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That's according to a government survey published last week, claiming that 42% of men and 44.2% of women -- almost half of Japan's millennial singles aged between 18 to 34 -- are virgins. There was no accounting for the discrepancy between the genders, except perhaps for the age-old problem of men and women having different understandings of the word “commitment.” The surveys did not ask about same-sex partners. A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship. (Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) Japan's demographic challenges are well-known: It's home to the world's oldest population and has a shrinking birthrate and an astonishing number of single people. But despite, the government's attempts to boost the number of marriages and children, this year's survey results from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, don't reveal a swerve in the right direction. "To just make it men looking at a female model perpetuates the problem."

– While America might more typically worry about what its youth are doing, Japan spends a lot of time worrying about what they're not doing, and what they're not doing is having sex—at all, apparently. A new government survey suggests that the country's millennials are not only in no hurry to marry, but apparently aren't in any rush to do the deed. To wit, a whopping 44% of women and 42% of men, amounting to nearly half of the country's millennial singles ages 18 to 34, say they are still virgins, reports the Washington Post. But the percentage of these singles who say they hope to marry in the future is up close to 90%. "People marry later or stay single for life, contributing to the nation’s low birthrate," the head researcher tells the Japan Times. "They want to tie the knot eventually, but they tend to put it off as they have gaps between their ideals and the reality." With an aging generation of baby boomers weighing down what is already the world's oldest population, Japan has for years been trying to encourage its dwindling number of young people to marry and have children. But complicating this quandary, CNN reports that the apparent lack of interest in engaging in actual sex could result in part from the country's many manga fans choosing fantasy over reality. Plus more women are making more money and choosing to marry later or not at all, while many men report feeling intimidated by them. "They feel threatened by women who are empowering themselves," one expert says. (A quarter of young men and almost half of young women in Japan go so far as to say they despise sexual contact.)

Mesolithic encampment at Blick Mead offers chance to find out about earliest chapter of Britain’s history, say archaeologists Experts have hit out at plans for a road tunnel under Stonehenge, warning it could damage the oldest encampment discovered near the stones. The £2bn scheme would see the road put into a dual carriageway tunnel past Stonehenge, reducing congestion and improving the setting of the stones - giving the public greater access to the wider prehistoric landscape and benefiting wildlife, supporters say. Charcoal dug up from the Mesolithic encampment at Blick Mead in the world heritage site, around one and a half miles from the stones, has been tested and dated to around 4,000 BC, archaeologists said. The dig has also unearthed evidence of possible structures, but further investigation is needed to see in more detail what these features in the only untouched Mesolithic landscape in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site contain. There is also evidence of feasting – burnt flints and remains of giant bulls – aurochs – eaten by early hunter gatherers, as well as tools. A previous dig at the site, led by the University of Buckingham, revealed Amesbury is the longest continually-occupied place in the country and that burnt frogs’ legs from 7,000 years ago were a delicacy here long before the French took a liking to them. Archaeologists believe that early Britons were drawn to the site because of a natural spring. A The combination of a water of a constant temperature and a rare alga also produced the only colour-changing stones, which change from brown to pink, found at any archaeological site in the country. But archaeologist David Jaques, who made the discovery of the encampment, said: “The prime minister is interested in re-election in 140 days – we are interested in discovering how our ancestors lived six thousand years ago.” He added: “Blick Mead could explain what archaeologists have been searching for for centuries – an answer to the story of Stonehenge’s past. “British pre-History may have to be rewritten. This is the latest dated Mesolithic encampment ever found in the UK. A shard of bone found at the site “Blick Mead site connects the early hunter gatherer groups returning to Britain after the Ice Age to the Stonehenge area all the way through to the Neolithic in the late 5th Millennium BC. “Britain is beginning across this time period. Blick Mead connects a time when the country was still joined to the mainland to it becoming the British Isles for the first time.” The experts believe that the site could show the Stonehenge was built as a monument to the ancestors of Neolithic Britons. But our only chance to find out about the earliest chapter of Britain’s history could be wrecked if the tunnel goes ahead.” Professor Tim Darvill, of Bournemouth University has described this as “This is the most important discovery at Stonehenge in over 60 years.” Andy Rhind-Tutt, of Amesbury and chairman of the Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, added: “Traffic congestion to one of the country’s most visited attractions will not be solved by a tunnel with one exit lane – the current tailback can extend five miles and can take two hours to get through. “Any tunnel would need to be motorway standard, and even with four lanes there would still be tailbacks. A much more practical solution would be to reroute the A303 supporting South Wiltshire as well as the West Country.” What we already know about how and when Stonehenge came to be built is examined in a new Stonehenge MOOC, launched today(Friday) and run by the University of Buckingham.

– Researchers are exploring a settlement near Stonehenge dating to about 4000 BC, making it the area's oldest, the Telegraph reports. The Blick Mead encampment, as it's known, is from the Mesolithic period and was likely home to hunter-gatherers who headed to the spot before Britain became an island. It's the "latest dated Mesolithic encampment ever found in the UK," says archaeologist David Jacques, and findings, including apparent structures and evidence of feasting, mean that "British pre-history may have to be rewritten." Another expert calls the encampment Stonehenge's greatest revelation in 60 years. "Was Stonehenge built in part as a monument to the ancestors from the deepest part of Britain’s past?" Jacques wonders, per Heritage Daily. "Blick Mead could explain what archaeologists have been searching for for centuries": the real story behind the site. But the encampment is already in trouble—from plans for a highway that's actually intended to make Stonehenge a nicer place to visit. A nearly two-mile tunnel aims to reduce a traffic bottleneck in the area, the Guardian reports. But it could also obscure history. Prime minister David Cameron, who announced the plans, "is interested in re-election in 140 days; we are interested in discovering how our ancestors lived 6,000 years ago," says Jacques. The site "connects the early hunter-gatherer groups returning to Britain after the Ice Age to the Stonehenge area all the way through to the Neolithic in the late fifth millennium BC," he notes, and "our only chance to find out about the earliest chapter of Britain’s history could be wrecked if the tunnel goes ahead." Recent reports also pointed to a "super henge" underneath the stones.

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. -- A middle school is under fire for its reaction to a violent brawl between a teacher and a staff member inside a classroom that was caught on video by a student. CBS affiliate WGCL-TV reports the fight broke out on May 19 at Stone Mountain Middle School, northeast of downtown Atlanta. WGCL obtained video of the dramatic incident, which shows two women punching each other and pulling each other's hair while students scream for them to stop. "From what I think I know the teachers were arguing about a teacher, a male teacher, and they started arguing and it went on for about three to five minutes," one student told WGCL. Julia Berry, whose daughter was in the classroom at the time of the fight, told WGCL she wants the teacher and the assistant fired. After the fight was finally broken up, students say school officials came into the classroom, went through their cell phones and made them delete any evidence of it. “Nobody apologized they just came in and were like who videotaped this and stuff like that,” A student said. “I think they were trying to push it under the rug so nobody would know about it and the school’s reputation wouldn’t be messed up." The DeKalb County School District (DCSD) told WGCL it was not aware of school officials examining students' phones. After WGCL sent the video to DCSD's communications director, the district issued a statement saying the staff members involved in the fight would be disciplined. The statement says, in part, for those involved in the fight, "Those staff members that participated in the conduct have been removed from the learning environment. "Following our process, DCSD will act swiftly and decisively to hold those employees accountable for their actions." After CBS46 kept pressing the school for answers, Berry says Stone Mountain Middle School sent out a letter saying, "Safety and security procedures are in place to help maintain a safe campus. "Anyone who creates an unsafe learning environment for our students receive swift disciplinary actions."

– A brawl broke out in a middle school classroom in Georgia last week—not between students, but between a teacher and a staff member. Students say the two women were arguing about a male teacher for a few minutes before things got physical. "Everyone was screaming like stop, stop, stop," one Stone Mountain Middle School student tells CBS 46, which obtained video of the fight from a student's cell phone; the women—one of whom was reportedly a teacher's assistant, per CBS News—are seen punching and pulling hair. Parents are now speaking out about the May 19 incident, calling for the employees to be fired and criticizing the school for how it handled the aftermath. Students say another adult ultimately broke up the fight, and then school officials entered the classrooms and went through students' cell phones, forcing them to delete any recordings of the fight. "Nobody apologized," one student says. "I think they were trying to push it under the rug so nobody would know about it." Parents say no letter was sent home about the incident until CBS 46 started questioning the school district. The district says it isn't aware of staff going through student phones and that the employees involved "have been removed from the learning environment." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that they have also been charged with disorderly conduct.

ONTARIO (KTLA) -- A college student who overstepped a safety railing fell into Niagara Falls over the weekend and searchers looking for her body on Monday found an unidentified male body instead.The 19-year-old international student from Japan was presumed drowned after she plunged into the fast-flowing waters near the brink of Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of the falls at about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to Canadian park police.She had climbed over a railing and straddled it while enjoying the view with a friend, police said.

– An odd footnote to the sad tale of the 19-year-old student swept over Niagara Falls on Sunday. An international search team dispatched in a helicopter to look for her body in Niagara Falls Gorge instead turned up the body of an unknown male. Authorities are working to identify him, reports KTLA. Meanwhile, more details are emerging about the tragic weekend incident: The woman, presumed drowned, was an international student from Japan. The Toronto Star talks to a witness who saw her posing on the railing for a photo moments before she fell, wearing a bright red sweatshirt and holding an umbrella. The paper notes that earlier the same day, a 27-year-old man scaled a safety wall and tumbled into Niagara River Gorge; he and a friend who went in to save him were rescued, though the man fractured his leg.

“She was very calm she did very well -- it was her third child so she had experienced childbirth before so I don’t think she was as nervous about it other than it was at Walmart,” Reilly said.

– Paper, plastic, or diaper bag? A woman shopping Sunday morning at a Walmart in Payson, Utah, surprised workers and customers when she approached Register 11, dropped to her knees, clutched her stomach, and … pulled out her wallet. She was in labor, ABC News reports, but she insisted on paying for her items first before she took care of her next transaction: having the baby right there in the store. "We weren't really interested in taking her money at [that] point, but she insisted," says Walmart manager Dustin Haight, who KSTU notes called 911 and implored her not to worry about the tab. "It wasn't like she was like, 'OK, let's get this baby out and [then] I'll pay.' She paid and then had the baby." As soon as the woman, identified as Cecelia Rivas by the Daily Herald, had paid up, employees and customers sprang into action, with some hunting down towels and blankets while others held sheets up to give her privacy. "By the time the EMTs got here, she had … a baby [boy]," Haight tells KSTU. "She was very calm," an assistant chief from the local fire department adds. "It was her third child … so I don't think she was as nervous about it other than it was at Walmart." Rivas admits she actually was "really scared," though she tells the Herald as soon as she saw her new son, "I was so happy." A spokesman for the hospital where Rivas and baby Matias were taken says they're both "doing well," per ABC. And Haight is counting on a new repeat customer. "Hopefully we'll be part of his life forever," he tells ABC. (A text-messaging conversation about this Walmart shopping trip went viral.)

Watchstanders with the 7th Coast Guard District command center received notification from the Carnival Ecstasy crew that a 32-year-old woman was reportedly seen going overboard at approximately 2:30 a.m. Wednesday from the 11th deck wearing a white dress with pink floral. The Coast Guard identified the woman as Rina Patel of Interlaken, New York. MIAMI - The Coast Guard is searching for a woman who reportedly went overboard Wednesday from the Carnival Ecstasy cruise ship approximately 27 miles southwest of Freeport, Bahamas. The cruise ship had left Nassau, Bahamas, and was en route to Charleston, South Carolina, at the time.

– A 32-year-old woman "was witnessed jumping overboard" from the 11th deck of a Carnival cruise ship before dawn Wednesday, the cruise line says in a statement to CBS News. The Ecstasy was about 15 miles off the coast of the island of Grand Bahama at the time, and the US Coast Guard is now searching for the passenger in the Bahamas. The ship had left the Bahamas on its way to Charleston, South Carolina, when the woman jumped around 2:30am, and the Coast Guard allowed it to continue heading to Charleston at 9am. No other details about the woman were released, but she apparently has family aboard the ship.

"German chancellor Angela Merkel has to know that the politics of austerity have suffered a humiliating defeat." With no single party winning enough support to form a government, a period of uncertainty lies ahead as political leaders attempt to form a coalition. Analysts did not rule out fresh elections in June if a new administration cannot be formed. Any political instability in Greece may prompt fresh questions over the country's place in the eurozone. Political revolution Although a protest vote against the stringent austerity measures enforced on Greeks had been widely expected, in the event the two main parties that had agreed the bailout terms, New Democracy (ND) and socialist Pasok, attracted less than a third of the vote. "This is a message of change, a message to Europe that a peaceful revolution has begun," said Alexis Tsipras, who heads Syriza, a coalition of radical left and green groups that took 16.6% of the vote – the second largest share. Pasok, the socialist party led by Evangelos Venizelos, the former finance minister who had been the architect of many of the unpopular policies, won 13.4%, compared to 40% in the last national poll, in 2009. He has already described the parties that signed the EU/IMF bailout as "de-legitimised" by the public. In a sign of the political tumult that lies ahead, Antonis Samaras, New Democracy's leader, said he would seek to create a "government of national salvation" that would attempt to amend the loan agreement Greece had signed with its "troika" of creditors, the EU, European Central Bank and IMF.

– A long period of instability looms for Greece after voters furious about tough austerity measures gave the two governing parties a hammering at the polls and boosted extremists at both ends of the political spectrum. The Coalition of the Radical Left, which opposes the terms of Greece's bailout, surged to second place with around 17% of the vote while the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which ran on an anti-immigration platform, is poised to enter Parliament for the first time after taking around 7% of the vote, reports the BBC. New Democracy and Pasok, the center-right and center-left parties that had governed in a coalition since last November, saw their support collapse. New Democracy took 19%, down from 33.5% in 2009, and its leader says he aims to form a "government of national salvation." The parties have three days to form a governing coalition but analysts say that Parliament is now so fragmented that a deal may be impossible and new elections will be required. "We are talking about a complete collapse of the party system as we have known it, which opens up new concerns about Greece's ability to govern itself," a professor of political science in Athens tells the Guardian.

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt took out a full-page ad in Sunday's Washington Post. (Katy Winn/Associated Press) Larry Flynt’s ad in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post is hard to miss. For one, it takes up a full page. And there are no pictures — just bold, all-caps text dominating the top third of the page: “$10 MILLION FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL FROM OFFICE OF DONALD J. TRUMP.” Flynt, best known as the publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler, outlined numerous reasons he felt President Trump needed to be removed from office, charging him with everything from “compromising domestic and foreign policy with his massive conflicts-of-interest global business empire” to “telling hundreds of bald-faced lies” to “gross nepotism and appointment of unqualified persons to high office.” That was why, Flynt wrote, he was seeking information from anyone who could provide a “smoking gun” — perhaps buried in Trump's tax returns or in some other investment records — that would lead to his impeachment. “Did he make some financial quid pro quo with the Russians?” the ad states. “Has the business of the United States been compromised to protect the business of the Trump empire? We need to flush everything out into the open.” An advertisement Larry Flynt placed in the Sunday October 15, 2017 edition of The Washington Post. (click to enlarge) At the end of the ad, there is a toll-free number and an email address, along with a reassurance that Flynt fully intends to pay the full sum of $10 million for good information. “Impeachment would be a messy, contentious affair, but the alternative — three more years of destabilizing dysfunction — is worse,” Flynt wrote. “ . . . I feel it is my patriotic duty, and the duty of all Americans, to dump Trump before it’s too late.” Kris Coratti, a spokeswoman for The Post, declined to say how much a full-page ad costs or how far in advance one would have to notify the newspaper to run such an ad in a Sunday edition. “We give advertisers wide latitude to have their say,” Coratti said. “Generally, if the ads are not illegal or advocating illegal actions, we try not to place limits on speech or content.” On Saturday afternoon during a call to the hotline listed in the ad a man told The Post the number would be staffed on weekdays, between 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. PT, for the next two weeks. The man declined to give his name but said he was not Flynt. In a subsequent phone interview, Flynt told The Post that he expected to get information “within a few days” and said he would release any legitimate information right away. He also defended offering a cash reward for information. “Just because you pay for it does not mean it’s not any good,” Flynt said. “I don’t think you can live as recklessly as Trump has for 30 years and not leave some baggage along the way . . . I can't think of something more patriotic to do than to try to get to get this moron out of office.” It’s not the first time Flynt, who endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential race, has offered a monetary reward with the aim of taking down a politician. In 2007, he offered $1 million, also through a full-page ad in The Post, seeking evidence from anyone who had had an illicit sexual encounter with a member of Congress or other government official. He had done the same in 1998, and the information that emerged reportedly influenced the resignation of Republican Congressman Bob Livingston, who was in line to be speaker of the House. In 2012, Flynt again dangled a $1 million reward in public, this time for then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax returns. Read more: Five reasons the GOP won’t dump Trump I’m one of the Central Park Five. Donald Trump won’t leave me alone. Angered by gun control, this lawmaker drafted a bill to require licenses for journalists Score one for Kellyanne Conway. The New York Times plans to toughen its Twitter policy.

– Pornography publisher Larry Flynt has apparently had it with the current administration and is offering "up to $10 million" to anyone who produces information that leads to President Trump's impeachment and removal from office, reports the AP. He lays out the offer in a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. During last year's presidential campaign, Flynt dangled $1 million to anyone who could turn over video or audio capturing Trump behaving in an illegal or sexually demeaning manner. That followed the release of the 2005 Access Hollywood video in which Trump bragged of sexually assaulting women. The ad, notes the Post itself, is less than subtle and hard to miss, reading at the top third of the page: "$10 MILLION FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL FROM OFFICE OF DONALD J. TRUMP." The fine print details Trump's alleged offenses as ranging from "compromising domestic and foreign policy with his massive conflicts-of-interest global business empire" to "telling hundreds of bald-faced lies" and "gross nepotism and appointment of unqualified persons to high office." The White House didn't comment.

Executive producer Al Jean admitted as much in a recent phone conference with the press, promoting Sunday's 25th season debut of The Simpsons. "I'll give you a clue that the actor playing the character won an Emmy for playing that character, but I won't say who it is," Jean said cagily. PHOTOS: Hollywood Backlot moments The 25th season of "The Simpsons" premiered Sunday night with a "Homeland" spoof guest starring Kristen Wiig. In the press call, Jean also teased some other highlights in the season ahead, including a "Futurama" crossover episode set to air sometime in May and a wedding, officiated by Stan Lee, for Comic Book Guy. "We’re actually working on a script where a character will pass away," Jean said.

– The Simpsons began its 25th season on Sunday, and it will end said season one character light. Producer Al Jean revealed in a conference call with reporters that a well-known character will meet his or her demise this season, reports the Sun News. "I'll give you a clue that the actor playing the character won an Emmy for playing that character, but I won't say who it is," said Jean. That happens to be the world's worst clue, explains the LA Times, because just about everyone on the show has scored an Emmy at this point. That covers not only only the regulars—voice actors Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Hank Azaria, Nancy Cartwright, and Yeardley Smith—but also Anne Hathaway for Princess Penelope and Kelsey Grammer for Sideshow Bob. (Click to read about how the show's writers cram it full of obscure math jokes.)

AP/Patrick Semansky Liberals, conservatives, and almost everybody in between are hammering New Jersey Gov. Kevin Roberts, a Christie spokesman, added: "To be clear: The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated. At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate.” Asked to confirm whether Christie believes it’s possible that vaccines cause autism, his office did not respond. "It's more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official," Christie said Monday when asked about recent measles outbreaks in the US, according to The New York Times. But the likely Republican presidential candidate added: “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.” Christie’s initial comments came after a laboratory tour at MedImmune, a biologics company that makes vaccines in Cambridge.

– NJ Gov. Chris Christie is now pulling back on statements he made earlier today—in response to the recent measles outbreak—that parents should have a "choice" whether to get their kids vaccinated. "The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection, and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," a statement from his office read this morning, as per the Washington Post. But the outrage from his call for "balance" had already been incited, as evidenced by the following reactions: At the Daily Beast, Olivia Nuzzi says statements like the ones Christie originally made today keep him "on the good side of the anti-vaccination crowd"—extra support that may come in handy if he runs for president next year—and reminds readers of a letter he wrote during his gubernatorial run in 2009 that seemed to acknowledge a link between autism and vaccines. As Sam Biddle writes on Gawker, Christie believed "public health [trumped] individual discomfort" in the case of Kaci Hickox, the nurse he involuntarily quarantined as a precaution against Ebola. "Except in the case of the Ebola nurse, it was unfounded and unscientific," Biddle notes. "If only Christie could take his 'I'm the boss, f---in' deal with it' stance against paranoid, negligent anti-vaxx parents, instead of a nurse with a fever." Some of the strongest criticism against Christie comes from Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel, who calls him an "IRRESPONSIBLE, PANDERING S---HEAD" (all-caps hers) and writes, "I guess he's only worried about scary African diseases, not good old-fashioned American diseases like measles." Faircloth adds, "Your average ancestor circa 1810 would probably rip every hair out of your head if she thought you were seriously considering turning your back on an invention that renders a great scourge powerless." Other heated responses, as per Business Insider, include GOP media guru's Rick Wilson's Twitter feed this morning (in which he calls Christie "wildly irresponsible," among other things), as well as that of Taegan Goddard of Political Wire, who posted, "Wow, I'm getting really sick of politicians who deny basic science." Former CNN news reporter Campbell Brown kept her tweet short and sweet: "Insane. Christie is done."

FILE PHOTO - A North Korean flag flutters at a guard post near the propaganda village of Gijungdong in North Korea, in this picture taken near the truce village of Panmunjom, South Korea, September 28, 2017. Ambassador Ja Song Nam said the United States was “running amok for war exercises by introducing nuclear war equipment in and around the Korean Peninsula.” Three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups have been involved in the joint exercise in the Western Pacific in a rare show of force as President Donald Trump visits Asia.

– North Korea says the unprecedented deployment of three US aircraft carrier groups "taking up a strike posture" around the Korean peninsula is making it impossible to predict when nuclear war will break out, the AP reports. North Korea's UN ambassador, Ja Song Nam, said in a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres Monday that the joint military exercises are creating "the worst ever situation" around the peninsula. He also said the US has reactivated round-the-clock sorties with nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers "which existed during the Cold War times." Ja said the "large-scale nuclear war exercises and blackmails, which the US staged for a whole year without a break ... make one conclude that the option we have taken was the right one and we should go along the way to the last." The three aircraft carrier groups have been taking part in a joint exercise with South Korea while Donald Trump visits Asia, Reuters reports. The last time so many carrier groups exercised together in the western Pacific was 2007. The North Korean letter came a day after Trump tweeted that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had insulted the American president by calling him "old."

– North Korea is working on a rocket so big that it makes the long-range Taepodong-2 missile it's preparing to test-launch look modest, South Korean government sources tell the Chosun Ilbo. Based on satellite images, they've determined that the North is working on a missile with a booster so large that it could fire more than 6,200 miles, meaning it would be capable of reaching the continental US. The officials aren't sure if the missile is functional, or "a life-sized mockup," but they suspect it will be unveiled either during a military parade on April 15, or during the army's April 25 centennial celebration. The North has around 10,000 missile experts with "considerable research skills," a source said in a separate report, and has spent some $3.1 billion on developing long-range ballistic missiles so far. For reference, South Korea has about 3,000 rocket experts total between the public and private sectors.

Officials have identified the woman found trapped in an overturned Hummer in near Adelanto as Ridgecrest resident Barbara McPheron. Authorities said during the rescue operation, it was discovered that she had been reported missing days earlier.A medical helicopter transported the woman to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. Fire crews rescued a woman who had been missing for almost a week when she was found Saturday evening trapped inside of an overturned SUV in Adelanto.Authorities had been searching for Barbara McPheron, 69, since she used the OnStar feature on her red 2007 Hummer to contact 911 on Oct. 23, according to the Ridgecrest Police Department in Kern County.Crews with the San Bernardino County Fire Department headed out to reports of a traffic crash near Torosa Road, west of Highway 395, around 6:11 p.m. Saturday.

– A woman who'd been reported missing five days earlier was found alive Saturday, trapped inside a Hummer that had crashed in the Mojave Desert. San Bernadino County Fire reports on Facebook that search and rescue teams had to use off-road vehicles to reach the SUV, which had rolled down a slope in a desert area. They stabilized the Hummer to prevent it from rolling further and were able to free the woman, who was flown to a medical center with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The woman is being identified as 69-year-old Barbara McPheron, reports KTLA. The circumstances under which she disappeared remain unclear. ABC 7 reports that the Ridgecrest Police Department in Kern County, roughly 80 miles north, say that McPheron was reported missing on Oct. 23, when she used the OnStar feature on her red 2007 Hummer to reach 911. A search at the time failed to turn up McPheron. (A rescuer ended up suing a woman he helped pull from a burning Hummer.)

(May 15) AP President Trump speaks during a meeting with California leaders and public officials who oppose California's sanctuary policies in the Cabinet Room of the White House Wednesday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday hammered California for its so-called sanctuary immigration policies, in what appeared to be his latest push to embolden his base leading into the midterm elections. As the debate over immigration heats up on Capitol Hill, Trump surrounded himself with mayors, sheriffs and other local leaders from California who oppose the state's immigration policies and who applauded his administration's hard-line efforts. During Wednesday's session, Trump thanked the officials, saying they had "bravely resisted California's deadly and unconstitutional sanctuary state laws." He claimed those laws are forcing "the release of illegal immigrant criminals, drug dealers, gang members and violent predators into your communities" and providing "safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on earth." He referred to some who cross the border illegally as "animals," not people. "I know what you're going through right now with families is very tough," he told Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, "but those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us. ► Blamed Democrats for a policy of separating children from their parents when undocumented families enter the United States. But no law "the Democrats gave us" mandates the separation of children from their parents at the border.

– "These aren't people. These are animals." It was a reference to some undocumented immigrants made Wednesday by President Trump during an hour-long meeting at the White House that USA Today characterized as studded with "extraordinarily harsh rhetoric" from the president. He was meeting with California leaders who are also against the state's so-called "sanctuary city" immigration policies, and that statement came after one of them made a reference to suspected gang members. The AP framed Trump's comments as his "latest push to embolden his base leading into the midterm elections." Trump described those present as having "bravely resisted California's deadly and unconstitutional sanctuary state laws," which are providing "safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on Earth." The comments garnered a response from Gov. Jerry Brown, who tweeted Trump "is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA." USA Today notes Trump also called upon Jeff Sessions to investigate Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for "obstruction of justice" over her February move and swung at Mexico for what he described as its inaction at stopping the entry of people into the US. "Mexico does nothing for us, they do nothing for us. Mexico talks, but they do nothing for us, especially at the border." (The Justice Department has sued California over laws that provide protection to undocumented immigrants.)

