A new book about a young, female Army officer who routinely accompanied Ranger units on raids in Afghanistan is shining a light on a select group of American women who have made history in modern warfare.
"Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield" focuses on 1st Lt. Ashley White, an incredibly physically fit soldier who joined the Special Operations Command Cultural Support Team effort in 2010.
The pilot program was designed to train women and have them serve with Army Ranger and other special operations direct-action units so they could gather battlefield intelligence by talking to Afghan women in situations where male soldiers had been unsuccessful.
White, a North Carolina National Guard member, served in the special unit until 2011 when she was killed during a night raid on a compound in Afghanistan where a Taliban weapons maker was known to live.
White died along with the senior Ranger leader, Sgt. 1st Class Kris Domeij, and Pfc. Christopher Horns when another Ranger triggered a daisy-chained improvised explosive device, detonating a series of devastating explosions, according to the book.
"Ashley's War," by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, was released as the U.S. military is immersed in an effort to open direct-combat jobs such as infantry and special operations to females for the first time.
Eight female soldiers are currently participating in the first co-ed class of Ranger School, a punishing, two-month long infantry course designed to push candidates to their physical and mental limits.
White's exploits, and those of her female teammates, earned the CST program the respect of key leaders in the special operations community, according to the book.
Col. Mark O'Donnell, who then served as the deputy commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, spoke at a memorial service for White.
"He read the 'The Man in the Arena' from President Theodore Roosevelt. The speech, given April 1910, focused on the importance to democracy of holding all citizens to the highest standards. The colonel noted that though this person described in the narrative was male, the words did indeed describe this female fallen soldier.
'On countless operations in which elite special operations strike forces targeted senior Taliban and al-Qaeda safe havens in which contact was likely, Ashley was frequently the only female on the objective,' O'Donnell finished. 'Think about this and the great courage that that took.
'She is the man in the Arena,' he said. 'Ashley, rest in peace. Know that your Ranger brothers have mourned and now continue the fight, a fight that you have committed your life to.'"
Lemmon is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2004, she left ABC News after 10 years to earn an MBA at Harvard University. At the same time, Lemmon traveled to Afghanistan many times between 2005 and 2010, writing about women entrepreneurs, which resulted in her first, best-selling book "The dressmaker of Khair Khana."
"I went to Afghanistan and just got hooked on covering that conflict and the stories we had not heard out of Afghanistan," Lemmon told Military.com.
"So I knew the war, and I was always fascinated about the fact that we didn't know enough about the people who were fighting this war on America's behalf."
In 2011, she was hosting an event for the Council on Foreign Relations when a former female Marine mentioned White and how she died on a raid with a Ranger unit.
"That set off a set of questions that led to two years' reporting, probably thousands and thousands of miles of travel, hundreds of hours of interviews and conversations with people including Adm. Eric Olson and Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- everybody from that level to very ground level -- Rangers who had done 10, 11, 12 deployments on America's behalf," Lemmon said.
"A lot of people who didn't want to have any kind of credit ... nobody wanted any credit; they only wanted to make sure their teammate was not forgotten.
"It just left you with so many questions because she wasn't there with the North Carolina National Guard and the combat ban for women was still in place, so how was she there? Who was she there with? What makes a person want to volunteer for that kind of a pilot program? And why don't we as Americans know that?"
It wasn't until 2013 when then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted the military's ban on women serving in direct-combat units. The services have until 2016 to make this happen.
Lemmon said she hadn't realized the depth of this story until she talked to White's mother.
"She said to me, 'These are incredible women and incredible friends that Ashley served with and maybe part of her legacy is introducing them to America,' " Lemmon said. "And having people understand who they are, not to give credit or glory but to give them acknowledgment to their service and their sacrifice."
Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, then commander of Army Special Operations Command, did when he presented a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Combat Action Badge to Ashley's family at her memorial service.
"It is important that we do recognize that what Ashley was doing is something that is a very small number, a very select group of women have raised their arms for," Lemmon quoted Mulholland in the book.
"They come from all across the United States, and they come to Fort Bragg because they have heard this call for women willing to do something unique in our country's history to serve alongside the Rangers, alongside our Special Forces that are the best warriors that our nation has.
"Make no mistake about it, these women are warriors; these are great women who have also provided enormous operational success to us on the battlefield by virtue of their being able to contact half of the population that we normally do not interact with.
"They absolutely have become part of our special operations family. They absolutely will write a new chapter in the role of women soldiers in the United States Army and our military and every single one of them have proven equal to the test."


Towards the end of 2013, we told you that a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite release date in 2014 was a real possibility and was one of the planned announcements at CES 2014. While we are yet to see an official announcement on the ‘Lite’ version just yet, it looks like it is coming soon since we now know what the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite US price will be.
If you thought the Nexus 7 2013 model was unbeatable value at $230, you may be blown away by what Samsung may be preparing to unleash in the next few months. The Galaxy Tab 3 Lite is definitely coming and whispers from Taiwan suggest that the US price is going to be just $130 on the market.
That is a seriously low price you have to agree, especially with Samsung planning to upgrade some of the features from the standard Galaxy Tab 3. Although not set in stone yet, the 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 Lite specs may include a 1.2Ghz Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 3 megapixel rear camera and a bump up to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Remember that the standard Galaxy Tab 3 only ships with Android 4.1 out of the box. It has to be said that the specs are not too desirable though, given that the $230 Nexus 7 offers a quad-core setup in comparison.
Then again, price is everything to consumers at the moment so a $100 is still going to be a major tempation we feel. Hopefully Samsung will end the rumors and make this tablet official by the end of the week.
Let us know if you think a $100 price difference is enough to consider the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite, despite the Nexus 7 coming with better hardware specs.


