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Minnesota shot only 31.3 percent from the field in its sixth loss in seven games.
Lindsay Whalen sees a team working hard. Every day, she said. In practice and in games. On both ends of the court.
But the results, right now, just aren’t there.
Again Thursday, her Gophers women’s basketball team held an upper-division opponent to 64 points. The Gophers defended hard, though there were cracks to be seen down the stretch. But they just couldn’t score enough in a 64-53 loss to Purdue at Williams Arena in front of 5,572 fans.
For now, unfortunately, difficulty scoring has led to a second straight loss and the sixth in seven games for Minnesota (13-6, 2-6 Big Ten).
Up by a point at halftime, the Gophers made only 11 of 34 second-half shots. A 13-3 Purdue run put the Boilermakers (15-6, 6-2) up seven with 3:40 left in the third quarter and Purdue never trailed again. The Gophers pulled with four points twice in the fourth quarter — the last time on Taiye Bello’s put-back with 4:08 left. But Purdue finished the game on a 12-5 run.
Pitts had a good night shooting, making five of 11 three-pointers and scoring 19 points. Senior guard Kenisha Bell had 17 points, with 14 coming in the second half. But the rest of the Gophers managed only 12 points in the final two quarters.
Purdue got 17 points from Karissa McLaughlin. Forward Ae’Rianna Harris had 13, all of them in the second half as Purdue did a better job of running its offense inside-out. Dominique Oden had 14.
Purdue’s offense got better as the game wore on; the Boilermakers were 7-for-9 on fourth-quarter shots. Though, to be fair, a few of them were well-contested.
And that was the difference. Purdue made some difficult shots. The Gophers couldn’t answer.
There just weren’t enough people scoring. Bell, Pitts and Annalese Lamke (nine points) scored 45 of the Gophers’ 53 points. The Gophers bench scored only two points. The Boilermakers, meanwhile — not a team known for a deep rotation — got 14 points off their bench; 10 from Cassidy Hardin, who was a plus-20 in 20 minutes played.
Purdue shot 46.3 percent from the field for the game, the Gophers 31.3 percent.
As has been the case many times this season, the Gophers led early but were outscored late, this time 38-26 in the second half.
To Whalen, there is only one thing the team can do.
“Stay the course,” she said, emphatically. Thursday she juggled her starting lineup, starting Irene Garrido Perez in place of Jasmine Brunson at one guard, looking for a spark. She noted that turnovers (eight) were down and assists (15) were up.
Bell vowed that’s what the team would do. Still, has the recent stretch made it difficult to keep playing hard?
“Not if you want it,” Bell said. “Our team has been working very hard. We know we want it.
And eventually, Whalen said, things will turn.
“At some point, hopefully, the shots will fall and the floodgates will open,” she said.
The Gophers’ Kenisha Bell and Purdue’s Kayana Traylor battled for a loose ball late in the second half.


I’m working with an amazing entertainment events company who are driving continual growth and are looking for a Head of People & Culture for a 6 month maternity contract. With people and culture very much at their core, you will play a significant role during a period of change within the business.
Reporting directly into the CEO & MD, you will partnering the leadership team from a HR strategic perspective but also be comfortable rolling your sleeves up and partnering with a diverse client group (x100). A true generalist role you will be exposed to everything from talent management, succession planning, learning & development and employee engagement. With the agency going through a change/transformation period, you will have been exposed to this previously.
You will have exposure of working within a creative SME environment, reporting directly into a CEO/COO/MD and leading HR from a strategic perspective. This role has a HR co-ordinator reporting into it, the ideal candidate will have experience of managing and the ability to develop & nurture them.
You will have excellent senior stakeholder management and demonstrate a commercial approach to people issues. A highly energetic office, you will have a confident, commercial and passionate approach, hitting the ground running and bring an innovative attitude.
A truly fantastic opportunity to shine in a high performing business and partner them on the next phase of their growth journey.


Gordon-Reed: Well, it goes back to almost my first encounter with Jefferson. The idea, the black people are missing. Any kind of realistic portrayal of what’s slavery was like in general, but also slavery at Monticello. Jefferson, as a slave owner, is missing. Not just him writing sort of philosophical stories about, philosophical pronouncements about what’s slavery means, but actual, the day to day relations with black people. That’s missing from a lot of Jefferson’s scholarship or if it’s there it’s the sort of happy, [dorky] kind of story, you know, that’s told and not really getting at the nature of this, of his relations with blacks. You know, and tell you in particular, you know, people wrote about him have long accepted that Sally Hemings and her siblings and five of her siblings were the half sisters of Jefferson’s, you know, half siblings of Jefferson’s wife. Well, you know, but they never written of that way. It’s always Bob, the manservant or James, the chef. These or his wife’s relatives, and in my book, I always refer to them that way and to sort of emphasize the fact that this is a relationship that’s not, it’s a master-slave relationship, the servant-master relationship, but there’s a blood relationship between these people as well, and invite people to… but this shows how weird Southern life really was at that time and slave life was, the slave society really was. So, I think the big puzzle, the big piece of the puzzle missing was a nuanced and a realistic portrayal of Jefferson as a slaveholder coming to grips with that aspect of his life. There’s a big hole in there.
Annette Gordon-Reed noted that analyses of slavery and slave ownership were missing from the bulk of Jeffersonian scholarship.


Gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis will not be allowed to have a surrogate participate in his place at the Club 20 debate in Grand Junction.
The Western Slope club’s leadership announced its decision on Friday regarding the upcoming Sept. 8 debate. The debate is a tradition, and the club said no gubernatorial candidate in more than three decades has declined participation.
Polis, a congressman and the Democratic candidate for governor, is running against Republican and state Treasurer Walker Stapleton for governor. Polis had requested to send Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, one of his primary opponents, to debate Stapleton in his place.
Polis’ move attracted criticism from leadership of the club, which represents 22 western Colorado counties.
“Congressman Polis’ decision not to honor the citizens of Western Colorado by participating in our debates is simply outrageous and we continue to ask for his reconsideration,” said Cindy Dozier, Club 20 board chair, in a statement.
Polis’ campaign has previously defended his commitment to western and rural Colorado issues, saying he has a scheduling conflict and plans to participate in a different debate in Grand Junction. Polis also opened his first campaign office in Grand Junction.
Stapleton will still be attending the Club 20 event, his campaign said.


Patrick J. Buchanan: Does Trump's Decertifying The Deal Mean War With Iran Is Inevitable?
With his declaration Friday that the Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest, President Donald Trump may have put us on the road to war with Iran.
Indeed, it is easier to see the collisions that are coming than to see how we get off this road before the shooting starts.
After "de-certifying" the nuclear agreement, signed by all five permanent members of the Security Council, Trump gave Congress 60 days to reimpose the sanctions that it lifted when Teheran signed.
If Congress does not reimpose those sanctions and kill the deal, Trump threatens to kill it himself.
Why? Did Iran violate the terms of the agreement? Almost no one argues that—not the UN nuclear inspectors, not our NATO allies, not even Trump's national security team.
Iran shipped all its 20 percent enriched uranium out of the country, shut down most of its centrifuges, and allowed intrusive inspections of all nuclear facilities. Even before the deal, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies said they could find no evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb program.
Indeed, if Iran wanted a bomb, Iran would have had a bomb.
She remains a non-nuclear-weapons state for a simple reason: Iran's vital national interests dictate that she remain so.
As the largest Shiite nation with 80 million people, among the most advanced in the Mideast, Iran is predestined to become the preeminent power in the Persian Gulf. But on one condition: She avoid the great war with the United States that Saddam Hussein failed to avoid.
Iran shut down any bomb program it had because it does not want to share Iraq's fate of being smashed and broken apart into Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Kurds and Baluch, as Iraq was broken apart by the Americans into Sunni, Shiite, Turkmen, Yazidis and Kurds.
Tehran does not want war with us. It is the War Party in Washington and its Middle East allies—Bibi Netanyahu and the Saudi royals—who hunger to have the United States come over and smash Iran.
Thus, the Congressional battle to kill, or not to kill, the Iran nuclear deal shapes up as decisive in the Trump presidency.
Yet, even earlier collisions with Iran may be at hand.
In Syria's east, U.S.-backed and Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces are about to take Raqqa. But as we are annihilating ISIS in its capital, the Syrian army is driving to capture Deir Ezzor, capital of the province that sits astride the road from Baghdad to Damascus.
Its capture by Bashar Assad's army would ensure that the road from Baghdad to Damascus to Hezbollah in Lebanon remains open.
If the U.S. intends to use the SDF to seize the border area, we could find ourselves in a battle with the Syrian army, Shiite militia, the Iranians, and perhaps even the Russians.
Are we up for that?
In Iraq, the national army is moving on oil-rich Kirkuk province and its capital city. The Kurds captured Kirkuk after the Iraqi army fled from the ISIS invasion. Why is a U.S.-trained Iraqi army moving against a U.S.-trained Kurdish army?
The Kurdistan Regional Government voted last month to secede. This raised alarms in Turkey and Iran, as well as Baghdad. An independent Kurdistan could serve as a magnet to Kurds in both those countries.
Baghdad's army is moving on Kirkuk to prevent its amputation from Iraq in any civil war of secession by the Kurds.
Where does Iran stand in all of this?
In the war against ISIS, they were de facto allies. For ISIS, like al-Qaida, is Sunni and hates Shiites as much as it hates Christians. But if the U.S. intends to use the SDF to capture the Iraqi-Syrian border, Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia could all be aligned against us.
Are we ready for such a clash?
We Americans are coming face to face with some new realities.
The people who are going to decide the future of the Middle East are the people who live there. And among these people, the future will be determined by those most willing to fight, bleed and die for years and in considerable numbers to realize that future.
We Americans, however, are not going to send another army to occupy another country, as we did Kuwait in 1991, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003.
Bashar Assad, his army and air force backed by Vladimir Putin's air power, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, and Hezbollah won the Syrian civil war because they were more willing to fight and die to win it. And, truth be told, all had far larger stakes there than did we.
We do not live there. Few Americans are aware of what is going on there. Even fewer care.
Our erstwhile allies in the Middle East naturally want us to fight their 21st-century wars, as the Brits got us to help fight their 20th-century wars.
But Donald Trump was not elected to do that. Or so at least some of us thought.


