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In this Sunday, April 22, 2018 image taken from video footage by China's CCTV via AP Video, an injured passenger receives medical treatment at a hospital following a bus accident in North Hwanghae province,... (Associated Press) In this Sunday, April 22, 2018 image taken from video footage by China's CCTV via AP Video, an injured passenger receives medical treatment at a hospital following a bus accident in North Hwanghae province, south of Pyongyang, North Korea. A traffic accident in southern North Korea has killed dozens... (Associated Press) BEIJING (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has met with China's ambassador and visited a hospital where Chinese tourists were being treated after a deadly bus crash. The crash Sunday evening killed 32 Chinese and four North Koreans, and two Chinese were seriously injured. China's official Xinhua News Agency said late Monday that the tourist bus fell from a bridge in North Hwanghae province in southern North Korea. Photos provided by the North Korean government on Tuesday showed Kim meeting with Ambassador Li Jinjun at the hospital and at the Chinese Embassy. China's Foreign Ministry said a medical team and diplomats were sent to help. It described the North Korean casualties as "workers." All visitors to North Korea must be accompanied by minders. Chinese tourists make up the vast majority of visitors to North Korea, where they often pay homage at sites related to China's participation in the 1950-53 Korean War. China and North Korea share a lengthy border and a traditional friendship. China remains Pyongyang's largest trading partner, although commerce has dropped off by about 90 percent under United Nations sanctions. Only about 5,000 Westerners visit the isolated, hard-line communist state each year. Americans have been banned from traveling to North Korea without special permission from the U.S. State Department since September amid concerns about the fate of those detained there in the past. The cause of the crash wasn't mentioned. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showed the mangled wreckage in the dark with rain falling and rescue vehicles on the scene. North Korean roads are often bumpy and poorly maintained. There is usually no lighting other than headlights at night, even on major roads outside of the cities. Drivers tend to travel at whatever speed they feel is safe, making the roads even more dangerous, particularly when the weather is bad. ||||| Image copyright AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS Image caption Mr Kim was pictured in state media speaking to an injured Chinese tourist North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has expressed "bitter sorrow" over a bus accident that left 32 Chinese tourists and four North Koreans dead. The accident took place on Sunday night in North Hwanghae province, when the tour bus plunged off a bridge. It is rare for North Korea's tightly-controlled media to report on negative news, and for Mr Kim to acknowledge the incident itself is even more unusual. China is the North's main political ally and largest trading partner. "[Mr Kim] said that the unexpected accident brought bitter sorrow to his heart," the official KCNA news agency reported. "He couldn't control his grief at the thought of the bereaved families who lost their blood relatives." Image copyright AFP PHOTO/KCNA VIA KNS Image caption Mr Kim expressed his 'sorrow' to Chinese ambassador Li Jinjun (2nd R) The North Korean leader was pictured visiting injured passengers in hospital. The report said he "personally learned about the treatment". He also visited the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang, where he met the Chinese ambassador to North Korea Li Jinjun and "expressed his heartfelt condolences and sympathy." China and North Korea have been long-time allies. Mr Kim's rapid visit to the injured people - and the reporting of it - is likely to be seen in part as a way of protecting his image among the Chinese population. Chinese tourists make up an estimated 80% of foreign tourists to North Korea - providing an important source of currency for Pyongyang. Mr Kim earlier this year visited Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, his first known foreign trip since he took office in 2011. China is responsible for virtually all of North Korea's food and fuel aid and by many measures, can be considered its most important partner. North Korea recently announced it was halting all nuclear and missile tests, as it builds up to major summit with the leaders of South Korea and the US.

– A crash that killed 32 tourists from North Korea's chief ally brought "bitter sorrow" to the heart of leader Kim Jong Un, according to Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency. The agency—in a rare admission of bad news—said the Chinese tourists and four North Koreans were killed when a tour bus plunged off a bridge in North Hwanghae province, south of the capital, the BBC reports. Kim "couldn't control his grief at the thought of the bereaved families who lost their blood relatives," KCNA said. The AP reports that China, source of the vast majority of foreign tourists to North Korea, has sent diplomats and a medical team to assist.

Wesley Snipes Begins Serving 3-Year Prison Stint Email This Wesley Snipes began serving a three-year sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania on Thursday for failure to file income tax returns. Snipes, 48, arrived shortly before noon at the Federal Correctional Institution McKean in the tiny northwestern Pennsylvania town of Lewis Run, federal prisons spokesman Ed Ross said. He had been ordered to surrender by noon. The minimum security prison camp is worlds away from the harsh prison fortresses depicted in the Snipes' films 'Undisputed' and 'Brooklyn's Finest.' The minimum-security camp doesn't have fences around its perimeter. The 300 nonviolent inmates live in barracks that feature two-man rooms, daily showers and double-feature movie showings Friday through Sunday. Alas, no NC-17, R or X ratings allowed, which knocks out much of Snipes' action-heavy repertoire. The most jarring aspect of the celebrity's stay might be the five daily head counts, three during the overnight hours. And Snipes, who earned a reported $13 million for the 'Blade: Trinity' sequel, will have to adjust to earning just pennies an hour handling kitchen, laundry or other campus chores. He can spend just $290 a month at the prison commissary. Wesley Snipes began serving a three-year sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania on Thursday for failure to file income tax returns. Snipes, 48, arrived shortly before noon at the Federal Correctional Institution McKean in the tiny northwestern Pennsylvania town of Lewis Run, federal prisons spokesman Ed Ross said. He had been ordered to surrender by noon.The minimum security prison camp is worlds away from the harsh prison fortresses depicted in the Snipes' films 'Undisputed' and 'Brooklyn's Finest.' The minimum-security camp doesn't have fences around its perimeter.The 300 nonviolent inmates live in barracks that feature two-man rooms, daily showers and double-feature movie showings Friday through Sunday. Alas, no NC-17, R or X ratings allowed, which knocks out much of Snipes' action-heavy repertoire.The most jarring aspect of the celebrity's stay might be the five daily head counts, three during the overnight hours. And Snipes, who earned a reported $13 million for the 'Blade: Trinity' sequel, will have to adjust to earning just pennies an hour handling kitchen, laundry or other campus chores. He can spend just $290 a month at the prison commissary. 2010 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. Snipes has appeared in dozens of studio films, from 'White Men Can't Jump' and 'Demolition Man' in the early 1990s to the blockbuster Blade trilogy.None of which will score him any points at McKean, officials insist."We recognize that he is high profile, but we treat all our inmates the same," spokeswoman Shirley White told The Associated Press last week.According to U.S. prosecutors, the actor failed to file any tax returns for at least a decade, and owed $2.7 million in taxes on $13.8 million in income from 1999 to 2001 alone.Snipes, a dues-paying member of a tax-protest group that challenges the government's right to collect taxes, described himself at his 2008 sentencing as a naive truth-seeker."I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance," said Snipes, who had pursued theater and dance from an early age, attending the vaunted High School for the Performing Arts in New York City.Tuesday night, he told CNN's "Larry King Live" that he was not nervous about reporting to prison.On Wednesday, he made a last-minute request for a new trial. In the emergency motion, Snipes said that the judge erred by not allowing defense attorneys to interview jurors about misconduct allegations.At McKean, if he reports as scheduled, he can pursue his spirituality at weekly meetings of nearly any religious group imaginable, from Wiccans to Jehovah's Witnesses to Spanish-speaking Evangelical Catholics.The martial-arts enthusiast can get his exercise playing sand volleyball or indoor basketball, or work out on an elliptical machine or stair climber. And he can tap into his fun side through badminton, bocci or bridge.Should he pull a muscle in a pickup game, the infirmary copay is just $2.But it's not all fun and games.The daily wake-up call is at 6:35 a.m. The mundane jobs run seven hours a day. There's little fashion flair to the prison-issued khakis. And contact in the visitors room is limited to "a kiss," according to the prison handbook.Snipes has tried to delay his arrival while he takes his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the trial judge said he had gotten a fair trial.U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges saw in Snipes "a history of contempt" for U.S. tax laws, the judge said at sentencing.Never mind that the actor, changing course, had delivered $5 million in checks to the IRS that day. Hodges imposed consecutive one-year terms for the three misdemeanor convictions."Someday, every fighter loses," says the prison boxer Monroe Hutchens, played by Snipes, in 2002's "Undisputed." "In the end, everybody gets beaten. The most you can hope for is that you stay on top a while." ||||| Wesley Snipes Weighs Options: 'Don't Send Me Up the River, Yet' Email This A defiant Wesley Snipes sat down with Larry King on Tuesday night to talk about his tax-related conviction and his three-year jail sentence, which is due to begin later this week. The 'Blade' actor told King he believes there were irregularities in his case and said he plans to file a request with the Supreme Court to review them. "We still have prayers out there, Larry, and we believe in miracles. Don't send me up the river, yet," he said on A defiant Wesley Snipes sat down with Larry King on Tuesday night to talk about his tax-related conviction and his three-year jail sentence, which is due to begin later this week. The 'Blade' actor told King he believes there were irregularities in his case and said he plans to file a request with the Supreme Court to review them."We still have prayers out there, Larry, and we believe in miracles. Don't send me up the river, yet," he said on 'Larry King Live.' Snipes said he relied on the advice of tax professionals and doesn't believe he deserves such a stiff sentence for failing to pay taxes. He also argued that his case was misrepresented in the media."Any man would be nervous if his liberty was at stake," Snipes told King when asked about going to jail. "Right now, I'm more upset and disappointed that the system seems to not be working for me."Snipes didn't play the blame game with his financial team, but claimed that he wrongly relied on their advice for his affairs.The 48-year-old 'White Men Can't Jump' star was convicted in 2008 in a Florida court on three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file income tax returns.Prosecutors in Snipes' case argued that the actor had not paid any taxes on the reported $38 million he earned since 1999. Although the star was acquitted of more serious felony charges, a Florida judge has ordered Snipes to begin serving his three-year sentence for his 2008 tax conviction.Snipes is scheduled to serve his time at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. ||||| The date is set for Wesley Snipes, and he's finally out of options. The 'Blade' hero was ordered to start his 3-year jail sentence for tax evasion on Dec. 9 at noon, AP reports.Snipes is scheduled to serve his time at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Snipes, who has been free on bail since the 2008 conviction, has attempted to have his case overturned to no avail.Prosecutors in Snipes' case alleged that the actor had not paid any taxes on the reported $38 million he earned since 1999, in addition to several misdemeanor offenses. Although the star was acquitted of more serious felony charges , a Florida judge has ordered Snipes to begin serving his three-year sentence for his 2008 felony tax conviction. ||||| When actor Wesley Snipes enters prison Thursday, he'll leave behind his wife, young children and celebrity neighbors in the wealthy Florida enclave made infamous by next-door neighbor Tiger Woods. FILE - In a Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009 file photo, actor Wesley Snipes poses during the photo call for the film "Brooklyn's Finest" at the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy. Snipes reports to the Federal... (Associated Press) The prison camp in Lewis Run in northwestern Pennsylvania pales by comparison, but is still worlds away from the harsh prison fortresses depicted in the Snipes films "Undisputed" and "Brooklyn's Finest." Federal Correctional Institution McKean, a minimum-security camp, doesn't have fences around its perimeter. The 300 nonviolent inmates live in barracks that feature two-man rooms, daily showers and double-feature movie showings Friday through Sunday. Alas, no NC-17, R or X ratings allowed, which knocks out much of Snipes' action-heavy repertoire. The most jarring aspect of the celebrity's stay might be the five daily head counts, three during the overnight hours. And Snipes, who earned a reported $13 million for the "Blade: Trinity" sequel, will have to adjust to earning just pennies an hour handling kitchen, laundry or other campus chores. And, he can spend just $290 a month at the prison commissary. Snipes has appeared in dozens of studio films, from "White Men Can't Jump" and "Demolition Man" in the early 1990s to the blockbuster Blade trilogy. None of which will score him any points at McKean, officials insist. "We recognize that he is high profile, but we treat all our inmates the same," spokeswoman Shirley White told The Associated Press last week. According to U.S. prosecutors, the actor failed to file any tax returns for at least a decade, and owed $2.7 million in taxes on $13.8 million in income from 1999 to 2001 alone. Snipes, a dues-paying member of a tax-protest group that challenges the government's right to collect taxes, described himself at his 2008 sentencing as a naive truth-seeker. "I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance," said Snipes, who had pursued theater and dance from an early age, attending the vaunted High School for the Performing Arts in New York City. Tuesday night, he told CNN's "Larry King Live" that he was not nervous about reporting to prison. On Wednesday, he made a last-minute request for a new trial. In the emergency motion, Snipes said that the judge erred by not allowing defense attorneys to interview jurors about misconduct allegations. At McKean, if he reports as scheduled, he can pursue his spirituality at weekly meetings of nearly any religious group imaginable, from Wiccans to Jehovah's Witnesses to Spanish-speaking Evangelical Catholics. The martial-arts enthusiast can get his exercise playing sand volleyball or indoor basketball, or work out on an elliptical machine or stair climber. And he can tap into his fun side through badminton, bocci or bridge. Should he pull a muscle in a pickup game, the infirmary copay is just $2. But it's not all fun and games. The daily wake-up call is at 6:35 a.m. The mundane jobs run seven hours a day. There's little fashion flair to the prison-issued khakis. And contact in the visitors room is limited to "a kiss," according to the prison handbook. Snipes has tried to delay his arrival while he takes his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the trial judge said he had gotten a fair trial. U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges saw in Snipes "a history of contempt" for U.S. tax laws, the judge said at sentencing. Never mind that the actor, changing course, had delivered $5 million in checks to the IRS that day. Hodges imposed consecutive one-year terms for the three misdemeanor convictions. "Someday, every fighter loses," says the prison boxer Monroe Hutchens, played by Snipes, in 2002's "Undisputed." "In the end, everybody gets beaten. The most you can hope for is that you stay on top a while." ___ Online: McKean FCI: http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/mck/index.jsp

– Wesley Snipes enters prison in Pennsylvania today to serve a three-year sentence for tax evasion—and though the minimum-security McKean prison camp isn't exactly a five-star resort, it's not as bad as it could be. The AP gives details on what his life will be like: No fences: But he will submit to five daily head counts, three of which are overnight. Living quarters: He'll have a two-man room in the barracks, where the other 300 nonviolent inmates live. Daily schedule: Wake-up time is 6:35am, and jobs are performed for seven hours per day. Conjugal visits: He'll have to limit himself to just a kiss in the visitors room. Money: He can earn pennies an hour by doing laundry or other chores, and is allowed to spend $290 a month at the commissary. Entertainment: Double-feature movies are shown Friday through Sunday, but no R-, NC-17-, or X-rated films are screened. Exercise: Sand volleyball, indoor basketball, exercise machines, badminton, bocci, and bridge will be available to him. Medical facilities: The copay at the infirmary is only $2. Church: Almost any group you can think of, including Wiccans, hold weekly meetings. Click for more, including why Snipes failed to pay taxes—or watch his Tuesday night appearance on Larry King Live.

Iran releases American spies on bail Share | Email | Print Iran releases US detainees Shane Bauer (L) and Joshua Fattal (R) on Wednesday, September 21, 2011. The Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran has confirmed the release of two US nationals, who had been convicted of illegal entry and espionage in Iran, on bail. Branch 36 of Tehran's Appeals Court has agreed to commuted the detention sentences of the two US nationals to release on a total bail of USD 1,000,000, a statement released by Iran's Judiciary said on Wednesday.Shane Michael Bauer and Joshua Felix Fattal had earlier been sentenced by Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolution Court to eight years in prison on charges of illegal entry and espionage.Sarah Emily Shourd, who had also been detained along with Bauer and Fattal, was released in September 2010 on a USD500,000 bail.Bauer, Fattal and Shourd were arrested on Iranian territory in July 2009 after illegally crossing the border from the mountains of northern Iraq's Kurdistan region.They were later charged with espionage after the Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi found "compelling evidence" that the three US citizens had been cooperating with US intelligence agencies.MAB/HGH ||||| Two American hikers jailed in Iran since 2009 were freed from prison Wednesday and flown to Oman, where they were reunited with joyful family members. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, both 29, were released Wednesday evening local time after spending more than two years in prison on charges of illegal entry and espionage since they and a companion, Sarah Shourd, were arrested on the border between Iraq and Iran while hiking in the mountainous region. Shourd, who was freed last year and is engaged to Bauer, was on hand in Oman to greet the two as they ran down the stairs from the private plane that picked them up in Iran and flew them to freedom. “We’re so happy we are free,” Fattal told reporters at Muscat International Airport in Oman. “Two years in prison is too long,” Bauer said. He expressed hope that Wednesday’s release would lead to “freedom for political prisoners in America and Iran.” After making their brief statements, Bauer and Fattal left the airport with their families. The release came a day before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and it seemed timed at least in part as a goodwill gesture ahead of the speech. “We are thrilled,” said President Obama, also in New York for the U.N. session, after being informed of the release. He told reporters it was a “wonderful day” for the two men’s families “and for us.” In a statement issued later by the White House, Obama praised “the tireless advocacy” of the families. He also expressed gratitude to Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the ruler of the tiny monarchy on the Arabian Peninsula, and to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the Swiss government and others around the world “who have worked steadfastly over the past two years to secure the release of Shane and Josh.” A convoy of official cars left Tehran’s notorious Evin prison about 6:30 p.m. local time (10 a.m. in Washington), the government-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The plane carrying the hikers left Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport and arrived in Oman about 3:40 p.m. Washington time. The two men raced down the aircraft’s stairs to embrace family members waiting on the tarmac, television images showed. Both men were surrounded by journalists and U.S. Embassy officials, as Bauer hugged Shourd, who was released from Evin prison in September 2010 on medical grounds. “Today can only be described as the best day of our lives,” the family members said in a joint statement reported by the Associated Press. “We have waited for nearly 26 months for this moment,” it added. “We now all want nothing more than to wrap Shane and Josh in our arms, catch up on two lost years and make a new beginning, for them and for all of us.” Masoud Shafiei, an Iranian lawyer representing Bauer and Fattal, spent two hours inside the prison complex earlier in the day completing paperwork for the Americans’ release. He told the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency that the government of Oman had paid $1 million bail for Bauer and Fattal. Oman also reportedly paid bail last year to secure the release of Shourd. After signing the papers, Shafiei waited outside the prison with the Swiss ambassador to Iran, Livia Leu Agosti, who represents U.S. interests in the country because Washington and Tehran do not have diplomatic relations. When two Iranian government cars left the prison complex, presumably with the Americans inside, Shafiei and Agosti sped after them. Bauer and Fattal were convicted of espionage charges in a closed trial last month. They denied being spies, maintaining that if they crossed the Iranian border, they did so accidentally while hiking with Shourd. Ahmadinejad told journalists from The Washington Post and NBC News last week that Bauer and Fattal would receive a “unilateral pardon” and would be home “within days.” The next day, Iran’s judiciary, which is led by Shiite Muslim clerics who once supported Ahmadinejad but now oppose him, reacted angrily, stressing that Ahmadinejad did not have the authority to free the men. On Sunday, the men’s release was delayed again because one of the judges whose signature is required on the bail paperwork was on vacation. Shafiei said that he had received the second signature Wednesday morning. The controversy over the hikers was the dominant backdrop as Ahmadinejad headed to New York on Monday to participate in the annual U.N. General Assembly session. News of the release was welcomed Wednesday by officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who were part of a delegation of U.S. religious leaders and American Muslims who traveled to Iran to ask that the hikers be allowed to leave. “We believe the efforts of the recent interfaith delegation to Iran offer a positive example of bridge-building initiatives that may be undertaken to help promote mutual understanding and cooperation between nations,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “We hope our government will now address the issue of Iranian citizens detained in the United States with the same spirit of compassion.” Staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.

– After being jailed for more than two years, American hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal walked out of Evin prison free men this morning, confirms Iranian state television. Their lawyer had said earlier that they would be released within hours, after a vacationing judge returned and the second signature needed to free them on $1 million bail was secured. In a statement quoted on a semi-official Iranian news agency, the country’s judiciary confirmed the bail request had been “accepted,” reports the Washington Post.

Have you seen this music video for Canadian band the Arcade Fire's single "We Used to Wait"? Well, actually, it's not quite a music video—it's a website. But it does some pretty amazing stuff. So, the Arcade Fire. You probably have an opinion about them, and their new album. (Mine is: "Kids these days! Really, kids from all the days!") But even if you hate them, and their music, you should head over to thewildernessdowntown.com, which describes itself as "an interactive film." And, well, it is! But it's a lot more than that. If you navigate over to the site, you're encouraged to "enter the address of the home where you grew up." (I got this message when I typed my parents' home address: "Your address doesn't contain enough Street-View and/or Google Maps data to 100% enjoy this experience," but I'd say I was still able to 90% enjoy the experience.) Once you hit "enter," the "film" starts, and your browser begins to open windows—a video of a kid running in a suburb pops up, and then a window with some odd vector animations of birds. One window has a satellite shot of a suburban neighborhood—I assume if my address contained enough Street-View data that's what I would've gotten—and at some point, you're asked to write a postcard to your younger self (I know, I know. Barf). The whole time, the Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait" is playing. Say what you will about the indie-goth aesthetics and the irritating, aggrandizing treatment of histrionic middle-class teen angst (both Arcade Fire trademarks!), "The Wilderness Downtown" works amazingly well as an internet "piece"—part video, part interactive project, part regular old website, part irritating bauble, coded with HTML 5 and billed as a collaboration with Google. And as music videos appeared to have moved off your television permanently, with the exception of various esoteric MTV channels, it's not too hard to see a future where "interactive films" like this (but maybe better!) replace the standard clip. Chris Milk, the director of the project (it was produced by Radical Media), is a veteran music video guy, so it's not like it's a whole new industry springing up—just eyeing the possibility of moving from one set of screens to another—and taking advantage of all the things the web can offer. And that could end up being pretty cool! I mean, it could also end up being awful. But I'm hoping for "cool." Update/Note: The site is optimized for Chrome; it also works in Safari, though not quite as well; other browsers seem to be hit-or-miss. [The Wilderness Downtown; Radical Media] ||||| As if I wasn’t already obsessed enough with the new Arcade Fire album, The Suburbs, it just got better. You can visit this website to create a personalized, interactive music video for the song “We Used to Wait.” Just enter your own suburban childhood address and the magic of Google images will have you flying over your old street. I got kind of choked up when I saw San Rosendo Dr. and the cul-de-sac where I used to ride my bike, the place where my brother and I built forts, and even my swimming pool. It took me all the way to the window outside of my old bedroom! Hello, nostalgia, I love you. [Stereogum]

– The Arcade Fire’s music video-slash-website is a harbinger of things to come. The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive experience that combines video of a kid running through a suburb, animated birds, satellite views of the neighborhood where you grew up (you provide the address), and an invitation to write a postcard to yourself as a child, all as the band’s “We Used to Wait” plays. “Say what you will about the indie-goth aesthetics and the irritating, aggrandizing treatment of histrionic middle-class teen angst, The Wilderness Downtown works amazingly well as an Internet ‘piece’—part video, part interactive project, part regular old website,” writes Max Read on Gawker. “And as music videos appeared to have moved off your television permanently, with the exception of various esoteric MTV channels, it's not too hard to see a future where ‘interactive films’ like this replace the standard clip.” Click here for an even more positive reaction at The Frisky.

Be your own boss, set your own schedule, and have more time to pursue your goals and dreams. Join us and put the power of Amazon behind you. Build your own schedule. Opportunities available 7 days a week. Schedule ahead or pick up any available block of time. Make $18-$25 an hour and easily track your earnings with the Amazon Flex app. Want to build the future of delivery? Amazon is hiring for job openings in engineering & technology, product management, and design. © 2018, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates ||||| Who delivers Amazon orders? Increasingly, it’s plainclothes contractors with few labor protections, driving their own cars, competing for shifts on the company’s own Uber-like platform. Though it’s deployed in dozens of cities and associated with one of the world’s biggest companies, government agencies and customers alike are nearly oblivious to the program’s existence. In terms of size, efficiency, and ruthlessness, Amazon has few equals. The least publicly accountable of the big tech companies—Google, Apple, and Facebook face considerably greater scrutiny—Amazon’s stock is one of the most valuable on the market, it’s among the fastest-growing companies in the United States. Atop its vast empire, CEO Jeff Bezos commands the single largest personal fortune on the planet. Estimates place Amazon as the recipient of approximately one third of all dollars spent online. Control over the manufacture, storage, sales, and shipping of an extraordinarily diverse set of products has led the company to expand into film and TV production, web hosting, publishing, groceries, fashion, space travel, wind farms, and soon, pharmaceuticals, to name just a few. It’s a new kind of company, the likes of which the American economy has never before seen and is legislatively ill-prepared for. Ingenuity alone doesn’t account for Amazon’s dominant position. The company’s Economic Development Team works hard to secure state and local subsidies, which research from watchdog group Good Jobs First indicates surpasses $1 billion, a figure which the advocacy group’s executive director, Greg LeRoy, freely admitted to Gizmodo is far from comprehensive. Infrastructure in the company’s home base of Seattle has strained to keep pace with Amazon’s meteoric growth, and the city has experienced massive increases in housing costs. While North America’s metro areas—including Seattle—scramble to offer attractive incentives to host Bezos’s second headquarters, research indicates that when Amazon comes to town, it might be killing more jobs than it creates. The majority of consumers, however, either don’t know or don’t care. Strip Amazon to its most familiar elements, and it’s a devilishly simple everything-store with limitless stuff-supply. You buy it. It shows up. Fast. Demand for those blocks and the desire to finish them quickly led to what one driver described as “physical fights [...] when someone tries to jump the line.” Near the very bottom of Amazon’s complicated machinery is a nearly invisible workforce over two years in the making tasked with getting those orders to your doorstep. It’s a network of supposedly self-employed, utterly expendable couriers enrolled in an app-based program which some believe may violate labor laws. That program is called Amazon Flex, and it accomplishes Amazon’s “last-mile” deliveries—the final journey from a local facility to the customer. Advertisement While investigating the nature of the program, we spoke to 15 current or former independent drivers across nine states and two countries whose enrollment spanned between a few weeks and two years, as well as three individuals attached to local courier companies delivering for Amazon. Their identities have all been obscured for fear of retribution. A great opportunity to be your own boss To understand the issues faced by the independent contractors handling last-mile delivery for Amazon requires some knowledge of how Flex works. When Amazon selects one of its facilities—what drivers refer to as a Fulfillment Center* (FC)— for participation in Flex, it blankets Craigslist and other sites with local ads describing Flex as “a great opportunity to be your own boss,” sometimes as many as twelve ads a day. Each FC is distinguished by three letters and a number—DLA5, for instance, refers to Riverside, California—and many of the over 50 cities Flex operates in have more than one. An interested driver goes through a preliminary screening online and finishes their application through the app, passes a background check allegedly administered by a company called Accurate Background. Accurate Background did not respond to multiple requests for comment and Amazon declined to comment on which companies or services it uses for this purpose, but claimed the check pulls from, among other signals, court records, the sex offender registry, and data analysis from US and global organizations. One driver told Gizmodo he was approved in under four hours. Others wait over a month. According to a Flex contract furnished to Gizmodo, the only requirements to entry are modest: be 21 or older, pass Accurate Background’s vetting, own a smartphone with Flex installed, and have access to a car, bike, or public transportation. No company cars. No uniforms. Just a non-photo ID badge. The training is similarly minimal. One driver attended an optional hour-long training at an FC. A veteran driver alleged he was asked to participate in a conference call. The consistent element reported to Gizmodo was being made to watch approximately 20 videos which fresh Flexers view from the comfort of their phones. “Watch videos of their expectations of you and their rules, agree to the rules,” a Georgia-based driver said. “That’s about it.” No drivers reported being trained on matters of workplace safety, and as one UK-based driver succinctly put it, “honestly it seems they take on anyone.” Amazon declined to describe its Flex driver training except to say that videos were among the materials used in onboarding. Work is secured by grabbing “blocks” through the app, measured in hours, with an associated route and payout. Flex’s blocks cover multiple local arms of Amazon—including Fresh and Restaurants—but the two most common, based on individual testimony and online posts, are Logistics, which covers standard packages, and Prime Now which handles same-day purchases. Regardless, the procedure is largely the same once a driver lands a block: get in line behind the other cars at the FC, check in, receive a pre-sorted rolling cart or shelf of goods for the route, scan and pack them into the car, then follow the Flex app’s “suggested” driving directions to each stop. Advertisement A driver sharing his experience with and tips for Flex on YouTube Block length and package count vary considerably between Prime Now and Logistics: Prime Now blocks can be as little as two hours, while five hour blocks have reportedly been offered to Logistics drivers with larger vehicles; 15 packages for a slim Prime Now block and as many as 90 on a Logistics run. Amazon’s own Craigslist ads show compensation varies by location, but among the drivers Gizmodo spoke to, pay averaged $20.50/hr—not bad by the standards of the gig economy. And similar to Uber’s “surge pricing” in the rare event that blocks go unclaimed, Amazon will sometimes increase to incentivize drivers to accept it. Still, all but three drivers we spoke to did not consider Flex their primary means of income, and of those who did one also contracts with UberEats and Grubhub, another was seeking additional work, and the third alleged to have been deactivated by Amazon despite delivering through floodwaters in the wake of Hurricane Irma. Arguably Amazon Flex, like Uber, is best used as supplemental income, and for many drivers it works well for that purpose. For others it’s a necessity. In major cities like New York and San Francisco—coincidentally located in the states that employ the largest numbers of couriers—Uber can be a living. Flex can’t. A difficult road Despite being able to fulfill hundreds of millions of orders per year, drivers report Amazon’s data at the local level can be lacking, leading to misalignments between block times and package numbers. “The block that I signed up for was four hours, but when I got to the facility they were struggling to find something for me to do, so I only ended up having three packages to deliver,” a driver told Gizmodo of a recent block picked up from a newly-opened FC. But according to a more veteran driver, Amazon’s bad bets cut both ways. “They won’t pay you for working over your allotted block time,” he told Gizmodo. “They said it evens out because when you work a three hour block and finish in two they still pay you for three, but it doesn’t even out.” Another alleged that Amazon’s systems struggle to estimate door-to-door time or handling large apartment buildings, leading to a “99% probability that you will exceed your block end time.” Additionally, two drivers in completely different regions of the US both claimed Flexers’ hours are capped at 40 hours per week. “As [independent contractors], we should be able to work as much as we wish since we take the blocks we want to work. It used to not be this way when I first started working for them,” the San Antonio-based driver bemoaned. But lately, drivers at a number of FCs have found it harder and harder to secure enough hours for 40 hours to be a meaningful limitation. A Philadelphia-based driver told Gizmodo, “Last year when I started it was easy to secure two four hour blocks a day and I was complaining that they would put us on payroll locks so I wouldn’t exceed 40 hours a week. How times have changed!” Demand for those blocks and the desire to finish them quickly led to what one driver described as “physical fights [...] when someone tries to jump the line.” Advertisement Amazon would not comment on whether it caps drivers’ hours, but characterized the program as a part-time opportunity. It claimed, in a statement to Gizmodo, that it “received overwhelmingly positive response[s] from drivers participating in the program.” The company also suggested that workers seeking more traditional full-time arrangements are encouraged to apply elsewhere within Amazon. A number of drivers have alleged they’re reprimanded by FC workers if their vehicles are unable to fit all the packages for a block, and fear being “ticketed” for returning packages they weren’t able to deliver. One reported getting written up by one FC employee for following the explicit instructions of another. While in and of themselves these incidents tend not to have serious repercussions, as little as two incidents have led to drivers being deactivated. Amazon told Gizmodo that it has performance expectations for its contractors which it expects them to meet or exceed, and sometimes those metrics are used to justify a termination. Other times, being notified your time with Amazon Flex has ended comes as a vague boilerplate email about violating the program’s terms of service. A Flex contract provided to Gizmodo states that drivers “may provide Amazon with data about your use of such Licensed Materials, your geo-location and related tracking data, including your location, movements, speed at which you are traveling, and other personally identifiable information,” and that “ if you choose to deny Amazon access to this information, this could affect the availability and functionality of the Amazon Flex App and your participation in the Program.” Presumably, this data is used to increase the company’s own routing efficiency. While Amazon does not pay drivers for work if it exceeds a given block’s time, it’s unclear if Flex continues to track drivers while off-hours. Lack of oversight and scarcity of work through Flex have caused cheating to proliferate. Drivers turn to auto-tap applications like FRep and Repetitouch to scoop up blocks much faster than human fingers are capable of, and once these practices become widespread at an FC, more scrupulous drivers either stoop to these methods or accept that regular hours won’t be possible. Though nearly every Flexer we contacted was familiar with the use of these types of software only one admitted to using it personally. “Most drivers at my warehouse are using some form of bot or macro to secure blocks, including myself,” he wrote. “Though Amazon recently sent out a threatening email regarding their use (threatening to terminate us for using them). That email is the main reason why I’ve cut back on my own use of them.” Video uploaded to YouTube even appears to show one such app running on an iPhone left charging inside inside a Fulfillment Center, screen blinking away at a feverish pace. Amazon told Gizmodo such software violates its Terms of Service. Advertisement Neither FRep or Repetitouch were built specifically for Flex, according to their respective creators. “From what I heard, there are people who heavily rely on it for their income and apparently there’s a lot of competition for jobs in general. Thus, I’m not surprised that some Flex drivers try to get an edge,” Erwin Goslawski, the German student behind Reptitouch told Gizmodo. “I can imagine that this makes it rather difficult for other users to grab jobs, however, which makes it more likely that more and more users decide to use such tools.” Despite the enormous amount of access Amazon is afforded to its drivers’ phones, “botting” remains popular and poorly policed. At least one device was built specifically to increase the likeliness of landing blocks—the Flexbot. It’s creator, a former driver named Tim McDaniel who suffers from arthritis, claims to have made it “just to level the playing field to able-bodied folks,” though certainly some of the customers who have paid $130 for the contraption—a pair of Arduino-controlled mechanical fingers—do so to avoid detection by Amazon’s software. Unlike software alternatives, Amazon told Gizmodo that Flexbot does not violate its terms of service. McDaniel originally sold Flexbot 6 on Amazon, but had his account shut down after he “fell behind on customer relations.” Add to this a general sense of disorder, from simple issues of whether or not Flexers are allowed to drive with passengers, to integral aspects of the gig like when new blocks become available. “When Flex first started all blocks were released at 10 PM. Then they changed to all blocks being released exactly 24 hours in advance. Now they have changed to completely random times,” one driver told Gizmodo. “This causes us to have to constantly use our phone to look for blocks and waste time that we are not being paid for just to find work.” There’s no easy way for this disposable workforce to have their problems addressed. While drivers are given a support number, Flexers claim its only purpose is to assist during the course of a block—to get the door code to an apartment building, for instance. “There’s no liaison, just hot-headed warehouse managers that will terminate a driver for anything they want,” a driver reported. And from other testimony, terminations occur frequently and with little explanation. Boilerplate emails reprimanding drivers for supposedly missed packages contain little information: only the date of the infraction, but not the package or address. Whether the package was stolen or an unscrupulous customer merely took advantage of Amazon’s willingness to offer refunds, it’s the courier who takes the fall. “It’s frustrating because Amazon will always believe the customer,” a driver claimed, echoing the sentiments of many others. “Even with photo or bodycam evidence. We have no support. And one customer too many and we’ll get that termination email.” To combat confusing rules—due both to changes in the program over time and quirks of individual FCs—drivers tend to share information over closed Facebook groups, Reddit, and gig economy forum Uberpeople. The largest of these boasts a membership of over 20,000. According to a moderator of one such community, a change in the Flex program takes place approximately every six weeks, sometimes buried inside a Terms of Service update. Many of the posts in these digital break rooms can be summarized as: Here’s what happened to me. Is this normal? But no matter how experienced, the advice of other, equally powerless people can only go so far in certain situations. Advertisement So where can a driver go to resolve an issue or dispute their termination? That leaves one final option: Flex’s reviled support email line. “It’s as if they scan it for keywords and then have a copy-and-paste type response to everything,” a Detroit-based driver told Gizmodo. “Literally I got the same email twice.” Unfortunately this appears to be a common occurrence. Flex, as part of a pilot program Amazon is rumored to be using to take on UPS, Fedex and others, is a constantly shifting set of systems with a number of redundancies. Besides drivers, some cities also employ motor scooter couriers and—in Manhattan at least—“Johnny walkers” who gather around delivery trucks and roll their packages to buildings on foot. But by far the biggest threat to self-employed Flexers (and vice versa) are “white vans”—third-party local couriers Amazon also contracts to do last-mile work. Joining the fleet The arrangement is virtually the same as Flex, only scaled up to accommodate bigger vans and larger package counts—as many as 270 per run, according to one source—and with pay going to the company to distribute as it sees fit, rather than to individual drivers. The major draw for Amazon—though it declined to comment on most aspects of these local business arrangements—appears to be the ability to count on a reliable number of couriers all capable of hauling an equally reliable volume (300 cubic feet or large is the required van size) of parcels. Amazon considers these companies, just like individual Flexers, to be contractors, though drivers still have to run Amazon’s software while working, and still have to pass a check from Accurate Background. “We have to background check the guys [that deliver Amazon packages]. We have to use their background check company. They won’t even tell us what the criteria is,” a California-based courier business owner said with clear frustration. A dispatcher for another last-mile courier claimed that applicants who don’t pass Accurate Background’s vetting simply aren’t hired by the company he works for. UPS spokesman Dan McMackin told Gizmodo that Amazon is not a threat to UPS—whose drivers are both full employees and the single largest contingent of long-lived Teamsters labor union—because “ecommerce is bigger than one customer.” In his opinion, good courier work requires a skilled, consistent workforce, and retaining that pool of labor means providing solidly middle-class wages and benefits. However much he claims to dislike doing business with large, often pushy customers, the California courier said he finally agreed work with a company like Amazon because, “the writing’s on the wall that Amazon’s gonna take over the whole delivery industry in the next ten years.” “The writing’s on the wall that Amazon’s gonna take over the whole delivery industry in the next ten years.” Advertisement Worryingly, courier company owners allege their drivers can be individually deactivated from using the Flex app. “They tier people out, it’s called, because you get a tier one offense, you cannot log into the app anymore,” the California boss claimed. “Amazon does fire people.” But deactivation is only the most extreme action within a larger scheme of control. “Fulfillment center managers control [...] what drivers can come, what can’t,” a New Jersey courier company owner told Gizmodo. “If you make a mistake in there, if you have a mouth on you and use curse words, they don’t allow that whatsoever, and they’ll take you out in a heartbeat. They’ll even take out the whole company if they want to.” That capriciousness, coupled with having significantly more at stake, also explains why, of the many dozens of courier companies advertising for Amazon route drivers, only three spoke to Gizmodo about working with Amazon. One company owner, who did not agree to answer questions about his relationship with Amazon, wrote back in an email that “anything Amazon related is really not up to me to accept on interview or not.” Asked if such companies are under non-disclosure agreement, Amazon declined to comment. Worse still, Amazon has a history of contracting courier services that themselves subcontract their drivers, which led to it being named in lawsuits in 2015 (against Scoobeez) and 2016 (against Courier Logistics Services.) The complaints in these suits included failure to pay minimum wage, failure to compensate overtime, failure to provide meal periods, employee misclassification, and violations of the unfair competition law. Still, at least one recent hiring ad on Craigslist from a courier company explicitly sought independent contractors to run Amazon routes. Technically, all drivers in these arrangements are required by Amazon to be full employees of those local delivery outlets, not contractors like individual Flexers. Yet Amazon’s background check policy insinuates itself into the hiring decisions these companies are able to make—especially if Amazon is provides the lion’s share of work for these local outfits—and testimony around pushy FC workers and app deactivations suggests Amazon also wields the power to functionally fire drivers as well. Amazon declined to comment specifically on any facet of its arrangement with third-party couriers, except to confirm that they are subject to the same background checks. Over the limit “I do think that Amazon is breaking the law. I think it’s breaking the law in a pretty widespread way,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney well known within courier circles for representing drivers from Lyft, Grubhub, Uber, and more recently few Amazon Flex, told Gizmodo. Though Amazon would likely disagree, the legality of the relatively new mass-contractor model remains an open question. “I do think that Amazon is breaking the law. I think it’s breaking the law in a pretty widespread way.” Advertisement The way Liss-Riordan sees it, the issue at hand is labor misclassification: Amazon and similar companies pay drivers to do the work of employees, but treat them as independent contractors, denying them basic amenities like health care, benefits, and workers’ compensation in the event of an on-the-job injury—something which two of the drivers we spoke to reported experiencing. As Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and program director for the National Employment Law Project, explained, the determination of whether a worker is doing the job of a contractor or employee comes down to a few key factors: among them, the right to control how the work is done, its permanence, the level of specialization required, and how integrated it is into the business paying for it. Some of the drivers we spoke to had run deliveries for Flex for up to two years, which suggests continuing rather than gig-based work. And where integration is concerned, the Prime Now arm of Flex is particularly suspect, in Ruckelshaus’s opinion. “If Amazon’s promoting one-day delivery, that’s likely to be found to be integrated to Amazon’s overall products or services that it’s providing to customers,” she said. Most damning though is Amazon’s apparent level of micromanagement. “If something’s relatively low-skill, you don’t have to show that the company, like an Amazon, told them exactly ‘take a left here, take a right there, drop this package off first,’ they mostly just want you to go from A to B, get this thing done, they don’t tell you how to get the thing done,” Ruckelshaus said. “So if Amazon is actually taking that amount of detailed oversight and control, that’s very powerful, strong evidence that it has the right to control because it’s actually exercising control over pretty minute details of the job.” If Amazon has been engaging in misclassification on a massive scale, why haven’t there been lawsuits? Beyond the expense of retaining legal representation, Flex’s terms of service also include an arbitration agreement which waives drivers’ rights to a class-action lawsuit against Amazon. It’s a common practice for comparable gigs, affecting some 25 million contracts. And though the version of the Flex contract made available to Gizmodo gives drivers the ability to opt out within two weeks of signing, it seems few do. Individual drivers looking to escalate an issue can’t bring it to court, keeping whatever ruling might have resulted from becoming valuable case law. “These companies have been very effective at wielding their arbitration clauses,” Liss-Riordan said. The result, in Ruckelshaus’s view, is that “the company doesn’t feel the heat because it doesn’t have to pay off all of its drivers, it only has to pay off the ones that bring their claims, and then nobody else knows—Did that guy win? What happened? It’s harder to change the practices across an entire company when it’s individual private arbitration.” While drivers are free to opt in to Liss-Riordan’s current Flex suit, the class-action gag keeps her from sending notice to driver who might benefit from joining. Compounding the difficulty of driver going up against a powerful and well-insulated company, of the governmental and regulatory regulatory agencies Gizmodo reached out to for comment on Amazon’s business practices, few seem to have ever heard of the Flex program or have an official stance on it. Even the National Labor Relations Board, which by its own description “acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices,” declined to comment on Flex, and further declined to comment on whether or not Flex even fell under the purview of the agency. Mounting regulatory pressure against Uber may have led Instacart to start walking back it’s contractor model, but no such outrage is directed at Flex, one imagines, because so few people even know it exists. Advertisement Both lawyers seemed most troubled to see these practices employed by a company of the size and wealth of Amazon. “It’s too bad that Amazon is continuing to pursue these structures, because it doesn’t have to. All it has to do is pay the minimum wage, that’s all,” Ruckelshaus said, sounding defeated. “It seems like they’re jumping through a lot of hoops to avoid being an employer for not really a good economic reason.” Similarly, Liss-Riordan, pointing to structural legal issues, said that “difficulties in enforcement are leading a company like Amazon, which is a major player and obviously could afford to do it right, to lead it to shift to a system where more and more of its drivers don’t have the benefits of employment.” “It’s too bad that Amazon is continuing to pursue these structures, because it doesn’t have to.” Flex is indicative of two alarming trends: the unwillingness of legislators to curb harmful practices of tech behemoths run amok, and a shift towards less protected, more precarious opportunities in a stagnant job market. Under the current administration, it’s unlikely either will receive the attention it deserves. There is a glimmer of hope for Liss-Riordan and the scores of Flexers she hopes to help though. On October 2nd, the US Supreme Court’s new term began. Among its cases is one which will determine the legality of arbitration clauses like the one Amazon uses to shield itself against the drivers it refuses to acknowledge as employees. The constantly shifting, secretive nature of Amazon makes it difficult to report its activities to the public. If you have information about company, we’d like to hear from you. Reach out to the author via email with tips or to request secure communications through Signal, Wickr, or SecureDrop.

– Amazon has an open secret that few pay heed to: a "nearly invisible workforce" that works to get consumers their packages on demand, per Gizmodo. Bryan Menegus dives into the company's Flex program, responsible for the firm's "last-mile" service, which involves getting ordered goods to a customer from the last local shipment site on the delivery chain. But while the driving program is described online by Amazon as letting those interested "be your own boss, set your own schedule, and have more time to pursue your goals and dreams," Menegus—who chatted with 15 current or ex-drivers from nine states and two countries, as well as with three contractors from local courier companies tied to Amazon—instead paints it as an exploitive system that considers its drivers "utterly expendable" and offers them little recourse to address issues or unfair practices. What he found is that getting into the Flex program can be simple: Entry criteria are "modest" (e.g., being over 21, having a smartphone with the Flex app), as is training. One UK driver says: "Honestly, it seems they take on anyone." But once on board, drivers say they face faulty data systems, altercations between drivers vying for prime routes (and high-tech cheating to claim those routes), and a lack of support from "hot-headed warehouse managers" who take a "customer is always right" attitude. And one labor attorney thinks not everything is on the up-and-up when it comes to how the company handles its drivers: considering them contractors, but treating them like employees, with all of the responsibility and few benefits. "I think it's breaking the law in a pretty widespread way," she says. More on the Flex program, part of the "constantly shifting, secretive nature of Amazon," here.

Howard Stern said on his program Wednesday that Trump will hate being president and the role will be detrimental to his mental health. Stern and Trump are long-time friends, with Trump making numerous appearances on Stern's radio show over the years. "I personally wish that he had never run, I told him that, because I actually think this is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," Stern said. "He wants people to cheer for him." "I don't think it's going to be a healthy experience. And by the way, he's now on this anti-Hollywood kick. He loves Hollywood. First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants hobnob with them. All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It's not good for him. It's not good. There's a reason every president who leaves the office has grey hair." Trump frequently appeared on Stern's radio program over the past two decades, engaging in the kind of crude talk about women and celebrities typical of the shock-jock's show. During the campaign, CNN's KFile surfaced demeaning comments Trump made about women on the show. Stern said he considers Trump a friend, but is opposed to his politics. "I like Donald very much personally. I was shocked when he decided to run for president, and even more shocked that sort of, people took it seriously," Stern said. "I remember saying to him when he announced his presidency, I remember being quite amazed, because I remember him being for Hillary Clinton," Stern added. "And I remember him being very--I mean he was pro-abortion. So the new Donald Trump kind of surprised me." Stern said he doesn't believe Trump has had a change of heart on issues like abortion, but is instead playing to his base. The radio host said he also believed Trump ran for president solely to get a larger contract from NBC for "The Apprentice." "I think it started out as like a kinda cool, fun thing to do in order to get a couple more bucks out of NBC for The Apprentice, I actually do believe that," Stern said. "He just wanted a couple more bucks out of NBC, and that is why Donald is calling for voter fraud investigations. He's pissed he won. He still wants Hillary Clinton to win. He's so f—ing pissed, he's hoping that he can find some voter fraud and hand it over to Hillary." ||||| Howard Stern wishes Donald Trump had never run for president — for Trump’s own sake. During Wednesday’s episode of his eponymous radio show, Stern said he doesn’t think running the country is “going to be a healthy experience” for Trump, whom he considers a longtime friend even though their political beliefs are very different. “I personally wish that he had never run,” Stern said. “I told him that because I actually think this is something that is going to be detrimental to his mental health too, because he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved. He wants people to cheer for him.” Trump has made numerous appearances on Stern’s show over the years, and the veteran shock jock said Wednesday, “I like Donald very much personally. I was shocked when he decided to run for president and even more shocked that people took it seriously.” An avowed Hillary Clinton supporter, Stern said he remembers a time when Trump backed her as well. Questioning the sincerity of Trump’s shift to the other end of the political spectrum, Stern added, “I don’t believe that, for example now, that he’s had some sort of rethink on abortion and all this. I think he’s sort of playing it to his constituency, which is this religious right.” Stern also addressed Trump’s recent feuding with the entertainment industry and the media. “He’s now on this anti-Hollywood kick,” Stern said. “[Trump] loves Hollywood. First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants to hobnob with them. And all of this hatred and stuff directed towards him, it’s not good for him. It’s not good. Listen, there’s a reason every president who leaves the office has gray hair.” Hear more of Stern’s thoughts on Trump here.

– Howard Stern goes back a ways with President Trump, who has been a regular guest on his show for decades. On Thursday, Stern generated headlines for voicing a concern about the man he considers a friend: Becoming president "is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health, too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," Stern said, per Entertainment Weekly. "All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It's not good for him. It's not good." Also of note: Stern says he thinks Trump ran only as a contract ploy. "I think it started out as like a kinda cool, fun thing to do in order to get a couple more bucks out of NBC for The Apprentice, I actually do believe that," Stern said, per CNN. He added that Trump always liked Hillary Clinton and thinks the "new Donald Trump" merely latched onto a conservative base because it was the most effective route to victory. “I don’t believe that, for example now, that he’s had some sort of rethink on abortion and all this." No response, at least yet, from Trump himself.

Men sit outside the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., Thursday, July 3, 2014. A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veteran Affairs hospital cafeteria 500 yards from the emergency... (Associated Press) ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veteran Affairs hospital cafeteria — 500 yards from the emergency room — died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed Thursday. It took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five-minute walk, officials at the hospital said. Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said. Staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday, she said. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown said. That policy is a local one, she said. The man's name hasn't been released. News of the man's death spread Thursday at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center among veterans who were visiting for various medical reasons. Lorenzo Calbert, 65, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, said it was sad that a fellow veteran had to die so close to where he could have received help. "There's no reason for it," he said. "They have so many workers. They could have put him on the gurney and run faster than that ambulance." Paul Bronston, a California emergency-room physician and chair of Ethics and Professional Policy Committee of the American College of Medical Quality, said it may sound ridiculous that staff had to call 911 but that practice is the standard at hospitals. Typically, an ambulance would arrive faster, and other factors can stall workers trying to rush patients to the emergency room on foot, he said. "The question I would have (is) ... was there an AED (automated external defibrillator) on site as required?" he said. Bronston said 90 percent of those who collapse are afflicted by heart problems and an AED could help them. It was not known what caused the man to collapse or whether an AED was nearby. The death comes as the Department of Veterans Affairs remains under scrutiny for widespread reports of long delays for treatment and medical appointments and of veterans dying while on waiting lists. A review last week cited "significant and chronic system failures" in the nation's health system for veterans. The review also portrayed the struggling agency as one battling a corrosive culture of distrust, lacking in resources and ill-prepared to deal with an influx of new and older veterans with a range of medical and mental health care needs. The scathing report by Deputy White House chief of staff Rob Nabors said the Veterans Health Administration, the VA sub agency that provides health care to about 8.8 million veterans a year, has systematically ignored warnings about its deficiencies and must be fundamentally restructured. Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College, said the Department of Veterans Affairs is a large bureaucracy with various local policies like the one under review in Albuquerque. Although the agency needs to undergo reform, Landy said it's unfair to attack the VA too harshly on the recent Albuquerque death because it appears to be so unusual. "I think we have to be careful," he said. "Let's not beat up too much on the VA while they are already facing criticism." ___ Follow Russell Contreras at http://twitter.com/russcontreras ||||| A military veteran died Monday after waiting for an ambulance to take him 500 yards to the emergency room. As it turns out, the problem was he was already at the Veterans Affairs Hospital. Advertisement A 71-year-old Albuquerque veteran died Monday at the VA hospital. He collapsed in the cafeteria, which is next to the main hospital building. Staff followed VA policy that said personnel must call 911 for a medical emergency that happens outside the main hospital. Target 7 spoke with the veteran's family. They asked that he remain unidentified because they are considering legal action. VA officials told the man's family he collapsed at 12:19 p.m. The Albuquerque Fire Department said they dispatched a rescue unit at 12:26 p.m. That unit arrived at the hospital at 12:33 p.m. Albuquerque ambulance said their paramedics got to the veteran at 12:39 p.m. Nearly 14 minutes passed from the time he collapsed to the time medics arrived at the scene. They drove him on the complex from one building to the other. It takes four minutes to walk from the cafeteria to the VA's emergency room. By the time the ambulance got to the cafeteria, loaded up the veteran and drove him around the building, it was too late to save the veteran. When Action 7 News asked the VA why the man wasn't helped on property or even wheeled on a gurney to the ER, a spokesperson said, "We are currently reviewing our policy on it." Officials cannot confirm if any doctors were present in the cafeteria when the man went down. Workers are required to call 911. Mobile users: Tap here for video AlertMe ||||| ........................................................................................................................................................................................ A veteran who collapsed in a cafeteria at Albuquerque’s Veterans Affairs hospital died after waiting 20 to 25 minutes to get to the same hospital’s emergency room, located about 500 yards away, a VA spokeswoman confirmed Thursday. An Albuquerque Fire Department spokeswoman said it took an ambulance about 11 minutes to be dispatched and arrive at the cafeteria, which is about a five-minute walk from the emergency room, officials at the hospital said. VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said VA staff told her that at least 20 minutes elapsed between the man’s medical episode and when he arrived at the ER. Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel, who regularly eat lunch at the cafeteria, performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, Brown said. Staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday, she said. “Our policy is under expedited review,” Brown said. Brown said the policy is a local one, and Jean Schaefer, spokeswoman for the Phoenix-based regional VA network, said these types of medical center policies vary across VA campuses, depending on what facilities are there. Brown also said she’s not aware of any vehicles owned by the VA that could have transported the veteran. National Veterans Affairs representatives did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The man’s name hasn’t been released. News of the man’s death at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center spread Thursday among veterans who were visiting the center for various medical reasons. Lorenzo Calbert, 65, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, said it was sad that a fellow veteran had to die so close to where he could have received help. “There’s no reason for it,” he said. “They have so many workers. They could have put him on the gurney and run faster than that ambulance.” An Albuquerque Fire Department spokeswoman said law prohibits disclosing how long it took for the ambulance to get from the cafeteria to the hospital. She also said Albuquerque Ambulance arrived before AFD, and a spokeswoman there said the ambulance arrived “well within” 10 minutes, which Brown said is unlikely. However, Brown said that, if the ambulance company and AFD are correct about their response times, it would have taken at least 10 minutes for the veteran to be driven the 500 yards between the cafeteria to the hospital. Under a policy instituted in 2010 and signed by then-director George Marnell, the VA medical center Code Blue Team is to respond to medical emergencies in six buildings on the 88-acre property off of San Pedro SE. The buildings include the main hospital in Building 41, but the cafeteria or canteen aren’t mentioned. Code Blue Team members include a physician, an intensive care unit nurse, a health technician, a nursing supervisor, an anesthesiologist, a respiratory therapist and a pharmacist, if needed. The policy goes on to state: “For medical emergencies out of the Code Blue Team response areas, the Albuquerque EMS system via 911 will be activated,” the policy states. Outpatients or non-patients responded to by Albuquerque EMS who have suffered a cardiac and/or respiratory arrest will be transported to the VA medical center’s emergency department, the policy adds. Outpatients or non-patients who haven’t suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest will be transported per Albuquerque EMS protocols. And all medical emergencies involving children regardless of the location on the VA Medical Center campus are to be dealt with by Albuquerque EMS via a 911 call. The policy requires medical center staff who witness a life-threatening event to give CPR or emergency aid regardless of the location. Staff members are to remain with the individual until emergency help arrives. Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a statement Thursday, saying her office has been trying for two days to get information from the VA about “whether its policy may have contributed to the delay in care. “In any case, the inability of officials to answer basic questions in a timely fashion is yet another reason the public has lost faith, and why we are demanding an outside investigation and immediate reform at the Albuquerque VA.” The death comes as the Department of Veterans Affairs remains under scrutiny for widespread reports of long delays for treatment and medical appointments and of veterans dying while on waiting lists. A review last week cited “significant and chronic system failures” in the nation’s health system for veterans. The review also portrayed the struggling agency as one battling a corrosive culture of distrust, lacking in resources and ill-prepared to deal with an influx of new and older veterans with a range of medical and mental health care needs. The scathing report by Deputy White House chief of staff Rob Nabors said the Veterans Health Administration, the VA sub agency that provides health care to about 8.8 million veterans a year, has systematically ignored warnings about its deficiencies and must be fundamentally restructured. Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College, said the Department of Veterans Affairs is a large bureaucracy with various local policies like the one under review in Albuquerque. Although the agency needs to undergo reform, Landy said it’s unfair to attack the VA too harshly on the recent Albuquerque death, because it appears to be so unusual. “I think we have to be careful,” he said. “Let’s not beat up too much on the VA while they are already facing criticism.”

– Another black eye for the Veterans Health Administration? A 71-year-old veteran died on Monday after waiting up to 30 minutes for an ambulance—while already at a Veteran Affairs hospital. Officials say the man collapsed in the Albuquerque hospital's cafeteria, which is around 1,500 feet from the emergency room, about a four-minute walk, the AP reports. By the time medics arrived, loaded him into the ambulance, and drove him around the building, it was too late to save him. A VA spokeswoman says staff followed policy by calling 911 when the man collapsed, but that "policy is under expedited review." The man's family has asked that he remain unidentified because they are considering legal action, KOAT reports. The case comes after a long series of reports of serious deficiencies at the VA, including dozens of veterans dying while on "secret waiting lists," the Albuquerque Journal reports. Rep. Michelle Grisham says her office has been trying for days to get the VA to answer "whether its policy may have contributed to the delay in care." In any case, she says, "the inability of officials to answer basic questions in a timely fashion is yet another reason the public has lost faith, and why we are demanding an outside investigation and immediate reform at the Albuquerque VA."

Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Democrats were gleeful this week when Donald Trump blurted out in Tuesday's debate that “wages [are] too high.” But as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley prepare to debate Saturday night, the Democrats have a wage problem of their own: American incomes have dropped during the Obama presidency. It's a vulnerability that Republicans haven't figured out how to exploit, and it's clearly one of the biggest weaknesses in the Obama economic recovery. Story Continued Below In 2014, the last year for which Census data are available, median household income was $1,656 lower than it was in January 2009, when President Barack Obama took office. A recent survey by the private firm Sentier Research showed household income finally rose this year above its level in June 2009, when the Great Recession ended — but only by 1.3 percent. That's a terrible record for any presidency. But that such stagnation occurred during a Democratic one is potentially a big problem for Democratic candidates, and especially for Clinton, who's running on her role in that administration. “I think that there are two phenomena here,” said Stuart Stevens, a senior strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “Those who normally are the most articulate, passionate voices for those who are doing least well in the economy have been muted over the past seven years” because they don’t want to undercut Obama. That should create an opening for Republicans. But “Republicans have never been great at talking about this,” Stevens said. The Republican candidates’ wage conundrum isn’t about excoriating the Democrats. They’re all too happy to call out Obama for failing to lift incomes. “These last seven years,” Bobby Jindal said at this week’s GOP “undercard” debate, “inequality has gone up. Only the top 10 percent have seen their incomes go up.” Rick Santorum said not once, not twice, but three times that the middle class was “hollowing out.” In the primetime debate that followed, Jeb Bush said “the disposable income of the great middle is down 2,300 bucks … Jobs are being created, but they’re lower-income jobs than the jobs that were lost.” But while the GOP candidates are eager to state the wages problem, they struggle to explain how they would fix it. “It’s a bit awkward,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, “if Republicans are talking about the need for wage growth and opposed to a minimum wage increase.” Only one of the Republican presidential candidates has endorsed a specific minimum-wage hike: Rick Santorum, who would raise the hourly minimum to $8.75, up from the current $7.25, over a period of three years. The Democratic field, meanwhile, proposes raising the minimum to $12 (Clinton) or $15 (Sanders, O’Malley). Ben Carson expressed in the September CNN debate tentative support for an unspecified increase. He also said he favored a lower “starter” minimum wage for young people. And Carson said the wage minimum should rise automatically with inflation “so that we never have to have this conversation again.” Romney also favored indexing the minimum wage, figuring, like Carson, that it would remove the topic permanently from the partisan arena. (Because the minimum wage is popular, politicizing it mostly hurts Republicans.) “It was a position [Romney] had as governor and a position he kept,” Stevens said, “and he ended up with a higher percentage of the GOP vote than Bush in 2000.” (Actually, Romney muddied his support in 2012 by proposing the minimum be indexed not only to inflation but also to “the jobs level throughout the country, unemployment rate [and] competitive rates in other states, or, in this case, other nations.”) But earlier this week Carson appeared to back away from his pro-minimum wage stance. “I would not raise it,” Carson said at Tuesday’s debate, “because I'm interested in making sure that people are able to enter the job market and take advantage of opportunities.” The Carson campaign didn’t answer POLITICO’s request for clarification, but spokesman Doug Watts told the Daily Beast that Carson’s position was unchanged. “His answer focused on the lower tier, which he does not believe needs raising, as it is an entry-level wage. He believes in a second, higher tier that, once determined, is indexed,” Watts told the Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick in a post-debate email. The other Republican candidates all oppose raising the minimum wage, and two of them — Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush — have indicated a preference for leaving the matter to the states. Then there's Trump, who since Tuesday has clarified that when he said wages were too high he was referring to the minimum wage, not to wages in general. (He did not propose lowering it.) Perhaps no candidate has underscored the Republicans’ wage dilemma more than Marco Rubio. “You can’t live on $10 an hour,” Rubio said in October. “You can’t live on $11 an hour.” That would indicate, logically, that still less can one live on $7.25 an hour. But Rubio opposes raising the federal minimum. To Republicans, “raising the minimum wage is a Band Aid solution,” explains Matthew Dickinson, a political scientist at Middlebury College. Lara Brown, a political scientist at George Washington University, says Republicans aren’t necessarily wrong about that. “The Democratic solution is dealing with the minimum wage. But the vast majority of people in the country are not making the minimum wage.” Instead, the Republican candidates favor stimulating the economy mainly through tax cuts and deregulation. But such policies yielded only modest growth in median household income under President Ronald Reagan, and a decline under President George W. Bush. Awareness has grown that sluggish wage growth is a long-term problem that's prevailed for four decades (excepting a period of brisk wage growth during the tech boom of the late 1990s). “Wages for the bottom 90 percent of the economy have been stagnant for 40 years,” Mike Huckabee said at Tuesday’s debate. Huckabee blamed the Federal Reserve. He favors a return to the gold standard, along with Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. But this position, long favored by many in the party’s more conservative wing, has never stirred much excitement among voters. The most dramatic initiative that Obama has undertaken to intervene in the wage economy has earned almost no mention from the Republican field. That’s the Labor Department’s proposed rule to more than double (to $50,440) the threshold under which virtually all salaried employees would qualify for time-and-a-half pay if they worked more than 40 hours in a given week. The overtime rule, which is expected to increase by five million the number of workers eligible for overtime pay, was welcomed warmly by Clinton and especially by Sanders and O’Malley. Congressional Republicans have denounced it as burdensome, echoing strong opposition by the business lobby. But the GOP’s presidential candidates have been largely silent on the topic. “It will probably become an increasing topic of debate,” said Dickinson, “particularly as the Labor department prepares for a final rule.” But with a final rule now not expected until late in 2016, “this one’s not close enough to fruition to become a target of attack.”

– Politico has an interesting article on what it's calling "the Democrats' wage problem," a major takeaway of which is that the average American income has actually gone down during Obama's years as president. The median household income in 2014 was more than $1,600 lower than it was in January 2009, according to Census data. And while a recent survey says median household income is finally above its 2009 level this year, it's barely 1% above it. Politico calls this "one of the biggest weaknesses in the Obama economic recovery" and says it could be a big problem for Hillary Clinton since she was part of the administration. However Politico reports none of that is to say Republicans know how to fix stagnant wages or have even shown themselves able to capably address the issue. “It’s a bit awkward if Republicans are talking about the need for wage growth and opposed to a minimum wage increase," one political scientist tells Politico. Only one GOP presidential candidate—Rick Santorum—has a proposal to raise the national minimum wage, and it's more modest than similar proposals from any of the Democratic candidates. The majority of the other Republican candidates favor fixing stagnant wages through tax cuts and deregulation, policies that only exacerbated the problem under George W. Bush. Read the full story here.

You can’t judge a movie by its source material: the much-maligned jukebox musical genre gave us “Rock of Ages,” yes, but it also made “Singin’ in the Rain” possible. And we were all worried about “The Lego Movie” before we saw it. So let us be clear that “The Emoji Movie” is not a soul-crushing disaster simply because its dramatis personae are the range of emotive faces and symbols that live inside your cell phone. It is a soul-crushing disaster because it lacks humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view or any other distinguishing characteristic that would make it anything but a complete waste of your time, not to mention that of the diligent animators who brought this catastrophe into being. On a story level, it cobbles together pieces of everything from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Smurfs: The Lost Village” (coincidentally, Sony Pictures Animation’s prior release), and thematically it hits a tediously familiar litany of kid-movie messages: Be yourself. People can be more than one thing. Parents should support their children. Candy Crush is super awesome. Watch Video: 'The Emoji Movie': First Trailer Reveals Hidden World In Your Smartphone OK, that last one is a new feature, since the premise of a movie set entirely inside a smartphone has clearly opened up new potentials of product placement, whether its characters are riding boats down the musical streams of Spotify or walking through other people’s photographic memories in Instagram. As with Sony’s “The Angry Birds Movie,” this is a film that’s shameless about its origins as a pocket doodad; it also resembles that previous film by being completely shrill and stupid. Within the phone of a hapless high-school freshman named Alex (voiced by Jake T. Austin, “The Fosters”), an emoji named Gene (T.J. Miller) excitedly prepares for his first day on the job in Textopolis. The “excitedly” part is a problem, since Gene is supposed to be a jaded “Meh” emoji, but he can’t stop himself from expressing a variety of emotions on his round yellow tennis-ball face. READ MORE See The Emoji Movie's latest POWER MOVE. PowerRank: 1383 His professionally underwhelmed parents, played by Steven Wright and Jennifer Coolidge, worry that his propensity for feelings will get him into trouble, and they’re right: when Alex clicks on him, the scanner registers Gene making a weird nonsense face, which infuriates the perpetually-cheery Smiler (Maya Rudolph), whose face bears a constant grinning rictus even when she’s calling for “malfunction” Gene to be deleted. Gene’s only hope is to team up with Hi-5 (James Corden) to find Jailbreak (Anna Faris), a hacker who can get them off the phone and into the cloud. Anti-virus bots are eluded and lessons are learned, but to piece together the film’s dreary plotting is to give it more thought than screenwriters Tony Leondis (who also directed), Eric Siegel and a presumably paycheck-collecting Mike White ever did. (And at least one of them will have to live with the fact that he wrote the dreadful pun, “Holy Delete-o!”) Also Read: Amazon, Annapurna Team Up for Ben Stiller Comedy 'Brad's Status' The unanswered questions are legion: Why do the emojis fear the phone reboot, when they’ll presumably return in its new iteration? Are they different from their counterparts in millions of other phones? Why does Gene have parents when most Americans are constantly switching to new and upgraded devices? And are we really to believe that teen boy Alex never uses his eggplant emoji? Emotionally, we’re supposed to care about Gene and Jailbreak getting together, even though they’re so muddily conceived that we know he’s pursuing something dumb and her desires are merely vague. On top of that, we’re also supposed to be rooting for Alex to win the affections of classmate Addie (Tati Gabrielle, “The 100”), but of course his courtship all boils down to picking the right emoji to text her. Sorry Cyrano de Bergerac and Abelard and Heloise and Cole Porter and anyone else who’s ever used dumb old words to declare love; you’re nothing without a poop symbol. The one non-dispiriting aspect of the “Emoji Movie” experience was getting to see “Puppy!”, a new animated short set in the world of “Hotel Transylvania.” When Adam Sandler outclasses your high-concept, high-tech functions, it’s time to switch to a flip phone. ||||| The Emoji Movie Looking back, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there was a small, flickering reason to believe that The Emoji Movie wouldn’t be a complete travesty. After all, the adorably ubiquitous pictograms that have become a second language for at least two generations are a public-domain entity; their relative recent rise makes us forget that, licensing-wise, this is no bigger a grab than Leaves: The Movie would be. It was pretty much free to do whatever it wanted within the ridiculous, cynical parameters it had set. The Emoji Movie had nothing to sell aside from itself. But this was naïve of me, because The Emoji Movie is selling something. In the mock tradition of countless superior Pixar films before it, it’s attempting to sell a sense of childlike wonder and fascination with an ordinary, everyday object: your smartphone. And in doing so, it is one of the darkest, most dismaying films I have ever seen, much less one ostensibly made for children. Let me get briefly more philosophical than this film deserves: Emoji remain a ripe source for humor in our everyday digital parlance, specifically because they are devoid of narrative, or even, ironically, emotion. There is a kind of poetry that has emerged from their use; an emoji is worth maybe not a thousand, but certainly a hundred words, and using one in place of words requires you to momentarily, subconsciously imagine that you are living in a language-free totalitarian state where a cry-laugh symbol is our linguistic Soylent. There’s a similar pathetic humor to the constricted movement and expression of Lego figurines, which The Lego Movie exploited to far greater effect. The Emoji Movie’s first aesthetic mistake is redesigning their titular figures to be the same kind of rubber-faced caricatures you can find in any other shrieking CGI kid-distracter on the market. Not once does this film rise above the level of humor of literally any real-world use of a simple upside-down-face emoji (whose meaning I tend to translate as “Wheeee, life is a horrible hall of mirrors and I am powerless to do anything but smile about it.”) If only my review of this film could be an upside-down-face emoji. The laboriously literal plot concerns the “Meh” emoji (T.J. Miller, who certainly doesn’t sound like a man who’s banking his career on this film as his game changer), who is “defective” due to his ability to express a kaleidoscope of emotions beyond his regimented role. I think this is the basic principle behind the Divergent films; it could just as easily be about a commercial actor in an existential rut. To fix his defect, he teams up with the lowly high-five emoji (James Corden), who has been replaced by the newer, hipper fist-bump emoji in the hall of favorites (racial subtext abounds). Together they escape the messaging app they call home on a dream-logic mission to find a “hacker” (Anna Faris) who can take them to the “cloud” and fix Meh’s defect. Along the way, they pass through a series of familiar apps while a battalion of anti-virus bots follows them in lukewarm pursuit. At one point, the film grinds to a halt for a game of Candy Crush. Yes, the actual IP of The Emoji Movie has nothing to do with the emoji themselves, and everything to do with the apps that have prime placement in the Google AdWords–grade narrative. Somewhat relevant to the plot is the fact that it all takes place on the phone of a 14-year-old boy, who is having text-based girl troubles somehow worsened by Meh’s poor performance as an emoji. Apparently this 14-year-old boy not only has the usual suspects on his phone (Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify all make appearances), but also, mystifyingly, the Crackle app, and extra-mystifyingly, a Just Dance mobile app that I wasn’t even aware existed before now and currently has a two-star rating on the Apple store. There is a mumbled, shorthand moral about staying true to yourself in all this, but it is drowned out by the wall-to-wall cynicism that is The Emoji Movie’s entire reason for existing in the first place. The film runs through its list of corporate and Zeitgeist awareness obligations in dead-eyed lockstep, making sure to get in uses of the words “slay” and “shade” and lifting an entire section of the lyrics to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” to telegraph a would-be important emotional beat (it’s not a joke, I don’t think). In the end, Meh’s embrace of his animated, multifaceted self just comes off as an ad for an Emoji Movie animated-sticker set that’s probably already out there. This is a film that seems beamed from a near future in which nothing goes right; “words,” as the kids in the film agree, “aren’t cool” anymore; and Patrick Stewart making jokes about soft shits is the new prestige TV. But what do I know? At my screening, which was for both press and a handful of unfortunate families, at the first sighting of her favorite rainbow-colored icon, a little girl behind me cried out, adoringly, “It’s Instagram!” A new age of heroes is born. ||||| Tony Leondis' kid-flick tries to turn text-message punctuation into a colorful adventure. Here's what you tell yourself when you accept an assignment to review a cartoon about emoji: "Remember what you thought when you heard about The Lego Movie? That it was the most shameless bit of advertising-as-entertainment you could imagine, the nadir of Hollywood's intellectual-property dependence, and couldn't possibly be worth seeing? Remember how incredibly wrong you were?" You were wrong then. Given the right combination of inspiration, intelligence and gifted artists, any dumb thing can be turned into an enjoyable film. But Tony Leondis' The Emoji Movie, a very, very dumb thing, comes nowhere near that magic combination. It is fast and colorful enough to attract young kids, but offers nearly nothing to their parents. If only this smartphone-centric dud, so happy to hawk real-world apps to its audience, could have done the same in its release strategy — coming out via Snapchat, where it would vanish shortly after arrival. But even that wouldn't be fast enough. The project's first hurdle is imagining how an emoji icon, which by definition represents only one emotional state (or object), can be a character capable of experiencing a story. Its solution is incoherent. We're told both that "the pressure's always on" for the face-emoji residents of Textopolis to keep their expressions convincing — smiley or smirking, angry or puzzled — and that they have no choice: That weeping guy keeps gushing tears even when he wins the lottery; he's just programmed that way. The exception is Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller), a youngster preparing to take over for his old man as the face of Meh. (Who could play the elder embodiment of Blah other than Steven Wright?) We learn that free-spirited Gene, thanks to some glitch, is capable of infinite facial expressions. He has a hard time being deadpan on cue. His first time on the job, in fact, he fails. In the film's weirdly unconvincing vision of how emojis make their way from a phone's inner universe to its screen when the user selects them, the whole process breaks down if one of the actors can't sit still for a face scan. Gene wrecks the app's game show-like stage, and eventually, the program's supervisor (Smiler, a ruthless but always-smiling woman voiced by Maya Rudolph) targets him for deletion, sending a team of mean-looking antivirus bots off to get him. With the help of a high-five icon (James Corden, taking his position as the story's fount of unrelenting enthusiasm very seriously), Gene sets out to find a hacker who can reprogram him and eliminate unwanted facial expressions. Jailbreak (Anna Faris) says they need to escape the phone entirely to do this, getting past a tricky firewall and out onto The Cloud. Getting there affords the filmmakers plenty of opportunities for product placement. The characters spend several minutes stuck in Candy Crush (gags about Hi-5's sweet tooth go on about five times longer than they should); they nearly die in a Dance Dance Revolution-style challenge game. At best, these episodes are limp set pieces; at worst, they sound like they were written by ad agencies. When our heroes need to ride streams of music from one place to another, one coos, "Whoa — this is Spotify?!"; when Jailbreak leads Gene into Dropbox, their pursuers can't follow them inside because "this app is secure." The dialogue is even lamer when the pic's three scribes depict the life of Alex, the high-school kid who owns the phone Gene inhabits. When Alex wonders what to text the girl he has a crush on, his pal scowls "words aren't cool" — in a Manhattan preview where critics were outnumbered by ordinary moviegoers, nearly all of the laughter was directed at this sort of line, where three grown men try and fail to convincingly imagine how kids talk. Hell, they can't even come up with fresh-smelling one-liners about the movie's resident poop icon. (Amusingly, the closing credits identify this slumming actor as "Sir Patrick Stewart.") Leondis and company don't get much mileage out of the vast variety of emojis they might use for sight gags, but they do well enough with the slapstick adventure of Gene's quest from home to the cloud. If not always imaginative or digestible, the look of the settings and characters should keep kids awake for 86 minutes; and if the trick that eventually saves the day makes very little sense to critical moviegoers, at least it's cutely frantic eye candy. Even so, few adults in the theater will have a hard time maintaining the flatline, unimpressed expression Gene has such difficulty with. Production company: Sony Pictures Animation Distributor: Columbia Cast: T.J. Miller, Anna Faris, James Corden, Patrick Stewart, Maya Rudolph, Steven Wright, Rob Riggle, Jennifer Coolidge, Jake T. Austin, Sofia Vergara, Christina Aguilera Director: Tony Leondis Screenwriters: Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel, Mike White Producer: Michelle Raimo Kouyate Executive producer: Ben Waisbren Production designer: Carlos Zaragoza Editor: William J. Caparella Composer: Patrick Doyle Casting director: Mary Hidalgo Rated PG, 86 minutes ||||| Children should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie. Their impressionable brains simply aren’t set up to sift through the thick haze of corporate subterfuge clouding every scene of this sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film. Adults know enough to snort derisively when, say, an anthropomorphic high-five drops a reference to popular smartphone game Just Dance Now (available for purchase in the App Store, kids!), but young children especially are more innocent and more vulnerable. The Emoji Movie is a force of insidious evil, a film that feels as if it was dashed off by an uninspired advertising executive. The best commercials have a way of making you forget you’re being pitched at, but director Tony Leondis leaves all the notes received from his brand partners in full view. The core conceit apes Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, where a spirited misfit hops between self-contained worlds styled in a single recognisable way. Instead of holidays, however, our hero here jumps from app to app, and the ulterior motive of pumping up download numbers drains every last drop of joy from Leondis’s efforts to enchant. The director wants us to think of Textopolis, the bustling city inside our smartphones, as a world of pure imagination. When a meh-face emoji named Gene (TJ Miller) is banished from his home for daring to express an emotion other than unimpressed nonchalance, Leondis takes his odyssey of self-discovery as an opportunity to imagine fantastical scenery. As a smiley-face emoji (Maya Rudolph) ruling Textopolis with a cheery iron fist tirelessly hunts him down, Gene gapes in awe at such marvels as a supercharged rollercoaster ride through raw data and a pixelated humpback whale that majestically glides over him. But because these glossy images are so nakedly in service of plugs for Dropbox and Spotify, it’s all but impossible to appreciate any incidental beauty they might possess. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex, voiced by Jake T Austin, in The Emoji Movie. Photograph: Sony Pictures/AP The pervasive falseness extends to the film’s thematic underpinnings, which make a clumsy lunge at vague, be-yourself positivity. The paramount importance of being true to one’s own spirit is made literal in Gene’s silly quandary; he’s forced to hide who he is for the sake of compulsory homogeneity, and only through tapping into his full range of emotions can he achieve his potential. While Leondis, who is gay, has stated he intends this as an allegory for the tribulations faced by the non-heterosexual community, any social commentary is stymied by the execution. The film’s insistent feel-goodery and occasional nods to feminism (delivered by a spunky blue-haired hacker emoji, voiced by Anna Faris) ring false. Product-placement mashups Toy Story and The Lego Movie had the purity of playtime to seal in the sentimentality; somehow it’s not as endearing in a film built around the apps we use to kill time while sat on the toilet. The ruthless mercenary details take the Emoji Movie beyond simply embarrassing and incompetent into something more manipulative and contemptible. One perplexing scene finds the emoji pals all doing a synchronised dance called “the emoji bop”. In a film so desperate to sell itself, this is clearly a craven bid to go viral, the cinematic equivalent of clickbait. The script practically begs for the approval of the tweens that elevated the lowly emoji to phenomenon status, but has only the slightest notion how they talk or act. Alex (Jake T Austin), the human in possession of the phone housing Gene and the rest of the cast, speaks like an dusty oldster. Alex’s awkward courtship of the cute girl in his class revolves around the deployment of emojis, but demonstrates no workable understanding of how the icons fit into adolescent life. Watching this fogeyish hero angle for edgy relevance is as uncomfortable as reading a fast-food chain’s Twitter account. However, the most disturbing part of this toxic film is the way it infects audiences with its ugly cynicism. A viewer leaves The Emoji Movie a colder person, not only angry at the film for being unconscionably bad, but resentful of it for making them feel angry. A critic can accept the truth that art and commerce will spend eternity locked in opposition. Nevertheless it’s still startling to see art that cheers commerce on while being stamped in the face by its boots. ||||| This animated comedy takes place in Textopolis, a world inside a smartphone that's inhabited by various emojis. There, an emoji named Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) is ashamed that he has multiple facial expressions while his colleagues only have one each, and he embarks on a quest to be like everyone else. James Corden, Anna Faris, Jennifer Coolidge, Patrick Stewart, and Maya Rudolph also lend their voices to this film from Sony Pictures Animation.

– With a 3% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews of The Emoji Movie could have consisted of repeated strings of the vomiting emoji, thumbs-down emoji, and poop emoji. Fortunately for fans of brutal critical drubbings, film critics had to use words (despite the film's position that "words aren't cool"). Here are some of the best takedowns of the new animated film: "Children should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie," writes Charles Bramesco at the Guardian, calling it a "sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film" and a "force of insidious evil." It somehow exists to get kids to buy apps without apparently understanding kids and how they actually use emojis. "A viewer leaves The Emoji Movie a colder person," the reviewer concludes. "Hear that? It's the end of the world," writes Johnny Oleksinsk at ithe New York Post after calling The Emoji Movie a "new exercise in soulless branding." At Vulture, Emily Yoshida calls it "one of the darkest, most dismaying films I have ever seen, much less one ostensibly made for children." The Emoji Movie is "a very, very dumb thing" full of moments that "sound like they were written by ad agencies," according to the Hollywood Reporter, which laments that the film wasn't released "via Snapchat, where it would vanish shortly after arrival. But even that wouldn't be fast enough." Finally, Alonso Duralde at the Wrap calls it a "soul-crushing disaster" and "completely shrill and stupid." This "complete waste of your time" is without "humor, wit, ideas, visual style, compelling performances, a point of view, or any other distinguishing characteristic."

Published: January 31st, 2012 | Tags: Super Bowl XLVI, Mark Herzlich, Media Day, New York Giants INDIANAPOLIS — Mark Herzlich knows what it takes to defeat a powerful opponent. His Giants have yet to play the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, but the rookie linebacker won the biggest battle of his life when he overcame Ewing’s sarcoma, a type of bone cancer. That story of survival led Herzlich to tweet this message upon the Giants’ Monday night arrival at Indianapolis International Airport: “2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in The #SuperBowl. #TakeThat**** Cancer.” “I was very pleased and very happy that so many people got to see it because that’s part of what my goal is and what my mission is,” Herzlich said Tuesday at Media Day. “This week’s all about football and all about playing, but there are people that are out there going through cancer right now and saying, ‘He’s doing it. I can do it.’ … “It’s a real privilege and a blessing to play in it. I’ve come from a different, tough place in my life with being sick, and just two short years later, to be able to play in the Super Bowl, that’s great.” According to Herzlich, football was the second-biggest motivator, only behind his family, in his battle with cancer. He even made a highlight tape of himself from Boston College’s 2008 season to help him “through the bad days” of chemotherapy. Since he was a Boston College student at the time of his diagnosis, Herzlich received a lot of support in New England. Although most of those fans will pull for the Patriots on Sunday, a few likely will cheer for Herzlich, too. “It’s interesting to have Boston fans root for any sort of Giant, but I appreciate everything, and the support I got all through school was unbelievable,” Herzlich said. “Even today, I got tweets from people saying, ‘I am a Patriots fan. I hope you lose, but I wish you well in your life and career.’ ” — Matt Florjancic, Special to NFL.com Share this: Facebook Twitter Email Print Like this: Like Loading... ||||| Image Credit: Scott Cunningham/Getty Images New York Giants' rookie linebacker Mark Herzlich stepped off the plane in Indianapolis to play against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI and immediately took to Twitter to express his gratitude. He was thankful not just to be there, but to be alive. "2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in The #SuperBowl. #TakeThatSh*tCancer," he tweeted. In 2009, Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The cancer was isolated to his left leg and the initial prognosis was not positive for the promising Boston College football star. "They felt the NFL was a long shot," Herzlich's father, Sandy, told ESPN last summer. "They were first happy if they could save his life and they were happy if they could save his leg." Herzlich was told there were three possible outcomes. "The worst-case scenario is obviously [that] it gets into other parts of your body and it completely kills you," he told ESPN. "Second worst-case scenario is if they saw a small fracture in the bone and it was seeping out. Then they would have to amputate my leg right away within hours of finding it out. … Then better than that would be to remove that portion of the leg, putting in a cadaver bone and being in a cast for six months from the waist down, not ever being able to run again." It turns out there was a fourth and even better option. Herzlich responded phenomenally to aggressive chemotherapy and radiation. He was given the choice to forgo surgery and continue treatment, saving his football career, but increasing the likelihood that the cancer could return, or have surgery, ending his football aspirations, but likely eliminating the cancer. Herzlich decided to keep his dream alive. After missing the 2009 college football season to undergo treatment, he took the field for Boston College in 2010. He started in all 13 games, but did not catch the eye of NFL scouts and went undrafted. Herzlich continued training and eventually signed as a free agent with the New York Giants. Now, one year into his NFL career he's walked off the plane in Indianapolis and is getting ready to run onto the field at Lucas Oil Stadium, two things, that just three years ago seemed nearly impossible. ESPN contributed to this report.

– Rookie Giants linebacker Mark Herzlich is happier than most to be playing in the Super Bowl: “2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in the Super Bowl. Take That Sh*t Cancer," Herzlich tweeted after arriving in Indianapolis yesterday. Herzlich was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in 2009. He had been expected to be a first-round draft pick from Boston College, but instead spent the year undergoing treatment, choosing chemotherapy and radiation over a leg amputation that would have ended his dream of playing in the NFL, ABC reports. Herzlich, who went undrafted and joined the Giants as a free agent this season, says he sees his arrival in Indianapolis to take on the New England Patriots as an opportunity to inspire. "This week’s all about football and all about playing," he tells NFL.com, "but there are people that are out there going through cancer right now and saying, ‘He’s doing it. I can do it.’"

Man charged after Heights party-goer shot to death while wearing bulletproof vest Now Playing: A Rosenberg man has been charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of another man wearing a bulletproof vest at a party in the Heights, Houston police said. Jason Griffin, 39, has also been charged with felon in possession of a weapon and unlawful possession of body armor. Officers were dispatched early Sunday to a garage apartment in the 300 block of West 23rd, where a man had been shot in the chest. Paramedics pronounced the man him dead at the scene. Court records identified him as Daniel Barber. Jason Griffin Jason Griffin Police were dispatched to the garage apartment on 23rd Street early Sunday morning. It was not immediately clear if the bullet had gone through the vest or if the shooter had missed the vest. Police were dispatched to the garage apartment on 23rd Street early Sunday morning. It was not immediately clear if the bullet had gone through the vest or if the shooter had missed the vest. Photo: Metro Video LLC / For The Houston Chronicle Police were dispatched to the garage apartment on 23rd Street early Sunday morning. It was not immediately clear if the bullet had gone through the vest or if the shooter had missed the vest. Police were dispatched to the garage apartment on 23rd Street early Sunday morning. It was not immediately clear if the bullet had gone through the vest or if the shooter had missed the vest. Photo: Metro Video LLC / For The Houston Chronicle window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-4', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 4', target_type: 'mix' }); _taboola.push({flush: true}); Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Man charged after Heights party-goer shot to death while wearing bulletproof vest 1 / 4 Back to Gallery Homicide investigators were working to determine whether the incident was the result of a dare. It was not immediately clear whether the bullet had gone through the vest, police said. Griffin and another witness fled the scene, officials said. Griffin was arrested Sunday while being treated at a local hospital for what police called "a medical issue." He is still in custody at the hospital. Griffin was charged in 2001 with the felony offense of aggravated robbery in a Fort Bound County court, according to Harris County District Clerk court records. ||||| EMBED More News Videos Man fatally shot after putting on bulletproof vest. Houston police have charged a man in connection with the deadly shooting in a Heights garage apartment early Sunday morning.Jason Griffin is charged with manslaughter, unlawful possession of a firearm and felon in possession of a gun for the deadly shooting.Investigators say Griffin was at a party in the 300 block of West 23rd Street.At some point during the party, the victim, now identified as Daniel Barber, put on a bulletproof vest.Police say Griffin took out his gun and shot Barber in the chest.He was killed.Griffin left the party before returning to talk with police.His girlfriend told ABC13 he didn't mean to kill his friend. She said Griffin didn't even know his gun was loaded."He goes 'shoot me.' Well, he didn't think there was nothing in it, and he did. And the dude went '@##$ that hurt' and then he dropped. And then Jason ripped the vest off of him and tried to help him,'" said Mary Warstler.Warstler said Griffin was suicidal after the shooting and had to be treated for seizures before he was arrested.

– A man was shot dead while wearing a bulletproof vest at a Houston party and police say they've been left to uncover whether the tragedy happened as part of some kind of prank gone terribly wrong. Jason Allen Griffin was arrested early Sunday morning following the death of a man named Daniel Barber. Per KTRK, cops say Griffin and Barber had been at a party together when Barber was shot in the chest while wearing the vest, allegedly by Griffin. He was arrested and has been charged with manslaughter, unlawful possession of a firearm, and felon in possession of a gun. According to the Houston Chronicle, police are trying to determine whether the men thought they were playing some kind of game. A woman who identified herself to KTRK as Griffin's girlfriend, Mary Warstler, said the suspect didn't even know his gun was loaded. What's more, Warstler claims that Barber told Griffin "shoot me" before Griffin allegedly pulled the trigger. After Barber was shot, Warstler said Griffin ripped off the vest in a bid to help the victim, but it was too late. Warstler said Griffin was so distraught following the shooting that he was suicidal and that he had to be checked into the hospital for seizures.

New York Times reporter James Risen is fighting back against critics who have cast a skeptical eye on his Page One story yesterday about Afghanistan's mineral deposits. In an interview with Yahoo! News, Risen dismissed suspicions that the story was part of an orchestrated campaign to rescue the troubled American effort there and derided critical bloggers as pajama-clad layabouts with no reporting chops. Risen's story reported the findings of ongoing Pentagon research into the value Afghanistan's lithium, copper, iron, and other mineral deposits, and cited officials claiming that "the United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself." Risen's piece quickly drew fire from online reporters and writers (including this one), who pointed out that many of the story's purported revelations about Afghanistan's mineral reserves had been previously reported. They also questioned the timing of the story, coming as it did on the heels of a series of troubling reports about the stability of the Karzai government and one day before Gen. David Petraeus was scheduled to testify before Congress about the war. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder wrote that the story "suggest[s] a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war." Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall wrote that "the timing of the revelation is enough to raise some suspicions in my mind." And Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell wrote that "there's less to this scoop than meets the eye." Risen didn't take kindly to the blogospheric criticism. "Bloggers should do their own reporting instead of sitting around in their pajamas," Risen said. "The thing that amazes me is that the blogosphere thinks they can deconstruct other people's stories," Risen told Yahoo! News during an increasingly hostile interview, which he called back to apologize for almost immediately after it ended. "Do you even know anything about me? Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don't know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think." (Risen and fellow Times reporter Eric Lichtblau shared a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Bush administration's secret wiretapping program; this reporter was 33 years old at the time.) Risen defended the article against claims that Afghanistan's mineral wealth was largely a matter of public knowledge prior to his story. "If it wasn't news, then why didn't anybody write about it?" he asked. In fact, McClatchy Newspapers reported last year that "the region is thought to hold some of the world's last major untapped deposits of iron, copper, gold, uranium, precious gems and other raw materials." In February, Agence France Presse quoted Afghan president Hamid Karzai, citing a U.S. Geological Survey study, claiming that his country had $1 trillion in mineral assets. Just last month, Karzai repeated the claim at a U.S. Institute of Peace event, saying the value was between $1 trillion and $3 trillion. "But no one picked up on it," Risen said. He explained that he based his report on the work of a Pentagon team led by Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense charged with rebuilding the Afghan economy. Using geological data from the Soviet era and USGS surveys conducted in 2006, Brinkley dispatched teams to Afghanistan last year to search for minerals on the ground. The data they've come back with, combined with internal Pentagon assessments that value the deposits at more than $900 billion, constitute news, according to Risen. (Those surveys are still under way, according to a briefing Brinkley gave yesterday.) "The question is how extensive it was," Risen said of the survey work. "The value of what Brinkley's team did was to put together and connect the dots on a lot of information that had been put on the shelf. And they did new research and came up with a lot of new data and put everything together in a more comprehensive way." So was the story a Pentagon plant, designed to show the American public a shiny metallic light at the end of the long tunnel that is the Afghan war, as skeptics allege? Risen said he heard about the Pentagon's efforts from Milt Bearden, a retired CIA officer who was active in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The men co-authored a book, "The Main Enemy," in 2003, and Bearden is now a consultant working with Brinkley's survey team. "Several months ago, Milt started telling me about what they were finding," Risen said. "At the beginning of the year, I said I wanted to do a story on it." At first both Bearden and Brinkley resisted, Risen said, but he eventually wore them down. "Milt convinced Brinkley to talk to me," he said, "and Brinkley convinced other Pentagon officials to go on the record. I think Milt realized that things were going so badly in Afghanistan that people would be willing to talk about this." In other words, according to Risen, he wasn't handed the story in a calculated leak. Calls and emails to Brinkley and to Eric Clark, a Pentagon public relations contractor who works with him, were not immediately returned. Minutes after making his initial angry comments about bloggers, Risen called back to apologize. "I was taken aback by some of the criticism, and didn't sleep well last night, and was upset about it. I apologize." —John Cook is a senior national reporter/blogger for Yahoo! News ||||| ink-stained wretches Cranky Times Reporter Lashes Out at Critical Bloggers With many online news outlets wondering whether a New York Times story on Afghanistan's mineral deposits was less a fresh discovery than a PR ploy by the Army, the story's author, James Risen, let loose on the brash, ignorant youngsters who dare to question him. "Do you even know anything about me?" he asked Yahoo News blogger John Cook, late of Gawker. "Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don't know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think." Cook also tweeted that Risen, falling back on hurtful stereotypes, said that bloggers who criticized the story were just "jerking off in their pajamas." Ouch, man. Ouch. That just shows how little Risen actually understands bloggers. We would never jerk off in our only article of clothing. Shortly after hanging up, Risen regained his composure and called back. "I was taken aback by some of the criticism, and didn't sleep well last night, and was upset about it," he said. "I apologize." Sounds like someone needs a nappy-poo. NYT reporter defends Afghan minerals piece, lashes out at critics [Newsroom/Yahoo] ||||| While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.” The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion. “This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines. American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House. So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact. Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country. The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced. Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits. At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said. Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.” With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.” Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency. The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said. “The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.” Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war. In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989. Advertisement Continue reading the main story During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. “There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,” said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s. Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country. The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted. The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing. But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits. Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai. So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan. Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves. For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”

– New York Times reporter James Risen is not a big fan of bloggers. Yahoo News blogger John Cook, formerly of Gawker, learned this when he called Risen to ask about criticism of his recent story on Afghan mineral deposits. (Original story here; sample of criticism here.) "Do you even know anything about me?" Risen asked. "Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don't know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think." (Risen shared a Pulitzer in 2006 for a story on secret wiretapping. Cook was age 33.) "The thing that amazes me is that the blogosphere thinks they can deconstruct other people's stories," Risen continued. And while a tamer version of this line appeared on Yahoo News, Cook tweeted that Risen accused bloggers of sitting around and "jerking off in their pajamas," reports New York magazine. Minutes after hanging up, Risen called back. "I was taken aback by some of the criticism, and didn't sleep well last night, and was upset about it. I apologize."

Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images LOSERS Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum Emir of Dubai Oh, it's got to hurt to go begging for money from Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi! That's like Trump asking for money from his uncle who put his salary in Vanguard index funds. It's like U.A.E. SmackDown. Google Buzz Some kind of thing on your computer Remember when Gmail invited you — just you! — to join Google Buzz, where you could connect all your social networks with your e-mail? Or maybe it was something totally different. All I know is that I already had more things that did that crap than I wanted. Leonid Tyagachev Ex-head of the Russian Olympic Committee Eleventh in gold medals and none in hockey — despite having Alexander Ovechkin on your team? In the past, someone who performed like this would be banished to Siberia. But they have a pretty good hockey team there right now. So I don't know where they send you now that you quit. Tom Tom Car GPS device Six years ago, these were from the future. Now they come with your phone. I think they sell them in the discount bins they used to use for Yngwie Malmsteen cassettes. Space Shuttle Formerly cool vehicle You know how all these other countries built space shuttles after we did? Well, that's because they didn't. Everyone stuck with rocket ships because rocket ships are cool. Space shuttles are airplanes that don't even go to other countries. Have you ever seen a comic book or a sci-fi movie where the hero goes up in something that looks like a space shuttle? Finally, we're going back to rocket ships. Kurmanbek Bakiyev Ex-President of Kyrgyzstan Bakiyev was barely influential when he was President of Kyrgyzstan, because it's Kyrgyzstan. But when massive corruption got him tossed out, he couldn't even get his brother and son out of the country. He gave both the U.S. and Russia bases in his country, and even they didn't have his back. Mamadou Tandja Ex-President of Niger Even Bakiyev was able to get out of his country when he got coup d'étated. But Tandja was stuck and arrested in Niger. The best way of telling that you have no influence: you can't even get someone to post a better photo on your Wikipedia page. Not flattering. Rue McClanahan Actress Betty White has usurped all the power from the remaining Golden Girls. Lorelle Young President of the U.S. Metric Association She's about 99 kilometers from being influential. Or 99 metrometers. I have no idea how that works. Manuel Zelaya Ex-President of Honduras Another guy who got coup d'étated. He wound up in the Dominican Republic. And, as every baseball fan knows, you don't walk off the Dominican Republic. Palm Inc. Maker of the Pre phone Remember when it was cool to have a Treo? And then Palm came out with this well-reviewed, awesome new smart phone? Thing is, that was a few years after the iPhone came out. Gourmet magazine Ex-magazine The country is obsessed with food, and Gourmet folds after 68 years. Condé Nast would rather keep Bon Appétit, which is a magazine called Bon Appétit. Next Under the Influence

– The Time 100—Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world—has just hit the interwebs, and as usual, the names range from obvious to head scratching. The names you expect are there—Barack Obama, Oprah, Steve Jobs—as are some you might not, or that seem to be in an odd category. Glenn Beck, for example, makes the list as a “Leader.” The “Heroes” category, meanwhile, contains a bunch of sports stars and entertainers—Phil Mickelson, Ben Stiller, and Serena Williams—alongside the likes of Bill Clinton or Mir Hossein Mousavi, the winner of Time's reader poll. Ashton Kutcher makes the “Artists” list, presumably because he has a Twitter account, as does Conan O'Brien, presumably for being fired. You can see the whole list here, or, for extra fun, check out Joel Stein's Least Influential list.

MURPHY, N.C. — A family is searching for the person responsible for writing a scathing obituary of a woman that said her “presence will not be missed by many.” Cornelia June Rogers Miller died in February, WTVC reports. Nearly four months later, an obituary posted by the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, North Carolina, is making its way around social media. Miller lived in Florida and had a summer home in Murphy. The obituary reads, in part, “Drugs were a major love in her life as June had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. Please let June Miller’s life be a cautionary tale. Addiction and hatred are no es bueno for the living. “We speak for the majority of her family when we say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed, and there will be no lamenting over her passing.” HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?! This obituary was posted in the @theScoutnews over the weekend. What do you think about it? pic.twitter.com/v2JGzWOCaE — Stephanie Santostasi (@Stephanie_NC9) July 3, 2017 Upset, Miller’s son Robert responded to the obituary, saying it’s untrue. Robert Miller blamed the writing on his sisters, although one sister said she didn’t write it, and called the obituary tragic and sad. After the obituary appeared, a viewer contacted WTVC to say it appeared some sections were plagiarized. Several sections are similar to the 2008 obituary for Dolores Aguilar ran in the Vallejo Times Herald in California. “Unbelievable. [She] doesn’t even have the integrity to write something for herself – just goes out and steals something,” Miller told WTVC. ||||| Cornelia June Rogers Miller passed away in February of 2017, but her recent obituary has gone viral, stirring up controversy in her family and online. (Image: Robert Miller) FOLLOW-UP: On Thursday, we reported that this obituary had been partly plagiarized from a 2008 obit notice that appeared in a San Francisco newspaper. Watch the update here. PREVIOUSLY: Obituaries are published in newspapers every day, but you've probably never read one like the one you're about to read. Friday, the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, North Carolina posted an obituary for Cornelia June Rogers Miller. She lived in Florida, but had a summer home in Murphy - a small town where the views are breathtaking. June and her husband visited often. "Once my father retired, they would go up to Murphy pretty much whenever they liked to. They would go for a weekend in the winter," said Robert Miller, June's oldest son. Miller says it wasn't until last year that his father had to sell the summer home in Murphy. It was becoming too much for the couple to make the drive from Florida. Eventually, they both ended up in an assisted living facility. "He was actually her roommate at the facility," Miller told NewsChannel 9. According to the obituary in the Cherokee Scout, June died in February. "She was 82 years old, I believe, so she had a variety of complications," Miller explained when we asked how she passed. It wasn't until last week though, nearly four months after her death, that the obituary showed up in the paper. Part of it reads: "There will be no service, no prayers, and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart." We sent it to June's son. "The whole thing is just sad," Miller said. It most obituaries, you find a message honoring a person's life. That's not the case here. Another part read: "Drugs were a major love in her life as June had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life." It goes on to say: "We speak for the majority of the family when we say her presence will not be missed by many." As we showed the obit to people in Murphy, they couldn't believe it. "Yeah, it's disturbing," said one man. So, who wrote the obituary about June? We still don't know. But, June's son Robert has an idea. "It's unbelievable that my sisters would write this," he said. We tracked down one of his sisters, but she says she didn't write it either. She called the obituary very tragic and very sad. "It's really sad that they don't have anything better to do," Miller added. Robert just hopes the memories his father and mother shared in Murphy won't ever be forgotten, and wants his mother to be remembered as a loving, generous woman. Miller tells us he sent a new obit to the paper that will run next week. We wanted to know if the Cherokee Scout considered rejecting the obituary. When we asked, publisher David Brown said, "the family's will overrode the editor." Brown told us the paper does look through each obituary and they feel they should only edit something if there is a very compelling reason to do so. Brown wouldn't say who sent the original obituary in.

– In the Deep South, a predilection for proper manners often means the temptation to tell someone off is replaced with a "Bless your heart." But an obituary that appeared last month in a North Carolina newspaper flouted politeness, and at least one family member isn't happy, KDVR reports. The death notice for Cornelia June Rogers Miller, who died in February, ran in Murphy's Cherokee Scout newspaper, and it wasn't a flattering depiction of the great-grandmother, who "died alone after a long battle with drug addiction and depression." "Drugs were a major love in her life as June had no hobbies, made no contribution to society, and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life," the obituary says. "We speak for the majority of her family when we say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed, and there will be no lamenting over her passing." All of which has her son, Robert Miller, fuming—and he thinks he knows who placed the obituary. "It's unbelievable that my sisters would write this," he tells WTVC, noting his mom was a "loving, generous woman." WTVC managed to track down one of his two sisters, and she tells the station she didn't write the obituary, calling it "tragic." To make matters worse, it appears parts of the obituary may have been plagiarized from one written for someone in California in 2008. "[She] doesn't even have the integrity to write something for herself," Miller says, apparently referring to the sister he thinks trashed their mom. The Cherokee Scout publisher says the paper scans all submitted obituaries but notes they won't change anything unless there's a solid reason. "The family's will overrode the editor," he says. Miller says he sent in a new obituary to replace the printed one. (It's not the first scathing obituary.)