SPRINT legend Usain Bolt has put his money where his mouth is. And he wants others to follow suit.
After the Usain Bolt Foundation yesterday committed $1 million toward Jamaica's participation at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in the United Arab Emirates in March, he is encouraging other sporting figures and corporate Jamaica to lend support.
Speaking at the Special Olympics Jamaica (SOJ) offices at Independence Park, Bolt, 32, also announced that at his request, sports goods company Puma, which has a long-standing endorsement deal with the retired Olympian, has agreed to outfit the Jamaica team at the Games.
“I always try my best to play my part because I know how hard it is to not have it. When we got the request to give back to Special Olympics Jamaica it was an easy decision for the foundation to make,” Bolt said during his short speech.
“I urge the private sector to also come on board and give what you can because it something good — for special needs.
“We know as athletes what we go through, especially coming up — not having [running] spikes and the struggles we have to go through. I urge all athletes who can give back to give back, they really need it, and it's [for] Special Olympics so it's a big thing,” Bolt told reporters during an interview after the press conference.
“Me and Puma are like family…when we found out they didn't have any sponsor I was kind of shocked. We called Puma and they said 'not a problem', so they're sending the gear and shoes and spikes and everything so they can look like a proper Jamaica team,” the Jamaican icon continued.
Bolt's manager and friend Nugent Walker did not disclose the value of the Puma deal, but he told the Jamaica Observer that the SOJ entire contingent will be fully outfitted.
SOJ is set to send a 98-member delegation to the Games, which will include 73 athletes, 22 coaches, two officials and one medical staff.
The Jamaicans are set to compete in athletics, bocce, skating, swimming, unified badminton, unified basketball, unified football (men's and women's teams), and unified volleyball (men's and women's teams) at the 2019 Abu Dhabi Games.
The Jamaican team raked in 29 medals at the 2015 Summer Games in Los Angeles, United States. They were also a huge hit at respective Winter Games in South Korea in 2013 and in Austria in 2017.
Bolt has long been a supporter of the Special Olympics movement. As a youth phenom, he was guest speaker at the 2005 SOJ National Games.
Back in March 2015, as a global mega star, Bolt and former NBA star Rick Fox were special guest attendants at the opening of the SOJ multi-purpose court.
Bolt, widely regarded as the greatest sprinter of all time, called time on his athletic career at the end of the IAAF World Championships in 2017. He holds the world record in both the 100m (9.58 seconds) and 200m (19.19 seconds). The Trelawny native is an eight-time Olympic Games champion, and winner of 11 World Championships gold medals.
True to his relaxed and easygoing persona, he encouraged athletes to revel in the opportunity at making the country and their families proud while doing justice to their talent.
“To the athletes… enjoy the experience. I'm sure Abu Dhabi is going to be amazing… I know you guys are going to go there and do the best you can do. Just go out there and make yourself proud and make Jamaica proud;just enjoy it. I enjoyed competing when I did and I know you guys will enjoy it too,” Bolt said.


For all of the hype surrounding "Lob City" and the bevy of highlights Chris Paul and Blake Griffin have produced since joining forces in Los Angeles, playoff success hasn’t been a byproduct.
The Clippers are taking aggressive measures to go deeper in the postseason this year.
Danny Granger is likely to make his debut for Los Angeles on Saturday night as it tries to beat the visiting New Orleans Pelicans for the second time this week.
The Clippers (40-20) have been one of the NBA’s top regular-season teams after acquiring Paul prior to the 2011-12 season, ranking fifth with a 136-72 record since. However, they were swept out of the conference semifinals by San Antonio in 2012 and eliminated in the first round by Memphis last year.
Los Angeles appears to be all in to advance further this season. The Clippers signed Granger on Friday, two days after his contract was bought out by Philadelphia following his trade from Indiana. They also added Glen Davis on Monday, further bolstering their bench.
Granger ranked ninth in the league in scoring from 2008-09 through 2010-11, averaging 23.3 points. But plagued by tendinitis in his right knee, he’s scored 7.9 per game over only 34 contests for the Pacers over the last two seasons.
"I definitely have gotten healthy," Granger, who is averaging 22.0 points over his last 11 matchups with New Orleans while shooting 47.8 percent from 3-point range, told the Clippers’ website. "Now it was just a matter of getting my game back and getting my feel and I was on track. I’m still feeling good. So, I still feel like I have a lot to offer and I like the way I’m going."
Granger joins Davis, who had two points and two rebounds over 5:14 in Wednesday’s 101-93 victory over the Rockets. Griffin finished with 23 points and 16 rebounds and has averaged 28.6 points during an 18-game streak of scoring 20 or more.
Los Angeles, which dealt Houston its second loss in 12 games, has won six of its last eight.
"It means a lot," said Darren Collison, who tallied seven of his 19 points in the final 2:09. "We know Houston’s guys are relatively new to each other, but they have been playing well as of late. So this speaks volumes for us."
Second-leading scorer Jamal Crawford (19.0 ppg) left in the first half with a strained left calf and will be sidelined until next week.
New Orleans (23-35) has experienced worse luck with injury, announcing Friday that Jrue Holiday would miss the remainder of the season after undergoing surgery for a stress fracture in his right tibia. The Pelicans are 8-16 since losing Holiday, who averaged 14.3 points and a team-best 7.9 assists through 34 contests.
They’re currently stuck in a six-game skid, which included a 123-110 home loss to Los Angeles on Monday. It was also the Pelicans’ fifth straight defeat to the Clippers, who got seven 3-pointers from Crawford and 16 overall in the win.
New Orleans lost 116-104 at Phoenix on Friday despite a career high-tying 32 points from Anthony Davis. The second-year center was a game-time decision due to a sore left shoulder he sprained in Wednesday’s loss at Dallas.
"We just couldn’t get the stops, we just couldn’t get the ball," coach Monty Williams said after his team yielded 40 points to Phoenix’s Goran Dragic. "Dragic was in our paint all night long. He’s a really good player, but we could have done a better job."
Davis averaged 25.0 points and 11.5 rebounds in the first two meetings with the Clippers this season.
Paul is averaging 10.0 assists and 3.2 steals over nine career matchups with his former club.