The clear, cool water that still flows in wild rivers is the clean blood of history, and now in the summer you can hear voices there, old voices, sometimes whispering in the slicks and eddies, sometimes shouting in the rocky, roaring rapids.
Sometimes the voices are so distinct that they make you stop and listen. There is no one there, of course, or is there?
There is a place where cedar trees brush the rushing water with dark boughs and great boulders defy the power of the rapids. A small jut of flat land lies at the foot of the rapids, and still discernible beneath the thick trees is the outline of a structure, its deminsions set by the decaying logs that formed its sides.
It was used a century ago by the lumberjacks who cut the great trees and then tended the spring log drives to float the wild land`s first crop to a consuming civilization.
Part way up the rapids, a huge gray stump sits solidly on the rocky riverbank. Its sides are gouged by ax marks, made long ago when it might have been used as a fulcrum to help break up the logjams that were terrifying in their power and capriciousness. Or perhaps it held a rope that a calk-booted man clung to as he tried to maneuver the ponderous logs, a futile lifeline of sorts in a business and time that would trade a man`s life for a log in a minute, and often did. A brief scream in the grinding crunch of logs and thundering water. No body. No funeral. Just a wooden stake beside the river to mark the spot.
The stump is there like a monument to that time of brave and foolish young men and to long-suffering women who waited in vain for them to come home in the summer. It is a decaying altar where you can pay homage to a brief and passionate page of history.
You cannot come to the stump or the rapids without hearing the voices. There are mumbling conversations of loves and dreams, businesslike commands to accomplish the work of the day, and shouts to horses and companions. Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason there is a scream, or is there? Was it just the summer wind, or the twist of a branch against the hissing water?
Now we come to the wild country to play, to canoe and fish, and the rushing stream puts us in our place: A hundred years from now, no one will ever know we were here, unless our whoops of fun are somehow added to the summer voices of the river.


In China, shocking images show employees humiliated and whipped at work, punished for failing to complete their tasks. The allegations are based on widely shared images posted on social media, sparking a debate over workers’ rights and employers’ abuse of power. But still, many managers defend these practices. Clément Bonnerot reports.
While in China, we also take a look at the issue of the thousands and thousands of children that have been kidnapped there, often by someone they know. People's desire of having large families, and the difficulties of adopting, have fuelled the country’s abduction business.
And an Indian village, known to be the cleanest in Asia, has become popular with tourists. But it now faces a new challenge to maintain its unblemished reputation.


"I've already had people saying, 'Are you bringing back the Crooked card? What about us old guys that had the original Crooked card?'" Cutler says with a laugh. "It's like, 'Oh. My. God. Give me a second to breathe, please!'"
Let's all take a deep breath. Under the ownership of Cutler and his wife, Maerene, Crooked Fence will reopen Friday, June 15, at 5220 N. Sawyer Ave. Twelve beers will be on tap. They range from old favorites 3 Picket Porter and Sins of Our Fathers imperial stout to more recent varieties such as Cranberry Sour and Grapefruit IPA. Head brewer Jeff Winn remains with the brewery.
"Crooked Fence has got a history," Cutler says. "There's lot of people out there that know it and like the beers. They are looking for a place back in town to be able to go."
Twelve beers will be on tap when Crooked Fence reopens. Crooked Fence Brewing Co.
Opened in Garden City in 2012, Crooked Fence helped lead a flood of local breweries that's still saturating the Treasure Valley. Two years later, Crooked Fence moved to a destination acreage in Eagle. In 2017, its brewpub closed, but the brewery continued to operate. The Cutlers took over Crooked Fence around the start of 2018. They hauled the 15-barrel brewhouse back to Garden City, to a space about a block away from Crooked Fence’s original location.
Brewing began at the new spot in February, but it's taken time to get the taproom running. A grand opening is planned sometime in July.
Within a month, Crooked Fence also will serve food, Cutler says.
"It'll be bites," he says. "Chips and salsa. Fruit and meat platter. We're talking about doing a Bavarian pretzel and mustard, that kind of stuff. We don't have a kitchen. We'll have a sandwich prep table and be able to do stuff like that."
Old-time Crooked Fence regulars longing for those beloved $6 growler fills on Saturdays are probably out of luck. But, Cutler says, Crooked Fence does plan to offer a $2 fill after 10 regular growler-fill purchases.
Happy hour details are still being worked out, he says, but "we'll end up doing some type of happy hour thing most every day."
Oh, and about that Crooked Fence Club card? Feel free to keep it in your wallet.
"Everybody has that card!" Cutler complains with a chuckle.
Summer hours: 3 to 10 p.m. Fridays, noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. Closed Monday and Tuesday.


EBENSBURG, Pa. - A former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced Monday to at least 79 years in prison for sexually assaulting 31 children, most of them patients, as his now-adult victims blasted not only their abuser but the system that let him get away with it for so long.
“I grieve for the little girl I should have been, for the childhood I should’ve had. ... I grieve for all the children you hurt,” Erika Brosig, who was sexually abused at age 13, said at Barto’s sentencing.
“He has been lying to me about everything for all of the 52 years I have known him. ... He spent his whole sinister life lying and sneaking around, so he could carry on his abuse uninterrupted,” she said. She said her heart was heavy for the victims.


LONDON (AFP) - From baggage carousels to airline signs and security scanners, the contents of a Heathrow airport terminal undergoing an upgrade will be auctioned off this month, the sale organisers said on Friday (April 6).
The sale of the contents of Terminal 1, once Europe's busiest terminal, also includes 110 check-in desks, 1,200 airport seats and 9 travellators, CA Global Partners (CAGP) said in a statement.
"A sale such as this, comprising the entire contents and infrastructure of an entire major airport terminal is unprecedented," Daniel Gray, managing partner of CAGP Europe.
Gray said some items were "iconic" and had "significant historic value", while others could be repurposed for different industries.
"There may even be elements of the furnishing that would appeal to nightclubs or other entertainment venues," he said.
Terminal 1 opened in 1968 and was gradually expanded before closing in 2015 to allow for a major upgrade at Heathrow, which is Europe's busiest airport by passenger numbers.
The sale includes 10 giant murals by Polish artist Stefan Knapp, a former pilot in Britain's Royal Air Force during World War II, that were specially commissioned for the terminal.
The auction is taking place on April 21 in a Heathrow hotel suite.
Heathrow opened as London's new airport in 1946.
Over 67 million passengers travel through annually on services offered by 90 airlines travelling to over 180 destinations.


The 65th annual awards ceremony will take place Sept. 22, 2013.
CBS has announced that the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards will air Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013 from L.A. Live's Nokia Theatre.
Nominations for the Emmys will be announced Thursday, July 18 from the Academy's Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood.
This year's Emmy Awards, broadcast on ABC, were hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and averaged 13.3 million viewers. Showtime's Homeland and ABC's Modern Family took home the top drama and comedy series prizes, respectively.


PHOTO BY JILL GOSCHE Tiffin’s Pat Catan’s store is located at 646 W. Market St. in Westgate Village Shopping Center.
The Michaels Cos. Inc. has decided not to rebrand Tiffin’s Pat Catan’s store as a Michaels store.
Tiffin’s Pat Catan’s store is located at 646 W. Market St. in Westgate Village Shopping Center.
In January, Michaels announced its decision to close all of its Pat Catan’s stores.
It intended to rebrand up to 12 of the closed stores and reopen them under the Michaels banner, according to a release.