Some might think it's up there with the flying pig and the killer rabbit, in the list of improbable animals – the screaming tadpole. But it's real. Scientists in South America have discovered that the larvae of the Argentine horned frog, a species remarkable for its tendency to try eating anything that passes, emit a "brief, clear and very audible metallic-like sound" when they feel threatened. Horned frog tadpoles are naturally aggressive and carnivorous, often eating the tadpoles of other frogs, and it is possible that the scream is mainly emitted when another horned frog tadpole moves to attack it as a measure to avoid cannibalism. The discovery, reported in the Swedish journal Acta Zoological, is the first evidence for the production of sound by the larvae of anurans (frogs and toads). It was made by Dr Guillermo Natale of the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires, and his colleagues, when they were studying the mating calls and croakings of adult frogs. Many adult amphibians use loud sounds such as croaks to advertise their presence, and often to attract sexual partners but until now researchers did not realise amphibian larvae might also produce sounds underwater. That changed when Dr Natale caught a horned frog tadpole in a pond using a hand-held net. "We heard a brief, clear and very audible metallic-like sound," he said. To investigate further, the researchers caught a wild pair of breeding adults, and began a programme to rear them in captivity. The researchers found that when horned frog tadpoles come into contact with, or are prodded by, an external object such as a metal spatula, they let out a brief, metallic sound consisting of a short series of higher frequency pulses. The tadpoles produce the sound by pushing air out of their lungs, which develop very early; tadpoles that are just three days old are capable of emitting loud distress signals. The discovery raises the possibility that other tadpoles may produce sound. ||||| By Matt Walker Editor, Earth News Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement Tadpoles of one frog species let out an audible "scream" when they come under attack, scientists have discovered. They only make the noise, described as a brief, clear metallic sound made up of a series of notes, when in distress. It is the first time any vertebrate larva has been found to use sound to communicate underwater. The discovery that frog tadpoles can make sounds also raises the possibility that a host of aquatic larvae communicate in a similar way. The distress calls are made by tadpoles of the horned frog Ceratophrys ornata which lives in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, researchers report in the journal Acta Zoologica. That tadpoles communicate somehow is simply amazing Dr Guillermo Natale National University of La Plata, Buenos Aires Scientist Dr Guillermo Natale of the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and his colleagues, were studying the mating calls of adult frogs. Many adult amphibians use loud sounds such as croaks to advertise their presence, and often to attract sexual partners. Until now though, researchers did not realise that amphibian larva might also produce sounds underwater. That changed when Dr Natale caught a horned frog tadpole in a pond using a hand-held net. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "We heard a brief, clear and very audible metallic-like sound," he told the BBC. C. ornata tadpoles are difficult to find in the wild, so the researchers caught a wild pair of breeding adults, and began a programme to rear the young amphibians in captivity. This enabled the scientists to better study the noise they had heard in the field. The team discovered that C. ornata tadpoles are naturally aggressive and carnivorous, often eating the tadpoles of other frog species that they encounter. However, "much to our astonishment, they do not eat each other," says Dr Natale, who is also an assistant researcher Argentinean Research Council (Conicet). That may be because of the "screams" emitted by the tadpoles. The researchers found that when C. ornata tadpoles come into contact with, or are prodded by, an external object such as a metal spatula, they let out a brief, metallic sound consisting of a short series of higher frequency pulses. FROG FACTS Watch an 'alien scene' of feasting tadpoles The first truly monogamous amphibian was discovered this year Toads, close relatives of frogs, may be able to predict when an impending earthquake will strike Watch more videos of bizarre frog and toad behaviour here Each "scream" lasts for just 0.05 seconds. Producing distress calls is likely to help prevent the tadpoles cannibalising each other. Underwater call The tadpole produce the sound by pushing air out of their lungs. The lungs develop very early in this species; tadpoles that are just three days old are capable of emitting loud distress signals. They continue to emit distress calls underwater both as tadpoles and after they have begun metamorphosis (when they become froglets). The tadpoles also produce the sounds when they are removed from the water. In fact, when out of the water, they make the distress call more frequently. This could be because the tadpoles can more easily access air, which they then expel. An oscillogram show the pulsated structure of the tadpole's distress call with pulsated structure "That tadpoles communicate somehow is simply amazing," says Dr Natale. "They possess the structures to do so within 3 days of life." He and his colleagues now want to study how and why the ability develops so rapidly, and how the sound is perceived by other tadpoles. "[We want to know] what information specifically is communicated," he says. Few larvae of any animal species are known to produce sounds. Those that do tend to be insect larvae, which live on land, making their sounds into the air rather than underwater. For example, juveniles of one species of common silkmoth caterpillar (Antheraea polyphemus) make "clicking" sounds with their mandibles to warn off predators such as ants. A female adult horned frog But as far as the researchers can tell, horned frog tadpoles are the first underwater larvae, and first larvae of any vertebrate, to make sounds. The discovery could have far-reaching implications for our understanding of the behaviour and ecology of amphibians, many of which are threatened by disease, habitat destruction and illegal trade. "We have definitely underestimated their abilities," says Dr Natale. "In more than 200 years of [amphibian research] this has never been reported." Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version

– Scientists studying the calls of adult Argentine horned frogs were amazed to discover that the species' larvae also make sounds—screams even, reports the Independent. The tadpole's scream is a "brief, clear and very audible metallic-like sound," say researchers. They believe the distress calls save the tadpoles from being cannibalized by adults of their species, which is known for its willingness to eat anything it can, including other kinds of frogs. This is the first time underwater larvae or any vertebrate larvae have been known to make sounds, the BBC notes. The researchers believe the discovery has wide-reaching implications for the understanding of amphibian behavior. "We have definitely underestimated their abilities," says the lead researcher, who now plans to study how other tadpoles respond to the sound.

Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. / Updated By Tom Winter, Andrew Blankstein, Elisha Fieldstadt and The Associated Press Bill Cosby’s wife underwent questioning that was at times contentious during a deposition in February involving a defamation case involving her husband. But Camille Cosby gave few answers in the six-hour-long deposition, often invoking spousal privilege and at times refusing to answer questions altogether, according to a transcript released Friday. "I’m done,” Camille Cosby said at one point in reply to a question. At another time, she left the room where the Feb. 22 deposition was taking place. The deposition was conducted as part of a defamation suit filed against Bill Cosby by seven women who say they were portrayed as liars after accusing the comedian of sexual assault. Camille Cosby is not named in the suit. Bill Cosby has counter-sued the seven women who filed suit, also alleging defamation. Camille Cosby was read sections of her husband's 2005 deposition where he said he "had sex and we had dinners and sex and rendezvous" with Beth Farrier in the 1970s. However, when asked repeatedly if she thought her husband was being deceitful, or whether or not she had an opinion on whether Bill Cosby deceived her, Camille Cosby invoked marital privilege or said she had no opinion. When asked about honesty and what it means, Camille Cosby answered: "I'm not going to expound on this." When she was told she had to, she answered: "I do not have to. I'm done." Camille Cosby also refused to answer in the deposition whether or not it is a dishonest act or whether or not it is deceitful to give Quaaludes to someone for the purposes of sex. Related: Bill Cosby Said He Gave Quaaludes to Woman Before Sex, Court Documents Show Dr. Bill Cosby and Dr. Camille Cosby, right, are photographed at the 50th Anniversary Gala of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art on Friday, Nov. 7, in Washington. AP About 50 women have publicly accused Bill Cosby of sexual misconduct going back decades. Cosby and his representatives have repeatedly denied the allegations. Bill Cosby faces a criminal case in Pennsylvania for allegedly drugging and molesting a former Temple University employee in 2004. Bill Cosby has not yet entered a plea in that case, but his attorneys have said he is innocent of the charges. The woman in that case is not part of the defamation suit. Camille Cosby invoked spousal privilege in the February deposition when asked whether or not her husband has been truthful with her. She did say she never obtained Quaaludes for her own use or someone else's use. She was asked by an opposing attorney, "now, can we agree that throughout your marriage, Mr. Cosby acted with a lack of integrity?" Camille's attorney, Monique Pressley, interjected immediately and instructed Camille Cosby that she did not have to answer that question or any others related to conversations with her husband. Camille Cosby replied: "And I won't." Related: Women Suing Bill Cosby for Defamation Win Key Ruling When asked if she had an opinion on whether Bill Cosby acted with a lack of integrity, Camille Cosby said she wouldn’t answer. Camille said she rarely watched television or read newspapers and when asked if "all of the information that you have regarding the sexual allegations against your husband came from conversation — whether conversations with your husband or conversations with counsel,” Camille said, "That is correct. That's my answer." Camille also said that she has no understanding and is unaware of what her husband said in the 2005 deposition where Bill Cosby said he obtained Quaaludes to give to women he wanted to have sex with. The lawyer for the seven women suing Cosby for defamation, Joseph Cammarata, asked her about Shawn Thompson, a woman who said Bill Cosby fathered her daughter, Autumn Jackson, in the 1970s. Jackson was convicted in 1997 of attempting to extort money from Bill Cosby to prevent her from telling a tabloid she's his daughter. He acknowledged he had an affair with her mother and had given her money. Camille Cosby said that Autumn Jackson is not Bill Cosby's daughter and that she is confident about that "because there was a test, a DNA test." Related: Bill Cosby Wants Another Chance to Throw Out Sexual-Assault Case Camille said, "I do not have an opinion." However, later she said, "it was a big deal then, yes" when it was revealed that in the 1970s Bill Cosby had extramarital affairs. Camille Cosby was also questioned on April 19, but that transcript has not been released. Her lawyers argued unsuccessfully to stop the deposition, which a judge ruled she would have to givebut said she could refuse to answer questions about private communications between her and her husband. An attorney handling a separate lawsuit against Bill Cosby revealed Friday that Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner provided sworn testimony Wednesday. In the sexual battery lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, Judy Huth says Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him at the Playboy Mansion around 1974, when she was 15. Bill Cosby's former lawyers have accused Huth of attempting to extort him before filing the case and have tried unsuccessfully to have it dismissed. Huth's attorney, Gloria Allred, said Hefner's testimony will remain under seal for now. Hefner also was named as a defendant in a case filed Monday by former model Chloe Goins, who accuses Bill Cosby of drugging and sexually abusing her at the Playboy Mansion in 2008. ||||| Camille Cosby’s February deposition in a defamation case brought by several women who have previously accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault was combative. A transcript of the deposition, made public today, shows that, from the start, Camille Cosby refused to answer a number of questions she deemed personal and off-limits. In total, the deposition lasted about eight hours, but included frequent breaks and interruptions. Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer for the women, previously said that her testimony lasted two-and-a-half hours. “That’s communication between my husband and me and that is it," she told lawyers at one point. Prior to Camille Cosby's deposition, a judge ruled that she did not have to answer questions protected by the marital disqualification rule. According to Cammarata, Camille Cosby evoked the marital disqualification rule more than a dozen times. The transcript reveals that the questions she faced were intense. At one point she was asked “Now, can we agree that throughout your marriage that your husband betrayed the sanctity of your marital home?” A moment later, she faced this question: “Would you agree that throughout your marriage Mr. Cosby used his position, power to manipulate young women?” In that instance, Camille Cosby was instructed by her lawyer not to answer. Two months after that first deposition, Camille Cosby was deposed a second time, according to attorneys for her and her husband. In a statement obtained by ABC News at the time, lawyers Dan Small and Monique Pressley, who represent Camille and Bill Cosby respectively, said that the comedian's wife had "no relevant non-privileged information to offer in this case." "Mrs. Cosby was able to persevere and cooperate in today's proceedings to the best of her abilities," they continued. "We are thankful for this distraction to now be over." Bill Cosby's legal team has repeatedly denied the allegations. ||||| Bill Cosby in February 2016 in Norristown, Pa. (Photo: Clem Murray, AP) A few days before a second pre-trial hearing in Bill Cosby's sexual-assault case, he was reminded of his many accusers pursuing him in civil court thanks to developments Friday. In Massachusetts, a newly released transcript shows that Cosby's wife Camille refused to answer dozens of questions during a combative February deposition in connection with a defamation lawsuit filed by seven of her husband's accusers in federal court in Springfield, near where the Cosbys have a home. In Los Angeles, Gloria Allred, who represents an accuser suing Cosby for sexual battery, said Friday she took a deposition from Hugh Hefner on Wednesday at the Playboy Mansion, but the contents of the testimony were sealed. Hefner gave the deposition in a case filed by Judy Huth, who alleges Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him around 1974 at Hefner's mansion. And on Monday in Los Angeles, yet another accuser, who also claims she was sexually assaulted by Cosby at the Playboy Mansion in 2008, sued Cosby and Hefner, asserting that Hefner was an enabler who knew what his friend Cosby was doing to women at the mansion or should have known it. Hugh Hefner in October 2011. (Photo: Matt Sayles, AP) In Massachusetts, Camille Cosby testified that she had no knowledge that her husband allegedly gave women drugs and had sex with them, according to a transcript of her deposition released Friday. Camille Cosby strongly resisted being deposed and her husband's legal team tried to stop it. But she was compelled by a federal judge anyway, although he confirmed her right to not answer any questions that violated her marital privilege. The deposition took place over two days in Boston; the transcript released Friday covers only the first day. It was clear in February that Camille Cosby's deposition had been strained, in part because the lawyers acknowledged it after the first day ended and a second day had to be scheduled. She refused to answer many times and the judge had to be called to rule on whether she had to. The transcript shows the back-and-forth between her and her lawyers and the accusers' lawyer, Joe Cammarata. Joseph Cammarata, right, in Springfield, Mass., after a deposition of Camille Cosby. (Photo: Elise Amendola, AP) She was subjected to intense questioning by Cammarata, who represents seven women who claim the comedian, through his lawyers, branded them as liars after they came forward in late 2014 with accusations that he drugged and/or raped them in episodes dating back decades. Among other questions, Cammarata asked her whether her husband "acted with a lack of integrity" during their 52-year marriage. She also was asked if her husband used his position and power "to manipulate young women." She refused to answer those questions after her lawyer cited marital privilege, the legal rule that communications between spouses are private. Camille and Bill Cosby in October 2009. (Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, AP) Although discovery and depositions are continuing in the various civil suits against him, none of it involves Cosby himself yet. Legal motions involving him have been put on temporary hold until the resolution of the sole criminal case against him, in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, where the Cosbys also have a home. On Tuesday, Cosby is scheduled to appear for a second pre-trial hearing on felony sexual assault charges stemming from an encounter at his home with ex-Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. Constand said Cosby drugged and raped her; Cosby said the encounter was consensual. Cosby's legal team is trying to get the criminal charges thrown out on the grounds that he was promised immunity in the case from a former district attorney. So far, his lawyers have failed to persuade the Pennsylvania judge. Nearly 60 women have accused Cosby of forcing unwanted sexual contact on them in encounters dating back to the mid-1960s. Cosby has denied the allegations. Contributing: The Associated Press Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Tsuxlo

– Camille Cosby refused to answer dozens of questions about her famous husband during two days of deposition back in February, USA Today reports. According to ABC News, a transcript of the deposition released Friday shows Camille cited "spousal privilege" in her refusal to answer questions more than a dozen times alone. Other times she refused without giving a reason or just left the room, NBC News reports. The deposition was part of a defamation suit against Bill Cosby brought by seven women who accused him of sexual assault and say they were branded liars in response. Bill has countersued them for defamation, as well. The Cosbys' legal team had tried to get Camille out of the deposition, but a federal judge insisted. Among the questions Camille refused to answer: what honesty means, if Bill "acted with a lack of integrity," if it is "dishonest" or "deceitful" to give Quaaludes to someone in order to have sex with them, if Bill used his status to "manipulate young women, and if Bill "betrayed the sanctity of [her] marital home." She did say she had no idea Bill allegedly gave drugs to women and had sex with them throughout their 52 years of marriage. ABC describes the eights hours total of deposition—during which Camille was read parts of a 2005 deposition in which Bill talked about having sex with one of his accusers in the 1970s—as "combative."

LORAIN, Ohio (AP) — Police say a 3-year-old Ohio girl is in critical condition after being shot in the head by her 4-year-old brother, who found a gun in a dresser. The shooting occurred around 10 a.m. Sunday in Lorain, about 30 miles west of Cleveland. Police say the two children were playing alone in a bedroom when the boy found a loaded .40-caliber handgun. A police report says the father of the 3-year-old girl was holding her in his arms when officers arrived. The report says the 4-year-old boy was crying and that he repeatedly told an officer he was sorry. Lorain police Capt. Roger Watkins says the investigation will be turned over to the Lorain County prosecutor's office to determine if criminal charges will be filed. ||||| LORAIN, Ohio –A 3-year-old girl remains in critical condition after she was shot in the head Sunday morning by her 4-year-old brother, police said. Police said the shooting was accidental. The girl was flown to Rainbow Babies Children's Hospital and was listed in critical condition as of Monday morning, the Lorain Police Department said. Officers were called about 10 a.m. to a home on the 1300 block of West 28th Street and found a man holding his daughter, who was shot in the head. Responding police officers learned that the boy and girl were playing by in a room by themselves when the boy got his hands on the gun. The boy accidentally pulled the trigger and shot his sister, police said. Investigators interviewed three other people who were in the house during the shooting and police recovered the gun at the scene, a report said. The Lorain County Prosecutor is reviewing the incident to determine if charges will be filed.

– What started out as fun playtime between a 4-year-old Ohio boy and his 3-year-old sister ended horrifically after the boy accidentally shot his sister with a gun, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. The children were playing in a room by themselves in a Lorain home yesterday morning when the boy found the .40-caliber handgun in a dresser and accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting his sister in the head, according to cops. When police arrived at the house, they found the father of the kids cradling his daughter; the 4-year-old was crying and told police multiple times that he was sorry, the AP reports. Three other people in the home at the time of the shooting were interviewed by police and the gun was recovered. The injured girl is reported to be in critical condition at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. (A 5-year-old Kentucky boy accidentally killed his 2-year-old sister with his "My First Rifle" last year.)

Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story WASHINGTON — A restriction on abortion coverage, added late Saturday to the health care bill passed by the House, has energized abortion opponents with their biggest victory in years — emboldening them for a pitched battle in the Senate. The provision would block the use of federal subsidies for insurance that covers elective abortions. Advocates on both sides are calling Saturday’s vote the biggest turning point in the battle over the procedure since the ban on so-called partial birth abortions six years ago. Both sides credited a forceful lobbying effort by Roman Catholic bishops with the success of the provision, inserted in the bill under pressure from conservative Democrats. The provision would apply only to insurance policies purchased with the federal subsidies that the health legislation would create to help low- and middle-income people, and to policies sold by a government-run insurance plan that would be created by the legislation. Abortion rights advocates charged Sunday that the provision threatened to deprive women of abortion coverage because insurers would drop the procedure from their plans in order to sell them in the newly expanded market of people receiving subsidies. The subsidized market would be large because anyone earning less than $88,000 for a family of four — four times the poverty level — would be eligible for a subsidy under the House bill. Women who received subsidies or public insurance could still pay out of pocket for the procedure. Or they could buy separate insurance riders to cover abortion, though some evidence suggests few would, in part because unwanted pregnancies are by their nature unexpected. Not many women who undergo abortions file private insurance claims, perhaps to avoid leaving a record. A 2003 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that 13 percent of abortions were billed directly to insurance companies. Only about half of those who receive insurance coverage from their employers have coverage of abortion in any event, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Abortion rights advocates, however, are grappling with a series of incremental defeats in the courts and in Congress, and are now bracing for another struggle as the health care legislation goes to the Senate. “This is going to make it that much more challenging on the Senate side,” said Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America. The president and Democratic leaders alike have long promised that their proposed health care overhaul would not direct taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions. But the president has never spelled out his answer to the contentious question of how to apply that standard to the novel program of offering insurance subsidies or a government-run plan to millions of poor and middle-class Americans. House Democratic leaders had sought to resolve the issue by requiring insurers to segregate their federal subsidies into separate accounts. Insurance plans would have been permitted to use only consumer premiums or co-payments to pay for abortions, even if individuals who received federal subsidies used them to buy health plans that covered abortion. But the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was unable to hold on to enough moderate and conservative Democratic votes to pass the health bill using that approach, forcing her to allow a vote Saturday night on the amendment containing the broader ban. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story Five states go further than the amendment to the health care overhaul. The five — Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma — already bar private insurance plans from covering elective abortions. The federal employees’ health insurance plan and most state Medicaid programs also ban coverage of abortion, complying with a three-decade old ban on federal abortion financing. Seventeen state Medicaid programs, however, do cover the procedure, by using only state money. The bishops objected to the segregated funds proposal previously embraced by the House and Senate Democratic leaders in part because they argued that it amounted to nothing more than an accounting gimmick. Advocates on both sides of the question weighed in, but the bishops’ role was especially pivotal in part because many Democrats had expected them to be an ally. They had pushed for decades for universal health insurance. “We think that providing health care is itself a pro-life thing, and we think that, by and large, providing better health coverage to women could reduce abortions,” said Richard M. Doerflinger, a spokesman for the anti-abortion division of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “But we don’t make these decisions statistically, and to get to that good we cannot do something seriously evil.” Beginning in late July, the bishops began issuing a series of increasingly stern letters to lawmakers making clear that they saw the abortion-financing issue as pre-eminent, a deal-breaker. At the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in August, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, stole a private moment with Mr. Obama to deliver the same warning: The bishops very much wanted to support his health care overhaul but not if it provided for abortions. The president “listened intently,” the cardinal reported on his blog. Bishops implored their priests and parishioners to call lawmakers. Conservative Democrats negotiating over the issue with party leaders often expressed their desire to meet the bishops’ criteria, according to many people involved in the talks. On Oct. 8 three members of the bishops conference wrote on its behalf to lawmakers, “If the final legislation does not meet our principles, we will have no choice but to oppose the bill.” On Sunday, some abortion rights advocates lashed out at the bishops. “It was an unconscionable power play,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, accusing the bishops of “interceding to put their own ideology in the national health care plan.” Now some Senate Democrats, including Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, are pushing to incorporate the same restrictions in their own bill. Senior Senate Democratic aides said the outcome was too close to call. ||||| President Obama and Senate Democrats sought on Sunday to generate momentum from the House's passage of health-care legislation, even as a new hurdle emerged: profound dismay among abortion-rights supporters over antiabortion provisions inserted into the House bill. The House passed its version of health-care legislation Saturday night by a vote of 220 to 215 after the approval of an amendment that would sharply restrict the availability of coverage for abortions, which many insurance plans now offer. The amendment goes beyond long-standing prohibitions against public funding for abortions, limiting abortion coverage even for women paying for it without government subsidies. The abortion issue had been rumbling within the House Democratic caucus for weeks, but Saturday's votes revealed the depths of the fault lines. The amendment passed with the support of 64 Democrats, roughly a quarter of the party caucus. But abortion-rights supporters are vowing to strip the amendment out, as the focus turns to the Senate and the conference committee that would resolve differences between the two bills. Although House liberals voted for the bill with the amendment to keep the process moving forward, Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment -- enough to block passage. "There's going to be a firestorm here," DeGette said. "Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We're not going to let this into law." Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is waiting for cost estimates of provisions of the bill he is cobbling together, and he hopes to bring it to the Senate floor before Thanksgiving. The battle over abortion has been more muted in the Senate, but Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, predicted that would change. "The debate in the House highlighted some of these issues that we're going to have to face here in the Senate, and on this issue in particular, it's something [Reid] is going to have to talk with his caucus about," Manley said. Obama left the abortion issue unmentioned Sunday when he appeared in the White House Rose Garden to give brief remarks congratulating the House on its "courageous" passage of the bill. "Now it falls on the United States Senate to take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people," he said. "And I'm absolutely confident that they will." Other issues remain unresolved. The House bill's primary new revenue source to pay for the bill is an income tax surcharge on families earning more than $1 million; the Senate bill will probably rely on a proposed new excise tax on costly insurance plans. The House and Senate also differ on a government-run insurance plan to be offered on the new marketplace where small businesses and people without employer-provided coverage -- about 30 million in all -- would buy coverage. The Senate version would limit this "public option" by allowing states to opt out of it, but even in that form, the bill's prospects are unclear. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), whose vote Democrats will probably need to break a filibuster, warned again Sunday on Fox News that he will withhold his support if the bill includes a public option. The bills also differ in their requirements for employers to provide coverage -- the House's language is tougher -- and in the subsidies for those who cannot afford coverage, which are larger in the House version. Both bills deny subsidies to illegal immigrants, but the Senate version goes further by also barring them from buying coverage on the new marketplace with their own money.

– The abortion funding ban included in the health-care bill passed by the House Saturday could doom it down the road, as abortion supporters in the Senate threaten revolt, and those who voted for it in the House vow they won't back the final bill if it's still included, the Washington Post reports. The 11th-hour provision, which was pushed through with the help of the Roman Catholic bishops, "is going to make it that much more challenging on the Senate side," the president of NARAL-Pro Choice America tells the New York Times. And even if the bill somehow manages to squeak by in the Senate, a group of House liberals who voted for the amendment just to keep the bill moving has vowed to block its final passage. "We're not going to let this into law," said Rep. Diana DeGette. For those on both sides of the abortion debate, the stakes are high. "This would be the greatest restriction on a woman's right to get an abortion with her own money in our lifetime," the pro-choice activist said.

Just One More Thing... We have sent you a verification email. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your profile. If you do not receive the verification message within a few minutes of signing up, please check your Spam or Junk folder. Close ||||| A boy missing for four years was rescued after officers found him behind a linen closet in a hidden space between the garage and the attic. The boy's father, stepmother and their three teenage children have been arrested. VPC Sgt. Joanne Southerland, of the Clayton County Police Department, insisted police return to the house. (Photo: WXIA-TV, Atlanta) JONESBORO, Ga. — It was just past midnight Saturday when Clayton County Police Sgt. Joanne Southerland pulled back a piece of wood from the back of a linen closet and uncovered a hidden space between the garage and the attic. Inside, 13-year-old Gregory Jean Jr. huddled. "We told him who we were, we told him we were there to help him," Southerland said. "When we finally got him calmed down he said, 'Thank you. Thank you.' " Clayton County Police held a news conference Monday to answer questions about the case that's drawn intense national attention. Police Chief Gregory Porter left many of the specifics unanswered, repeatedly saying he didn't want to damage the case against Gregory Jean Sr. and Samantha Joy Davis. Three teenagers, children of Davis, also were arrested early Saturday morning. They face charges of false imprisonment, cruelty to children and obstruction of an officer, Porter said. "The investigation is ongoing," said Porter. “We weren't going to leave until we found him.” Sgt. Joanne Southerland, Clayton County (Ga.) Police Department Police had received information that the child did not want to be there and had been physically abused. Porter, Southerland and Officer Daniel Day focused on how they found Gregory. The boy's birth mother called 911 and told them her son was being held at the home against his will. When police went to investigate, his father and stepmother said they didn't know the child, and didn't know why police were coming to their home. They granted police access to search the home. Police found nothing. Gregory was able to reach his mother again through a MagicJack app. She, again, called 911. When Southerland, who worked several years in the Crimes Against Children Unit, heard the specifics of that 911 call, she insisted they return to the house. "We weren't going to leave until we found him," she said. After police left following the first visit, the incident report says the boy "was thrown down the stairs and punched several times ... (causing) bleeding and lacerations around his mouth." The report says the boy was assaulted by a juvenile in the house at the direction of the boy's father, apparently in retribution for contacting his mother. Thirty minutes later, using more specific information the boy was able to pass to his mother, they finally found the hidden compartment. The space included just wooden beams and insulation. "A space where no person should be living," Porter said. He wouldn't go into specifics about how long and how often the boy was kept there, but there was a bedroom he shared at the home with the other children. Porter wouldn't answer specific questions about why the mother had not contacted police earlier, calling it a "unique case." He did confirm Gregory was not officially listed as missing with any police agency. On Sunday, a judge denied bond for Jean, 37, and Davis, 42. Davis is on probation for child cruelty. She's also accused of striking the boy with a stick across the back of his legs, back and buttocks. "It concerns me as a police officer and a father," Porter said. Court records show in 2004, Davis heated a pair of scissors on the stove and used them to burn her 6-year-old son on his neck and hand, before cutting off a piece of his tongue. She was ordered in 2006 to 10 years probation and anger management classes. Police won't say whether the child at the center of that case was one of the three teenagers arrested at the house, but officers say they are all Davis' children. Police say the 13-year-old found had been abused that night by both Davis and one of her children and he told police he had been physically punished in the past for trying to leave. The missing boy's mother, Lisa Smith, says she did not know exactly where her son was located, and neither did the court in Allen County, Ind. The couple are defendants in a small claims case seeking $4,417 in unpaid rent. The case was filed in 2001, but efforts to find Jean and Smith continued, with filings as late as September of this year. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1y6yjTX ||||| JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) — A 13-year-old boy used text messages and photos to help lead police to the small compartment behind an upstairs linen closet where he was being hidden inside his father's and stepmother's home in the Atlanta suburbs, authorities said Monday. Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter said the boy's biological mother, who lives in Orlando, Florida, called her local 911 and was routed to the 911 center in Jonesboro just before 11 p.m. Friday. She told police her son was being abused at a home in Jonesboro and was being hidden in a garage. Porter said the boy's mother told police he had been missing for four years, and she had been trying to reunite with him during that time. Those details and others in the case emerged during a press conference at Clayton County Police headquarters. Police declined to say whose phone the boy used, how he knew to contact his mother or which parent had legal custody of the boy. Porter said he didn't want to compromise the investigation. Two officers who responded initially couldn't find the boy after searching and shouting out for him inside the garage. They left, but were told to go back by a supervisor, Porter said. As police resumed their search shortly after midnight, the boy used an app to send his mother text messages, including a photo of the home's garage according to the initial police report. She then passed those updates to police, who continued questioning the other residents of the house and searching. The boy's stepmother eventually directed officers to a closet on the home's third floor, according to the report, where Sgt. Joanne Southerland found a panel at the back wall. She pushed it in, discovering the boy who looked "absolutely afraid," she told reporters on Monday. Southerland said she helped him out of the concealed compartment and calmed him down. She said the space where the boy had been hidden was bounded by the home's exterior siding, and he was enclosed within the wooden frame of the house and garage. The boy then thanked officers for helping him, and later posed for photos with police while smiling widely. The boy's 37-year-old birth father and 42-year-old stepmother face charges of false imprisonment, cruelty to children and obstruction. A message left for the attorney listed in jail records for the two adults was not returned late Monday. The woman's three teenage children also were arrested, Porter said. Police said all five had denied knowing anything about another child living at the home, and the police report says they turned lights off and were slow to answer the door each time officers arrived. The boy's father later told police he did have a 13-year-old son but he was in New York with a family member, according to the report. Neighbors said the family appeared normal, and the 13-year-old often was seen outdoors. Porter said police have not found the boy was enrolled in public schools. It was not clear whether the mother had previously reported her son missing. Porter said he did not appear to be listed on any registries of missing children. Julie Pizarro, who lives nearby, said the boy seemed quiet but she never thought anything was wrong. She said her own son even played with the boy a few times. "And again there was nothing usual about the situation to me," Pizarro said. "You know, it just seemed like (it) was regular as apple pie ..." ___ Associated Press video journalist Johnny Clark contributed to this report. ||||| Story highlights Police say the missing 13-year-old thanked officers after they found him He was inside a hidden compartment, behind the linen closet, police say Police arrest boy's father and stepmother on false imprisonment, other charges The boy contacted his mother by phone, helping officers find him, police say A missing 13-year-old boy escaped from a hidden compartment in a Georgia home, crawling through a narrow opening behind the shelves of a linen closet to reach police. The first thing Gregory Jean Jr. told officers, police said Monday, was "thank you." "We told him who we were and we told him that we were here to help him," Clayton County Police Sgt. Joanne Southerland told reporters. "After minutes of talking with him, he was able to come out." Before his rescue last week from an Atlanta-area home, the boy had been physically assaulted that day, Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter said. The boy's mother told police he had been missing for four years. Porter told reporters Monday that investigators are still looking into the case. He declined to provide specific details, saying he didn't want to jeopardize the investigation. JUST WATCHED See boy's emotional reunion with mom Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH See boy's emotional reunion with mom 01:18 "The point today is that the child is safe. ... There are a lot of unanswered questions at this point," he said. The boy's father, 37-year-old Gregory Jean Sr., and stepmother, 42-year-old Samantha Joy Davis, were arrested and charged with false imprisonment, cruelty to children and obstruction, Porter said. A judge denied them bond at a court appearance Sunday, CNN affiliate WSB reported. Three teenagers who were living in the home were also arrested, Porter said. The boy was reunited Saturday morning with his mother, who lives out of state, police said over the weekend. The hidden compartment where the boy was found, police said, was an area filled with wooden beams and insulation between the garage and attic of the home in Jonesboro, Georgia. "It was an area where no person should be living or held. ... No one should have been in that area where we found the victim," Porter said. Police said it was unclear exactly how long the boy had been inside the compartment. He also shared a bedroom in the house, Southerland said. The boy's father and stepmother didn't do anything to physically stop police from searching the house, she said, but "there was a lot of deception." "They denied knowing the child existed, denied knowing the child was in the residence," Southerland told reporters. "They had no idea who the child was or why we were there." Police said they first went to the home in Jonesboro on Friday night after the boy's mother contacted them. On the first visit, they didn't find him. Then his mother called 911 again, this time with more information provided by her son. Southerland said police returned to the home, determined to find the boy. While police were at the house, the boy was able to communicate with his mother and give more detailed information about his whereabouts. That, she said, is how investigators found him. "When we get a call like that....we won't leave until we make sure that any child is safe," Southerland said. "And that's what we did. ... It's just a reminder that we never know what happens behind closed doors. And we have to take every call seriously."

– "Thank you. Thank you." Those were the first words Gregory Jean Jr. spoke to police on Saturday when they peeled back a wood panel in an upstairs closet and found him crammed in the space between the garage and attic, WXIA reports. But the officers had help from Gregory himself, because it was the texts and photos he sent to his mom that helped police track down where the missing 13-year-old was hidden in his father and stepmother's house, the AP reports. And although Gregory Jean Sr., 37, and Samantha Joy Davis, 42, didn't bar police from searching the home, "there was a lot of deception," Clayton County Police Sgt. Joanne Southerland told reporters, as per CNN. In fact, the first officers on the scene—sent after a 911 call from the boy's mother—came up empty-handed and left after Jean and Davis said they knew nothing. After the police left, young Gregory contacted his mom again through the magicJack app and she redialed 911; when Southerland, who had worked in a Crimes Against Children unit for several years, heard that call, she made police go back and search again. "We weren't going to leave until we found him," she tells WXIA. The space Gregory was crammed into had nothing but wooden beams and insulation—"a space where no person should be living," the local police chief told reporters. The next court appearance for Jean and Davis, who have been charged with false imprisonment, child cruelty, and obstruction of justice, is scheduled for Dec. 9, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. (A girl missing for 12 years was recently found in Mexico.)

The Washington media loves Mitch McConnell as a creature of the establishment and hates Donald Trump with a burning passion. So the Washington media has a vested interest in savaging Donald Trump for Luther Strange’s loss, while protecting Mitch McConnell. But ask any Roy Moore voter and you’ll find that they believed Donald Trump really wanted Moore, not Strange, in the Senate. They believe, rightly, that Trump was just going through the motions with Strange. Trump was trying to play nice with the establishment in hopes they might get their butts in gear on Obamacare. But he had no real affinity for Luther Strange. His rhetoric was all in Roy Moore’s wheelhouse. McConnell poured money into the race for Strange and even blessed Luther Strange deciding at the last minute to start campaigning against Mitch McConnell. Moore made running against McConnell the theme of his campaign. Both sides claimed they were going to help Trump against McConnell, but Moore’s base really believed him. Strange’s was just going through the motions. It is harder and harder to get honest reporting from DC when it comes to Trump. Reporters just hate him so much. So the DC press corps is celebrating the Roy Moore win as a Trump defeat when the reality and truth are that Moore is the most Trumpian senate candidate in America today. His race is not over, but the Democrats will mount little credible opposition. And when Donald Trump comes back to campaign for Roy Moore, Moore’s base will know Trump means it this time. ||||| For Mitch McConnell, Tuesday was about as bad as it could get. A vulnerable incumbent senator, Luther Strange of Alabama, lost handily to Roy Moore, who used the Senate leader as his campaign punching bag. McConnell pulled the plug — again — on repealing Obamacare. One of his close allies, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), announced his retirement. Story Continued Below And President Donald Trump is back on McConnell’s case, dubbing him “weak” at a private dinner with conservative activists on Monday evening. McConnell’s job is in no immediate danger, and he hopes to pivot quickly to tax reform. Yet months of woes are now taking their toll on the GOP leader’s agenda, and his caucus. “It’s been a hard summer for all of us,” admitted Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 GOP senator. Asked Tuesday whether he was having a “tough day,” McConnell ignored the question. And that was before Corker announced his retirement and Moore won. “We haven’t given up on changing the American health care system,” McConnell said. “We’re not going to be able to do that this week, but it still lies ahead of us, and we haven’t given up on that.” McConnell’s long-shot bid to save Strange, who had Trump’s backing as well, failed spectacularly as the former Alabama attorney general was trounced by Moore in the deep red state. And that soon could be a daily problem for McConnell. Moore, twice ousted as a judge on the Alabama Supreme Court for defying federal edicts, has openly said he wants to dump McConnell as the top Senate Republican. “Judge Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate means the END of Mitch McConnell’s reign as Majority Leader,” Moore vowed in one fundraising pitch. Moore now faces Democrat Doug Jones in the Dec. 12 general election. Moore’s win came just hours after McConnell, faced with unwavering opposition from a trio of his GOP colleagues, was forced to ditch the latest GOP proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare. McConnell’s choices were grim: Hold another failed vote, or concede another defeat. Sign up here for POLITICO Huddle A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. McConnell chose to call it quits and perhaps try again next year. Yet it was another embarrassing setback in McConnell’s failed months-long effort to overturn the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and it came at an even heavier price this time — more problems for McConnell from the occupant of the Oval Office. Trump spent much of August publicly bashing McConnell but stopped after the two held a private meeting several weeks ago. But now the president is bad-mouthing the Senate leader again. During a dinner with conservative activists on Monday night at the White House, Trump laid into McConnell, according to two attendees. Trump told the activists that McConnell was “weak” because he couldn’t pass the GOP health care plan, and the president complained at length about how Republicans had failed him on the issue, while asking the activists what they should do next. Trump added that he was disappointed in McConnell for not changing the Senate filibuster rule so that only 51 votes are needed to pass legislation, also dubbing McConnell’s resistance to the idea as “weak.” That criticism does not ring true to Senate Republicans, given that Democrats have barely been able to use the filibuster due to McConnell mostly holding party-line votes. A McConnell spokesman declined to comment. A person briefed on the meeting noted Trump took aim at far more than McConnell during the meeting, distancing himself from Strange and whacking Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as well. Trump called McCain “disgraceful” on health care and mocked his thumbs-down gesture on the Senate floor against a GOP proposal in July, complete with a facial expression, attendees said. After the race was called Tuesday, McConnell vowed to support Moore in the general election despite the candidate’s opposition to him personally. “He ran a spirited campaign centered around a dissatisfaction with the progress made in Washington. I share that frustration,” McConnell said of Moore in a statement. “Senate Republicans will be as committed to keeping Alabama’s Senate seat in Republican hands with Roy Moore as we were with Luther Strange.” McConnell’s support in the Republican Conference remains solid despite what Trump, Moore and former Trump aide Steve Bannon say about him. Bannon has launched a crusade against the Senate leader and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Ohio) since leaving the White House. “It’s not even a close question there,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said of McConnell’s position. “It’s not easy being majority leader, which is why many people choose not to run for it.” The way to put an end to anti-McConnell challengers, Cornyn said, is “you win. Really, it’s about that simple.” After ushering through the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, McConnell has found himself in a box. Trump will receive the lion’s share of credit for legislative victories that McConnell or Ryan engineer, but the president has made clear he’ll blame the GOP leaders when bills falter. Trump might turn to Democrats again in search of victories — as he did earlier this month to put off a fight over the budget and debt ceiling — which would again test McConnell and Ryan’s loyalty to the president. Some Republicans said that at least in the case of Obamacare, McConnell was not to blame for the failure of the proposal pushed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.). “The whole health care thing right now was sort of inspired by Graham and Cassidy, and the president, who kept it alive. I don’t think Mitch has much ownership other than to try to see if there’s a path forward,” Thune said. Thune added that Strange’s situation in Alabama was a “unique set of circumstances. I think everybody in a lot of these places, particularly primary voters, want to send a message to Washington.” Strange was appointed to the seat by former Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, who later resigned in a sex scandal. Strange’s appointment didn’t sit well with Alabama voters. The Senate Leadership Fund, a pro-McConnell super PAC, dumped $9 million into the race in a bid to derail Moore, but he proved far too strong. And Trump’s endorsement of Strange proved to be too little, too late. “What happens today in Alabama with Luther Strange has nothing to do with Mitch McConnell. It has everything to do with Alabama,” Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said before the results were tallied. Personal loyalty to McConnell remains high among his colleagues. They remember him as a two-term chairman of the NRSC. He led the fight against former President Barack Obama for eight years. And he got Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court, which is Trump’s only real win in Congress so far. When it comes to who to blame for a difficult year with just a 52-seat majority, McConnell’s colleagues refuse to point to the majority leader as the source of the problem. They criticize each other, not McConnell. “You can only fight with the troops that you’ve got,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said of McConnell’s predicament. ||||| Why it matters: A funding freeze could be seen as a slap against the organization — which the U.S. and Israel consider to be biased against Israel and too politicized — and an attempt to pressure the Palestinians to return to peace talks with Israel. But a State Department official said that the fact the money wasn't transferred on Jan. 1 doesn't mean it was frozen. "There are still deliberations taking place, and we have until mid January to decide what we are going to do,” the official said. The Trump administration has frozen $125 million in funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, according to three Western diplomats who were informed of the move. They said the funding, one third of the annual U.S. donations to the agency, was supposed to be transferred by Jan. 1 but was withheld. The details: The diplomats, who asked to speak on conditions of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the funding was frozen until the Trump administration finishes its review of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority. The move comes after the Palestinian Authority suspended their contacts with the Trump administration in response to its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. A senior White House official said no decision have been made yet, but confirmed that a review of the U.S. assistance to the Palestinians is underway "in light of the Palestinians' recent conduct." The diplomats added that U.S. officials told U.N. officials in the last two days that President Trump is considering totally cutting the part of the funding which was frozen, and is even considering cutting up to $180 million, which amounts to half of the U.S. funding to UNRWA. The impact: The Western diplomats said freezing or cutting of such a big part of the U.S. funding would be catastrophic for the organization, would hamper its work and might lead to negative consequences for the Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon. U.N. secretary general António Guterres has spoken with senior U.S. official about the UNRWA funding and also consulted with foreign ministers from other donor countries, according to the diplomats. The Israeli security establishment and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories — the Israeli organization that oversees government activities in the West Bank and Gaza — are concerned about possible freezing or cutting of U.S. funding to UNRWA, fearing the escalation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza is complicated enough and harming UNRWA funding will only make it more complicated," a senior Israeli security official told me. What we're hearing: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not enthusiastic about the cutting of U.S. funding to UNRWA, but is politically pressed by conservative ministers in his cabinet and by the fact he can't be more dovish on the Palestinian issue than President Trump. Officials in the prime minister's office told diplomats from several western countries that Israel does not object to the cutting of U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority, but prefers that the U.S. doesn't cut funding to UNRWA due to the fact it also serves Israeli security interests. A senior Israeli official told me Netanyahu is in touch with the White House on the UNRWA funding issue, and conveyed the message that Israel prefers “gradual disengagement" with UNRWA by the U.S. and not a big funding cut. The prime minister's office said in a statement: "Netanyahu supports President Trump's critical attitude towards UNRWA and believes practical steps need to be taken in order to change the fact that UNRWA is being used to entrench the Palestinian refugee problem instead of solving it."

– As has been widely noted, Mitch McConnell had a truly awful Tuesday. The Senate majority leader had to surrender on ObamaCare repeal, ally Bob Corker announced he was retiring, and, perhaps worst of all, the Senate candidate that McConnell strongly backed in Alabama got trounced by one backed by the Steve Bannon contingent. Just how bad is it for McConnell? Here's a look at coverage: Mocked by Trump: The president has taken to doing physical impressions of a slump-shouldered McConnell, reports Axios. Trump also reportedly called out McConnell as "weak" at a dinner with conservative activists, reports Politico. On the wane: McConnell has gone from "brilliant tactician" to looking vulnerable after the defeats this week, reports the New York Times. If the GOP fails to get tax reform passed this year, his post as majority leader could be in jeopardy—especially with populist insurgents backed by Bannon looking to win more seats. No immediate danger: Both Politico and the Times say McConnell retains rock-solid support in the Republican Conference and thus is not in any immediate peril. Much of that support is based on his formidable fundraising skills on behalf of Senate Republicans. Beware the midterms: In a piece subtitled, "Is the Senate Leader Losing His Grip on the GOP?," Abigail Tracy at Vanity Fair notes that midterm elections in general are often unkind to the party in power: "With the GOP in the midst of an ideological schism, McConnell’s faction could be headed for a reckoning." Indeed, Tuesday's triple whammy "just shows how weak the Republican establishment is right now," writes Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. Boehner's fate? McConnell is willing to take all the criticism coming from conservatives over the ObamaCare fail, especially if it protects rank-and-file Republicans, per an analysis at the Washington Post. "But one thing that could hamper McConnell’s long-term standing would be if he became a real albatross to his own incumbents in primary elections ahead," writes Paul Kane. Fear of that played a role in John Boehner's resignation as House speaker two years ago. False narrative: Many in the media are portraying the Alabama results as a loss for Trump, but winner Roy Moore is decidedly Trumpian, writes Erick Erickson at the Resurgent. No, this was all about McConnell—in fact, Moore made running against him "the theme of his campaign."

May 2008: 17-year-old Hayden Kennedy, Jonas Waterman, and I were a few pitches up El Cap’s El Niño (VI 5.13 b/c A0), a notoriously runout, nearly-free route on El Cap’s steep southeast face. The wall looked absolutely huge from our belay stance a few hundred feet off the ground. Hayden stepped off the anchor and headed into one of the first few cruxes—near vertical face climbing with minuscule handholds and little crystals for footholds. He moved quickly, confidently, and when he got into big-fall territory on hard climbing he simply “journeyed on,” as he said. It didn’t take long to see that Hayden, on his first El Cap route, was the future of climbing. Here was a kid ticking off 5.14s at Rifle every few weeks, with a solid lead head, and miles and miles of hard and varied climbing under his belt. I was impressed. Then Hayden and I drove out to Yosemite that May, he pointed out towers that he’d climbed long before he “officially became a climber,” when he began taking the sport seriously at age 13 or 14. “I grew up climbing with my dad when I was super young. But I wasn’t that into it,” he tells me. “Then as a teenager I did more sport and trad climbing. When I was in high school, when I met you, I started climbing with other people then, and not just my dad, and that’s when I became my own climber. Know what I mean?” Hayden has it in his genes. He’s the son of Julie and Michael Kennedy. Michael, a renowned alpinist in his own right, established such routes as the Moonflower Buttress on Mt. Hunter among others. He has completed countless first ascents on ice and rock and was editor-in-chief at Climbing magazine for 30 years. Hayden graduated from high school at Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado, and decided to pass on college for that moment, and just focus on his passion: To climb how he wanted to, where he wanted to. Oh, how he has succeeded. “My first expedition, I went to Patagonia in 2009-2010. I turned 20 there. I’ve been there three more times. I climbed Fitz Roy my first year, and then smaller peaks and started free climbing peaks.” To sustain a living Hayden works like anyone else—just not a regular job. “I work for sure,” he says. “I have the sponsorship gig, and I hang Christmas lights, paint. I’ve worked at a bar, consignment work, odd jobs and different stuff.” Kennedy relies on grants from the outdoor industry to fund his expeditions. “We got the AAC [American Alpine Club] Mountain Fellowship grant my first year. I also got a grant to go to the Bugaboos one time. That was pretty cool.” n recent years, Kennedy has grown as an alpinist, climbing more towers in the Fitzroy massif, including a near bolt-free first ascent of the southeast face of Cerro Torre. It was an ascent that proved controversial due to their removal of over 100 bolts of the neighboring Compressor Route when they rappelled down the wall. Back in town, they were threatened by locals, arrested, and spent the night in jail for removing the bolts. His career highlights include the first ascent of Carbondale Short Bus (named after his van) a 5.14- in Indian Creek; an ascent of the notoriously runout Bachar/Yerian 5.11c R/X; climbing a new route up K7, followed by a new route up the South Face of the Ogre (Baintha Brakk), a formation near K2, topping out at 7,285 meters that had only been previously climbed twice. In May, he and Nik Berry made a 10-hour all-free ascent of the Hallucinogen Wall (VI 5.13+ R) in Colorado’s Black Canyon. Regarding Hayden’s ascents of K7 and the Ogre in the same season, Berry stated that Kennedy had “probably had the best season of climbing in alpine history. Its ridiculous. It’s so fun climbing with Hayden Kennedy. He’s such a rad, humble dude. He has this lighthearted attitude about everything. And super-psyched as well. His skill base is insane. This kid can climb everything. He doesn’t get super pissed if it’s not his day or things aren’t going well or whatever. He doesn’t throw wobblers. He’s just like ‘whatever, I’ll come back or not come back, it’s not a big issue.’” Hayden takes it in stride: “I’ve had lots of big adventures and lots of close calls. In 2011 Jason Kruk and I tried to climb the North Face of North Twin. It was scary. We got caught in bad weather. It was too dangerous to rappel off and we had to traverse off. We spent a few nights out in the open without enough bivvy stuff. I don’t know if I would call that an epic. We got out of that unscathed.” Regarding his success rate of climbing big mountains, Hayden says, “I think alpine climbing comes down to 40 percent luck, 40 percent motivation, and 20 percent skill. You have to be really motivated to do that. You have to be able to climb pitches that aren’t that good. You’re just climbing to the top of these things instead of the next pitch. You just keep building and dealing with the bad rock and deal with whatever. I feel if you’re really motivated to do it you can just keep doing it. I don’t really know.” I ask him how he does it and his reply sums up what makes him so special: “I’m just trying to have fun and not take it too seriously.” Indeed, Hayden Kennedy’s career is going to be fun. ||||| On Saturday, October 7, 27-year-old alpinist Hayden Kennedy was skiing with his girlfriend, Inge Perkins, 23, on Imp Peak south of Bozeman, Montana. The pair triggered a slide that buried and killed Perkins. Kennedy survived the slide, but returned home and took his own life. Perkins had a beacon, but it was turned off and in her pack, said Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Bozeman. “That’s why she wasn’t found.” Hayden “never called 911” to report the slide, Chabot said. “He left a note with locations as to where the avalanche happened. They were incredibly clear directions for where to find her.” Early-season avalanches “catch people all the time,” Chabot said. “This was not a particularly huge avalanche” yet “it packed a punch....We had huge storms back in September that put three or four feet of snow on the ground” then another foot around October 1, with high winds that loaded the snow on a firm bed. Kennedy’s family released a statement saying that they sorrowfully respected Hayden’s decision and praised their son’s openness to the world while he was alive. Perkins was a beloved climber from Bozeman who was working on a degree at Montana State University. “Just like Hayden was someone I looked up to, you were, too,” professional climber Chelsea Rude wrote on Facebook, addressing Perkins. “You two were perfect for each other. Both with the biggest hearts a human can have and smiles that made anyone feel welcome, heard and loved.” Trying my best to honor you. Thanks for putting up with my camera guys. A post shared by Michael Lim (@murkytimes) on Oct 10, 2017 at 11:17am PDT Kennedy has long been one of the top climbers in the world. Though, unless you were steeped in the minutiae of climbing, you wouldn’t necessarily know it. He avoided most media. When Outside reached out to him four years ago about coverage he replied that he was “just not really interested in being in the mag. I have nothing against Outside but I would rather just be out of the media in general. I think that it distracts and over hypes everything, for me it’s just not worth it. My passion for climbing is my own experience and doesn't need to be blow[n] out of portion.” Though his accomplishments were many—from big walls in Mexico to bold first ascents in the Karakoram—he was mostly widely known to the non-climbing world for removing 125 bolts from Cerro Torre’s Compressor Route in Patagonia after making the first fair means ascent of the Southeast Ridge with Jason Kruk in 2012. Casare Maestri had put in and used the bolts to ascend the pillar 42 years before, and many had followed in his path. Some thought the bolts should be left as a monument to history. Kennedy and Kruk sought to return the mountain to its initial state, and were both praised and criticized for that decision. In a letter to his son published in the Alpinist shortly after their effort, Michael wrote: “The story of the Southeast Ridge is one of the distance between our ideals and what we are willing to sacrifice to live up to them. As alpinists, we should strive to reach our dream summits with a minimum of means, leaving the least trace of our passage...Chopping the bolts was a reminder that we need to abide by what we say we believe in. For making that decision, some will call you and Jason heroes. Others will call you villains. Don't buy into either narrative.” Just a few weeks ago, Kennedy published an essay on the climbing blog Evening Sends that contemplated climbing, loss, and mortality. “Over the last few years, as I’ve watched too many friends go to the mountains only to never return, I’ve realized something painful,” he wrote. “It’s not just the memorable summits and crux moves that are fleeting. Friends and climbing partners are fleeting, too. This is the painful reality of our sport, and I’m unsure what to make of it. Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse…I see both light and dark in climbing. Through this recognition, true learning begins and a full awareness of the brevity of our time becomes clearer. It’s difficult to accept the fact that we cannot control everything in life, yet we still try, and maybe our path changes to something totally unexpected…Maybe the most genuine aspects of any tale are the sputterings and the silences, the acknowledgments of failure, the glimmerings in the dark. And maybe one genuine reason to try to share our stories about days we actually send something, when we are alive and at the height of our powers, is to try to bring back what’s past, lost, or gone. Perhaps by doing so, we might find some light illuminating a new way forward.” ||||| Close Get email notifications on Whitney Bermes daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. 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– World-class alpinist Hayden Kennedy and his partner, Inge Perkins, were skiing in Montana on Saturday when an early-season avalanche on Imp Peak near Bozeman took the couple by surprise at 10,000 feet, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The slide buried Perkins, 23, and partially covered Kennedy, 27. He searched in vain but never found Perkins. Then Kennedy headed home and took his own life, Outside reports; his family says Kennedy was unable to deal with the "unbearable loss." Kennedy didn't call 911 but left "incredibly clear directions for where to find her," Doug Chabot of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center tells Outside. Perkins, also an accomplished climber, was wearing a beacon that could have led rescuers to her, but it was turned off, Chabot says. Her body was recovered Monday morning under 3 feet of snow, per the Post Independent. The couple had moved to Bozeman so Perkins could pursue a degree in math and education at Montana State University. Kennedy, hailed in 2014 as maybe "the best young climber on the planet," was studying for an EMT certification. He wrote recently of the pain of seeing "too many friends go to the mountains only to never return … Climbing is either a beautiful gift or a curse." As tributes flowed to the pair, Kennedy's family says they "sorrowfully" respect his final decision and remembered "an uncensored soul whose accomplishments as a mountaineer were always secondary to his deep friendships and mindfulness." (Another climber survived one avalanche on Everest, but perished on his second ascent.)

The world of English-language online media is evolving rapidly. Not only are publications like BuzzFeed, Business Insider, and Quartz changing the way readers consume news by merging the law of the click with real news street cred, they’re taking this model beyond US borders. Business Insider struck a deal with Tencent. Quartz has set up a local office in India. BuzzFeed is often cited as a leader of the new media charge, but for all its innovations, in some capacities it still operates like any other business. News markets must be sought out, entered, and conquered. It has already invested in overseas English markets like the UK and India and, after receiving a US$50 million funding round, BuzzFeed announced that it will expand to Japan, among other non-English speaking countries, by the end of 2014. Though the company has 27 reasons why moving to Japan is great, it will find one very real competitor upon arrival. Curazy, a website for humorous, viral observations on Japan and the outside world, is steadily attracting a strong following. Recent articles titles include “What is Acrobatic Kissing?” and “Even After Their Owners Became Homeless These 12 Dogs Stayed Completely Faithful”. The site, which launched in January, attracts five million unique users per month and just closed a JPY 100 million (US$964,000) round. The company only has five full-time employees, lead by Shinnosuke Ito (CEO), Masahiro Kawasaki (head of marketing), and Taisuke Takemoto (head of business). None of the three have prior media experience but they are all entrepreneurs at heart. Ito previously operated a tutoring school via Skype during college, Kawasaki was doing sales for a homepage web developer while working on side projects, and Takemoto, who joined this summer, was running a website design company of his own. Curazy launched in January 2014, but its operating company, Laugh Tech, first had an interest in manga (comic books in Japan). Ito explained they launched Cosmo in October 2013, only six months after incorporating Laugh Tech (then called Bit Gather). The service was well-regarded and the netted the team the “Google Award” at a pitch contest held for Google for Entrepreneurs Week 2013. Users, however, did not follow the plaudits and the team began planning a pivot. They had already started experimenting with a 9gag clone, Curazy Pix, a simple collection of humorous images. The early feedback was positive, leading the team to work on the release of Curazy. Looking to the future, Laugh Tech definitely got the memo startups are supposed to set big, audacious goals. The team wants to hit 300 million in monthly pageviews and exit via IPO or acquisition within four years. The pageview goal is definitely a reach considering BuzzFeed – which does not report pageview data – recorded 179 million total visits from 25 July 2014 to 23 August 2014 from American alone, according to Quantcast. BuzzFeed’s 150 million unique users, acquired over the past eight years, are also a significant increase from Laugh Tech’s 5 million. As a start, the company has already expanded outside of Japan. Its Taiwanese incarnation is managed by a husband-wife team who translate some of the Japan site’s content and also add localized pieces. Early traction is a positive sign but Ito is well aware of BuzzFeed’s position in the digital media market and is no rush to become bitter rivals. In fact, his team has already identified BuzzFeed as a potential acquirer. “BuzzFeed, are you reading [this article]? Buy us!” he said. Ito’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the company’s future evinces his sure-footed confidence. BuzzFeed may be a behemoth but Ito believes Japan will be difficult to conquer. “Humor is a part of culture, and the culture here is too different,” he said. 9月3日と4日にスタートアップアジア＠東京を開催します！8月29日まで、割引コード < latebird >を使ってみて下さい！ Startup Asia Tokyo 2014 is on Sep 3 and 4. Until Aug 29th, unlock secret level using code < latebird > ||||| Most citizens still oppose lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18, a government survey said Saturday. According to the poll by the Cabinet Office, 69.0 percent don’t want parental authority to end at a child’s 18th birthday. This was almost unchanged from 69.4 percent in the 2008 survey. Only 26.2 percent backed lowering the age, down 0.5 point. A 2007 law that specifies procedures for constitutional amendment in principle allows people 18 or above to vote in national referendums. The law calls for discussions on lowering the legal age of adulthood from 20 before it is put into effect. However, related bills have not been initiated more than three years since its enforcement, due in part to the Liberal Democratic Party’s reluctance to lower the age to 18. According to the survey, 79.4 percent of Japanese object to making 18 the youngest age at which people can conclude contracts to buy expensive items without parental consent, up 0.6 point from the previous survey. Meanwhile, 18.6 percent supported the change, down 0.4 point. Asked about the minimum age at which people are allowed to adopt children, 51.5 percent answered that it should remain unchanged at 20, down 0.1 point, while 5.9 percent said it should drop to 18, down 0.8 point. The survey also revealed waning public interest in whether the age of majority should be lowered, with 69.8 percent interested, down 5.6 points, and 29.6 percent saying they have no interest, up 5.6 points. The Cabinet Office conducted the survey through face-to-face interviews with 5,000 people aged 18 or above nationwide between Oct. 10 and 27. Valid responses were received from 62.4 percent. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Unlike in the U.S., legal adulthood in Japan doesn’t begin until the age of 20. But while that means an extra two years to enjoy the benefits and protection society affords to minors, everyone has to grow up sometime, and for one Japanese Twitter user the transition was especially abrupt. On his 20th birthday as his parents presented him with a written notice congratulating him on graduating from childhood and celebrating his newfound freedoms, while spelling out exactly what they, and the world, now expected of him as an adult. Twitter user @zamayuma1004’s birthday was last weekend, and this year he hit the two-decade mark. On his special day, his parents presented him with this festive-looking envelope. Normally when someone hands you something like this on your birthday, you expect a birthday card, and the envelope did indeed have “Happy birthday” written on it. What was inside, though, was a little less orthodox. The paper reads: Happy 20th Birthday! Notice of Expiration of Child-Rearing Services As of October 4, 2015, your father, Yoshikazu Hasegawa, and mother, Chiaki Hasegawa, have completed their duties of raising their child: you, Yuma Hasegawa. Going forward, please become a proper and responsible member of society, like your father and mother. In addition, should you continue living in the Hasegawa family home, please make a monthly payment of 20,000 yen [US$168] for rent, utility, and grocery expenses. Also, please be aware that should you ask for a loan from your parents, interest will be charged. Points to note upon reaching the age of 20 ● You must make compulsory national pension payments. If you put this off it will cause problems, so make the payments. ● Should you commit a crime, your face and name can now be shown on television and in newspapers. You will also have a permanent criminal record. ● You can now buy alcohol and tobacco products. Do not drive while intoxicated. ● You can get married without your parents’ permission. However, they may not emotionally accept your wife as their daughter-in-law if you don’t discuss the situation without them beforehand. ● Think responsibly about the future and set aside an adequate amount of savings from the money you earn. Please enjoy your life as an adult. Although the document might sound the like the grumblings of a pair of exasperated parents who’ve reached the limits of their patience, @zamayuma1004 says they’ve got their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. He’s actually been paying the monthly amount mentioned for rent and expenses since last year, and he hopes to do even more to help his parents out in the future. That said, this is a documented case of pretty tough love by Japanese standards, considering that at the age of 20 much of the population is still attending college or trade school, and that it’s customary to continue living with your parents until getting married or school or work takes you away from your home town. Still, it’s hard to argue with any of the things @zamayuma1004’s parents are saying as they tell him not to let the door of his childhood hit him in the butt on his way out of it. Source: Curazy Top image: Twitter/@zamayuma1004 (1, 2) (edited by RocketNews24)

– When young adults in the US reach the age of majority, they take on full legal responsibility for themselves and can do fun things like vote, sign contracts, and open bank accounts. In Japan, the same milestone means they get hit with rent charges and manifestos from their parents on how they're pretty much on their own now. At least, that's the case for Japanese Twitter user @zamayuma1004, who tweeted photos last week of the special gift his mom and dad presented him on the occasion of his 20th birthday (the Japanese age of majority). Beautifully wrapped in an envelope tied with red and white string was a letter titled "Notice of Expiration of Child-Rearing Services," and its contents proved the parents weren't messing around, RocketNews24 reports via Curazy, Japan's BuzzFeed-style site. "As of October 4, 2015, your father, Yoshikazu Hasegawa, and mother, Chiaki Hasegawa, have completed their duties of raising their child: you, Yuma Hasegawa," the letter reads, per a RocketNews24 translation. "Going forward, please become a proper and responsible member of society, like your father and mother." It then offers a bulleted list of advice for the new adult, including that Yuma pay into his pension, "not drive while intoxicated," and discuss any future possible wife with them or they "may not emotionally accept" her. They also mention the $168 they expect for rent and other household expenses and note that "should you ask for a loan from your parents, interest will be charged." "Please enjoy your life as an adult," the note ends. Meanwhile, Yuma insists his parents are just joshing (kind of) and that he's been contributing monetarily to the household since last year. (Centenarians probably won't be getting fancy birthday gifts in Japan anymore.)

A 10-year-old girl airlifted Friday afternoon from Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia, California, died Saturday, according to the coroner's office. Updated Article: Natural Causes in Girl's Death, Coroner Says The Ventura County girl had just exited the Revolution ride and returned to the ride station when she collapsed at the park in northern Los Angeles County. She was described as breathing, but unconscious, when she was airlifted from the Valencia theme park and later died at a hospital. Details regarding why the girl, identified by the coroner as Jasmine Martinez, collapsed were not immediately available. An autopsy will determine the cause of death. 2015 Southern California Images in the News The ride has been temporarily closed, pending a review, according to Magic Mountain. The ride was cleared to reopen shortly after the airlift, and there was no evidence to suggest "this was in any way ride related," according to Magic Mountain. It was not immediately determined whether the girl suffered from a pre-existing condition. "We were deeply saddened to learn that Jasmine Martinez, who was transported to the hospital after riding Revolution on June 12 has died, " a Magic Mountain spokeswoman said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Jasmine’s family and friends during this difficult time." Revolution is a roller coaster that features a 90-foot tall vertical loop. The ride reaches speeds up to 55 mph. More than 45 million visitors have "safely ridden" Revolution since it opened in 1976, according to a spokeswoman for Magic Mountain. ||||| The theme park said Jasmine came into the ride station unconscious. Later that day, state officials determined it wasn't related to the operation of the ride and reopened the attraction. But now that Jasmine has died, the ride has been temporarily closed as they review the incident.

– A 10-year-old California girl died on Saturday, a day after losing consciousness while at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Jasmine Martinez rode the Revolution roller coaster, exited the ride, and then collapsed near the ride station Friday afternoon. She was airlifted out of the park and ultimately brought to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, per the LA Times. A cause of death has not yet been established, and "we do not know if there was a pre-existing condition," the park said in a statement. NBC Los Angeles reports that the steel coaster, which features a vertical loop and hits speeds of 55mph, was temporarily shut down after Jasmine collapsed; it reopened only to be closed again upon her death as the park investigates. "There is no evidence to suggest that this was in any way ride related," Six Flags notes. Further, more than 45 million people have "safely ridden" Revolution since 1976, per the park. How dangerous are amusement park rides? The Times cited its own analysis of more than 2,000 reported injuries at Southern California theme parks between 2007 and 2012. It found that 18% of the injuries involved symptoms of motion sickness: nausea, fainting, and dizziness. Injured patrons were most likely to be female, with roller coasters and water slides being the most common culprits. Older attractions also caused more problems than newer rides.

In the course of one week, the burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan has set off a deadly chain of events that has not only inflamed tensions but possibly exposed a crippling weakness in the American strategy to wind down the war. The emerging U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is built around plans to replace large NATO combat formations with small teams of advisers who will live and work alongside their Afghan partners. But the killing of two high-ranking NATO officers by an Afghan security official — and the subsequent decision by the top NATO commander in the country to recall his personnel from top Afghan ministries — has spurred doubts about whether Afghan security forces can be relied upon to provide for the protection of their Western partners. The consequences of that erosion of confidence, former U.S. officials and analysts say, could be devastating. “If the trust, ability and willingness to partner falls apart, you are looking at the endgame here,” said Mark Jacobson, who served until last summer as the NATO deputy senior civilian representative in Kabul. The killing of the U.S. officers on Saturday occurred two days after a man wearing an Afghan army uniform fatally shot two American troops in eastern Afghanistan, the latest in a string of incidents in recent months in which local security forces have turned against NATO personnel. Some of the killings have been perpetrated by Afghan troops whose loyalties lay with the Taliban. But, in most cases, the attacks have been the result of tensions between U.S. forces and Afghans who felt as though they had suffered an insult to themselves or their faith. On Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who initially responded to the Koran burnings with outrage, sought to stem the latest wave of violence by issuing a plea for calm and blessing the withdrawal of NATO advisers from his ministries as a justifiable measure. But protests continued, including in the northern city of Kunduz, where Afghan demonstrators opened fire and tossed a grenade at a U.S. base, wounding seven American troops. The Afghan defense and interior ministers canceled a long-planned trip to Washington to focus on curbing the violence, which has claimed 25 Afghan lives. “We remain committed to a partnership with the Afghan government and people,” the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Ryan C. Crocker, told CNN on Sunday, promising that American service members and civilians would continue to work with their Afghan allies. For now, though, much of the cooperation between U.S. advisers and their Afghan partners is on hold. And even though the decision to withdraw the advisers is probably temporary, it is not clear how U.S. troops will be able to reestablish trust with Afghan security forces. “This is not going back to business as usual,” an Army officer who works as an adviser in Kabul said Sunday. “The threat is still higher than normal.” Once advisers return to the ministries, the officer said, some will probably have to shorten their visits, instead of remaining there for six- to 10-hour shifts, to reduce risks. Senior Obama administration officials have sought to reassure a war-weary American public that the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan would draw to a close by the middle of next year. These officials have implied that the change to an advisory mission would not only mean fewer U.S. service members in Afghanistan, but also less risk for the noncombat troops who remain behind. Military experts, however, say that the smaller U.S. advisory force might be more exposed to fratricidal attacks than conventional military units. Such attacks — which were exceptionally rare in Iraq — often stem from a cultural chasm between U.S. and Afghan troops. Carter Malkasian, who served as a State Department adviser in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province in 2010 and 2011, said one way to mitigate that risk is for advisers to build closer relationships with their Afghan partners. But the risk will always be there. “The most effective advisers will be with their Afghans all the time, and that certainly does involve additional risk,” Malkasian said. Unlike a typical infantry platoon, which consists of more than 35 heavily armed soldiers, the advisers work in teams of as few as a dozen troops. Some military and civilian advisers working in Afghanistan said Sunday that the risks associated with their jobs were still manageable and that they believed that they would soon be able to return to their work. “I hope [the ban] is lifted soon,” said a State Department adviser working at a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan. “Maybe I am complacent. I know we face all kinds of threats, but we have a job to do.” Current plans call for the U.S. force in Afghanistan to fall from a peak of 100,000 troops to about 68,000 by the end of the summer. Further reductions are likely later this year and in 2013. All NATO combat troops are expected to be withdrawn by the end of 2014. In an article in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, Malkasian and Kael Weston, who served a multiyear stint as an adviser in southern Afghanistan, estimated that NATO could hold off the Taliban and keep the Afghan government and security forces functioning with as few as 25,000 advisory troops. The Afghans would rely on the NATO advisers to call in airstrikes if their position was about to be overrun by a larger Taliban force. The advisers would ensure that their Afghan partner units were receiving ammunition, food and fuel from their headquarters. The Westerners also would help control the most damaging and overt acts of corruption. To be effective, these troops would have to live without large American bases, expensive dining facilities and intensive quick-reaction forces. “The more willing advisers are to accept risk,” Malkasian said, “the more effective they will be.” Special correspondent Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report. ||||| 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 KABUL—America's plan to hand over responsibility for securing Afghanistan faced unprecedented strains, as the U.S. and its allies withdrew hundreds of military and civilian advisers in Kabul following a string of deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers on American troops. The U.S., Britain, Germany and France temporarily pulled out the advisers helping the Afghan government on Sunday amid a wave of unrest triggered by the burning of Qurans last week at the Bagram U.S. military base. The broad adviser pullout not only deprives Afghan ministries of expertise in managing their affairs but also sends a pointed signal that the international community ...

– Afghanistan has roiled with violence for the past week over the Koran burnings at Bagram, leading to questions of whether the American exit strategy will actually work as planned. The US, Britain, Germany, and France temporarily removed hundreds of advisers from Afghanistan over the weekend in the wake of several retaliatory attacks—four US troops have been killed by Afghan comrades since the protests began—and some fear that Afghan security forces will not be able to protect the few Western advisers who will remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal is complete. One adviser says he expects that upon their reinstatement, shifts will have to be shortened for the advisers' protection. Recent months have seen a number of incidents involving Afghan security forces turning on NATO personnel—and only some out of those incidents arose out of loyalty to the Taliban, the Washington Post notes. Most involved Afghan troops who felt insulted in some fashion, such as after the Koran burning came to light, and military experts think there could be an even higher risk of such attacks after the military withdrawal. A former US Army Ranger tells the Wall Street Journal that Americans are wary of sending advisers "to a country where those trainers and advisers are liable to be targeted by the very people they are training and advising."

Pieces of flint tools dropped more than 4,300 years ago on the floor of a house as old as Stonehenge have been laid bare on the edge of Marden Henge, a giant ditch and bank enclosure so buried in rich Wiltshire farmland that it has almost vanished from view. “We’ve over-fetishised Stonehenge for far too long, because those giant trilithons are just so damn impressive,” said Dr Jim Leary, director of this summer’s excavation with the Reading University archaeology summer school, in the lush Vale of Pewsey. “It could well be that this was really where it was at in the Neolithic.” The rectangular building will welcome visitors next weekend for an open day which is part of the national festival of archaeology. The house, believed to be one of the best preserved from the period ever found in the UK, and made to look smarter with tonnes of white chalk brought from miles away and stamped into a kind of plaster, is as neatly levelled and regular as the nearby postwar bungalows built on top of part of the henge bank. The house and other parts of the huge site have already produced finds including beautifully worked flint arrowheads and blades, decorated pottery including some pieces with the residue of the last meals cooked in them, shale and copper bracelets and a beautiful little Roman brooch – and the tiny jawbone of a vole. Analysis of the mass of seeds and charred grains recovered will reveal what the people were growing and eating. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some of the flint arrowheads discovered at the site Photograph: Kevin Standage Pig bones – probably the remains of at least 13 animals, food for hundreds of people – and scorch marks from a charcoal firepit suggest the house was never a permanent residence but connected with great gatherings for feasts. When it was abandoned the entire site, pig bones and all, was cleaned and neatly covered with earth, so it would never be used again. The structure originally stood on a terrace overlooking a mound, within a small earth-banked circle, in turn part of the enormous Marden Henge. Leary, joined by archaeology students, professionals and amateurs from all over the world, who will continue working on the site for years to come, is peeling back the layers of a monument that was once one of the biggest and most impressive in Britain. Ramparts three metres high enclosed a vast space of 15 hectares, far larger than the Avebury or Stonehenge circles, and too large for any imaginable practical use. Leary believes the purpose must have been status, showing off wealth and power in the ability to mobilise a massive workforce. “Avebury had the huge ditches, Stonehenge upped the ante with the massive trilothons, Marden had this enormous enclosure.” The site is so vast that it takes Leary and fellow director Amanda Clarke 40 minutes to walk from the team working on the house to the diggers who have uncovered a previously unrecorded Roman complex including the foundations of an impressive barn. Like the Durrington Walls henge a few miles downstream, and Stonehenge itself, Marden was linked to the river Avon by a navigable flow, now a sedge- and nettle-choked stream, which forms one side of the henge. “Avebury in one direction and Stonehenge in the other have been excavated and studied for centuries because the preservation of the monuments on chalk is so much better. Not nearly enough attention has been paid to the archaeology of the fertile valleys because the land is so good the monuments have often been ploughed out above ground – but it is a key part of understanding the story.” Marden’s banks, cut through by later roads or lying under modern farm buildings, grazing cows and ripening crops in many places, once stood three metres tall, towering over an equally deep ditch. The outer ring enclosed a complex of smaller monuments, including the Hatfield Barrow, which was once 15 metres tall, and now survives only as a 15cm ripple in the field. It was excavated in 1807 and, after a collapse caused by the shaft, later completely levelled by the farmer. The site welcomes visitors every day, but the open day will have finds on display, tours and activities. It will be among more than 1,000 events across the country over the last fortnight of July, including lectures, site tours and visits to archaeology stores and structures normally closed to the public. ||||| Image copyright Reading University Image caption The body, which is about 1.5m in length and wearing an amber necklace, was found lying in a foetal position A 4,000-year-old Bronze Age skeleton, believed to be that of a child, has been unearthed by archaeologists at a dig in Wiltshire. The team from the University of Reading made the discovery while excavating Wilsford henge in the Vale of Pewsey. The body was found lying in a foetal position and wearing an amber necklace. Reading University archaeologist Dr Jim Leary described the skeleton as a "wonderful discovery". He said: "Scientific analysis will provide information on the gender of the child, diet, pathologies and date of burial. "It may also shed light on where this young individual had lived." The three-year Vale of Pewsey dig is a partnership between the University of Reading, Historic England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Wiltshire Museum. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the people who lived in the areas surrounding Stonehenge. Findings to date include flint arrowheads and blades, decorated pottery, shale and copper bracelets and a Roman brooch. Image copyright Reading University Image caption Scientific analysis will provide information on the gender of the child, its diet and date of burial During the last six weeks the team has focused on Marden henge and Wilsford henge. Dr Leary said: "Finds from the first five weeks of the dig were exciting - but as so often during excavations the best is revealed last." Built in 2,400 BC, Marden henge is the largest prehistoric monument of its kind in the country. Duncan Wilson, of Historic England, said: "Bigger than Avebury, 10 times the size of Stonehenge and halfway between the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Sites, comparatively little is known about this fascinating and ancient landscape. "The work will help Historic England focus on identifying sites for protection and improved management, as well as adding a new dimension to our understanding of this important archaeological environment."

– You think Stonehenge is impressive? Archaeologists in Britain are excavating a monument ten times larger than the iconic structure, though it appears to the naked eye to be little more than farmland. A henge is a circular earthwork, and the one in question is Marden Henge, which sits a few miles north of Stonehenge in Wiltshire. National Geographic reports that roughly 4,500 years ago it featured 10-foot-tall earthen berms that encompassed some 40 acres. The Guardian writes that the henge was "far larger than the Avebury or Stonehenge circles, and too large for any imaginable practical use." But over the ages Marden Henge's berms have "slumped" and farmers have worked the land, and archaeologists have gravitated to the more breathtaking Stonehenge. Until now. Jim Leary of the University of Reading has just kicked off a three-year study of the site; his excavations (he worked at the site in 2010, too) are the only ones to have occurred there in nearly 50 years. He hopes the berms will help explain the "insane, utterly unsustainable" construction boom that led to Marden Henge and four other nearby Neolithic monuments, including Stonehenge. "Not nearly enough attention has been paid to the archaeology of the fertile valley in between these places," says Leary. So far he's found the remains of a 4,000-year-old teen wearing an amber necklace just outside Marden Henge, per the BBC; fancy arrowheads; and a stone building within the henge containing the bones of at least 13 pigs, suggesting a huge feast was held there. "For all the attention that has been lavished on Stonehenge over the years, we may well find out that Marden was where it was really at during the Neolithic," he says. (There's a giant "super henge" under Stonehenge.)

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES "The Interview," the Sony Pictures film about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, opened in more than 300 movie theaters across the United States on Christmas Day, drawing many sell-out audiences and statements by patrons that they were championing freedom of expression. Co-directors Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, who also co-stars in the low-brow comedy with James Franco, surprised moviegoers by appearing at the sold-out 12:30 a.m. PT screening of the movie at a theater in Los Angeles, where they briefly thanked fans for their support. Sony Pictures this week backtracked from its original decision to cancel the release of the $44 million film after major U.S. theater chains pulled out because of threats of violence by Guardians of Peace, a computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for a destructive cyberattack on Sony last month. The United States blamed the attacks on North Korea. In China and South Korea, two countries that share a land border with North Korea, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to illegal video sharing sites to see the movie. In the United States, movie theater managers and patrons alike said they believed there was nothing to fear from the threats, and the initial screenings on Thursday were uneventful. But one of the online outlets that distributed the film ahead of its theatrical release, Microsoft Corp's Xbox Live, reported that users were experiencing problems getting connected on Thursday. A hacking group called the Lizard Squad claimed it was behind disruptions at both Xbox and Sony Corp's PlayStation Networks, which was not carrying "The Interview." The group's claim could not be verified. Neither Microsoft nor Sony offered explanations for the connectivity problems, though both services expected heavy use as consumers who received the devices for Christmas tried to log on all at once. Extra network traffic on Xbox from users downloading "The Interview" may also have exacerbated connectivity problems for Microsoft. The film also was available to U.S. online viewers through Google Inc's Google Play and YouTube Movie, as well as on a Sony website, www.seetheinterview.com. It can be seen in Canada on the Sony site and Google Canada's website. A Sony spokeswoman on Thursday said she had no figures on the number of downloads so far, and the studio was not expected to have box office numbers from theaters before Friday morning. The audience at the first screening of the film in New York City, at the Cinema Village in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, remained silent during a scene showing the death of Kim Jong Un in the downing of his helicopter. Matt Rosenzweig, 60, of Manhattan, said the moments that drew the most applause had to do with the idea of acting against censorship rather than animosity toward North Korea. RAUCOUS APPLAUSE Although Cinema Village manager Lee Peterson said the New York Police Department planned to post officers outside the theater, there was no visible police presence outside or inside the venue for the first screening. An afternoon screening at the Van Nuys Regency Theatres in the city's San Fernando Valley was two-thirds full and drew a diverse crowd ranging from teens to senior citizens, who laughed loudly throughout at Rogen and Franco's antics. "It was much better than I thought it would be," said Carlos Royal, 45, a professor who came with a friend dressed in Santa hats and took selfies for the occasion in front of the theater's Hollywood sign marquis. "I wanted to support the U.S." The movie, which is playing in theaters in major metropolitan areas as well as in smaller cities ranging from Bangor, Maine, to Jasper, Indiana, features Rogen and Franco as journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean leader. In Asia, online audiences seemed to find the movie tedious. "There is no drama and not much fun," said a blogger in South Korea. "It's all about forced comedy that turns you off. Couldn't they have done a better job making this movie?" Sony decided to release the film after U.S. President Barack Obama, as well as such Hollywood luminaries as George Clooney and Republicans and Democrats in Washington, raised concerns that Hollywood was setting a precedent of self-censorship. The audience in Manhattan exited the theater to a throng of network TV cameras and a crowd of people lined up for the next showing. "It was more serious, the satire, than I was expecting," said Simone Reynolds, who saw the film while visiting from London. "There's a message for America in there too about America's foreign policy." North Korea has called the film an "act of war." Most fans simply called "The Interview" a funny movie. Ken Jacowitz, a 54-year-old librarian from the New York borough of Queens, called it "a funny film made by funny people." He had a message for North Korea and the hackers: "You have given this movie whole new lives." (Additional reporting by Mary Milliken, Eric Kelsey and Jed Horowitz; Jack Kim and Kahyun Yang in Seoul; Adam Jourdan in Shanghai and the Shanghai newsroom; Writing by Leslie Adler; Editing by Howard Goller, Steve Orlofsky and Raju Gopalakrishnan) ||||| A bit of Hollywood history unfolded on Wednesday. And it might be a glimpse into the future. The controversial Sony Pictures comedy "The Interview" was released on YouTube, Google Play, the Microsoft Xbox video game console, and a special Web site. The movie, which started streaming online around 1 p.m. ET, costs $5.99 to rent and $14.99 to buy. So it is having historic simultaneous release in both living rooms and, come Christmas Day, about 300 independently-owned theaters across the United States. Sony announced the digital release just an hour ahead of time, after CNNMoney and other news organizations began to report on the studio's plans to distribute "The Interview" through YouTube's movie rental store. Word spread via social media, and some curious fans started watching -- and live-tweeting -- the movie right at 1 p.m. Sony's extraordinary announcement encapsulated days of sometimes desperate negotiations between the studio and a number of potential Internet distribution partners. Related: You won't get hacked streaming 'The Interview' online There was a plan at one point to allow rentals through Apple's iTunes store, but it fell apart, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. An iTunes release could re-materialize sometime after Christmas. Sony (SNE) could also cut a deal with a subscription streaming site like Netflix (NFLX), enabling wider access to the movie sometime after Christmas. But at the moment, it's up on YouTube and generating an enormous amount of free publicity for the embattled movie studio, which fell victim to a cyberattack late last month. A Sony representative said the company would not be releasing any immediate data about the number of rentals or sales. A groundbreaking moment for the American movie industry The online release is groundbreaking -- but also awfully contentious. Owners of major theater chains have steadfastly opposed proposals for simultaneous physical and digital releases, a concept known in the industry as a same-day-and-date release. It's been tried, with varying success, for some documentaries and niche dramas, but never for a big, broad comedy like "The Interview," which was originally meant to premiere on 2,000 to 3,000 screens. But extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary movie release strategies. This time last week, after hackers -- apparently objecting to the content of "The Interview" -- threatened American moviegoers, Sony canceled the movie's release. Related: What we know now about the Sony Hack Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he had no choice because "the movie theaters came to us, one by one, over the course of a very short period of time ... and announced that they would not carry the movie." Some of the theater chains dispute that. But one thing is clear: that same day, December 17, Sony contacted Google (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT) and other potential online distributors. "We never stopped pursuing as wide a release as possible for 'The Interview,'" Lynton said in a statement on Wednesday. "It was essential for our studio to release this movie, especially given the assault upon our business and our employees by those who wanted to stop free speech." He added, "We chose the path of digital distribution first so as to reach as many people as possible on opening day, and we continue to seek other partners and platforms to further expand the release." One of the platforms is a dedicated site, SeeTheInterview.com, done in partnership with Kernel and secure payments system Stripe. But that site appeared to be overwhelmed by traffic shortly after 1 p.m. ET. Kernel acknowledged "tremendous demand" but said the streams were "free flowing" by 2 p.m. Google's streams appeared to be more stable. Google senior vice president David Drummond wrote in a blog post that "security implications were very much at the front of our minds" when Sony contacted the company last week. "After discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be)," he wrote. Next stop for 'The Interview:' indie theaters As for the physical release on Thursday, the studio's list of participating theaters includes about 300 that will start showing it on Christmas and dozens of others that will start showing it on January 1 or January 2. Some of the Christmas Day screenings are already sold out. "With what looks like a seriously limited release, limited supply is yielding substantial demand," the fan web site Moviepilot said. For Sony's partners, the digital release of the movie is an opportunity to show off technological and commercial prowess. YouTube, for instance, has a two-year-old movie rental system that many of its users don't know about; "The Interview" is chance to gain attention for it. The movie, oddly enough, became a political and geopolitical symbol. It is about an assassination plot against the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. And it is widely believed that Sony Pictures suffered a cyberattack last month partly due to North Korea's fury over the movie. Backlash to Sony's original cancellation decision was fierce, including from President Obama, who said the movie studio had made a mistake. Since then, Sony executives have stayed in close touch with White House officials, appraising them of the studio's efforts to seek distribution. And on Wednesday, administration officials signaled that they were pleased with the theatrical and digital plans. Shortly after 1 p.m., the White House responded to reporters' inquiries with a statement: "The President welcomes the news that people will be able to decide for themselves whether or not to see this film, and appreciates Sony's work on this effort over the past few weeks." The statement added, "With today's announcements, people can now make their own choices about the film, and that's how it should be." Related: Dennis Rodman on 'The Interview': Watch my movie Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus concurred. In a followup to his Saturday message calling on theater owners to support the movie, he said the renewed Christmas release "was the right decision." Priebus added, "Anything else would set a horrible precedent and allow our freedom to be ceded to the whims of a totalitarian regime." --CNN's Pamela Brown and Michelle Kosinski contributed reporting. ||||| Patrons queue up to see "The Interview" at the the Cinefamily at Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday, Dec. 25, 2014. The film's Christmas Day release was canceled by Sony after threats of... (Associated Press) NEW YORK (AP) — Critics and early viewers agree that "The Interview" is less than a masterpiece. But thanks to threats from hackers that nearly derailed its release, it has become an event. Hundreds of theaters Thursday, from The Edge 8 in Greenville, Alabama, to Michael Moore's Bijou by the Bay in Traverse City, Michigan, made special holiday arrangements for the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Sony Pictures had initially called off the release after major theater chains dropped the movie that was to have opened on as many as 3,000 screens. But with President Obama among others criticizing the decision, Sony officials changed their minds. "The Interview" became available on a variety of digital platforms Wednesday afternoon, including Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft's Xbox Video and a separate Sony website. Meanwhile, Sony and independent theaters agreed to release it in over 300 venues on Christmas. "We are taking a stand for freedom, said theater manager Lee Peterson of the Cinema Village East in Manhattan, where most of Thursday's seven screenings had sold out by early afternoon. "We want to show the world that Americans will not be told what we can or cannot watch. Personally, I am not afraid." Some venues showing "The Interview" were more likely to feature documentaries about North Korea than a low-brow comedy about it. At the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico, owned by "Game of Thrones" author George RR Martin, the schedule also includes the Spanish art-house release "Flamenco," the locally made "The Twilight Angel" and an Italian film festival. The Film Society of Lincoln Center, which begins screening "The Interview" on Friday, will soon be hosting a tribute to "Force Majeure" director Ruben Ostlund of Sweden and a documentary about the late Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. The back story of "The Interview" has itself played out like a Hollywood satire, in which a cartoonish farce distracts from some of the holiday season's most prestigious films: "Selma," the drama about the 1965 civil rights march; Angelina Jolie's adaptation of the best-selling World War II story "Unbroken"; and the all-star, big-screen version of Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods." Security was light at many theaters, with the occasional police officer on hand. The possibility of violence was taken more seriously by the movie industry than by government officials. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying that there were no credible threats. Meanwhile, Darrell Foxworth, a special agent for the FBI in San Diego, said Wednesday the agency was sharing information with independent movie theater owners showing "The Interview" out of "an abundance of caution" and to educate them about cyber threats and what help the FBI can offer. Kim Song, a North Korean diplomat to the United Nations, condemned the release Wednesday, calling the movie an "unpardonable mockery of our sovereignty and dignity of our supreme leader." But Kim said North Korea will likely limit its response to condemnation, with no "physical reaction." Decisions to show the movie through the Internet could open up companies to hacking. Xbox and PlayStation's online gaming services were down Thursday afternoon but the cause was unclear. Meanwhile, YouTube and other Google products were not having any disruptions. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed the Xbox outage but declined further comment. Sony PlayStation representatives did not immediately respond to inquiries. Members of an Arkansas family who say they otherwise would have never seen "The Interview" were among the first patrons at the Riverdale 10 theater in Little Rock. Kay Trice and her husband drove an hour from Stuttgart, Arkansas, to see the movie with their daughter and appreciated "the freedom to see it." "It should be shown in this country and somebody in North Korea should not have the right to scare us out of seeing this," Trice said. A few dozen people lined up early outside Tempe, Arizona's Valley Art theater, where tickets for all five showings on Thursday had sold out. "There are a lot of people going crazy over (the controversy). It's bigger than the movie," said Omar Khiel, 20. At the Cinema Village theater in Manhattan, the 10 a.m. screening was near capacity. Derek Karpel, a 34-year-old attorney, said that "as many people as possible should go see it. In fact, the government should subsidize tickets to make that possible." But he didn't say that "The Interview" was a great movie. "No one should go into expecting it to be a serious commentary on politics," he said. "But it's fun. People should go." ____ Jonathan Lemire and Scott Mayerowitz in New York, Eric Tucker in Washington, Kelly Kissel in Little Rock and Alina A. Hartounian in Tempe contributed to this report. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story LOS ANGELES — Carolers dressed in Dickensian costumes sang “Silent Night” at 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday here, as a woman with a strip of shiny gold garland tied around her head handed out hot cider. “I could think of no place better to be on Christmas Eve than here, with like-minded people, coming together for something we strongly believe in,” said Julia Paredes, a bookstore manager. This was not a midnight Mass. It was one of the first screenings of Sony’s “The Interview,” which improbably became a symbol of free speech in the last week as hackers who attacked the studio first got the movie withdrawn from distribution, then, after a groundswell of support for releasing it that reached the White House, watched it open after all. As moviegoers lined up at the 331 scrappy, independently owned theaters that played “The Interview” on Christmas, it was obvious that many, like Ms. Paredes, 28, were there to make a political stand. They turned out in red, white and blue attire. At one theater in California, a ticket taker dressed up as “Uncle Sam-ty Claus.” A manager at Cinema Village in Manhattan introduced the film by reciting “America,” also known as “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” Continue reading the main story Video The number of tickets sold was not immediately available. Sony said only that it would disclose results on Friday. The studio similarly declined to report sales figures or estimates for online rentals and sales. But there were indications of strong interest: Many theaters reported sellouts, and “The Interview” was listed as the No. 1 seller on YouTube Movies and the Google Play store on Thursday morning. The small theaters playing the film — art houses that only rarely get such a hot ticket — appeared to be doing well while doing good. Some theaters started selling souvenir soft drink cups shaped like rockets for a $6 premium over the standard drink price. Individual tickets in spots ran as high as $24. “It’s been gangbusters,” said Christian Parkes, chief brand officer of Alamo Drafthouse, which showed “The Interview” in 19 theaters across multiple states. “Christmas Day is sold out across the chain.” Many of the theaters playing “The Interview” did not have showtimes until midday in their various time zones. But the Cinefamily Theater — a 174-seat cinematheque here still identified on its purple neon marquee as the Silent Movie Theater — held a 12:30 a.m. screening, which is the one Ms. Paredes drove an hour from her home in Santa Ana, Calif., to attend. Continue reading the main story More on Sony and ‘The Interview’ Highlights from The Times’s coverage of the Sony Pictures Entertainment cyberattack. As the lights came down in the 72-year-old theater, two men appeared with microphones to make an introduction: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. They directed “The Interview,” a raunchy comedy about the assassination of North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Rogen, who also stars in the film, gave a profanity-laced warm-up. “We live near here,” Mr. Rogen said. “We just wanted to say thank you.” “The Interview” has received mixed-to-negative reviews. (“A goofy, strenuously naughty, hit-and-miss farce,” wrote A.O. Scott in The New York Times.) But curiosity about the controversy surrounding the film at least in some instances trumped taste. “I’m just here for the hype,” said Pam Silverthorn, 49, a defense contractor, who turned out for a matinee at Williamsburg Cinemas in Brooklyn. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story Noel Rodriguez, 21, made a first-time visit to the Regency theater in Commerce, Calif., in part to participate in an unusual chapter of Hollywood history. “I just wanted to be able to say I saw it,” he said. Photo Sony made its initial theatrical retreat after a threat — traced by the F.B.I. to the North Korean government — of 9/11-style violence against theaters that showed the film. The smaller theaters Sony eventually lined up to present it promised heightened security. Weezie Melancon, president of the Crest Theater in Los Angeles, said she had been in contact with the Los Angeles Police Department and the county sheriff’s department, both of which had promised an extra presence. Officers huddled with a ticket taker shortly before showtime. Noah Elgart, 28, the manager at Williamsburg Cinemas, said his staff would be checking bags as a precaution but did not expect any problems despite the threats against the film. Toby Leonard, programming director at the restored Belcourt Theater in Nashville, said he had been in touch with a local representative for the F.B.I. and was told “in so many words that there really isn’t much of a credible threat here.” Mr. Leonard said he also checked with the Belcourt’s insurance company, which responded “by asking if they could buy a block of tickets.” In a rare move, Sony made “The Interview” available for rental or sale online Wednesday. Among the Internet services that offered it were the Google Play store, Google’s YouTube and Microsoft’s Xbox Video. Sony began showing the film on a website of its own. On Wednesday night, Sony’s hastily assembled online release of “The Interview” hit bumps. Some early would-be viewers could not load or pay for the film on Sony’s SeeTheInterview.com site, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Separately, users of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox Live game services — in an episode apparently unrelated to the film — complained of service problems. Photo In addition, digital pirates were already offering “The Interview” online. One link had been downloaded more than 20,000 times as of Thursday morning. Although Sony has not yet made “The Interview” available overseas, it was also widely available for streaming on Chinese video-sharing sites, with an unofficial version with English and Chinese subtitles. The Chinese title for that version of the film translated as “Assassinate Kim Jong-un.” But gratitude and patriotism ruled the day in theaters. “The fact that they’re showing this movie shows that America still has a backbone regardless of the critics,” said Jay Killion, a golf pro who caught a screening at Tower City Cinemas in Cleveland. At Alamo Drafthouse, screenings began with a recorded video message of thanks from Mr. Rogen to members of the Art House Convergence, an alliance of small theaters that was instrumental in reviving the film. “Thank you, America,” Mr. Rogen added in the recording, to cheers from one audience at Alamo’s Lubbock, Tex., location.

– After Sony's U-turn on releasing The Interview, the controversial movie played in 331 independent cinemas across America on Christmas Day, often to sellout crowds. Many moviegoers made it clear they were there to take a political stand, with one ticket seller in California dressed as "Uncle Sam-ty Claus," the New York Times reports. "We are taking a stand for freedom," the manager of the Cinema Village East in Manhattan tells the AP. "We want to show the world that Americans will not be told what we can or cannot watch. Personally, I am not afraid." Security was light at most theaters, though some had police officers standing by. Co-directors Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen made a surprise appearance at a screening in Los Angeles, where they thanked moviegoers for their support, reports Reuters. A North Korean diplomat, meanwhile, called the release an "unpardonable mockery" of the "dignity of our supreme leader," but said there would probably be no "physical reaction" from Pyongyang. In a first for a major studio, the movie had a simultaneous release online. The groundbreaking release strategy is being closely watched by the industry, although Sony says it won't release any immediate data on the number of sales or rentals, CNN reports.

The popular anonymous app Yik Yak finds itself at the center of a growing controversy after a prominent member of a feminist group was murdered at a Virginia university. Grace Rebecca Mann, a junior at the University of Mary Washington, and member of UMW's Feminists United, was killed in April. Mann was a vocal leader in the group, and she was particularly outspoken about an incident in which the school's rugby team engaged in chants calling for violence against women -- including rape and necrophilia. Mann was harassed on Yik Yak before her murder, after members of the rugby team incorrectly assumed that the Feminists United called for the college to suspend the team's members. Mann was named in the "Yaks" and she had said that she feared for her safety, though it's unclear whether her murder was related to the harassment on Yik Yak. Steven Vander Briel, a former UMW rugby club member and roommate of Mann's, has been charged with first-degree murder. He is accused of strangling Mann to death. The feminist group claims that the college's administration didn't go far enough to protect them from the harassment. With the help of the national women's rights organization Feminist Majority Foundation and attorneys Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, the campus group brought a Title IX complaint to the Department of Education on Thursday. They hope UMW will take action to stop the harassment and work to prevent it in the future. The complaint alleges that the group's members feared for their safety after more than 700 sexist, threatening Yaks were posted about Feminists United or the group's individual members. "Gonna tie these feminists to the radiator and grape them in the mouth," said one Yak. The app, which allows people to post social media messages without revealing their names, filters out certain words, such as "rape," but users have found ways to get around that by using similar sounding words. "Dandy's about to kill a bitch...or two," said another. "Can we euthanize whoever caused this bulls--t?" another said. The group says they complained to UMW's administration, but the university's staff told them to take up their case with Yik Yak. "While the University has no recourse for such cyber bullying, Yik Yak and other social media sites do," the University's Title IX coordinator Leah Cox told the students in an email, according to the complaint. "If you find yourself the subject of an abusive or threatening comment on social media, please immediately file a report so that the site can take administrative action." The university denied the group's request to shut down access to Yik Yak on campus, citing First Amendment concerns. That also would not have completely blocked access, since Yik Yak can be accessed on mobile networks that the university does not control. After members of Feminists United reached out to Yik Yak, they say the company did not respond to their requests. Though the complaint is not directed at Yik Yak, Katz, the group's attorney, said, "Yik Yak does have some responsibility here." "What we're seeing is increased use of Yik Yak for cyberbullying over race, gender and sexual orientation," Katz told CNNMoney. She also said that she believes prosecutors and the university need to get to the bottom of whether Mann's killer was posting on Yik Yak and directing threats at her. Since Yik Yak posts are anonymous, that could be tricky to pin down. In its privacy statement, Yik Yak says it doesn't collect users' names or contact information, but, upon request, it could provide law enforcement with certain identifying information, including a user's location IP address or data about a user's device. A spokesman for Yik Yak said the company is working to make changes to its app, including improving filters for abusive content. "It's always disappointing to see rare instances occur that simply don't represent what Yik Yak is all about, and guarding against misuse is something we take very seriously," the company told the Post. "We've taken significant measures so far by adding filters, pop-up warnings, reporting, and moderation within the app, and we will constantly work to enhance these measures." The university did not respond directly to the complaint. But a spokesman said the college responded to the students' complaints. "To the university's knowledge, no known reports of direct threats of violence and/or sexual assault have gone unheeded," the university said in a statement. "The University of Mary Washington's No. 1 priority has been and continues to be the creation and maintenance of a safe environment where all students can learn and grow." Related: Yik Yak chat app stirring up trouble in high schools Related: 'Secret' app shuts down ||||| Students, family and friends gather at the steps of George Washington Hall to honor Grace Mann's life on April 24 in Fredericksburg. (Reza A. Marvashti/For The Washington Post) A feminist group at the University of Mary Washington is accusing school officials of failing to act on threats against its members — one of whom was killed last month — on the popular and controversial messaging app Yik Yak, an attorney for the group said. Feminists United plans to announce at a news conference Thursday that it has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that members were threatened with sexual assault and death and were cyber-stalked after speaking out in campus debates about Greek life and against a lewd chant by the rugby team this year, said attorney Lisa Banks. Authorities say that Grace Rebecca Mann, a 20-year-old from McLean, Va., who served on United’s board, was slain April 17 by a roommate. Steven Vander Briel was charged with first-degree murder and abduction. Police have not commented on an alleged motive. [At vigil, slain Mary Washington student recalled as a ‘force of nature’] Banks and United members said they have no evidence that Mann’s activism or the threats on Yik Yak were related to her slaying. But they said a flood of more than 700 messages — some of which targeted members by name — left them feeling afraid. They said school officials did nothing to stop the threats despite repeated requests throughout the year. Grace Rebecca Mann (Courtesy of Grace Rebecca Mann's family) “I felt deeply unsafe at many points,” said Paige McKinsey, the outgoing president of the university’s Feminists United group. “I made sure to walk with people. I made sure my apartment door was locked and told people where I was going.” School officials said they acted on all threats of violence or sexual assault on the social-media site and that student safety is their top priority. “If we receive any complaints, we investigate them and offer extra security as needed,” said school spokeswoman Anna Billingsley. Yik Yak’s popularity has exploded on campuses nationwide since it was introduced in the fall of 2013. The app allows smartphone users within a 1.5-mile radius to post and read messages anonymously in real time, making it well-suited to campus life. The vast majority of traffic includes gripes about finals, talk of drinking and jokes, but the app also has been a freewheeling forum for racism, misogyny and threats that have made it a lightning rod at many schools. During the past year, at least 13 students have been arrested on charges of threatening mass shootings, bombings and other mass violence through Yik Yak. A Virginia Tech senior was arrested last month after allegedly posting a message warning of another “4.16 moment” — a reference to the date of the 2007 campus massacre in which a student killed 32 people. After a black student at the University of Virginia was arrested by a group of white Alcoholic Beverage Control officers in March, the app was bombarded with racist comments and disparaging remarks about the victim, 20-year-old Martese Johnson. And Emory University’s student government passed a resolution denouncing the use of Yik Yak to spread hate speech and harassment. The University of Mary Washington student group "Feminists United" filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, accusing the school of failing to act on online threats against its members, one of whom was killed last month. (WUSA9) [Racial tensions flare at U-Va. after arrest of black student] Yik Yak has said it has taken a number of steps to limit hateful speech on the app. “It’s always disappointing to see rare instances occur that simply don’t represent what Yik Yak is all about, and guarding against misuse is something we take very seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We’ve taken significant measures so far by adding filters, pop-up warnings, reporting, and moderation within the app, and we will constantly work to enhance these measures.” At Mary Washington, McKinsey said, problems began in November as students were talking about whether to allow fraternities and sororities on the 5,000-student campus in Fredericksburg. At a forum, McKinsey said she made a comment linking Greek life to sexual assault, and the reaction on Yik Yak was immediate and unrelenting. Hostile comments started flowing as soon as she stopped speaking, she said. McKinsey said a second wave of vitriol was unleashed after she wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper in January in which she discussed a recording that was made of rugby team members at a party. The recording captures them chanting a rhyme about having sex with a dead prostitute. The school eventually suspended the rugby team because of it. “There were waves,” McKinsey said of the abuse. Among the comments in the weeks and months that followed, McKinsey said, there was a riff on a line from “The Hunger Games” — “We burn. You burn with us.” Her movements around campus were posted, and she said someone urged students to make problems at a Feminists United meeting, so they asked police to attend. Banks, the attorney, said a majority of the 700 comments aimed at Feminists United were name-calling or sexist, but a handful were direct threats. In one, members were threatened with rape “in the mouth,” and at another point, someone posted about killing a “bitch.” Because Yik Yak is anonymous, the group has no idea who posted the comments. McKinsey said Feminists United members resorted to walking in groups and informing each other where they were going out of fear for their safety. “It created an increasing level of fear and anxiety,” Banks said. “They had no way to know if people who were posting messages were sitting next to them in class or walking next to them on campus.” On multiple occasions, Banks and McKinsey said that Feminists United met with the school president and other officials about the problems. Feminists United said that Mary Washington should have blocked Yik Yak on the school’s WiFi and taken action to identify the offenders. In March, school officials e-mailed students about Yik Yak, saying the university had “no recourse for cyberbullying” and urged them to report incidents to the social-media site. They told students to report any direct threats to the administration or campus police. Billingsley said that the school consulted with Virginia’s attorney general but that its options were constrained when it came to limiting access to Yik Yak. They worried that blocking it might impinge on other students’ right to free speech. “There are First Amendment concerns when you are a state institution,” Billingsley said. On the afternoon of April 17, Mann made a brief stop at the off-campus home she shared with Vander Briel, 30, and two other students. Mann and Vander Briel appeared to be on different trajectories. Mann was a member of the student Senate, active in the school’s gay and lesbian club, and an activist for gay rights. Vander Briel, a former rugby player, was on his third stint at Mary Washington and was involved in few campus activities. When Mann’s other roommates arrived that afternoon, they found her bound and unconscious, police said. Detectives say they believe that plastic shopping bags were used to asphyxiate her, according to a search warrant. Police said the two did not have a personal relationship. Vander Briel told the roommates that he assaulted her and then fled the home. He was arrested later that day and charged, according to police and a search warrant. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 19. Feminists United is not the first group to take issue with Yik Yak. Elizabeth Long, an 18-year-old from Atlanta, said she started a petition asking for Yik Yak to improve community standards after students at her school posted messages while she was recovering from a suicide attempt, telling her that she should take her life. “It really, really hurt,” Long said. Her petition has garnered more than 78,000 signatures. Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland law professor and the author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace”, said Yik Yak’s anonymity combined with geolocation can be a powerful tool in the wrong hands. “We’ve had threats on message boards since the ’80s,” Citron said. “Yik Yak compounds fear, because you know the individual is located nearby.”