Mini E (2008) The Mini E program marked the first time BMW offered an EV to the public. More than 600 hit the road in the United States and Europe in what was essentially a real-world EV R&D program for the technology. Based on the diminutive hatch that proved Americans would pay a premium for a plush compact car, BMW throttled that mindset by requiring early adopters to shell out $850 a month (which did include a charge station and insurance) for the privilege of driving this rolling testbed. But with a 35 kWh lithium-ion battery pack taking up all the trunk room, even the 200-hp electric motor was barely enough to motivate this 3,600-pound retromobile. Lithium-ion battery packs were finally implemented, boosting range and performance in the process, and special charging stations available to owners were able to top up the cells in around three hours to provide a theoretical range of 155 miles (real-world use was closer to 100 miles). The data it gleaned from these field trials began to prove the efficacy of EVs as day-to-day vehicles, and nearly all this tech made its way into the first BMW-badged EV.
BMW 325 Electric (1992-1997) BMW loved to put the always popular 3-Series under the knife to see what kind of crazy things it might come up with. And for the better part of the 1990s, engineers developed 25 experimental 3s to test a variety of electric drivetrain components with backing from the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology. Some electric 325s were fitted with sodium-nickel chloride batteries, while others used newly developed nickel-cadmium cells. Electric motor output shot up to as much as 45 kW (60 horsepower), quick charging batteries allowed drivers to get to 75 percent capacity in as little as 40 minutes, and engine and brake regeneration could boost range by up to 20 percent. Many of these modified 325s were employed both by BMW and government officials, and much of the technology filtered up to BMW's first commercially available EV.
BMW E1 (1991) If there's one car you can point to as the predecessor to the i3, it's the E1, BMW's first ground-up electric vehicle. Designed from the start as an EV, the E1 was designed to be a versatile and efficient city car, with a compact footprint, room for four people and their stuff and a range of around 100 miles in city driving. Thanks to an aluminum shell, recycled plastic body panels and an evolution of the NaS battery pack developed for the 325 ix electric, the E1 was a lightweight compared to other EVs. A second version was developed with a new "ZEBRA" battery using sodium-nickel chloride (NaNiCl2) for extended range, improved performance and better service life. And unlike other concepts from the era, the E1 was functional. So what happened, BMW?
BMW 325iX (1987) The relaunch of the Mini brand was BMW's first foray into front wheel drive (there's talk of a front-driven BMW coming, but try to forget about that for the moment), but BMW experimented with it in the late 1980s and, what's more, it was electric. The Germans took eight all-wheel-drive 325iX coupes and converted them to FWD, then gave them all battery packs developed by Asea Brown Boveri. The packs used maintenance-free sodium-sulphur (NaS) cells with three times the energy density of lead-acid batteries. They also were much lighter and dramatically smaller, allowing the minimal fleet of 325s to go 93 miles on to a charge. They were so good, in fact, that the German postal service used a touring model. The rest were handed to government workers. Lucky dogs.
BMW LS Electric (1975) Using the lessons learned from the 1602, BMW's boffins nabbed an LS bound for the crusher and fitted it with a new DC motor from Bosch and 10 Varta lead-acid batteries. This time, they had the smarts to equip it with a plug. The bad news: it took 14 hours to charge, saddled the car with an additional 700 pounds of batteries, was even slower to 31 than the 1620 and would go just 19 miles in city traffic. It was such a disaster that BMW didn't bother to include a picture in its EV retrospective.
BMW 1602 Electric (1972) Go read the late David E. Davis Jr.'s review of the original BMW 2002. It's okay, we'll wait. Done? Now you know why the 2002 remains an icon, and the car that put BMW on the map in the United States. Davis' piece in Car and Driver solidified the brand's reputation as the ultimate driving machine long before marketing flacks even dreamed up the tagline. The 2002 was countless forms of awesome. Now imagine it in electric form. Wait. Don't. BMW tried to do just that, developing the 1602 ("16" refers to the smaller displacement engine) Electric as a technological showpiece for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Too bad it was a complete dog. With a 32 kilowatt (42 horsepower) DC motor in place of the 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine, it was never gonna be quick. And like nearly every EV that's come down the pike in the past four decades, it was hampered by battery weight — 772 pounds of lead-acid cells, to be exact. This baby was all show and no go. It needed eight seconds to go from zero to 31 mph, and only got around 20 miles on a charge. However, the batteries were mounted on a tray in the engine bay, allowing them to be swapped out with ease (a good thing, since there was no way to plug in), and even in the early 70s, the electric motor doubled as a generator, regenerating power for the pack. We're scouring Craigslist now for a suitable donor to create our own neo-1602 Electric.
Never let it be said BMW cannot develop electric vehicles. The company may not like selling electric vehicles — both the Mini E and Active E were available only through wildly expensive leases — but it seems to like building them. It's been doing so for 40 years, after all. You probably didn't know that. It's not like BMW has made a big deal of cars that were nothing more than experiments. But now that BMW is on the cusp of launching the i3, its first electric vehicle under the new "i" brand, BMW is reminding folks that it's been churning out fully-functional EVs for years. Forty years, to be exact. The i3 is about a year from appearing in driveways, but that isn't keeping BMW from throwing open its archives and providing a glimpse at its electric lineage.
BMW Active E (2010) The Mini E begat the Active E, an electric version of the 1 Series coupe. It was OK, as EVs go, but it completely killed the infinitely fun, absurdly chuckable nature of the smallest Bimmer. Adding 800 pounds of batteries and electronics will do that. But with 125 kW (167 horsepower) and 184 pound-feet of torque, rear wheel drive, a perfect 50/50 weight distribution and a nine-second run to 60 mph, the Active E had a modicum of performance cred. It even had a range of 100 miles. BMW leased 1,000 of them in the United States and Europe, providing invaluable insights that will make the i3 that much better.


Egyptian police have exchanged fire with armed men as they search for six Pakistanis suspected of involvement in deadly bombings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Shaikh.
The Monday firefight with bedouin men erupted in the mountainous interior of the Sinai peninsula about 30km from the scene of Saturday's attacks on the coast, security officials said.
It came after police surrounded the nearby villages of Khurum and Rweissat in overnight raids, they said.
"Two Pakistanis had been staying there, and it is suspected that the bombs were assembled in this area," an intelligence source said.
Pictures of the six Pakistanis believed to have entered Egypt in early July were distributed to police stations in the Sharm al-Shaikh area after the attacks, which followed other bombings in Sinai resorts in October.
Their passports were found in an unspecified Sharm al-Shaikh hotel, police said, adding that one of them might have died in the deadly bombings, but stressing that the Pakistanis were not necessarily the bombers.
Pakistani authorities said they had yet to be approached by their Egyptian counterparts about the six suspects.
Pictures of more than 30 other suspects were also distributed, mostly Egyptians, as well as internationally wanted "terror" suspects.
At least 130 people have been arrested in a police dragnet as part of a search for the perpetrators of the attack on a hotel, a market and a parking lot that came after deadly bombings in London.
On Monday, the government also sacked the heads of security in North and South Sinai provinces - a sign of security failures that may have allowed the assault on one of Egypt's most closely guarded towns.
Hospital officials say the three bombings - Egypt's deadliest attacks - killed 88 people, while the health and tourism ministries have confirmed 64 dead.


Sunny. High 77F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph..