Berlin (AFP) - The copyright of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" expires Friday, with plans by several publishers for annotated reprints sparking fierce debate over how one of the world's most controversial books should be treated seven decades after the defeat of the Nazis. FILE - In this Dec. 11, 2015, file photo, different editions of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" are on display at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. But "Mein Kampf" -- which means "My Struggle" -- falls into the public domain on January 1, meaning that the state of Bavaria can no longer challenge reproductions or translations of the inflammatory work. Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" — or "My Struggle" — after he was jailed following the failed 1923 coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Some 12.4 million copies were published in Germany until 1945, and copies can be found in academic libraries. "The book should not be underestimated as a historical source and also as a key to understanding the history of National Socialism," the director of the Munich institute, Andreas Wirsching, said ahead of the new edition's mid-January publication. Nevertheless, opinion is split, particularly among Jewish groups, some of which want a ban maintained while others see reason in a scholarly version being made available for educational purposes. The book set out two ideas that he put into practice as Germany's leader going into World War II: annexing neighbouring countries to gain "lebensraum", or "living space", for Germans; and his hatred of Jews, which led to the Holocaust. That use of the copyright "of course had its reasons," Wirsching said.

– Mein Kampf is coming back. The copyright on Hitler's "anti-Semitic manifesto" expires Friday, and with the book in the public domain, several publishers are planning new editions. The German state of Bavaria has held the copyright in Germany since 1945 and has forbidden the book from being republished. But there is much debate as to whether the new, annotated reprints are a good idea, AFP reports. A version will hit shelves in Germany on Jan. 8, and another is planned in France. And while some want a ban on the book's publication, others point out that it's already available in many places around the globe—and the Internet. (Bavaria, for example, never held the copyright for the book in the US, the AP explains.) Even a Jewish community leader who wants the book banned does not oppose a scholarly version of the book with annotations, and that's what will be out in Germany on Jan. 8. The aim of the $65, 2,000-page text is to "deconstruct and put into context Hitler's writing," and to provide counterarguments to his ideas. Germany's Education Minister thinks such a version should be studied in classrooms so that "Hitler's comments do not remain unchallenged" and students' questions are answered. But another Jewish community leader warns that, even though it is accompanied by commentary, the original text is contained in the annotated version, and "right wing militants" could attempt to spread Hitler's ideas. Others argue that it's the limits on publication up til now that have served to fuel the "mystique" surrounding the book.

The U.S. Navy ship arrived at the American Navy base,... (Associated Press) Jennifer Appel, right, and Tasha Fuiava speak on the deck of the USS Ashland at White Beach Naval Facility in Okinawa, Japan Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. I knew we were going to live.” Yet, a Coast Guard spokeswoman told the AP that the women had an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) on board, which could have been used to alert search and rescue services via satellite at any point during their five-month journey. “To have people afraid they’re going to be lost at sea, or that they’re going to be attacked by sharks, I think it’s a terrible picture for the sailboat cruising community,” he says. "If the thing was operational and it was turned on, a signal should have been received very, very quickly that this vessel was in distress," Phillip R. Johnson said Monday in a telephone interview from Washington state. “My initial thought when I heard the story was that Jennifer was very irresponsible for not checking the weather reports.” Appel says a Force 11 storm slammed into their boat within days of leaving Hawaii, but Wilson’s suspicions led him to research if any Force 11 storms—which can cause exceptionally high 30- to 50-foot waves and can dramatically reduce visibility—formed around Hawaii at the start of May. Two women who were retrieved by the Navy after they were stranded in a damaged sailboat with their two dogs for five months have, at long last, stepped foot on land.

– The story of two women from Hawaii rescued after being lost at sea for five months is beginning to seem incredible—as in difficult to believe. After they were picked up by the USS Ashland 900 miles southeast of Japan last week, Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava said they faced storms and shark attacks and that there were times when they "absolutely" thought they would die. They didn't mention that they failed to use their Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, which would have immediately alerted rescuers to their location. A Coast Guard spokeswoman says the women claim they never used the emergency beacon because they never felt "truly in distress, like in a 24-hour period they were going to die." Multiple other inconsistencies in the account have surfaced, including some that conflict with the "basic geography of the Pacific Ocean," the AP reports. The women say they departed Hawaii bound for Tahiti on May 3 and ran into a fearsome Force 11 storm the same day that "lasted for two nights and three days," but the National Weather Service says there were no storm systems near Hawaii around that time. The women have said their mast and motor failed, along with multiple methods of communication, though the Coast Guard says it made radio contact with their sailboat, the Sea Nymph, near Tahiti in June and they said they weren't in distress. One long-distance sailor tells People that many sailors find the women's story odd, because "there are so many holes in it that it just doesn't make any sense." (The two women are now back on land.)

This image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown shows a performance of "Mean Girls," in New York. The Tony Awards race is dominated by big established brands, including Disney's “Frozen,” J.K. Rowling's “Harry... (Associated Press) This image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown shows a performance of "Mean Girls," in New York. The Tony Awards race is dominated by big established brands, including Disney's “Frozen,” J.K. Rowling's “Harry Potter” franchise, Tina Fey's “Mean Girls” and Nickelodeon's “SpongeBob SquarePants.” The nominations... (Associated Press) NEW YORK (AP) — Tina Fey's musical "Mean Girls," which she adapted from her much-beloved and oft-quoted 2004 high school comedy movie, and the goofy undersea adaptation from the cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical" lead the Tony Award nominations with dozen nods each. Best Musical: "The Band's Visit;" ''Frozen;" ''Mean Girls;" ''SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical" Best Play: "The Children;" ''Farinelli and the King;" ''Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two;" ''Junk;" ''Latin History for Morons" Best Book of a Musical: "The Band's Visit;" ''Frozen;" ''Mean Girls"; "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical" Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theater: "Angels in America"; "The Band's Visit;" ''Frozen"; "Mean Girls"; "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical" Best Revival of a Play: "Angels in America;" ''Three Tall Women;" ''The Iceman Cometh;" ''Lobby Hero"; "Travesties" Best Revival of a Musical: "Carousel;" ''My Fair Lady;" ''Once on This Island" Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play: Andrew Garfield, "Angels in America"; Tom Hollander, "Travesties"; Jamie Parker, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two"; Mark Rylance, "Farinelli and The King"; Denzel Washington, "The Iceman Cometh" Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play: Glenda Jackson, "Three Tall Women"; Condola Rashad, "Saint Joan"; Lauren Ridloff, "Children of a Lesser God"; Amy Schumer, "Meteor Shower" Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical: Harry Hadden-Paton, "My Fair Lady"; Joshua Henry, "Carousel"; Tony Shalhoub, "The Band's Visit"; Ethan Slater, "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical."

– Tina Fey's musical Mean Girls, which she adapted from her much-beloved and oft-quoted 2004 high school comedy movie, and the goofy undersea cartoon adaptation SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical lead the Tony Award nominations with a dozen nods each. A British revival of Angels in America, Tony Kushner's monumental, two-part drama about AIDS, life, and love during the 1980s, grabbed 11 nominations—the most for any play—25 years after it first appeared on Broadway. The shimmering, grown-up musical The Band's Visit also earned 11 nods. JK Rowling's Harry Potter franchise extended its magical touch to Broadway, with a two-part stage play featuring the bespectacled wizard earning 10 nominations, as did a revival of My Fair Lady, per the AP. The best new musical category is filled by The Band's Visit, Frozen, Mean Girls, and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. Amy Schumer, who made her Broadway debut in Steve Martin's comedy Meteor Shower, won a nomination for best actress in a play. Others in the category include Glenda Jackson from Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, Condola Rashad in Saint Joan, and Lauren Ridloff in Children of a Lesser God. Best male acting nominations for a play include Denzel Washington, starring in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's epic The Iceman Cometh. The 2010 Tony winner for Fences will have to face off against Andrew Garfield in Angels in America, Tom Hollander of Travesties, Jamie Parker of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Mark Rylance in Farinelli and The King. A fuller list is here.

A contributor on the paper, Smith is an expert on the use of targeted muscle reinnervation, when the nerves are repurposed to improve the control of a motorized arm prosthesis. With the use of this TMR-enhanced combination of mechanical-sensor and EMG information, the patient was also able to walk safely outdoors and to climb and descend multiple flights of stairs with the robotic leg prosthesis ( Figure 3 Figure 3 Stair Ascent with Reciprocal Gait with the Use of the TMR-Enhanced Control System.

– Zac Vawter imagines movements that his leg mimics just like everyone else. When going up an incline, he visualizes his ankle moving as needed, and it does. But there's something remarkable about that moment: It's actually "a marvel of 21st century engineering," reports the Los Angeles Times. Vawter, 32, is the "test pilot" for a new bionic leg—the first of its kind to communicate with the brain (though the technology has been used with arm prostheses). It uses sensors to harness "reinnervated" nerves; they're essentially nerves that, rather than being allowed to die, are surgically "rewired" to control his right thigh muscles; the bionic leg is then programmed to read the contractions of those muscles. The comparison to his other prosthesis is "night and day," Vawter tells the Wall Street Journal. The error rate (that includes things like the risk of falling) is shaved, from 12.9% with a robotic leg, down to just 1.8%, Bloomberg reports via a New England Journal of Medicine report. Weighing about 10 pounds, the bionic leg is the work of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which saw an $8 million boost from the US Army. The latter hopes the leg can one day benefit some 1,200 Iraq and Afghanistan vets who could use it. But there's much broader appeal: About 1 million Americans are without lower limbs and the device could be available to them in three to five years, Bloomberg reports. "The value it will provide to the people who use it will be enormous," the study's lead author said. "We are making fantastic progress."

They're developing a new fashion series for Amazon, which plans to sell clothes featured on the new reality project. “After 16 incredible seasons, I am saying ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to ‘Project Runway,’ a show that I was honored to host and help create,” said Klum. “I am incredibly proud of the show, and it will always have a special place in my heart. I am so appreciative of the dedicated fans, and most of all, I am grateful that we could shine a light on creativity and help launch so many talented designers' careers," she said. "I’m most excited that my journey with my dear friend and colleague, Tim Gunn, is far from over.” Gunn also said he was "grateful" for the show's influence in his career. "I am so proud to have been a part of the groundbreaking process that showcased talented young designers as never before. Most importantly, I am indebted to our incredible fans, they are the heart and soul of what we do, and continue to inspire us to raise the bar in this arena," he said. "I’m excited for them to see what’s next as I partner with Amazon and Heidi Klum on our next great ‘fashion’ adventure.” More: 'Project Runway' designer and finalist Mychael Knight dies at 39 More: 'Project Runway' is breaking barriers in body inclusivity with new season, thanks to Tim Gunn Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2MX1z2X I wish the show and everyone much success always.” Bravo and producer Magical Elves are in the process of recasting “Project Runway.” “Bravo is proud to bring ‘Project Runway’ back where it all began, and Heidi and Tim will always be a huge part of the legacy,” a Bravo spokesperson said in a statement.

– Project Runway may never look the same. Mainstays Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are leaving the show after 16 seasons to start a new fashion series for Amazon, reports USA Today. The format of the new series is still unclear, but viewers will apparently be able to buy clothes featured on it. Project Runway, meanwhile, is set to move from Lifetime back to its original network, Bravo, next year. Variety notes that Amazon's entertainment division is making some aggressive moves under its new leader, former NBC exec Jennifer Salke. The division recently signed other deals with Nicole Kidman and Jordan Peele, among others.

Photo: Mireya Acierto Ashley Judd has made quite the commitment. Like, as in the years-long kind that will put her in the single-digit percentage of the educated population. We’re talking, of course, about some serious PhD-getting business here. The actress and humanitarian announced in a Facebook Live video on Monday that she will be getting her third degree at UC Berkeley starting this fall. Judd was accepted into a rigorous PhD program for public policy at the Northern California university, where she said she hopes to “do some good thinking, some rigorous research and fill it with my typical heart and soul and see how I can continue to do my little part to make the world a better place.” But she’s also experiencing some normal first day of school jitters. “Sometimes I’m really excited, sometimes I’m like ‘What have I gotten myself into?!’” she added. Judd’s desire to pursue a PhD places her in a minority among those in Hollywood and the population at large. It’s not unheard of for universities to sometimes bestow an honorary degree on a celebrity, but that tends to happen for musicians for their creative works over the years. Seeing a relatively well-known actress decide to dedicate years to a post-doc program is pretty darn rare. Still, Judd’s acceptance into the competitive program at Berkeley, which only accepts a handful of students every year, shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. Judd graduated from the University of Kentucky, and in 2009, she enrolled in an itty-bitty school by the grand old name of Harvard. Her master’s there was in public administration with a focus on gender equality, two issues that have been been dear to Judd’s heart for some time. Judd has often used her celebrity status to speak candidly about the tough choices women and girls face around the world when it comes to their sexuality. At the Democratic National Convention this year, Judd spoke openly about her choice to have an abortion after she was raped in a state where, had she carried to term, the rapist could have held parental rights. Judd has also used her fame and platform to speak about the importance of education worldwide. As an UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador for the Empowerment of Adolescent Girls, she focused on traveling to 150 countries to bring attention to women’s right’s violations and lack of educational opportunities, according to the United Nations Population Fund. Her studies at Berkeley will continue in the same vein of women’s rights with a focus on the role gender plays in human trafficking, according to People. Given that Judd was awarded also awarded the Dean’s Scholars Award at Harvard for a paper in a class titled “Gender Violence, Law and Society,” we have a feeling that she’ll fit right in among the academic crowd.

– Ashley Judd might soon be a doctor—and no, she won't be playing one on screen. The actress, 48, says she'll attend the University of California Berkeley this fall as one of a few candidates accepted into a PhD program in public policy, reports New York. Judd—who has a Master's in public administration with a focus on gender equality from Harvard—says she'll focus on "the injustices of gender inequality" in human trafficking, reports People, via a Facebook Live video. The actress, who spoke at the DNC this year about her decision to have an abortion after she was raped, says her goal is "to make the world a better place."

| Win McNamee/Getty Images Trump releases updated short list of potential Supreme Court nominees President Donald Trump released a new list of potential Supreme Court justices on Friday, adding five new judges to his previous compilation of 20 jurists. Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Keith Blackwell of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia Charles Canady of Florida, Supreme Court of Florida Steven Colloton of Iowa, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Allison Eid of Colorado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Britt Grant of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia Raymond Gruender of Missouri, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Joan Larsen of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Mike Lee of Utah, United States Senator Thomas Lee of Utah, Supreme Court of Utah Edward Mansfield of Iowa, Supreme Court of Iowa Federico Moreno of Florida, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Kevin Newsom of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit William Pryor of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Margaret Ryan of Virginia, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces David Stras of Minnesota, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Diane Sykes of Wisconsin, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Amul Thapar of Kentucky, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Timothy Tymkovich of Colorado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Robert Young of Michigan, Supreme Court of Michigan (Ret.) However, shortly before the Senate confirmed Gorsuch in April, administration officials said the president did not feel bound to pick a second Supreme Court justice from his campaign list. Like Justice Neil Gorsuch of Colorado, who was confirmed to the high court in April, Kavanaugh is a conservative who once clerked for the more moderate Kennedy. Story Continued Below “President Trump will choose a nominee for a future Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, from this updated list of 25 individuals,” the White House said in a statement. “There’s no inkling of any vacancy, but the fact of the matter is that you would be foolish to wait for one,” said Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and a top adviser to the White House on judicial nominations. The other new names on Trump's list are Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor just confirmed last month to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit; Kevin Newsom, confirmed in August to a seat on the 11th Circuit court of appeals; Georgia Supreme Court Justice Britt Grant, a former state solicitor general; and Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Patrick Wyrick, also a former state solicitor general. Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, was quick to praise Trump for the additions, calling the candidates the "best and brightest judges in the nation."

– President Trump's Supreme Court shortlist just got a little longer. Should another vacancy on the high court arise, Trump on Friday added five new judges to his existing list of 20 possible replacements, Politico reports. "These additions, like those on the original list released more than a year ago, were selected with input from respected conservative leaders," the White House said in a statement that also noted Trump was "elected to restore the rule of law and to Make the Judiciary Great Again." USA Today notes that Trump's move "precedes the possible, but still unannounced, retirement of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy." Trump's initial list, released in May 2016, had 11 names on it; in September 2016 he added 10 more, and he ultimately chose Neil Gorsuch from that list to replace Antonin Scalia once he was elected president. The new judges added to the list are Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Britt Grant of the Georgia Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kevin Newsom of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, and Patrick Wyrick of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. A director at the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, which spent $10 million on a pro-Gorsuch ad campaign, calls the new additions the "best and brightest judges in the nation," the Hill reports. The full list is here.

Under a new partnership announced Thursday with Project Learn of Summit County, which exists to help adults get their GEDs, parents of the children enrolled in the LeBron James Family Foundation's scholastic mentorship program can get financial and emotional support to obtain high school equivalency credentials and learn other life skills. The LeBron Foundation, which mentors poor, at-risk children in James's native Akron, Ohio, last month announced a partnership with the University of Akron to pay college tuition costs for students under its tutelage with the "I PROMISE" initiative. Under the program, those enrolled will have costs covered for their GED practice exams as well as for the exam itself, and will receive HP laptops (which they can keep if they finish the classes), free bus passes and parking to attend class, as well as prizes for progress and attendance — in fact, six of the nine adults currently enrolled got Beats by Dre speakers for attending an informational meeting. "We are so excited about the I PROMISE, Too program because a huge part of our foundation's work (with children) centers around parent involvement," Michele Campbell, executive director of the LeBron James Family Foundation, added in a press release to The Huffington Post. "This is an opportunity to help our parents make strides in their own academic careers so they are better equipped to help our students keep their educational promises." "We can't reach our students without their parents' support, so this program is monumental for our families and their futures." "It takes a lot of courage to start classes to earn GED once you've been out of school for years, even decades," Alexia Harris, communications manager for Project Learn, told Cleveland.com. "Definitely, things can get in the way of completing the process, things like work or family issues. With the LeBron foundation, we're working with these parents to be as accommodating as we can, and the incentives can help. The laptops, for instance, that's a cost to them that they won't have to bear."

– Through his foundation, LeBron James spends at least $1 million every year to educate the poor and at-risk children of his native Akron, Ohio, Cleveland.com reports. Now, he's doing something for their parents, too. Last week, the LeBron James Family Foundation announced a partnership with Project Learn of Summit County to help the parents of kids in the foundation's mentorship program get their GEDs, according to Mashable. James' foundation will pay for the GED exam and practice tests, as well as provide free bus passes, parking, and laptops the parents can keep if they finish classes. And participants will get prizes for progress and attendance. For example, six enrollees who attended an informational meeting received Beats by Dre speakers. "This is an opportunity to help our parents make strides in their own academic careers so they are better equipped to help our students keep their educational promises," the foundation's executive director says in a press release. Cleveland.com reports more than 1,000 children are enrolled in the foundation's mentorship program, and nine parents are already participating in the new GED program. It's been an education-focused summer for James, to say the least. Last month, the basketball superstar announced a partnership with the University of Akron to cover tuition for 2,300 students beginning in 2021.

– The first time around, Ben Harper was the one to file for divorce from Laura Dern—but nearly two years later, it's Dern filing to reactivate the divorce. The divorce was never finalized, TMZ explains, and the couple attempted to reconcile earlier this year (click to see a photo of them together in February). Apparently, that didn't work out, based on Dern's Friday filing in LA. She wants primary physical custody of their two children, joint legal custody, spousal support, child support, and attorney fees. Click for more on the split.

You don’t have to be 13 and a tapioca-brained romantic to enjoy “Letters to Juliet.’’ But it would help. Sure, the story merely puts attractive, likable people in a pretty setting and lets love take its course.

– Critics aren't exactly head-over-heels for Letters to Juliet, a predictable romantic comedy about a young woman helping an older one reconnect with a lost love, but it has its charms. Here's what they're saying: “Letters will hardly go down as the funniest or sharpest caper of the year,” writes Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon, but it's a “breathtakingly refreshing change” from the “flinty females and douche-bag dudes” that populate most recent rom-coms. “Letters to Juliet makes the case that even boring young nincompoops deserve love,” writes Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. Maybe, maybe , a better actress could have made it work, but Amanda Seyfried “delivers lines in the broad, affectless tones of a weather girl.” This movie is “an insult to common sense and the hacks over at Team Harlequin,” writes Kyle Smith of the New York Post . “Not to be left unsaid are lines like, 'Destiny wanted us to meet again,' 'An angel brought you to me,' and 'When we are speaking of love, is never too late.'” But that's fine, writs Kerry Lengel of the Arizona Republic. It's not date-night material, but “Letters to Juliet is a guilty pleasure for the ladies, perfect Blu-ray fodder when their significant others turn them into World of Warcraft widows for the evening."

Zimmerman also included a photo of the engagement ring, which had a caption explaining what the final project will look like: “Changing the diamond to a black diamond FYI . MORE >> isn’t the only celebrity who got engaged this weekend. "Happiest Night of my life last night!" I am so lucky and am with the greatest man ever:)” That greatest man ever is Brandon Blackstock, who has been dating the American Idol winner since February 2012. kelly clarkson lists texas ranch for $1.5m The engagement comes just one month after Clarkson told Life & Style that there was “no rush” to get hitched to her talent manager boyfriend. Celebuzz Single Player No Autoplay (CORE) No changes are to be made to this player

– How romantic: Kat Von D and Deadmau5 are engaged, after the Canadian DJ proposed to his tattoo artist and reality star girlfriend ... over Twitter. "I can't wait for Christmas so.... Katherine Von Drachenberg, will you marry me?" tweeted Deadmau5, real name Joel Zimmerman, on Saturday. He also posted a picture of the engagement ring, which will be a black diamond buffeted by two skulls. Von D responded by tweeting simply, "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" followed by a declaration that she needed to "go squeeze the hell out of my fiancé!" Celebuzz reports that the two also tweeted that they were splitting up ... just five weeks ago. (Priceless line, from Von D: "But at least he made it a no-brainer to break that off.") Perhaps Jesse James' engagement spurred Kat's change of heart? Von D wasn't the only celeb with something to celebrate this weekend: Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock got engaged, too, Celebuzz reports. Blackstock, son of Clarkson's longtime manager and stepson of Reba McEntire, has been dating the former American Idol since February. "I'M ENGAGED!!!!! I wanted y'all to know!! Happiest night of my life last night! I am so lucky and am with the greatest man ever :)," she tweeted. Click to see a picture of her ring, which is yellow.

Erin Storm, a contestant on season 12 of The Bachelor and a pilot, died in a plane crash in Los Angeles on Monday, March 21, multiple outlets are reporting. Please enable Javascript to watch this video A female pilot who was pulled unconscious from her burning aircraft after the small plane crashed near Hawthorne airport Monday afternoon later died, according to police. The small aircraft -- a light-sport, weight-shift-control plane -- was departing Hawthorne Municipal Airport when it crashed, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said. (KTLA-TV Channel 5) (KTLA-TV Channel 5) Police and fire officials told The Los Angeles Times and the Daily Breeze that the motorized hang glider was fully engulfed in flames when officers arrived and that the woman aboard it was in "traumatic full arrest" when she was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The unidentified pilot did not survive the crash, the Hawthorne Police Department posted on its Facebook page. ---------- "As soon as the plane hit the curb, it blew up and it just kept getting bigger and bigger, but the engine was still running and eventually the engine blew and the fire got even bigger," Best Drilling and Pump Inc. employee Byron Mayes, who was working in a nearby area, told KNBC-TV Channel 4 and KTLA-TV Channel 5. "My partner just started yelling, 'There's a plane coming, a plane coming,'" said witness Byron Mayes. and it looked like the plane veered up, lost control and hit a couple feet away from the truck, a couple feet away from us," Mayes said. Mayes said he and his fellow employees found the pilot unconscious with her legs on fire and pulled her out of the plane. Eyewitnesses told NBC that the pilot had been flying a Pacific Blue Air plane and was wearing the training facility's blue jumpsuit when she crashed. See more of Entertainment's top stories on Facebook >> Storm was among the slew of women who vied for British bachelor Matt Grant's affections on the ABC dating show in 2008. The Venice, California, resident was eliminated during week 3 of British Bachelor Grant’s season, in which reality star Shayne Lamas coveted the final rose. Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics, and more delivered straight to your inbox!

