn is expected to give an update shortly.
3pm
The Grand Mufti of Australia has denounced the siege in a statement released a short time ago.
2.55pm
2.45pm
Broadcaster Ray Hadley claims to have spoken to a hostage inside the cafe on two occasions today.
Speaking on 2GB, Hadley said he had spoken to a 'remarkably calm' male hostage about 1pm AEDT, and that the hostage taker had demanded the hostage speak live on the radio, a demand Hadley refused.
'I told the hostage it would not be in his best interest or my best interest to allow that to happen because I'm not a trained negotiator, I don't have any expertise in this, there are people who will talk to both the hostages and the person holding the hostages and they will be knowing what to do,' he said.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has also addressed the media, saying that while there were no specific threats being monitored by Victorian police, extra officers would be on patrol in Melbourne and surrounds today.
2.30pm
Here's the full press conference from the Premier and Police Commissioner from earlier this afternoon.
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2pm
Speaking at a press conference in Sydney, NSW Premier Mike Baird urged Sydney residents to go about their business as usual.
'I have full confidence in the police commissioner and the NSW police – they are the world’s best,' he said.
'Be aware, be vigilant and be patient. Our thoughts and prayers are with those caught up in the situation.'
The police commissioner confirmed there was 'an armed offender holding an undisclosed number of hostages'.
'We are very contained and have tight restrictions around that location.
The city is still operating and will continue to operate unless we need to change that.'
'Transport arrangements are in place for people to leave the city.'
He said police had yet to make contact with the hostage taker.
'My advice is that we haven’t had contact with the armed individual at this stage,' he said, but there was 'at least one' gunman inside the cafe.
Police had taken a number of calls from the public, and were looking into the meaning of a flag held up against the cafe's window earlier this morning.
'At this stage we are looking into what it stands for, but it’s probably best that I don’t take that any further,' he said.
1.50pm
Words of support are coming in from international leaders.
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1.45pm
An update on public schools - only schools within 1km of the Sydney CBD are implementing mandatory lockouts, other schools can choose to implement a lockout if they feel it necessary.
1.40pm
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1.20pm
All public schools in NSW have been asked to assume a 'white level' lockout, which means no school group is to leave the school grounds.
1.05pm
NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione will address the media at 1.30pm AEDT.
1pm
The Prime Minister has urged Australians to go about their business as usual.
'The ordinary business of government must go on and it will go on,' he said, adding that the mid-year financial outlook would be released today as planned.
He described the scene as a 'disturbing incident' and said there were 'some indications' it was politically motivated.
US President Barack Obama has reportedly been briefed on the siege.
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12.50pm
There are about 200 bystanders between Martin Place and Castlereagh Street watching anxiously.
Workers trapped in buildings inside the police cordon have been told to stay away from the windows.
Justin Doyle, who works in a legal office inside the cordon, said colleagues were 'all very scared'.
'Police have told them to stay where they are and do as they're told,' he said.
Around 11.50am, police officers placed a ladder up against a window on the first floor of an office on the Elizabeth Street side of the same building. People then began climbing out onto an awning.
Martin Place is home to several prominent buildings, including NSW Premier Mike Baird's office, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Westpac Bank and the Commonwealth Bank headquarters as well as the US embassy and Network Seven.
The Supreme Court, Sydney Hospital, NSW Library, NSW parliament are all located nearby.
Lebanese Muslim Association President Samier Dandan says Australian Muslim leaders are meeting online now to see if the community can help.
'If there's something that the Australian Muslim community can do to assist, we are there,' he told ABC.
Elsewhere, the Sydney Opera House has reopened after an earlier report of a suspicious package.
12.35pm
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12.30pm
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has also released a statement.
'Our thoughts and prayers today are with the innocent people involved in this morning’s incident in Martin Place, Sydney.
Our thoughts are also with their families who are seeing this incredibly distressing situation unfold, along with the rest of Australia.
I have full confidence in the skill and professionalism of our police and security agencies.
I have spoken to Prime Minister Tony Abbott this morning and offered him the Opposition’s full support at this time.
Australians can be assured that we are one when it comes to keeping Australians safe.'
The Prime Minister is due to speak at a press conference in Canberra shortly.
12.20pm
AAP reports a man has been arrested 200 metres from the siege scene, and may have been carrying a gun.
12.15pm
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Midday
Several sites around the CBD have now been evacuated, including:
Channel Seven building at Martin Place
The Opera House
NSW parliamentary executive offices
The State Library
The NSW Supreme Court's criminal courts
Sydney Airport has also confirmed there are no changes to flights, and the airspace around the airport remains open.
11.55am
Statement from NSW Police:
'There is a police operation underway at Martin Place. Police and emergency services have responded and a number of streets around the area have been closed. The Martin Place train station is also shut.
Police are dealing with an armed incident and specialist officers are attempting to make contact those inside a café.
Some nearby offices have been evacuated as a precaution. Anyone else in the area encompassing Hunter, George, Elizabeth and Macquarie streets bordering Martin Place is directed to remain indoors and away from open windows. Anyone in the vicinity but outside that area is free to leave their buildings.
Police urge members of the public to remain calm and note that an appropriate police presence is in place.'
Police urge the media to be responsible in their reporting. Speculation can cause unnecessary alarm. We will attempt to keep you updated and Police will release more information when it has been confirmed.
11.40am
An update on transport and road closures in Sydney as the siege continues.
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There's also been a statement released by the NSW Premier, Mike Baird:
'All my thoughts and prayers are with those members of the public affected by the situation in Martin Place and the NSW Police who are trained to deal with these events.
I have spoken to Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and have full confidence the NSW Police are working effectively to resolve the situation.
I will provide further information as appropriate.'
11.30am
The Prime Minister's Office has just put out a statement:
'New South Wales Police and the Australian Federal Police are currently responding to a reported hostage-taking incident in Martin Place in Sydney.
I have spoken with NSW Premier Mike Baird and offered him all possible Commonwealth support and assistance.
The National Security Committee of Cabinet has also convened for briefings on the situation.
This is obviously a deeply concerning incident but all Australians should be reassured that our law enforcement and security agencies are well trained and equipped and are responding in a thorough and professional manner.
We will provide regular updates as further information becomes available.'
11.20am
The office of the Deputy Prime Minister has said the airspace above Sydney is not shut down.
'The airspace over the Sydney CBD is not shut down. There are choppers in the air and air traffic is being rerouted according. At this stage no impact on the air traffic network.'
11.15am
Fairfax Media reports police are saying there has been an 'incident' at the Sydney Opera House, but no further details are available.
The US Consulate has sent the following emergency message to US citizens in Australia: 'US Consulate Sydney informs US citizens of a security incident involving at least one armed person at Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place in Sydney. New South Wales and Australian Federal police are addressing the threat. Please avoid the area around Martin Place until further notice.
'US citizens are strongly encouraged to review your personal security plan, remain aware of your surroundings including local events, and monitor local news stations for updates. Maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security.'
11.05am
Fairfax Media reports that Channel Seven's Sean Berry told ABC Radio's 702 that police have asked them not to film, so their live coverage is no longer rolling.
11am
There are up to 13 hostages inside the cafe, News Corp and Channel Seven are reporting.
Train services have resumed on the Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line, but trains are not stopping at Martin Place.
10.45am
There are now reports the airspace above Sydney's CBD has been shut down, and the Sydney Opera House evacuated.
Earlier
Workers in nearby buildings, including the Seven Network, have been ordered to evacuate the area.
NSW government offices, including Premier Mike Baird's, are in the vicinity of the cafe.
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A black flag with white writing on it, thought to be an Islamic flag, is being displayed from the window of the cafe. ||||| Story highlights The hostages who died are identified as Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson
All of those injured are described by police in stable condition
"It will take time to clarify exactly what happened ... and why," PM says
The gunman's social media postings reflect a radical Sunni extremist theology
The deadly siege of a central Sydney cafe has ended but the investigation is just beginning.
Australian authorities stormed the cafe where a self-styled Muslim cleric had been holding hostages early Tuesday, killing the gunman. They moved in some 16 hours after the siege began, after hearing gunfire inside the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, New South Wales police Commissioner Andrew P. Scipione told reporters.
Two of the 17 hostages initially held by the gunman died, according to Scipione. They were later identified as Katrina Dawson, 38, and Tori Johnson, 34. Other people were injured, including a police officer who suffered a wound to the face from gunshot pellets. All were described by police to be in stable condition.
"Understandably, there is a lot of speculation, but it will take time to clarify exactly what happened ... and why," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters Tuesday.
Man Haron Monis.
What did the gunman want? Why did he choose the cafe as his target?
"There is nothing more Australian than dropping in at the local cafe for a morning coffee, and it's tragic beyond words that people going about their everyday business should have been caught up in such a horrific incident," Abbott said.
He offered his condolences to people caught in the attack and to their loved ones.
"These events do demonstrate that even a country as free as open as generous and as safe as ours is vulnerable to acts of politically motivated violence," the Prime Minister said. "But they also remind us that Australia, and Australians are resilient and we are ready to respond."
Gunman had violent history
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The gunman was identified as Man Haron Monis by an official with direct knowledge of the situation. According to his social media posts, the hostage-taker appears to have embraced a radical Sunni theology.
Abbott told reporters that the gunman was already well-known to authorities, and that he had a "long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability."
Before the raid, Monis had demanded a flag and phone call with Abbott, CNN affiliate Sky News Australia reported. He made the demands through hostages who contacted media organizations, Sky News reported.
Some hostages had also reportedly posted messages to social networking sites and the YouTube online video service. Police urged media early Tuesday not to show the videos.
Monis, also known as Sheikh Haron, pleaded guilty in 2013 to writing letters to relatives of Australian service members saying they were "Hitler's soldiers," according to Australian media reports.
He was believed to be acting alone, and he didn't appear to be part of a broader plot, additional U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources said.