Los Angeles designer Pierre Davis made her debut in New York this week, becoming the first openly transgender creator to present a collection at Fashion Week, further shaking up an event that had already featured trans models.
The powerful Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), which says it represents more than 500 creators and has made diversity its battle cry, announced last month that Davis’s No Sesso brand would be “making NYFW history” at Monday’s event, which opened with a parade of whimsical garments.
Fashion Week began with a focus on men and will turn to women’s wear on Thursday.
While she embraces her identity as a trans woman in the design field, Davis doesn’t want it to be a gimmick, telling AFP it’s important for people to see the creations and for them to be recognized.
“I just want to show the work,” she said of the agender brand No Sesso, which was launched in 2015 and — according to CFDA — counts fans including R&B artists Kelela and Erykah Badu.
“I am just humble and happy that I got to show at Fashion Week,” Davis said.
For her Chapter 2 collection — she calls them “chapters” rather than seasons — Davis came up with the idea of a wardrobe that blends the sartorial codes associated with the two sexes.
Plain black vests became skirts, cocktail dresses were transformed and worn with self-assurance by models whose diversity — male or female, slender or plus-size — reflected Fashion Week’s growing efforts to look beyond the conventional razor-thin body type.
The wardrobe mixed the formalism of work attire with sportswear, producing a jogging jacket with epaulets, for example.
“The show is inspired by business wear and evoking the spirit of the Glamazon regardless of gender,” Davis told CFDA.
For several years, trans models have regularly appeared at New York Fashion Week, and in September 2017 Calvin Klein featured a 16-year-old trans model.
Last September Marco Marco, another Los Angeles designer, went further with a podium exclusively showing trans models.


"Back in the 80's, Richard was also a five-time Jeopardy champion and a semi-finalist in the Tournament of Champions. Not too shabby," President Obama said as he announced the nomination of Richard Cordray to run the consumer bureau on Monday.
"That's why all his confirmation -- all the answers at his confirmation hearings will be in a form of a question," Obama said to silence.
"That's a joke," he reminded the audience.


Ald. Jane Grover (7th) championed a drone moratorium ordinance that the City Council narrowly approved Tuesday despite opposition from aldermen including Ald. Ann Rainey (8th).
The chief supporter of Evanston’s ban on drone activity was surprised by the amount of dissent it faced during a City Council meeting Tuesday.
Grover brought up a resolution proposed by the North Shore Coalition for Peace and Justice that would sharply limit the use of the drones by police but allow them for recreational and research purposes. The resolution passed in a 5-4 vote Tuesday after receiving unanimous approval from the Human Services Committee.
Opponents of the drone moratorium said it would stifle technological progress in the city. Ald. Judy Fiske (1st) and Ald. Mark Tendam (6th), both Human Services Committee members, voted to move the resolution to council but voted against it Tuesday.
“I don’t think we want to appear to be unfriendly toward technology,” Tendam said.
At the May 6 committee meeting, Eddington said although the drones could serve as useful technology, EPD does not have plans to acquire a drone in the immediate future. Under the resolution, the department could ask for city approval to use drones in emergency cases, such as search-and-rescue operations, Grover said.
The resolution, which is the third of its kind in the country, includes exceptions for drone hobbyists and academic research.
“We’re just happy to live in a community where our city council … agreed that there is a potential for abuse of our rights to privacy is serious enough,” coalition member Dickelle Fonda said.
However, Tendam said he did not expect the resolution to pass. With existing legislation already addressing privacy issues, this statement would further limit technology, he said.
Some Associated Student Government leaders have discussed similarly worded legislation on drone regulation. Grover said she hopes to develop a joint resolution between the council and ASG before sending both statements to state officials.
State Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston) has sponsored a bill regulating drone use that will likely be voted on next year, she said.
Grover said she does not think the city will have to renew the two-year moratorium because state and federal regulations on drones will probably be in place by then.
Ald. Delores Holmes (5th) said she still felt torn during the council vote on the drone moratorium. She eventually voted to support the moratorium.


Security guards stand near a model of a fighter jet from the Star Wars movie franchise displayed in Beijing, China, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015.
What makes a Hollywood franchise a hit in China? Walt Disney needs to know.
Disney has unleashed a marketing campaign in China to sell "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" when the latest in the nearly 40-year-old movie franchise comes to the world's No. 2 movie market on Jan. 9. The campaign is aimed at an audience that largely missed the "Stars Wars" phenomenon and has trouble telling Jabba the Hutt from Jar-Jar Binks.
The good news is that whiz-bang science-fiction stories with lots of special effects do well in China. Still, not every franchise translates to the country's increasingly discerning audience.
This photo provided by Lionsgate shows Liam Hemsworth, left, Sam Clafin, back left, Evan Ross, back right, and Jennifer Lawrence, right, in the film, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2."
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 2," the latest installment in the dystopian series by Lions Gate Entertainment, has grossed a modest 143.4 million yuan ($22.2 million) since it opened on Nov. 20, according to Chinese film data company EntGroup. “Our Times,” a Chinese-language romantic comedy released the day before the latest installment, has grossed more than two times that. That is also less than the previous "Hunger Games" installment, which was released earlier this year in China, with ticket sales of about 225 million yuan.
By contrast, "Mockingjay -- Part 2" has been ruling the U.S. box office since it was released, raking in $245 million so far, according to Box Office Mojo.
The slump came despite a visit to China by star Jennifer Lawrence, who is liked there and even has the nickname "Da Biaojie," or "big elder cousin sister." Still, the four "Hunger Games" installments have grossed a total of about 715 million yuan in China so far.
In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Jenny Gabrielle, from left, Dylan O'Brien and Rosa Salazar appear in a scene from the film, "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials."
Other Hollywood film franchises adapted from young adult books also haven't done as well. Two installments of the teen vampire melodrama "Twilight," screened in China in 2009 and 2012, grossed nearly 40 million yuan in total. The first two installments of Fox’s “The Maze Runner”, which is released in China last year and this year, raked in nearly 348 million yuan ($53.76 million) in China, compared with $183 million in the U.S.
Optimus Prime, from the worldwide blockbuster film "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is unveiled at a ceremony in Hollywood, California on September 30, 2014.
Chinese audiences like big-budget tent poles with special-effects, with a simple good-guy-beats-bad-guy plot. Paramount's "Transformers: Age of Extinction" was China’s highest-grossing film in 2014. The "Transformers" franchise is helped by having some familiarity to Chinese people who were young in the 1980s -- a cartoon version was shown on TV then and was so popular that it was criticized by government officials.
"Star Wars'" abundance of robots could help too. China’s love for mechanical figures has even helped films that underperformed at home, like Warner Brothers’ “Pacific Rim” (2013), which grossed a little more than $101 million. It grossed about $112 million in China. "Terminator Genisys" (2015), the sci-fi action film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, a big name in China, grossed $113 million in China, compared with $89.8 million in the U.S.
This photo provide by Disney shows Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in a scene from Marvel's "Avengers: Age Of Ultron."
Superheroes help too. What local film types call the "man" movies -- "Spider-Man," "Iron Man" and "X-Men" -- have mostly done well.
"The Avengers" films -- which pack the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and assorted other people with special powers into each film -- have especially done well. The two installments of "The Avengers," which opened in China in 2012 and 2015, grossed more than 2 billion yuan ($310 million) in total. "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is the second-highest-grossing foreign film this year. "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" were among the top-10 highest-grossing films in China last year.
This photo released by 20th Century Fox shows Matt Damon in a scene from the film, "The Martian."
Though not as solid at the box office as some domestic comedy films, which nowadays could easily pass the 1 billion yuan threshold in ticket sales, Chinese audiences still turn out to see sci-fi dramas. Fox’s “The Martian,” featuring Matt Damon, so far grossed about 576 million yuan after it opened in China last month. “Interstellar” raked in more than 755 million yuan in China as the second-highest-grossing foreign film in 2014. The director Christopher Nolan came to Shanghai last year, fostering a fan base in China that developed after his “Inception” (2010) grossed over 462 milion yuan in 2010, the second-highest-grossing foreign film that year.


Two houses in Harohalli in ISRO Layout, including a farmer’s house, bore the brunt soon after the crash of two Suryakiran Hawk aircraft.
“I was stacking hay for my cows when I heard a blast. A part of one of the planes crashed in front of my cow shed on to my doghouse, killing my dog,” said Venkatesh, a farmer. The part of the plane was engulfed in flames, burning at least five tractor loads of ragi hay meant for his cattle, he said.
Venkatesh told DH he saw the two pilots who had ejected from the planes on a double road near his farmland. One of them landed into thorny bushes and was injured and the locals rushed for his help. While some of the locals were trying to help him by giving water and fanning books and towels at him, the pilot said in Hindi that his team was on the way and he did not need anything.
A few undergraduates staying at the Government Boys Hostel very close to Venkatesh’s farmhouse were the eyewitness to the incident. Sumith O Naik (19), his friends Srinath N (24), and Shivakumar Ronad (23) were standing on the terrace of the hostel to witness the rehearsal. “I saw the wings of the planes touch each other and both planes lost control. We also saw two pilots ejecting and the planes looked like they will hit our hostel,” said Sumith.