– A group of female students at Virginia's University of Mary Washington is lodging a Title IX complaint against the school over the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, reports CNN. The members of the campus group Feminists United say they've received so many abusive threats online that they feel unsafe on their own campus, and they accuse the school of doing too little to protect them. Last month, one of their members was killed, allegedly by a male roommate, though authorities have made no links between the Yik Yak threats and the death of Grace Rebecca Mann. Yik Yak is popular on college campuses because it allows users within a relatively small area to post and receive anonymous messages on their phones. Members of the feminists' group say they've endured cyber-stalking and repeated threats of rape and murder, in particular after two incidents: They spoke out against allowing frats on campus because of concerns over sexual abuse, and they got the rugby team suspended over an abusive chant. (Mann's accused killer is a former rugby player.) Afterward, the Yik Yak threats came pouring in. “It created an increasing level of fear and anxiety,” says attorney Lisa Banks. “They had no way to know if people who were posting messages were sitting next to them in class or walking next to them on campus.” The school says it has investigated all threats of violence, and Yik Yak says it is working to curb hate speech on its service, reports the Washington Post

This post has been updated. See below. A Groupon Super Bowl commercial that pokes fun at the political situation in Tibet has managed to offend viewers both in the U.S. and China, and may have consequences for the fast-growing Internet company's expansion plans. The ad features actor Timmothy Hutton narrating a mock public service announcement about Tibetans that quickly turns into an ad for the type of group-buying deals Groupon offers its customers: "The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture in jeopardy," Mr. Hutton says in the ad. "But they still whip up an amazing fish curry. And since 200 of us bought on Groupon.com we’re getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15 at Himalayan restaurant in Chicago.” It has been rumored for weeks now that the Chicago-based company, which offers daily deals from local businesses, has its eyes on China, which boasts more Internet users than any other nation. Local media outlets have reported that Groupon is on a hiring spree and is in talks to partner with Chinese Internet giant Tencent. China’s state-run newspaper China Daily reported today that a “well-placed source” said Groupon is going to partner with Tencent to offer its services in China, and that the Chinese website will employ 1,000 people within three months. Tencent’s own Web portal published a report (in Chinese) last month saying that Groupon is entering the China market and planning to hire many employees, while Ifeng.com, the web portal of Phoenix Television, said last month that Groupon and Tencent have jointly created a new website. None of those reports has been substantiated, with both Groupon and Tencent declining to comment. But if Groupon has aspirations in China, bringing up Tibet and saying its people are “in trouble” and that their “very culture is in jeopardy,” even jokingly, isn’t likely to please the Chinese officials whose blessing they'll need to set up operations. The Tibet ad was one of three the company aired during the Super Bowl, each of which makes fun of a different charitable cause. A statement on Groupon's official blog describes campaign as "a parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as 'Save the Whales'), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in 'Save the Money')." Perhaps anticipating a certain level of public criticism, Groupon is offering to match donations to charities associated with the causes it parodies. In the case of Tibet, the charity is the Tibet Fund, an organization backed partially by the U.S. State Department and which works with Tibet’s government in exile, the Central Tibetan Administration, that raises money for health care and education for Tibetan refugees. A copy of the ad with Chinese subtitles was reportedly posted on a Chinese video site not long after the spot aired in the U.S. but appears to have since been taken down. A number of Chinese Internet users were disapproving of the ad, slamming it as a bad business move and criticizing the company for mixing business with politics. "Groupon's Super Bowl commercial with Tibet as its main theme is super offensive," one user called Wandering D wrote on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service. "Why did they have to link their commercials with politics?" Another Sina Weibo user called nixiner quipped: "Can anyone be more stupid than Groupon?" The company "made its first TV commercial as controversial as possible. Good job!" While Tibetan independence is treated as a sensitive topic in China -- and treated as such by the country's Internet filtering system -- it is not a topic on which most Chinese citizens vocally disagree with the government. Politics aside, if Groupon does manage to start a Chinese website, it will have to compete with local group-buying start-ups like Letao.com that are gaining popularity. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, China had 18.75 million group-buying users by the end of 2010, and the category is likely to have “rapid growth” in 2011. UPDATE, 10:35am Beijing time: An employee of SS PR, the public relations firm that represents Groupon, sent the following statement to CRT after this post was published: "We wanted to clarify the intention of the Super Bowl ad yesterday. The humor was designed to draw attention to causes including Greenpeace, The Tibet Fund, and Rainforest Action Network. Groupon actually started as a collective action and philanthropy site (ThePoint.com). Collective action is in Groupon's DNA and this campaign pokes fun at its own roots." -- Loretta Chao with contributions from Yoli Zhang. Follow Loretta on Twitter @lorettac ||||| WATCH: The Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials of 2011 Email This There is a contingent of fans that watches the Super Bowl and takes a bathroom break during the game so they don't miss the commercials. There is something at stake here for the companies who invested an enormous amount of money to buy time. A good spot can keep people talking for weeks or help launch a lasting campaign. Here is a list of the best, the worst and the indifferent of this year's Super Bowl spots, from the standpoint of pure entertainment. Volkswagen is the biggest winner, and Pepsi and Doritos peppered the Super Bowl with hit or miss adds. Watch the commercials after the jump! There is a contingent of fans that watches the Super Bowl and takes a bathroom break during the game so they don't miss the commercials.There is something at stake here for the companies who invested an enormous amount of money to buy time. A good spot can keep people talking for weeks or help launch a lasting campaign.Here is a list of the best, the worst and the indifferent of this year's Super Bowl spots, from the standpoint of pure entertainment. Volkswagen is the biggest winner, and Pepsi and Doritos peppered the Super Bowl with hit or miss adds. THE WORST Starting with a kid in a Darth Vader costume is almost cheating. You'd have to be kind of heartless not to smile at that. It would be like heckling kittens. You knew eventually The Force would work for the kid, but the reveal is still funny.Fun gag, and relatable. This might be the funny one people talk about this week.More monkeys from Careerbuilder.com, the idea being once again how frustrating it is to work with idiots. An easy concept for which to have sympathy.Creepy funny is always good. And the guy addicted to Doritos cheese dust is definitely creepy.Best of the Pepsi MAX commercials. Quick to the punchline, funny ending.A lot of short gags in this one help make it funny. The actors are also good.When you have one joke, get to it and get out. This one didn't go over the top.Ozzy and Bieber were amusing. "What's a Bieber?" was a good line. Bieber had to be in the mix somewhere today -- he's everywhere else.Solid ad. Another one with a good string of gags, although distracting from the point of the product.This is another one people might talk about. Clever enough premise, visuals will help.Cheesy, but always good to see a wordless concept pulled off well.Loved this one. Animals are hit and miss, but this was cute. It helps if you have a good, short story to tell.An inspiring sentiment about Detroit with one of its biggest stars, Eminem. Hopefully Detroit isn't counting on Chrysler to bring it back. Much better than the other Eminem commercial, for Brisk.Not sure this is the change people are looking for from LivingSocial.com, but it's amusing.Animation is pretty impressive. 'World of Warcraft' fans might enjoy this. It's a nice change of pace from polar bears.Can we please be rid of these? There is a school of thought that says advertising doesn't have to be good or pleasing -- if it's memorable and you remember the product, you can hate the ad. GoDaddy.com is the leading practitioner of this philosophy.Apparently, moguls, sea gods, aliens and ancient civilizations don't have $14,000 to buy their own Kia. No one is buying "an epic ride."Old people are funny! Sometimes they can't hear!The babies ads have been remarkably consistent. The streak ends here.Adrien Brody is an Oscar winner. Now he croons for beer commercials. That is sad enough to make me want to drink.A Pepsi MAX to the groin? Doesn't make me thirsty, or make me laugh.Who thought the Pug was in danger? Hands. No one? Who went to the kitchen for something other than Doritos during this spot? Hands. Smarter choice.Continuation of the diva theme. Doesn't outdo the Betty White/Abe Vigoda spot from last year.Kind of confused as to what the product is. Not curious to find out, even if it turns the fat thin, builds buildings and brokers peace between political factions.Eminem and tea aren't really a great match. Chrysler used Eminem much better.Peter Stormare stars in this centerpiece of the Bud campaign. Disappointing after having seen this spot hyped.This has the scale and length of a big Super Bowl ad, and "test baby" is funny. But it's hard to get excited about the possibility of cheaper hotels when there are a ton of sites doing this already. Not sure why HomeAway.com would be better from this ad.One of the longer spots, this one will be interesting to Mercedes aficionados for the variety of models. Diddy doesn't get to do much. If you're not already a fan of the vehicle, this is kind of a big shrug.This one will get a lot of attention for Kardashian. What you think of this commercial pretty much depends on how much you like watching her.Amusing reveal -- grandpa is funny. Still not terribly memorable.Making fun of rich people with a cameo by Kenny G. This is where most of America imagines Bernie Madoff has been assigned. Not bad, but again, not terribly memorable.No one is using a Xoom to create a better world. Hope we can avoid the future where everyone wears white running suits.See more at TV Squad ||||| In the Super Bowl of advertising, Justin Bieber replaced Ozzy Osbourne and Joan Rivers became a GoDaddy girl. But a pair of commercials by automakers took the early trophy for online buzz. This screen shot provided by Kia Motors Corp., shows a scene from the Super Bowl commercial titled "One Epic Ride," with the all-new 2011 Kia Optima being held by Poseidon. (AP Photo/Kia Motor Corp.) (Associated Press) COMMERCIAL IMAGE - In this photo released by Brisk on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011, Eminem is seen in puppet form for Brisk Iced Tea's Super Bowl TV spot shot in San Francisco. (Brisk via AP Images) (Associated Press) In this screen shot provided by TeleFlora, Faith Hill and actor, Kevin Manwarren are seen in Teleflora’s commercial, “Help me Faith,” that is scheduled to debut during the Super Bowl. (AP Photo/TeleFlora)... (Associated Press) In this photo released by Brisk on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011, Eminem in puppet form is seen in the recording booth, in an image from the taping of the Brisk Super Bowl TV spot in San Francisco. (Brisk via... (Associated Press) In this composite screen shot provided by Mars Inc., Comedians Richard Lewis (left) and Roseanne Barr (right) will appear in a SNICKERS® Super Bowl XLV commercial called “Logging." (AP Photo/Mars Inc.)... (Associated Press) In this screen shot provided by CareerBuilder.com, the CareerBuilder chimpanzees are back at work, in a scene from this years Super Bowl commercial. (AP Photo/CareerBuilder.com) (Associated Press) A two-minute ad for Chrysler starring Eminem and a Volkswagen ad featuring a mini-Darth Vader that went viral before it even aired were two of the most talked-about spots during advertising's big night, Super Bowl XLV, in which Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25. Chrysler was one of nine automakers that took advantage of advertising's biggest and most expensive showcase, at $3 million for 30 seconds, to try to show they're back after two tough years for the industry. The cinematic third-quarter Chrysler ad starred Eminem driving through Detroit and introduced a new car, the Chrysler 200 sedan, amid gritty scenes of the city. A voiceover talks about how the city has survived going through "hell and back." "This is the Motor City and this is what we do," Eminem says. The Chrysler ad was "the big story of the night," according to NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey Co. that tracks online buzz. Consumers repeated the "imported from Detroit" slogan over and over in online buzz, the company said. "It was a very risky commercial, but it scored very well with our panel" that rates the ads, said Tim Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management. Another hit was a Volkswagen's ad that showed a boy in a Darth Vader costume trying to use "The Force" on objects, including the Passat. "It really wasn't selling a car, it was selling a feeling, and it tapped into its target market of families very effectively, which you usually don't see in a car ad," said Robert Kolt, an instructor at Michigan State University College of Communication Arts & Sciences. Volkswagen released the ad early on Youtube.com and it had than 13 million views before the game even started. Elsewhere, celebrities and humor dominated. A scantily clad Kim Kardashian broke up with her trainer for Skechers, Roseanne Barr took a big hit from a log in a Snickers ad and comedian Joan Rivers, her head at least, became a GoDaddy girl. According to the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter, the best-scoring ads featured dogs: A Doritos ad that showed a man taunting a dog and getting smashed under a glass door, and a Bud Light ad that showed dogs catering a party. The newspaper uses a panel of viewers who rate the commercials as they watch them. After avoiding the Super Bowl for two years as it went in and out of a government-led bankruptcy, General Motors came back with five ads for Chevrolet. In one ad, a seemingly mundane car dealership ad is disrupted when a Camaro suddenly morphs into the Bumblebee character from the "Transformers" movies. One miss was daily coupon website Groupon's fake public service ad with Timothy Hutton, which appeared to be a plea for help for people of Tibet but instead touted a deal from Groupon for fish curry. While aiming for humor, "It wasn't a very effective piece of communication and clearly rubbed some people the wrong way," Calkins said. A Homeaway.com ad featuring a "test baby" smushed against a window also garnered negative reaction from ad experts and "didn't resonate with people," Calkins said. Some ads, predictably, drew criticism for being entertaining without doing much to sell people on the item being advertised. Among those was an ad for Lipton Brisk Iced Tea in which an animated Eminem explains why he doesn't usually do endorsements. He throws a business type off a roof when he refuses to rename the drink "Eminem." "It was confusing, and it didn't say a lot about the product," Calkins said. Not all ads went for laughs. Motorola Mobility's 60-second spot during the second quarter played off of the famous Apple ad "1984." The dialogue-free Motorola ad shows a world where drones dress all in white and wear Apple iPod-like earbuds and a man uses a Motorola Xoom tablet to free and woo a girl. The message is that Apple has become an oppressor rather than a liberator, and show Motorola's tablet as a worthy opponent to Apple's popular iPad, said Bill Ogle, chief marketing officer of Motorola Mobility. "A lot of people just try to go for laughs," he said. "There are all kinds of sex and monkeys and horses (during the Super Bowl), but what we were trying to do is a bit more of a serious story." ___ Online: http://www.youtube.com/adblitz

– Man, isn’t the plight of the Tibetan people hilarious? Groupon hit a real nerve last night with a Super Bowl commercial that seemed to exploit said plight for yucks. “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their culture is in jeopardy,” says narrator Timothy Hutton. “But they still whip up an amazing fish curry.” The ad—part of a whole series of mock-PSAs—generated an instant backlash on Twitter and YouTube for its insensitivity, the Huffington Post reports. To be fair, the company has offered to match donations to the causes it parodies. But at the same time, even jokingly referencing the Tibet situation has infuriated China, and may throw a monkey wrench in the company’s expansion plans, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Can anyone be more stupid than Groupon?” asked one Chinese blogger. “Made its first TV commercial as controversial as possible. Good job!” Other ads generating buzz included: Chrysler’s cinematic 2-minute “Imported from Detroit” spot starring Eminem was “the big story of the night,” a company that tracks online buzz tells the AP. Volkswagen’s young Darth Vader ad went viral before it even aired. “It really wasn't selling a car,” says one communications professor. “It was selling a feeling." GoDaddy also made waves with its Joan Rivers commercial… but perhaps the less said of that, the better. Click here for a complete rundown of the best and worst Super Bowl ads.

Israel says it has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza and militants keep up rocket fire with no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough to end the fighting. (Reuters) Israel says it has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza and militants keep up rocket fire with no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough to end the fighting. (Reuters) Hamas militants intensified their attacks on Israeli forces Saturday, killing two soldiers on Israeli soil and attacking others with antitank missiles, machine guns, even an explosives-laden donkey, apparently undaunted by Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip. As the conflict stretched into its 12th day, the militants’ resilience seemed to upend the narrative provided by Israel of a Hamas severely weakened by the Israeli ground offensive, airstrikes, artillery barrages and the ongoing destruction of its tunnel network. In their most audacious attack Saturday, Hamas fighters dressed in Israeli army uniforms slipped from central Gaza into Israel through a tunnel and attacked an Israeli army patrol, killing two soldiers and injuring two others. The army returned fire, killing one militant and forcing the rest back through the tunnel into the Palestinian territory. In all, three Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began Thursday night. Hamas, military analysts said, is much better prepared militarily than in its two previous conflicts with Israel, in 2009 and 2012. Since then, the Islamist group has invested millions in building large quantities of short- and long-range rockets, as well as acquiring other sophisticated weaponry. 1 of 38 Full Screen Autoplay Close July 18, 2014 July 17, 2014 Thursday Skip Ad × Israel launches ground invasion of Gaza View Photos Backed by artillery shells and airstrikes, assault continues. Caption Backed by artillery shells and airstrikes, assault continues. July 19, 2014 Israeli soldiers patrol near the Israeli-Gaza border. Two Israeli soldiers were killed early Saturday during an attack by Hamas militants, Israel’s military said.The Palestinian death toll from the conflict rose Saturday to more than 330, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. At the same time, Hamas’s political and economic situation is in its worst state since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007. It no longer has the support of Iran, Syria or Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia because of its refusal to back President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot, is no longer in power. Much of the Arab world, in fact, no longer supports the militants, crippling them financially. “They are really stressed. They have to work very hard to achieve meaningful or strategic developments,” said Kobi Michael, former head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. “They are much more violent and extremist than in previous campaigns,” he added. In a second attempt Saturday to enter Israel through their tunnels, Hamas militants were found carrying handcuffs and tranquilizers in an apparent attempt to kidnap soldiers, Israel’s military said, adding that the militants were killed. In a third incident, a militant emerged from a concealed tunnel entrance in southern Gaza and began firing at soldiers. Saturday’s attempted infiltrations into Israel, coming as thousands of Israeli soldiers focus on dismantling the Hamas tunnel network along Gaza’s border, suggested that the number of tunnels could be far greater than believed. If Hamas continues to use them to kill and injure Israeli soldiers or target civilians in Israel, it could prompt Israel to widen its ground offensive and push deeper into Gaza, swelling civilian casualties. The Palestinian death toll from the conflict rose Saturday to more than 330, including about 60 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. An additional 2,200 have been injured. The United Nations estimates that about 80 percent of the casualties are civilians, many of them children. More than 60,000 Palestinians are seeking refuge in U.N. shelters. By Saturday, large swaths of the coastal enclave, including Gaza City, had been without electricity for 24 hours. Residents worry about their water supply, since they need electrical power to pump water to their rooftop tanks. Israeli tanks dig into Gaza's eastern frontier, as casualty numbers rise on both sides amid fresh fighting. (Reuters) Citing its concern about reports of severe shortages of medicines, Israel briefly opened its Erez crossing into Gaza to allow medical supplies in. Israeli troops and Gaza militants engaged repeatedly in exchanges of small-arms fire.A midday gun battle near the no-man’s land between the fence and populated areas in central Gaza left several Israeli soldiers injured. An overnight attack by a militant near Beit Lahiya wounded three Israeli soldiers. And in southern Gaza, three more soldiers were injured when an explosive device planted by Hamas militants detonated. “The resistance is roughly as we were expecting, maybe a little bit lower,” a senior Israeli military official told reporters Saturday, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accord with military protocol. “We expect Hamas to fight.” In one incident, militants strapped a donkey with explosives and pushed it in the direction of Israeli soldiers, Israel’s military said, adding that soldiers “engaged the donkey and it exploded at a safe distance” without injuring any troops. Much of Hamas’s ammunition and weaponry has been smuggled in from Iran or Sudan, through tunnels that stretched from Egypt into Gaza, according to Israeli intelligence officials. So were raw materials used by Hamas engineers to assemble sophisticated homemade rockets and other weapons. There are also reports that Hamas has acquired drones. But since the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood last year, Egypt’s military has destroyed most, if not all, of the tunnels entering Gaza and closed off its border. A high-ranking Israeli intelligence officer told reporters in a briefing Saturday that Hamas’s fighters were unable to match Israel’s firepower and that Israel was “using its power on the ground to ruin those tunnels.” He said Hamas’s weapons arsenal had been reduced by about half and that the Israeli army “believes that it has caused a lot of damage” to the group. Still, as they tangled with Israeli troops on the ground, Hamas and other militant factions continued to fire a steady barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Since Israel’s ground offensive began Thursday night, some 160 rockets have been fired, Israel’s military said, saying the number represented a “limited decline.” “Not a big change, but the numbers are smaller than in the past couple of days,” said Capt. Eytan Buchman, an Israeli Army spokesman. In southern Israel, though, a Hamas rocket killed a Bedouin man — the second Israeli civilian killed in the conflict — and badly injured an infant girl Saturday, said officials with Magen David Adom, Israel’s first aid agency. Twenty-nine people were slightly injured in the attack. Sirens rang over communities in southern Israel all day. During the ground offensive, Israeli troops have attacked more than 300 Hamas targets, including 112 command centers and 95 rocket launchers, the military said, and have found 13 tunnels from Gaza into Israel, with 31 openings. In Gaza, evacuees watched from the top floor of an elementary school northeast of Khan Younis, one of the enclave’s hardest-hit areas, as round after round of Israeli tank and artillery shells fell a mile or two away. Ten men gathered in front of a grocery store were killed before dawn when an Israeli missile struck the pavement. Small BB-size pieces of shrapnel flew from the explosion and flecked the walls with pinpoint holes. The men’s funerals were sponsored by Hamas and Fatah, the other leading Palestinian party. Their bodies were draped in the flags of their movements, while religious and martial music blared. Sanna Siri — whose sons Mohammad, 17, and Yahiva, 20, were killed — cried out to God and cursed the Israelis minutes after the funeral procession left her home. “My sons went to the heavens as angels,” Siri said. She called the Israelis “pigs” and said she hoped they suffer. Booth reported from Gaza City. ||||| On Thursday, NBC News reportedly pulled correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of the Gaza Strip citing “security concerns.” Meanwhile, NBC News correspondent Richard Engel was allowed to stay in the region. But now, it appears the network has reversed its decision and will be sending the reporter back to Gaza to continue his coverage as soon as possible. New York Times media reporter Bill Carter tweeted the news Friday evening: NBC News reverses decision on Gaza correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin–will send him back into Gaza as soon as possible — Bill Carter (@wjcarter) July 18, 2014 Suspicion over the cause of NBC’s initial decision to remove Mohyeldin followed a widely seen report he gave on Wednesday, describing an Israeli missile attack that killed four Gazan children and injured three others. Glenn Greenwald, who first reported NBC’s decision on First Look, criticized the network for removing the correspondent “at exactly the moment where he brought the humanity of this war and the humanity of Gazans to the world.” Greenwald called the reversal “GREAT news” on Twitter Friday, crediting the social media outcry for pressuring NBC to reconsider its move. GREAT news: NBC reverses its decision on pulling @AymanM – sending him back to Gaza on Sunday https://t.co/4ClcJ7PaGs — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2014 No question: an interesting testament to the power of social media. RT @leahmcelrath Do you think the outcry helped? #NBC — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2014 UPDATE — 8:35 p.m. ET: NBC’s official statement, as posted by HuffPost’s Michael Calderone: Watch the report that may have led to NBC pulling Mohyeldin out of Gaza below, via MSNBC: [Photo via screengrab] — — >> Follow Matt Wilstein (@TheMattWilstein) on Twitter Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — NBC said Friday it was sending Middle East correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin back to the Gaza strip this weekend after he left the region for unexplained reasons following his eyewitness report on the killing of four Palestinian boys on a beach this week. The network praised Mohyeldin for his "extraordinary reporting" throughout the conflict in Gaza. NBC said that as with any news team in combat zones, deployments are constantly reassessed. Mohyeldin's firsthand reports on the deaths of the four boys Wednesday were aired on the "Today" show and MSNBC, and he tweeted that he had played soccer with some of the victims shortly before the attack. But then his social media account went quiet, and when NBC's "Nightly News" reported on the deaths Wednesday, correspondent Richard Engel did the story and Mohyeldin was nowhere to be seen. His absence was immediately noticed in the news world. When NBC refused to discuss the situation, there was much online speculation that the network had problems with his reporting. Mohyeldin, who has worked extensively in the Middle East and reported for Al Jazeera English before joining NBC in 2011, has received some criticism of his reporting from pro-Israeli groups. In announcing his return to Gaza on Friday, NBC still would not discuss Mohyeldin's temporary absence. But the network made a point to compliment him. "Ayman Mohyeldin has done extraordinary reporting throughout the escalation of the conflict in Gaza, filing 25+ reports over the past 17 days, including his invaluable and well-documented contribution to the story on the deaths of the four Palestinian children on Wednesday," the network said in a statement. News organizations are usually reluctant to talk about security of its personnel in danger zones, or if some of their employees had been threatened. While working at Al Jazeera English, Mohyeldin was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011. Tensions in the region affected another reporter, CNN's Diana Magnay, as she reported live Thursday on Israel's launch of a ground attack in Gaza. Magnay tweeted that she was surrounded by Israelis watching the action who cheered the explosions and threatened to "destroy our car if I say a word wrong." Magnay called those who threatened her "scum," leading CNN to apologize Friday and reassign her to Russia. ||||| GAZA/JERUSALEM Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Saturday, the army said, as the Palestinian death toll from the conflict rose above 300 with no diplomatic solution in sight. The Israeli military said four other soldiers were wounded in the raid by fighters who reached Israel through a concealed tunnel. One Hamas gunman was killed, while the rest of the group managed to escape back into the Gaza Strip, the military added. Israel sent ground forces into Hamas-controlled Gaza on Thursday after 10 days of air and naval barrages failed to stop rocket fire from the Palestinian territory. It has vowed to destroy a network of tunnels out of Gaza and hunt down the militants' stockpiles of missiles. The land incursion has so far failed to subdue Hamas and its allies, who fired more than 90 rockets into Israel on Saturday, the Israeli army said. One killed a man and wounded two children in a southern Bedouin Arab village in Israel, police said. Gaza officials said at least 336 Palestinians, including 70 children, have been killed in the 12-day conflict - about 100 in the last 48 hours alone. On Israel's side, three soldiers and two civilians have died. Israel said the Palestinian gunmen who ambushed and killed its troops were disguised as Israeli soldiers. In a separate incident, Israel said it shot and killed another gunman who opened fire at them after emerging from a tunnel shaft. Diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire involving, amongst others, Egypt, Qatar, France and the United Nations, have failed to make headway. Hamas rejected an attempt by Cairo last week to end the fighting. The sound of explosions rocked Gaza through the day, while sirens repeatedly sounded in towns and cities in southern and central Israel, warning of approaching missiles. Eight members of a Palestinian family, including a six-month old baby and two children aged three and 13, died overnight when an Israeli shell hit their house in Beit Hanoun, in northeastern Gaza, officials said. "Oh, God. Oh, God," a shocked relative said, repeatedly knocking his head against a wall. Hostilities between the two sides escalated following the killing last month of three Jewish students that Israel blames on Hamas. Hamas neither confirmed nor denied involvement. The apparent revenge murder of a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, for which Israel has charged three Jews, further fueled tensions. BULLDOZERS, TUNNELS Israeli bulldozers and engineers worked along a mile-wide strip of Gaza's eastern frontier, uncovering 13 tunnels, at least one of them 30 meters (90 feet) deep, military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said. About 95 rocket launchers were also found and destroyed in the sweep, he added. Searches were continuing on what he described as an open-ended mission that had "severely impeded Hamas capabilities". Explosives piled onto a donkey blew up in southern Gaza after Israeli troops opened fire, suspecting the animal had been booby-trapped, the Israeli military said. Israel says more than 1,500 rockets have been fired out of Gaza during this month's fighting, and between 3,000-4,000 others destroyed in military strikes - together almost half of the militants' original estimated arsenal. Hamas says it is continuously replenishing its stock of weapons and is ready for a prolonged conflict. The Israeli death toll has been kept low due to the rockets' relative inaccuracy, a network of air raid sirens and shelters and the Iron Dome rocket interceptor's 90 percent success rate. The Israeli military urged Palestinians to flee an ever-growing area of Gaza ahead of further military action in the Mediterranean enclave. Locals say about half of the territory's 1.8-million population have been told to move. With both the Israeli and Egyptian borders sealed off, Gazans say they have few places to escape to. The largest United Nations agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said about 61,500 people had sought refugee in its buildings, mainly schools - more than in any previous conflict there between Israel and Islamist militants. "My family and I left the house with nothing but the clothes we were wearing at two in the morning," said Kareem Ramadan, 45, an unemployed father of three, resting in an UNWRA school in northern Gaza. "Maybe we'll go back and see the house destroyed, but at least we're alive." NO CEASEFIRE U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to travel to the region this weekend as part of a growing international efforts to end hostilities. France's foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who flew to Israel after meetings in Egypt and Jordan, said efforts to secure a ceasefire so far had failed. "On the contrary, there's a risk of more civilian casualties that worries us," Fabius said, after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. Egypt said on Saturday it had no plans to revise the ceasefire proposal, which Hamas has already rejected. "There will be no truce without an end to the war that the Occupation (Israel) began, a lifting of the blockade and a halt to all violations and killings in Gaza and the West Bank," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of numerous European cities, including London and Paris, to demand an immediate end to the conflict. Hundreds of protesters for and against the offensive also faced off in two Israeli cities. (Writing by Crispian Balmer and Dan Williams; Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Gaza, John Irish in Amman and Tel Aviv, and Allyn Fisher in Jerusalem; Editing by Andrew Heavens) ||||| GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops uncovered more than a dozen cross-border tunnels and battled Gaza militants on the second day of an open-ended ground operation Saturday, as the Palestinian death toll climbed past 330 and diplomats scrambled to revive cease-fire efforts. An Israeli armored personnel carrier moves near the Israel and Gaza border, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israel pounded Hamas rocket launchers, uncovered more than a dozen cross-border tunnels and engaged... (Associated Press) EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT -In this Friday, July 18, 2014 photo, Palestinians gather around the body of Ahmed Barnasawi, 22, at the Shifa hospital's morgue as workers prepare him for burial, in Gaza City,... (Associated Press) Palestinian mourners gather around the lifeless body of one year-old Rizk Hayek, who was killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during his funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Relatives say... (Associated Press) Palestinian relatives mourn for Qasim Alwan, 4, and Imad Alwan, 6, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. The brothers were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell. Relatives say the... (Associated Press) Palestinian relatives mourn for Qasim Alwan, 4, and Imad Alwan, 6, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. The brothers were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell. Relatives say the... (Associated Press) Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday to destroy rocket launching sites and tunnels,... (Associated Press) A Palestinian child runs on debris from a destroyed house, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza strip, Saturday, July 19, 2014. A Gaza health official says the death... (Associated Press) Palestinian relatives mourn for Qasim Alwan, 4, and Imad Alwan, 6, who were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Relatives say the tank shell... (Associated Press) Palestinian relatives mourn for Qasim Alwan, 4, and Imad Alwan, 6, who were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Relatives say the tank shell... (Associated Press) A man takes a photo with his mobile phone of the lifeless bodies of Qasim Alwan, 4, Imad Alwan, 6, and Rizk Hayek, 1, who were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during their funeral in Gaza City,... (Associated Press) Palestinians carry the lifeless bodies of Qasim Alwan, 4, Imad Alwan, 6, who were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Relatives say the... (Associated Press) Israeli armor is seen through dust near the Israel and Gaza border, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israel pounded Hamas rocket launchers, uncovered more than a dozen cross-border tunnels and engaged in gunbattles... (Associated Press) A Palestinian child walks on debris from a destroyed house, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza strip, Saturday, July 19, 2014. A Gaza health official says the death... (Associated Press) Palestinian inspects a ruble of a destroyed house of Qasim Alwan, 4, Imad Alwan, 6, after it was hit by an Israeli tank shell on Friday in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. The brothers were killed... (Associated Press) Israeli armored personnel carriers move along the Israel and Gaza border, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israel pounded Hamas rocket launchers, uncovered more than a dozen cross-border tunnels and engaged in... (Associated Press) The Israeli military said it had severely diminished the arsenal of Hamas, the Islamic militant group ruling Gaza, but the militants have continued to fire rockets. In the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials reported intensified Israeli airstrikes, shelling and numerous civilian casualties. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the new round of strikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to more than 330 Palestinians, many of them civilians and nearly a fourth of them under the age of 18. In Israel, a Gaza rocket killed a man near the southern city of Dimona and wounded four people, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, marking the second Israeli civilian casualty from the fighting. An Israeli soldier was killed after the start of the ground operation, likely from friendly fire. The Israeli military said during its first 24 hours on the ground in Gaza troops discovered 13 tunnels into Israel — some as deep as 30 meters (yards) — that could be used to carry out attacks. Israel says it launched the offensive to deal with that threat. On Saturday, the military said it thwarted a second infiltration attempt through just such a tunnel, killing one militant and forcing the others to return to Gaza. Two soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants in the firefight, the army said. The military also said it has hit 2,350 targets in Gaza, including 1,100 rocket launchers, during the 12 days of fighting. Militants have fired more than 1,600 rockets since July 8. "We have struck hard on the two main strategic assets of Hamas: the rockets and these tunnels," Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. Israel says it has encountered little resistance on the ground so far, and has killed about 20 militants in sporadic gunbattles. Three soldiers were wounded in overnight fighting, one seriously, the military said. In one case, it said troops encountered a man who appealed for medical assistance before pulling out grenades and trying to hurl them at soldiers. He was shot dead, authorities said. Troops also encountered a donkey with explosives strapped to it. Israel launched the ground operation late Thursday after its air campaign on the Hamas-ruled territory failed to halt the unrelenting rocket fire. The rate of Palestinian casualties has risen since the ground offensive began — Al-Kidra said more than 90 Palestinians have since been killed. Casualties could quickly mount further if the military moves further into urban areas. Some 50,000 Palestinians already are staying in United Nations shelters, according to UNRWA, the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians. Early Saturday, Israeli tank fire killed at least five members of the Al Zawaydi family at their home in Beit Lahiya, including two children. In a separate incident, tank shell fire killed three members of the Hamooda family in their home, among them two children. In Gaza City, two boys and a 1-year-old infant neighbor were killed Friday evening following the break of the Ramadan fast. On Saturday, at least two of the bodies were carried by somber relatives during a funeral procession in Gaza City. A neighbor described the damage to the home as a "world turned upside down." "The blood is filling the place everywhere. Small kids, it's a shame, they're kids," Amer al-Jumaasi said. An Egyptian truce proposal was rejected by Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and has demanded the lifting of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade as part of any cease-fire agreement. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri on Saturday repeated a call for the two sides to adopt its cease-fire initiative, saying it is the only offer on the table, despite efforts from Hamas backers Turkey and Qatar to broker a deal. "This initiative still presents the chance for the two sides to cease fire, ending the bloodshed," he said. "It meets the needs of both sides. We will continue to propose it. We hope both sides accept it." In a fresh effort to broker a truce, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was to leave Saturday for the Middle East to help mediate the Gaza conflict. A cease-fire is "indispensable" for urgently needed humanitarian efforts to succeed, the undersecretary-general for political affairs Jeffrey Feltman told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday. Israeli officials have said the offensive could last up to two weeks. The military reported making steady progress but said dozens of tunnels remain and would not give a time frame for its operation. Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, visited troops on the Gaza border early Saturday and said "a strategic national patience is necessary" to complete the mission. "Hamas and other terror organizations have been hit hard, painfully and extensively," he added. But Gaza militants have remained defiant despite the heavy death toll. "The Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip will not surrender to the enemy and will not raise the white flag," Ziad Nakhala, a leader in the Islamic Jihad militant group, told a Palestinian radio station. "We are open to all possibilities as long as the enemy does not respond to the demands of the resistance." Hamas has survived Israeli offensives in the past, including a major three-week ground operation in January 2009 and another weeklong air offensive in 2012. It now controls an arsenal of thousands of rockets, including long-range projectiles, and has built a system of underground bunkers. But Hamas is weaker than it was during the previous two offensives, with little international or even regional support from its main allies, Turkey and Qatar. Protests against the offensive took place Friday in Turkey, Jordan and the West Bank. ___ Heller reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Yousur Alhlou in Jerusalem, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Lefteris Pitarakis in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

– With day two of its ground offensive in Gaza under way, Israel says it's discovered 13 tunnels used by Hamas to infiltrate the country or store weapons, reports AP. Israeli tanks and bulldozers are focusing on a strip about a mile wide near the border, looking for both tunnels and rocket pads, reports Reuters. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and two others injured today by Hamas fighters who emerged from one of those tunnels, reports the Washington Post. One Hamas militant also was killed in the firefight. Palestinians, meanwhile, say the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has passed 330, with nearly a quarter of those killed under the age of 18. In other developments: NBC reporter returns: NBC has reversed itself and allowed Ayman Mohyeldin to continue reporting from Gaza, reports AP. The network pulled Mohyeldin for unexplained reasons after he reported on the deaths of four Palestinian children, noting among other things that he had just been kicking around a ball with them. The move set off a social media outcry, especially among fellow journalists, notes Mediaite. The network had nothing but praise for Mohyeldin's "extraordinary reporting" in announcing his return. Analysis: In a New York Times analysis, Jodi Rudoren writes that the "landscape is different" than in years' past for this latest ground offensive, in ways that benefit Israel. This time, Israel "has publicly framed a clear agenda targeting tunnels it says militants built to store weapons or stage attacks on its territory. This time, a weakened Hamas cannot turn to Egypt for respite. This time, Western leaders appear more patient." That could change, however, if the ground offensive expands. Click for the full analysis.

In his application for disability benefits, John Caltabiano claimed he couldn’t drive, cook for himself, exercise at the gym, move around his house or even shave without help. The New York man, 49, said he had lost his sight in a workplace accident at a cement company in 2006 and, since then, he bumps into things and hurts himself at home. “I sit in the dark and listen to TV,” he wrote in his application. On the date of his disability hearing in Hudson, New York, last fall, Caltabiano had his girlfriend lead him into the building. But what he didn’t know was just a few days prior, investigators had caught Caltabiano on video appearing to be reading something. In another video, investigators had caught him driving a vehicle and then braking in time to avoid hitting a woman and child in the street. Courtesy of Innovative Claims Investigators Another video shot by investigators caught him holding the door open for someone, all unusual behavior, they said, for a person claiming to be blind. Disability fraud is a big problem across the United States. Last year, the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) received 90,000 allegations to investigate. It also won 1,200 convictions and the return of $225 million to taxpayers last year. “When it comes to making an assessment of how many are out there, we know how much has been brought to our attention, and we really rely on those fraud allegations,” SSA assistant inspector general for investigations Michael Robinson said. So when a tip came in about Caltabiano, U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian at the Department of Justice and his counterparts at the Social Security Administration quickly started looking into it. Their investigation found that Caltabiano did lose sight in one eye in a workplace incident, but there was no indication that his other eye was affected. Courtesy of Innovative Claims Investigators Caltabiano was on track to collect $1.3 million in benefits before he was caught, according to federal investigators. Caltabiano was sentenced in October 2015 to almost five years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, five counts of mail fraud, and theft of government property. His lawyer said he was appealing the case. His girlfriend is serving three years’ probation after being found guilty of fraudulently obtaining federal and state disability benefits. More than 7,000 cases are opened each year of suspected Americans trying to dupe the system. For anyone out there considering getting some dark glasses and a cane, assistant inspector general Robinson has a message. “We’re going do everything we can to ensure that those individuals who violate the public’s trust are held accountable,” he said. “So if you’re not caught now, eventually, you will.” ||||| CATSKILL, N.Y. (NEWS10) – A Catskill man was the subject of “Nightline” on Friday after being sentenced for benefit fraud. John Caltabiano Jr. was sentenced in April. He was previously convicted on sexual assault charges. A federal judge called his criminal history “extremely disturbing.” Starting in 2006, investigators said Caltabiano Jr. pretended to be blind to collect workers compensation. An in-depth piece on his case aired on “Nightline” Friday night. The piece highlighted how far some people will go to rob the system, and it’s happening across the Capital Region. “A couple years ago, it was over $1 million,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said. “Last year, I think it was a half-million dollars.” The money stolen through benefit fraud belongs to taxpayers, and it may never be given back. Benefit programs are designed to help people get back on their feet and move on. “They find a void and work the system, and boy do they go to work,” Apple said. A federal judge handed down an almost 5-year sentence to Caltabiano Jr. for disability fraud. According to court documents, in 2006, the 49-year old said a workplace accident left him blind. He started collecting workers compensation, and he played the part. His girlfriend would lead him into hearings, and he told investigators he couldn’t get around without help. But little did he know that investigators caught him on camera driving, shopping and going to the gym. Caltabiano Jr. was on track to steal more than $1 million from taxpayers. It’s a widespread program that has people financially crippling their communities. “It costs the county a lot of money – a lot of money,” Apple said. “And then if you start thinking about having to hire all these investigators to investigate it – paying their salary and benefits – people wonder why their taxes are so high. Well, here you go.” ||||| From the U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of New York: ALBANY, NEW YORK – John W. Caltabiano, Jr., age 49, of Catskill, New York, was sentenced today to serve 57 months in prison after a jury found him guilty in October of fraudulently obtaining federal and state disability benefits. He was immediately taken into custody. The announcement was made by United States Attorney Richard S. Hartunian and Edward J. Ryan, Special Agent in Charge for the Social Security Administration ("SSA") Office of the Inspector General. On October 16, 2015, following a two-week trial, a jury found Caltabiano and co-defendant Colleen McCarten guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, five counts of mail fraud, and theft of government property. Between April 2008 and October 2010, Caltabiano and McCarten conspired to steal Social Security Disability and Workers’ Compensation benefits by falsely representing to the SSA, the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, and Travelers Insurance that an on-the-job injury had left him almost completely blind. In reality, as demonstrated in videos taken during the investigation and presented at trial, he was able to drive, shop, go to the gym, and otherwise move about without the assistance that a blind person would need. At the sentencing, Judge D’Agostino said, "And had he not been caught, I have no doubt that Mr. Caltabiano would still have someone leading him into any proceedings or any hearings as though he couldn’t see a darn thing when we all know that he was seeing well enough to carry out his ordinary activities, to drive, to go to convenience stores, all of that." U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian stated: "If Caltabiano had not been stopped, he would have been able to steal more than one-half a million dollars based on his life expectancy. His sentence reflects the magnitude of his fraud and sends a message that those who steal benefits face significant prison sentences. My office will continue to prosecute benefits fraud aggressively so that that taxpayer-funded government benefits go to people who truly need them." Edward J. Ryan, Special Agent in Charge for the SSA Office of the Inspector General, stated: "As guardians of the public trust we vigorously pursue incidents of fraud against SSA programs. We continue to investigate allegations of fraudulent disability claims to combat fraud in federal and state government sponsored disability programs. Our successful criminal prosecutions protect the SSA trust funds for those who truly deserve disability benefits. Our office greatly appreciates the continued support and the priority given to these cases by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York." United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino also sentenced Caltabiano to serve 3 years of post-imprisonment supervised release, and to pay $27,784 in restitution to the SSA. At today’s sentencing hearing, Judge D’Agostino described his criminal history as "extremely disturbing." She referred to Caltabiano’s many prior convictions, four of which involved his sexual assault or attempted abduction of teenage girls. McCarten’s sentencing is scheduled for April 20, 2016 in Albany before Judge D’Agostino. This case was investigated by the Social Security Administration, Office of the Inspector General, and the Office of the New York State Workers’ Compensation Fraud Inspector General, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Coffman and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason W. White. ||||| An upstate New York man who pretended to be blind to collect worker's comp was captured on camera by investigators driving a car, going shopping and hitting the gym, new images show. Scammer John Caltabiano, Jr. is seen wearing shades as he sits behind the wheel of a teal pickup truck and staring at the camera as he walks without help into a store in photos that aired Friday on "Nightline." The incriminating photos were snapped just days before his girlfriend led him into a courthouse for a hearing in his fraud trial to fool people into thinking he was completely blind. John Caltabiano Jr., 49, was arrested for disability fraud after he claimed he was blinded by workplace injury. (Police Handout) Caltabiano, a 49-year-old Catskill native, was convicted in October along with his girlfriend, Colleen J. McCarten, 43, for faking an on-the-job-injury he claimed left him totally vision impaired in order to cash in on more social security and worker's compensation between 2008 and 2010. The fraudster could have raked in more than a half million dollars had investigators not caught him in his lie, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. John Caltabiano Jr., 49, was caught on camera driving a pickup truck while faking blindess. (ABC Nightline) "If Caltabiano had not been stopped, he would have been able to steal more than a half a million dollars based on his life expectancy," U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian said after the pair's sentencing. Caltabiano, who was previously convicted of sexual assault charges for attempting to abduct teenage girls, was slapped with a five-year sentence for disability and mail fraud in February. His girlfriend was given three years probation for helping with the conspiracy. Caltabiano's girlfriend helped him lie about being blind by leading him in to his court hearings as if he couldn't see. (ABC Nightline) He was on his way to steal nearly $1 million in tax dollars over the course of almost a decade of stealing money that was set aside for workers who had become disabled on the job. “It costs the county a lot of money — a lot of money,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple told ABC News 10. His ruse was discovered after video of his lie was uncovered by investigators caught him driving, reading and doing things impossible without eyesight. (ABC Nightline) Caltabiano’s girlfriend helped him play the part of a helpless blind man by leading him by the arm when he appeared publicly for court hearings in his case. But, unbeknownst to the conning couple, investigators caught on to Caltabiano's ruse by capturing on camera the con artist engaging in everyday activities without any help — like driving, working out at the gym, and shopping — proving his vision was intact. “And then if you start thinking about having to hire all these investigators to investigate it — paying their salary and benefits — people wonder why their taxes are so high. Well, here you go,” Apple said.

– John Caltabiano was collecting disability benefits for a 2006 workplace accident that he said left him blind when investigators caught him on video reading, driving, and holding a door open for someone, ABC News reports. The 49-year-old New York man had said in his benefits application that he couldn't do basic things like cook for himself, exercise, shave, or get around the house. "I sit in the dark and listen to TV," he wrote. But based on a tip, US Attorney Richard Hartunian and investigators at the Social Security Administration gave Caltabiano a closer look. He had indeed lost sight in one eye in a workplace accident, they found, but video evidence showed he wasn't homebound. Aired Friday on Nightline, the evidence helped authorities in October convict Caltabiano and girlfriend Colleen J. McCarten, 43, of fraud and theft in faking an on-the-job-injury, the New York Daily News reports. Hartunian says the New York man was on track to steal half-a-million dollars over the course of his life. In April, Caltabiano was sentenced to 57 months and McCarten to three years' probation, per a press release; his lawyer says he plans to appeal. As for his attempted fraud, it's not all that unusual. "It costs the county a lot of money—a lot of money," Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple tells ABC News 10. "And then if you start thinking about having to hire all these investigators to investigate it—paying their salary and benefits—people wonder why their taxes are so high. Well, here you go.”

People have asked whether Facebook would make a "Dislike" button for years, and for years Facebook has said that it wouldn't. It's kind of obvious why this cycle happens: there's a natural impulse to want to see a "Dislike" button next to Facebook's ubiquitous Like button, but there are also some real problems with that. Facebook doesn't want people using "Dislike" as a way to harass or disrespect other people, and — more cynically — you can argue that it certainly doesn't want people Disliking the sponsored posts that companies pay to put in your News Feed. (On a similar note, please don't forget to Like this article.) "[We] are very close to shipping a test of it." That all said, Facebook has apparently had a change of heart. It's making a Dislike button — or something like it — and it's apparently going to head into testing soon. "People have asked about the 'Dislike' button for many years ... and today is a special day, because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during a public Q&A session, according to CNBC. There aren't a lot of details beyond that, but Zuckerberg says that Facebook's goal is to implement the button in a way that makes it a tool to "express empathy" — as in, to Dislike a sad moment that a friend shared — than a way to hurt someone. So while Zuckerberg may have called it a "Dislike" button, what Facebook is building may approximate better to a button for sharing compassion when a thumbs up is socially inappropriate. "We don't want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people's posts," Zuckerberg said. "That doesn't seem like the kind of community that we want to create: you don't want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone downvote it." Basically, he doesn't want to turn Facebook into Reddit, which, given Reddit's recent troubles, seems like a solid course of action. Update September 15th, 4:55PM ET: This story has been updated to elaborate on how Facebook could implement "Dislike" in ways other than as an explicit button. Verge Video: Changes are coming to Facebook ||||| After years of speculation and member requests, Facebook is finally working on a Dislike button, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said. But it's probably not exactly what you think. Zuckerberg said the feature will be coming soon during a town hall meeting on Tuesday at the company's California headquarters. However, he also said it wouldn't be a way for users to "downvote" posts and instead would let users express other emotions besides the inferred positivity of the Like button. See also: 14 honest Facebook buttons that need to exist "People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it," Zuckerberg said, according to a CNBC report. Zuckerberg added that the company has held off on a Dislike button to avoid becoming a Reddit-style system that encouraged upvoting and downvoting, according to reports. "What they really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment," he said. Regardless of its intent, a Dislike button used across the board on Facebook would have a dramatic effect on the service, so in all likelihood, "disliking" something will be one of many Like alternatives, and users will probably have a say over which ones will happen. It would be a large departure from positive persona Facebook has adopted with features like Moments, which serves up old, happy memories in a user's timeline. Considering Facebook is by far the largest driver of traffic to news publications, this feature has the potential to be a big deal. When a Dislike button becomes a reality, companies and users would have to radically shift the strategy of what they post. Speaking at a similar town hall Q&A in December, Zuckerberg said that a Dislike button is a tricky proposition. See also: The Facebook Like Button Could Have Been Green "We need to figure out the right way to do it so it ends up being a force for good, not a force for bad," he said at the time. "Everyone feels like they can just push the Like button, and that's an important way to sympathize or empathize with someone," Zuckerberg said "But there are times when you may want the simplicity of a one-click response but a "like" doesn't feel appropriate." Especially in light of the recent brouhaha at Reddit, a Dislike button would be a challenge for Facebook to roll out. Update — 4:45 p.m. ET: This story was updated to reflect the ambiguity of Zuckerberg's comments.

– People have been calling for it for years, and Mark Zuckerberg said at a company town hall meeting today that a "dislike" button is finally coming to Facebook. "People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it," Zuck said, per CNBC. The concept is tricky, he explained, because "we don't want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people's posts," as they do on, for example, Reddit. "That doesn't seem like the kind of community that we want to create: You don't want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone 'downvote' it." What people "really want is the ability to express empathy," he said, per Mashable. "Not every moment is a good moment. ... If you are sharing something that is sad, then it may not feel comfortable to 'like' that post." Zuckerberg says Facebook expects to start testing soon, then launching a wider roll-out. As Mashable notes, the move could have big implications: "When a Dislike button becomes a reality, companies and users would have to radically shift the strategy of what they post." And as The Verge notes, "Facebook doesn't want people using 'Dislike' as a way to harass or disrespect other people, and—more cynically—you can argue that it certainly doesn't want people Disliking the sponsored posts that companies pay to put in your News Feed." Indeed, Zuck said back in December that any such button would have to be "a force for good, not a force for bad."

It's Official: Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' Sells 1.11 Million By Keith Caulfield, Los Angeles Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" album debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 1,108,000 copies sold in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It's only the 17th album to sell a million in a week since SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991, and the highest sales week since 2005. "Born This Way" also marks Gaga's first No. 1 album -- "The Fame" debut peaked at No. 2, while "The Fame Monster" EP reached No. 5 and dance effort "The Remix" hit No. 6. "Born This Way" reaps the largest sales week of any album since 50 Cent's "The Massacre" did 1,141,000 in its first week, in March of 2005. The last time we had a million-plus frame was when Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" premiered at No. 1 with 1,047,000 in November of 2010. The SoundScan-era record week is held by NSYNC's "No Strings Attached," when it debuted at No. 1 with 2,416,000 in 2000. Additionally, Gaga is only the fifth woman to notch a million-plus week. The record frame for a woman is held by the bow of Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did It Again," which started with 1,319,000 upon its release in May of 2000. "The Bodyguard" soundtrack, driven mostly by Whitney Houston songs, was the first SoundScan-era album to shift a million, and it did so over the busy Christmas shopping week of 1992 (1,061,000). Later, Norah Jonas' "Feels Like Home" debuted with 1,022,000 in 2004, and then the aforementioned Swift sizzled just last year. While there wasn't any doubt as to whether Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" album would debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 -- that's been an assumption for months -- its first-week number was always in question. A month ago, executives at Gaga's record company, Universal Music Group, were expecting a first week total of around 400,000. That number escalated to 650,000-700,000 by its release on Monday, May 23 -- the same day AmazonMP3 announced its controversial decision to sell the album for 99-cents for one day only. By last Wednesday (May 25), sources indicated that a million-unit week seemed quite plausible. Once Amazon opted to again sell the set for 99-cents on Thursday, May 26, "Born This Way's" million-unit week was all but guaranteed. It's estimated that Amazon sold upwards of 440,000 downloads of its 99-cent "Born This Way" album. Gaga's total downloads haul from all digital retailers was 662,000 -- the biggest week for a digital album in SoundScan history. It represents 60% of the set's overall first week. A full recap of the week's top 10 selling albums and digital songs will follow on Wednesday morning (June 1). ||||| Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sold 1.11 million copies its first week in North America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, giving the pop singer the largest sales week since 2005. View Full Image Everett Collection Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' sold 1.11 million copies in its first week. Sales of the album, launched on May 23, were helped by Amazon.com Inc., which offered a digital-download version of "Born This Way" for just 99 cents on Monday and Thursday last week. The low price drew attention, created technical problems and helped sell an estimated 440,000 downloads, according to an estimate posted on the website of trade magazine Billboard. That appeared to be about double the number of albums sold by Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, which normally commands a dominant share of paid digital downloads. The first day of Amazon's promotion, which was designed to draw attention to its new Cloud Drive online storage service, the retailer was forced to apologize for delays in delivering the album. Three days later it repeated the offer, telling customers: "This time we're ready." Apple sells the same album for $11.99. Both services offered an expanded edition of the album for higher prices. Amazon paid the album's full wholesale cost, about $9, to the singer's record company, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, and absorbed the cost. The last album to sell more copies in a week was rapper 50 Cent's "The Massacre," which notched 1.14 million copies its first week out, in 2005. Albums that sold a million copies in a week have never been common. Since SoundScan started in 1991, the service has reported only 17 albums that achieved that sales record. More Lady Gaga Mixes It Up With Bollywood But as music sales have declined under pressure from digital piracy and other forces, they have become even rarer. Last December, Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" sold just over 1 million copies its first week out. Apple is expected to start iCloud, its competitor to Cloud Drive, next Monday. The service is expected to include more features than Cloud Drive, thanks to a set of licensing deals it recently reached with Universal and other major music companies. Write to Ethan Smith at ethan.smith@wsj.com

– Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way has zoomed to mega-hit status with sales of 1.11 million copies in its first week, making it the hottest-selling debut for an album since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005, according to Billboard. Only 17 albums in the last 20 years have hit a million in their first week of sales, although Gaga had a huge boost from an Amazon promotion, notes the Wall Street Journal. Amazon, in a bid to draw attention to its new Cloud Drive online storage service, offered downloads of the album for just 99 cents twice last week. The money-losing promotion helped sell an estimated 440,000 copies of Born This Way, crashing Amazon's servers in the process. The total number of downloads from all digital retailers was a record-breaking 662,000.

Story highlights Gregory Arthur Weiler II was arrested at a motel last week Authorities found bomb-making materials and a handwritten journal He is charged with threatening to use an explosive or incediary device He also is charged with violating the Oklahoma Anti-Terrorism Act Authorities in Oklahoma have arrested and charged a 23-year-old man who they say planned to blow up 48 area churches. Gregory Arthur Weiler II was arrested last week at a motel in Miami, Oklahoma, according to Ben Loring, first assistant district attorney for Ottawa County. Authorities were tipped off to the plot by workers at the motel about 90 miles northeast of Tulsa. One discovered a duffel bag full of Molotov cocktails near the outside trash, while a room service employee reported suspicious items in Weiler's room, said Loring. Police searched the room and allegedly found various documents outlining his plan to set off bombs at 48 churches in and around Miami. Among the documents were a list of churches, a hand-drawn map with the churches grouped and circled, instructions for making Molotov cocktails and a handwritten journal, said Loring. Some of the documents had been torn up and needed to be assembled. Loring said one of the journal entries read as follows: "Self-Promote for the next 4 years while beginning list of goals written out in Oklahoma having to do with destroying and removing church buildings from U.S., a tiny bit at a time -- setting foundation for the years to follow." Authorities also recovered 50 brown glass bottles with cloth wicks attached by duct tape, a funnel and a 5-gallon gasoline can, Loring said. Weiler was charged Friday with threatening to use an explosive or incendiary device and violating the Oklahoma Anti-Terrorism Act. He is being held without bond. Weiler appeared in court Monday and was appointed representation -- attorneys Andrew Meloy and Daniel Giraldi, said Loring. Both work at the Hartley Law Firm. A woman answering the phone there said that the office would have no comment. The suspect, who is from Illinois, is expected to appear in court next on October 22. FBI using social media in hunt for 'wanted terrorist' French police kill terror suspect, arrest 10 ||||| An Illinois man with a long history of mental illness has been charged with plotting to blow up dozens of churches after a hotel maintenance worker in Oklahoma spotted the makings of Molotov cocktails in a trash bin and alerted police. This undatedphoto provided by the Ottawa County (Okla.) Sheriff Department shows Gregory Arthur Weiler II. Prosecutors have filed charges against the Illinois man accused of plotting to bomb nearly 50... (Associated Press) Gregory Arthur Weiler II, 23, of Elk Grove Village, Ill., has been charged under a strict Oklahoma anti-terrorism law put in place after the federal building bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995. The law makes terrorism hoaxes a crime as well as any effort to plan or help plan an act of terrorism. Weiler was arrested Thursday after a worker at a motel in Miami, Okla., spotted bottles and other suspicious items in a garbage bin, according to a police affidavit. Officers found bomb-making materials in Weiler's room along with torn bits of paper that, when assembled, contained directions for making Molotov cocktails, a list of 48 local churches, a hand-drawn map of the churches, and an outline of a plan to plant bombs. Weiler has been held without bond on charges of threatening to use an explosive or incendiary device and violating the Oklahoma Antiterrorism Act. Online court records indicate he has applied for a court-appointed attorney and is due in court on Oct. 22. According to an affidavit filed by Det. Jeff Frazier, a maintenance worker alerted Miami police after noticing a pile of brown bottles with cloth wicks attached by duct tape in a trash bin at the Legacy Inn and Suites, which sits just off a major interstate. A funnel and 5-gallon red gasoline can also had been dumped in the bin. While background checks were being done on the hotel's 18 guests, the maintenance worker accidentally walked into Weiler's room and saw Weiler with similar items and a Walmart receipt showing the purchase of other items, the affidavit said. Police found pieces of paper in the trash with details of the plot, plans to videotape the bombings and the words: "Try to get away with it ... maybe a plan out of town?" Weiler's family said he has a long history of mental illness, and Miami Police Chief George Haralson said his answers during questioning ranged from rambling to coherent. Haralson said it wasn't clear whether Weiler posed a real threat to churches and the community. "He had the means and the ability to carry this out," he said. "How does one assess the threat?" Weiler's parents both committed suicide, and Weiler has battled drug addiction and "a lot of mental illnesses" that led to a suicide attempt in the eighth grade, said his cousin Johnny Meyers. Weiler has been admitted to mental hospitals multiple times, but "with his medication, he was perfectly fine and functional," Meyers said. He said family members in suburban Chicago believe Weiler must have stopped taking his medication and planned to go to Oklahoma to see him. Meyers, whose parents cared for Weiler and his siblings, said his cousin had been out of touch for several years after leaving Illinois. A pastor at a homeless shelter operated by a church in suburban Kansas City, Mo., said Weiler lived there for about six months within the past year. Doug Perry said Weiler showed no violent tendencies and was active in the group's food pantry and various ministries, but he was clearly troubled. Among other things, he blamed himself for his parents' deaths, Perry said. "I knew he was in a bad place," the minister said. He said he last saw Weiler about three months ago, when he left to take a roofing job in Houston. "We really, really tried hard to love Greg and put up with his sort of sullen detachment," said Perry, pastor of The Church of Liberty in Liberty, Mo. "We poured a whole lot of love, a whole lot of time, a whole lot of prayer into trying to help him. I grieve because I really do love the kid." Perry's church opposes denominational divisions and advocates for one Christian church in each community. "We're supposed to be ONE Body and we're supposed to be about JESUS," its website says. "We're not supposed to split off and let theologies and philosophies of Man and personal grudges divide us into little pieces." Perry said his beliefs are based on Christian teachings and his church does not advocate physical violence or the destruction of buildings. He said it would not support any plan Weiler had to harm churches. "We've never advocated any kind of violence at all," he said. "This has nothing to do with physical violence." Back in Oklahoma, youth pastor Chris Carlisle of First Baptist Church of Miami, said the community in the northeast corner of the state is usually very safe and Weiler's arrest hadn't caused great alarm. "We haven't changed anything," Carlisle said. "We just pray for him that God would do a work in his life. We know that God has a different plan for his life." ___ Associated Press writer Don Babwin contributed to this story from Chicago.

– A 23-year-old from Illinois has been charged in connection with an alleged plot to blow up 48 churches in northeast Oklahoma. Gregory Weiler, who has a long history of mental illness, was arrested after motel workers in the town of Miami spotted suspicious items in a garbage bin, CNN reports. Police found 50 Molotov cocktails in the trash and bomb-making materials in Weiler's room, along with documents outlining his plans to set off bombs at dozens of churches. He has been charged under state anti-terrorism laws. Miami's police chief says Weiler's answers in custody ranged from rambling to coherent and it's not clear whether he was going to actually carry out the plot. "He had the means and the ability to carry this out," the chief tells the AP. "How does one assess the threat?" Weiler's parents both committed suicide and he has battled drug addiction and "a lot of mental illnesses," his cousin says. "With his medication, he was perfectly fine and functional," but family members believe he must have stopped taking the medication, the cousin says.

While it’s easy to identify the largest and most affluent metropolises in the United States, it’s far more difficult to pinpoint the priciest suburb closest to each major city. So real estate firm Engel & Völkers examined the fringes of the country’s 10 most populated urban spreads to determine just that. Here’s a rundown of the well-to-do towns that made the list, ordered from least to greatest in terms of the corresponding major city’s population. Los Altos Hills, CA Bordering San Jose, Los Altos Hills is one of Silicon Valley’s most esteemed residential enclaves. With rolling hills and unparalleled bay views, it’s a popular home base for tech titans—including Cisco president John Chambers—and baseball legend Barry Bonds. (To boot, among its plethora of multimillion-dollar havens is the $10,000-a-night Airbnb mansion Beyoncé rented before performing at Super Bowl 50’s halftime show.) Population (as of 2013): 8,334 Median home sales price: $3.45 million Most expensive home for sale: A five-bedroom, 12-bath home now priced at $88 million Westlake, TX Nestled on the outskirts of Dallas, Westlake is one of Texas’ most enviable communities. A Certified Gold Scenic City, it contains the Vaquero Club (one of the most exclusive private clubs in the nation) and the prestigious Westlake Academy, along with several corporate campuses such as Deloitte University and Fidelity Investments. Noteworthy residents include Glenn Beck, who occupies a 8,000-square-foot house formerly owned by retired MLB player Jorge Piedra and his Swarovski heiress wife, Vanessa. Properties currently up for grabs (sans celebrity ties) include this $4 million Mediterranean-style home. Population (as of 2013): 1,096 Median home sales price: $2 million Most expensive home for sale: An 11,248-square-foot mansion presently listed at $6.299 million Rancho Santa Fe, CA A stone’s throw away from San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe houses a slew of wealthy notables—from baseball bigwig Bud Black to billionaire businessman Bill Gates (who purchased his horse ranch for $18 million from weight loss guru Jenny Craig). Former denizens include singers Patti Page, Bing Crosby, Jewel, and Janet Jackson; NASA astronaut Pete Conrad (the third man to walk on the moon); golfer Phil Mickelson; and filmmaker Howard Hughes. Among the beautiful abodes now on the market in the area is this 7,400-square-foot, two-acre spread, now priced at $3.888 million. Population (as of 2010): 3,117 Median home sales price: $2.119 million Most expensive home for sale: A 210-acre ranch with an 8,148-square-foot home now asking $85 million Terrell Hills, TX Population (as of 2013): 5,088 Median home sales price: $1.322 million Most expensive home for sale: A four-bedroom, five-bath home presently priced at $2.077 million Five miles from downtown San Antonio, Terrell Hills is just minutes away from the vibrant city, widely regarded as one of the most culturally rich places in southwest Texas. Historic and cultural landmarks including the Riverwalk, Witte Museum, and the Alamo are at arm’s reach for inhabitants of the illustrious town, who include Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones. Paradise Valley, AZ Back in the day, Paradise Valley catered to farmers and their cattle. But today it’s regarded as Phoenix’s most coveted suburb and one of Arizona’s most popular tourist spots, touting a number of luxury resorts and must-see attractions. Framed by magnificent mountains, the desert oasis counts boxers Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, along with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle among its past residents. Picturesque properties for sale in the area include this 6,905-square-foot, $5 million contemporary. Population (as of 2013): 13,387 Median home sales price: $1.1 million Most expensive home for sale: A five-acre Mediterranean estate with a 25,416-square-foot main house now listed at $25 million Bryn Mawr, PA Bryn Mawr—which translates to “great hill” in Welsh—rests 10 miles outside of Philadelphia, in a moneyed region known as the Main Line. Teeming with distinguished schools, high-end boutiques, and fine-dining restaurants, the lush stretch is tied to an impressive who’s who, from Katharine Hepburn (who attended Bryan Mawr College) and former President Woodrow Wilson (who taught government at the school) to Kat Dennings (who grew up there) and Pro Football Hall of Famer Emlen Tunnell. Population (as of 2010): 3,779 Median home sales price: $760,292 Most expensive home for sale: A 6,500-square-foot haven nestled on over five acres currently asking $4.25 million Southside Place, TX Southside Place is known for its family-friendly nature and close proximity to Houston. Spanning a mere 10 blocks, the charming expanse has an abundance of pools, parks, and reputable public schools, making it a great white-picket-fence escape from the bustling city. Population (as of 2013): 1,784 Median home sales price: $1.253 million Most expensive home for sale: A Prairie-style house with four bedrooms and four baths now priced at $2.395 million Glencoe, IL Twenty miles north of Chicago lies the Village of Glencoe—a quaint community teeming with green, bordered by Lake Michigan, the Cook County Forest preserve, and Glencoe Golf Course. TV star Fred Savage and film actors Bruce Dern and Lili Taylor all grew up in the small town, which was also once home to vacuum cleaner king Earle Hoover, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, and Judge James Wilkerson (who put Al Capone behind bars). Population (as of 2013): 8,854 Median home sales price: $1.3 million Most expensive home for sale: A six-bedroom, English Country-style manor presently listed at $7.5 million Bel Air, CA Ensconced beneath the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, Bel Air has served as the backdrop for innumerable film and television productions in the past and boasts countless A-list residents—among them, Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk (whose 20,248-square-foot haven cost $17 million) and Jennifer Aniston (who spent $21 million on her 8,500-square-foot estate). Erstwhile dwellers include Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, film icon Alfred Hitchcock, British screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, and Nancy and Ronald Reagan. Population (as of 2013): 17,613 Median home sales price: $3.45 million Most expensive home for sale: A yet-to-be-built bespoke behemoth, set to be priced at $75 million (for 23,000 square-feet) or $115 million (for 59,000 square feet) Bronxville, NY Fifteen miles north of the Big Apple, Bronxville is one of Westchester County’s most beguiling suburbs. Measuring only one square mile, the close-knit spread—styled to resemble an English village—showcases an assortment of shops and restaurants, along with two collegiate institutions (including Sarah Lawrence College). Frank Abagnale Jr.—whose life story inspired the movie Catch Me If You Can—was born in the village, where the Kennedys also once lived. Population (as of 2013): 6,403 Median home sales price: $2.325 million Most expensive home for sale: A Classic Revival-style charmer currently listed at $7.295 million ||||| 5 Reasons To Shop For A Home In December While it’s easy to identify the largest and most affluent metropolises in the United States, it’s far more difficult to pinpoint the priciest suburb closest to each major city. So real estate firm Engel & Völkers examined the fringes of the country’s 10 most populated urban spreads to determine just that. Here’s a rundown of the well-to-do towns that made the list, ordered from least to greatest in terms of the corresponding major city’s population. Los Altos Hills, CA Bordering San Jose, Los Altos Hills is one of Silicon Valley’s most esteemed residential enclaves. With rolling hills and unparalleled bay views, it’s a popular home base for tech titans—including Cisco president John Chambers—and baseball legend Barry Bonds. (To boot, among its plethora of multimillion-dollar havens is the $10,000-a-night Airbnb mansion Beyoncé rented before performing at Super Bowl 50’s halftime show.) Population (as of 2013): 8,334 Median home sales price: $3.45 million Most expensive home for sale: A five-bedroom, 12-bath home now priced at $88 million Westlake, TX Nestled on the outskirts of Dallas, Westlake is one of Texas’ most enviable communities. A Certified Gold Scenic City, it contains the Vaquero Club (one of the most exclusive private clubs in the nation) and the prestigious Westlake Academy, along with several corporate campuses such as Deloitte University and Fidelity Investments. Noteworthy residents include Glenn Beck, who occupies a 8,000-square-foot house formerly owned by retired MLB player Jorge Piedra and his Swarovski heiress wife, Vanessa. Properties currently up for grabs (sans celebrity ties) include this $4 million Mediterranean-style home. Population (as of 2013): 1,096 Median home sales price: $2 million Most expensive home for sale: An 11,248-square-foot mansion presently listed at $6.299 million Rancho Santa Fe, CA A stone’s throw away from San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe houses a slew of wealthy notables—from baseball bigwig Bud Black to billionaire businessman Bill Gates (who purchased his horse ranch for $18 million from weight loss guru Jenny Craig). Former denizens include singers Patti Page, Bing Crosby, Jewel, and Janet Jackson; NASA astronaut Pete Conrad (the third man to walk on the moon); golfer Phil Mickelson; and filmmaker Howard Hughes. Among the beautiful abodes now on the market in the area is this 7,400-square-foot, two-acre spread, now priced at $3.888 million. Population (as of 2010): 3,117 Median home sales price: $2.119 million Most expensive home for sale: A 210-acre ranch with an 8,148-square-foot home now asking $85 million Terrell Hills, TX Population (as of 2013): 5,088 Median home sales price: $1.322 million Most expensive home for sale: A four-bedroom, five-bath home presently priced at $2.077 million Five miles from downtown San Antonio, Terrell Hills is just minutes away from the vibrant city, widely regarded as one of the most culturally rich places in southwest Texas. Historic and cultural landmarks including the Riverwalk, Witte Museum, and the Alamo are at arm’s reach for inhabitants of the illustrious town, who include Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones. Paradise Valley, AZ Back in the day, Paradise Valley catered to farmers and their cattle. But today it’s regarded as Phoenix’s most coveted suburb and one of Arizona’s most popular tourist spots, touting a number of luxury resorts and must-see attractions. Framed by magnificent mountains, the desert oasis counts boxers Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, along with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle among its past residents. Picturesque properties for sale in the area include this 6,905-square-foot, $5 million contemporary. Population (as of 2013): 13,387 Median home sales price: $1.1 million Most expensive home for sale: A five-acre Mediterranean estate with a 25,416-square-foot main house now listed at $25 million Bryn Mawr, PA Bryn Mawr—which translates to “great hill” in Welsh—rests 10 miles outside of Philadelphia, in a moneyed region known as the Main Line. Teeming with distinguished schools, high-end boutiques, and fine-dining restaurants, the lush stretch is tied to an impressive who’s who, from Katharine Hepburn (who attended Bryan Mawr College) and former President Woodrow Wilson (who taught government at the school) to Kat Dennings (who grew up there) and Pro Football Hall of Famer Emlen Tunnell. Population (as of 2010): 3,779 Median home sales price: $760,292 Most expensive home for sale: A 6,500-square-foot haven nestled on over five acres currently asking $4.25 million Southside Place, TX Southside Place is known for its family-friendly nature and close proximity to Houston. Spanning a mere 10 blocks, the charming expanse has an abundance of pools, parks, and reputable public schools, making it a great white-picket-fence escape from the bustling city. Population (as of 2013): 1,784 Median home sales price: $1.253 million Most expensive home for sale: A Prairie-style house with four bedrooms and four baths now priced at $2.395 million Glencoe, IL Twenty miles north of Chicago lies the Village of Glencoe—a quaint community teeming with green, bordered by Lake Michigan, the Cook County Forest preserve, and Glencoe Golf Course. TV star Fred Savage and film actors Bruce Dern and Lili Taylor all grew up in the small town, which was also once home to vacuum cleaner king Earle Hoover, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, and Judge James Wilkerson (who put Al Capone behind bars). Population (as of 2013): 8,854 Median home sales price: $1.3 million Most expensive home for sale: A six-bedroom, English Country-style manor presently listed at $7.5 million Bel Air, CA Ensconced beneath the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, Bel Air has served as the backdrop for innumerable film and television productions in the past and boasts countless A-list residents—among them, Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk (whose 20,248-square-foot haven cost $17 million) and Jennifer Aniston (who spent $21 million on her 8,500-square-foot estate). Erstwhile dwellers include Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, film icon Alfred Hitchcock, British screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, and Nancy and Ronald Reagan. Population (as of 2013): 17,613 Median home sales price: $3.45 million Most expensive home for sale: A yet-to-be-built bespoke behemoth, set to be priced at $75 million (for 23,000 square-feet) or $115 million (for 59,000 square feet) Bronxville, NY Fifteen miles north of the Big Apple, Bronxville is one of Westchester County’s most beguiling suburbs. Measuring only one square mile, the close-knit spread—styled to resemble an English village—showcases an assortment of shops and restaurants, along with two collegiate institutions (including Sarah Lawrence College). Frank Abagnale Jr.—whose life story inspired the movie Catch Me If You Can—was born in the village, where the Kennedys also once lived. Population (as of 2013): 6,403 Median home sales price: $2.325 million Most expensive home for sale: A Classic Revival-style charmer currently listed at $7.295 million

– Think moving to the 'burbs will save you money? Not in these neighborhoods. Real estate firm Engel & Völkers has identified the priciest suburb around each of America's 10 most populous urban areas, based on the median home price. The top five, per Forbes: Bel Air outside Los Angeles: $3.45 million Los Altos Hills outside San Jose: $3.45 million Bronxville outside New York City: $2.33 million Rancho Santa Fe outside San Diego: $2.12 million Westlake outside Dallas: $2 million Click for the full list or the strongest and weakest housing markets.

An 8-year-old girl came to court Thursday to tell Washington County jurors that her mother, Jessica Dutro, used to give her and her brothers “lickins” when they were bad. The girl was 7 years old when her 4-year-old brother, Zachary Dutro-Boggess, died from injuries related to a beating. Wearing a pink t-shirt and jeans, the girl answered attorneys’ questions from the witness stand during her mother’s murder trial. Dutro, 25, is charged with murder, murder by abuse and second-degree assault in Zachary’s August 2012 death. Brian Canady, Dutro’s 24-year-old boyfriend, pleaded guilty earlier this month to first-degree manslaughter for his abuse of the child. Prosecutors say both defendants abused Dutro’s three children and neglected to seek medical attention for Zachary until it was too late. The couple together had an infant son, who was not diagnosed with abuse. Zachary, Dutro’s second child, was taken to a hospital Aug. 14, 2012, with tears in his bowel from a blow to his abdomen. Doctors kept him alive for two more days before he was taken off life support. Zachary’s older sister told investigators that “Jessica and Brian” beat Zachary until he was sick. They knew he wasn't doing well, but they didn’t tell anyone, she said. She also reported that she and her two preschool-aged brothers were put in timeout for long stretches. They were forced to “face the wall” with their hands in the air. If their arms dropped, she said, Dutro or Canady would hit them. On audio and video recordings, the girl was talkative in one-on-one interviews. In a courtroom, before a jury, judge, her mother, lawyers and spectators, the girl often gave soft, one-word answers to questions. She said both Dutro and Canady gave her and her brother “lickins.” The punishments hurt and left marks, she said. Her mother told her she wasn’t supposed to talk about getting hit, she testified. She could remember a time when Zachary got hit in the stomach, she said. She couldn’t recall the specifics. The girl and her two surviving brothers now live with Dutro’s relatives. It's fun, she said. -- Emily E. Smith ||||| Jessica Dutro believed her 4-year-old son, Zachary Dutro-Boggess was gay, prosecutors told the court Wednesday, and that was her motive for subjecting him to deadly beatings. Dutro, charged with murder, murder by abuse and second-degree assault, is on trial in Washington County Circuit Court. Emergency crews brought Zachary to a Portland hospital Aug. 14, 2012, where doctors determined he was dying from trauma to his abdomen that caused tears in his bowel. He was taken off life support two days later. After jurors were released for the day Wednesday, Judge Don Letourneau ruled that a Facebook message from Dutro to her boyfriend was admissible evidence. Prosecutor Megan Johnson argued the message established Dutro’s motive for inflicting on Zachary a pattern of torture and abuse. Authorities say Dutro assaulted three of her children, but Zachary received the brunt of the violence. In the message, Dutro told her boyfriend, Brian Canady, that Zachary was “facing the wall” because he had made her mad. Her son was going to be gay, she wrote, using a slur. “He walks and talks like it. Ugh.” Canady would have to “work on” Zachary, she wrote. Canady pleaded guilty earlier this month to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault in the boy’s death. Letourneau further ruled that web searches thought to be done by Dutro would also be admissible evidence. Prosecutors say on Aug. 16, 2012, the day Zachary’s life support was terminated, Dutro searched terms such as anger management and parenting classes. She also searched listings for free stuff and sex with strangers, they said. -- Emily E. Smith ||||| Jessica Dutro is on trial for beating her 4-year-old son Zachary to death, and prosecutors say the mom snapped because she feared the toddler was gay. Dutro is charged with murder, murder by abuse, and second-degree assault for the incident in August, 2012. Emergency crews brought the boy to a Portland hospital after a beating so severe that he had torn his bowels, and the boy was taken off life support two days later. At the trial this week, the prosecution presented a Facebook message Jessica Dutro had sent to her boyfriend detailing the motive for the brutal attack. In the message, Dutro told boyfriend Brian Canady that the toddler was in timeout because he had angered her. Dutro added that she thought her son was going to be gay. “He walks and talks like it. Ugh,” she wrote, adding that her boyfriend would have to “work on” the boy. Canady has already pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault. Earlier in the trial, Jessica’s 7-year-old daughter told about how her brother Zachary “got dead.” “Jessica and Brian, they kept hitting him and punching him,” she said. “He didn’t listen to them so they kicked him and punched him and stuff and they kept doing it and doing it.” Prosecutor Megan Johnson said the message points to a long pattern of torture that Jessica Dutro inflicted on her 4-year-old. They allege that she beat three of her other children, but that Zachary received the harshest treatment. Prosecutors also said that one the Zachary was taken off life support, Jessica Dutro went onto the internet and searched for anger management and parenting classes. She made other searches for free items and sex with strangers, prosecutors added.

– An Oregon mom is on trial for allegedly beating her son to death, which she did, prosecutors told the court this week, because she believed the 4-year-old was gay. On Wednesday the judge in the case ruled that prosecutors could introduce as evidence a Facebook message in which Jessica Dutro, 25, told her boyfriend Brian Canady, 24, that her son Zachary was "facing the wall" for making her angry, the Oregonian reports. He's going to be gay, Dutro wrote, using a slur. "He walks and talks like it. Ugh." She said the two would have to "work on" the boy. Yesterday, Dutro's 8-year-old daughter testified that facing the wall was a common punishment, the Oregonian reports. Dutro would make the children stand holding their arms in the air, and hit them if they relaxed, she said, adding that Dutro and Canady also often gave her and her brother "lickins." She described the night her brother "got dead" this way, according to Inquisitr: "Jessica and Brian, they kept hitting him and punching him. He didn't listen to them, so they kicked him and punched him and stuff and they kept doing it and doing it." That beating allegedly tore the boy's bowels. Zachary Dutro-Boggess was brought to the hospital on Aug. 14, 2012, and was taken off life support two days later. Canady has already pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault.

Play Facebook Twitter Embed Ted Cruz Says Undisclosed Loan Report Was a Filing Error 0:42 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Ted Cruz on Wednesday night dismissed a New York Times report that he failed to properly disclose a loan from Goldman Sachs during his 2012 bid for the U.S. Senate, calling the matter merely a "filing error." "It is an inadvertent filing question," he told reporters at a press conference in Dorchester, S.C. "The facts of the underlying matter have been disclosed for many, many years. It is not complicated. Our finances are not complicated." The Times reported that the Cruz family took out a hefty low-interest loan from the bank, from which the candidate's wife took a leave of absence as a managing director at Goldman Sachs at the launch of the Texas senator's presidential run. That loan did not appear in the reports Cruz filed with the Federal Election Commission during his 2012 run. "If it was the case that it was not filed exactly as the FEC requires, we'll amend the filings," Cruz said. "But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years." Earlier Wednesday, the Cruz campaign called the charge an "issue of semantics." "The campaign is going to ask the FEC what to do," a campaign aide said, noting the loan was previously disclosed as part of Cruz's personal financial disclosures when he entered the Senate. The loan, which was for just under $500,000, was from his own assets, "not borrowed money," the campaign said. But a story often part of Cruz's speech on the road is his family's decision to invest in the campaign with the family's own finances. Cruz says on the stump that he and his wife "liquidated" their life savings to put into the Senate run. The campaign says he personally fronted a $1.43 million of his campaign's financing from personal savings, sold stock, and this particular loan. It also said on Wednesday night that Cruz ultimately repaid the loan in full but did not specify how. The campaign said Cruz was not aware at the time the loan was taken out that he had to file the loan with the FEC and was just made aware of it by the New York Times' inquiry. ||||| Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, shown at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, helped pay for his 2012 election campaign in part by taking out personal loans from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, shown at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, helped pay for his 2012 election campaign in part by taking out personal loans from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Photo: Ryan McBride/ Zuma Press WASHINGTON—Texas Sen. Ted Cruz didn’t disclose to election officials a pair of loans he took from Wall Street banks when he first ran for the Senate in 2012, an omission that could violate campaign rules. Mr. Cruz, a Republican, helped pay for his 2012 election campaign in part by taking out personal loans from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that were eventually worth a total of between $500,001 and $1 million, according to financial disclosure forms that he filed with the Senate. Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, worked for Goldman Sachs at the time. There is no indication that his wife was involved with the loan. Mr. Cruz disclosed those loans to Senate officials as required by congressional rules but didn’t tell federal election authorities about the loans, as required by election rules. The omission was first reported by the New York Times on Wednesday. Kenneth Gross, a campaign finance lawyer for Skadden Arps and a former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said that if a “candidate borrows funds to finance his campaign and puts those funds in his campaign, the candidate must disclose the original source of those funds.” Mr. Cruz told reporters late Wednesday that “those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings. If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we’ll amend the filings. But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years and that’s the end of that.” A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Citigroup also declined to comment. There is no allegation that the banks did anything improper. Under the Senate’s financial-disclosure rules, senators and candidates for the Senate must make public information about their assets, income and debts. Under Federal Election Commission rules, candidates must disclose the source of funds for their campaigns. Mr. Cruz disclosed to the FEC at the time that he had put roughly $1 million in personal funds into his election campaign, but he didn’t disclose that the source of that money may have been the loans he received from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs at about the same time. At the time of the 2012 Senate race, Mr. Cruz was being outspent by Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was considered the favorite and spent more than $20 million of his own money on the race. Mr. Cruz first disclosed the loans on his congressional financial disclosure forms in July 2012, a few months before the election. Those filings show that he took out a “margin loan” of between $100,001 and $250,000 from Goldman Sachs earlier in 2012. Mr. Cruz had a brokerage account with Goldman Sachs and he told reporters Wednesday that he took out a margin loan from that account. Mr. Cruz’s July 2012 financial report to the Senate also shows that he took a “line of credit” from Citigroup of between $250,001 and $500,000. The loan from Goldman was later increased to between $250,001 and $500,000, according to subsequent financial disclosure reports for 2012 that Mr. Cruz made after being elected to the Senate. The senator’s financial statements for 2012 show that he paid off both the loans from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup by the end of that year.

– Banks loaned Ted Cruz as much as $1 million during his first Senate campaign in Texas back in 2012, but you wouldn't know it from campaign finance reports. While Cruz eventually disclosed the loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs—each valued at $250,000 to $500,000—to Senate officials, he failed to inform the Federal Election Commission as required, reports the New York Times. At the time, Cruz spoke of how he and his wife put "our entire net worth" into the campaign. NBC News reports he used $1.43 million in personal funds. But "a review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign," per the Times. A Cruz rep admits the Goldman Sachs loan was used for the Senate race and a failure to disclose it was "inadvertent." She didn't comment on the Citibank loan, which the Times notes would have freed up other assets even if it wasn't used on Cruz's campaign. The Times notes, too, that disclosing the loans might have hurt Cruz's campaign, given that he was criticizing Wall Street bailouts and big banks. Cruz, who says the loans were borrowed against the couple's own assets, cites a "filing error," per NBC. "Those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings," he adds, per the Wall Street Journal. "If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we'll amend the filings."

House-Senate negotiators rolled out a $1.1 trillion spending bill Monday night — a giant package that fills in the blanks of the December budget agreement and promises to restore some order to government funding over the next year. Under pressure from Republicans, the measure keeps a tight rein on new funding for Wall Street regulators and effectively freezes appropriations for President Barack Obama’s health care program at the reduced, post-sequester level. Text Size - + reset Obama pushes Congress on 2014 agenda Boehner pushes Obama on job growth But the White House retains the flexibility to find the financing it needs to implement the health exchanges and appears satisfied to have avoided the most contentious restrictions proposed by conservatives. (Also on POLITICO: What's in the $1.1T government spending bill?) Among his other domestic priorities, Obama secured significant new funding he has wanted for pre-kindergarten education initiatives, albeit more through existing programs like Head Start than the new format he envisioned. Indeed, the new $8.6 billion funding level for Head Start reflects one of the biggest investments in the bill — an estimated $1 billion, or 13 percent, increase over current funding and $612 million over its initial 2013 enacted appropriation. At the same time, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) came away with two coal-related riders, one affecting mountaintop mining regulations and the other challenging new Export-Import Bank guidelines on the financing of coal-fired power plants overseas. One legislative provision that all sides embraced would exempt disability pensions for veterans from a cost-of-living cut included in the December budget deal. (Also on POLITICO: Senate delays unemployment vote) The very evident give-and-take caps more than six weeks of often intense bargaining within the Appropriations Committees and sets the stage for what the leadership hopes will be a rapid series of floor votes sending the bill on to Obama by this weekend. “This bill is a compromise, but it reflects Republican priorities and holds the line on spending in many critical areas,” Rogers said. His Senate counterpart, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), more colorfully described the deal as an end to “shutdown, slowdown, slam-down politics.” And speaking for the White House, Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell suggested lawmakers get on with it. “The administration urges Congress to move quickly to pass it,” Burwell said. To avoid any threat of a shutdown, the House will first take up a short extension of the current stopgap continuing resolution on Tuesday — moving the deadline back three days to Saturday. This should buy sufficient time for the House to act on the larger omnibus bill Wednesday. And Senate Democrats are hoping that there will be sufficient Republican support to avoid major battles over cloture Thursday and Friday. (PHOTOS: Who's leaving Congress?) This remains a tight time frame, but the rewards are substantial for both parties. And there is a genuine hunger to build on the December budget deal and not risk another government shutdown akin to last October’s. (Also on POLITICO: Senate Dems to meet with Obama) Already, a long-anticipated farm bill has gone off the tracks since lawmakers returned from the holidays. If the omnibus were to fail as well, it would be a huge black eye for both parties. One positive sign came from Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on Appropriations. In anticipation of the filing, he met with his fellow Republicans on the panel. Shelby said later he would support the bill and asked his colleagues to support it as well. “I’m on board,” Shelby told POLITICO. “If the House comes with a big vote, we’ll get a big vote, too.” “It’s not everything anybody wanted, but we’ve been working hard at it, and it will lead us, hopefully, to regular order.” As the former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — and an ardent opponent of the Dodd-Frank reforms — Shelby left an imprint seen in the tight budgets for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The administration appears to have avoided restrictive riders proposed in the House, but the price is far less money than the president wants. ||||| The massive $1.1 trillion spending bill would fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year. (Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images) Congressional negotiators unveiled a $1.1 trillion funding bill late Monday that would ease sharp spending cuts known as the sequester while providing fresh cash for new priorities, including President Obama’s push to expand early-childhood education. The 1,582-page bill would fully restore cuts to Head Start, partially restore cuts to medical research and job training programs, and finance new programs to combat sexual assault in the military. It would also give all federal workers a 1 percent raise. But in a blow to the District, it provides only partial funding to continue constructing buildings for the Department of Homeland Security’s campus in Anacostia. The White House and leaders of both parties praised the measure, which would fund federal agencies for the remainder of the fiscal year and end the lingering threat of a government shutdown when the current funding bill expires at midnight Wednesday. “The bipartisan appropriations bill represents a positive step forward for the nation and our economy,” White House budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in a statement. The spending bill puts flesh on the bones of a bipartisan budget deal struck in December, when Republicans and Democrats agreed to partially repeal the sequester, heading off a roughly $20 billion cut set to hit the Pentagon on Wednesday and restoring funding to domestic agencies, which had already absorbed sequester reductions. Despite the increases, the bill would leave agency budgets tens of billions of dollars lower than Obama had requested and ­congressional Democrats had sought. That represents a victory for congressional Republicans, who, after three years of fevered battles over the budget, have succeeded in rolling back agency appropriations to a level on par with the final years of the George W. Bush administration, before spending skyrocketed in an effort to combat the recession. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he expects a majority of lawmakers in both parties to support the measure. “Everybody can find something to complain about — legitimately so,” Cole said. “But from the Republican standpoint, gosh, this is $164 billion less than Bush’s last discretionary budget, so that’s pretty good progress in cutting spending.” Many Democrats agreed. “Compared to the sequester, this is obviously a big improvement. But compared to investments we should be making, it falls far short,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. The measure proves, he said, that “this notion that the federal government is on a spending binge is just nonsense.” With the deadline for a government shutdown fast approaching Wednesday night, House and Senate leaders were preparing a temporary bill to keep the government open through Saturday. That would give lawmakers the rest of the week to review the massive new measure, which proposes funding and policy changes that would reach into every corner of the federal government. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) met through the weekend to put the finishing touches on the package. The pair released a joint statement late Monday, along with a photo showing them smiling happily and shaking hands. “As with any compromise, not everyone will like everything in this bill,” the statement said. “But in this divided government a critical bill such as this simply cannot reflect the wants of only one party.” Given barely a month to complete work on the package, Mikulski and Rogers were able to overcome early partisan disputes over funding for the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature legislative achievement, and payments due to the International Monetary Fund, a frequent target of conservatives. To sweeten the package, they agreed to include a provision that would exempt disabled veterans from a modest pension reduction for military retirees enacted last month to help cover the cost of the sequester repeal. All told, the bill would provide $1.012 trillion to the Pentagon and other federal agencies. An additional $92 billion would be set aside for overseas operations, including military activity in Afghanistan and assistance for the growing flow of refu­gees fleeing the war in Syria. The bill also authorizes $6.55 billion for domestic disaster relief. The measure authorizes a 1 percent pay increase for civilian federal workers and U.S. military personnel. But in response to several examples of excess spending by federal agencies, the bill would put in place new limits on certain conferences, official travel and employee awards. The National Institutes of Health would receive $29.9 billion, $1 billion more than under the sequester but $714 million less than the agency was due to receive last year before the sequester hit last March. Carrie Wolinetz, president of United for Medical Research, a consortium of patient, provider and research organizations, said the proposal “won’t adequately reverse the damage done by last year’s budget sequester and ensure the nation’s biomedical research enterprise makes continued progress in lifesaving research and development.” Head Start, which had to drop children from its rolls due to the sequester, would get $8.6 billion, fully reversing the cuts. And while Republicans refused to finance Obama’s push for universal pre-kindergarten classes, they granted his request to expand Head Start partnerships that benefit toddlers and infants. The Department of Homeland Security would face a reduction in funding of about $336 million, with most of the cuts at the scandal-ridden Transportation Security Administration. In a victory for Republicans who have sought for years to boost the use of private security contractors, the agreement increases funding for private security screeners and caps the TSA’s overall screening personnel at 46,000. The agreement is riddled with dozens of controversial policy riders. One would bar funding to enforce a law that requires incandescent light bulbs to meet new efficiency standards. The measure would continue a ban on transferring terrorism detainees at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to sites in the United States. It would also withhold additional funding for the government of Afghanistan until the country agrees to a new bilateral security agreement. And the measure would ban foreign aid for Libya until Secretary of State John F. Kerry “confirms Libyan cooperation” with ongoing investigations into the Sept. 11, 2012, attack at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. The measure would also provide new congressional backing for Obama’s strategy of continuing aid to Egypt, despite a law that forbids U.S. military aid to governments that have taken power by military coup, as Egypt’s interim military-backed government did in July. Several issues regarding gun control are also included in the bill. The legislation restricts the Justice and Homeland Security departments from establishing programs similar to the “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking effort. In response to allegations that the administration has been stockpiling ammunition for use by federal agents, the measure also requires Homeland Security to provide detailed reports on its purchase and use of ammunition. The measure also continues a ban on the use of federal funding to perform most abortions, including abortions in the District and for federal prisoners. But Republicans agreed to jettison other contentious proposals, including a ban on new federal regulations for greenhouse gases and the “global gag rule,” which sought to prohibit U.S. funding for organizations that give women information about abortion. Anne Gearan contributed to this report. ||||| Lawmakers on Monday night unveiled a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, contained in a 1,582-page document , that leaders plan to bring to a House vote on Wednesday and before the Senate by the weekend. The bill covers the entire federal discretionary budget for fiscal 2014 and fleshes out the details of December’s budget agreement between Democrats and Republicans. By passing the bill, Congress would ensure the government stays open until Oct. 1. ADVERTISEMENT The two leaders of the appropriations panel on Monday said their bill would ensure there would be no repeat of October's 16-day government shutdown. "There will be no shutdown," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who predicted a strong bipartisan vote. "The fact is, this is a strong bipartisan bill; it is a bicameral bill. We feel very good we were able to accomplish this with a lot of give and take, a lot of compromise on both sides." Her House counterpart said the bill reflected a compromise between the GOP-led House and Democratic-led Senate, adding that it would also continue a "downward trend" in spending by the government. “The bill reflects careful decisions to realign the nation’s funding priorities and target precious tax dollars to important programs where they are needed the most," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said in a release. "At the same time, the legislation will continue the downward trend in federal spending to put our nation on a sustainable fiscal path." “My committee worked closely with our colleagues in the Senate to find common ground. This bill is a compromise, but it reflects Republican priorities and holds the line on spending in many critical areas,” Rogers said. The Obama administration also praised the bill in a statement. "Appropriations Chairmen Mikulski and Rogers deserve credit for working together to craft this legislation in a bipartisan and constructive manner. The Administration urges Congress to move quickly to pass it," White House Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell said. To please defense hawks, the bill includes $92 billion in war funding for the Pentagon, about $10 billion more than the Senate sought. This should help the military cope with a base budget decrease to $486 billion, a drop of $30 billion from the Senate's draft bill. Republican appropriators touted a number of policy riders they were able to get into the bill, including a provision preventing the Export-Import Bank from blocking coal projects and one preventing new restrictions on livestock industry. The bill has no high speed rail funding nor any for the International Monetary Fund or United Nations cultural organization. On ObamaCare, the GOP notes there is no new funding requested by agencies to implement the law and the so-called ObamaCare slush fund is cut by $1 billion to prevent the administration from dipping into it. Appropriators had to contend with 134 policy riders on the omnibus, many of which were opposed by Mikulski. In the end, many remained in the bill, including one preventing the National Labor Relations Board from implementing e-Card Check regulations for unions and language preventing a ban on incandescent light bulbs. But Mikulski emphasized that there was nothing in the omnibus that would hold up Obama's signature healthcare law. "There is nothing in the bill that blocks ObamaCare," she said, however. "ObamaCare lives another day." She also said there are no "new" abortion riders in the giant bill. The bill includes one crucial change to a controversial cut to military pensions that was included in the December budget deal. With the change, disabled veterans and relatives of deceased service members would not see their pensions cut. But the omnibus does not completely reverse the $6 billion cut agreed to in December, despite demands by scores of lawmakers. Some senators hope to enact that change as part of a separate unemployment insurance extension. To keep the government funded while lawmakers consider the omnibus, the House on Tuesday will vote on a 3-day spending bill that would keep the government operating through Saturday night. The Senate will also have to approve that measure before the end of Wednesday. The series of votes this week creates opportunities for disagreements that could lead to a shutdown, particularly given the secretive talks on the bill and the possibility that members of either party will object to spending provisions. But neither party seems in the mood to create a huge fight over either the continuing resolution or the omnibus, which is based on spending levels set by a budget deal approved by Congress in December. Republicans in particular are keen to avoid another shutdown after their approval numbers plummeted during the October shutdown. The GOP now wants to keep the discussion on ObamaCare’s flawed rollout as much as possible. The budget was approved overwhelmingly on a 332-94 vote in the House, and negotiators are hoping to recreate the coalition of centrists that led to passage. While majorities in both chambers look likely to back the omnibus, House and Senate conservatives are warning of opposition, and outside Tea Party groups have sought to pressure GOP leaders. FreedomWorks, one of the Tea Party groups, unfavorably compared Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Monday to his predecessor — Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House Democratic leader. “What do John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi have in common?” it said in a release. “Boehner is trying to ram an omnibus spending bill through Congress before you and I can find out what's in it. That's the same way Pelosi snuck ObamaCare through Congress.” It's not clear if Boehner will lose a number of conservatives. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) has said he would oppose any bill that funds the government above $967 billion in annual funding. The budget deal brokered last month sets regular spending at $1.012 trillion with additional money for wars and disasters. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) is open to supporting an omnibus, but says it would have to include conservative priorities. Wall Street regulators would receive relatively modest funding hikes under the omnibus. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which faces a significantly expanded workload under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, would receive a 9.3 percent boost, or $20 million, to bring its funding up to $215 million. It had warned this fall it could have to furlough employees this fiscal year for up to 14 days to make ends meet. The other financial regulator whose budget is set by Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, received a relatively smaller boost. That agency got just a $25 million hike to bring its budget up to $1.35 billion, a 1.8 percent increase. The package eliminates $25 million the SEC had kept in a reserve fund congressional critics decried as a “slush fund” free of oversight, and assigns $44 million of the SEC’s budget to its economic analysis branch. Republican critics of the agency have long argued it fails to properly weigh the economic impact of new rules, and the regulator has faced legal challenges on that front. Significantly in the foreign policy arena, the bill prevents the implementation of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, opposed by gun-rights advocates, and adds new restrictions on aid to Afghanistan and Egypt. The bill continues a ban on the troubled Postal Service ending Saturday mail delivery. — This story was updated at 9:03 a.m.

– After weeks of late nights, House and Senate negotiators believe they have hammered out a bipartisan spending bill that will ensure a year free from government shutdown drama. "There will be no shutdown," says Senate Appropriations Committee chair Barbara Mikulski. "This is a strong bipartisan bill, and it is a bicameral bill." The bill covers discretionary spending throughout fiscal 2014, ensuring the government remains open until at least October 1. The time frame to pass the mammoth $1.1 trillion bill is tight, but both parties are keen to avoid another shutdown, Politico notes. "I'm on board,” says Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee. "It’s not everything anybody wanted, but we’ve been working hard at it, and it will lead us, hopefully, to regular order.” Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, says he expects a majority of lawmakers from both parties to back the measure. "Everybody can find something to complain about—legitimately so," he tells the Washington Post. "But from the Republican standpoint, gosh, this is $164 billion less than Bush’s last discretionary budget, so that’s pretty good progress in cutting spending." The bill eases the sequester spending cuts, providing just upward of $1 trillion to federal agencies and another $92 billion for overseas operations for a total of $1.1 trillion, marking the first time discretionary spending has fallen over four years since the Korean War, according House Appropriations Committee chair Hal Rogers. Federal workers will get a 1% raise under the bill, which provides fresh cash for President Obama's push to expand pre-kindergarten education and contains no language that would block ObamaCare. The measure slashes Homeland Security funding by $336 million, with most of the cuts at the TSA. The measure also contains dozens of policy riders, including a continued ban on transferring Gitmo detainees, prevention of funding for a ban on incandescent light bulbs, and new restrictions on aid to Egypt, the Hill finds.