How the siege unfolded
Hundreds of police officers, including snipers, surrounded the cafe in Sydney's central business district shortly after the gunman took over the building at 10 a.m. Monday (6 p.m. ET Sunday).
Chilling images from Australian media showed people, believed to be hostages, with their hands pressed against the cafe's windows. They were holding up a black flag with Arabic writing on it reading, "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God."
Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A message of condolence is written on the pavement at Martin Place, Sydney on Wednesday, December 17. #illridewithyou became a trending hashtag on Twitter during the siege, expressing solidarity with Australian Muslims in the wake of deadly siege at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney. Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A woman walks past flowers placed by people as a mark of respect for the victims of Martin Place siege on Tuesday, December 16. Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Members of the Muslim community show their respect at Martin Place on December 16. Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Prime Minister Tony Abbott arrives with his wife Margaret to pay their respects at Martin Place on December 16. Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Australian flags fly at half mast on Sydney Harbour Bridge on December 16 following the fatal siege. Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – An injured hostage is carried to an ambulance from a cafe in Sydney on December 16. Gunfire erupted early Tuesday as police stormed the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, where a gunman had been holding hostages since Monday morning. Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Hostages run toward police officers on December 16. Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A police officer and a paramedic escort a hostage away from the scene of the siege on December 16. Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – An injured hostage is wheeled to an ambulance after shots were fired during the raid on the cafe. Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Two armed police officers stand ready to enter the cafe on December 16. Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A hostage stands by the front entrance of the cafe as she turns off the lights on Monday, December 15. Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A hostage runs toward police on December 15. She was one of five people seen fleeing the cafe. Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Police gather near the cafe on December 15. Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Hostages behind the cafe's window hold up a black flag with Arabic script on December 15. Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A police officer listens to a radio on December 15. Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Two hostages make it to safety outside the cafe on December 15. Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A police sniper walks to his vehicle on December 15. Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – A journalist reports on the situation in Sydney. Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Armed police are seen outside the cafe on December 15. Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – People rush past armed police near the cafe on December 15. Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Police close a street near the scene on December 15. Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Police officers talk at the scene on December 15. Hide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: Photos: Sydney cafe siege Sydney cafe siege – Armed police patrol near the Sydney Opera House. Major landmarks in Sydney were evacuated as police responded to the hostage situation. Hide Caption 23 of 23
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Five hostages sprinted out of the cafe toward heavily armed police officers several hours into the standoff, sending the gunman into a tirade, according to an Australian reporter.
Chris Reason, a correspondent for CNN affiliate Seven Network, said the gunman became "extremely agitated" when he realized what had happened and "started screaming orders" at the remaining hostages.
Reason said he could see the gunman pacing past the cafe's windows from his vantage point at the network's nearby offices. He described the man as unshaven, wearing a white shirt and black cap and carrying a shotgun.
As night fell, lights went out in the cafe, Reason reported.
After a tense night, police could be seen early Tuesday throwing flash-bang grenades into the cafe in video aired by Seven Network. Gunfire erupted amid the chaos.
A national security source in the United States said that a team of Australian special forces troops and police had entered the Lindt Chocolate Cafe from two directions and killed the gunman.
Video captured medics working on some people and others being carried away on stretchers.
On Tuesday, the hostages who died were identified as Dawson and Johnson.
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"Katrina was one of our best and brightest barristers who will be greatly missed by her colleagues and friends at the NSW Bar," the New South Wales Bar Association said in a statement. "She was a devoted mother of three children and a valued member of her floor and of our bar community. Our thoughts are with her family at this time."
Johnson's family also released a statement. It read, in part: "We are so proud of our beautiful boy Tori, gone from this Earth but forever in our memories as the most amazing life partner, son and brother we could ever wish for." | – An unknown number of hostages are being held at a chocolate shop and cafe in Sydney in what Prime Minister Tony Abbott says may be a politically motivated incident. Authorities say they're still working to find out how many people are being held in the Lindt Chocolat Cafe, where five hostages were seen running from the building after being captive for seven hours, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Three men who ran from a fire exit were followed by two women, apparently cafe employees, who ran into the arms of police. Earlier, hostages could be seen holding up what appears to be an Islamic flag. Police say they believe there are no more than 30 hostages in the cafe and as far as they know, nobody has been harmed. It's not clear whether there's more than one gunman involved. Hundreds of police officers have locked down part of the city's central business district and police presence has been massively boosted in other Australian cities. The police commissioner for New South Wales says the situation is tightly contained and officers are trying to resolve the situation peacefully, the Guardian reports. He did not confirm or deny reports that radio host Ray Hadley had spoken to a hostage acting under instructions from a gunman. Abbott said at a press conference that Australians should go about their lives as normal but stay alert, the BBC reports. "I can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation, and our hearts go out to these people," he said. Uber, meanwhile, now says it's offering free rides out of central Sydney. At the start of the hostage crisis, the company quadrupled its prices to a minimum $100 Australian, saying "demand is off the charts," Mashable reports. |
CLOSE Our biggest fears can have our minds racing with scary images of bed bugs, but could you spot one? Angeli Kakade (@angelikakade) has the story. Buzz60
Two bedbugs (Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
A Brazilian model is suing Palm Desert Embassy Suites, a Hilton hotel, claiming she was "massacred" by bed bugs during a stay in one of their hotel rooms two years ago.
In a lawsuit filed in Riverside County Superior Court, Sabrina Jales St. Pierre says a severe reaction to the bites affected her ability to model and caused her pain, discomfort and emotional distress.
Jales St. Pierre, who has modeled for brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Valentino, Versace and Victoria’s Secret, is seeking monetary and punitive damages against the defendants, which include Hilton Worldwide, Inc., Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Inc., Embassy Suites Management, LLC.
“Sabrina started noticing the bed bug bites after her first night in the hotel, and eventually she was massacred by bites covering pretty much her entire body,” said her attorney, Brian Virag, founder of the My Bed Bug Lawyer, Inc.
Virag said the model’s bites were among the worst he has seen in his eight years specializing in bed bug litigation.
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In a lawsuit filed in Riverside County Superior Court, Sabrina Jales St. Pierre says a severe reaction to the bites affected her ability to model and caused her pain, discomfort and emotional distress. (Photo: Sabrina Jales St. Pierre)
"Like most victims of bed bugs, Sabrina also had nightmares about the experience, and she still experiences psychological trauma and fear of bed bugs today," Virag said. "This was especially traumatic for Sabrina because her body is her work, so this severely affected her work and her career. She had to continue working during the hotel stay, but the bite marks all over her body made her feel embarrassed, ashamed and humiliated.”
Carlos Mendoza, Embassy Suites in Palm Desert general manager, disputes the claims, saying there was never any evidence of a bed bug infestation.
Mendoza said the hotel’s chief engineer and house-keeping manager investigated the room for bed bugs the day the incident allegedly occurred. None were found The hotel then called an outside pest control company to perform a second inspection and also found no evidence of bed bugs.
But, he said, the hotel agreed to dry clean Jales St. Pierre’s clothes in a gesture of good hospitality.
“The comfort and health and safety of our guests is most important,” Mendoza said. “Our experience with bed bugs though is that people travel with them and bring them to hotels. Once they are in our rooms, we take corrective actions.”
Mendoza said when hotel officials heard about the model's allegations two years ago they were very concerned and they investigated the allegations thoroughly.
In a lawsuit filed in Riverside County Superior Court, Sabrina Jales St. Pierre says a severe reaction to the bites affected her ability to model and caused her pain, discomfort and emotional distress. (Photo: Sabrina Jales St. Pierre)
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“We did all the proper protocols and found no evidence,” he said. “Now we have to go through the lawsuit to defend the reputation of the hotel.”
The lawsuit alleges that the hotel didn’t maintain proper pest control protocols, thus exposing their guests to bedbugs. Virag said hotels need to be proactive about pests, not reactive.
“This really is an epidemic problem with hotel rooms,” Virag said. “You have an expectation that you’re going to be safe at a hotel, so when bed bugs infiltrate that space, it’s like a betrayal of trust.”
Virag said Jales St. Pierre had to seek medical attention from the bites that lasted "for an extended period of time."
“I would say it definitely had an impact on her ability to do her job as a model,” Virag told the Desert Sun. “She still has trauma from the physical and emotional aspect of it to this day. Some people have permanent scarring from it, too.”
Virag had worked on lawsuits against Hilton hotels in the past. In October 2017, he represented an Arkansas family that was exposed to bed bugs during a one-night stay at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rancho Cucamonga. He obtained a $546,000 jury verdict against that property.
Virag said he ventured into the bed bug business because he “wanted to give a voice to those who don’t have one…because I really have a deep understanding of what people go through when exposed to bed bugs.”
Desert Sun reporter Nicole Hayden covers the cities of La Quinta, Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert. She can be reached at Nicole.Hayden@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4623. Follow her on Twitter @Nicole_A_Hayden.
Read or Share this story: https://desert.sn/2MYTWp7 ||||| Disney Sued I Found Bed Bugs In Disneyland Hotel ... They Sucked My Blood!!!
Disney Sued For Bed Bugs at Disneyland Hotel
EXCLUSIVE
Disney took "A Bug's Life" from the big screen and into the bedroom ... according to a new lawsuit filed by a woman claiming the Disneyland Hotel is infested by bed bugs.
According to legal docs, obtained by TMZ, Ivy Lizette Ewell Eldridge says she developed a severe skin rash over her entire body after an April stay in the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, and the hotel failed to tell her about a bed bug infestation.
In the suit, she says bed bugs latched onto her body while she slept and "sucked her blood until they were gorged." She claims the rash was so bad, she needed medical treatment.
We've obtained photos of her alleged injuries and, yeah ... they're gross.