The 'Buzz without booze' campaign has just launched promoting fun things for young people to do that don't involve alcohol.
The Southampton, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Portsmouth PCT Cluster would like 11 to 16 year olds living in Southampton to suggest how to have fun without booze. By submitting ideas and healthy activities, entrants could win a Wii and Wii Fit.
The 'Buzz without booze' project aims to encourage young people to enjoy themselves without alcohol by participating in alternative activities.
Sandy Jerrim, alcohol project manager, for the Southampton, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Portsmouth PCT Cluster said: "The levels of alcohol use significantly increases from age 11 to 15 years, and is therefore a critical time to make sure young people are making positive choices about what to do with their time. The campaign aims to get young people to share ideas about that they could be doing instead."
"The PCT Cluster is committed to promoting positive alternatives to young people and their parents, and is very excited to have developed the Buzz without Booze campaign as a way of involving young people," explained Sandy.
Councillor Jeremy Moulton, Southampton City Council's cabinet member for Children?s Services said: "I'm very happy to back this campaign. What?s great is that it's all about involving young people directly in reducing the harm caused by alcohol and exploring positive, healthy and fun alternatives to drinking."
Young people and parents can also find information and advice on alcohol awareness on the NHS Choices website at www.nhs.uk/livewell/alcohol which has lots of ideas about how to cut down the amount of alcohol.


Last year Congress enacted a GI Bill for the 21st Century, historic legislation that provides veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with a full, four-year education, among other benefits. Some veterans who have enrolled in college have not yet received their student aid, so Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki has authorized a $3,000 emergency advance for students who have applied for benefits.
Students may obtain these advances, on-the-spot, by visiting their regional VA benefits office or by applying online at www.va.gov. Students without transportation can call their nearest VA medical center and ask for assistance getting to the nearest office. While the VA improves its processing, we can be grateful Secretary Shinseki has taken this step to see that our veterans can concentrate on their studies.
Anthony graduated from Middlesex County College in May 2009 with a major in liberal arts/journalism. He has been writing for The Home News Tribune for almost three years, starting as a circulation representative for the newspaper.


Recent reforms were hailed as progress, but advocates say the system is still riddled with problems.
Recent federal reforms aimed at protecting prisoners from exorbitant phone bills still fall short of reining in prices on the the vast majority of inmate calls, federal officials and prisoners' advocates said Wednesday.
The new rules, enacted in February by the Federal Communications Commission, cap prices for out-of-state calls. But most calls from prisoners are in-state communications, which remain unregulated.
Advocates say call fees have long been a problem for inmates and their families. Costly charges can leave prisoners with thousands of dollars in phone bills when they get out. In some cases, people have been forced to choose between phone calls and food. And children who lack regular contact with their incarcerated parents are more likely to miss school, become homeless, or suffer depression.
The FCC, led by interim Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, took a step toward addressing that problem last year. The agency's ruling capped prices for interstate phone calls at 21 cents per minute for prepaid calls and 25 cents per minute for collect calls. Previous prices had exceeded $1 a minute in some cases.
When the FCC put forth its original ruling in 2013, it expressed a desire to address in-state rates as well, seeking comment on possible proposals to do so. But the telephone companies that challenged the out-of-state caps have threatened opposition to in-state rules as well, and any FCC attempt to reform them would likely trigger a legal battle over the FCC's jurisdiction.
But with in-state calls still unregulated, some prisoners are paying much more for their local calls. In New Jersey, for instance, some in-state calls can run more than $8 for 15 minutes on the phone.
"The reforms thus far, though significant, have had very little impact because the majority of inmate calling is intrastate," said Darrell Baker, an Alabama utility official who has led that state's push to lower its call rates.
"The FCC's decision did a lot, but it certainly didn't help for large numbers of people," said Cheryl Leanza, an advocate with the United Church of Christ.
FCC leaders, including Clyburn, Wheeler, and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, said last year's reforms are a starting point, but agreed that in-state calls still need to be addressed.
"We recognize that more needs to be done," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in his opening remarks at a Wednesday panel at the agency's Washington headquarters.
The FCC, however, is asking states to take the lead on intrastate calling. Some states — including Alabama — have taken steps to protect prisoners from predatory rates.
Similar to the FCC's out-of-state rules, Alabama moved recently to cap in-state call fees at 25 cents per minute.
But with most states still inactive on the issue, some are calling for federal intervention.
"The FCC has both the duty and the authority to act under the statute if states do not," Clyburn said.
Others think the FCC's role should be limited advising state officials.
"Much of the heavy lifting is now left to the states," said Jesse Wiese, who works with the faith-based criminal-justice reform group Justice Fellowship. "We don't think the commission should regulate intrastate calls." Wiese said the agency should focus on working with lawmakers and regulators around the country to enact reforms.
But inmate calling problems aren't limited to high intrastate prices. Many prisoners, said panelists, are frequently plagued by dropped calls. Those are generally the fault of three-way detection systems, which exist to prevent prisoners' calls from being routed to another — unknown — recipient. The problem is that these systems can be overly sensitive, cutting off calls when they pick up background noise like a child or wind. "When the call is dropped, the prisoner has to call back again, which leads to another call-hookup fee," said Paul Wright, who heads the Human Rights Defense Center.
Baker added that dropped calls have been the No. 1 complaint among the prisoners with whom he's talked.
Commissioners also mentioned other priorities in continuing to reform inmate calling services. Wheeler, Clyburn, and Rosenworcel all expressed a desire to make the interstate rate caps permanent. The current figures were set on an interim status as the agency collects more data to set permanent rates.
"The relief for family and friends has been tremendous," said Clyburn, citing the ruling's early success. "Call volumes have increased as much as 30 percent."


LAS VEGAS — Charging your mobile device wirelessly via a chip embedded into a Starbucks table or resting it on a surface inside your car could become more commonplace in the next year or so, thanks to the latest backing of a larger effort to make wireless charging more a part of everyday life.
It was announced on Monday at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that 30 companies across the smartphone ecosystem are joining the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) organization, which consists of government leaders and major companies such as Starbucks, AT&T and Google working to get rid of cable-based charging plugs and embrace wireless power.
Smartphone case manufacturers such as Otterbox and chipset vendor Integrated Device Technology are among the new wave of companies backing the PMA, which was founded by Duracell's Powermat and its parent company Procter & Gamble and Powermat Technologies in March 2012.
"For wireless power to really transform our lives, a lot of things have to come together, from how companies make their products to public spaces deploying the right technology for charging," Daniel Schreiber, president of Powermat and Power Matters Alliance board member, told Mashable. "We are becoming so dependent on our mobile devices, and people want longer battery life. We want to tackle that issue, but we need manufacturers and companies to get on the same page."
With the most recent backing of Starbucks, Google and AT&T in October and existing support from Facebook, General Motors and Delta Airlines — which is already using wireless charging in its Sky Club lounges — more are looking to join in. In fact, after Starbucks announced it would introduce Duracell Powermat charging stations embedded into tables at 17 locations in Boston, PMA membership has skyrocketed, tripling in the past month alone.
"Eventually, we will reach a tipping point where it transforms from being cool to becoming an industry standard and expectation," Schreiber said.
Madison Square Garden has also embraced PMA wireless charging stations, as well as various salons, restaurants and airports across the U.S.
Among the new batch of companies joining include case makers Incipio and Skech, as well as APS Technologies, Diodes, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Everpurse, Foxlink, IGRS China, Leyden Energy, Microsemi, Microtips Technology, Monolithic Power Systems, MxMedia, NXT health, NXP Semiconductors, ON Semiconductor, Silicon laboratories, Telegesis, TennRich International and World Fair International.
"Wireless cases will be important for promoting this lifestyle, and this is where accessory manufacturers come into play," Schreiber said. "Duracell also has portable batteries for wireless charging and there are WiCC wireless charging cards that are insertable and could become embeddable. This is the start of the future."
However, the PMA has had its share of competition from other groups such as Wireless Power Consortium, which supports the Qi standard. The WPC has backing from heavy hitters too, including hardware companies such as Samsung, Motorola and HTC. But the rapid member growth of the PMA from both small and large companies indicates we might see more wireless charging of this nature.
"It's really important to create an ecosystem we can all get behind," Schreiber said. "It hasn't happened yet, but it's our hope and expectation we will all get there."