Latest top 500 ranking of the speedy machines includes old favorites like IBM's BlueGene/L, plus a few surprises.
It was November 2000 when the first supercomputer passed 4 teraflops, or 4 trillion calculations per second. Now, that's the minimum requirement to even show up on the latest version of a list of the 500 fastest machines.
Supercomputing, which pits the highest-end machines against challenges such as forecasting the global climate in coming decades or finding oil reservoirs underground, is a fast-changing field. The Top500 list, released twice annually at supercomputing conferences, has the most turnover compared with the preceding list yet, according to the researchers who compile it.
Many systems on the newest Top500 ranking, set to be released Wednesday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, weren't on the list at all when the last one was released in November 2006.
But one familiar supercomputer, IBM's BlueGene/L at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, again topped the Top500 List of Supercomputers with 131,072 processors, staying far ahead of its closest competitors by achieving speeds of 280.6 teraflops. The big change is Cray's Jaguar system, which leapfrogged from the No. 10 to the No. 2 position. The only two other systems to surpass 100 teraflops were also made by Cray: Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar, at 101.7 teraflops, and Sandia National Laboratory's Red Storm, at 101.4 teraflops.
The total performance of all 500 systems reached 4.92 petaflops, or 1,000 teraflops. The systems on the November list topped out at 3.54 petaflops, and the June 2006 compilation totaled 2.79 petaflops.
IBM dominated the list with 6 of the top 10 systems and 192 of the total 500, though Hewlett-Packard is actually the overall leader in terms of the percentage of systems. Forty percent, or 203 of 500, are powered by HP, but IBM's total teraflop sum is 2,060, almost double Hewlett-Packard's total of 1,202.
Coming in at No. 5, IBM's New York Blue at Stony Brook University is new to the list, as is IBM's similar Blue Gene system at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at No. 7. Dell's Abe PowerEdge 1955 server, at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications, made its at the No. 8 spot.
The main measurement used in compiling the list is the Linpack measurement, which puts each system through its paces by having to solve a dense system of linear equations. The Top500 acknowledges it isn't a complete test of system performance, but it's a way to test for performance on a similar problem across each system. The need for a more complete benchmarking system has been under discussion for several years.
Intel managed to increase its lead over Advanced Micro Devices in the number of systems using x86 processors. Just over half--52 percent--of the systems use Intel's x86 chips, up from 45.6 percent, while AMD's share shrunk from a 22.6 percent share to 21.2 percent. Intel's Itanium processors are beginning to move off the list, appearing in 28 of the 500 systems, down from last year's count of 35.
The most noticeable change in applications of supercomputing is the rise in the number of systems used in geophysics, which rose from 23 in November to 37 on the newest list.


Meet our February speaker, Dr. Bud Pierce, candidate for Governor of Oregon. Bud’s bio reads like an ad for commitment to God, Family, Country, and a career of service. Valedictorian in High School, Phi Beta Kappa in College Alpha Omega Alpha in Med School…while courting his bride…and being a Marine. Then, in 1994, Oregon pulled him north. Board certified in Internal Medicine, Oncology, and Hematology, Dr. Pierce practices in Salem, and teaches at OHSU in Portland and Western University of Health Sciences in Lebanon. And serves on boards at his church, as well.
Battling disease should prepare a person for battling other destructive adversaries, like excess government, bureaucratic bloat, regulatory sprawl, and out-of-control public payrolls.
So let’s hear a conservative doctor’s prescription for restoring Oregon’s health.
Seriously, Oregon needs fixing; on that we all agree. Let’s have a chat with a candidate who can do that.


As a long-time critic of the Bowl Championship Series system, this must be said. The BCS, in the final year of existence, will get it right this season. In one corner, undefeated Florida State. The Seminoles completed an undefeated regular season run through the ACC and finished it off with a dominating performance against undermanned Duke in the ACC Championship Game Saturday afternoon in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In the other corner, representing the seven-time BCS champion conference known to us all as the SEC, the Auburn Tigers. Despite the string of national success established by the SEC over the better part of the past decade, the pressure is on for Auburn to keep the streak alive. They will do so as an underdog, but perhaps they embrace that mentality and thrive when doubt is cast upon them. See Alabama and Missouri.
This year, the BCS got it right. Few will question if the best two teams are playing for the championship this season.
Florida State ripped through every opponent placed in front of them and had redshirt freshman quarterback Jameis Winston put together a near-certain Heisman Trophy season. When faced with even an ounce of adversity this season, Florida State responded in a big way. As the only undefeated team in the country and as a champion of one of the automatic qualifying conferences, nobody seems to have much of an issue with Florida State making a cross-country trip to Pasadena next month for the BCS Championship Game.
Auburn does not have many doubters either. Champions of the toughest conference in the country and slayers of the previously top-ranked and perceived team-to-beat Alabama, Auburn has emerged as the nation’s top one-loss team based on their body of work. Along the way, running back Tre Mason became an unstoppable force on the ground, as did Auburn’s entire running game. There had been some discussion about whether or not a one-loss SEC champion, be it Auburn or Missouri, should jump an undefeated Ohio State after Saturday’s championship games. Auburn has as strong an argument as any team could, but may still be thankful for Michigan State settling things for them.
Michigan State ends the season with just one loss (Notre Dame) after upsetting Ohio State and snapping the 24-game winning streak in the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis. Despite knocking off the nation’s second-ranked team and ending the year with an identical record to Auburn, nobody was considering Michigan State for a BCS title shot. Michigan State suffered the same problem Ohio State did in that the caliber of the Big Ten is not quite as shiny as it once was.
Maybe you are in the boat that feels Alabama is still one of the top two teams in the country. You may be right. After all, the only loss they suffered came from one of the top on-field miracles in college football history, on the road against a top five team. The two-time defending BCS champs had their chance though and were unable to take care of business, thus lost out on a chance to repeat as SEC champion.
Are the two best teams in the country right now scheduled to collide in Pasadena, California? It would be difficult to prove otherwise.