Senior U.S. commanders argued that increasing electricity through the “Kandahar Bridging Solution” would be an important part of the overall American military effort to beat back the Taliban in Kandahar province. Those commanders asserted that more power to operate lights, television sets and fans would please residents and lead many of them to throw their support behind the Afghan government. But other civilian and military officials have questioned that logic. When U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl was the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Kandahar last year, he said he could not find any evidence that the additional electricity was yielding greater employment, stability or support for the government. “This is a bridge to nowhere,” he declared to his staff in 2011. Back then, Dahl also noticed a disturbing disparity: The installation of the turbine at the dam, which will not occur for at least two more years, will produce significantly less power than the city receives from the generators. Since the Afghan government will not have the financial ability to buy diesel for the generators, that means the city’s power supply will inevitably ebb once the turbine is operational and U.S. funding for diesel ends. That gap was seized upon by the inspector general. “While the Kandahar Bridging Solution may achieve some immediate [counter­insurgency] benefits because — as stated by USAID officials — ‘people like having their lights on,’ the U.S. government may be building an expectations gap that cannot be met in a timely manner,” the report states. The inspector general’s report also questions whether a new $23 million road in Helmand province will have adverse effects because the Afghan government has not compensated landowners for the destruction of their property. In addition, the report reveals that four electricity projects — costing a total of more than $300 million from the infrastructure fund — have not yet been awarded to contractors, despite claims from the military and USAID that they will have important counterinsurgency benefits. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a frequent critic of Afghan reconstruction efforts, said the report raises fundamental questions about the strategic rationale of U.S. development programs in the war-torn nation. “There’s no data that shows these major projects have changed the security environment in the country,” she said. “We cannot just throw money at a country like this and expect it to have a good ending.” In its response to the report, the U.S. Embassy defended the importance of large-scale development initiatives. “These critical infrastructure projects have signaled to Afghan populations the U.S. government’s long term commitment to Afghanistan.” Although the United States has spent almost $90 billion on Afghan reconstruction and development over the past decade, such examinations traditionally had not been conducted by the special inspector general’s office, which was more interested in contracting waste and fraud. This report was approved by a new inspector, former federal prosecutor John F. Sopko, who took charge of the office this month. He has vowed to scrutinize how projects are conceptualized and designed, not just how they are implemented. ||||| 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 ||||| A U.S. initiative to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects in Afghanistan, originally pitched as a vital tool in the military campaign against the Taliban, is running so far behind schedule that it will not yield benefits until most U.S. combat forces have departed the country, according to a government inspection report to be released Monday. The report, by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, also concludes that the Afghan government will not have the money or skill to maintain many of the projects, creating an “expectations gap�? among the population that could harm overall stabilization efforts. “Implementing projects that the Afghan government is unable to sustain may be counter­productive�? to the U.S. counterinsurgency mission, the inspector general wrote. “If goals are set and not achieved, both the U.S. and Afghan governments can lose the populace’s support.�? The study calls into question a fundamental premise of the U.S. strategy to counter the Taliban insurgency — that expensive new roads and power plants can be funded and constructed quickly enough to help turn the tide of war — and it poses a sobering, counterintuitive question for policymakers in Washington: whether the massive influx of American spending in Afghanistan is actually making problems worse. Many U.S. military commanders, diplomats and reconstruction experts have long believed that large infrastructure projects were essential to fixing Iraq and Afghanistan. Now-retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top commander in both wars who is now director of the CIA, used to say that cash was one of his most important weapons. But the latest report adds new weight to the argument — voiced by independent development specialists and even a few government officials — that the United States attempted to build too much in a country with limited means to assume responsibility for those projects. All U.S. combat forces are expected to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Until now, most critiques have asserted only that the massive U.S. foreign assistance program has led to waste and fueled corruption. The new report goes further by suggesting that some projects may ultimately prove detrimental. In a written response to the report, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it was “speculative�? for the inspector general to conclude that some of the projects would have adverse effects. The top Pentagon official responsible for Afghanistan called the report premature and insisted that the announcement of the projects, even though they have not been completed, has generated goodwill and excitement among the Afghan people. The inspector general’s examination focuses on the Afghan Infrastructure Fund, which was authorized by Congress in 2010 in part to prevent the Defense Department from dipping into a discretionary account for military commanders to bankroll large projects. The infrastructure fund was supposed to allow the Defense and State departments to collaboratively plan and pool money for large infrastructure improvements aimed at supporting the U.S. counter­insurgency campaign. Since then, Congress has poured $800 million into the fund and the State Department has committed about $1 billion of its funds to related infrastructure programs. Among the projects criticized by the inspector general is a plan to use costly diesel generators to provide electricity to residents of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, until the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers install a new hydropower turbine at a dam in the violence-plagued hills of neighboring Helmand province. Purchasing diesel to run the generators, which produce about 25 megawatts of electricity each — enough to power about 2,500 Afghan homes or small businesses — is projected to cost U.S. taxpayers about $220 million through 2013. Senior U.S. commanders argued that increasing electricity through the “Kandahar Bridging Solution�? would be an important part of the overall American military effort to beat back the Taliban in Kandahar province. Those commanders asserted that more power to operate lights, television sets and fans would please residents and lead many of them to throw their support behind the Afghan government. But other civilian and military officials have questioned that logic. When U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl was the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Kandahar last year, he said he could not find any evidence that the additional electricity was yielding greater employment, stability or support for the government. “This is a bridge to nowhere,�? he declared to his staff in 2011. Back then, Dahl also noticed a disturbing disparity: The installation of the turbine at the dam, which will not occur for at least two more years, will produce significantly less power than the city receives from the generators. Since the Afghan government will not have the financial ability to buy diesel for the generators, that means the city’s power supply will inevitably ebb once the turbine is operational and U.S. funding for diesel ends. That gap was seized upon by the inspector general. “While the Kandahar Bridging Solution may achieve some immediate [counter­insurgency] benefits because — as stated by USAID officials — ‘people like having their lights on,’ the U.S. government may be building an expectations gap that cannot be met in a timely manner,�? the report states. The inspector general’s report also questions whether a new $23 million road in Helmand province will have adverse effects because the Afghan government has not compensated landowners for the destruction of their property. In addition, the report reveals that four electricity projects — costing a total of more than $300 million from the infrastructure fund — have not yet been awarded to contractors, despite claims from the military and USAID that they will have important counterinsurgency benefits. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a frequent critic of Afghan reconstruction efforts, said the report raises fundamental questions about the strategic rationale of U.S. development programs in the war-torn nation. “There’s no data that shows these major projects have changed the security environment in the country,�? she said. “We cannot just throw money at a country like this and expect it to have a good ending.�? In its response to the report, the U.S. Embassy defended the importance of large-scale development initiatives. “These critical infrastructure projects have signaled to Afghan populations the U.S. government’s long term commitment to Afghanistan.�? Although the United States has spent almost $90 billion on Afghan reconstruction and development over the past decade, such examinations traditionally had not been conducted by the special inspector general’s office, which was more interested in contracting waste and fraud. This report was approved by a new inspector, former federal prosecutor John F. Sopko, who took charge of the office this month. He has vowed to scrutinize how projects are conceptualized and designed, not just how they are implemented.

– When US inspectors looked at four border police bases in Afghanistan—funded by the US at a cost of almost $19 million—they found most of the facilities on three of those bases had either been abandoned or weren't being used as intended, the Wall Street Journal reports. The report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a US government watchdog agency, uncovered numerous examples of poor construction work: One base has no water supply, a second is experiencing sewage overflow, some are missing drainpipes, others have leaking fuel lines or broken doors. One even includes a well house being used as … a chicken coop. The US Army Corps of Engineers says it is working on fixing the issues. The report also finds that the US plan to fund hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects in the country is extremely behind schedule—and that some of the ambitious plans may actually hurt the country, the Washington Post adds. The report raises concerns about the 2014 withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and questions whether local forces are prepared to take over security duties—and whether this new infrastructure can be successfully maintained by a country with limited resources. The Post digs into a $220 million electricity project in Kandahar that it cites as a prime example.

Although “Thor” hung on to the No. 1 spot at the box office this weekend, the big story was a stellar opening for “The Best Man Holiday,” which trounced all expectations to debut with a studio-estimated $30.6-million. Disney’s 3-D sequel “Thor: the Dark World” took in a solid $38.5-million, which represented an expected 55% drop from its opening weekend when it grossed $86 million. The film cost Marvel Entertainment $170 million to produce and after two weekends has already taken in a strong $147 million. It’s currently on track to eclipse the performance of its predecessor, which grossed $181 million domestically. PHOTOS: 75 images from 'Thor: The Dark World' “The Best Man Holiday” received a coveted average grade of A+ from moviegoers, according to market research firm CinemaScore. That means it joins an elite club of films that have enjoyed long and fruitful box office runs, including “Argo,” “42,” “The Help,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Blind Side” and “Titanic.” Going into the weekend, the distributor of "The Best Man Holiday," Universal Pictures, projected that the film would take in a modest $17 million, while prerelease audience surveys indicated the film would start off with around $23 million. “There’s no crystal ball in guessing this stuff," said Nikki Rocco, Universal's president of distribution. “It was fair to think this film— where 87% of the audience was African American—would open in the high teens.” That it nearly doubled that estimate is “a phenomenal result,” said Rocco. “I would never have thought in my most non-lucid moment to expect this -- the picture only cost $17-million.” Thanks to the A+ CinemaScore, Rocco says she believes the film will eventually reach a broader audience. PHOTOS: Holiday movie sneaks 2013 “The Best Man Holiday,” which is about a group of friends gathering for Christmas, is a sequel to 1999's "The Best Man," which grossed $34 million. Both films were directed by Malcolm D. Lee and star a number of the same actors, including Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard and Nia Long. Meanwhile, Paramount Vantage's buzzy limited-release opening “Nebraska,” which was directed by Alexander Payne and stars Bruce Dern as a sour old man on a road trip with his son, is off to an auspicious start, taking in $140,000 in four locations. That’s $35,000 per location, making it the 10th best per-theater average for a film playing in limited release, behind art-house hits like "Blue Jasmine" and "12 Years a Slave." Next weekend will see a significant shake-up as the highly anticipated “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” blazes into theaters. The film opened on 962 screens in Brazil on Friday and pulled in an estimated $6.3 million, according to its distributor, Lionsgate. That’s double what the first “Hunger Games” grossed in it's opening weekend in Brazil and sounds a warning bell that next weekend could be huge for the franchise. ALSO: Is the soap opera 'All My Children' washed up? TV Academy to roll out online voting for Emmy Awards Movie Projector: 'Thor 2' to rule again, but 'Best Man Holiday' will still celebrate ||||| For the second weekend in a row, Marvel’s $170 million sequel Thor: The Dark World topped the domestic box office chart. The Chris Hemsworth vehicle fell 55 percent to $38.5 million, giving the comic book adaptation $147 million total so far. The Dark World is still on track to easily surpass the original Thor‘s $181 million domestic total in 2011, and it should finish above $200 million. Internationally, the sequel has already earned more than its predecessor. The Dark World has grossed $332.8 million internationally and $479.8 million worldwide, far more than Thor’s $268 million and $449 million respective finishes. At this point, The Dark World seems headed for a finish above $700 million worldwide. Thor wasn’t the only success story this weekend. The Best Man Holiday unwrapped an outstanding $30.5 million on opening weekend from 2,024 theaters, yielding an excellent $15,115 venue average — the best in the top-10. The film, which stars Terrence Howard, Taye Diggs, and Regina Hall (among others), opened with $10.7 million on Friday, and then ticked up 15 percent on Saturday to $12 million — a rare boost on a film’s opening weekend that signifies great word-of-mouth. Audiences, which Universal reports were 75 percent female and 87 percent African-American, issued the film a rare “A+” CinemaScore grade. Holiday‘s predecessor, the 1999 comedy The Best Man, which was also written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee, grossed $9 million on its opening weekend en route to a $34 million total. Given how handily The Best Man Holiday beat that film’s opening weekend, and given its slim $17 million budget, Universal likely won’t wait 14 years before releasing another sequel. Third place belonged to CBS Films’ Last Vegas, which continued to demonstrate great staying power and older-audience appeal in its third weekend. The Vegas adventure, which stars Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, and Robert DeNiro, didn’t hit the jackpot in its opening weekend, but teensy drops are turning it into a substantial hit. The film fell just 25 percent to $8.9 million this weekend, good for a $47 million running total against a $28 million budget. Last Vegas is set to become CBS Films’ highest-grossing film ever ahead of last year’s Daniel Radcliffe spookfest The Woman In Black, which earned $54.3 million. Thanksgiving-themed comedy Free Birds held up in fourth place with $8.3 million, marking a scant 25 percent drop from last weekend, a sensible dip as the holiday approaches. While the film’s week-to-week hold is encouraging, its numbers were unfortunately quite low to begin with. After three frames, Relativity’s $55 million animation has earned just $42.2 million — and that’s without any family competition. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa rounded out the Top 5, falling by only 32 percent to $7.7 million. Paramount’s $15 million prank film has become one of the runaway smashes of the fall season, and — unlike the other Jackass films — proved an enduring success, rather than a fast burn at the box office. The film has earned $90.2 million so far, and it’s poised to pass the $100 million mark in the coming weeks. 1. Thor: The Dark World – $38.5million 2. The Best Man Holiday – $30.6 million 3. Last Vegas – $8.9 million 4. Free Birds – $8.3 million 5. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa – $7.7 million In limited release, Oscar contender Dallas Buyers Club expanded nicely from 35 to 184 theaters, pulling in $1.8 million this weekend — about $9,701 per theater. Focus Features will continue expanding the film, which has earned $3 million so far, in the coming weeks. New opener Nebraska also fared well in its opening weekend. The Alexander Payne film, which stars Bruce Dern and Will Forte, pulled in $140,000 from only four theaters. Next week brings the arrival of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and guess what? It’s going to make a lot of money. How much? Stay tuned to EW to find out.

– Thor: the Dark World ruled the weekend box office again, banking $38.5 million, but more exciting may be The Best Man Holiday—a black-American release that took second with a stunning $30.6 million debut, the LA Times reports. "There’s no crystal ball in guessing this stuff," said an exec at distributor Universal. "It was fair to think this film ... would open in the high teens." Also generating buzz is the Alexander Payne-directed Nebraska, which raked in a notable $140,000 at four locations. Wrapping up the top five are Last Vegas ($8.9 million), Free Birds ($8.3 million), and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa ($7.7 million), reports Entertainment Weekly.

Nashua police believe body found is that of missing teen Nashua police said they believe a body discovered in the Merrimack River Sunday is that of a teenager who is feared to have been swept down a storm drain during a storm on Friday night. Timeline: What we know about Jacob Goulet’s disappearance. Around 11:40 a.m., a Massachusetts State Police helicopter spotted what appeared to be a body in the Merrimack River in Tyngsboro. By 12:20 p.m. Tyngsboro police and firefighters recovered the body of a young man. Police said Sunday afternoon that the identity of the body has not been confirmed, but they believe it’s Jacob Goulet, 16. Goulet’s parents filed a missing person’s report around 8:48 a.m. Saturday after he didn’t return home from visiting a friend on Friday night. His family was frantically searching for him. His uncle and cousin yelled for him into storm drains throughout the city. “I just hope that maybe he might have fallen in and he’s just hanging on, and maybe he’s too cold to yell. Maybe we’ll see him, we’ll hear him. Just can’t stop trying, you know?” said Goulet’s uncle, Darren Blouin. “He just turned 16. He’s a good kid. He doesn’t get in trouble, likes video games, like listening to music,” said Goulet’s cousin, Sarah Blouin. Goulet is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs around 200 pounds. He has short, black hair on the sides with longer hair along the top of his head. He has blue eyes. He was last wearing a denim vest with metal studs on it, a gray T-shirt, black shorts and black Converse All-Star sneakers. Based on that description, Nashua police said the body appears to be Goulet, but police will not officially identify the body until the Massachusetts Medical Examiner’s Office makes a positive identification. On Friday, officers responded to a drain behind 75 Main St. and the north side of Water Street for a report that a person may have fallen down a storm drain. "A citizen in the area noted an open sewer cover with personal items on the ground nearby. Several people were interviewed, but no one witnessed anyone falling through the hole," Nashua police Chief Andrew Lavoie said. Despite there being no witnesses, Nashua police said they believe Goulet fell down the storm drain, and a massive search began Saturday. Police said they found items, including a baseball cap and an umbrella, near the drain, but no identifying information. Based on information given by Goulet’s parents and surveillance footage, police said they had reason to believe that the items could belong to Goulet. Officers said areas searched included the Nashua River, the Merrimack River and the entire underwater storm drain system north of Water Street and south to Sawmill Drive. The Nashua Fire Department and its dive team, the city of Nashua Waste Water Department, Division of Public Works, New Hampshire State Police, Massachusetts State Police and New Hampshire Fish and Game assisted with the effort. Public works assisted in the search, and a private contractor was called in to search the sewers with cameras, according to Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess. Donchess said that approximately 1,000 feet of the sewer system had been searched as of Sunday afternoon. Donchess described the storm drain that Goulet may have fallen into as an "interceptor," which connects to the waste water treatment plant over "several miles" of pipeline. The interceptor is said to have a steep drop and could be 20 feet deep. Donchess said that there is no direct flow to the Merrimack River from the drain in question, but that there is an overflow system in place where water could be discharged into the river during a storm. Officials are unsure how the cover came off of the storm drain. The storm drain cover was resecured with bolts Sunday afternoon. "No one has ever potentially fallen into the sewer system as far as we know, and these covers don’t typically come off," Donchess said. Donchess said that grief counselors will be available at Nashua North on Monday to talk to Goulet’s classmates. "We feel so badly for the family -- for Jacob’s family, his parents, for the kids who know him at the high school. We’ve asked that the school department have grief counselors available for the kids at Nashua High School North," Donchess said. Meanwhile, his friends and family are reeling after the latest developments. The high school is putting together a list of his friends and reaching out to them. The principal said they will also send a note to parents on Sunday evening to update them on the situation. Many people in Nashua, some who didn’t even know Goulet, were emotional over the situation. "I have kids -- a 14- and a 20-year-old -- so as a parent, I hope somebody would care about my kid," Jessica Keyza said. A tribute to Goulet grew by the hour Sunday night. Friends sat together and consoled each other while many people -- some total strangers to Goulet -- left flowers at the site. "I wouldn’t want it to be one of my boys. That shouldn’t have happened," Diana Bela said. Nicholas Brown, one of Goulet’s best friends, left a Converse shoe -- Goulet’s favorite brand -- with a note inside at the memorial. Brown said he saw Goulet on Friday, just hours before he disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house. "Anything sad, he would just like, try to be happy about it," Brown said. "Or he’d try to make a joke of something, just to get him by, you know." "It doesn’t seem real to me that something like this could happen, where I could be making jokes with him in second block of school, and then a day later, he turns up missing," Brown said. ||||| Nashua Public Works employee Chris Nelson and a co-worker worked to repair a sewer cover that missing teen Jacob Goulet is thought to have fallen into in Nashua, N.H. NASHUA — Authorities said Sunday they believed they had found the body of a missing teen floating in the Merrimack River, bringing a heartbreaking end to a days-long search for the Nashua High School North student who might have fallen into an open sewer. Jacob Goulet, 16, disappeared during an intense rainstorm Friday. Friends, family, and teachers had held out hope through the weekend, but by Sunday afternoon, Nashua police had confirmed their worst fears. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Jacob’s family, friends, classmates, [and] the entire Nashua community at the probable tragic loss of Jacob Goulet,” the department wrote on Twitter. Advertisement Police said they feared Goulet fell at least 20 feet down an open sewer near 75 Main St. in Nashua during the downpours Friday evening. He could have ended up in the river through the overflow of water through the system following Friday evening’s intense downpour. Get Fast Forward in your inbox: Forget yesterday's news. Get what you need today in this early-morning email. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here Nashua officials said Sunday that the sewer should not have been open, and they were looking into what happened. Related Links Read Story Nashua police say teen may have fallen through drain Police believe Jacob Goulet fell through a storm drain during heavy rain on Friday night. As news of Goulet’s apparent death spread, there was an outpouring of shock and grief. Lauren Comeau, who said she is a family friend and former co-worker of Goulet’s father, said in a Facebook message to the Globe that the loss had shaken the Nashua community, and parents were hugging their children a little tighter on Sunday. “Jacob was a sweet boy with a great heart,” she said. “He is his father Billy’s whole world.” Advertisement Search teams had scoured miles of river, treatment plants, and sewer pipes for the teen, whose family had reported him missing Saturday morning after looking for him all night. A Massachusetts State Police helicopter crew sighted a body floating near Parlee Farms in Tyngsborough at 11:38 a.m. Sunday, said David Procopio, a State Police spokesman. A positive identification must still be made by the Massachusetts chief medical examiner, Nashua police said in a statement, but the body and clothing fit the description of Goulet. Officers from the Nashua police dive team and Special Investigations Division traveled to Tyngsborough, where the dive team and Tyngsborough Fire Rescue pulled the body from the water, Nashua police said. Little is known about what happened Friday night after Goulet left a friend’s house to walk home, but he was seen near the sewer in a surveillance video. Advertisement No one saw him fall, but a caller reported Friday night that someone could have plunged into the sewer, after the caller found a baseball cap and an umbrella on the ground near the opening, Nashua police said. Goulet’s parents told police the items belonged to their son. Rescuers arrived Friday to find dangerous conditions. “They were literally thinking of sending people into that hole,” Nashua Police Chief Andrew Lavoie said. “The water flow was just, without being positive that someone was down there, was just absolutely unsafe.” Nashua Public Works employees were at the scene Sunday attempting to secure the sewer, which was surrounded by six cones. Nashua’s director of public works could not be reached for comment Sunday. Nashua Mayor James Donchess said at a Sunday press conference that such covers don’t typically come off and that nothing like the incident had happened in the city before. “We’re going to be looking into how that may have come off,” Donchess said, “and whether it could’ve been water or air or some other cause. That’s not clear now.” The sewer lies at the juncture of two pipes, he said, and leads to a treatment plant several miles away. Donchess said there are 900 covers in the system. The one Goulet might have fallen through is about 4 feet by 4 feet. “This is a tragedy for our community,” Donchess said. “We still are somewhat of a small town. I know people whose kids are friendly with Jacob.” Some of those close to Goulet attended the press conference but sat quietly in the back and declined to comment. His parents and siblings could not be reached. Nashua High School North Principal Marianne Busteed said she was planning to meet with a crisis team Monday morning and prepare for the day and that grief counselors will be available for students. Supporters created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Goulet’s funeral costs. By Sunday evening, they had raised more than $3,000 toward a goal of $8,000. Cristela Guerra can be reached at cristela.guerra@globe.com . Follow her on Twitter @CristelaGuerra . Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox

– Sad news out of Nashua, NH, after police say they believe a body found floating in a river is that of a high school student who likely plunged 20 feet into an open sewer. Jacob Goulet, 16, was last seen Friday night after he left a friend's house during a torrential rainstorm, WMUR reports. His family reported him missing Saturday morning. A Massachusetts State Police helicopter spotted a body floating in the Merrimack River in neighboring Tyngsboro on Sunday morning. A positive ID is pending, but cops said they believe the body is Jacob's. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Jacob’s family, friends, classmates," Nashua Police wrote on Twitter. Cops were investigating why the sewer cover was open. They described a steep drop into a storm drain that links to a water treatment plant. During heavy rains an overflow system discharges water directly into the river. A frantic search began Saturday morning after a passerby spotted the open sewer and beside it a baseball cap and umbrella believed to be Jacob's. Surveillance video confirmed the teen was in the area, WMUR reports. Jacob's family searched storm drains across the city, hoping perhaps he was trapped inside one and would hear their shouts. "Maybe he might have fallen in and he’s just hanging on, and maybe he’s too cold to yell," his uncle, Darren Blouin, told WMUR. Devastated family and friends recalled Jacob, who recently turned 16, as a good kid who avoided trouble and liked video games. "Jacob is a sweet boy with a great heart,” family friend Lauren Comeau told the Boston Globe. "He is his father Billy’s whole world." (A freak hammock accident killed this teen.)

SINGAPORE — About two hours into an early Monday (June 27) morning flight from Singapore to Milan, Italy, the pilot of Singapore Airlines flight 368 announced over the public address system that the plane would have to turn back. An engine oil warning message had been triggered, and the aircraft was returning to Changi Airport for safety reasons. “I could feel the vibrations,” recalled passenger Amit Jain, 44, who was seated at the business-class section near the right engine that would eventually catch fire hours later. “There was a very strange sound, sort of like a slight screeching noise coming from the plane.” Another passenger on SQ368, Ms Lee Bee Yee, told TODAY that she and her husband noticed a faint fuel-like smell in the economy cabin where they were seated. But at that time, no one was particularly concerned about the announcement, recalled Mr Jain, the director of IT and enterprise resource planning at a multinational company. “Half of the passengers were sleeping,” he added. Mr Jain was awake as the plane landed back at Changi airport at about 6.50am, more than four hours after it took off at about 2.25am. He had a good view of the Boeing 777-300ER’s right engine and did not notice anything unusual when the plane came to a halt. Then he caught sight of a convoy of fire engines racing towards the aircraft. That was when he realised that SQ368’s right engine was on fire. “I saw the flames getting worse and worse. By the time the fire engines reached the plane, the flames were about a meter high. I could see the wing turn black from the heat,” Mr Jain recounted. “When we could see the flames rising, some people were trying to remove their bags from the overhead compartments, which was crazy,” he told TODAY. “I heard a few people scream ‘Open the doors!’ and ‘Let us out!’ and they were standing in the aisle. I had to tell a lady, ‘if I had to run out I’m going to have to kick your bag out of the way’.” Still, the pilot and crew managed to calm things down, repeatedly reminding passengers to stay in their seats while airport emergency services tackled the fire, passengers said. A statement from Singapore Airlines said the fire was put out in minutes by the Airport Emergency Service team. “All passengers and crew on board disembarked safely. No injuries were reported,” the statement added. “The affected aircraft has been towed away and the clean-up of Runway 2 is underway.” Ms Lee, the owner of an e-commerce luxury bags company, posted dramatic footage and photos of the aircraft’s right engine and wing engulfed in flames. She wrote on Facebook: “We were so close to death! I thank God I am alive! I going home to hug my kids.” Mr Jain said at one point he could feel a bit of the intense heat from the flames outside the plane. The passengers were not allowed to leave as firefighters sprayed water and foam to douse the flames. “The foam was close to waist-deep for the firefighters,” he recalled. “The pilot came on the public address system a couple of times to tell passengers to stay calm and that fire was being put out.” Added Ms Lee, who postponed her trip and headed home with her husband after their ordeal: “We are very grateful to the air crew and the firefighters. Everyone did a good job.” A rescheduled flight with a new crew took off for Milan after 10am on Monday. It was unclear how many passengers pressed on with their trip. Singapore Airlines said it had offered passengers the option to defer or reschedule their travel. Mr Jain was one of many passengers who pressed on with his trip to Milan. Those who boarded the new flight with him did not seem too rattled. He told TODAY before boarding his rescheduled flight: “Most of the passengers are in the lounge right now. Snacks being served. People don’t look distressed, at least to me. It’s mostly calm.” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote on Facebook that he was relieved all the people onboard were safely disembarked. “Thanks to SQ and Changi Airport for the swift response. SQ and CAAS (Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore) are investigating the cause, and will get to the bottom of the matter,” said Mr Lee. Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan also wrote on Facebook that he was relieved to learn of the safe emergency landing. “Incident is being investigated, as to the cause and whether any of our procedures can be improved further,” he said. ||||| Story highlights Right engine of Singapore Airlines flight SQ368 caught fire after emergency landing at Changi Airport All of the 222 passengers and 19 crew disembarked safely (CNN) A Singapore Airlines plane burst into flames Monday after an emergency landing at the city-state's Changi Airport. Images posted to social media show flames leaping from the plane's wing. "We were so close to death!! I am still in the plane with all passengers. But I think we are safe for now..." passenger Lee Bee Yee posted on Facebook. From her seat, Yee could see the fire from inside the plane, and the aftermath as firefighters doused it with foam. Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing A cell phone photo shot by passenger Lee Bee Yee (facebook.com/premiummall.sg) shows the wing of a Singapore Airlines flight on fire upon landing at Changi Airport on June 27, 2016. Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing Passengers were calm throughout the incident, said Lee. Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing Firefighting foam coats the window of the plane after the landing. Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing Firefighting crews were able to extinguish the blaze. Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing The wing in the aftermath of the blaze. Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing Lee thanks a firefighter as she disembarks the plane. Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire after landing All passengers were safely evacuated after the blaze. Hide Caption 7 of 7 Flight SQ368, a Boeing 777-300ER, took off from Changi Airport around 2:25am on June 27 carrying 222 passengers and 19 crew, Singapore Airlines said. Read More ||||| LONDON (Reuters) - To leave, or not to leave: that is the question. Still. A woman holds a sign in Westminster, in central London, Britain June 24, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble After Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union, there is no indication that a so-called Brexit will happen soon. It maybe never will. Prime Minister David Cameron, who is resigning, has said he will not take the formal step to an EU divorce on the grounds that his successor should. Because the referendum is not legally-binding, some politicians are suggesting a parliament vote before formally triggering Brexit. A petition on the UK government’s website on holding a second referendum has gained more than 3 million signatories in just two days. European leaders, facing the biggest threat to European unity since World War Two, are divided over how swiftly divorce talks should start. Paris wants haste and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging patience. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he wanted to “start immediately”. And on Sunday, Scotland’s leader said Scotland may veto Brexit altogether. Under devolution rules, the parliaments of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are required to consent to any EU divorce, according to a report by the House of Lords. Most British politicians agree such a decisive 52-48 win for Leave in the referendum means a divorce must happen. Anything less would be a slap in the face of democracy. “The will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered,” a choking Cameron said in his resignation speech, which marked the most tumultuous end to a British premiership since Anthony Eden resigned in 1957 after the Suez crisis. Still, the upswell of chatter - #regrexit is trending big on twitter - over whether Britain might be able to reconsider speaks to the disbelief gripping this continent in the wake of a vote that has unleashed financial and political mayhem. Sterling has plunged, and Britain’s political parties are both crippled. Cameron is a lameduck leader, and the main opposition Labour party on Sunday attempted a coup against its leader, with nine top officials resigning. “The kaleidoscope has been shaken up not just in terms of our relationship with the EU but in terms of who runs our parties, who governs the country and what the country is made up of,” said Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London. “It is very hard to see where the pieces are.” ARTICLE 50 The law provisioning an EU member country’s exit from the union is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that is effectively the EU’s constitution. It has never been invoked before. Before the vote, Cameron had said Article 50 would be triggered straight away if Britain voted to leave. Over the weekend, several EU officials also said the UK needed to formally split right away - possibly at a Tuesday EU meeting. But officials of the Leave campaign - including former London mayor Boris Johnson - are stepping on the brakes. They say they want to negotiate Britain’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU before formally pulling the trigger to divorce. European officials and observers say such a deal is unlikely, especially considering the thorny issues involved. For example, it is unlikely that the EU would grant Britain access to the single market - key to allowing Britain trade goods and services in the EU - without London accepting the free movement of EU workers. But the biggest issue for those who voted to leave the bloc was limits on immigration - something the Leave campaigners promised. DIVIDED UK On Sunday, a petition to call for a second referendum was gaining supporters, reaching 3.3 million signatories by the afternoon. David Lammy, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party, said it was within parliament’s powers to call a second referendum and urged that it be done. Perhaps the most vocal resistance to a British exit is coming from Scotland. Scotland, a nation of five million people, voted to stay in the EU by 62 to 38 percent, compared to the 54 percent in England who voted to leave. Under the United Kingdom’s complex arrangements to devolve some powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, legislation generated in London to set off an EU divorce would have to gain consent from the three devolved parliaments, according to a report by the House of Lords’ European Union Committee. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC on Sunday that she would consider urging the Scottish parliament to block such a motion. It is not clear, however, whether such a scenario would ever materialize or be binding. Sturgeon’s spokesman later said that the British government might not seek consent in the first place. Moreover, Sturgeon is simply laying out the groundwork for a new referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom —something the first minister said was “highly likely.” Slideshow (5 Images) WITHDRAWAL While there is no precedent for Article 50, the House of Lords has discussed how any Brexit would work. In May, it published a report after consultations with legal experts. In the report, Derrick Wyatt, one of the professors involved, said that while it would be politically difficult, the law allows the UK to change its mind after invoking Article 50. “In law, the UK could change its mind before withdrawal from the EU and decide to stay in after all,” said Wyatt. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Watch: Singapore Airlines plane catches fire A Singapore Airlines plane bound for Milan caught fire shortly after making an emergency landing. Flight SQ368, which departed at 02:05 local time on Monday (18:00 GMT Sunday), was two hours into the flight when the pilot announced there was an engine problem. The plane turned back and landed before the right engine of the Boeing 777 burst into flames. All 222 passengers and 19 crew on board were safely evacuated. "We were in the air for roughly an hour before we began to smell gas," one passenger who gave his name as Chuan told the BBC. "The pilot came on the intercom and said that there was an oil leak in one of the engines and that they were going to turn and go back to Singapore." Image copyright AP Image caption Firefighters took about five to 10 minutes to extinguish the flames on the plane Image copyright AP Image caption Everyone on board was safely evacuated Chuan added that all the passengers were very calm and that he actually "went back to sleep" after the announcement was made. It was only after he got off the flight that he realised how "close to death" he and his wife had been. Firefighters took about five to 10 minutes to extinguish the flames, he said. Passengers will be transferred to another aircraft which is expected to depart for Milan later on Monday, said Singapore Airlines in a statement on Facebook. ||||| This image provided by Lee Bee Yee shows passengers disembarking a Singapore Airlines flight after an engine fire, at Changi International Airport in Singapore on Monday, June 27, 2016. A Singapore Airlines... (Associated Press) This image provided by Lee Bee Yee shows passengers disembarking a Singapore Airlines flight after an engine fire, at Changi International Airport in Singapore on Monday, June 27, 2016. A Singapore Airlines statement said the Boeing 777-300ER was on its way to Milan when it turned back "following an... (Associated Press) SINGAPORE (AP) — Singapore Airlines said Monday that there were no injuries when a jetliner caught fire after the plane returned to Changi Airport because of an engine warning. An airline statement said the Boeing 777-300ER was on its way to Milan when it turned back "following an engine oil warning message." It said the aircraft's right engine caught fire after Flight SQ368 touched down more than four hours after takeoff. "The fire was put out by airport emergency services and there were no injuries to the 222 passengers and 19 crew on board," it said. The airline says the passengers were transferred to another aircraft that was to depart for Milan later Monday.

– All 222 passengers and 19 crew from a Singapore Airlines flight are safe and unharmed after a terrifying incident early Monday. The airline says the Boeing 777-3000 was on its way from Singapore to Milan when the pilot decided to turn back after receiving an engine oil warning message, the AP reports. It landed back at Singapore's Changi Airport more then four hours later—and just after it came to a halt, its right engine burst into flames as horrified passengers looked on. "By the time the fire engines reached the plane, the flames were about a meter high," passenger Amit Jain tells Today. "When we could see the flames rising, some people were trying to remove their bags from the overhead compartments, which was crazy," he says. "I heard a few people scream 'Open the doors!' and 'Let us out!'" The airline and the airport say the blaze was extinguished within minutes, CNN reports. The passengers were transferred to another flight to Milan. Passengers say they could smell oil while the plane was in the air, but they didn't realize how close to death they were until afterward, the BBC reports. Analyst Greg Waldron at Flightglobal says it appears the pilots did everything right by turning back when they discovered the problem and dumping fuel along the way. "When the plane slows down as you land, fuel can cling to the wing and surfaces. Sparks from the hot brakes after they landed could have the triggered the fire and it does appear quite dramatic. But they appear to have gotten that under control very quickly," he says, per Reuters. "There don't appear to be any procedural issues here."

(CBS Connecticut) — The Connecticut Supreme Court today found that the state can forcibly medicate a man accused of killing a Yale doctor. Mentally ill Doctor Lishan Wang does not want to take medication that could make him competent to stand trial. But in its decision, the state Supreme Court confirmed that it is substantially likely that Wang would be made competent by the medication, and that it is unlikely he will suffer from side effects. The court also found no less-intrusive option exists, and that the drugs are in Wang’s medical best interest. Wang is charged with shooting and killing Yale Doctor Vajindor Toor outside Toor’s home in Branford. The defendant was also accused of shooting at Toor’s pregant wife, but missing. ||||| Connecticut authorities can forcibly administer anti-psychotic medicine on a mentally ill doctor charged in the murder of a Yale University physician so he can be competent to stand trial, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. Justices released a 7-0 decision that rejected the appeal of Lishan Wang, whose lawyer argued that medicating Wang against his will would violate his constitutional rights to a fair trial and to mental and physical bodily integrity, as well as conflict with a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting involuntary medication of defendants. Wang, a Chinese citizen from Beijing, is charged with murder in the 2010 fatal shooting of Dr. Vajinder Toor outside Toor's home in Branford. He is also charged with attempted murder on allegations he shot at Toor's pregnant wife, who wasn't injured. Wang has pleaded not guilty, and he has insisted he is competent and doesn't need medication. Authorities say the shooting appeared to stem from a 2008 workplace dispute Wang had with Toor and other doctors when they worked together at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York City. Wang was fired from the medical center that year after a series of confrontations with Toor and other colleagues. Wang represented himself in the case until a judge ruled him incompetent last year and assigned a public defender. In November, New Haven Superior Court Judge Thomas O'Keefe Jr. ruled that state officials could forcibly medicate Wang to make him competent to stand trial and that doing so would not violate Wang's constitutional rights or the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. O'Keefe's decision was put on hold pending the Supreme Court appeal. A main issue in the appeal was whether prosecutors showed that it was "substantially likely" that forcing medication on Wang would restore him to competency. The "substantially likely" standard was set — but not specifically defined — in 2003 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said the government can force medication on mentally ill criminal defendants only in the rarest of circumstances and only if certain conditions are met. The Connecticut Supreme Court said state prosecutors met those conditions and concluded that it was substantially likely that Wang would be restored to competency with medication. State justices relied on the testimony of a state psychiatrist, who said the chances of success in restoring Wang to competency with recommended medications was in a percentage range from the mid-50s to 70. Wang's public defender on the appeal, Mark Rademacher, argued that a projected success rate of mid-50s to 70 percent did not make it "substantially likely" that Wang would be restored to competency. The Supreme Court disagreed and defined "substantially likely" as "more likely than not, or a greater than 50 percent probability." "They just set the bar too low before they can violently restrain a patient, knock him out with a sedative and inject him with medication," Rademacher said Tuesday. "It's an extremely serious thing to do and shouldn't be taken lightly." Rademacher said he will be deciding whether to appeal the state Supreme Court ruling to a federal court, possibly the U.S. Supreme Court. Prosecutor Nancy Walker has said the ruling by O'Keefe in November did not violate Wang's rights or the U.S. Supreme Court restrictions. She said his case is based on the sound medical advice of experts and is one of the rare instances where forced medication is allowed.

– Lishan Wang, a Chinese doctor charged with murder in Connecticut, can be forced to take anti-psychotic medication in order to be competent enough to stand trial, the AP reports. The state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday it wouldn't be a violation of the mentally ill Wang's rights to forcibly medicate him. As laid out in a 2003 US Supreme Court ruling, prosecutors had to show it was "substantially likely" the medication would make Wang competent to stand trial. A state psychiatrist testified there was a 50% to 70% chance of that happening. While Wang's public defender, Mark Rademacher, argues that doesn't meet the threshold, the state Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that anything greater than 50% constitutes "substantially likely." The court also ruled there wasn't a "less-intrusive option" to forcibly medicating Wang and that he was unlikely to have side effects from the medication, CBS Connecticut reports. Rademacher may appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court. "They just set the bar too low before they can violently restrain a patient, knock him out with a sedative, and inject him with medication," he tells the AP. Wang is charged with fatally shooting Dr. Vajinder Toor and shooting at Toor's pregnant wife in 2010 outside their Connecticut home. Wang was fired from his job in 2008 after multiple confrontations with Toor and other doctors. Wang maintains that he's not guilty and doesn't need medication.

Cops: Connecticut Burglar Gets Tripped Up By Stolen Sweatshirt And Its Vigilant Owner Share Tweet A Connecticut man already facing multiple burglary charges has been arrested on new criminal counts after he was spotted wearing a stolen sweatshirt in a mug shot photo, police report. According to cops, a Glastonbury residence was burglarized in July 2014, but the probe of the crime was suspended after no leads were developed. However, two months ago, the victimized homeowner contacted cops to report seeing a booking photo of Derek Benson, 30, who was arrested late last year in connection with a series of burglaries during which expensive golf equipment was stolen. “In the photo, Benson was wearing the victim’s sweatshirt, which had been stolen during the burglary of his residence,” the Glastonbury Police Department reported. The stolen gray sweatshirt contains the logo for Coco Libre, the “pure organic coconut water.” The victim, a police spokesperson said, works for Coco Libre. Benson is seen in the above mug shot wearing the purloined garment. After being tipped by the homeowner, cops noted, “A subsequent investigation linked Benson to the burglary.” In addition to the sweatshirt, jewelry was stolen during last year’s burglary. Benson was arrested last week on burglary, larceny, and criminal mischief counts. He remains locked up in lieu of $125,000 bond. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– Derek Benson wore a sweatshirt that said "libre" ("freedom") on it for a 2014 mugshot, but he got quite the opposite after a man contacted police in Glastonbury, Conn., to report he had seen the mugshot and that Benson, 30, was wearing the victim's Coco Libre sweatshirt—which had been stolen from his residence in July 2014, the Smoking Gun reports. The victim works for the coconut water company, a police rep says. A "subsequent investigation" led to Benson's Sept. 16 arrest for that home burglary as well, a Glastonbury Police Department press release notes, and Benson was charged with burglary, larceny, criminal trespass, and criminal larceny, Fox Connecticut reports. (This suspected burglar didn't just take stuff with him—he left stuff behind.)

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A son of the former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he pressured a teenage girl to send him naked photos and asked her teenage sister to give him oral sex. The plea deal for Jeffrey Sandusky, Jerry Sandusky’s son, comes one week before his trial was to begin, and nearly six years after his father was arrested in a child molestation case that shook Penn State and is still working its way through criminal and civil courts. Jeffrey Sandusky pleaded guilty to all 14 counts, including solicitation of statutory sexual assault and solicitation of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. A call seeking comment from his lawyer was not immediately returned Friday. As part of the deal, Mr. Sandusky, 41, will spend up to six years in state prison, but the judge could impose a sentence of as much as eight years. ||||| Story highlights The DA says he entered the pleas a week before his scheduled trial The charges included soliciting sex from a child and soliciting child pornography (CNN) Jeffrey Sandusky, the son of convicted sex abuser and former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, pleaded guilty Friday to all 14 counts of child sexual abuse against him. The Centre Country district attorney's office said the younger Sandusky, 41, entered the guilty pleas a week before his trial was scheduled to begin. The 14 counts included soliciting sex from a child younger than 16 and soliciting child pornography. According to the district attorney's office, Sandusky will become a Tier III sex offender, the highest level in Pennsylvania. The charges involve incidents with two girls, one in 2013 and one in 2016. Read More

– One of Jerry Sandusky's six adopted children is following in his father's footsteps—and it's not as a football coach. Jeffrey Sandusky is on his way to a Pennsylvania state prison after pleading guilty to 14 counts of child sexual abuse, reports CNN. Under a plea deal, the 41-year-old will spend between three and eight years in prison. Prosecutors say Sandusky pressured a teenage girl under 16 to send him nude photos, the New York Times reports. After her father reported messages from Sandusky to police last year, investigators discovered that he had asked the girl's sister to perform oral sex on him in 2013, when she was 13. He pleaded guilty to charges including soliciting sex from a child younger than 16. Authorities say Sandusky, a former state prison guard who knew the girls through dating their mother, tried to persuade them that what he was doing was normal, saying "it's not weird because he studied medicine," but asking them not to show his messages to anybody. Sandusky, like his mother, Dottie, loyally supported his father through his trial for the sexual abuse of 10 boys, the Times notes. Sandusky will now be classed as a Tier III sex offender, Pennsylvania's highest level, meaning he will have to register with state police for life and verify his information four times a year. (In June, three Penn State officials went to prison for failing to report allegations against the elder Sandusky.)

Detained China artist Ai Weiwei gets first family visit Ai Weiwei was arrested trying to board a Hong Kong-bound plane out of Beijing Continue reading the main story Related Stories The detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been allowed his first contact with his family since his arrest more than 40 days ago. The artist met his wife at an unknown location on Sunday and told her he is well, his sister told the BBC. Mr Ai is said to be under investigation for suspected "economic crimes". The artist is a vocal critic of the government, complaining about a lack of basic freedoms and often incorporating these political themes into his work. Ai Weiwei's wife Lu Qing was taken by Chinese police to meet her husband on Sunday afternoon. The artist's sister told the BBC Lu Qing was summoned to a police station and taken to another location where she was allowed a brief meeting with her husband. Continue reading the main story AI'S TANGLES WITH AUTHORITIES Supported online campaign to compile names of children who died in 2008 Sichuan earthquake - many in schools whose construction was allegedly compromised due to corruption - many in schools whose construction was allegedly compromised due to corruption In August 2009, beaten up by police in Sichuan while trying to testify for dissident Tan Zuoren in Sichuan while trying to testify for dissident Tan Zuoren Although a co-designer of Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympics stadium, he later disavowed the project, condemning China's hosting of the Games as "fake and hypocritical" condemning China's hosting of the Games as "fake and hypocritical" His frequently censored blog was read by 10,000 people a day until shut down by authorities in May 2009 was read by 10,000 people a day until shut down by authorities in May 2009 Ai Weiwei is a "maverick" who "chooses to have a different attitude from ordinary people toward law", the Global Times said on Wednesday Mrs Lu does not know where that location was, but thinks it was only used for the meeting - she said she did not believe her husband was being held there. She reported that Mr Ai told her those holding him were taking good care of him, he was healthy and she should not worry. However the meeting was very brief, she said, and there were many other people present, some of them taking notes, so she was afraid to talk much more with her husband. The family were then warned by police not to discuss the visit with the media as they were told it could "be bad for Mr Ai's case". His family had been demanding to know if he was safe and well as more than 43 days have passed since Mr Ai was detained by police at Beijing's airport, says the BBC's Damian Grammaticas in Beijing. He had not been allowed any contact with his lawyers or his family. Calls by artists and governments worldwide for information had not produced any response from China's authorities. China's foreign ministry has insisted that Mr Ai's case has "nothing to do with human rights or freedom of expression". ||||| Groundbreaking Chinese artist Ai Weiwei appeared healthy but tense during his first meeting with family since he was detained more than a month ago, and authorities still haven't explained why he was seized, his wife said Monday. FILE - In this April 6, 2011 file photo, Lu Qing, wife of missing groundbreaking Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, speaks during an interview in Beijing, China, Wednesday, April 6, 2011. Ai has been allowed his... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Nov. 17, 2010 file photo, artist Ai Weiwei arrives at the Wenyuhe court to support fellow artist Wu Yuren during his trial in Beijing. Ai has been allowed his first family visit after more... (Associated Press) FILE - In this May 11, 2011 file photo, workers put up a two-story-high black-and-white photograph of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei outside the Lisson Gallery in London. Ai has been allowed his first family... (Associated Press) Lu Qing told The Associated Press she was allowed to meet with her husband at an unknown location for about twenty minutes Sunday afternoon and that he seemed conflicted and upset, though insisted he was healthy and that his physical needs were being met. "I could see redness in his eyes. It was obvious that without freedom to express himself he was not behaving naturally even with me, someone from his family," Lu said. The avant-garde artist and fearless government critic was taken into custody April 3 and has been held incommunicado though not yet charged with any crime. His case has prompted an outcry in the art world and among officials in the U.S. and EU who say his treatment is a sign of China's deteriorating human rights. The Foreign Ministry has said Ai is being investigated for suspected economic crimes, but his detention comes amid a crackdown on dissent apparently sparked by fears that uprisings such as those in the Arab world could erupt in China. Ai had been keeping an informal tally on Twitter of the dozens of bloggers, writers and other intellectuals who were detained or arrested in the campaign before he was taken away. Ai is famous in artistic circles for performance pieces that explored the dizzying change of contemporary China and for irreverent, avant garde works such as a photo series that shows him giving the middle finger to landmarks such as Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the White House in Washington. He is known more popularly as one of the designers on the iconic "Bird's Nest" national stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and in recent years, has emerged as an advocate for victims of social injustice. Lu said two other people were present during the brief meeting, including one person "who seemed to be in charge of Ai," and another who took notes. "He seemed conflicted, contained, his face was tense," Lu said. Lu said Ai was not handcuffed and was wearing his own clothes instead of a detention center uniform. His trademark beard had not been shaven. Lu said the people that arranged the visit, who showed her no identification, made it clear that no questions other than health related ones were allowed. "We could not talk about the economic charges or other stuff, mainly about the family and health," she said. "We were careful, we knew that the deal could be broken at any moment, so we were careful." Ai, 53, suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes. He told his wife that he takes long walks everyday, has his blood pressure checked 7 times a day, and that he eats and sleeps very well. Despite the visit, much about Ai's case remains murky. Family visits are rarely allowed for suspects under criminal investigation until after they are formally charged. Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer and friend of Ai's who met with Lu Monday to discuss the visit, said it sounded like Ai was being held under residential surveillance somewhere outside Beijing. Chinese law allows police to impose residential surveillance for up to six months before requiring them to make a decision about how to proceed with a case, as opposed to 30 days under criminal detention, said Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong-based research manager for the U.S. human rights group Dui Hua Foundation. Such surveillance usually takes place at the suspect's home and is "supposed to be a less restrictive measure than detention," Rosenzweig said in an email. "Instead, the police seem to be using residential surveillance as a way to legitimize extended, incommunicado detention outside of a regular detention facility." Ai's elder sister Gao Ge said that her family is relieved to know that Ai is well, but hopes the government can clarify what is going on with his case. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and officials from the European Union and elsewhere have called on China to release Ai and criticized Beijing for what they say is backsliding on human rights. Ai's influence has ranged far beyond that of the usual contemporary artist. His outrage at the deaths of so many students in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 turned him into a social activist and tapped into anger among many Chinese at official corruption and indifference. He took to Twitter, prolifically tweeting not only his social criticism but his everyday doings, attracting more than 70,000 followers, even though Twitter is blocked by China's Internet filtering. Since his disappearance, art museums such as the Tate in London, collectors and artists have rallied behind him. At the launch of an exhibition of Ai's sculpture earlier this month, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said fearlessness in the face of official intimidation spoke to "the indomitable desire for freedom that is inside every human being."

– Imprisoned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was granted his first family visit yesterday, 43 days after he was taken into custody, reports the BBC. Ai's wife, Lu Qing, was brought to a secret location to meet with him for about 20 minutes, under the condition they did not talk about sensitive issues, only family and health. "He seemed conflicted, contained, his face was tense. I could see redness in his eyes. It was obvious that without freedom to express himself he was not behaving naturally even with me," says Lu, who adds that Ai otherwise appeared to be in good health. "We could not talk about the economic charges or other stuff," she says, and tells the AP that others were present when they met, and some of them were taking notes. "We were careful, we knew that the deal could be broken at any moment, so we were careful." Lu says Ai was not handcuffed and was wearing his own clothes instead of a detention center uniform. His trademark beard had not been shaven. Chinese authorities have not specified the charges against him, except to say he was being investigated for "economic crimes," but it is generally believed Ai is actually being investigated for his criticism of the government.

The first update in nearly 30 years to U.S. guidelines for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease expands the definition to include patients with earlier stage symptoms and recognizes the condition as being on a continuum rather than just end-stage dementia. People diagnosed with Alzheimer's tend to be 65 and older, but evidence suggests that signs of the memory-robbing disease, like amyloid protein plaques and nerve cell death, may start in the brain five to 10 years before they can currently be detected. In the future, doctors hope to rely more on biomarkers, proteins and other molecules in patients' blood and tissue that are indicators of the disease. For now, clinical practice won't change much. Diagnosis will continue to rely on the judgment of clinicians, as it has since the diagnostic criteria were first published in 1984, according to experts, including those from the National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer's Association, who led the new guidelines that were published Tuesday. 5.4 million Number of Americans who have Alzheimer's disease Still, the formal recognition that people can have less severe memory problems known as mild cognitive impairment years before full-fledged Alzheimer's could enable doctors "to investigate the ideas and eventually to find the treatments that are so necessary to avoiding the epidemic of Alzheimer's disease that we see facing us," said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer for the Alzheimer's Association. Earlier diagnosis would enable patients to make plans about their lives when they are better equipped to make such decisions. And once medications become available that are proven to slow the progress of the disease, doctors hope that Alzheimer's patients can begin taking them earlier. "We felt that our best chance for disease-modifying therapy is to detect disease and intervene much earlier," said Reisa Sperling, a committee member and director of the Center for Alzheimer's Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women's Hospital. While some experts advocate taking currently available drugs in the early stages of Alzheimer's, there is no conclusive evidence that they are effective in slowing down the disease. In recent years, several clinical trials of experimental treatments that have reached late-stage testing have been disappointing. Alzheimer's is thought to affect some 5.4 million Americans. An equal number of people may have mild cognitive impairment or earlier stages of the disease, though data about these individuals are lacking. The new guidelines detail the importance of studying biomarkers, which are considered to be key to earlier diagnosis because they don't rely on subjective judgments of patients' behavior. Such indicators could also be useful in identifying subjects for research studies. Though several biomarkers related to Alzheimer's have been identified already, they aren't ready for clinical usage yet owing to a lack of standardization about how the tests are performed and what should be considered the cutoff point for a normal result, said Marilyn Albert, director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com ||||| For the first time in 27 years, the definition of Alzheimer’s disease is being recast in new medical guidelines that reflect fast-mounting evidence that it begins ravaging the brain years before the symptoms of dementia . The guidelines, to be issued Tuesday by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association, divide the disease into three stages: a phase when dementia has developed, a middle phase in which mild problems emerge but daily functions can still be performed, and the most recently discovered phase, in which no symptoms are evident but changes are brewing in the brain. “We’re redefining Alzheimer’s disease and looking at this in a different way than had ever been done,” said Creighton Phelps, director of the National Institute on Aging’s Alzheimer’s Disease Centers Program. “I think we’re going to start to identify it earlier and earlier.” The drive to diagnose Alzheimer’s before it has progressed into profound dementia is also reflected in a bill introduced in Congress this month, which would create specific Medicare cost codes for Alzheimer’s diagnosis, including steps involving discussions between the patient’s doctor and caregivers, a recognition that keeping family members well-informed can result in better planning and care. “Early diagnosis is really the key to this,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and a sponsor of the bill. “Oftentimes family members notice the symptoms in their loved ones, but it’s only years later that they get diagnosed or understand what resources are available.” The most striking addition to the guidelines concerns methods that assess brain changes involved in Alzheimer’s, including brain scans and tests of cerebral spinal fluid. Such methods measure what are called biomarkers, physiological indicators that someone is likely to develop dementia eventually, just as cholesterol and blood pressure are biomarkers of impending heart disease. For now, the guidelines specify that Alzheimer’s biomarkers — including abnormal levels of the proteins amyloid and tau, and shrinkage of certain brain areas — should not yet be put into widespread use, but used only with patients enrolled in clinical trials. That is because scientists cannot yet standardize the results of the tests, or know “what measure is truly abnormal and what measure is not,” said Marilyn Albert, director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and a leader of one working group that developed the new guidelines. As many as a third of people with amyloid plaques in their brains, for example, have not developed Alzheimer’s symptoms by the time they die. The guidelines also urge caution because there is currently no drug known to halt or significantly delay the onset of symptoms, so people told they are likely to get Alzheimer’s have no effective medication to take. “We don’t have enough information about what to tell people,” said Dr. Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia medical school, who participated in one of the working groups. “Until you can tell a clinician, ‘If you do this test you have X amount of reliability and to do that will make a difference in the life of your patient’ — until then, it remains in the lab.” But the guidelines reflect a sense in the medical community that the moment when science will have more specific knowledge about biomarkers is not that far off. They are intended to encourage more research so that drugs can be developed to attack early brain changes and to identify people who might benefit from such drugs when they become available. The goal, said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer for the Alzheimer’s Association, is “extending the range of our ability to investigate this disease and eventually find the treatment that is going to be so necessary to avoid the epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease that we see facing us over the next 40 years.” In the short term, the biggest impact is likely to be seen with people who fall into the middle phase, those with mild cognitive impairment linked to Alzheimer’s. Experts say there are at least as many people experiencing this phase as the 5.4 million people estimated to have Alzheimer’s dementia. And they expect others to now ask their doctors if they are showing signs of mild impairment, which include experiencing some difficulty or inefficiency with memory, attention or other mental faculties, while still being able to function independently. Dr. Albert said that if patients with symptoms of mild cognitive impairment wanted to “increase the certainty” of the diagnosis by getting a brain scan or spinal fluid test, they should obtain such tests in a research trial so they have a better chance of getting accurate results. The guidelines also clarify diagnosis criteria for people with dementia symptoms, distinguishing Alzheimer’s from other dementias, including vascular, fronto-temporal and Lewy body. And they note that the earliest symptom of Alzheimer’s dementia is not always memory loss, but could be mood changes or problems with language, spatial perception or reasoning. Dr. Pierre Tariot, director of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix, who was not involved in drafting the guidelines, called them “a step in the right direction” that he hoped would not be “misconstrued” as a sign that biomarker tests are further along than they are. He added, “The notion that Alzheimer’s disease is a continuum that has an extensive pre-symptomatic phase is a very important message to get out.” Dr. Phelps said it would hardly be the last word from the medical community on Alzheimer’s. “We’re not drawing a line and saying this is it,” Dr. Phelps said. “What we’re saying is this is the best of our knowledge and we’re not going to wait 27 years to revisit these again.”

– Alzheimer's disease is being redefined for the first time in 27 years, with new medical guidelines reflecting the fact that the disease is a "continuum." Growing evidence shows that Alzheimer's starts affecting the brain years before dementia symptoms present themselves, and the new guidelines reflect that by dividing the disease into three stages: end-stage dementia, a middle phase involving mild problems, and a symptomless beginning stage where the brain has already begun to change. "I think we’re going to start to identify it earlier and earlier," says one expert. The new guidelines are concerned with measuring biomarkers, or indicators that a person will likely develop dementia, in clinical trial patients, the New York Times reports. The Wall Street Journal notes that earlier diagnosis of the disease will also allow earlier intervention, and could someday allow patients to take Alzheimer's-slowing drugs earlier.

Consumers’ Guide to Highly Fluorinated Chemicals Why are highly fluorinated chemicals harmful? Highly fluorinated chemicals contain carbon-fluorine (C-F) bonds, which are some of the strongest bonds in nature. That makes them both incredibly resistant to breakdown and very useful. For instance, they can make products grease or stain-resistant, nonstick, or waterproof. However, this comes at a cost. The highly fluorinated chemicals that have been well-studied have been associated with: Watch our new video To learn more, watch our short webinar testicular and kidney cancer liver malfunction hormonal changes thyroid disruption high cholesterol obesity ulcerative colitis lower birth weight and size Other highly fluorinated chemicals are suspected of similarly causing health problems, but have not been well tested. Because they are resistant to breakdown, these chemicals can persist in our bodies for years. In the environment, they can last for millions of years. This means that the highly fluorinated chemicals released during our lifetimes will build up in the environment, and many future generations will be exposed to them, at even higher levels than we are today. Scientists from all over the world signed the Madrid Statement to share their concerns about highly fluorinated chemicals and are asking for a limit to the production and use of these chemicals. Find out more here On May 1, 2015, the Madrid Statement was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a high-impact scientific journal. Click here to read the article, here to read an accompanying editorial by distinguished scientists Linda Birnbaum and Phillipe Grandjean, here to read the reply from the chemical industry, and here for our response. How are we exposed? Highly fluorinated chemicals are used in consumer products such as cookware, clothing, outdoor apparel, carpeting, and food packaging to provide nonstick, oil- and water resistant properties. They are also used in some kinds of cosmetics. We are exposed to them by direct contact with these products, but also through the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. They have been detected at high levels in humans and wildlife all over the globe. What can you do? Ask yourself, “Do I really need products that are stain-resistant, nonstick, or waterproof?” Knowing the consequences, you might choose to give up some conveniences or product performance. Steps you can take: Avoid products that are oil repellant or stain resistant. Only purchase waterproof gear when you really need it. Avoid cosmetics with PTFE or any word containing “perfluor” or “polyfluor” on their ingredients list. Replace your Teflon nonstick cookware with cast iron, glass, or ceramic. Avoid microwave popcorn and greasy foods wrapped in paper. Tell retailers and manufacturers you want products without fluorinated chemicals. Support companies committed to phasing out highly fluorinated chemicals, such as the apparel brands that have joined Greenpeace’s Detox campaign, and the fast food chains that removed them from food packaging as a result of EWG’s action. All products from these apparel brands will be free of highly fluorinated chemicals after those dates. You can drive change for healthy products! Resources In the Media ||||| The dust in our homes and the air we breathe harbor a complex stew of chemicals. Some, like oxygen, sustain life. Others are pollution stemming from things like car exhaust or from tiny scraps of household products. A pair of new studies adds a level of much-needed detail about exactly how widespread such toxic exposures can be. A new analysis, published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology, reaffirmed that consumer product chemicals including phthalates, phenols and flame retardants are ubiquitous components of household dust. These substances are present at such high levels that researchers say it is likely we are inhaling and accidentally eating small amounts of these chemicals every day, although we don't yet know whether this level of exposure is enough to do harm. Such exposures occur after the chemicals flake off of products including building materials, electrical cords or perfume, says senior author Ami Zota, a professor of environmental and occupational health at The George Washington University. To better understand the scale of such exposures she and her colleagues collected the findings of 26 peer-reviewed studies and one unpublished data set on indoor dust samples from 14 states. The samples came from urban, suburban and rural settings, and included houses as well as other locations like schools and workplaces. The 10 most common chemicals in the study were found in over 90 percent of samples, which suggests they come from items present in most people's households and communities. The most abundant chemical in the analysis was di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), a phthalate that is used in flexible plastics as well as in cosmetics and personal care products. In mice and rats, ingesting high doses of DEHP interferes with the development of the male reproductive system and is linked to liver cancer. When the investigators ranked the chemicals according to how much preschool-aged children were likely to ingest, the flame retardant tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP) came out on top. TCEP has been linked to cancer and brain damage in mice, but like many of these household chemicals we don't know whether it might be dangerous to humans. An important limitation of the study is that it only looked at the types and amounts of chemicals present in dust—not the health of people who spent time in places where the dust was collected. For many of the chemicals, we don't yet know what amount should be considered hazardous for long-term exposure, Zota says. And we don't know whether some of the chemicals might be more harmful in combination than they are individually. Tracey Woodruff, who was not involved with the new analysis, calls the work a “great contribution” to the study of chemicals in household dust. She's the director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco, and she was previously a senior scientist and policy analyst at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The dust is out there. We know the chemicals are in the dust,” she says. “Now we have a better picture of what that looks like and also what we’re going to be ingesting, which is really important for thinking about risks.” In the Air A second study raises new questions about air exposures we might encounter outside the home. Work published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 6 suggests magnetite nanoparticles, typically found in the air, may travel farther than previously believed throughout the human body and ultimately lodge in human brain tissue. Such particles from air pollution have long been linked to respiratory disease, Woodruff says, but the link to brain health is “newly being appreciated.” The researchers examined 37 samples of brain tissue from people who had lived in Manchester, England, and in Mexico City. They used a sensitive magnet to confirm that magnetic particles were present in the brains and then looked for the particles under a transmission electron microscope. Although our bodies produce a small amount of magnetite—a mineral made of iron and oxygen—specific characteristics of the magnetite particles researchers found in the brain samples suggest these substances did not come from the body. Typically, such particles appear crystal-shaped under an electron microscopic. Yet Barbara Maher, who studies magnetic minerals that occur in the environment at Lancaster University, and her team found that most of the samples from the brain were actually smooth and round. That shape, along with other clues like particle size and the presence of other metals, suggests they were produced at high temperatures—likely in the engines of vehicles. “In essence they are molten droplets,” Maher says. ”If they cool quickly enough, they keep that spherical shape.” The particles are small enough that they can enter the brain through the olfactory nerve via the nose. Nobody has yet proved that magnetite contributes to Alzheimer's or any other disease—magnetite has been detected previously in the brains of some Alzheimer’s patients—but the mineral is known to create free radicals that can damage cells. As a result, Maher believes it is “highly improbable” that the particles' presence in the brain is harmless. “The levels of magnetite they found in the brain are much higher than have been found in other studies,” says Jon Dobson, who studies magnetic nanoparticles in biomedicine at the University of Florida and was not involved in the study. There is a chance the high levels were from accidental contamination in the lab, in spite of the researchers' careful steps to avoid it, he says. But if the high levels are simply due to the patients being exposed to high levels of pollution, future studies involving a control group from less polluted areas could confirm the findings. Removing nanoparticles and consumer product chemicals from our environment is a big job that would require major policy changes, for example banning the most toxic chemical from products. In the meantime, though, both Zota and Woodruff note that washing your hands before you eat can significantly reduce your accidental intake of the chemicals found in dust. They also recommend vacuuming with a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, which is designed to remove very fine particles. Maher points out that walking farther away from busy roads may also help to reduce how much exhaust you breathe in. Even walking on the downhill side of the road, she says, rather than the uphill side where drivers burn more fuel as they accelerate, may make a difference. “Any distance that you can put between you and the source of the particles is a good thing.” ||||| TIME Health For more, visit TIME Health Ten chemicals suspected or known to harm human health are present in more than 90% of household dust samples, according to a new study. The research, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, adds to a growing body of evidence showing the dangers posed by exposure to a slew of chemicals people in developed countries encounter on a day-to-day basis. The chemicals come from a variety of household goods that includes toys, cosmetics, furniture, cookware and cleaning products. A class of chemicals known as phthalates — a group that includes DEP, DEHP, DNBP and DIBP — are present in the highest concentrations, according to the research. That class of chemicals is also thought to be among the most harmful. Exposure to phthalates may interrupt the endocrine system, leading to a decrease in IQ and respiratory problems, among other problems, health researchers say. Read More: You Asked: Can My Couch Give Me Cancer? Highly fluorinated chemicals (HFCs), another class of chemicals common in household dust, has been linked to kidney and testicular cancer. The compound is found in everything from cell phones to pizza boxes, according to the study. Researchers behind the study, which evaluated datasets from more than 25 prior studies, called for manufacturers to replace the chemicals in their products with safe alternatives, but, voluntary participation aside, the path to force companies to replace chemicals remains difficult. For decades, chemicals in this country have been eligible for use without tests to confirm their safety. An overhaul to the Toxic Substances Control Act passed earlier this year will require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to sign off on new chemicals before they enter the open market, but still thousands of chemicals on the market today remain untested. The Environmental Working Group, an environmental nonprofit, estimates that 1,000 of those chemicals warrant further scrutiny, but the EPA does not have the staff — or the time — to invest in such an effort. Instead, the EPA has selected a much smaller list of priority chemicals to evaluate first. The research comes as scientists increasingly understand that exposure even to very low levels of these toxic substances can damage human health. And, while exposure on any given day may be small, each exposure adds up. ||||| A new analysis of more than two dozen studies found toxic chemicals in 90 percent of household dust samples taken from 14 states. Household dust does more than collect in corners and on bookshelves full of novels you haven’t gotten around to reading. A new study shows it can expose people to a wide range of potentially toxic chemicals. In what the authors are calling the first study of its kind – a meta-analysis of more than two dozen previous studies on chemicals in dust – they report that 90 percent of dust samples taken from houses in 14 states contain harmful chemicals, including one that’s known to cause cancer. “Most studies only measure a few chemicals so it makes it hard to understand typical exposures in homes and work places,” said the study’s lead author Ami Zota, an assistant professor of environment and occupational health at Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. The researchers – who also came from Harvard University, the University of California-San Francisco, Silent Spring Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council – analyzed data from 26 peer-reviewed papers and one unpublished set of data. The collected data included 45 chemicals from five chemical classes. “We wanted to be able to draw more solid conclusions about concentrations of indoor chemicals in the U.S. by pooling data across all of these studies,” Zota explained. The chemicals studied come from all sorts of common consumer goods, including furniture, personal hygiene products, flooring, baby products, cleaning supplies, fast food and food packaging. Zota said the chemicals are released into the air and then seep into dust that settles on furniture and floors. People can inhale or ingest small particles of dust or even absorb them through the skin. To analyze the previous studies, the scientists parsed the information from three different angles: the level of chemical concentration in dust, how much might be getting into our bodies, and how hazardous the chemicals are. “No matter which way we looked at it, there were some chemicals that stood out,” co-author Veena Singla, a staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told CBS News. The non-profit group helped to fund the study. Ten harmful chemicals were found in 90 percent of the dust samples tested. Phthalates, used in toys and vinyl flooring, among other products, occurred in the highest concentrations. They were followed by phenols, often used in cleaning products. Then came flame retardants, fragrances and perflouroalkyl substances, which are used in carpets, textiles, and leather to make them water-, oil- and stain-repellent and to create grease-proof and waterproof coatings for products such as paper plates and food packaging. “Phthalates are linked to multiple health hazards, including reproductive,” Signla said. “And some flame retardants are linked to cancer.” The authors of the study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, were especially concerned about exposure to children, especially very young children who crawl around on the floor and put their hands in their mouths. Chemicals of top concern: TCEP - A flame retardant added to couches, baby products, electronics and other products DEP, DEHP, BBzP and DnBP – These chemicals, different varieties of phthalates, are found in an array of drugstore items like those listed above, as well as some highly processed foods and fast food. Phthalates are also linked to IQ and respiratory problems in children. PFOA and PFOS - These chemicals​ are found in cellphones, pizza boxes and many non-stick, waterproof and stain-resistant products. They’ve been linked to developmental problems​ and issues with the immune, digestive, and endocrine systems. These may be worrisome when they accumulate in household dust, the researchers say. “Indoor dust is a reservoir for commercial consumer product chemicals and many of these chemicals have known and suspected health effects,” Zota said. “This is the first study where we can get a more comprehensive picture of chemical contamination in the home,” Singla added. “Previous studies were like looking at the individual dots in an Impressionist painting. Putting this data altogether, we could see what the bigger picture is and it’s really kind of scary.” The authors said small amounts can add up over time and potentially impact health. “On the one hand, I wasn’t that surprised, and on the other hand I was surprised to see just how bad it was. I definitely expected to see a number of toxic chemicals when we put the data together, but just the extent of it did surprise me,” Singla said. The study doesn’t answer all of the researchers’ questions, however. There are still big gaps in knowledge about many chemicals. “We know so little about fragrance chemicals. They’re a prime example of the problem of not having information on what’s in our products because companies claim trade secrets,” Singla said. Safer alternatives need to be developed, said Zota. “One of our objectives with this – because there are so many consumer product chemicals being used currently in commerce with incomplete health and safety information – was to conduct this analysis with the objective of helping researchers as well as decision-makers to set priorities. Which chemicals to prioritize, in terms of conducting future health assessments. As well as which chemicals to actively develop safer alternatives for,” Zota said. Individuals can take a number of steps to improve safety, Singla said. In your own home, day-to-day, washing your hands​​ with plain soap and water can cut down on the amount of dust you come into contact with. Vacuuming with a HEPA-filter, wet mopping and dusting with a damp cloth can reduce exposure to dust, as well. In the longer term, she said, “There are regulatory and legislative solutions. It does make a difference when people tell their government agencies that this matters to them and they’re concerned.” Singla also noted that the Natural Resources Defense Council has a petition for the FDA to ban phthalates from food, which supporters can sign online. “We think our homes are safe havens, but what we found is the surprising reality that our homes are being polluted by the products we have every day. Our choices about what we buy and the policies we support can make a real difference,” Singla said. ||||| Since then, many advocates for human health have demanded overhaul of the patently “toothless” law. The Toxic Substances Control Act has simply proven ineffective at banning elements linked to health problems, and many believe its premarket safety testing standards are also inadequate. (Not to mention that the law requires no safety testing for the roughly 60,000 “grandfathered” substances that were already in use as of its passage in 1972.) So it is of great historical significance that after 40 years, in a Congress so divided, the U.S. House of Representative voted overwhelmingly (403 to 12) this week to pass the first ever update to the law. Even Republicans who have repeatedly voted to downsize the EPA, have in this case supported the measure to expand its power. The Senate is expected to pass the bill in coming weeks, after which President Obama is expected to sign. The product of years of negotiation, the bill was introduced in 2013 by Senators Frank Lautenberg and David Vitter. It had momentum in the moment, but several days later, Lautenberg died. The bill is named in his honor, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. “This is an issue that many people assumed was never going to see progress because it had been so politicized, and industry and environmentalists were so diametrically opposed on how it should be handled,” said Anne Kolton, vice president of communications for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a trade group that advocates for industrial chemical manufacturers and suppliers. “It's something that, through the art of compromise, we've settled on with the environmental community and the public health community.” But those communities seem less than settled. Philip Landrigan, dean for global health in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has for years been concerned about the cumulative effects of environmental exposures that, he believes, have “subtle but far-reaching impacts on brain development that show up as lifelong impairments in cognition, ability to focus, and ability to exert executive control over impulsive, risk-taking behaviors.” Among his chief concerns are brominated flame retardants used in furniture, organophosphate pesticides, phthalates used in some toys, perfluorinated compounds, which he'd like to see restricted to “essential uses” (where there is no substitute). Nanotechnology, too, is a concern. “Investment has exploded, but the amount of information on hazards is minute,” said Landrigan. “It may turn out that there isn’t much hazard, but I wouldn't be so sanguine.” He’s unsure if the new bill will give enough power to remove substances once they prove harmful. “This could very well fix the problem, but we won't know until the first legal judgment,” said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, a self-described non-partisan organization "dedicated to protecting human health and the environment." ||||| Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and harder to break. They are often called plasticizers. Some phthalates are used as solvents (dissolving agents) for other materials. They are used in hundreds of products, such as vinyl flooring, adhesives, detergents, lubricating oils, automotive plastics, plastic clothes (raincoats), and personal-care products (soaps, shampoos, hair sprays, and nail polishes). Phthalates are used widely in polyvinyl chloride plastics, which are used to make products such as plastic packaging film and sheets, garden hoses, inflatable toys, blood-storage containers, medical tubing, and some children’s toys. How People Are Exposed to Phthalates People are exposed to phthalates by eating and drinking foods that have been in contact with containers and products containing phthalates. To a lesser extent exposure can occur from breathing in air that contains phthalate vapors or dust contaminated with phthalate particles. Young children may have a greater risk of being exposed to phthalate particles in dust than adults because of their hand-to-mouth behaviors. Once phthalates enter a person’s body, they are converted into breakdown products (metabolites) that pass out quickly in urine. How Phthalates Affect People’s Health Human health effects from exposure to low levels of phthalates are unknown. Some types of phthalates have affected the reproductive system of laboratory animals. More research is needed to assess the human health effects of exposure to phthalates. Levels of Phthalate Metabolites in the U.S. Population In the Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (Fourth Report), CDC scientists measured 13 phthalate metabolites in the urine of 2,636 or more participants aged six years and older who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) during 2003–2004. For several phthalate metabolites, results from the prior survey periods of 1999–2000 and 2001–2002 are also included in the Fourth Report. By measuring phthalate metabolites in urine, scientists can estimate the amount of phthalates that have entered people’s bodies. CDC researchers found measurable levels of many phthalate metabolites in the general population. This finding indicates that phthalate exposure is widespread in the U.S. population. Research has found that adult women have higher levels of urinary metabolites than men for those phthalates that are used in soaps, body washes, shampoos, cosmetics, and similar personal care products. Finding a detectable amount of phthalate metabolites in urine does not imply that the levels of one or more will cause an adverse health effect. Biomonitoring studies on levels of phthalate metabolites provide physicians and public health officials with reference values so that they can determine whether people have been exposed to higher levels of these chemicals than are found in the general population. Biomonitoring data can also help scientists plan and conduct research on exposure and health effects. Additional Resources Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Public Health Statement for Di-n-butyl Phthalate https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=857&tid=167 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=857&tid=167 Public Health Statement for Di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=376&tid=65 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=376&tid=65 Public Health Statement for Diethyl Phthalate https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=601&tid=112 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=601&tid=112 Public Health Statement for Di-n-octylphthalate (DNOP) https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=971&tid=204 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=971&tid=204 ToxFAQs for Di-n-butyl Phthalate https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=858&tid=167 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=858&tid=167 ToxFAQs for Di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=377&tid=65 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=377&tid=65 ToxFAQs for Diethyl Phthalate https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=602&tid=112 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=602&tid=112 ToxFAQs for Di-n-octylphthalate (DNOP) https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=972&tid=204 Environmental Protection Agency Consumer Fact Sheet on Di (2- ethyhexyl) Phthalate https://www.epa.gov/safewater/pdfs/factsheets/soc/phthalat.pdf https://www.epa.gov/safewater/pdfs/factsheets/soc/phthalat.pdf Dibutyl phthalate https://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0038.htm https://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0038.htm Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) https://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0014.htm Food and Drug Administration Phthalates and Cosmetic Products https://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/ProductandIngredientSafety/SelectedCosmeticIngredients/ucm128250.htm National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health ||||| (CNN) When was the last time you dusted your house? Your answer could reveal a lot about your home habits, but the findings of a new study might have everyone upping their game -- and potentially keeping wet wipes and hand sanitizer nearby at all times. Researchers at George Washington University say 45 toxic chemicals are found commonly in your house dust, with 10 of them lurking in 90% of homes across the country. "We wanted to identify which chemicals were present at the highest exposure in homes," said Dr. Ami Zota , an assistant professor of environmental occupational health who led the study. "Some chemicals were in virtually every dust sample." To reveal which potential toxins we're being exposed to in the comfort of our own homes, Zota's team analyzed all studies that have sampled indoor environments in the United States since 2000. They looked for the presence of potentially toxic chemicals and divided them into five classes of chemicals, two of which were found to be more common than the rest: phthalates and flame retardants. "Many of the top 10 fall into these two categories," Zota said. But when factoring in the wide range of chemicals we're exposed to, small amounts can add up, she stressed. Lurking in the dust The chemicals found in dust samples came from a range of things typically found inside your home, including vinyl products -- such as flooring -- cosmetics, baby products, furniture and nail polish. To understand how these chemicals are entering your home, it helps to understand where they are used. Phthalates make plastic softer and more flexible, so they tend to be found in vinyl (PVC) materials such as flooring, blinds and food packaging. Flame retardants help products meet flammability standards that are built into building codes, insurance requirements and fire regulations. The other three classes of chemicals found in dust samples included environmental phenols, usually used as preservatives in personal care products like shampoo; fluorinated chemicals, used as stain- and water-repellent treatments for upholstery, carpets and clothes and in nonstick pans; and fragrances. Only one chemical used in fragrances had been the topic of a study, meaning many more chemicals are likely to be present in dust with little insight into them, according to the researchers. "We know very little about the health hazard of these fragrances," said Zota. But the researchers note that it is about more than exposure. For example, phthalates were detected in the highest concentrations in the study, but the chemicals found in flame retardants had the "highest estimated intake," meaning they are more likely to enter the body. "You can breathe it in and can absorb into your skin," Zota said. "These chemicals are not bound to the products, so they can migrate out." A risk to child development One of the biggest concerns underlying the presence of these chemicals hiding in house dust is the fact that children are most likely to inhale or ingest them as they crawl around, touching things and inevitably placing their hands in their mouths multiple times a day. "Environmental insults during early development can have long-lasting adverse health effects that persist across the lifespan," Zota said. Phthalate exposure in children "can increase risk of respiratory, behavioral and neurodevelopmental problems." Phthalates are also known to disrupt hormones inside the body, meaning they could cause reproductive problems. "We know from lead that exposures are not acceptable," said Dr. Asa Bradman, associate director for exposure assessment at the Center for Environmental Research and Child's Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new study. "There's a strong argument to reduce exposure to children whose brains are changing and bodies are developing." As for the study findings, Bradman noted that the reason phthalates were found to be most common in house dust was probably because most studies have been done on this class of chemicals. "By compiling information in this way, there's always the possibility of exposures that haven't been studied yet," Bradman said. Preventing exposure Some advice to prevent exposure, other than regularly dusting your home, is to veer away from the traditional feather duster and use a powerful vacuum with a HEPA filter to ensure that all dust particles are sucked up. Regular hand-washing -- which has a multitude of benefits -- will also reduce exposure to flame retardants found on the surfaces of furniture. The Silent Spring Institute has created an app to help people understand more about their environmental exposures, aptly named Detox Me Join the conversation See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter. But both Zota and Bradman stress that there needs to be more research into the range of chemicals people are exposed to at home and changes at the policy level to reduce the number of chemicals entering people's households, through bans, better regulation and improved underlying chemistry during production. "There may be chemicals out there that we don't know about, that we should know about," said Bradman, whose own research looks into exposure risks, particularly among children. His studies have found phthalates to be common in child care practices in the United States. "But we can also reformulate materials so that chemicals don't just go into our bodies," he added. "There may be ways to have better adhesion [of flame retardants to furnishings] so they don't get into the environment." The issue is also not specific to the United States. "These consumer product chemicals are widely used throughout the globe and have been detected in homes in the UK and other European countries," Zota said, adding, "since the European Union has different chemical regulations than the US, the average levels for some of the chemicals may be different than those we found for US homes."

– We're surrounded by toxic chemicals, and even holing up in our meticulously kept homes may not save us, Time reports. Ten chemicals that may be hazardous to our health were found in over 90% of indoor dust samples taken for a study published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal. And these chemicals are found in everyday items, including ones you may suspect (e.g., cleaning products, cellphones) and ones that may surprise you (toys, pizza boxes). Two of the most common toxins are phthalates—chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and thought to be linked to harmful effects on the endocrine system, which can lower IQ and lead to breathing troubles—and highly fluorinated chemicals, or HFCs, used to make items nonstick or waterproof but which are also tied to testicular and kidney cancer, thyroid issues, and liver malfunction, among other problems. In what the study's authors say is the first mega-study of its kind, they scrutinized data from 26 past studies and one unpublished one, with dust containing 45 chemicals collected from homes, schools, and workplaces in 14 states, per Scientific American. The Toxic Substances Control Act was updated earlier this year, per the Atlantic, but the law only requires new chemicals get a green light from the EPA—leaving about 1,000 examination-worthy chemicals already on the market that the agency doesn't have the resources to study. "We think our homes are safe havens, but … the surprising reality [is] that our homes are being polluted by the products we have every day," co-author Veena Singla tells CBS News. How you can decrease your risk, the authors say, per CNN: Wash your hands regularly and use a strong vacuum with a HEPA filter. (Arkansas prisoners fear they were exposed to toxic dust.)

Play Facebook Twitter Embed Angel Gonzalez Walks Free, Thanks his Supporters 0:49 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog An Illinois man exonerated of an abduction and rape conviction that kept him locked up for 20 years was a free man Tuesday night after he was cleared of a separate property damage charge that had kept him locked up. Angel Gonzalez, 41, had pleaded guilty to a property destruction charge stemming from when he destroyed the sink in his cell while he was in solitary confinement. That added more time to the sentence he was serving for the rape and abduction conviction that was thrown out Monday. Gonzalez was released Tuesday night after the property charge was dismissed, Vanessa Potkin, a senior attorney with the Innocence Project, told NBC News. Potkin said Gonzalez told her the first thing he wanted to do was "hug my mother and thank her for being there." "It was very hard when you don't understand what is going on. She always believed in me," Potkin quoted Gonzalez as saying as he drove to his family's home. Gonzalez's younger brother Saul said the wrongful conviction that took Gonzalez away hit him very hard because he the two often did things together. "The family is so excited. Everyone is so excited. Everything is moving so fast. We haven't had time to think about this," Saul, 34, said in a telephone interview. He said his mother, Maria, quickly started handing out tasks to everyone. "Go pick up this and go pick up fried chicken and fix this," Saul said, describing her orders. Gonzalez also has two sisters, and Saul said he would be introducing his children, ages 11 and 5, to their uncle for the first time. "All the kids are decorating with balloons," said Saul, who visited his brother one to three times a month during his time in prison when he was old enough to do so. Gonzalez was jailed for a 1994 rape and abduction of a woman who had identified him as her attacker. But DNA testing returned profiles belonging to two other men and did not connect Gonzalez to the crime. The Innocence Project found other problems with the investigation and with Gonzalez's conviction, which forced a re-examination of his case and brought about the new DNA testing of evidence from the crime scene. In addition, Immigration and Customs Enforcement canceled what is known as a detainer, which would have required that he be turned over to ICE custody after he finished serving his sentence. The detainer was placed on Gonzalez on Aug. 20, 1995. "Since Mr. Gonzalez has been exonerated on all charges, ICE is exercising prosecutorial discretion and has canceled his detaineer," said Gail Montenegro, an ICE spokeswoman. Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook and Twitter The Gonzalezes are originally from Mexico. An ICE spokeswoman referred questions about Angel Gonzalez's future immigration status to Citizenship and Immigration Services, which was considering the question late Tuesday. Although wrongly imprisoned, Gonzalez used his time in prison to educate himself and learn skills. He is an artist and mentored other younger prisoners and helped those who spoke Spanish. "He was always studying in school and teaching other inmates," Saul said. Saul remembered that about five years before Gonzalez's arrest, his brother also was teaching him. His fondest memory has been of the two swimming in Mexico and riding a bike, he said. "He showed me how to swim and he taught me how to ride a bike," Saul said. But Saul said his brother is now ready to learn from him. "I told him I drive a truck. He said, 'You are going to show me now.'" Video interview by Telemundo correspondent Janet Rodríguez and photographer Cesar González ||||| Lake County prosecutors plan to exonerate a man who has spent 20 years in prison for rape and abduction, a move that would lengthen the list of the county's criminal convictions wiped away by DNA evidence. State's Attorney Mike Nerheim said he will go to court Monday afternoon and ask a judge to throw out the conviction of Angel Gonzalez, who has been serving a 55-year sentence for a 1994 rape and abduction in Waukegan. The crime involved two suspects, and DNA test results that arrived late last week showed the presence of bodily fluids from two men, both of whom remain unidentified, Nerheim said. The prosecutor said it was "very clear" that the evidence indicates that Gonzalez, now 41, is innocent and contradicts the confession he gave and the victim's identification of him as one of her rapists. Gonzalez, who is incarcerated at Dixon Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois, was speechless at first when he learned last week that prosecutors planned to clear him, said Vanessa Potkin, an attorney from the Innocence Project in New York who has represented him with the help of the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Barry Scheck, co-founder and co-director of the New York group, said Gonzalez voiced sympathy for the victim and said he hoped that the perpetrators would be caught. Gonzalez has maintained his innocence for decades, Potkin said. "He's obviously anxious and excited to see his family again," she said. If Monday's court hearing proceeds as planned, Gonzalez's conviction would be the fifth major felony case to collapse in the last five years after DNA indicated Lake County authorities had put an innocent man behind bars. Gonzalez, who lived in Waukegan, was tried during the 22-year tenure of State's Attorney Michael Waller, who retired in 2012 following revelations that prosecutors had disregarded forensic evidence that contradicted their conclusions and worked to prevent men from walking free even after DNA had indicated their innocence. It is not clear whether Gonzalez will be freed after his scheduled appearance in Lake County court. He is a Mexican national who had once obtained a visa, but that expired after he was arrested, Potkin said. Attorneys have been working to try to make sure Gonzalez can remain in the country if he's freed, Potkin said. Deporting him upon his release would be "a huge travesty of justice," she said, since he planned to seek citizenship before he was imprisoned. "It's only the wrongful conviction that makes his status in the country illegal at this point," Potkin said. Gonzalez also was convicted in the late 1990s of criminal damage to state property and has not served his three-year sentence for that crime, according to prison records. That charge stemmed from an accusation that he destroyed a sink while in solitary confinement in prison, Potkin said. Nerheim said Friday afternoon he hoped Livingston County prosecutors would agree to have that conviction wiped away. The rape victim, Nerheim said, was distraught to learn of prosecutors' plan to clear Gonzalez. "She is completely devastated about this," Nerheim said. On the night of July 10, 1994, the victim, then 35, heard the door buzzer at her home in Waukegan, according to court records and Tribune archives. She opened the door to two men and asked what they wanted. One of the men said, "You," and they dragged her to a sedan and drove away, according to court records. She was driven to another location, pulled from the car and raped in some bushes by Gonzalez, she testified at trial. She ran and hid, but the second man quickly found her and raped her, according to a transcript. After the attack, court records show, she walked to a convenience store and called police. Early the next morning, police stopped a vehicle matching the description of the car the woman gave and detained the driver, Gonzalez, court records show. An officer testified that Gonzalez matched the description the woman had given of one of her attackers. The victim was summoned to the scene of the traffic stop, where she identified Gonzalez as her attacker as he was illuminated in the dark by headlights, according to court records. "He was wearing the same clothes, everything. I recognized him immediately," the victim testified. At trial, prosecutors presented a videotaped statement from Gonzalez in which he acknowledged participating in the assault but said he didn't ejaculate, according to court records. DNA tests at the time on semen taken from the victim and her clothing were inconclusive. Despite his confession, Gonzalez presented an alibi at trial, saying he'd been with his girlfriend at the time of the attack, court records show. Gonzalez, who had no felony record at the time, was found guilty of sexual assault and kidnapping, court records show. He continued to maintain his innocence, and a judge sentenced him to 55 years in prison, according to court records. In the early 2000s, tests determined that some of the forensic material from the victim matched an unidentified man other than Gonzalez, according to court records. But judges ruled that the new DNA was not conclusive because Gonzalez said he did not ejaculate and could still could have been one of the two men who participated in the crime. More recent DNA testing revealed distinct genetic profiles of two men, neither of whom is Gonzalez, Nerheim said. The identity of the two men is unknown. Scheck and Potkin said the evidence against Gonzalez was never solid. Witnesses' identifications have been proven fallible, and some experts regard the type of "show-up" procedure by which the victim identified Gonzalez as unreliable. The lawyers said there were discrepancies between the description the victim gave police and Gonzalez's appearance. Gonzalez confessed after some 13 hours in custody, Potkin said, and court records indicate there were also discrepancies between the confession and the victim's account of the attack. Asked about her client's mindset, Potkin said Gonzalez "has kept his humanity and his hope and is so thankful." Gonzalez wrote to the Innocence Project for years before the group took his case in 2012, Potkin said. Nerheim agreed to new testing in 2013, according to court records, and now plans to reopen the case. Nerheim took office promising reform, and he's faced criticism for not clearing other people who claim innocence. Scheck praised the prosecutor for his plan to act promptly on the DNA. "Lake County, unfortunately, was infamous for its resistance to ... DNA evidence," Scheck said. "This is exactly the opposite." Tribune reporter Lisa Black contributed. dhinkel@tribpub.com ||||| A Waukegan man walked out of prison Tuesday evening, nearly 20 years after he was convicted of a rape and abduction that authorities now say he did not commit. Angel Gonzalez, who spent about half of his life incarcerated for the Lake County conviction, hugged his attorneys at the Dixon Correctional Center gatehouse before emerging a free man. "I'm free," he said. "Thank God." Lake County authorities cleared Gonzalez of the rape conviction on Monday after determining that new DNA testing of evidence eliminated him as the one of the two men who committed the crime. But he was not freed right away because he still had a property damage conviction on his record, stemming from an incident in which he broke a sink while in solitary confinement in prison, his lawyers said. They went to court earlier Tuesday in downstate Livingston County, where a judge agreed to void that charge, paving the way for his release hours later. At about 7 p.m., Gonzalez, wearing a new dark gray track suit, walked out into an early evening fog that shrouded the prison. After raising his arms with his lawyers and staff from the Innocence Project in New York, he appeared jovial as he spoke with the assembled media. The 41-year-old Gonzalez thanked his family, his supporters, his lawyers and the criminal authorities who worked for his release. Gonzalez said he had no reason to be angry: "The past is the past." Angel Gonzalez Jr., of Waukegan, walked out of prison March 10, 2015, nearly 20 years after he was convicted of a rape and abduction that authorities now say he did not commit. Now, he looks forward to learning and continuing with his hobby of painting. "To be here today is making me feel alive again," he said. Before leaving for the long-awaited trip home to Waukegan, he said that years in prison can make it feel like "no one believes in you." One of his attorneys, Lauren Kaeseberg, from the Illinois Innocence Project, said: "He never gave up, and we've always believed in him." Gonzalez's lawyers had argued that the property damage conviction, for which he received a three-year sentence, to be served after he completed his 55-year term for the rape, should also be wiped away. They noted that the property crime occurred when he was in prison for a wrongful conviction, and also that Gonzalez, who speaks limited English, pleaded guilty to damaging the sink without the assistance of an interpreter. "Right now, everybody is saying, finally, there is justice for him," said Angel's younger brother, Saul Gonzalez, 34. "Finally, this is over." Angel Gonzalez, who was exonerated Monday of a 1994 rape and abduction in Waukegan, was cleared of property damage charges and will be freed from prison. His family shares their reaction to the events. (Stacey Wescott, Chicago Tribune) Angel Gonzalez, who was exonerated Monday of a 1994 rape and abduction in Waukegan, was cleared of property damage charges and will be freed from prison. His family shares their reaction to the events. (Stacey Wescott, Chicago Tribune) SEE MORE VIDEOS The family was planning a party with his favorite foods, like chile relleno and fish, to make up for all the family events that Angel missed, said his mother, Maria Gonzalez, 67, speaking in Spanish. Those included siblings' weddings and the births of five nieces and nephews, the family said. The children, the eldest of whom is 11, asked about their missing uncle at every family event. On Monday, a Lake County judge vacated Gonzalez's conviction for the abduction and rape of a woman in Waukegan in July 1994. State's Attorney Mike Nerheim agreed to ask for Gonzalez's freedom after recent DNA tests showed that bodily fluids collected as evidence had come from two men, neither of whom was Gonzalez. Nerheim, who took office long after Gonzalez was convicted, said it was clear that this indicated he wasn't guilty and that two other men, who have yet to be identified, committed the crime. Nerheim apologized for the case outside court, striking a markedly different tone than his predecessor, Michael Waller, who generally remained unapologetic in public as DNA repeatedly indicated he had sent innocent men to prison. Five rape or murder cases have collapsed in Lake County since 2010; DNA cleared all the men, but they spent a combined 80 years behind bars. Prosecutors under Waller, who held the office for 22 years, were responsible for Gonzalez's prosecution and three of the other convictions. In several cases, the prosecutor's office under Waller fought for years to prevent inmates from going free after DNA had suggested their innocence, and his office attracted unflattering national attention as prosecutors proposed alternate theories of the crimes that many found implausible. Nerheim took office promising reform after Waller retired in 2012. Gonzalez's relatives said they never doubted his innocence, Saul Gonzalez said, but they wondered if they would see him vindicated after spending thousands of dollars over the years for his defense. Their efforts seemed to be wasted until the Innocence Project took over, he said. "We were thinking when he went to jail it was a mistake and he'd get out," Gonzalez said Tuesday afternoon, as his mother proudly displayed early family photos. "But everything went wrong." Saul Gonzalez worried most of all that his parents wouldn't live to see the day Angel was released. Their father, Angel Gonzalez Sr., 68, had a stroke last year after spending years working in a factory. "I wanted them to see him out (of prison) before they passed away," Saul Gonzalez said. He answered phone calls all day Monday and Tuesday, as family and friends from California and Texas reacted with excitement after hearing that the charges were dropped. His sister went shopping for clothes for Angel on Monday, he said. "He's kind of scared right now," said Saul Gonzalez, who on Sunday reassured his brother that his family will help him readjust to life outside prison. "He's seen many bad things. He says he's lucky he's not crazy. He says thank God for everything. He says he's lucky to be alive." While in prison, Angel obtained his high school diploma and learned skills in electronics, mechanics, window-washing, construction and auto mechanics, his brother said. He also painted pictures, including a Mother's Day card with an iris set between two hearts. "The hardest part is over," Saul Gonzalez said. Following Angel Gonzalez's exoneration in Lake County, another issue threatened his prospects for immediate release: his immigration status. His lawyers said he had a visa in 1994 but that it expired after Gonzalez, a Mexican national, was arrested. One of his lawyers, Vanessa Potkin, from the Innocence Project in New York, said she was informed Tuesday that an immigration hold on Gonzalez had been lifted, allowing him to remain in the country as he seeks citizenship. dhinkel@tribpub.com lblack@tribpub.com

– A man wrongly convicted of rape is finally free after spending nearly half his life in prison. After hugging his lawyers from the Innocence Project, Illinois' Angel Gonzalez left Dixon Correctional Center yesterday with his arms raised, saying simply, "the past is the past." A day earlier, a judge threw out Gonzalez's conviction for the abduction and rape of a woman in 1994 at the request of state attorney Mike Nerheim. Though NBC News reports the victim identified Gonzalez, new DNA tests show bodily fluids related to the crime came not from Gonzalez but from two still-unidentified men, the Chicago Tribune reports. Yesterday, a judge waived Gonzalez's conviction and three-year sentence for property damage—the 41-year-old broke a sink while in solitary confinement, his lawyers say—allowing for his release. Nerheim apologized outside court, though it was prosecutors under his predecessor, Michael Waller, who secured Gonzalez's wrongful conviction, as well as three others that have since been overturned. Nerheim told the Chicago Tribune that the victim was "devastated" to learn Gonzalez would be cleared. The then-35-year-old victim was taken from her Waukegan home, put in a sedan, and driven to a location where she was raped by two men. Gonzalez was stopped the next day while behind the wheel of a car similar to the one she had described. In 1994, Gonzalez, who speaks little English, gave a statement to police admitting to taking part in the assault but said he didn't ejaculate; he has since maintained his innocence, and testified he was with his girlfriend at the time. A Mexican national, Gonzalez's visa expired after his arrest, but he's gotten the OK to stay in the US while he pursues citizenship, one of his lawyers says.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (AP) — Court records say a Colorado inmate, mistakenly released from jail, enjoyed less than two hours of freedom before his wife realized the error and made him turn himself in. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports James Rynerson was in custody late last month at the Mesa County Jail on a $2,000 cash bond while awaiting prosecution on menacing, disorderly conduct and trespass charges. Rynerson, 38, was released after Mesa County sheriff's deputies at the Jail mistook him for another inmate, Marvin March. Mesa County Sheriff's Sgt. Henry Stoffel said Wednesday that jail employees broke procedure when they failed to check Rynerson's wristband and picture, and that an investigation is ongoing to determine whether jail policy around the housing list needs to be updated. He credited Rynerson's wife for returning her husband to custody. ___ Information from: The Daily Sentinel, http://www.gjsentinel.com ||||| Sorry, this zipcode is not in our deliverable area for this subscription service. Re-enter zip code or sign up for digital access. Get digital access

– Court records say a Colorado inmate, mistakenly released from jail, enjoyed less than two hours of freedom before his wife made him turn himself in. James Rynerson was in custody late last month at the Mesa County Jail on a $2,000 cash bond while awaiting prosecution on menacing, disorderly conduct, and trespass charges, reports the AP. Rynerson, 38, was released after Mesa County sheriff's deputies at the jail mistook him for another inmate, Marvin March, who was awaiting release. Rynerson's wife was surprised to find him in her garage shortly after. "(Rynerson's wife) told Inmate Rynerson he needed to turn himself in after he informed her he had been released under another person's name," the court report said, per the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. She "convinced Inmate Rynerson to go back, and personally drove him back to the Mesa County Detention Facility." Mesa County Sheriff's Sgt. Henry Stoffel said Wednesday that jail employees broke procedure when they failed to check Rynerson's wristband and picture, and that an investigation is ongoing to determine whether jail policy needs to be updated. He credited Rynerson's wife for his return. "We appreciate that she recognized his error and recommended that he turn himself in before it became something more significant," he said. Rynerson, meanwhile, faces new charges for his efforts, including escape, forgery, criminal impersonation, and theft.