– Erin Storm, a former contestant on The Bachelor, was killed Monday when the small plane she was piloting crashed soon after takeoff in Los Angeles, US Magazine reports. Storm, a pilot working for an aircraft training facility at the Hawthorne Municipal Airport, appeared on the popular reality show's 12th season in 2008. She was piloting an Airborne XT-912 ultralight plane—the Los Angeles TImes describes it as a "motorized hang glider"—when she crashed. Three people working near the crash site pulled Storm—her legs on fire—from the wreckage, according to KTLA. Emergency responders transported her to the hospital, where she died from her injuries. When Storm appeared on The Bachelor, she listed her occupation as "hot dog vendor."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, left, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, second right, pose for the media prior to a meeting on Syria at the... (Associated Press) This photo released by the United Nations shows professor Ake Sellstrom, head of the chemical weapons team working in Syria, handing over the report on the Al-Ghouta massacre to Secretary-General Ban... (Associated Press) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, left, listen to French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius speak at a news conference after a meeting on Syria, at the... (Associated Press) French President Francois Hollande, left, welcomes U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for a meeting on Syria at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (Associated Press) From left, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, French President Francois Hollande and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, pose in the lobby of the Elysee... (Associated Press) This photo released by the United Nations shows professor Ake Sellstrom, head of the chemical weapons team working in Syria, handing over the report on the Al-Ghouta massacre to Secretary-General Ban... (Associated Press) From left, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, French President Francois Hollande, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius pose upon their arrival at the Elysse... (Associated Press) French President Francois Hollande, left, gestures as he talks to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, upon his arrival at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (Associated Press) The inspectors said "the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used ... in the Ghouta area of Damascus" on Aug. 21. The U.N.'s chief weapons inspector turned over his team's report on Sunday, and the Security Council is due to take it up in a closed session Monday. The Aug. 21 chemical attack unfolded as a U.N. chemical weapons team was in Syria to investigate earlier reported attacks. After days of delays, the inspectors were allowed access to victims, doctors and others in the Damascus suburbs afflicted by the poison gas. The inspection team led by Swedish expert Ake Sellstrom was mandated to report on whether chemical weapons were used and which ones they were, but not on who was responsible. "If the Assad regime believes that this is not enforceable, then they will play games," he said. Chief weapons inspector Ake Sellstrom handed over the report to the secretary-general on Sunday amid a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at getting Syria to put its just-acknowledged stockpile of chemical weapons and chemical precursors under international control for destruction. In Geneva, the chairman of a U.N. war crimes panel on Monday said it is investigating 14 suspected chemical attacks in Syria, dramatically escalating the stakes after diplomatic breakthroughs that saw the Syrian government agree to dismantle its chemical weapons program. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (Associated Press) Commission chairman Paulo Sergio Pinheiro says the Geneva-based U.N. probe has not yet determined the exact materials used but is awaiting evidence from a separate team of U.N. chemical weapons inspectors expected to be made public later Monday. Pinheiro told reporters Monday the commission believes that President Bashar Assad's government has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, while it believes that rebel groups have perpetrated war crimes but not crimes against humanity "because there is not a clear chain of command." But Kerry told reporters Monday that "Should diplomacy fail, the military option is still on the table." Just a week ago, he was there lobbying for global support for military strikes against Assad, but after a breakthrough with Russia, Kerry's latest visit was intended to secure support from allies for the deal to secure and then eradicate Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. The U.S. and its closest allies laid out a two-pronged approach in Syria on Monday, calling for enforceable U.N. benchmarks for eradicating the country's chemical weapons program and an international conference bolstering the moderate opposition. France and the U.S. insisted that a military response to the Aug. 21 poison gas attack that killed hundreds remained on the table, and were pressing for a U.N. resolution reflecting that in coming days. Lavrov said the deal does not say the U.N. resolution will be under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter, which potentially authorizes the use of force -- and comments by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the any resolution will need to include the possibility of force "show unwillingness to read the document" that Russia and the United States endorsed. Meanwhile, invitations were going out Monday to top members of the Syrian National Coalition _ the main umbrella opposition group _ for an international conference in New York timed to coincide with next week's U.N. General Assembly meeting, French officials said. Bolstering the Western-backed SNC is just as crucial to Syria's future as Assad's agreement to give up chemical arms, said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "He must understand that there is no military victory, no possible military victory for him," Fabius said. He acknowledged that broad popular support for the rebels has been hampered by fears that Islamic militants are now playing a major role in the 2 1/2-year-old uprising. In briefing the allies, Kerry was pressing for support for the ambitious agreement that averted threatened U.S. military strikes. It calls for an inventory of Syria's chemical weapons program within one week, with all components of the program out of the country or destroyed by mid-2014. The top diplomats from the United States, France and Britain stood side by side Monday to pressure Syrian President Bashar Assad to uphold his end of any deal on securing and destroying Syria's chemical weapons. "It is extremely important that there are no evasions, that there is no cat and mouse game going on over these weapons," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague. Kerry acknowledged the chemical arms deal would have little immediate effect on the bloodshed in Syria, which has killed more than 100,000 people, but he said full compliance was a key first step. In Geneva, Pinheiro said the "vast majority" of casualties in Syria's civil war came from conventional weapons like guns and mortars.

– There's "clear and convincing evidence" that surface-to-air rockets loaded with sarin gas rained down on the Ghouta area of Damascus last month, UN weapons inspectors announced today. The panel concluded that chemical weapons have been used "against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale." The inspectors were only tasked with determining whether chemical weapons had been fired, not who fired them, the AP explains; though CNN reports that the report will cover "signs of culpability." Earlier today, a separate UN commission said it was investigating reports of 14 chemical attacks, but that it had already determined that both sides had committed war crimes, with or without chemicals. The Assad regime has committed both war crimes and crimes against humanity, the commission determined. The rebels hadn't committed crimes against humanity only "because there is not a clear chain of command." The reports follow Syria's admission that it has chemical weapons, as part of a deal to disarm. Some recent fallout of that deal: The Assad government called the disarmament deal a "victory," and the rebels seem to agree, the New York Times reports. They expect Assad to break his word, and to step up his conventional weapons offensives. Indeed, the violence escalated appreciably last week, the Washington Post points out, with some towns facing their first airstrikes in weeks, and more than 1,000 killed. Now that the threat from the US has evaporated, "the regime has regrouped and is back on the offensive with a vengeance," one expert on the region says. Some rebels said arms shipments from foreign backers had increased, but complained that they were light weapons, and speculated that their backers only want to see the war drag on. "We won't get advanced weapons," a spokesman for a brigade in Aleppo says, "Because that would mean we would achieve victories."

Having a serious concussion could be a risk factor for developing Alzheimer's decades later – though not everyone with head trauma will lose their memory, a new study suggests. Concussions Linked to Alzheimer's Risk in Study Brain scans found seniors with both poor memory and prior head injury have more plaque buildup WebMD News from HealthDay WebMD News Archive By Kathleen Doheny HealthDay Reporter THURSDAY, Dec. 26, 2013 (HealthDay News) -- Older adults with memory problems and a history of concussion have more buildup of Alzheimer's disease-associated plaques in the brain than those who also had concussions but don't have memory problems, according to a new study. A team from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minn., conducted brain scans on 448 older Minnesotans who had no signs of memory problems and 141 who did. Roughly 17% in both groups had had a brain injury earlier in life involving some loss of consciousness or memory. Those who had no signs of memory problems had normal brain scans, regardless of their history of brain injury. Scans of those with memory problems and a history of brain injury were five times more likely to show a buildup of a brain protein long associated with Alzheimer's Disease, says study author Michelle Mielke, an associate professor of epidemiology and neurology at the Mayo Clinic. The study, published online today in the journal Neurology, examined people in their 70s and 80s who reported having an earlier head trauma – in most cases 50 or 60 years earlier when they were adolescents. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

– If you've ever suffered a concussion, a new study suggests you may have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease—or not. Mayo Clinic researchers performed brain scans on 141 people in their 70s and 80s who had memory problems and 448 who didn't. Some 18% and 17%, respectively, reported at one time suffering a brain injury in which they lost consciousness or memory. The latter group's scans came back normal, head injury or not. But the group with memory issues and a previous concussion were five times more likely to have an Alzheimer's-associated plaque buildup in the brain, the study author explains, per HealthDay News. Since both groups had the same rate of injury and only some showed a buildup of the protein beta amyloid, the findings show the link between head trauma and the plaque is complex and not all brain injuries lead to the disease. "If you do hit your head, it doesn't mean you are going to develop Alzheimer's," the study author says, but "it may increase your risk." A medical director agrees, and tells USA Today, "In my view, these findings are consistent with the idea that traumatic brain injury may lead to amyloid accumulation and Alzheimer's disease."

Sheriff’s deputies captured psychiatric hospital escapee Anthony Garver on Friday night after two hectic days of searching for the killer in the Mount Spokane foothills. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said two police officers tracked Garver with the help of a police dog and found him about 8:15 p.m. in trees above the home of his parents. Garver, 28, escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital Wednesday night with Mark Alexander Adams, 58, a patient who had been accused of domestic assault... (Associated Press) SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A man who escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital where he was held after being found too mentally ill to face charges that he tortured a woman to death was found hiding under a pile of debris in the woods and apprehended without incident. Garver, who bought a bus ticket from Seattle to Spokane after he escaped, had last been seen on Thursday in the Spokane area where his parents live after his father called authorities to report his son had stopped by briefly. Garver then left as searchers, with the help of helicopters, dogs, SWAT team members and others, cast a dragnet over the area of pine forest and rolling wheat and hay fields. The12-hour lapse between escape and notification of Spokane law enforcement drew sharp words from Knezovich, who said the state needs to “get a clue” when it comes to keeping dangerous patients secure and working with local agencies when there’s a problem. “We never did recover all those caches,” he said. But Garver was ruled not competent to help with his own defense on a charge of killing a Snohomish County woman, who was bound with electrical cords and stabbed to death. He had been moved to a lower-security unit of the hospital after a judge said mental health treatment to prepare him to face criminal charges was not working and ordered him held as a danger to himself or others. Patients have personal accounts with the hospital that hold money they may have had when they arrived at Western State, that family or friends might send them, or that they can earn for jobs they do as part of their treatment, said Norah West, spokeswoman for the state Department of Social and Health Services. Garver crawled out a window of a locked, lower-security unit on Wednesday with another patient, Mark Alexander Adams, 58, who was caught the next day. Garver has a history of running from law enforcement, and Knzeovich had strong works for state officials about the fact that he was able to make another run for it.

– A man who escaped from a Washington state psychiatric hospital where he was being held after being found too mentally ill to face charges that he tortured a woman to death is back in custody. Anthony Garver, 28, was apprehended without incident Friday night by law enforcement in Spokane after he was found hiding under a pile of debris in the woods, a Washington State Patrol spokesman tells the AP. Garver crawled out a window of a locked, lower-security unit on Wednesday with another patient, Mark Alexander Adams, 58, who was caught the next day. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich says two police officers tracked Garver with the help of a police dog and found him in woods less than a mile from the home of his parents, who called police after he visited them on Thursday. Garver was hungry and dehydrated and received medical treatment before being transferred to jail, the sheriff says. Garver has a history of running from law enforcement, and Knzeovich has strong words for state officials about the fact that he was able to make another run for it. "The state of Washington needs to get a clue," he says. "This cannot happen again." The sheriff tells the Spokesman-Review that despite the fact that Garver had headed toward Spokane after previous escapes, local law enforcement was not notified until at least 12 hours after the escape.

As of the end of fiscal 2012, the Resettlement Trust Fund for the People of Bikini had a balance of $69 million, according to audited financial statements. “This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit Islands in the Marshall Islands with crowding, diminishing resources, and increased frequency of flooding.” Esther Kia'aina, Interior Department "This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit Islands in the Marshall Islands with crowding, diminishing resources, and increased frequency of flooding due to King Tides on their islands," Esther Kia'aina, assistant secretary for insular affairs, said in a statement. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Bikini Atoll was used for extensive atomic bomb tests by the US from 1946 The US Department of the Interior is supporting the islanders and is now proposing legislation in Congress that would change the terms of the resettlement trust.

– Their first home was destroyed by nuclear testing. Their new home is being threatened by climate change. Now the former residents of Bikini Atoll want to use their million-dollar government trust fund to resettle in the US, USA Today reports. More than 150 residents of Bikini Atoll were moved 500 miles away to Kili and Ejit in the Marshall Islands in 1948 so the US could conduct nearly two-dozen atomic tests. They tried to move back in 1969 but had to be relocated again because of radiation. According to the BBC, the US set up a resettlement trust fund to help the displaced Bikini islanders rebuild their lives. However, that fund offers little protection from the life-threatening rising seas brought on by climate change. The BBC reports there was widespread flooding on Kili in 2011 and 2015, and encroaching salt water is killing crops and ruining fresh water supplies. Both Kili and Ejit were covered by waves at least five times in the past four years, according to USA Today. The islanders, who are already allowed to live and work in the US, passed a resolution in August asking the US government to let them take their resettlement trust fund—which has a balance of around $69 million—with them to the US, the BBC reports. The Department of Interior is supporting the islanders and taking their proposal to congress. "This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people, given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit," the assistant secretary of the Interior says in a statement.

They’re carried to other worlds in the stream of semen.” Gluth: “Doesn’t anybody else notice that Smiggles sometimes sends huge ‘I AM A PEDOPHILE’ signals?” Gluth is implying that this is not the first time. “So maybe 20-year-old Adam Lanza was a kind of pedophile whose idea of having sex with kids was to shoot them,” I wrote. (AP Photo/Connecticut State Police) less This Dec. 14, 2012 photo released by the Connecticut State Police shows what the evidence report describes as a view of a second floor bathroom and its contents including a photo identification of Adam Lanza ... more Photo: HOPD Image 4 of 8 This photo released by the Connecticut State Police on Friday, Dec. 27, 2013, from a document titled "Sec 8 - Autopsy," shows evidence pertaining to the Dec. 14, 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza gunned down 20 first-graders and six educators with a semi-automatic rifle at the school after killing his mother inside their home. I then saw in the state police report that among the items detectives found in Lanza’s room were “materials regarding the topic of pedophilia and advocating for rights for pedophiles.” There was also a “screenplay or script” titled Lovebound “describing a relationship between a 10-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man.” I had always felt there had to be a sexual component to the fascination with guns and I had noted that Lanza himself called it a “fetish.” I commenced to write a piece suggesting that the Sandy Hook killer may have been acting out of some kind of homicidal pedophilia. “I just don’t think it would be such a stretch to say that he very well could have been a teenage mall shooter or something like that.” But Lanza himself was not just another mall shooter, or school shooter. I did not mind that even people at The Daily Beast had objected to my speculation as to Lanza’s motive. Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the smartest, sharpest takes from The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of news and must-reads from The Daily Beast and across the Web By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason One thing that seems notable in retrospect is the book Lanza made as part of a class project in the fifth grade. "I would expect to see a more compulsive nature to the inquiry. But I always make an entirely honest effort.” Even with Smiggles, I am not close to certain that Lanza was indeed a kind of homicidal pedophile. She asked him if he would feel badly if something happened to her. “His attack can be seen entirely parallel to the attacks and random acts of violence that you bring up on your show every week, committed by humans, which the mainstream also has no explanation for,” Lanza said. Lanza's hard drive, however, was filled with documents pertaining to his research of mass shootings, images of Lanza holding a handgun to his head and a smattering of information related to the rights of pedophiles. “Those mental health professionals who saw him did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior.” But there is a suggestion of a blindness on the part of the investigators along with the mental health folks when the report says, “He was undoubtedly afflicted with mental health problems; yet despite a fascination with mass shootings and firearms, he displayed no aggressive or threatening tendencies.” How can a fascination with mass shooting and firearms not be a predicator of somebody using a firearm to perpetrate a mass shooting? I described the remarkable courage of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis when Lanza’s gun jammed. "It could mean the investigators didn't find it or it was part of what was destroyed," she said. “Unfortunately, that question may never be answered conclusively, despite the collection of extensive background information on the shooter through a multitude of interviews and other sources,” the state police allowed.

– Adam Lanza, pedophile? The 20-year-old who perpetrated the Sandy Hook massacre and killed himself on Dec. 14, 2012, kept documents on his hard drive showing an interest in pedophilia, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Topping the list is a screenplay, Lovebound, that depicts a relationship between a 10-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man. There are also documents in support of "pedophiles' rights and the liberation of children." What's more, Lanza told a friend that pedophilia was "a disease that needed to be treated and not look at as evil," according to a police report on the shooting. Appearing as Smiggles in an online forum, Lanza posted that children are duped by "culturapists" and "carried to other worlds in the stream of semen," reports the Daily Beast. Someone responded: "Doesn’t anybody else notice that Smiggles sometimes sends huge 'I AM A PEDOPHILE' signals?" If Lanza was battling pedophilic urges, that's "still a long way from explaining what he did," said Fred Berlin, an expert in sexual behavior, but he doesn't rule it out. Michael Daly puts it more bluntly at the Daily Beast: "So maybe 20-year-old Adam Lanza was a kind of pedophile whose idea of having sex with kids was to shoot them." (A seven-minute call Lanza made to an Oregon radio station in 2011 grabbed headlines last week.)

A A Oregon State Police said investigators have identified a 15-year-old Vancouver boy as a suspect in the Eagle Creek Fire. No arrests have been made and no formal charges have been filed in connection with the fire, according to the Oregon State Police, which did not identify the boy. The agency said Tuesday investigators think he and others were using fireworks in the woods along the Eagle Creek Trail on Saturday, sparking the fire. The suspect was then contacted by law enforcement in the parking lot of the trailhead and was interviewed by law enforcement. We started walking, and it was about twelve paces that we took, and I saw a minivan go by. I looked at them and I said 'I think that they're in that car.' She told them what she’d seen, and they told her they’d also seen a group of teenagers lighting fireworks. She looked like she was having fun and she was excited about getting away. Oregon State Police said investigators were looking for witnesses and anyone with helpful information about the fire’s cause. The agency asked anyone who heard fireworks or other explosions in the area of the Eagle Creek Trail and Punch Bowl Falls on Saturday between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to contact the Oregon State Police at 503-375-3555.

– A wildfire that started over the weekend in Oregon torched at least 10,000 acres, stranded more than 150 hikers, and forced the evacuation of multiple towns—and officials think a teen fooling around with firecrackers may be to blame. The Columbian reports that a 15-year-old boy from Vancouver, Wash., has been named a suspect but not arrested in the Eagle Creek fire that sparked on Saturday. A Portland woman witnessed the scene and sounded the alarm, she tells Oregon Public Broadcasting. Liz FitzGerald was hiking to Punch Bowl Falls on Saturday when she came across a group of young people and "saw this kid throw a smoke bomb" into a ravine. She admonished the kids but forged ahead, only to reconsider. "If I get stuck in a wildfire because I was so determined to get to this watering hole, I would feel like a total idiot," she tells Willamette Week. She doubled back, and as she passed the spot where she'd seen the group, she saw "billowing smoke" and "could distinctly smell fire." She says she then came upon the teens and told them they had started a forest fire. She says one shot back, "Well, what are we supposed to do about it now?" FitzGerald notified a US Forest Service official, who she says apprehended the teens' minivan. FitzGerald, though, doesn't think the one who tossed the firecracker should bear sole responsibility for the group's "complacency. ... All of them watched, all of them did nothing." Oregon State Police are looking for more witnesses to help them determine their next move. Late Tuesday night, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office indicated on Twitter that the fire "has slowed way down for now."

The past 72 hours have seen pro-Russian rebels suddenly open a new front and push Ukrainian troops out of a key town in strategic coastal territory along the Sea of Azov. Rebels said they would accept Putin's proposal to allow Kiev forces, who they say are surrounded, to retreat, provided the government forces turn over weapons and armor. Obama said Russia's activity in Ukraine would incur "more costs and consequences," though these seemed to be limited to economic pressure that will be discussed when Obama meets with European leaders at a NATO summit in Wales next week. In 2008, Ukraine applied for Nato membership under then-President Viktor Yushchenko. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen: "Russia is blatantly violating Ukrainian sovereignty" Nato has accused Russia of a "blatant violation" of Ukraine's sovereignty and engaging in direct military operations to support pro-Russian rebels. "Despite Moscow's hollow denials, it is now clear that Russian troops and equipment have illegally crossed the border into eastern and southeastern Ukraine," Rasmussen said. "This is not an isolated action, but part of a dangerous pattern over many months to destabilise Ukraine as a sovereign nation," he said. Protesters rallied outside the Ukrainian General Staff on Thursday, demanding reinforcements and heavy weaponry for the troops outside Ilovaysk, most of whom are volunteers. Two columns of tanks and other equipment entered southeastern Ukraine at midday on Thursday, following heavy shelling of the area from Russia that forced overmatched Ukrainian border guards to flee, according to Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's national security council. European Union foreign ministers met in Milan Friday to weigh the 28-nation bloc's stance amid increasing calls to beef up economic sanctions against Russia. Markets dropped on Thursday on reports of Russia's apparent invasion in Ukraine, sparking investors' fears of further economic sanctions directed at Moscow. On Thursday, Nato had released satellite images it said showed columns of Russian armed forces inside Ukrainian territory, adding that more than 1,000 Russian troops were operating inside Ukraine. "I'm calling on insurgents to open a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian troops who were surrounded in order to avoid senseless deaths," Putin said in the statement published on the Kremlin's web-site in the early hours on Friday. "Russia's partners ... should understand it's best not to mess with us," Putin said. Putin compared Kiev's assault on the rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk to the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad in which 1 million civilians died, perhaps the most powerful historical analogy it is possible to invoke in Russia. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Putin: "The situation sadly reminds me of the Second World War" Nearly 2,600 people have been killed since April, the UN says, when Russia's annexation of Crimea prompted the rebels to take control of large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "With all our respect to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the president of a country which gives us moral support, we are ready to open humanitarian corridors to the Ukrainian troops who were surrounded with the condition that they surrender heavy weaponry and ammunition so that this weaponry and ammunition will not be used against us in future," Alexander Zakharchenko said on Russia's state Rossiya 24 television.

– Moscow continues to insist it's got nothing to do with the Russian soldiers and tanks that have entered Ukraine to bolster pro-Russian separatists, but Vladimir Putin today made a point to praise the separatists' military moves. They have "achieved serious successes in stopping the armed operation by Kiev," said the Russian president in a message on the Kremlin website, reports Reuters. He also urged the rebels to let trapped Ukrainian soldiers retreat safely, reports the AP: "I call on the militia groups to open a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian service members who have been surrounded, so as to avoid any needless loss of life, giving them the opportunity to leave the combat area unimpeded and reunite with their families, to return them to their mothers, wives, and children, and to quickly provide medical assistance to those who were injured in the course of the military operation." The rebels appear ready to comply with what the New York Times calls a "rare direct address" from Putin. "With all respect to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the president of the country, which has helped us very much with moral support, we are ready to grant humanitarian corridors to the Ukrainian divisions surrounded in these pockets," said one leader. NATO, meanwhile, accused Russia of a "blatant violation" of its neighbor's sovereignty, reports the BBC, much as President Obama did yesterday. Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen dismissed Moscow's "hollow denials" that it hadn't deliberately sent troops over the border. Further sanctions will be on the table at an EU summit this weekend.

We posted some highlights from Snowden's comments. America Edward Snowden Tells SXSW He'd Leak Those Secrets Again Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked large amounts of classified information about the agency's electronic surveillance programs, spoke via video to a sympathetic audience at South By Southwest Interactive on Monday. In response to a question, Snowden said he had no regrets about his decision to leak the NSA documents, which showed the intelligence agency has conducted secret monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet behavior in the name of national security. "Absolutely Yes": The last question to Snowden is about whether he would do what he's done again. "Absolutely yes," he says, adding that he "took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and I saw the Constitution ... being violated on a massive scale." Repeating things he's said before, Snowden declared Monday that he would do what he did all over again because he had seen the Constitution being "violated on a massive scale." "There's a political response that needs to occur, but there's also a tech response that needs to occur." The Constitution As A Backdrop: The background behind Snowden (presumably thanks to a "green screen" projection), is an image of the U.S. Constitution. While tech geeks may have no problem using encryption tools to scramble their messages or accessing the more-private "deep Web" via clients like Tor, Snowden said the average Web user should be able to access similar protections. Snowden took questions from two moderators -- the ACLU's Chris Sogohian and Ben Wizner, his legal counsel -- from the audience, and from Twitter. Berners-Lee asked Snowden what he would change about the nation's surveillance system. Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor who fled the United States after leaking details of the American government's spy programs, was granted temporary asylum in Russia last year. Snowden's call for developers to create secure, private networks for their users is less of a no-brainer at South by Southwest than it may have once been.

– By leaking NSA data, Edward Snowden forced himself into exile—but he'd "absolutely" do it again, he said today during a video talk broadcast at SXSW. He spoke from Russia, saying that he "took an oath to support and defend the Constitution," NPR reports. "I saw the Constitution ... being violated on a massive scale," he continued. And for what? He argued that the US has "actually had tremendous intelligence failures because we're monitoring ... everybody's communications, instead of the suspects' communications." He pointed to the Boston Marathon bombings as an example, arguing that tips about the terrorists may have been overlooked while investigators focused on the surveillance programs. How to "fix" the system? "There's a political response that needs to occur, but there's also a tech response that needs to occur," Snowden said, according to CNN. "We need public oversight ... some way for trusted public figures to advocate for us. We need a watchdog that watches Congress, because if we're not informed, we can't consent to these (government) policies." He also suggested Internet users protect themselves, and suggested using a "mixed routing network" to make online activity more difficult to track. Today is the first time Snowden has directly addressed US citizens since fleeing the country.

It was right under his nose, in the University of Bologna library, where it had been mistakenly catalogued a century ago as dating from the 17th century. Image caption This Torah scroll may be more than 850 years old The University of Bologna in Italy has found what it says may be the oldest complete scroll of Judaism's most important text, the Torah. But this is the oldest Torah scroll of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, according to Mauro Perani, a professor of Hebrew in the University of Bologna's cultural heritage department. Two separate carbon-dating tests _ performed by the University of Salento in Italy and the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign _ confirmed the revised dating, according to a statement from the University of Bologna. Another reason for the dating is that the text has many features forbidden in later copies under rules laid down by the scholar Maimonides in the 12th Century, the university says. However, when Prof Perani recently re-examined the scroll, he realised the script used was that of the oriental Babylonian tradition, meaning that the scroll must be extremely old. The find was also emotionally important, he said because the scroll, as opposed to a bound book, is used for reading Torah portions throughout the year in synagogue.

– An Italian researcher has found what is believed to be the oldest scroll from Judaism's most important text, and he didn't have far to look. The professor at the University of Bologna found the 850-year-old Torah scroll in the school library, where it had been mistakenly labeled a century ago, reports the BBC. That long-ago cataloguer thought the scroll dated back to the 17th century, but Hebrew professor Mauro Perani immediately recognized the error as he was doing some re-organizing of the library. Carbon-dating confirmed his hunch. "It is fairly big news," a Cambridge expert tells the AP. "Hebrew scholars get excited by very small things, but it certainly is important and clearly looks like a very beautiful scroll." The manuscript is 40 yards long and 25 inches high. Further study will be done to see whether it yields any new information from the period it was written, somewhere around 1155 to 1225.

Some of the worst damage was in Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 that is home to the University of Alabama. "Me and a few of my friends helped pull a woman with a very severe head wound out of the rubble of her house and get her to the hospital," he said. Even on the ground floor of our two-storey apartment building, we could hear the wildness above us Will Nevin, Tuscaloosa resident The twister "cut a path of destruction deep into the heart of the city," said Mayor Walter Maddox. "What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time," Mr Maddox told reporters.

– A wave of tornado-spawning storms ripped through six states yesterday, killing at least 269 people and flattening buildings. Some 180 people died in Alabama alone, many of those in college-town Tuscaloosa, where a mile-wide tornado tore through the city's downtown, the AP reports. There were 33 casualties in Mississippi, 33 in Tennessee, 14 in Georgia, eight in Virginia, and one in Kentucky. President Obama has spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for federal emergency assistance, including search and rescue teams. Tuscaloosa's mayor estimates "hundreds of homes and businesses (were) destroyed and hundreds more damaged" around the University of Alabama campus, reports the BBC, and the city's infrastructure has been devastated. "What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time," he told reporters.

You know how every year at the end of American Idol, the finalists get the chance to perform with some random artist who may or not may be their musical hero?

– Sixteen-year-old Jessica Sanchez "made 40 million people cry" last night when she performed Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" on American Idol, judge Steven Tyler told her. The San Diego high school student enjoyed a standing ovation after her performance and reaped praise from all three judges; Randy Jackson called her "one of the best talents in the whole country." Last night's Idol featured Stevie Wonder songs for the male contestants and Houston songs for the females, the AP notes. In other Idol news, Vulture notes that first-season winner Kelly Clarkson has signed on to "ABC's version of Idol," a talent competition called Duets that involves famous singers searching the country for amateur musical partners.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2013 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is issuing a public health alert due to concerns that illness caused by strains of Salmonella Heidelberg are associated with raw chicken products produced by Foster Farms at three facilities in California. “FSIS is unable to link the illnesses to a specific product and a specific production period,” the agency said in an emailed alert. “The outbreak is continuing.” (Updates to this post are at the bottom.) Consumption of food contaminated with Salmonella can cause salmonellosis, one of the most common bacterial foodborne illnesses. In its statement, FSIS said: Raw products from the facilities in question bear one of the establishment numbers inside a USDA mark of inspection or elsewhere on the package: “P6137” “P6137A” “P7632” The products were mainly distributed to retail outlets in California, Oregon and Washington State. Illnesses were linked to Foster Farms brand chicken through epidemiologic, laboratory and traceback investigations conducted by local, state, and federal officials.