Even as authorities insist they leave, Kurdish migrants are working without permits on government projects. Japan’s strict immigration rules combined with a shrinking work population has spawned a black market in labor.
WARABI, Japan – Mazlum Balibay paves Japan’s roads, digs its sewers and lays its water pipes – all for a country that doesn’t want him.
Balibay, 24, is a Kurdish asylum seeker who fled to Japan more than eight years ago after he said his family was persecuted by Turkish security forces who tortured his father. He has since been on provisional release from immigration detention, which means he is barred from working while the immigration authorities consider his application for asylum and could be detained again at any time.
Two of Balibay’s brothers have also worked without permits on government projects around Tokyo, laying asphalt and digging sewers. Reuters also spoke to more than 30 Kurds on provisional release who are working illegally on private sector projects, mainly in demolition.
Japan’s deep reluctance to take in migrant workers is now clashing with the reality of a shrinking population and the nation’s worst labor shortage in more than two decades. In a country that jealously guards its cultural uniformity, politicians are loath to consider lowering the barriers to immigration even as the proportion of retirees grows and the working-age population declines.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters at the United Nations in September that Japan should address its demographic problems by putting women and the elderly to work before considering immigration.
Masahiko Shibayama, a lawmaker and special adviser to Abe, told Reuters that there’s “an allergy towards the word ‘immigration’” in Japan. “People are worried about public security. They worry that foreign workers would eat up Japanese jobs,” he said.
But the combination of strict immigration laws and a shrinking work pool has spawned a black market in labor, especially in the construction sector where Balibay and his brothers work. In manufacturing, it has also created a growing dependence on asylum seekers: Reuters reported last year how the maker of Subaru cars was enjoying a boom driven in part by its reliance on cheap laborers from Asia and Africa who were seeking refugee status in Japan.
Japanese business leaders want the government to rethink its immigration policy. Of 259 major Japanese companies that responded to a Reuters poll in October, 76 percent said they support opening up the country to blue-collar migrants.
With work getting underway for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, demand for labor is set to jump further, according to Hitoshi Ito, an executive at Kajima Corp., Japan’s second largest construction firm by sales. That’s why the industry “desperately wants” foreign workers, he said.
Balibay is part of a community of some 1,200 Kurds who live in Warabi and Kawaguchi, drab blue-collar suburbs north of Tokyo where cast iron foundries dot the streets and gang-related crime is prevalent. The area has been dubbed “Warabistan” by locals because of the high number of Kurdish immigrants living there, nearly all of whom are asylum seekers. They inhabit a legal twilight zone, locked in lengthy struggles with an immigration system that recognized just 27 people as refugees last year.
As of December, Japan had 13,831 asylum applications under review. That is small by the standards of Europe, where there were more than a million asylum applications pending at the end of April, as refugees sought haven from troubled lands such as Syria and Eritrea. But it’s a record number for insular Japan. According to the latest available data, at the end of 2015 there were 4,701 people on provisional release in Japan. Of those, community groups estimate about 400 are Kurds living in the Warabi area.
Most Kurds on provisional release work without contracts, are paid in cash and can be laid off without warning. They don’t have national health insurance, often leaving them with an agonizing choice when they or family members fall ill – go into debt or forego medical treatment.
Balibay is the main breadwinner in an extended family that includes his mother, two of his four brothers, a sister and her husband, and their infant son. He earns about $2,500 a month – not enough to cover the family’s expenses.
The family says its unpaid medical bills amount to several thousand dollars. Last year, Balibay’s seven-year-old brother Deniz was hospitalized with pneumonia. That cost $5,500.
Court documents reviewed by Reuters show that Mustafa Balibay and five other Kurdish men arrested along with him were acquitted in 2000.
That experience ultimately led his family to seek refuge in Japan. Over several years, Balibay’s parents and five of his siblings left Turkey.
A Japanese psychiatrist diagnosed Mustafa Balibay in 2008 with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression caused by torture, according to a medical opinion submitted as part of Mustafa’s asylum application. For years, he took anti-depressants, sedatives and painkillers. The walls inside the family’s apartment are pockmarked from where Mustafa lashed out during his frequent nightmares.
His mental state deteriorated last year as violence flared between Turkish security forces and the PKK in Turkey’s southeast. On December 27, Mustafa went to a park near his home, tied a rope around his neck and hanged himself from a tree.
Turkey’s Interior Ministry and Gendarmerie did not respond to questions from Reuters about Mustafa Balibay’s case.
The family’s asylum claims have all been rejected, and their time in Japan has been peppered with legal battles against deportation orders and detention. Balibay has submitted four asylum applications, including one in August last year. According to Japanese law, asylum seekers can’t be deported while their claims are pending.
Immigration activists say Japan has never granted refugee status to a Turkish Kurd. Government officials would not say if any of the 3,463 Turkish nationals who have applied for asylum since 2008 had been granted refugee status.
The absence of a work permit hasn’t stopped Balibay, two of his brothers and a cousin from working on taxpayer funded projects in the past few years. Balibay flicks through photos on his mobile phone, stopping at images of a road project he worked on last year in Warabi.
Interviews with the Balibays and a review of their payslips show they worked for a company that was contracted to carry out road building, sewage works and demolition by local governments, including Kawaguchi city and Saitama prefecture. The Balibays asked that the name of the company not be made public.
Almost all of Warabi’s Kurds are from villages around Gaziantep, an industrial city in southern Turkey. Starting in the 1990s, they entered Japan on tourist visas, fleeing poverty and violent clashes between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Like Balibay, who has the word “Kurdistan” tattooed on the inside of his right wrist, many Kurds still harbor strong ties to their homeland. Every year in March, the community gathers under cherry trees in a Kawaguchi park to celebrate Newroz, the Kurdish new year.
And while they may be far from the conflict between Turkey and Kurdish militants, which resumed last year after the collapse of a ceasefire that lasted two-and-a-half years, the bitter emotions have been imported to the streets of Tokyo. Last October, Balibay and two of his brothers were injured in a brawl with a group of Turkish migrants that erupted outside the Turkish embassy as Kurds and Turks waited to vote in the country’s parliamentary elections. Balibay suffered a broken nose and cracked ribs. That added more than $2,000 to his medical debts, he said.
Asked how asylum seekers on provisional release, who are barred from working, are supposed to pay for food and shelter, Japanese government officials say that friends, relatives or NGOs should help out. But once out of detention, the reality is that migrants are left largely to fend for themselves. That’s why people like Balibay look for work even at the risk it will land them back behind bars.
Unlike many officials, Kawaguchi mayor Nobuo Okunoki isn’t willing to play policeman. “I’m not going to tell these people they can’t work. Everyone needs to live and they have families to support,” he said.
People on provisional release cannot legally rent apartments, open bank accounts or sign up for mobile phone contracts in their names. They navigate this phantom status by borrowing the names and personal details of relatives and friends with residency permits.
They also need official permission to leave their prefecture. The Japanese authorities granted that approval when they needed the Kurds’ help after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country’s northeast on March 11, 2011. A group of Kurdish men, some on provisional release, who volunteered to help with disaster relief were given official clearance to make the journey to the worst-hit areas, according to the Japan Association for Refugees.
The Kurdish volunteers – many with construction and demolition experience – headed to Rikuzentakata, one of the hardest-hit areas. The coastal village was swallowed by a 15-meter wave that killed 1,700 people and swept away thousands of buildings.
The volunteers, who were housed in tents, cleared rubble from roads and rice fields, and cleaned up damaged homes, according to the refugee association, which organized the volunteer trips after being inundated with offers of help from asylum seekers.
Akinobu Kinoshita, who runs Tokyo-based International Construction Consulting, says there are several dozen Kurdish asylum seekers working on private demolition jobs across the capital that are being run by his company. Most have six-month renewable work permits, but Reuters spoke to several who are on provisional release. Kinoshita said he allows them to work “out of compassion” because they need to make a living.
If workers are caught on his building sites without permits, Kinoshita faces a fine that could run to nearly $30,000 and a maximum jail sentence of three years. The Japanese government said it did not have data on how many employers had been punished for using illegal labor.
Officials at the ministry concede that the outreach has done little to make the industry more attractive. And with Abe struggling to boost the economy, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party published a proposal on its website in May to establish a system for attracting foreign workers to sectors including nursing and agriculture. But the party gave few details and buried the proposal deep in its manifesto.
The Justice Ministry’s Torisu said there were “no plans” to change the system of provisional release. “People being on provisional release doesn’t change our stance that they should go home,” he said.
Nearly a decade after arriving in Japan, Balibay has little hope he will ever be recognized as a refugee by his adopted country. After 10-hour days on construction sites, he escapes into a world far away, spending his nights watching YouTube videos of young Kurdish men like himself fighting Islamic State in Syria.
“I can’t think about tomorrow,” he says.
Additional reporting by Melih Aslan in Istanbul.