Ivy means business -- she's hired Brian Virag from the firm, MyBedBugLawyer, Inc. to rep her in court. She's seeking money to cover her medical costs, pain, suffering and lost wages. | – A woman who's modeled for Valentino, Versace, and Victoria's Secret is suing a Hilton hotel in California, claiming she was "massacred" by bedbugs. Brazilian model Sabrina Jales St. Pierre says she had a severe reaction to bedbug bites that required medical attention and affected her ability to model while staying at Palm Desert Embassy Suites two years ago. Attorney Brian Virag, who secured in October a $546,000 jury verdict over bedbugs at a Hilton Garden Inn, says the bites "covering pretty much her entire body" were among the worst he's seen. Jales St. Pierre was "embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated" but had to keep working, he says, per the Palm Springs Desert Sun, adding "she still experiences psychological trauma" and is seeking monetary and punitive damages. Photos shared as part of the lawsuit, at least one of which includes a dated newspaper, show large red welts covering the model's shoulder, back, and legs, per the Los Angeles Times. Describing the site of the 2016 incident as "an independently owned and managed franchise property," Hilton directed questions to Embassy Suites. The general manager of the Palm Desert location essentially accuses Jales St. Pierre of lying. The hotel agreed to dry-clean her clothes after she complained, but officials and an outside pest-control company investigated and found no evidence of a bedbug infestation, Carlos Mendoza tells the Desert Sun. "We did all the proper protocols," he says. "Now we have to go through the lawsuit to defend the reputation of the hotel." (This family won $1.6 million over bedbugs.) |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows disappeared while out playing
A convicted paedophile has been found guilty of murdering two schoolgirls who were found strangled and sexually assaulted near Brighton 32 years ago.
Russell Bishop, 52, had protested his innocence since the bodies of Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway were found.
Cleared of their murders in 1987, Bishop went on to attack a seven-year-old girl within three years, leaving her for dead in 1990, but she survived.
He was convicted of the double murder in a second trial at the Old Bailey.
After Nicola and Karen were found dead, the case became known as the Babes in the Wood.
The guilty verdicts came exactly 31 years to the day of Bishop's original acquittal in 1987.
Families of the girls wept in court earlier as the jury delivered the verdicts after two-and-a-half hours.
Image copyright BBC News Image caption Bishop was found guilty exactly 31 years on from his first acquittal
Afterwards, Karen's mother Michelle Hadaway described Bishop as an "evil monster".
"We finally have justice for Karen and Nicola," she said.
"Time stood still for us in 1986. To us, them beautiful girls will always be nine years old. They will never grow up."
Speaking outside the Old Bailey, she said: "What people like Bishop inflict on the families of their victims is a living death.
"They take the lives of children but they also take the lives of the families left behind."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Barrie Fellows, who has epilepsy, says his daughter Nicola was always there for him
The Fellows family said in a statement that the two families had been "united in grief", and while the verdicts did not bring the girls back, other children were now safe from Bishop.
They added: "He is a monster. A predatory paedophile. Russell Bishop truly is evil personified.
"During the past eight weeks, we have endured reliving the horrific details of their murders and we have learned an awful lot about the true meaning of heartbreak all over again."
The two girls, aged nine, who were scared of the dark, went missing from their homes after they had gone out to play on 9 October 1986.
They were found in Wild Park the next day, lying together in a woodland den as if they were sleeping.
The trial heard former roofer Bishop had spotted the girls playing in the park near their home and attacked them.
On 10 October, he had joined the search for Nicola and Karen, claiming his dog was a trained tracker, and was nearby when two teenagers spotted the girls' bodies.
Image copyright PA Image caption A memorial tree stands in Wild Park, where the girls died
Afterwards, Bishop gave conflicting accounts to police and produced a series of fake alibis.
But he described details of the murder scene which only the killer could have known, jurors were told.
Judge Mr Justice Sweeney said Bishop would be sentenced on Tuesday, and must be present at the hearing.
Bishop chose to give evidence in his defence, but not to return during cross-examination, and then did not attend for the rest of the trial.
A DNA breakthrough led to the fresh trial taking place under double jeopardy laws. Bishop's 1987 acquittal was quashed and the second trial ordered.
The DNA came from a blue Pinto sweatshirt that was initially identified as belonging to Bishop by his former partner Jennifer Johnson, who then denied it in the first trial.
Senior investigating officer Det Supt Jeff Riley refused to rule out a perjury investigation.
Image copyright PA Image caption The Babes in the Wood case still affects people in the city
After Bishop's conviction, Nigel Pilkington, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said the verdicts marked the end of a long fight for justice by the families, praising their "remarkable resilience".
He described Bishop as an "extremely dangerous" man who had been convicted on "overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence".
Mr Pilkington also said Bishop had tried to blame Nicola's father to create the "most havoc" possible, adding: "There is not a shred of evidence against Barrie Fellows."
Calling Bishop a "wicked" paedophile, Det Supt Riley said the murder case was one of the most "high-profile and complex" in Sussex Police history and one that still affected people in the city.
"We have never forgotten or given up," he said.
"This is a moment to remember the two girls that died at the hands of a predatory and vicious killer that refused for 32 years to face up to what he did and still does."
Det Supt Riley added: "I sincerely hope the families can find some peace and look forward to the next chapter in their lives." ||||| A convicted paedophile has been found guilty of the “babes in the wood” murders at the end of a retrial that drew on scientific advances in forensics 32 years after two schoolgirls were killed.
Russell Bishop had been accused of sexually assaulting and strangling Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in October 1986 in woods about half a mile from Moulsecoomb, the area of Brighton where both girls lived.
The guilty verdicts were described as marking the end of a 32-year fight for justice for the girls’ families, who hugged each other and wept in court on Monday as the jury delivered its verdict.
“Time stood still for us in 1986. To us them beautiful girls will always be nine years old. They will never grow up,” said Michelle Hadaway, Karen’s mother, who described Bishop as an “evil monster”. “What people like Bishop inflict on the families of their victims is a living death,” she added.
Lee Hadaway, Karen’s father, died in 1998.
In a joint statement, the Fellows family said: “The guilty verdict doesn’t bring Nicola and Karen back, but we know that other children are now safe from the hands of Russell Bishop.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Russell Bishop. Photograph: Sussex police/PA
After demonstrating that there was new and compelling evidence against Bishop in the form of scientific material, the prosecution had shown the jury how he attempted to conceal his crimes through lies, said the Crown Prosecution Service.
This included DNA evidence which provided what the CPS described as a “one-in-a-billion” DNA match linking Bishop to a sweatshirt which was at the scene of the murders.
The case had never been closed and had become the largest and longest-running inquiry in the history of Sussex police. A retrial was made possible after Bishop’s 1987 acquittal on the same charges was quashed at the court of appealin light of new evidence.
Bishop, who was not present to hear he was being convicted on the 31st anniversary of his original acquittal, will be required to appear when he is sentenced on Tuesday after the eight-week trial.
It also emerged on Monday that Bishop’s former partner could face a perjury investigation over her conduct at his murder trial at Lewes crown court in 1987. Jennifer Johnson had initially identified the sweatshirt which was found discarded along Bishop’s route home in Brighton as belonging to him, but then denied it in court.
She was not called by the prosecution in the second trial but another of Bishop’s former partners said he had been violent towards Johnson.
Nigel Pilkington, a CPS lawyer, suggested the result of the 1987 trial could have been “wholly different” if Johnson had not changed her story.
“Obviously if somebody has not told the truth in a case which has been a miscarriage of justice for 32 years, that’s a serious matter, if it turns out to be so. But we will wait to see if police make a decision to investigate,” he added.
Both Karen and Nicola had been afraid of the dark and the latter’s father had banned her from playing in an area known as Wild Park, even saying the “bogeyman” lived there, the court was told.
However, Bishop spotted the two nine-year-olds playing in the park near their home at around dusk on 9 October 1986 and seized his opportunity, the prosecution said.
During the attack, he punched Nicola in the face, to “subdue” or “punish” her for being disrespectful to his teenage girlfriend earlier that day, suggested Brian Altman QC.
The court heard that as well as the DNA evidence, fibre transfers linked the sweatshirt to the girls, the murder scene and Bishop’s home. Dried red paint on the sleeve was matched to a flake on Nicola’s neck and Karen’s T-shirt, providing “very strong support” they had recent contact with the garment.
There were also hundreds of ivy hairs on the sweatshirt like those at the scene of the murders. As well as the evidence from the sweatshirt, a DNA match to Bishop was found on Karen’s left forearm, jurors heard.
Bishop had returned to live in the Brighton area after his acquittal, but less than three years later, in February 1990, committed offences involving the attempted murder, kidnapping and indecent assault of a seven-year-old girl in the Whitehawk area of the city.
She survived and identified Bishop as her attacker, the jury was told. This, together with other evidence, led to his conviction for that crime in December 1990.
During the trial this year, Bishop tailored his defence to the new evidence and claimed he had touched the girls to feel for a pulse on the day after the killings, when he had joined the search for them and was nearby when they were found. However, two teenagers who had spotted the bodies insisted that he could not have come close.
Acting on instructions, Bishop’s defence team had also cast suspicion on Nicola’s father, Barrie Fellows, suggesting that police spent decades investigating the wrong man. The 69-year-old was reduced to tears during the trial by the claims against him.
The defence team also cast doubt on the new evidence, suggesting it could have been contaminated.
Det Supt Jeff Riley described Bishop as a “wicked” paedophile.
He said: “I still feel it’s a shadow over Brighton to this day. I’m very proud of the investigation we have put together. We have been meticulous. We have never given up on this investigation.” ||||| Paedophile Russell Bishop has been found guilty of the Babes in the Wood murders more than 30 years after a bungled police and forensic operation saw him walk free from court.
The 52 year-old was finally convicted of the sexually motivated murders of nine-year-olds Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, who were strangled to death in October 1986.
The families of the two girls cheered members of the jury as the verdict was handed down at the Old Bailey on the anniversary of his original acquittal.
Bishop was not in court having refused to leave his cell and attend. He will be sentenced on Tuesday.
Bishop was initially charged with shocking crimes in 1987, but was cleared by a jury at Lewes Crown Court after a catalogue of forensic mistakes torpedoed the prosecution case.