– A salmonella outbreak involving chicken has sickened about 300 people in 18 states, most of them in California, reports the AP. Authorities issued an alert for chicken packaged at one of three Foster Farms operations in California with a USDA mark of P6137, P6137A, or P7632. Here's the fun part: The CDC has a skeletal staff because of the government shutdown. "That means that the lab work and molecular detection that can link far-apart cases and define the size and seriousness of outbreaks are not happening," writes Maryn McKenna at Wired. The government alert is here.

In this photo taken by Alexey Avanesyan, Alexander Kuznetsov, Russian rapper also known as Husky waits for a court hearing in Krasnodar, Russia, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The Russian rapper is facing two... (Associated Press) In this photo taken by Alexey Avanesyan, Alexander Kuznetsov, Russian rapper also known as Husky waits for a court hearing in Krasnodar, Russia, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The Russian rapper is facing two weeks in jail for performing on a car after prosecutors banned his gig for going against the government.... (Associated Press) MOSCOW (AP) — A popular Russian rapper was sentenced Thursday to 12 days in jail for performing on a car after prosecutors banned his gig. Husky, who has a wide following among young Russians with his videos scoring up to 6 million views on YouTube, was arrested Wednesday. A court in the southern city of Krasnodar sentenced Husky on charges of hooliganism. The 25-year-old rapper, known for his songs mocking authorities and police brutality, was due to perform in Krasnodar when local prosecutors warned the venue that his act had elements of what they termed "extremism." Russian authorities have in recent years used the vaguely worded law on extremism to go after Kremlin critics and dissenters. Wednesday's gig was moved to another club, where the power was shut off and Husky's fans poured outside. Videos posted online showed the rapper, whose real name is Dmitry Kuznetsov, reading his verses on top of a car with the fans chanting in unison. Police officers let him finish the song and then detained him, but had trouble driving away as crowds of fans blocked the police vehicle, demanding his release. Police eventually persuaded them to disperse. Local police also said that the owner of the car on which Husky performed filed a complaint for property damage, a charge that may carry a longer prison term. It wasn't immediately clear if authorities were going to press those charges. The rapper told the court that he was forced to perform on the street because his concert had been canceled without explanation. He said he was willing to pay compensation for any damage to the vehicle. "I acted in such a way because I faced a situation when I felt an obligation to talk to the people who had bought tickets," he told the court. Husky's black-and-white videos mock a political regime that expects tacit compliance from its citizens. A new wave of Russian rap musicians is widely credited for channeling young Russians' frustration with the political system and lack of economic prospects. Authorities in other Russian regions have also moved to ban Husky's gigs. Husky said in a social media post last month that officials in several Russian cities are pressuring venues to shut down his shows because his songs allegedly offend Christian believers and promote promiscuity. ___ Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

– A popular Russian rapper was sentenced Thursday to 12 days in jail for performing on a car after prosecutors banned his gig. Husky, who has a wide following among young Russians with his videos scoring up to 6 million views on YouTube, was arrested Wednesday. A court in the southern city of Krasnodar sentenced Husky on charges of hooliganism. The 25-year-old rapper, known for his songs mocking authorities and police brutality, was due to perform in Krasnodar when local prosecutors warned the venue that his act had elements of what they termed "extremism." Russian authorities have in recent years used the vaguely worded law on extremism to go after Kremlin critics and dissenters, reports the AP. Wednesday's gig was moved to another club, where the power was shut off and Husky's fans poured outside. Videos posted online showed the rapper, whose real name is Dmitry Kuznetsov, reading his verses on top of a car with the fans chanting in unison. Police officers let him finish the song and then detained him. Local police also said that the owner of the car on which Husky performed filed a complaint for property damage, a charge that may carry a longer prison term. It wasn't immediately clear if authorities were going to press those charges. The rapper told the court that he was forced to perform on the street because his concert had been canceled without explanation. He said he was willing to pay compensation for any damage to the vehicle. "I acted in such a way because I faced a situation when I felt an obligation to talk to the people who had bought tickets," he told the court.

Washington, DC (July 21, 2014) - It seems common practice. After a long day at work, sometimes you just want to turn on the TV or play a video game to relax, decompress. This is supposed to make you feel better. But, a recent study published in the Journal of Communication, by researchers at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, and VU University Amsterdam, found that people who had high stress levels after work and engaged in television viewing or video game play didn't feel relaxed or recovered, but had high levels of guilt and feelings of failure. Leonard Reinecke (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) and Tilo Hartmann and Allison Eden, (VU University Amsterdam) surveyed 471 participants to think about the preceding day and report how they had felt after work and what media they had used. The researchers found that people who were particularly fatigued after work or school showed a higher tendency to feel that their media use was a form of procrastination. They felt that they succumbed to their desire of using media instead of taking care of more important tasks. As a result, they had a higher risk of feeling guilty about their media use. These feelings of guilt diminished the positive effects of media use and reduced recovery and vitality after media use. The results also suggest a paradoxical pattern between depletion and media-induced recovery: Those depleted individuals who could have benefitted the most from recovery through media use, instead experienced lower levels of recovery because they took their media use as a sign of their own self-control failure. Prior research has shown that the use of entertaining media produces a "recovery experience", that helps us to psychologically detach from work stress and relax, but also provides mastery experience (e.g., when you beat a computer game or watch a thought-provoking movie) and a feeling of control during leisure time. As a result, people feel energized and more vital after media use and even show stronger cognitive performance thanks to media-induced recovery. "We are beginning to better understand that media use can have beneficial effects for people's well-being, through media-induced recovery. Our present study is an important step towards a deeper understanding of this. It demonstrates that in the real life, the relationship between media use and well-being is complicated and that the use of media may conflict with other, less pleasurable but more important duties and goals in everyday life," said Reinecke. "We are starting to look at media use as a cause of depletion. In times of smartphones and mobile Internet, the ubiquitous availability of content and communication often seems to be a burden and a stressor rather than a recovery resource." ### "The Guilty Couch Potato: The Role of Ego Depletion in Reducing Recovery Through Media Use," by Leonard Reinecke, Tilo Hartmann and Allison Eden; Journal of Communication Contact: To schedule an interview with the author or a copy of the research, please contact John Paul Gutierrez, jpgutierrez@icahdq.org. About ICA

– It seems natural to reach for the remote to take a breather after a taxing day of conference calls and TPS reports, but a new study warns that especially work-weary folks who flick on the TV or play video games may feel incredibly guilty and like failures afterward, reports the Independent. Instead of letting the media do its ostensible job of mitigating any 9-to-5 stress, scientists found that certain “ego-depleted individuals” regard these activities as procrastination from more critical tasks and fault themselves for a lack of self-control. The German and Dutch researchers asked 471 subjects to talk about how they felt after their 9-to-5 toil the previous day, as well as what media they used to veg out, according to a post at Eureka Alert. Even though the study’s authors say that media has been shown in previous research to offer a “recovery experience” for stressed-out working stiffs, this survey seems to indicate the opposite: that worn-out workers who could probably use a decompression session of Orange Is the New Black the most end up feeling like the biggest losers because they think they should be reading Crime and Punishment or cleaning out the garage instead. “In times of smartphones and mobile Internet, the ubiquitous availability of content and communication often seems to be a burden and a stressor rather than a recovery resource,” says one of the co-authors. (Click to read how food can affect your stress level, too.)

The number of death sentences handed down in the US, 32, was the lowest since 1973 and the number of executions, 20, meant the country is now no longer among the world's five biggest executioners. In its annual death penalty report, "Death Sentences and Executions 2016," rights group Amnesty International found at least 1,032 people were executed in 23 countries in 2016, not including figures from China. The total figure represents a 37 percent decease from 2015, when the group recorded 1,634 executions in 25 countries. In descending order, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan followed China to complete the top five countries that recorded the greatest number of executions. The report also noted sharp drops in the number of executions in Iran -- down 42 percent to at least 567 -- and Pakistan -- down 73 percent to 87. The number of death sentences handed down in the US, 32, was the lowest since 1973 and the number of executions, 20, meant the country is now no longer among the world's five biggest executioners US death penalty sentences fell to a historic low last year and executions also dropped sharply, contributing to a global slump of over a third from 2015, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

– The US is no longer one of the top five executioners in the world, AFP reports. In 2016, both death sentences and executions dropped in the US; only 20 people were put to death, which dropped the US to the No. 7 spot globally, per US News & World Report. And just 32 people were sentenced to death, the lowest number since 1973. Amnesty International, which reported the news, is hailing the trend, with the secretary general of the human rights organization calling it "a sign of hope for activists who have long campaigned for an end to capital punishment." And it's not just the US—globally, there has been a 37% decline in the death penalty since 2015, the year that saw the highest recorded number of executions worldwide (1,634) since 1989. But China, which keeps its numbers secret, was not included in Amnesty's tally. "China wants to be a leader on the world stage, but when it comes to the death penalty it is leading in the worst possible way—executing more people annually than any other country in the world," the organization states, calling on the country to start publicizing its numbers. Amnesty says China is the biggest executioner in the world, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan. But two of those, Iran and Pakistan, saw significant drops in the number of executions (42% and 73% respectively) in 2016.

A private company based in Delray Beach, Fla., Alfred Angelo sold its dresses at 1,400 other retailers, in addition to operating its own stores, according to its website. All of the stores posted “closed” signs, directing customers to contact Stearns, Weaver via email at predmond@stearnsweaver.com for more information. Top creditors of Alfred Angelo, the main company, are Czech Asset Management of Connecticut, a portfolio company, for $54 million; and CardConnect, a credit card processor for up to $5 million, Redmond said. With dream wedding dresses for every style, size, and budget, plus bridesmaid dresses in sizes 0–30, David's Bridal can ensure that every bride has the wedding of her dreams. Alfred Angelo’s failure led Alex Pacifico and her co-workers at the company’s bridal store near Dayton, Ohio, to spend Thursday essentially running a guerrilla retail operation. Nora Ares, an employee at nearby Bijou Bridal & Special Occasion store, said she would often refer customers to Alfred Angelo. David’s Bridal said it will offer a 30 percent discounts on replacement wedding gowns to those with an Alfred Angelo receipt and 20 percent discounts for bridesmaid dresses. took a higher than usual volume of calls, many from affected Alfred Angelo customers in search of replacement wedding or bridesmaid dresses, said store manager Heather Dadic.

– Wedding dress retailer Alfred Angelo shuttered stores nationwide on Friday, sending brides-to-be into a panic. The Sun Sentinel reports the Florida-based company filed for bankruptcy protection after failing to find a buyer. The chain has at least 60 shops in the US, and its dresses are sold in more than 1,400 spots worldwide. Little information was available for angry brides who vented on social media after finding they were shut out of shops holding their gowns. "I'm glad orange is my wedding color because I'm gonna be married in jail if I can't get my dresses," one woman tweeted. Alfred Angelo hasn’t commented, but company lawyer Patricia Redmond tells the Sun Sentinel she has been bombed with more than 3,500 emails from worried brides. Redmond says the chain will work with a court-appointed trustee to release all the gowns in the shops. With her wedding a week away, Yadira Castro, 27, was no doubt hoping that was the case. "I don’t have the money to buy a new dress," she tells the newspaper, after paying $1,200 for an ensemble featuring a gown inspired by the Disney character Princess Jasmine. Some customers blamed Alfred Angelo workers for not being honest, but one mother tells the New York Times an employee in the Houston shop found her daughter’s dress and "gave us one hour" to pick it up Friday morning. "We have a happy ending," she says. Meanwhile, competitors liked David's Bridal rushed to offer discounts and alterations for betrayed brides and bridesmaids. (This wedding registry is not for everyone.)

"People have a real lack of understanding of the struggles that many families have to go through — hard working families that play by the rules," Booker said when he first set up the challenge last week. This is the financial equivalent of the budget provided to people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, in the State of New Jersey. In my own quest to better understand the outcomes of SNAP assistance, I suggested to this specific Twitter user that we both live on a SNAP equivalent food budget for a week and document our experience. My goals for the #SNAPChallenge are to raise awareness and understanding of food insecurity; reduce the stigma of SNAP participation; elevate innovative local and national food justice initiatives and food policy; and, amplify compassion for individuals and communities in need of assistance. A Twitter user tweeted me her opinion that "nutrition is not the responsibility of the government".

– Cory Booker began his food stamp challenge yesterday, showing off his decidedly modest grocery haul for the week to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. The vegetarian mayor spent $29.78 on an assortment that included 17 cans of beans, seven yams, two bags of frozen vegetables, and two apples. "If I could go back and do it over again, I definitely would have gotten a dozen eggs and I would have clipped coupons," he says. Booker says he's hoping to foster compassion for people living on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) food stamps, even as Congress considers cutting the program. "People have a real lack of understanding of the struggles that many families have to go through," he says. In a blog post about the challenge he says he's "doubling down on my commitment to the Food Justice Movement." He promised to document the experience on social media, and indeed, this morning he tweeted an image of his chickpea-and-lettuce breakfast.

It has now emerged that the same group, described by the restaurant owner as Roma from Romania, have a history of not paying their bill. The reservation for Feb. 27 in Bembibre, a town in northwestern Castile and Leon region, was to celebrate the christening of two boys with appetizers, pork chops, dessert and alcohol for 120 guests, said Rodriguez. They got in their cars and sped out," said Antonio Rodriguez, who was the first restaurateur to alert authorities after staff in his Carmen Hotel found themselves with an unpaid bill of 2,200 euros ($2,300). “Just after eating their desserts when I was on my way to make coffee, they all upped and left.” They left an outstanding bill of more than €10,000. The owners of El Rincón de Pepín, a restaurant in nearby Ponferrada believes they fell victim to the same fraudsters in February when a group of 200 wedding guests “stampeded” out of the dining room just before the coffees were served. "We had just served the cake and they left just like that, without insults, without being rude to us. “They had made a reservation for 100 but there was close to 200 people present,” one of the workers there told El Confidencial. On Monday, the Diario del Leon newspaper reported (in Spanish) that two ringleaders had been identified and that police were working to establish firm links between the two cases.

– All hail the new kings of the dine and dash. Authorities and restaurateurs in northwest Spain are on the lookout after a huge group of hungry people is suspected of skating out on massive bills around the region. One such incident happened Feb. 27 at the Carmen Hotel in Bembibre, where 120 diners were celebrating the christening of two boys, the AP reports. Owner Antonio Rodriguez says the diners racked up a $2,300 bill then left "in a stampede" before the cake showed up. According to the Local, the diners actually danced the conga out the door and to their cars. Rodriguez says it was like "something they'd planned," but there wasn't anything he could do "because these were huge men with muscles." Within days and a few miles of the Carmen Hotel incident, a wedding party of between 160 and 200 guests skipped out on a $10,600 bill at El Rincon de Pepin in Ponferrado. The guests reportedly went outside to set off celebratory fireworks after the meal but before coffee and never returned. "They didn't say anything," El Rincon de Pepin owner Laura Arias tells the BBC. "They just disappeared." It's believed the same group is responsible for both incidents, as well as a potential third. Authorities started investigating after restaurateurs claimed to have identified some of the dine-and-dashers through photos posted on Facebook. A man from Romania believed to be a ringleader has been arrested. (These dine-and-dashers allegedly hit their waitress with a car, too.)

A review of euthanasia or assisted suicide (EAS) cases among patients with psychiatric disorders in the Netherlands found that most had chronic, severe conditions, with histories of attempted suicides and hospitalizations, and were described as socially isolated or lonely, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Design, Setting, and Participants This investigation reviewed psychiatric EAS case summaries made available online by the Dutch regional euthanasia review committees as of June 1, 2015. There were 66 summaries of psychiatric assisted suicide cases that took place between 2011 and 2014, representing the majority of assisted suicides involving psychiatric patients known to have occurred during that period. Of the 66 cases, 46 of them were women (70 percent); 32 percent of patients (n=21) were 70 or older; 44 percent (n=29) were 50 to 70 years old; and 24 percent (n=16) were 30 to 50 years old. While fully 55 percent of patients were diagnosed with depression, the others had a number of different conditions, including psychosis, posttraumatic stress disorder or anxiety, neurocognitive issues, pain without any physical cause, eating disorders, prolonged grief and autism. Consultation with other physicians was extensive but in 11 percent (n=7) of cases there was no independent psychiatric input and 24 percent (n=16) of cases involved disagreements among physicians. Euthanasia review committees found only one case failed to meet the criteria for legal due care among all 110 reported psychiatric EAS cases during 2011 to 2014, the study reports. Dr. Paul Applebaum writes in an accompanying editorial that the findings “raise serious concerns about the implementation of physician-assisted dying for psychiatric patients.” For example, over half of the cases also had personality disorders, which raises questions about “the stability of the expressed desires to die,” writes Applebaum, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry in New York City.

– Euthanasia is itself not without controversy; the euthanasia or assisted suicide (EAS) of the mentally ill even more so. It's an infrequent practice but one on the rise in the Netherlands, which is thought to have seen no more than five such cases in 1997 but 42 in 2013. Still, "little is known" about these cases, write researchers in a report published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. And so they reviewed the particulars of 66 patients who opted for EAS in the country from 2011 to 2014. Depression was the most common psychiatric disorder, but there was also psychosis, PTSD, and anxiety and long-term eating disorders (most had more than one condition). About half had attempted suicide; almost all had a comorbidity (ranging from cancer to arthritis), though the study calls out one healthy 70-year-old woman who simply found her life a "living hell" in the year after her husband's death. As for how they came to end their lives, "the reality of implementing such programs is messy," Reuters notes. In 32% of the cases, the patient had been refused EAS. The physicians for three of those 21 patients ultimately reversed their decisions; the other 18 got approval from a new physician. In 24% of the cases, there was physician disagreement, per a press release, and the New York Times points out that while most patients had long treatment histories, 56% had turned down at least some treatment. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Paul S. Applebaum sees further "red flags," among them the 20% who had never been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, the "ratio of women to men (2.3 to 1), and the 56% of cases in which social isolation or loneliness was important enough to be mentioned," raising "the concern that physician-assisted death served as a substitute for effective psychosocial intervention." (Belgium granted a depressed 24-year-old the right to die.)

“Guns can kill if people have evil intentions, but don’t tell our children that it’s acceptable to mow down people in malls, in churches, in schools, on the street – they don’t know better. Deep down we all know it, as deep down we know our culture has a bad impact on the young and unstable who aren’t sturdy enough to withstand and resist sick messages and imagery. “I know well that the responsible one was the devil,” the pope said.

– Everyone's talking about the need for gun control and mental health treatment in the wake of the Newtown school shooting, and Peggy Noonan is on board with reform in both areas. But there's a third area she thinks sorely needs to be addressed: "our national culture ... of death." Violent movies, TV shows, and video games have "a bad impact on the young and unstable who aren’t sturdy enough to withstand and resist sick messages and imagery," Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal. Republicans can't get anything changed, because Hollywood doesn't respect them—but if President Obama "tells Hollywood it has made America sicker, Hollywood will be forced to listen." () But while Noonan isn't the only one blaming Hollywood, others aren't buying it: On Mediaite, Noah Rothman rounds up the "lamentable parade of falsehoods and half-truths" currently winding through the media. "To indict entertainment, and video games in particular, is a self-serving instinct and irresponsible broadcasting," he writes. In fact, violent crime—particularly gun crime—has gone down as video game playing has gone up. "No movie or video game drove Lanza to murder 20 first graders in cold blood," Rothman writes, and to blame the entertainment industry is "baseless scapegoating." () Quentin Tarantino feels similarly. He's apparently tired of having to defend his violent films: At a press conference for Django Unchained Saturday, he said, “I just think you know there's violence in the world, tragedies happen, blame the playmakers. It's a western. Give me a break." He added that only the perpetrators should be blamed, the Independent reports. Django saw its premiere tonight canceled in light of the shooting.

“On behalf of the entire Indiana University community, I want to express my deepest sympathies to Karlijn’s family and friends over her tragic death,” Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie said. -- Karlijn Keijzer, a Dutch citizen who was a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, was among the passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down Thursday, July 17, over Ukraine, leaving no survivors. Keijzer, 25, also had been a member of the women’s rowing team during the 2011 season. Keijzer was from the Netherlands, and under NCAA rules was eligible to row only one year while she pursued her graduate studies in chemistry. A decorated junior rower, Keijzer participated in the European Rowing Junior Championships in 2006 and the World Rowing Junior Championships in 2007. The "stroke" of Varsity 8 boat Keijzer was a member of IU’s Varsity 8 boat during the 2011 season, helping them to a 14-5 record. She rowed with the Varsity 8 – “the big cheese,” says Peterson – and sat in the “stroke” position. "That is the person who sets the rhythm for the boat and everyone follows her. It also helped propel our program towards the success that we had this past season, and we all know that we can trace it back to that boat that was led by Karlijn. Then this past year, we saw that come to fruition and she contacted me and said ‘I told you so.’ So she was as excited as anyone else for us as a program and the success we had.” David Giedroc, professor and chair of Indiana’s chemistry department, remembers Keijzer walking into his office as soon as she got on campus. "She struck me right then as a very smart, very confident young woman who had a passion for science and for sports that we don't often see," he said. "The last piece of research work she completed before heading out to catch her flight to her short summer vacation was preparing a computer simulation on bryostatin, an anti-cancer drug and a promising drug candidate for treating Alzheimer's disease. “Cancer was just one obstacle she was tackling. She also took on a project seeking better HPV vaccines.” Keijzer and McCormick were co-authors on a study just published in the Journal of the American Chemistry Society , titled: “Understanding Intrinsically Irreversible, Non-Nernstian, Two-Electron Redox Processes: A Combined Experimental and Computational Study of the Electrochemical Activation of Platinum(IV) Antitumor Prodrugs.” McCormick offers the lay explanation: “Many second and third generation cancer drugs aren’t working as well as they could be. “As a woman in science, a woman in chemistry, she was a big inspiration. Any picture she you see of her, she was always smiling or happy or joking around with someone. This is a profoundly sad day in the College.

– Just one American was among the 298 killed on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but also among the victims was an Indiana University doctoral student. Karlijn Keijzer, a 25-year-old Dutch citizen, was a chemistry researcher and, in 2011, a member of the women's rowing team. "Karlijn was, by all accounts, a bright star in the IU constellation, a gifted student and athlete, and a talented researcher with a passion for making the world better through science," says the executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in a press release. "This is a profoundly sad day in the College." She came to IU in 2010, and was currently a member of a chemistry research team and an associate instructor in the chemistry department. Under NCAA rules, Keijzer was only eligible to row for one year, but that was enough to make an impact on the head women's rowing coach. He tells Time she was one of the best he's coached in three decades, and she helped propel the school on the path that took it to the NCAA championships for the first time this season. She was registered for classes this fall, but was en route for a summer vacation in Indonesia with her boyfriend when she was killed. The American killed on the flight, 19-year-old Quinn Schansman, was born in the US but spent most of his life in the Netherlands while keeping his dual citizenship, the New York Times reports. A business student and soccer player, he was on his way to meet his family for a vacation in Indonesia, where his grandfather was born.

– By all accounts, Katie Holmes "won" when it came to her divorce settlement with Tom Cruise—but that doesn't mean Tom can't get a little satisfaction of his own. Cruise's plan is to totally spoil 6-year-old daughter Suri, thus thoroughly annoying Holmes. "While she’s trying to instill a routine and introduce more discipline, Tom could swoop in with a fun-only policy," a source tells Look magazine in an article picked up by Australia's News Network. Cruise recently took Suri on a helicopter ride and, reportedly, bought her a bunch of designer clothes and shoes. He may even move to New York City to be closer to his daughter, a source tells Grazia. "Until now, Scientology has been a very LA-centric movement, but another reason Tom will be keen to relocate … is to focus on developing the church in Manhattan." Speaking of the church, fellow Scientologist John Travolta is disgusted by Cruise's "weak" behavior, believing he "rolled over" in the aforementioned divorce settlement and failed to "man up," thus making "a laughingstock" of Scientology, a source tells the National Enquirer. And what is Holmes up to? Well, she canceled her first public appearance since the split, a red carpet walk at an event for a foundation that promotes dance education, which Holmes co-founded. "Her security team had concerns about the situation, especially the daytime event given it was being held in a public park," a source tells Celebuzz. Meanwhile, TMZ is very, very excited that not just one but both halves of the former couple actually spoke to its photographers. Click to see what Katie said or what Tom said.

Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.” Another policeman, 48-year-old Franck Brinsolaro, was killed moments earlier in the assault on Charlie Hebdo where he was responsible for the protection of its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, one of the 11 killed in the building. “They’re out there with AK47s, the weapons of war.” On Thursday, a 25-year-old police officer, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, was killed in an attack in the south Paris suburb of Montrouge.

– Ahmed Merabet was "slaughtered like a dog" in the street by the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, the police union says—but the slain officer is being mourned as a hero. The 40-year-old, who is believed to have been a Muslim, pulled out his weapon when he encountered the gunmen outside the newspaper's offices and was shot in the groin when they emerged from their car, the Guardian reports. In video footage that shocked France, one gunman approached him as he lay on the sidewalk and shot him in the head. Merabet's parents are Muslim immigrants from Tunisia, although it's not clear whether he practiced the religion himself, and police say his family doesn't want media attention, reports the Wall Street Journal. Merabet, an eight-year veteran of the force, "was killed in a cowardly way by people who had misinterpreted their sacred text," a police union spokesman says. "Yet he himself was from an immigrant background." The #JeSuisAhmed hashtag has sprung up on social media alongside #JeSuisCharlie, and some are praising the officer as a symbol of the fight for free speech, reports the New York Times. Franck Brinsolaro, the officer assigned to protect Charlie Hebdo's editor, was also killed in the attack, and colleagues say he never had a chance to pull his weapon. A policewoman in south Paris was shot dead yesterday in what authorities believe was an unrelated attack, although the gunman is still at large.