It was about 7:30 Thursday morning when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis decided he needed to see his Commander in Chief.
He was "livid" at the notion that the US was betraying an ally, two defense officials said. A military man of 40 years, Mattis felt President Donald Trump's stunning decision the previous day to pull US troops out of Syria undercut the cardinal rule of never leaving a friend on the battlefield.
The Turkish Defense Minister was already threatening to level a brutal assault on US-backed Kurdish allies and put them "in ditches" once the US pulled out. The remark set Mattis off. He had spent months trying to convince Trump that withdrawal was a bad idea and was now seeing early signs of what it could mean to US allies in the region.
A little past 3pm, Mattis was in the Oval Office, trying one last time to get Trump to change his mind about Syria. The meeting didn't last very long. The President refused to budge, and so Mattis made the only remaining choice he felt he had left— he pulled out a two-page letter he'd brought with him and resigned on the spot. Though he wouldn't be leaving immediately— Mattis will stay on until February— the decision was final.
By 3:27pm, the President was walking out of the West Wing and into the Eisenhower Executive Office building to celebrate the passage of the farm bill. Trump emerged on stage to the sound of his own voice at the 2005 Emmy's singing a rendition of Green Acres' theme song, all smiles. Meanwhile, Mattis headed back to the Pentagon, where he told his senior staff and the Joint Chiefs of his decision.
News of Mattis' resignation reverberated through Washington like a collective gut punch. The mood at the Pentagon was one of shock and dismay. On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers were stuck in the middle of a contentious budget battle they'd hoped to be done with, Republicans and Democrats alike reacted gloomily. Mattis was seen on both sides of the aisle as one of the last and most reassuring buffers to Trump's rash foreign policy decision-making.
For people who truly know Mattis, the news of his resignation likely did not come as a huge surprise. Abandoning the Kurds was his red line. Along with keeping troops in Syria, Mattis had been struggling to convince Trump to keep troops in Afghanistan, too. It became clear he had lost out on both fronts. Not long after Mattis resigned, word went out that Trump had ordered the military to start withdrawing roughly half of the 14,000 US troops there.
While the President's troop withdrawals provided the final impetus for Mattis to submit his resignation, his influence had been waning for months, a sharp break from the early days of the administration.
Back then, Mattis was a frequent lunch guest of the President's and Trump was enamored with the retired four-star general he viewed as straight out of "central casting": stoic, granite-faced, and endowed with a killer nickname: Mad Dog. Even though Mattis detests the moniker, Trump used it frequently to herald his choice. Mattis, a bachelor who served in the First Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq, has also been described as a "warrior monk," married to the Marines.
While Trump and Mattis butted heads, the President rarely assailed the retired-four star general with the same impatience and venom he leveled against other Cabinet officials during the first year-and-a-half of the administration.
"They certainly disagreed on things. But he was the only Cabinet official that the President had never yelled at or been visibly upset with," a former senior administration said.
But aides began to fear that Mattis' relationship with Trump would fray after the President ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster last March.
Mattis, Tillerson and McMaster -- along with outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly -- frequently joined forces in efforts to dissuade Trump from foreign policy decisions they considered rash, unwise or even dangerous. Together, they often slow-walked presidential orders that fit those descriptions or took turns making their case directly to Trump in an effort to change his mind.
With Tillerson and McMaster gone -- replaced by advisers more aligned with Trump's worldview -- Mattis increasingly found himself alone as the last bulwark against Trump's most impulsive decisions and, as he voiced his opposition, a more frequent target of the President's ire.
"We always suspected that Mattis wasn't going to last a very long time after McMaster left," a former senior administration official told CNN. "That meant that if Mattis is going to have to stand up for his policy beliefs, he's going to have to do it himself."
Over the past several months, Mattis's rapport with Trump slowly degraded. He ecame less visible in the Oval Office. And Trump grew more exasperated with Mattis' efforts to dissuade him from his isolationist tendencies.
Unlike other Cabinet officials who sought to ingratiate themselves with the President and defend him publicly, Mattis maintained an independent streak -- repeatedly rebuffing the White House's requests to appear on Sunday talk shows.
That refusal came down to what his aides describe as two of Mattis' most important characteristics.
"He is A, genetically incapable of lying and B, genetically incapable of disloyalty," one former Pentagon official said. "So if he is asked on a Sunday show about fill in the blank, he is not going to lie about what his opinion is. But he is also not going to be disloyal to the president."
He acquiesced once, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation in May after Trump personally asked him to, a former defense official said. On the program , asked what keeps him awake at night, Mattis famously replied, "Nothing. I keep other people awake at night."
It didn't take long for Trump to anger Mattis. During his first week in office, the President used a sacred hall in the Pentagon as the backdrop for one of his most controversial actions.
In a hall devoted to recipients of the Medal of Honor, Trump signed an executive order banning people from several Muslim majority countries from entering the US. Mattis was completely caught off guard, and he made no secret of his displeasure with West Wing officials.
"He was furious after that. Furious at the breakdown in process. And furious that it had been at the Hall of Heroes," a former Pentagon official said. "And that he had been used in the photo op and would be associated with something he had no role in developing."
Beyond guarding against some of Trump's most impulsive decisions, Mattis also sought to steer Trump onto a more traditional course of US foreign policy, a strategy that Trump began to bristle at over time.
According to one senior administration official, there were a string of decisions that Trump felt pressured into by Mattis, leaving the President feeling manipulated and regretful. That included forestalling his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, a move Mattis advised against; signing onto a NATO declaration at the end of the defense bloc's summit in July; and a steady increase in the number of US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Eight months before his resignation, Mattis managed to forestall the Syria troop withdrawal after the President announced during a rally in Ohio that US troops would soon be coming home.
Meeting later in the Situation Room , Trump told his military and national security advisers they had six months to wrap up the mission in Syria. Mattis and others warned that would not be sufficient, but the agreement at least bought US forces more time in Syria -- and gave Mattis more time to try and change Trump's mind.
It took 21 months for the relationship to fully unravel, a process that culminated in October, when Trump referred to Mattis as "sort of a Democrat," during an interview with 60 Minutes. Trump's decision to discard Mattis' advice over who to nominate as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs was also a blow. Mattis recommended Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. Trump instead choose Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. That dispute did not play out publicly, but Mattis found Trump's willingness to discard his advice insulting, according to a senior defense official with direct knowledge.
While Trump frequently undercut Tillerson as secretary of state, the President kept his disagreements with Mattis private. That changed this summer as the issue of suspending joint US-South Korea military exercises near the Korean peninsula spilled into public view. At a Pentagon briefing in late August, Mattis suggested the war games were back on the table, despite Trump's pledge during his Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un to put them on hold.
The next day, Trump took to Twitter to make clear who was calling the shots.
"The President believes that his relationship with Kim Jong Un is a very good and warm one, and there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint US-South Korea war games," Trump tweeted, issuing what he called a "statement from the White House."
Trump and Mattis clashed repeatedly over how best to approach the North Korean nuclear threat and over Trump's wavering commitment to the US's military presence in South Korea, which Trump found costly.
As Trump mulled the merits of launching a limited military strike against North Korea, he took the provocative step of ordering the evacuation of military families in South Korea -- a move Mattis and other top national security officials feared could send a signal that the US was on a war footing.
As McMaster directed his NSC staff to begin drafting the order, Mattis worked with White House chief of staff John Kelly to dissuade the President, ultimately convincing him to issue a scaled-down directive barring military personnel in South Korea from bringing their families during future tours.
That memo was also never implemented -- one of many presidential directives Mattis slow-walked with the hope that Trump would forget about them and move on.
From the very beginning, it didn't seem that Trump ever saw much beyond Mattis' military uniform, often mistaking his reputation for toughness as an indication he was onboard with Trump's America First agenda. That was particularly obvious the day Trump introduced Mattis as his defense secretary during a victory rally with his supporters in December 2016. As he began ticking down Mattis' resume, Trump appeared struck by a sudden realization.
"Jim is a Marine Corps four-star general, the former commander of US Central Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander..." he said, pausing in thought before offering the rest of Mattis' former title, his voice now conveying a sense of wonder, "for Transformation-- this is going to be so great for us!"
Trump had repeatedly denigrated NATO during his campaign for president, refusing to commit to the alliance's mutual defense clause and citing insufficient financial contributions from some of its members. Now, as President-elect, he seemed to believe his incoming defense secretary would be a partner in his mission to radically reshape -- or simply scrap -- the military alliance.
Two years later, there is no issue Mattis stressed more in his resignation letter than the importance of America's alliances.
"One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies," Mattis wrote.
It was a lesson Mattis frequently sought to impart to Trump, whether he was explaining the importance of the US maintaining military bases around the world or urging Trump not to denigrate the NATO military alliance.
The letter amounts to a point-by-point rebuttal of Trump's foreign policy outlook. It is also notable for what it doesn't say. Mattis offers not a single word of praise for Trump.
"I very much appreciate this opportunity," Mattis wrote in his closing sentence, "to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform."
After delivering his letter to the President and returning to the Pentagon, Mattis spent Thursday night joking and laughing with shocked senior staff, according to the senior defense official. Mattis assured them that everything would be OK, repeatedly saying that it's not all about him— it's about the troops and the job.
The next morning, he was back at work and in his office at 6:15am, his usual time.