If at first you don’t succeed, hitch up your pants, spit out your broken teeth and try again.
Last week Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner, Massachusetts Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, and eight other Senators re-introduced the legislation the two co-sponsored last year to allow states to legalize marijuana without federal interference.
The co-sponsors included Colorado’s other senator, Democrat Michael Bennet, who is also contemplating a presidential run, and Minnesota Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar.
“In 2012, Coloradans legalized marijuana at the ballot box and the state created an apparatus to regulate the legal marijuana industry. But because of the one-size-fits-all federal prohibition, state decisions like this put Colorado and other states at odds with the federal government,” Gardner said in a prepared statement.
“The federal government is closing its eyes and plugging its ears while 47 states have acted. The bipartisan STATES Act fixes this problem once and for all by taking a states’ rights approach to the legal marijuana question. The bipartisan commonsense bill ensures the federal government will respect the will of the voters — whether that is legalization or prohibition — and not interfere in any states’ legal marijuana industry,” he said.
At the same time, an identical bill, also called the STATES Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives with 26 cosponsors — half Democrats and half Republicans. The lead sponsors in the House are Oregon Democratic Representative Earl Blumenauer and Ohio Republican Representative David Joyce.
On April 1, Denver Democratic Representative Diana DeGette introduced a separate bill that does essentially the same thing as the STATES Act. DeGette’s bill, titled the Respect States; and Citizens’ Rights Act, is similar to legislation she introduced in the previous four Congresses.
It’s not clear why she chose to introduce separate legislation instead of joining the co-sponsors of Blumenauer’s bill.
Past attempts to get marijuana legislation through Congress haven’t had much support from interest groups beyond those directly advocating for pot, like NORML and the Marijuana Policy Project. That isn’t the case this year.
According to a press release from Warren’s office, the STATES Act is supported by the ACLU, the American Bankers Association, Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers funded political interest group), Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cooperative Credit Union Association, the Credit Union National Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and a number of Indian tribes.
The support from a diverse portfolio of interest groups, especially conservative ones, significantly increases the bill’s chances of passage.
Put not your trust in polls department. For weeks, polls taken in Israel showed a political party whose founder advocated marijuana legalization as winning as many as seven seats in Israel’s parliament and conceivably being able to determine whether a conservative bloc lead by incumbent prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu or a liberal bloc led by former army chief of staff Benny Gantz would form the next government.
The polls were wrong. Israel voted on Tuesday and with more than 97 percent of the vote counted the Zehut party failed to get the minimum percentage of votes (3.25 percent) necessary to claim any seats in parliament. Party founder Moshe Feiglin, a former member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party who went rogue, said he was still hopeful of getting the minimum required, since most of the outstanding votes were cast by soldiers, most of whom are in the age groups most likely to favor marijuana legalization, but the prospect seemed unlikely. The party’s poor showing seemed due to the fact that its rise in the polls drew furious attacks from parties across the political spectrum.


In response to a surge of Central Americans fleeing north to the U.S. southern border, President Donald Trump vowed Saturday to cut direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. He also threatened to close the border and halt all trade with Mexico.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a visit to Lake Okeechobee and Herbert Hoover Dike at Canal Point, Fla., on March 29, 2019. Mr. Trump threatened to close part or all of the nation's southern border next week if Mexico does not immediately stop illegal immigration.
Taking drastic action over illegal immigration, President Donald Trump moved Saturday to cut direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, whose citizens are fleeing north and overwhelming United States resources at the southern border.
The State Department notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the U.S. border.
Amplified by conservative media, Mr. Trump has turned the caravans into the symbol of what he says are the dangers of illegal immigration – a central theme of his midterm campaigning last fall. With the special counsel's Russia probe seemingly behind him, Mr. Trump has revived his warnings of the caravans' presence.
Mr. Trump also has returned to a previous threat he never carried out – closing the border with Mexico. He brought up that possibility on Friday and revisited it in tweets Saturday, blaming Democrats and Mexico for problems at the border and beyond despite warnings that a closed border could create economic havoc on both sides.
"It would be so easy to fix our weak and very stupid Democrat inspired immigration laws," Mr. Trump tweeted Saturday. "In less than one hour, and then a vote, the problem would be solved. But the Dems don't care about the crime, they don't want any victory for Trump and the Republicans, even if good for USA!"
As far as Mexico's role, he tweeted: "Mexico must use its very strong immigration laws to stop the many thousands of people trying to get into the USA. Our detention areas are maxed out & we will take no more illegals. Next step is to close the Border! This will also help us with stopping the Drug flow from Mexico!"
When reporters asked Mr. Trump on Friday what closing the border could entail, he said "it could mean all trade" with Mexico and added, "We will close it for a long time."
Mr. Trump has been promising for more than two years to build a long, impenetrable wall along the border to stop illegal immigration, though Congress has been reluctant to provide the money he needs. In the meantime, he has repeatedly threatened to close the border, but this time, with a new group of migrants heading north, he gave a definite timetable and suggested a visit to the border within the next two weeks.
A substantial closure could have an especially heavy impact on cross-border communities from San Diego to South Texas, as well as supermarkets that sell Mexican produce, factories that rely on imported parts, and other businesses across the U.S.
The U.S. and Mexico trade about $1.7 billion in goods daily, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said closing the border would be "an unmitigated economic debacle" that would threaten 5 million American jobs.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke out Saturday against cutting off aid to Central America, declaring that "foreign assistance is not charity; it advances our strategic interests and funds initiatives that protect American citizens."
And a group of House Democrats visiting El Salvador denounced the administration's decision to cut aid to the region.
"As we visit El Salvador evaluating the importance of U.S. assistance to Central America to address the root causes of family and child migration, we are extremely disappointed to learn that President Trump intends to cut off aid to the region," said the statement from five lawmakers, including Rep. Eliot L. Engel of New York, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "The President's approach is entirely counterproductive."
The Trump administration has threatened before to scale back or cut off U.S. assistance to Central America. Congress has not approved most of those proposed cuts, however, and a report this year by the Congressional Research Service said any change in that funding would depend on what Congress does.
Short of a widespread border shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the U.S. might close designated ports of entry to re-deploy staff to help process parents and children. Ports of entry are official crossing points that are used by residents and commercial vehicles. Many people who cross the border illegally ultimately request asylum under U.S. law, which does not require asylum seekers to enter at an official crossing.
Border officials are also planning to more than quadruple the number of asylum seekers sent back over the border to wait out their immigration cases, said an administration official. The official said right now about 60 migrants per day are returned and officials are hoping to send as many as 300 per day. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about internal plans and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador said Friday his country was doing its part to fight migrant smuggling. Criminal networks charge thousands of dollars a person to move migrants through Mexico, increasingly in large groups toward remote sections of the border.
"We want to have a good relationship with the government of the United States," Mr. López Obrador said. He added: "We are going to continue helping so that the migratory flow, those who pass through our country, do so according to the law, in an orderly way."
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's foreign relations secretary, tweeted that his country "doesn't act based on threats" and is "the best neighbor" the U.S. could have.
Alejandra Mier y Teran, executive director of the Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce in San Diego, said the mere threat of border closures sends the wrong message to businesses in Mexico and may eventually scare companies into turning to Asia for their supply chains.
"I think the impact would be absolutely devastating on so many fronts," said Ms. Mier y Teran, whose members rely on the Otay Mesa crossing to bring televisions, medical devices, and a wide range of products to the U.S. "In terms of a long-term effect, it's basically shooting yourself in your foot. It's sending out a message to other countries that, 'Don't come because our borders may not work at any time.' That is extremely scary and dangerous."
This story was reported by The Associated Press. Nomaan Merchant, Colleen Long, Peter Orsi, Elliot Spagat, Catherine Lucey, and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
Briefing Is there a border crisis? Depends on how you measure it.
3 million Venezuelans have fled. Who will rebuild?


BIRTHDAY GAL: Actress Carey Mulligan was born in London on this date in 1985. This birthday gal was nominated for a 2009 Oscar for her role in “An Education.” She has starred in such films as “Suffragette,” “Far From the Maddening Crowd,” and “Inside Llewyn Davis.” She voiced the role of Lady Anne York on the acclaimed mini-series “The Spoils of Babylon.” Mulligan has been married to musician Marcus Mumford since 2012 and the couple has one daughter.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You are willing to put your shoulder to the wheel to achieve your goals. Well-meaning friends may point out flaws in your plans or problems that should be addressed, so listen well.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Mind conquers matter. Springtime romances will flourish and permanent partnerships can be nurtured with a few well-placed words. Your penetrating intellect can overcome any challenge.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You shine on the social scene so don’t hide from view. Share your hopes, your dreams, and your heart with a special someone. Use your intense mental skills to brainstorm complex situations.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Keep things from spinning out of control. You may be the middleman who can direct traffic or flash a “stop” sign to keep people in line. Your charm and kindness can uplift others.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): A surge of energy and determination keeps you in the lead. Key competitors may be tired out and unable to match your dynamic resourcefulness. Minor mistakes or blowups are quickly resolved.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The truth may be revealed. It is up to you to choose an appropriate ethical action. Stick to honest appraisals of people and things whenever you have a chance to express your views.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Put your head together with someone you trust to brainstorm problems. Excellent solutions to pressing problems can be developed. Hold off on starting new business matters until next week.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Don’t neglect obligations that require your attention just because you feel a temporary financial pinch. Your big dreams of the future can come true if you keep on working hard to stay afloat.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sometimes doing nothing is doing something. Don’t be cornered by friends or feel pressured by family members into doing something that is against the rules or your principles.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Safely put all your eggs in one basket. Your judgment is better than usual so you are more likely to make wise financial decisions. A new hookup might have amorous plans for the weekend.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You don’t need to pretend to be something you aren’t. Hiding your intentions is counterproductive. Spend time with friends and get some exercise. Delay decisions about major expenditures.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Play possum. The possum plays dead to avoid being attacked and survived when the dinosaurs didn’t. Your energy levels may lag, so avoid starting anything new and steer clear of confrontations.