The research, carried out at Carnegie Mellon University and published in Human Brain Mapping, involved teaching people a new concept and observing how it was coded in the same areas of the brain through neural representations. Published in Human Brain Mapping, the scientists have - for the first time - documented the formation of a newly learned concept inside the brain and show that it occurs in the same brain areas for everyone.This image illustrates how the study participants learned about the habitat and the diet of eight animals, such as the cytar (not its real zoological name). The set of habitat brain regions (A-green) and diet (B-red and blue) regions where the new knowledge was stored. (L refers to left hemisphere of the brain.) Credit: Carnegie Mellon University Thanks to Carnegie Mellon University advances in brain imaging technology, we now know how specific concrete objects are coded in the brain, to the point where we can identify which object, such as a house or a banana, someone is thinking about from its brain activation signature. Marcel Just, a leading neuroscientist, pointed to the Smithsonian Institute's 2013 announcement about the olinguito, a newly identified carnivore species that mainly eats fruits and lives by itself in the treetops of rainforests, as an example of the type of new concept that people learn. Marcel Just, a professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, commented: "When people learned that the olinguito eats mainly fruit instead of meat, a region of their left inferior frontal gyrus -- as well as several other areas -- stored the new information according to its own code." Just added, 'The new knowledge gained from the Smithsonian's announcement became encoded in the same brain areas in every person that learned the new information, because all brains appear to use the same filing system.' For the study, Andrew Bauer, a Ph.D. student in psychology, and Just taught 16 study participants diet and dwelling information about extinct animals to monitor the growth of the neural representations of eight new animal concepts in the participants' brains. Drawing on previous findings, the research team knew 'where' to expect the new knowledge to emerge in the brains of their participants. Over the course of an hour, the study participants were given a zoology mini-tutorial on the diets and habitats of the animals, while the scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor the emergence of the concepts in the participants' brains. This allowed a computer program to effectively work out which of the eight animals a participant was thinking about at any given time -- essentially allowing the scientists to read their minds. Don't miss Interestingly, the animals with close similarities (such as habitat) had closely matched activation signatures, and once a property of an animal had been learned, it stayed intact in the brain even after new ones had been taught -- providing a new insight into the neural durability of the things we learn. 'Each time we learn something, we permanently change our brains in a systematic way,' said Bauer, the study's lead author. 'It was exciting to see our study successfully implant the information about extinct animals into the expected locations in the brain's filing system.' It's hoped that the research may be able to help shape future teaching methods in schools, and also give a clearer picture of how knowledge is "lost" as a result of serious brain injuries and conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

– Scientists using cutting-edge brain imaging technology finally know how that new idea pops into your head and may even be able to read the thought by looking at your brain. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University observed 16 participants' brains as they learned about the habitat and eating habits of eight extinct animals, Wired reports. As participants underwent a one-hour, mini-tutorial on the animals, functional magnetic resonance imaging showed changes in specific parts of the brain, along with a "unique activation signature" for each animal. Incredibly, a computer program was then able to determine which animal a participant was thinking about just from observing their brain. In other words, scientists could read the participants' minds. "Each time we learn something, we permanently change our brains in a systematic way," says the lead author, whose research is published in Human Brain Mapping. For example, anyone who read about the discovery of the olinguito "permanently changed their own brains," a researcher explains in a press release. "When people learned that the olinguito eats mainly fruit instead of meat, a region of their left inferior frontal gyrus—as well as several other areas—stored the new information according to its own code." Animals with similar diets or habitats elicited similar activation signatures, and a property of an animal stayed in the brain once it was learned, even after several new animals were introduced, suggesting a neural durability of the subjects we learn. Researchers say the study could help develop new teaching methods and give insights into how knowledge is supposedly erased due to conditions like dementia. (Check out the gruesome way a tribe became immune to brain disease.)

Reaction to Harriet Tubman, a Civil War-era abolitionist, replacing Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 was widely positive. Tubman replacing Jackson on the $20, Hamilton spared Treasury Secretary Jack Lew reverses a plan to bump Hamilton after receiving fierce blowback. Harriet Tubman will bump Andrew Jackson from the front of the $20 bill while Alexander Hamilton will stay put on the $10 — a historic move that gives a woman prime placement on U.S. currency and quells a controversy kicked up by Hamilton super-fans. “Today, I’m excited to announce that for the first time in more than a century, the front of our currency will feature the portrait of a woman, Harriet Tubman, on the $20 note,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told reporters during a conference call Wednesday afternoon. “Her incredible story of courage and commitment to equality embody the ideals of democracy that our nation celebrates, and we’ll continue to value her legacy by honoring her on our currency.” Story Continued Below Lew rolled out sweeping changes that will put a new cast of historic figures onto various bills that have remained largely static for decades. Leaders of the women’s suffrage movement will make their way onto the back of the $10 bill, while civil rights era leaders and other important moments in American history will be incorporated into the $5 bill. Jackson will be kicked to the back of the $20 bill. The plan is a major reversal for Lew, who appeared taken aback by the swift rebukes Treasury received last summer when he announced that he was considering replacing Hamilton on the $10 bill with a woman. While he explained that Hamilton was on the chopping block as a matter of practicality – the $10 bill was the next one up for a redesign – Lew still got an earful from fans of Hamilton, who helped create the Treasury Department and the modern American financial system. Critics immediately called for Lew to take Jackson off the $20 bill instead, given the former president's role in moving Native Americans off their land. Lew told POLITICO last July that Treasury was exploring ways to respond to critics. “There are a number of options of how we can resolve this,” Lew said. “We’re not taking Alexander Hamilton off our currency.” But supporters of putting a woman on the $10 bill have complained that it will take too long for the $20 bill to come up for a redesign. Lew has predicted that the new bills will be unveiled in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. On the call on Wednesday, Lew said he would try and make the changes quickly. “The two things most important are the security of our money and getting this process to move as quickly as possible,” he said. “Due to security needs, the redesigned $10 note is scheduled to go into circulation next,” Lew said. “I’ve directed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to work closely with the Federal Reserve to accelerate work on the new $20 and $5 notes. Our goal is to have all three new notes go into circulation as quickly as possible, while ensuring that we protect against counterfeiting through effective and sophisticated production.” The movement to keep Hamilton on the $10 bill was fueled by academics but gathered strength after the Broadway musical named after the former Treasury secretary and founding father became a smash hit. “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda even directly lobbied Lew last month on Hamilton’s behalf, after which Miranda said Lew told him “you’re going to be very happy” with the redesign plan. Reaction to Tubman, a Civil War-era abolitionist, replacing Jackson on the front of the $20 was widely positive, with Democratic presidential candidates quickly hailing Treasury’s decision. “A woman, a leader, and a freedom fighter,” Hillary Clinton tweeted. “I can’t think of a better choice for the $20 bill than Harriet Tubman.” Bernie Sanders concurred, tweeting roughly 30 minutes later that he “cannot think of an American hero more deserving of this honor than Harriet Tubman.” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) tweeted that it was “great news!” “Tubman on $20 is the right call,” she added. “The redesign needs to happen as soon as possible. Women have waited long enough.” Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), who introduced the “Put a Woman on the Twenty Act in Congress” last year in the House (Shaheen introduced a similar bill in the Senate), also commended the decision Wednesday. “There has been a lot of talk about putting a woman’s portrait on our money, but finally it sounds like Secretary Lew is putting our money where his mouth is,” Gutiérrez said in a prepared statement. “It is crazy that women have been mostly absent from our money up until now, with only a few exceptions.” Conservatives also supported the selection of Tubman for the $20 bill. National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted: “Given the sheer number of blows that Tubman struck for liberty, she belongs on the currency more than most. Good choice.” Former Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, however, expressed his love for Tubman and what she accomplished but suggested that placing her on the $2 bill would be a more appropriate honor. Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander on Wednesday expressed dissatisfaction with the decision to move Jackson, arguing that history shouldn't pit the former president against the anti-slavery activist. “United States history is not Andrew Jackson versus Harriet Tubman,” he said in a statement. “It is Andrew Jackson and Harriet Tubman, both heroes of a nation’s work in progress toward great goals. It is unnecessary to diminish Jackson in order to honor Tubman.” Historians and policy wonks weighed in as well, sharing praise for the compromise. “[Hamilton] is fully appropriate to be on American currency, whereas Jackson was a scoundrel, a slave holder and a white supremacist who was involved in the removal of Indians and was completely opposed to paper money and was horrible to women,” said Kari Winter, director of the gender institute at the University at Buffalo. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, last year railed against the initial plan, saying he was “appalled” Hamilton would be yanked. On Wednesday, he called the new plan “a good one,” noting that it fell in line with what he recommended. “Tubman is an excellent and deserving choice, and no one has a better claim to be represented on the currency than Hamilton, who did so much to help establish the American economic system we know today,” he wrote in a blog post. Bernanke also advised that Treasury, similar to the U.S. Postal Service, should redesign bills more frequently. “Occasional changes to bill design would give us more space and flexibility to honor the past; and, if done at reasonable intervals, could coincide with necessary security improvements as well,” he said. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also commended the move. "Throughout American history, women have made important contributions to the free and democratic society we enjoy today," Yellen said in a statement. "I welcome the decision by the Treasury Department to honor these achievements. The Federal Reserve will work with Treasury on a design that also incorporates strong security features to protect worldwide users of U.S. currency." White House deputy press secretary Jennifer Friedman said President Barack Obama was both pleased with Americans' enthusiasm around the whole process and the end result. "The President welcomes Secretary Lew's important announcement that our next currency will honor the contributions that women and civil rights leaders have made to our country, celebrate our democracy and reflect the rich history of the United States and the struggles for freedom and equal rights," Friedman said. And it’s not just the faces that are changing on the bills. U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios told reporters on the call that the new currency will include additional security features. “For the first time in our history, our currency will also include a new tech-help feature intended to aid the blind and the visually impaired,” Rios said. “This is a new, complex and critical, important element in the production of modern U.S. currency.”

– Earlier rumors had it that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was soon to announce a major change to the new $10 bill—specifically, that a woman would replace Alexander Hamilton as the main mug. Instead, sources tell Politico, Lew is expected to announce Wednesday that abolitionist Harriet Tubman is going on the $20 bill, kicking President Andrew Jackson to the back of the bill. Hamilton is staying put, and that leaders of the women's suffrage movement will be put on the back of the sawbuck. Prominent figures from the civil rights movement will also get a spot on the $5 bill. Initial discussion to kick Hamilton to the currency curb was met with resistance, including from ex-Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke, who said he was "appalled" at dishonoring the "best and most foresighted economic policymaker in US history." And a women's advocacy group pointed out last year that a) people are more likely to have a $20 bill in their wallet than a $10 bill, and b) Jackson had a terrible rep for his brutal role in removing Native Americans from their land. If confirmed, Tubman would be the first African-American and the second woman to appear on US paper currency, per the Palm Beach Post. That other woman? Martha Washington, who appeared on a $1 silver note in the 1880s and '90s, per the Atlantic. (Maybe Hamilton's Pulitzer held some sway?)

(Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post) [ Update: Suspect worked for victims’ family business, police say ] D.C. police said late Wednesday that they have identified a suspect in the killings of Savvas Savopoulos, his wife, young son and housekeeper, who authorities believe were held captive in the family’s Northwest Washington home. Phillip Savopoulos (Photo: Facebook) LATEST UPDATE: Suspect identified in NW DC quadruple homicide WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- Law enforcement sources tell WUSA9 that an assistant dropped a package filled with $40,000 in cash before four people were killed inside a D.C. mansion that was then set on fire. Hours later, Alfaro heard that the family had been murdered, WUSA9's Bruce Leshan reported. There were a lot of video cameras around the house, but the only video police have been able to release is a shadowy tape of a figure running, apparently near the scene where a suspect torched the Savopoulos' Porsche on Annapolis Road in Prince George's County. On May 14, Phillip Savopoulos was found dead, along with his parents, 46-year-old Savvas and 47-year-old Amy Savopoulos, and housekeeper Veralicia Figuaroa, 57, at a mansion on Woodland Drive near the National Cathedral. The Savopoulos' also have two daughters, but both were away at boarding school during the murders. The funeral for the three Savopoulos family members is June 1 at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Northwest Washington.

– Whoever killed four people in a DC mansion appears to have gotten away with at least $40,000 in cash. The Washington Post reports that an assistant to businessman Savvas Savopoulos dropped off a package with that amount at his home last Thursday while the family and a housekeeper were being held captive. It's not clear whether the assistant knew the package contained money, why he dropped it off, or whether he had any inkling that anything was amiss. Hours later, the mansion was in flames, and firefighters found the bodies of Savopoulos, wife Amy, their 10-year-old son Philip, and housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa. Investigators think the four had been held for about 10 hours. In fact, WUSA9 reports that two Domino's clerks say a delivery person brought a pizza to the house at some point during that stretch. The station is floating the theory, based on an anonymous source, that the killers coerced Savopoulos into coming up with money. Authorities haven't said much about how the victims died, only that three had wounds. DC police chief Cathy Lanier says detectives are "passionate" about the case, particularly because Philip was only 10. One of the few public clues is an image of a hooded figure running.

'American Idol' Alum Ayla Brown Benefits From Father's Senate Win The season five semi-finalist is back in the spotlight after father Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. Scott Brown became senator-elect of Massachusetts in a special election to fill the late Senator Ted Kennedy's seat for the remainder of his term. In a shocking upset, the Republican candidate defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in the staunchly blue state of Massachusetts. Will Ayla Brown now join the ranks of other "Idol" alums who went on to see illustrious careers?

– That daughter Senator-elect Scott Brown embarrassed the heck out of last night was more famous than her dad until recently. Ayla Brown is also a former American Idol contestant, as well as a Boston College basketball standout. Watch clips of her time on the show, ("Up until I was 10 years old, I was truly convinced that my dad was the Elvis Presley") as well as her performance—and her dad’s now-notorious pimping—at last night’s victory party, in the gallery. And, notes MTV, dad's victory and her constant presence on his campaign isn't hurting Ayla's career, either. Her name was lighting up the search engines this morning, leading Gawker to declare, "The campaign for Ted Kennedy's senate seat may have ended in disaster, but the race for Ayla Brown's heart has just begun."

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.

– Cue the Kleenex boxes, folks: Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm are pulling the cord following months of breakup rumors, People reports. The 44-year-old Mad Men star and 45-year-old actress, last seen canoodling at a New York party on July 22, have issued a statement: "With great sadness, we have decided to separate, after 18 years of love and shared history," the couple says. "We will continue to be supportive of each other in every way possible moving forward." That fits, since Hamm credits his now-ex for helping him through alcohol-abuse treatment earlier this year. This adds to a slew of celebrity breakups this summer, including Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert, and Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, the Daily News reports.

FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. - A Flagler County man is behind bars after he was accused of having rigged the door to his home in Palm Coast with electrical devices in an attempt to electrocute his pregnant estranged wife. Michael Wilson, 32, is accused of trying to kill his wife after he attached electrical devices to the inside of the deadbolt lock and the door handle of their Palm Coast home, according to a charging affidavit. Deputies observed that the front door to the home was barricaded, with burn marks near the handle. When a deputy attempted to kick the door, they witnessed a "booby trap," which possibly caused a large spark to appear, according to the report. Wilson is charged with two counts of attempted aggravated battery on a pregnant person and one count of grand theft of a firearm. "This is one of the most bizarre domestic violence cases I have seen in my career,” Sheriff Rick Staley said in a statement. “Not only did this man plan to electrocute his wife, but he could have injured a deputy, or any person attempting to enter this residence. Thankfully, this man was found and taken into custody before he could cause the harm he intended.” Wilson is being held on $150,000 bail and will be extradited back to Florida. Wilson was found in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Thursday and was arrested. Summit County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS Wilson was arrested in Tennessee and remained at a local detention center on Friday.

– A Florida sheriff calls it "one of the most bizarre domestic violence cases I have seen in my career." The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports a Florida man allegedly rigged a "booby trap" capable of electrocuting his pregnant wife if she unlocked the front door of their home over the Christmas holiday. Authorities say 32-year-old Michael Wilson aroused the suspicions of his unnamed wife's stepfather when he told her to make sure she used the front door and to not let a child touch the doorknob. (Reuters reports Wilson and his wife have a young daughter together.) During this time, Wilson had disappeared from his in-law's home in Tennessee without explanation and accused his wife of cheating on him via text. Authorities went to Wilson's home in Florida on Tuesday and found burn marks on the front door, which let off a large spark when kicked open. Inside they found the doorknob and deadbolt attached to a car battery charger. An electrician who looked at a picture of the booby trap determined there was an 80% to 100% chance of "suffering death or great bodily harm." They also found Wilson's wife's new smart cameras in the toilet and other odd items. Wilson was arrested Thursday in Tennessee and charged with attempted aggravated battery on a pregnant person. He's also been charged with stealing a firearm from his father-in-law's home, WKMG reports. Wilson's wife says he "seemed to be a normal person" until falling a few months ago and refusing to get medical treatment. Wilson's Facebook page lists him as "widowed."

John Woods, who was the soldier responsible for hanging the top Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg Trials.

– The name John C. Woods may not be familiar to most Americans, but it turns out the Wichita native played a unique role in history in the aftermath of World War II. As the Wichita Eagle explains, Woods was a US Army executioner who hanged 10 prominent Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg trials. His story, one that includes allegations that he deliberately prolonged those hangings and ends with his own suspicious death in 1950, may become better known with the release of the book American Hangman later this year. The Eagle talks to the author, retired US Army Col. French MacLean, for the broad strokes. One of the first disturbing bits is that Woods was dishonorably discharged from the Navy prior to joining the Army and diagnosed with "psychopathic inferiority without psychosis," a term associated with violent criminals. He managed to join the Army anyway amid WWII and eventually volunteered for his executioner duties. Woods executed an estimated 90 men, says MacLean, but he became internationally known for his killing of the Nazis. "I'm proud of it," he would say. Eyewitnesses say some of the hangings appear to have been botched, either out of incompetence or malice. One man reportedly took 28 minutes to die. An earlier book, The Nazi Hunters, also chronicled Woods' role, and the Dallas Morning News points out that the "Nazi elite" dispatched by Woods probably were affronted by an executioner who was "slovenly, unshaven, with crooked yellow teeth and dirty, unpressed pants and an insubordinate attitude." Woods was fatally electrocuted in 1950 while standing in a pool of water and changing light bulbs, but MacLean asserts that the Army investigation into his death was wrong, suggesting foul play.

On Friday afternoon, the National Weather Service reported that the Guajataca Dam in the northwest is "failing," causing flash flooding.

– Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated in Puerto Rico after reports of a dam failing Friday, CBS News reports. According to NPR, the National Weather Service announced the Guajataca Dam was failing, causing flash flooding on the Guajataca River. Buses are trying to evacuate the cities of Isabela and Quebradillas—home to about 70,000 people. But details on the damage to the dam and evacuation were sparse as communication is still difficult following Hurricane Maria's battering of the island. “It’s a structural failure. I don’t have any more details,” the Guardian quotes Gov. Ricardo Rossello as saying. “We’re trying to evacuate as many people as possible.” The Guajataca Dam was built decades ago and holds back a man-made lake of about 2 square miles. The National Weather Service is warning of a "life-threatening" situation and advising people to "move to higher ground now." At least seven rivers in Puerto Rico are currently above "flood stage" and much of the island is under a flash-flood warning through Friday. Puerto Rico averages about 10 inches of rain for the entire month of September; some areas of the island have received nearly 40 in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Up to 6 inches of rain is expected through Saturday, and heavy rain is expected on and off until Tuesday.

James T. Hodgkinson was going to change taxes, wife of shooter says Suzanne Hodgkinson came out of her home near Belleville, IL, to talk to the media about her husband, James "Tom" Hodgkinson. James Hodgkinson, who was 66, died of gunshot wounds suffered in a shootout with police. She said she thought he was going to return to Illinois because he'd run out of money. She had no clue he wanted to shoot members of Congress.

– The wife of Alexandria shooter James Hodgkinson says he told her he was going to Washington to work on "changing the tax brackets" and she had no idea he was going to hurt anybody. The Belleville News-Democrat reports that Suzanne Hodgkinson trembled and held a deputy's arm as she spoke to reporters in the southern Illinois town. She said they had been married 30 years, but hadn't been on the best of terms before he sold most of his possessions and departed early this year. "I had no idea this was going to happen, and I don't know what to say about it. I can’t wrap my head around it," she said. "I'm sorry that he did this but there’s nothing I can do about it." Belleville residents say the outspoken liberal could be "politically aggressive." He would collect signatures for causes, and "if you weren't of his opinion, he'd be very agitated," business owner Jack McClenahan tells the Chicago Tribune. Rep. Steve Scalise was one of six people injured when Hodgkinson opened fire on a congressional baseball practice before being fatally injured by police. CNN reports that the hospital where Scalise is being treated says he is still in critical condition after a second operation. The hospital says he has improved in the last 24 hours, but will remain hospitalized "for some time." (Democrats gave the trophy to Scalise's office after winning the congressional baseball game.)

(AP Photo/Jae... (Associated Press) Wisconsin 's Frank Kaminsky (44) grabs a rebound in front of Arizona center Kaleb Tarczewski, right, during the first half in a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game, Saturday, March... (Associated Press) Wisconsin 's Frank Kaminsky cuts down the net after a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game against Arizona, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif. Wisconsin won 64-63 in overtime.... (Associated Press) Arizona's Nick Johnson watches as Wisconsin celebrates after overtime in a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif. Wisconsin won 64-63 in overtime.... (Associated Press) Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan celebrates after cutting down the net after a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game against Arizona, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif. Wisconsin... (Associated Press) Arizona's Kaleb Tarczewski shoots over Wisconsin 's Frank Kaminsky (44) during the first half in a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif.... (Associated Press) Arizona head coach Sean Miller yells during the first half in a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game against Wisconsin, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C.... (Associated Press) Wisconsin 's Traevon Jackson celebrates in front of Arizona's Nick Johnson (13) as time runs out in overtime of a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim,... (Associated Press) Wisconsin forward Frank Kaminsky shoots past Arizona's Kaleb Tarczewski (35) during the first half in a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif.... (Associated Press) Wisconsin 's Josh Gasser shoots past Arizona's Gabe York (1) during the first half in a regional final NCAA college basketball tournament game, Saturday, March 29, 2014, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae... (Associated Press) The 7-footer carried Wisconsin to the Final Four with 28 points, including six in overtime, as the Badgers defeated Arizona 64-63 in a physical West Region final Saturday night. 2 seed Badgers (30-7). Florida won its 30th straight game and improved to 36-2, topping the 35 wins by the 2007 national championship squad. Johnson led the Wildcats with 16 points, and Aaron Gordon had 18 rebounds in the relentlessly physical game. Kaleb Tarczewski scored 12 points and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson had 10 points for the Wildcats, who were trying to get coach Sean Miller to the Final Four for his first time. Scottie Wilbekin scored 23 points and Florida became the first team to advance to the Final Four with a 62-52 win Saturday night over the 11th-seeded Dayton Flyers in the South Region final. MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — First yet again this season, the Florida Gators want more. T. J. McConnell's jumper missed, but Arizona got the offensive rebound and found Johnson, who missed and got called for the push-off on Gasser with 3 seconds left. "I thought it was a really, really tough call," Miller said.

– Wisconsin handed the University of Arizona a narrow overtime loss last night, and the student body cheering on the latter didn't exactly take it well, clogging a main thoroughfare in Tucson and chucking beer bottles and firecrackers at pepper spray-wielding police officers. Police eventually managed to clear the streets, but arrested 15 people along the way; of those, 14 were released, reports the AP. A police spokesman says that crowds emptied out of bars and restaurants along University Boulevard after the game, and refused to leave in spite of warnings via a PA system and social media. A witness says everything was going swimmingly until "people got in cops' faces" and cans started flying. Deadspin notes that things quickly deteriorated to the point that students were shot with bean bags; the Daily Wildcat chronicled events via its Twitter feed. Meanwhile, the Florida Gators became the first team to advance to the Final Four last night.

He may not have gifted her the iPad she wanted, but Bill Gates proved a very generous Secret Santa to a Reddit user. 10/10 would receive gift from Bill Gates again ps: Sorry for the apple ipad on my wishlist, that was really awkward.

– You might end up with a great Secret Santa this year, but Reddit user Rachel will probably have you beat. Hers ended up being none other than Bill Gates in Reddit's online gift exchange program, reports Fast Company. She posted the news yesterday under her NY1227 handle, thanking Gates for the "amazing and thoughtful gift." He donated a cow on her behalf to a needy family via the Heifer International program, gave her a stuffed-animal cow as a symbol of that, and added a travel book. In her post, Rachel writes how she didn't realize it was Bill Gates himself until she found a photo inside her package of him holding the stuffed animal, notes CNET. "My God. Never in my entire life did I imagine, ever, ever, ever that Bill would get me," Rachel wrote. "I am SO SO thankful for the time, thought ,and energy he put into my gift, and especially thankful for him over-nighting it :)" She also apologized for putting an Apple iPad on her wish list.

So when Malaysian authorities announced Friday that VX was to blame for the Feb. 13 death of the North Korean leader's exiled half brother inside a busy Kuala Lumpur airport, it raised nearly as many questions as answers. In a brief statement, Khalid Abu Bakar, the national police chief, said the substance was listed as a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Conventions of 1997 and 2005, to which North Korea is not a party.

– The banned chemical weapon VX is considered by some experts to be the nastiest of the nasty nerve agents known to exist. With a consistency similar to motor oil, it lingers for long periods in the environment and even a tiny amount causes victims' bodies to flood with fluids, producing a feeling of drowning before death, reports the AP. So when Malaysian authorities announced Friday that VX was to blame for the Feb. 13 death of the North Korean leader's exiled half-brother inside a busy Kuala Lumpur airport, it raised nearly as many questions as answers, including how the two women who allegedly attacked Kim Jong Nam with it could have survived. A toxicologist says the woman shouldn't have escaped unscathed—one reportedly vomited—as police have said they did not wear gloves or protective gear and only washed their hands after the attack. One theory is that they took an antidote in advance. And the New York Times points out VX becomes lethal when two chemicals are mixed, something that can be done "at the last moment." Police have said the two suspects rubbed something on Kim's face in quick succession. Another toxicologist notes that VX—a small amount of which could kill 500 people through skin exposure—would likely have come from a chemical weapons laboratory, making it more likely that the attack was executed by a government. But he wants an independent lab to verify that VX was used, given that no one else at the airport was sickened. On Friday officials announced the facility would be decontaminated.