Has the tipping point arrived?
Finally, we seem willing to call a lie a lie — sorry, a falsehood if you're The New York Times — something that's been carefully avoided since President Donald Trump first began running for office. Finally, we seem willing to look beyond he said, she said false equivalencies, the anchor that's been dragging down meaningful reporting for far too long.
Bill Goodykoontz is a film critic and columnist at The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared.


Eagles' scoring drive was 4 plays-75 yards. It was their first TD drive of fewer than 8 plays this season.
That was Zach Ertz's second red-zone TD catch in as many games. Had none in the Eagles' first 4 games.
That sack was his Destiny.
Destiny Vaeao with a sack. First sack since 2016, when he had two.
Destiny Vaeao with a sack! First in two years. No way the #Eagles lose.
I'm starting to think Jake Elliott has fixed whatever flaws he was having on extra points.
That body slam on Carson should have had that dude kicked out of the game!!!!
Another blatant cheap shot from the Giants.
If I had an Amazon Prime subscription I'd put on the British commentators. I know Derek Rae and Tommy Smyth from soccer... and some of you may know Smith is the Union's color guy.
This just in: The officials are allowed to call Roughing the Passer on the Eagles' opponents.
Disney with another version of Aladdin? Robin Williams stole the movie in the animated version.
What's next, live action Lion King or live action Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
Eagles score 24 points for the first time this season.
#Eagles eclipse the 23-point barrier for the first time this season -- 24 points by the half. Lead the Giants, 24-6.
...I would have gone for that fourth down, but Eagles take the points.
Eagles have scored 24 points for the first time this season. And did it in one half.
Wentz had an easy first down if that were a keeper.
History is made: The 2018 Eagles have finally scored 24 points in a game. Hall of Fame president David Baker is on the sideline with white gloves, ready to take the ball from Jake Elliott's field goal to Canton.
In a Disney "Aladdin" tie-in, Eli and Odell to duet "A Whole New World" for the fans at halftime.
Wentzmania's gonna get you, brother!
Well, it was bound to happen. Mills gets burned!
Eagles get the ball back at the 42 with 23 seconds and two timeouts. They can set up a long FG with a completion or two.
Jake Elliott misses from 54 yards, but Eagles will take a 24-6 lead into halftime and get ball back to start second half.
This must be the Eagles night. An opposing kicker actually missed from beyond 50 yards.


The replacement refs are gone, done in by their eagerness to call fouls as if they were getting paid for each one. The traveling rule has been clarified, too, so LeBron James doesn't have to think twice when he takes off for a dunk from the top of the key.
The NBA is even trying to show fans what a foul really is, as if anyone can tell the difference.
A new season tips off Tuesday with the Lakers receiving their championship rings and teams around the NBA looking for ways to sell more tickets in a difficult economy. There's excitement about a new openness in the game itself, and a curiosity over whether the pairing of James and Shaquille O'Neal might turn out as magical as it seems.
But there's also the reality that too many conversations about the NBA tend to begin and end with the officiating. Even in an age of advanced technology, the last few minutes of too many games are decided by either fouls or non-calls that even the referees seem to have trouble explaining.
So the last thing the NBA needed was a preseason dominated by referees, no matter that they were just filling in. The league got it anyway as it kept handing out stiff fines to coaches who complained loudly that the replacements had no clue what they were doing.
That's going to happen when you bring in new people to do a job dominated by an old guard. Things are going to be different, no matter how hard they try to fit in.
But the curious thing wasn't that coaches were complaining because the replacements didn't know the rules. Much of it came because they actually followed the rules.
"They just called things differently than the normal officials," Houston coach Rick Adelman said. "They're pretty much going by the book."
That might not seem like such a bad idea, especially in a league where almost every foul can be contested and conspiracy theorists lurk behind every bench. There's long been the perception -- not always unjustified -- that certain teams are favored and certain stars will never be called for anything that really matters.
Just two years ago in the NBA finals, commissioner David Stern was forced to hold an impromptu press conference by the loading dock at Staples Center to rebut allegations by a lawyer for disgraced former referee Tim Donaghy that a 2002 playoff series was rigged to go seven games and that a 2005 series was also manipulated.
And the Donaghy scandal itself tore at the very heart of a league that has long had credibility issues when it comes to the way things are called during games. Luckily, Donaghy was just one rogue official, and Stern quickly -- and rightfully -- moved to put in a referee czar to assure fans there are no grand schemes anywhere to defraud teams.
Still, with all the attention on referees and foul calling, the NBA is wary that some fans may confuse perception with reality. That's why the league recently put up a series of short videos on its Web site that show examples of what constitutes a call on everything from charges to technicals.
Five of them relate to traveling alone, and the NBA updated its traveling rule to confirm for the first time that players can take two steps without dribbling the ball. Stern made a point on Friday in his annual preseason conference call to have Stu Jackson, the league's executive vice president of basketball operations, dispute some media reports that the rule had been changed to allow an extra step after a dribble.
"We have not changed the traveling rule, nor how we enforce the rule," Jackson said. "What we did change was some antiquated language in our existing rule as it related to steps."
That Stern and company are turning their attention to how rules are perceived is a good thing. That they can turn their attention there also is indicative of how the league has managed to deal with other issues that confronted it.
A few years ago it was the gangster reputation of its players. More recently it has been the weakened economy that continues to leave some high-priced seats unfilled.
But if you're going to have a book of rules, go by the book of rules. Enforce them fairly, even if it means LeBron or Kobe is sitting on the bench with six fouls at the end of a game.
The rules may be complex, but it's not all that hard. The goal certainly is simple enough.
Just give fans a league they don't have to question.