Former state Sen. Brian Joyce was arrested Friday morning and charged in a federal indictment for allegedly using his legislative seat for private gain. Joyce, 55, faces more than 100 charges, including racketeering, wire fraud, extortion and money laundering, according to the 102-page indictment. Then-state Sen. Brian Joyce takes the oath of office in the Senate chambers at the State House on Jan. 5, 2005. (Elise Amendola/AP) "Defendant Joyce's objective ... was to secretly profit from his position as State Senator," the indictment alleges. Joyce pleaded not guilty Friday. The indictment claims Joyce accepted a "stream of concealed bribes and kickbacks" in exchange for his official action on matters before the state Legislature and for exerting pressure on local officials, and that he employed "various methods of concealment, including using a shell company and other entities to launder proceeds from his bribery and kickback schemes." The indictment details various schemes, including alleged kickbacks from an energy brokerage and alleged bribes from a coffee shop franchisee. “We believe Mr. Joyce was greedy, plain and simple," Harold Shaw, head of the Boston FBI office, said in a news conference Friday. Joyce's attorney, Howard Cooper, spoke to reporters, with Joyce by his side, after Joyce pleaded not guilty in Worcester court. "You just heard ... former Sen. Joyce declare in a very loud and firm voice in court that he's innocent of all of these charges," Cooper said. "I should add that in the last few years it's been apparent across the country that the federal government has brought a number of cases against public officials which have either gone nowhere, or have been rejected by juries, or highly criticized by courts." Joyce was taken into custody shortly before dawn Friday at his Westport home, Shaw said. He was a Milton resident when he was a senator. The Democrat, who was first elected to his Senate seat in 1998, announced in February 2016 that he would not seek re-election. That was days after his law offices were raided by federal law enforcement. In 2015, Joyce gave up his leadership posts in the Senate amid an ethics probe. The arrest of a former state senator follows a tumultuous week for the State House chamber. Senate President Stan Rosenberg has taken a leave of absence from the post following allegations of sexual assault against his husband. The acting Senate president, Harriette Chandler, said in a statement Friday that "[l]aw enforcement has done its job today. She added she's "confident that the justice system will come to a fair and just conclusion in the days to come." The Senate's top Republican, Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, said in a statement that the indictment "details reprehensible acts of criminal behavior." With reporting by WBUR's Fred Thys from Worcester ||||| BOSTON (CBS/AP) – Former Massachusetts Sen. Brian Joyce “violated the public’s trust” and “decided to take the path of greed” by using his office for personal profit to accept up to $1 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for official actions, federal investigators said Friday. Joyce, a longtime attorney and Milton Democrat who was arrested Friday, is accused of then hiding that money by creating a shell company and disguising it as “legal fees.” “We believe Mr. Joyce was greedy, plain and simple,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Hank Shaw said. Federal authorities arrested Joyce, 55, at his Westport home on Friday. Joyce pleaded not guilty to the charges before a federal magistrate in Worcester Friday afternoon. The 113-count indictment against Joyce, stemming from a two-year investigation, includes charges of racketeering, extortion, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the IRS and money laundering. His lawyer, Howard Cooper, said in an email to The Associated Press that he is still reviewing the charges. READ: THE FULL INDICTMENT AGAINST BRIAN JOYCE The indictment alleges that Joyce secretly profited from his position as state senator by accepting “a stream of concealed bribes and kickbacks” that included a free Jeep and hundreds of pounds of Dunkin Donuts coffee, in exchange for official actions before the state Legislature. He is accused of pressuring state and municipal officials to take official action on government matters. Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said Joyce, who as a state senator represented more than 100,000 constituents across Milton, Randolph, Avon, Canton, Stoughton, West Bridgewater and parts of Braintree, East Bridgewater and Sharon, ran his public office as a “criminal enterprise.” “He had a duty to serve (his constituents) honestly, and he violated that duty by accepting bribes and kickbacks in exchange for his official action,” Weinreb said. In February 2016, the FBI and IRS raided Joyce’s Canton law office. Months later, Joyce reportedly sold his Milton home and also sold his family burial plot in Milton, where he grew up. Joyce is accused of participating in a number of complex schemes dating back to 2010 that netted him hundreds of thousands of dollars and concealing the payments by using his law office as a “money laundering conduit.” Prosecutors say he also lied to the state’s ethics commission and used the panel as a “cloak of legitimacy for his corrupt schemes.” In one case, prosecutors alleged Joyce used his position to exert influence on behalf of a New York-based energy brokerage business and formed a shell company to collect secret kickbacks from the firm. In another scheme, prosecutors say Joyce pressured the Milton Planning Board to approve a waiver sought by a developer, who gave Joyce a Jeep from one of the developer’s car dealerships. The indictment also accuses Joyce of taking legislative action to aid a Dunkin Donuts franchise whose owner was paying him tens of thousands of dollars for “purported legal fees” and providing him with hundreds of pounds of free coffee. Investigators allege Joyce took steps to conceal this by submitting backdated checks to the State Ethics Commission and instructed the franchise owner and his relative to falsely represent to the Ethics Commission that they had agreed to provide Joyce coffee in exchange for legal services. The indictment also alleges that Joyce attempted to use his Senate position to collect money for “legal work” from representatives of a Philadelphia solar company who sought Joyce’s assistance with local permitting and pending legislation. Joyce is also charged with conspiring to defraud the IRS in connection with his purchase of more than $470,000 in common stock from the energy brokerage firm and falsely reporting the stock purchase as a tax-exempt retirement account rollover in his personal tax return. Weinreb would not say whether charges would be brought against any of the companies accused to be involved in the schemes but said the investigation remains ongoing. Joyce, who had served as assistant majority leader, announced last year that he would not seek re-election in 2017. He had represented his district since 1998. A 1980 graduate of Milton High School, Joyce received a bachelor’s degree from Boston College School of Management and a law degree from Suffolk University Law School. As a state legislator, Joyce served as chairman of the Special Senate Committee on Government Expenditures and the Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Redistricting. He was also a member of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy as well as the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing. In 2015, then-Senate President Stan Rosenberg asked the ethics commission to review Joyce’s conduct after The Boston Globe reported on potential conflicts of interest focusing on whether he used his position to boost his law practice. In an unrelated case last year, Joyce agreed to pay nearly $5,000 to resolve issues raised by state campaign finance regulators, including using campaign funds for his son’s 2014 high school graduation party. Joyce said there had been no finding of wrongdoing on his part in that case. The arrest is the second blow to the state Senate in the past week. Rosenberg announced Monday he was stepping aside as president of the chamber during a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the circumstances surrounding reported sexual misconduct allegations by several men against his husband, Bryon Hefner. Harriette Chandler, a Worcester Democrat who is serving as acting Senate president, said in a statement about Joyce that she’s confident the “justice system will come to a fair and just conclusion in the days to come.” Republican Gov. Charlie Baker called the allegations against Joyce disturbing. “People in public life need to respect the offices they hold and that means not using them for personal gain, and if the feds believe there’s enough there to justify an indictment then the investigation needs to be thorough and move forward accordingly,” Baker said. Last year, after federal authorities raided Joyce’s law office in Canton, Baker poked fun at then-Sen. Joyce at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast in Boston. (© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.) ||||| Former state senator Brian A. Joyce collected about $1 million in bribes and kickbacks that he laundered through his law firm, according to a sweeping 102-page indictment that accuses the Milton Democrat of turning his public office into a criminal enterprise — even accepting hundreds of pounds of free coffee from a Dunkin’ Donuts owner. Joyce, once the Senate’s assistant majority leader, was taken from his Westport home in handcuffs early on Friday morning and escorted by federal agents to be booked and fingerprinted, and face federal charges of mail fraud, corruption, money laundering, and embezzlement, among many others. Acting US Attorney William Weinreb said prosecutors launched the investigation of Joyce after a series of stories by The Boston Globe that began in January 2015 looking at Joyce’s mingling of public and personal business. Advertisement Weinreb said investigators estimated that Joyce’s many illegal schemes have netted him about $1 million since 2010. Prosecutors say, among other things, Joyce extorted a Jeep from a Milton developer and collected more than $100,000 in phony legal fees from a Dunkin’ Donuts store owner in exchange for using his influence to help them. Get Metro Headlines in your inbox: The 10 top local news stories from metro Boston and around New England delivered daily. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here “Brian Joyce represented over 100,000 Massachusetts citizens in the state Legislature,’’ Weinreb said at a morning press conference. “He had a duty to serve them honestly. And he violated that duty by accepting bribes and kickbacks in exchange for his official action.” Harold Shaw, special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office, was more blunt: “We believe Mr. Joyce was greedy, plain and simple.’’ Late on Friday afternoon, Joyce appeared in a federal courtroom in Worcester, roughly 10 hours after his arrest, in a dark blue suit and a tie. He nodded to his wife and other family members. Standing before US Magistrate Judge David Hennessy, Joyce pleaded not guilty to all the charges before he was released on $250,000 secured bond. The case was continued until a status hearing on Feb. 23. Joyce must surrender his passport, and his travel is restricted to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Advertisement “You just heard former senator Joyce declare in a very loud and affirmative voice in federal court that he is innocent of all these charges and he expects that’s what will happen in court,” said Joyce’s attorney, Howard Cooper, outside the courtroom as Joyce stood by his side. The 113-count indictment describes Joyce as someone who considered his duties as an elected public official secondary to his goal of secretly amassing wealth, a goal he would achieve by using the power of his Senate office to help those who allegedly provided bribes and kickbacks to him. “Defendant Joyce’s objective in conducting and participating in the affairs of the Senate Office . . . was to secretly profit from his position as State Senator [by] . . . accepting a stream of concealed bribes and kickbacks from private individuals and entities in exchange for his official action as specific opportunities arose,’’ the indictment reads. Joyce is accused of using his law office, the Joyce Law Group in Canton, “as a money laundering conduit for the corrupt payments” by labeling the bribes and kickbacks as legal referral fees and consulting fees for working on real estate issues, and by using the “corrupt payments” to buy a 2014 Jeep, according to the indictment. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff US Attorney William D. Weinreb addressed the media about the Joyce indictment. A developer seeking help with Milton town officials is accused of handing over the Jeep to Joyce without demanding he pay the $20,000 due on the purchase price, authorities allege. The developer, John Morrill, who owns two car dealerships, has been a longtime political supporter of Joyce. Advertisement Under one scheme, federal authorities allege, Joyce spent $471,250 to purchase 65,000 shares in a company, Energi, whose business activities he was actively supporting on Beacon Hill. But Joyce never disclosed his financial ties to the company and falsely claimed the money he used to buy the stock came from a tax-free rollover of an IRA account. “Defendant Joyce created sham retirement accounts for himself and his spouse in order to conceal his stock ownership from the Ethics Commission and to defraud the IRS,’’ the indictment alleges. Joyce is also accused of collecting hundreds of pounds of coffee — along with $125,089 in “purported legal fees” — from a Carlos Andrade, a major Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee who sits on the Dunkin’ Donuts foundation board of directors. On one occasion in 2015, he collected 504 pounds of coffee, worth an estimated $4,278, for free, authorities allege. When the Globe asked Joyce how he obtained the free coffee in 2015, he had someone else make up a fake invoice and backdate it, the indictment alleges. At the time, his lawyer insisted Joyce had paid full retail price, like anyone else. Governor Charlie Baker told the Globe that the charges against Joyce should be a warning to anyone in public office. “People in public life need to respect the offices they hold, and that means not using them for personal gain,’’ he said Friday. “And, if the feds believe there is enough there to justify an indictment, then the investigation needs to be thorough and move forward accordingly.” Acting Senate President Harriette Chandler issued a brief statement: “Law enforcement has done its job today. This case now moves to the courts, and I am confident that the justice system will come to a fair and just conclusion in the days to come.” Joyce had been an early supporter of then Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, who appointed him assistant majority leader in 2015 and made him chairman of the committee that decided which bills would come up for a vote. Now, Joyce is facing more than 100 criminal charges, outpacing the corruption counts leveled against other politicians in recent years, including former House speaker Sal DiMasi and former state senator Dianne Wilkerson, who was charged with one count of bribery. DiMasi was sentenced to eight years after he was convicted of helping a software company win multimillion-dollar state contracts in exchange for kickbacks. Wilkerson was sentenced to three and a half years. If convicted on all counts, Joyce could face far more jail time. Some of the counts in the indictment carry possible sentences of up to 20 years each. But Joyce’s attorney Cooper suggested that the charges against his client are the work of overzealous federal prosecutors. “I should add that, in the last few years, it has been very apparent across the country that the federal government has brought a number of cases against public officials, which have either gone nowhere, or have been rejected by juries, or have been highly criticized by the courts,” Cooper said. The charges against Joyce represent a stunning fall from grace over the past two years. Joyce, 55, decided not to run for reelection in 2016 — and moved out of Milton, his longtime hometown — after the FBI and IRS raided his Canton law office. The raid followed a series of stories published by the Globe describing some of the ways in which he appeared to use his public position to get private benefits for himself and his family. Joyce aroused suspicions by repeatedly receiving discounted and sometimes free goods and services, often from businesses in his legislative district. For instance, when he was angling for a Senate leadership position in late 2014, he gave his Senate colleagues expensive sunglasses that he got at a significant discount from a company in his district, as well as pounds of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Joyce also received free dry cleaning from a Randolph dry cleaner for more than a decade, services worth thousands of dollars. Neither the sunglasses nor the dry cleaning were mentioned in the indictment. Through his attorney, Joyce denied any wrongdoing. He said he bartered the dry cleaning for legal work and paid for coffee and sunglasses the same price as anyone else. The Globe also wrote extensively about Joyce’s relationship with Energi, the Peabody company that is the subject of much of the indictment. The company, which sells insurance to the energy industry, hired Joyce and his law firm to do legal work and to handle regulatory matters before the state Division of Insurance. Between 2010 and 2015, the company paid the Joyce Law Group $377,169 in fees, according to the indictment. Even so, Joyce apparently wanted more legal business and fees in return for his help with a bill promoted by the company. He filed the bill and spoke at a symposium sponsored by Energi promoting the bill — never disclosing his ties to the company. Energi put him on retainer, paying him $5,000 a month for approximately five months. “We intend to cooperate fully with the government . . . and we regret that we too were victimized by Mr. Joyce,” said Brian Kelly, a lawyer who represents Energi. The indictment also describes Joyce’s relationship with a company that sells solar credits, Power Management, referred to in the indictment as the “energy broker.” The company paid him “secret kickbacks” for his help in landing the company energy consulting work with the towns of Randolph, Easton, East Bridgewater, Southbridge, and Holbrook, the indictment said. He created a shell company, “Windswept LLC,” where he deposited the kickbacks, the indictment says. In Milton, where he lived until this year, he allegedly approached developer John Morrill about buying and redeveloping the Milton Women’s Club, a historic building that had fallen into disrepair, the indictment says. Joyce pressured the planning board to allow Morrill to take actions that would allow Morrill to build four houses on the site. In return, the indictment says, Morrill agreed to pay Joyce a kickback — a 2014 Jeep from one of his dealerships. Morrill also agreed that Joyce’s wife, Mary, a local realtor, would be a sales broker for the homes built on the site. Joyce was also accused of using his position to try to extract a $25,000 fee from a Philadelphia-based solar company, Tecta Solar. The company was looking for help with legislation and permitting for a project in West Bridgewater. “Yeah, I can get the permit for you,” Joyce told Tecta officials. “It would be through my law firm, and our fee would be $25,000 . . .’ according to the indictment. Company officials told the Globe in 2015 that they were stunned by his request and declined to hire him. “It was suggested we could retain him, but we never pursued it. It was certainly not our intent and it was twisted in a completely different direction,” said Samir Dube, who was then the company’s managing director. John Tlumacki/Globe staff Brian Joyce pleaded not guilty to all charges Friday before he was released on $250,000 secured bond. Joshua Miller of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Andrea Estes can be reached at estes@globe.com . Milton J. Valencia can be reached at milton.valencia@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @miltonvalencia . John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe

– A former Massachusetts state senator was arrested Friday on charges he accepted about $1 million in bribes and kickbacks, laundered through his law firm, between 2010 and 2016, the Boston Globe reports. Part of those bribes and kickbacks? Hundreds of pounds of free Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Brian Joyce has been charged with more than 100 criminal counts, including federal charges of money laundering, corruption, mail fraud, and embezzlement. "Joyce's objective ... was to secretly profit from his position as State Senator," WBUR quotes the indictment as stating. Or, as FBI agent Harold Shaw puts it: "We believe Mr. Joyce was greedy, plain and simple." As for the coffee-related part of Joyce's alleged schemes: The former Democratic senator is accused of receiving the coffee and more than $125,000 in fake legal fees from "major" Dunkin' Donuts franchisee Carlos Andrade. Joyce allegedly got 504 pounds of coffee worth more than $4,000 on just one occasion in 2015. CBS Boston reports prosecutors say the money and coffee was in exchange for unspecified legislative action beneficial to Andrade. Joyce allegedly told Andrade to tell the Ethics Commission that the coffee was in exchange for legal services. It's reported that Joyce gave pounds of coffee to his colleagues in the Senate while gunning for a Senate leadership position. Joyce has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

On Jan. 18, NASA announced that astronaut Jeanette Epps would not fly, as expected, to the International Space Station in June. The mission would have been historic, since she would have become the first African-American crewmember on the orbiting outpost. The space agency hasn't released any information about why Epps was benched from her planned mission, saying only that "these decisions are personnel matters for which NASA doesn’t provide information," according to NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean. Epps will now work in the Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center and await another possible flight assignment. Epps' removal from her planned flight isn't without historic precedent. NASA has benched astronauts before flights many times in its decades as a federal agency, and for many different reasons. "Flight assignments have been changed often in the past at various stages of training for a variety of reasons," Dean said via email. Specifically, quite a few astronauts have been removed from their missions for health reasons. NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps. Image: NASA NASA's Ken Mattingly was pulled from the Apollo 13 crew just a few days before their scheduled launch because he was exposed to German measles. From the ground, Mattingly was part of the team that helped bring back the Apollo 13 crew to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded, putting the lives of the crew in serious danger and forcing them to abandon their planned moon landing. Mattingly still earned a place in cinematic history, since he was portrayed by actor Gary Sinise in the movie Apollo 13. "Long before Jeanette Epps was pulled from her upcoming space station expedition, astronauts such as Ken Mattingly in 1970 and Don Thomas in 2002 were reassigned due to medical issues, while Mark Lee was pulled from a 2001 space station assembly shuttle mission for reasons NASA never disclosed," space historian and editor of collectSPACE.com Robert Pearlman said in an interview. "To their crewmates' credit, despite the interruptions, the missions went on as planned (or in the case of Apollo 13, went awry but at no fault of Mattingly's replacement, Jack Swigert)." NASA also replaced Jeff Ashby in 1997 due to an illness in his family, and other astronauts have been removed due to other medical or personal issues. "NASA invests a lot of time, effort and money in training their astronaut crews, and stresses teamwork throughout, so the decision to remove an astronaut from a flight is never taken lightly," Pearlman said. Epps's 2018 mission was announced in 2017 and it immediately went viral. News organizations profiled Epps and wrote about her expected upcoming flight, making the news of her reassignment all the more surprising. She has not yet flown to space. Epps was chosen as part of NASA's 2009 astronaut class as one of 14 candidates. Her path to NASA is different from many other astronauts, however. Epps started off as a NASA fellow and then worked at Ford Motor Company before spending seven years at the Central Intelligence Agency. Epps was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the first class of women become NASA astronauts decades ago. "It was about 1980, I was nine years old. My brother came home and he looked at my grades and my twin sisters' grades and he said, 'You know, you guys can probably become aerospace engineers or even astronauts,'" Epps said in a NASA video. "And this was at the time that Sally Ride [the first American woman to fly in space] and a group of women were selected to become astronauts — the first time in history. So, he made that comment and I said, 'Wow, that would be so cool.'" ||||| The brother of a Syracuse-born astronaut said "oppressive racism and misogyny in NASA" is behind the administration's choice not to send Dr. Jeanette Epps to the International Space Station. Henry Epps shared a MoveOn.org petition on his Facebook page and called for NASA to reinstate Epps to the mission, where she would be the first African-American to become a crew member on the ISS. The petition, started yesterday, has about 120 signatures. Epps did not start the petition, but he and several other family members signed it. "My sister Dr. Jeannette Epps has been fighting against oppressive racism and misogynist in NASA and now they are holding her back and allowing a Caucasian Astronaut to take her place!" Henry Epps wrote on Facebook on Saturday night. Epps, of Tennessee, and other family members in Delaware and Maryland could not be reached Sunday morning. Epps, like his sister, attended Corcoran High School, according to his Facebook page. "We have lost all of the gains we gained over the past 40 years in one year? No more!" he said. "We cannot continue to tolerate what is going on in America but we must stand together and stand behind our people and ou(r) nation! Take a stand and sign the petition! Thank you!" It was not clear from Epps' post whether he had spoken to his sister about why she was removed from the mission. NASA officials have declined to describe why she was passed over, saying it is a "personnel matter." Epps, a Le Moyne College graduate, was part of NASA 20th astronaut class, announced in 2009. She was one of nine selected out of 3,500 applicants. Epps had been assigned to serve as flight engineer for Expedition 56 and remained on board for Expedition 57, according to NASA. The crew is set to go to the ISS in June and spend at least six months in space. On Thursday, the administration announced that Serena Aunon-Chancellor, who previously was assigned to Expedition 58/59, was reassigned to the ISS mission. She's a surgeon who spent nine months in Russia supporting medical operations for ISS crew members, according to her biography. Epps was born in Syracuse and attended Clary Middle School after Danforth. She graduated from Corcoran in 1988 and went on to 11 1/2 more years of schooling, beginning at Le Moyne College. She graduated with a degree in physics in 1992. She eventually earned her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. ||||| NASA’s Jeanette Epps was on track to become the first African-American International Space Station (ISS) crew member. However, on Thursday the space agency announced it was rearranging their scheduled line-ups and Epps would be replaced by Serena Auñón-Chancellor for the June mission. It’s unclear exactly why she was bumped from the mission. These types of decisions are “personnel matters for which NASA doesn’t provide information,” spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz, said in an email, Newsweek previously reported. But, Epps’ brother believes he has the answer to why she was released. “My sister Dr. Jeannette Epps has been fighting against oppressive racism and misogynist in NASA and now they are holding her back and allowing a Caucasian Astronaut to take her place!” Henry Epps wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday evening. His post was accompanied by a link to a MoveOn.org petition which calls on NASA to reassign Epps to the mission. As of Sunday evening, the post had racked up more than 350 signatures. Epps’ brother didn’t start the online petition, but he and other family members signed it, NYup.com reports. “My sister deserve a chance just life [sic] her white peers! This administration policies and culture is reprehensible against their stance against women and minorities in this nation. We have lost all of the gains we gained over the past 40 years in one year?No more!” he wrote on Facebook. “We cannot continue to tolerate what is going on in America but we must stand together and stand behind our people and out [sic] nation!” A number of people who signed the petition wrote comments asking for NASA to offer a credible reason for why she was released. It’s important to note it’s not unusual for them to offer no explanation to the public when crews are reassigned. If there’s a medical reason, they’ll sometimes offer some information, but even in those cases, it’s very limited, according to Ars Technica. Epps will now remain on the ground in Houston and work at the agency’s Johnson Space Center. She’ll also be considered for future space missions, NASA announced in a statement.

– Jeanette Epps was to make history when she set foot on the International Space Station in June, as the first African-American astronaut to do so. Emphasis on "was." NASA on Thursday announced a shake-up to its crew assignments, stating Serena Auñón-Chancellor would be bumped from her scheduled Expedition 58/59 to Expedition 56/57, where she would take Epps' place. Instead of Epps flipping to the later mission, she'll "return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to assume duties in the Astronaut Office and be considered for assignment to future missions," and Anne McClain will join the Expedition 58/59 crew. Newsweek reports that NASA doesn't elaborate on "personnel matters," but notes someone is floating a theory. "My sister Dr. Jeannette Epps has been fighting against oppressive racism and misogynist in NASA and now they are holding her back and allowing a Caucasian Astronaut to take her place!" brother Henry Epps posted on Facebook on Saturday. Mashable notes it's hardly unprecedented for an astronaut to be pulled from a mission, and outlines the reasons that have surfaced in past instances, including medical issues. A former NASA administrator tells Syracuse.com that the likelihood is high Epps will make it to space. "When [crew changes] do happen, the reassigned astronauts almost always fly on a later mission. The exceptions are very few and far between." Sean O'Keefe further speculates that Auñón-Chancellor's medical background might be better suited to the mission's human research experiments than Epps, who is an engineer. (An astronaut who made history died last month.)

We’ve got all the latest developments in the death of Julia Roberts‘ half-sister Nancy Motes, including a reaction from her fiancé John Dilbeck, and a look at the lurking conflict between her grieving partner and surviving family members. As we previously reported, Moats was found dead at 37 Sunday in what officials indicated was a suicide via overdose, with Los Angeles County Coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter confirming to Yahoo! that numerous “notes [were] found at the scene,” as well as “both prescription and nonprescription pills.” (Toxicology tests remain pending in Moats’ death, Winter said, adding the results could take up to 10 weeks.) PHOTOS: Stars Who OD’d On Wednesday, MailOnline.com that caught up with Dilbeck as he ran errands in Santa Monica, Calif; asked if he thought Motes was a drug addict, he shook his head sideways, gesturing, “No.” When the outlet asked Dilbeck if he’d been in touch with the Pretty Woman star, amidst reports of serious dissension between his camp and his late fiance’s family, he said he had “no comment at this time.” While Dibeck wasn’t talking, a source close to the situation told the NY Post that he’ll be pushing to keep Moats’ belongings as the sole beneficiary of her estate, which would have implications involving the Oscar-winner. PHOTOS: Hollywood Bodyguards Tell All — Who Steals, Sexts, Does Drugs & More Star Secrets Revealed “If Nancy had photos and wrote a diary, describing her feelings towards her sister, he could use them,” the source said. “There is a fear that John could be holding Nancy’s personal items hostage and possibly sell them to the highest bidder. “While Nancy wasn’t a wealthy woman, she would have had gifts given to her by Julia, as well as intimate family pictures.” The source said that longstanding hard feelings between Dilbeck and Moats’ relatives stemmed from the fact that Roberts and their mother, Betty Lou Motes, “felt that he was a bad influence on” Nancy. PHOTOS: Hollywood Bodyguards Tell All — Who Steals, Sexts, Does Drugs & More Star Secrets Revealed “Julia and her mother had tried for a long time, for years, to get Nancy to go into rehab, and she repeatedly refused,” the source told the paper. “They did not approve of John … but you can’t tell someone of Nancy’s age whom not to date.” On Tuesday, Dilbeck’s brother Connor publicly chided Moats’ family for their treatment of the late dog walker, and said he believed that the late woman timed her suicide to put a dent in Roberts’ Oscar chances next month. (Roberts, who won the Best Actress award in 2000 for Erin Brockovich, is up for Best Supporting Actress for her role in August: Osage County.) If you, or anyone you know, is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please immediately seek help. You can speak with a skilled, trained counselor at a national Suicide Prevention Lifeline crisis center in your area, anytime 24/7 — call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). ||||| EXCLUSIVE: Julia Roberts' half-sister 'deliberately timed suicide to harm actress's Oscar chances,' claims her fiance's brother Nancy Motes took an overdose after writing a suicide note which contained dark secrets about Julia Roberts that she wanted to be made public, said Conner Dilbeck in an exclusive interview with MailOnline Nancy's fiance John Dilbeck, Conner's brother, found her dead body in the bath Sunday, the same day Julia was due to be at an Oscar nominees lunch The actress is up for Best Supporting Actress for August: Osage County However, RadarOnline reported the 37-year-old was battling drug addiction and Julia had tried to save her multiple times by getting her to go to rehab Julia Roberts' half-sister may have killed herself in a deliberate attempt to harm the actress' career and scupper her chances of winning an Oscar at this year's Academy Awards, her fiance's brother claimed today. Nancy Motes took an overdose after writing a suicide note which allegedly contained dark secrets about the Pretty Woman star that she wanted to be made public, said Conner Dilbeck in an exclusive interview with MailOnline. Nancy's fiance John Dilbeck, Conner's own brother, found her dead body in the bath Sunday, the same day Julia was due to be at an Oscar nominees lunch. She is up for Best Supporting Actress for August: Osage County. Scroll down for video Nominated: Julia Roberts is up for Best Supporting Actress for August: Osage County. She is pictured left in the film Tragic: Nancy Motes with her fiancé John Dilbeck' - who is said to be too distraught to face the public since her death 'We are talking about people who are powerful,' Conner told MailOnline. 'People who have very delicate power, people who are in the limelight. Their power can be destroyed very easily if unfortunate things make them look more wicked. 'They have to be careful, it can destroy their career or their Academy Award.' The insight into Nancy's life comes as RadarOnline reported that the 37-year-old who worked as a production worker on Glee was battling drug addiction and Julia had tried to save her numerous times by getting her to go to rehab. Authorities recovered both prescription and non-prescription drugs at the Los Angeles home. 'Julia tried in vain over the years, even in the last six months, to get Nancy to go to rehab,' a source close to Julia reportedly told RadarOnline. 'Nancy refused the offers and that is when she would often publicly lash out at Julia. It hurt Julia, but she knew her sister was battling addiction.' The sisters' relationship became even more rocky after Nancy blasted Julia to Britain's Sun newspaper last August. She also gave a bruising interview to the New York Daily News. Tragic: Julia Roberts' half-sister Nancy Motes killed herself in a desperate attempt to destroy the actress' career and scupper her chances of winning an Oscar at this year's Academy Awards, Conner Dilbeck, pictured, has claimed in an exclusive interview with MailOnline Busy woman: Roberts has been working the awards circuit for her turn in August: Osage County, which she did here on January 18 while attending the Screen Actors Guild Awards Plea: Conner wrote about his brother's fiance and Nancy's troubles with Julia Roberts on his Facebook page along with a photo of when John Dilbeck proposed According to Page Six, the Hollywood star was 'mortified' by the 'embarrassing' stories and wondered if her cash-strapped sister had betrayed her by selling the juicy details to the UK tabloid for money. It's not clear if Nancy was in fact paid by The Sun for the interview. However, Conner told MailOnline Julia inflicted 'pure cruelty' on her sister and Nancy's suicide letter was a desperate attempt to expose the alleged treatment. And a friend and neighbor of Nancy Motes told MailOnline that her death was 'not a Philip Seymour Hoffman thing' but a planned suicide. Conner claimed the note is eight pages long - not five as had been thought - and Julia is said to be 'terrified' about it coming out. Conner also revealed that John Dilbeck was overcome by the 'horror' of seeing his fiance's lifeless body in the bath. In a Facebook post Conner wrote: 'Nancy wanted the Truth to come out and she was Willing to Die to get her point across.' Conner, 40, lived with Nancy and John in their apartment in Santa Monica, California for years, during which time he saw their relationship blossom. But the dark side was that he claimed it gave him a front row seat to the he mistreatment he claims Nancy suffered at the hands of Julia. Watch the full interview on Inside Edition Emotional: Nancy Motes appeared to post aggressive messages onto her Twitter account in the weeks prior to her tragic death apparently attacking her half-sister Julia Roberts Conner said: 'I have spent enough time with Nancy and I know enough about her that I can say from first hand experience a lot of things that have happened.' He added: 'The truth is in the eight pages of her suicide letter.' In a series of furious posts on Facebook, Conner railed against Julia and squarely blamed her for the tragedy. He wrote: 'I am posting this as a plea to everyone to Pray for my Brother John. 'His lovely Fiancé, Nancy Motes, was driven to Take her Life yesterday because of the Pure Cruelty of her Sister, Julia Roberts (yes Ms. Pretty Woman herself), that has done everything in her power to Ruin her and my brothers lives. 'He is overwhelmed by this horrible event and all the Turmoil Julia has subjected them too.' Speaking to MailOnline, Conner said that after his brother found his fiance's body last Sunday he called the police and then called his family in distress. Breaking into tears, he said: 'The one thing that has made it more emotional for our family than anything else is to think of the horror of my brother having to walk in their and find his dead love in the water and nothing he could do about it and how she was driven to do this.' Oscars: Nancy Motes killed herself to scupper her sister's Oscar chances, it has been claimed. Roberts, left, stars in the film with Meryl Streep, center In the months before her death, Nancy took aim at her famous sister on Twitter and one particular tweet apparently gives weight to the claim that she was plotting to hurt the Notting Hill star in some way. Nancy's death hasn't officially been ruled a suicide as a toxicology report has not been completed but her the family said in a statement that she died of 'an apparent drug overdose.' In December, an emotional Nancy mysteriously tweeted, apparently about Julia: 'Hey Hag! Glad you f****ed with me yet? You're going to LOVE what's coming! FYI-You're an awful, hate filled old pathetic excuse for a human.' Conner's account comes after John Fraschetti, who also knows Nancy's grieving fiancé, claimed the family of the Oscar winner were now 'crying crocodile tears' over the former Glee production worker's death. He said they are only interested in manipulating public opinion after her suicide, but during her life, 'drove her to death.' Making the incendiary comments Tuesday outside Nancy and Dilbeck's home, Fraschetti said Nancy spiraled into depression after Betty Lou Motes, the mother she and Roberts shared, 'rejected' her six months ago - and that she 'just couldn't handle it anymore'. 'And then you get the actress woman who is pretending to grieve but she didn't want to deal with Nancy and made her f***ing miserable.' Nancy Motes was found dead on Sunday in a bathtub filled with water with prescription and 'illegal drugs' near her in an apparent suicide. Fraschetti claims to have seen the letter she left behind. Fraschetti, who has known Dilbeck since he was 13, said that since her death, her family have been careful to mold a favorable public reaction. 'They are crying crocodile tears. They have taken control of this situation, but they never cared of her when she was alive,' said Fraschetti. Fraschetti said that Nancy, 'couldn't stand the rejection of her mom, who in the last six months had cut her off entirely.' Upset: Julia Roberts' mother Betty Lou Motes is seen leaving her home in Los Angeles looking frail and upset Tuesday afternoon Cut-off: Nancy Motes is pictured in this photo with Julia Roberts when the Oscar winning actress was around 22 years old 'It hurt her that none of her family wanted to be with her. She had a miserable Christmas, truly awful, and I think she just couldn't handle it anymore.' Fraschetti admitted that Nancy's well-documented problems with drugs and her weight had caused divisions, but claimed that to cut her off was unforgivable. 'They didn’t care when she was alive. She was a handful, and yes she had her problems, but there’s a way to deal with your relatives,' said an angry Fraschetti. Nancy's suicide note also reveals the true depths of depression that her family's rejection had sent her to. 'It read about how much she loved and cared for her fiancé and how happy he made her, but it also said how unhappy and depressed her family made her and how she couldn’t cope anymore,' said Fraschetti, who said that fiancé, Dilbeck, is grief stricken by Nancy's death and can't face the media. Indicating that the suicide note goes into detail about how hurt she felt by being ignored, Fraschetti said that Roberts and her family even put pressure on Dilbeck to delete tweets. But, it was revealed last night that Nancy had apparently tweeted a string of vicious messages aimed at her Oscar winning sister, including 'Just so you all know "America's Sweetheart" is a B****!!' on January 20. That and others were indeed deleted overnight. Friend: John Fraschetti has known Nancy Motes' fiance John Dilbeck since he was 13 and says that Julia Roberts and her family cutting off Nancy caused her suicide 'We've got a person who is grieving so much, but then there is the other so called family who are grieving, so to speak, who want to see as little grief as possible for them,' said Fraschetti. 'It's the rich versus the poor, the fake versus the real, he's the one who's in agony, he's the one that's genuine.' And in an apparent confirmation that she did indeed commit suicide, Fraschetti said that her death was planned, but that she didn't use heroin like Philip Seymour Hoffman. She wasn’t into heroin, as far as I was aware. It’s not like her or John were heroin addicts. Come on, it’s ridiculous. ‘I wouldn’t read too much into where she did it, it wasn’t in some drug den. She was dog sitting, and I imagine she did this, so she didn’t have to do it at home and let John find her.' And this afternoon, Julia Roberts' grief-stricken mother looked frail and visibly shaken as she visited the Oscar-winner following the apparent suicide death of her younger daughter, Nancy Motes. Dressed in a tartan hat and black jacket, Betty Lou Motes was driven by a friend from her home in Pacific Palisades to Julia's mansion in Malibu. The visit came after it was reported that Nancy left a five page suicide note in which she accused her famous sibling of driving her to kill herself. Her fiancé discovered her body, which had been dead as long as 12 hours, but a responding EMT worker recovered the extensive letter, according to the New York Daily News. In the note, Nancy dedicated three pages to her tortured relationship with the Pretty Woman actress, the Daily News quoted a source close to the investigation as saying. Gone too soon: Nancy Motes, pictured in August (left), died on Sunday from an apparent drug overdose; she is the half-sister of Julia Roberts (right) Rage: Nancy Motes, tweeted under her husband-to-be's last name online. This vitriolic attack is believed to be against her half-sister, Julia Roberts and happened a little more than a month before she died Pain: Nancy Motes is also believed to have launched these attacks on the star of Pretty Woman and Mystic Pizza - calling her cruel and blaming her for causing her rage despite her best efforts to remain calm Sad: Nancy Motes posted these bittersweet tweets in October - in which she laments that she is having to leave her family to find the love she craves from another 'It was definitely a suicide. She left a five-page suicide letter. The EMT found it,' the source told the Daily News. 'There were three pages of rantings that her sister drove her to do this. There was one page to her mom, telling her how much she loved her, and one page apologizing to (her fiancé).' Nancy and Dilbeck were scheduled to be married in May, but the Georgia native seemed to be unraveling recently. On Twitter, she sounded decidedly unstable, lashing out at Julia, whom she claims bullied her about her weight when they were growing up. 'So my "sister" said that with all her friends & fans she doesn't need any more love. Just so you all know "America's Sweetheart" is a B****!!' she tweeted on January 20, referring to Roberts. 'Do you want to be a fan of someone so cruel? She's not even that good of an actress. Happy you totally F***ed with me?' she added in a subsequent tweet before claiming she'd never been more angry. 'I must admit I maybe going to far… But I never been so angry in my life. I'm actually a pretty easygoing, peaceful person.' '(M)y own family has abandoned me,' she tweeted January 22. Three weeks later, she was dead. The emotional comments, seen on the Twitter handle @Dabbs76, had been deleted by Tuesday morning. Family: Roberts with Motes and their mother Betty Lou when the star was filming 1997's My Best Friend's Wedding The most recent Twitter outburst followed similar rants late last year. For example, Nancy had written previously of her family abandoning her. 'Feeling blessed, even though I'm sick as a dog! I'm very grateful that I have my loves family, since my own family has abandoned me,' she tweeted, referring to her new partner. Her next tweets also appeared to be angrily directed at the Notting Hill star. She tweeted: 'Hey Hag! Glad you f****ed with me yet? You’re going to LOVE what’s coming! FYI-You’re an awful, hate filled old pathetic excuse for a human. 'I must be grateful & not hateful. I must forgive. But Damn that is a REALLY hard thing to do sometimes, right?!?!' Back on December 19, Nancy also sounded depressed. She wrote: 'I must remember how blessed I am even in this very low point in my life. I want ALL of my family to have an awesome magical Christmas! ' And on December 15 she tweeted: 'Must remember to stay strong. Life is a fight. You have to stay in it.' Back in October Nancy also spoke about her family rift, tweeting: 'It’s a shame when you get more support from strangers than you do from your family. I can’t wait to officially belong to another family!' She also wrote that she was getting support from her and Julia’s mother Betty, writing: 'So glad to have the support & love of my friends & mom! Still a smashing success: At 46, Roberts is more in demand than ever; here she leaves a talk about her Meryl Streep drama on February 4 Nancy last tweeted on Saturday, the day before she was found dead in the bathtub. She wrote: 'Hope everyone is enjoying their Saturdays & watching East Los High! Season 3 coming soon!' Nancy joined twitter last August and had 69 followers. She posted several happy photos with her fiancé John Dilbeck who she was due to marry on May 17. Nancy had been tweeting excitedly about the big day, on October 21 she wrote: 'I found my beautiful shoes for my wedding day! And anyone that wants to bring me down during all the planning I have to do can kiss my ass!' On October 3 she tweeted a photo of them together, writing: 'YAY! Wedding Venue found! Wedding dress found! Things are truly happening! It's all soooo exciting! I love him!' Since her tormented tweets were made public overnight, they key sections have been deleted. On Monday, her family confirmed to People the 37-year-old had passed away in what appears to be an overdose. On top: The actress on the February cover of Vanity Fair, on stands now 'It is with deep sadness that the family of Nancy Motes ... confirms that she was found dead in Los Angeles yesterday of an apparent drug overdose,' the statement read. 'There is no official report from the Coroner's office yet. The family is both shocked and devastated.' She was discovered in the bathtub of a home by her fiancé John Dilbeck and pronounced dead at 2:12 p.m., a spokesman for the Los Angeles Coroner's Office told MailOnline. It is believed she was found at a house where she was pet-sitting for a friend. Today, Ed Winter, assistant chief at the LA County Coroner's Office, said: ‘The autopsy has been completed and the cause of death has been deferred depending on the toxicology reports. This can take between six and eight weeks. ‘A number of prescription medications were found in the bathroom area as were illegal drugs. We are still investigating whether they were hers or not. We’re not releasing what illegal drugs they were. ‘It could be a possible suicide, but we don’t know the cause of death yet for sure, which is depending on further investigation. It’s more complicated as she also had some medical issues, so we’re not sure what happened at the moment. 'We are not being specific what those issues are, but it could mean a number of reasons for her death, she could have been taking a bath and had a heart attack. We just don’t know at this stage.' Julia's rep did not return calls to MailOnline. The actress cancelled an appearance at an Academy Awards luncheon on Monday. Nancy was an aspiring actress who had worked as a production assistant on TV's Glee. Julia and Nancy had the same mother, Betty Lou, but different fathers: Nancy's dad was Michael Motes and Julia's is the late Walter Grady Roberts. In August the blonde had complained about growing up in the shadow of the Pretty Woman star, who has been working the awards circuit this year for her turn in August: Osage County with Meryl Streep. Thinner: Nancy Motes looked considerably thinner in August 2013 as she grabbed coffee near her home in Santa Monica The younger sibling had said she was known as Julia's 'fat little sister' and said the Oscar-winner had taunted her about her weight, leading her to undergo weight loss surgery in June 2012. Roberts, 46, made her feel embarrassed and ashamed of her weight, according to Nancy, which peaked at 20st. She resorted to a £20,000 gastric bypass operation last year. 'It makes me feel incredibly hurt and very sad,' Motes said. 'When you're in a family of very, very exceptionally beautiful people it's intimidating.' Her other siblings include Eric Roberts, 57, and Lisa Roberts Gillan, 48, who are also actors. Actress Emma Roberts is the daughter of Eric. 'I think that growing up as Pretty Woman's little sister has definitely made me try to see the person inside and not the person outside,' she added. 'A lot of my life I felt judged for my weight.' Motes, who grew up in the US state of Georgia, was only 13 when Roberts shot to Hollywood fame as hooker Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman. The actress, who had won a Golden Globe for playing a young bride in Steel Magnolias, received a second for Pretty Woman. Motes, who described herself as an 'awkward' child who was bullied at school, could not compete with the success of her 'very pretty and very popular' sister. She said: 'When I was in high school and she was an adult, she would just let me know that I was definitely overweight. She would make it quite clear to me and in a not so nice manner. 'Julia did not want to see me go down that path [of acting] … So I just got a lot of criticism from Julia, which was very discouraging for me.' After graduating from high school in 1995, Motes auditioned for roles in Hollywood while working as a waitress. But she could not afford to continue so returned to Georgia. Niece: Emma Roberts, pictured Monday with Evan Peters, was Nancy's niece Three years ago Nancy moved back to Los Angeles, after meeting her fiancé John Dilbeck. But she claimed Roberts started taunting her about her weight again days after she arrived. With her weight soaring, she finally decided to have a gastric bypass fitted. Motes said she could not afford the £20,000 fee, but rather than ask Roberts, who is worth £90million, for financial help, she took out a loan. She had lost 7st since the operation last June and had planned on marrying in May. However, RadarOnline reported last year that Julia planned to boycott the nuptials because she didn't like the groom and didn't want to get stuck paying for the wedding. 'Julia doesn't think much of Nancy's husband-to-be,' the website quoted an insider as saying. 'She's convinced he's sponging off Nancy, who doesn't have much money in the first place.' At the time of her death, it was not known if she had mended her relationship with Julia. She said last year: 'It's a work in progress, it's not going to be fixed overnight, nor do I think it's going to be fixed by me just getting skinny.' ||||| Julia Roberts was left devastated and anguished that she could not convince her half-sister Nancy Motes to enter rehab before her tragic drug overdose death in Los Angeles, Calif., on Feb. 9, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned. Motes, 37, a former production worker on the hit television show Glee, was found dead Sunday in a bathtub at a Los Angeles home, where authorities recovered both prescription and non-prescription drugs. A source close to Oscar-nominee Roberts told Radar: “The sisters had a very complex relationship. They used to be very close when they were younger. Julia tried in vain over the years, even in the last six months, to get Nancy to go to rehab. Nancy refused the offers and that is when she would often publicly lash out at Julia. PHOTOS: Stars Who OD’d “It hurt Julia, but she knew her sister was battling addiction. “The addiction to prescription drugs made Nancy a totally different person. There would be periods of sobriety and with that brought clarity. It would be during those moments that the sisters would reconnect. Sadly, of course, those times became less frequent before her death.” As Radar previously reported, Motes called the Pretty Woman star a “b*tch” and appeared to have called her a “hag” as she vented in a series of tweets sent late last month. PHOTOS: Cheating, Gay Lovers, Incest, Drugs & Lip Synching! 50 Of Hollywood’s Juiciest Confessions It was yet another illustration of the pair’s rocky relationship after Motes previously declared Roberts led her to take the extreme measure of having gastric bypass surgery. “When I was in high school and she was an adult, she would just let me know that I was definitely overweight,” Motes told the New York Daily News last year. “She would make it quite clear to me and in a not-so-nice a manner.” PHOTOS: Celebs Who Died Young In tweets that have since been deleted, Motes wrote on Jan. 19 under the handle @Dabbs76, “So my ‘sister’ said that with all her friends & fans she doesn’t need anymore love. Just so you all know ‘America’s Sweetheart’ is a B—-H!!’” She later added, “Do you want to be a fan of someone so cruel? She’s not even that good of an actress. Happy you totally F—ed with me?” The family insider revealed to Radar that Roberts, 46, made arrangements for her troubled sister to check into a first class rehab facility last year. “She had agreed to go… this was about a year ago,” the source said. PHOTOS: Heroin Addicts, Coke Fiends & Celebrity Stoners — Hollywood Drug Dealers Tell All! “At the last minute, Nancy backed out, gave no reason. Yet, Julia told Nancy if she was ready to get healthy, all she had to do was call. Julia never got that call.” On Monday, Roberts’ rep released a statement announcing the death of her Motes, as the August: Osage County star withdrew from a number of professional commitments in the wake of the family tragedy, including appearances Monday at a pre-Academy Award luncheon and one on Jimmy Kimmel. “There is no official report from the Coroner’s office yet,” the spokesperson said. “The family is both shocked and devastated.” Nearly Unrecognizable! 20 Shocking Photos Of Stars Without Makeup Added our source: Julia is taking the death very hard. It’s extremely difficult for her because it didn’t have to happen. Julia has a great support network around her and she is relying on her husband [Danny Moder], more now than ever.” The star’s younger sibling was also half-sister to Eric Roberts and aunt to American Horror Story actress, Emma Roberts. If you, or anyone you know, is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please immediately seek help. You can speak with a skilled, trained counselor at a national Suicide Prevention Lifeline crisis center in your area, anytime 24/7 — call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). ||||| Julia Roberts has remained silent over the death of her troubled half-sister Nancy Motes, but privately a struggle is going on between the Hollywood star’s family and her late sibling’s devastated fiancé. A source exclusively tells Page Six that John Dilbeck, whom Motes planned to marry in May, is planning on asserting his right to be a beneficiary of her estate based on their years together and to keep control of her possessions. The source tells us: “Julia and her mother had tried for a long time, for years, to get Nancy to go into rehab, and she repeatedly refused. They did not approve of John and felt that he was a bad influence on her. But you can’t tell someone of Nancy’s age whom not to date. She was living in a tiny apartment with John, his brother and a child. “While Nancy wasn’t a wealthy woman, she would have had gifts given to her by Julia as well as intimate family pictures. “There is a fear that John could be holding Nancy’s personal items hostage and possibly sell them to the highest bidder. If Nancy had photos and wrote a diary, describing her feelings towards her sister, he could use them.” Nancy took an overdose after writing a ­suicide note, which allegedly contained dark ­secrets about the “Pretty Woman” star that she wanted to be made public, Conner Dilbeck, John’s brother, has claimed in an interview. John found his fiancée’s body in the bath Sunday, the day before Julia was due to be at an Oscar nominees lunch. She is up for Best Supporting Actress for “August: Osage County.” Conner claims Julia inflicted “pure cruelty” on her sister and Nancy’s suicide letter was a desperate attempt to expose the alleged treatment. Conner claimed the note is eight pages long, and Motes deliberately timed her apparent overdose to destroy Julia’s Oscar chances. The note is believed to be in the possession of police — who have not confirmed its contents to Julia’s family. A source countered, “Julia has been nominated for other awards. Timing a suicide doesn’t make sense.” Roberts’ rep declined to comment.

– The latest drama surrounding the death of Julia Roberts' half-sister, Nancy Motes: A source tells the New York Post that Roberts may end up in a battle with Motes' fiance, John Dilbeck, who plans to argue that he should be a beneficiary of Motes' estate due to the length of their relationship. Of particular concern: gifts Roberts gave her sister and "intimate family pictures," the source explains. "There is a fear that John could be holding Nancy’s personal items hostage and possibly sell them to the highest bidder. If Nancy had photos and wrote a diary, describing her feelings towards her sister, he could use them," the source adds. And things get more bizarre: In an interview with the Daily Mail, Dilbeck's brother Conner—who has been ranting about Roberts on Facebook—claims Motes killed herself at this time specifically to hurt Roberts' chances of winning an Oscar for her role in August: Osage County. "We are talking about people who are powerful," he says. "People who have very delicate power, people who are in the limelight. Their power can be destroyed very easily if unfortunate things make them look more wicked. They have to be careful, it can destroy their career or their Academy Award." He also claims Motes' suicide note contains secrets about Roberts that Motes wanted to make public, and that Roberts is "terrified" the note could come out. Meanwhile, Radar has stories from both sides: Some sources insist Roberts had been trying to help Motes by getting her into rehab, but Motes' fiance says she was not a drug addict.

(CNN) Indonesian searchers battled bad weather Wednesday in their efforts to find more remains from AirAsia Flight QZ8501, a day after the first signs of debris were spotted. There was conflicting information about whether any parts of the plane had been located underwater. One search official told CNN that he believes sonar equipment has detected wreckage from the plane at the bottom of the sea. "I think that that's the case," said Muhammad Hernanto, the head of search and rescue for the city of Surabaya, where Flight 8501 began its journey on Sunday. He was dialing back earlier comments he made to CNN in which he said the sonar equipment had located wreckage from the plane. Indonesia's national search and rescue chief said the body of the aircraft hasn't yet been discovered. "Until now, we haven't found the plane," Bambang Soelistyo said, according to Indonesia's national news agency Antara. "We've only found seven bodies to this day." The grim discovery Tuesday of parts of the missing plane and several bodies on the surface of the sea dealt a heartbreaking blow to families whose loved ones were lost. Debris was found 100-200 kilometers (60-120 miles) from the aircraft's last known location over the Java Sea, Indonesia's search and rescue agency said. Seven bodies -- four men and three women -- have been recovered from the water so far, Soelistyo said. One of the women found was wearing a flight attendant's uniform, he said. Search teams are looking for other bodies and parts of the plane, including its so-called black boxes. Those could help investigators determine what went wrong on the flight, which lost contact with air traffic controllers on Sunday with 162 people aboard. Sonar equipment has been searching the bottom of the sea, tens of meters below the water's surface, according to SB Supriyadi, the search agency's director of operations. Dozens of ambulances were lined up in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, ready to carry any bodies recovered. The search isn't easy; heavy wind and rain, as well as big waves, are hampering efforts, officials said. Families' anguish As families watched a live news conference Tuesday about the discovery of the debris and saw video of a helicopter lowering a diver to what appeared to be a floating body, some people fainted. Stretchers were brought into the room. Family members burst into tears, dabbing their eyes as officials passed out tissues. Some sat with their eyes full of tears, hands covering their mouths or heads buried in their hands. Others had phones jammed against their ears. "Everyone became hysterical, especially the mothers. One mother even blacked out," said Maria Endang Wirasmi, whose daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren were on the flight. Her husband, Imam Sampurno, said he was relieved the plane had been found. "We hope that our children will be saved by a miracle," he said. AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters he hoped there was "at least some closure" for families. "My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501," he tweeted. "On behalf of AirAsia my condolences to all. Words cannot express how sorry I am." Flight 8501 was operated by AirAsia's Indonesian affiliate. Military crew spotted an object's shadow Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, said the debris was discovered when a crew on a military aircraft spotted the shadow of an object that looked like a plane in the water off the coast of Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province on Borneo. Further searching found floating objects believed to be the bodies of passengers, and then what appeared to be an emergency exit of the plane. Officials sent other search teams racing to the area. Several nations are contributing resources to the effort, including the United States. The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Sampson arrived Tuesday. JUST WATCHED Jet in water deep as a 10-story building Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Jet in water deep as a 10-story building 02:22 The USS Fort Worth is also being prepared to deploy from Singapore, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said. It "can be ready to sail in a day or two to get on station and can be there very quickly," he said. The United States is also preparing maritime patrol aircraft that could help, he said. Search and rescue teams are diverting all their resources to where the debris is, in the Karimata Strait, about 110 nautical miles southwest of the Indonesian city of Pangkalan Bun, AirAsia said. JUST WATCHED Is air travel in Asia growing too quickly? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Is air travel in Asia growing too quickly? 02:16 Unanswered questions Fernandes said the focus for now must remain on the recovery effort, and no sweeping changes were planned for the airline, which has 1,000 flights a day. "But rest assured," he said, that once the investigation is done, if "there are things we need to change, that we will change it." The Airbus A320-200 lost contact with air traffic control early Sunday shortly after the pilot requested permission to turn and climb to a higher altitude because of bad weather, according to Indonesian officials. Authorities mounted a huge effort to find the aircraft, mapping out a search zone covering 156,000 square kilometers. Questions remain about why Flight 8501 lost contact with air traffic control and what happened afterward. Some experts have said the aircraft might have experienced an aerodynamic stall because of a lack of speed or from flying at too sharp an angle to get enough lift. Analysts have also suggested the pilots might not have been getting information from onboard systems about the plane's position or that rain or hail from thunderstorms in the area could have damaged the engines. The key to understanding what happened is likely to be contained in the aircraft's flight recorders. "Until we get the black boxes, we won't know what's going on with the engines," said Bill Savage, a former pilot with 30 years of experience. ||||| Some of the victims' relatives at Subaraya airport The first bodies have been recovered from the AirAsia plane crash site but many of the relatives waiting at Indonesia's Subaraya airport are increasingly frustrated. They cannot understand why there has not been more concrete news over the last 24 hours. Kezia has lost five members of her family. They were all wiped out when the flight went down. Kezia lost five members of her family in the crash She has given DNA to officials to try and expedite the identification process - when the corpses of her relatives are found. She said: "I have so many precious memories that are gone.... But I cannot start to grieve properly until we can hold proper funerals." Play video "Bodies Returned After Plane Crash" Video: Bodies Returned After Plane Crash The mood is increasingly sombre at the airport. Most of the people on board were Indonesian and the country is dealing with a national tragedy. I meet Vivi just outside the crisis centre where she is close to tears. Her sister was on board the aircraft and although she knows she is dead she tells me she still prays for the impossible. She said: "I don't know what to say. I just hope for a miracle. I just want a miracle to happen." But there is also fury in some quarters. Inside the crisis centre there is no hope; that disappeared on Tuesday when uncensored video showing a corpse floating in the water was broadcast onto a big screen without warning. Play video "Latest Update From AirAsia Boss" Video: Latest Update From AirAsia Boss It was the moment Aldilia Sutanto found out her family was dead - like many she's angry and says the TV channel should apologise. She said: "I feel this is not good to show it to us like that. It is not ethical." Crucial to the investigation will be finding the flight data recorders. Aviation experts believe the plane may have crashed whilst trying to evade a catastrophic storm. For the moment though the massive international recovery effort will continue and with it the grief and anguish of the relatives. ||||| PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (AP) — Bad weather hindered efforts to recover victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 on Wednesday and sent wreckage drifting far from the crash site, as grieving relatives prayed for strength to endure their losses. Indonesians hold candles to pray for the victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 in Surabaya, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. Bad weather hindered efforts to recover victims of the jetliner on Wednesday,... (Associated Press) Relatives of passengers of AirAsia Flight 8501 pray at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. The first proof of the jet's fate emerged Tuesday in an... (Associated Press) An Indonesian girl holds a candle to pray for the victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 in Surabaya, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. Bad weather hindered efforts to recover victims of the jetliner on Wednesday,... (Associated Press) Officers of the National Search And Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) carry a body of one of the victims on board the ill-fated AirAsia Flight 8501, from a helicopter upon arrival at the airport in Pangkalan Bun,... (Associated Press) Officers of the National Search And Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) and Indonesian Air Force personnel unload a body of one of the victims on board AirAsia Flight 8501 from a helicopter at the airport in Pangkalan... (Associated Press) Relatives check the documents of passengers on board AirAsia Flight 8501, which will be used for identification purpose, at the crisis center at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia,... (Associated Press) Relatives of passengers of AirAsia Flight 8501 cry after visiting the crisis center at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. The first proof of the... (Associated Press) Indonesian soldiers carry a coffin containing a victim of AirAsia Flight 8501 upon arrival at Indonesian Military Air Force base in Surabaya, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. A massive hunt for the... (Associated Press) Indonesian soldiers carry coffins containing bodies of victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 upon arrival at Indonesian Military Air Force base in Surabaya, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. A massive hunt... (Associated Press) Members of Indonesian National Search And Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) carry the body of a victim of AirAsia Flight 8501 upon arrival at the airport in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014.... (Associated Press) "Help us, God, to move forward, even though we are surrounded by darkness," the Rev. Philip Mantofa, whose church lost about 40 members in the disaster, told families gathered in a waiting room at the Surabaya airport. The massive hunt for 162 people who vanished Sunday aboard the Airbus A320 traveling from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, was severely limited due to heavy rain, wind and thick clouds. Seven bodies, including a flight attendant in her red AirAsia uniform, have been recovered, said Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo. Sonar images also identified what appeared to be large parts of the plane, but strong currents were moving the debris. Conditions prevented divers from entering the choppy Java Sea, and helicopters were largely grounded. But 18 ships continued to scour the narrowed search area, and four of the seven corpses were recovered Wednesday. Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency predicted conditions would worsen, with more intense rains, through Friday. "It seems all the wreckage found has drifted more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from yesterday's location," said Vice Air Marshal Sunarbowo Sandi, search and rescue coordinator in Pangkalan Bun on Borneo island, the closest town to the site. "We are expecting those bodies will end up on beaches." The airliner's disappearance halfway through the two-hour flight triggered an international search involving dozens of planes, ships and helicopters from numerous countries. It is still unclear what brought the plane down. Its last communication indicated the pilots were worried about bad weather. They sought permission to climb above threatening clouds but were denied because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the jet disappeared from the radar without issuing a distress signal. The aircraft's cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or black boxes, must be recovered before officials can start determining what caused the crash. Items recovered so far include a life jacket, an emergency exit window, children's shoes, a blue suitcase and backpacks filled with food. Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the still-unsolved disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew. Simple wooden coffins — numbered 001 and 002 — with purple flowers on top contained the first two bodies, which were sent from Pangkalan Bun to Surabaya for autopsies. The two victims were a woman wearing blue jeans and a boy. The other five bodies — three male and two female — will remain on a warship until the weather clears. Nearly all the passengers were Indonesian, and a large portion were Christians of Chinese descent. The country is predominantly Muslim, but sizeable pockets of people of other faiths are found throughout the sprawling archipelago. Around 10 percent of those in Surabaya, the nation's second-largest city, are Christian. On Wednesday, around 100 relatives gathered for the airport prayer service where Mantofa urged them to hold onto their faith, despite their pain. About 40 members of his Manwar Sharon Church died in the crash. "Some things do not make sense to us, but God is bigger than all this," he said. "Our God is not evil." Before breaking up, those gathered stood together and sang with their hands reaching upward. "I surrender all. I surrender all," they repeated. "I surrender all to God our savior. I surrender all." Many family members had planned to travel to Pangkalan Bun, 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the area where bodies were first spotted, to start identifying their loved ones. However, Surabaya airport general manager Trikora Hardjo later said the trip was canceled after authorities suggested their presence could slow down the operation. Instead, some relatives gave blood for DNA tests in Surabaya, where the bodies will be transported, and submitted photos of their loved ones along with identifying information such as tattoos or birthmarks that could help make the process easier. Nearly all the passengers from Indonesia were frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays. It was 13-year-old Adrian Fernando's first trip to the city-state and was supposed to be a fun vacation with his aunt, uncle and cousin before school resumed. "He is my only son," said his emotional mother Linca Gonimasela, 39, who could not accompany him because she had to work. "At first, he didn't want to go, but later on he was persuaded to join them for the New Year holiday." A number of Indonesian cities have opted to cancel or tone down their planned New Year's Eve celebrations. However, a giant street bash was still in the works for the capital, Jakarta. In Surabaya, hundreds stood in a drizzle holding candles in a park. "Let us pray for the grieving families of those on board the plane," Mayor Tri Rismaharini told the crowd. "Let us pray this will be the last tragedy for Surabaya." ___ Ng reported from Surabaya, Indonesia. Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini, Ali Kotarumalos and Margie Mason in Jakarta contributed to this report.

– A day after debris was first spotted, Indonesian searchers have confirmed that sonar equipment has detected wreckage from AirAsia Flight QZ8501 at the bottom of the sea—though whether the plane is in one piece or broken up remains to be seen, reports CNN. The wreckage was found between 60 and 120 miles from the plane's last known location over the Java Sea, and the bodies of six more men and women—one of whom was wearing a flight attendant's uniform—had been recovered as of late yesterday, officials said. Other news: Though the wreckage has been located, victims' grieving families are growing frustrated with the recovery and identification process, reports Sky News. "I have so many precious memories that are gone," says one woman who lost five family members. "But I cannot start to grieve properly until we can hold proper funerals." AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters he hoped that the families would have "at least some closure." In spite of heavy winds, rain, and 6-foot waves, searchers are continuing to look for more bodies and plane parts. But the weather is causing the wreckage to drift—by a lot, reports the AP. "It seems all the wreckage found has drifted more than 30 miles from yesterday's location," says the search and rescue coordinator on Borneo island in the closest town to the site. "We are expecting those bodies will end up on beaches."

People have been warned not to take "selfies" in the bad weather, as Storm Barney sweeps across the UK. The storm is currently moving across central Ireland, with a gust of 78mph being recorded in the county of Carlow. Power cuts, fallen trees and diverted flights have all been reported on Twitter. The wind is expected to pick up further over Wales and southern England later on Tuesday, which could affect flights from Gatwick and Heathrow airports. Sky News Weather Producer Joanna Robinson said: "Named storm Barney will bring disruptive winds to southern Britain on Tuesday evening, but severe gales over Ireland will ease. "Gusts up to 70mph are possible inland, especially for Wales and central England, with higher values likely on the coasts. "The worst of the gales over southern Britain will be gone by around midnight and central parts will see showers clearing." Natural Resources Wales told Sky News they are expecting "strong onshore winds and "large waves", particularly along the country's west coast. Projects delivery manager Scott Squire said: "Due to the relatively low tidal levels at the moment we're only expecting moderate flood impacts, but advising people to be aware of the risk of large waves. "We will be monitoring the situation and will be issuing flood alerts and warnings if necessary while our staff ensure flood defences are secure." The storm has led to a warning by the Environment Agency and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) that people taking "storm selfies" are putting themselves at risk to capture dramatic moments. David Walker, leisure safety manager at RoSPA, said: "We understand the temptation to view powerful tides and weather conditions, however, if you get caught up or swept out to sea in these events your life will be at risk very quickly and our rescue services will also be at great risk." Barney is the second storm deemed strong enough to be given its own name after Abigail hit last week. The storm is being caused by a series of low pressure systems from the Atlantic. There is also a weather warning about heavy rain over the coming days in the north-west of England and Wales. ||||| There were dozens of injuries and fatalities this year as people took extreme risks in search of the edgiest shot. Be careful out there If 2013 and 2014 were the years when the selfie craze took hold, then 2015 was when we discovered how dangerous they are. In January, three Indian college students were killed by a train when they stopped on the road to Agra and tried to take a photograph of themselves in front of it. A fourth friend survived to tell the tale. In the same month, two men in the Ural mountains died while taking a selfie with a hand grenade – after they had removed the pin. In March, seven young men drowned in Nagpur, India, after capsizing a boat while posing on one side. In May, Eri Yunanto was killed when he fell into a crater up Mount Merapi in Java, Indonesia; in Bali a Singaporean tourist, Mohamed Aslam Shahul, was killed when he was swept off a cliff by a wave. In Romania, 18-year-old Anna Ursu was killed while climbing on top of a train for a picture. In Ryazan, Russia – still in May – another teen died doing the same thing. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman perches on a window ledge in Tokyo to take a selfie. Photograph: Petri Artturi Asikainen/Getty Images In August it was David González Lopez, 32, killed photographing himself during the bull run in Villaseca de la Sagra, Spain. In September, a teenaged Russian urban climbing enthusiast fell from the roof of a nine-storey building. Three people in Yellowstone national park in the US were gored by bison while taking selfies too close to them. At least two Americans were taken to hospital after being bitten by rattlesnakes. Then there are the many, many people who accidentally shot themselves while posing with loaded guns. In the past, Darwin awards have been declared for deaths like these, attributing the victim’s death to their foolishness, but really, it seems fair to put most down to youthful misadventure – egged on by the promise of a souvenir photograph and an online audience. In Russia, selfie deaths are now becoming a matter of national concern. “Since the beginning of the year, we are talking about some hundred cases of injuries for sure,” said Yelena Alexeyeva, an aide to the interior minister – and she was speaking in July. As a result, the interior ministry launched a public safety campaign, warning people not to pose in dangerous places, and to keep their wits about them. Perhaps some day, ideally soon, the “safe selfie” lesson will be a fact of life in the world’s schools. • This article was amended on 30 January 2015 to remove a reference to Kristi Kafcaloudis, who fell from the Trolltunga rock in Norway. Although initial reports suggested she was taking a selfie at the time, her family subsequently said she was trying to get past other people posing for photographs. ||||| Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A man has died after being gored by a bull in a Spanish town while taking a selfie on his mobile phone. Spaniard David González Lopez, 32, had his back to the charging beasts while trying to film the bull run and did not see the one which attacked him until it was too late. Horrified onlookers watched as he suffered fatal injuries to his neck and thigh in the early hours of Sunday morning. A video taken of the fatal attack shows Lopez leaving the protected area to wander into the centre of the Villaseca de la Sagra bull running arena as the animals charge past. While he films a collision between two bulls, one of which appeared to fall unconscious, a third bull runs towards him and gores him in the back, tossing him in the air. It then rakes and tosses him with its horns as he lies helpless on the ground. Witness Juan Jose Losana said: “He looked like a puppet spinning around in the air because he didn’t fall to the ground. “He was off-guard and was carried along with the bull. It was an accident.” Martin Capilla, the first doctor to try to save him, said: “I told his brother when he went to hospital that he was going with a very serious injury. “He was given two litres of blood before he died.” The town's mayor, Jesus Hijosa, said: "The young man was on the path of a bull run which he was filming with his mobile phone. “A bull surprised him from behind and gored him in the neck.” The man was rushed to hospital but died soon after from his injuries. Villaseca de la Sagra is one of many towns across Spain that host annual festivals where crowds of people run ahead of a herd of bulls. The animals are taunted as they are let loose to run through the streets, an event which animal campaigners say is cruel and should be banned. Mr Lopez who lived in nearby Villasequilla, had gone to the bull run with friends. Villasequilla mayoress Elena Fernandez said: “Friends have said he never took part in the bull runs, that it was just bad luck he decided to record the video on his mobile and leave the protected area and the bull got him. “It’s a tragic and stupid death.” The mayor of Villaseca de la Sagra Mr Hijosa warned onlookers to be careful and keep their wits about them to avoid meeting a similar fate. “This sends shivers down our spine ... we organise these events as a tradition, so that people can enjoy them, but these things happen,” Hijosa said. “Bulls are dangerous animals and when there are a lot of people some don’t pay attention ... you have to have your wits about you.” The rest of the festival was immediately suspended. ||||| A schoolboy fell to his death while trying to take an ‘extreme selfie’ from the roof of a nine-story building. The teenager, identified only as Andrey R, had climbed to the top of the building in Vologda, Russia, to add the selfie to his collection of photographs in dangerous places. But, as he attempted the picture in the fading light of the evening, the boy slipped and was fell. Although the fall would have killed him instantly, he landed in bushes which slightly cushioned the impact. However, doctors were unable to save him due to his extensive and severe injuries. The blonde teen, who was athletic and fit, was in his last year at high school and was thinking of applying to university. Story Continues ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption Selfie warnings will be put in Mumbai's iconic Marine Drive promenade Police in the Indian city of Mumbai have identified 15 places where taking selfies "can be dangerous". The places include the iconic sea-facing Marine Drive promenade and the popular Girgaum Chowpatty beach, both major tourist attractions. The decision was taken after an 18-year-old girl drowned in the sea while taking a selfie last week. Last year, authorities imposed a "no selfie zone" at a Hindu festival due to fears they could cause stampedes. Signs saying "no selfie zone" can be seen around the two festival sites in the city, which is the capital of Maharashtra state. Mumbai police spokesperson Dhananjay Kulkarni told the BBC that the places where taking selfies was risky included Bandra Bandstand, Sion Fort and Worli Fort, all places popular with tourists. "The police will now approach the city's municipality to prevent accidents at such spots due to people taking selfies. The municipality may deploy life guards and install warning signs," Mr Kulkarni said. The police warning follows Saturday's incident when three girls trying to take a selfie near the sea in the Bandra area fell into the water. One of them drowned and her body is yet to be recovered. A passerby, 37-year-old Ramesh Walanju, jumped in and helped save the other two girls but was washed away by the choppy waters and his body was found floating in a nearby creek on Monday, AFP said. Image copyright AFP Image caption Most of the selfie warnings will come up at the city's tourist attractions In September a Japanese tourist died after allegedly slipping down the stairs while taking a selfie at the Taj Mahal monument in Agra. Last year, the Russian government reportedly launched a campaign to make young people think twice before snapping selfies in risky situations. In May, a 21-year-old woman survived accidentally shooting herself in the head while posing for a selfie with a gun in Moscow. There have also been several cases of children being electrocuted while taking selfies on top of railway carriages in Russia. In August, a man in Spain was gored to death by a bull while taking a selfie at the annual bull running festival in the town of Villaseca de la Sagra. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The tourist had slipped while taking a selfie at the royal gate near the monument A Japanese tourist has died after allegedly slipping down the stairs at India's Taj Mahal monument. Eyewitness Sagar Singh told BBC Hindi that the tourist fell while taking a selfie at the Taj Mahal's Royal Gate. Police said he lost consciousness immediately after the fall and succumbed to head injuries in hospital. The Taj Mahal, a 17th Century mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan after his wife's death, attracts about 12,000 visitors a day. Agra tourist police officer Sushant Gaur told BBC Hindi that the Japanese tourist had been with three other people when the incident occurred. One of his colleagues fractured his leg, after both fell from the staircase of the monument in the afternoon, police said. The Japanese embassy has been informed about the death, and an investigation is being conducted into the incident. There have been several deaths linked to selfies in recent years. Earlier this year, the Russian government reportedly launched a campaign to make young people think twice before snapping selfies in risky situations. In May, a 21-year-old woman survived accidentally shooting herself in the head while posing for a selfie with a gun in Moscow. There have also been several cases of children being electrocuted while taking selfies on top of railway carriages in Russia. In August, a man in Spain was gored to death by a bull while taking a selfie at the annual bull running festival in the town of Villaseca de la Sagra. ||||| Indian prime minister candidate Narendra Modi takes a "selfie" with a mobile phone after casting his vote at a polling station during India's general election in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on April 30, 2014. (Amit Dave/Reuters) India may have a selfie-loving prime minister, Narendra Modi, but Indians in general seem to be bad at selfie safety. Of at least 27 “selfie related” deaths around the world last year, about half occurred in India, reports show. In 2015, Indians taking selfies died while posing in front of an oncoming train, in a boat that tipped over at a picnic, on a cliff that gave way and crumbled into a 60-foot ravine and on the slippery edge of a scenic river canal. Also, in September, a Japanese tourist trying to take a selfie fell down steps at the Taj Mahal, suffering fatal head injuries. Mumbai police said this week that they had identified more than a dozen “no-selfie zones” around India’s largest city after three young girls were swept out into the Arabian Sea while taking selfies in a rocky part of the Bandra area Saturday. One of the young women is presumed to have drowned, as did a man who jumped in to save them. A Mumbai police spokesman, Dhananjay Kulkarni, told the BBC that police would be asking city officials to take steps to reduce the risk of selfies at popular tourist spots such as the city’s famous Marine Drive, including deploying life guards and posting warning signs. Police would also be giving warnings, authorities said. Last year, no-selfie zones were also established in certain areas of the massive Hindu religious gathering called the Kumbh Mela because organizers feared bottlenecks caused by selfie-takers could spark stampedes.

– The Washington Post takes a deep dive into the field of selfie research, and it's come up with a disturbing number: The paper says 27 people died while taking selfies in 2015, and in some countries, it's become a major headache. Nearly half of those deaths occurred in India, which has started imposing "no-selfie zones" in places where the activity "can be dangerous," the BBC reports. Russia's not far behind, with the Guardian noting it's become a "matter of national concern" there. "Since the beginning of [2015], we are talking about some hundred cases of injuries for sure," a Russian interior minister aide said last year. And the UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in November warned locals not to take "storm selfies" during some particularly bad weather, Sky News reports. Some of the more bizarre or notable selfie cases last year: A Japanese tourist suffered fatal head injuries after tumbling down the steps of the Taj Mahal. A man was gored to death in Spain taking a photo during his run with the bulls. A Russian teen plummeted from a nine-story building while trying to bulk up his compilation of pics taken in dangerous places. (By mid-September, more people had died by selfie than shark in 2015.)

This undated photo taken by Mexican Authorities and provided Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013 by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Juan Salaz.AP/Texas Department of Criminal Justice A Texas prison escapee on the run for almost 16 years has been captured by authorities in Mexico and awaits extradition to the U.S. to finish serving his sentence on charges of attempted capital murder of a police officer, state Department of Criminal Justice officials said Wednesday. Juan Salaz was apprehended last week. The 37-year-old American citizen had been sought for years by authorities on both sides of the border. Salaz escaped the night of March 22, 1997, from the Garza East prison in Beeville in South Texas by climbing over three 16-foot fences all topped with razor wire. At the time, he was serving three concurrent 35-year sentences for aggravated kidnapping with a deadly weapon and two counts of attempted capital murder of a police officer for a 1995 incident involving two Houston officers. He now also faces a felony escape charge besides serving the remainder of his sentence. Prison records show on April 2, 1995, Salaz and another man, Geronimo Soto Alvarado, abducted a man at gunpoint and demanded a ransom. Houston police undercover officers involved in the case arranged for the exchange. After the abducted man was freed, they identified themselves as police and Salaz and Alvarado opened fire on them. A police sergeant avoided serious injury when he was saved by his body armor. Another officer suffered a hand wound. Salaz was seriously wounded when police returned fire. He recovered from his injuries and subsequently pleaded guilty. Alvarado, now 45, also was arrested and is serving a life sentence for two convictions of aggravated assault and another for aggravated kidnapping. Prison officials said sources for years had told them Salaz was hiding out in Mexico but he managed to evade police. The hunt for him involved the U.S. Marshals Service, the Texas prison system's Office of Inspector General and Mexican law enforcement agencies. "Salaz thought that he had eluded authorities by starting a new life in Mexico," Department of Criminal Justice Inspector General Bruce Toney said Wednesday. "He was wrong." Salaz is to be returned to Texas custody once the Mexican government approves his extradition. Salaz's capture leaves Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz, 24, as the lone Texas prison fugitive. He fled in April 2010 from the Brisco Unit in Dilley, near San Antonio. The prison houses medium- and minimum-security inmates. He also is believed to have fled to Mexico. Bustos-Diaz was serving 35 years for a 2005 murder in Harris County. ||||| Page 1 of 1 Former Houston Police Department homicide detective Jim Binford shows the bullet that was removed from his body after a shootout involving fugitive Jose Salaz in April 1995. Jose Salaz is the only prisoner to escape from the Texas prison system and still remain at large. A man who escaped from a Texas prison 16 years ago has been captured in Mexico, authorities said Wednesday. Juan Salaz, an American citizen, was captured last week and remains in Mexico awaiting extradition, authorities said. Salaz escaped on March 22, 1997 from the Garza East Unit in Beeville, southeast of San Antonio. He was serving three concurrent 35 years sentences for two counts of attempted capital murder of a police officer and aggravated kidnapping with a deadly weapon. He climbed over three 16-foot razor wire topped security fences. As recently as three years ago, investigators suspected Salaz was is in the vicinity of Monterrey, Mexico. At that time, investigators said they suspected Salaz has crossed back and forth between Mexico and Texas with help from family in Houston.

– A Texas inmate who escaped from prison nearly 16 years ago has been caught in Mexico, reports the Houston Chronicle. Juan Salaz, a 37-year-old US citizen, climbed a 16-foot fence outside a San Antonio prison in 1997 and made his way to a new life in Mexico. It's not clear how he got caught, but authorities in both countries were on the case. Salaz was serving a 35-year sentence for, among other things, trying to kill a police officer, reports Fox News. His capture leaves Texas with one remaining fugitive inmate: Convicted murderer Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz, 24, busted out in 2010.

A supporter of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, wears a Trump mask as he dances in the aisle before a town hall Saturday, April 2, 2016, in Rothschild, Wis. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Associated Press) RACINE, Wis. (AP) — Following one of the worst weeks of his campaign, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was on defense Saturday as he kicked off a three-day sprint to Wisconsin's primary. Trump began the afternoon with a rally in the Milwaukee suburb of Racine, where he defended a series of controversial comments in recent days on NATO, abortion and nuclear weapons. "This politics is a tough business," said Trump, whose performance in Tuesday's contest will help determine whether he can seize the Republican nomination without a fight at the convention. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly." Offstage, Trump expressed regret that he had retweeted an unflattering photo of rival Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, paired with a glamorous photo of his own wife, Melania, as part of a bitter feud between the two men. "Yeah, it was a mistake," he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have sent it." Among his biggest missteps have been Trump's recent comments on abortion, which have managed to unite both abortion rights activists and opponents in their criticism. During a taping of "Face The Nation" on Friday, Trump said he believed that, when it comes to abortion: "The laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way." His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, quickly issued a clarification that Trump meant that laws won't change until he's president and appoints judges who can interpret them differently. It was the second time in days that he'd stepped in hot water over the issue. On Wednesday, he'd said women should be punished for getting abortions if they're ever banned — a position the notoriously unapologetic campaign quickly reversed. Trump told one audience on Saturday that his words had been repeatedly taken out of context, and complained he was being held to a different standard than his rivals. He called his comments on "Face the Nation" ''perfect" and "so good." "They took words out that I said," Trump told the rally, implying CBS had edited his answer about keeping abortion laws as they are. But the video made clear there was no editing in the exchange about abortion and his response was given in full. Speaking to a friendlier crowd in Eau Claire Saturday night, Trump said that, on the plus side, he gets millions of dollars worth of free media coverage, "so I can't complain that much." Trump's abortion comments raised concerns in the Republican Party about whether his unpopularity with women as measured in preference polling would make him unelectable in a general election match-up against Democrat Hillary Clinton. In an apparent effort to address that concern, Trump said his wife will be campaigning with him Monday. His daughter Ivanka, who just had a baby, will also be returning to campaign with him in another week or so, he said. Trump's three events Saturday passed peacefully, though some of his supporters waiting in line to enter the Eau Claire rally exchanged harsh words with the several dozen protesters gathered outside. ___ Lemire reported from Wausau and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. ||||| Trump quickly recanted and even told CBS’s John Dickerson that “the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way.” “This was not real life,” he told me. “This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that’s where that answer came from, hypothetically.” Given his draconian comment, sending women back to back alleys, I had to ask: When he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, was he ever involved with anyone who had an abortion? “Such an interesting question,” he said. “So what’s your next question?” I pressed, how he could possibly win with 73 percent of women in this country turned off by him? He chose another poll, murmuring, “It was 68 percent, actually.” Trump doesn’t have a plan to turn it around with women, except to use Ivanka as a character witness and to chant that “nobody respects women more than I do.” “I’m just going to be myself,” he said. “That’s all I can do.” I asked how he would get past the damage done by his insults about women’s looks. “I attack men far more than I attack women,” he said. “And I attack them tougher.” Besides, he noted, he gets attacked on his looks, too. “My hair is just fine, but I get attacked on my hair,” he said. “But if I attack someone else on their hair, they’d say, ‘Oh, what a terrible thing to do.’”

– Maureen Dowd has an unlikely admission from Donald Trump, after a bruising week in which the brash candidate took heat for re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz: "Yeah, it was a mistake," he tells the New York Times columnist. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it." Of his comments that women who get abortions should be punished, Trump also backtracked, telling Dowd that "this was not real life. This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that’s where that answer came from, hypothetically." When Dowd wonders whether he was ever involved with anyone who had an abortion when "he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan," he responds thusly: "Such an interesting question. So what’s your next question?" Other un-Trump-like highlights: On his problems with women voters: "Nobody respects women more than I do. I’m just going to be myself. That’s all I can do." On Rosie O'Donnell: "Give me a break, Rosie. I won’t comment on Rosie. I wish her the best. See? In the old days—tell your sister, I’m making progress." (Dowd told Trump he'd lost her sister's vote with the Cruz retweet.) On his hair: It's "phenomenal. My hair is just fine, but I get attacked on my hair. But if I attack someone else on their hair, they’d say, 'Oh, what a terrible thing to do.'" On whether Corey Lewandowski should have just apologized: "You’re right, but from what I understand it wouldn’t have mattered." The softer side of Trump comes as he's campaigning hard in Wisconsin, reports the AP, where he's gotten a rough reception. "This politics is a tough business," Trump told a rally there Saturday. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly." The Wisconsin primary is Tuesday.

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| The daily hustle got you down? God's Little People Cat Rescue on the Greek Island of Syros is looking to hire a live-in caretaker. The job comes with free housing and a salary, according to a post on the organization's Facebook page. "PAID JOB OFFER WITH CATS! (this is genuine and NOT a joke — friends, please feel free to verify!)," the posting reads. "A very special position and living circumstance on offer on a little Greek island called Syros (a small paradise no less!)" (Syros is located in the Aegean Sea to the Southeast of Athens, Greece.) ||||| HOME I NEED A HOME ADOPT-A-CAT ADOPT-A-KITTEN CONTACT US FACEBOOK ABOUT FACILITIES SPONSORS VOLUNTEERS MIRACLES CAT TAILS BOOK NEWSLETTERS RESOURCES WELCOME TO RESQCATS ! RESQCATS is a non-profit cat sanctuary located in Santa Barbara, California, dedicated to the rescue, care and adoption of abandoned cats and kittens. It is my not so humble opinion that God outdid Himself when He created cats. They are small enough to sit on your cold feet without cutting into your already questionable circulation. They greet you in the morning by marching up your body to stand firmly on your chest announcing "can opener time." They bring you presents to honor you. They appreciate what you do for them by purring and rubbing against you as you do it. Many of our cats and kittens arrive very frightened and in desperate need of love and socialization. It is important to personally know each cat in order to find the "purrfect" home. Some kitties will do fine in homes with young children while others may not. Sometimes it is better for a shy or traumatized cat to be adopted out with a more outgoing sibling or playmate. And occasionally, a cat prefers to be the only cat in the house! Quite a few calls I receive at RESQCATS are from people who have just lost their beloved furry friend through death. They are sometimes filled with grief and call because they miss having a kitty around to give the unconditional love they are so good at bestowing upon us. Whether the reason for thinking of adopting a cat or kitten is the loss of your own or the desire to give a furry friend a good home, I would love to hear from you. This site explains what RESQCATS is about and how you can help. For a quick peek of our facilities, visit our cats and kittens at the Online RESQCATS Sanctuary. Many of the kittens you see on this site were once or are RESQCATS cats and kittens themselves. Jeffyne Telson President 805-563-9424 email "What matters most is how you see yourself..." Copyright Alan Wnuk

– When Joan and Richard Bowell decided it was time to leave the Greek island of Syros, they first needed to find someone to manage the cat sanctuary they'd established there. God's Little People Cat Rescue, which started with one stray mama cat and her two kittens, expanded to more than 60 cats roaming the Bowells' property as they continued to take in strays. They posted a Facebook ad for a modestly paid job managing the sanctuary—and 40,000 people responded. The ad went viral, spawning headlines about the "dream job" or "purrrfect job," leading the Bowells to explain to would-be caretakers that it would, in fact, often be a difficult job—not only would poop have to be scooped and the like, but "heartbreaking decisions" would need to be made about sick cats. Months later, as the Washington Post reports, the sanctuary's caretaker has been chosen. Jeffyne Telson's husband sent her the ad soon after it was posted in August, the 62-year-old recalls. Telson runs her own cat rescue in Santa Barbara, Calif., only taking in strays; she's adopted out 3,000 cats and kittens over the past 21 years and has kept those who can't be placed at her own small sanctuary. Her application stood out, and the Bowells traveled to California to visit the couple in September. Joan and Jeffyne clicked immediately, and the Bowells offered Telson the job. She'll run the Syros sanctuary for some months, while volunteers run her Santa Barbara rescue, and other finalists for the Syros job will likely then take their own turns managing God's Little People. Meanwhile, the Bowells are looking into expanding the sanctuary, possibly even using it as an international training center for similarly-minded volunteers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There’s not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There’s an iridescent dinosaur. An illustration of a reconstruction of the iridescent dinosaur which had rainbow feathers, named Caihong juji, unearthed in China, is shown in this October 31, 2016 photo released on January 15, 2018. Courtesy Velizar Simeonovski/The Field Museum for the University of Texas at Austin/Handout via REUTERS Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of a crow-sized, bird-like dinosaur with colorful feathers from northeastern China that lived 161 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. They named it Caihong, the Mandarin word for rainbow. Microscopic structures in the exquisitely preserved, nearly complete fossil unearthed in Hebei Province indicated that it boasted iridescent feathers, particularly on its head, neck and chest, with colors that shimmered and shifted in the light, like those of hummingbirds. The discovery “suggests a more colorful Jurassic World than we previously imagined,” said evolutionary biologist Chad Eliason of the Field Museum in Chicago, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature Communications. Using powerful microscopes, the scientists detected within the feathers the remnants of organelles called melanosomes responsible for pigmentation. Their shape determines the color. Caihong’s feathers had pancake-shaped melanosomes similar to those of hummingbirds with iridescent feathers. Much of its body had dark feathers, but ribbon-like iridescent feathers covered its head and neck. While it possessed many bird-like characteristics, the researchers doubted it could actually get airborne. Its plumage could have attracted mates while also providing insulation. Caihong was a two-legged predator with a Velociraptor-like skull and sharp teeth, probably hunting small mammals and lizards. It had crests above its eyes that looked like bony eyebrows. Many dinosaurs possessed feathers. Birds evolved from small feathered dinosaurs near the end of the Jurassic Period. Caihong had fuzzy feathers and pennaceous ones, those that look like writing quills. It is the earliest-known creature with asymmetrical feathers, a trait used by birds to steer when flying. Caihong’s were on its tail, suggesting tail feathers, not arm feathers, were first utilized for aerodynamic locomotion. “It is extremely similar to some early birds such as Archaeopteryx,” said paleontologist Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, referring to the earliest-known bird, which lived 150 million years ago. “Its forelimbs were configured like wings. To be honest, I am not sure what function the feathers have, and I don’t think that you can completely exclude the possibility that the feathers helped the animal to get in the air.” Asked what someone might say upon seeing Caihong, University of Texas paleontologist Julia Clarke said, “‘Wow!’ And if they are anything like me, they might want one as a pet. Not suitable for children.” The dinosaur’s full scientific name, Caihong juji, means “rainbow with a big crest.” ||||| Systematic palaeontology Theropoda Marsh, 1881 Maniraptora Gauthier, 1986 Paraves Sereno, 1998 Caihong juji gen. et sp. nov. Etymology. Caihong is from the Mandarin ‘Caihong’ (rainbow), referring to the beautiful preservation of the holotype specimen of the animal and the array of insights it offers into paravian evolution; juji is from the Mandarin ‘ju’ (big) and ‘ji’ (crest), referring to the animal’s prominent lacrimal crests. Holotype. PMoL-B00175 (Paleontological Museum of Liaoning), a nearly complete skeleton with associated plumage preserved on a slab and counter slab from Gangou, Qinglong, northern Hebei Province, Tiaojishan Formation, early Late Jurassic, ~161 Myr9 (Supplementary Figs. 1–5; Supplementary Notes 1 and 2). Diagnosis. A small theropod with the following autapomorphies within Paraves: accessory fenestra posteroventral to promaxillary fenestra, lacrimal with prominent dorsolaterally oriented crests, robust dentary with anterior tip dorsoventrally deeper than its midsection and short ilium (<50% of the femoral length, compared to considerably >50% in other theropods). Differentia. Besides the aforementioned autapomorphies, Caihong juji further differs from the Yanliao theropods Anchiornis huxleyi, Xiaotingia zhengi, Eosinopteryx brevipenna and Aurornis xui in possessing the following features: a shallow skull with long snout (about 60% of skull length), antorbital fenestra much longer anteroposteriorly than high dorsoventrally, postorbital with extremely short squamosal process and exceedingly long jugal process, caudal vertebral series short (ie, caudal vertebral series/femur length ratio about 2.5, compared to ~4.0 in Anchiornis huxleyi and Aurornis xui; this ratio has been suggested to be 2.7 in Eosinopteryx brevipenna, but the illustrated posterior-most preserved caudal vertebrae are only slightly shorter than the mid-series caudals5 and thus are not the terminal caudals in that taxon), forelimb proportionally short (about 60% the hindlimb length, compared to about 85% in Anchiornis huxleyi, about 80% in Aurornis xui and 75% in Eosinopteryx brevipenna), forearm proportionally long (ulna and radius longer than humerus, a feature only known in relatively derived birds and in the scansoriopterygid Yi qi among theropods) and manual unguals proportionally small (eg, Manual phalanx III-3/III-2 length ratio about 0.5, compared to ~0.9 in Anchiornis huxleyi and other Tiaojishan theropods). Caihong juji further differs from Anchiornis huxleyi, Eosinopteryx brevipenna and Aurornis xui but not Xiaotingia zhengi in the following features: jugal with long and shallow quadratojugal process, ilium with a long preacetabular process (about 60% of iliac length compared to about 50% in Anchiornis huxleyi, Aurornis xui and Eosinopteryx brevipenna) and comparatively short lower segments of hindlimb (eg, tibiotarsus <120% of femoral length, compared to about 160% in Anchiornis huxleyi and about 140% in Aurornis xui and Eosinopteryx brevipenna). Caihong juji further differs Xiaotingia zhengi in the following features: the posterior maxillary ramus shallow (ie, a depth at mid-length considerably smaller than the corresponding portion of the dentary), the surangular with less extensive lateral exposure, a moderately large surangular foramen, the tooth crowns recurved and slender in lateral view, metacarpal IV less robust than metacarpals II and III; and manual phalanx III-2 shorter than metacarpal III (we identify the three manual digits of maniraptorans as II-III-IV following some recent studies7,10, rather than as I-II-III as in many other studies11), ischium with rectangular obturator process (only known in Anchiornis huxleyi, Aurornis xui, and Eosinopteryx brevipenna and Archaeopteryx among coelurosaurs), among others. Caihong juji further differs Eosinopteryx brevipenna in the following features: ilium with relatively deep postacetabular process and extensive tail feathering. Caihong juji further differs Aurornis xui in the following features: manual phalanx II-1 about the same in thickness as the radius, ilium with a convex dorsal margin, ischium with posteriorly curved distal end (compared to the unusually anteroventrally curved ischial distal end in Aurornis), and extremely short metatarsal I (<15% of the metatarsal length, compared to about 30% in Aurornis xui), among others. Caihong juji differs from Pedopenna daohugouensis in the following features: a relatively robust pedal phalanx I-1 (a length/mid-shaft-diameter ratio of about 4.0, compared to 7.2 in Pedopenna), an extremely short metatarsal I (<15% of the metatarsal III length, compared to about 25% in Pedopenna), pedal phalanx III-3 considerably longer than III-2 (III-3 slightly shorter than III-2 in Pedopenna) and extensive feathering of the pedal digits. Description and comparisons The holotype is assessed to be an adult based on closure of the neurocentral sutures in all preserved vertebrae. It is small (Supplementary Table 1), estimated to be ~400 mm in total skeletal body length with a body mass of ~475 g12. The cranial morphology is well exposed on the left side of the rostrum of the skull and mandible preserved on the counter slab, but poorly exposed on the slab and other parts of the skull and mandible on the counter slab (Fig. 1, Supplementary Fig. 4a, b). In order to understand better the cranial morphology, we prepare the slab from the bottom side, which reveals well most of the left side of the skull and mandible except the rostrum (Supplementary Fig. 4c). In general, the skull and mandible are well preserved, with most elements preserved in their original anatomical positions, though a few elements are slightly displaced (Fig. 1d, e). For example, the nasals are slightly inclined anteroventrally, the left palatine is slightly displaced dorsally, the left lacrimal slightly anteriorly and the braincase slightly anteriorly. Fig. 1 Caihong juji holotype specimen (PMoL-B00175). Photographs of the slab (a) and counter slab (b) and line drawing (c) of the specimen based on both slabs. Photograph (d) and line drawing (e) of a composite of the rostrum of the skull and mandible exposed on the counter slab and the post-rostrum cranium exposed on the slab. Arrows indicate lacrimal crests. Question mark indicates uncertain identification. Scale bars: 10 cm a–c, 1 cm d and e. aof antorbital fenestra, cav caudal vertebra, cev cervical vertebra, dr dorsal rib, dv dorsal vertebra, ect ectopterygoid, emf external mandibular fenestra, en external naris, f feather, fu furcula, ga gastralia, hy hyoid, il ilium, is ischium, la left angular, lar left articular, lc left coracoid, lcr lacrimal crest, ld left dentary, lf left, frontal, lfe left femur, lh left humerus, lj left jugal, ll left lacrimal, lma left maxilla, lm left manus, ln left nasal, lp left pes, lpa left palatine, lpo left postorbital, lq left quadrate, lqj left quadratojugal, lr left radius, ls left scapula, lsp left splenial, lsa left surangular, lsq left squamosal, lt left tibiotarsus, lu left ulna, ma mandible, mf maxillary fenestra, o orbit, p parietal, pm premaxilla, pt pterygoid, pu pubis, rar right articular, rc right coracoid, rd right dentary, rfe right femur, rh right humerus, rm right manus, rp right pes, rpra right prearticular, rq right quadrate, rr right radius, rs right scapula, rt right tibiotarsus, ru right ulna, scl sclerotic bones, sk skull, sy synsacrum Full size image The skull is long (slightly shorter than the femur in length) and shallow (maximum height/length ratio about 0.2). It displays five major openings from lateral view: an elongate-oval-shaped external naris that extends posteriorly beyond the anterior border of the antorbital fossa as in many other basal paravians4, a hypertrophied elliptical maxillary fenestra that is centrally located, an anteroposteriorly elongated antorbital fenestra that is ~40% of the anteroposterior length of the antorbital fossa and that appears to be extensively medially walled as in the troodontid Mei13, an orbit longer anteroposteriorly than dorsoventrally, and a relatively large infratemporal fenestra. The premaxilla has a small prenarial portion and a nearly vertical anterior margin more common in dromaeosaurids than in troodontids and basal birds. The subnarial portion is large and longer anteroposteriorly than dorsoventrally. A slender subnarial process contacts a slender nasal subnarial process about the mid-length of the external naris to separate the external naris from the maxilla. The nasal process of the premaxilla is flattened dorsoventrally, a feature seen in troodontids and ornithomimosaurs14. The maxilla is relatively shallow element, with the maximum height/length ratio about 0.3. It has a relatively small and high anterior ramus and a slender subantorbital-fossa ramus that has parallel dorsal and ventral margins and a robust posterior portion. There is a shallow groove along the lateral surface of the subantorbial-fossa ramus in which there are a row of anteroposteriorly-elongate, large foramina. The antorbital fossa contains a large promaxillary fenestra as in some basal paravians including Archaeopteryx4, posteroventral to which is an accessory fenestra. Both fenestrae are at least partially walled medially. The maxillary fenestra is separated from the antorbital fenestra by a narrow interfenestral bar, the posterior margin of which is scalloped in two places, indicating the posterior ends of the narial passage and a ventral canal connecting the antorbital and maxillary fenestrae as in troodontids15. The nasal is a major element contributing to the roof of the snout. It sends anteroventrally a slender subnarial process to the level of the mid-length of the external naris, which overlaps the lateral surface of the subnarial process of the premaxilla. The lacrimal is tetra-radiated, with an anterior process, a posterior process, a descending process and a fourth dorsolateral process. The anterior process is not well exposed, and thus it is not known whether the anterior process is highly elongated as in troodontids14. As in many paravians16, a posterior process is present, and furthermore, it is long as in many deinonychosaurs16. The descending process of the lacrimal has an anteroposteriorly relatively broad lateral surface and expanded ventral end. One striking feature is the presence of a fourth dorsolateral process at the junctional area of the aforementioned three processes, which extends laterally first and then curves dorsally. This process is robust and has a somewhat horned shape in lateral view, unlike the other three processes which are laminal. In many troodontids, the lacrimal extends laterally to form a horizontal shelf over the anterodorsal corner of the orbit16,17 and in the unenlagiid Austroraptor, a fourth process, which projects posterolaterally, is present lateral to a tiny posterior process18. The frontal contributes to the dorsal border of the large orbit. Posteriorly, the frontal is arched. The internal surface of the frontal bears a prominent crista cranium along the orbital edge, which appears to be more prominent posteriorly than anteriorly. The parietal exposes little, but the posterolateral corner of the left parietal is visible. The lateral end of the transverse nuchal crest is not particularly prominent and a short and relatively broad posterolateral process is visible. The postorbital has an extremely long jugal process, which extends ventrally close to the ventral border of the orbit, and appears to have an extremely short squamosal process and a frontal process that is not strongly upturned. A prominent eminence appears present at the junction with the jugal process, but, this could be a preservation artefact. The jugal has a very shallow but strap-like suborbital ramus, along the ventral edge of the lateral surface of which is a prominent ridge, a feature also known in some troodontids and basal dromaeosaurids. The postorbital process orients much more posteriorly than dorsally and its great length suggests a long overlapping contact with the jugal process of the postorbital. The quadratojugal process (the posterior process) is long and slender, suggesting the presence of a long contact with the quadratojugal. The quadratojugal has an extremely long jugal process, which is considerably thickened mediolaterally. The squamosal process appears to be very short, suggesting the absence of the quadratojugal-squamosal contact. There is no distinct posterior process, which is present in dromaeosaurids19. The quadrate is strongly curved, and appears to lack a large quadratojugal flange and a large lateral flange. Unusually among paravians, the dorsal end of the quadrate lies more anteriorly than the ventral end, but this might be a preservation artefact. The palatine is a large tetraradiate element. It has a distinctive pneumatic fossa on the ventral surface. Sclerotic ossicles are preserved within the orbit. They are thin plates with a sub-rectangular outline, but more details are not obtainable. The dentary is a long and shallow bone, roughly triangular in lateral view as in troodontids14. The anterior end is not slightly downturned as in Sinovenator20, and the anterior portion is deep dorsoventrally, even greater in depth than the middle portion. As in troodontids and unenlagiids14,21, there is a groove on the lateral surface of the dentary, which is narrow anteriorly but much wider posteriorly. Elongated vascular foramina are located within the groove as in troodontids and unenlagiids14,15,21. In medial view, a centrally located Meckelian canal is extremely narrow and deep anteriorly, and becomes much wider posteriorly. The surangular forms more than half of the lateral surface of the posterior portion of the mandible. The anterior process of the surangular bears a groove on the lateral surface for contacting the dentary and it forms the dorsal and posterior border of the external mandibular fenestra. The angular forms the ventral border of the large external mandibular fenestra. The anterior portion of the angular is shallow and the posterior portion deep in lateral view, but it appears not to be as curved as many other deinonychosaurs. The splenial has a relatively large lateral exposure as in deinonychosaurs16 and possibly Archaeopteryx4. It has a long and shallow posterior process, which contacts the ventral margin of the prearticular and angular, and its anterior portion is not well exposed. Two ceratobranchial elements from the hyoid are preserved. Caihong resembles basal troodontids and to a lesser degree basal dromaeosaurids in dental features (Supplementary Fig. 4d–h): anterior teeth are slender and closely packed, but middle and posterior teeth are more stout and sparsely spaced. Serrations are absent in the premaxilla and anterior maxilla; the more strongly recurved mid-dentary teeth have posterior serrations, and the posterior-most dentary teeth have short stout crowns with large, apically hooked serrations along both mesial and distal carina. One unusual feature shared with some basal troodontids such as Mei13 is the extremely long maxillary tooth row: the posterior-most maxillary tooth is located close to the preorbital bar, unlike most maniraptorans that have a short maxillary tooth row terminating considerably anterior to the preorbital bar. Caihong has probably 10 cervical vertebrae, no more than 13 dorsal, 5 sacral and 26 caudal vertebrae (Figs. 1 and 2). The cervical centra appear to be weakly angled in lateral view as in Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis2,22. Slender cervical ribs are parallel to the cervical series and they appear to be long and overlap with neighbouring ribs (Fig. 2a). The dorsal centra are anteroposteriorly long and lack distinctive pneumatic fossae or foramina (Fig. 2b) as in basal deinonychosaurs and Archaeopteryx20. The dorsal neural spines are posteriorly expanded distally (Fig. 2b). The sacrum comprises five vertebrae, but little can be said about their morphology. Fig. 2 Photographs of the vertebral column of Caihong juji. a Posterior cervical vertebrae in dorsal view; b middle dorsal vertebrae in lateral view; c anterior caudal vertebrae in dorsal view; d middle caudal vertebrae in lateral view; e posterior caudal vertebrae in lateral view. Scale bars: 0.5 cm Full size image A complete caudal series comprises 26 vertebrae and it measures only 2.5 times femoral length, proportionally much shorter than those of all other Yanliao taxa2,6,23. The proportionally short bony tail is due to the relatively small size of each vertebra. As in other paravians, the anterior caudals are short and with prominent transverse processes and neural spines (Fig. 2c); more posterior ones become longer and bear smaller transverse processes and neural spines (Fig. 2d, e). The transition point, which is determined by the absence of transverse process, occurs between caudal 7 and 8. As in basal paravians20, the middle and posterior caudal vertebrae are comparatively elongate (ie, the longest caudal vertebra in the midseries is 2.3 times as long as the anterior-most caudal vertebrae). The plate-like chevrons all are short, with the first three longer dorsoventrally than wide anteroposteriorly, the next two sub-equal in length and width, and more posterior ones wider than long, a condition seen in Avialae. As in basal troodontids and other Tiaojishan theropods, the scapula is slightly shorter than the humerus and the rectangular coracoid has a prominent coracoid tubercle and a relatively small postglenoid process (Fig. 3a). The furcula is relatively slender. Unlike oviraptorosaurs and dromaeosaurids, but as in troodontids, other Tiaojishan theropods, and some basal avialans, ossified sternum and uncinate processes are absent. Fig. 3 Photographs of the pectoral girdle and limbs of Caihong juji. a Right scapula and coracoid in medial and proximal views; b right forelimb; c left manus; d left and right hind limbs. Scale bar: 1 cm in a, c, and 5 cm in b, d Full size image The forelimbs in Caihong measure only about 60% the hindlimb length, proportionally shorter than most other basal paravians2,23. The humerus is nearly as robust as the femur in most basal paravians (Fig. 3b), but it is proportionally shorter than in other Tiaojishan theropods and many basal paravians (eg, a humerus/femur length ratio is about 0.6, compared to about 1.0 in Anchiornis, 0.8–0.9 in other Tiaojishan theropods)24,25. However, the ulna and radius are longer than the humerus, a feature so far known only in flighted avialan taxa among theropods26. As in basal troodontids, other Tiaojishan theropods, and to a lesser degree, Archaeopteryx4, the ulna is weakly bowed and the radius is only slightly thinner than the ulna (Fig. 3b, c). The manus resembles those of other Tiaojishan theropods and to a lesser degree basal troodontids: a relatively long metacarpal II (about 40% of the metacarpal IV length), a straight and relatively robust metacarpal IV, a long phalanx II-1 (close in length to metacarpal III), a long phalanx III-2 (about 1.7 times as long as phalanx III-1), and the combined lengths of the subequally long phalanx IV-1 and IV-2 considerably smaller than IV-3 length (Fig. 3b, c; II–IV sensu Xu et al.10). The pelvis closely resembles those of other Tiaojishan theropods and Archaeopteryx4. The ilium has a preacetabular process considerably longer than the postacetabular process that is slightly downturned; the pubis is slightly curved posteriorly and it has a strongly hooked boot as in the unenlagiids; the ischium is a strap-like element that is extremely short and broad anteroposteriorly, and most unusually, it has a large rectangular obturator process, in striking contrast to nearly all coelurosaurs except Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx that have a triangular obturator process on the ischium4 (Fig. 3d). The hind limbs are highly elongated, measuring about 3.1 times the length of the dorsal series. The sub-arctometatarsalian pes has a hallux that is proportionally smaller than that of most other basal paravians and a moderately enlarged and hyperextensible second pedal digit (Fig. 3d). Feathers are well preserved over the whole body, except for the anterior portion of the rostrum and unguals (Fig. 1a–c), but in many cases, they are too densely preserved to display both gross and fine morphological features (eg, number and general outline of feathers and details related to rachis, barbs and barbules). It is noteworthy that the preserved morphologies are not necessarily the true morphologies of these fossil feathers as preservation can alter the morphology of fossil feathers27. Caihong’s body contour feathers are proportionally longer than those of other known non-avialan theropods2,5,28. Feathers attached to the skull and neck are either long (~20 mm in length) and linear, possibly stiff (Fig. 4a; Supplementary Fig. 5) or short (~10 mm) and sinuous in preserved aspect (Fig. 4b). Relatively long feathers (~40 mm) near the chest region and other parts of the body (eg, parts of the forelimb) show sub-parallel, thick and linear barbs (Fig. 4c). Fig. 4 Feathers preserved in Caihong juji. Feathers attached to the neck: (a) pennaceous feathers and (b) down-like feather; (c) feathers attached to the chest and trunk region; (d) primary or secondary remige near the carpal joint; (e) alula; (f) pennaceous feather on the tibiotarsus; (g) anterior rectrix; (h) posterior rectrix; (i) middle rectrix; (j) close-up of barbs and barbules. Scale bars are 0.2 cm in a, b, j; 0.5 cm in d, e, f, g, h; and 1 cm in c, i, respectively. Arrows in j indicate barbules of a rectrix Full size image As preserved, the proximal primaries and distal secondaries are among the longest remiges (>100 mm long). These feathers are ~2.4 times as long as the humerus and have narrow rachises (Fig. 4d). While the bony forelimb is shorter than in Anchiornis, these remiges are striking more elongated than in that taxon (Fig. 3b). One unusual feature is the preservation of several slender feathers associated with the right pollex (Fig. 4e). These feathers are not completely preserved (missing the distal portions), but the preserved portions suggest that they are pennaceous. Because these feathers are similar in anatomical position to the alula in relatively derived birds, we tentatively identify them as a form of alula, although their function might not be necessarily the same as the alula in relatively derived birds. Nevertheless, similar feathers have been also reported in Microraptor, a non-avialan theropod nearly 40 million years younger than Caihong28. Large pennaceous feathers are preserved posterior to the tibiotarsus and the metatarsus (Figs. 3d, 4f). The longest of these well exceeds any such feathers known in Eosinopteryx5, Aurornis6, and Archaeopteryx29. These feathers display well-organized vanes on either side of the extremely thin rachis, which are formed by densely spaced parallel barbs (eg, four barbs in a length of 0.6 mm close to the tip of a feather attaching to the mid-length of the tibiotarsus). In some cases, pennaceous barbules are visible in these feathers (Fig. 4j), which are inferred to be present but have rarely been preserved in other non-avialan theropod fossils30. The tibial feathers have barbs with an angle of about 25 degrees to the rachis, forming nearly symmetrical vanes on either side of the rachis. Small, distally deflected feathers are also preserved anterior to the proximal tibiotarsus, metatarsus, and on the pedal digits (Fig. 3d). The closed vanes are not obvious in most metatarsal and arm feathers. Instead, most preserved metatarsal feathers display densely spaced parallel barbs with nearly same orientation, so are the arm feathers including those that are identified as remiges (Fig. 3b, d). However, several arm feathers show densely spaced parallel barbs orienting in opposite directions on either side of the rachis, suggesting that these feathers are pennaceous (Fig. 4d), and so are several metatarsal feathers. Hindlimb feathering (Fig. 3d) of Caihong juji is seen in Anchiornis huxleyi, and other Tiaojishan theropods2,31. The new species is particularly similar to the first taxon in having extensively feathered toes2. Eosinopteryx brevipenna has been suggested to have reduced tail and hindlimb plumages, but specimens of Anchiornis huxleyi display variable plumages in terms of not only feather distribution, but also feather size and shape. Some closely related Tiaojishan theropods not differentiated by osteological features may need reassessment of their taxonomic status. Large pennaceous tail feathers (eg, 112 mm length and 16 mm width in a posterior caudal) attach to all but the most anterior caudal vertebrae, contributing to a robust and broad tail with a sub-rectangular outline (Fig. 1a–c). Feathers attaching to the most anterior caudals are less well-organized and there is no clear evidence for the presence of closed vanes. However, in some cases, closely spaced parallel barbs are visible, which suggest that these feathers may have also been pennaceous. As preserved, feathers attaching to middle and posterior caudal vertebrae are clearly pennaceous, and each caudal vertebra has approximately four associated feathers comprising rectrices and covert feathers. These feathers display well preserved closed vanes (Fig. 4g–i; Supplementary Fig. 5), which are indicated by densely spaced parallel barbs orienting in opposite directions on either side of the rachis that often results in a crossing pattern between the neighbouring feathers. In some cases, barbules are visible in these feathers. For example, some barbules preserved in a middle rectrix are up to 2 mm long and they are parallel to each other and set an acute angle to the barbs (about 15°). These rectrices are among the largest feathers preserved on this specimen. For example, one rectrix attaching to a middle caudal measures about 80 mm in length and 9 mm in maximum width, and one rectrix attaching to the second last caudal measures about 110 mm long and 15 mm wide. Rachises in all these feathers are extremely thin. For example, the rachis of a rectrix attaching to the second last caudal, one of the largest rectrices, measures about 1 mm in diameter about its mid-length. The exceptionally preserved rectrices display proximodistal variation in barb density and angle from fewer higher-angled barbs to more numerous and elongate lower-angled barbs (Fig. 4i). There are four barbs within a length of about 1 mm close to the tip of a feather attaching to a middle caudal, and the same barbs from the leading vane set an angle of about 15 degrees to the rachis and those from the trailing vanes set an angle of about 25°. The posterior rectrices have larger barbs (eg, four barbs within a length of 1.8 mm close to the tip of a rectrix attaching to the second last caudal), which seem to set a larger angle with the rachis (eg, 25° for the leading barbs and 30° for the trailing barbs). Anterior and mid-series rectrices have asymmetrical vanes (eg, mid-series rectrix with the inner vane about twice as wide as the outer vane; Fig. 4g) and attach to the bony tail at a higher angle than the posterior rectrices. Vane asymmetry decreases in the posteriorly directed terminal rectrices, which show nearly symmetrical vanes (Fig. 4h). In general, the tail feathering of Caihong resembles those of Archaeopteryx29 and the troodontid Jinfengopteryx32 in having large rectrices attaching to either side of the caudal series to form a frond-shaped tail (Fig. 1; Supplementary Figs. 3, 5), a unique feature that has been suggested to represent a synapomorphy for the Avialae33. Anchiornis and other Tiaojishan theropods seem to have a similar tail feathering25, but their rectrices are smaller and more leaf-like, forming a narrower frond-shaped feathery tail. Furthermore, the available specimens of Anchiornis and its close relatives have highly variable tail feathering, with most of them displaying more plumulaceous rather than pennaceous tail feathers and some displaying more pennaceous than plumulaceous feathers. In general, the feathery tail shapes of non-avialan paravian theropods are diverse and some of them appear to have functioned as ornaments1,2,28,34,35,36,37. Several other feather morphotypes are also preserved around different regions of the body. One morphotype is represented by a series of barbs joined basally to form a simply branching structure without rachis (Fig. 4b), which is also seen the dromaeosaurid Sinornithosaurus38. However, some recent studies suggest that this morphotype might represent a derived condition within birds39 and its presence in non-avialan theropods might be a preservation artefact27. A variation of this morphotype is that the barbs are stiff rather than soft, and nearly parallel to each other for most of their length, and also much longer and thicker than the former (Fig. 4a). The other morphotype is represented by a series of long and narrow feathers preserved over the humerus (Fig. 4c). They can be up to at least 45 mm in length but only about 1.5 mm in width. These feathers are composed of an extremely narrow membrane-like leading vane, a rachis that is about 0.3 mm wide (even wider than the leading vane), and a trailing vane that seems to be open with very long barbs attaching to the rachis at a very small angle. Given the available information on the plumages of basal paravians40, it is difficult to draw a conclusion whether rectrices with asymmetrical vanes and/or coverts on the tail represent synapomorphies for the Avialae or a more inclusive clade or independently evolved features in early paravian evolution. Alula seems to be absent in several basal birds such as Archaeopteryx and Confuciuornis, and thus even if the small feathers associated with the pollex of Caihong juji and Micororaptor can be confirmed as a form of alula, they must have been independently evolved several times early in paravian evolution given the patchy distribution of this feature among early paravian theropods. Nanostructures and inference of plumage colour in the Caihong juji holotype Scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging was used to characterize 2460 structures from 66 samples of feathers from across the body (Fig. 5a–d; Supplementary Figs. 6, 7). Cross-sectional focused ion beam (FIB)-SEM images reveal distinct differences between known fossil bacteria and the nanostructures in Caihong (Supplementary Figs. 8, 9). SEM data show that the nanostructures recovered from fossil feathers are comparable in size and shape to extant avian melanosomes. Focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy data show that these structures are solid (ie, uniformly electron-dense; Supplementary Figs. 8, 9). Because bacteria are expected to be electron lucent in the core (‘hollow’; see Supplementary Fig. 9 with reproduced Fig. 7c from ref. 41), these data (the electron-dense cores) as well as absence of any observed evidence of binary fission, do not support a microbial hypothesis for the origin of these nanostructures but do support melanosome identity (Methods).The nanostructures from Caihong were compared to an expanded melanosome data set for extant birds (Figs. 5e–h, 6; Methods; Supplementary Tables 2–4; Supplementary Figs. 10–12). Analysis of the structures from Caihong indicated that this species occupies a distinct area of morphospace relative to other extinct basal paravians, including Anchiornis from the same deposits (Fig. 6a; Supplementary Figs. 12, 13). Rarefaction analyses indicate the structures observed in pinnate feathers of basal paravians are likely to be as diverse as extant bird melanosomes, although this predicted variation is estimated to not yet be fully sampled (Supplementary Figs. 12, 13). Fig. 5 Platelet-like nanostructures in Caihong juji and melanosomes in iridescent extant feathers. a–d Fossilized nanostructures from Caihong feathers preserved as molds in a neck feather (a) and three-dimensional preservation in a neck feather, with SEM stage rotated 45° to show 3D platelet morphology (b), a back feather with SEM stage at 0° (c) and a neck feather showing nanostructure packing (d); e Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) showing overlapping melanosomes within a feather barbule; f white-tailed starfrontlet (Coeligena phalerata) showing stacking and interior morphology (air bubbles) of melanosomes in a feather barbule; g black-tailed trainbearer (Lesbia victoriae) showing exterior surface and morphology of isolated melanosomes in a feather barb; h moustached treeswift (Hemiprocne mystacea) showing densely packed melanosomes in the barbule of a crown feather. Inset in d illustrates 3D stacking of platelet-shaped nanostructures. All scale bars: 1000 nm. Photo credits: Chao PC (e, license CC BY-2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode), Misty Vaughn f, Lip Kee (g, license CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode), Lip Kee (h, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode) Full size image Fig. 6 Analyses of nanostructure shape diversity and phylogenetic position of Caihong juji. a Mean length and diameter measurements for nanostructures from various body regions in Caihong juji (red), Anchiornis huxleyi (grey) and Microraptor (black). Rarefaction analyses show that sampling of the fossil taxa is appropriate to determine significant differences: Anchiornis shows significantly more nanostructure diversity than either Caihong or Microraptor (Supplementary Fig. 13). b Morphospace plots of raw nanostructure measurements for Caihong juji relative to extant avian groups with platelet-like melanosomes (orange: hummingbirds, green: swifts, blue: trumpeters and trogons, grey: other non-platelet avian melanosomes). Contour lines show 2D density of measurements. Numbers give proportional overlap (∩) between Caihong juji (red) and each group (Methods). c Simplified coelurosaurian phylogeny (strict consensus of 192 most parsimonious trees from the primary analysis) showing the recovered position of Caihong juji (Supplementary Note 3; Supplementary Figs. 18 and 19). Additional assessments of the taxon utilizing another recent data set recover an Anchiorninae clade as a part of Troodontidae (Supplementary Note 3; Supplementary Figs. 20, 22). Photo credits: Fred Wierum (Microraptor, CC BY SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode), Dick Daniels (Trumpeter, CC BY SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode), Alan Vernon (Red-tailed hawk, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode), T R Shankar Raman (Glossy swiftlet, CC BY SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode), Nobu Tamura (Anchiornis, CC BY 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode), J. Clarke (Caihong, modified from original artwork by Velizar Simeonovski, used with permission), Robert McMorran/USFWS (Anna’s hummingbird, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode) Full size image Based on the assumption that these structures are melanosomes, most of the plumage of Caihong is predicted by discriminant function analysis as black, with iridescence primarily on the head, chest and, to a lesser extent, the base of the tail (Supplementary Table 4, Supplementary Fig. 6). The morphospace of the platelet-shaped structures overlaps that associated with iridescent colours of vivid, highly variable hues in hummingbirds and swifts (Figs. 5e–g, 6b)42,43,44, but also with grey and black colours in penguins45. However, unlike melanosomes in those penguin grey or black feathers, the structures in the 21 samples from the fossil appear aligned in sheets and dorsoventrally compressed (Fig. 5; Supplementary Fig. 7). This organization was further confirmed in SEM images taken on a rotating stage at three different angles to the preserved structures (Supplementary Fig. 8). Other specimens from the same deposits (eg, Anchiornis) do not show similar platelet morphologies or organization (Supplementary Fig. 14)25,34, platelet-shaped nanostructures in Caihong occur only in certain body regions (Supplementary Figs. 6, 7), and nanostructures in nearby regions were statistically more similar to each other than more distantly related anatomical areas (Mantel test r = 0.16, p = 0.001; Supplementary Fig. 15). Thus, flattening of the nanostructures by compaction during burial is considered unlikely. While melanosomes from internal organs can also fossilize, our sampling was limited to feathers, and we did not observe any ‘halo’ around the body cavity that may be diagnostic of internal melanosome migration46. We also modelled the effect of taphonomic shrinkage47 (Methods). In most cases, our results were not affected by this taphonomic bias (Supplementary Tables 3, 4; Supplementary Fig. 12). If this occurred, the original sizes of these structures in the 21 regions would overlap even more of the iridescent hummingbird melanosome morphospace (Supplementary Figs. 16, 17). ||||| View Images An artist's depiction of Caihong juji, a species of theropod dinosaur that lived 160 million years ago in what's now northeastern China. Illustration by Velizar Simeonovski, The Field Museum A new dinosaur discovered in China had feathers that may have glittered with the colors of the rainbow. Based on its stunningly preserved remains, scientists say the dinosaur’s head and chest seem to have been covered with iridescent feathers akin to those on modern hummingbirds. The flashy display may have provided a social or sexual cue, like modern peacock tails. The dinosaur also has a bird-like body, including the sorts of feathers required for flight, but it has a crested head that more closely resembles that of a Velociraptor. Dinosaurs 101 They ruled the Earth for more than 160 million years, but much about how dinosaurs lived and died remains a mystery. See what we know and don't know about the age of dinos. Given these traits, the ancient animal has been named Caihong juji—Mandarin for “rainbow with the big crest”—the team reports today in the journal Nature Communications. Caihong lived in forests and may have glided from tree to tree, preying on small mammals and lizards, says study co-author Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In life, the duck-size carnivore would’ve weighed roughly a pound. “I was shocked by its beautifully preserved feathers, even though I had seen many feathered dinosaur fossils previously,” adds Xu. View Images The slab containing Caihong juji. Exceptional conditions allowed the dinosaur's feathers to fossilize along with its bones. Photograph by The Field Museum Rainbow in the Dark Birds—the last living dinosaurs—use feathers today for flight, but feathers also help birds woo potential mates or jockey for social status. Dinosaur fossils suggest that feathers originally evolved for display, only later taking on the traits needed for flight. (Learn more about how feathers evolved.) Like modern and ancient birds, dinosaurs likely had color vision and took advantage of it with striking, feathery displays. In exceptional cases, scientists can reveal dinosaur feathers’ original colors by finding vestiges of pigment sacs called melanosomes within fossilized plumes. (See the full-body coloration of the feathered dinosaur Anchiornis.) Yang Jan, a local farmer, found the Caihong fossil in northeastern China’s Hebei Province. In February 2014, the Paleontological Museum of Liaoning acquired the fossil from Jan. When scientists led by Dongyu Hu, a paleontologist at China’s Shenyang Normal University, examined the fossil, they found that its well-preserved remnants contained traces of pigment in its feathers. The team sampled 66 sites across the fossil, comparing the melanosomes they saw with melanosomes from modern bird feathers. On Caihong’s head, chest, and parts of its tail, the researchers saw melanosomes that were long, flat, and organized into sheets. These patterns most closely match the melanosomes in the iridescent throat feathers of hummingbirds. In hummingbirds, similar structures split light like a prism, creating a metallic sheen that changes color with the viewing angle. The team couldn’t reconstruct the dinosaur feathers’ exact colors, but they suspect that the observed pigments gave Caihong a rainbow glimmer. See Hummingbirds Fly, Shake, Drink in Amazing Slow Motion They move so fast that human eyes see only a hovering spot of color, a blur of wings. But when frozen in time by high-speed cameras, hummingbirds yield their secrets. Paleontologists have seen this sparkle in dinosaurs before. In 2012, scientists found evidence that the feathered dinosaur Microraptor glinted blue in the sun like modern crows and grackles. Unlike Caihong, though, Microraptor was iridescent all over—and it is much younger: Microraptor lived a full 40 million years after Caihong. “When we put these data on the evolutionary tree, we recognize two different ways of creating iridescent color in small raptor dinosaurs before the origin of birds,” says Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin who coauthored the Caihong and Microraptor studies. More Than a Light Show Caihong may not have used just its feathers for showing off, notes University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte, who reviewed the study before publication. “Its plumage was a shiny rainbow of iridescent colors … but it didn't stop there,” he says. “It also had a funky crest of bone sticking up in front of its eyes, which was probably a display structure as well.” View Images The skull of Caihong juji. Photograph by The Field Museum In addition, Xu says that Caihong’s frond-like tail has asymmetrical feathers, and their short, stiff leading edges would have borne the aerodynamic load of flight. Caihong is now the oldest known animal to have this key adaptation. The iconic bird-like dinosaur Archaeopteryx also has asymmetrical feathers, but it lived ten million years later. With Caihong, “who knows what the functions of this large, wide tail were?” says National Geographic explorer Ryan Carney, a University of South Florida biologist who studies Archaeopteryx. “Perhaps it was held up as a dark background to provide contrast against the iridescent head during displays?” Clarke, an expert on the origin of birds, says that researchers also can’t yet be sure how Caihong used its iridescent feathers, or whether males or females of the species had different plumage. For that, paleontologists can only hope for further study of the new fossil, and perhaps even more bones from Caihong and other feathered dinosaurs.