Nathan Deal said 11 State Parks have opened as emergency shelters, MyFoxAtlanta.com reported. Up to three-quarters of an inch of ice was expected to accumulate in Atlanta and up to 10 inches of snow and sleet were expected in Raleigh and Charlotte, making travel treacherous. All federal offices in the nation's capital were ordered closed, and thousands of employees were being told to stay home, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Motorists were encouraged to stay off roads. Hide Caption 40 of 52 52 photos: Southeast storm moves north Southeast storm moves north – Ice coats trees hanging over a sign for the Broadway at the Beach tourist attraction in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on February 12. Hide Caption 51 of 52 52 photos: Southeast storm moves north Southeast storm moves north – A vehicle drives through falling snow on the U.S. 421 bypass in Sanford, North Carolina, on February 11. The situation in North Carolina was eerily similar to what happened in Atlanta: As snow started to fall around midday, everyone left work at the same time, despite warnings from officials to stay home because the storm would move in quickly. Michael Crosswhite, 44, planned on leaving work in Raleigh, in Wake County, by midafternoon, well ahead of when forecasters initially predicted a snow and ice storm to hit the area. While Atlanta's highways were clear, apparently because people learned their lesson two weeks ago during a storm that paralyzed area traffic, thousands of cars lined the slippery, snow-covered interstates around Raleigh, N.C., and short commutes turned into hours-long journeys. The scene was markedly different from the one Jan. 28, when thousands of children were stranded all night in schools by less than 3 inches of snow and countless drivers abandoned their cars after getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours and hours. "Right now we've got people traveling up and down the highways in special four-wheel vehicles to make any rescues that we need to make, and more than anything else we're just encouraging people to be smart, and don't put their stupid hat on during the next 48 hours," North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory urged people to charge their cellphones and find batteries for radios and flashlights because the storm could bring nearly a foot of snow in places such as Charlotte. In Atlanta, which was caught unprepared by the last storm, streets and highways were largely deserted this time. – Greg Ranallo walked more than 10 miles to a friend's house after his car was stranded during the last storm. However, the South is particularly vulnerable: Many trees are allowed to hang over power lines for the simple reason that people don't normally have to worry about ice and snow snapping off limbs. With a blanket draped over her shoulders, she made it home more than four hours later, comparing her journey to the blizzard scene from the movie "Dr. So, too, did the rest of her family who were stuck in traffic across the region. More than 1,000 National Guard troops have mobilized around the state, and Gov. Power outages More than 729,000 customers were without power in the Southeast, power companies told CNN. South Carolina was the hardest hit, with about 220,000 customers without electricity, while Wilmington, North Carolina, accounted for more than 58,000 outages. Two people were killed in Georgia, and two died in North Carolina, they said. In Texas, three people died when an ambulance driver lost control on an icy patch of road outside of Carlsbad, the state Department of Public Safety said. At least nine traffic deaths across the region were blamed on the treacherous weather, and more than 3,600 flights were cancelled across the nation, FlightAware.com reported.

– The warnings haven't minced words, and the potentially "catastrophic" weather set to hit the South has begun, with Atlanta already feeling the effects: Some 39,000 and counting have lost power there, with that number climbing by the thousands within spans as short as 10 minutes. In terms of thousands, 2,200 flights have been axed out of the city's airport, the world's busiest, with just 300 expected to depart today. Ice began to descend on major roads around 4am, and "all of the interstates, all of the secondary routes, all of the surface streets, are all iced over," said a local radio host, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Where you are right now is where you’re going to be tomorrow morning, there's no doubt about it." Of particular concern are the many tree limbs over power lines; weighed-down icy limbs can snap, causing extensive outages, Fox News notes. Experts are warning that power could be out for a week in some areas, CNN reports. Indeed, ice is "our biggest enemy," says Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal. But much of the South is bracing for snow and ice: Three to five inches of snow could hit Atlanta; southwestern Virginia could see 14 inches, while Charlotte, NC, could get a foot. South Carolina hasn't logged a significant ice storm in a decade, but it could see as much as three-quarters of an inch of ice ... plus up to 8 inches of snow.

Hundreds of people hold a vigil in support of Scott Olsen at City Hall in Oakland, October 27, 2011. Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen, a former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran, lies on the street after being injured during a demonstration in Oakland, California October 25, 2011. Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen, a former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran, is carried away after being injured during a demonstration in Oakland, California October 25, 2011. OAKLAND -- Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, stood calmly in front of a police line as tear gas canisters that officers shot into the Occupy Oakland protest Tuesday night whizzed past his head. Olsen's injury has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide, and Oakland organizers said they would stage a general strike over what a spokeswoman called the "brutal and vicious" treatment of protesters, including the young Iraq war veteran. He's able to write and hear, but has a little difficulty with his speech," Lyons said. Olsen has a bruise on his brain that is causing swelling, but he should recover fully without needing surgery, Harken said. Mayor's visit Mayor Jean Quan visited Olsen in the hospital, told him she was sorry for what happened and promised an investigation, said Highland spokesman Vintage Foster. Olsen, a Daly City resident and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, fell to the ground after police lobbed or fired an object - possibly a tear gas canister - at a group of protesters. Olsen was dropped off at the hospital by people in a private car and was unconscious for 12 hours, Harken said. Acting Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan had told a news conference his department was investigating the incident. Keith Shannon, 24, who said he served with Olsen in Iraq, told Reuters his friend suffered a two-inch skull fracture. Olsen served two tours in Iraq from 2006 to 2010 with the 3rd battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, Shannon said, adding that he and Olsen deployed together and were assigned to a tactical communications unit.

– Scott Olsen, the 24-year-old Iraq war veteran who suffered a fractured skull when police raided the Occupy Oakland camp on Tuesday, is awake and lucid, and doctors have upgraded his condition from critical to fair, Reuters reports. “He’s able to understand what’s going on,” a hospital spokesman said. “He’s able to write and hear, but has a little difficulty with his speech.” Olsen’s parents flew in from Wisconsin yesterday to see him, and he “responded with a very large smile” when he saw them. Olsen has a large bruise on his brain, but chief of surgery Alden Harken tells the San Francisco Chronicle that he should recover without surgery. As "We are all Scott Olsen" becomes a rallying cry, candlelight vigils were held for him in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and, of course, Oakland last night, the New York Times reports. Oakland’s mayor has also visited him, promising an investigation. But Olsen is unaware of his newfound fame. “He wouldn’t be able to comprehend it,” Harken says.

As first reported by Vox, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) last week also announced his intention to introduce a separate bill that would create a pilot program for a job guarantee in 15 rural and urban areas. The Federal Jobs Guarantee Development Act, announced by Booker on Friday, would establish a three-year pilot program in which the Department of Labor would select up to 15 local areas (defined in the bill as any political subdivision of a state, like a city or a county, or a group of cities and counties) and offer that area funding so that every adult living there is guaranteed a job paying at least $15 an hour (or the prevailing wage for the job in question, whichever’s higher) and offering paid family/sick leave and health benefits. “The goal is to eliminate working poverty and involuntary unemployment altogether,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economist at the New School who has advocated for a jobs guarantee program along with Stony Brook University's Stephanie Kelton and a group of left-leaning economists at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. An effective full employment program would cost more than half a trillion dollars annually, making it almost as large as Medicaid, according to a lengthy paper published in March by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an influential liberal think tank. “If Republicans could give $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest among us,” Gillibrand said in a tweet earlier this month, “why can’t we invest a similar amount in a guaranteed jobs plan for regular Americans who are unemployed and willing to work to better their local community?” Booker last week announced a separate proposal that would test the jobs guarantee idea in 15 local areas, saying the idea ought to be taken seriously. “Creating an employment guarantee would give all Americans a shot at a day’s work and, by introducing competition into the labor market, raise wages and improve benefits for all workers.” The policy case for a job guarantee The idea of a job guarantee serves both a policy and a political purpose. The plan's authors envision millions of Americans being hired under the proposal, with the number going up during economic recessions in the private sector and down during economic booms. But that figure does not include people who've given up looking for work, and the labor force participation rate — a broader measure of those not working — suggests there may be people not counted among the unemployed who would join the labor force. Seventy-eight counties, like Yuma, Arizona, still have unemployment rates in excess of 10 percent. Supporters say it also would reduce racial inequality, because black workers face unemployment at about twice the rates of white workers, as well as gender inequality, because many iterations of the plan call for the expansion of federal child-care work. The new government spending could also lead to inflation, decreasing the real value of workers' wages. Job guarantee advocates say their plan would drive up wages by significantly increasing competition for workers, ensuring that corporations have to offer more generous salaries and benefits if they want to keep their employees from working for the government. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will propose a jobs guarantee program for every American worker “who wants or needs one.” (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job paying $15 an hour and health-care benefits to every American worker “who wants or needs one,” embracing the kind of large-scale government works project that Democrats have shied away from in recent decades. “It would be extremely expensive, and I wonder if this is the best, most targeted use of the amount of money it would cost,” he said. Once the program was up and running, the vast majority of jobs offered would be in the public sector, and participants who need more skills development would be offered up to eight weeks of training. Critics point to potential unintended consequences in the plan. It’s the kind of idea Democrats might have scoffed at in the past; President Barack Obama, for instance, tended to agree with Republicans that it was important to reduce budget deficits.

– Bernie Sanders is working on a plan that would allow the federal government to guarantee a $15-per-hour job, plus healthcare benefits, to every worker in the US "who wants or needs one," per an early draft of the proposal obtained by the Washington Post. The jobs guarantee would encompass projects involving infrastructure, education, the environment, and care giving. It's not clear when Sanders will formally present the plan; a representative says Sanders' office has not done a cost estimate for the plan or determined where its funding would come from. Sanders' announcement comes after two other Democrats, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Cory Booker, recently backed the idea of a jobs guarantee plan. Booker is aiming to create a three-year pilot program to test such a guarantee in 15 areas, Vox reports. Supporters of such a plan say it would increase competition for workers, thus forcing corporations to increase their wages and benefits in order to compete with government jobs. But Republicans, who currently control Congress, say the idea is impractical, and even some Democrats agree with that. "It would be extremely expensive, and I wonder if this is the best, most targeted use of the amount of money it would cost," says one economist who served in Obama's Treasury Department, noting that it would be tricky to make sure millions of new jobs—the authors of the Sanders plan do envision it would hire millions of Americans—are all actually productive. The Huffington Post spoke to Democratic Senate leaders and reports that they don't seem quite ready to "embrace" the idea; all Chuck Schumer would say is that he wants to look at Sanders' proposal.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius speaks at a news conference in Chicago (Photo: AP/Al Podgorski, Chicago Sun Times) Story Highlights Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will appear before House panel on Wednesday Despite four tough weeks since ACA roll out, Sebelius maintains Obama's "full confidence" Sebelius' allies say she is steeled for tough fight with GOP WASHINGTON — Kathleen Sebelius is on the hot seat as the Obama administration battles to rebound from a problem-plagued rollout of the Affordable Care Act, but friends of the embattled Health and Human Services secretary say it's a mistake to count her out. 5 questions Sebelius must answer Oct. 30, 2013 at 3:33 AM ET Evan Vucci / AP Two down and one to go. CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner told the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday “We had tested the website, and we were comfortable with its performance.” So what did HHS officials know about any problems and were White House officials notified of any problems? Tavenner has admitted that CMS wasn’t aware of the depth of the problems in the first day or two. “I want to know why sufficient systems integrated testing was not conducted, and you made the decision to move forward with the website,” said Tennessee Republican Diane Black who, like Tavenner, started her career as a registered nurse.

– Kathleen Sebelius is testifying before Congress this morning in eagerly anticipated remarks about problem-plagued HealthCare.gov, but you may not hear anything new. Politico reports that her eight pages of prepared testimony are, almost verbatim, the same as the testimony offered to Congress yesterday by head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Marilyn Tavenner. Of course, that's not stopping anyone from hoping Sebelius will address some questions that remain unanswered. NBC and CNN round up a few: Why wasn't the site tested earlier? Officials have said they were running out of time and tests indicated everything was fine. But Republicans want a much better explanation, and contractors have said they warned CMS that more testing was needed. Why wasn't the launch delayed? Tavenner said yesterday that CMS wasn't aware how bad the problems were at first. The questions for Sebelius: Why not? And when, exactly, did she learn of the problems and how bad they were? Why so secretive? Specifically, why hasn't HHS named the contractors or experts involved with the site? How do we know everything on the site will work correctly? For example, how do we know the subsidy calculator (which uses a complex formula) will accurately calculate an individual's government subsidy? How much is this going to cost to fix? So far, HHS hasn't offered an estimate. Can she explain the millions of people whose current policies will be canceled? Those people will need to switch to a plan that complies with ObamaCare's minimum standards. It's probably not going to be a fun day for Sebelius, but in a profile this week, USA Today points out that she's used to this type of political fight. "She has been successful because she is level-headed," says a colleague from Sebelius' days as governor of Kansas. "She's unflappable."

ADVERTISEMENT It's been said that you're less likely to win the lottery than you are to be struck by lightning. Submitted HL: Peter McCathie of Amherst Shore and Diana Miller of Amherst are co-workers who purchased a Lott 6/49 Combo 4 lottery ticket together every week. But lightning strike survivor Peter McCathie beat all those odds when he and his co-worker, Diana Miller, collected their million-dollar prize at the Atlantic Lottery offices in Moncton on Monday. McCathie owns the store where he purchased the ticket and where he and Miller both work, Miller as a baker. pic.twitter.com/zjLJKjMVCV — Atlantic Lottery (@AL_Lottery) July 20, 2015 The pair had been buying tickets for approximately one year, and had bought the latest one from the very store that McCathie owns. They purchased it through what's known as a "Retailer Play" button, which allows store owners or employees to buy tickets and avoid disputes later, The Amherst Daily News reported. "I honestly expected to get hit by lightning again first," McCathie told CTV News. The lottery winner said he was wading through shallow waters near the shore of a lake when he was struck by lightning. "I was trying to lock the boat up, it was a very sunny day, there was one big, white cloud in the sky and the lightning bolt came through the trees and hit me," McCathie told CTV Atlantic. Next year, he and his wife will celebrate their 30th anniversary, so they may go on a second honeymoon, possibly to Ecuador. Diana Miller is planning a trip to Cancun, Mexico with her share of the winnings, while McCathie says that after 30 years of marriage, it's time for him and his wife to take a second honeymoon. "By assuming that these events happened independently … so probability of lotto … times another probability of lightning – since there are two people that got hit by lightning – we get approximately 1 in 2.6 trillion," said Sophie Leger.

– Peter McCathie's first grand stroke of good luck happened when he got hit by lightning at age 14 and lived to tell the tale. His second came this month when he won a $1 million lottery in Canada with a co-worker, reports Huffington Post Canada. If you're scratching your head wondering, "What are the odds," CTV has your answer, courtesy of a math professor at the University of Moncton: one in 2.6 trillion. Those are the odds of one lotto win and two lightning strikes, the professor explains. It turns out McCathie's daughter has also been struck by lightning. "I honestly expected to get hit by lightning again first," says McCathie of winning the lottery; he plans to use the money to pay off debt and take a second honeymoon with his wife of 30 years. He still recalls the lightning strike, which happened as he was wading in a lake's shallow waters. "I was trying to lock the boat up, it was a very sunny day, there was one big, white cloud in the sky and the lightning bolt came through the trees and hit me." McCathie actually owns the store in Amherst Shore, Nova Scotia, where he and employee Diana Miller bought the winning ticket, and if that sounds fishy, cumberlandnewsnow.com can dispel any suspicions. They used something called a "retailer play button" designed to ensure any such purchases are legit. As for Miller, a baker at the store: "Maybe I won't ask him for a raise this year." (This man just survived a lightning strike to the head.)

– Looks like Justin Bieber finally got that baptism he so desperately wanted. Biebs had been trying to find a church in New York City with a pool in which to get baptized since February, after a string of unfortunate choices got him quite a bit of bad press. Well, last week, he settled for a bathtub baptism, TMZ reports. Pastor Carl Lentz of Justin's fave Hillsong Church NYC performed the ritual in the home of one of Bieber's friends, sources say. Before the baptism, Lentz says he and Bieber did a week of "intense Bible study" involving reading and studying Bible passages and attending church services. The religious rebirth comes after Bieber's latest controversy—two videos of him using the n-word when he was younger were just recently released, two months after an alleged extortion attempt. A man demanded $1 million from Bieber or else he would release the videos, TMZ notes. If you were wondering how Bieber mentor Usher might react to that whole brouhaha, TMZ reported over the weekend that Usher insists Bieber "hasn't always chosen the path of his greatest potential, but he is unequivocally not a racist."

RELATED: With healthcare battle about over, Senate Republicans consider holiday exit Obama pushes back vacation to help Senate on healthcare -- Michael Muskal Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal Even Senate Republicans appeared ready to admit defeat, as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) cut a deal with Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to hold a final vote on the Senate bill at 8 a.m. Thursday, allowing senators to head home hours earlier than expected. Under Senate rules, Republicans could have forced senators to stay at their desks until nearly 10 p.m. during what will be the Senate's first Christmas Eve session since 1963.

– It looks like senators and their staffs will be home for Christmas Eve after all. The final vote on health care legislation has been moved up to 8am Thursday, reports the LA Times. Harry Reid and GOP leader Mitch McConnell announced the move today after a set of procedural votes cleared the Senate with the necessary 60 votes. Republicans could have delayed Thursday's action until 9pm, but McConnell chose not to do so, notes the Post.

Mr. Parvaiz, according to prosecutors, initially described a trio of attackers: one white, one black and one whose race he said he could not determine. And on Friday, several people who attended Ms. Noorani’s funeral at the Jam-e-Masjid Islamic Center in Boonton said the news that Mr. Parvaiz had been charged was less surprising than his cover story, since there has been little racial or ethnic tension in Boonton. “We were talking to each other and we were like, ‘Who else?’ ” Moheet Durrani, 62, a family friend, said. Parvaiz and Antoinette Stephen are charged with connection of... (Associated Press) Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi holds the police booking photos of Kashif Parvaiz, left, and Antoinette Stephen, who were charged in the murder of 27-year-old Nazish Noorani, during a news conference,... (Associated Press) In this photo released by the Morris County Prosecutor's office, Antoinette Stephen is seen in this police booking photo, Friday, Aug. 19, 2011. Bail for Ms. Stephen was set at $5 million. She was being held in Boston, awaiting extradition to New Jersey. According to the arrest affidavit, Mr. Parvaiz had told investigators “that there were issues in his marriage and that he was angry at his wife, the victim, for allegedly speaking negatively about his family.” He also seemed to regret her killing, saying “that he did not want to be the person to look at his children and tell them that he took their mother away,” the affidavit said. According to the affidavit, Mr. Parvaiz told Ms. Stephen about the turbulence in his six-year marriage and Ms. Stephen promised to “think of something.” The document detailed text messages between them. In one on Aug. 12, four days before the killing, she was said to have written: “You hang in there. Freedom is just around ur corner.” On Aug. 14, Mr. Parvaiz is alleged to have sent her a text message: “Well I need to speak to you and explain to you how to approach the situation. I wont message from here on.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The plan, according to the affidavit, was that Mr. Parvaiz “would go out for a walk with the victim” and that Ms. Stephen “would kill the victim and wound the suspect.” The walk took Mr. Parvaiz and Ms. Noorani from her sister’s house — where Ms. Noorani had broken her daytime Ramadan fast — toward her father’s house a short distance away, where Mr. Parvaiz had parked his car. They left their 5-year-old son with Ms. Noorani’s sister Lubna Choudhry. They were walking with their 3-year-old son, who was in a stroller, to a relative's house in Boonton when shots rang out Tuesday night. Friends and family had set up a website, www.nazishmemorialfund.org, to help the couple's two children. Parvaiz told family he was attending graduate school at Harvard, but the school has no record of him studying there. Subsequent texts from Stephen's number describe driving around the neighborhood to see how far away the nearest police station was, according to the affidavit.

– A Pakistani-American admitted to police that he set up his wife's murder and made up a cover story about getting jumped by three black men shouting "terrorists!" Kashif Parvaiz of New Jersey and a woman the New York Post describes as his lover, Antoinette Stephen, are under arrest for plotting the shooting of Nazish Noorani. It took place as she walked down a neighborhood street accompanied by her 3-year-old son, who was unharmed, and by Parvaiz, who was wounded in the attack as planned, but not seriously. Afterward, he couldn't keep his story straight, and both police and Noorani's family got suspicious, notes the New York Times. "Someday U will find me dead, but it’s cuz of Kashi ... he wants to kill me," she recently texted her brother. Police say they also have text records from the suspects laying out intricate details of the plot. "You hang in there," Stephen texted him before the shooting, according to AP. "Freedom is just around ur corner."

Talk about savage irony: on the heels of his separation from wife Heidi Klum, Seal released his new album, "Soul 2," in the U.S. on Tuesday -- one that he says has a particularly romantic feel. "Sources who've witnessed Seal and Klum's typically overt shows of affection – "They were always all over each other, practically groping," says another fashion source, "totally in love" – are now left wondering what could have gone wrong for the pair, whose children are Leni, 7½, Henry, 6, Johan, 5, and Lou, 2.

– Despite his very recent, very public split with wife Heidi Klum, Seal visited Ellen DeGeneres' show yesterday and had only nice things to say about his soon-to-be-ex. He's still wearing his ring because it's "a token of how I feel about this woman," he says in a clip obtained by the Huffington Post. "We have eight years, eight wonderful years together. And just because we have decided to separate doesn't necessarily mean that you take off your ring and you're no longer connected to that person. We will be connected in many ways for the rest of our lives." He has "no intention of taking it off any time soon," he adds. If you were shocked by news of the split, you're not alone: Even their friends were surprised, People reports. The couple renewed their wedding vows every year, and multiple sources recall their infamous PDAs: Says one fashion source, "They were always all over each other, practically groping." Another friend says that "something major" must have caused the split. Whatever it was, it caused Seal to start looking for a new place to live weeks ago, sources tell the New York Post. Click to watch more from Seal's Ellen appearance, which airs today.

Address covering state visits for next two years refers to welcoming Spanish king and queen in July, but not US president The Queen’s speech has given a further indication that Donald Trump’s planned state visit to the UK has been put on hold, after the monarch did not mention it in her address. “I have today been able to convey Her Majesty the Queen’s hope that President Trump and the First Lady would pay a state visit to the United Kingdom later this year and I’m delighted that the president has accepted that invitation,” May said in a press conference in the White House in January. She told a joint press conference she had extended an invitation from the Queen to Trump and his wife Melania to make a state visit later in the year and was “delighted that the president has accepted that invitation”.

– While Prince Philip was in the hospital Wednesday, his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, delivered the Queen's Speech at the opening of parliament in the UK. The speech, which outlines the government's agenda and is actually written by ministers, centered on Brexit, reports Reuters. But what's drawing the most attention is what was apparently left out: any mention of Donald Trump's state visit to the country, previously announced by Prime Minister Theresa May. Details: The Guardian reports the Queen usually mentions state visits "planned for the duration of the parliament," which in this case is two years. Trump's visit was rumored to be planned for October, per the BBC. While she mentioned an upcoming visit from King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain, the Queen might've simply wanted to avoid a hullabaloo. After all, May's invitation to Trump resulted in protests and more than 1.8 million people signing a petition seeking to prevent the trip, per Bloomberg. But a Trump administration official offers a simple explanation to CNN: "She didn't mention [the visit] because the date is not yet set." A Downing Street rep affirmed that account. The BBC's James Landale isn't convinced. Citing fears within the British government that the public response would embarrass Trump, he concludes the visit has been put off and is "very unlikely" to occur this year. The Guardian previously reported Trump had decided to put off the visit until he could gain public support in the UK. The White House denied the report. Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Telegraph are now wondering whether the queen was sending a pro-EU message with her hat during the speech.

A statement from the U.S. Capitol Police said the protestors were arrested for unlawful demonstration activities. They were processed on the scene and released, the statement said.

– The Ben and Jerry of Ben & Jerry's were among hundreds of people arrested Monday in a protest at the US Capitol over what they perceive to be a corrupt political system. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were taking part in a demonstration by a group called Democracy Awakening, and they were two of about 300 arrested on Monday, reports CNN. Like most of the others, the ice cream moguls were processed at the scene and released by Capitol Police on misdemeanor charges of "crowding, obstructing or incommoding," reports the AP. The Democracy Awakening movement is related to the larger Democracy Spring movement that has been staging protests in DC over issues such as voter ID laws, campaign financing, and the lack of progress on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, reports USA Today. Ben & Jerry's is trumpeting the arrests, with the company website saying that the purpose of the protests is "to ensure that every citizen's voice is heard and that power in this country is returned to the people." In all, police have arrested about 1,200 since the demonstrations began on April 11. As for Cohen and Greenfield, they'll be distributing free ice cream at a Bernie Sanders rally in Delaware on Tuesday.

Authorities say several people were shot... (Associated Press) In this image made from a video provided by WSB-TV authorities respond after reports of a shooting at the West Lake station Thursday, April 13, 2017, in Atlanta. Authorities say several people were shot... (Associated Press) ATLANTA (AP) — The shooting that killed a man and wounded three other riders Thursday on an Atlanta public transit train appears to be a "targeted, isolated incident," officials said. The shooting occurred at the West Lake MARTA station around 4:30 p.m. MARTA Police Chief Wanda Dunham says "in what we believe was a targeted, isolated incident, Zachariah Hunnicutt was shot fatally." Two men and a woman who were wounded by gunfire were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. In addition to the three shot, one person injured in the panic was brought to the hospital, she said. MORE: MARTA to increase patrols in wake of deadly shooting Dunham says the suspect, identified as Chauncey Lee Daniels, was captured at the train station and the weapon was recovered.

– A shooting that killed a man and wounded three other riders Thursday on an Atlanta public transit train appears to be a "targeted, isolated incident," officials say. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority Police Chief Wanda Dunham said in a statement late Thursday that officers arrested a suspect in the death of Zachariah Hunnicutt at the West Lake station, the AP reports. Dunham didn't release the suspect's name or details about what led to the shooting at around 4:30pm. A MARTA spokesman says one man died at the scene. Two men and a woman who were wounded by gunfire were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. Cedric Peterson tells WGCL he regularly rides the train after work and that the ride started off normally. "Everybody's sitting down. It's quiet," he says. "After we pulled off, we heard a sound like a crash, like we ran into maybe a tree limb that was on the track. Then like three seconds later, I'm hearing pop, pop, pop. I look back and see a guy's back and see his outstretched arm. I'm like, 'Yo, man, this is a shooter.' Then I'm running for the door." The shooter got on the train just like anyone else, Peterson says: "He was wearing headphones and just bobbing his head. There was no argument or anything. Then I heard the first pop."

At the D11 conference Musk danced around the topic a bit. Long answer, according to Elon Musk: a “cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table” and “a really fun ride.” In the video below, the Tesla founder talks about his vision for a really rapid transit system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles. It sounds like a magical, impossible mode of transportation.

– Elon Musk is up to something that he thinks could revolutionize transportation. At this week's D11 conference, the Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder was asked about something called "hyperloop," but said he couldn't talk much about it because "if I do, that will be the news tomorrow" and he needed to talk Tesla. But he did say that it was an alternative to California's proposed high-speed rail project, and he dropped this tantalizing description: "It's a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table." But Musk has said more in the past. Last year, Business Insider recalls, Musk said the system was a bit like a Jetsons tube. It "can never crash, is immune to weather" and could move twice as fast as a plane while costing less and being potentially completely solar powered. "This is possible, absolutely," he said. At the time, Musk's plans seemed vague—he said he was "considering just open-sourcing" the idea. But now he says he might be ready to talk about it at the end of June.