Why Were Three White House Officials Trawling Through Highly Classified Documents?
One of those involved in procuring the documents cited by Nunes has close ties to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The official, Ezra Cohen, survived a recent attempt to oust him from his White House job by appealing to Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, the officials said….After assembling reports that showed that Trump campaign officials were mentioned or inadvertently monitored by U.S. spy agencies targeting foreign individuals, Cohen took the matter to the top lawyer for the National Security Council, John Eisenberg.
The third White House official involved was identified as Michael Ellis, a lawyer who previously worked with Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee but joined the Trump administration as an attorney who reports to Eisenberg.
This is an amazingly far-reaching conspiracy considering that the documents don’t actually seem to have contained anything very interesting. You’d think that at some point one of these guys would have the common sense to call off this Keystone Cops affair.
Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, has offered to be interviewed by House and Senate investigators who are examining the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in exchange for immunity from prosecution, according to his lawyer and a congressional official.
Flynn’s lawyer states rather grandly that his client “has a story to tell and … very much wants to tell it.” But Alex Whiting of Harvard Law School argues pretty convincingly that what we learned last night likely means either that Flynn doesn’t have a story prosecutors are willing to barter for or isn’t yet willing to tell it.
If Nunes saw reports that named Trump or his associates, as he said, the initiative for naming names did not come from the originating intelligence agency. That is not how the process works. The names could only have been unmasked if the customers—who seem in this case to have been Trump’s White House appointees—made that request themselves. If anyone breached the president’s privacy, the perpetrators were working down the hall from him. (Okay, probably in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door.) It is of course hypocritical, even deceptive, for Nunes to lay that blame at the feet of intelligence officials, but that is not the central concern either.
That reference at the end to “the president’s men” is no coincidence. This whole thing looks more Watergate-ish by the day. Maybe it’s time to start calling it Russiagate.


In AMC's hit series "The Walking Dead," anyone can get killed at any moment. Creator Robert Kirkman has said that no character is safe despite their popularity in the longstanding comic series.
However, in the show, more people get killed by the living than the dead.
In the zombie apocalypse, most people would think the cause of death would either be getting devoured or infected by other zombies. It turns out that's not the case!
Matt Yancey put together an incredible graphic extensively tracking the life and death of 105 characters on the series.


A Freedom of Information Act Request reveals that immigration agents were instructed to search DMV records to target immigrants.
A damning new post at USA Today reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) administrators created a plan to boost deportations of undocumented immigrants convicted of minor crimes, like driving without a license.
The Obama administration—which has deported a record 1.5 million people in its first term—has enthusiastically promoted the deportation of criminals. It has also issued a memo advising immigration personnel to use prosecutorial discretion for low-priority cases. Still, many immigrants facing deportation point out that they were picked up after being racially profiled while driving.
Today’s report originates from an ACLU of North Carolina Freedom of Information Act request surrounding traffic checkpoints. The request yielded a cache of e-mails and documents that disclose that immigration agents were instructed to delve into Department of Motor Vehicle records to target immigrants for deportation.
Previously, documents considered acceptable for proof of residency in North Carolina were easily forged, or the information provided by applicants was not verified. However, in 2006, state lawmakers required a valid social security number or visa. The DMV stopped accepting Mexican ID cards in 2004. Therefore, cooperating with DMV to identify all denied license renewal applications (due to lacking proof of residency) would provide a significant foreign-born target base which could be vetted further to identify those with prior criminal convictions.
The emails and documents also illustrate that ICE would work with local police departments to target immigrants for deportation, but obscure its presence. “ICE would not be at the checkpoint itself so this would not appear to be an ICE organized checkpoint,” reads one section about assisted checkpoints, adding that ICE would not limit its questioning to the driver, but also interview vehicle passengers who might also be detained.
The documents confirm what undocumented immigrants have known for too long. In August of last year, Undocubus riders in North Carolina on their way to the DNC protested inside Jackson County Sheriff Jimmy Ashe’s office, accusing Ashe of staging checkpoints that racially profiled Latino drivers and passengers—and resulted in deportations that tore families apart.
Read Aura Bogado’s take on what Obama said—and didn’t say—about immigration in his State of the Union address.
TAKE ACTION: Halt the Deportation of Parents.


But the governor noted that, at least for the moment, he doesn’t have to make that choice.
The issue arises because the pope, in the strongest statement ever, said earlier this month that executions are “an attack” on human dignity. Francis also promised to work “with determination” to abolish capital punishment wherever it still exists.
“I, of course, am going to listen to what the pope says,” Ducey said on Monday when asked about it. The governor is a practicing Catholic.
“At the same time, I took an oath to uphold the law in Arizona. And I’m going to continue to uphold the law,” he added.
In his 1995 Evangelium vitae — the Gospel of Life — Pope John Paul II said that execution is only appropriate in cases of absolute necessity, “in other words when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society” through non-lethal means. That language provided enough of an escape clause of sorts for Catholic officials like the governor who must sign death warrants.
The governor sidestepped questions of whether he is saying that state statutes, and his oath to obey them, are superior to God’s law, at least as interpreted by the pope.
“We can have an interesting discussion about that and about life,” Ducey responded. He pointed out that, at least for the time being, he doesn’t have to make that choice.
“Thankfully, there’s nothing on the docket in front of me at the time,” he said.
The last execution in Arizona was in 2014, under Gov. Jan Brewer. Since that time, a series of legal actions about the penalty and the drugs used to execute inmates have resulted in a virtual moratorium on executions.
There are currently 117 inmates on “death row,” including three women.


It’s not that the human immune system doesn’t recognize HIV. Indeed, an infection causes the body to unleash antibodies that attack the virus, and initially some HIV is destroyed.
But HIV is able to quickly defend itself by co-opting a part of the innate human immune system — the immune system people are born with, called the complement. The complement includes a vital mechanism that prevents immune system cells from attacking the body’s own cells. HIV is able to incorporate a key protein in that self-protection mechanism, CD59, and by doing so makes itself appear to be one of the body’s normal cells, not an infective agent.
In laboratories at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Andy Qigui Yu, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, is testing a promising compound that may counteract HIV’s ability to hijack the immune system’s protection mechanism.
“HIV is very clever. As it replicates inside cells, it takes on the CD59. The virus is covered with CD59, so the immune system treats the virus like your own normal cells,” Dr. Yu said.
In November, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced it had awarded nine new Grand Challenges Explorations Phase II grants, one of them to Dr. Yu. The Phase II grants were awarded to researchers who had received initial $100,000 awards and had shown promising results.
The new grant will support not only Dr. Yu’s research into compounds that may block the ability of HIV to hide behind the CD59 “cloak,” but also his work to identify the mechanism the virus uses to incorporate CD59.
“If we find that mechanism, then we can develop something to block that incorporation, and HIV may lose that protection from the immune system,” Dr. Yu said.
Researchers have been able in the past to generate antibodies that successfully attacked HIV in the laboratory. But these antibodies have failed in human testing because the virus in the body escapes from immune system attacks, Dr. Yu said.
In an attempt to disrupt HIV’s hijacking of CD59, Yu and colleagues at IU and Harvard University crafted a molecule from a bacterial toxin that is known to bind to the CD59 protein. In laboratory tests, they administered the molecule to blood samples taken from patients with HIV. The bacteria toxin molecule latched on to the CD59 proteins, revealing the viral particles to be invaders and enabling the antibodies to attack the virus.
Reporting their findings in the Journal of Immunology in December 2010, the researchers suggested that the molecule could potentially be developed into a new therapy to fight HIV/AIDS.
More recent experiments have indicated that the administration of the molecule enabled the antibody-complement to attack infected cells and not just the virus particles found in the blood samples. The next steps will include more extensive testing of the molecule in a broader range of patient samples, Dr. Yu said.
Grand Challenges Explorations is a $100 million initiative funded by the Gates Foundation to help researchers worldwide explore innovative ideas in how to solve persistent global health and development challenges. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have an opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.