– Scientists are now saying there may have been "a more colorful Jurassic World than we previously imagined," thanks to the recent discovery of a fossil in China's Hebei province. Reuters reports that a closer look at the "exquisitely preserved," almost completely intact fossil of a crow-like dinosaur that lived about 161 million years ago revealed that Caihong juji had luminous, brilliantly hued feathers that closely resembled those of hummingbirds. The study in the journal Nature Communications documenting the find explains that "Caihong" means "rainbow" in Mandarin. Scientists think the colorful plumage, which appeared to have covered the bony-crested creature's head, neck, and chest areas, may have kept the dinosaur warm, as well as attracted potential mates; National Geographic compares it to peacock feathers. So how were researchers able to tell what color feathers the creature had from preserved bones? They used high-tech microscopes able to home in on 66 sites on the fossil, detecting tiny cell structures called melanosomes, which underlie pigmentation. Which colors they led to can be found by their shapes, and the melanosomes in Caihong were long and flat like pancakes—similar to those found in hummingbirds, which boast iridescent plumage. Although they can't pick out from the Pantone wheel Caihong's exact colors, researchers say the creature likely sported feathers with a "rainbow glimmer." Study co-author Xing Zu tells National Geographic that Caihong was a predator that spent its days gliding from tree to tree. And "glide" is the operative word, as this dinosaur likely didn't fly: Its feathers were located on its tail, not on its wings like birds, Discover notes. (A study postulated that nearly all dinosaurs had feathers.)

The “safest” drug for relieving aches and pains, lowering fever and treating headaches in pregnancy may not be so safe after all, according to a new report — it may raise the risk of ADHD and similar disorders in their children. Researchers found that pregnant women who frequently took acetaminophen, sold under the brand name Tylenol, were more likely to have children later diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and similar issues. They say it doesn’t mean that pregnant women must never, ever take the drug, but they said women may want to avoid using it frequently until more studies have been done. “We aren’t saying if you take one Tylenol once it will give your child hyperactivity,” said Dr. Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist at the University of California Los Angeles who worked on the study. "You should just avoid chronic or long-term use.” Infections such as influenza in pregnancy are known to affect the brain development of babies — they’re linked to autism, for instance. It’s one of the many reasons pregnant women are urged to get flu shots. So the researchers in this study were careful to ask women if they were taking the acetaminophen pills to reduce a fever to treat flu symptoms. Even when taking this into account, women who took acetaminophen were more likely to have children later diagnosed with ADHD. The team used an ongoing Danish study of 64,000 children and their mothers, who were called up regularly during pregnancy and asked whether they had taken any painkillers at all. “All these women were asked had they taken any pain medications and fever medications, any medications,” Ritz said. “We aren’t saying if you take one Tylenol once it will give your child hyperactivity. … You should just avoid chronic or long-term use.” About half had taken acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, Ritz’s team reports Monday in the American Medical Association journal JAMA Pediatrics. “They also reported what kind of disorders they had. But there are viral infections that the woman doesn’t even recognize. She just feels a little malaise.” That is why it is possible that it may not be the drug itself to blame, but some infection the women had, Ritz and other experts point out. It’s also possible that women who feel pain more acutely, and take painkillers more often, may also have some sort of genetic predisposition that raises the risk of ADHD. The researchers were not able to make a clear estimate of risk based on dose. But women who reported ever taking the drug had a 29 percent higher risk of having a child diagnosed with ADHD, and a 37 percent higher risk of a rarer diagnosis called hyperkinetic syndrome. Still, the findings don't show a clear cause-and-effect. “I don’t think one study alone is enough to say nobody should use acetaminophen in pregnancy,” said Dr. Jeff Chapa of Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, who was not involved in the study. However, there are suspicions about acetaminophen. UCLA’s Dr. Jorn Olsen, who designed and led the study, had set it up because of lab studies suggesting that acetaminophen might have a hormone-like effect on the developing fetus. And it’s not the first study to show something may happen in people, too. A study late last year showed that women who took acetaminophen frequently during pregnancy raised the risk of behavior problems in their children by 70 percent. “Pregnancy is just a very sensitive period of time where the hormones are very important to development,” Ritz said. And although acetaminophen is considered a very gentle drug, it is not harmless. Large doses can damage the liver and even kill. The Food and Drug Administration has asked drug companies to limit how much they put into products. It wasn’t possible to compare acetaminophen to other painkillers and fever reducers, such as ibuprofen, because pregnant women so rarely took them, Ritz said. Chapa raises another possibility. Maybe moms who favor acetaminophen for themselves also gave it to their children when they were very young and their brains were still developing. “Are those moms also more likely to give acetaminophen to their children after birth?” he asked. “The immediate take-home message is that if you are taking a lot, maybe you shouldn’t.” Kate Langley, a neuroscientist at Britain’s Cardiff University, notes that it’s likely that more than one thing is going on with kids who develop ADHD. “ADHD is a complex disorder so it means that there are lots of different risk factors and we know a bit about some of them but we don’t know a great deal,” said Langley, who helped write a commentary on the findings. “We know that there are genetic and environmental and possibly prenatal (factors) but we know that none of them on their own cause ADHD.” ADHD diagnoses are on the rise. More than 1 in 10 children has been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although much of this is due to awareness and not a real increase in incidence, experts say. Nonetheless, pregnant women need to weigh the risks, Ritz says. “We make these tradeoffs all the time. We would not take a woman off antibiotics when she has a severe infection during pregnancy,” Ritz said. “It’s the risk-benefit ratio. As much as we want to avoid every type of risk, it is not possible.” In this case, she advised, it might be worth toughing out a headache. “The immediate take-home message is that if you are taking a lot, maybe you shouldn’t, and really question whether you need to take it,” Chapa added. “And if you do that’s fine, but take a small quantity for a small duration. If you have chronic pain, maybe don’t take acetaminophen for it.” McNeil Consumer Healthcare, which makes Tylenol, said pregnant and breastfeeding women whould consult their doctors before taking any medication. "We are aware of the recent JAMA Pediatrics study; however, there are no prospective, randomized controlled studies demonstrating a causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse effects on child development," the company said in a statement. NBC News intern Nikita Japra and Medical Fellow Hayley Goldbach contributed to this story. ||||| Doctors frequently recommend acetaminophen, commonly found in over-the-counter pain relievers including Tylenol, to pregnant women for treating mild pain. But a new study out of Denmark suggests the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy could be associated with ADHD-like behavioral problems in children. “(Pregnant women) shouldn’t worry at this point,” says study author Dr. Beate Ritz, professor and chair of the epidemiology department at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health. “But if I were a woman who was pregnant ... I would try to avoid taking painkillers as much as I can until we know more about this.” The study, published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed data from more than 64,000 children enrolled in the Danish National Birth Cohort study between 1996 and 2002. Mothers in the cohort study reported on their children’s behavior, and the researchers looked at databases to determine how many prescriptions for ADHD drugs were written and how many children received a diagnosis of a severe form of ADHD called hyperkinetic disorder, or HKD. The study authors concluded that prenatal exposure to acetaminophen may increase the risk of a child being diagnosed with HKD or being prescribed ADHD medications and “exhibiting ADHD-like behaviors." It's important to note that ADHD-like behaviors are not the same as having ADHD. An accompanying editorial published in JAMA Pediatrics emphasizes that the study has found “an interesting observed association,” but that the researchers did not find that acetaminophen causes ADHD. The study authors agree that their results do not show a cause-and-effect relationship. The data suggests that taking acetaminophen for longer periods and later in pregnancy is associated with higher risks, Ritz says. When women reported use for 20 weeks or more, their children had a 50% increased risk for receiving ADHD medication, according to the study. Ritz says more than half of all mothers in the study reported some acetaminophen use while pregnant. The study measured how many weeks the mother reported taking any amount of acetaminophen but did not take the dosage into account. “When used as directed, Tylenol has one of the most favorable safety profiles among over-the-counter pain relievers,” said McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the maker of Tylenol. “We are aware of the recent JAMA Pediatrics study; however, there are no prospective, randomized controlled studies demonstrating a causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse effects on child development." The study’s authors suggest that acetaminophen may increase the risk of ADHD by interfering with maternal hormones that are critical for fetal brain development, citing a previous study done using acetaminophen in rats and a study of acetaminophen and autism done with humans. “The cited literature is not relevant to the human condition,” says Dr. Max Wiznitzer, pediatric neurologist and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “I’m afraid that (women) will think, somehow, that they caused their child’s problem when the study does not tell us that. It tells us that they are linked but does not tell us how.” “There are a lot of variables that still need to be considered, such as the fact that ADHD runs in families,” Wiznitzer says. Seventy to 80% of ADHD cases are hereditary, he says. The study highlights the importance of not taking a drug’s safety during pregnancy for granted, the accompanying editorial points out. “There are nonpharmacological ways to deal with pain,” says Dr. Jeffrey Chapa, head of maternal-fetal medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital. Massages, baths and acupuncture are some alternatives he suggests to help relieve pain. “I think we have to focus a little bit more on that as opposed to just medications.”

– The bad news about acetaminophen just keeps on coming: A new study finds that use of the drug during pregnancy is linked to "ADHD-like behavioral problems" in children, CNN reports. The Danish study looked at data from more than 64,000 children and found that those who had prenatal exposure to acetaminophen had a 13% higher risk of exhibiting ADHD-like behaviors, a 29% higher risk of being prescribed ADHD medication, and a 37% higher risk of receiving a diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorder, a severe form of ADHD, USA Today reports. The risk increased the later in pregnancy the drug was taken and the longer it was taken. Women who used acetaminophen for 20 weeks or longer had a 50% higher chance of their children being prescribed ADHD medication. But the authors did not find a cause-and-effect relationship, and they note that "exhibiting ADHD-like behaviors" is not the same as actually having ADHD. Right now, doctors consider acetaminophen the "safest" pain reliever for pregnant women, NBC News reports; the study author says pregnant women "shouldn't worry at this point." What could account for the link? The authors think acetaminophen may interfere with key maternal hormones that impact fetal brain development. Another recent study also found that frequent acetaminophen use during pregnancy was linked with a 70% higher risk of behavioral problems in children.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- After months of efforts to craft a bipartisan bill, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd plans to introduce a revised version of sweeping bank reform legislation on Monday, most likely without Republican support. Dodd had hoped to release a bipartisan bill, after working furiously with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to reach a solution. However, Dodd said that time was running out to pass a bill in 2010. "There isn't a lot of time left to complete bank reform this year," Dodd said to reporters at a news conference. "The real problem I'm facing is that clock." At a separate news conference, a visibly disappointed Corker said that he and Dodd, along with other members of the committee, were extremely close to completing a bipartisan bill, coming to agreements on dozens of controversial areas such as how much power to award a new regulator for consumer protection of mortgage and credit card products. Corker said the lawmakers had been "on the five-yard line" when it came to completing the reform, but that Dodd told him he was under pressure by the White House to wrap up efforts to complete bank reform quickly in the committee so that Congress can take steps it needs to pass health care legislation, also languishing on Capitol Hill. "There is no question that White House politics and health care have kept us from getting to the goal line," Corker said to reporters. "The fact of the matter is, he is a victim of health care policy. We're still almost there but it looks like we're not going to get there." Dodd plans to have the 22 senators on the committee vote on the bill during the week of March 22, after which it could be quickly considered on the Senate floor some time in the Spring. Not enough time? In his news conference, Corker also criticized Dodd's plan to have the banking committee begin and complete its review of the bank bill in one week. "This is a very important bill and I cannot imagine a committee member, Republican or Democrat, passing a bill with this kind of substance in it in a week," Corker said. "I think that would be a travesty. If senators can pass a bill of this substance in a week, which has so much in it, then the states that elect them might as well send robots to Washington." In response, Dodd said that he needs to set time-posts, otherwise nothing would get done. He acknowledged, however that his timeline of having members of the committee vote on the bill in a week, could slip. "It is more important to get this right than getting it done but I emphasize again, I don't have a lot of time left in this Congress." However, Corker said Dodd, Republicans and Democrats had agreed to a number of areas, including a new structure for a consumer protection division, new heightened liability for credit raters and additional oversight for payday lenders and other lenders. Dodd and other Democrats have sought to create a powerful consumer financial protection agency that could write rules for mortgages and credit cards. However, Republicans have sought to have a bank regulator have veto power over any rules the new consumer advocate would write. Corker said Dodd and he had come to an agreement to allow a group of five agencies, the Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Fed, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, have veto power over consumer rules the division would write if a majority of the agencies agreed it was a problematic rule. Both sides also agreed to let bank regulators enforce the rules put in place by the consumer unit. "We have come to a very good balance," Corker said. However, Dodd declined to comment about whether it was that structure he would ultimately agree to. Dodd also denied reports assertions that he might try to split the bill into two pieces and first move forward on portions he could find broad consensus on. "To do this in pieces would be impossible in the Senate," Dodd said. Disagreements still abound Republicans and Democrats on the committee disagree on a number of other areas. Case in point: Dodd and other Democrats have installed a series of shareholder empowering provisions in the bank reform bill that Corker and others are opposed to. "That's a line in the sand," Corker said. The bill is expected to include provisions that would make it easier for investors to nominate a minority slate of directors onto corporate boards using corporate proxy cards, which are papers filed to investors. Another provision gives investors a non-binding vote on pay packages given to executives, while they are heading the corporations, and the golden parachutes they receive when they leave firms. Republicans are trying to remove all of these measures, arguing they empower labor unions and environmentalist investor groups in behind-the-scenes conversations at the expense of shareholder value. "Proxy access was going to be an issue," Corker said. "We agreed to look at some governance issues however this shareholder provision concerns us greatly because it involves giving activist investor groups too much power." Corker also said Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., had been still working on crafting bipartisan derivatives legislation before Dodd decided to bring the bill to a vote. The two sides were working on how much of an exemption to give end users of derivatives, such as manufacturers, from transparency and trading requirements. The bill requires that most derivatives transactions go through transparent clearinghouses, which are intermediaries between buyers and sellers. ||||| WASHINGTON—The White House's yearlong effort to rewrite financial regulations risked running aground in the Senate after Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd broke off bipartisan negotiations and announced plans to push ahead without Republican support. The gamble is a bid to speed progress, but it raises the chance that Congress won't be able to push through a substantive regulatory overhaul. The White House and some Senate Democrats now plan to challenge the GOP to a partisan fistfight, daring Republican senators to break ranks and not use the blocking power of a filibuster to kill a measure that would curb Wall Street and ...

– Chris Dodd is preparing to introduce a sweeping bank reform bill on Monday in the Senate without any Republican support. The move comes after months of negotiations with the GOP's Bob Corker, who said the two were on the "5-yard-line" before Dodd got pressure from the White House to push a bill out of committee before a health care vote. Says Dodd: "There isn't a lot of time left to complete bank reform this year. The real problem I'm facing is that clock." Corker said "there's no question that White House politics and health care have kept us from getting to the goal line," reports MarketWatch. Assuming Dodd and Corker don't patch up remaining differences quickly about the legislation, which is to include tougher consumer protections, Democrats could face a filibuster on the Senate floor, reports the Wall Street Journal.

It's the last will and testament of Hollywood legend Tony Curtis, and it reveals that in his final days he disinherited daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis and his other four children. INSIDE EDITION has obtained the will, written five months before his death from cardiac arrest last year at age 85. His children are listed by name, including jamie Lee. Then there's this statement: "I acknowledge the existence of my children...and have intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them." Instead, Curtis leaves his estate to his widow, Jill. A source provided INSIDE EDITION with an e-mail, apparently written to one of Curtis' kids that reads: "(I) just had to write to tell you how very sorry I am about the news of the will. I'm in shock! Your father loved you all so much, and I will never believe that he turned his back on you." Curtis, who starred in Spartacus and Some Like it Hot, was eulogized by his actress daughter Jamie Lee at his funeral. She comforted family members at his burial. Now she and her siblings find themselves cut out of their father's will. One of Curtis's daughters contested the will in court, but was denied. Meanwhile, Curtis's widow Jill released a statement saying, "Tony's last will and testament and his passing wishes are private family matters." ||||| According to a copy of the will obtained by the CBS television show Inside Edition he acknowledged the existence of his children, including the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, but said he had "intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them." His fifth wife Jill Vandenberg Curtis was named as the representative of his estate in the document which was filed in the state of Nevada, CBS reported. One of the children, not Jamie Lee Curtis, was said to have tried to contest the will but the move failed. Curtis died from cardiac arrest at the age of 85 at his home in Nevada in September. He made more than 140 films over 60 years including Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, and Spartacus with Kirk Douglas. Curtis, who was born Bernard Schwartz in New York, had children with three of his wives – the actress Janet Leigh, Christine Kaufmann, and Leslie Allen. He married for the fifth time in 1998. Following his death Jamie Lee Curtis, his daughter with Leigh, said: "He leaves behind children and their families who loved him and respected him and a wife and in laws who were devoted to him." A statement from the actor's widow to CBS said: "Tony's last will and testament and his passing wishes are private family matters."

– Jamie Lee Curtis eulogized her father Tony at his funeral last year—but just five months before his death, Curtis had disinherited Jamie Lee and his other four children. Inside Edition has a copy of the will, which lists his children by name … then says, “I acknowledge the existence of my children … and have intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them.” Curtis left the entire estate to his widow Jill—his fifth wife and not the mother of any of his children, the Telegraph notes. One of Curtis’ daughters contested the will, but was denied by the court.

Many of us drink a cup of coffee on the way to work or chow down on some food while driving.But in New Jersey that could soon land you a ticket, or stiff fines.A controversial new bill, calling for hefty fines and even a driver's license suspension, is making its way through the legislature.Many are wondering, does this distracted driving bill go too far?However, while many are harping on the possibility that motorists would be pulled over simply for drinking coffee, the evidence strongly suggests something needs to be done to drastically reduce distracted driving.According to the latest figures from the federal government, in 2014 there were some 400,000 accidents involving distracted drivers, and 3,000 of those resulted in death.Those numbers are shocking, and sadly most of the accidents were preventable."There are 3,000 people who didn't make it home for reasons that are entirely preventable," said Assemblyman John Wisniewski. "Those reasons are keeping your eye on the road."The proposed law seeks to stop motorists who like to multi-task and take their attention away from driving to do such things as text, use computers, eat or drink without paying attention to the road.The proposed fines for violators are $200 to $400 for the first offense and $400 to $600 for a second offense.A third offense could mean a fine of $600 to $800 and up to a 90 day license suspension, as well as motor vehicle points.Some see the law as an overreach, but lawmakers say it's all about safety and saving lives. ||||| TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Drivers who drink coffee behind the wheel don't need to worry about getting a ticket in New Jersey any time soon. The sponsor of a bill targeting distracted driving says his measure doesn't specifically cite coffee, despite recent news reports focusing on the beverage. Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski said the legislation is aimed at discouraging distracted driving and that he cannot imagine that a police officer would pull anyone over for drinking coffee. Current law already prohibits texting or talking without a hands-free device. The new legislation is broader and would bar "any activity unrelated to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle." Wisniewski says he sponsored the bill , which doesn't mention eating or drinking, to avoid the need for new legislation every time technology changes. He introduced the measure seven months ago, but he has yet to bring it up for a vote in a committee he leads. It also never came up for a vote in the two previous legislative sessions in which he introduced similar bills. Wisniewski said he was surprised by the reaction to the legislation. He said the outcry against the bill has been so strong that his inbox has filled up even more than when he proposed a 25-cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax. Wisniewski said when he introduced the bill before, people worried he was trying to stop them from eating sandwiches while driving. "It was the 'ham sandwich bill' last time," he said. "Now it's coffee." ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Put down the coffee, bagel or hairbrush and drive! Or else! A bill winding its way through Trenton would impose stiff fines and even a possible license suspension for drivers who eat, drink, groom, read or use electronic devices behind the wheel. Violators could face a $200 to $400 fine for the first offense and a $400 to $600 fine for a second offense. A third or subsequent offense could mean a fine of $600 to $800 and up to a 90 day license suspension, as well as motor vehicle points. The sponsors of the bill, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D- Middlesex and Nicholas Chiaravalloti, D-Hudson, said it is modeled after a law in Maine and is intended to educate, not punish drivers. "The issue is that we need to try, in every way, to discourage distracted driving, it's dangerous," Wisniewski said. "Education and enforcement can change the attitudes of people." Some experts say that motorists must be discouraged from multitasking while driving. Others say the bill is an overreach and questioned how police could enforce it. "This proposed distracted driving law is not needed, since three statutes can be used when a distraction causes unsafe actions, like swerving or crossing a line," said Steve Carrellas, policy and government affairs director for the National Motorists Association state chapter. "There is unsafe driving, careless driving and reckless driving." Supporters of the bill must come to terms with the fact that a certain level of multitasking by drivers is a reality, Carrellas said. "Would [the bill] make changing the radio station or adjusting the volume illegal? What about talking to a passenger?" Carrellas asked. Arnold Anderson, the Essex County Community Traffic Safety Program coordinator, said its imperative that motorists break the habit of doing more than one thing while driving. "You've got to get people out of the mindset of multitasking," said Arnold Anderson, " You can't multitask. We are so far away from the mindset of ... just drive." This kills more drivers than anything else Officials from AAA said that a distraction law would be hard to enforce since an officer would have to observe how the driver was distracted, but also that the bill may have a higher purpose. "The legislation introduced by Assemblyman Wisniewski, while admirable in theory, may not help police enforce the law," said Tracy Noble, AAA Mid-Atlantic spokeswoman. But a distraction law could have a similar effect as seat belt laws, which Noble and Anderson credited for increasing seat belt use in the state, even without fines. "The more widespread the message of eliminating distractions becomes, the more likely it is to be ingrained in everyday behavior, similar to seat belt usage," Noble said. Currently, New Jersey has laws banning the use of hand-held cell phones and texting while driving, but no prohibitions of other behavior that is considered distracting, according to the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety. Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com . Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry . Find NJ.com on Facebook

– A New Jersey lawmaker wants to slap stiff fines on motorists guilty of distracted driving, which his bill defines as "any activity unrelated to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle." A story at NJ.com translates that to mean anyone caught drinking, eating, grooming, or reading an e-device, which in turn has led to a spate of stories suggesting that coffee will soon be outlawed in cars across the state. Not so much, reports the AP. Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski says his bill never mentions the beverage, adding that he'd be stunned if police pulled over a driver just for taking a morning sip. "It was the 'ham sandwich bill' last time," he says, referring to a previous iteration of the bill. "Now it's coffee." Still, he says he's serious about distracted driving, which was blamed for 400,000 accidents and 3,000 deaths in 2014, ABC7 reports. First-time offenders risk being slapped with a fine of up to $400—and $800 for a subsequent breach, plus a 90-day license suspension. Some critics say the legislation, inspired by a similar bill in Maine, goes too far. Steve Carrellas of the state National Motorists Association chapter told NJ.com that existing laws already cover “unsafe actions, like swerving or crossing a line.” He added, "Would [the bill] make changing the radio station or adjusting the volume illegal?" There's time to figure all that out: The measure has yet to come up for a vote even in committee. (A new report calls attention to drowsy drivers.)

HALIFAX—Before her planned death earlier this week, a Halifax woman asked Canadian politicians to change the medically assisted dying law so that others like her might live out more days, and responses from Ottawa have been varied. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said the government had no plans to amend the two-year-old assisted dying law, but another Liberal parliamentarian said that wasn’t the end of the story. Since Audrey Parker’s assisted death on Nov. 1, Canadian politicians have given varied responses to her plea for legislative change. ( Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press ) “Although the minister may say we’re not imagining any changes right now, I think we have to see what Canadians are thinking of,” said Darren Fisher, MP for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour. “If Canadians are staunchly in favour of something, then that’s our job to go out and try to advocate for those things on behalf of Canadians,” he added. Read more: Article Continued Below Thousands sharing, commenting on Audrey Parker’s final public words Advocate dies ‘peacefully’ after plea for changes to Canada’s assisted-death law Fisher’s riding is one of four in the Halifax area where Audrey Parker lived until her death on Nov. 1. Parker, 57, was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in 2016. When she decided to end her life she was in excruciating pain from tumours in her bones, and had recently learned that the cancer had spread to her brain lining. Since Canada’s medically assisted dying law requires last-minute consent from the patient, Parker chose to go before her condition worsened further. If she could have made an advance request, she said she would have stayed until after Christmas. Parker made a public call for the government to amend the law to eliminate late-stage consent in situations like hers. Article Continued Below “We’re not considering changing something in the legislation,” Wilson-Raybould told reporters on Nov. 2. In an interview on the same day, Fisher said he felt differently. “(My constituents) are basically saying that they support (Parker) and my personal view is I’m supportive of it as well,” he said. In Parker’s final Facebook post she said the assisted dying law was “poorly thought out,” and asked the public to contact their MPs about changing it. Thousands have responded to Parker’s post, many of them expressing support for her request. In addition to Fisher, the other three Halifax-area MPs were asked for interviews Friday. Geoff Regan and Darrell Samson did not respond to the request. Andy Fillmore responded with an emailed statement, saying in part: “Many constituents have sent me emails containing (Parker’s) final Facebook post, adding their own reflections. It’s clear that she has left an impact on our community, and on the ongoing conversation related to medical assistance in dying.” “We know that medical assistance in dying is a deeply personal choice, and I believe it is important that Canadians have access to it if they choose.” Fillmore’s email went to on to say that he “looked forward” to reading an upcoming report on the issue. When Ottawa first drafted the medically assisted dying law, it asked the Council of Canadian Academies — a non-profit organization that operates on federal funding — to review three unresolved issues, including advance requests. A report on that review is due to be tabled at the House of Commons by the end of this year. Fisher said the report would not offer recommendations, but rather a summary “of the evidence of all the different perspectives.” “I do feel that we could have gone a little bit further on this and I’m looking forward to seeing that report come in December,” he said. Stephen McNeil, Nova Scotia’s Liberal premier, offered his respect to Parker in a statement after her death, calling her “courageous.” He otherwise left her request to the federal government. “This debate will continue at the national level, and she will be a major voice in the conversation that I’m sure Canadians are going to have.” Halifax Mayor Mike Savage echoed McNeil’s response, saying in an interview Friday that he was “impressed at her courage and tenacity,” but that there was nothing he could do at a municipal level to address her plea. With files from Mitchell Kedrosky and The Canadian Press Taryn Grant is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on education. Follow her on Twitter: @tarynalgrant Read more about: ||||| Audrey Parker was assessed and approved for medically assisted death, but because federal law requires that she be lucid at the time of death her plans were derailed For weeks, Audrey Parker had been organizing what she called her “beautiful death”, carefully planning every detail of her final days, and even writing her own obituary. Parker, a television makeup artist, was in excruciating pain as cancer crept from her breast into her bones and brain, and intended to end her life before the suffering became too overwhelming. But because Canadian federal law required that she was lucid at the time of death – and fearing that the combined effects of cancer and medication could rob her of that clarity – Parker was forced to end her life months before she had intended to die. With the help of a nurse, Audrey Parker passed away on 1 November, surrounded by friends and family in her Halifax home. She was 57. Parker’s lost battle for greater autonomy in medically assisted death has reignited a debate over Canada’s legislation on medically assisted death, which critics say forces terminally ill people to choose two equally unpalatable choices: a death that is premature, or one that is painful. Sign up for the new US morning briefing Parker was not the first to use Canada’s medically assisted death laws – more than 3,700 already have done so since the country’s supreme court paved the way for physician-assisted death in 2015 – but she quickly became one of the country’s most prominent advocates for changes in the law. “The world lost a person that had such spirit, who kind of always knew she was going to do something really, really important,” said Kim King, a close friend who was with Parker during her last moments. “And in the end, she did.” Legislation passed in 2016 allowed anyone above the age of 18 with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” to apply for physician-assisted death. Individuals must undergo consultations and be examined by two clinicians in order to gain approval for the process. Parker was assessed and approved, but a key provision in the law – that she be of full mental capacity when the decision to terminate life is made – derailed her plans. “When we realized the implications of the late-stage consent, it was very disturbing,” said King. “She was so courageous to face her death head on.” If she wanted to die on her own terms, it would have to be when she was still mentally sound. While she wanted to live to see another Christmas, she told friends she couldn’t run the risk of waiting too long. “She was worried about how this cancer had ravaged her body so aggressively that if she waited too long, she would lose capacity and then she would be completely denied the right to have an assisted death,” said Shanaaz Gokool, head of Dying with Dignity Canada. “And then she would die in a manner she knew will be horrible.” For clinicians and bioethicists, Parker’s fight encapsulates an ongoing debate within the medical community surrounding how to best help patients in their final days. “A lot of us knew when the legislation came down, that this would be one of the next battle grounds,” said Chris Kaposy, a bioethicist at Memorial University. While the law has produced troubling situations like Parker’s, it also aims to protect vulnerable people, said Kaposy. Clinical ethicists often grapple with instances of patients with late-stage dementia, some of whom have requested physician-assisted death – but later forget these wishes and go on to live contented lives, he said. “You have to walk that line between honouring legitimate directives, where people are suffering … But also you want to be able to avoid situations where you’re obligated to essentially kill people who are happy.” Only three countries permit people to plan their death beforehand, and do not require competency at the moment of death: the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. But according to King, “[Parker] didn’t suffer from dementia, she wasn’t vulnerable. And she was very clear about what she wanted.” Parker’s death has prompted a fresh debate on end-of-life planning in Canada, said Dr Jeff Blackmer, vice-president of the Canadian Medical Association. “If you agree with assisted dying or not, one of the silver linings to this has been a more open discussion about death and dying in Canada – and about the choices that we make at the end of our lives,” he said. A government panel which is studying the existing legislation will release its full report in December, but will not make any recommendations, and the government will not be required to act. The day after Parker’s death, the federal justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, expressed no intention of amending the current law. “We’re not considering changing something in the legislation,” she told reporters, adding that she and the government were “confident in the legislation”. While the minister’s position disappointed King and other friends, they see it as a reason to keep pushing hard for changes in the law, continuing the battle Parker fought to the end. “Until she took her last breath yesterday, she never wavered,” said King. “It was just so beautiful.” ||||| Open this photo in gallery Friends massage Audrey Parker's hands and feet at the end of her last party. (Photojournalist Chris Donovan has a family relationship with Audrey Parker) Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail After a decadent breakfast of lobster eggs Benedict prepared by a friend in her modern high-rise kitchen Thursday morning, Audrey Parker plans to tidy up, climb back into her king-sized bed and receive a lethal injection. Ms. Parker, who lives in Halifax, is three years into a battle with Stage 4 breast cancer she chose to “lean into” rather than resist because of its ravenous spread to her bones and brain. A former ballroom dancer and makeup artist with an affinity for the brand Chanel, Ms. Parker decided immediately after her diagnosis that she wanted to end her life on her own terms. She qualified to do so under Canada’s assisted-dying legislation. That law requires patients to be lucid enough to consent to their own deaths – and Ms. Parker feared she wouldn’t be if she waited too long. The 57-year-old effervescent divorcee has taken pleasure in scripting what she calls her “dream death,” with the exception of one key element: choosing the actual day she will die. On this, Ms. Parker says her pen was unfairly forced by federal legislation requiring patients to be able to confirm their wish to die moments before a fatal injection is administered. Story continues below advertisement “All I wanted to do was have a fabulous end-of-life experience on my own terms,” said Ms. Parker, who plans to die Thursday, holding her elderly mother’s hand and surrounded by her best friends, even though she is still full of life. “I would have liked to have really lived until Christmas. But I can’t take the chance of losing my window.” Ms. Parker’s predicament highlights what some physicians and supporters of assisted dying see as a defect in Canada’s law and it is one Ms. Parker is bent on altering, if only posthumously. Patients ending their lives are required to give what is known as “late stage consent,” meaning they must be lucid enough to agree to their own death immediately before a doctor or nurse practitioner administers the cocktail of life-ending drugs. If patients cannot give late-stage consent, they cannot, under the law, receive an assisted death. Open this photo in gallery Audrey Parker is comforted by her friend Denise Doucet as they say goodbye at the end of night. Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail Intended as a safeguard, the rule has had unintended consequences. Ms. Parker said it seemed to force early death on her before it really feels like her time is up. “They’ve literally taken my ability to die on my own terms away from me,” Ms. Parker said of lawmakers. “I have cancer in the lining of my brain. I could wake up tomorrow and I might not be myself. I just don’t know,” she said, adding: “It defies the whole point of the law. People are dying sooner than they need to.” To avoid that fate, some patients choose to dial back their painkillers before receiving an assisted death to ensure they are fit to consent, a decision that leads to increased suffering, said Jeff Blackmer, the vice-president of medical professionalism for the Canadian Medical Association, which represents doctors across the country. “That’s obviously a challenge that clinicians are concerned about,” he said. “They don’t want patients to undergo any sort of pain or suffering that could otherwise be avoided.” Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Cutting back her cocktail of pain medication – heavy doses of Dilaudid and cannabis – was something Ms. Parker said she could not endure. “I’m picking to die over going through that pain again,” she said in an interview with The Globe and Mail one afternoon last week between sips of Red Bull, her walls filled with framed art she chose for her funeral, including a depiction of a nearly empty hourglass. "But if they would just let me die on my own terms … I’d figure out the right day.” Ms. Parker reluctantly but firmly chose Nov. 1. She is haunted by cases of terminally ill patients who were approved for an assisted death but didn’t get one after losing their capacity to consent. According to Health Canada’s most recent interim report on medically assisted dying, 3,714 legal assisted deaths have been carried out in Canada as of the end of last year. An analysis of why requests for the procedure are turned down in six provinces found that loss of capacity was the reason cited most frequently, followed by the patient’s death not being deemed “reasonably foreseeable,” as the law requires. Some of the experts who helped to inform Canada’s assisted dying law predicted that prohibiting advance requests would lead to situations such as Ms. Parker’s. Open this photo in gallery An ex-husband of Audrey Parker comes to say goodbye during her last party at her apartment in Halifax. Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail After the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the Criminal Code prohibition against helping others take their own lives in 2015, a special joint committee of the House and Senate and a provincial-territorial expert advisory group were set up to make recommendations about how the new assisted-dying law should work. Story continues below advertisement Both groups recommended that the federal legislation allow for advance requests for assisted death in limited circumstances. The panels felt that patients such as Ms. Parker – those whose cases have already been rigorously assessed by two doctors and approved for an assisted death – should be allowed to make advance requests that set out the future terms for their death that wouldn’t be jeopardized as their mental capacity deteriorated. The panels also recommended that the same permission be extended to people diagnosed with diseases such as dementia, a category of patients that raises difficult ethical concerns. However, no advance requests of any kind were allowed under the legislation passed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in June of 2016. The legislation included a provision that independent reviewers would be asked to study whether the law should be expanded to cover three types of patients currently excluded: mature patients under the age of 18; patients whose sole reason for seeking an assisted death is mental illness and patients who want to make advance requests to have doctors hasten their deaths. The Council of Canadian Academies, a federally funded not-for-profit organization, is expected to publish a review of the evidence for all three situations in December. However, the reports won’t make any formal recommendations. They will only summarize the evidence. Those advocating for changes that would allow advance directives say it is important to distinguish between cases such as Ms. Parker’s and those that involve patients who have been diagnosed with dementia. The latter involve more complex practical and philosophical challenges, including which version of a patient should have the final say, said Hilary Young, a University of New Brunswick law professor with an expertise in health law and informed consent. “Is it the [predementia] person who didn’t want to be a burden and who valued her cognitive faculties very highly, or the present person who’s quite happy to read the same page of a book every day or watch television?” Story continues below advertisement Open this photo in gallery Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail Canada is not the only country grappling with these questions. The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Colombia all allow advance requests for assisted death but some have specific rules that limit their use. However, the complexities wrought by dementia are not a concern in cases such as Ms. Parker’s, which some argue ought to be given more expansive consideration. “She’s presently suffering and has a good sense of what she’s facing," Prof. Young said. "In that context, it seems almost arbitrary to deny her the ability to make that decision.” The advocacy group Dying with Dignity Canada agrees. Although the organization also supports advance requests for assisted death for people with dementia, its leaders, along with Ms. Parker’s friends and family, are launching a campaign to change the federal law so that patients who have been approved for an assisted death can get one, even if they aren’t able to consent at the moment of death. Chief executive Shanaaz Gokool, said they want any amendment to be named Audrey’s Law, in Ms. Parker’s honour. Ms. Parker would like that too. “I’m not doing this for me. I’m already out of here. I’m doing this for you guys,” she said. “Let’s all be proactive now. If people just demand this ... we don’t need a debate. Just an amendment to the legislation.” Ms. Parker said she gave that message to Justice Department officials in a telephone conversation facilitated by Dying with Dignity Canada last week. “I really pleaded with them. I begged them to lift that late stage consent,” Ms. Parker said. “Life just worked out for me. Everything went my way. It really did. So I want my death to go my way too. I’m not going to rest easy until it’s done." ||||| HALIFAX—On her final day alive, Audrey Parker shared a stirring message online about the right to a medically assisted death, and her post is receiving support from thousands. The 57-year-old Halifax woman died at her home on Nov. 1 after a lethal injection — a choice that was made possible by a two-year-old Canadian law that allows adults to request medical assistance to die. Audrey Parker, who died on Thursday, said before passing away that she was forced to die early due to the current assisted dying laws in Canada. ( Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press ) Hours before her death, Parker said in a Facebook post that she loved her life and had no regrets, but still wished she could have lived until Christmas. She said she was forced to die sooner than she wanted because of “a poorly thought out federal law.” As of Friday morning, the post had been shared more than 4,000 times, was approaching 5,000 reactions, and had almost 2,000 comments. “Peace be with you and thank you for the courage to post your thoughts,” wrote Facebook user Glynis Humber. Article Continued Below Read more: Halifax woman plans to die on Thursday, saying Ottawa is forcing early death on her Advocate dies 'peacefully' after plea for changes to Canada's assisted-death law “I will share this and I fully believe you should be able to go when you want…the late stage clause has to be removed,” Frances Power-Stone commented. Parker was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in 2016, which eventually spread to her bones, causing her excruciating pain, and to her brain lining, which made her worry that she would eventually lose her lucidity. Her final request was for the public to maintain pressure on legislators to amend the medical assistance in dying (MAID) law. “In the spirit of teaching and sharing, I’d like to leave you with some words that explain my position with MAID. You can copy and paste them into an email or text them to your MP asking for Ottawa to amend and remove late stage consent on MAID candidates in Audrey Parker’s category of Assessed and Approved MAID users,” she wrote. Article Continued Below The law stipulates that people who want to die must be able to give late-stage consent. In other words, they must reassure the doctor of their choice immediately before going through with it. Parker said that stipulation cut her life short. “As I near my death today, it is even more evident than ever before, that late stage consent has got to be amended and removed from MAID in Canada for my category of end users,” she said in the post. “Dying is a messy business. I can’t predict when cancer will move into my brain matter or when something else big happens to make me more unwell. I and only I can make that decision for myself.” Parker’s friends and family will host a public celebration of life at Pier 21 in Halifax on Nov. 9 at 2 p.m. Taryn Grant is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on education. Follow her on Twitter: @tarynalgrant Read more about:

– Audrey Parker used Canada's medically assisted death law to legally end her life—but a provision in that law forced her to do so months earlier than she wanted to. The Guardian looks at the 57-year-old's case and the debate it has generated: Parker's stage 4 breast cancer was painful and advanced enough that she qualified as having a "grievous and irremediable medical condition," as determined by two doctors. But the law requires that one be of sound mind at the time of his or her death—and with the Toronto Star reporting the cancer had moved into Parker's brain lining, she feared that if she held off, her lucidity might erode. "I would have liked to have really lived until Christmas. But I can't take the chance of losing my window," she told the Globe and Mail. So she opted for a premature death on Nov. 1. The Globe and Mail reports the provision was put in as a "safeguard," with the Guardian noting cases of dementia patients who request death but then forget they have done so and happily live out their last days. On the flip side, the provision has also forced others to reel in their painkiller dosage at the end, resulting in increased pain. Before Parker's death, she publicly advocated to have the law changed, and the Guardian reports federal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould responded in the negative: "We're not considering changing something in the legislation." Parker discusses her experience in a lengthy obituary she wrote herself, which is filled with gratitude, features 10 pieces of advice, and ends with this: "Until we meet again, I leave you with a simple message: Be kind ... because you can." (This man had issues with the way he had to end his life.)

Conservative legislators in Washington state have proposed a bill that would allow fans to bring guns into stadiums. The bill was proposed by Republican representatives Matt Shea, David Taylor and Bob McCaslin and would prevent stadium operators from stopping members of the public with licenses to carry concealed firearms from entering their venues with weapons. Stadiums affected would include the Seattle Mariners’ Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field, the home of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and MLS’s Seattle Sounders. The Sounders won their first MLS title on Saturday night with victory over Toronto FC. On Sunday, the NFL told the Washington Post it would oppose the bill. “We haven’t seen the proposed legislation but we have a policy forbidding carrying a weapon into NFL stadiums,” Brian McCarthy, the NFL’s vice president of communications, said in a statement. Seattle Sounders hold nerve in shootout to clinch first ever MLS Cup Read more Although US sports do not have the same reputation for violence as some of the more dangerous parts of European and South American soccer, there would be obvious concerns about allow firearms into venues with alcohol and where passions can ignite. The Seahawks have the lowest arrest rate in the NFL, with 0.8 arrests per game. The San Diego Chargers have the highest, with 24.6 arrests per game – although that figure is partly influenced by the team’s “zero-tolerance” policy. The bill is likely to face strong opposition in Washington, a state with a strong Democratic base. ||||| A new proposed amendment to the Revised Code of Washington would change laws currently prohibiting a private company, such at the Seattle Seahawks, from banning guns from stadiums on public land. It's not currently illegal to carry a firearm into a game under Washington law, but CenturyLink Field, as well as Safeco Field and any other stadium, are allowed to prohibit folks from bringing certain items, including firearms, into said stadiums. House Bill 1015, proposed by three Republican members of the state House of Representatives, would eliminate the stadiums' ability to "prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in any facility or on any grounds of a facility." CenturyLink, like Safeco, is located on public property. But it's run by a private enterprise, one that prohibits people from bringing in guns. The new law, first noticed by the Seattle Times, would change that. Here's the full text of the proposed law: NEW SECTION. Sec. 2. A new section is added to chapter 36.102 RCW to read as follows: (1) A public stadium authority may not prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in any facility or on any grounds of a facility that is owned, operated, managed, administered, controlled, or maintained by the public stadium authority, or leased or rented to a private or public entity by the public stadium authority. (2) A private entity that operates, manages, administers, controls, maintains, or leases or rents a facility from a public stadium authority may not prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in the facility or on the grounds of the facility. Additionally, the law seeks to prohibit "any local government" from stopping folks from carrying guns into stadiums or convention centers, etc. A local governmental entity may not, whether by law, ordinance, regulation, rule, policy, or contractual agreement, prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in any stadium, convention center, arena, or similar facility, or on the grounds of any such facility, that is owned, operated, managed, administered, controlled, or maintained by the local governmental entity, or leased or rented to a private or public entity by the local governmental entity. The logistics of bringing a pistol into a stadium legally would be tricky to say the least, particularly when you consider the current restrictions on items allowed into NFL games. The league doesn't allow most bags in games, requiring fans to utilize clear plastic bags to bring items into games. It would be a stunning turn if the league suddenly allowed people to bring firearms into the stadium. And there's the whole matter of fan safety, of course. We saw in Raiders-Chiefs that people aren't afraid to fight in the stands of a football game following a couple of beers and a heated rivalry in a frigid night football game. Fighting in these situations is far from uncommon -- adding bullets and guns to these situations literally has deadly potential. The NFL is hardly afraid to utilize its leverage in certain political situations, typically behind the scenes more than outright, and it would hardly be surprising to see the league cough loudly and inform local politicians that the passage of such a law would be greatly frowned upon.

– Lawmakers in Washington state are floating a controversial idea to let sports fans bring guns to the stadium. Under the proposed amendment to state code, private entities that operate stadiums would not be able to prevent people with licenses for concealed guns from entering while armed, reports CBS Sports. In this case, the law would cover CenturyLink Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play, and Safeco Field, where the Mariners play. Not on board with the idea? The NFL. “We haven’t seen the proposed legislation but we have a policy forbidding carrying a weapon into NFL stadiums,” the league's vice president of communications tells the Washington Post in an email. As the Guardian notes, "there would be obvious concerns about allow firearms into venues with alcohol and where passions can ignite."

US senators warn Pakistan on aid over bin Laden WASHINGTON — Key US senators Wednesday demanded that Pakistan pardon a surgeon handed 33 years in prison for helping in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, warning that the decision could put US assistance at risk. A tribal court in Khyber, a lawless district and extremist hotbed, sentenced surgeon Shakeel Afridi for treason after he agreed to collect DNA for US intelligence to verify the presence of the most-wanted Al-Qaeda leader. Carl Levin and John McCain, the top senators from the two major US parties on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a joint statement called Afridi's sentence "shocking and outrageous." "What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from treason. It was a courageous, heroic and patriotic act which helped to locate the most wanted terrorist in the world -- a mass murderer who had the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands," the two senators said. McCain and Levin urged Pakistan to pardon and free Afridi "immediately." "Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to US-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress's willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan," they said. The United States has provided Pakistan with more than $18 billion since it joined the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks, but US officials have persistently worried that some elements of the Pakistani establishment have maintained support for extremists. US lawmakers rejected calls to cut off aid but imposed tougher conditions after US forces in May last year killed bin Laden, who had been living a stone's throw away from Pakistan's elite military academy in Abbottabad. Pakistan shut down supply routes -- its main assistance to US-led forces in Afghanistan -- after a border air raid in November killed 26 Pakistani troops. President Barack Obama has voiced regret, calling the deaths an accident, but stopped short of meeting demands for an apology. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari flew to Chicago for this week's NATO summit on Afghanistan amid signs of a deal on the supply routes. But no agreement materialized and Zardari left Chicago after only a brief meeting with Obama. Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More » ||||| MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike on suspected Islamist militants in northwest Pakistan killed 10 people on Thursday, Pakistani intelligence officials said, an attack likely to raise tensions in a standoff with Washington over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The pilotless drone aircraft attacked a compound in a village in North Waziristan, a day after a similar attack killed four suspected militants in the same region. "The drone fired two missiles at the compound. We believe it was being used by militants," one of the Pakistani officials said. The United States has been urging Pakistan to mount an offensive in North Waziristan to pursue members of the Haqqani militant network, one of Washington's most feared foes in neighboring Afghanistan. That looks more unlikely than ever, as a result of a crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad over a range of issues. The United States has been pushing Pakistan to re-open supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan in difficult talks that show no signs of a breakthrough any time soon. Pakistan closed the routes, which are seen as vital to the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan before the end of 2014, in protest against last November's killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO air attack along the Afghan border. U.S. frustrations with Pakistan deepened on Wednesday after Pakistani authorities sentenced a doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden to 33 years in jail on charges of treason. Attacks by unmanned drone aircraft, which U.S. officials say are highly effective against militants, fuel anti-American sentiment in Pakistan because they are seen as violations of sovereignty that inflict civilian casualties. After a review of ties with the United States following the killing of the 24 Pakistani soldiers, Pakistan's parliament demanded an end to drone strikes. Pakistan has spelt out in no uncertain terms that the drone attacks inside its territory must stop, but Washington is not listening, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told Reuters in an interview in April. Analysts say the CIA could not kill high-value al Qaeda or Taliban militants without cooperation from Pakistani authorities, unless intelligence from informants on the ground used in drone strikes has improved dramatically. (Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

– The sun still is not shining on US-Pakistan relations. A US drone strike targeting suspected militants in northwest Pakistan killed 10 today, a move that will likely further inflame tensions between the two countries, reports Reuters. Pakistan has demanded an end to the strikes, which it considers a violation of its sovereignty—and it's still waiting for an apology for November's deadly strike. Adding to the most recent drama: Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin. McCain and Levin yesterday called the 33-year sentence handed to the doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden "shocking and outrageous." They threatened to end US financial assistance to Pakistan—which had totaled $18 billion since the war in Afghanistan began—if Shakil Afridi is not pardoned and freed "immediately," reports the AFP. "Dr. Afridi's continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will only do further harm to US-Pakistani relations, including diminishing Congress' willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan," they wrote in a joint statement.

poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201709/1562/1155968404_5582404989001_5582297447001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Kimmel, not Cassidy, is right on health care, analysts say In the war of words between Jimmy Kimmel and Sen. Bill Cassidy, the late-night host has the better grasp of health policy, health care analysts say. Kimmel — who had allied himself with Cassidy after the senator famously proposed a “Jimmy Kimmel test” for health reform — blasted the Louisiana Republican’s last-ditch Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill in a seven-minute monologue on Tuesday night. While Cassidy had pledged to protect people with pre-existing conditions like Kimmel’s infant son, who was born with a serious heart condition, the proposal Cassidy co-authored with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wouldn’t live up to those promises, Kimmel said. Story Continued Below “This guy, Bill Cassidy, he just lied right to my face,” Kimmel said. He then listed four pledges that Cassidy made when he appeared on Kimmel’s show in May, including a promise to lower health costs for Americans and to oppose insurance companies’ lifetime caps on coverage that Kimmel said would no longer be guaranteed under the new legislation. “Health care’s complicated [and] it’s boring; I don’t want to talk about it [and] the details are confusing,” Kimmel said in his monologue. “And that’s what these guys are relying on. … They’re taking care of the people who give them money, like insurance companies.” Cassidy countered Wednesday that the talk-show host didn’t grasp the nuances of his legislation. “I am sorry he does not understand,” the senator told CNN on Wednesday morning. “More people will have coverage, and we protect those with pre-existing conditions,” citing a provision in the bill that states would have to ensure certain protections for individuals. POLITICO Pulse newsletter Get the latest on the health care fight, every weekday morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Graham on Wednesday defended his colleague, telling NBC News that Kimmel's monologue was "absolute garbage" and parroted "liberal talking points." Kimmel "went on national TV and called this man, who has worked for the underprivileged and health care all of his life, a liar and I think that's inappropriate," Graham said. President Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter on Wednesday night, saying that he wouldn't back Graham-Cassidy if it didn't have sufficient protections for patients with pre-existing conditions: "It does! A great Bill. Repeal & Replace," Trump tweeted. Later, Trump offered more personal support for Cassidy: "Senator (Doctor) Bill Cassidy is a class act who really cares about people and their Health(care), he doesn't lie-just wants to help people!" But experts say that Cassidy and Graham’s bill can't guarantee those protections and that Kimmel’s assessment was basically accurate because of the flexibility the bill gives states to set up their own health care systems. For example, health insurers could hike premiums for patients with pre-existing conditions if their states obtain waivers from Obamacare regulations — as Kimmel said. Cassidy’s plan “would pave the way for insurers to deny coverage to people with a history of medical conditions,” five HIV/AIDS groups warned in a joint statement on Tuesday. The bill would also roll back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and make other funding changes, like converting Obamacare funds into block grants and ending traditional Medicaid as an open-ended entitlement that would force states to choose whether to cut Medicaid enrollment, benefits or payments to providers — or else raise taxes. “Graham-Cassidy, like the previous Senate ‘repeal and replace’ proposals, takes a fiscal crowbar to Medicaid’s knees,” warned Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. Those cuts could disproportionately affect children, program director Joan Alker added. "Kimmel did not overstate the impact," Alker said. "If Graham-Cassidy becomes law, there is no guarantee a child born with a congenital heart defect will get the coverage they need. It would depend on where they live, but even states with good intentions would struggle to protect children with the massive cuts to Medicaid included in this bill." The proposal’s significant cuts to Medicaid and other changes to the ACA’s regulations would lead to dramatic reductions in coverage for adults too, analysts say. “It is likely that the bill, if enacted, would lead to a loss of health insurance for at least 32 million people after 2026,” the left-leaning Commonwealth Fund’s Sara Collins wrote in a post on Wednesday, citing Congressional Budget Office analysis of similar legislation. Some conservatives disputed that the proposal would lead to coverage cuts. “I tend to think that the Graham-Cassidy proposal holds a lot of promise to expand coverage down the road,” said Lanhee Chen, a professor at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution. Chen cited the possibility of state flexibility and lower premiums bringing more uninsured Americans into the market, although he acknowledged that the bill's Medicaid cuts would force “tough trade-offs” in the future. The CBO, usually the authoritative source on such questions, said Monday that it would not be able to answer them on this bill "for at least several weeks" — long after the Sept. 30 expiration of the reconciliation bill that allows Republicans to pass the measure with a simple majority. One conservative policy analyst argued that neither Kimmel, nor Cassidy should be taking their case to TV. "In my view, neither are correct — or at the very least, neither should be certain in their assertions,” said Chris Jacobs of Juniper Research Group. "I’m agreeing with Jimmy Kimmel that health care is complicated, so reducing it to simple talking points — that means you too, Jimmy Kimmel — often belies the reality of the situation." ||||| Jimmy Kimmel tripled down on his condemnation of the latest GOP-led effort to repeal and replace Obamacare during his monologue Thursday night, unloading scathing criticisms of President Trump and Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a co-author of the Graham-Cassidy bill. “For Donald Trump, this isn’t about the Graham-Cassidy bill,” Kimmel said. “It’s about Obamacare, which he hates, because Obama’s name is on it. He likes to have his name on things: buildings, vodka, you name it. At this point he would sign anything if it meant getting rid of Obamacare. He’d sign copies of the Quran at the Barnes and Noble in Fallujah if it meant he could get rid of Obamacare.” Kimmel added, “I guarantee [Trump] doesn’t know anything about this Graham-Cassidy bill. He doesn’t know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid; he barely knows the difference between Melania and Ivanka.” Kimmel has been hammering the Graham-Cassidy bill — which would enact deep cuts to Medicaid and likely cause millions of Americans to lose health coverage — this week, and Cassidy responded by saying the late-night host “does not understand” the proposed legislation. On Thursday, Kimmel said of Cassidy, “Some people tell me I should give him the benefit of the doubt, and you know what, I do give him the benefit of the doubt: I doubt all the benefits he claims are part of the new health care bill.” Kimmel went on to say that Cassidy, who is a doctor and helped found a community clinic in Baton Rouge, has done admirable work in the past. “He’s done good things, I just want him to keep doing good things,” Kimmel said. “This plan is not a good thing. His supporters say, ‘Well he’s a doctor and you’re not, what do you know?’ To them I say, all of these very reputable associations — American Diabetes Association, American Medical Association, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, the list goes on and on — all of these groups populated by doctors say this health care bill is bad, they’re against it. We haven’t seen this many people come forward to speak out against a bill since Cosby.” Watch the clip above for more. Jimmy Kimmel Live airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC. ||||| Published on Sep 21, 2017 Jimmy has found himself in the middle of a battle over American health care, so tonight he responds to more criticism from Senator Bill Cassidy and those other jerks who want to take our health care away. Jimmy Kimmel Fights Back Against Bill Cassidy, Lindsey Graham & Chris Christie https://youtu.be/wB5Hek7Z2b8 SUBSCRIBE to get the latest #KIMMEL: http://bit.ly/JKLSubscribe Watch Mean Tweets: http://bit.ly/KimmelMT10 Connect with Jimmy Kimmel Live Online: Visit the Jimmy Kimmel Live WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/JKLWebsite Like Jimmy Kimmel on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/KimmelFB Like Jimmy Kimmel Live on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/JKLFacebook Follow @JimmyKimmel on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/KimmelTW Follow Jimmy Kimmel Live on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/JKLTwitter Follow Jimmy Kimmel Live on INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/JKLInstagram About Jimmy Kimmel Live: Jimmy Kimmel serves as host and executive producer of Emmy-winning "Jimmy Kimmel Live," ABC's late-night talk show. "Jimmy Kimmel Live" is well known for its huge viral video successes with 5.6 billion views on YouTube alone. Some of Kimmel's most popular comedy bits include - Mean Tweets, Lie Witness News, Jimmy's Twerk Fail Prank, Unnecessary Censorship, YouTube Challenge, The Baby Bachelor, Movie: The Movie, Handsome Men's Club, Jimmy Kimmel Lie Detective and music videos like "I (Wanna) Channing All Over Your Tatum" and a Blurred Lines parody with Robin Thicke, Pharrell, Jimmy and his security guard Guillermo. Now in its fifteenth season, Kimmel's guests have included: Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Halle Berry, Harrison Ford, Jennifer Aniston, Will Ferrell, Katy Perry, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, George Clooney, Larry David, Charlize Theron, Mark Wahlberg, Kobe Bryant, Steve Carell, Hugh Jackman, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Garner, Ryan Gosling, Bryan Cranston, Jamie Foxx, Amy Poehler, Ben Affleck, Robert Downey Jr., Jake Gyllenhaal, Oprah, and unfortunately Matt Damon. Round 3 of Jimmy Kimmel’s Health Care Battle https://youtu.be/KUH0KQ1qMiw ||||| Is Jimmy Kimmel worth listening to beyond monologues or celebrity chats? He can make people laugh, sure, and coax conversation out of the most vapid stars. But on health care? “Health care is complicated, it’s boring. I don’t want to talk about it. The details are confusing,” the comedian allowed last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! But not, apparently, confusing enough to lower Kimmel’s self-confidence. Graham-Cassidy would “kick about 30 million Americans off insurance” and is “actually worse than” the skinny repeal the Senate rejected in July, Kimmel said. He even added the humble parenthetical, “This is not my area of expertise.” That, at least, is truth on display: Anyone who figured being a comedian and talk-show host was a natural fit with policy expertise has been duly warned. Comedians have become public intellectuals in the popular imagination, so maybe some charity is in order. We should be open to the possibility that Kimmel has deep and hidden reservoirs of knowledge on risk-adjustment programs, the Medicaid expansion, or per capita caps. After all, Kimmel has, in the words of CNN, become the “conscience of the health care fight.” It’s not hard to see why: Kimmel has a moving family story to tell, a huge audience, and an unmistakable gift for the big screen. His infant son Billy has a heart condition that required surgery soon after birth and, like any father, Kimmel takes his son’s well-being seriously. But his genuinely scary experience represents the sum total of his health-care education, as far as one can tell. Months ago, Kimmel told Billy’s story before pivoting swiftly to Republicans’ attempts to reform the Affordable Care Act. The point was obvious: Republicans would not mind seeing Billy, or at least children like him with poorer parents, die. Kimmel deemed inhumane any provision that would weaken the Affordable Care Act’s regulations prohibiting insurers from charging higher premiums for those with pre-existing conditions, and Kimmel said that while he can obviously afford to pay his son’s bills, other parents might not be able to. Thus a comedian became the public face of perhaps the toughest issue facing legislators today. Senator Bill Cassidy (R., La.), now the co-sponsor of the latest Republican pass at health-care reform, proceeded to coin the “Jimmy Kimmel test” for health policy: Does the bill allow children with congenital heart defects to receive the necessary care without bankrupting their parents? The question is situated in a much larger problem plaguing policymakers, which is how to preserve elements of a free health-insurance market while also ensuring that people with more unfortunate health problems — who don’t have the luxury of choosing what health benefits to buy — can receive the appropriate assistance from the government. Won’t wash, Kimmel says. Cassidy and Graham’s bill fails the Jimmy Kimmel test, at least according to its namesake. Kimmel labeled Cassidy, who appeared on Kimmel’s show months ago to applause, a liar. Perhaps it was a mistake for a senator to arrogate rhetorical supremacy to a comedian, but Cassidy, for his part, has since pushed back. “I am sorry he does not understand,” Cassidy said today on CNN. “There will be more people covered under the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson amendment than under the status quo,” he said later on MSNBC, explaining that his bill requires “coverage” of pre-existing conditions “to be ‘adequate and affordable.’” What to do about the health-care system is a complicated question. Kimmel has elected to probe the empirical matter of whether this bill does quite enough to erect a safety net for people with pre-existing conditions. There are legitimate critiques of Graham-Cassidy on those grounds, but at the same time, rhetoric about those with pre-existing conditions, or about the costs of reforming our current health-care system, tends toward exaggeration. And with the leeway Graham-Cassidy’s New Federalist framework would afford them, states might be able to find more efficacious ways to protect those people. The collective decision to elevate Kimmel to status as a leading bioethicist and policy wonk reduces a tricky debate to a single talking point. It forecloses the path this bill could open up for states to implement a more competitive insurance marketplace that could make things better for all Americans. And it’s worth pointing out, as Cassidy did, that the requirement Graham-Cassidy imposes on states to waive the relevant Obamacare regulation is not a mere formality. Of course, you won’t hear this on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Otherwise fans might check their phones instead of clapping or booing on cue. Policy expertise is hard-won and not likely to dawn suddenly during crises. It’s also not something that resides in people who make jokes for a living. It’s not objectionable for comedians to joke about politics. The political world is tense; comedy provides release. Politics is filled with figures who are eminently laughable, and joking about them is a tradition of the form. Late-night hosts’ lampooning of Clinton, Bush, or Trump follows Aristophanes’ lampooning of Athenian pols, and some of the best modern comedians have been the most unapologetic ones. So Kimmel should keep on making Americans laugh, and if he includes moving personal stories about his beloved son and advocates based upon what parenting a sick child has taught him, that’s no crime. But policy expertise is hard-won and not likely to dawn suddenly during crises. It’s also not something that resides in people who make jokes for a living. Just as Kimmel is entitled to share his opinion, his audience is entitled to seek more-informed ones. George Carlin was outraged, Dick Gregory was righteous, and Dave Chappelle is incisive. But even at their rawest, each was understood in the popular imagination to be a comedian. Does Kimmel want a career change? Or does Hollywood simply want to feel better about its propensity to wax earnest about complicated public-policy questions? Regarding anything in the era of Trump, it’s apparently time for comedians to get serious. They volunteer to do their part, not their bit — replacing good jokes with good points, laughs with nods. Such sanctimony degrades comedy. Who really laughs at The Daily Show, Full Frontal, or Last Week Tonight? But more importantly, swapping two unrelated discursive forms corrodes public discourse. Policy isn’t funny, and comedy isn’t policy. Kimmel’s love for his son is understandable. But his epistemic humility ended after the accurate admission that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to health care. It’s irresponsible to pontificate on subjects one knows little about, but that didn’t stop him from calling Cassidy a liar. Once we substitute even sincere feelings for policy expertise, the results are unlikely to please anyone. Jimmy Kimmel can be funny, and he loves his son. Well and good. But Jimmy Kimmel knows policy? To paraphrase another comedian, comedians are not public intellectuals. READ MORE: A Thinking Mom’s Message for Jimmy Kimmel Jimmy Kimmel and the Dangers of Empathy David Letterman’s Crazy-Old-Coot Phase — Theodore Kupfer is a William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow in Political Journalism at National Review Institute. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

– The Jimmy Kimmel-Bill Cassidy dust-up over health care circled back to Kimmel Thursday, the third night in a row that the late-night host has taken on the Louisiana senator over the latter's bill with Sen. Lindsey Graham to replace ObamaCare. Per EW, Kimmel addressed President Trump at the outset, noting that the commander in chief's aim is dumping ObamaCare, "which he hates, primarily because Obama's name is on it. … He'd sign copies of the Koran at the Barnes and Noble in Fallujah if it meant he could get rid of ObamaCare." Kimmel did have praise to offer for Cassidy, a doctor who started a community clinic in his home state. "He's done good things; I just want him to keep doing good things. This plan is not a good thing," said Kimmel, who then rattled off the doctor-tied organizations, including the AMA, that have come out against the bill. Although some media sources have given Kimmel a thumbs-up for his understanding of the legislation, the National Review has jumped into the fray, calling the host a "policy wonk wannabe" and asserting that "comedians are not public intellectuals." "Does Kimmel want a career change?" writes Theodore Kupfer. "Or does Hollywood simply want to feel better about its propensity to wax earnest about complicated public-policy questions?" Some are coming to Kimmel's defense with clips of the conservative-leaning Fox News interviewing other celebrities on various topics. Kimmel wrapped up his latest launch against Cassidy by addressing critics. "Some people tell me I should give him the benefit of the doubt," he said. "And you know what, I do give him the benefit of the doubt: I doubt all the benefits he claims are part of the new health care bill." The whole clip here.

Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. Did You Know? Personal Quote: Trivia: Star Sign: [on why she chose to be an actress] I felt so much when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I felt everything. I didn't understand [myself], I was so happy yet so angry and sad. That was the point when I realized that I needed to tell stories and make characters come alive and I needed to make people cry, and make people angry, and make people happy, and make them laugh. See more Daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. Charlie Matthew Hunnam was born in Newcastle, England on April 10, 1980. At 16 years of age, he made a guest appearances in the popular TV series Byker Grove . He gained fame in Britain thanks to his television role as the love-smitten Nathan Maloney in Queer as Folk . Independent movies, television series and auditions for such blockbusters as Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones followed... See full bio » Did You Know? Personal Quote: Trivia: Nickname: Star Sign: When some films do not pay as well and you have a mortgage to pay and you are on an economy drive eating eggs and beans, and you are offered a million dollar role and you turn it down, as it is not right. I want to be doing this when I am 60 and getting the big paying roles then so I have to pick the parts that are right for the long term rather than take the money now... See more Was going to play the "stoner" in the small independent film Anderson's Cross alongside former Undeclared co star Samm Levine and good friend Jerome Elston Scott , but couldn't because of scheduling conflicts. Director Jerome cut the part out of the script completely saying "No one replaces Charlie Hunnam". See more Charlie See more

– After 50 million different rumors, the Internet has its answer as to who will play Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey on the big screen: Anastasia is none other than Dakota Johnson, the 24-year-old daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and perhaps previously best known for Fox sitcom Ben & Kate, and minor roles in The Social Network and The Five-Year Engagement. "I am delighted to let you know that the lovely Dakota Johnson has agreed to be our Anastasia in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey," tweeted author EL James this morning. James later tweet-dropped: "the gorgeous and talented Charlie Hunnam" as the actor who would portray Grey. Click for more Social Network alums working on the project.

A loyal dog has been waiting patiently at his owner's door step for over two weeks, not realizing he's never coming back."You could just tell that he was a lost dog," said Cassandra Eubanks who lives at an apartment complex near Hobby Airport.Eubanks said every day, she would see the German shepherd at the front gates of the apartment complex, looking and searching for his owner to drive in."He would follow the cars and when he would realize that it was not his owner's car, he would just stand there and look helpless," said Eubanks.Neighbors said they would also see the dog waiting outside of an apartment door. Not long after, they understood why the dog was waiting for so long. His owner, and convenience store clerk was killed this past month during an armed robbery.How do you explain that to a dog?"Of course he's confused because he doesn't know what's going on. He hadn't seen his owner in two weeks," said Eubanks.The dog would not come close to anyone. Residents left behind food and water. Finally, after a plea on social media for help, Maranda Perez responded with her dog."As a German shepherd, he didn't stand a chance," said Perez. "It just broke my heart to hear that the poor animal lost his owner, his best friend."For nearly an hour, Perez slowly gained the dog's trust. The dog ran up three flights of stairs before it finally was able to trust Perez enough to put a leash around his neck."He was still very shaken-up whenever I touched him," added Perez.The next hurdle was putting the dog in her car. It was a struggle, but the pup finally had to let go.Perez said she can keep the dog for a week. The victim's brother said he would like to keep the dog after that. ||||| The bond a man and his best friend shared was put on full display in Houston when a loyal dog waited for weeks for his owner to come home after he was killed while working at a convenience store. Neighbors saw the German shepherd waiting at the front gate to the apartment complex where he lived with his owner, 54-year-old Hatem Abuharbid, who was killed during a robbery on Feb. 7. "You could just tell that he was a lost dog," neighbor Cassandra Eubanks, who lives nearby, told ABC-owned station KTRK in Houston. "He would follow the cars, and when he would realize that it was not his owner's car, he would just stand there and look helpless," Eubanks added. Abuharbid was shot in the thigh when two men robbed the Kay-B convenience store where he worked in Houston, police said in a press release. The bullet pierced an artery in his leg, and he later died at the hospital. But there was no way for Abuharbid's German shepherd to know any of this had happened. "Of course he's confused, because he doesn't know what's going on, Eubanks said. "He hadn't seen his owner in two weeks." KTRK Residents at the apartment complex left food and water for the dog, but he wouldn't go near anyone, KTRK reported. It took a good Samaritan and her dog to coax the orphaned pup away from the apartment on Monday. "It just broke my heart to hear that the poor animal lost his owner, his best friend," Maranda Perez told KTRK. It took an hour for Perez, who answered a plea for help on social media, to gain the dog's trust. He ran up three flights of stairs before she was able to get close enough to put a leash on him, she said. "He was still very shaken up whenever I touched him," she said. Perez will foster the dog for a week, she said, adding that Abuharbid's brother would like to adopt the pup after that. The investigation into Abuharbid's death is ongoing, police told ABC News.

– Loyalty between dog and man once again has no bounds, this time via a German shepherd who waited two weeks for an owner who'd never come home again. The dog was first spotted at an apartment complex near Houston's Hobby Airport, KTRK reports—sometimes on the steps, sometimes at the complex's front gates, sometimes camped out at one particular apartment's front door. "You could just tell that he was a lost dog," neighbor Cassandra Eubanks says. "He would follow the cars and when he would realize that it was not his owner's car, he would just stand there and look helpless." What the poor pup didn't realize: His owner, 54-year-old Hatem Abuharbid, had been killed in a robbery Feb. 7 at the convenience store where he worked, ABC News reports. "Of course he's confused, because he doesn't know what's going on," Eubanks says. The dog wouldn't approach neighbors who left food and water out for him, but he was eventually rescued by a woman who had heard about his plight on social media. "It just broke my heart to hear that the poor animal lost his owner, his best friend," Maranda Perez tells KTRK. She brought her own dog along and worked patiently for about an hour to make the now-ownerless dog comfortable around her. After following him up three flights of stairs, Perez was finally able to place a leash around his neck and get him, with some resistance, into her car. "He was still very shaken up whenever I touched him," she says. Perez says she'll take care of him for the next week or so before Abuharbid's brother takes the dog in. (This loyal pooch stuck by its owner's body until rescuers found them.)

They are microscopic artwork: tiny tubes and long filaments, strange squiggles etched into some of the most ancient rocks known. On Wednesday, researchers reported that these may be the oldest fossils ever discovered, the remains of bacteria thriving on Earth not long, geologically speaking, after the very birth of the planet. If so, they offer evidence that life here got off to a very early start. But many experts in the field were skeptical of the new study — or downright unconvinced. Martin J. Van Kranendonk, a geologist at the University of New South Wales, called the patterns in the rocks “dubiofossils” — fossil-like structures, perhaps, but without clear proof that they started out as something alive. Heated disputes are nothing new in the search for the earliest life on Earth. In 1993 J. William Schopf, a paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues found what that they, too, argued were the world’s oldest fossils: chainlike blobs in 3.46 billion-year-old rocks made, they said, by bacteria. Other researchers later argued that the structures were just oddly shaped minerals. ||||| The study of life’s history on Earth is an ongoing effort to follow the thread further and further back in time. As amazing and fascinating as a few billion years’ worth of fossils are, we still ultimately want that Holy Grail that illuminates the origins of life on Earth. Unfortunately, that goal collides with the fact that the earliest evidence stands the least chance of being preserved through the eons for us to find. Each new find that purports to supplant the earliest known signs of life is virtually guaranteed to be controversial, subject to poking and prodding from skeptical scientists uncertain that every competing (non-living) explanation can be ruled out. Last August, for example, a paper claimed to show the remnants of stromatolites (small mounds built by communities of shallow water microorganisms) in 3.7 billion-year-old rocks in Greenland. Similar fossils from Australia that come in at about 3.5 billion years old are generally accepted as legit, but anything older is still subject to scientific debate. Now, a new study led by University College London PhD student Matthew Dodd describes evidence of what the researchers believe to be seafloor bacteria that lived at least 3.7 billion years ago. That evidence comes from rocks that are part of Quebec’s Nuvvuagittuq belt, which contain some of the oldest rocks on the planet. They comprised an ancient seafloor made of volcanic rock, but there are also layers of iron minerals that precipitated out of the seawater. Those are believed to have formed near hydrothermal vents that gushed super-hot water laden with minerals. The Nuvvuagittuq rocks have proven hard to date, but they are known to be at least 3.77 billion years old, and could even be as old as 4.28 billion years—very early indeed, considering that our planet formed only a little over 4.5 billion years ago. This is all further complicated by the fact that the Nuvvuagittuq rocks were metamorphosed under high temperature and pressure about 2.7 billion years ago. But within some jasper in the hydrothermal vent layers, the researchers found tiny tubes and filaments filled with hematite, an iron oxide mineral. The size and shape of these structures was fairly consistent (especially considering the metamorphic torture they’ve endured), and some pairs of tubes were connected by small “knobs.” All this, the researchers say, is consistent with iron-oxidizing bacteria that we find at hydrothermal vents today, as well as slightly less ancient fossil examples. These bacteria build iron-oxide tubes around themselves and extend filaments out into their surroundings. Around these familiar-looking structures, there are some even tinier bits of carbon-rich material here and there. The ratio of different carbon isotopes that are present is one good way to tell biological carbon from other sources, as organisms have a preference for lighter isotopes. In this case, the carbon that can be found in the rock does fall within the biological range—“although not unambiguously," the researchers write. There are also some blobs ringed with magnetite, which have been seen in other rocks recognized to contain these sorts of fossils. Several minerals can be found within the blobs, which also contain bits of carbon-rich material. The researchers think that this set of minerals reflects reactions between organic matter and the iron precipitating from the hydrothermal vents—supporting a biological origin. If the researchers are right about what they’ve found, this would be the oldest direct evidence of life we’ve ever seen. What’s more, if the recent discovery of stromatolites in Greenland also turns out to be the real deal, we would be able to say that there were at least two very different types of microorganisms living in very different parts of the ocean by 3.7 billion years ago. This new paper is particularly interesting because it involves hydrothermal vent environments, which have been proposed as a logical place where life on Earth could have had its origins. Any evidence supporting that idea also makes hydrothermal vents on other worlds look more and more like priority targets in the search for life beyond our home planet. Of course, it’s best not to get too carried away in daydreams until we’re more certain about what the researchers have found in these Canadian rocks. But the University of Western Australia’s David Wacey, who was not involved in this new study, told Ars that the multiple lines of evidence presented make a pretty strong case. “The morphological comparisons with younger vent-dwelling organisms are quite striking and it is rather difficult to envisage how the microstructures shown [in the paper] could be formed in a purely abiotic scenario. “There will, no doubt, be arguments, and it may be many years before a consensus is reached, but this is how science progresses," Wacey added. "I think it will be particularly important to understand more about the regional geology of the area and perhaps try to better constrain the age of these potential organisms. “The other exciting aspect of this report is that these potential microfossils are from a rock unit not previously studied for early life,” he continued. The Nuvvuagittuq rocks might even be older than the rocks researchers have been looking at in Greenland, South Africa, and Australia, and they represent a different marine environment, too. “This new study once again gets us thinking about a potential hydrothermal cradle of life.” Nature, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/nature21377 (About DOIs).

– Researchers say they've found fossilized bacteria that may date back to shortly after the formation of the Earth (geologically speaking, anyway), the New York Times reports. They published their findings Wednesday in Nature. The rocks were collected in 2008 from the Nuvvuagittuq geological formation in Canada. The rocks are estimated to have formed near a hydrothermal vent on the seafloor between 3.77 billion and 4.22 billion years ago. They contain tiny filaments and tubes, some connected by knobs, that resemble younger bacteria fossils created near hydrothermal vents. They also contain a level of carbon indicative of a living organism. If the fossils are what researchers say they are—and not everyone is convinced they are—they would push the date of earliest known life back billions of years. Currently the oldest fossilized bacteria widely accepted as legitimate are 3.5 billion years old and come from Australia, Ars Technica reports. And if these Canadian fossils are closer to 4.22 billion years old, it means the bacteria would have been alive just 340 million years after the formation of the Earth. Still, every new claim of finding the world's oldest fossilized life is met with skepticism, and this discovery is no different. One expert calls the rocks "dubiofossils," fossil-like but not clearly evidence of an organism. In response, researchers argue there's too much evidence in favor of their conclusion to ignore. (This dinosaur fossil is one of the "saddest" ever found.)

Image copyright AFP Image caption Boris Becker says the legal action being taken against him is "unjustified and unjust" Confusion surrounds a claim by former tennis champion Boris Becker that he holds diplomatic status on behalf of the Central African Republic (CAR). He asserted last week in London that his appointment as a diplomat by the CAR gave him protection from legal action in a bankruptcy case. The CAR embassy in Belgium confirmed it had issued him a diplomatic passport. However, a top official in the CAR foreign ministry told a French news agency the passport was fake. Cherubin Moroubama told AFP the serial number on the document matched one of a batch of "new passports that were stolen in 2014". He added that the passport, dated 19 March 2018, does not bear the signature or the stamp of the foreign minister. CAR foreign minister Charles Armel Doubane later told Reuters an inquiry was being launched into who had issued the passport. Lawyers for the 50-year-old three-time Wimbledon champion say he was appointed a sport and culture attache to the EU by the CAR in April. In that month he tweeted a picture of himself shaking hands with CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera in Brussels. Mr Becker was declared bankrupt in 2017 over money owed to private bank Arbuthnot Latham and is now being pursued for "further assets". In his defence lodged with the High Court in London last week, Mr Becker's lawyers maintained he could not be made subject to any legal process unless President Touadera specifically lifted his immunity at the request of the British government. Image copyright CAR embassy Brussels Image caption Mr Becker's photo appeared on the website of the CAR embassy in Brussels His legal team said: "This means he cannot be subject to legal process in the courts of any country for so long as he remains a recognised diplomatic agent." But on Tuesday, Mr Moroubama was quoted by AFP as saying that "Becker's job profile does not exist" in the CAR's records. He added that the document in question describes Becker's diplomatic role as "financial charge de mission... nothing to do with sporting questions". Mr Becker's lawyers have not yet responded. The tennis star became the first German to win Wimbledon in 1985, at the age of 17. He won it again in 1986 and 1989 among the 64 ATP Tour titles he claimed during a 15-year career. After his retirement as a player he became a commentator with the BBC. ||||| Boris Becker's diplomatic passport for the Central African Republic 'fake': Foreign Minister Updated Central African Republic's Foreign Minister says a copy of former tennis champion Boris Becker's diplomatic passport he has seen is a "clumsy fake". Becker said he had claimed diplomatic immunity from bankruptcy proceedings in London by taking up a role with Central African Republic (CAR) as a sports envoy. But the country's Foreign Minister, Charles Armel Doubane, said the diplomatic passport he had seen was a fake. "The signature on the passport was not mine and the number belongs to a series that was stolen during the transitional government [set up in 2014 after the country's civil conflict]," he said. "The copy of Boris Becker's passport that I saw and that has been circulating on social media is a clumsy fake." He said CAR was launching an inquiry into who issued the phoney diplomatic passport to Becker. Becker's lawyer was not immediately available for comment. The 50-year-old was declared bankrupt by a British court last year in connection to a debt owed to private bankers Arbuthnot Latham. He had recently been pursued for "further assets", according to a statement by his lawyers. Becker's argument against 'gravy train for the suits' The former tennis champion lodged a claim at the High Court in London to halt the case, and claimed his appointment as a diplomat by the CAR afforded him protection. Becker's lawyers argued his post as attache diplomatic immunity under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which meant he "cannot be subject to legal process in the courts of any country for so long as he remains a recognised diplomatic agent". Through his lawyers, Becker had said the bank's decision to sue him was "both unjustified and unjust". "A bunch of anonymous and unaccountable bankers and bureaucrats pushed me into a completely unnecessary declaration of bankruptcy, which has inflicted a whole heap of damage on me," he said late last week. "Once this gravy train for the suits has been stopped in its tracks, my lawyers will turn to the question of compensation." In the statement, Becker went on say his attache role for the CAR would allow him to give something meaningful back to sports supporters in one of the poorest parts of the world. "There's no reason why a role of this kind should be treated any differently to an appointment as a military or a trade attache, which everyone recognises as attracting diplomatic immunity," he said. During his tennis career Becker stacked up six grand slam titles but in recent years his life has been a roller coaster. He lost much of his fortune, had a messy divorce and became the butt of jokes for his flings. Reuters/ABC Topics: tennis, sport, law-crime-and-justice, international-law, laws, germany, central-african-republic, england First posted ||||| Country says tennis star, who faces bankruptcy proceedings, is not one of its diplomats The Central African Republic has denied that Boris Becker is one of its official diplomats and said a passport the former tennis star claimed should give him diplomatic immunity from bankruptcy proceedings in the UK is invalid. “The diplomatic passport that he has is a fake,” the foreign ministry’s chief of staff, Cherubin Moroubama, told Agence-France Presse. He said the document’s serial number corresponded to one of a batch of passports stolen in 2014. AFP said the passport, of which it had seen a copy, was dated 19 March 2018 but had not been stamped or signed by the country’s foreign minister, Charles Armel Doubane. On Friday lawyers for the three-time Wimbledon champion informed the high court in London that he had been appointed as the CAR’s attaché to the EU on sporting, cultural and humanitarian affairs in April. They argued this gave him diplomatic immunity from bankruptcy proceedings under the Vienna convention. According to the German daily Die Welt, Doubane told journalists in Bangui that Becker was “not an official diplomat for the Central African Republic. To be recognised as a diplomat, it would require not just president’s nomination but also my signature as foreign minister.” Moroubama said the job Becker claimed to be doing for his nation – which, despite abundant natural resources including gold, diamonds and uranium, ranks bottom of the UN’s human development index – “does not exist”. Becker, who became the youngest male grand slam champion when he won Wimbledon as an unseeded player in 1985, was declared bankrupt in June last year over an undisclosed sum owed to the private bankers Arbuthnot Latham & Co. After his lawyers submitted the application for immunity, Becker said the decision to commence bankruptcy proceedings against him was “both unjustified and unjust” and he was asserting immunity “to bring this farce to an end so that I can start to rebuild my life”.

– Boris Becker's claim of diplomatic immunity in an ongoing bankruptcy case just went from odd to bewildering. Though the former tennis champ claims his April appointment as a Central African Republic attache to the European Union means he's immune from bankruptcy hearings in the UK, the CAR appears to be balking. Becker's claimed post of attache for sports, culture, and humanitarian affairs "does not exist" in CAR records, meaning he's not an official diplomat, says Foreign Ministry chief of staff Cherubin Moroubama. What's more, the diplomatic passport issued to Becker in March, listing his post as "financial charge de mission," is phony, with a serial number matching one of several stolen under a transitional government in 2014, Moroubama says, per the BBC and Guardian. CAR Foreign Minister Charles Armel Doubane calls the passport a "clumsy fake," per ABC Australia. "To be recognized as a diplomat, it would require not just [the] president's nomination but also my signature as foreign minister," he adds, per the Guardian. That leaves plenty of questions for CAR's ambassador to the EU, Daniel Emery Dede, who reportedly signed Becker's passport, and for the CAR embassy in Belgium, which confirmed the issuance of it and featured a photo of Becker on its website, per the BBC. Becker, who met with CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera in Brussels in April, is maintaining his diplomatic status amid the confusion, reports Deutsche Welle, which has a certificate a lawyer says confirms Becker's position as attache for finance, as well as for sports, culture, and humanitarian affairs.

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers. The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow. ||||| FILE- In this Oct. 11, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House. When Trump visits Canada this week there's... (Associated Press) FILE- In this Oct. 11, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House. When Trump visits Canada this week there's speculation he could walk out of meetings with allies furious over his belligerent trade policies.... (Associated Press) QUEBEC CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump is cutting short his first presidential trip to Canada this weekend, as trade and foreign policy disputes appear set to mar his planned summit with the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies. The U.S. president's reception in the picturesque town of La Malbaie along the St. Lawrence River is set to be a far cry from when Ronald Reagan visited Quebec three decades ago, when he was so friendly with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney they sang a song together. Quarrelling with Trump over his protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, decision to exit the Iran nuclear accord, and retreat from global efforts to combat climate change, erstwhile American allies are turning the summit into something of an intervention, challenging the norm-breaking U.S. president in the most direct terms to date. The summit threatens to mark the outer limit of international patience for the avowed nationalistic Trump, as leaders who had sought to cajole and "bromance" the president are embracing more hard-nosed tactics. Before shortening his planned participation on the eve of his departure, Trump found himself publicly feuding with summit host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and with French President Emmanuel Macron — two leaders who previously banked on flattery to win concessions with the American. Trudeau has grown increasingly direct with his fury with Trump for imposing the tariffs on Canada's metals industries — and for justifying the protectionist move by calling those imports a threat to U.S. national security. Under Trump, the United States has abandoned its traditional role in the G-7. American presidents from Reagan to Barack Obama pressed for freer global trade. And they championed a trading system that required countries to follow World Trade Organization rules. Trump's policies, by contrast, are unapologetically protectionist and confrontational. To hear the president, poorly conceived trade deals and unfair practices by America's trading partners have widened America's trade deficit with the rest of the world — $566 billion last year — and contributed to a loss of millions of factory jobs. Nelson Wiseman, a professor at the University of Toronto, said he can't recall relations between U.S. and Canada being worse. He said the G-7 meeting will appear to be six lined up against one. Indeed, on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested in a tweet that Trump might not sign the final summit statement on G-7 priorities. "The American president may not mind being isolated," Macron tweeted, "but neither do we mind signing a 6-country agreement if need be. Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force." Trump offered his own digs the evening before his departure. "Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers. The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out," he tweeted, adding, "Look forward to seeing them tomorrow." Later, Trump tweeted, "Take down your tariffs & barriers or we will more than match you!" White House officials said Trump in recent days had bristled at attending the summit, where he is set to be challenged face-to-face on his policy decisions. Among allies, there was even been speculation that Trump might walk out of the meetings — or even decide not to show up. Late Thursday, the White House announced he would be leaving the summit Saturday morning, after a session on women's empowerment but well before it wraps up. "The President will travel directly to Singapore from Canada in anticipation of his upcoming meeting with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un Tuesday," press secretary Sarah Sanders said. "G7 Sherpa and Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs Everett Eissenstat will represent the United States for the remaining G7 sessions." Trudeau has charged that he found the tariffs "insulting" and said such tactics are hardly how two close allies and trading partners that fought side-by-side in World War II, Korea and Afghanistan should treat one another. The Trump administration has also clashed with Canada over his insistence that the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement involving the United States, Canada and Mexico be written to better serve the U.S. The prime minister had at first refrained from criticizing Trump, apparently in the hope that he could forge a personal relationship that might help preserve the landmark free trade deal, a forerunner of which Reagan and Mulroney negotiated. Those two leaders became fast friends and famously sang "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" together in Quebec City in 1985. Trudeau's courting of Trump appeared to work for a time. The president had initially exempted Canada from the steel and aluminum tariffs in March. But Trudeau became exasperated and took a shot after Trump let the exemption expire last week. "We'll continue to make arguments based on logic and common sense," he said, "and hope that eventually they will prevail against an administration that doesn't always align itself around those principles." The prime minister had hoped to visit Washington last week to complete what he thought would be the final stages of the NAFTA renegotiation. But Vice President Mike Pence called and demanded he agree to "sunset clause" that would end NAFTA unless the three countries agreed to extend it every five years. Trudeau refused, and he canceled the proposed visit. NAFTA talks stalled. Since then, Trump has sounded hostile at times toward Canada. Given the conflicts between Washington and its allies, the most likely outcome of the G-7 talks, said William Reinsch, a trade analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is "polite acrimony." The United States has experienced tense relations with its allies before — over the Vietnam War, for example, over Reagan's decision to deploy Pershing II missiles in Europe and over President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But Trump's moves — the tariffs and his decisions to pull out of the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, among other actions — have taken the hostility to heights. "This is the first time the U.S. government is seen as truly acting in bad faith, in treating allies as a threat, in treating trade as negative and fundamentally undermining the system that it built," said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "This U.S. administration feels unbound by previous U.S. commitments in a way that no other administration has ever felt." "Prime ministers are people, and he's insulted them," Reinsch said. "They're just not going to easily roll over when he punches them in the nose like that." Canada and other U.S. allies are retaliating with tariffs on U.S. exports. Canada is waiting until the end of the month to apply them with the hope the Trump administration will reconsider. The Canadian tariffs would apply to goods ranging from yogurt to whiskey. Trump has also mused about wanting to split up NAFTA and negotiating separate trade deals with Canada and Mexico in what Ujczo sees as a divide-and-conquer strategy. Robert Bothwell, a professor at the University of Toronto, said Trump's actions appear intended to break Canada at the negotiating table. "They are relying on the overwhelming strength of the U.S. to compel a much weaker neighbor to give in to whatever they demand," Bothwell said. "That brings in the real possibility of lasting damage to Canadian American relations." Bothwell expects this to be Trump's only visit to Canada. He even wonders if it could be the last G-7 meeting for the president. "We've not had an American president or administration like this in the post-war period," said Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat. "I am worried because it is destructive to the rules-based international system that the Americans have been the guardian of." ___ Wiseman reported from Washington. AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| President Donald Trump will depart Canada straight for Singapore, the site of his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. | Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images Trump to depart G-7 summit early President Donald Trump continued to criticize Canada early Friday morning after the White House announced he will leave the G-7 summit before its conclusion following a day of back-and-forth with fellow world leaders that foreshadowed confrontations during the meeting of the world's largest advanced economies. Trump will be depart the summit in Quebec at 10:30 a.m. Saturday and head directly to Singapore, the site of his June 12 meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. The G-7 summit is scheduled to wrap up later on Saturday. Story Continued Below Before the Thursday night announcement, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada both promised to confront Trump over his recent decision to impose tariffs on U.S. allies. Trump, in response, laid into the two leaders on Thursday evening and Friday morning over those plans. Sign up for Morning Trade A speed read on global trade news — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. “Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.” On Friday a little after 6 a.m., he tweeted, “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products! They didn’t tell you that, did they? Not fair to our farmers!” and “Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better!” By pulling out early, Trump will skip sessions focused on climate change, the oceans and clean energy. He will also miss the traditional group-photo opportunity among fellow heads of state. The president may also miss the opportunity to host a summit-ending news conference, something world leaders traditionally do. The leader of the host nation, in this case Trudeau, also takes questions and gives closing remarks. Trump chose not to hold a news conference last year, becoming the only G-7 leader not to do so before leaving Italy, according to The Hill. He opted instead for a speech at a nearby naval air station. The summit traditionally concludes with a joint statement spelling out the areas of agreement on the wide range of policy issues discussed. But before Trump's announcement, Macron urged the other five nations to hold strong and not let potential U.S. opposition water down their communiqué. The 2017 statement, for example was notable for its explicit mention that the U.S. did not share its allies‘ support of the Paris Climate Accord. Less than a week later, Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden that the U.S. would be exiting the climate agreement. “Maybe the American president doesn’t care about being isolated today, but we don’t mind being six, if needs be,” Macron said, part of his plea to confront Trump head-on. Trump later upped the ante, accusing Trudeau of being “so indignant” on the topic. The U.S. and its allies have been at loggerheads in recent days as the EU, Canada and Mexico continue to bristle over the president’s decision to levy 10 percent tariffs on aluminum imports and 25 percent tariffs on steel imports from the two countries and Europe. The move, which reportedly came with little warning, has also caused Republicans on Capitol Hill to consider reining in Trump’s trade powers. Suggesting that the world powers could continue on without the U.S. is a stark departure from the chummy relationship Macron and Trump had during the French president’s state visit to Washington in April. For his part, Trudeau continued to call the tariffs “ridiculous.” Last week, he repeatedly invoked the fact that Canadians fought alongside U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in characterizing Trump’s decision as a slap in the face. The thought of allies ganging up on him has reportedly left Trump uneasy about attending the summit. But for now, Trudeau says that he expects his American counterpart to show up. “We know that President Trump likes to be unpredictable," the Canadian leader said on Thursday, "but everything suggests that he will be there for the G7 summit, including his tweets this morning." CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the format for the closing news conference of the G-7. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is set to give his own, and other leaders traditionally follow suit.