He is amazing” On November 9 2018 an incredible man named Michael Rogers from Melbourne, now known as ‘Trolleyman’, put his own life at risk to stop a terrorist who was on a rampage. One person had already been stabbed to death and another two were injured. Mr Rogers, who is homeless with few possessions, began ramming a shopping trolley into the terrorist in a bid to help. We’re a registered charity, (National Homeless Collective) supporting people experiencing homelessness, and all funds donated to this campaign will go directly to Mr Rogers to help get him back on his feet. “He’s a hero in our eyes and he can do what he feels best with any funds he receives. He risked his own life that day for nothing in return and you can’t put a price on that.” The charity had originally set a goal of $5000 but has since said it will no longer set a target due to the overwhelming amount of support. “We’re absolutely blown away by everyone’s generosity and spirit in helping our hero ‘Trolleyman’ get back on his feet,” the charity said. “We don’t actually have a set target to reach but due to the incredible generosity we’ve seen so far we’ll keep increasing the total accordingly. Uodate 17/11/2018 We’ve reached our goal! Let’s aim for the sky. Our hero absolutely deserves it.” The Sunday Herald Sun tracked down Mr Rogers on a park bench, amid a nationwide bid to find the humble hero, just 24 hours after he risked his life to save others. The newspaper reported that Mr Rogers is homeless, but wasn’t concerned when his phone was smashed during the fight, despite not having the means to replace it. “I’ve seen the trolley to the side so I’ve picked it up and I ran, threw the trolley straight at him, got him, but didn’t get him down,” he said. He is so grapple the support he has received and is quite overwhelmed by it all.

– Michael Rogers, a hero? It's hard for him to believe. But many Australians are celebrating the man who helped police fight a knife-wielding terrorist in Melbourne, Australia's News Network reports. In fact, a crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly $110,000 as of this writing for the so-called "Trolleyman." On Friday, Rogers grabbed a shopping cart (or "trolley" in British English) when terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali was facing cops on a busy commercial street. Ali had just fatally stabbed two people and wounded two others. "I threw the trolley straight at him, and I got him," says Rogers. "I didn’t quite get him down, though. I'm no hero." Yet after falling, Rogers chased Ali across the street and pushed the cart at him again. Police eventually shot and killed the attacker. (See a video here, but be warned it's violent.) Now the media is lionizing Rogers and strangers are approaching him for selfies, the Age reports. But Rogers still seems himself, talking about his early years with a drug-addicted mom and his history of drug use and jail time. Raised partly by his grandma, the "dearest lady," he often disappointed her and was behind bars for aggravated burglary when she died in 2013. "She would have been exceptionally proud" of his actions, he says. "God bless her, she lived to 92." So how will he spend his newfound riches? Rogers, who has public housing but chooses to live on the streets, says he has no idea. "I'm 46, mate. I've got to get my act together." But he admits Friday was special: "I just wanted to help and do something right for the first time in me life." (In California, a sergeant at a mass shooting "died a hero.")

Harvard study finds 911 calls dropped by 20% after beating, much of it in black neighborhoods Frank Jude Jr. is shown in the hospital after he was beaten by off-duty Milwaukee police officers in October 2004. The first study of its kind found 911 calls in black Milwaukee neighborhoods dropped significantly following the beating of Frank Jude, an unarmed black man. The beating of Frank Jude Jr. 12 years ago by off-duty Milwaukee police officers rocked the city, leading to the largest number of firings in department history, federal convictions of seven officers and a series of reforms. To test their theory that police brutality makes black Americans less likely to contact police, the authors also analyzed the impact of other highly publicized incidents of violence against black men by law enforcement, including two that happened outside of Milwaukee. The researchers found another drop in 911 calls in predominantly black neighborhoods after the beating of Danyall Simpson by a Milwaukee police officer. The number of 911 calls in all Milwaukee neighborhoods also declined significantly following the high-profile killing of Sean Bell by police in Queens, N.Y. in 2006, suggesting the fallout of police violence is not an “isolated incident,” as the authors write “police departments and city politicians often frame [it].” African Americans’ lack of confidence in police has been well documented through surveys and testimonies. ORIGINAL COVERAGE: Police suspected in Frank Jude's beating | Prosecutors haven’t queried key witness in Frank Jude case | 100 protest progress of police beating case | Wall of silence not breaking in Jude case The study's lead author, Matthew Desmond, associate social sciences professor at Harvard University, said the research shows that 911 calls started dropping right after the Journal Sentinel investigation was published and stayed down over the following year. Desmond, who recently published a book that examined the unseen effects of evictions on families and communities, did the study with Andrew Papachristos, associate professor of sociology at Yale University whose research focuses on gun violence, street gangs, social networks and neighborhoods; and David Kirk, associate sociology professor at the University of Oxford in England. They looked at every crime-related 911 call in Milwaukee from March 2004 to December 2010. To do the statistical analysis, the authors controlled for crime rates in different neighborhoods, weather and other factors. Coined the "Ferguson Effect" in reference to unrest after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the theory holds officers have become passive out of fear they will be investigated for uses of force. “Police work of every kind relies on citizen participation, especially reports of law breaking … If police misconduct lowers crime reporting throughout black communities, it directly threatens public safety within those communities, many of which already have high levels of crime,” the authors concluded in the article. On October 23, 2004, Jude and a black male friend arrived at a private party in a white middle-class neighborhood as guests of two white women college students. But before the four could leave, off-duty officers surrounded their truck and pulled the men out, accusing them of stealing officer Andrew Spengler's badge. Jude suffered blows to his face and torso; his arms were pinned behind his back; he was kicked in the head; an officer stomped on his face “until he heard bones breaking;” he was picked up and kicked in the groin so hard “his feet left the ground;” he had a pen inserted deep into his ear canals; his fingers were “bent back” until “they snapped;” before finally being left naked from the waist down on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood. Jude’s story would not become public until months later when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a report on the incident on February 6, 2005, and recounted the police cover-up that had followed. Three officers were later charged in state court but were acquitted. Spengler and two others were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury. Of these three, only the latter did not trigger a drop in calls to 911. The researchers looked at homicides because unlike other crimes, the numbers would not be affected by the lack of crime reporting. There were 87 homicides in the six months after Jude's beating became public, which was the highest in the seven-year period studied, from 2004 to 2010. They looked at the killing of Sean Bell in Queens, New York in 2006, the assault of Danyall Simpson in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2007, and the killing of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California in 2009. Based on what they found in Milwaukee, Desmond and his fellow researchers say those are areas ripe for more study.

– The so-called "Ferguson Effect" says homicides go up after high-profile police-on-citizen violence because police become too worried about being investigated for use of force. But the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports a new study published Thursday has another explanation. Researchers found that 911 calls related to crime dropped 20% in Milwaukee following the horrific beating of unarmed black man Frank Jude by off-duty cops in 2004. The effect lasted for more than a year, totaling more than 22,000 fewer crime-related 911 calls, according to the Atlantic. And 56% of the decrease occurred in black neighborhoods, despite black neighborhoods making up only 31% of Milwaukee. Researchers are calling it the "Jude effect." Researchers found similar declines after police killed Sean Bell in 2006 in New York City and assaulted Danyall Simpson in 2007 in Milwaukee. Police violence "de-legitimizes the criminal justice system in the eyes of the African-American community," researcher Matthew Desmond tells the Journal Sentinel. The study concludes that incidents of police violence "make the city as a whole...less safe," the Christian Science Monitor reports. Jude's beating was followed by a 32% increase in murders in Milwaukee. The spike in homicides can potentially be attributed to the drop in 911 calls, which are used by police for all sorts of crime fighting. "No act of police violence is an isolated incident, in both cause and consequence." the Atlantic quotes researcher Andrew Papachristos as saying. (Man dies three days after calling police for help.)

– A 2,700-acre piece of pop-culture history is now up for sale. The Wall Street Journal reports that Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch near Santa Barbara is on the market for $100 million. Except it's now called Sycamore Valley Ranch, and while it no longer has amusement park rides or an elephant, it still has the train station and tracks Jackson had installed. Curbed LA, which notes that Beyonce and Jay Z were once rumored to be interested, links to this video tour. And sorry Jackson fans, the listing agents are going to thoroughly vet any prospective buyers—"we're not going to be giving tours," one tells the Journal. (Also for sale: the Mean Girls mansion.)

“He said if they're small, something else must be small, and I guarantee you there’s no problem.” In an often bewildering campaign, the front-runner discussing the size of his penis was still shocking. 01:14 The moment won't help Rubio -- who had joined the #NeverTrump movement of Republicans vowing not to support Trump on Twitter last week -- with that crowd. “And you’re not going to stop the corruption in Washington by supporting someone who has supported liberal Democrats for four decades, from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry to Hillary Clinton.” “Donald Trump in 2008 wrote four checks to elect Hillary Clinton as president,” Mr. Cruz added, turning to Mr. Trump to demand why he had done so. Mr. Trump found himself on the defensive throughout the night, challenged by his rivals and the Fox News moderators to explain his inconsistent stands in the past. “You have to show a degree of flexibility,” he said. Hell, within the first 10 minutes of the debate Trump was insisting that questions about his endowment — not the financial kind — were way off. Later, in an exchange over Supreme Court nominations, Mr. Cruz taunted, “Breathe, breathe, breathe — you can do it.” That prompted Mr. Rubio to joke that his two rivals were primed for yoga, especially Mr. Trump. It’s hard to see how this debate changes the dynamic set in place on Tuesday night: Trump as the favorite, Cruz with the next-best chance of being the nominee, Rubio as Trump spoiler. Trump kept calling Rubio “this little guy” and “Little Marco.” (Weirdly, Rubio played along, calling Trump “Big Donald.”) The candidates tussled at length over what the polls show—who is winning the primary and about who could win the general election. “Is this the debate you want playing out in the general election?” Trump was incoherent on trade: “I say, ‘Free trade, great,’ but not when they’re beating us so badly.” He reprised his call for the United States to employ torture in the war on terror. No exception.” Mr. Trump’s shifting positions have been a target for months, but during this debate, his rivals received help from the Fox News debate moderators. JUST WATCHED Megyn Kelly questions Trump over Trump University Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Megyn Kelly questions Trump over Trump University 01:33 JUST WATCHED Fox anchor challenges Trump on deficit plans Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Fox anchor challenges Trump on deficit plans 01:37 It forced an awkward and unspecific claim about "other things" out of Trump. JUST WATCHED Donald Trump refuses to release New York Times tape Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Donald Trump refuses to release New York Times tape 02:07 But on Thursday night, Trump said the bond between reporters and politicians who agree to go off-the-record is too strong to break. I’ve given my answer.” The fourth candidate, Gov. John Kasich: 'I will win Ohio' 01:16 He demonstrated his experience on economic and budgetary challenges and foreign policy, and showed no signs of backing out of the race anytime soon -- especially not before Ohio's March 15 primary.

– The newly narrowed GOP field of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich went at it again Thursday night. Here's a sampling of some of the post-debate analysis: Cruz had "his best debate of the primary season," writes Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, showing "prosecutorial chops when making the case that Donald Trump was neither a real conservative nor someone who could win the White House." Kasich also did well, but Cillizza places Trump ("took real body blows" and showed "wafer-thin understanding of policy") and Rubio (on a "kamikaze mission against Trump") in the "losers" category. "Cruz the winner. Rubio solid & feisty at times, but role seemed reversed w/ Cruz from last debate," tweets Guy Benson of Town Hall. "Kasich hit his marks. Trump was Trump." Kasich won by staying above the fray and improving his position "in the grand Trump sabotage plan," which might involve a brokered convention, writes Dylan Matthews at Vox. Rubio, meanwhile, flailed at Trump so much he failed to make "an affirmative argument for his candidacy." He "was dead before tonight, and the debate mostly served to remind the public why." At the Atlantic, David A. Graham isn't very charitable to any of the candidates. "The funny thing about Trump's rough performance was that no one else did especially well, either," he writes. Cruz gave "a middling performance, with much of his emphasis on the fact that he'd beaten Trump in a few states," while Rubio "was hoarse and seemed shrunken, chastened, and at sea" as he tried to out-shout Trump. When Kasich surfaced, it was to spout "capsule history lessons." But this surely qualifies as good news for Trump: "In a striking moment, all of Mr. Trump's rivals on stage indicated that they would support him if he became the Republican nominee," notes the New York Times. "The consensus was especially unusual in the case of Mr. Rubio, who has been caustically attacking Mr. Trump as a 'con man.'" As does this from Eric Bradner at CNN: Yes, Trump struggled on substantive issues and came under heavy attack, but "what else is new?" he asks. "None of the debates so far have changed the trajectory of the race."

(Photo: James Lang-USA TODAY Sports) Super Bowl viewers were greeted by a blank screen for approximately 15 to 30 seconds during NBC's Super Bowl broadcast on Sunday night. PHOTOS: Super Bowl LII The signal finally returned with coverage of the game resuming. In a tweet, an NBC Sports spokesperson blamed the incident on a "brief equipment failure that we quickly resolved. No game action or commercial time were missed.” NBC’s statement suggests it did not lose out on any ad revenue — a 30-second Super Bowl spot cost about $5 million.

– One of the commercial breaks generating a lot of buzz during the Super Bowl wasn't actually a commercial at all. TV screens went black for about 30 seconds after NBC cut to a commercial in the second quarter following a Philadelphia touchdown, reports CBS. While some may have suspected some bizarro ad message, NBC later tweeted an explanation: "We had a brief equipment failure that we quickly resolved. No game action or commercial time were missed." As USA Today notes, a 30-second ad during the game costs about $5 million. Twitter had all kinds of fun, with lots of comments like this: "Best Super Bowl commercial so far has been 'empty black screen.'"

Story highlights A veterans group demands a criminal investigation of medical center practices 1,700 veterans will be contacted by the end of business Friday, a VA official says VA Secretary Eric Shinseki is on ''thin ice'' with Obama, a White House official says The scope widens, with 42 medical centers now under investigation At least 1,700 military veterans waiting to see a doctor were never scheduled for an appointment and were never placed on a wait list at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Phoenix, raising the question of just how many may have been "forgotten or lost" in the system, according to a preliminary report made public Wednesday. The VA's inspector general, Richard Griffin, told a Senate committee in recent weeks that his investigation so far had found a possible 17 deaths of veterans waiting for care in Phoenix, but he added that there was no evidence that excessive waiting was the reason. Describing a "systemic" practice of manipulating appointments and wait lists at the Phoenix Health Care System, the VA's Office of Inspector General called for a nationwide review to determine whether veterans at other locations were falling through the cracks. For the first time since the controversy erupted last month, several Senate Democrats, including Mark Udall of Colorado and John Walsh of Montana, demanded that the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric Shinseki, step down, joining Republican lawmakers who have been making that demand for weeks. There have been calls from other members of Congress for him to step down over the scandal, but McCain's voice on military matters carries enormous weight considering his experience as a combat veteran, a Vietnam prisoner of war, and his work in the Senate on related issues. Mr. Griffin previously said that he was working with the Justice Department to examine whether criminal violations had occurred there. The preliminary report sparked outrage from all corners, with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki calling the findings "reprehensible" and ordering the 1,700 veterans be immediately "triaged" for care, while some lawmakers called for the agency's chief to resign. Shinseki has been on "probation" since President Barack Obama vowed last week to hold accountable those responsible for the delays, and he remains on "thin ice" with the President pending the outcome of the internal investigations, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNN. Mr. Griffin’s interim report — the final version is expected by August — did not address the most explosive allegations made about the Phoenix facility: that as many as 40 veterans who were never put on the official list for doctors’ appointments might have died while awaiting care. He had previously said that after reviewing 17 of those cases, he had found no indication that any of those deaths were tied to delays. Mr. Griffin said his office had received “numerous allegations daily of mismanagement, inappropriate hiring decisions, sexual harassment, and bullying behavior by mid- and senior-level managers at this facility.” Mr. Shinseki, a soft-spoken former four-star Army general and chief of staff, has had support on Capitol Hill from some lawmakers partly because of his long military career. Mr. Walsh, the Montana senator, said that the report “confirms the worst of the allegations against the V.A.,” and that “it’s time to put the partisanship aside and focus on what’s right for our veterans.” Representative Jeff Miller, the Florida Republican who is the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said the report “confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt what was becoming more obvious by the day: wait time schemes and data manipulation are systemic throughout V.A. "I haven't said this before, but I think it's time for Gen. Shinseki to move on," McCain said.

– At least 1,700 veterans awaiting treatment from the Department of Veteran Affairs' now-infamous Phoenix medical center were kept off of any official waiting list, putting them "at risk of being forgotten or lost," according to a damning initial report from the department's inspector general. What's more, the patients the IG surveyed waited an average 115 days for a first primary care appointment—a far cry from the 24 days the center reported to the VA, the New York Times reports. The investigation also found "numerous allegations" of "mismanagement, inappropriate hiring decisions, sexual harassment, and bullying behavior by mid- and senior-level managers." The report doesn't touch on allegations that as many as 40 deaths were tied to waiting list shenanigans. On CNN, John McCain responded to the report by calling on the Justice Department to launch its own probe. "I haven't said this before, but I think it's time for General Shinseki to move on," he added. (The Army fired the head of the Womack medical facility after the deaths of two patients in their 20s.)

– If updates from the South by Southwest music/film/Internet/etc. extravaganza aren’t your thing, perhaps you’ll find some amusement among its top-Web-site honorees. A sampling: Waterlife: Activism winner keeps tabs on pollution in the Great Lakes. odosketch: Create animated sketches with drawing app. The Vile Plutocrat: “Keep track of those individuals whose implacable greed poisons the societies that made them wealthy,” with this blog. 1066: Educational site lets you pick sides in Middle Ages conflict among English, Normans and Vikings. Atlas Obscura: Let the “world’s wonders, curiosities and esoterica” amuse you. Smokescreen: Online life is the thrust of this gaming site. Cornify: Wins the People’s Choice Award as the “#1 unicorns and rainbow service worldwide, providing sparkles and happiness for all.” For more, click either link at right.

And more than half of the youths living with HIV don't even realize they're infected The bottom line: 1,000 American teenagers and young adults become infected each month with HIV. Youths age 13 to 24 made up about a quarter of all new HIV infections in the U.S. during 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday. "Given everything we know about HIV and how to prevent it after more than 30 years of fighting the disease, it's just unacceptable that young people are becoming infected at such high rates," CDC chief Dr. Thomas Frieden said Tuesday. Public Health HIV Infections Rise Among Young Black Men In U.S. i itoggle caption CDC CDC The latest data on HIV rates in American teenagers and young adults offer a sobering message. Right now, only 13 percent of high school students get screened for HIV each year, despite the fact that both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend routine testing for adolescents. Among sexually active students, young gay or bisexual men were more likely to have used alcohol or drugs before their last sexual experience and were less likely to have used a condom. "The AIDS epidemic seems very remote to young people," Dr. Kenneth Mayer, the Director of HIV Prevention at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, told USA Today. "There is no equivalent of a young Magic Johnson. If you are young, this seems like a disease of old people."

– The number of new HIV cases in the US has leveled off at about 50,000 a year, but one important group is defying the trend: those ages 13 to 24. The CDC says about 1,000 new infections a month occur in the age group, and most of those infected (60%) have no idea, reports USA Today. Young black men are driving the increase, accounting for 45% of the new cases, reports NPR. Most infections occur in men having sex with other men. "This is our future generation," says CDC chief Thomas Frieden. "That so many young people become infected with HIV each year is a preventable tragedy." A government task force suggested last week that everybody be screened for HIV as part of routine physicals, and the new stats could bolster the argument.

– Britain's Daily Mail is calling it "Le Snub!": Reading much (maybe too much?) into the body language of Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, it says the French president dissed the UK prime minister by blowing off Cameron's handshake at today's high-stakes European Union summit. (Britain isn't going along with the French-backed pact.) The Telegraph isn't so sure about it being a snub, noting that the men had shaken hands a bit earlier—but it's still happy to play up the video posing the question. See for yourself.

This winter is going to be a warm one for the majority of the United States, according to forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. That means "greater-than-average snowfall around the Great Lakes and in the northern Rockies, with less-than-average snowfall throughout the Mid-Atlantic region," Mike Halpert of the Climate Prediction Center said in a forecast Thursday. He said the forecast shows conditions will be warmer, but he doesn't think we will see a top 10 record warm winter like we have the past two years. Hawaii, western and northern Alaska and the lower two-thirds of the contiguous U.S. are likely to see warmer-than-average temperatures, Halpert says. Check expected conditions in your part of the country on this map: Forecasters are predicting less rainfall than usual across the Southern U.S., Halpert adds, while "wetter-than-average conditions are favored across Hawaii, northern and western Alaska and much of the northern part of the lower 48." If La Niña forms, this will have a direct impact on the weather this winter. It doesn't mean that the Southeast will escape winter weather altogether -- the chances are just lower, and the average temperature is likely to be above average. Halpert stressed that these outlooks could change: "For every point on our outlook maps, there exists the possibility that there will be a below-, near-, or above-average outcome." However, the jet stream set up a little bit differently than expected and the below-average temperatures expected in the Northern Plains occurred farther west into the Northwestern US.

– People in small parts of the Northwest, northern Plains, and parts of Alaska are going to have a colder winter than usual this year, while most other Americans can expect a milder-than-average winter, according to the NOAA's latest forecast. Mike Halpert of the Climate Prediction Center says there will likely be a La Nina weather pattern that will bring more snow than usual to the northern Rockies and the Great Lakes area, while there will be less shoveling than usual to do in the mid-Atlantic region, NPR reports. There probably will be less rainfall than usual in the South, Halpert says, but more than average in much of the northern part of the lower 48. The center says there's a 55% to 65% chance of La Nina developing. Halpert tells the Washington Post that climate change caused by carbon emissions is certainly among the reasons why most of the US will have a warmer-than-average winter, though he says that unlike the previous two winters, this one is unlikely to break records. Despite a higher-than-average precipitation forecast, drought could develop in parts of the South, the NOAA says. But is the forecast accurate? CNN looks at the accuracy of the NOAA's forecast for last year and gives it a passing grade, noting that it was right about above-average temperatures across the South, though people in the Northwest had a far colder winter than the NOAA predicted.

But the cable news coverage focused on the dust-up between Biden and Mattera. “What I said — let’s get it straight, guy, don’t screw around with me. Speaking in Flint on Oct. 12, Biden said murder and rape statistics skyrocketed in that city from 2008 to 2010 (even though, as we reported, FBI data show rapes in Flint declined during that period). But even disregarding the disputed murder figures, Biden’s claims about what happened between 2008 and 2010 are contradicted both by the FBI and Michigan State Police numbers. He also ignored the fact that crime this year is down, based on the city’s own crime figures, despite cuts in the police force and in direct contradiction with his larger point that Flint’s staffing cuts resulted in rising crime. After initially balking at the questions, Biden stood by his argument that if Republicans continue to block the Democratic jobs bill, “murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise.” The Washington Post’s fact-checker ripped Biden’s claims over the weekend, giving the vice president “four Pinocchios” and writing that he “should know better than to spout off half-baked facts in service of a dubious argument.” The Senate periodical press gallery and a spokeswoman for Biden declined to comment for this article.

– Joe Biden is not happy about the ambush interview that landed him on cable TV—and he’s letting the press gallery’s standing committee of correspondents know about it. Jason Mattera of the conservative blog Human Events caught Biden off guard last week by asking to take a photo with him while Biden was signing autographs. Then Mattera hit him with questions about factually dubious statements he’d made recently connecting rape in Flint, Michigan, to rising unemployment. “Let’s get this straight guy, don’t screw around with me,” Biden told Mattera. “I said rape was up three times in Flint,” and if the jobs bill isn’t passed “all crimes will continue to rise.” (Of course, FactCheck.org found that crime rates are actually down in Flint.) Now, Biden’s asking the correspondents committee if Mattera broke any rules by springing the questions on him, the Hill reports. Mattera, however, is unapologetic. “You shouldn’t play patty-cake with politicians to gain access,” he says.

A rare white giraffe with a genetic condition which means many of her body surface cells are incapable of making pigment has been photographed at a national park in Tanzania. “A local lodge guide christened her Omo, after a popular brand of detergent here,” the organization, which conducts scientific research, said in a blog post. “One way to tell the difference between albino and leucistic animals is that albino individuals lack melanin everywhere, including in the eyes, so the resulting eye color is red from the underlying blood vessels,” the organization said. Facebook | @I-Love-Africa I-Love-Africa - Omo who is leucistic, is the only white... | Facebook While researchers were pleased to see that Omo survived her first year, she has a long road ahead, according to ecologist and Wild Nature Institute founder Derek Lee, the Telegraph reported. “She survived her first year as a small calf, which is the most dangerous time for a young giraffe due to lion, leopard and hyena preying on them,” Lee told the Telegraph.

– A rare 15-month-old white giraffe has made another appearance in Tanzania, leaving conservationists to hope poachers don't decide to go all Ahab on it, the Telegraph reports. According to USA Today, the unique giraffe was spotted as a calf last year in Tarangire National Park. It was seen again this month, almost exactly a year later, the Wild Nature Institute writes in a blog post. "We are thrilled that she is still alive and well," the nonprofit states. A tour guide named the pale animal Omo after a local laundry detergent, but the institute is open to other suggestions. Omo is leucistic, meaning most of her surface cells produce no pigment, explains the Wild Nature Institute. But unlike an albino, some of her cells—such as those in her eyes—can still manufacture color. The institute's founder, Dr. Derek Lee, tells the Telegraph that Omo is the only such giraffe they are aware of. “Omo appears to get along with the other giraffes; she has always been seen with a large group of normally colored giraffe," he says. "They don't seem to mind her different coloring.” But her uniqueness could make her a target for poachers, Lee says. The institute is currently working on anti-poaching efforts for all giraffes. “We hope that she lives a long life and that someday she has calves of her own,” says Lee.

"Tete de Faune," a 1962 linocut of a faun's head by Picasso, was purchased by the pranksters using cash from 150,000 customers who each gave $15 toward Cards Against Humanity's "Eight Sensible Gifts for Hanukkah" promotion. Asked Tuesday whether he had the guts to follow through on the gimmick, one of the company's founders, Max Temkin, declined to comment. The envelope contained a handwritten letter from "David M.'s dad" on the importance of culture, a second "Jew Pack" of special Cards Against Humanity cards, and a smooth card bearing Picasso's artwork. The card goes on to say that the company used the money it raised from the 150,000 subscribers to the Hanukkah promotion to purchase Picasso's "Tete de Faune" for the express purpose of either donating it to the Art Institute of Chicago or cutting it up into 150,000 squares and sending a piece (clearly a teeny tiny one) to each subscriber. The company's philanthropy efforts have also included buying an island in Maine that it dubbed "Hawaii 2" and vowed to preserve as wilderness, and a $500,000 donation toward scholarships for women studying in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. That's what Cards Against Humanity (CAH) is asking the 150,000 customers who subscribed to its Eight Sensible Gifts For Hanukkah.