Tragically, three years later, when Bishop should have been languishing in prison, he struck again, attacking a seven-year-old in almost identical circumstances. | – Nothing can bring back Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, 9-year-old girls murdered in the UK in 1986. "But we know that other children are now safe from the hands of Russell Bishop," family members said Monday as the 52-year-old convicted pedophile was found guilty of sexually assaulting and strangling the schoolgirls in a wooded area half a mile from their Brighton neighborhood on Oct. 9, 1986. Based on what prosecutors described as a "one-in-a-billion" DNA match linking a discarded sweatshirt to Bishop, the girls, and the murder scene, the convictions came exactly 31 years after Bishop's acquittal on the same charges, reports the Guardian. An ex-girlfriend had initially said the sweatshirt found discarded along Bishop's route home in Brighton belonged to him, but she denied that claim in court in 1987. "Certainly, if she had not changed her story, it might have been a wholly different thing," a prosecutor tells the Telegraph, raising the possibility of a perjury investigation. Not only was Bishop's DNA found on Karen's left forearm, but dried paint on the sweatshirt matched flakes found on her shirt and Nicola's neck, according to prosecutors. They described Bishop attacking the girls at a park around dusk, though defense attorneys instead suggested the involvement of Nicola's father, who was brought to tears during the trial. Afterward, the family had harsh words for their daughter's killer, serving life for the 1990 attempted murder, kidnapping, and indecent assault of a 7-year-old girl, per the BBC: "He is a monster. A predatory pedophile. Russell Bishop truly is evil personified." He'll be sentenced Tuesday. (A podcast might've helped solve a 1982 murder.) |
Syniah Martinez, 17, of the 5100 block of Spruce Street, Philadelphia, remains at large. She has been identified as one of two teenage girls allegedly involved in a series of robberies.
UPPER DARBY >> Serial robbers preying on cabbies and women in late June have been identified as two teenage girls who will be charged as adults, police said.
Kemonie McKee, 16, of the 300 block of North 61st Street, Philadelphia, surrendered on Sunday and jailed in lieu of posting $500,000 cash bail after arraignment on Monday.
Her alleged accomplice, identified as Syniah Martinez, 17, of the 5100 block of Spruce Street, Philadelphia, remains at large.
“They are real scumbags,” township Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said. “When you hold a gun to someone’s head, that’s being a violent predator. They are both facing charges as adults because of the sheer terror of these two girls for terrorizing people with a gun. These were serial holdups, a two-person crime wave. They just wanted money.”
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Police continue to search for an unidentified man for his involvement as the driver of the getaway car in one of the robberies.
According to Chitwood, the string of robberies in Upper Darby began when two taxi drivers were dispatched to separate locations on June 19.
A 35-year-old cab driver, employed with Get A Cab, was dispatched to the 100 block of Glendale Road to pick up a fare at 9:30 p.m. June 19.
“One of the women approached and then a second woman came up to the driver’s side with a firearm,” Chitwood said. “She held the gun to the driver’s head and demanded money. He handed over about $100 and the two robbers ran away. Less than two hours later at 11:30 p.m. it was the same thing. The driver, 43, employed by County Cab, was dispatched to Copley Road and one of the women opened the door and put the gun to his head. He handed over $90.”
Police were searching for the bandits in the cab driver holdups when the duo allegedly attacked and robbed two women, ages 52 and 86, visiting from Ecuador on June 23 on Kent Road.
“An 86-year-old woman was hit with a gun on the arm when she refused to turn over her handbag,” Chitwood said. “It’s the same women committing these holdups. It’s the same M.O. and the same physical description except in the third one involving the two female victims they were seen getting into the back seat of a car.”
The vehicle was first identified as a Chevy Impala but later identified as a Hyundai Sonata, and was allegedly stolen in Philadelphia in a carjacking. A total of $900 and two cell phones were stolen in the robbery-purse snatches.
Nothing has been recovered.
“This is an ongoing investigation that exploded,” Chitwood said. “Both girls were identified by the cab drivers. Detectives Phil Lydon and Justin Clark with Philadelphia police officers did a great job. These detectives did not stop. They worked around the clock in Upper Darby and Philadelphia. They got locations and they got names of potential suspects. Philly police really helped us out. It was a great collaborative effort. We beat the bush pretty good to find the female robbers.
“We believe they are also involved in three pizza delivery jobs in Philadelphia.”
According to Chitwood, McKee gave a statement and admitted using a black BB gun in the robberies.
An innocent victim in the crime wave is the 11-year-old sister of Martinez, who was in the alleged stolen car with the girls after one heist.
She suffered a broken arm when the car they were driving crashed in Philadelphia, Chitwood said.
McKee was arraigned on two counts of robbery, theft and related offenses for the cabbie incidents and two counts of robbery, theft and assault for the attack on the two women on Kent Road. ||||| PHILADELPHIA (CBS) —Upper Darby Police on Monday announced a break in a series of violent armed robberies that took place in the township over the last two weeks.
Police have charged 16-year-old Kemonie McKee of Philadelphia as an adult.
Police say McKee and 17-year-old Syniah Martinez robbed two cab drivers within hours of each other in a residential neighborhood near 69th Street.
“How do you get into the head of a 16-year-old?” Superintendent Michael Chitwood said. “I mean she’s a baby committing adult crimes.”
The crime spree began June 19.
Police: Teen Girls Rob 2 Cabbies, 2 Tourists In Upper Darby
In each crime, the cab drivers were held at gunpoint.
Days later, an 86-year-old woman and a 52-year-old woman, who were both visiting from Ecuador, reportedly lost almost $1,000 in a robbery on Kent Road.
When the 86-year-old tried to resist, she got a pistol forced into her chest.
Police say McKee and Martinez are responsible.
“They were terrorizing people – I mean how do you rob an 86 year old woman!” Chitwood said. “Give me a break.”
In one of the cases, the teens allegedly had assistance from a getaway driver.
It was somewhat of a lucky break for officers as they were led down a whole other path. The car was stolen in a carjacking in Philadelphia during the robbery of a pizza driver, several days prior. ||||| Police are searching for two armed teen girls who robbed cab drivers and tourists in Upper Darby. NBC10's Denise Nakano speaks to two of the victims as the investigation continues.
Police arrested two teen girls accused of robbing two cab drivers, a mother and daughter visiting their family from Ecuador, and a Domino's Pizza.
Kemonie McKee, 16, of Philadelphia and Synia Martinez, 15, were both arrested and charged with robbery, assault, conspiracy and other related offenses.
Police say the girls first targeted a cab driver on June 19 shortly before 9:30 p.m. The teens called the cab driver to the 100 block of Glendale Road in Upper Darby, according to investigators. When he arrived, one of the girls began talking to him to distract him while the second girl pulled out a gun and aimed it at his head, police said. They then allegedly stole the cab driver's phone and $100.
About two hours later the girls called another cab driver to the 200 block of Copley Road in Upper Darby and used the same method to rob him once he arrived, investigators said. The teens allegedly stole $80 in cash during the second incident. The cab drivers were not hurt in either incident.
"Cab driver arrives, starts a conversation, next thing you know he's got a gun to his head," Chitwood said.
On June 21, the girls robbed a Domino's Pizza on the 6400 block of Race Street in Southwest Philadelphia, police said. A surveillance photo of one of the suspects during that robbery was obtained by NBC10.
Photo credit: Philadelphia Police
On June 23, the two girls allegedly robbed a mother and daughter from Ecuador who were visiting their family in Upper Darby. Martha Chacon, 52, and her mother Maria Cardenas, 86, said they were both leaving their family members' home on Kent Road at 9:40 a.m. when they were approached by the two girls.
"She came up close to me, got really close and put the gun right here," Chacon said.
The girls allegedly shoved Chacon in the chest and took her purse which contained $200. They then struggled with Cardenas before hitting her in the arm with a gun and taking her purse which contained $700 and other items, according to police.
"I didn't want to let go," Cardenas said. "I grabbed my little purse with two hands. I had money, my watch, some other little things. They even took my denture that was inside."
After robbing the mother and daughter, the teen girls left the scene in a dark gray Hyundai Sonata which was captured on surveillance video, police said. Police say a third suspect was driving the getaway vehicle.
Surveillance photo of the suspects' getaway vehicle.
Photo credit: Surveillance
On Sunday, McKee surrendered to Upper Darby Police while Martinez was taken into custody by Philadelphia Police Tuesday. Both teen girls are being charged as adults.
(L to R), Kemonie McKee, 16, and Synia Martinez, 15.
Photo credit: Upper Darby Police
Police also say two anonymous people donated $1000 each to Chacon and Cardenas. ||||| Man accused in murder, rape of boy, 1, had been charged with attempted murder at 15
Man accused in murder, rape of boy, 1, had been charged with attempted murder at 15 Jun 13
Stephanie Farr has been a reporter with the Daily News since 2007. She covers everything from crime to basic human decency.
Caliph Douglass, 32, has been charged with aggravated assault, fleeing police, and related offenses for allegedly hitting a 6-year-old girl and her aunt, 44, with his dirt bike in Upper Darby Saturday.
An unlicensed dirt bike rider who hit a 6-year-old girl and her aunt on 69th Street in Upper Darby on Saturday and then fled has a lengthy record of criminal charges including attempted murder, Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said Sunday.
Caliph Douglass, 32, of South Philadelphia, who suffered a collapsed lung and a spinal injury during the chaotic episode, was arraigned Sunday morning in his hospital bed at Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Chitwood said. He faces charges of aggravated assault, robbery, fleeing police, driving under a suspended license, and related offenses. His bail was set at $1 million.
The girl hit by the dirt bike was listed in critical condition Sunday at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Her 44-year-old aunt, who had been crossing the street with her and initially was reported to be her grandmother, was listed in guarded condition at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chitwood said.
The episode began Saturday afternoon when Philadelphia Police were searching for dirt bikes and ATVs — which are illegal on city streets — when they tried to pull over Douglass, who allegedly fled and led them on a pursuit into Upper Darby.