Does our contributor have a camera owned by the first woman to serve as a White House photographer?
A quick search tells our contributor that Marion Carpenter was the first female wire service photographer assigned to the White House. She covered the Truman administration.
Did this camera belong to Marion Carpenter? Did she use it to photograph President Truman?
History Detectives visits the White House Pressroom and the Washington Post to find answers.
View more photos taken by Marion Carpenter.
Also in Season 9 African American Comic Book Did the makers of this 1950s comic book have more than romance on their minds?
Also in Depression and WWII: 1929-1945 Duke Ellington Plates What is the story behind the printing plates for this famous Jazz song?
Also with Wes Cowan Mankato Spoon What does this delicate silver spoon have to do with the largest mass execution in American history?
Also with Wes Cowan Slave Songbook Are these tattered pages the earliest record of music created by slaves?


Last week, a portion of Charlotte Street near A1A Ale works, became an archaeological excavation, something required before street work begins.
That's where the team discovered between five to six bone fragments, dating back hundreds of years.
"We found a radius and a small piece of skull," said Mischa Johns, a St. Augustine archaeologist.
Johns says they are remains from a very old church cemetery known as Nuestra Senora De Los Remedios, which was around between the years 1572 and 1702.
She says the bones likely belonged to Europeans of Spanish origin.
Problem is, Johns says the bones are so fractured from an 1880's gas line project, they can only narrow the age of the bones down to that more than 100 year time frame.
She says it's difficult to say what else they may find.
"We may find many more, we may find nothing else. We're not really sure what the boundaries of the cemetery was, so we don't know where we're going to get out of it and no longer find anything like that," said Johns.
Johns says she didn't take any pictures of the bone fragments out of respect for the dead.
She says they plan on doing five or six more digs before the city's construction work on the road begins.


London: World stocks dipped towards the previous session’s four-week lows on Tuesday as investors continued to fret over the early removal of government stimulus, particularly in the financial sector.
Positive US manufacturing and home sales data buoyed US stocks on Monday but investors worry that signs of recovery will lead governments to cut economic and fiscal support, a fear that has contributed to a reversal of equities’ seven-month rally.
CIT Group INC, a US lender to hundreds and thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, underscoring the continuing fragility of parts of the financial sector.
European shares hit four-week lows as poor results from Swiss bank UBS and a shake-up of UK banks Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland rattled investors.
Lloyds launched a record £13.5 billion ($22 billion) rights issue and along with RBS agreed to sell off businesses as part of a complex deal to limit reliance on government support.
“UBS just posted ugly results that bode ill for European bank results and CIT just filed for bankruptcy. This raises the question: isn’t it too early to pay back government money?" said David Thebault, head of quantitative sales trading at Global Equities in Paris.
World stocks as measured by MSCI fell 0.6% to 281.32. The index rallied by 75% between early March and late Oct on growing optimism over the global economy, but fell 4% last week.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares fell 1.5% to a four-week low, losing ground for the sixth time in nine sessions. Riskier emerging market shares fell 1.0%.
The dollar edged up against the euro but fell 0.4% against the yen. Currency markets are likely to trade cautiously ahead of a raft of key events this week.
The Federal Reserve starts a two-day meeting on interest rates on Tuesday, the European Central Bank and Bank of England make rate decisions on Thursday, US employment data is due on Friday and G20 finance ministers meet in St Andrews, Scotland, this weekend.
The Fed is not expected to depart from a policy of maintaining low rates for an extended period of time but it could discuss how to prepare markets for an eventual policy shift.
The ECB and BoE are expected to keep rates on hold but the UK central bank may decide to pump yet more money into the economy.
The Australian dollar fell nearly 1% after the Australian central bank raised rates on Tuesday for a second consecutive month, to 3.5%.
Investors are becoming more tentative about markets going into the final two months of the year.
“We are inclined toward slightly more caution on the evolving global economic dataflow, at least as far as the next three to four weeks are concerned," said analysts at UBS in a client note.
Oil slipped 0.5% below $78 a barrel but gold was boosted by news the International Monetary Fund had sold 200 tonnes of gold to the Reserve Bank of India for $6.8 billion, half of a long-planned sale that threatened to slow the precious metal’s rally.
Euro zone government bonds benefited from the fall in European stocks. The December Bund future rose 15 ticks to 122.06.


The gunman bought an assault-style rifle used in the church shooting that killed more than two dozen people from Academy Sport & Outdoors.
Monday marked another day of healing in Sutherland Springs, exactly one year after a gunman burst into First Baptist Church and killed 26 people.
Nine members of Jenni Holcombe's family – including an unborn baby – were killed on that horrific Sunday one year ago.
Doctors told Kris Workman he would never walk again after a bullet pierced his spine one year ago. He's bound to a wheelchair but making progress.
It's a painful anniversary and another day of healing in Sutherland Springs, exactly one year after gunfire exploded inside First Baptist Church, killing 26 people.
A local college held a prayer in honor of Haley Krueger, a small-town girl killed in the mass shooting, who dreamed of one day becoming a nurse.
The shooting at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs ripped apart the small South Texas community one year ago. Among those devastated is the Holcombe family, which lost nine members.


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China plans to make a big show of its newly developed naval capabilities, which include nuclear submarines and destroyers, at a parade marking 70 years of its navy’s founding. Ten countries -- including India, Russia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- will deploy 20 vessels to join the naval parade. China is expected to parade 32 vessels and 39 aircraft as part of its plan to flex naval muscle.
Pompeo said the US has continuously cautioned that ballistic missile and SLV launches by Iran have a destabilising effect on the region and beyond. France, Germany, the UK and many other nations have also expressed deep concern. Recently, Iran's ministry of defence announced plans to launch three SLVs soon.
After abandoning the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, US President Donald Trump is trying to force Tehran to quash not only its nuclear ambitions and its ballistic missile programme but its support for militant proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.
The sleek single-stage missile was launched on Tuesday from a mobile launcher from launch pad 4 of the integrated test range (ITR). The launch of the surface-to-surface missile was undertaken as a part of periodic training activity by the strategic forces command from Abdul Kalam island to consolidate operational readiness, sources said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday announced the country's first indigenous nuclear submarine INS Arihant successfully completed its "first deterrence patrol", which signifies the underwater predator has undertaken its maiden long-range mission with "live" nuclear-tipped missiles.