– Should Pablo Picasso's "Tete de Faune" be donated to a museum or cut up into tiny pieces? The decision rests with fans of Cards Against Humanity—the game that's managed to get people to spend their hard-earned cash on poop and, well, nothing at all. With some of the $2.25 million received from 150,000 subscribers who signed up for the company's "Eight Sensible Gifts for Hanukkah" promotion—which included the gift of a one-week paid vacation for workers at the Chinese factory where Cards Against Humanity is made—the company purchased the 1962 Picasso linocut known in English as "Head of a Faun" and decided to host a "social experiment," report CNET and the Verge. It asked the subscribers to vote on whether the work should be donated to the Art Institute of Chicago or cut into 150,000 pieces so each subscriber can have their "own scrap of a real Picasso." Should fans choose the latter option, each scrap of the linocut—one of an edition of 50, likely worth about $22,000, per the Chicago Tribune—will measure 1.5mm, the company says. Subscribers will vote from Dec. 26 until New Year's Eve. So far Cards Against Humanity founder Max Temkin has kept his lips sealed about whether he'll actually follow through with the stunt. But the company did something awfully similar last year, giving a square foot of an island to each of 250,000 fans who signed up for its "Ten Days or Whatever of Kwanzaa" campaign. While subscribers weigh their decisions, Temkin and partners are busy working on another game, Secret Hitler, which just wrapped up a $1.2 million Kickstarter campaign, per the Tribune. Players are assigned political identities and attempt to enact supporting policies while keeping their identities secret. It's expected to ship to 30,000 backers in April. (There's also this sex game.)

Then there's the unresolved scandal involving Bo Xilai, who was a well-connected contender for high office before he was ousted for still unexplained transgressions. Five years after he was picked as successor, Vice President Xi Jinping remains on track to take over from President Hu Jintao in the party's fall congress, where its leading members will install a new generation of leaders. The rapid expansion of security powers under Zhou Yongkang, the current Standing Committee member who heads the politics and law committee and supported Mr. Bo, has alarmed some party leaders, political analysts say. Some political observers had expected that by now the party would have concluded the investigation into Mr. Bo and his wife, who is suspected of killing a British businessman. But party elders behind the scenes sometimes wield more authority.

– With China's once-a-decade leadership transition coming this fall, the country's powerbrokers are now in the thick of furious and extremely hush-hush negotiations over who will guide the world's most populous country for the next decade. And in the brutal heat and pollution of the Beijing summer, China's most important politicians head to the beach—specifically, the resort town of Beidaihe, "a Chinese combination of the Jersey Shore and Martha’s Vineyard" that lies 180 miles east of the capital, reports the New York Times. President Hu Jintao tried cracking down on the Beidaihe gatherings when he took power in 2002, but many in the party bucked hard and today the resort town is as important as ever. And in the face of a worsening economic slowdown and the fallout of the Bo Xilai scandal, the struggle for power is growing fiercer, notes the AP. But with expensive private villas and swimming spots for rich party leaders dominating this beach town, many party elders are unhappy with the rising generation of leaders. "What are they good for?" asked one retired official. "What did they inherit from their fathers? They should have inherited the solidarity of the revolution."

NEW DELHI (AP) — A 14-year-old girl was dragged into a forest and raped on the orders of a village council in remote eastern India in retaliation for a sex assault blamed on her brother, her family and police said Friday. 'Retaliation' In the latest incident, the village head was arrested along with the alleged rapist himself and the brother of the girl. Earlier this year, a 20-year-old tribal woman was gang-raped in eastern West Bengal state - allegedly on the orders of village elders who had objected to her relationship with a man.

– A girl has been raped in northern India after a village council ordered the crime as payback for her brother's actions, according to police and her family. The Wall Street Journal reports the teen's brother stands accused of trying to sexually assault the wife of Birju Pasi, with the Jharkhand police chief telling the BBC the wife was "the victim of misbehavior on the part of the girl's brother." He says the girl, 14, was raped Monday by Pasi "out of retaliation" and that "the head of the village was instrumental in provoking this rape on the victim." Both men have been arrested, as has the girl's brother. The girl's mother tells the AP, "We begged with folded hands but [the village council] would not listen. They dragged her away to the forest." A police rep says that her father later took her to a police station, her clothes "smeared with blood." The Journal notes that unelected village councils, like the one in question, are common in India, though they are illegal. The case is just the latest in a string of disturbing rapes in India. Police announced this week they will exhume the bodies of two teenage girls who were gang-raped and hanged in May in order to perform autopsies.

Sky Arts will screen the one-off comedy, co-starring Stockard Channing as Elizabeth Taylor and Brian Cox as Marlon Brando, about the trio’s supposed road trip west from New York after the 9/11 terror attacks September 2001 was allegedly witness to one of the strangest road trips in history: Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando driving from New York to Ohio in an attempt to get home following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Enter Scottish journalist Neil Forsyth, who has written the untitled half-hour TV special adaptation, and which has now announced its main stars: Stockard Channing as Taylor, Brian Cox as Brando, and … Joseph Fiennes as the King of Pop??? Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Marlon Brando 'fled 9/11 in hire car' Read more After being originally announced in December, Fiennes has now described the script as “a challenge”, adding: “It’s a fun, lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek road trip of what celebrity of that kind is like. But also it’s rather beautiful and poignant about their relationships.” The half-hour comedy will be written by Neil Forsyth, who wrote – as alter ego Bob Servant – Delete This at Your Peril, a collection of humorous email conversations with would-be con artists and spammers. The urban legend concerning Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando during 9/11 goes a little something this: Jackson was in town for his huge Madison Square Garden concert, but once chaos broke out, and since air travel was shut down after the twin towers collapsed, Brando, Jackson and Taylor got a rental car and drove west, but only got as far as Ohio. “They actually got as far as Ohio – all three of them, in a car they drove themselves,” claimed a former employee of Jackson. Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson is a symptom of a deeper sickness that moviemakers are only now beginning to treat.

– In a new movie about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop will be played by ... a white British guy. Joseph Fiennes is set to play Jackson in Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, a film that follows Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor (played by Stockard Channing), and Marlon Brando (played by Brian Cox) as they attempt a road trip from New York to California. The trip supposedly really happened, after Jackson invited Taylor and Brando to his concert at Madison Square Garden and then the 9/11 attacks kept them from being able to fly back home. Legend has it they made it to Ohio, although some insist the story isn't true, the Guardian reports. But, true or not, it will be immortalized on film with Fiennes playing a black man, a fact that has many shaking their heads: The Daily Beast calls the casting "a symptom of Hollywood's deep-seated race problem." Writes Stereo Williams, "Even ... with Jackson's specific physical attributes at that point in his life—he suffered from vitiligo, which causes the skin to lose its pigment—it's not beyond reason to consider that there are qualified black actors out there that could convincingly portray Michael Jackson." At Slate, Aisha Harris agrees—despite his shifting looks and persona, Jackson was still a black man. "Find the right black actor who can perfectly capture all of Jackson's complexities—his femininity, his weirdness, his naivete, and yes, his black cultural upbringing—and invest in better makeup and prosthetics than whoever was in charge of that terrible Man in the Mirror movie. Or cast a light-skinned black actor in the role." Fiennes recently called the script "a challenge," and at The Root, Yesha Callahan writes, "Yeah, I can see how difficult it would be as a white man to play the black King of Pop." BuzzFeed has rounded up a range of Twitter reactions to the news.

The couple said they told the waiter their meal was “tough and rubbery” and he passed the complaint onto the head chef. The next thing Mr Evans knew was a raging head chef had stormed out of his kitchen and thrown chilli powder in his eyes, leaving the 46-year-old pipe-fitter sick in pain. “David had numerous eye washes through a drip into his eyes in A&E as his eyes were extremely red and sore and the ph level was way off what it should have been and the doctor said if he wasn’t treated it was very dangerous for him,” Michelle added.

– A diner who complained about his "tough and rubbery" food at a curry house in Wales ended up being hospitalized to have chili powder washed out of his eye. Michelle Evans says she was dining with husband David on Saturday night when their complaint about the food brought an angry head chef out of the kitchen, the Telegraph reports. The chef "was extremely rude and aggressive and accused us of not wanting to pay for our food," she says. Michelle says after the chef swore at her, David followed him back to the kitchen demanding an apology, and the chef "came to the door with a large bowl of chili powder which he threw at David's face." David "instantly thought he had been blinded" and was "extremely distressed," Michelle says. She says the 46-year-old was rushed to the hospital, where he received eye washes through a drip. She says he still has to take steroid eye drops. Wales Online reports that chef Kamrul Islam has a different take on the incident, which was captured on CCTV. He says the couple were shouting and swearing at him and David Evans chased him into the kitchen. "He was being very aggressive and pushed past another member of staff," the chef says. "I was frightened and grabbed a handful of chili just in case I needed to defend myself." Police say the chef was released on bail after being arrested for common assault.

This year, The Spark Institute Inc., a group that represents retirement plan service providers, released an alternative proposal for a new Universal Small Employer Retirement Savings Program that would “simplify” investment option selection and fiduciary-liability concerns, as well as plan administration and documentation, according to the group.

– Democrats plan to introduce legislation that would automatically enroll private-sector workers in retirement savings accounts, the Hill reports. The measure, being heavily pushed by the AARP, would apply to those whose employers don't offer 401k accounts. Workers would be able to opt out of the plan, whose backers don't expect it to be approved until next year at the earliest, notes Investment News. “There’s this inertia that keeps people from taking advantage of saving opportunities,” said an AARP official. “It’s all sort of foundationally related to that, how people choose to save.”?? The measure would require employers who have at least 10 employees to offer the savings option through payroll deductions, a provision likely to draw flak from small-business owners as another bureaucratic hassle, notes the Hill.

(AP Photo/LM Otero, File) (Associated Press) The Miami-based chain said Tuesday that global sales rose 2.4 percent at established locations during the third quarter, including a 3.6 percent increase in the U.S. and Canada. Burger King said this summer it would buy the Canadian chain for about $11 billion, creating the world's third-largest fast-food company.

– The people asked; Burger King listened. After becoming what BK marketing chief Eric Hirschhorn calls "one of those things we [could] no longer ignore," the Yumbo ham-and-cheese sandwich once more graces the eatery's menu, Bloomberg reports. You probably won't remember this fast-food delicacy if you're under the age of 45—it was only in circulation from 1968 to 1974—but apparently those who tasted its steaming goodness couldn't get it out of their minds. Customers kept asking about its return, notes Hirschhorn, and since the restaurant enjoyed success with this year's return of chicken fries and was seeking more easy-to-make items, it resurrected the Yumbo. The sandwich will only be available for a limited time for $3.69. (Wonder if it'll bring in more sales than the Black Burger?)

A meteorite crashed into an engineering college in Vellore district on Saturday, causing an explosion that killed one man and injured three others, the Tamil Nadu government said on Sunday.Scientists, however, said it wasn't clear how the government concluded that a meteorite strike caused the blast. There has been no established death due to a meteorite hit in recorded history, they said.If a meteorite indeed caused the death, bus driver Kamaraj will be the first person ever to have died in a meteorite strike. Policemen recovered a black, pockmarked stone weighing 11g from the blast site.A police officer said the department would consult experts from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru and ask them for a detailed analysis of the stone to ascertain whether it is debris from a meteorite. Scientists closely watch space bodies that come to earth and predict in advance when a meteor large enough to stay intact after burning up in the atmosphere is going to hit the planet.“Organizations like International Meteor Organization have already put out the calendar for 2016 -for the days we can expect meteor showers and if there are any chances of them hitting earth.

– Whatever it was that killed a bus driver in India on Saturday probably didn't travel through untold millions of miles of space to get there, according to NASA scientists. The 11-gram rock recovered from a college campus in Tamil Nadu is still being analyzed, but NASA scientists say that from photos alone, the incident that killed one person and injured three others appears to have been "a land-based explosion" instead of the first recorded death from a meteorite strike in history, the New York Times reports. The BBC reports that police asked scientists to examine the small stone found in a crater at Bharathidasan Engineering College after Saturday's explosion. The dean of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics tells the Times that institute experts are looking at samples of the rock. "Considering that there was no prediction of a meteorite shower and there was no meteorite shower observed, this certainly is a rare phenomena if it is a meteorite," he says. It's not clear what else could have caused the explosion. A police spokesman tells the Times of India that they "did not find any trace of explosive substances" and are now awaiting the results of forensic tests and an autopsy of the bus driver.

David Friedman (File Photo) ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, Tuesday June 4, 2013 – The Grenada government says it is saddened at the death of David Friedman, the owner and founder of the Grenada Chocolate Factory who was electrocuted over the weekend. In the United States, they are sold at Whole Foods stores in Manhattan and other retailers scattered across several states. The minister said that Friedman “passionately led the creation of a company that manufactures and exports this country’s cocoa and while increasing Grenada’s profile internationally.

– He was kind of like Willy Wonka, if Wonka had combined his passion for chocolate with social justice. Or as the headline in Haaretz puts it: "Mott Green, Jewish anarchist chocolatier, dies aged 47." Green was born David Friedman and grew up in Staten Island, but he gave up the idea of a middle-class lifestyle in the US to live in the jungle of Grenada—and then went on to create a sustainable chocolate company with the unprecedented mission of benefiting the locals. Green died after being electrocuted repairing his (solar-powered) cooling equipment, reports Caribbean 360. Green attended the Ivy League's Penn but dropped out a few months before graduation because he thought a degree would prove corrupting. He "spent several years after college as a kind of master tinkerer, forager and activist among homeless anarchists in Philadelphia," writes William Yardley in the New York Times. He eventually made his way to the Caribbean and settled into a hermit's life in Grenada in a bamboo hut. But then he developed a taste for the local cocoa tea, which led to his exploration of chocolate ... and ultimately to the creation of the Grenada Chocolate Company in 1999. Along the way, "he rewrote the rules of the global chocolate industry by adding all the value at the source and bringing maximum benefit to the local economy, in this case to the people of Grenada whom he loved," writes Aviel Luz in Haaretz. If it sounds like the stuff of movies, it is, in a way. A well-received documentary about his company called Nothing Like Chocolate came out last year.

The security footage above captured the entire, terrifying affair. The twister destroyed two of the homes John Stein owns on a street in the city of Berkeley, and damaged five others. First the good news: A miracle zero deaths have been reporting following the tornado that tore through Bridgeton, a densely populated suburb of St. Louis, on Friday night, passing directly through the airport. No casualties, and only "minor injuries" to five people. Locals are praising the local weather service, which blared sirens 34 minutes before the tornado hit, as well as "the grace of God," as the mayor put it.

– Miraculously, no one was killed by the Friday night tornado that ripped through the St. Louis airport. But that doesn't make the experience, captured by security cameras and reported by KMOX, any less terrifying. (Hat tip to Gawker for the find.) How is it that—even though 2,700 buildings were damaged and 100 homes destroyed—only minor injuries were reported in the St. Louis area, and only to five people? Locals credit early warnings from the weather service. The tornado, which packed winds of up to 200mph, was the most powerful in the St. Louis area in 44 years and peaked at the second-highest level on the Enhanced Fujita scale. But thanks to the weather service and local TV stations, residents were made aware of the impending disaster 34 minutes before it hit. Warning sirens at the airport allowed security officers to get people into stairwells and bathrooms for safety. The mayor has another theory. He tells the AP he credits "the grace of God."

FOR THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS, SEE: Calgary family, police 'devastated' as charges laid in deaths of Taliyah Marsman, mother The father of Taliyah Leigh Marsman has issued a statement to the media through a friend, pleading for anyone with information to come forward after the five-year-old disappeared and her mother was found dead in the Calgary home she shared with the child. Taliyah is the subject of an Amber Alert after her mom, Sara Baillie, was found dead in a northwest Calgary home on Monday evening. An Alberta-wide Amber Alert has been in effect for Taliyah since early Tuesday, hours after she was discovered missing and Sara Baillie was found slain in their rented basement suite in Panorama Hills. Taliyah is described as a mixed-race child with a slim build, brown curly hair and blue eyes. "Those who know me best, know the person and kind of father I am, and know more than anything, I just want my baby girl back," said Marsman, 36. Please allow her to come home to her family," said Taliyah's father, Colin Marsman — who was Baillie's estranged common-law spouse — in the statement sent out by his friend Gabriel Goree. Coleman said police have spoken to him and he is co-operating with the investigation. (Photo: Facebook) Marsman's girlfriend, Jessica Mardinger, added on Facebook: "Colin is a great father. Don Coleman of the Calgary Police Service major crimes section said there is a "limited" history of domestic violence between Baillie and Marsman, "both reported and unreported." According to court documents, Marsman was charged with unlawful confinement and intimidation for preventing Baillie from using her cellphone to call police in connection with a Feb. 1, 2015, incident. Those charges were later withdrawn and he agreed to enter into a peace bond last March with conditions for a year, including having no contact with Baillie except by text to access his child through a third party. They said support was being offered to grieving staff.

– Police are searching for a missing 5-year-old girl after her mother was found dead in their apartment Monday in Canada, the Calgary Herald reports. Investigators believe Sara Baillie was killed, though a cause of death hasn't been given, and an Amber Alert for her daughter Taliyah Marsman was issued early Tuesday. According to the Canadian Press, Taliyah was last seen by family on Sunday morning. The girl's aunt and uncle describe her as a "vivacious, wonderful child." “She’s always dancing and loving and caring,” a babysitter tells the Herald. “She likes to love people, and she’s really good at making friends.” Taliyah's father and Baillie's estranged common-law husband, Colin Marsman, asked for anyone with information regarding his daughter's whereabouts to come forward. "With all my heart, I love her sooo much; she is my light! Please allow her to come home to her family," CBC quotes a statement issued by Marsman Wednesday. "Those who know me best, know the person and kind of father I am, and know more than anything, I just want my baby girl back.” Authorities say there is some history of domestic violence between Marsman and Baillie. Marsman is cooperating with police, but they aren't ruling out anyone as a suspect.

#SurvivorGameChangers — Nissy Dos (@Nisa911) April 13, 2017 RELATED VIDEO: PEN’s Survivor Fan Forum Reacts to Zeke Smith Being Outed as Transgender On Wednesday’s episode, Varner, 50, outed Smith, 29, during a tribal council in an attempt to paint the Brooklyn-based asset manager as “deceitful” and therefore worthy of being voted out. I spoke with Varner the day after it happened and I think he was still in a bit of shock. This week, he gives his on-the-scene and behind-the-scenes insight and reaction to Jeff Varner outing Zeke Smith as transgender. Smith told PEOPLE he was “shell-shocked” by Varner’s decision and struggles with forgiving him. I didn't discuss my trans status in my initial video because I wanted the show to desire me as a game player and an eccentric storyteller, not as "The First Trans Survivor Player." When you spoke with Zeke before his first season during the interview process, did the subject ever come up in terms of whether he planned to tell players he was trans and how he would handle it if someone brought it up? ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay, so clearly a lot to unpack here with Jeff Varner outing Zeke as trans on national television. And I have to imagine the Nuku tribe will still be decompressing from what just happened. I was also very impressed with the compassion Zeke showed Varner. Witnessing that moment was so powerful because from my seat at Tribal, I could see it all. And there is another moment that I hope was as inspiring for others as it was for me, and that was when Sarah told Zeke she was glad she got to know Zeke for who Zeke is and would never see him any other way. Varner, who is gay, shared the information during an emotional Tribal Council on "Survivor: Game Changers." He would be returning to Ponderosa, where voted out contestants go, after making one of the worst decisions of his life. Varner calls his actions a "mistake" on Twitter and says he's "deeply saddened." In 34 seasons of Survivor, I have rarely, if ever, personally commented on what is said or done in the game. I hope Varner is able to take this moment and turn it into something positive.

– "I was maliciously outed by a former local network news anchor. What a summer!" That's how Zeke Smith sums up his adventure on Survivor: Game Changers, which turned out to be a bit more eventful than Smith's first appearance on the reality show last season. As Wednesday's episode revealed, fellow contestant Jeff Varner accused Smith of "a deception" before outing Smith as transgender, per the AP—a move that has drawn condemnation from an LGBT rights group, host Jeff Probst, and the public at large, per People. Though Varner apologized before he was voted off the show, Smith says he's struggled with forgiving him in the eight months since filming wrapped, in a piece for the Hollywood Reporter. "In calling me deceptive, Varner invoked one of the most odious stereotypes of transgender people," Smith writes. Varner, who is gay, implied "that I'm not really a man and that simply living as my authentic self is a nefarious trick." GLAAD has criticized Varner's move, while Probst tells Entertainment Weekly that the reaction of his teammates, who swiftly defended Smith, "mirrors what the vast majority of society will feel. You just don’t do that to someone." After Wednesday's episode aired, Varner offered his "deepest, most heartfelt apologies" in a statement on Twitter, per CNN. "I recklessly revealed something I mistakenly believed everyone already knew. I was wrong and make no excuses for it," he said.

A Malibu recording studio where Young had worked, Indigo Ranch, was destroyed in a 2007 fire. Trump tweeted on Saturday: "There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Wildfires have become more devastating because of the extreme weather swings from global warming, fire scientists said. The first nine months of the year have been fourth-warmest on record for California, and this past summer was the second-hottest on record in the state. The death toll from the wildfire that incinerated the town of Northern California town of Paradise and surrounding areas climbed to 29, matching the mark for the deadliest single blaze in California history. The dean of the University of Michigan's environmental school, Jonathan Overpeck, said Western fires are getting bigger and more severe. "But, thanks in part to climate change, California isn't getting enough snow and rain to compensate for the unrelenting warming caused by climate change.

– President Trump on Saturday expressed his belief that the wildfires ravaging California can be blamed on "gross mismanagement of the forests." Neil Young, for one, isn't having it. Variety reports the musician lost his Malibu home in the fires, and on Sunday he offered a retort to Trump on his website in the form of a 300-word post (you'll need to register to read it in full). It reads in part: "California is vulnerable – not because of poor forest management as DT (our so-called president) would have us think. We are vulnerable because of climate change; the extreme weather events and our extended drought is part of it. ... We love California. We are not ill-prepared. We are up against something bigger than we have ever seen. It’s too big for some to see at all. Firefighters have never seen anything like this before in their lives." The AP backs up Young's assertion by way of an interview with University of Utah fire scientist Philip Dennison. He says there are a number of contributing factors, but "forest management wasn't one of them." He elaborates on why: Some of the areas that have been hit saw fires in 2005 and 2008, so they aren't "fuel-choked closed-canopy forests." And in the case of Southern California, what has burned isn't forest but shrub land. So of the other contributing factors, which was the big one? The Santa Ana winds, says Dennison. "With wind speeds as high as they were, there was nothing firefighters could do to stop the advance." Even fire breaks—areas where vegetation has been cleared or intentionally so as not to offer the oncoming flames fuel—has been no match. One of the fires straddled eight lanes of freeway, a distance of roughly 140 feet, he says.

On Feb. 29 only, Arby's will take a leap by offering the company's first ever vegetarian menu, highlighted by Arby's® signature sandwich lineup, minus the delicious meats that make them sandwiches. The (vegetarian) Loaded Italian Sandwich Image: Arby's In a press release, Chief Marketing Officer and Brand President Rob Lynch said, “If it goes well, we’ll likely bring back the vegetarian menu on Feb. 29 each year.” We know you're thinking: Wait, I can get those sandwiches sans meat any time of year just by ordering them that way. The Arby's Leap Day vegetarian menu includes: Loaded Italian Sandwich: Melted cheese, banana peppers, shredded lettuce, tomato and red onion, with red wine vinaigrette and garlic aioli on a toasted Italian style roll minus the thinly-sliced ham, succulent salami and delicious pepperoni that made this one of the most popular sandwich launches in Arby's history. Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich: Smoked Gouda cheese, crispy onions, mayonnaise and BBQ sauce on a star top bun minus the mouthwatering, tender brisket hickory-smoked at a family-owned smokehouse in Texas . Ordering a “Beef ‘n Cheddar Classic Sandwich” will get you just cheese sauce on a presumably soggy roll and the “Crispy Fish Flatbread” is cringe-inducing flatbread slopped with shredded lettuce and tartar sauce. Crispy Chicken Sandwich: Lettuce, mayonnaise and tomato served on a star top bun without Arby's crispy, all-white-meat Prime-Cut™ chicken breast. Roast Beef 'n Cheese Slider: Melted cheese you love on a slider-sized bun, for when you want a mini-me of the classic without Arby's famous thinly sliced roast beef, marinated and roasted in Arby's restaurants every single day. That's exactly why ordering a vegetarian sandwich from a roast beef emporium on a day that only comes around once every four years makes so much sense. Curly fries, jalapeño poppers and milkshakes also remain a year-round vegetarian option, too. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160224/337127 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160224/337476 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150521/217860LOGO SOURCE Arby’s

– It's difficult for a vegetarian to eat at Arby's—there's a lot of meat on the menu. So, in order "to give vegetarians a reason to visit Arby’s on Leap Day," an exec says in a press release, the fast food chain will offer a vegetarian menu on Feb. 29 this year. The Consumerist, Digiday, and Mashable insist the stunt is not a joke, though it is pretty hilarious that one of the items on Arby's official promotional photo is ... just a bun. Indeed, the descriptions of the items available on Leap Day are all pretty funny: "Roast Beef Sandwich: A toasted sesame seed bun minus Arby's famous thinly sliced roast beef, marinated and roasted in Arby's restaurants every single day. Available in Classic, Mid or Max sizes." "Crispy Fish Sandwich: Tartar sauce and shredded lettuce on a toasted sesame seed bun minus Arby's wild-caught Alaskan Pollock crispy-fried to golden-brown perfection." "Beef 'n Cheddar Classic Sandwich: A toasted onion roll topped with Cheddar cheese sauce and zesty Red Ranch minus Arby's famous thinly sliced roast beef, marinated and roasted in Arby's restaurants every single day." Meat-lovers, rest assured you can also still order the normal menu. As Mashable points out, of course, vegetarians could also order the vegetarian menu any time, simply by asking Arby's to hold the meat ... but "you can also drink eggnog any time of year ... but you probably don't." And Digiday points out that some of the items still sound pretty "fulfilling," like the Loaded Italian Sandwich with cheese, banana peppers, lettuce, tomato, onion, red wine vinaigrette, and garlic aioli on a toasted bun. Prices for vegetarian items are not discounted.