Around 1:30 p.m. on the township's 69th Street, busy with Easter shoppers and families attending a children's show at the Tower Theater, Douglass sped down the street along the yellow line dividing the north and south lanes, Chitwood said.
The woman and her niece, who were shopping on 69th Street, were walking at the crosswalk when the dirt bike struck them, Chitwood said. "He hits the little girl first at full speed, then the aunt. Both fly up in the air, land on the highway, and are knocked unconscious."
The dirt bike crashed and Douglass ran toward Ludlow Street, pulled a driver from a 2002 Nissan, and stole the vehicle, Chitwood said.
Police found the stolen car a short time later parked on the 6400 block of Market Street next to a wooded area. Douglass had parked the car and fled into a homeless encampment, where he began asking people who lived there if he could use a cellphone to call for someone to pick him up, Chitwood said.
When police found Douglass — who was bleeding from his face and covered in bruises — he was with a homeless man who was trying to help him walk and did not know how Douglass had been injured, Chitwood said.
Douglass was taken into custody and initially taken to Delaware County Memorial Hospital, where he asked a nurse if the little girl he hit had died, Chitwood said.
People in the large crowd at 69th Street took pictures of Douglass — who was wearing a red hoodie when the dirt bike crashed — and many of them have shared their photos with police, Chitwood said.
"It was like a fishbowl," he said. "We have pictures of him running, pictures of him on the bike, pictures of him in the hoodie. Numerous people took photos."
In 2007, Douglass was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and firearms violations in Philadelphia, but the case was dismissed for lack of prosecution, according to court records. He has been found guilty of numerous drug offenses and of driving under the influence of intoxicants, court records show. Douglass is currently on probation for possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, according to court documents.
According to his Facebook page, Douglass attended Glen Mills Schools, the school in Delaware County for court-adjudicated youths..
Douglass is also a father, having proudly posted photos with his baby son to his Facebook page last year.
Meanwhile, as a result of the crash, Philadelphia police are facing questions about their pursuit policy.
The department’s directive on vehicle pursuits states that they should be conducted only when a chase might prevent death or serious injury or the escape of a person believed to have committed a forcible felony, such as murder, or believed to have a deadly weapon other than a vehicle.
The directive also states that officers “may not pursue outside of the boundaries of Philadelphia” unless given permission to do so by a higher-ranking supervisor.
“Continuously evaluate the benefits of an immediate capture against the safety of the public, other officers and the suspect,” the directive reads. “An officer can self-terminate a pursuit at any time.”
A Philadelphia police spokesman said nobody was available Sunday to comment on whether the department’s policies were followed during Saturday’s pursuit. | – "You could write a book" about Kemonie McKee and Syniah Martinez, a Philly-area police official tells the Philadelphia Inquirer, but the story about the two teen girls wouldn't exactly be a fairy tale. Instead, McKee, 16, and Martinez, 17, pulled off "some very heinous, nasty crimes," Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood says, and they've now been charged as adults for the armed robberies of two taxi drivers, which took place just hours apart June 19 in Upper Darby, CBS Philly reports. In the cab crimes, which are said to have taken place at gunpoint (though Chitwood notes the teens say it was just a BB gun), police say the girls made off with a grand total of $100 from one taxi, $80 from the second. The girls are also accused of robbing two women from Ecuador, identified by NBC Philadelphia as a mother and daughter, at gunpoint on June 23 in Upper Darby. The teens have been charged with aggravated assault and related offenses in all three cases. In the Ecuador case, $900 and a cellphone were taken from the 86-year-old and 52-year-old tourists, who were also assaulted. The girls are also suspected of the carjacking robberies of two Philly pizza delivery drivers. Martinez's 11-year-old sister, meanwhile, suffered a broken arm when one of the getaway cars that she was riding in crashed, Chitwood tells the Delaware County Daily Times. While cops seek out a male adult they think was involved in planning the crimes and possibly serving as the getaway driver, they note a somewhat happy ending: Two anonymous locals came forward with $1,000 for each of the Ecuadorian women. "They felt bad ... people would come here from another country and be victims of a robbery," Chitwood tells CBS. (A teen pimped out other teens.) |
FILE – In this Dec. 22, 2016, file photo, Colo, the world's first gorilla born in a zoo, opens a present in her enclosure during her 60th birthday party at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Columbus, Ohio.... (Associated Press)
FILE – In this Dec. 22, 2016, file photo, Colo, the world's first gorilla born in a zoo, opens a present in her enclosure during her 60th birthday party at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium said Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, that Colo, the oldest known gorilla... (Associated Press)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The world's first gorilla born in a zoo, a female named Colo who became the oldest known living gorilla in the U.S., has died at age 60, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium said Tuesday.
Colo died in her sleep overnight, less than a month after her birthday, the zoo announced. She surpassed the usual life expectancy of captive gorillas by two decades.
"Colo touched the hearts of generations of people who came to see her and those that cared for her over her long lifetime," zoo president Tom Stalf said in a statement. "She was an ambassador for gorillas and inspired people to learn more about the critically endangered species and motivated them to protect gorillas in their native habitat."
Colo had been on exhibit in view of visitors on Monday, when the zoo offered free admission for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Fond of baseball caps, the gorilla was seen in her enclosure toting around a yellow cap with a gorilla on it, given to her by the zoo team caring for her.
The zoo said the gorilla's body will be cremated and the ashes will be buried at an undisclosed location at the zoo.
Colo was born at the zoo on Dec. 22, 1956. She eventually became a mother of three, grandmother of 16, great-grandmother of 12 and great-great-grandmother of three.
Hundreds of people had gathered at the zoo last month to see Colo for her birthday, when the zoo decorated her enclosure with multicolored construction paper chains and cakes of squash and beet and cornbread with mashed potato parsley frosting.
Zoo officials said a post-mortem examination was planned to determine Colo's cause of death. The median life expectancy for female gorillas in human care is 37.5 years.
Veterinarians recently removed a malignant tumor from Colo, but the zoo had said she was doing well. The necropsy could help show whether the cancer contributed to her death, but the results aren't anticipated for several weeks.
Zoo officials said they also planned to take blood and tissue samples to assist with zoologists' efforts to learn more about western lowland gorillas.
Colo is the second zoo gorilla to die in Ohio this month. Cleveland Metroparks Zoo said one of its two male western lowland gorillas, a 32-year-old named Bebac, died Jan. 6.
Zoo experts say animals in human care are living longer than ever as early diagnosis and improvements in medical care extend their lives. The oldest known living male gorilla, Ozzie, is 55 years old and lives at the Atlanta Zoo, which has a geriatric gorilla specialty.
Packy, an Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo, is now 54 and the oldest male of his species in North America.
Nikko, a 33-year-old snow monkey at the Minnesota Zoo, is the oldest male snow monkey in North America. Zulie, a 30-year-old Black Howler monkey at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is the oldest living female Howler monkey in captivity.
___
Find the reporters on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus and http://www.twitter.com/kantele10 . ||||| Story highlights Colo turned 60 on December 22, extending the oldest gorilla record
She was a great-great grandmother
(CNN) There's been another gorilla death at a zoo in Ohio. And while this one is of natural causes, it's no less heart-breaking.
Colo was the oldest gorilla ever on record and the first to be born in human care. She died in her sleep at the Columbus Zoo early Tuesday.
She was 60, and lived two decades longer than most gorillas.
She leaves behind an extended family, including three children, 16 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.
"Colo touched the hearts of generations of people," the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium said . "She was an ambassador for gorillas and inspired people to learn more about the critically endangered species and motivated them to protect gorillas in their native habitat."
Read More | – On Monday, Colo the gorilla was seen by visitors to Ohio's Columbus Zoo toting around a baseball cap—a favorite item of hers, the AP reports. On Tuesday, the oldest gorilla ever recorded died in her sleep, less than a month after her 60th birthday. According to CNN, Colo, the first gorilla born in human care, lived 20 years longer than an average gorilla. In a Facebook post, zoo CEO Tom Stalf says Colo "touched the hearts of generations of people." Colo had recently had a malignant tumor removed but was believed to be doing well. A cause of death is yet to be determined. The zoo plans to cremate her and bury her remains. Colo leaves behind three children, 16 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren. |
Brian Taylor is director of Ivy Coach, a Manhattan company that advises families on how to get their students into elite colleges. A number of his clients are Asian American, and Taylor is frank about his strategy for them.
“While it is controversial, this is what we do,’’ he says. “We will make them appear less Asian when they apply.”
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That a hard working, high achieving Asian-American student would want to appear less Asian on a college application may seem counterintuitive. But Asian-American students already make up a disproportionate percentage of the student body at many select schools, compared to their share of the general population.
And that’s the problem.
Some call it “the bamboo ceiling” of racial quotas, telling stories of Asian-American students with perfect SAT scores and GPAs turned down by elite colleges who limit the number of Asians they will admit, effectively forcing them to face a higher bar for admissions than other racial groups, including whites.
In response, groups of Asians have filed lawsuits against top schools, including one on May 15 by a coalition accusing Harvard and other Ivy League institutions of using racial quotas to admit lesser qualified candidates over Asians.
And some families are turning to consultants who offer services aimed at helping their students stand out from the competition and avoid what James Chen calls “the Asian penalty” in admissions.
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Chen founded Asian Advantage College Consulting 20 years ago in response to what he considers bias against top Asian students in elite college admissions. His firm, which is based in Alameda, Calif., also has clients on the East Coast, he says, including Boston.
“The admissions officers are seeing a bunch of people who all look alike: high test scores, high grades, many play musical instruments and tend not to engage in more physical sports like football,” Chen says.
If students come to him early in high school, Chen will direct them to “switch to another musical instrument” or “play a sport a little bit out of their element.”
And for the college essay, don’t write about your immigrant family, he tells them: “Don’t talk about your family coming from Vietnam with $2 in a rickety boat and swimming away from sharks.”
One of Chen’s New York clients is a girl who attended a top public examination high school in the city, where more than half the class is Asian. She got a perfect score on her SAT, was valedictorian, class president, and captain of the badminton team.