– The traditional end-of-summit group photo at this year's G7 gathering will not include President Trump. The White House says Trump will leave the Quebec summit on Saturday morning and travel directly to Singapore, where he is due to meet Kim Jong Un June 12, Politico reports. The summit is scheduled to conclude hours after Trump's departure and he will miss sessions on issues including climate change and the oceans. The president will travel to the Quebec resort of La Malbaie Friday, the AP reports. His first trip to Canada as president comes as disputes with both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and France's President Emmanuel Macron are heating up. Both leaders have said they will confront Trump at the summit over new tariffs imposed on US allies in the name of "national security." Trudeau and Macron "are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers. The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow," Trump tweeted Thursday. In another tweet, he said Trudeau "is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things...but he doesn’t bring up the fact that they charge us up to 300% on dairy — hurting our Farmers, killing our Agriculture!" A third tweet warned the EU and Canada to "Take down your tariffs & barriers or we will more than match you!" Earlier Thursday, Macron said that the other six countries may end up signing an agreement that doesn't include the US. (Trump reportedly brought up a War of 1812 incident when discussing new tariffs on Canadian steel.)

Starbucks' employees can now wear grey and muted blue shirts. Starbucks Starbucks baristas can now wear dark jeans and dye their hair any color. On Monday, the coffee giant announced it was changing its dress code. Under the new policy, employees are allowed to wear shirt colors outside of solid black or white, as well as dark wash jeans. Beanies, fedoras, and "other suitable hats" — not bucket hats, sports caps, berets, or cowboy hats — are also permitted. Perhaps most notable, however, is that Starbucks workers are now allowed to "make a statement with hair color," according to the company's press release, as long as dyed hair is permanent or semi-permanent (some temporary dyes, hair chalk, or glitter could be a food safety issue). Starbucks employees quickly took to social media to celebrate the change. Employees have been complaining about the coffee giant's hair policy for quite some time. "Starbucks is place where partners are unique and should be able to show their true selves," reads a petition to change Starbucks' hair color policy on Coworker.org. "How are they going to do it if they can't color their hair how they want? Sometimes color shows the person's true self." The petition, which was posted last year, received nearly 15,000 signatures. An example of appropriate dyed hair, according to Starbucks' look book. Starbucks The new dress code certainly isn't a free-for-all. Permitted clothing colors are still subdued, and the chain's "no list" remains extensive. Banned items include brightly colored shirts (including certain plaids and floral prints), hoodies, socks with "distracting" graphics, and UGG boots. However, as with Starbucks lifting its ban on visible tattoos in 2014, the shift allows for a wider range of options and hair colors, a convenient way keep up with the times and boost employee morale. Now, most of Starbucks' most hated dress code requirements, such as no nail polish and minimal jewelry, can be tied to food safety issues — not a supposedly creative chain trying to blunt employees' freedom of expression. ||||| The new Starbucks Dress Code announced today invites baristas to shine as individuals while continuing to present a clean, neat and professional appearance. Effective immediately, a range of shirt colors beyond solid black and white are welcome, including gray, navy, dark denim and brown, including patterns. Shorts, skirts, dresses and pants, including dark-wash jeans, are all part of the Starbucks wardrobe, and partners are invited to make a statement with hair color, so long as coloring is permanent or semi-permanent, in keeping with food-safety standards. To cap the look off, beanies, fedoras and other suitable hats are welcome. Related: Starbucks Dress Code Lookbook Some partners (employees) have already been wearing clothing that fits the new dress code guidelines. Customers coming into the Starbucks at the 47th & Broadway store in Manhattan last September immediately detected something different. Rather than the familiar solid black, white and khaki clothing underneath green aprons, baristas were decked out in a range of colors and outfits that reflected their own personal tastes. Visitors to the store were caught slightly off guard by the change, but they welcomed the new style, according to Starbucks store manager Mario Leon. “Customers noticed right away,” Leon said. “They actually thought that something was wrong. They would ask me, ‘Why are you guys all out of uniform?’ And we just told them, ‘No, this is the new uniform for this store.’ They said, ‘We like it. We’re happy to see that you can wear expressive clothing to show who you are.’” The Broadway coffeehouse and select Reserve stores that spotlight small-batch coffees, as well as the Reserve® Roastery and Tasting Room in Seattle, are forerunners for all company stores in the U.S. and Canada as Starbucks updates its North America dress code beginning now. “This new dress code is what partners have in their closets,” Leon added. “It just makes it so much easier. It just makes so much sense.” “I believe these changes work well with our iconic green apron and also complement the passion partners bring to our coffee and their craft,” said Cosimo LaPorta, executive vice president, U.S. Retail Store Operations. “We want partners to be as proud of their look as they are when they tie on their green apron.” “Our success is rooted in our continual innovation and customization in every aspect of our business and this also applies to offering the best partner experience we can,” said Rossann Williams, president, Starbucks Canada. “We are responding to what our partners have told us and are confident this will uplift the Starbucks brand, partner and customer experience.” For more information on this story, contact the Starbucks Newsroom ||||| The Policy states: "HAIR: Keep it looking natural- no bright or unnatural colors (purple,pink, blue,green). Pull long hair back with clips, hair ties or bands." I would like Starbucks to allow Partners to have unnatural hair color. I feel that compared to tattoos and piercings, it should be nothing. The Starbucks mission statement is: "Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time." Starbucks is place where partners are unique and should be able to show their true selves. How are they going to do it if they can't color their hair how they want? Sometimes color shows the person's true self. Allowing tattoos and nose piercings was a good first step but now let's allow unnatural hair color. Variety in a workplace is always great! Wouldn't you want to have some red, purple, green, or maybe pink in your hair? ||||| Your favorite Starbucks Corp. (ticker: SBUX) barista might be showing off a new look next time you order that latte — sporting dark-wash jeans, a tone-on-tone plaid shirt and fedora. The coffee chain announced a new North American dress code Monday that invites more than just black, white and khaki options. It's extending shirt colors to gray, navy, dark denim and brown, plus patterns. Its partners can also wear shorts, skirts, dresses and pants, and go for any hair color they desire, so long as it meets food safety standards. The company had previously barred its employees from dyeing their hair unnatural colors, i.e. pink and purple, reports Fortune . The dress code is intended to be more reflective of what its baristas wear outside of work. "This new dress code is what partners have in their closets," Starbucks store manager Mario Leon said in a press release. "It just makes it so much easier. It just makes so much sense." Leon's 47th and Broadway Manhattan, New York location had already implemented the change in September. A full look at the new wardrobe is available here. It clearly invokes more of a hipster, average Joe coffee shop feel, one the chain could emulate to broaden its fast casual, basic appeal. It also builds on a growing trend of individual expression in the workplace. The company has been making a series of changes meant to benefit employees, notably through its college achievement plan and more recently its wage increase announcement set to go into effect in October. The caveat of the upcoming pay increase is that there won't be another in January, reports BuzzFeed . ||||| Crawl of outlinks from wikipedia.org started March, 2016. These files are currently not publicly accessible. Properties of this collection. It has been several years since the last time we did this. For this collection, several things were done: 1. Turned off duplicate detection. This collection will be complete, as there is a good chance we will share the data, and sharing data with pointers to random other collections, is a complex problem. 2. For the first time, did all the different wikis. The original runs were just against the enwiki. This one, the seed list was built from all 865 collections.

– Just like a Starbucks customer can match her perc to her personality via a customized coffee, company baristas can now also "shine as individuals" thanks to the java giant's updated dress code. Per a company release posted Monday, baristas are now allowed to diverge somewhat from the black, white, and khaki attire that's been the Starbucks standard. Although the green aprons aren't going anywhere, baristas can now wear navy, brown, and gray clothing underneath, as long as it presents a "clean, neat, and professional appearance." Wild hair hues, previously forbidden, are also now welcome—though it has to be permanent or semi-permanent color and can't have glitter or spray in it for health reasons, Fortune notes—and employees can top off their tresses with beanies, fedoras, or other "suitable" headwear within the same color approved color scheme. The new dress designation, which will take effect in all stores in the US and Canada, offers "more of a hipster, average Joe coffee shop feel," US News reports—and it notes the chain could harness that feel to "broaden its fast casual, basic appeal." Business Insider notes that employees had long asked for similar concessions, especially regarding hair color, including via a petition with nearly 15,000 signatures that says, "Starbucks is [a] place where partners are unique and should be able to show their true selves." The code is expected to affect some 150,000 workers in the US. "This new dress code is what partners have in their closets," a Starbucks store manager in Manhattan says in the release. "It just makes it so much easier." Check out the company's new acceptable color palette here. (Starbucks also recently announced it will raise workers' wages.)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email President-elect Donald Trump, who won the hearts and minds of millions of working-class voters, may help deliver a multibillion-dollar bonanza to America’s wealthiest families. The Manhattan businessman’s election offers congressional Republicans their best chance in years to eliminate the estate tax, which he and others call the “death tax.” Abolishing it would save more than $20 billion a year for the millionaires and billionaires the tax applies to -- including the Trump family and several of the people he has chosen for his administration. “A lot of families go through hell over the death tax,” Trump said during his presidential run. The tax’s opponents say it forces some families to sell their farms or small businesses in order to pay up. Studies suggest that only a small percentage of estates fall into those categories. Wiping out the estate tax has been a longstanding goal for Republican lawmakers, and the party’s sweeping victories in the 2016 election have brought them thrillingly close to achieving it. But there are potential stumbling blocks. Their narrow margin in the Senate leaves few votes to spare. And Trump may have a hard time reconciling his populist campaign themes with a tax break for America’s richest. Under federal law, the tax, which is levied at a 40 percent rate, applies only to estates worth more than $5.45 million for individuals and $10.9 million for couples. Estates worth less than that may be passed on to heirs tax-free. Last year, just 0.2 percent of estates of people who died were subject to the tax, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington-based research group that’s a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. ‘The Forgotten Guy’ Trump “campaigned as someone who’s going to help the middle class, the forgotten guy, but every policy he’s advocating -- huge tax cuts for the wealthy, estate tax -- all for the top .001 percent,” said Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from Manhattan. America’s wealthiest “hit the jackpot” with Trump’s election, he said. Since Trump’s election, House Ways & Means Chairman Kevin Brady and Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch have repeated their desire to repeal the estate tax. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have long supported its elimination. Passage in the Republican-led House is assured. In the Senate, a decade-long estate tax repeal can pass with 50 of 52 expected GOP senators under a special mechanism called reconciliation, while 60 votes could end it for good. “The death tax on family farms, small businesses, ranches and estates has crippled hard-working families for far too long,” Hatch told Bloomberg News in a statement. In 2013, 120 of the 3,780 estates subject to the tax were farms and businesses, according to the Tax Policy Center. That’s a little more than 3 percent. The same year, estates valued above $20 million paid an average tax rate of 18.8 percent -- many achieve a lower effective rate through tax-planning strategies, including giving some of their fortune away to charity. Windfall to Leaders At that 18.8 percent effective rate, repealing the tax would be a large windfall to the leaders-in-waiting of the Trump administration. Trump’s estate would save $564 million, based on his estimated net worth of $3 billion. Trump disagrees with that net-worth estimate, which Bloomberg News compiled in July; he has said his net worth exceeds $10 billion. If so, his savings would increase -- to as much as $1.9 billion at an 18.8 percent effective tax rate. Trump’s transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story. Trump’s Commerce secretary choice, Wilbur Ross, might save about $545 million, based on his estimated net worth of $2.9 billion. Ross is the chairman and chief strategy officer of WL Ross & Co. LLC. Richard DeVos, the father-in-law of Trump’s education secretary choice Betsy DeVos, might save $900 million, based on his estimated $4.8 billion net worth. Richard DeVos is co-founder of Alticor Inc., the parent of closely held direct-seller Amway Corp. Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to head the Small Business Administration, and her husband, Vince McMahon, who together founded World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., might save more than $250 million based on their shared net worth of at least $1.35 billion. The nominees’ net worth estimates were compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Repealing the tax would also benefit Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin, who held shares in CIT Group Inc. worth more than $100 million as of Dec. 2. And Gary Cohn, who is said to be Trump’s choice for his chief economic policy adviser, would leave his position as president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with $266 million of stock and awards amassed during his years at the investment bank, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Early Test The looming estate-tax debate may be an early test of how Republicans deal with the electorate’s populist-over-elite mood. In interviews, Republican senators and congressmen played down the tension between Trump’s populist image and repealing the estate tax. “Every president who’s ever had the office is going to have tension between their campaign and reality,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. “How he handles that tension is up to him. But there’s nothing new about a president campaigning one way and having to govern another.” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on Thursday he expects an estate tax repeal to be included in the budget reconciliation beginning in April. Others want it to be part of a comprehensive tax overhaul package. GOP aides said many are waiting for guidance from Trump. Some conservatives caution that upper-end tax breaks are politically problematic. “Trump would do well to craft a tax-reform agenda that is populist in a very visible, obvious way that delivers tangible gains to middle-income voters,” said Reihan Salam, executive editor of the National Review, a conservative magazine. “I believe that coming right out of the gate and focusing on high-end tax cuts might prove costly.” Democratic Opposition Democrats overwhelmingly oppose reducing the tax — presidential nominee Hillary Clinton campaigned on raising its rate to 65 percent for couples worth $1 billion. “I’m against” repealing the tax, said incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “To do it would sure help out the wealthiest few in America.” GOP leaders are thus wary of over-promising. “Every tax bill is going to have a lot of tension and a lot of problems because the Democrats are not real enthused about things,” Hatch said in an interview. “We’ll just have to see. But we may be able to do some things.” The politics of repeal may depend on which description of the tax reaches the public. A Gallup poll in March found that 54 percent of Americans favored eliminating it when told it’s a tax paid when a person dies. But researchers have found that people are more likely to support it -- and to want it to be increased -- when told who it affects. “It becomes a question of how effective Democrats are at reframing that issue beyond this notion of a death tax,” said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. — With assistance by Brendan Coffey ||||| Highlighted areas show what parts of President Trump’s 2005 tax return could have been affected by the new tax plan. President Trump could cut his tax bills by more than $1.1 billion, including saving tens of millions of dollars in a single year, under his proposed tax changes, a New York Times analysis has found. On Wednesday, the White House announced a sweeping plan to cut a variety of taxes that would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. The estimate of Mr. Trump’s savings is based in part on information from his 2005 federal tax return. The analysis compares what his tax burden would be under current law with what it would be under the proposal. Mr. Trump’s 2005 return is the most recent available publicly and was released in March by David Cay Johnston on the website DCReport.org. The Times’s figure also relies on an estimate of Mr. Trump’s net worth, calculated by the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index to be $2.86 billion. “I don’t benefit. I don’t benefit,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday. “In fact, very, very strongly, as you see, I think there’s very little benefit for people of wealth.” In fact, high-income earners like Mr. Trump are likely to benefit disproportionately if the White House proposal becomes law. The estimates, calculated with the help of Robert Willens, an accounting expert, and Stephen Breitstone, a tax lawyer, provide a view into precisely how. Savings of about $1.1 billion from repealing the estate tax Though it would not be reflected on his income tax return, Mr. Trump’s proposal to eliminate the estate tax would generate the largest tax savings. If his assets — reportedly valued at $2.86 billion — were transferred after his death under today’s rules, his estate would be taxed at about 40 percent. Repealing the federal estate tax could save his family about $1.1 billion, though it could still be subject to New York estate taxes. Savings of $31 million from repealing the alternative minimum tax Line 45 of Mr. Trump’s 2005 tax return shows he paid $31.3 million because of the alternative minimum tax. The decades-old alternative minimum tax is meant to prevent America’s wealthiest from using deductions to pay very low or no federal income tax. In 2005, it accounted for about 80 percent of Mr. Trump’s overall income tax payment. His plan to repeal the tax would save him $31.3 million. Savings of about $16 million from taxing certain types of business income at 25 percent Lines 12 and 17 of Mr. Trump’s tax return show the income he earned from businesses, rental real estate and other kinds of business partnerships, totaling $109.76 million. Mr. Trump’s proposed changes could allow individuals to qualify for a significantly reduced tax rate of 25 percent on certain types of income they receive through business partnerships and similar entities. That is up from the original proposal in April of 15 percent, but far lower than the top tax rates currently faced by high-income earners of 39.6 percent. Mr. Trump could save as much as $6.2 million on business income and $9.8 million on income from real estate and other kinds of partnerships under this plan, compared with his tax burden under current law. (In 2005, much of this taxable income was offset by a $103.2 million write-down in business losses.) The proposal released Wednesday “contemplates” that Congress will adopt measures to prevent the wealthy from recharacterizing their income to take advantage of the new, lower rate and avoid the top personal rate. If that happens, it could have a big effect on Mr. Trump’s tax bill. Savings of about $0.5 million from cutting the highest tax rate Lines 7, 8a and 9a show $10.79 million in wages, taxable interest and ordinary dividends that Mr. Trump earned in 2005. The proposal to reduce the highest tax rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent would save high-income earners similar to Mr. Trump a relatively small amount compared with the repeal of the alternative minimum tax. The $500,000 in savings is a rough estimate because Mr. Trump has not specified income levels for his proposed tax brackets. Increase of $3 million to $5 million in taxes from repealing most deductions Line 40 shows Mr. Trump itemized his deductions instead of using the standard tax deduction, claiming $17 million. Mr. Trump would probably lose most of the deductions he reported in 2005. Depending on his effective tax rate under the proposal, Mr. Trump could pay roughly $3 million to $5 million more in taxes. ||||| President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans unveiled Wednesday their plan for a massive tax overhaul. The plan, meant to be a framework for Congress to negotiate into legislation, still has missing parts. But read on for a look at who wins and loses under the proposal as it stands now. Winners Corporations with high tax rates: The framework lowers the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent. Trump initially wanted to lower it to 15 percent but said his “red line” for the rate is 20. It also lowers the tax rate for small businesses to 25 percent. The majority of small business owners would use the extra cash to expand businesses and hire additional employees, Alfredo Ortiz, president of the nonprofit Job Creators Network, told Fox News. Heirs to large estates: The plan eliminates the so-called death tax, or estate tax. The federal estate tax, which typically affects wealthier Americans, is a tax on property transferred after the owner’s death. People who do their own taxes: With the framework, Republicans hoped to simplify the tax code and the way Americans file their taxes. The plan collapses the number of brackets from seven to as little as three. High-income households: The framework includes multiple tax cuts for high-income taxpayers, including the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT is a supplemental income tax meant to offset benefits a person with a high economic income could receive. Low-income households: The plan doubles the standard deduction, which reduces the amount of taxed income, to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples, making low-income taxpayers a winner, Steve Odland, CEO of the Committee for Economic Development, told Fox News. It also increases the child tax credit which could be beneficial to families. Losers Taxpayers in high-tax states: The plan eliminates state and local tax deductions, meaning taxpayers in states with high taxes will lose out on the write-off. This impacts those in mostly blue states, such as California and New York. Congressional New York Republicans have warned that they will not vote for a plan that includes the removal. Accountants: Because the plan would streamline the tax process, less people would potentially need to hire tax accountants, lawyers and firms, Odland predicted. Trump has said he wants to put H&R Block "out of business." National debt: The plan would result in approximately $2.2 trillion of net tax cuts -- a blow to the national debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said. “Given today’s record-high levels of national debt, the country cannot afford a deficit-financed tax cut,” the nonprofit said. Social programs: With the greatly reduced amount of tax collections the plan calls for, it’s possible that domestic spending on programs such as welfare programs and education could take a hit, Henry Aaron, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Fox News. People who want a concrete plan: Aaron also said the plan was lacking in details, making it difficult for policy experts to come up with concrete estimates of the framework’s impact. “People can make assumptions about what the details will be and make estimates based on their assumptions, but you won’t really know until the details are in,” he said.

– It's hard to know for sure, but President Trump may save a pretty penny if his administration's "once in a generation" tax proposal goes into effect, despite Trump insisting earlier this week the plan is "not good for me." The New York Times put Trump's estimated net worth of $2.86 billion and his 2005 federal tax return—one of the few publicly available pieces of detailed info on the president's finances—up against the current tax law and the new plan. Its findings: The president and his estate could save more than $1 billion. Experts commissioned by the Times postulate the benefits would mostly come from the elimination of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. Under the current estate tax, Trump's estate would take a 40% hit following an assets transfer after his death. In what it called a potential "bonanza" for Trump and his Cabinet members, Bloomberg last year estimated Trump's family would save $564 million by dumping the estate tax; the Times figures it closer to $1.1 billion, minus New York state taxes. Getting rid of the AMT, which made up about 80% of Trump's income tax payment in the 2005 return, could save him more than $31 million. Writing for the Washington Post, Philip Bump notes Trump's "vague articulation" on how he's looking out for the little guy, not the ones with fat wallets, "is not borne out by the details." Fox News offers the winners and losers under the tax proposal.

Dab A group of teens dabbing. Genre Hip-hop Year Mid-to-late 2010s Dabbing, or the dab, is a simple dance move or gesture in which a person drops the head into the bent crook of a slanted, upwardly angled arm, while raising the opposite arm out straight in a parallel direction. Since 2015, dabbing has been used as a gesture of triumph or playfulness, becoming a youthful American fad and Internet meme.[1] The move looks similar to someone sneezing into the "inside" of their elbow.[1][2] Origin The dab has its origins in the Atlanta hip-hop scene in the 2010s, but there was initially disagreement about who originated the dance.[3] Artists initially mentioned as possible originators of the name of the dance include Migos (as in "Look at My Dab"), Skippa Da Flippa, Peewee Longway, Jose Guapo and Rich the Kid.[4] QC labelmate OG Maco called out Migos for saying they were the creators when it was actually Skippa Da Flippa. The controversy was cleared up when Migos confirmed Skippa as the originator of the dance, though they were unhappy with the way Maco handled the situation.[5]. The dance evolved throughout Summer 2014 [6]. American rapper Bow Wow attempted to explain the origin of the dab dance, saying it derived from the cannabis dabbers community, which started in about 2012, before the dance move. He was met with opposition from other rappers who immediately took to Twitter to insult him and disprove his claims.[7] The music video for "Shake It" by Metro Station, released in 2009, shows a person doing what appears to be a dab.[8] Popularity As XXL magazine reported in August 2015, "What started as a regional down South adlib is quickly becoming a masterful maneuver in clubs and on street corners. It’s called dabbin’."[9] Jason Derulo taught James Corden how to dab during the November 4, 2015 edition of "Carpool Karaoke" on The Late Late Show with James Corden.[10] The dab gained popularity in American sports following an eight-second celebratory dab by Cam Newton, football quarterback for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, during a game against the Tennessee Titans on November 15, 2015.[11][12] According to a Sports Illustrated account of the incident, "[w]hen two Titans players confronted [Newton] about the celebration, he continued to dance in their faces, even as he backed away."[1] Newton explained the incident by crediting a 16-year-old for instructing him to "Dab on them folks": I'm a firm believer that if you don't like me to do it then don't let me in ... I just like doing it, man. It's not to be boastful, and from the crowd's response they like seeing it. ... Tell me what to do "Dab on them folks," so I tried "Dab on them folks," in that tone too. "Dab on them folks." He's only like 16, but he's got an Adam's apple out of this world.[13] It was later confirmed that the 16-year-old was Newton's younger brother Caylin.[14] On June 9, 2016, Cam Newton announced that he would no longer perform the celebration. However, he dabbed again on November 13, 2016 after a touchdown against the Kansas City Chiefs, nearly a year after his initial dab against the Titans.[15] Dabbing has made its appearance in politics, as well. In January 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dabbed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In October 2016, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez dabbed at the end of a Senate debate against Attorney General Kamala Harris.[16][17][18] On January 3, 2017, Cal Marshall, 17-year-old son of Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan), dabbed at his father's swearing in as a Congressman, confusing House Speaker Paul Ryan.[19] On February 22, 2017, Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson dabbed in the UK's House of Commons.[20] French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron,[21] Benoît Hamon and François Fillon dabbed on TV in March 2017. In May 2017, Prince Sverre Magnus of Norway dabbed at the Royal Palace in Oslo during his grandparents' King Harald V and Queen Sonja's official appearance for their 80th birthday.[22] In October 2017, Australian Labor Party leader Bill Shorten dabbed as part of a "diss track" criticising members of the Liberal Party.[23] He later alluded to the dab's infamy, stating that his children had been "humiliated" by it.[24] In January 2017, an Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja dabbed in celebration of his half-century scored in a Test match against Pakistan in Sydney. His move received mixed reactions, with some praising it while others accused him of disrespecting his opponents.[25] In February 2017, the president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, invited a dance group to State House to perform the dab dance move with him.[26] The president was doing the dab dance in a bid to appeal to the youthful population of Kenya to come out and register as voters. Some critics found this move to be in bad taste since there were other pressing issues like the doctors and lecturers strike that the president ought to have been dealing with rather than dancing.[27] Today, the dab is both a dance move and a statement. The culture behind it has been propagated by celebrity use and memes. Many dancers incorporate the move in their repertoire as a minor addition to a set. Whether in the beginning, middle, or end of a set, a dab is usually used to mark a drop. In Korean pop music (K-pop) some South Koreans adopted the move,[28] along with Whip and Nae Nae.[29] Manchester United footballers Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard also popularised the dab by performing the dance as their goal celebration.[30] Wrestler T.J. Perkins often uses the move as a taunt or a sign of disrespect after a headstand headscissors takedown.[citation needed] Illegality in Saudi Arabia In Saudi Arabia, the move was made illegal by the National Committee for Drug Control as it was deemed that it alludes to cannabis and other illegal substances. In August 2017, Saudi singer and actor Abdallah Al Shaharani was arrested for performing the move at a music festival in Ta'if, and afterward apologised in a tweet.[31][32] In January 2018 a Saudi footballer was criticized on social media for performing the move during a match.[33] See also

– The 115th Congress was sworn in Tuesday, and Kansas Rep. Roger Marshall was one of the newbies who took advantage of a photo op with Speaker Paul Ryan after the ceremony. But per CNN, another Marshall ended up stealing the spotlight: the congressman's son, who started dabbing—for the uninitiated, Wikipedia describes it as "a dance move in which the dancer simultaneously drops the head while raising an arm and the elbow in a gesture that has been noted to resemble sneezing," and often employed by the Carolina Panthers' Cam Newton to celebrate a touchdown. Ryan seemed flummoxed by whatever was going on next to him, asking young Marshall, "Do you want to put your hand down?" Ryan said, gently pulling the boy's arm down. "You gonna sneeze? That it?" The elder Marshall responded with details of his son's fate Tuesday afternoon, tweeting, "Just so you know @SpeakerRyan: He's grounded." But Ryan's take on the dab debacle showed it was less the punishment he was concerned about and more answers that he sought. "Just finished swearing-in photos. Nearly 300 members. Countless cute kids. Still don't get what dabbing is, though," he tweeted Tuesday evening. Someone tape a Panthers game for him?

LEBANON, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee high school student's anti-bullying video has resulted in nearly 600,000 views on YouTube and a suspension for its creator. Lebanon High School student Emily Gipson said school administrators accused her of "trying to incite violence" and gave her a two-day in-school suspension for the video entitled "Welcome to Lebanon High School," posted Jan. 22. In the video, prompted by a classmate's October suicide, she asks students to treat each other better. It's a broad indictment of campus culture, but contains neither profanity nor calls for direct action. "Welcome to Lebanon High School, where smiles are fake and suicide prevention is something to laugh at," she said in the video, criticizing her peers' reaction to the Stop It app the Wilson County school had put out in response to the death. Her ire was not restricted to students, however. Perhaps the harshest words in Gipson's free-verse speech were reserved for school administration. "Posters say 'Smile' and 'Be happy,' but how am I supposed to be happy in a world — no, in a community — where creativity is put down, where the people who make fun of others never get punished because 'There's no proof,' or 'There's nothing we can do about it,' or, my favorite, 'Kids will be kids,'" she says in the video. "So let's summarize: We're expected to come to this emotional prison every day, and we're expected to forgive the bullies because the authorities are sure they didn't mean it. Sometimes I wonder how many kids it takes dying to make a difference." Principal Scott Walters told The Lebanon Democrat he can't discuss the 16-year-old's punishment, but said he took issue with the fact that the free-verse speech was recorded in a classroom without a teacher's permission. Gipson disputed that, saying she had two coaches' permission. Walters also said the video hurt his feelings, and those of teachers, too. He said he's received feedback from parents and students who didn't agree with the video, including a gift from a student who told him he was doing a good job. He also said people could learn from Gipson's viewpoint. "I can appreciate the perspective of the video," Walters said. "Of course, she's 16, and her perspective is going to be different from mine." Kenneth Gipson, her grandfather and guardian, said the principal told him the only reason the teen was punished was because she didn't have permission to take the video on school grounds. "I don't have a problem with that. She violated their policies," he told The Associated Press But Gipson says he's proud of his granddaughter for expressing herself. "I applaud her for taking a stance. She's speaking against something that is obviously an issue in today's society — today's schools especially. I don't have a problem with the videos at all. I wish she hadn't of done the first one the way she did it inside the classroom, but as far as the message goes, I'm all for the message. I think she's done a great job in bringing to light a very sensitive and needed subject." Gipson said her punishment is worth the good she feels the video has produced. Then she posted another spoken-word poem on Youtube, titled "Have I Made a Difference Yet?" urging teenagers like her to speak up. "I never knew that it would get this big, and through it getting this big I've learned a lesson: This is not my school, this is everyone's school, this is a national problem," she said. ||||| (CNN) A high school student who posted an anti-bullying video attacking her school's administration was given a two-day suspension, but the school is saying it had nothing to do with her video's message. Emily Gipson is a student at Lebanon High School in Lebanon, Tennessee. On January 22, she posted a YouTube video of her performing a free-verse poem about bullying and suicide at her school. "Welcome to Lebanon High School, where smiles are fake and suicide prevention is something to laugh at," she begins. In the days since it was posted, Gipson's video has racked up more than 700,000 views -- and has caused serious controversy at her high school. Gipson was given a two-day suspension for the video, a punishment some people attributed to her strong words against the school's handling of bullying. Read More ||||| The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

– "We're expected to forgive the bullies because the authorities are sure they didn't mean it," Emily Gipson says in a YouTube video posted Jan. 22. "Sometimes I wonder how many kids it takes dying to make a difference." The 16-year-old sophomore at Tennessee's Lebanon High School made the video after a classmate's apparent suicide, the AP reports. The video went viral—surpassing 800,000 views—and Gipson has been hit with a two-day suspension. In the video, she says her school is an "emotional prison" and a place "where creativity is put down, where the people who make fun of others never get punished because 'There's no proof,' or 'There's nothing we can do about it,' or, my favorite, 'Kids will be kids.'" Principal Scott Walters says his feelings and those of teachers were hurt by the video, but that's not why Gipson was suspended. Gipson says the school administration accused her of "trying to incite violence," but Walters says she was suspended for filming in a classroom after school without the teacher's permission or knowledge, the Tennessean reports. Gipson says she had permission from two coaches, and in a statement quoted by CNN, Wilson County Schools spokesperson Jennifer Johnson confirms that Gipson asked a coach if she could use the classroom only to have the coach later be "mortified by the nature of her message." Johnson adds that it's "patently false" to say Gipson was punished for inciting violence and there's "no evidence whatsoever" that the student who died was bullied, despite the claims of other students. Gipson says she wanted "to be a voice for as many people as possible" and ends the video by imploring others "do not be the bully ... do not be the one that takes their own life."

CLOSE More women are buying breat milk online, but a study by Nationwide Children's Hospital discovered high levels of bacteria. Courtesy Nationwide Children's Hospital Nationwide Children's Hospital Researchers find high levels of bacteria that can make infants sick in breast milk purchased via the Internet. Despite safety concerns, new mothers are increasingly buying and selling milk over the Internet. A recent study by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that 75% of the breast milk they bought online was contaminated with high levels of bacteria. (Photo: Nationwide Children's Hospital) Story Highlights The selling of breast milk to others over the Web has become a growing trend Researchers found high counts of harmful bacteria and even fecal contamination in the milk The findings were likely the result of poor collection, storage or shipping practices Thanks to the Internet, women who produce an abundant supply of breast milk and those in need of it for their babies have more opportunities than ever to connect. But a first-of-its-kind study finds high levels of harmful bacteria and contamination in breast milk purchased via the Web. Researchers' analysis of 100 samples of breast milk bought on a public milk-sharing website found three in four samples contained either high levels of bacterial growth overall or contained disease-causing bacteria, including fecal contamination. The findings were likely the result of poor hygiene during milk collection, the use of either unclean containers or unsanitary breast milk pump parts, or compromised shipping practices, says epidemiologist Sarah Keim, lead author of the study in November's Pediatrics, published online today. Nineteen percent of sellers did not include dry ice or another cooling method when shipping, according to the study. It is unknown exactly how common purchasing breast milk online is, but a soon-to-be published journal article by Keim found 13,000 postings on U.S. milk sharing websites in 2011. It is "totally normal" for there to be certain bacteria in human breast milk, says Keim, a principal investigator with the Center for Biobehavioral Health at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Some are "very important and healthy for babies and the development of their immune system and digestive system," she says. This study focused on bacteria which "are generally pretty harmless as long as they don't grow out of control" but have also been associated with illnesses in infants linked to contaminated milk, including staphylococcus and streptococcus, says Keim. It also focused on bacteria associated with disease even at low levels, such as salmonella and E. coli. Researchers compared the online-purchased breast milk samples to samples of unpasteurized breast milk donated to a non-profit milk bank. Twelve such banks throughout the U.S. follow strict guidelines set by the Human Milk Banking Association of North America and provide pasteurized milk from carefully screened donors to fragile and premature infants, primarily in hospitals. Pasteurization kills the harmful bacteria before the milk reaches an infant. In all the samples analyzed, the Web-purchased milk had higher bacteria counts and were more likely to contain disease-related types of bacteria, even though the donated milk from the milk banks had yet to be pasteurized: -- 72% had any detectable gram-negative bacteria, which are associated with bloodstream infections, wound or surgical site infections, meningitis and fecal contamination vs. 35% of milk bank samples -- 63% tested positive for staphylococcus vs. 25% of milk bank samples -- 36% tested positive for streptococcus vs. 20% of milk bank samples -- 3% were contaminated with salmonella vs. none of the milk bank samples. All of the samples tested negative for HIV, says Keim, but the laboratory analysis to determine "the authenticity" of the breast milk is just beginning, she says, adding: "We're a little suspicious of some of the milk." "This study confirms what people have suspected in terms of online milk purchases," says Anne Eglash, a family medicine physician with University of Wisconsin Health in Mt. Horeb and a co-founder of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. She was not involved in the new study. "You don't know what you're getting, you don't know the quality, how honest people are about how old the milk is, and so many other issues. It's important to realize that this may not be the safest way to get breast milk when you don't have enough," she says. But Eglash, co-medical director of the still-in-development Mother's Milk Bank of the Western Great Lakes, cautions against "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" when it comes to the sharing of raw, unpasteurized human breast milk between lactating women and those who cannot, for medical or other reasons, provide their own milk for their healthy, full-term babies. "I don't think the message should be that women should never share milk, but that this behavior of buying it on the Web from someone you don't know should not happen," she says. Eglash emphasizes that "you don't want unpasteurized milk that has various bacteria going to an infant whose immune system is vulnerable," but says there are safe ways to share human breast milk with healthy infants who are not your own, as well as pasteurize it at home. The Food and Drug Administration warns against feeding babies breast milk acquired directly from individuals or through the Internet, citing safety concerns; the American Academy of Pediatrics discourages feeding preterm infants human breast milk from unscreened donors. Keim, author of the new study, says her findings "may not apply to situations where milk is shared among friends or relatives or donated rather than sold. The potential risks of those situations are less well understood." Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1gwTueV ||||| “We worried at first,” she said. “We wanted to be mindful that the donors were healthy, but there was never a moment when we were afraid. We’ve had the milk of about 30 women and have never had a problem.” Women who do not wish to rely on an informal network may turn to breast milk banks, which store and sell breast milk from donors. Thirteen banks in the United States and Canada follow voluntary guidelines set up by the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, which require that donors and donations be screened, and that milk be pasteurized. But milk banks give priority to premature infants with significant medical complications, and the milk is available only by prescription. A bank will supply milk by prescription to healthy infants, but only if sufficient supplies are available — and they rarely are. The association’s banks distributed 2.15 million ounces in 2011, but the current annual need is 9 million ounces. Even when it is available, milk from banks is expensive, as much as $6 an ounce, and the average intake of a 1-month-old is about 25 ounces a day. All of this encourages new parents, often scrambling to find breast milk on short notice, to shop for cheaper or more convenient sources, and Web sites including onlythebreast.com and eatsonfeets.org have sprung up to fill the demand. In 2011, there were more than 13,000 postings on the four leading milk-sharing Web sites, according to Sarah Keim, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Ohio State and a researcher at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Photo In using any of these services, the buyer relies on the representations of the seller. The new study suggests that may prove hazardous. Today’s Headlines Wake up each morning to the day’s top news, analysis and opinion delivered to your inbox. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Dr. Keim and her colleagues collected 101 samples from milk-sharing Web sites, recording the sellers’ assertions about their own health and their methods of handling and storage. Then the researchers analyzed the bacterial content in the samples, comparing them with unpasteurized breast milk from screened donors at banks. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The researchers found that 64 percent of the samples from milk-sharing sites were contaminated with staph, 36 percent with strep, and almost three-quarters with other bacterial species. Three of the samples contained salmonella. Seventy-four percent of the samples would have failed milk bank criteria. The unpasteurized milk bank samples were not entirely free of contamination either, but they were considerably cleaner than those from the online milk-sharers — 25 percent were contaminated with staph, 20 percent with strep, and 35 percent with other types of bacteria. Twenty-five percent of the milk bank samples contained no detectable bacteria at all, compared with 9 percent of the samples from milk-sharing sites. “Most staph and strep are harmless at normal levels,” Dr. Keim said. “But some of the levels we found were very high.” Nine percent of the milk-sharing samples contained dangerous levels of staph, and a handful had unusually high strep levels. Salmonella “doesn’t belong in milk at all,” she said. Dr. Keim gave high marks to the milk banks. “When you donate to one of the H.M.B.A.N.A. banks, you know it’s been processed and made safe for a baby who really needs it.” All milk shipped from milk banks is pasteurized, which kills skin and gastrointestinal bacteria, as well as many viruses, including those that cause colds. But pasteurization also destroys some of the beneficial substances in breast milk. Kim Updegrove, president of the milk bank association, believes that however well intended, informal sharing of breast milk can be hazardous. “If you get milk from an unscreened sharer, you put your child at risk,” she said. “I hate to say this to an informal sharer, because they are trying to do good. But they are playing a game of Russian roulette.” The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate the buying or selling of breast milk, but the agency discourages both online and person-to-person sharing. Only three states — California, Maryland and New York — regulate milk banks. New York, for instance, specifies rules for collection and storage of breast milk, and requires that donors be screened and periodically re-evaluated in a process overseen by a physician. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Dr. Keim said there is no way for a consumer to be certain what she is getting from an online source. “We looked at everything a buyer could know herself — temperature, the condition of the containers, how long it took to ship, what sellers were saying in their ads — and only the time in transit had any effect on contamination. “Buyers have no way of knowing even what they’re getting — it could be cow’s milk or formula.” ||||| Informal sharing of human milk has been gaining popularity in the U.S., spurred by research suggesting breast-fed babies are healthier than those fed formula. But a study being published Monday in the journal Pediatrics found that 72% of breast-milk samples purchased over the Internet contained infection-causing bacteria and 21% had potentially harmful viruses. As news of the forthcoming study spread, one milk-selling site,...

– With the rise of sharing breast milk, a disturbing new study finds that 72% of samples bought online contained bacteria that could cause infections and 21% contained viruses. In 74% of the 101 samples purchased anonymously from two popular websites, the total bacteria count was significantly higher than the level generally considered safe. Bacteria found included E. coli, staphylococcus, streptococcus, and even salmonella, the Wall Street Journal reports. The FDA does not regulate the breast milk market, though it discourages sharing, the New York Times reports. Breast milk can be sold or donated on dozens of websites, and while some suppliers hand off the milk in person, others ship it. Problems during collection (improper hand-washing, dirty breast pumps or containers), improper storage (19% of the samples in the study were not cooled), and long shipping times (some of the samples took as long as six days to arrive) likely contributed to the health hazards. Another potential problem: Researchers say they are "a little suspicious of some of the milk," and are now working to determine if it's authentic breast milk, USA Today reports. In response to the study, at least one site that sells milk will stop allowing mothers to purchase from other mothers; donors will instead sell to a company that processes breast milk.

The giraffe tends to appear in parents’ lives sometime around the birth of a first child. It’s 7.5 inches tall, squeaky, and vaguely vanilla-scented. Its pupil-less eyes have the same blank, dazed expression newborns might recognize in the sleep-deprived parents dangling the toy above their crib. If you have birthed a child or given a baby gift at any point in the last five years, you may well have encountered Sophie the Giraffe. Sophie doesn’t make children smarter or improve cognitive development or any other benefit more high-tech toys promise. It’s just a rubber teether, distinguished from the thousands of other animal-shaped rubber teethers on the market primarily by its $24.99 retail price. In contrast, a perfectly serviceable set of Nuby teething keys—another baby favorite—is $4.99 at BabiesRUs. Yet in less than a decade Sophie went from being a virtual unknown in the US to the go-to baby gift for the upper-middle class. Roughly 500,000 Sophies are sold in the US each year. Its price point is right in prime baby shower gift territory. The giraffe is the 10th most popular baby item on Amazon, alongside staples like changing pads and breast milk storage bags. The giraffe’s rise to fame is a starlet’s tale of obscure rural beginnings, an LA discovery, and a few lucky breaks. In France, where the toy manufacturer Vulli produced its first Sophie on May 25, 1961, la girafe is a childhood staple. Sophie sales match or surpass annual birth rates. So when French expatriate Hélène Dumoulin-Montgomery gave birth to her daughter in California in 2000, she looked for a toy Sophie for her baby like the one she’d had as a child. Sophie wasn’t sold in the US at the time. Dumoulin-Montgomery, who then worked part-time as a realtor’s assistant, contacted Vulli and asked for permission to import the toy. The company was ambivalent, Dumoulin-Montgomery said. (Vulli did not respond to Quartz’s requests for comment.) After middling sales in neighboring western European countries, Vulli was content to focus on the French market. Nonetheless, the company agreed to grant Dumoulin-Montgomery a license to distribute the toy stateside. In 2001, Dumoulin-Montgomery received her first shipment of 100 Sophies. Nobody wanted them. “She was expensive. Everyone was comparing it to toys [made] in China,” she recalled via Skype while on vacation in France. (Her company, Calisson, Inc., is based in Orange County, California.) “I had a face to face with Sophie and said, ‘How am I going to sell you?’” Sophie’s fate changed in 2004 after a meeting with Teri Weiss, owner of the Beverly Hills gift boutique Elegant Child. Weiss crafts custom gift baskets destined for the offspring of high rollers in LA’s entertainment and finance scenes. She sells doll strollers more expensive than the strollers most people buy for their actual children. Dumoulin-Montgomery arrived at Weiss’s offices with a duffel bag full of children’s clothing and toys recently imported from France. “I remember it like yesterday,” Weiss recalled. “She brought a bag. I didn’t like anything. Nothing. And then at the bottom I saw this little giraffe, with no packaging or anything. I pick it up. It’s the right color and shape. I said, ‘That would look great in my basket.’” Dumoulin-Montgomery had six Sophies in the trunk of her car. Weiss bought them all. She put a Sophie that same day in a basket a Hollywood agent was gifting a client, the actress Kate Hudson, who had just given birth to her son Ryder. “A week or so later, her assistant calls me and says, ‘Kate Hudson received this basket.’ It’s literally a $500 basket, and her assistant says, ‘Her son loves this giraffe.” Demand rose as famous babies like Ryder Robinson were photographed gnawing on the toy. For the next four years, Elegant Child was one of Dumoulin-Montgomery’s biggest clients. Weiss was sending out 100 to 125 rubber giraffes per day at the peak, she said. Sales exploded after the toymaker Mattel’s 2007 recall of millions of lead-tainted Chinese-made toys. Sophie is made of natural rubber—each giraffe spends three months curing on a tray in the factory in Rumilly, France—and embellished with food-grade paint. Its success has led to unsubstantiated reports of imposter giraffes. Several parents have complained in Amazon reviews of receiving a giraffe they suspect is counterfeit, either because its painted spots faded (a normal occurrence in the genuine toy, Dumoulin-Montgomery said) or it has a funky chemical smell. Neither Dumoulin-Montgomery nor Amazon was able to confirm cases of counterfeit Sophies. Sophie’s US success convinced Vulli to invest in international marketing, Dumoulin-Montgomery said. The giraffe is now available in 75 different countries. If Sophie is on the higher end of toys in the US, in other countries she is practically gilded. In Brazil, the toy retails for roughly $50. In Europe Sophie is considerably cheaper—£8.99 ($13) on Amazon UK, €11 ($12.50) in her native France—and thus more democratized. London mom Carol Horne was at a wedding in Amsterdam in 2011 when her then-6-month-old bit down on the toy’s distinctive squeaker. Without turning around a Dutch woman two rows ahead said, “Ah—Sophie!” For this story, I informally surveyed roughly 30 parents with kids born after 2007, from Cape Town to London to New York. Nearly all of them had purchased or been gifted at least one Sophie at some point. “I’d never heard of Sophie until I got pregnant, and all of the baby registries listed it as a top pick,” said Stephanie Paterik, a New York journalist expecting her first child in August. “I’m still unclear about what she is/does, but registered for her anyway.” Sophie isn’t a universal panacea. Several parents surveyed for this story reported that their children never cared for the toy. At least two family dogs tried to commandeer it as their own. But for those babies who do take to the giraffe, Sophie holds a near-hypnotic sway. My own daughter gummed hers reverentially. An increasingly worn Sophie appears in almost every photo taken of her in her infancy. That graspable neck, chewable legs, and soothingly empty expression appeals in a way Sophie’s fans are incapable of explaining. “It’s her face. There’s something magical about it,” Dumoulin-Montgomery said. “I wish I could go in the head of a baby just to know.” ||||| When parents discovered mold in their "Tommee Tippee Sippee" cups last year, people everywhere were horrified. Well, we have more bad news: Sophie the Giraffe isn't safe either. Recent reports from parents reveal people have found mold growing inside of the popular toddler teething toy. As a pediatric dentist, Dana Chianese recommends teething toys to parents every single day, including Sophie the Giraffe (which her two boys under the age of three prefer), but not anymore. A month ago she decided to clean the toy and noticed the air coming out of the hole smelled musty. "I decided to cut into Sophie out of curiosity and discovered a science experiment living inside," Chianese told Goodhousekeeping.com. "Smelly, ugly mold living in my infant's favorite chew toy!" Dana Chianese Chianese says she always cleaned the toy according to instructions, using hot, soapy water with a damp sponge and never submerging it into water. "It still hurts my heart to know that for months I allowed my babies to chew on moldy toys," she says. "I no longer buy any chew toys with a hole or recommend any to my patients." And she's not the only one: On Amazon, one reviewer tried to alert others to what she found when she cut the legs off of her child's teething toy and even shared a picture for proof: "Beware!! If you have a drooly baby, moisture will get in the hole and you'll end up with mold!" says Amazon user Stephanie Opera. "We've had ours for two years and the entire inside is coated with black mold!" Stephanie Oprea via Amazon Meanwhile, a user on What to Expect shared her own pictures of the moldy toy. She says she only found the mold after she chopped off the legs after hearing reports of them getting caught in the throats of other babies. Let's just say, she had no clue she was about the uncover the real danger inside. What to Expect Dr. Lyuba Konopasek, an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Presbyterian/Weil Cornell Medical Center told Care.com exposure to mold in toys is usually not something to be too alarmed about, unless your child has a immune disorder. However, if your child does have a mold allergy, they may start experiencing symptoms such as coughing or itchy eyes. So what can you do? "The only way to prevent mold inside plastic toys is to make sure they are cleaned and thoroughly dried," says Carolyn Forte, the Director of the Cleaning Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute. The best way to clean washable plastic toys is in hot sudsy water or in the dishwasher. Then, disinfect them with a solution of 1/2 cup Clorox bleach per gallon of water. Soak them for five minutes, rinse and air dry. How often you should clean these toys depends on the frequency of use. If used daily, Forte recommends cleaning them at least once a week. And don't let these items sit in water or leave them with water trapped inside between uses or cleanings. See update below for more information. Update, 1/16/2017: When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for Sophie the Giraffe, shared the following statement: First of all, it's important to know that Sophie la Girafe [Sophie the Giraffe] is composed of 100% natural rubber, so the cleaning instructions have to be carefully respected. As indicated on the packaging and in an explanatory leaflet inside the packaging, we recommend to clean the surface of Sophie la Girafe with a damp cloth. It should not be immersed in the water nor rinsed off, to prevent water from getting inside, as she may become damaged. We thus would like to emphasize on the fact that is it important, while cleaning the product, that no water gets inside the whole. As of now, we have not been contacted by Mrs. Chianese nor Mrs. Opera and were not aware of the situation before reading your article. It is thus difficult for us to comment on the current situation, as we haven't had the chance to examine the products. Please know that each complaint received is taken very seriously and that the return of the product is always asked for further examination. Furthermore, please know that the safety of children and satisfaction of their parents is our main priority. For the past 55 years, we have always strived to exceed security standards and all of our products comply with the most stringent global standards. Update, 1/17/2017: After hearing from the manufacturers of Sophie the Giraffe, we checked in again with Carolyn Forte, Director of the Cleaning Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute. "You should always follow the advice for cleaning a toy that a manufacturer provides," she says. "Sometimes there is special care required that may be different from other toys your child owns. Always check a toy's packaging for care instructions before discarding it or if the packaging has already been tossed, check the manufacturer's website." That said, Forte questioned how practical a teething toy might be that can't be thoroughly washed. ||||| Parents surprised at mold growth inside Sophie the Giraffe toy Hi, parents. Welcome to Babies 101. First lesson? Babies drool. A lot. And they like to suck on toys. A lot. Moisture in an enclosed space can cause mold to grow, which should be common sense. Apparently, it’s not. In the latest edition of Parent’s Freaking Out, we have moms and dads upset that their child’s Sophie the Giraffe teething toy is full of mold. Dana Chianese, a pediatric dentist and mother of two toddler sons, tells Good Housekeeping of her horrifying discovery after noticing a musty smell coming from the hole of her child’s Sophie toy. “I decided to cut into Sophie out of curiosity and discovered a science experiment living inside,” she explains. “Smelly, ugly mold living in my infant’s favorite chew toy!” Though Chianese followed the cleaning instructions that came with the toy, wiping it down with hot, soapy water and never submerging it, the mold still grew. Understandably, the mom is shaken, saying, “It still hurts my heart to know that for months I allowed my babies to chew on moldy toys. I no longer buy any chew toys with a hole or recommend any to my patients.” OK, ew. Like, all the ew. We won’t deny that this would be a jarring discovery for any parent, and in the haze of our exhausting lives raising small people who hardly let us sleep, we might forget tiny details. Like the fact that mold growing inside a toy a baby constantly sucks on shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Yet, Amazon has more than one review, including cautionary photos of gross Sophie toys full of blackish-colored mold, with stories just like Chianese’s. User Stephanie Oprea writes, “Beware!! If you have a drooly baby, moisture will get in the hole and you’ll end up with mold! We’ve had ours for two years and the entire inside is coated with black mold!” Behold, the grossness. Another reviewer writes, “My 8-month-old grandson had this giraffe. When it started giving off a foul odor, my son cut it open to find the inside covered with mold. It was not used as a bath toy, but was washed in order to clean it.” Alright, we get it. It’s shocking and disgusting, but again, shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. And mold is more than just yucky to look at, the CDC says it can cause health issues including respiratory symptoms, itchy eyes and even skin reactions. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way, since there are easy ways to keep plastic toys with holes in them clean. Advertisement Cleaning website The Maids has several suggestions for keeping bath toys and teething toys clean and free of mold. The most practical and baby-safe among them are: Vinegar Mix together 1 gallon of water with ½ cup of white vinegar and let the toys soak in this solution for about an hour. Give them a scrub once the mold is loose and then let them dry. If they still smell like vinegar, just do a simple rise and dry before placing them back in the toy bin. The Dishwasher Running bath toys through the dishwasher also sanitizes and kills any gunk or mold that may be growing on both the inside and out. It seems like an overly simple method, but it gets the job done. Boiling Water Take the toys and boil them in hot water and squeeze out any of the “yuck” from the insides with some tongs. Let them cool and dry thoroughly. So, it’s not Sophie’s fault she gets moldy. She just needs a proper cleaning, like any other plastic or rubber toy with a hole in it that your baby regularly gums on.

– Sophie the Giraffe, a squeaky rubber teething toy, has become all the rage the past few years, despite a relatively steep price tag—Quartz noted in June its $24.99 cost compared with simpler teething toys that retail for less than $5. But Sophie's popularity may take a hit after some consumers report finding mold, per GoodHousekeeping.com. Pediatric dentist Dana Chianese, a mom of two young boys, says she promotes teething products (including Sophie the Giraffe) to parents of infants, but she recently noticed a weird smell emanating from her own, and when she sliced Sophie open, she made what the website calls an "absolutely horrifying" discovery. It was a "science experiment living inside," she reveals, adding, "It … hurts my heart" to know she let her own little boys gnaw on the giraffe. Other complaints have filtered in about the giraffe's mold issue on Amazon and various baby forums, with some saying even a baby who drools a lot could spur mold growth inside the giraffe. Meanwhile, Valerie Williams rolls her eyes at the Scary Mommy blog: "If you don't want toys filled with mold, clean them." (Chianese, for her part, says she always meticulously followed directions on how to take care of the toy.) A spokeswoman from the company that makes the giraffe reiterates that tip in a statement to GoodHousekeeping.com, noting that cleaning how-tos should be "carefully respected" and that all efforts must be made to keep water out of the hole. (Parents, stay away from homeopathic teething products.)

A court hearing for the sexual-assault case against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been delayed two weeks, until Aug. 1. The Manhattan District Attorney's office and attorneys for Mr. Strauss-Kahn filed a letter with the Office of Court Administration on Monday saying both sides had agreed to the delay "to facilitate both parties continued investigation in this matter," the letter said. A court hearing had been scheduled for July 18. Mr. Strauss-Kahn has pleaded not guilty to charges that he sexually assaulted a maid at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan in May. Prosecutors have raised questions about the credibility of the maid who has admitted lying to authorities about a range of matters, according to a court filing. "We hope that during this time the district attorney will make the necessary decision to dismiss the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn," said William W. Taylor, a lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Erin Duggan, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said the investigation is continuing and no decisions have been made about how to proceed in the case. "At the end of its investigation, we expect the district attorney's office to stand by the victim and take her case to trial," said Kenneth Thompson, an attorney for the accuser. "Justice requires no less." Meanwhile, a French lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn said he had filed a complaint for slander against the French novelist who has accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape. The complaint was filed with Paris prosecutors on Friday, Henri Leclerc, the lawyer, said. A lawyer for Tristane Banon, the novelist couldn't be reached to comment on the slander complaint. Ms. Banon was interviewed by police on Monday as part of a preliminary probe Paris prosecutors launched into the attempted rape complaint the 32-year old woman has filed against Mr. Strauss-Kahn. —David Gauthier-Villars contributed to this article. Write to Dionne Searcey at dionne.searcey@wsj.com ||||| In France, the woman who says Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her in 2003 has been interviewed by police for the first time. It is the first step in the preliminary inquiry sparked after Tristane Banon made the allegation last week. Investigators will decide if there is enough evidence to proceed with a full trial. The former head of the IMF is already fighting legal action in New York, where it is alleged he tried to rape a hotel chambermaid in May. His lawyers in Paris say he will file a counter-claim against Banon for defamation. Copyright © 2011 euronews

– Legal troubles for accused sex attacker Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be just beginning. French police are questioning the writer in France who is suing Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape. The interview will help investigators determine if there's enough evidence to go ahead with a full-scale French criminal case against the former head of the IMF for the alleged attack on Tristane Banon, reports EuroNews. Stateside, a hearing for his sexual-assault case has been delayed two weeks, from July 18 to Aug. 1, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a letter filed yesterday, Strauss-Kahn's lawyers and the DA's office explained that they had agreed to the delay "to facilitate both parties' continued investigation in this matter."

As the outrage continued to grow over the hunting death of one of Africa's most iconic lions, two Zimbabwean men who allegedly received $50,000 from the American tourist who killed Cecil the lion arrived in court to face poaching charges related to the illegal hunt, Reuters reported. Professional hunter Theo Bronchorst and land owner Honest Trymore Ndlovu allegedly tied a dead animal to a vehicle to lure the beloved lion outside a national park so that American Walter James Palmer could kill him, according to conservationists in Zimbabwe. The two Zimbabwean men appeared at the Hwange magistrate’s court on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. They were charged with poaching offenses and for not having the required hunting permit, according to the BBC, which reported that the men were granted bail of $1,000 each and ordered to appear in court again next week. 1 of 12 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The reaction to Cecil the lion’s killing by an American tourist View Photos Minnesota dentist Walter James Palmer is accused of killing Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion. Caption Minnesota dentist Walter James Palmer is accused of killing Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion. A photo of Walter James Palmer, the American dentist accused of killing Cecil the lion. Rex Features via AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. Palmer shot Cecil with a bow and arrow, injuring it, according to an account detailed by non-governmental group, Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. After tracking the 13-year-old lion for about 40 hours, Palmer is alleged to have killed the animal with a gun. Cecil was then beheaded and skinned. [The death of Cecil the lion and the big business of big game trophy hunting] Zimbabwean authorities said Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, could face charges as well; he has been accused by wildlife officials of killing Cecil without a permit, Reuters reported. “We'll see how it plays out,” Caroline Washaya-Moyo, a spokeswoman for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, told The Post on Tuesday. She added that professional hunters and land owners typically first face charges in such cases. Palmer, who has reportedly left Zimbabwe, said Tuesday that "I deeply regret" having killed "a known, local favorite" and that he may have been misled by his hunting guides. “I hired several professional guides, and they secured all proper permits,” read a statement from Palmer to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted.” He added: “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt. I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion." [OPINION: What justice for Cecil the Lion would actually look like] Palmer said he hasn't been contacted by American or Zimbabwean officials "but will assist them in any inquires they may have." A combination photo shows Theo Bronkhorst, left, and Honest Trymore Ndlovu before their court appearance in Zimbabwe. (Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters) Cecil, thought to have been killed July 1, was one of Africa's most famous lions and lived in the massive Hwange National Park. “It is alleged that the hunter connived with the Antoinette land owner, Mr. Honest Trymore Ndlovu to kill the lion,” read a joint statement from the parks service and the Safari Operators Association. “Ongoing investigations to date suggest that the killing of the lion was illegal since the land owner was not allocated a lion on his hunting quota for 2015. Therefore, all persons implicated in this case are due to appear in court facing poaching charges.” The lion’s death on private land outside the park's boundary was condemned by the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association and set off a wave of international outrage that centered on Palmer after he was named in connection to the hunt. Angry commenters have inundated the Yelp and Google Review pages for Palmer's dental practice, and he has been vilified across social media, as #CecilTheLion became a top worldwide trending topic on Twitter. Local police are now monitoring Palmer's office, the Associated Press reported. Protesters have placed a small pile of stuffed animal toys at the dental practice's front door. [A vengeful Internet trashed the Yelp page of the Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil the lion] Lets have some social media shaming for an American dentist Walter Palmer paid $55,000 to SHOOT & KILL African lion #CecilTheLion. @peta — Rhonda Sherwood, CFP (@Rhonda_Sherwood) July 28, 2015 the outrage over #CecilTheLion is so, so justified. how people hurt or kill animals with such thoughtlessness or even joy is mind-boggling. — frances koncan (@franceskoncan) July 28, 2015 I’d love to go hunting for killer dentist Dr Walter Palmer, so I can stuff & mount him for MY office wall. My column: http://t.co/Xy2OWE8sU2 — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 28, 2015 The voice-mail inbox at Palmer’s dental practice in Minnesota was full Tuesday, and an e-mail from The Post to the practice was not answered. Citing court records, Palmer pleaded guilty in 2008 to making a false statement to U.S. wildlife officials regarding the location of a black bear killing in Wisconsin during a guided hunt, the New York Times reported. According to the AP: Palmer had a permit to hunt but shot the animal outside the authorized zone in 2006, then tried to pass it off as being killed elsewhere, according to court documents. He was given one year probation and fined nearly $3,000. The Times chronicled Palmer going on a big game hunt in 2009, a year after he began probation. As the 2009 season approached, Walter J. Palmer, a dentist in his late 40s from Eden Prairie, Minn., paid $45,000 for a tag at an auction to finance preservation of the elk habitat. Palmer, said to be capable of skewering a playing card from 100 yards with his compound bow, has cultivated a purist’s reputation for his disinclination to carry firearms as backup. Learning to shoot at age 5, he has slain all but one of the animals recognized by Pope and Young. “I don’t have a golf game,” Palmer said. [Rich American tourists kill hundreds of lions each year, and it’s all legal] According to park and safari officials in Zimbabwe, authorities were trying to interview another professional hunter — Zane Bronkhorst — who may have been involved in Cecil the lion's death. The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, a nongovernmental organization, alleged that the hunters purposefully lured Cecil out of the park. "They went hunting at night with a spotlight and they spotted Cecil," the group said in a statement. "They tied a dead animal to their vehicle to lure Cecil out of the park and they scented an area about half a kilometre from the park. Mr Palmer shot Cecil with a bow and arrow but this shot didn't kill him. "They tracked him down and found him 40 hours later when they shot him with a gun. They found that he was fitted with a GPS collar because he was being studied by the Hwange Lion Research, funded by Oxford University so they tried to destroy the collar but failed because it was found." Theo Bronkhorst owns Bushman Safaris, a company offering "top quality hunts with maximum results" and specializing in "leopards with dogs and other big game." The company's Facebook page includes statements proclaiming that hunters help conservation efforts through the fees they pay to hunt big game: Thanks to all who like our page.Understanding how we as hunters do far more for conservation of our wildlife than anti... Posted by Bushman Safaris Zimbabwe on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 This post, originally published July 28, has been updated. MORE READING: Texas hunter who paid $350,000 to kill an endangered black rhino has bagged his prey A tragic death leaves just four northern white rhinos living and little hope for the species The real reason for the catastrophic collapse of Tanzania’s elephant population ‘I’m a huge target for them': Critics take aim at hunting show star Eva Shockey Why female big-game hunters become the hunted online, in a way men don’t Ricky Gervais fires back after getting slaughtered over hunting remarks ||||| Who shot Cecil? First it was thought that a mystery Spaniard had the blood of one of Africa’s most famous lions on his hands. Then came a fresh twist. The Cecil slayer, Zimbabwean conservations said on Tuesday, was in fact a dentist from Minnesota. American Walter Palmer was said to be “quite upset” as the hunter became hunted. Zimbabwean police warned that he faced poaching charges, while there was a furious backlash on social media, with Facebook users variously calling for him to be publicly shamed, have his teeth pulled out without anaesthetic or be hunted and killed. Killer of Cecil the lion was dentist from Minnesota, claim Zimbabwe officials Read more Cecil the lion, known for his black mane, was about 13 years old and a famous attraction for wildlife tourists in Zimbabwe until, earlier this month, he was tempted outside a national park using bait and shot with a bow and arrow. He is believed to have taken 40 hours to die. Walter Palmer (left) and one of his previous trophy kills Photograph: facebook In a statement to the Guardian, Palmer confirmed he had been in Zimbabwe in early July on a bow hunting trip. “I hired several professionals and they secured all proper permits,” said Palmer. “To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted. “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favourite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt,” he said. “I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.” Palmer, who is from Eden Prairie, just outside of Minneapolis, said he had not been contacted by authorities – either in Zimbabwe or the US – about the situation, but was willing to answer any questions they might have for him. “I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity that I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion,” he said. The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force charity had initially suggested the culprit had been from Spain but on Tuesday named him as Palmer. This was later confirmed by police. The charity’s chairman, Johnny Rodrigues, alleged that Palmer and professional hunter Theo Bronkhorst had gone hunting at night and tied a dead animal to their vehicle to lure Cecil out of Hwange national park. “Palmer shot Cecil with a bow and arrow but this shot didn’t kill him,” he said. “They tracked him down and found him 40 hours later when they shot him with a gun. The hunters then found that the dead lion was wearing a tracking collar, which they unsuccessfully tried to hide.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Conservationists call for better protection for wild animals Cecil was wearing a GPS collar as part of a research project that Oxford University has been running since 1999, making it possible to trace his last movements. Rodrigues added: “Cecil was skinned and beheaded … Walter Palmer apparently paid $50,000 for the kill and we assume Theo Bronkhorst received this money.” Initially his organisation had said the whereabouts of Cecil’s head was unknown, sparking concerns that it would be sent abroad as a trophy. But on Tuesday Rodrigues said the head of the lion had been located in Zimbabwe and impounded to be used as evidence in the investigation. “The saddest part of all is that now that Cecil is dead, the next lion in the hierarchy, Jericho, will most likely kill all Cecil’s cubs so that he can insert his own bloodline into the females.” Palmer – married with two children and thought to be in his 50s – became a target as the Facebook page of his dental clinic was flooded with angry comments and threats. An online petition demanding justice for Cecil had gathered more than 12,000 signatures. An Associated Press reporter approached his clinic in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington but was told he was not seeing patients on Tuesday. A spokesman for Palmer said the hunter was “obviously quite upset over everything”, adding: “As far as I understand, Walter believes that he might have shot the lion that has been referred to as Cecil. Palmer’s love of hunting is well documented online. In 2009, he was interviewed by the New York Times about his slaying of an elk that was touted as a kill for the archery record books. Noting that Palmer had learned to shoot at age five and was “capable of skewering a playing card from 100 yards with his compound bow,” the article said he had paid $45,000 at auction to take part in the hunt, with the proceeds being used to help fund the elk habitat. As the hunting season began, Palmer was on probation for lying to authorities over the exact location where he had killed a black bear in northern Wisconsin in 2006. A 2008 Flickr photo album by Trophy Hunt America and Porcupine Creek Outfitters, a company that leads hunting expeditions, shows Palmer posing next to a variety of slain animals, including a wood bison and a lion. In other online photos Palmer sits next to a slain rhino – the caption stating that the photo was taken in South Africa – or holds up a 175-pound leopard in Zimbabwe. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Patrick Barkham visits a lion-breeding farm in North Eastern Free State, South Africa, to investigate the ‘canned hunting’ industr. Emmanuel Fundira, president of the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe, called for Palmer to be prosecuted as a criminal. “Cecil was a collared lion, a protected species,” he said. “The rules are clear in Zimbabwe that no protected lions should be hunted. The American members of our association are encouraged to conduct themselves in a way that is beyond reproach. We are using hunting as a conservation tool, but when the tool is abused in this way, it destroys the whole principle.” He added: “The culprits should be brought to book and punished at the highest level. This is really reckless.” Cecil’s death is yet another blow to Zimbabwe’s economy, which is teetering under president Robert Mugabe. Fundira said: “We are extremely saddened. Cecil was a drawcard, well-known in the industry. Travellers came from all over the world for the experience and it’s been taken away. “If you imagine the amount being talked about as changing hands, $50,000, the country has been short-changed. An iconic animal like that is worth much more in the long term. It’s a huge loss and people are grieving.” The Zimbabwean Parks & Wildlife Authority said Bronkhorst and the local landowner, Honest Ndlovu, will appear in court in Victoria Falls on Wednesday to face poaching charges. “Both the professional hunter and land owner had no permit or quota to justify the offtake of the lion and therefore are liable for the illegal hunt,” it added. If convicted, the men face up to 15 years in prison. Palmer also faces poaching charges, according to police spokeswoman Charity Charamba. “We arrested two people and now we are looking for Palmer in connection with the same case,” she said. A Texan hunter shot an elderly black rhino in Namibia in May after buying a government-issued licence for $350,000 (£224,000). ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption Hunter Theo Bronkhorst (left) and landowner Honest Ndlovu are facing poaching charges A hunter accused of helping a US tourist kill Zimbabwe's most famous lion has been released on bail. Theo Bronkhorst pleaded not guilty to a charge of "failing to prevent an unlawful hunt". He was granted bail of $1,000 (£638) and ordered to appear in court again on 5 August. His co-accused - farm owner Honest Ndlovu - will appear at a later date. Walter Palmer, the US dentist who shot the animal known as Cecil, has left Zimbabwe but could also face charges. Mr Palmer said he paid for the hunt, but was not aware of the lion's identity. He said he regretted shooting the animal, and believed he was on a legal hunt. He had relied on professional guides to find a lion and obtain the necessary permits, he added. Mr Bronkhorst and Mr Ndlovu could face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty. Image copyright Paula French/Facebook Image caption Walter Palmer, who killed Cecil, said he had no idea the lion was a "local favourite" Cecil is believed to have died on 1 July, but the carcass was not discovered until a few days later. Mr Palmer is said to have shot and injured the animal with a bow and arrow. The group did not find the wounded lion until 40 hours later, when he was shot dead with a gun. 'An activity I love' Separately, court records have shown that Mr Palmer has a felony record in the US after killing a black bear in the state of Wisconsin in 2006. The dentist was given a one-year probation and fined $3,000, having shot the creature outside an authorised zone and then tried to pass it off as having been killed elsewhere. The American tourist is believed to have paid about $50,000 to go on the hunt in Zimbabwe. More than 400,000 people have signed an online "Justice for Cecil" petition, calling on Zimbabwe's government to stop issuing hunting permits for endangered animals. How the internet descended on Walter Palmer Image copyright Twitter Image caption Social media commentators condemned Mr Palmer Mr Palmer insists that he believed his guides had secured "all proper permits" for the hunt. "I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt," he said in a statement on Tuesday. "I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion." He said he had not been contacted by authorities in Zimbabwe or the US but would "assist them in any inquiries they may have". Image copyright Reuters Image caption Stuffed toys were left by protesters outside Mr Palmer's workplace The dentist is believed to be back in the US, although his exact whereabouts are unknown. His dental practice in Bloomington, Minnesota has been temporarily closed and a note placed on the door referring visitors to a public relations firm. A protest is due to be held outside the building later. The firm's social media accounts have also been disabled, after they were flooded with messages from angry members of the public. Cecil the lion Image copyright AP A major tourist attraction in Hwange National Park - Zimbabwe's largest game reserve The 13-year-old animal was renowned for being friendly towards visitors Recognisable because of his large size and distinctive black mane Led two prides containing six lionesses and 12 cubs along with another lion, Jericho Was being monitored as part of an Oxford University study into lion conservation When is hunting not poaching? Night-time pursuit Cecil the lion was skinned and beheaded, according to the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF), a local charity. The ZCTF said the hunters had used bait to lure him outside Hwange National Park during a night-time pursuit. Lions in Africa 35,000 Max estimated lion population 12,000 Max lion population in southern Africa 665 Approx number of 'trophy' lions killed for export from Africa per year 49 Lion 'trophies' exported from Zimbabwe in 2013 0.29% Contribution to GDP of Zimbabwe from trophy hunting 17% Of Zimbabwe's land given to trophy hunting AFP The animal had a GPS collar fitted for a research project by UK-based Oxford University that allowed authorities to track its movements. The hunters had tried to destroy it but failed, according to the ZCTF. On Monday, the head of the ZCTF told the BBC that Cecil "never bothered anybody" and was "one of the most beautiful animals to look at".

– It's the dawn of a new, uncomfortable day for Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who achieved infamy yesterday when it was revealed he was the hunter who felled the beloved lion Cecil in Zimbabwe. The New York Times and Washington Post today have more on how Palmer and his guides lured the 13-year-old lion out of his sanctuary in Hwange National Park: According to the chair of the non-governmental Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, Palmer's party sighted the lion at night using a spotlight, and affixed a dead animal to their car to lead Cecil from the reserve into unprotected territory. It claims the men scented an area about three-tenths of a mile from the park. Cecil was first injured by a shot from Palmer's crossbow, then killed nearly two days later by Palmer, via gun. Chair Johnny Rodrigues alleges that "the hunters then found that the dead lion was wearing a [GPS] tracking collar, which they unsuccessfully tried to hide." Cecil was skinned and beheaded, and his body "left to rot in the sun," as the Times puts it. Rodrigues yesterday said the head has been tracked down and impounded as evidence, reports the Guardian. The BBC adds that it's thought Cecil was killed July 1, though his corpse wasn't found until days later. Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority and the Safari Operators Association say "ongoing investigations to date suggest that the killing of the lion was illegal since the land owner was not allocated a lion on his hunting quota for 2015. Therefore, all persons implicated in this case are due to appear in court facing poaching charges." Professional hunter Theo Bronkhorst and landowner Honest Ndlovu accompanied Palmer and are making that court appearance today; the poaching charges carry up to 15 years. A parks and wildlife rep told the Post professional hunters and landowners are usually the first to be charged in these instances. Palmer is reportedly being sought in connection with the case. Here's what Palmer has to say.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts college president is apologizing after campus police were called to investigate a black student quietly eating her lunch in a common room. Smith College President Kathleen McCartney says in a letter Thursday the college is hiring a "third-party investigator" to review the incident and that every Smith staff member will undergo mandatory anti-bias training. Officials say an employee at the Northampton college called 911 Tuesday to report someone appeared "out of place" in the building. The school says there was nothing suspicious. McCartney has apologized to the undergraduate student, who is a teaching assistant this summer. The woman who has identified herself as the student posted on Facebook that it was outrageous she couldn't eat her lunch in peace. She added: "All I did was be black." ||||| NORTHAMPTON (CBS) – Smith College is investigating after police were called to investigate a black student who was eating her lunch in a common room. “This shouldn’t happen to anyone at all,” Oumou Kanoute said crying. Kanoute is a rising sophomore at Smith College. She works at a summer program teaching chemistry to high schoolers for Smith’s STEM program and was reading in the dining hall of the Tyler House dorm Tuesday. “Next thing you know, I see the cop walk in with a Smith employee whom I’ve never seen before and the man asked me, ‘we were wondering why you’re here?’” Kanoute said. She says police told her an employee had called about a suspicious black man. She recorded video with her phone, adding her own text on Instagram, with a post that’s prompted outrage from supporters. “No student of color should have to explain why they belong at prestigious white institutions,” she wrote. “I worked my hardest to get into Smith, and I deserve to feel safe on my campus.” She added: “All I did was be black.” “It just still upsets me to just talk about it because I don’t even feel safe on my own campus and I’m away from home. I’m the first in my family to go to college. I’m doing this not only for me but for my family, for my ancestors,” Kanoute told WBZ-TV Smith’s president sent a statement apologizing and assuring the student, “That she belongs in all Smith spaces. This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their daily lives…building an inclusive, diverse and sustainable community is urgent and ongoing work.” Kanoute appreciates the apology but wants more. “I want the identity of the caller released,” she says. “I want a public apology from that caller and I want them fired from the school.” Smith’s administration says privacy laws prevent them from releasing the name, so Kanoute has turned to social media with a plea for help. “I tried to like shake it off. I didn’t even want to speak up and speak out because I know not everyone’s going to agree with what you need to say. Not everyone’s going to listen to you,” Kanoute says. “I’m just so upset.” ||||| Each incident shared a catalyst: Someone considered black people going about their everyday lives to be suspicious or dangerous enough to call the police. On Facebook, Ms. Kanoute noted that the person who called the police did not approach her first. “I am blown away at the fact that I cannot even sit down and eat lunch peacefully,” she wrote. The employee who placed the call to the police was placed on leave pending an investigation, the college announced on Friday. In a statement on Thursday, Kathleen McCartney, Smith’s president, apologized to Ms. Kanoute and said that “we continue to fall short even as we continue to make progress.” “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their daily lives,” Ms. McCartney said. “It is a powerful reminder that building an inclusive, diverse and sustainable community is urgent and ongoing work.” Amy Hunter, the college’s interim director of inclusion, diversity and equity, said that she had reached out to Ms. Kanoute and was investigating the incident along with human resources and the campus police. ||||| Frequently Asked Questions Q: What was the charge to the investigators? A: The investigators were asked to determine whether any employees violated the college’s Affirmative Action Policy in connection with the incident on July 31, 2018. The college also asked the investigative team, irrespective of its findings, to share recommendations for ways Smith could improve its policies and practices on interactions with persons who may be perceived as suspicious. Q: Did the external report find the July 31, 2018 incident was the result of bias? A. No. The investigators ultimately concluded that “the Caller provided a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for calling the Campus Police on the day of the Incident.” Further, “the Investigative Team did not find sufficient information that this decision was based on the Reported Party’s race or color, or violated the Policy.” Nevertheless, the report acknowledges that the student was having lunch near a campus dining area, and that she was put in fear when the officer approached her. Q: Has the college responded to the student’s request for an apology and to meet with the caller? A: Yes. President McCartney apologized publicly on August 2, 2018. President McCartney also reached out to the student on August 3, to personally apologize and offer to meet and continues to welcome a meeting with the student. The college offered restorative justice mediation between the student and the caller. The caller has agreed to mediation, and the offer remains open. Q: Has the college responded to the student’s requests for affinity housing, employee training, changes in policies and procedures, and investigation of the legacy of President Emeritus Neilson? A: Yes. Regarding specific requests from the student and the ACLU, President McCartney’s letter to the community on September 4 includes pertinent information, including new and existing initiatives. These include: Affinity housing: The college’s Residential Experience Working Group, which was established earlier this summer, will conduct a comprehensive examination of how Smith, as an educational institution and a residential college, can optimize the learning potential of living and dining in community. This group will address, among other things, affinity housing. Employee training: The college committed to mandatory anti-bias training for staff and faculty. Please see President McCartney’s October 20 email for more information. Changes in policies and procedures: The college currently has policies prohibiting race and gender discrimination and robust procedures for prevention and enforcement. See, for example: For additional information on potential policy changes, see President McCartney’s October 29 letter to the community. William Allan Neilson served as president of Smith from 1917 to 1939. The ACLU has circulated an excerpt from a previously published 1927 letter from Neilson referencing segregation and student housing. The public is welcome to view and assess Neilson’s legacy via his personal papers, including those that reference his service on the board of the NAACP and his role in founding the Legal Defense and Education Fund of the NAACP. Out of an interest for transparency and to support research into Neilson’s views on race, the college has digitized two sets of documents: The full letter referenced by the ACLU is available in the first link. The college continues to evaluate additional reforms proposed by the student, guided by the findings and recommendations in the report. As part of the review process, Smith also looks forward to input from campus governance groups such as the Committee on Mission and Priorities and the Inclusion Counsel. Q: Will Smith be implementing the recommendations in the report? A: Smith is carefully considering the recommendations in the report and looks forward to input from the affected parties and the community to fully assess which additional steps are appropriate. Q: What is the employment status of the staff member who called campus police? A: The report concluded that no employees violated Smith College policies. Therefore, the college does not anticipate pursuing any adverse employment action in connection with the events of July 31. However, the report has identified certain areas for improvement in Smith’s training for employees, including on encounters with people on campus who may appear to be unfamiliar or out of place. Smith is assessing potential enhancements to its staff trainings to address concerns about the influence of implicit bias in this area. Q: What information has been redacted from the investigative report? A: The substance and findings of the independent investigation have not been changed or redacted. The college has, however, redacted certain language to preserve confidentiality consistent with college policy, relating to those interviewed in the investigation. Q: Have any lawsuits been filed in relation to the July 31 incident? A: No. Q: What is the nature of the ACLU’s involvement? A: Although no lawsuits have been filed, an ACLU attorney is providing counsel to the student and has been in communication with the college since late August. Q: Social media posts from August 21 purport to identify the caller to Campus Police. Are the posts accurate? A: No. Neither of the individuals named in these posts placed the call. Q: Who led the external investigation of the incident? A: Two experienced attorneys investigated the incident: Anthony Cruthird and Kate Upatham. Anthony Cruthird has close to 20 years of experience in the field of civil rights and education. The bulk of his experience stems from his prior role as a senior civil rights attorney and team leader with the United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), where his work centered on investigating and remedying complaints alleging discrimination on the bases of race, color, national origin, disability, sex, and age. Kate Upatham worked for eight years as a Civil Rights Attorney with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR). She has conducted numerous investigations including with OCR’s compliance team that proactively ensures that schools receiving Federal financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education, and public entities, are in compliance with the laws enforced by OCR. Both attorneys are members of the Sanghavi Law Office. Q: What type of training do Campus Police officers receive? A: Campus Police officers receive training including, but not limited to: Diversity, equity and inclusion Implicit bias (led by the District Attorney’s Office) Trauma-informed victim response Violence prevention and de-escalation Massachusetts State Police training plus an additional nine-week in-house field training Q: Are college employees required to take anti-bias training? A: Yes. Please read President McCartney’s October 20, 2018 email to the community regarding employee diversity and bias training. Q: Does Smith outsource its security to the Northampton Police Department or any other armed police department? A: No. Campus Police officers respond to all on-campus calls, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Campus Police may contact the Northampton Police Department for additional support only in those instances where required—large events, major crimes, etc. Q: Are Campus Police officers armed? A: No. Campus Police officers do not carry firearms. Q: Was there a call to 911? A: No. The caller contacted Smith College's Campus Police dispatch. Q: Is there a police report available of the July 31 call to campus police? A: A Community Incident Report was filed recording the Campus Police officer’s response to the call. The Community Incident Report is included as an exhibit to the investigative report.

– A Massachusetts college president is apologizing after campus police were called to investigate an undergraduate black student quietly eating her lunch in a common room. Smith College President Kathleen McCartney says in a letter Thursday the college is hiring a "third-party investigator" to review the incident and that every Smith staff member will undergo mandatory anti-bias training. Officials say an employee at the Northampton college called 911 Tuesday to report someone appeared "out of place" in the building, the AP reports. The school says there was nothing suspicious. The New York Times identifies the student as Oumou Kanoute, who says she was on break from work when she was approached by a campus police officer, who quickly surmised nothing was amiss. "I am blown away at the fact that i cannot even sit down and eat lunch peacefully," Kanoute wrote on Facebook, including two short video clips of her interaction with the police officer. "I did nothing wrong, I wasn't making any noise or bothering anyone. All I did was be black." Kanoute adds she had a "complete meltdown" following this "wrong and uncalled for" incident. "No students of color should have to explain why they belong at prestigious white institutions," she noted. "I worked my hardest to get into Smith, and I deserve to feel safe on my campus." Kanoute also tells CBS Boston she wants the person who called to report her—she says police told her it was an employee at Smith—identified and fired. McCartney has apologized to Kanoute, a rising sophomore who's spending the summer as a teaching assistant working with high school students in a Smith STEM program.

An injured child sits on the sidewalk in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. The powerful earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday flattened the president's palace, the cathedral, hospitals,... (Associated Press) Turning pickup trucks into ambulances and doors into stretchers, Haitians were frantically struggling to save those injured in this week's earthquake as desperately needed aid from around the world began arriving Thursday. An Air China plane carrying a Chinese search-and-rescue team, medics and tons of food and medicine landed at Port-au-Prince airport before dawn, along with three French planes with aid and a mobile hospital, officials said. A British relief team arrived in neighboring Dominican Republic. The U.S. and other nations said they were sending food, water, medical supplies to assist the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, where the international Red Cross estimated 3 million people _ a third of the population _ may need emergency relief. In the streets of the capital, survivors set up camps amid piles of salvaged goods, including food being scavenged from the rubble. "This is much worse than a hurricane," said Jimitre Coquillon, a doctor's assistant working at a makeshift triage center set up in a hotel parking lot. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die." If there were any organized efforts to distribute food or water, they were not visible Wednesday. The aid group Doctors Without Borders treated wounded at two hospitals that withstood the quake and set up tent clinics elsewhere to replace its damaged facilities. Cuba, which already had hundreds of doctors in Haiti, treated injured in field hospitals. President Barack Obama promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort including the military and civilian emergency teams from across the U.S. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was expected to arrive off the coast Thursday and the Navy said the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan had been ordered to sail as soon as possible with a 2,000-member Marine unit. "We have to be there for them in their hour of need," Obama said. A U.S. military assessment team was the first to arrive, to determine Haiti's needs. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the French three planes that touched down Thursday are to evacuate around 60 injured people to hospitals in the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. He told France Inter radio two additional French relief planes are on their way. There was no estimate on how many people were killed by Tuesday's magnitude-7 quake. Haitian President Rene Preval said the toll could be in the thousands. Leading Sen. Youri Latortue told The Associated Press the number could be 500,000, but conceded that nobody really knew. "Let's say that it's too early to give a number," Preval said told CNN. Survivors used sledgehammers and their bare hands to try to find victims in the rubble. In Petionville, next to the capital, people dug through a collapsed shopping center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a U.N. truck. Nearby, about 200 survivors, including many children, huddled in a theater parking lot using sheets to rig makeshift tents and shield themselves from the sun in 90-degree heat. Police officers carried the injured in their pickup trucks. Wisnel Occilus, a 24-year-old student, was wedged between two other survivors in a truck bed headed to a police station. He was in an English class when the magnitude-7 quake struck at 4:53 p.m. and the building collapsed. "The professor is dead. Some of the students are dead, too," said Occilus, who suspected he had several broken bones. "Everything hurts." Other survivors carried injured to hospitals in wheelbarrows and on stretchers fashioned from doors. Bodies lay everywhere in Port-au-Prince: tiny children next to schools, women in rubble-strewn streets with stunned expressions frozen on their faces, men hidden beneath plastic tarps and cotton sheets. Balancing suitcases and belongings on their heads, people streamed on foot into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage. Ambulances and U.N. trucks raced in the opposite direction, toward Port-au-Prince. Calls from victims seeking help from emergency services weren't getting through because systems that connect different phone networks were not working, said officials from a telecommunications provider in Haiti. Calls were being placed sometimes 15 to 20 times from the same phone, which was "painful to watch," said Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre, Alcatel-Lucent's general manager of wireless voice. About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest. The U.N.'s 9,000-member peacekeeping force sent patrols across the capital's streets while securing the airport, port and main buildings. Looting began immediately after the quake, with people seen carrying food from collapsed buildings. Inmates were reported to have escaped from the damaged main prison in Port au Prince, said Elisabeth Byrs, a U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman in Geneva. It was unclear whether the U.S. ground troops heading this way would be used for security operations as well as humanitarian efforts. Port-au-Prince's ruined buildings fell on both the poor and the prominent: The body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller at Miot's order, the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France. Haitian Senate President Kelly Bastien was rescued from the collapsed Parliament building and taken to a hospital in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The president of Haiti's Citibank was also among the survivors being treated there, said Rafael Sanchez Espanol, director of the Homs Hospital in Santiago. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the hospital at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the military has been detaining suspected terrorists. The U.S. Embassy had no confirmed reports of deaths among the estimated 40,000 to 45,000 Americans who live in Haiti, but many were struggling to find a way out of the country. The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it has launched a Web site to help Haitians find loved ones missing in the quake. Robert Zimmerman, deputy head of the group's tracing unit, said people in Haiti and abroad can use the site to register the names of missing relatives. As dusk fell Wednesday, thousands of people gathered on blankets outside the crumpled presidential palace, including hundreds of women who waved their hands and sang hymns in a joyful, even defiant tone. Ricardo Dervil, 29, said he decided to join the crowd because he was worried about aftershocks and was tired of seeing dead bodies. "I was listening to the radio and they were saying to stay away from buildings," he said. "All I was doing was walking the street and seeing dead people." ___ Associated Press contributors to this story: Jonathan Katz and Jennifer Kay in Port-au-Prince; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Frank Jordans and Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva; Matthew Lee and Julie Pace in Washington; Jamey Keaton in Paris; Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo; Alicia Chang in Los Angeles, and Andrea Rodriguez in Havana. ||||| PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Desperate Haitians clawed at the rubble of their ruined capital for a second day Thursday, retrieving their dead and rescuing the living, as an international armada of ships and aircraft struggled to provide food, water, medicine and shelter. Forty-eight hours after much of the impoverished Caribbean nation was devastated by an earthquake, it was mainly the people of this shattered city, working with bare hands and simple tools, who pulled at slabs of concrete and blocks of debris to get at those still trapped. The dead and injured were pushed through the streets in wheelbarrows. At the overwhelmed central hospital, anguished patients lay in a weedy parking lot on gurneys fashioned from wooden doors. Calls for help went unanswered, and no doctors were in sight. Even as a 90,000-ton American nuclear aircraft carrier was expected Friday, and transport planes arrived from as far away as China and Belgium, the first shipments of aid were just starting to reach the stunned nation. There were scant signs of help from the Haitian government, itself scattered by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake Tuesday evening. The streets were filled with beleaguered residents milling about, left with no jobs, no instructions on what to do, and no place to buy food or to take the injured. Many said they felt totally alone and saw no evidence that relief was on the way, as their mournful pleas began to give way to anger. "The government is mute," a dismayed young Haitian said while he hurried past a body left on a traffic median. "They do nothing." Further hampering relief efforts, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily stopped all private and humanitarian flights from the United States to Haiti's clogged airports for slightly more than five hours on Thursday, allowing only military planes, at the request of the Haitian government, a U.S. official said. Nine planes from the United States were already in the air when FAA issued the order, the official said. They could not land in Haiti. Despite the arrival of some aid and rescue teams on Thursday, Port-au-Prince remained a haunted place of destruction, with many of its pastel buildings collapsed into death traps. A Haitian Red Cross official said the quake may have killed as many as 50,000 people. Across the sprawling city, makeshift citizen rescue crews squirmed through openings in the debris and past bodies to search for survivors. The living cried with joy when they were extricated. The dead were stacked on streets and sidewalks, some victims covered with blankets or cardboard, or bound in winding sheets. Many of the deceased remained in the rubble, with an arm protruding here, a leg there. In a collapsed school, the body of a student was slumped over what appeared to be a desk -- her dark-blue jumper and pink blouse covered in white dust.

– A Haitian Red Cross official estimated today that 45,000 to 50,000 people perished in the shattering earthquake Tuesday, as President Obama pledged US support of $100 million for what he said is likely to be one of the biggest relief efforts in history. Desperately needed aid began arriving from around the world this morning, the Washington Post reports. An Air China plane carrying a Chinese search-and-rescue team, medics, and tons of food and medicine landed at Port-au-Prince airport before dawn, along with three French planes with aid and a mobile hospital, officials said. A British relief team arrived in neighboring Dominican Republic, the AP reports. Bodies lay everywhere in Port-au-Prince, as survivors, many severely injured, set up camps, salvaging mattresses, plastic chairs, bits of cardboard and food from the rubble. Others streamed on foot into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage, passing ambulances and UN trucks racing in the opposite direction. "This is much worse than a hurricane," said a doctor's assistant working at a makeshift triage center set up in a hotel parking lot. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die."

With a smile on his face, George Zimmerman spent Saturday afternoon posing for photos, sharing hugs and shaking hands with gun enthusiasts at a firearms expo in Lake Mary. "It's so odd to me," said Zimmerman, about the celebrity treatment he receives in public. "[But] it is appreciated." In his first interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman described life after his acquittal last year in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The former Neighborhood Watch volunteer shot the unarmed black teen in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012. Now life for the 30-year-old is completely different. He's always moving. He's in debt. And he's constantly receiving death threats. "I just try to be smart where I go," said Zimmerman, who described the gun show at Gander Mountain Academy as a "friendly" event that didn't warrant extra protection. Zimmerman said he carries a semi-automatic handgun for added safety. "It's part of life," said Zimmerman, whose Twitter feed is a constant barrage of death threats. "It's unfortunately necessary right now." The polarizing case that made Zimmerman a household name captured the world's attention for more than a year, prompting protests after Trayvon was fatally shot and Zimmerman was not immediately charged — then sparking more protests when Zimmerman was acquitted. Zimmerman attended Saturday's expo after being invited by his friends at The Arms Room gun shop near Orlando. Donning a black Arms Room T-shirt, khaki shorts and a baseball cap, Zimmerman more or less blended in with the rest of the crowd until someone would approach him asking for a photo. Not everyone in attendance Saturday was fazed by Zimmerman's appearance. "I don't think he has a reason to be hidden from the public," said Katie Strupp, national events coordinator for the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, one of the event's sponsors. Others were not as supportive. One woman who declined to be identified jumped and grabbed her chest when she found out Zimmerman was there. Aside from harsh criticism or palpable hatred, Zimmerman said people often wish him well and tell him, "God bless you." He said they often comment that he's not what they expected him to be. He said he's been described by strangers as soft-spoken and even kind. He also frequently receives invitations to parties and barbecues from strangers and will go if he's in town. But Zimmerman still often finds himself embroiled in controversy. About a week ago, a driver called Lake Mary police accusing Zimmerman of threatening to shoot him during a road-rage incident. The driver didn't press charges, so Zimmerman was not arrested. The odd celebrity and media attention aside, Zimmerman describes himself as a regular, free citizen and tries to live a normal life. He said people have told him to use aliases, but he said "I'm not able to lie." Zimmerman said he is constantly on the move, spending no more than a month in one state. He often flies to California, Texas and Virginia for speaking engagements and meetings with lawyers. He recently launched a website to give himself a platform to speak freely. One of his posts discusses a series of portraits he has painted honoring the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya. Zimmerman said he plans to give the original paintings to the families of the four people killed but will sell replicas and donate all the funds to various wounded veterans' organizations. Zimmerman painted the portraits so the names of the victims killed wouldn't go unknown. He shared that sentiment on his site's first post Sept. 17: "I cannot fathom an America where the name of Tyrone Woods is not as well known as mine. It makes a difference, a tremendous one." The post was signed "Your Friend, George M. Zimmerman." cdineen@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414 ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– George Zimmerman is constantly on the move and in the news. It's been nearly three years since he shot unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin to death in Sanford, Fla., and his speaking engagements and meetings with attorneys afford him no more than a month in any given state. The Orlando Sentinel recently caught up with him at a gun show and reports that the 30-year-old is in debt, constantly under attack on Twitter, and carries a semi-automatic handgun for extra protection but that he refuses to use an alias because, he says, "I'm not able to lie." Zimmerman continues to pop in and out of the news. Late last year he made headlines when bids on eBay for his "first hand painted artwork" hit nearly $100,000, reports the Miami Herald. A few months prior, his estranged wife—who'd just filed for divorce—called 911 saying he'd threatened her with a gun, but she never followed up with charges. Not long after that, he was arrested on domestic violence charges, which his girlfriend ultimately dropped. (Earlier this month, a driver in Florida called police saying Zimmerman had threatened to shoot him dead when overcome by road rage.)

Media caption Passenger John Wildey: "I hadn't a clue what to do to get down" A pilot who fell ill at the controls of his plane forcing his passenger to land the light aircraft has died, police have said. The man collapsed in the cockpit of the plane after taking off, leaving the "inexperienced" passenger to make an emergency landing. The plane landed at Humberside Airport under the guidance of instructors called in by air traffic controllers. Police said they were unable to confirm the cause of death. A spokesman for Humberside Police said: "A post mortem is to be undertaken following the sad death of the pilot of a light aircraft which landed safely at Humberside Airport yesterday evening. "The post mortem is likely to take place tomorrow afternoon. The results of the examination will determine whether it is necessary to prepare a file for reference to the coroner." Image caption The plane was landed at Humberside Airport by a passenger under the guidance of two flying instructors He added the death was not being treated as suspicious and said: "In accordance with the wishes of the family of the deceased, police will not be confirming the identity of the pilot nor releasing any video footage of the incident." Police, fire and ambulance crews were called to the North Lincolnshire airport after a distress call was made from the light aircraft at about 18:25 BST. Eyewitness saw sparks Two flying instructors were called in to advise the passenger, named only as "John", on how to bring the plane down and a RAF Sea King helicopter was scrambled to provide assistance. The man is nothing short of a hero Richard Tomlinson, Friend of the pilot and passenger One of them, Roy Murray, said: "I think without any sort of talk-down he would have just gone into the ground and that would have been the end of it." The passenger and pilot were the only people on board the Cessna 172 aircraft, which had taken off from Sandtoft Airfield 25 miles (40km) away. It is believed the two men had flown to Skegness and were returning to Sandtoft when the pilot collapsed. Speaking at a press conference earlier, Mr Murray said the novice flyer did four circuits of the airport before landing at about 19:30. He said: "The gentleman was called John, that's all I knew. Media caption Deborah Zost, operations director at Humberside Airport, describes what happened "We had to get him to do two to three circuits. The last one was not very good so we told him to go round again and on the fourth one he managed it. "He did a beautiful landing in my opinion. "He was calm. He was answering the calls I made to him quite professionally. "I would not be frightened to fly with him." Eyewitnesses described seeing sparks as the plane landed. Stuart Sykes, who saw the aircraft land, said: "It came down with a bump, a bump, a bump, hit the front end down, I heard some crashing and it's come to a halt." Two incoming flights were delayed while the aircraft was removed from the runway. 'Nothing short of phenomenal' Richard Tomlinson, a friend of the pilot and his passenger, told BBC Radio Sheffield the passenger was "nothing short of a hero". Media caption Flying instructor Roy Murray describing what he said to the passenger He said: "For somebody who is not a pilot but has been around airfields and been a passenger on several occasions to take control is nothing short of phenomenal. "The man is nothing short of a hero." Mr Tomlinson, himself an amateur pilot, said of the man who died: was a "very experienced pilot". He added: "He had been flying for many years. "Only this week I was sat having a cup of tea and airfield banter [with both men]. "They were both very funny gentlemen to have a conversation with. "It is very, very sad news." ||||| A passenger has been forced to land a plane at Humberside Airport because its pilot fell ill, according to reports. A passenger, who was on board the light aircraft when the pilot became ill at the controls, took over and landed the plane. It's thought the passenger was helped with instructions given by two flying instructors. The condition of the pilot is not known. TOGETHER, WE CAN PUNCH OUT BREAST CANCER! Curves View details Print voucher At Curves it takes just 30 minutes to improve your health! Complete 10 WORKOUTS in honour of woman who have battled breast cancer and you can join for free with a donation to Breast Cancer Care UK! Terms: Not valid with any other offer, no cash value and for new fitness members only. Valid at participating locations. 10 visits must be completed by 15th November 2013. Based on first visit enrolment. Contact: 01522 303191 Valid until: Thursday, October 31 2013 A Humberside pilot is understood to have seen the landing while he moved his aircraft to make way. Under the name 'Mike B', he posted on social media afterwards: "Just watched and listened to the most amazing brave passenger who landed at Humberside at night with a blacked out Cockpit and cross wind. "The boy done well, never landed a plane before and sounded calm as a cucumber on the radio." Humberside Police posted this, also on social media, after the incident: "Police and fire have been at humb airport tonight following a distress call from a pilot who became unable to fly while heading back to land. "Thankfully the passenger landed the aircraft safely and without major incident. Condition of pilot is not known at this stage." Roads around the airport were initially closed after the incident, but have now been re-opened. It is understood flights are now landing again at the airport.

– After the pilot of a small plane fell ill at the controls, two flight instructors were called in to the airport to give his only passenger a crash course in not crashing. The passenger—who had no flying experience—managed to bring the plane in for a safe, though somewhat bumpy, landing at England's Humberside Airport. "He made quite a good landing actually," one of the flight instructors tells the BBC. "He didn't know the layout of the airplane, he didn't have lights on so he was absolutely flying blind as well," he says. "I think he'd flown once before as a passenger but never flown an airplane before." There were cheers in the control room as the passenger made a successful landing on his fourth attempt, says the instructor, who did his best to keep the man calm. "I think without any sort of talk-down he would have just gone into the ground and that would have been the end of it," he says. A pilot who witnessed the landing praised the "most amazing brave passenger who landed at Humberside at night with a blacked out cockpit and cross wind," the Lincolnshire Echo reports. "The boy done well, never landed a plane before and sounded calm as a cucumber on the radio," he said. Sadly, the BBC reports that the pilot died; the cause of death has not been given. (In another recent emergency landing, a plane was forced to come down ... on a California highway.)