Fine Gael TD Noel Rock and Labour Senator traded insults over their commitment or otherwise to provide housing.
Fine Gael TD Noel Rock and Labour Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin have been involved in a bitter spat on Twitter over objections to housing developments.
Mr Rock accused Mr O’Ríordáin of being a “serial objector and massive hypocrite” and said the Labour Party used to have a policy of supporting housing for everyone.
Mr O’Ríordáin countered by accusing Mr Rock of “cheap shots” and said Fine Gael are “ripping up the rule book to benefit landlords and developers, but then stage photo ops with supposed ticket touts to look tough”.
The reference to ticket touts is the private members Bill brought forward by Mr Rock to stop tickets being sold for above face-value prices.
Mr Rock is the latest prominent Fine Gael politician to target Mr Ó’ Ríordáin over his objections to housing developments.
Raheny refers to Senator O’Ríordáin’s involvement in the campaign to stop the building of 104 houses and 432 apartments on the St Paul’s College site in St Anne’s Park.
In Howth he objected to a 164-apartment development in Howth, north Co Dublin, being built on the site of the former Baily Court Hotel. He also appealed a decision to grant planning permission to an apartment complex in Howth on the old Techrete site.
In Marino he is one of a number of public representatives, also including Minister of State Finian McGrath, who have objected to a 377-apartment complex and eight houses on Griffith Avenue in Marino.
Senator Ó’Ríordán responded by asking Mr Rock to clarify what he means by his objecting to a development in Clontarf.
Senator Ó’Ríordáin retorted that he had “gone out of my way not to score political points over the issue of St Anne’s Park “but if @finegael feel that way they should let everyone on the Northside know – esp all those who use and love St Anne’s Park”.


Silicon Valley style just went too far.
The sartorial equivalent of Silicon Valley used to be the hoodie, jeans, and adidas slides. But now that San Francisco is getting richer, it's in need of a classier (but still really lazy) uniform, and that's where the Suitsy comes in.
Herzog told the Guardian he had the idea six months ago and got a seamstress to produce his design. "It feels great, and no one knows it isn't a real suit," he said. "Its debut was at the rehearsal dinner for my wedding." Yes, someone agreed to marry a man who wore a onesie to his rehearsal dinner.
You can't buy the Suitsy just yet; currently it's been submitted to the company Betabrand for possible production. If it gets enough users' votes, the company will produce the product. Betabrand is also the company that brought you the Dress Pant Yoga Pants and the pinstriped Executive Hoodie, so you can essentially blame them for all of society's ills.
The Suitsy exemplifies a certain type of Silicon Valley guy: the productivity-obsessed techie who will do anything to avoid doing basic tasks, like eating food or putting on clothing. A commenter on the Suitsy's Betabrand page pretty much sums it up: "This is basically the Soylent of menswear."


P1Research needs a whole mess of Farsi-speaking radio professionals to launch a new radio station in Dubai. Your office will likely not be in this beachfront hotel. Still.
As of the time of this posting, there were 1490 jobs on our board.


Here was the oddest thing: within weeks of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on a second Japanese city on August 9, 1945, and so obliterating it, Americans were already immersed in new scenarios of nuclear destruction. As the late Paul Boyer so vividly described in his classic bookBy the Bomb’s Early Light, it took no time at all -- at a moment when no other nation had such potentially Earth-destroying weaponry -- for an America triumphant to begin to imagine itself in ruins, and for its newspapers and magazines to start drawing concentric circles of death and destruction around American cities while consigning their future country to the stewardship of the roaches.
Radio quickly followed with its own nightmarish nuclear scenarios of all-American disaster as, within years, would TV, while post-nuclear landscapes of horror were a dime a dozen in the world ofpulp fiction. In the movies, mutant and irradiated creatures of every sort -- from previously somnolentgiant reptilestomonstrous ants-- ran wild on screen. Everything, in a sense, became radioactive. There were even, as Boyer wrote, “fashion tips for the apocalypse,” as in a government-sponsored pamphlet with an illustration of a man in a fedora, its brim tipped down, captioned, “If you are caught outdoors in a sudden attack, a hat will give you at least some protection from the ‘heat flash.’” This was the “duck and cover” worldI grew up in(“you and I don't have shells to crawl into, likeBert the Turtle, so we have to cover up in our own way...”), one in which, though few spoke of it, everyone sensed that some “red line” had been crossed in theNew Mexican desertand then at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a world in which, for the first time, not God but human beings could create their own end times.
We still haven’t taken it all in, but 50 years ago, there was a moment when it looked like all the futuristic fiction might indeed turn into reality, when (at least if you lived on the East Coast of the U.S.) it seemed as if events were drawing a concentric circle around you. That was, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and anybody my age undoubtedly remembers with particular specificity the night of October 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy wenton TVand the radio to tell us that we were all potentially toast. "We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth," he said grimly, "but neither will we shrink from the risk at any time it must be faced." At 18, with most of my life still theoretically ahead of me, I believed him.
The image of the world standing still is theturn of phraseof Sheldon Stern, former historian at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, who published the authoritative version of the tapes of the ExComm meetings where Kennedy and a close circle of advisers debated how to respond to the crisis. Those meetings were secretly recorded by the president, which might bear on the fact that his stand throughout the recorded sessions is relatively temperate compared to other participants, who were unaware that they were speaking to history.
Kennedy had already declared the highest nuclear alert short of launch (DEFCON 2), which authorized “NATO aircraft with Turkish pilots ... [or others] ... to take off, fly to Moscow, and drop a bomb,”according tothe well-informed Harvard University strategic analyst Graham Allison, writing in the major establishment journalForeign Affairs.
The basic reason why no such thought could be contemplated was spelled out by National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, former Harvard dean and reputedly the brightest star in the Camelot firmament. The world, he insisted, must come to understand that “[t]he current threat to peace isnotin Turkey, it is inCuba,” where missiles were directed against the U.S. A vastly more powerful U.S. missile force trained on the much weaker and more vulnerable Soviet enemy could not possibly be regarded as a threat to peace, because we are Good, as a great many people in the Western hemisphere and beyond could testify -- among numerous others, the victims of theongoing terrorist warthat the U.S. was then waging against Cuba, or those swept up in the “campaign of hatred” in the Arab world that so puzzled Eisenhower, though not the National Security Council, which explained it clearly.
Of course, the idea that the U.S. should be restrained by international law was too ridiculous to merit consideration. Asexplained recentlyby the respected left-liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias, “one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely tolegitimatethe use of deadly military force by western powers” -- meaning the U.S. -- so that it is “amazingly naïve,” indeed quite “silly,” to suggest that it should obey international law or other conditions that we impose on the powerless. This was a frank and welcome exposition of operative assumptions, reflexively taken for granted by the ExComm assemblage.
We might have been “in even a worse position” if the world had known more about what the U.S. was doing at the time. Only recently was it learned that, six months earlier, the U.S. had secretly deployed missiles in Okinawa virtually identical to those the Russians would send to Cuba. These were surely aimed at China at a moment of elevated regional tensions. To this day, Okinawa remains a major offensive U.S. military base over the bitter objections of its inhabitants who, right now, are less than enthusiastic aboutthe dispatchof accident-prone V-22 Osprey helicopters to the Futenma military base, located at the heart of a heavily populated urban center.
Not the Russians of that moment then, but rather the right to dominate, a leading principle of foreign policy found almost everywhere, though typically concealed in defensive terms: during the Cold War years, routinely by invoking the “Russian threat,” even when Russians were nowhere in sight. An example of great contemporary import is revealed in Iran scholar Ervand Abrahamian’s importantupcoming bookof the U.S.-U.K. coup that overthrew the parliamentary regime of Iran in 1953. With scrupulous examination of internal records, he shows convincingly that standard accounts cannot be sustained. The primary causes were not Cold War concerns, nor Iranian irrationality that undermined Washington's “benign intentions,” nor even access to oil or profits, but rather the way the U.S. demand for “overall controls” -- with its broader implications for global dominance -- was threatened by independent nationalism.
That is what we discover over and over by investigating particular cases, including Cuba (not surprisingly) though the fanaticism in that particular case might merit examination. U.S. policy towards Cuba is harshly condemned throughout Latin America and indeed most of the world, but “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind” is understood to be meaningless rhetoric intoned mindlessly on July 4th. Ever since polls have been taken on the matter, a considerable majority of the U.S. population hasfavored normalization of relationswith Cuba, but that too is insignificant.
We can, at last, hear the voices of the victims in Canadian historian Keith Bolender’sVoices From the Other Side, the first oral history of the terror campaign -- one of many books unlikely to receive more than casual notice, if that, in the West because the contents are too revealing.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. ATomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous best-selling political works, most recently,Hopes and Prospects,Making the Future, andOccupy.
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The production volume of Korean automakers is now bigger overseas than at home.
Data from the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association show that Korean carmakers produced 2.77 million cars in the country from January to August but 2.92 million in their overseas factories.
The main reason were major strikes at Hyundai compounded by slow exports and lackluster sales in Korea.
The decreased output at home leads to a vicious cycle of smaller orders for subcontractors, lower factory operating rates, layoffs of assembly line workers and a worsening slump.
The car industry, one of the top export pillars, is starting to see the same exodus of production facilities that has happened among mobile phone manufacturers.
Even until 2009, the domestic plants of Korean automakers accounted for 65 percent of total production. But domestic output peaked at 4.65 million vehicles in 2011 and has been declining ever since.
Although domestic production recovered slightly in 2013 and 2014, overseas output more than doubled over the past six years.