Her father, who asked that the family not be identified, told the Globe that he contacted Asian Advantage when his daughter was a sophomore. He and his wife emigrated from China, and their daughter was born here. “In general, we have the impression that it’s not easy for Asian Americans to apply to college,” he said.
Chen said that he worked with the teenager to “deemphasize the Asianness in her resume.” She played the piano, but he encouraged her to participate in musical theater. Badminton was a no-no on her college app: Too many Asian students play racquet sports. Ditto for Asian Club. And she was to avoid saying that she was interested in biology or wanted to be a doctor.
“She put down social sciences,” Chen says.
She was accepted early admission into Harvard.
At Ivy Coach, much of the advice Taylor offers his clients echoes that of Chen. Be careful, he tells them, to avoid appearing like a “grade grubber”: “Schools don’t want students who care too much about their grades. They want kids who love learning.”
Ivy Coach offers an “unlimited package” for students for $100,000, which includes helping them throughout high school with all aspects of their college applications: testing, essays, letters of recommendation.
The Asian controversy is another aspect in the complex and charged debate over diversity and privilege in higher education. Some schools and education advocates say affirmative action and diversity should be defined by socioeconomic class as much as race or ethnicity. And many also point out that, despite stereotypes, there is wide diversity within the Asian demographic: those from India, China, and southeast Asia differ greatly from one another.
It was a different story when the parents themselves were applying to college. Joe Chow didn’t feel hampered 40 years ago by the fact that he was Asian. In fact, it helped him.
“In the early 1970s, Asian-Americans were really an underrepresented minority,” he says. “So we benefited from the civil rights movement.” Chow graduated from Brandeis University and earned his MBA at MIT.
Chow and his wife Selina, who is board president of Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, encouraged their children to focus on English, speech, and performance.
“Our family is not totally traditional from an Asian perspective,” says Chow, a retired executive vice president at State Street who lives in Brookline. “Selina and I are much more comfortable with our children getting a good liberal arts education.”
Their oldest daughter went to Northwestern University, their son to Skidmore, and their youngest daughter is a junior at Colby College. Some of their Asian friends have questioned why they “wasted their time” on liberal arts over math and science.
At Ivy Coach, some of the toughest work is with the parents. “Asian-Americans are extremely competitive among each other,” Taylor says. “They want to impress.” Few such parents refer his firm to one another. “No one wants others to know they’re using us. But we always get the siblings and the cousins.”
That brand of hard-nosed ambition has paid dividends. The number of high-achieving Asian-American students applying to the top schools has soared in the past decade. According to the Pew Research Center, Asians are among the highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing groups in the nation.
At Princeton, 21 percent of the Class of 2018 is Asian American; Harvard’s is 20 percent. But the point raised by the lawsuits is that there are even more qualified Asian students who want to get into such selective schools. Asians make up about 5 percent of the US population.
“I think the successful Asian population has reached a tipping point,” says Elliot Place, who runs 1on1 Educational Consulting in Hingham. Just like high-achieving students of all ethnicities, Asians “have learned how to master the SAT, and they’ve mastered math and science. I think they’re frustrated that this doesn’t show up in their acceptance letters.”
The question now being asked by parents and students — and even attorneys: Is it discrimination or diversity that is bedeviling them?
The recent complaint by more than 60 Asian organizations against the Ivies called for an investigation and an end to racial quotas or balancing. The groups say that they are facing the kind of quotas that limited the number of Jews in the nation’s best schools through the middle of the 20th century.
In a 2014 lawsuit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nonprofit Students For Fair Admission allege that both schools discriminate against Asian applicants in favor of less qualified African-American and Latino students. The suit cited a 2009 Princeton University study of seven top colleges that concluded an Asian applicant needed an average 1460 SAT score to be admitted, while whites with similar academic qualifications needed 1320, Hispanics 1190, and blacks 1010.
Harvard’s general counsel, Robert Iuliano, defended the school’s admissions policy. “As the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, a class that is diverse on multiple dimensions, including on race, transforms the educational experience of students from every background and prepares our graduates for an increasingly pluralistic world,” he said.
And not all Asian Americans support the legal actions. Some groups released statements supporting affirmative action. “Neither of us believes that any racial or ethnic group should be subjected to quotas,” said Karen Narasaki and Michael Yaki, who serve on the US Commission on Civil Rights. “Nor do we believe that test scores alone entitle anyone to admission at Harvard. Students are more than test scores and grades.”
Julie J. Park is an education professor at the University of Maryland and author of the book, “When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education.” Despite a 1520 SAT score and many extracurriculars, she was rejected by Harvard and ended up at Vanderbilt on a full-tuition, “affirmative-action-based scholarship.”
She says that she understood the rejection: “Harvard did not necessarily need more students like me. Vanderbilt did.”
While she understands parent and student frustrations over rejections, Park says she doesn’t believe that they understand the numbers. “I’m not sure that people really get that so many students of all races get rejected,” she says.
Last year, Harvard had 37,305 applicants for 1,990 seats for the Class of 2019; Stanford chose 2,144 out of 42,487 applicants.
At Newton North High School, whose student body is 12 percent Asian, college and career counselor Brad MacGowan says he hasn’t heard complaints from Asian-American students about being singled out. “I don’t see a victim mentality around that,” he says. “The students looking at colleges here are doing really well and they realize it’s competitive for everybody.”
At Milton Academy, Rod Skinner agrees that the pressure is not exclusive to Asian students. “It’s playing itself out across all kinds of high-achieving pools of kids,” says Skinner, director of college counseling. “It all comes down to, how do you make yourself distinctive? What else do you have, basically?”
Joey Kim of Chicago was one of those accepted at Harvard. His parents and sister came to his graduation last week. Kim, 23, had also been accepted into other elite schools, including Yale.
Yes, he had top SATs and a stellar GPA, was first violinist in his high school orchestra — and had come here from Korea at age 8 with not a word of English. What set him apart from other Asian-American applicants?
“I fell in love with theater in high school, and did a lot of drama productions, and speech,” he says.
Does he feel there’s an Asian disadvantage at select colleges? “It’s hard for me to say because I came in on the right side of that,” he says. “I’m personally caught in between the tension of having a diverse campus here, which I witnessed and is a good thing, but at the same time I feel for those kids who are caught in the nerve-wracking position of achieving but not getting in.”
His sister is one of them. Jessica, 18, applied to 10 top schools and got into 5. “I didn’t get into Yale and Harvard, and was wait-listed at Princeton,” she says. She’ll attend the University of Pennsylvania in the fall.
While pleased with her acceptance, she notes classmates from other ethnic groups with qualifications similar to hers got into schools that rejected her. “For the most part, I think it [being Asian] hurt me,” she says.
More coverage:
• Harvard faces bias complaint from Asian-American groups
• What’s it like being poor at an Ivy League school?
• 12 ideas for making Boston more inclusive
• Google struggling to diversity beyond white, Asian men ||||| A coalition of more than 60 Asian-American groups filed a federal discrimination complaint against Harvard University, claiming racial bias in undergraduate admissions.
Asian-American students with almost perfect college entrance-exam scores, top 1 percent grade-point averages, academic awards and leadership positions are more likely to be rejected than similar applicants of other races, according to their administrative complaint, filed Friday with the US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Harvard denies any discrimination.
Their complaint, also filed with the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, reflects longstanding concern among academically high-performing Asian-Americans that they are held to a higher admissions standard at elite US colleges. While they represent about 6 percent of the US population and 21 percent of students admitted to Harvard’s freshman class this fall, they say they are being subjected to the kind of quotas that kept many Jews out of the same institutions in the first half of the 20th century.
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“So many in the Asian-American community have not spoken out,” said Yukong Zhao, 52, an executive at an engineering company and author of a book about Chinese culture who helped organize the groups filing the complaint. “We’ve been largely silent for 20 years.”
‘Holistic review’
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The coalition represents organizations such as the Houston Chinese Alliance, the Pakistan Policy Institute and the Sino Professionals Association, according to the complaint. It didn’t cite any individuals who had allegedly faced discrimination.
While Harvard officials hadn’t seen the complaint, Robert Iuliano, the school’s general counsel said in a statement that the college’s admissions policies comply fully with the law and are essential to the school’s mission.
“The college considers each applicant through an individualized, holistic review having the goal of creating a vibrant academic community that exposes students to a wide range of differences: background, ideas, experiences, talents and aspirations,” Iuliano said.
Affirmative action
Iuliano cited a landmark 1978 Supreme Court decision on affirmative action that referred to Harvard’s admission plan as an example of a legally sound approach. The treatment of Asian- Americans has factored into the debate over racial preferences for groups such as blacks and Hispanics, which survived a high court challenge in 2013.
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The filing marks the second complaint about admissions at Harvard in six months. Last year, Students for Fair Admissions Inc., a group which said it represents unidentified college applicants, filed a pending federal lawsuit in Boston against Harvard’s governing board, alleging that the school illegally limited admissions of Asian-Americans.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights first examined Harvard’s handling of Asian-American applicants more than 20 years ago. It turned up stereotyping by Harvard evaluators, such as this comment about one Asian-American candidate: “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”
Higher scores
It also documented that Harvard admitted Asian-Americans at a proportionally lower rate than white applicants even though the Asian-Americans had slightly stronger SAT scores and grades. The agency concluded in 1990 that Harvard didn’t violate civil rights laws because preferences for alumni children and recruited athletes, rather than racial discrimination, accounted for the gap. The new complaint also says Asian-Americans suffer in admissions from stereotyping, such as a belief they lack creativity.
Princeton investigation
In 2011, a rejected Asian-American student filed a complaint with the Education Department against Harvard and Princeton University that was withdrawn the next year. The Education Department’s civil-rights division still has an open investigation against Princeton, stemming from complaints in 2006 and 2008, which included an allegation that the school discriminated against students of Asian background in admissions, according to the Department.