Liberals and conservatives alike harshly criticized a new Obama administration policy designed to make it harder for the government to hamper lawsuits against it by invoking a “state secret” claim, and even the support from privacy-rights groups was tepid and cautious.
From one side, civil-liberties advocate and best-selling author Glenn Greenwald called the new policy merely cosmetic and a continuation of “the very Bush/Cheney policies” that President Obama criticized. From the other, Sept. 11 families activist Debra Burlingame said even those changes would encourage jihadist lawsuits and chill counterterrorism operations.
Such privacy-advocacy groups as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the new rules looked good, but said the Obama administration still needed to deliver concrete results - by dropping its support for several Bush-era invocations of the privilege in court and by pushing through Congress a permanent law on the matter.
On Wednesday, the Obama administration appeared to vindicate such longstanding liberal criticisms by invoking the state-secret privilege to urge U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to toss a 2004 warrantless-wiretapping lawsuit filed by the Ashland, Ore., branch of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.
Justice Department lawyer Anthony Coppolino made the same arguments at Wednesday’s hearing in San Francisco that Bush administration lawyers had: “Foreign intelligence surveillance is so vital to national security that it is important for the government to maintain secrecy,” he argued.
The new policy, announced Wednesday, gives the attorney general the sole authority to invoke a “state secret” claim, which allows the government to exclude evidence it says will compromise national security. The new rules, which take effect Oct. 1, also set a higher standard to make that claim, saying that revealing the information would need to pose “the risk of significant harm to national security”; the previous standard, set by the Supreme Court, allowed a claim when there was a risk of “reasonable possibility of harm” to national security.
The ACLU acknowledged that “on paper, this is a step forward,” but referred to the new policies as “voluntary guidelines” and called on Congress to pass legislation that will limit state-secret claims. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, has proposed such a bill.
“In court, however, the Obama administration continues to defend a broader view of state secrets put forward by the Bush administration and to demand that federal courts throw out lawsuits filed by victims of torture and illegal surveillance,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU attorney.
“By vesting the authority in the attorney general, it continues to allow the executive branch unfettered latitude to determine when lawsuits should be dismissed: exactly what Obama claimed to find so objectionable … this is yet another instance of the Obama DOJ replicating the very Bush/Cheney policies which Democrats claimed for so long to find offensive,” Mr. Greenwald said.
Meanwhile, conservatives criticized both the possibility of legislation on the matter and the potential that scaling back the state-secret privilege would help America’s enemies obtain sensitive information.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Judiciary Committee Republican and member of its terrorism subcommittee, called the policy “a promising development,” but because it keeps authority in the executive branch and makes legislation limiting state-secret privilege unneeded.


RUGBY PARK legend Ally Mitchell fears his beloved Kilmarnock are doomed unless everybody starts to pull in the right direction.
The Killie favourite admitted it breaks his hearts to see his old club in their current predicament.
Manager Jim Jefferies is on the verge of exiting, the club are £9 million in debt, bang in the middle of a relegation dogfight and there is unrest in the dressing room towards chairman Michael Johnston.
Mitchell knows it is a recipe for disaster and is a far cry from his days when Killie lifted the Scottish Cup and were European regulars.
Kilmarnock are in a perilous position and they need to get everything sorted out, a worried Mitchell admitted.
‘’I think everyone knows the consequences of the club if they were to drop into the First Division especially financially.Scottish football certainly can t afford to lose a team of Kilmarnock s standing.
Killie chairman Johnston admitted the club could go to the wall if they were relegated and didn t have the full backing of the banks.
Mitchell admitted:’’ I saw Kevin Kyle s claims but the chairman has come out and denied those claims, so who is telling the truth?
‘’I am just disappointed something like that has come out because back in my day things would have been dealt with in the dressing room.
Killie look set to turn to Jimmy Calderwood and Jimmy Nicholl to keep them in the SPL as soon as a severance package with Jefferies and No. 2 Billy Brown are thrashed out.


Good with this TGI Friday's Coupon.
Offer good now through November 1, 2009.
Or, get a free appetizer when you buy a beverage at TGI Friday’s now through Nov. 1, 2009.
Good when you sit at the bar from 4 pm to close.


Low-tech fixes are intended to increase accountability of workers and add backup systems to prevent mistakes in animal care, which had contributed to the deaths of four monkeys.
Advice for Joseph Kennedy III from someone who has worked in the Fourth Congressional District since 1970.
The NCAA is fond of talking about its student-athletes, but MIT’s basketball team, which is playing Friday in the Division III Final Four for the first time, truly lives that dual role.
Software developers say the iPad’s new video screen will let them present images with richness and clarity that will rival the look of ink on paper.
The Boston Teachers Union launched a media blitz in hopes of convincing the public to side with them in tense contract negotiations over pay.
A community planning group will ask the Cambridge City Council to call for changes in Google Inc.’s plans for an urban campus in Kendall Square.
President Hamid Karzai insisted Thursday that the US confine its troops to major bases in Afghanistan by next year, as the Taliban declared they were suspending peace talks.
The Commodores fought off the final surge by the Crimson, who cut the deficit to 5 late, before holding on for a 79-70 victory at The Pit.
The play delivers a fierce and scorching reminder of the lives that were shattered by Hurricane Katrina, and the governmental incompetence or indifference that allowed it to happen.


No Canadian tennis player has ever won a Grand Slam singles title, with Eugenie Bouchard and Milos Raonic coming closest by reaching the Wimbledon final in 2014 and 2016 respectively. But that statistical quirk could change in the near future. That’s because three of the most exciting prospects in world tennis all happen to be teenagers from Canada: Bianca Andreescu, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov. With all of them still going strong at Indian Wells this week, Tennis Podcast presenters David Law (BT Sport, BBC 5 Live) and Catherine Whitaker (Amazon Prime Video) take a look at what makes each of them special.
Denis Shapovalov is the best-known of the trio, having beaten Rafael Nadal in 2017 and achieved a career-high ranking inside the Top 25. His form plateaued last year, but the early signs are good in 2019. He was one of only two players to take a set off Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open, and it looks as though he’s beginning to mould the components of his game and become a more consistent force.
Not only do these three players have the world at their feet, they’ve also been shaped by the world. Andreescu grew up in Ontario with her Romanian parents. Shapovalov was born in Tel Aviv and his mother represented the Soviet Union. Auger-Aliassime was raised as a French-speaker in Quebec, with his father immigrating to Canada from Togo.
This confluence of cultures is now Canada’s gain, with Andreescu, Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime having all proudly represented Canada in Fed and Davis Cup competition. Tennis Canada, whose CEO is the former LTA chief Michael Downey, will now be hoping that this gifted generation can make good on their immense promise. Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure: Canadian tennis fans have every reason to be excited about the future.
This episode of The Tennis Podcast, produced in association with Telegraph Sport, also discusses all the other major storylines from Indian Wells, as well as the political turmoil at the ATP, with news that President Chris Kermode will not have his contract renewed at the end of the year.