ELK GROVE (CBS13) — A man who helped a family trapped a crash got a bill in the mail for his unselfish act. Paramedics sent him the first-responder fee of nearly $150 after he says they only checked his pulse and gave him a bottle of water. A photo shows the aftermath of the scary rollover crash that trapped a man and his three children trapped inside. Derrick Deanda jumped into action and recounted the heart-pounding moment. “I pulled up right as it happened,” he said. “There was a guy standing inside the van, because it was on its side, holding a 2 year-old infant.” Deanda broke the glass to free the family before paramedics arrived. Everyone was OK. But weeks later Deanda got a bill in the mail from the Cosumnes Community Services District with a $143 first-responder fee. Deputy Chief Mike McLaughlin says his district billed the good Samaritan. “We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing the same everything, for every patient we encounter,” he said. Deanda became a patient, he says, when a paramedic at the scene checked him out after breaking the van window to help save the family inside. Deanda had a small cut. “This is truly a unique situation,” he said. “In my 28 years, this is my first time I’ve run into a situation similar to this.” The district began implementing the fee two years ago in a move it says prevents fire station brownouts. But in this case, McLaughlin says he’d like to see the fee waived. “There is a mechanism for appealing this. a mechanism for making this right. Our desire it to make it right,” he said. But for now, this heroic act deserving of a medal has Deanda facing a bill. “I mean why would I want to stop to help somebody if I’m going to get a bill for $150?” he said. Deanda plans to appeal and hopes the matter is resolved before it goes to collections. ||||| A Good Samaritan who rescued a family from their crashed van has been billed by paramedics. Derrick Deanda is being charged $143 after first responders checked his pulse and gave him a bottle of water after he saved a father and his three children from the rolled-over vehicle. He was driving past the scene in Elk Grove, California, in September 2015 when he pulled over and saw the man standing in the vehicle holding a two-year-old child. Scroll down for video Derrick Deanda (left) is being charged $143 after first responders checked his pulse and gave him a bottle of water after he saved a father and his three children from the rolled-over vehicle He was driving past the scene in Elk Grove, California, in September 2015 when he pulled over and saw the man standing in the vehicle holding a two-year-old child. He then smashed the window to see if the passengers were OK Deanda then smashed a window to check if everyone was OK, but suffered a small cut in the process. When paramedics arrived, they checked him over after attending to those inside the car. But months later Cosumnes Community Services sent him the bill for the 'first responders fee'. He told CBS Sacramento: 'I mean why would I want to stop to help somebody if I'm going to get a bill for $150?' On Facebook, he posted a picture of the bill and a scary image of the crashed van. 'So I guess this is how Good Samaritans are treated when they stop at an accident scene to help somebody,' he wrote. 'I asked the paramedics for a bottle of water to clean my hand off because I had a small scrape on my hand they ask me questions and they consider that an assessment on me. 'They asked me for my name and information so I give it to him. Then a couple months later I get a bill for $143 for a bottle of water?' When paramedics arrived, they checked him over after attending to those inside the car. But months later Cosumnes Community Services sent him the bill for the 'first responders fee' 'Makes you wonder why people don't want to stop to help at an accident scene. All I can say is the look on the man's face when I was able to break that windshield and get him and his kids out of that vehicle was all the thanks I needed. 'I'm glad I was able to help. But now I have a bill to pay and they won't let it go.' Deputy Chief Mike McLaughlin confirmed his district billed Deanda. ''We're obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing the same everything, for every patient we encounter,' he told the station. He said Deanda technically became a patient when he suffered the cut. 'This is truly a unique situation,' he said. 'In my 28 years, this is my first time I've run into a situation similar to this.' The district began implementing the fee two years ago in a move it says prevents fire station brownouts. But in this case, McLaughlin says he'd like to see the fee waived.

– Derrick Deanda saw a van on its side after a rollover crash in Elk Grove, California, broke windows to free the father and three kids trapped inside, and then ... got billed $143. "I pulled up right as it happened," Deanda recalls to CBS Sacramento of the September 2015 incident. "There was a guy standing inside the van, because it was on its side, holding a 2 year-old infant." After paramedics arrived, they briefly checked over Deanda, who had a small cut from breaking the glass, checking his pulse and giving him a bottle of water. That's why, weeks after the crash, he got a bill in the mail for a "first-responder fee." "We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing, the same everything, for every patient we encounter," explains deputy fire chief Mike McLaughlin. "I asked the paramedics for a bottle of water to clean my hand off because I had a small scrape on my hand they ask me questions and they consider that an assessment on me," Deanda wrote on Facebook, per the Daily Mail. McLaughlin says the fire department wants to "make it right" and waive the fee, but that hasn't happened yet, and Deanda plans to formally appeal. He also says the fee sends the wrong message: "Why would I want to stop to help somebody if I’m going to get a bill for $150?" The family members he helped are all OK.

Positive associations between human intelligence and brain size have been suspected for more than 150 years. Nowadays, modern non-invasive measures of in vivo brain volume (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) make it possible to reliably assess associations with IQ. By means of a systematic review of published studies and unpublished results obtained by personal communications with researchers, we identified 88 studies examining effect sizes of 148 healthy and clinical mixed-sex samples (>8000 individuals). Our results showed significant positive associations of brain volume and IQ (r=.24, R(2)=.06) that generalize over age (children vs. adults), IQ domain (full-scale, performance, and verbal IQ), and sex. Application of a number of methods for detection of publication bias indicates that strong and positive correlation coefficients have been reported frequently in the literature whilst small and non-significant associations appear to have been often omitted from reports. We show that the strength of the positive association of brain volume and IQ has been overestimated in the literature, but remains robust even when accounting for different types of dissemination bias, although reported effects have been declining over time. While it is tempting to interpret this association in the context of human cognitive evolution and species differences in brain size and cognitive ability, we show that it is not warranted to interpret brain size as an isomorphic proxy of human intelligence differences. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ||||| For centuries, scientists have been investigating the link between human brain size and intelligence, with several studies suggesting inconclusively that the bigger the brain, the smarter a person. But a review of 88 studies involving more than 8,000 participants has now shown that even though a small link between brain volume and IQ exists, there's no evidence to suggest it's a causal one. Instead, it's the structure of your brain that seems play a larger role in determining how smart you are. Although they're not perfect, IQ - or intelligence quotient - tests, are currently the best way we can measure someone's ability to rationally understand the world around them, as well as their memory, reasoning, and logic skills. And as a result, they're often used to help scientists try to make sense of what makes people more or less 'intelligent' than their peers. In this instance, researchers from Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany compared IQ test results to participants' brain volumes, measured using brain imaging methods over multiple studies. "Although a certain association is observable, brain volume appears to be of only little practical relevance," said lead researcher Jakob Pietschnig, from the University of Vienna in Austria. "Rather, brain structure and integrity appear to be more important as a biological foundation of IQ, whilst brain size works as one of many compensatory mechanisms of cognitive functions." This isn't the first nail in the coffin for the 'bigger brain = better' argument. The first stumbling block was when scientists realised that humans - arguably the most intelligent animals on the planet - don't actually have the biggest brains in the animal kingdom relative to body size (that honour goes to the humble shrew). To make up for that, scientists came up with a new way to measure brain size, known as the 'encephalisation quotient', which explains an animal's brain size relative to the expected brain size in related taxa. And when taking that into account, humans - thankfully - come at the top of the heap. But in the new review, the researchers looked at both unpublished and published studies, and found that the link between brain volume and higher IQ had been overestimated and exaggerated in the literature. This is because of publication bias, which means that journals are more willing to publish papers that find a strong link between something rather than those that find a small one, or are inconclusive. But regardless, Pietschnig and his team showed that there was still a weak association between bigger brains and higher IQs throughout the research, which was independent of sex and age - but they also showed that brain size didn't have much predictive value when it came to measuring intelligence. Their conclusion is supported by the fact that men consistently have higher brain volumes than women, but that there's no significant difference between the sexes when it comes to IQ tests. "While it is tempting to interpret this association in the context of human cognitive evolution and species differences in brain size and cognitive ability, we show that it is not warranted to interpret brain size as an isomorphic proxy of human intelligence differences," the researchers conclude in Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews. And in case you were wondering, scientists have also studied Einstein's brain in great detail, and found that it's not that different from the rest of ours. So next time you feel sad about the size of your head, just remember that you have as much potential in there as even the largest brains out there. ||||| The brain structure is more important than the size Is brain size related to cognitive ability of humans? This question has captured the attention of scientists for more than a century. An international team of researchers from the Universities of Vienna (Austria), Göttingen (Germany), and Tilburg (Netherlands) provides no evidence for a causal role of brain size for IQ test performance. In a meta-analysis of data from more than 8000 participants, they show that associations between in-vivo brain volume and IQ are small. As early as 1836, the German physiologist and anatomist Friedrich Tiedemann, in an article in the Philosophical Transactions, expressed his opinion that "there is undoubtedly a connection between the absolute size of the brain and the intellectual powers and functions of the mind". With the advent of brain imaging methods (e.g., MRI, PET), reliable assessments of in-vivo brain volume and investigations of its association with IQ are now possible. Now, an international team of researchers, led by University of Vienna researchers Jakob Pietschnig, Michael Zeiler, and Martin Voracek from the Faculty of Psychology, together with Lars Penke (University of Göttingen) and Jelte Wicherts (Tilburg University), published a meta-analysis examining correlations between in-vivo brain volume and IQ in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Based on the data from 148 samples comprising over 8000 participants, they report a robust but weak association between brain size and IQ. This association appeared to be independent of participant sex and age. "The presently observed association means that brain volume plays only a minor role in explaining IQ test performance in humans. Although a certain association is observable, brain volume appears to be of only little practical relevance. Rather, brain structure and integrity appear to be more important as a biological foundation of IQ, whilst brain size works as one of many compensatory mechanisms of cognitive functions", explains Jakob Pietschnig from the Institute of Applied Psychology of the University of Vienna. Brain structure vs. brain size The importance of brain structure compared to brain volume becomes already evident when comparing different species. When considering absolute brain size, the sperm whale weighs in with the largest central nervous system. When controlling for body mass, the shrew is on the top of the list. Similar results emerge when considering other aspects of species anatomy: Homo sapiens never appears at the top at the list, as would be expected. Rather, differences in brain structure appear to be mainly responsible for between-species differences in cognitive performance. Within Homo sapiens, there are indications that render a large association between IQ and brain volume similarly questionable. For instance, differences in brain size between men and women are well-established, yielding larger brains of men compared to women. However, there are no differences in global IQ test performance between men and women. Another example are individuals with megalencephaly syndrome (enlarged brain volume) who typically show lower IQ test performance than the average population. “Therefore, structural aspects appear to be more important for cognitive performance within humans as well”, concludes Jakob Pietschnig. Publication in "Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews": Pietschnig, J., Penke, L., Wicherts, J. M., Zeiler, M., & Voracek, M. (2015). Meta-analysis of associations between human brain volume and intelligence differences: How strong are they and what do they mean? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, in press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.09.017 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/aip/01497634

– If brain size relative to body size determines IQ, the venerable shrew would be the smartest creature on the planet. But it doesn't, and it's not, and scientists from Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany have combed through 88 studies with more than 8,000 participants to confirm in the journal Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews that when it comes to intelligence, brain size simply doesn't matter. "Although a certain association is observable, brain volume appears to be of only little practical relevance," says Jakob Pietschnig from the Institute of Applied Psychology at the University of Vienna. The researchers write that "positive associations between human intelligence and brain size have been suspected for more than 150 years." Why the long-held belief in such a link despite a lack of concrete evidence for it? It may partly be the result of publication bias, reports ScienceAlert. This means that journals more readily publish findings with strong links between subjects than weak or inconclusive links. And that's all that Pietschnig and his team found when they reviewed published and unpublished studies—a link too small to have any discernible effect. "Rather, brain structure and integrity appear to be more important as a biological foundation of IQ, whilst brain size works as one of many compensatory mechanisms of cognitive functions," Pietschnig adds. This helps explain why men, who tend to have larger brains than women, do not perform better on IQ tests. To be small-minded, then, should be construed in only a metaphorical sense. (Check out what has been hiding in brains for centuries until this year.)

Published on Sep 29, 2016 To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email licensing@storyful.com Angry guy destroys everything in a French Apple Store with a steel ball. Very calmly till security comes to stop him. To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email licensing@storyful.com ||||| Hell hath no fury like an Apple fanboy scorned. A French customer Hulked out in an Apple Store in Dijon, smashing everything in sight, one slick item at a time. He employed a small steel ball, the kind usually used in the yard game pétanque. The rampage was captured by others in the store. Un mec détruit un Apple Store avec une boule de pétanque PARTIE 1 pic.twitter.com/XC9i8C9chH — Qυεηтιη  (@Quentin_IOS) September 29, 2016 It appears the incident was sparked by a refund dispute. In between wrecking iPhone, MacBooks, and iPads, he says in French, “Apple is a company that 'violated' European consumers' rights. They refused to reimburse me, I told them: 'Give me my money back'. They said no. So you know what's happening? This is happening!" According to a local news report, the man was apprehended by a security guard and arrested, after causing considerable damage. Here’s a video of his attempt to flee the scene. Fun fact: The French word for Apple is "pomme,” which is the root word for “pummel,” so maybe this guy was just confused. H/T Mashable

– Geez, the French are even sophisticated while performing wanton acts of destruction. The Verge reports a young man was caught on video calmly and methodically wrecking up an Apple Store in France over a refund disagreement. The man used a steel ball—apparently the kind used in a French lawn game—to break at least 10 iPhones and a MacBook Air, one at a time, before being arrested outside the store. “Apple is a company that violated European consumers' rights," the Daily Dot quotes the man as saying in French during his iPhone smashing. "They refused to reimburse me. I told them: 'Give me my money back.' They said no. So you know what's happening? This is happening!"

Mary Anne Forster was attacked by a koala while walking her dogs. Photo: 7News. A woman has been left bloodied and required a four-day stay in hospital after being attacked by a koala north of Adelaide. But despite her injuries, she says she doesn’t blame the animal for the brutal attack. Williamstown woman Mary Anne Forster said she was walking her two dogs a fortnight ago when they pulled her towards a koala at the base of a tree. “Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply,” she said. After a struggle, she managed to break free. “Because it wouldn’t let go, I put my fingers in its mouth and pried its jaws open to release my leg,” Ms Forster said. The assistant principal hobbled more than two kilometres home and was then taken to hospital. Ms Forster was taken to hospital after the koala bite. Photo: Supplied. She needed 12 stitches. “All wild animals have dirty bites and so it was a matter of covering with the antibiotics because it became very infected, it was very swollen and painful,” she said. Environmental experts have warned people to keep their distance if they spot a koala out in the wild. “Just leave them alone, certainly don’t let dogs go near them because they will fight back, they’ve got big claws and big teeth,” Dr Deb Kelly from the Environment Department said. ||||| A koala attack in South Australia left one woman, who was walking her dogs at the time, bitten and bloodied. Mary Anne Forster took her two dogs for a walk two weeks ago and when they pulled her toward a koala at the base of a tree, 7News Adelaide reported Wednesday. The koala launched into an attack on the dogs, but Forster got caught in the middle. “Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply,” she told 7News. The koala latched on to Forster's leg and would not let go, causing a bite that required 12 stitches. In a desperate attempt to get the animal off her leg, she put her fingers in its mouth to get it to release its jaw. It finally released its grip and she stumbled 2km home before being admitted to hospital. The wound on Forster's leg. Image: 7News Adelaide Although koalas and dogs have a history of fighting, with 110 koalas killed each year by dog attacks, it is rare for a humans to be involved. "It should also be remembered that koalas are capable of defending themselves. They have sharp teeth and claws capable of causing deep wounds and any dog that attacks a koala may risk serious injury," the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection states on its website.

– It wasn't the koala's fault, says an Australian woman who was savaged by one of the planet's cutest and most cuddly-appearing creatures. According to 7News Adelaide, Mary Anne Forster was walking her two dogs a couple of weeks ago when they dragged her toward a koala at the bottom of a tree; she got caught in the middle when the koala attacked the dogs. "Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply," she says. Forster, who had to put her fingers in the koala's mouth to make it let go, needed 12 stitches and spent four days in the hospital after the attack. The bite "became very infected, it was very swollen and painful," she says. The koala had good reason to feel threatened, Mashable reports: Australian authorities estimate that 110 koalas are killed in dog attacks every year, and an environmental department spokesperson warns that people who see them in the wild should "just leave them alone—certainly don't let dogs go near them because they will fight back, they've got big claws and big teeth." (Scientists using thermal cameras have discovered why koalas hug trees.)

The hearse carrying the casket of former President George H.W. Bush arrives at the Capitol, Monday, Dec. 3, 2018 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Pool via AP) (Associated Press) The hearse carrying the casket of former President George H.W. Bush arrives at the Capitol, Monday, Dec. 3, 2018 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Pool via AP) (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on events related to late former President George H.W. Bush (all times local): 8:35 p.m. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have paid their respects to former President George H.W. Bush at the U.S. Capitol. The nation's 41st president is lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda. The Trumps stood in front of the casket Monday evening with their eyes closed for a few moments. After Trump saluted the casket, the pair walked out. Trump skipped an earlier service at the Capitol, where Bush was eulogized by Vice President Mike Pence, among others. Trump plans to attend Bush's state funeral Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. Trump has a fractured relationship with the Bush family, whom he has repeatedly criticized. But he has praised Bush since his passing as "just a high-quality man who truly loved his family" and a "terrific guy" who will be missed. ___ 8:30 p.m. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have arrived at the U.S. Capitol to pay their respects to former President George H.W. Bush. The body of the nation's 41st president is lying in state at the U.S. Capitol until Wednesday morning. Trump skipped an earlier service at the Capitol, where Bush was eulogized by Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan, among others. Trump plans to attend Bush's state funeral Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. Trump is not expected to speak at the service and has a fractured relationship with the Bush family. But he has praised Bush since his passing as "just a high-quality man who truly loved his family" and a "terrific guy" who will be missed. Bush died Friday at his home in Houston. He was 94. ___ 8:15 p.m. Several hundred people have gathered in downtown Houston for a memorial to former President George H.W. Bush, a beloved figure in his adopted hometown. The ceremony Monday night took place in front of Houston's City Hall, bathed in lights of red, white, and blue. City organizers encouraged Houston residents to wear their boldest socks in a nod to Bush's well-known sartorial tradition. Michael Meaux (moh), who worked in the U.S. State Department for Bush's son, former President George W. Bush, wore a pair of hot-pink socks that he laughingly said he had owned for a long time but had never worn before. The Houston resident called Bush "the last gentleman president that we've had." ___ 5:50 p.m. Vice President Mike Pence has offered the nation's condolences to the family of the late former President George H.W. Bush. He also thanked Bush's family for sharing "this special man" with the country and the world. The vice president says Bush left America and the world "more peaceful, prosperous and secure." He spoke of first meeting Bush as a 29-year-old entering politics and of a letter his son, an enlisted Marine, received from Bush. Pence's son had just completed a landing on the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier and Pence wrote to Bush. Bush sent a signed photograph and letter. Pence spoke at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where Bush will lie in state through Wednesday. Bush died Friday at his home in Houston. He was 94. ___ 5:40 p.m. Vice President Mike Pence says former President George H.W. Bush's example will always inspire and his lifetime of public service will be enshrined in the hearts of the American people. Pence says Bush never failed to answer the call to serve his country. Pence is speaking in the Capitol Rotunda as lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and former members of his administration pay their respects to the nation's 41st president. Bush also served as vice president for two terms under President Ronald Reagan. Pence says Bush joked there was "nothing substantive to do at all" going into that job. But Pence says Bush set the standard as "a sound counselor and loyal adviser to an outsider who came to Washington, D.C., to shake things up, cut taxes, rebuild the military, and together they did just that." ___ 5:30 p.m. House Speaker Paul Ryan praised George H.W. Bush as a "great patriot," and the first president he had been able to cast a ballot for as a young man. Ryan said Monday, "Here lies a great man." The Wisconsin Republican was delivering remarks during a ceremony at the Capitol Rotunda where Bush will lie in state, an honor reserved for few. The former president died Friday. Ryan says Bush's character was "second to none." He says Bush lived his life with "a fundamental decency that resonates across generations." Ryan says Bush's presidential campaign in 1988 first drew him to politics. He said Bush showed other political leaders that "how we live is as important as what we achieve." ___ 5:20 p.m. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is comparing the "steady hand" with which President George H.W. Bush kept his bomber under control when it was shot down during World War II with the way he guided the country. McConnell says Bush "kept us on course" as the Kentucky Republican delivered a eulogy for the late president at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday. Bush's flag-covered casket lay in state as McConnell spoke. Bush's aircraft was shot down in 1944 over the Pacific. He completed his bombing mission before bailing out. McConnell says Bush "kept us flying high and challenged us to fly higher still" as he steered the U.S. through the end of the Cold War and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. ___ 4:40 p.m. The casket carrying the remains of George H.W. Bush has arrived at the U.S. Capitol for the nation to begin its formal farewell to the 41st president. His remains arrived Monday afternoon at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington aboard an aircraft that often serves as Air Force One. Former President George W. Bush, the eldest of the four Bush sons, and his wife, Laura, along with brother Neil Bush and his family, were aboard the plane for the trip from Houston. Following a short service Monday afternoon, the president's remains will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until Wednesday morning. Bush died Friday in Houston at age 94. An invitation-only funeral service is set for Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. President Donald Trump is among the dignitaries who plan to attend. ___ 4:10 p.m. The body of former President George H.W. Bush is heading toward the U.S. Capitol following a brief ceremony at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. Bush's flag-draped casket was unloaded from the presidential plane and brought to a hearse by an honor guard as a military band played "Hail to the Chief." Bush's son, former President George W. Bush, descended from the plane with his wife, Laura, and other family members. Others including Jeb Bush were already waiting on the tarmac. Bush will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda for a ceremony and public visitation from Monday through Wednesday. An invitation-only funeral service will follow at Washington National Cathedral before his casket returns to Houston for burial. ___ 3:25 p.m. A military aircraft carrying the remains of former President George H.W. Bush has arrived at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, as the nation's capital prepares to honor the 41st president. A formation of Navy sailors and Air Force personnel stood at attention as the plane touched down. The sailors assembled were from the USS George H. W. Bush, the Navy's newest aircraft carrier. A group of about 100 civilian dignitaries and well-wishers also were on hand. Bush will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda for a ceremony and public visitation from Monday through Wednesday. An invitation-only funeral service will follow at Washington National Cathedral before his casket returns to Houston for burial. President Donald Trump, who will attend the funeral service in Washington, has ordered the federal government closed Wednesday for a national day of mourning. ___ 12:10 p.m. A military aircraft carrying the remains of former President George H.W. Bush has taken off and is flying from Houston to Washington for official mourning ceremonies, including a state funeral. Pallbearers carried Bush's casket from a hearse across the tarmac to a presidential plane commonly known as Air Force One. For the task of transporting Bush's body on Monday, the plane has been renamed Special Air Mission 41, the number being a reference to Bush's place in the roster of America's presidents. A military band played "Hail to the Chief." An American flag and one with the presidential seal flew nearby. Bush's son former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush, were among those relatives and Bush friends who walked to the aircraft shortly after the body was loaded aboard. George H.W. Bush died Friday in Houston at age 94. ___ 11:45 a.m. George H.W. Bush's remains have made the journey from a Houston funeral home to Ellington Field, where a presidential aircraft will carry them to Washington for a state funeral. Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, one of George H.W. Bush's grandsons, was among more than 100 invited guests seeing off Bush's remains on Monday. The guests are set to witness a ceremony including a military band and a 21-gun salute. Angela Savage one of the people who stood outside the funeral home to watch the passing of the hearse carrying Bush's casket as it headed to Ellington Field. She called it "a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event." Savage describes what she saw as "amazing and very respectful," adding, "I feel like that's what he deserves." Bush died Friday in Houston at age 94. ___ 11:25 a.m. More than 100 invited guests have gathered at Houston's Ellington Field for a ceremony to send off the casket of former President George H.W. Bush to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The guests stood next to the tarmac at Ellington Field on Monday and awaited the arrival of the hearse with Bush's casket. The guests and Bush family members are to attend a ceremony that will include a military band and a 21-gun salute. The guests stood near the U.S. military plane that's more commonly known as Air Force One. For the task of transporting Bush's body, the plane has been renamed Special Air Mission 41, the number being a reference to Bush's place in the roster of America's presidents. Bush died Friday in Houston at age 94. An invitation-only funeral service is set for Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. ___ 10:45 a.m. A hearse carrying the casket of former President George H.W. Bush has left a Houston funeral home. The casket was draped in an American flag and was carried by six pallbearers on Monday morning. It was placed into a hearse headed to Houston's Ellington Field, where a presidential aircraft waited to carry Bush's body to Washington for a state funeral. The hearse was part of a motorcade escorted by Houston police officers on motorcycles. Bush died Friday in Houston at age 94. ___ 10:35 a.m. A spokeswoman confirms former President Jimmy Carter plans to attend the state funeral for former President George H.W. Bush. Rosalynn Carter will not attend. The 91-year-old former first lady has limited her travels in recent months. With Bush's death, Jimmy Carter becomes the oldest living former president, at age 94. Both men were born in 1924, Bush on June 12, Carter on Oct. 1. Bush served as CIA director when Carter first ran for president 1976. Carter replaced Bush with Stansfield Turner. Four years later, Bush joined the Ronald Reagan Republican ticket that routed Carter in the 1980 presidential election. Bush died Friday in Houston at age 94. An invitation-only funeral service is set for Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. ___ 10:20 a.m. Secret Service personnel who had been assigned to protecting George H.W. Bush are serving as honorary pallbearers as his remains begin making their way from Houston to a state funeral in Washington. The former president's spokesman, Jim McGrath, tweeted Monday that for "this first movement in Houston" members of "the current @SecretService Bush Protective Division will serve as honorary pallbearers." Bush died at his Houston home on Friday at age 94. His remains are scheduled to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Monday afternoon and later will begin lying in state at the U.S. Capitol. On Wednesday morning, a motorcade will take the remains to a state funeral at the National Cathedral. ___ 9:20 a.m. Houston is honoring George H.W. Bush with a City Hall tribute and urging people who attend to dress in colorful socks, a nod to one of the former president's favorite fashion accessories. Mayor Sylvester Turner is hosting Monday evening's event featuring music and community leaders in front of City Hall. Turner tweeted that those in attendance should "wear their own colorful socks." Bush often sported bright socks, sometimes with loud, unusual patterns. He died Friday at his Houston home at age 94, and his body is heading to Washington for a state funeral. Spokesman Jim McGrath tweeted Monday that Bush "will be carried to his final rest" wearing gray socks saluting the Armed Forces and paying "tribute to his lifetime of service," starting as an 18-year-old "naval aviator in war." ___ 1:35 a.m. George H.W. Bush is set to embark on his final tour of Washington as a nation prepares to bid farewell to its 41st president. His remains will arrive in Washington on Monday, and he will lie in state at the Capitol through Wednesday. An invitation-only funeral service is set for Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral, to be attended by President Donald Trump and other dignitaries. Bush will then be returned to Houston for burial Thursday at his presidential library at Texas A&M University. He will be laid to rest alongside Barbara Bush, his wife of 73 years who died in April, and Robin Bush, the daughter who died of leukemia at age 3. Bush was president from 1989 to 1993. He died Friday in Houston at age 94. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption President Trump visits George HW Bush's coffin lying in state at the US Capitol US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania have paid their respects to President George HW Bush as he lies in state at the US Capitol. Mr Trump made a brief visit to the rotunda, where the public can visit the coffin until the funeral on Wednesday. Mr Trump has in the past clashed with the Bush family but will attend the funeral service. Mr Bush, who died on Friday aged 94, will later be buried in his home state of Texas, alongside his wife, Barbara. His coffin had earlier left Texas to a 21-gun salute and was carried to Washington on board Air Force One - temporarily renamed Special Air Mission 41 in homage to the late president. Mr Bush, who served as the 41st US president between 1989 and 1993, had been receiving treatment for a form of Parkinson's disease and had been admitted to hospital with a blood infection in April. An extended salute BBC North America reporter Anthony Zurcher, Capitol Hill Three hours after an assemblage of officials, dignitaries, family and friends welcomed the coffin of President George HW Bush to the US Capitol, the current president and first lady made a mid-evening visit to pay their respects. The motorcade took only a few minutes to travel down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. At 20:30 (01:30 GMT on Tuesday) Donald and Melania Trump arrived inside what was now a relatively empty Capitol rotunda. Members of the five branches of the US military continued to stand to attention, as the two approached the flag-draped coffin. The president gave an extended salute and the first lady put her hand over her heart. The only sound in the massive, marbled room - where 32 people, including 12 presidents, have lain in state - was the steady whirr of press cameras. Mr and Mrs Trump then turned and left. In all, the president was away from the White House less than half an hour, without a word to the public or press. The president tweeted that he was "looking forward" to seeing the "wonderful Bush family" at a presidential guest house on Tuesday. He added that Mrs Trump would be giving former First Lady Laura Bush a tour of the White House Christmas decorations. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sully visits George HW Bush's coffin at US Capitol The public will be able to pay respects at the rotunda until Wednesday's invitation-only funeral service at the National Cathedral. Prince Charles will be attending the funeral, representing the Queen, Clarence House announced on Tuesday. Mr Trump will attend with Melania but will not deliver a speech. According to Mark Updegrove's book The Last Republicans, which came out last year, Mr Bush voted for Mr Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton in the election and had called Mr Trump a "blowhard". Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption George W Bush struggled to hold back his emotions as his father's coffin passed him by His son, former President George W Bush, worried he would be the "last Republican president", despite Mr Trump running on the party's ticket, the book said. A service was held in the rotunda after Mr Bush's coffin arrived on Monday afternoon, with members of the military serving as pallbearers. George Bush Jr was in attendance and was clearly moved by the events. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption George HW Bush's body is taken to Washington on board Air Force One In a eulogy, House Speaker Paul Ryan said: "Here lies a great man", adding that "no-one better harmonised the joy of life and the duty of life". Mr Ryan said Mr Bush was a "great leader and a good man, a gentle soul of firm resolve". Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said: "Through the Cold War and the Soviet Union's collapse, he kept us on course. When the rule of law needed defending in the Persian Gulf, he kept us on course." Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A look back at the life of George Bush Senior Vice-President Mike Pence said there was a "kindness about the man that was evident to everyone who met him". George HW Bush was a decorated fighter pilot in World War Two, a head of the CIA and vice-president to Ronald Reagan before being elected president in 1988. Also making the final journey with President Bush was his loyal labrador service dog, Sully. Mr Bush's spokesman, Jim McGrath, tweeted a picture of Sully with the coffin, with the caption: "Mission complete."

– President Trump paid his respects Monday after George HW Bush arrived at the Capitol for the final time. The 45th president—who skipped an earlier service—visited the 41st president as he was lying in state, the AP reports. The president, who traveled down Pennsylvania Avenue in a motorcade, saluted the flag-draped coffin and Melania Trump put her hand over her heart. They turned and left after the brief visit. "In all, the president was away from the White House less than half an hour, without a word to the public or press," says Anthony Zurcher at the BBC. The former president died Friday at age 94. Trump is expected at his state funeral Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral. (Bush will be buried in a very fitting pair of socks.)

Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it will make a brand of emergency contraception known as Plan B One-Step available over the counter for women ages 15 and older, and with a prescription for younger teens. The pill is currently available over the counter to women ages 17 and older. "Research has shown that access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in a statement. "The data reviewed by the agency demonstrated that women 15 years of age and older were able to understand how Plan B One-Step works, how to use it properly, and that it does not prevent the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease." The decision by the FDA only partially complies with a ruling handed down by a federal judge in early April, which instructed the FDA to lift all age restrictions on Plan B and make it available to everyone on pharmacy shelves. A panel of scientists at the FDA had recommended in 2011 that age restrictions be lifted on the morning-after pill, but Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled that recommendation, arguing that there was a lack of evidence showing that those under the age of 17 would use the pill appropriately. By dropping the age limit to 15 instead of removing the limit entirely, the FDA has ensured that all women will still have to show an ID to the cashier in order to purchase the emergency contraception. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called the FDA's decision a "step in the right direction." "This decision is a step in the right direction for increased access to a product that is a safe and effective method of preventing unintended pregnancies," Murray said in a statement. "It's also a decision that moves us closer to these critical availability decisions being based on science, not politics. Plan B is an essential part of a woman's basic health care and I will continue to push for more information from FDA and HHS on the practical application of this policy while also working to ensure that access is based on science, safety, and efficacy." The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit against Sebelius and the FDA that led to the judge's ruling in April, said on Tuesday that it is not satisfied with the FDA's decision. "The FDA is under a federal court order that makes it crystal clear that emergency contraception must be made available over the counter without restriction to women of all ages by next Monday," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the center. "Lowering the age restriction to 15 for over-the-counter access to Plan B One-Step may reduce delays for some young women -- but it does nothing to address the significant barriers that far too many women of all ages will still find if they arrive at the drugstore without identification or after the pharmacy gates have been closed for the night or weekend," she added. "These are daunting and sometimes insurmountable hoops women are forced to jump through in time-sensitive circumstances, and we will continue our battle in court to remove these arbitrary restrictions on emergency contraception for all women," Northup said. This story has been updated with comments from Sen. Patty Murray and the Center for Reproductive Rights. ||||| FDA NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release: April 30, 2013 Media Inquiries: Erica Jefferson, 301-796-4988, erica.jefferson@fda.hhs.gov Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA FDA approves Plan B One-Step emergency contraceptive without a prescription for women 15 years of age and older The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that it has approved an amended application submitted by Teva Women’s Health, Inc. to market Plan B One-Step (active ingredient levonorgestrel) for use without a prescription by women 15 years of age and older. After the FDA did not approve Teva’s application to make Plan B One-Step available over-the-counter for all females of reproductive age in December 2011, the company submitted an amended application to make the product available for women 15 years of age and older without a prescription. The product will now be labeled “not for sale to those under 15 years of age *proof of age required* not for sale where age cannot be verified.” Plan B One-Step will be packaged with a product code prompting a cashier to request and verify the customer’s age. A customer who cannot provide age verification will not be able to purchase the product. In addition, Teva has arranged to have a security tag placed on all product cartons to prevent theft. In addition, Teva will make the product available in retail outlets with an onsite pharmacy, where it generally, will be available in the family planning or female health aisles. The product will be available for sale during the retailer’s normal operating hours whether the pharmacy is open or not. Plan B One-Step is an emergency contraceptive intended to reduce the possibility of pregnancy following unprotected sexual intercourse – if another form of birth control (e.g., condom) was not used or failed. Plan B One-Step is a single-dose pill (1.5 mg tablet) that is most effective in decreasing the possibility of unwanted pregnancy if taken immediately or within 3 days after unprotected sexual intercourse. Plan B One-Step will not stop a pregnancy when a woman is already pregnant, and there is no medical evidence that the product will harm a developing fetus. “Research has shown that access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. “The data reviewed by the agency demonstrated that women 15 years of age and older were able to understand how Plan B One-Step works, how to use it properly, and that it does not prevent the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease.” The approval of Plan B One-Step for use without a prescription by women 15 years of age and older is based on an actual use study and label comprehension data submitted by Teva showing that women age 15 and older understood that the product was not for routine use and would not protect them against sexually-transmitted diseases. These data also established that Plan B One-Step could be used properly within this age group without the intervention of a health care provider. Because the product will not protect a woman from HIV or AIDS or other sexually-transmitted diseases, it is important that young women who are sexually active remember to see a health care provider for routine checkups. The health care provider should counsel the patient about, and if necessary test her for, sexually-transmitted diseases, discuss effective methods of routine birth control, and answer any other questions the patient may have. Teva has indicated that it plans to educate consumers, pharmacy staff, and health care professionals about the product’s new status. It has also indicated its willingness to conduct an audit of the age verification practices after the product is approved to ensure that the age limitation is being followed. On April 5, 2013, a federal judge in New York ordered the FDA to grant a 2001 citizen’s petition to the agency that sought to allow over-the-counter access to Plan B (a two dose levonorgestrel product) for women of all ages and/or make Plan B One-Step available without age or point of sale restrictions. However, Teva’s application to market Plan B One-Step for women 15 and older was pending with the agency prior to the ruling. The FDA’s approval of Teva’s current application for Plan B One-Step is independent of that litigation and this decision is not intended to address the judge’s ruling. The Department of Justice is considering next steps in the litigation. In the meantime, the FDA took independent action to approve the pending application on Plan B One-Step for use without a prescription by women 15 years of age or older. There are currently three emergency contraceptive drugs marketed in the United States – Plan B One-Step, Plan B, and ella. Plan B, available from generic manufacturers, uses two doses of levonorgestrel (.75 mg in each tablet), taken 12 hours apart, and requires a prescription for women under the age of 17. Ella (ulipristal) is a prescription-only product that prevents pregnancy when taken orally within 120 hours (five days) after a contraceptive failure or unprotected sexual intercourse. The approval of Teva’s application for Plan B One-Step does not affect the prescription status of these other drugs. Teva Women’s Health is based in North Wales, Pa. The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products. # Read our Blog: FDA Voice Visit the FDA on Facebook , Flickr , YouTube , and Twitter RSS Feed for FDA News Releases

– The Plan B morning-after pill is moving over the counter. The FDA announced today that the emergency contraceptive will be available without a prescription to those ages 15 and older. The pill also no longer needs to be behind pharmacy counters. Instead, it can sit on drugstore shelves just like condoms, but buyers will have to prove their age at the cash register. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled there should be no age restrictions and gave the FDA 30 days to act. The FDA said that its latest decision was independent of the court case, and that Justice Department lawyers were still considering their response to the ruling. "Research has shown that access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States," says FDA chief Margaret Hamburg. "The data reviewed by the agency demonstrated that women 15 years of age and older were able to understand how Plan B One-Step works, how to use it properly, and that it does not prevent the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease." Click for more.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Co.'s new genetically modified potato. But one of the company's oldest business partners — McDonald's — hasn't. The fast-food giant says it doesn't use genetically modified potatoes, the Idaho Statesman reported (http://is.gd/VLciDK ). "McDonald's USA does not source GMO potatoes, nor do we have current plans to change our sourcing practices," the company said in a statement. The USDA this month gave Boise-based Simplot permission to begin commercial planting of its new spud, called the "Innate" potato. The company altered the potato's DNA so it produces less acrylamide, which is suspected to be a human carcinogen. Potatoes naturally produce the chemical when they're cooked at high temperatures. The potato is also engineered to resist bruising. Simplot is a major supplier of french fries, hash browns and other potato products for restaurant chains like McDonald's. This isn't the first time the fast-food industry has resisted GMO potatoes. More than a decade ago, Monsanto brought its bug-resistant "New Leaf" line of genetically modified potato to market. Buyers, led by the fast-food industry, rejected the Monsanto spud, and it was pulled from production due to lack of business. Simplot spokesman Doug Cole didn't address the company's plans to sell to the fast-food industry or the dehydrated potato industry, which both have urged growers against planting GMO potatoes. But Cole said the fresh potato market would embrace Innate. Consumers will be receptive to the reduced sugars and potential carcinogens, Cole said. Because only 400 test acres of Innate varieties were planted and harvested this fall, production can't ramp up until after the 2015 harvest, he said. Rupert potato grower Duane Grant said he's been told by buyers in the dehydrated potato industry not to plant the GMO potatoes. But he hopes to line up willing buyers so that he can plant the biotech potatoes and reap the higher yields that come with their reduced bruising, he said. Consumers will be more receptive to Simplot's potato than Monsanto's because it benefits them, not just growers, he said. The key for Simplot and for growers, Grant said, will be convincing the food industry, which is worried about consumer backlash, to trust the product. "Brand equity is extremely important to quick-serve restaurants," Grant said. "They will avoid conflict whenever possible in order to protect equity of their brand name." ___ Information from: Idaho Statesman, http://www.idahostatesman.com ||||| Statement of Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter Washington, D.C.— “This week McDonald’s, one of the largest fast food chains on the planet, told an agriculture news service that it would not use the J.R. Simplot Company’s Innate GMO potato. This victory for consumers is another indication that the food industry recognizes that consumers do not want to eat GMO foods. Many parents are already limiting the amount of fast food that their children eat, and GMO french fries would give them another reason to pass by the golden arches. Over the past year, Food & Watch submitted over 90,000 petitions urging McDonald’s to reject GMO potatoes. “While we cannot speak to the rest of McDonald’s practices, this decision marks a milestone in the movement to protect consumers from the potential dangers of GMO foods. McDonald’s is a global leader in fast food sales and is a major purchaser of potatoes in the United States. “Consumers spoke, and McDonald’s listened. We now urge competing fast foods chains such as Burger King to follow its lead.” Contact: Kate Fried, Food & Water Watch, (202) 683-4905, kfried(at)fwwatch(dot)org.

– A major Idaho potato producer has won some love from the FDA for its genetically modified spud, but don't look for the "Innate" potato in the deep fryers at McDonald's anytime soon. As the Idaho Statesman reports, the fast-food giant—a longtime major buyer of Boise-based JR Simplot Co.—is taking a pass. "McDonald's USA does not source GMO potatoes, nor do we have current plans to change our sourcing practices," it says in a statement. The Innate potato, which got the FDA OK earlier this month to begin planting commercially, contains fewer sugars and asparagine—which can convert to acrylamide, a carcinogen—than normal potatoes; it also bruises less easily, notes the AP. It's not the first time a GMO spud hit the fast-food industry with a thud, notes the Statesman; Monsanto suffered a similar fate a decade ago with a bug-resistant potato it ultimately yanked over lack of demand. Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch calls the move a "major victory for consumers," with director Wenonah Hauter adding that "while we cannot speak to the rest of McDonald's practices, this decision marks a milestone in the movement to protect consumers from the potential dangers of GMO foods." Hauter urges Mickey Dee's competitors to likewise snub the Innate potato.

At least two open investigations into... COLUMBIA, Mo. - University of Missouri officials have at least two open investigations into the potential use of "date rape" drugs at Delta Upsilon fraternity. ABC 17 News first reported Wednesday through an open records request the series of incidents that led to a temporary suspension of Delta Upsilon in late September. The fraternity was given disciplinary probation just a day before a racially-charged incident with students in the Legion of Black Collegians ended up in DU front lawn on September 27. The national organization placed its Columbia chapter on emergency suspension the next day, and the school's Office of Student Conduct continues to investigate that issue. DU received probation after several issues arose from parties on August 27 and September 10. A 20-year-old woman was taken by ambulance for an alcohol overdose, a man was pushed down a flight of steps during a fight and an 18-year-old girl tripped and hit her head after drinking too much at DU during the September incident. The fraternity had been given two warnings prior to that by the school for underage drinking and "failing to comply" with University police during a theft investigation. ABC 17 News uncovered a letter from the Title IX Office informing the fraternity of a possible investigation into use of "date rape" drugs. The letter, dated September 13, said the office received numerous contacts from students, along with social media posts that claim "active members of Delta Upsilon fraternity allegedly provided each new member with three pills and instructed them to drug women for the purpose of incapacitating them prior to engaging in sexual activity." The letter from Title IX Administrator Ellen Eardley goes on to say, "Should my office receive any information indicating that there is any veracity to the allegations that Delta Upsilon promoted sexual misconduct and hazing, an investigation will begin immediately." MU spokesman Christian Basi told ABC 17 News Thursday he could not comment on the status of that particular matter. An MUPD police report details a medical call on Sept. 16 for an 18-year-old student acting strangely in Johnston Hall. The woman was naked from the waist down, the officer wrote, and had "smeared feces" on the walls of the hall. She eventually went to the hospital with a friend and the police, telling them she had been drinking at several places, including DU. She did not see how made her drinks at that fraternity, according to the report. At University Hospital, officers took samples of her urine to test for drug intoxication that night. She also told officers she did not remember whether or not she had sex that night. Officer Bryanne Gawlik also wrote that the woman did not see who made her drinks that day. Major Brian Weimer confirmed that investigation is still open. Ashley Martin, DU national director of communications, told ABC 17 News the fraternity has "worked tirelessly and collaboratively" with the school to investigate these reports, some of which they had just learned about. Martin pointed to an "internal membership review" at Mizzou two years ago that led to the removal of 90 of its 123 members.They also reorganized chapter policy, including alcohol and guest rules. "We will not condone or tolerate the type of behavior alleged in these incidents, and the chapter remains on a temporary suspension as our investigation continues," Martin said in an email. "We are committed to holding all members to our code of conduct, and our investigation will help us determine whether our Missouri Chapter can positively contribute to a safe, enriching and inclusive campus environment." While individual students could face expulsion for any violations of student conduct, Basi said the fraternity as a whole could see "withdrawal of recognition" by the university. That means the fraternity could not use school spaces for anything, and it would be unable to participate in events like Homecoming. A group that receives such a punishment could either appeal, or reapply for recognition, depending on the punishment laid out by the Office of Student Conduct. ||||| Close Get email notifications on Alan Burdziak daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. Whenever Alan Burdziak posts new content, you'll get an email delivered to your inbox with a link. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.

– A University of Missouri fraternity with a track record of problem behavior has been accused of telling new members to drug women and sexually assault them as part of their initiation, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, multiple people informed the school in August that members of Delta Upsilon had given new members three pills each and told them to drug woman and have sex with them as the final step of initiation. Justin Kirk, executive director of Delta Upsilon, calls the allegations "deeply concerning" but notes there have been no claims of sexual assault brought against the frat. But in September, an 18-year-old girl was hospitalized after being possibly drugged, ABC 17 reports. She was found naked from the waist down and smearing feces on a wall after drinking at Delta Upsilon. She didn't see who was making her drinks and didn't remember if she had sex that night. This is just one in a string of problems at Delta Upsilon—which was temporarily suspended last month by both its national organization and the University of Missouri—including underage drinking, physical abuse, at least one assault, and a "racial incident." In September, frat members reportedly yelled racist and sexist slurs at black female students. Members also reportedly forced drunk pledges to fight each other. In one incident of underage drinking last year at Delta Upsilon, a woman had to be hospitalized. In 2014, the frat removed 90 of its 132 members and hired a live-in graduate student as well as an off-duty police officer to keep an eye on things. Multiple school investigations into Delta Upsilon are ongoing.

'Put 'em in a coffin' prank damages Houston BMW The latest bizarre internet "meme" to take off has made a splash on the web – and a giant dent in the hood of a Houston man's BMW. According to KPRC-TV, teens trying to emulate the popular "Put 'Em in a Coffin" videos left a crater in the hood of Houston resident James McHugh's white BMW, as well as his wife's car. The damage has left McHugh with a $4,000 repair bill. "Put 'Em in a Coffin" videos started popping up online in May after a member of the rap group ThotBoyz posted a video of himself flopping back first across the hood of a car with his arms crossed in front of him like a body in a coffin. The original Vine video was viewed more than 3 million times (see above). Soon, copycat videos started making their way around the internet, with teens flopping on cars, fast food counters, cafeteria tables, classroom desks and elsewhere. For more stupid games kids play, check out the slideshow above. ||||| KIDS DO? [NO AUDIO] PUT THEM IN THE COFFIN. PUT HIM IN THE KEVIN. PUT HIM IN A KOCH. PUT HIM IN A COFFIN. Reporter: IT'S THE VERY LATEST SOCIAL MEDIA-DRIVEN DEINSTRUCTIVE ATTENTION-GETTING PRANK TO HIT THE INTERNET. YOU CAN FIND IT ALL OVER YOUTUBE. IT'S CALLED PUT 'EM IN A COFFIN. PUT THEM IN A KEVIN. Reporter: AND IT'S ALL ABOUT -- COFFIN. Reporter: AND IT'S ALL ABOUT DANGEROUS TEENAGERS FILMING THEMSELVES DOING A BACKWARD DIVE. WHAT KIND OF DAMAGE DID THEY DO? SOMEBODY ELSE OBVIOUSLY JUMPED ON TO THE HOOD AND SO THE WHOLE HOOD IS NOW CAVED IN. Reporter: 28-YEAR-OLD JAMES McCUE HAD BOTH THE HOOD OF HIS WHITE BMW AND THE HOOD OF HIS WIFE'S CAR SMASHED IN. HE SAYS BY ONE OF THESE COFFIN CREWS. HIS HOME SECURITY SYSTEM HE SAYS CAPTURED THIS VIDEO OF A GROUP OF SEVEN YOUNG MEN WALKING UP TO HIS CAR LAST FRIDAY NIGHT ON PLAZA DEL SOL PARK. ANY IDEA WHAT ALL THIS IS GOING TO COST KNEW DAMAGES? THEY SAID ABOUT $4,000 FOR BOTH OF THEM, JUST BASED ON PICTURES. PUT THEM IN A COFFIN. ? Reporter: YES, KIDS ARE CALLING IT A GAME. JAMES CALLS IT A RIDICULOUS SENSELESS, INFURIATING CRIME. IT'S GOING TO COST HIM THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. THAT'S PRETTY FRUSTRATING, YOU KNOW. YOU WORK HARD AND TO HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY WASHED AWAY IN -- YOU KNOW, FOR 10 SECONDS OF LAUGHS, THAT'S PRETTY FRUSTRATING. Reporter: NOW, YOU SAW FROM THE VIDEO, THIS DOESN'T INVOLVE JUST TEENAGERS JUMPING ON THE CARS. THEY'RE JUMPING ON TO STORE DISPLAYS, THEY'RE JUMPING ON TO TRASH BINS OR EVEN JUMPING ON EACH OTHER. THIS IS ALL PART OF THIS NEW GAME. AGAIN, JAMES SAYS ALL OF THIS SHOULD COST HIM AROUND $4,000. HOUSTON - Teenagers are throwing themselves on cars and property and recording it in a new trend spreading around the web. One Houston man was left with a big bill after several teens damaged his car. James McHugh's BMW has part of its hood smashed in as the result of teenagers engaging in a practical joke popping up on YouTube and social media. "Put 'em in a coffin" is the latest social media-driven attention-getting prank where teens basically do a backward dive onto the hood of a car. "They jumped on the hood and now the whole hood is caved in," McHugh said. McHugh, 28, had both the hood of his white BMW and the hood his wife's car dented. He says his home security camera captured video of a group of seven young men walking up to his car last Friday on Plaza del Sol Park. McHugh says the damage is going to cost him about $4,000. "You work hard, and then to have that much money washed away for 10 seconds of laughter," he said. "It's very frustrating."

– The latest prank that all the kids are into is a little more destructive than the toilet paper of yesteryear: Called "Put 'em in a coffin" and based on a Vine video from May that's gone viral, it involves throwing yourself back-first onto the tops of cars (and grocery displays, and classroom desks, and one another, etc.). And for at least one Houston man and his wife, the damage is into the thousands. Last Friday, James McHugh, 28, found both his BMW and his wife's car seriously dented across the hoods, reports KPRC-TV, and a home security camera caught grainy footage of seven young men approaching his property. He says it'll cost about $4,000 for the repairs. "You work hard, and then to have that much money washed away for 10 seconds of laughter—it's very frustrating," McHugh says. People have been posting videos on YouTube, Vine, and other social media sites since rapper VonMar of the group ThotBoyz posted the original back in May, reports the Houston Chronicle. Since then, his video has been viewed more than 3 million times on Vine. As for McHugh, there's no word yet on whether his own security footage will help identify the vandals. (This high school prank resulted in 62 arrests.)

Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox was announced to be Madame Tussauds’ first transgender wax figure. Cox’s likeness will be housed in San Francisco’s museum in Fisherman’s Wharf and unveiled to coincide with the timing of the city’s Pride Festival. “I am so deeply honored to have been asked to be part of the Madame Tussauds legacy,” Cox said in a statement. “When I think about being who I am, a black trans woman from a working class background raised in Mobile, Alabama, this honor feels even more improbable and extraordinary. I hope that this will be a source of inspiration for everyone who encounters it to believe that their dreams matter and are possible.” Cox’s figure will be unveiled on June 26 at a press conference ahead of Pride, which begins the following day. ||||| SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 (UPI) -- Laverne Cox will be immortalized by Madame Tussauds. The 31-year-old actress is the first transgender person to be chosen for the honor by the wax museum. Cox will unveil her statue at the San Francisco location ahead of the city's 45th annual Pride Celebration & Parade on June 26. "I am so deeply honored to have been asked to be part of the Madame Tussauds legacy," the star said in a statement. "I hope that this will be a source of inspiration for everyone who encounters it to believe that their dreams matter and are possible." "Madame Tussauds is proud to recognize Laverne Cox's achievements," spokeswoman Beth Schnitzer said on behalf of the museum. "[The choice reflects] the San Francisco Pride 2015 theme of equality without exception and [underpins] Madame Tussauds' tradition of celebrating and reflecting contemporary society." Cox is best known for portraying Sophia Burset on Netflix series Orange is the New Black, which will return for a third season June 12. She is the first transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy in an acting category, and to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Cox is an active voice in the transgender community, and shared her support for Caitlyn Jenner after learning of the reality star's transition in May. The 65-year-old Olympic medalist revealed her new name and look in Vanity Fair last week after confirming she is transgender in April.

– Madame Tussauds will have its first transgender wax figure in place by the end of the month, with Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox getting the honor. The 31-year-old pronounced herself "deeply honored," reports Entertainment Weekly. "When I think about being who I am, a black trans woman from a working class background raised in Mobile, Alabama, this honor feels even more improbable and extraordinary." It will be unveiled June 26 in the San Francisco museum, coinciding with the city's Pride festival. Orange, meanwhile, is back for a new season on Netflix Friday, notes UPI.

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| By contrast, local members of the Texas Legislature (whom fourth-graders learn about) got a perfect score, as did Barbara Jordan, Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin and Henry B. González. President Donald Trump isn't included in the list by name, but students are required to learn about Texans who have been president, governor and mayor. Earlier this year, the work group split up and each subgroup took a set of figures to grade using the rubric, said the two teachers, who both said they wanted to keep politics out of the decisions. "There were hundreds of people" kids had to learn about, Misty Matthews, a teacher in Round Rock, told The News. "Our task was to simplify. ... We tried to make it as objective as possible." Jana Poth added that the work group did "not want to offend anyone" with its choices. "But there's too many [figures]," she said. Third-graders, for example, should learn about three dozen figures. Fourth-graders have 70 required or recommended historical figures to learn, and in eighth grade, when students take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness social studies test, there are 50 people on the list. Neither Poth nor Matthews said she was in the small group that made the decisions about Clinton and Keller. In a note next to the deletion from the third-grade social studies curriculum in which Keller was included in a lesson about "the characteristics of good citizenship," the work group wrote, "Helen Keller does not best represent the concept of citizenship. Military and first responders are best represented." There was no comment next to the recommendation to remove Clinton. Students in that grade are still required to learn about former President Bill Clinton's impeachment. Slavery, eugenics and Alamo heroes: What made the cut? Each year, the board discusses and debates new classroom standards for Texas' 5.4 million schoolchildren. Its members, currently five Democrats and 10 Republicans, are elected to four-year terms and represent specific geographic areas. The board's process has always garnered attention — and often controversy. Five years ago, members clashed over whether science books should have to teach an alternative to evolution. In 2014, math standards were revised, drawing criticism from parents and teachers. And earlier this year, a new Mexican-American studies course was the subject of the latest culture war. Many of the work group's recommendations that were rejected by the board dealt with descriptions of the nation's "Judeo-Christian" heritage. Texas Values, a conservative Christian political advocacy group, sent representatives before the board this week to speak out against removing the descriptions. On Friday, they applauded the board's decision to keep them. "In Texas, you don't mess with the Alamo and you don't mess with our Christian heritage. We applaud the majority of the State Board of Education for doing the right thing by restoring our foundational rights and history," Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz said in a statement. "We are prepared to fight to protect these standards all the way to the end." Others criticized the board's vote. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Chris Turner urged boadmembers to add Clinton and Keller back into the curriculum. "If Helen Keller was an important historical figure when I was in school (and she was), then she still is today," tweeted Turner, D-Grand Prairie. "Clinton is the 1st and only woman to be the presidential nominee of a major party in U.S. history. Enough said." Here are some of the changes the board approved Friday: Replace San Jacinto Day with Constitution Day in a section on "the origins of customs, holidays, and celebrations of the community, state, and nation" (the Battle of San Jacinto is taught in fourth-grade social studies and high school U.S. history). Remove Helen Keller from section on "citizenship."

– The Texas Board of Education says it's trying to "streamline" the social studies curriculum in its public schools, and one way it plans on doing so is by getting rid of two big names from the required learning plan. The Dallas Morning News reports that on Friday, the board held a preliminary vote and decided to nix Hillary Clinton from high school history class. As the first woman to nab a major political party's presidential nomination, Clinton appeared alongside Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O'Connor, among others, in a "citizenship" section of the curriculum in which students were tasked to "evaluate the contributions of significant political and social leaders in the United States." A work group made its recommendations to the board based on a rubric it created on how "essential" it was to learn about certain historical figures. Also cut, but from the elementary school curriculum: Helen Keller. "Helen Keller does not best represent the concept of citizenship," the group wrote. "Military and first responders are best represented." By the group's gauge, Clinton received just 5 points out of 20; Keller got 7. Some wonder how much time will really be saved by nixing these notable figures. "It won't take that long to teach about either woman. they happen to be part of history," tweeted pundit Greta Van Susteren. The work group estimates cutting Clinton will save about 30 minutes of teaching time, while yanking Keller will free up 40. What the BOE voted to keep in the state curriculum: references to "Judeo-Christian values" and "a requirement that students explain how the 'Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict' in the Middle East," per the Morning News. These decisions aren't set in stone: There's still a chance for the BOE to make changes before a final November vote.

Brad Pitt Further Clarifies Jen Aniston Remarks The night was devoted to unveiling his latest movie, the based-on-fact baseball movie Moneyball, but Brad Pitt still found a moment to clarify comments he made last week regarding his marriage to Jennifer Aniston "That was never my intention for it to be spun that way," he said of those who interpreted his remarks to be critical of his former mate. "People read things into it that just weren't there."At the Oakland Coliseum, where the movie premiered and much of Moneyball takes place, Pitt, 47, said the role of Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane offered him a unique behind-the-scenes perspective of America's favorite pastime. (The film is based on nonfiction author Michael Lewis's Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.)"Getting into the Oakland Coliseum and being inside the baseball world is something you just don't get to do every day," he said. "When you are a spectator, you are left behind the gate, so to speak. So getting inside was a real privilege."But while Pitt, 47, never played baseball himself, it's likely he'll one day be watching son Maddox swing for the fences."My son is a big baseball fan," he said. " We went to a Yankees game and we were sitting next to the dugout. [Derek] Jeter offered him a cracked bat, and he said, 'It's broken!' " ||||| Although Brad Pitt has "Moneyball," one of his most-buzzed about films in recent memory set to release, comments he made to Parade magazine involving his ex Jennifer Aniston remain top of mind. Pitt spoke to Matt Lauer in an interview to air Thursday on TODAY, and clarified some of those remarks, saying that his point was lost in the controversy. "I don't know what was pieced together or put together. All I know is that my point was, the best thing I'd done as a father is be sure that my kids have a good mother," Pitt said. "That's all I was, or am, trying to say. It has no reference to the past. And I think it's a shame that I can't say something nice about Angie without Jen being drug in. You know, she doesn't deserve it." Pitt told Lauer that although he chooses to "live outside all that," i.e., the rumors that constantly swirl around his relationships with current partner Angelina Jolie or Aniston, he had to attempt to clarify what he meant to say. "I don't want them to say anything bad like that about Jen. She's a dear friend of mine," he said, adding that Aniston did not reach out to him after the Parade quotes were published. But back to the driving force behind Pitt's interview: "Moneyball." Although there's already Oscar talk surrounding the baseball pic, Pitt says he's distancing himself from that for now. "It remains a great piece of material for me that I got to take on. And, we're all -- it's too early to talk about all that other stuff," Pitt told Lauer. "It's all good fun if your number comes up, and it's even more fun when your friend's number comes up." Tune in Thursday for the complete interview on TODAY. Related content: ||||| Whatddya know? The Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston bash-fest plot thickens. The latest piece of succulent gossip to drip from the ripe, fruit-bearing tree? It's two-fold, actually. One part says that Jennifer Aniston's team "went ballistic" when they got wind of Pitt's asinine comments; the other part says that Pitt's asinine comments actually came from a place of jealousy. As in Brad, although blissfully in love with Angelina Jolie, is actually jealous that Jennifer's so in love. Hmm ... did Jennifer's team actually go ballistic? And are they the savviest people in the whole wide world, spinning the jealousy angle? Or is it true, Brad really is jealous? Of course, no one will ever know for sure, as, well, everything in Hollywood needs to be taken with a heaping spoonful of salt, but it does make for an interesting discussion. Shall we? First, let's start with the deets. Apparently after the rude comments Pitt made to Parade magazine -- and Team Aniston's going ballistic -- they reached out to Brad's camp and "read him the riot act." Then, a short while later, Brad gave his jank explanation, saying that what he said was taken out of context, Jennifer's a wonderful woman, blah blah blah yawn lies. Now here comes the interesting part. That same source who leaked this information to the press is saying that the real reason for Pitt's comments is because he's jealous of Justin Theroux. Hmph. Here's what I believe. Well, a little of all of it, actually. I don't doubt for a second that Jen's team went bonkers after getting wind of the news -- and that's natural; their job is to protect her. I also believe that they "read him the riot act," which, in turn, made him apologize, which, in turn, makes him an even bigger jerk since everything he said after the fact was disingenuous poppycock. I also kind of believe that he is, in fact, a little bit jealous that Jen's really happy with Justin. That's natural, too. They were married, after all, and human beings will be human beings. Where this whole "jealousy" thing is coming from, though? Eh, not really going to chalk that one up as a fact. In other words, I certainly don't think Brad ever overtly expressed anything like that. I think it's just something Jennifer Aniston's "people" are saying to make him look bad. And it's kind of genius. 'Cause it's totally working. What do you believe? Image via chris_natt/Flickr ||||| Cover Story: Jen Aniston's Team "Went Ballistic" After Brad Pitt Insult Brad Pitt made a big-time boo-boo. He's garnering Oscar buzz for his role in Moneyball, but Angelina Jolie's man sparked a public relations catastrophe last week -- all for a Parade interview in which he casually slammed his five-year marriage to Jennifer Aniston, which ended in 2005. PHOTOS: Brad and Jen, the way they were (In the interview released Sept. 15, Pitt, 47, sniffed that he "wasn't living an interesting life" before Jolie, and that he was "trying to pretend my marriage was something that it wasn't.") And, yes, his 42-year-old ex-wife got wind of the catty comment. "She was annoyed," a pal close to the Horrible Bosses actress tells the new Us Weekly, out now. "She thought it was rude and inappropriate." Team Aniston -- her agent and publicists -- "went ballistic," a Pitt insider reveals, and angrily reached out to Pitt's camp. PHOTOS: When exes attack "They got his team involved and Brad was read the riot act -- the only way you can read the riot act to Brad Pitt," the source says. Within 24 hours, Pitt had surprisingly released a statement lamenting that his words were misinterpreted, and that his former love "is an incredibly giving, loving and hilarious woman." PHOTOS: Justin Theroux, Angelina Jolie -- separated at birth? Still, the Pitt source says, "no one believes his words were taken out of context -- he said what he said. I do hear that he's remorseful." And although Pitt is clearly blissed out with Jolie, 36, and their six kids, "We think he's jealous she's in love," the source says. PHOTOS: Jen's hottest bikini shots Indeed, Aniston hasn't let her ex's harsh words get in the way of her hot romance with Justin Theroux, with whom she's now spending time with in NYC. "Justin's The One!" an Aniston pal says. For much more on Pitt and Aniston's unexpected new war -- and how Pitt and Jolie "make fun of" her -- pick up the new Us Weekly, out now!

– Brad Pitt is trying to promote Moneyball, his film coming out tomorrow, but everyone keeps insisting on asking him about his Jennifer Aniston non-slam from last week. The whole thing was made into something it wasn’t by the tabloid press, Pitt tells Matt Lauer in a Today interview this morning (watch at left). “My point was, the best thing I'd done as a father is be sure that my kids have a good mother,” he says. “That's all I was, or am, trying to say. It has no reference to the past. And I think it's a shame that I can't say something nice about Angie without Jen being drug in. You know, she doesn't deserve it.” He also calls Aniston “good people,” a “valuable person,” and a “dear friend." Earlier this week, he had already clarified his comments to People, saying it “was never my intention for it to be spun” as a diss. “People read things into it that just weren't there." An Aniston friend tells Us that Jen was “annoyed” by Pitt’s comments and found them “rude and inappropriate,” and a Pitt source says her team “went ballistic” and called Pitt to “read [him] the riot act” before he released his first clarification. But another Jen source tells E! that story “is complete crap,” and that “Jennifer does not want to continue any of this nonsense." Click for more on Pitt’s Today interview, or check out one take on why Pitt’s apology is “totally bogus.”

If True, Building Set For Demolition Could Be Manhattan's Oldest October 15, 2013 5:39 PM Preservationist Adam Woodward discovered a cellar that he believes could be the foundation of the Revolutionary War-era Bull’s Head Tavern. (credit: Adam Woodward) NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A preservationist says he has found evidence that a Manhattan building is the former site of an 18th-century tavern where George Washington is believed to have enjoyed a celebratory drink during the American Revolution. If it is indeed the home of the legendary watering hole, the discovery could mean that the building that is perhaps Manhattan’s oldest is slated to demolished. “After the English had marched up the Bowery and out of the city (in 1783), George Washington and Governor (George) Clinton stopped at the Bull’s Head (tavern),” preservationist Adam Woodward told WCBS 880’s Alex Silverman. play pause Preservationist Believes He's Found Tavern Where George Washington Visited WCBS 880's Alex Silverman... The building at 50 Bowery, which has had many faces since, is being prepared for demolition so a hotel can be built at the site. Legend had it that “the Bull’s Head’s structure, cellar, bones” were still inside, Woodward said. He decided to poke around and, in the basement, Woodward found what he believes are Colonial-era, hand-hewn and hand-planed joists and foundation walls. “Found myself in what I am pretty certain is the 1750s historic tavern,” he said. Woodward said he felt compelled to investigate in the building, which once housed a chain drugstore and the Atlantic Garden beer garden, because time was running out. “I just realized that it would be the last chance to solve one of the great mysteries of New York City history,” he said. “It was pretty incredible walking back in time 250 years.” Historian and author David Freeland told Silverman that the find “would make it very likely the oldest building remaining in Manhattan.” That has Woodward hoping city officials will act quickly to preserve the site. “What an incredible opportunity that the city suddenly has for this thing to re-emerge,” he said. You May Also Be Interested In These Stories ||||| Photo Maybe George Washington slept there, or maybe he only watered his horse and ordered stronger stuff for himself. Either way, David Freeland sounded excited as he crossed the threshold where a famous Colonial-era tavern, the Bull’s Head, once welcomed thirsty out-of-towners. “There are treasures inside,” said Mr. Freeland, an author and a historian who researched the site for a book about a beer garden that later occupied the tavern’s place on the Bowery. Photo But all he saw was debris from the building’s most recent life, as a chain drugstore with a Chinese restaurant upstairs. He did not reach the treasures that thrilled local-history aficionados over the weekend — namely, some old-looking joists and foundation walls in the basement — because the steps were blocked by rubble. The site is to be cleared for a hotel. The joists were discovered by a photographer and preservationist, Adam Woodward, who suspects that structural elements of the Colonial-era tavern were used in the construction of the much larger beer hall, the Atlantic Garden. It reigned as “one of the show places of New York” from 1858 on, The New York Times said when it finally shut down in 1911. But what about the tavern where Washington established his temporary headquarters in November 1783 as the British withdrew? “The whole issue of whether the Bull’s Head was buried inside the Atlantic Garden was one of the great mysteries of New York,” Mr. Woodward said. Until, apparently, the other day, when he got a look inside. He saw iron work from the 19th century and I-beams from later on. And then he saw a stairway to the basement, and headed down. “At one point there was a distinct change in the building material, from cinder block to a brick-and-stone foundation wall,” he said. “I followed that wall and found myself at the front of the building, under the sidewalk at the Bowery, and looked up and saw what looked to me like 18th-century hand-hewn and hand-planed joists and beams with extremely wide floorboards right above them.” He said, “I was thinking, I am standing in the cellar of the Bull’s Head.” The Bull’s Head opened around 1750 on the fringe of what was a still-young city concentrated below the Bowery. Washington and his troops marched down the Bowery and stopped there in 1783 before making “their official entrance into the city proper,” said Kerri Culhane, a historian who wrote the application that won the Bowery a place on the National Register of Historic Places. The neighborhood “was a butchers’ district in the 18th century and the 19th century,” Ms. Culhane said. “People drove livestock down from the hinterland and the slaughterhouse was behind the Bowery. That’s where the trading took place.” It was also a home to the ancestors of future V.I.P.’s. “The Astors started out as butchers,” she said, but began snapping up land. They even owned the Bull’s Head site. But the tavern closed. Mr. Freeland wrote that the building became a store that sold stoves until the Atlantic Garden opened as a beer garden. It was a popular gathering place for German immigrants in its early days, and in the 1870s and 1880s, the Atlantic Garden was raided repeatedly for selling beer on Sundays, when the city’s excise laws appeared to forbid that. Mr. Freeland noted that the laws did not mention beer, only “intoxicating liquors or wines.” The Atlantic Garden’s owner got off after one raid because the judge sampled the beer the police had seized and complained it was so watered down that “a man might drink by the gallon without getting drunk.” Later still, the Atlantic Garden became “a place where Tin Pan Alley songwriters would go to plug their songs,” Mr. Freeland said. One tune that apparently got its start there in the 1890s was “Daisy Bell,” the song that turned the phrase “bicycle built for two” into a catchphrase. Mr. Woodward said he hoped the demolition for the hotel could be delayed long enough for “a proper archaeological exploration.” (Calls to the owner were not returned on Monday.) “I can’t think of another lot in Manhattan that has a more important history,” Mr. Woodward said, “and the fact that it might be intact, a couple of feet under the building, is an incredible opportunity to get on archaeological record.” ||||| Elected officials and the Landmarks Preservation Commission are both doing their best to launch a thorough investigation of what may very well be the famed 18th century saloon the Bull's Head Tavern, but their options are limited. Photographer Adam Woodward first documented the ancient, hand-planed wood joists and stone foundation in the basement of 50 Bowery last week, and both he and historian David Freeland are convinced that these are the remnants of Bull's Head. If so, this would be the oldest surviving structure in Manhattan by far, and as Woodward puts it, an "incredible opportunity to get on archaeological record." But the fate of the site depends on the current owner, Alex Chu, who is demolishing the site to make way for a new hotel. The Landmarks Commission tells The Lo-Down that they're "aware of the situation," but "cannot require the owner to conduct archaeology." The best they can do is give the owner a list of good archaeologists. Some elected officials are also getting involved, but again they've got to take it up with Chu first. · Landmarks Commission: No Jurisdiction to Mandate Historic Site Survey at 50 Bowery [TLD] · All Coverage of Bull's Head Tavern [~ENY~]

– In 1783, after the British soldiers left New York City, George Washington is believed to have stopped for a celebratory drink at the Bull's Head tavern. Now a preservationist thinks he's found the historic site—and if he's right, it could be the oldest building in Manhattan. Adam Woodward had heard that the building at 50 Bowery, currently scheduled to be demolished so a hotel can go up, might have "the Bull's Head's structure, cellar, bones," he tells CBS New York. So he searched the basement, and "found myself in what I am pretty certain is the 1750s historic tavern," he says. Specifically, he found what he thinks are hand-hewn and hand-planed joists and foundation walls from the Colonial era. Since that time, the building has housed a drugstore, a Chinese restaurant, and a beer garden, among other things. Now he's hoping city officials will preserve the site, saying, "What an incredible opportunity that the city suddenly has for this thing to re-emerge." A historian is also convinced it is indeed the old tavern, and investigations have been launched by elected officials and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Eater NY reports. But ultimately, the commission says, it "cannot require the owner to conduct archaeology," so a lot depends on him. He's apparently not talking yet; the New York Times couldn't get hold of him.

A 1,112-y tree-ring record of moisture shows that in opposition to conventional wisdom, the climate during the rise of the 13 th -century Mongol Empire was a period of persistent moisture, unprecedented in the last 1,000 y. This 15-y episode of persistent moisture likely led to a period of high grassland productivity, contributing fuel to the Mongol Empire. We also present evidence that anthropogenic warming exacerbated the 21st-century drought in central Mongolia. These results indicate that ecosystems and societies in semiarid regions can be significantly affected by unusual climatic events at the decadal time scale. Abstract Although many studies have associated the demise of complex societies with deteriorating climate, few have investigated the connection between an ameliorating environment, surplus resources, energy, and the rise of empires. The 13th-century Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in world history. Although drought has been proposed as one factor that spurred these conquests, no high-resolution moisture data are available during the rapid development of the Mongol Empire. Here we present a 1,112-y tree-ring reconstruction of warm-season water balance derived from Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica) trees in central Mongolia. Our reconstruction accounts for 56% of the variability in the regional water balance and is significantly correlated with steppe productivity across central Mongolia. In combination with a gridded temperature reconstruction, our results indicate that the regional climate during the conquests of Chinggis Khan’s (Genghis Khan’s) 13th-century Mongol Empire was warm and persistently wet. This period, characterized by 15 consecutive years of above-average moisture in central Mongolia and coinciding with the rise of Chinggis Khan, is unprecedented over the last 1,112 y. We propose that these climate conditions promoted high grassland productivity and favored the formation of Mongol political and military power. Tree-ring and meteorological data also suggest that the early 21st-century drought in central Mongolia was the hottest drought in the last 1,112 y, consistent with projections of warming over Inner Asia. Future warming may overwhelm increases in precipitation leading to similar heat droughts, with potentially severe consequences for modern Mongolia. ||||| Image copyright National Palace Museum Image caption Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol empire, which historians say was the largest contiguous empire in history The rise of Genghis Khan and the huge Mongol Empire in the early 13th Century may have been helped by good weather, scientists suggest. American researchers studying the rings of ancient trees in central Mongolia have discovered that his rise coincided with the mildest, wettest weather in more than 1,000 years. Grass grew at a rapid rate, providing fodder for his war horses. Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes to invade and rule a vast area. It covered modern-day Korea, China, Russia, eastern Europe, India and south-east Asia. Charismatic leader The research shows that the years before Genghis Khan's rule were characterised by severe drought from 1180 to 1190, the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said. Image caption Present-day Mongolians regard Genghis Khan as the founding father of their country But as the empire expanded from from 1211 to 1225, Mongolia saw an unusual spell of regular rainfall and mild temperatures. "The transition from extreme drought to extreme moisture right then strongly suggests that climate played a role in human events," study co-author and West Virginia University tree-ring scientist Amy Hessl told the AFP news agency. "It wasn't the only thing, but it must have created the ideal conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge out of the chaos, develop an army and concentrate power. "Where it's arid, unusual moisture creates unusual plant productivity, and that translates into horsepower. Genghis was literally able to ride that wave." Allied to the good weather, Genghis Khan was able to unite disparate tribes into an efficient military unit that rapidly conquered its neighbours. For the oldest samples, Ms Hessl and lead author Neil Pederson, a tree-ring scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, concentrated on an unusual group of stunted Siberian pines found while researching wildfires in Mongolia. The trees were growing from cracks in an old solid-rock lava flow in the Khangai Mountains, according to a statement from Columbia. Trees living in such conditions grow more slowly and are particularly sensitive to weather changes - and as a result provide an abundance of data to study, scientists say. Some of the trees had lived for more than 1,100 years. the experts say, and one piece of wood they found had rings going back to about 650 BC.

– Scientists who study tree rings for a living have discovered that central Mongolia had an usually warm and wet spell from 1211 to 1225. This would probably remain of note only in tree-ring-studying circles if not for one other thing: Those dates happen to coincide with the rise of none other than Genghis Khan, reports the BBC. And the researchers say it's no coincidence. They argue in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the change in weather from severe drought conditions prior to 1211 to fertile ones afterward directly helped Khan build his empire. Think rain—specifically the lush grasslands it created to fuel to Khan's horse-driven army, along with the livestock his soldiers needed to survive. "It wasn't the only thing, but it must have created the ideal conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge out of the chaos, develop an army, and concentrate power," West Virginia University researcher Amy Hessl tells National Geographic. "Where it's arid, unusual moisture creates unusual plant productivity, and that translates into horsepower—literally. Genghis was able to ride that wave." By the time he died in 1227, Khan's empire spanned modern-day Korea, China, Russia, eastern Europe, India, and southeast Asia. Researchers stumbled onto his meteorological good luck while studying ancient Siberian pine trees. (Click to read about the 800-year search for Genghis Khan's tomb.)

In this photo released by the Israeli Defense Ministry, released Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, second right, walks with his father Noam, right, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second left, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, left, at the Tel Nof Air base in southern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011. / HO, Ariel Hermoni,AP Photo/ Defense Ministry In this photo released by the Israeli Defense Ministry, released Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, second right, walks with his father Noam, right, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, second left, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, left, at the Tel Nof Air base in southern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011. / HO, Ariel Hermoni,AP Photo/ Defense Ministry Updated 2:45 PM EST MITZPE HILA, Israel - The father of the Israeli soldier freed in a swap for Palestinian prisoners said his son will need time to recover from psychological and physical wounds after five years in Hamas captivity. But he said the family of Gilad Schalit hopes the young man will lead a normal life. Noam Schalit spoke to reporters outside the family home in the Israeli town of Mitzpe Hila. Schalit said his son is still suffering from shrapnel wounds he suffered during his 2006 abduction by Hamas militants. He said his son is struggling with all the attention after spending the last few years in "isolation." "Naturally he can't be exposed to so many people because he was in isolation so many days and years and couldn't interact with people in his language, and all he could do was communicate with his abductors and guards," Noam Schalit said. He said his son hadn't said much about his captivity, only that his treatment was poor at the beginning but improved in recent years. Looking thin, weary and dazed, Gilad Schalit had earlier emerged from more than five years in Hamas captivity on Tuesday, surrounded by Gaza militants with black face masks and green headbands who handed him over to Egyptian mediators in an exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. After a medical examination, Israeli officials said Schalit showed signs of malnutrition. Mass rallies celebrate freed Palestinians Netanyahu issues warning to freed Palestinians Before he was flown to an Israel air base where he reunited with his parents, Schalit spoke to Egyptian TV in an interview Israeli officials later called "shocking." The gaunt, sallow and uncomfortable looking Schalit appeared to struggle to speak at times, and his breathing was noticeably labored as he awkwardly answered questions. Still he said he felt good and was "very excited" to be going free. But the circumstances of his release, along with the awkward TV interview, raised questions about the conditions the 25-year-old had endured. After a tumultuous day that included a reception with the prime minister and an emotional reunion with his family, Schalit touched down in his hometown of Mitzpe Hila in northern Israel late Tuesday on board a military helicopter. Thousands of people jammed the streets and stood on rooftops to celebrate Schalit's return. The ecstatic crowd sang songs, waved Israeli flags, popped champagne bottles, embraced and cheered him on. A smiling Schalit -- the first Israeli soldier returned home alive in 26 years -- briefly waved to the crowd before ducking into his family's house. Police blocked access to the street to give the family privacy. The White House welcomed the release of Schalit. Spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama has long called for Schalit's release and is pleased that he's been reunited with this family. Schalit, who had not been seen in public since his capture, was whisked across Gaza's border into Egypt early in the morning by armed Hamas militants in an SUV, setting the swap into motion. Wearing a black baseball hat and gray shirt, he was seen for the first time emerging from a pickup truck and turned over to Egyptian mediators by a gang of top Hamas militants, some with their faces covered in black masks with the green headband of the Qassam brigades -- Hamas' military wing. Among those around Schalit in those first moments was Ahmed Jabari, the shadowy head of Hamas' militant wing, one of Israel's most wanted militants. Schalit, still escorted by Hamas gunmen, was then taken to a border crossing, where an Egyptian TV crew waited to interview him before he was finally sent into Israel. Stumbling over his words, he spoke in the interview of missing his family and friends, said he feared he would remain in captivity "many more years" and worried that the deal might fall through after learning about it last week. "Of course I missed my family. I missed friends, meeting people to talk to people, and not to sit all day, to do the same things," he said. In one picture taken of the interview, a Hamas gunman with black face mask and green headband of the Hamas military brigade could be seen lurking in the background. Israeli officials reacted angrily to the interview, saying it was inappropriate to force Schalit to answer questions in such difficult circumstances. But the interviewer, Shahira Amin, said he had not been coerced. Later, video released by the Israeli military showed the weak Schalit being helped into an army jeep after crossing the border into Israel, and walking gingerly down some steps as he exited a military caravan after changing into a fresh army uniform. Military officials said a physical exam had found him to be in "good" condition, though he showed signs of malnutrition and lack of exposure to the sun. Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit (C) and his father Noam (L) arrive near their home town following Gilad's release after over five years of captivity by Gaza-based militant groups, following a landmark deal with Hamas, on October 18, 2011. / Getty Images Schalit was then flown to an air base in central Israel, where he was hugged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, and reunited with his family. Video footage showed Schalit's father, Noam, hugging and kissing his son, before saying "come see your mother" and leading him away for a family reunion. Speaking afterward, Netanyahu said he understood the pain of Israeli families who lost relatives in Palestinian violence, but that Israel's ethos of doing everything possible to bring its soldiers home safely forced him to act. He also issued a staunch warning to the freed militants. "We will continue to fight terror and every released terrorist who returns to terror will be held accountable," he said. More than 450 Palestinians were transferred from Israeli prisons to the West Bank and Gaza, where massive celebratory rallies festooned with green Hamas flags were held. In Gaza City, tens of thousands crammed into an open lot where a huge stage was set up, decorated with a mural depicting Schalit's capture in a June 2006 raid on an army base near the Gaza border. The crowd exhorted militants to seize more soldiers for future swaps. The rest of the prisoners -- about 550 more -- are to be released in a second phase in two months. no previous page next ||||| The question of whether the exchange would lead to more abductions of Israeli soldiers hung in the air on Tuesday for both Israelis and Palestinians. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The armed wing of Hamas made clear that for it the conflict with Israel was hardly over. “We will not give up until prisons are shut down,” a masked spokesman for the group, who identified himself as Abu Obaida, said in a televised statement in Gaza. “A chapter has ended but there are other chapters.” Abu Obaida also said that Hamas treated Sergeant Shalit “according to the Islamic morals,” while Israel “deliberately dealt with our prisoners with torture, compulsion and revenge.” One of the freed prisoners, Yehya Sinwar, a co-founder of an early security wing of Hamas, was defiant. He promised “to work hard to free all prisoners, especially those who serve high sentences, whatever the price was.” Photo Another was Wafa al-Bass, who has been in prison since 2005 when she used the chance for treatment at an Israeli hospital as a pretext to bring a suicide belt through the Erez crossing — trying to explode it when caught. Upon arrival in Gaza, she said that Palestinians should “take another Shalit” every year until all the remaining 5,000 Palestinians prisoners in Israeli jails went free. Israel displayed a calibrated mix of relieved celebration and acknowledgment — both of the pain and death that the released Palestinians caused many families and of the risk that their release may pose to Israelis. Several petitions to block or alter the exchange had been rejected by Israel’s high court on Monday. The scene at the courtroom was emotionally charged, with some families who lost members in terrorist attacks assailing the Shalit family and the government. Mr. Netanyahu wrote letters to the bereaved families saying he understood their heartache. “I know that the price is very heavy for you,” he wrote. “I understand the difficulty to countenance that the evil people who perpetrated the appalling crimes against your loved ones will not pay the full price that they deserve. During these moments I hope that you will find solace that I and the entire nation of Israel embrace you and share your pain.” On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu, in his remarks at Tel Nof base, said Israel would continue to fight terrorism and warned that any released prisoner who returned to violence was “taking his life into his hands.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The deal is likely to strengthen Hamas within Palestinian politics, adding to the difficulties for President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and efforts to revive the peace process with Israel. Egypt, a key broker of the deal, will likely gain, as will Turkey, a supporter of Hamas. Hamas may even move its headquarters to Egypt from the Syrian capital, Damascus, where President Bashar al-Assad is facing strong popular revolt. And if the prisoner exchange emboldens Hamas to carry out more actions against Israel, that would likely empower the hawkish right in Israel. Sergeant Shalit, the first captive Israeli soldier returned home alive in 26 years, was unexpectedly interviewed on Egyptian television before being handed over to Israel. Sitting in a blue checked shirt and speaking Hebrew, he smiled and reflected on the questions before answering them. Asked if he had feared that he would never get out, Sergeant Shalit answered that he worried it would take many more years although in the past month he had suspected a deal was in the works. He said he was told of his release a week ago. Photo Asked what he missed most in prison, he replied, “My family and my friends and seeing and talking with people. The worst was having to do the same thing every day over and over.” He was told that Israel still had thousands of prisoners and was asked if he would like them released. “I will be happy for them to be released if they don’t return to fight us,” he said. “I very much hope that this deal will advance peace.” Rafah, the most isolated part of Gaza, was where the Shalit saga began and ended. In June 2006, Hamas and two other militant factions raided an Israeli military post at Kerem Shalom via a long tunnel beneath the Rafah sands under the border, capturing the young soldier, then a corporal. He was never seen in public during his captivity. On Tuesday, Egyptian television showed Sergeant Shalit being rushed through the Rafah crossing terminal from Gaza into Egypt accompanied by Hamas and Egyptian officials. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Soon afterward, an Israeli military statement said: “Gilad Shalit crossed the border into Israel, ending over five years in captivity.” Sergeant Shalit — who was promoted twice while in captivity — was brought to the Tel Nof base after his medical check, which took longer than expected, raising concern about his health. At the base where he reunited with his family and met Mr. Netanyahu, he also met Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the military chief of staff. After a more extensive medical examination and some time with the officials and his family, Sergeant Shalit and his family were transported by helicopter to their home in northern Israel. Reporters and onlookers were barred from his neighborhood to give the family a measure of privacy. Chiefs of major Israeli news organizations vowed to respect the restrictions. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, told Al Jazeera television that the first step of the agreement was complete. Speaking from the Rafah crossing point, Mr. Barhoum warned Israel against “maneuvering or playing with any article of the agreement.” He added that Egyptian mediators had assured Hamas that they would not allow Israel to violate the agreement. Both Israel and the divided Palestinian leadership — Fatah runs the West Bank while Hamas controls the Gaza Strip — had made elaborate preparations for the handover of the prisoners, many of them held far longer than Sergeant Shalit. Video Throngs of excited Palestinians woke to mosque loudspeakers crying “God is great!” and “Victory to God!” as they awaited the arrival of buses carrying the 477 prisoners. Another 550 are expected to be released in two months. Two female prisoners due to be sent to Gaza were demanding instead to be sent to Egypt. Turkey was expecting to receive about 10 prisoners, according to its foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. The Anatolian news agency reported that around 40 Palestinians would be relocated to Turkey, Syria and Egypt and Turkey. Shortly after dawn, the Hamas-run government took busloads of journalists in a tightly controlled media operation to the Rafah crossing Armed members of Hamas’s militant wing, the Qassam Brigades, lined the main highway to the crossing, wearing black and green bandanas and balaclavas. Some carried Kalashnikov assault rifles while others bore rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the guards — at some points posted every 15 feet — had apparently been deployed to forestall disruptions. A celebratory rally was planned at Brigades Park in one of Gaza’s largest open spaces. There a stage had been erected for the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, to address the crowd and welcome the returnees. The buses carrying the prisoners drove through a huge crowd of Hamas police and a drum band and honor guard. The men disembarked one by one and ran a gantlet of people who cheered them, held up camera phones, saluted and patted them on the back. Some were given sashes with the Palestinian colors. All along Salahuddin Street, the main north-south road that runs the length of the Gaza Strip, Hamas activists had attached Islamist banners to streetlights on Monday. Dozens of the released prisoners attended a reception given by President Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank. Although the exchange was negotiated by his rivals in Hamas, the release of prisoners was a source of national celebration. School was canceled so that children could participate. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We thank God that you returned safe and sound to your families, your brothers, and your homeland after this forced disappearance because you struggled for your homeland,” Mr. Abbas told the freed prisoners and well wishers. “We pray that God enables us to see the rest of our sisters and brothers freed in this yard. Your sacrifices, and efforts and work were not in vain. You worked and struggled and sacrificed. You will see the results of your sacrifices in the independent Palestinian state.” At Rafah, a woman arrived with a photograph of her son, who was killed in the raid that captured Gilad Shalit. He was Mohammad Azmi Firwana, 23, from Khan Younis. “I have come to greet the prisoners because they are all like my sons and daughters,” said the woman, Ahlam Firwana. “We have not got Mohammad’s body back yet. We have heard nothing.” ||||| Gilad Schalit's father says his son has begun a long healing process; says Gilad suffered from a lack of sunlight, interaction with others. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad Noam Schalit said that Gilad's homecoming from captivity in the Gaza Strip was like experiencing the rebirth of his son, speaking with reporters outside the family home in Mitzpe Hila on Tuesday, and shared some details of his captivity. "Gilad is happy to be at home," Noam said, explaining that the public exposure was difficult for his son. Schalit stressed that Gilad was suffering after being "in isolation so many days and years." "He had no connection with his people, with his own his language." Noam said the family felt as if it "was experiencing the rebirth of their son," and thanked supporters for their efforts in the long campaign to bring his son home. Noam said he hoped his son's healing process would be as quick as possible, after more than five years in captivity. Gilad said that at the beginning he was held in difficult conditions, Noam recounted, adding that his conditions later improved. Noam said that Gilad feels well, but suffers some health problems due to his lengthy solitary confinement and maltreatment, including problems related to a lack of sunlight. He is being treated by the IDF, Noam said. "We, of course, thank the public that supported us all this way and all the activists who were with us this whole time, accompanying us until the very last step," Noam said. "We want to thank IDF officials, and the government, who helped complete this operation." Schalit said that he appreciated the hard work of "the government, prime minister, and defense minister." ||||| TEL NOF AIR BASE, Israel (AP) – Looking thin, weary and dazed, an Israeli soldier returned home Tuesday from more than five years of captivity in the Gaza Strip in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners whose joyful families greeted them with massive celebrations. Sgt. Gilad Shalit, in a brief but controversial interview with Egyptian TV before being transferred to Israel, said he was "very excited to taste freedom and had missed his family and friends." He said he feared he would remain in captivity "many more years" and worried since being told of the deal last week that last-minute hitches might cause it to collapse. "Of course I missed my family. I missed friends, meeting people to talk to people, and not to sit all day, to do the same things," he said. SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS In a press conference at the Tel Nof airbase in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted Gilad Shalit with "Shalom Gilad. Welcome back to Israel. How good to have you back home," the BBC reports. Shalit was later flown to his home in Mitzpe Hila, in the north of Israel, where thousands were waiting to welcome him. According to the BBC, Shalit told his grandfather that he is really tired and wants to sleep. Shalit's father told reporters outside the family's home in Mitzpe Hila that his son will need time to recover from psychological and physical wounds after five years in Hamas captivity. Shalit's father also said his son is still suffering from shrapnel wounds he suffered during his 2006 abduction by Hamas militants. He says his son is struggling with all the attention after spending the last few years in "isolation." In Gaza, tens of thousands of flag-waving Palestinians celebrated the homecoming Tuesday of hundreds of prisoners swapped for an Israeli soldier, as political leaders jockeyed for credit for the most significant prisoner release by Israel in nearly three decades. In Gaza City, a large crowd crammed into a sandy lot, where a huge stage was set up, decorated with a mural depicting Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit's capture in a June 2006 at an army base near the Gaza border. Thousands hoisted green Hamas flags. Many in the crowd were overcome with joy. Azhar Abu Jawad, 30, celebrated the return of a brother who had been sentenced to life for killing an Israeli in 1992. She said she last saw him eight years ago, before Israel banned visits by Gazans. "My happiness is indescribable," she said. "We'll get him a bride and everything. I just spoke to him. He's so happy. This is a reminder, God doesn't forget anyone." In the West Bank, released prisoners were taken to the grave of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas greeted them, and several thousand people filled the courtyard outside his headquarters to celebrate. Abbas addressed jubilant crowds from his compound, Ma'an News Agency reports: "We pray that God enables us to see the rest of our sisters and brothers freed in this yard. Your sacrifices, and efforts and work were not in vain. You worked and struggled and sacrificed. You will see the results of your sacrifices in the independent Palestinian state." Israeli Sgt. Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in June 2006 by Hamas militants and held captive in the Gaza strip. The most recent video message shows the soldier in September 2009, saying he had been "waiting and yearning" a long time for his release, according to a BBC translation. Last week, Israel and the Palestinian organization Hamas reached an agreement on Shalit's release, exchanging over a thousand Palestinian prisoners for the soldier. Israel released 477 Palestinian prisoners on Tuesday. 550 other Palestinians will be freed in the next two months. The majority of those released today will return to the Gaza Strip. Some 30 of them will be deported to countries such as Jordan, Turkey and Qatar. About a hundred will go to the West Bank. The deal is perceived as an important political victory for Hamas, despite the fact that the organization was unable to include the release of prominent Palestinian Marwan Barghouti in the negotiations. The deal that arranged for Shalit's release sparked controversy in Israel, as the list of Palestinians who will be released includes some convicted of killing Israelis in the past. According to the Associated Press, the deal was the most lopsided prisoner swap in Israel's history. Families of terror victims petitioned against the deal before the Israeli High Court on Monday, hoping to delay the prisoners' swap. Last week, 27-year-old Shvuel Schijvenschuurder, whose parents and siblings were killed in a suicide bombing, defaced a memorial for former president Rabin to protest the agreement. However, according to Haaretz, Israeli president Shimon Peres said in a meeting with the victims' families on Monday that he understood the families' pain, yet that it was his duty to save Shalit's life. In his press conference at Tel Nof airbase, Netanyahu reiterated this sentiment. "Today is a happy day and a sad day for Israel. When I returned to the position of Prime Minister in 2009, I had a important task waiting for me: to return our soldier Gilad Shalit home," he said, according to Haaretz. Netanyahu also issued a staunch warning to the freed Palestinian militants. "We will continue to fight terror and every released terrorist who returns to terror will be held accountable," he said. Those concerns were underscored with comments by one of the freed prisoners, Hamas militant leader Yehia Sinwar, who called on the movement to kidnap more soldiers. In the video above, watch footage of Gilad Shalit posted by the Israel Defense Forces. Below, Netanyahu's address:

– Israel soldier Gilad Shalit is home and “happy,” but he’s still recovering from five years’ imprisonment, his father says. “In isolation,” Gilad “had no connection with his people, with his own language,” Noam Shalit told members of the media, including the Jerusalem Post. Lack of sunlight and mistreatment in captivity have contributed to health problems, Shalit said, though he noted that prison conditions improved over the years. Before Gilad’s release, he was interviewed by Egyptian TV, and speaking seemed difficult for him, CBS News notes. Media attention has been difficult for Gilad, his father said. “Naturally he can't be exposed to so many people because he was in isolation so many days and years.” Noam Shalit thanked supporters and acknowledged “the price we are paying for Gilad’s release,” an exchange of some 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. One freed prisoner said Palestinians should kidnap "another Shalit" every year until all Palestinians are released, notes the New York Times. For video of the release and homecoming, click here.

Thursday, May 14 2015, 07:36 PM EDT Landscape owner defends employee charged with killing ducklings ||||| Like any normal day, Boyd Jentzsch and his son, Kai, put out food for the family of Muscovy ducks that lived outside their Wellington home. But on May 2 as they watched out their patio door at the mother duck and her 11 ducklings peck at their food, a lawn worker plotted a different fate for the birds, according to an arrest report. He gunned his riding lawnmower toward the ducks, which were perched on the grass near a tree in the family's yard, and swerved his blades over them, the report stated. Inside, the family of three watched and screamed at what they had just witnessed. "We were horrified," said Jentzsch. "I couldn't believe it was happening. It was totally disgusting." The landscaper, Jason Falbo, 24, of Royal Palm Beach, was arrested Wednesday and charged with nine counts of animal cruelty by Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Jason Scott Falbo II, 24, of Royal Palm Beach, pleaded guilty to nine felony cruelty to animals charges in Palm Beach County court, concerning the May 2 deaths of ducklings in Wellington. Jason Scott Falbo II, 24, of Royal Palm Beach, pleaded guilty to nine felony cruelty to animals charges in Palm Beach County court, concerning the May 2 deaths of ducklings in Wellington. (The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office) (The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office) Officers were called to the family's home at about 2:30 p.m. the day the ducks died. As Jentzsch's wife, Laura Gontchar recalls, the day started beautifully. She said Kai, 7, loves animals and grew especially fond of the ducks that would waddle up into the family's backyard. Gontchar said the ducklings weren't more than a few days old. Meanwhile, Falbo's lawnmower hummed along the side of the house and Kai watched as his beloved ducks ate their lunch. Then, the lawmower appeared. Jentzsch said the blades on the mower were up, lifted above the grass. In an instant the blades went down and a flurry of feathers, bones and small beaks went flying into the air. The three bolted out the door; first Gontchar, then Kai, then Jentzsch. "What are you doing?" Jentzsch remembers screaming, as Kai and Gontchar became more and more hysterical. "These are our friends. These are our babies, we love to feed them!" Falbo sat on his mower, backed up and ran over the ducklings again, the family said. This time he smiled and laughed. Four ducklings managed to get away, hobbling with their mother into the lake, but two drowned. Out of the 11 ducklings, only two survived, according to the report. "What are you doing to my ducks?" Kai wailed, his father remembers. "Why are you laughing?" The boy, in tears, ran from the backyard and back into his house. Jentzsch and his wife were stunned. "It was one of the most emotional things I've ever seen," Jentzsch said. "It was just — wow." Jentzsch called the police and the county's Animal Care and Control, who found the remains of the birds. When the officials were gone, the family sat inside and cried. Kai grabbed his iPad and started watching cartoons. "I don't want to hear about it," he told his dad. "I'm too upset." Nearly two weeks later, the family is still reeling from witnessing the traumatic event. On his way to the school bus stop Thursday, Kai asked Jentzsch whether he thought more ducks would come and if they could take care of them so he could remember what it felt like. It's hard for the couple to explain to Kai why this happened, they said. "He asked me, 'Is everybody out there like this?'" Jentzsch said. Officers said they were able to make contact with Falbo about the attack a few hours after the incident occurred. They wrote in the report that the nine baby ducks lost their lives "cruelly and viciously with extreme intent." Records show Falbo was arrested in March for domestic battery and aggravated child abuse after he was accused of beating his girlfriend. He is being held at the Palm Beach County Jail on $27,000 bail on the animal cruelty charges. Gontchar said she is still emotional from what she and her family saw, but she and her husband are trying to use this experience as an opportunity to teach their son about the value of life and how cruel some people can be. "A person came and ruined the lives of those birds," she said. "We talked about it, going through death and questions like that, and how things need to be done when he sees these cruel things happen. I think that was a very powerful and hurtful experience for him to see." kjacobson@sunsentinel.com, 561-243-6547 or Twitter @katejacobson

– A Florida landscaper faces prison time after he mowed down a family of ducklings. Jason Falbo, 24, claims it was unintentional, but a couple and their young son who watched the scene unfold aren't buying it, and, so far, neither are police, reports the Palm Beach Post. It happened in Wellington, as Falbo mowed the back yard of Boyd Jentzsch and Laura Gontchar. The husband and wife had put food out for the ducklings and were watching with their 7-year-old son as the mother duck led them out of a lake to feed. That's when they say Falbo deliberately headed for the ducks on his riding mower, ran them over, and hit them again in reverse. Seven died instantly, and two more made it back to the water and drowned, say police. Only the mother and two ducklings survived. "We were horrified," Jentzsch tells the Sun Sentinel. He, his wife, and their son, Kai, ran after Falbo as he neared the ducks screaming for him to stop, to no avail. The family says Falbo was laughing on his second pass over the ducks. They booted him from the property and called animal control, and Falbo was charged with nine counts of animal cruelty. His employer tells CBS12 that Falbo is "kind-hearted" and wouldn't have run over the ducks on purpose. He says Falbo didn't see them in the tall grass and backed up after the first pass only because he wanted to avoid hitting more ducks in front of him. He is being held on $27,000 bond. (Elsewhere in Florida, a woman faces animal cruelty charges over goldfish.)

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named David M. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right, as his nominee for ambassador to Israel, elevating a campaign adviser who has questioned the need for a two-state solution and has likened left-leaning Jews in America to the Jews who aided the Nazis in the Holocaust. Mr. Friedman, whose outspoken views stand in stark contrast to decades of American policy toward Israel, did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach. In a statement from the Trump transition team announcing his nomination, he said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.” Through decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, the embassy has been in Tel Aviv, as the State Department insists that the status of Jerusalem — which both Israel and the Palestinians see as their rightful capital — can be determined only through negotiations as part of an overall peace deal. Mr. Friedman, who has no diplomatic experience, has said that he does not believe it would be illegal for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank and he supports building new settlements there, which Washington has long condemned as illegitimate and an obstacle to peace. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate attorney David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel, selecting an envoy who supports Israeli settlements and other changes to U.S. policies in the region. Friedman said he looked forward to carrying out his duties from "the U.S. embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem," even though the embassy is in Tel Aviv. Like some of his predecessors, Trump has vowed to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, a politically charged act that would anger Palestinians who want east Jerusalem as part of their sovereign territory. The move would also distance the U.S. from most of the international community, including its closest allies in Western Europe and the Arab world. The president-elect said Friedman would "maintain the special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel. But the announcement sparked anger from liberal Jewish groups. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, called nominating Friedman "reckless," citing his support for settlements and his questioning of a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The statement doesn't detail how Friedman could work in Jerusalem. However, Trump advisers have insisted in recent days that the president-elect will follow through on his call for moving the embassy. "He has made that promise," Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters Thursday. "I can guarantee you, just generally, he's a man who is going to accomplish many things very quickly." One option Trump allies have discussed would involve Friedman, if confirmed by the Senate, working out of an existing U.S. consulate in Jerusalem. According to a person who has discussed the plan with Trump advisers, the administration would essentially deem the facility the American embassy by virtue of the ambassador working there. It's unclear how far those discussions have gotten or whether Trump himself has been briefed on the proposal. Trump's transition team did not respond to questions about the matter. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush promised to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but backed away from the idea once in office. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in a move that is not internationally recognized. It claims the entire city as its capital. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem, home to key Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, as the capital of their future state. Virtually all embassies to Israel are located in or around Tel Aviv. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told The Associated Press this week that he has been in touch with Trump's staff about the embassy issue. Barkat said his conversations have led him to believe that Trump is serious about making the move. _ Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

– Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate attorney David Friedman as US ambassador to Israel, selecting an envoy who supports Israeli settlements and other changes to US policies in the region, reports the AP. Friedman says he looks forward to carrying out his duties from "the US embassy in Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem," even though the embassy is in Tel Aviv. Like some of his predecessors, Trump has vowed to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, a politically charged act that would anger Palestinians who want east Jerusalem as part of their sovereign territory. The move would also distance the US from most of the international community, including its closest allies in Western Europe and the Arab world. The president-elect says Friedman will "maintain the special relationship" between the US and Israel. But the announcement sparked anger from liberal Jewish groups, with the president of J Street calling Friedman's nomination "reckless," citing his support for settlements and his questioning of a two-state solution with the Palestinians. (Friedman has previously likened liberal Jews in the US to Jews who aided the Nazis during World War II, notes the New York Times.) The statement doesn't detail how Friedman could work in Jerusalem. One option would involve Friedman, if confirmed by the Senate, working out of an existing US consulate in Jerusalem. The administration would essentially deem the facility the American embassy by virtue of the ambassador working there.