Princeton said it doesn’t discriminate and considers each applicant individually in enrolling a class “that is both excellent and diverse.” A spokesman said the school makes decisions on “a case by case basis.”
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Last year, Asian-Americans had the highest mean scores of any racial group on the math and writing sections of the SAT college entrance exam, according to the College Board, the New York nonprofit that administers the exam. On the reading section, they outscore all but white students, whom they lagged only slightly on average. They also win more than their share of academic competitions, the complaint said.
Lower expectations
Asian-Americans represent 5.6 percent of the US population. At Harvard, Asian-Americans made up 21 percent of the freshman class admitted in March, more than any other group apart from whites. In 2006, the percentage was was 17.7. Harvard this year accepted 5.3 percent of all applicants, second to Stanford University in its selectivity, the schools said.
Asian-American high-school students have lower expectations for getting into top colleges because of their race, said Chunyan Li, an assistant accounting professor at Pace University, who helped recruit groups to join the complaint.
“That to me, as a mother, is really hurtful,” said Li, 46, who has two teenage children. “It is easier for people to rationalize that they are not working hard enough than saying there is systematic discrimination.”
‘Sea change’
The coalition cited research from a 2009 book co-authored by Thomas Espenshade, an economist and senior scholar at the office of Population Research at Princeton University.
If all other credentials are equal, Asian-Americans need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points above African-Americans out of a maximum 1,600 on the math and reading SAT to have the same chance of admission to a private college, the book found.
In an interview, Espenshade said more evidence is needed to prove that Asian-Americans are facing discrimination because the schools evaluate “soft information” such as essays and teacher recommendations. Still, the mounting complaints from Asian- Americans represent a “sea change.”
“In some sense, they’re moving into the mainstream of American democratic participation,” Espenshade said. Once- isolated voices “have become a crescendo.” ||||| A coalition of more than 60 Asian-American groups filed a complaint today against Harvard University, asking for an investigation into what it alleges are "discriminatory practices" in the Ivy League school's admission process.
“We want to eliminate discrimination of Asian Americans, and we want procedural justice for all racial groups,” Yukong Zhao, one of the chief organizers and a guest columnist with the Orlando Sentinel, told NBC News. “All racial groups should be treated equal.”
The complaint, which Zhao said has the support of a number of Chinese, Korean, Indian and Pakistani-American groups, asks that the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Education require that Harvard “immediately cease and desist from using racial quota or racial balancing” to admit students and “ensure that Harvard and other ivy league schools will never again discriminate against Asian-Americans or applicants of any other races.”
The coalition includes, among others, the Chinese-American Association of Orange County, in California; the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin, in New York; and the Pakistani Policy Institute, also in New York, Zhao said.
Over the years, Harvard has been accused of using race in its admissions process, with some claiming that the number of Asian-American students admitted annually has not kept pace with an overall increase in the Asian-American population. But others, including Khin Mai Aung of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, have said the accusation that Harvard uses quotas is one not rooted in fact.
In a written statement, Harvard University General Counsel Robert Iuliano said that Harvard College has a strong track-record of both recruiting and admitting Asian Americans to its school, with the percentage of admitted Asian Americans increasing from 17.6 percent to 21 percent in the last decade.
"The college's admissions policies are fully compliant with the law and are essential to the pedagogical objectives that underlie its educational mission," Luliano said. ||||| Asian-American applicants to Harvard University had among the strongest academic credentials, broad extracurricular interests, and impressed alumni in interviews, but consistently scored poorly by one key measure: charming admissions officers with their personality.
According to court documents filed Friday in an affirmative action lawsuit against Harvard University, Asian-Americans across the academic spectrum received lower personal ratings from the university’s admissions officers than their peers.
Those findings are the latest evidence in a lawsuit contending that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants and was aware for several years that the admissions process at one of the world’s most exclusive universities was stacked against them.
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The case is likely to go to trial this fall and may ultimately be decided years from now by the US Supreme Court. It is being closely watched by the Department of Justice, legal experts, and advocacy groups, and could change the way colleges use race in admissions decisions.
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The ratings, offering a rare glimpse into the oft-mysterious admissions process, measured whether students were likable, funny, helpful, courageous, widely respected, and a “good person,” according to filings submitted by the Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit group that is suing Harvard. The filings were based on a review of applicant data to Harvard from students seeking admission to the classes of 2014 to 2019.
Harvard’s own internal research also raised concerns about how Asian-American applicants are treated by the college’s selective admissions process, according to documents filed in US District Court in Boston by the organization.
Harvard has fought the release of its admissions information and many of the court documents remain redacted.
Friday’s filing “exposes the startling magnitude of Harvard’s discrimination against Asian-American applicants,” said Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions. Blum and his organization have been involved in anti-affirmative action cases and most recently backed a challenge to race-based admissions at the University of Texas that centered on a white student.
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Harvard on Friday rejected allegations that it discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The university also defended its use of race to ensure a diverse campus as legal and fair.
Students for Fair Admissions cherry-picked variables from six years of admissions data that it reviewed, Harvard officials said.
In fact, the admissions rate for Asian-Americans has grown by 29 percent in the past decade, Harvard officials said.
In its report on admissions data, Harvard found that being Asian-American had no material effect on gaining a seat at Harvard, according to the university’s court filing.
Harvard argued that Blum and his organization have failed to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the use of race in college admissions in the University of Texas case, and are now trying again with Asian-Americans.
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“Mr. Blum and his organization’s incomplete and misleading data analysis paint a dangerously inaccurate picture of Harvard College’s whole-person admissions process by omitting critical data and information factors, such as personal essays and teacher recommendations that directly counter his arguments,” said Anna Cowenhoven, a spokeswoman for Harvard.
Harvard defended its use of character and personality in deciding admissions, insisting that it gets nearly 40,000 applications for 1,600 freshman seats and can’t just rely on academics and extracurricular activities to evaluate students. Thirteen percent of its domestic applicants had perfect math SAT scores and more than 30 percent had a perfect grade-point average.
Harvard is unlikely to be the only elite university considering personal qualities as part of its admissions process, said Jon Boeckenstedt, an associate vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University in Chicago.
“When a university is very selective, they don’t want just A-students with high test scores,” Boeckenstedt said. “They want an interesting community. They are trying to impose a different sorting mechanism, because everybody looks alike.”
Students’ personal qualities are gleaned from alumni interviews, essays, and considerations about which extracurricular activities students participate in while in high school, said Maria Laskaris, a former admissions dean at Dartmouth College who now works as a senior private counselor at Top Tier Admissions, a Concord-based college counseling company.
“You’re trying to assemble a community that is diverse in the full sense of the word,” Laskaris said. “You want students to experience the world, through the eyes of their classmates. As you are thinking about building a residential community, you are thinking of students who will learn as much from each other as they do in the classroom.”
But based on Students for Fair Admissions’ review, the ratings of personal qualities hurt Asian-American students in particular at Harvard. Asian-Americans received top personal ratings only 22 percent of the time if they were in the top tenth of the academic ladder. On the other hand, white students in the top half of the academic ladder received the highest personal ratings at least 22 percent of the time.
An even greater share of Hispanic and African-American applicants were likely to get the top personal scores.
At Harvard, those personal scores were particularly important, and internal reports by the university suggested that they may have disadvantaged Asian-American students, according to court documents.
In 2013, Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research found that Asian-Americans would comprise 43 percent of an admitted class if admissions officers considered only academic qualifications and should make up 26 percent of the class when extracurricular activities and personal ratings are considered. Yet at that time, Asian-Americans made up 19 percent of the share of admitted students.
Asian-Americans accounted for about 23 percent of the students admitted into Harvard this past spring.
One of Harvard’s reports noted that, “Asian high achievers have lower rates of admission,” according to the court documents.
Blum and his organization argue in their filings that Harvard did nothing to address the inequity discovered by its own research into Asian-American admissions.
“Instead of taking even the most minor steps to address this problem, or conducting any further investigation, Harvard killed the investigation and buried the reports,” according to the organization’s court filings.
Harvard did seem aware that its research could draw controversy. Harvard’s research arm had conducted one of the studies to show that the university gives extra consideration to low-income students. But the data also demonstrated that the advantage given to low-income students was far less than what Harvard provided athletes and students whose parents attended Harvard, and that it had a “negative effect” on Asian applicants.
“To draw attention to the positive benefit that low-income students receive may also draw attention to the more controversial findings around Asians, or the expected results around legacies and athletes,” Harvard’s research division warned in a draft report that discouraged publicly sharing the results, according to court documents.
Harvard officials said those old internal reports were preliminary and incomplete and pointed to its most recent report that found no discrimination against Asian-American applicants.
Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at deirdre.fernandes@globe.com . Follow her on Twitter @fernandesglobe | – Asian-American groups recently filed a federal complaint against Harvard, claiming the university holds Asian applicants to higher standards. But while that complaint is pending, the Boston Globe reports that breaking the "bamboo ceiling" is a thriving business, with coaches often advising applicants to appear, well … "less Asian," according to the director of NYC's Ivy Coach. Asians only make up about 5% of the US population, but, for example, 21% of Princeton's Class of 2018 is Asian-American, while Harvard's is 20%. But complaints focus on the many more qualified Asian-Americans who are being rejected because of what James Chen, founder of Asian Advantage College Consulting, calls "the Asian penalty." Coaches, therefore, focus on "deemphasiz[ing] the Asianness," as Chen says, to set them apart within their own demographic. Tips include trying different musical instruments (musical theater gets a thumbs-up over piano) and more physical sports like football. Chen also warns about immigrant tales in the application essay—"Don't talk about your family coming from Vietnam with $2 in a rickety boat," he tells the Globe—and says don't be a "grade grubber": "Schools don't want students who care too much about their grades. They want kids who love learning." Harvard's general counsel replies: "A class that is diverse on multiple dimensions, including on race, transforms the educational experience of students from every background." And an Asian-American professor adds, "I'm not sure that people really get that so many students of all races get rejected." (So why does that "Asian-American students are smarter" stereotype exist?) |
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Petro Poroshenko spoke about his plans for a ceasefire at a military graduation ceremony
Ukraine's president has set out proposals for a peace plan for eastern Ukraine involving a unilateral ceasefire by government forces.
Petro Poroshenko said the temporary truce - expected "in hours or days" - would allow pro-Russian militants in the region to lay down their arms.
One separatist group has already rejected the proposal.
Mr Poroshenko's comments come after he held a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Media caption Petro Poroshenko is known in Ukraine as the "Chocolate King"
They discussed a solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels are battling government forces.
More than 30 gunmen were killed and wounded in fighting near the town of Shchastya in the Luhansk region on Tuesday, a spokesman for the government's "anti-terrorism operation" said.
Kiev also said that 147 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed and 267 injured in fighting since March.
UN human rights investigators say the security situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has deteriorated significantly over the past month.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Flames could be seen erupting from the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod Pipeline on Tuesday
Image copyright AFP Image caption Government forces have been fighting pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine since April
A report revealed a rising number of abductions and killings, with civilians increasingly caught in the crossfire and thousands forced to flee the violence.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has said an explosion at a major pipeline in central Ukraine was caused by a bomb.
He said explosives had been placed under a concrete support at the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod Pipeline.
No-one was reported injured by the blast. European and Russian companies said gas exports were not affected by Tuesday's pipeline explosion.
'New warfare'
Speaking at a graduation ceremony at the National University of Defence in Kiev, Mr Poroshenko said a "brief" truce would be introduced to allow "Russian mercenaries" to leave Ukraine.
"The peace plan begins with my order for a unilateral ceasefire," Mr Poroshenko announced on Wednesday.
"We expect that disarmament of military groups and restoration of order will take place right after it."
The president added that his peace plan would have 14 points, including the closure of the Ukrainian-Russian border and changes to the constitution to give more power to the regions.
A presidential spokesman told the BBC the ceasefire could be announced in "hours or days" but gave no further details.
But Denis Pushilin, one of the leaders of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, a breakaway area which has asked to join Russia, rejected the proposal for the rebels to lay down their arms, Russia's TV channel Dozhd reports.
Mr Poroshenko also said Russia was waging "a new type of warfare" with the use of professional subversive groups and volunteers.
The Kremlin confirmed that Mr Poroshenko and Mr Putin "touched upon" the issue of a possible ceasefire during their talks on Tuesday, but gave no details.
Meanwhile Russia says it has launched a criminal investigation into Ukraine's interior minister and a local governor over the killings of civilians and journalists.
Mr Avakov and Igor Kolomoisky, governor of Dnipropetrovsk, are accused of organising military operations, including rocket strikes, in cities such as Donetsk, Sloviansk and Mariupol that left more than 100 dead, Russian state media said. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mark Lowen said rebels seemed to be grouping together to seize control
Russia says it is "open to dialogue" with the new president of Ukraine, as initial results suggested Petro Poroshenko would win its election.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said military action must end against separatists in the east.
Mr Poroshenko said he would meet Russian leaders soon but vowed to take a tough line on any armed separatists.
Unrest continues in the east, with pro-Russia militiamen halting flights at Donetsk airport.
Heavy gunfire is now reported there, with thick black smoke rising from the area. Military aircraft have been seen overhead.
Meanwhile election observers said Sunday's vote was a genuine one that largely met international standards.
The mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) also said it gave the new president "legitimacy" to open a dialogue with separatists in the east.
'No Somalia'
Mr Lavrov told a press conference in Moscow: "We are ready for dialogue with Kiev's representatives, with Petro Poroshenko."
Mr Lavrov said EU and US mediation were not needed, but warned Kiev that continuing military operations against the separatists would be a "colossal mistake".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Petro Poroshenko: "Without Russia it would be much less effective or almost impossible to speak about the security in the whole region"
He said: "As our president [Vladimir Putin] has said, we shall treat the results of the expression of will of the Ukrainian people with respect."
But Mr Lavrov said Kiev must also treat its people with respect and that dialogue with the east was necessary to resolve the crisis.
Mr Poroshenko said he hoped to meet Russian leaders early next month, after a trip to Poland where he will meet the US president and EU leaders.
However, he warned he would take a tough line on armed militiamen.
He said: "Their goal is to turn Donbass [east Ukraine] into Somalia. I will not let anyone do this to our state and I hope that Russia will support my approach."
Mr Poroshenko also indicated he would keep current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, saying: "There are no plans to change the government leadership."
Mr Poroshenko, 48, currently has 53.75% of the vote, with 70% of the ballots counted, and would not need a run-off. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a distant second on 13.1%.
Full results are expected on Monday.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Flights were halted in Donetsk on security grounds
The election came three months after pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev amid bloody street protests and calls for closer ties with the EU.
Since then, Russia has annexed the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine and armed separatists in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk have declared independence.
Mr Yanukovych has also said he will accept the election result, "no matter which regions and what percentage of the population voted", Russian media reported.
Ukraine's interim government is engaged in an offensive in the east to quash the uprising that has left scores dead.
Pro-Russian separatists severely disrupted voting there. No polling stations were open in Donetsk city, and across the region only seven out of 12 district electoral commissions were operating.
Media reaction
"Has Ukraine been reborn?" asks the Ukrainian edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda. It says the election "will have a special place in the history books". But the paper notes that Crimeans did not vote and the voting in Donbass and Luhansk - formerly Ukraine's "electoral core", proceeded with "great difficulty".
"We have survived," proclaims popular Ukrainian daily Segodnya.
Claims in the Russian media that Ukraine is overrun by extremists and neo-Nazis are ridiculed by some social media commentators. The two right-wing candidates - Dmytro Yarosh and Oleh Tyahnybok - polled less than 2% in total.
Prominent Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem proclaims an "epic fail" of Russian propaganda. "Vladimir Putin won't sleep tonight," he predicts.
:A turning point, or business as usual?
However, the central elections commission said about 60% of Ukraine's 35.5 million eligible voters had turned out.
Unrest continued on Monday.
Flights were suspended at Sergei Prokofiev airport in Donetsk after several dozen separatists from the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic demanded Ukrainian troops guarding the inner perimeter be removed.
Officials said there had been "shots and confrontation".
The head of Donetsk airport's press service, Dmitry Kosinov, said: "On the territory of the airport there are armed people, this is ample reason to halt our work on security grounds."
Ukrainian TV is also reporting clashes in the villages of Semenivka and Andriyivka near the separatist stronghold of Sloviansk. ||||| An armed pro-Russian separatist with attached orange ribbon of St. George, a symbol widely associated with pro-Russian protests in Ukraine, stands guard at a road check point outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk June 8, 2014.
KIEV (Reuters) - After a late-night telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday set out proposals for a peace plan for eastern Ukraine involving a unilateral ceasefire by government forces.
Speaking to students at a military institute in Kiev, Poroshenko outlined a 14-step plan, including an amnesty for separatist fighters who lay down arms, and tighter controls over Ukraine's border with Russia. Acting Defence Minister Mykhailo Koval told journalists in Kiev the ceasefire "will happen in the next few days".
Ukraine accuses Russia of backing the rebels in the industrial Russian-speaking east who rose up after mass protests in Kiev toppled Viktor Yanukovich, a president sympathetic to Moscow. It says the rebels have been bringing in weapons across the long border with Russia.
"The plan will start with my order for a unilateral ceasefire," Poroshenko said. "Immediately after this, we need very quickly to get support for the peace plan ... from all participants."
Poroshenko had said on Monday that a ceasefire could start only if the border was secure, and that he had ordered troops to regain control of it to pave the way for a truce and peace talks.
The Kremlin said Putin's conversation with Poroshenko late on Tuesday night had "touched on the theme of a possible ceasefire in the area of military action in southeastern Ukraine".
Moscow has urged a swift end to what it calls a "punitive operation" by Ukrainian forces against pro-Russian separatists in the east.
Relations between the two neighbours are in tatters, three months after Russia labelled the uprising against Yanukovich a Western-backed coup, then annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine.
Moscow has grudgingly acknowledged Poroshenko as Ukraine’s new elected leader, but tensions are still high, exacerbated by Russia’s decision to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine after the two sides failed to agree a regime for pricing and the settlement of Ukraine’s debts.
On Wednesday, Russian investigators accused Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Ihor Kolomoisky, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region in the east, of criminal acts in the government's military push against the separatists.
A spokesman for the federal Investigative Committee said they were under investigation on charges including murder, kidnapping and using illegal methods of warfare - although it was not immediately clear under what jurisdiction.
"Kolomoisky and Avakov are literally drowning the country in the blood of its own people," spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement.
The Kremlin also said Putin had expressed his concern to Poroshenko over the deaths of two journalists for Russian state television, who were killed in shelling as Ukrainian forces fought pro-Russian separatists near the eastern city of Luhansk.
Poroshenko expressed his condolences and assured Putin there would be an investigation and that measures would be taken to protect journalists.
(writing by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Kevin Liffey) | – Ukraine's new president talked to Vladimir Putin last night, and today, Petro Poroshenko appears ready for a ceasefire, the New York Times reports. Poroshenko says he'll order the unilateral move once the border is secure; he believes "all illegal military units" will follow suit, per Russian and Ukrainian reports. During their call, "the presidents of Ukraine and Russia discussed a number of priority measures to be taken for a sustainable ceasefire, and the effective ways of monitoring it," Ukraine says in a statement. The ceasefire could come within "hours or days," a Ukrainian presidential rep tells the BBC. Poroshenko today told graduating students that a "brief" agreement would give "Russian mercenaries" a chance to leave the country. He discussed a 14-step plan involving amnesty for separatist fighters, Reuters reports. "The plan will start with my order for a unilateral ceasefire," he said. "Immediately after this, we need very quickly to get support for the peace plan ... from all participants." Russia's foreign minister has previously suggested that separatists would likely halt violence given an end to Ukraine's military action, the Times notes. |